diminutive
Active Member
The question is what kind of Heavy Rail? Subways, UPX and GO trains all fall into that category. Although at first glance building a TTC subway line makes the most sense, building a GO compatible S-Bahn type system could also work and relieve congestion in some other places.
In North America at least, isn't the distinction between GO/UPX and subways mostly regulatory in that GO/UPX conform to federal regulations and standards? In Japan "commuter rail" and "subway/metro" are more or less indistinguishable from each other.
Re. DRL technology, I would by highly suspicious of running it as part of a Federally regulated railway. We'd pretty much screw ourselves out of every lightweight EMU on earth.
That said, I would be highly supportive of using the DRL as a kind of regional route as well. The typical DRL end-points (DM/Elginton, DW) seem ripe for radial commuter lines near or along existing GO lines or hydro rights of way.
Also, if a substantial part of the GO network was transferred to this new route, the issue of getting across downtown could be simplified. Instead of a tunnel, we could segregate two tracks from the existing rail corridors and maybe four platforms at Union. No super expensive tunnel needed. Since the two tracks could handle >30 trains per hour, there wouldn't be any overall loss of rail capacity.
The obvious downside to that is whatever commuter lines fed into this central corridor would need to be segregated as well and turned into 'metro systems, which would imply hundreds of kilometers of new 'metro.' Since the long term GO/REX/WTF service requirements on many corridors seem to implicitly require much of this anyways though it could be a worthwhile tradeoff.
EDIT: Just to be consistent with some earlier posts of mine, if we are going to end the DRL @ Dundas West and Eglinton, or even more so simply Pape-Spadina, then I'd say best to build it as a kind of mini-metro technology to save whatever construction costs possible (Smaller tunnels, smaller trains, smaller stations). A Pape-King-Spadina route's demand in 2031 is only ~12k pphpd. Full bore subway isn't really necessary for those demand levels, and since most of them are existing riders avoiding BloorYonge there wouldn't be much new revenue to offset it. But if we start adding in regional routes I think a full bore heavy rail system is warranted.
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