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TOareaFan said:
I don't follow the relief line discussions (figure I will be long retired before it is ever in use) so I don't know much about the plans....but it is not clear to me how a transit line under Queen Street answers Drum's question about how you move 10s of thousands of people from Spadina and Front.
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It's not clear to anyone but the Toronto planners. To everyone else it's obvious a subway on King or Wellington could but what do layman know when they're not being whipped by the backroom people in Tory's office?

wolfewood said:
He's just being snarky about Keesmaat. I don't think I've ever seen a post made by Forgotten that doesn't involve slagging off Keesmaat, he has a pathetic obsession with making her look bad.
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When Chow was in the running everyone here mocked Tory and his SmartTrack for being a stupid and impractical sham. They did it mercilessly and continue to do so. Rightfully because his plan is swiss cheese, but when Keesmat plays the part of Tory toadie and eviscerates the Scarborough subway and screws up the RL solely for the purposes of propping up SmartTrack, the RDF activates and the KDF closes rank.

Fanboys/fangirls suddenly lose objectivity and think she's beyond reproach. Some of these same folks were accusing guys like Mark Towhey of being "enablers" (and worse) for allegedly putting themselves or their boss ahead of the city, all over a few pops in the office, but when you're a fan of the person, inappropriately spending billions that could harm Toronto's future competitiveness, you can't criticize that too harshly because she's just following orders. Double standards and hypocrisy are real.

If her ideas were so great it would have been unnecessary to have her underlings broadcasting tall tales to the public throughout the consultations.
 
^ No one is defending Keesmaat for her inability to fight Tory (though god knows it's clear that she can't just propose what she wants - remember what happened after the Gardiner debate when she tried to actually make her opinion known and got publicly reprimand?), or at least only me. I see her merely trying to work within the constraints of her position, including the political pressures that are coming from Council and the Province. And, for that matter, as far as the data goes, it does even appear that the King alignment is even that much better. Queen works virtually the same as King but is politically expedient as well. Is that shitty? Obviously. But again, not Keesmaat's fault and tbh not even that big a concern if the Queen alignment would be largely similar to a King alignment.
 
wolfewood said:
^ No one is defending Keesmaat for her inability to fight Tory (though god knows it's clear that she can't just propose what she wants - remember what happened after the Gardiner debate when she tried to actually make her opinion known and got publicly reprimand?), or at least only me. I see her merely trying to work within the constraints of her position, including the political pressures that are coming from Council and the Province. And, for that matter, as far as the data goes, it does even appear that the King alignment is even that much better. Queen works virtually the same as King but is politically expedient as well. Is that shitty? Obviously. But again, not Keesmaat's fault and tbh not even that big a concern if the Queen alignment would be largely similar to a King alignment.
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Maybe politically expediant, but it also has other benefits: 2 stations that are already built to accomodate a line below them (Queen with its old streetcar tunnel, Osgoode with provisions in the original tunnel foundations) and significantly fewer PATH connects crossing the street (only 1 not associated with a staton, at Sherton) versus 3 not associated with a station. Wellington also has 3.

Plus, for extension west, Queen is a much denser corridor than King.

And she was absolutely right in trimming the Scarborough subway, which otherwise would have been "inappropriately spending billions that could harm Toronto's future competitiveness", using Forgotten's own words.
 
jcam said:
Maybe politically expediant, but it also has other benefits: 2 stations that are already built to accomodate a line below them (Queen with its old streetcar tunnel, Osgoode with provisions in the original tunnel foundations) and significantly fewer PATH connects crossing the street (only 1 not associated with a staton, at Sherton) versus 3 not associated with a station. Wellington also has 3.

Plus, for extension west, Queen is a much denser corridor than King.
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It is also likely to be cheaper, fewer utilities along Queen corridor, cheaper crossing of the Don River probably, and a shorter route overall.
 
jcam said:
Maybe politically expediant, but it also has other benefits: 2 stations that are already built to accommodate a line below them (Queen with its old streetcar tunnel, Osgoode with provisions in the original tunnel foundations)
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Queen Lower remains part of the TTC’s infrastructure. It is laced with conduits and houses elevator shafts for the functioning subway station that sits above it. Part of the station also now forms a pedestrian passageway from the northbound to southbound sides of the tracks. Reclaiming it for anything else would be extremely challenging at best. And besides, how would you run subway cars through a tunnel that was built for streetcars?


