Another DRL Proposal or Just Another Gerrymander?
Read More: http://stevemunro.ca/?p=8187#more-8187
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“That TTC CEO Andy Byford initiate discussions with appropriate Metrolinx staff to determine the feasibility of using the Georgetown and Lakeshore East Transit GO Transit corridors for the Downtown Relief Line, as part of the Downtown Relief Line environmental assessment.â€
- The idea, in brief, is to build a U-shaped route from northern Etobicoke southeast along the Weston rail corridor, through Union Station, out the Lake Shore East corridor to Scarborough Junction, and then north to Kennedy Station. Although it was not part of her motion, Stintz talked about using the rail corridors for an LRT route since Metrolinx was planning to electrify anyhow.
- If a new line is to be built on dedicated tracks, there must be some place to put it. The Weston corridor is already full side-to-side thanks to the extra tracks Metrolinx has added for expanded services and for the UPX to Pearson Airport. Through Union Station, any new service, especially one with a distinct technology, would have to find new space for its tracks, or permanently displace some existing operation. To the east, Metrolinx already plans or has built more capacity in the corridor, and room for a separate line may be hard to come by.
- Any new service on Metrolinx corridors should be provided with mainline compatible equipment such as electric multiple unit cars (EMUs). These are technically the equivalent of a subway car, streetcar or LRV, but built to mainline railway standards. This eliminates issues with locations where, necessarily, the new, local service must cross over existing regional and freight operations (yes, there is still the occasional freight train even though Metrolinx owns the corridors now). It also eliminates issues with cars built to city transit standards (operating voltage, collision strength, platform height, etc.) having to co-exist on a rail corridor.
- The UPX is something of an embarrassment, a line dating from the dark ages of a previous federal government, handed off to a PPP (SNC Lavalin) and finally taken over by the McGuinty government at Queen’s Park as a Pan Am Games project. At least two chances to revisit its design as a premium fare express service have been lost thanks to the project’s charmed state, but it will be difficult if not impossible to create a local Etobicoke-Weston-Downtown service in this corridor without taking over the tracks now designated for the UPX.
- East of Union, indeed even through Union Station, the situation is more complex. The UPX is on the west/south side of the Weston corridor, but a through service must pass through Union, avoid conflict with tracks turning north at the Don Valley (the Richmond Hill corridor, itself slated for considerably improved service), and then arrive at Scarborough Junction on the north side of the rail corridor to turn north to Kennedy without blocking service on the Lake Shore itself. This is an example of the problems caused by linking an east and west “DRL†especially if a non-standard technology like LRT were going to be used in the rail corridor.
- The UPX will have a small yard for its small fleet in Rexdale, but any higher-capacity urban line will need more storage and maintenance facilities somewhere, and this pushes the scope of a first stage electrification beyond what is planned for the UPX. A strong argument can be made that Metrolinx should electrify sooner rather than later, but any scheme for local service on GO trackage should work with the likely rollout first in the Weston corridor to the Airport.
- A line diagonally to the northwest would serve a travel demand that does not now have a direct route to downtown except for a few peak period, peak direction GO trains. As it heads northwest, the Weston rail corridor goes through a widening swath of Toronto that is remote from the subway network. Rapid transit, whatever its form, would be an addition to this part of the city. An important design issue, however, is that most of the proposed stations are not at major employment or residential nodes and this is unlikely to change in the medium term, possibly longer. Railway corridors have their limitations partly because of historic industrial areas and because more attractive development sites exist elsewhere.
- Good feeder bus services and interchanges will be essential, and by implication, the line should be part of the TTC fare grid. By the time anything like this is built, the long-standing and highly artificial separation of GO and TTC as two separate fare structures must end as this is a barrier to GO’s role in supplementing/relieving subway capacity.
- The eastern leg is more of a problem. With a subway interchange at Kennedy (to the presumed, by then, extended Danforth subway), the eastern service could bleed off some subway traffic provided that the interchange were reasonably convenient and service frequent. We have already seen how the supposed problems of a much-simplified LRT-to-subway transfer at Kennedy rank with The Apocalypse for Scarborough riders, and they will need a big incentive to change trains at Kennedy.
- Both halves of this line look to divert riders from the Bloor-Danforth subway, but they do almost nothing to reduce the north-south flow on the Yonge line north of Bloor Station. That has always been the challenge for “downtown relief†— shifting north-south travel away from Yonge Street. Metrolinx recently launched a study of travel in, broadly speaking, the Yonge corridor. This will include not only the existing YUS subway, its northern extensions and the DRL, but also the potential role of the GO corridors.
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