[kEiThZ]

10%.

You'd take a full year delay on a 10 yr project?

Amazing. Appreciate the honesty.

If it's so vital to take those cars off the road, why are you not advocating for it to be expedited even further?

Would love to see it expedited. And not just this project. It's ridiculous how far behind this city is, especially in the context of recent and planned population growth.

The only barrier here is money. How much money would be too much?

Do you know what opportunity cost is? If it costs $2B to save 2 years, what would you cut?

 

[W. K. Lis]

When they were building the original Yonge Subway, there were diversions for the Yonge streetcars along the sidestreets. From link.

They cut and covered under Yonge Street from Union Station on Front Street up to just above College Street/Carlton Street. They then put in timber decking AND reinstalled the streetcar tracks.

The Yonge streetcars (and trailers) continued to run over the decking until they started to fill and cover the tunnels. They would go back to the diversions during that time.

Can't they do the same with Queen Street? Having only the streetcars run on Queen Street (and emergency vehicles as well) on the decking. No private automobiles during that time.

 

[MrGoose]

Which other conflicts are there that impact the public this way?

Heritage TD and McDonalds at Queen & Spadina


The McDonalds at Queen and Spadina is a pillar of the community. An indispensable place for people to hang out at 4 in the morning and get McNuggets! There are hardly any other McDonalds in Chinatown and it is imperative that it remain open throughout construction and that nothing affect its operation

Also

Moss park trees
Riverside: Jimmy Simpson, No Frills @ Gerard & Carlaw
Heritage Home Depot and Clothing Stores at Pape
Minton Place portal and the trees over the Don River.
Thorncliff park and the MSF
Trees over Don River

 

[Ward8]

It's exceptionally rare for NIMBYs to be flat out opposed to something. The new NIMBYism is the, "Yes but...." variety, where NIMBYs keep demanding changes without consideration to schedule, cost or feasibility, untill the project is either rammed through or scope creep kills it.

The very fact that this discussion started about a station box and has now moved on to questioning everything about the project, the organization that runs it and the government funding it, makes me question the sincerity of critics who claim to really, really want transit. Seems to me, most want transit built exclusively on their terms or not at all.

I personally didn't vote for this government. I don't think Metrolinx is great or has consulted enough. But I will sure take a slightly flawed project sooner than put up with months or years of delays. And I daresay, that I am probably closer to public sentiment on this, than the folks who see this as opportunity to settle scores with Metrolinx.

"Never let perfect be the enemy of good." -A concept that I think of lot of people in this city and even country seem to struggle with

Calling people on this forum NIMBY's is such a strange line of thinking to me. The whole purpose of this forum is to discuss the merits of various projects across the city and critique them with like minded people. Just because I think this station is lacking doesn't mean I want to throw the baby out with the bath water. If one had complained about the crosstown being buried in the wrong places and low floor being a wrong choice it wouldn't make them a NIMBY, it would make them a critic of that project. It's been insinuated that I'm a NIMBY for acknowledging that urban green space is important and should be transparently dealt with. Now that we have more information, it appears the keyhole shaft is necessary in the current location, and I'm satisfied with that explanation. Can the station building be moved? Or connections improved? TBD what that would entail.

You tell me. Apply this logic to every conflict on the OL and across multiple projects. What do you think the outcome would be to the city? Especially in the context of some record immigration rates and growth.

This would depend entirely on the different tradeoffs one would have to make for improving the different elements of the project. If people are going to be driven away from transit because of inconvenient design, then some delay could be acceptable. The DRL was delayed for the Ontario Line and that turned out to be a good thing long term. A formerly phased project will be built in greater scale faster. If a change requires enormous amounts of time and money for limited improvement, then no delay would make sense. If a 1 year delay meant direct platform connections and a full University park I'd take that deal in a heartbeat. That's a result that is materially and generationally transformative for the lives of Torontonians. If it was a full year to move just the station building at exponentially greater cost, then no.

It's impossible to comment on most of this because there is such a lack of accurate information. It's all hypothetical.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Heritage TD and McDonalds at Queen & Spadina


The McDonalds at Queen and Spadina is a pillar of the community. An indispensable place for people to hang out at 4 in the morning and get McNuggets! There are hardly any other McDonalds in Chinatown and it is imperative that it remain open throughout construction and that nothing affect its operation

Also

Moss park trees
Riverside: Jimmy Simpson, No Frills @ Gerard & Carlaw
Heritage Home Depot and Clothing Stores at Pape
Minton Place portal and the trees over the Don River.
Thorncliff park and the MSF
Trees over Don River

As well as Silver Snail Comic Books, CTV, MuchMusic, Sheraton Centre, "New" City Hall, "Old" City Hall, "Simpsons" Building, Eaton Centre, St. Michael's Hospital, Metropolitan United Church, Henrys Camera, etc.

 

[T3G]

The Ontario Line will WRECK a path through the Don Valley!

HUNDREDS of trees, some as old as the country will be mercilessly CUT down!

We NEED to protect those TREES from METROLINX by tunneling under the Don Valley!

We NEED to protect our public parks from being DESPOILED by Metrolinx MetroLIARS.

Why does the Don Valley crossing have to be a bridge when a tunnel would be just as good? The Don Valley Bridge is far too large and grandiose for the Don Valley and we should make it a much more humble tunnel

I personally find it much more asinine to give Metrolinx cart blanche to ruin the public sphere, given what we know about how they operate as an organization. They are one of the worst organizations we could possibly be allied with. If a stop was put to this madness, and Metrolinx were forced to work around the DON VALLEY instead of destroying it, it would set an important precedent, that the building of transit is not the be-all, end-all of life, and any transit project that is proposed must be designed with care and sensitivity. What you are instead proposing would set the precedent that Metrolinx can do whatever the hell they like, be goddamned to the consequences, as long as the end result is transit.

