Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
This "excellent" plan still does not actually solve many of the city's transit problems that require the Relief Line.This new plan is an excellent one and unlike the standard DRL, this one can actually get built.
Trudeau will NEVER gives a dime of federal money for the DRL. There are huge infrastructure funds about to be released and they will be on a first-come first-serve basis. Toronto should drop all talk of it's stupid tunnelled DRL plan and put all resources towards the ST subway. It can start construction immediately and that is the only way it will get any money from the feds. These new funds aren't just for long term investment but also short term economic boosts and waiting 10 years for routing, community consultations, and environmental reviews doesn't cut the mustard.
This is the right plan at the right time and Toronto should put all it's financial, political, planning, and intellectual capitol into this project and within 5 years Toronto could see a new LRT to Pearson and a downtown subway.
Trudeau will not wait for Toronto to get it's act in gear and if this doesn't get built then Toronto can forget blaming the feds or Queen's Park and have only itself to blame.
In 2031, the entire stretch between Eglinton and Dundas station on Line 1 will be over-capacity. SmartTrack will only relieve Bloor-Yonge station by 4%, which is nothing. GO-RER and SmartTrack plans will put our newly upgraded Union station to capacity. Our streetcar routes, especially the Queen and King streetcar routes are over-capacity, the 501 King streetcar is sitting at 64,600 daily riders in 2014, over 20k more daily riders than the Sheppard line. Eglinton Station on Line 1 in 2031 with its tiny platform will rival Finch Station for 3rd busiest station in our subway system.
We have real, legitimate, capacity problems that we are purposefully ignoring.