[Bojaxs]

Equal volume or equal value? If value, how calculated? The economic value to both the city/province and the company or simply the land value?

Good point.

I'm not sure there would be a continuous corridor of Crown-owned land in the GTA. There is an online Crown Land atlas but I couldn't figure out how to manipulate it. Even if it were feasible, I doubt CPKC would be willing to absorb the cost of building the bypass. They're not the ones wanting to leave.

My suggestion for constructing the freight bypass alongside the 413 is that it would help to reduce construction costs. The Ontario government can set aside land running alongside the proposed path of the 413 to allow for construction of the freight bypass.

I'm not sure of the legal issues involved in expropriation only to turn it over to a private company.

It's been done before. Albeit not exactly to the benefit of the general public. The Irving brothers got access to large swathes of crown land in New Brunswick which they exploited to benefit their lumber business.

The idea here is that by giving a private company crown land in order to move their operations outside the city would help to give passenger rail easier access into the city. So in that sense it's a benefit to the general public.

The question is, do we want to spend a decade in the courts to work this out.

None of this would move forward unless both sides can come to an agreement. So why would the courts get involved?

 

[smallspy]

My suggestion for constructing the freight bypass alongside the 413 is that it would help to reduce construction costs. The Ontario government can set aside land running alongside the proposed path of the 413 to allow for construction of the freight bypass.

There is a very, very serious flaw with your assumption here.

Freight railway corridors have very, very different needs from highway corridors.

Any corridor that will be used to house both therefore will not be optimal for both and will have some (potentially major) shortcomings.

Dan

 

[sixrings]

There is a very, very serious flaw with your assumption here.

Freight railway corridors have very, very different needs from highway corridors.

Any corridor that will be used to house both therefore will not be optimal for both and will have some (potentially major) shortcomings.

Dan

Subway to MCC. It costs money but it saves all the buy out stuff and in the end might work out to the same thing.

 

[T3G]

Subway to MCC. It costs money but it saves all the buy out stuff and in the end might work out to the same thing.

A subway to MCC wouldn't save the necessity of buy outs because there'd be zero overlap past Dixie (or perhaps Cooksville, depending on the alignment chosen). Milton line riders further west wouldn't be helped at all by this project, all they'd get is the option to take the mixed traffic, infrequent bus to the nearest subway station and suffer a much slower and less comfortable ride and still have to transfer if they want to get to Union.

I am not remotely convinced of the merits of this project at all, especially not as a purported "replacement" to the Milton line. There are bigger groups at stake here than just eastern Mississaugans.

 

[Sunnyside]

There is a very, very serious flaw with your assumption here.

Freight railway corridors have very, very different needs from highway corridors.

Any corridor that will be used to house both therefore will not be optimal for both and will have some (potentially major) shortcomings.

Dan

I don't think it's impossible, I just think it's not the best way to do this... a bypass along the 413 could work, but you'd only free up the Milton line, when the goal of a bypass would be to free up the eastern half of CP's mainline through Scarborough, too. If you're only getting *half* of what you could, it's worth asking why we'd do it greenfield along the 413 if the OG 407 option is much shorter and still effectively greenfield. It also gets CN off of the bit of the Halton sub that the Kitchener Line needs.

A subway to MCC is a bandage to this problem. If we are talking as a short-term solution where we add dedicated tracks from Union-Cooksville, and then a tunnel to MCC, then you've satiated enough of the core 'urban' demand to work out a longer-term bypass solution upstream. But it does not address the need in western Mississauga (which is fully built out) and Milton (which is at ~50% buildout, and already can justify more GO service).

 

[sixrings]

Mississauga population 800k. Milton 150k. The bigger group at stake by definition is MCC.

 

[T3G]

And yet, despite Mississauga being entitled to special rights to which Milton is not (despite Milton being one of the fastest growing communities in the entire country and a testament to infrastructure planning failure in this country), a subway to MCC would leave 4-5 stations (probably 5, I can't see there being any appetite to run a subway under the LRT tracks on Hurontario street) on the Milton line within Mississauga exactly as desolate as they currently are. How can you possibly justify this even as looking out for the city as a whole? It's looking out for the best interests of the corner of southeastern Mississauga, that's all.

It would cost untold billions to extend the subway the 12-13 km out to Square One. If you're spending that much money, you might as well do the thing properly and upgrade the Milton line in full.

 

[sixrings]

MCC is far more central Mississauga than STC is in Scarborough.

The reason this is a conversation is because MCC is about the same distance to union as STC is and or VMC.

It’s also a conversation because like it or not MCC is the city centre. If it was at port credit your location frustrations would be even worse.

Unless the Milton line branches to MCC it is again serving a small section of the population. All the high density zoning currently is planned for MCC. At Dundas you see 20 floor buildings being constructed. At MCC 70 floors.

