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Voltz said:
Yup, and the locals who fought the move to extend the tunnels will now have to suffer through the resulting traffic mess during the construction period. And I wouldn't be surprised if these same groups end up complaining about the construction disruptions as well.
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Leslie or no Leslie, they will still suffer plenty during the construction of Laird station.
 
gweed123 said:
I would hope so, but honestly I don't know. The south side alignment seems like such a common sense solution, hopefully someone in a position to make a change will wake up to it at some point.
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Do you really think the engineers and planners haven't considered every option available? I don't know what all the myriad of different factors they need to consider are or how they would weigh the different options, but I would like to assume that people who make their living planning and building transit systems know substantially more about how to plan and build transit systems than the average man on the street. If they came up with a different solution than you I suspect it's because they have more knowledge and/or experience than you, not that they didn't do their jobs properly.
 
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howl said:
Do you really think the engineers and planners haven't considered every option available? I don't know what all the myriad of different factors they need to consider are or how they would weigh the different options, but I would like to assume that people who make their living planning and building transit systems know substantially more about how to plan and build transit systems than the average man on the street. If they came up with a different solution than you I suspect it's because they have more knowledge and/or experience than you, not that they didn't do their jobs properly.
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The answer is probably yes and no.

Engineers and planners must have considered more than one solution, but the political leaders only allowed one conclusion to be reached.

Look at the Scarborough subway debate. A year ago, all transit experts at Metrolinx and TTC said that the best solution is the LRT along the SRT corridor. Now, both Metrolinx and TTC agree that the best solution is to extend the B-D subway. Did the engineers at both organizations simultaneously realized that they had made a mistake in their calculations, or was it the political interference from the Liberals (Wynne and Murray) and Stintz that silenced the conclusions of the engineers and planners and forced the senior management to agree with their political solution.

I know another provincial project where the technical experts wanted a $30M solution, but the political leaders wanted a $110M solution because it was in the Minsters riding. Both would serve the public equally well - actually, the $30M solution is better with less maintenance costs and a bit safer with more structural redundancy in case of extreme events.
Guess which solution wound up being implemented?
Guess which solution was silenced and not even released to the public as an option?
 
howl said:
Do you really think the engineers and planners haven't considered every option available? I don't know what all the myriad of different factors they need to consider are or how they would weigh the different options, but I would like to assume that people who make their living planning and building transit systems know substantially more about how to plan and build transit systems than the average man on the street. If they came up with a different solution than you I suspect it's because they have more knowledge and/or experience than you, not that they didn't do their jobs properly.
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As an engineer, I believe they may have considered them, which is how they came up with the superior underground option to Don Mills for the same price.

However, once it became clear that wasn't going to get through council easily, I suspect they were left without time to develop a superior above-ground option, and simply had to keep what was already approved to maintain the timeline.
 
howl makes a good point. It's possible that there is a reason that they can't do south side alignment that we don't know or understand. However if that's the case, they probably should have explained why in a public meeting.

For those who feel strongly about this, you can probably get your answer at a public meeting where there are lots of Metrolinx people to talk to. I'll probably ask the next time there is one.

The strange thing is, on this site they say there will be two left turn lanes from Eg EB to Leslie NB, however the panels show one:
http://www.thecrosstown.ca/the-project/stations-and-stops/leslie-stop
Maybe things are still changing & being re-designed.
 
ehlow said:
howl makes a good point. It's possible that there is a reason that they can't do south side alignment that we don't know or understand. However if that's the case, they probably should have explained why in a public meeting.

For those who feel strongly about this, you can probably get your answer at a public meeting where there are lots of Metrolinx people to talk to. I'll probably ask the next time there is one.

The strange thing is, on this site they say there will be two left turn lanes from Eg EB to Leslie NB, however the panels show one:
http://www.thecrosstown.ca/the-project/stations-and-stops/leslie-stop
Maybe things are still changing & being re-designed.
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Someone here said they asked the question and got a response back that the south side was not considered because in general a side-of-road alignment is not possible due to the numerous driveways along Eglinton. I asked back in September and never got a response back. The official displays said that the current location for a launch shaft was not possible so there was no point even considering a south side alignment. There seems to be more contradictions in this story than a Ford explanation about a police investigation.
 
nfitz said:
As an engineer, I believe they may have considered them, which is how they came up with the superior underground option to Don Mills for the same price.

However, once it became clear that wasn't going to get through council easily, I suspect they were left without time to develop a superior above-ground option, and simply had to keep what was already approved to maintain the timeline.
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As an engineer, it is pretty embarrassing that the story being told is that they ran out of time and that the 5 or 6 years since 2007 was not enough to properly study the various options.
 
Metrolinx didn't get control of the project until 2011 or 2012. They focused on the west end first, and only had a couple of months to work on the eastern design..
 
M II A II R II K said:
Maybe Eglinton Town Centre can be a station and replace VP, Pharmacy, and that other one.
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I've always wondered why Victoria Park station would be either built as underground in either the No Frills parking lot or in Eglinton square's. It would probably have a large bus bay and would even intercept some Lawrence 54 buses as well, I know there were plans for some huge condos at Eglinton and Pharmacy some years back. Putting a station at the mall(s) would accelerate more of that development.

Actually, Victoria Park to Birchmount underground make a lot of sense. I can see that area becoming mid and high rise infill for that entire stretch. It would become more of a downtown fro Scarborough in vibe than the Town Centre area ever could be. I wonder if Metrolinx would also consider making the Kennedy to Markham LRT underground as well? So much potential in that area.
 
BurlOak said:
As an engineer, it is pretty embarrassing that the story being told is that they ran out of time and that the 5 or 6 years since 2007 was not enough to properly study the various options.
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That's pretty typical though, isn't it? You don't spend your $$$ and your consultant's time looking at unnecessary alternatives.
 
BurlOak said:
As an engineer, it is pretty embarrassing that the story being told is that they ran out of time and that the 5 or 6 years since 2007 was not enough to properly study the various options.
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I'm not an engineer but I do know engineers need to rank alternatives based on a number of factors, primarily: public safety, cost, functionality and ability to meet deadlines. In a case where there are two or more options that are equally safe and will both take about the same time to build the main deciding factor becomes the trade-off between cost and functionality. Options that provide less functionality but cost more would be eliminated and you'd be left with a set of options where you get increased functionality for more cost. At that point the decision making process would be handed over to whoever held the purse stings - in this case the politicians.

However my guess is that you are right - it was more of a timing thing. If the south side alignment was to move forward there may have been some timing factors (approval of updated EA, reconstruction of the railway bridge, etc.) that pushed the completion of that section beyond a certain deadline. Remember that the decision would have affected the location of the tunnel portal. If it took them an extra year to get the south side alignment approved it would have pushed back the eastern tunnel construction a year, which would have pushed back the construction of all stations east of Yonge, including Yonge, by a year. I suspect someone figured out that trying to fight for a different alignment than what was in the EA was going to add another year to the completion of the project - and moving the alignment was not a big enough issue to warrant that.
 
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