[ShonTron]

Scarberian's last activity was 5 days ago. I'm worried.

The LRT mob caught up with them. After all, the first Transit City EA is tonight, and I couldn't see them missing it over their dead bodies.

 

[EnviroTO]

I really wonder how much space there will be in the corridor between Union and Dundas West once the route to Georgetown goes to four tracks to handle all-day Brampton, very frequent airport, and VIA and the route south of the West Toronto Diamond has the extra load of all-day Milton and GO Bolton at rush hour. By the time GO Barrie joins in at Lansdowne things start to look a little congested. Maybe it is a good thing they are putting off what might seem like a no-brainer subway route right now since the future GO/VIA/Airport cost of having nowhere to expand would probably be far more expensive than a subway under Roncesvalles. It would be interesting to have the GO/Airport service in a subway to the airport while TTC subways run on the surface in the rail corridor.

 

[EnviroTO]

My choice for the DRL route would be to start at Dundas West Station, head south under Roncesvalles, continue east on King, south under Parliament, diagonal under the Distillery parking under Cherry, under Commissioners, north under Carlaw to Gerrard, diagonal to Pape, north under Pape to Pape Station.

Stations:
- Dundas West (Bloor-Danforth Line, GO Bloor)
- Howard Park (College Streetcar)
- High Park East
- Queen West (Waterfront LRT)
- Jameson
- Dufferin South {CNE West}
- Atlantic {CNE GO Exhibition}
- Strachan {CNE East}
- Bathurst South (Bathurst Streetcar)
- Spadina South (Spadina LRT)
- Theatre
- St. Andrew (University Line)
- Financial (PATH walkway to Union)
- Yonge-King (Yonge Line)
- Jarvis
- Distillery {Parliament and Mill}
- Cherry {between Lakeshore and Queens Quay} (Cherry LRT, possible future GO Cherry)
- Commissioners {at Don Roadway} (Commissioners (Waterfront East) LRT)
- Lakeshore {at Carlaw}
- Queen East (Queen Streetcar)
- Dundas East (new Dundas Streetcar terminus)
- Gerrard (College streetcar, possible future GO Gerrard instead of GO Cherry)
- Pape (Bloor-Danforth Line, Don Mills LRT)

 

[CDL.TO]

I really wonder how much space there will be in the corridor between Union and Dundas West once the route to Georgetown goes to four tracks to handle all-day Brampton, very frequent airport, and VIA and the route south of the West Toronto Diamond has the extra load of all-day Milton and GO Bolton at rush hour. By the time GO Barrie joins in at Lansdowne things start to look a little congested. Maybe it is a good thing they are putting off what might seem like a no-brainer subway route right now since the future GO/VIA/Airport cost of having nowhere to expand would probably be far more expensive than a subway under Roncesvalles. It would be interesting to have the GO/Airport service in a subway to the airport while TTC subways run on the surface in the rail corridor.

The Weston sub is really, really wide. People should go check it out. There's space for almost anything we would want to send down that corridor, short of a 6-lane expressway.

Check out this link showing the Weston sub just south of Lansdowne. There's 5 tracks currently in the corridor, there's room for another track on the south side and 3 more on the north. That's room for 9 tracks! There's consistent space in the corridor for 8 or more tracks. Look how wide it is at Black Creek.

You could have 4 tracks for GO and VIA Georgetown and Milton line services (2 express, 2 local), 1 for the Bradford line, 2 subway tracks and their associated platforms, and still have space left over.

 

[EnviroTO]

I can see there being a need for 2 Milton, 2 Georgetown Local, 2 Georgetown Express, and 1 Bolton at Bloor. Considering platforms at Bloor it seems a little tight. The corridor is wide between Lansdowne and Stachan but very tight elsewhere especially once you factor in any form of platform space or bridge support structures from overpasses.

They have allocated space for 6 tracks on Lakeshore north of the Gardiner as can be seen in the Waterfront West LRT documents. Considering the Lakeshore Line is only VIA + GO on a single route to Hamilton could require 6 tracks, a corridor handling Airport + Georgetown + Milton + Bolton + Barrie could easily require 7 or 8. I figure 8 to Lansdowne, 7 to the West Toronto diamond, 6 to Church St Weston, 4 to Brampton.

 

[junctionist]

The Weston sub is really, really wide. People should go check it out. There's space for almost anything we would want to send down that corridor, short of a 6-lane expressway.

Check out this link showing the Weston sub just south of Lansdowne. There's 5 tracks currently in the corridor, there's room for another track on the south side and 3 more on the north. That's room for 9 tracks! There's consistent space in the corridor for 8 or more tracks. Look how wide it is at Black Creek.

