How long until the line east of Laird is closed and Laird to Don Mills is rebuilt, so that Don Mills and everything west (including the Eglinton West extension) is fully grade separated and east of Don Mills becomes the genesis of the Eglinton East LRT?
In theory if you had a maintenance facility in the East End, and the Ontario Line was open you could have an Eglinton East LRT running from science centre east, which would funnel traffic to and from the Ontario Line.
That will never happen. Noone is going to fund that kind of rebuild.
You would have to rebuild the Laird to Don Mills section as a tunnel. And then, rebuild the Don Mills Stn itself, add 2 more tracks so it can serve as a terminus for both the western and the eastern line.
What would you gain?
- The eastern section doesn't become any faster
- The western section becomes a bit faster, and a bit easier to operate, but the improvements are minor
- The riders yell and scream that they lost the ability to travel across Don Mills without a transfer, basically for no gains that matter to them
- Other transit riders yell and scream that Eglinton is getting the funding twice in a row, while they are getting zilch
- And worst of all, you do not gain a lot of capacity in the western section, that is now fully grade separated. The trains can run a bit more frequently, but then you hit the next capacity bottleneck, which likely to be the size of platforms and the capacity of elevators / stairs. A tansit line designed for 10k to 13k PPHPD, does not turn into a 30k+ transit line, just because you removed one section.
