[fanoftoronto]

Or we could just elevate it along Queensway itself. The road is wide enough, and there's very little existing development on the road to object to it.

The current 501 streetcar ROW would get in the way for a portion of it. Though I guess we could run the trains along the rail corridor in that portion and then elevate it over Queensway near the Humber Waste Water Treatment Plant.

It would make sense for the line to go through Queensway, swing up Kipling to meet the Kipling TTC/MiWay/GO stations. Then go up the Hydro corridor to get to the airport.

This way we've covered the Humber Bay Shores, developments along Queensway, connected with GO, MiWay, and Line 2 at Kipling, connected with the Line 5 at Eglinton, and finally ending at the Airport with an additional connection to Line 5 and potentially Line 6 by the time this is completed.

This allows Line 2 to be extended along Dundas to have a stop at East Mall, swing south to meet Sherway Gardens, then back up to Dixie-Dundas, and finally up to Square One.

 

[robmausser]

The current 501 streetcar ROW would get in the way for a portion of it. Though I guess we could run the trains along the rail corridor in that portion and then elevate it over Queensway near the Humber Waste Water Treatment Plant.

It would make sense for the line to go through Queensway, swing up Kipling to meet the Kipling TTC/MiWay/GO stations. Then go up the Hydro corridor to get to the airport.

View attachment 394199

This way we've covered the Humber Bay Shores, developments along Queensway, connected with GO, MiWay, and Line 2 at Kipling, connected with the Line 5 at Eglinton, and finally ending at the Airport with an additional connection to Line 5 and potentially Line 6 by the time this is completed.

This allows Line 2 to be extended along Dundas to have a stop at East Mall, swing south to meet Sherway Gardens, then back up to Dixie-Dundas, and finally up to Square One.

Id go over to Mimco/Park Lawn, which is forming into a large centre, and then use the Campa sub to get up to Kipling.

 

[kamira51]

The possibilities are endless with the OL.

 

[EnviroTO]

Wait till you see the bill for tunnelling that line...

It might be as much as double the cost of the super-valuable Eglinton West LRT tunnel that provides direct access to townhomes and residential backyards. In any case, normally the cost of underground subways is not so much the tunnel cost as it is the station and emergency exit building costs. With the direct route, the length of the tunnel is minimized compared to a winding route, and the areas served are almost entirely transit supportive (i.e. seriously intensifying or employment hubs)

The tunnel diving under at Grand next to the Gardiner, and resurfacing at American Drive where it would become elevated would be 13.4km in length with 6 stations underground (one in a mid-density intensifying neighbourhood, one in a Civic Centre and what will be one of the higher-density nodes in the city, two in the north end of intensifying high-density corridors with a mix of residential and employment, a transit hub near a major employment district, and the airport transit hub. That compares to 6.5km for Eglinton West with 4 underground stations (two towers in the park stations, and two lower density residential stations), Yonge North (about 6km) with 3 underground stations (one towers in the park, one in a mix of low and towers in the park but north of some real density, and one station in a high density area), and Scarborough (7.6km) with 3 underground stations (one with a hospital and a mix of medium and low density, one a Civic Centre and high-density node, and one medium density towers in the park and car dealerships). Is this route as valuable than Eglinton West plus Scarborough or Yonge North... I think so.

Getting to the airport corporate centre by transit is a long trip for most. Being able to take GO (Kitchener, Milton, Lakeshore) to the Ontario Line, or the Ontario Line from downtown would greatly improve on that. There are so many busses running from Kipling to Eglinton and 427... other than the East/West Mall locals, those could go away and start from Renforth. No more need for the Airport Express bus. No more complaints about how long it takes to get downtown from Humber Bay Shores.

 

[fanoftoronto]

Id go over to Mimco/Park Lawn, which is forming into a large centre, and then use the Campa sub to get up to Kipling.

I figured we shouldn't be duplicating service that the GO is already providing. Mimico and Long Branch GO stations would serve South Etobicoke much better once they improve the service along the Lakeshore West line.