I am not interested in slippery slope arguments about how redesigning the DON VALLEY CROSSING would cause substantial delays. These are guaranteed to occur either way, it is a 15 km line being built over the span of a decade by Metrolinx. I don't remember them being forced to halt the construction of the Eglinton Crosstown for years to redesign a problematic part of the line, and yet here we are, it is over budget, behind schedule, and still without anything resembling a timeline for opening in sight. Anyone who thinks the Ontario Line project would've gone any differently under Metrolinx's management had the DON VALLEY CROSSING been left alone is operating outside of reality, and that is a fact.

@AlvinofDiaspar @interchange42

Several of these paragraphs are arguments I have previously presented up thread, and have now been repurposed to discredit my stance.

 

[W. K. Lis]

@AlvinofDiaspar @interchange42

Several of these paragraphs are arguments I have previously presented up thread, and have now been repurposed to discredit my stance.

The Don River Valley was already wrecked by the Don Valley Parkway and industry. Remember too that the Portlands was also industry. We have been spending decades and big bucks cleaning the Don River and valley and Portlands.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Saying the design sucks when the all the other entrances to Osgoode suck in their own right.

Would it kill them to put in signs with line symbols?
View attachment 455016

No, but that won't cost millions. This is fine otherwise. Just leave this alone and focus on the actual subway.

 

[Allandale25]

Star article on a heritage report Osgoode has received from its consultant.

Metrolinx plans for Osgoode Hall will cause ‘permanent damage to one of the most historic sites in Canada’: Heritage report

“Slicing a corner from the site and placing an inappropriate transit pavilion there is, in my opinion, tantamount to drawing a cartoon in the corner of a painting done by a great master.”

www.thestar.com

 

[44 North]

So the site is also being used for TBM Extraction so they can start on station construction earlier .. thats why the site needs to be so big. Also .. we went from this...

View attachment 454795


to this:

View attachment 454798

... its the half sized station boxes of the ontario line (remember the relief line boxes were 200m to match the existing subway) and suboptimal placement (the relief line was shifted to form a T for better inter-platform connections) that is causing them to take over osgoode hall it appears. Also .. why does the Ontario line require grandiose station buildings when the relief line did not..

Interesting. The pavilion does seem larger than necessary. And why extract the TBM. Just turn it downwards and bury it in situ. Or keep it tunnelling to another extraction point - with the tunnel being put to use when the line is extended west.

I've thought of this before, but with regards to spoil do we really want to be hauling load after load at station sites? Dump trucks in this city are fucking nightmare. The less they're on the street the better. Use the tunnels, tracks, and carts to haul spoil to a couple optimally-located extraction sites. Ones where trucks can easily get on the highway to haul the stuff to its mystery destination.

 

[picard102]

You'd take a full year delay on a 10 yr project?

A full year is not a lot of time. ML has seen project delays far worse for far less.

Do you know what opportunity cost is? If it costs $2B to save 2 years, what would you cut?

To pretend there isn't money to do these things is ludicrous. If there is the political will, the money will flow.
Do you think people in 100 years are going to care it took an extra year, or another billion dollars? Ask the average person how long the Yonge line took and what it cost, they won't know or care really.

 

[kEiThZ]

A full year is not a lot of time.

To you. I personally would not want 28 000 cars spewing for another year just to get say a slightly better concourse. Not worthwhile to me. That is letting perfect be the enemy of good.

To pretend there isn't money to do these things is ludicrous.

Unless you plan to raise taxes or fees, money is actually limited. And given the way bond markets view Canadian debt levels, those limits are going to become obvious soon. But that's a different discussion.

You missed the point. I asked about opportunity cost. Money can be spent on different things. Not just speeding up construction. It can buy you another transit line. It can pay for new rec centres. It can pay to speed up electrification of the bus fleet. So with that in mind insisting that the project be delayed to achieve perfectin and then built at substantial opportunity cost is wasteful and counterproductive. Certainly, if I was a minister in a higher level of government, I would not want to reward that with more investment. Spend it on cities that get things done sooner and more efficiently.

 

[kv1990]

Doug Ford government interfered in Metrolinx tree removal communications, emails show

Internal emails obtained by the Star cast doubt on the independence of provincial transit agency Metrolinx.

www.thestar.com

From the article:

In a series of emails between the province and the transit agency, Ministry of Transportation staff overrode Metrolinx’s recommendation to include New Democrat MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam and then official Opposition leader Peter Tabuns — two vocal critics of Metrolinx — on notices about the need to remove trees in their ridings to allow construction of the new Ontario Line subway, with staff saying the order came from minister Caroline Mulroney’s office.

Communications staff at the ministry also ask Metrolinx in the emails to remove from construction notices the estimated number of trees that will be taken down, at the request of Ford’s office.

 

[ShonTron]

Thanks for summarizing the article in your edit, though I pay for the subscription, many do not.

It’s infuriating. I don’t care so much about the trees – we knew about this at Moss Park for months now – but the intentional snubbing of the local MPPs and Metrolinx’s complicity is indefensible. There’s no way we can trust them.

 

[picard102]

To you. I personally would not want 28 000 cars spewing for another year just to get say a slightly better concourse. Not worthwhile to me. That is letting perfect be the enemy of good.

It's not, but you're entitled to your opinion. People in 100 years won't care it took an extra year in addition to the extra year or two this project will run over.

Unless you plan to raise taxes or fees, money is actually limited. And given the way bond markets view Canadian debt levels, those limits are going to become obvious soon. But that's a different discussion.

The government has plenty of tools at its disposal to pay for it.