[Paleo]

The Front corridor is in the process of being built up with much greater heights and densities than Queen, and is poorly served by transit. It has important regional destinations like the Dome, the convention centre, and the Exhibition that would benefit from a subway line. Building it would not involve scrapping an existing transit investment and would be less disruptive in terms of transit, people's lives, and heritage.

The Dome, MTCC, and NTC aren't the cause of congestion on the Yonge or Bloor-Danforth lines. Neither are the short stretches of condos that end at Bathurst. Condos themselves are overrated as sources of riders because each building only has a few hundred units at best.

The DRL should go on a real street aka King. The centre of the CBD and location of many new towers too (what's CityPlace?) and you have a heavily used local route that can be the base of solid ridership on top of suburban commuters as long as TPTB aren't stupid and make the line express.

 

[Rainforest]

There is no Woodbine connection; that's simply crappy reporting by the Star. Look at the original not-to-scale Metrolinx map, and where the DRL goes in comparison to the existing GO line. That's most likely Pape/Donland they are thinking ... not Woodbine!

Good to hear that. Let's hope that was just a map poorly drawn.

 

[Rainforest]

A tunnel under Queen might not be the optimal DRL route through the core. IMO, Wellington would be best (direct connection to Union, King, and St Andrew stations, and close to all major destinations).

However, I heard that there exists some geological feature (water table? underground streams? not sure) that makes a Wellington or King tunnel harder to construct. Therefore, all official studies so far placed DRL either under Queen or in the rail corridor.

 

[dunkalunk]

I too agree with a Wellington alignment for the above reasons in addition to the reality that placing it on wellington will make it easier for the line to swing south to serve the West Don Lands and mount the rail corridor to cross the Don River.

 

[rbt]

The DRL should go on a real street aka King. The centre of the CBD and location of many new towers too (what's CityPlace?) and you have a heavily used local route that can be the base of solid ridership on top of suburban commuters as long as TPTB aren't stupid and make the line express.

I'm not so certain of that. King is certainly the top destination but the Queen/Dundas combination (Eaton Centre) beat it.

For maximum relief of Yonge you need to find out where passengers East of Woodbine (or Pape) are going in the core. There may well be more from that area going to College/Dundas/Queen (Dundas as DRL street) than to Queen/King/Union (King as DRL interchange).

Taking transfers onto the Yonge line destined to King/Union at a Queen interchange isn't a big deal as there is free space by that point.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Why not Run the DRL under Union Station? Go with the original plan!

 

[leopetr]

Why not Run the DRL under Union Station? Go with the original plan!

Which original plan? This one? With frequent service on both Georgetown and Lakeshore East, there wouldn't be a point.

 

[mrgrieves]

It's clear that a Downtown Relief Line is necessary in this city. Just the fact that its called a Relief line and has been in discussion for decades speaks for itself.

Just like our mayor I'm by no means a transit expert. But I was wondering if there ever discussion of closing off Queen or King Street to cars and just giving the streetcars their own street? To me this almost seems like a no-brainer for at least one of these streetcar lines to have their own street. I understand that business would be opposed to it but it would essentially create downtown rapid transit (especially with new streetcars on the way) with zero investment in infrastructure.

The streetcars would control traffic signals at the intersections and stops would be spread out.

The parallel streets like Richmond and Adelaide can both handle plenty of traffic.

Toronto has this nostalgic fixation with streetcars. But the truth is they seem like a mode of transport suited for the pre-car era when they had streets all to themselves

 

[M II A II R II K]

An additional line under Queen would also provide extra interchanges with the GO service so people can transfer there and avoid going to Union altogether. And plus the Queen streetcar is too crowded and bogs the street down too much.

 

[gweed123]

And plus the Queen streetcar is too crowded and bogs the street down too much.

The streetcar doesn't bog the street down. The cars on it do.

 

[Mapleson]

I don't think we'll see a DRL in the next two decades. However, by then I'd hope GO Transit is well on the way to electrifying the whole system. The recession will slow down transit improvements this decade as we try to grow out of deficits. While we don't have the money for new big ticket plans, we can maximize what our current infrastructure is capable of supporting. After all that, a DRL will be the next logical step, money permitting.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Which original plan? This one? With frequent service on both Georgetown and Lakeshore East, there wouldn't be a point.

That's not for Georgetown and Whitby/Oshawa, but GO train expansion does nothing for local sevice unless more train stations come downtown.

 

[Electrify]

I don't think I've ever seen a Toronto Star graphic about a transportation project that wasn't wildly wrong. It's as though they've never even visited Toronto. I can't imagine how they do it.