 

[T3G]

Suggesting a new plan that will serve less of the city than the old plan does, and defending it as being in Mississauga's best interests, makes about as much sense as telling Scarborough or Etobicoke to stop complaining because downtown is getting the Ontario line. Regardless of whether Square One is considered the "central" part of Mississauga or not, it's still less people being served than would be by the Milton line upgrades. You yourself brought it up as an alternative to Milton line buy outs, so it would be fair for you to admit it is absolutely not that, at all.

Let's hear your proposed solutions for how to deliver service to west Mississauga and Milton.

 

[sixrings]

Suggesting a new plan that will serve less of the city than the old plan does, and defending it as being in Mississauga's best interests, makes about as much sense as telling Scarborough or Etobicoke to stop complaining because downtown is getting the Ontario line. Regardless of whether Square One is considered the "central" part of Mississauga or not, it's still less people being served than would be by the Milton line upgrades. You yourself brought it up as an alternative to Milton line buy outs, so it would be fair for you to admit it is absolutely not that, at all.

Let's hear your proposed solutions for how to deliver service to west Mississauga and Milton.

But STC got a subway extension at the expense of eglinton east and Sheppard east. Now Sheppard east subway may end up being a thing but let’s not kid ourselves that sacrifices were made to make a subway straight to STC.

It isn’t like I am suggesting the Milton line cease to exist. I’m just arguing instead of upgrading it perhaps a subway makes more sense. Milton and the rest of Mississauga would still have their Milton line.

If it makes you feel better. In the midtown thread I suggested that perhaps that line could branch to MCC and the Milton line could serve Dundas. I am highly skeptical of us being able to make a deal with the rail line which is where my subway proposal came from.

 

[T3G]

And yet, you've made frequent allusions here about how what happened in Scarborough was a mistake, so why are you advocating for it to be repeated in Mississauga?

If the Milton line upgrade happened instead, MCC of all places would be connected to Cooksville by an LRT that runs in its own private lanes, so even by not having a subway directly to Square One the inconvenience would be much less than that suffered out west. You try using Google Maps and planning out a journey from the western stations. The 2 km LRT ride and then the 30 minute train ride straight to Union would be a picnic in comparison.

 

[sixrings]

And yet, you've made frequent allusions here about how what happened in Scarborough was a mistake, so why are you advocating for it to be repeated in Mississauga?

If the Milton line upgrade happened instead, MCC of all places would be connected to Cooksville by an LRT that runs in its own private lanes, so even by not having a subway directly to Square One the inconvenience would be much less than that suffered out west. You try using Google Maps and planning out a journey from the western stations. The 2 km LRT ride and then the 30 minute train ride straight to Union would be a picnic in comparison.

Again I am not suggesting that the Milton line cease to exist.

 

[Bordercollie]

I think a really easy solution would be a bus lane on the 401 shoulder, with it starting at Pickering GO to Milton. You don't need to stop at every street, possibly stopping at Major stops only.

Scarborough Town, Don Mills, Yonge, Yorkdale, 400, Airport, Dixie, Hurontario, Williams Parkway, Etc. The cost to use an auger to clean the shoulder would be marginal vs the cost to build a tunnel. You will need to build stations on the shoulder and add an extra lane here and there make space. But you would be able to get it done for under a billion dollars including new buses.

 

[T3G]

Subway to MCC. It costs money but it saves all the buy out stuff and in the end might work out to the same thing.

This is what you are quoted as saying. You are suggesting the subway to Square One as an alternative to buying out the Milton corridor from CP. So, no, the Milton line wouldn't cease to exist, but the status quo would remain west of Dixie (/Cooksville). And as I have been trying to explain all along in this discussion, that status quo is horrendous, slow transit - GO bus connections that take 1.5 - almost 2 hours if you happen to catch the infrequent pulses, and all manner of convoluted transfers culminating in an even longer journey if you happen not to catch said GO buses. These are connections that would take much longer than the LRT ride down from Square One to an upgraded Cooksville, so the subway proposal screws over more people, even if it would bring a (very slow) subway ride directly to the "heart" of Mississauga.

 

[sixrings]

This is what you are quoted as saying. You are suggesting the subway to Square One as an alternative to buying out the Milton corridor from CP. So, no, the Milton line wouldn't cease to exist, but the status quo would remain west of Dixie (/Cooksville). And as I have been trying to explain all along in this discussion, that status quo is horrendous, slow transit - GO bus connections that take 1.5 - almost 2 hours if you happen to catch the infrequent pulses, and all manner of convoluted transfers culminating in an even longer journey if you happen not to catch said GO buses. These are connections that would take much longer than the LRT ride down from Square One to an upgraded Cooksville, so the subway proposal screws over more people, even if it would bring a (very slow) subway ride directly to the "heart" of Mississauga.

I am suggesting not buy out the whole line. So the Milton line would continue to have the exact same service it has currently and instead of buying the line you spend the money making a subway to MCC which would be all day.

I don’t know what you expect. Mississauga does not have the same service as Toronto and Milton shouldn’t expect to have the same service as Mississauga.