Are people forgetting that the Relief Line South alone had a target opening date of 2029-31? How long do you think it would have taken to build the North section under the former Liberal gov? Go look for clues in how much they waffled on Finch, Hamilton, Hurontario, Shepard East LRT, High-Speed Rail, and Scarborough Extention. They had 15 full years to sign these contracts but they instead slowed things down to look fiscally conservative. They didn't want to interfere with city politics so they let those cities' councils propose and cancel projects over and over.

RLN was far from certain. Relief line South was far from certain. Months before they were decimated, the Wynne Liberals + Trudeau Liberals had committed 9 billion for The RLS, Waterfront LRT, and Yonge North Extention in total. RLS alone was estimated to cost $6.8 billion. Nobody was being honest about how much it would cost to build these projects and were more than happy to go slow to save money (Crosstown phasing). It made me hopeful at the time but infuriated now. GO RER had baby steps until the Cons came in and signed the P3 with Deutsche Bahn.

Contracts for the Ontario Line and SSE are being signed. Digging for the latter has started along with the Eglinton West Extension. Hurontario's contract was awarded and started construction under the Ford Gov.
 
NoahB said:
Are people forgetting that the Relief Line South alone had a target opening date of 2029-31? How long do you think it would have taken to build the North section under the former Liberal gov? Go look for clues in how much they waffled on Finch, Hamilton, Hurontario, Shepard East LRT, High-Speed Rail, and Scarborough Extention. They had 15 full years to sign these contracts but they instead slowed things down to look fiscally conservative. They didn't want to interfere with city politics so they let those cities' councils propose and cancel projects over and over.

RLN was far from certain. Relief line South was far from certain. Months before they were decimated, the Wynne Liberals + Trudeau Liberals had committed 9 billion for The RLS, Waterfront LRT, and Yonge North Extention in total. RLS alone was estimated to cost $6.8 billion. Nobody was being honest about how much it would cost to build these projects and were more than happy to go slow to save money (Crosstown phasing). It made me hopeful at the time but infuriated now. GO RER had baby steps until the Cons came in and signed the P3 with Deutsche Bahn.

Contracts for the Ontario Line and SSE are being signed. Digging for the latter has started along with the Eglinton West Extension. Hurontario's contract was awarded and started construction under the Ford Gov.
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You hit the nail on the mf head right here.

Such a strange last few years we've had in terms of transit expansion. The Liberals were trying so hard to seem fiscally conservative they ended up shooting themselves in the foot. The final nail in the coffin was selling stake in HydroOne, which was seen as so fiscally conservative they ended up alienating their base. Combined with being intensely socially Liberal, they managed to also alienate those on the right they were seemingly courting as well. Recipe for disaster.
 
T3G said:
So, the same situation we find ourselves in in the present day, yes?
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Relief Line South (Osgoode - Pape), West(Exhibition - Osgoode), and Central (Pape - Science Centre) is certain at this point. North isn't really even being formally discussed, but will likely be a fairly quick and inexpensive project when it does happen as it can likely be entirely elevated.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Relief Line South (Osgoode - Pape), West(Exhibition - Osgoode), and Central (Pape - Science Centre) is certain at this point. North isn't really even being formally discussed, but will likely be a fairly quick and inexpensive project when it does happen as it can likely be entirely elevated.
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I thought the current project was just referred to as the "Ontario Line", and that "west" referred to potential future extensions west of Exhibition. Apart from splitting up the contracts into sections, is there any other literature that presents these as separate sections?

If someone presented one project as three separate projects that they are delivering all at the same time, I would think they were fudging the count to make it seem like more transit was delivered than actually has been.
 
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T3G said:
I thought the current project was just referred to as the "Ontario Line", and that "west" referred to potential future extensions west of Exhibition. Apart from splitting up the contracts into sections, is there any other literature that presents these as separate sections?

If someone presented one project as three separate projects that they are delivering all at the same time, I would think they were fudging the count to make it seem like more transit was delivered than actually has been.
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I was being a bit farcicial about how the Ontario Line is much larger than the original Relief Line project :). The whole project is just "the Ontario Line" officially.
 
I mean don't get me wrong, the increased scope of the project is sure to be a welcome one (though I remain unconvinced that the light metro technology should've been used for a project of this scope), I just find it very strange that so many people are defending the conservatives as visionary planners by presenting these all as separate projects they had the foresight to start building together, rather than a single project that they are working on! Any true "north" (north of Science Centre) or "west" (of Exhibition) project is but a fantasy at this point.
 
So theres a lot of talk about building the new lines. Ive talked with ttc employees in the past whom told me that the line at Lower Bay Station actually runs from Union station to Pape and then branches off from there.
If this is true why arent they using this line instead of building a entire new one??
Theres also a station under Queen ive been told??
Does anybody really know were these two lines go???
 
Obee1 said:
So theres a lot of talk about building the new lines. Ive talked with ttc employees in the past whom told me that the line at Lower Bay Station actually runs from Union station to Pape and then branches off from there.
If this is true why arent they using this line instead of building a entire new one??
Theres also a station under Queen ive been told??
Does anybody really know were these two lines go???
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not sure where you heard it from but those arent true. No branches exist unless theres some secret undocumented national treasure type tunnel which is 99.99999999% unlikely.

The station under queen is a very roughed in box for streetcars
 
Obee1 said:
Ive talked with ttc employees in the past whom told me that the line at Lower Bay Station actually runs from Union station to Pape and then branches off from there.
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Whoever you spoke to was biblically out to lunch.

Lower Bay is a single station on a spur line that runs from Museum station on the 1 to Yonge on the 2. It is about 0.7 km of unused track that connects the two lines.

If I was being charitable, the only way that line could be interpreted as running from Union to Pape is through the fact that a train could theoretically run along the existing lines from Union (or as far as Finch) through to Pape (or as far as Kennedy) without stopping, but there is no secret hidden trackage that could aid with this.

The station under Queen was roughed in in anticipation of a possible streetcar subway under Queen Street. This didn't end up materializing, so Lower Queen is not much more than a large concrete box in the ground, and certainly not connected to any other secret lines.

 
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This is lower Queen Station:

maxresdefault.jpg


It's a small concrete room with narrow track widths to accommodate PCC streetcars, with no platforms. The platforms would have been the pedestrian underpass under the existing subway tracks. My understanding is that there is one of these narrow tunnels on either side of the underpass.

It's quite small, and not useable for a subway station.

Lower Bay does exist as when the Bloor line first opened, it was interlined with the Yonge line (i.e. no transfer required). To facilitate this, a lower Bay st station was required. There is no additional trackage, only the tracks required for trains to transfer between the University line and the Bloor line.


subway-5117-01.gif


The interlined service only operated for 6 months before being abandoned however as customers found it confusing and the TTC was having problems operating it reliably.
 
generalcanada said:
from what ive heard it ran for 6 months at most. then switched over to separate lines
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Yeah ... the plan was to try it 6 months in both ways and see how it worked. (well originally the plan was to run it the first way).

This is my favourite image - from the 2010 diversion for tunnel repairs between Yonge and St. George. While the trains ran through Lower Bay, they didn't stop, given that the platforms and escalators aren't up to it.

1669658374350.png

We've heard for years that the originally envisioned service isn't possible given Line 1 extension to Spadina restricting the frequency. I wonder once they have ATC on Line 2, what the maximum frequency they could run.

I suppose if ATC had existed in 1966, then they might have been able to pull off the original configuration.
 
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