Skip to 2:55

 
salsa said:
Queen Lower remains part of the TTC’s infrastructure. It is laced with conduits and houses elevator shafts for the functioning subway station that sits above it. Part of the station also now forms a pedestrian passageway from the northbound to southbound sides of the tracks. Reclaiming it for anything else would be extremely challenging at best. And besides, how would you run subway cars through a tunnel that was built for streetcars?


Skip to 2:55

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Sorry, should've clarified....the useful fact of the streetcar tunnels isn't their exact reuse, but merely the same situation that exists at Osgoode....the existing subway tunnel structure has been built in a way that redistributes load around an expected future tunnel. IN the case of Queen, yes there are conduits and passageways, but that is MUCH easier to modify than having to build a structure around an existing tunnel that wasn't designed for it.

I'll use the analogy of renovating a home...it's much easier to underpin an existing basement to get a few more inches of head height that it is to build a basement under a house without an existing one.
 
wolfewood said:
^ No one is defending Keesmaat for her inability to fight Tory (though god knows it's clear that she can't just propose what she wants - remember what happened after the Gardiner debate when she tried to actually make her opinion known and got publicly reprimand?), or at least only me. I see her merely trying to work within the constraints of her position, including the political pressures that are coming from Council and the Province. And, for that matter, as far as the data goes, it does even appear that the King alignment is even that much better. Queen works virtually the same as King but is politically expedient as well. Is that shitty? Obviously. But again, not Keesmaat's fault and tbh not even that big a concern if the Queen alignment would be largely similar to a King alignment.
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Her own data says Queen loses if you care about the future. All future job growth downtown for the next 25-30 years is going to be developed south of Lot Street as per city policy and directives. Does no one click on the headlines at the top of the each page? Relevant to this thread is the possible sites for new GO stations and 0 of the shortlisted ones are at Queen Street. Queen is completely useless to the GO network. See drum's post in another thread. How are you going to get 10s thousands into the core from GO stations not at Union? Toy streetcars?
 
facepalming_brooklynite said:
This is not quite accurate. Metrolinx is considering Queen & Dufferin as a potential GO station site:
https://www.metrolinxengage.com/en/content/dufferinqueen-west
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Euphoria said:
Attended the Lakeshore Collegiate public meeting tonight. A few things were made clear that narrowed the scope of the discussion: The Smart Trac options are either C or D. There will NOT be a Spadina Smart Trac station. There are no near future plans to expand the Relief Line west of University, though a Spadina station is a possibility with a fight. The Relief Line will very likely be a subway, not an LRT. It's more likely that there will be stations at Osgoode and Queen than at City Hall. Streetcar service will likely continue on Queen after the DRL is built. The Relief Line choices are B1, with or without a Unilever stop. The likely location of the Liberty Village stop is the north side of King. There's a faint possibility of this stop being located at Queen and Dufferin, but there won't be stops in both locations. The subway to STC is going to happen. There won't be a Smart Spur from Ellesmere to STC. Basically transit will be overbuilt in Scarborough, underbuilt in the core. Adding a Go station at Park Lawn is not for sure. I really felt that there was little sense of the value of the Relief Line among the technocrats apart from the utility of removing riders from the Yonge line.
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Forgotten said:
It's not clear to anyone but the Toronto planners. To everyone else it's obvious a subway on King or Wellington could but what do layman know when they're not being whipped by the backroom people in Tory's office?.
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I work at King and Bay and take 1 Yonge/2 Danforth on my commute. In theory a King DRL would be the best for my commute, but for big picture it is not "obvious" to me. I would locate the DRL along Queen. It works from a pedestrian flow through PATH aspect, for being the easiest alignment, for having City Hall car park as either station or TBM excavation point. It also has less potential to disrupt utilities during construction in the financial district.
 
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