[Dan416]

Why do you think getting to Union is so Critical. Other then ACC and the streetcar link to the ex I cant see why Union would be a destination. In fact most people who go through union (Go users) transfer onto the subway and go north. I dont see why going through union is so important... However on the other hand I can clearly see how the queen streetcar is a mess. Instead of using the streetcar PEOPLE WALK up to 40 minutes to get downtown because the streetcar is too full. God help anyone whose clausterphobic on the queen car.

You honestly can't see why Union is a destination? Really?

 

[sixrings]

Honestly cant see. Sure people use it for ACC, ROgers centre and the ex... But that cant be a problem since they are using the subway during off peak hours. If game time is at 7pm then the yonge subway wont need relief since almost everyone has left work already. When the game is over, deffinately the yonge line wouldnt need relief. However QUEEN has needed relief for quite some time!! Also I took the Go train from sauga to toronto for 6 months between moving. What I was shocked to notice was how many people from the train transfer to subway and get off at either Queen or Dundas. Actually I would say close to half got off at one of these two stops. Obviously a Queen alignment probably wouldnt help these people but it indicates that there are more people then I thought who believe queen and dundas are destinations. AGAIN that streetcar line is inadequate for how many people use the service. The real answer may be that we need two lines downtown. One what you are preposing and Two Queen. Unfortunately were more then likely only getting one. Actually even in this Subway everywhere campaign there is only one subway allocated for downtown...

 

[Dan416]

Honestly cant see. Sure people use it for ACC, ROgers centre and the ex... But that cant be a problem since they are using the subway during off peak hours. If game time is at 7pm then the yonge subway wont need relief since almost everyone has left work already. When the game is over, deffinately the yonge line wouldnt need relief. However QUEEN has needed relief for quite some time!! Also I took the Go train from sauga to toronto for 6 months between moving. What I was shocked to notice was how many people from the train transfer to subway and get off at either Queen or Dundas. Actually I would say close to half got off at one of these two stops. Obviously a Queen alignment probably wouldnt help these people but it indicates that there are more people then I thought who believe queen and dundas are destinations. AGAIN that streetcar line is inadequate for how many people use the service. The real answer may be that we need two lines downtown. One what you are preposing and Two Queen. Unfortunately were more then likely only getting one. Actually even in this Subway everywhere campaign there is only one subway allocated for downtown...

I took the GO Train from Erindale to Union for 3 years for school. The vast majority of people don't even get on the subway after, they walk straight through the subway station and on to the PATH.

And again, a rail alignment would relieve Queen anyway. But that's not even what the DRL is supposed to be relieving anyway, it's just a happy coincidence.

 

[unimaginative2]

What people forget about the Union alignment is the area east and west of downtown. On Queen, both are low-density residential and commercial neighbourhoods that the city wants to preserve in their present form. On the Union alignment, the DRL would run through rapidly developing high-density neighbourhoods that are the principal targets for intensification in the entire 416. Not to mention all of the development that exists directly south of Union and in the Metro Hall/Simcoe Place area that are much better served from a Convention Centre station than from Queen.

 

[gweed123]

What people forget about the Union alignment is the area east and west of downtown. On Queen, both are low-density residential and commercial neighbourhoods that the city wants to preserve in their present form. On the Union alignment, the DRL would run through rapidly developing high-density neighbourhoods that are the principal targets for intensification in the entire 416. Not to mention all of the development that exists directly south of Union and in the Metro Hall/Simcoe Place area that are much better served from a Convention Centre station than from Queen.

THANK YOU! The development potential (and even what is currently there) along the rail corridor, particularly in downtown, far exceeds what is currently there or what will ever be there along Queen.

 

[SlickFranky]

Reminder: subways don't exist solely to line developers' pockets.

 

[Dan416]

Reminder: subways don't exist solely to line developers' pockets.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't give developers a place to build very high density.

 

[Fresh Start]

Reminder: subways don't exist solely to line developers' pockets.

