asher__jo said:
Agreed, the relief line has been planned for over 3 decades! And to anyone that wants suburban subways, the only way they are vaguely viable is if they start in the core and are extended outwards...but then again that's kinda what GO transit is for when frequencies are expanded to every 15 minutes.
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Technically Queen Street subway was the old version of the relief line so if you count that, this line has been planned for a century now.
 
MisterF said:
It's all the more rich when you consider that it's been several decades since there's been any subway expansion in the old city, where the system is overloaded. All the expansion in that time has been suburban.

One reason RER is so needed is that it might just get people to realize that subways aren't always the answer in suburban areas.
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If only we would have built Transit City - it was the absolute priority for Toronto. It would have added no transit to old Toronto. :rolleyes:
 
Coolstar said:
Technically Queen Street subway was the old version of the relief line so if you count that, this line has been planned for a century now.
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I'm not sure that's not specifically true.

When the original "subway" lines were conceived of over a century ago, the idea was for the construction and operation of two lines - one to run up-and-down Yonge, as that was the main thoroughfare from the north. The other was a cross-town line to be located under Queen, as that was the main east-west artery across the City.

By the time everyone was actually ready to start building them after the Second World War, the City had grown to the point where the main east-west thoroughfare had moved north to Bloor and Danforth. And thus the cross-town line was built underneath that alignment.

It wasn't until the late 1960s or early 1970s that it was felt that another subway was needed through downtown, on an east-west alignment but well south of Bloor. That is what has become the DRL or Ontario Line.

Dan
 
smallspy said:
It wasn't until the late 1960s or early 1970s that it was felt that another subway was needed through downtown, on an east-west alignment but well south of Bloor. That is what has become the DRL or Ontario Line.

Dan
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While you're not entirely wrong here, it's fairly significant to remember that the "late 1960s" puts the first talk of it VERY shortly after BD opened. Moreover, the streetcar abandonment program was premised on King/Queen lasting into the 80s when they expected some kind of Queen line to open. Similarly, the pre First World War subway plans sometimes had a bloor line pencilled in as a future possiblility, hence the Bloor Viaducts lower deck. A second East/West line is relatively recent as an immediate need, but has been floating around as "the project after next" for a long time.
 
smallspy said:
I'm not sure that's not specifically true.

When the original "subway" lines were conceived of over a century ago, the idea was for the construction and operation of two lines - one to run up-and-down Yonge, as that was the main thoroughfare from the north. The other was a cross-town line to be located under Queen, as that was the main east-west artery across the City.

By the time everyone was actually ready to start building them after the Second World War, the City had grown to the point where the main east-west thoroughfare had moved north to Bloor and Danforth. And thus the cross-town line was built underneath that alignment.

It wasn't until the late 1960s or early 1970s that it was felt that another subway was needed through downtown, on an east-west alignment but well south of Bloor. That is what has become the DRL or Ontario Line.

Dan
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Also, the Queen Line proposal wasn’t a subway in any sense that would be recognized by modern Torontonians. It would be more like the Queen’s Quay streetcar tunnel... just longer.

If I recall correctly, the route was planned to have underground streetcars until about Trinity Bellwood’s. After that, it would’ve ran on street in mixed traffic like a regular streetcar line, with various branches. Certainly not built to provide any significant Yonge capacity relief.
 
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^ That's right. The shell space underneath Queen Station was designed to handle PCC streetcars dropping off passengers. It was a very different type of service than what is planned today.

It would probably have been great to have the tunnel as originally planned in the 1940's as it would have supported much quicker streetcar journeys, but I don't think it would have changed the need for the DRL.
 
Streety McCarface said:
The main irony is that Old Toronto (East York in particular) is technically part of the suburbs. Sure, they're streetcar suburbs, but suburbs nonetheless.
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I suppose I should clarify when I say suburbs I mean anything that has absolutely zero density. Streetcar suburbs have the building blocks to support intensification better.
 
My comments on a form of a relief line being in planning for (insert number of decades here) went down a rabbit hole. Moral of the story is that a form of rapid transit following the general relief line path has been around quite a long time, and now is only possibly maybe getting built when it's become a crisis.
 
asher__jo said:
I suppose I should clarify when I say suburbs I mean anything that has absolutely zero density. Streetcar suburbs have the building blocks to support intensification better.
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Kennedy, Warden and Vic Park stations are in Scarborough and have been just fine from a ridership perspective for over 40 years. Therefore your point is BS. As for densification...if they used that justification 60 years ago, there would be no subway built.
 
asher__jo said:
I suppose I should clarify when I say suburbs I mean anything that has absolutely zero density. Streetcar suburbs have the building blocks to support intensification better.
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But what about North York? They have the highest per-capita subway ridership outside of Downtown Toronto. What about the terminal areas of the Bloor, Danforth, and (previously) the Spadina Subway? Don't these areas have overwhelmingly excellent (or at least decent) ridership to support the services they currently have?

Sure, RER is an extremely important piece of a missing transit network in the city, but it exists to mainly serve separate suburban cities (Pickering, Oshawa, Oakville, Aurora, Brampton, Mississauga, Markham), all of which are much farther than the current scope of the existing subway system, whereas the subway extensions to the STC or RHC exist mainly to serve people in the city of Toronto, or an area directly next to it. You can certainly have both in a healthy system, and oftentimes for commuters, having both increases overall transit usage astronomically because it gives people choice. RER studies have shown that RER will only remove, at best, 10% of customers from the Danforth subway, which is insignificant over the next 20 years, this is largely because RER would be more crowded than most of their subway commutes, travel times would be the same between North York/Richmond Hill/Scarborough and Downtown on either, and the fact that RER is less flexible in its destinations. This is not to say that it is bad, but that it serves a much different market.

But I digress, we're talking about the Ontario line here, and even the density of a streetcar suburb is not really enough to truly support a subway. The relief Line/Ontario line is mainly needed to funnel suburban commuters from Scarborough and North York off the Yonge line and away from Bloor Yonge Station, all while increasing redundancy in the network. The streetcar suburb's presence only improves the business case for this line (in the form of increased property values, options for densification, economic stimulus, improved commutes for those that rely on the 501/502/503/506, and added ridership). This is excellent for the project but isn't the ultimate goal of it.

Don't get me wrong, South East York and the East area of Old Toronto certainly need better rapid transit, but if the Yonge line didn't extend past Eglinton and the Danforth line didn't extend past Main St, the Relief line would not be needed.
 
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