I figured it's better have the OL serve a different area of the city, no?

 

[Amare]

Or we could always use these 2 Threads, and keep this one on topic about the current project...

Ontario Line Extension West of Ontario Place (Speculation)​

Ontario Line Extension West of Ontario Place (Speculation)

Don't remember how far we walk from the airport check-in to the airplane gates? Would be shorter. I'm not saying it's impossible to walk that far, but the entire premise of a bypass is that it is more convenient than the alternatives. If you have to walk five minutes from the Kitchener line to...

urbantoronto.ca

Transit Fantasy Maps​

Transit Fantasy Maps

It is, but it's nowhere the size of a Hamilton or a Kitchener. The population and ridership in Durham is pretty evenly distributed between the 4 stations there. Oshawa may have the slight lead currently because it's the EOL and sees a lot of drive-in traffic from further east, something that...

urbantoronto.ca

 

[ARG1]

I figured we shouldn't be duplicating service that the GO is already providing. Mimico and Long Branch GO stations would serve South Etobicoke much better once they improve the service along the Lakeshore West line.

I figured it's better have the OL serve a different area of the city, no?

That's sort of the big problem with the Ontario Line (and likewise the DRL before it). Its really hard to find a route to send it west that doesn't conflict with a GO line. Sending it to Dundas West parallels Kitchener too much, and sending it New Toronto parallels the Waterfront West LRT/LSW too much. My personal fantasy for the Ontario Line would be to connect it up and extended north to Pioneer Village as a Jane Line, creating a U-Shaped Jane-Queen-Don Mills line, but again that requires duplicating LSW for the entire stretch between Exhibition and Humber Loop. Maybe it could makesense to send it down the southern side of the Gardiner, so have the streetcar/LSW serve more the areas north of the gardiner, and have the OL serve the developments south of it directly? I'm not sure though.

 

[superelevation]

Really?

There may never be a need for more capacity on one of GO's busiest routes?

If we need more than the 100,000 + ppdph of capacity we will have with ERTMS and massive 300m long trains we should invest in more capacity somewhere else. It's the (less extreme) equivalent of suggesting instead of building the Ontario Line we should just build more Yonge Line tracks. If this is a problem we actually face we could even bury this short section of OL down the road and convert back to GO use (as soonest this is 50+ years away)

I'm curious, where would this third subway line go?

There hasn't been a subway built in downtown Toronto in over half a century. Are you honestly suggesting Toronto's coverage and capacity rivals that of other large cities on the planet?

...

Coverage doesn't which is why we need not build every line to such high capacity. If you have few corridors you inevitably need more capacity per corridor but we have a lot of corridors! London, and Paris are both way bigger cities than TO and both have lower capacity on each subway line (and more lines) which is a better model.

It's hard for me to imagine how or why a customers originating from east of Leslie would favour the Yonge Line over the Ontario Line to get Downtown. That's another 5 kilometres stuck in a mixed traffic bus. The Ontario Line will get them Downtown faster. And even if it didn't, I'm sure most of them would still pick the OL just out of passenger comfort.
...

Had the OL been designed with extra capacity, extending it into York Region would've been rather trivial and inexpensive. We could've seen that extension to York Region done by 2040. But now that's just not going to be a possibility (not without catastrophically low employment growth). And it's not like we can just trivially just build another subway line from Downtown to York Region either; it would almost certainly be too expensive to be worthwhile. These capacity constraints mean that a subway from Downtown to eastern York Region has gone from a cheap, no brainer extension, to something that probably isn't going to ever happen.

Likewise, it's unlikely that the OL could serve deep into the west end of the city either, due to capacity constraints.

York will already have both legs of Line 1, Barrie, and Stouffville - extending the OL is way less valuable than just making those locations better connects to VIVA, even if you did extend the subway as others have said if you are going south of bloor GO is very likely to be a much better option even if you have to take a bus to it.

I take it we would have to build this underground?

If so why not just make the investment now? Why not build a higher capacity underground line where it's actually needed?

