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Which is why GO presented long-term proposals to either build a regional rail tunnel under Union Station for Lakeshore Trains, or a second station at Spadina/Front for Milton, Barrie and/or Georgetown trains, connected by the DRL to the Financial District. (Such a plan must also have platforms for Lakeshore trains to stop there, IMO, to provide connections to other trains at Union.)

Shame they only proposed a pair of tracks for Lakeshore trains. If the proposal were for half a dozen or a dozen tracks plus platforms you could increase capacity and relieve some of the crunch on the ground level platforms.
 
Yesterday from Canoe:

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Sounds like the union station capacity issue needs some out of the box thinking. How about retrofitting the GO bilevel coaches with doors on the top level and essentially doubling the platform area with a second platform level.
 
Sounds like the union station capacity issue needs some out of the box thinking. How about retrofitting the GO bilevel coaches with doors on the top level and essentially doubling the platform area with a second platform level.

Don't know if you could retrofit doors into them....even if you could, you would lose a fair bit of capacity removing seats.....then you wouldn't get anywhere near double the capacity on the platforms as you would have to build some sort of stairs (and likely elevators for accessibility) to get people down.

Off the top of my head....sounds like an idea that would prove too expensive for the yield it would produce.
 
Which is why GO presented long-term proposals to either build a regional rail tunnel under Union Station for Lakeshore Trains, or a second station at Spadina/Front for Milton, Barrie and/or Georgetown trains, connected by the DRL to the Financial District. (Such a plan must also have platforms for Lakeshore trains to stop there, IMO, to provide connections to other trains at Union.)

Both of these solutions seem Rube Goldberg-ish. It seems like cutting down on dwell times at Union would be a far more practical solution than either of these options. Peak hour is supposed to see 90 trains arriving at Union. That would mean about 45 from either direction. These aren't totally unmanageable frequencies for a station as large as Union.

It would be interesting reimagining the DRL as a relief line or distributor for a notional GO RER network. DRL could become an upside down U of sorts, intercepting passengers at a Cherry/EDL station and at a Spadina/FortYork station, giving an alternative route to the north end of the CBD.

Land use planning has to become a bigger issue as well. CBD employment is great and such but the current plan is maybe a bit too focused on the CBD. I'm not saying we should bring back the suburban city centres idea, but if commercial development could be encouraged in areas adjacent to future RER stations (e.g. the Sunlight Soap lands, the area bounded by King, Bathurst, University and the railcorridor.) it could reduce pressure on Union station.
 
Thats what the whole RER 15 minute thing over the last 2 weeks has been about, the liberals want to start converting the GO lines to 15 minute off peak service lines using EMUs.
 
I do know that one option is to build a series of platforms far below the existing station with access tunnels to the east and west from Union. Though initially expensive it would allow GO to increase the number of platforms similar to the new RER station at Gare du Nord in Paris which is close to 7 storeys underground.
 
I do know that one option is to build a series of platforms far below the existing station with access tunnels to the east and west from Union. Though initially expensive it would allow GO to increase the number of platforms similar to the new RER station at Gare du Nord in Paris which is close to 7 storeys underground.

Paris' RER (and London's Crossrail...) had to create through-routes all across downtown Paris, though. They went underground because that was pretty much the only way to create continuous routes.

It's totally redundant to build a tunnel under a wide rail corridor. Toronto has an obsession with tunnelling!
 
note that plan was created when they were not planning for RER service, simply large electrified locos pulling the existing train cars. Using that model, it would require around 10 minute wait times at union, meaning you will very quickly run into capacity issues. With RER, you can use existing Union platforms with wait times of maybe 2 minutes, much more manageable.
 
It would be interesting reimagining the DRL as a relief line or distributor for a notional GO RER network. DRL could become an upside down U of sorts, intercepting passengers at a Cherry/EDL station and at a Spadina/FortYork station, giving an alternative route to the north end of the CBD.

What I favour is building the DRL as part of the GO REX system. Have 4 lines: Lakeshore (E+W), Milton + Richmond Hill, Kitchener + Markham (Kitchener to Mt. Joy), and Pearson to Seaton via STC. All of those routes would run via Union.

The first 3 would have second, shorter routes that, rather than going through Union, would go through a DRL tunnel under Wellington, King, or Queen. The routes would be: Clarkson to Pickering, Mississauga Centre to Richmond Hill Centre, and Mt. Pleasant to Unionville. 15 min frequencies on each of those branches equates to 5 mins off-peak through the core, with shorter headways during peak.

The Richmond Hill branch, rather than running through the Don Valley, would run the traditional northeast DRL route to Eglinton, and then continue under Don Mills until just north of Lawrence, where it would then pick up the current GO alignment up to RHC, with the full GO REX route continuing to Bloomington. With this, you get 7.5 min frequencies up to RHC outside of peak, and potentially as long as every 3 mins during peak.

This solves the capacity crunch at Union. It solves the overcrowding of the Yonge line, because in essence the DRL is reaching all the way up to RHC. It alleviates the subway system in general, because not only does it provide a more convenient option for 905ers who currently get dropped off at Finch or Kipling, but it also provides alternatives for 416ers, because within the 416 and inner 905 these routes are running near subway level frequencies.
 
I do know that one option is to build a series of platforms far below the existing station with access tunnels to the east and west from Union. Though initially expensive it would allow GO to increase the number of platforms similar to the new RER station at Gare du Nord in Paris which is close to 7 storeys underground.

Why both East and West? If the initial build is for only one of the directions it would save considerable cost. Let's assume just the west side for now

There needs to be a starting/staging area for the tunneling machine. The only places I could think of are the storage yards at Bathurst and Cherry.

Continue the pillars that hold the existing lines down 1 more story just like they are doing right now (extra high for exhaust, etc). These become the centre of each of the platforms. But only on the western edge.

Temporarily close part/all of the Bathurst yard. Shift some of the mainline tracks north so that the tunnels start on the south (a straight line for speed). This is where the tunnel boring machines will launch (several small ones build similar to the Island Airport tunnel).

The tunnel boring machine would be disassembled in the area that was created between the pillars and then reused for the next tunnel.

Build the platform starting just after Simcoe. This would allow wider platforms and distribute people away from the Bay/Yonge area. Also would allow for the East end to be eventually built under the east 1/2 of Union.

Repurpose some/all of the mall that is being created underneath of Union (lower level) to be the waiting area for the lower tracks
 

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