Thank you for being the voice of reason. What a huge slap in the face of long-time downtown Toronto residents to subject the majority of them to commute as far south to access a rail corridor-aligned DRL as they would travelling north to access the Bloor-Danforth. If Front's so frakking great why not built it a Transit City-style LRT line since they're renovating that corridor anyway? People like to pontificate about Union and its alledged endless ridership potential yet totally neglect the Dundas corridor from Bathurst to Parliament which would be very proximal to a Queen subway, same walking distance north of it as King is south. There are far more important things than lining a developer's grubby pockets indeed.

 

[Fresh Start]

Honestly cant see. Sure people use it for ACC, ROgers centre and the ex... But that cant be a problem since they are using the subway during off peak hours. If game time is at 7pm then the yonge subway wont need relief since almost everyone has left work already. When the game is over, deffinately the yonge line wouldnt need relief. However QUEEN has needed relief for quite some time!! Also I took the Go train from sauga to toronto for 6 months between moving. What I was shocked to notice was how many people from the train transfer to subway and get off at either Queen or Dundas. Actually I would say close to half got off at one of these two stops. Obviously a Queen alignment probably wouldnt help these people but it indicates that there are more people then I thought who believe queen and dundas are destinations. AGAIN that streetcar line is inadequate for how many people use the service. The real answer may be that we need two lines downtown. One what you are preposing and Two Queen. Unfortunately were more then likely only getting one. Actually even in this Subway everywhere campaign there is only one subway allocated for downtown...

You're precisely right there is only one subway line being prescribed for the downtown core, that's why its alignment must be central to the entire area NOT piggyback to a tee along a preexisting mass transit corridor which can very easily beef up its frequency and coverage level through the downtown with the addition of more train trips and stations and full fare integration.

 

[SlickFranky]

Doesn't mean we shouldn't give developers a place to build very high density.

They are building there already. 509/510/511 serves the inner area's needs well, and TC's WW-LRT addresses the craziness further west. Subways aren't always about increasing development..sometimes they're actually about meeting current demand and improving overall transportation.

 

[Fresh Start]

B-D transfers, and people tranferring from the College, Dundas, Queen, and King streetcars. As well as walk-on potential from both the existing neighbourhoods and the potential for TOD development that you DON'T get by following Queen.

The redevelopment of the industrial sites along the corridor, as well as the up-and-coming Liberty Village, and City Place (speaking only of the DRL West).

So in other words, you're supportive of having the bulkload of commuters travel longer distances in order to transfer onto the DRL; time that just as well could have been spent travelling to the nearest YUS stop. The areas of the core that are developable are already in the process of being redeveloped and will thrive no matter what transit type we prescribe to it. The inner-city meanwhile is losing its business and tradespeople to the 905 area, which I think we can partly blame on the pishpoor public transit service into these areas turning away a lot of potential customers.

And more than a handful of daily riders of the 505 and 506 cars in the west end will be converted over to riding a rail-corridor aligned DRL? Really?

Because any increase in stop distances along the street will change the nature of the street. The best solution is not to replace any part of the Queen service, but to relieve it by taking thru-traffic off of it, and leaving it for local traffic. Putting a DRL under Queen doesn't do that, it just moves both the thru-traffic and local traffic underground. This, for people who want local stop spacing, would be a detriment to local service.

Queen would more than survive with stop spacings of maximum every 750 metres, making anyone whose point of origin is midway between stops only 375 metres away from the nearest subway. How barbaric do you think official city planners are to prescribe spacing gaps much wider than that through the core? This isn't Thornhill or Willowdale were talking about here.

Where the hell did you get that from what I said? The closer to downtown you move the streetcar-subway transfer point, the more people you will intercept on the way to downtown. I never said anything about serving the Waterfront villas. The DRL has the unique opportunity to be the first subway in Toronto to intersect dozens of existing routes, but overlap none of them. It will do the same in the east. Keep the local services local, leave the subway to handle the long-haul commuters and the thru-traffic that were using the local routes. The moment you start trying to overlap portions of existing routes in order to relieve them, it will cause more damage than good. Intersect those dozens of routes at 1 single point (some cases 2, on opposite sides of the city), so people can transfer off them if they wish, or continue along it.

