BurlOak said:
If we want the DRL to relieve Yonge, it must run parallel to Yonge for a great enough distrance to actually siphon off the riders from Sheppard, Finch and Steeles. Maybe a single Design Build project from Bathurst (or Dundas West) to Seneca College.
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No way that the province is ever going to fund this. Going from Dundas West -> King -> Pape-> Don Mills -> Finch/Steeles would be a huge task. Larger than any other subway project in Canadian history and almost the size of the YUS.

But the whole thing should only cost $11 - 13 Billion. Subtract the $7 Billion that Metrolinx has committed and Toronto could easily afford that with some revenue tools.
 
thing is that the metrolinx funding is also going to be coming from revenue tools.. so people would likely be resistant to even more taxes going towards transit.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Nobody coming from as far west as the Spadina Subway line would ever go to Yonge anyways.
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Really? Many riders of both Finch West and Steeles West go to Finch station.

I should think that Finch Station would lose ~20,000 trips per day just from those 2 routes.

Not enough to warrant building Spadina Subway extension but it was enough to warrant building a BRT corridor and feeding Steeles/Finch buses into Downview efficiently.
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
No way that the province is ever going to fund this. Going from Dundas West -> King -> Pape-> Don Mills -> Finch/Steeles would be a huge task. Larger than any other subway project in Canadian history and almost the size of the YUS.
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I see the Pape -> Don Mills phase being built before the Dundas-West -> King/Front phase, creating a "hook line."

Phase 1: King/Front -> Pape
Phase 2: Pape -> Don Mills

Phase 3: King/Front -> Dundas West
Phase 4: Don Mills -> Finch/Steeles

It will be a hard sell for a mayor/premier to propose the Dundas West -> King/Front -> Pape "loop" as a main election plank. Suburbanites will wonder what's in it for them. I am reminded of David Shiner during the Scarborough Subway debates. When questioning Andy Byford about transit priorities, Byford mentioned the DRL, and Shiner said something to the effect of "what about the suburbs?" "Downtown Relief Line" implicitly suggests that it is a downtown-focused transit solution. That is of course nonsense, as there would be undoubted positive benefits for suburban transit commuters in any of the proposed DRL routes - albeit to various degrees. I think rebranding the line to something as ubiquitous as Vancouver's "Canada Line" would definitely make it more palatable to Toronto's electorate.

We were painfully reminded of the role of electoral politics in transit planning this past month. A hotly contested Scarborough byelection could very well have sealed the fate of the LRT. Don't think similar pandering can't happen in Don Valley West and Don Valley East, two bellwether ridings where a DRL Pape -> Don Mills proposal could make or break the Liberals/Conservatives' chances at forming a government.
 
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mjl08 said:
We were painfully reminded of the role of electoral politics in transit planning this past month. A hotly contested Scarborough byelection could very well have sealed the fate of the LRT. Don't think similar pandering can't happen in Don Valley West and Don Valley East, two bellwether ridings where a DRL Pape -> Don Mills proposal could make or break the Liberals/Conservatives' chances at forming a government.
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Slightly offtopic, I think the problem we have in Toronto is that we focus far too much on smaller, inexpensive incremental projects. Nobody is going to support raising taxes to build transit that appears to only benefit one part of the city.

If a candidate were to come along with a $20 to $30 Billion plan that brings transit everywhere in the city, more people would want to support it even if it meant higher taxes. We saw that when Stintz introduced her OneCity plan. Increasing taxes to build it had over 80% support.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
No way that the province is ever going to fund this. Going from Dundas West -> King -> Pape-> Don Mills -> Finch/Steeles would be a huge task. Larger than any other subway project in Canadian history and almost the size of the YUS.

But the whole thing should only cost $11 - 13 Billion. Subtract the $7 Billion that Metrolinx has committed and Toronto could easily afford that with some revenue tools.
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It would be about the same length (a bit longer) as the Canada Line in Vancouver. The cost of that was $2B. We need to build for higher capacity than Vancouver did (and it is a bit longer), so I will add 150% to it. It should cost in the $5 range.
 
mjl08 said:
I see the Pape -> Don Mills phase being built before the Dundas-West -> King/Front phase, creating a "hook line."

Phase 1: King/Front -> Pape
Phase 2: Pape -> Don Mills

Phase 3: King/Front -> Dundas West
Phase 4: Don Mills -> Finch/Steeles

It will be a hard sell for a mayor/premier to propose the Dundas West -> King/Front -> Pape "loop" as a main election plank. Suburbanites will wonder what's in it for them. I am reminded of David Shiner during the Scarborough Subway debates. When questioning Andy Byford about transit priorities, Byford mentioned the DRL, and Shiner said something to the effect of "what about the suburbs?" "Downtown Relief Line" implicitly suggests that it is a downtown-focused transit solution. That is of course nonsense, as there would be undoubted positive benefits for suburban transit commuters in any of the proposed DRL routes - albeit to various degrees. I think rebranding the line to something as ubiquitous as Vancouver's "Canada Line" would definitely make it more palatable to Toronto's electorate.

We were painfully reminded of the role of electoral politics in transit planning this past month. A hotly contested Scarborough byelection could very well have sealed the fate of the LRT. Don't think similar pandering can't happen in Don Valley West and Don Valley East, two bellwether ridings where a DRL Pape -> Don Mills proposal could make or break the Liberals/Conservatives' chances at forming a government.
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Isn't it now being called Relief Line by Metrolinx?
 
BurlOak said:
It would be about the same length (a bit longer) as the Canada Line in Vancouver. The cost of that was $2B. We need to build for higher capacity than Vancouver did (and it is a bit longer), so I will add 150% to it. It should cost in the $5 range.
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The Canada Line is elevated. Still that's really inexpensive. How did they pull that off?
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Slightly offtopic, I think the problem we have in Toronto is that we focus far too much on smaller, inexpensive incremental projects. Nobody is going to support raising taxes to build transit that appears to only benefit one part of the city.
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I definitely agree. This is sustained by a culture of building projects "piece by piece" as Doug Holiday advocates. Build a little bit here, and a little bit there. That is why we're likely to get a subway connection to Sherway Gardens before Thorncliffe (!). We shouldn't let current infrastructure lead us to where the next "logical" stops should be.


Isn't it now being called Relief Line by Metrolinx?
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I believe so, although it is used interchangeably among politicians. I believe earlier in the thread there were other creative naming ideas.
 
mjl08 said:
I definitely agree. This is sustained by a culture of building projects "piece by piece" as Doug Holiday advocates. Build a little bit here, and a little bit there. That is why we're likely to get a subway connection to Sherway Gardens before Thorncliffe (!). We shouldn't let current infrastructure lead us to where the next "logical" stops should be.
Click to expand...

Yup. Sometimes living in this city gets really irritating. Toronto is the 4th largest city on the continent. In another 2 years we'll be the third, only behind New York and Mexico. Yet we still think like a small impoverished sleeper town of 500,000 people with stupid 2 station extensions. We could easily afford to dump transit all over this city. In 2014 the first candidate who promises to raise my taxes to do it will have my vote. Let's just hope that OneCity inspired some of them.
 
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