Metrolinx seems to have a fixation with Queen Street; the DRL has to go there, end of question. If the theoretical GO tunnel isn't under the rail corridor, then it has to be under Queen, end of story. One look at a satellite view of downtown Toronto should show you that getting a rail line from Front and Spadina to Osgoode would give you a bunch of huge curves and cost a huge bucket of money. And it would take most of the passengers well north of where they want to go. I may be missing something, but it seems such a preposterous idea that I can't understand how it got on paper. What about King? A tunnel under Wellington would be almost easy by comparison, and would deposit riders where they are actually destined.

I know the idea of a subway line under Queen has a long history to it and a lot of folks think it's the obvious choice, but I think it's a bad one. Building it would cause transit chaos downtown for years. Queen already has a transit line that can handle all of its own demand. It is lined with heritage buildings that, let's face it, would "accidentally" burn down and be replaced by 40-story cookie-cutter boxes about 20 minutes after the subway opened.

The Front corridor is in the process of being built up with much greater heights and densities than Queen, and is poorly served by transit. It has important regional destinations like the Dome, the convention centre, and the Exhibition that would benefit from a subway line. Building it would not involve scrapping an existing transit investment and would be less disruptive in terms of transit, people's lives, and heritage.

Queen, AKA Highway 2, has always been the main west-east arterial for the Greater Toronto Area. Etobicoke, Mississauga, Oakville, and Burlington all built themselves along it, not Highway 5 (Bloor and Dundas). Building the subway along Highway 5 makes as much sense as building it along Bathurst instead of Yonge.

With that said, I could see through downtown diverging away from Queen through. Wellington and front is too far south, but Richmond, Adelaide, or King could work. One suggestion I remember hearing about is to run trains in one direction under Richmond, another under Adelaide, and use the area in between as a platform.

 

[Northern Magus]

How is it we study so much and build so little?

Because (a) no one wants to foot the bill, and (b) accordingly politicians like Mike Harris and Rob Ford keep getting elected.

 

[Northern Magus]

The Woodbine connection is strange indeed, and I don't even know what gave them such idea. The eastern leg of DRL should go to Pape / Danforth, that route would be both more effective (in relieving Yonge) and cheaper (since it is shorter).

I think Woodbine is intriguing and potentially brilliant . . . and it may ultimately be even more cost effective than you're suggesting.

Woodbine - Kingston Rd - Queen means a gentler curve, which will translate into a faster journey. It'll also be doable as a cut and cover trench in its entirety, which AFAIK tends to be the most cost-effective method of subway construction. Additionally, Woodbine and Kingston will handily support rezoning for intensification, which means that development can potentially be piggybacked onto station construction, maximizing the ROI. Pape is a poor choice for all three of these: in particular, since it would need to be bored (expensively) under predominantly low-density established residential side streets, it is difficult to imagine how they would be conducive to the densification required for leveraging local ridership. The proposed Woodbine route will succeed on all three counts.

An interesting question then is: what will become of the streetcar to the Beaches? Hopefully it will turn southbound at Coxwell and then go along the median in the middle of Lakeshore over to Queens Quay and then into Union Station.

But that's a topic for another thread.

A big problem here is that the Yonge Subway, Bloor-Yonge Station, Union Station, and the surface streetcar network all need to be 'relieved'. Obviously its a consequence of underinvestment in downtown transit relative to travel demand, and now we're forced to catch up quickly. Knowing that realistically we'll be lucky to get one tunnel dug in the next 30 years, they're trying to solve several problems at once, which is going to become a compromised design no matter what is chosen.

Yep, and I also think they're trying to avoid having to deal with all the hidden extra costs inherent to going underneath the PATH and through the CBD, which is why King and Wellington were out of the running.

One more thing to add:

I realize that the DRL is something dear to many people who've invested countless hours designing their own routes and fantasy maps based on what they thought was best. Some of them are clearly dissatisfied with this route map in preference of their own.

Most of the maps I have seen over the years are subway-centric only, and don't take into account the existing GO and streetcar infrastructure that's already there, waiting to be leveraged. That's the perspective Metrolinx is coming at this from. It's already looking at the day when electrified GO trains are running every 5-15 minutes. It's already eyeing a midtown commuter line that runs from Kipling to Scarborough. And based on the realities of the last 30 years, it's probably already weighing what's financially and politically feasible.

This line reminds me a lot of London's Victoria line: built for speed, relief, and maximum connectivity with other lines. Like I said, this proposal is intriguing and potentially brilliant.