You could have 4 tracks for GO and VIA Georgetown and Milton line services (2 express, 2 local), 1 for the Bradford line, 2 subway tracks and their associated platforms, and still have space left over.

That's good to hear that there's a lot of space. Hamish Wilson kept commenting on Spacing and those cycling blogs on how a bike path is a terrible idea in the corridor because the lands should kept for rail transit, but it's a really wide corridor as I've noticed.

 

[RedRocket191]

With respect, why must there be so many tracks?

Assuming express trains will only run when there is high demand (and that likely won't be outside of the peak hours), is it really necessary to give two full tracks for each express branch?

With effective signaling and schedules, you could probably cut the number of tracks in half.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Effective signalling should be able to place many different trains into a smaller number of tracks than you might think. Especially allowing for interlining on the CP and CN lines, and running against the flow (ie no dedicated "up" or "down" tracks to us British parlance).

 

[CDL.TO]

I can see there being a need for 2 Milton, 2 Georgetown Local, 2 Georgetown Express, and 1 Bolton at Bloor. Considering platforms at Bloor it seems a little tight. The corridor is wide between Lansdowne and Stachan but very tight elsewhere especially once you factor in any form of platform space or bridge support structures from overpasses.

They have allocated space for 6 tracks on Lakeshore north of the Gardiner as can be seen in the Waterfront West LRT documents. Considering the Lakeshore Line is only VIA + GO on a single route to Hamilton could require 6 tracks, a corridor handling Airport + Georgetown + Milton + Bolton + Barrie could easily require 7 or 8. I figure 8 to Lansdowne, 7 to the West Toronto diamond, 6 to Church St Weston, 4 to Brampton.

That's serious, serious overkill. Once you have trains running the same way on the same track, the capacity of 4 tracks is immense. Every 3 minutes on each track (for which there is no need or demand now or in the foreseeable future) is 40 trains per hour per direction.

Lakeshore to Hamilton most certainly doesn't need 6 tracks. They're only adding a third track as far as Oakville right now, and it's 4 on the way into Toronto. 6 tracks should be including the tracks for the WWLRT.

 

[RedRocket191]

We also need to ask ourselves:

What are the urban design consequences of having 4 tracks through places like downtown Brampton?

 

[CDL.TO]

We also need to ask ourselves:

What are the urban design consequences of having 4 tracks through places like downtown Brampton?

I really think it's minimal. The way buildings (such as the bus terminal) are close to the current bridge over Main Street does an excellent job of minimising the visual and urbanistic effects of the railway and is another example of why dense urban settings should provide a great example for urban design. I really can't see the same bridge, but only twice as wide, causing any measurable damage of the downtown Brampton landscape. With electrification and the loss of diesel locomotives, the vibrations and noise of the train tracks would be reduced which I believe causes greater issues than the width of the rail corridor itself.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Adam (a.k.a. TTC Chairman) Giambrone's Ward 18 Davenport western frontier is the railway line, where the Downtown Relief Line may go along. How much an influence that may or may not be, we will have to see.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Has anyone given any consideration how this will be presented to CN and CP?

I'd imagine that (should this come to pass) the right to use their ROW could be legislated, but that seems a very confrontational approach.

 

[Anth]

Hamish Wilson kept commenting on Spacing and those cycling blogs on how a bike path is a terrible idea in the corridor because the lands should kept for rail transit, but it's a really wide corridor as I've noticed.

Did he mention the Front Street Extension?

 

[EnviroTO]

That's serious, serious overkill. Once you have trains running the same way on the same track, the capacity of 4 tracks is immense. Every 3 minutes on each track (for which there is no need or demand now or in the foreseeable future) is 40 trains per hour per direction.

The issue is that CP and CN are involved. Every time a train moves betweens systems it is a bottleneck. Six tracks may be able to handle the traffic but it would require GO purchasing the tracks from CN and CP, creating a flyovers/flyunders at West Toronto Diamond, Lansdowne, and Church St Weston to get tracks into the middle express tracks. Six is an ideal number as it allows two local, two express, and two used by freight. With no freight five is probably ideal as it allows for a reserve track in case of line maintenance without throwing all the schedules into disarray.

Lakeshore to Hamilton most certainly doesn't need 6 tracks. They're only adding a third track as far as Oakville right now, and it's 4 on the way into Toronto. 6 tracks should be including the tracks for the WWLRT.

I'm only reading the engineering documents. It has allocated space for a new track north and south of the existing four.