The notion that we can just build another line later on seems rather unrealistic. After all these years the idea of investing in downtown transit expansion is still a political hot potato.

We can all hope that changes but that's no guarantee. It's probably not going to get cheaper either.

Because *opportunity cost*, building tons of spare capacity today means parking your money in a way where it won't be super useful for decades when there are numerous very attractive other ways to spend transit money today. Someone else made a really good point which is that there was less incentive not to do this when projects were much less expensive, but now that they are overbuilding makes way less sense.

If we seriously get desperate for capacity and a new line isn't doable it is possible to extend platforms on the existing lines - it's been done in other cities.

We could've asked the exact same question in the 1940s. Why was little Toronto so unique that it needed a subway line of 30k pphpd? Surely this tiny city would've never be able to saturate 150 metre trains at sub two-minute frequencies. Two car trains surely would've provided enough capacity for decades to come.

...

Yes, and maybe we would have had to build more subway lines sooner which would have provided more coverage and a better network! That the network is so small is at least in part because we have been able to lean on the very high capacity of the existing network.

 

[AnnetteMeetsJane]

TD bank at SW corner of Queen/Spadina, and the future site of the OL station, closes for good on 22nd July. The first tangible sign in the area of the impending construction….

 

[syn]

Because *opportunity cost*, building tons of spare capacity today means parking your money in a way where it won't be super useful for decades when there are numerous very attractive other ways to spend transit money today. Someone else made a really good point which is that there was less incentive not to do this when projects were much less expensive, but now that they are overbuilding makes way less sense.

If we seriously get desperate for capacity and a new line isn't doable it is possible to extend platforms on the existing lines - it's been done in other cities.

Overbuilding would be an apt description of the SSE, Sheppard Line and the suburban projects we've been focusing on for years.

Putting this underground with larger trains would not be overbuilding.

Yes, and maybe we would have had to build more subway lines sooner which would have provided more coverage and a better network! That the network is so small is at least in part because we have been able to lean on the very high capacity of the existing network.

I don't understand this line of reasoning.

Underbuild now, to motivate future expansion??

When has that ever worked?

I think the point is that the Yonge Line very quickly exceeded ridership expectations. Given the growth of GTA (especially downtown Toronto) building underground would be a wise investment.

The money being 'saved' on the OL is being used to drastically overbuild in other areas of the city. That doesn't make much sense IMO.

 

[smuncky]

from yesterday @ exhibition

 

[ARG1]

I don't understand this line of reasoning.

Underbuild now, to motivate future expansion??

When has that ever worked?

When have we ever tried that?

You can't say it hasn't worked when you have no data on it.

Also in terms of other cities, when has it ever worked? VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER CITY.

 

[allengeorge]

When have we ever tried that?

You can't say it hasn't worked when you have no data on it.

Also in terms of other cities, when has it ever worked? VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER CITY.

I mean - I don’t think they’re wrong when it comes to Toronto.

Can you point to where - in Toronto - we have underbuilt and actually delivered additional capacity via a new line in a timely manner? I mean - even our BRT process, for buses that are already slammed is at least 2-3 years long per route. And that’s just adding improvements to an existing roadway.

 

[Deadpool X]

I mean - I don’t think they’re wrong when it comes to Toronto.

Can you point to where - in Toronto - we have underbuilt and actually delivered additional capacity via a new line in a timely manner? I mean - even our BRT process, for buses that are already slammed is at least 2-3 years long per route. And that’s just adding improvements to an existing roadway.

Ontario line was Downtown Relief Line only because it was planned to "relieve" Yonge Line. If Yonge Line had much higher capacity, we would not have been talking about a relief line. So, there you go.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Ontario line was Downtown Relief Line only because it was planned to "relieve" Yonge Line. If Yonge Line had much higher capacity, we would not have been talking about a relief line. So, there you go.

The "Downtown Relief Line" had 6 stations going west to east and 2 (or 3) stations going south to north. More to "relieve" the downtown stations.

From link.