You did imply that the poor can eat cake, gweed, whether you meant it or not. I find it farcical that you mention moving the subway-streetcar transfer point more inwards yet you're endorsing the most far-flung alignment imaginable. In some cases it is the right move to overlap instead of intersect, which if you are going to intersect you do it a lot closer to the preexisting built up areas of the innercity than the Weston-Galt. Subways are not intended for long-distance commuters; commuter surface-rail lines ARE, and yet you wish to duplicate the service when there are so many far more deserving corridors we could attribute a new subway line to? Yes King, Queen and Dundas are heavily used transport corridors... but guess what, their major trip generation areas are not oriented anywhere along the rail corridor in the west nor the east. So those 55,000, 44,000 and 35,000 daily riders are all inconvenieced by having to stay longer aboard the streetcar in order to access that version of DRL, time which many comuters will instead likely spend continuing to rely on YUS per as usual. Ergo that DRL is of little value or worth to the majority or even to places like Liberty Village and West Don Lands which are pretty proximal to the Gardiner Exwy.

And a rail corridor alignment in the west wouldn't??? Review the communities you just named again, and tell me honestly that they wouldn't also benefit from a rail corridor alignment.

Did I say they wouldn't benefit? My point is that more areas besides those I had listed should benefit. The downtown doesn't begin nor end at King Street. Although by following your logic, if demand levels are so high south of Queen Street methinks far more people would be willing to walk up to it than Queen (and Dundas) commuters would be willing to walk down to King or lower.

 

[Dan416]

I've yet to hear any good arguments for building the DRL along Queen. If anyone had any good reasons for putting the DRL there, I'd love to hear them.

 

[Fresh Start]

^ Good thing the final decision doesn't rest on your shoulders then.

 

[gweed123]

I simply prefer a rail corridor alignment in the west. However, I am not nearly as dead-set on that as I am using Wellington through the core, that's what matters most. For the majority of people who will use the DRL, they really won't care whether or not it uses the rail corridor or a Roncesvalles/Queen/whatever alignment to Spadina, as long as it drops them off where they need to go inside the core. The majority of the DRL's ridership will not be coming from people south of B-D, it will be coming from people transferring from B-D onto the DRL. To them the alignment between B-D and downtown is just symantics, they just want to get downtown quickly.

All I want is an alignment that will effectively relieve the streetcar routes that exist south of B-D, but not relieve them to the point where they are being replaced, or are no longer needed. Yes, you want passenger demand on the College, Dundas, Queen, and King streetcars to drop, but not to the point where they are no longer viable routes. Running a subway under Queen would make the King and Dundas streetcars even less reliable than they are now, because they would be even less frequent. Intersecting those routes at a single point removes the commuter pressure from them, but keeps the local aspect of the lines in tact. Yes, some people may be willing to walk from Dundas or King to a line on Queen, but a lot of people won't. It may even get to the point where a walk down/up to Queen may not be a choice so much as it would be a necessity, because the streetcar service on Dundas and King has gone to hell in a handbasket.

And to FS, the last part of that is to refute the entire line being along Queen, not part of it as you have proposed. I'm not against the Roncesvalles alignment per-say, I just think that it would be just as effective, and cheaper, to build it up the rail corridor.

 

[js97]

feasibility of Sarah Thompson' transit Plan

If the 60 dollar car registry only gets about 20 million a year. How will road tolls squeeze out 500 million???

Even if half of that comes from Torontonians at 250 million, it would be about 600-700 dollars per car/per year. Is that something people are willing to pay?

That's a pretty hefty price tag.


What about a 'head' tax for residents? at 2.5 milllion people proper, can't we just charge every individual 200 dollars a year to pay for this??? (Probably also bring together Richmond Hill/vaughan into the equation since we are building extensions to their neighbourhood.