Thinking very long term, does anyone else think there'll be a need for another downtown subway line beyond the DRL? We're talking at least 50 years out, here...
Yes, I could see the need, perhaps along a Dundasesque rooting (which will likely be somewhere halfway between the DRL on the south and the Bloor line on the north. Perhaps between Gerrard Square (to meet the DRL) and then over to Roncey area (to meet the DRL again) via Dundas Square. Full tunneling under Dundas might mitigate the private homeowners a bit, but the development pressure on places like Kensignton Market, Chinatown, etc. would be huge (assuming they already hadn't imploded/gentrified/etc. in 50 years time).
 
In 50 years low impact wuppertalls could replace busses and streetcars, making them fast unimpeded transit as well as subways but with much less capacity of course.
 
The Transitway in downtown Ottawa worked, until it was simply overwhelmed by the demand. The first idea I floated there was kind of a late night 'hadn't really thought it all the way through' moment, to be honest, haha.

The map I posted though is something that would actually make sense, mainly because it would help relieve the King and Queen streetcars, specifically for the people getting on them in the flanks of downtown. Much easier to get on a downtown-bound semi-BRT bus at Bathurst & Adelaide then get on a King streetcar that is going to crawl it's way downtown. The branches on either side are really just for connectivity, and aren't really meant to divert significant riders FROM the subway, it's more for a better way to get people from those areas TO the subway. The real core of the plan is the dedicated lanes on Richmond and Adelaide.

Yes, there are some intersection areas where you may not be able to fit too many buses in, but I figure during rush hour you're looking at one articulated bus every couple of minutes. You're not going to see an Ottawa-style bus snake heading into downtown.
 
Thinking very long term, does anyone else think there'll be a need for another downtown subway line beyond the DRL? We're talking at least 50 years out, here, so it's hard to imagine what the downtown core will look like. Still, I always imagined (dreamed?) that, one day, the area south of Bloor would have the density of Manhattan or a major European downtown like Paris or Barcelona. We could easily pack 1.5 million people in the area bounded by High Park, Bloor and, say, Woodbine*.

It would be great to have, maybe, a line down Dundas and some north-south connectors to make a tight grid in the downtown core, reminiscent of the systems in the major alpha cities we try to emulate.




*I know this seems unrealistic today, because most of those homes are highly desirable Bay and Gables owned by wealthy, politically influential homeowners who would be the first to mobilize against change, but you never know how the wind blows. For one, most of these homeowners and the culture they represent will be dead by then; secondly, the values that future generations hold about living in a heritage semi-detached home may be drastically different. It's happened before: the Upper East Side went from a wealthy enclave of detached mansions to a wealthy enclave of midrises and apartment towers in about 50 years.

Houses are prized over condos. In my taxation class, the instructor (son of real estate agents) said condos are considered 2nd class housing. When 40,000 condos hit the market in the next year, watch the price adjustment. Banks are already telling people who put down 20% to put down more because they are panicking about a condo collapse. New York of course has way more wealth and people that can afford maintenance fees which are a rip off. There should be a way to make hydro/gas/water individually metered. Then the only thing fees would cover is snow (how much of that do we get anymore), roof replacements (again over 100 years perhaps happens 3x) The fees would thus not be so high. A roof over a house costs what $5,000 (at high end). Spread out over 25 years it is $200 a year. You cannot compare maintenance on a house with condos. Way lower on a house than condo
 
A Don Mills Subway For Toronto

http://stevemunro.ca/?p=8770

.....

My proposed alignment is not intended to be definitive although parts of it are locked down to make specific connections and to take into account physical constraints on the route’s placement. Other alignments are possible in places, but I don’t want to revisit that discussion in excruciating detail when the basic purpose is to show what a new line could achieve.

- Spadina & Front Station: This station would be part of a proposed Metrolinx/GO western Union Station to be used by services originating in the northwest corridor so that capacity at Union can be released for remaining routes. An extension west from this location to serve new development at Exhibition Place, for example, would be possible.

- St. Andrew Station: The station is nominally at King, but the structure extends somewhat to the south. A parking garage sits on top of the subway structure, and a pathway through it could link a station at Wellington into the existing St. Andrew Station.

- King Station: The box making up King Station extends well south of King Street and includes the Melinda Street exit on the west side of Yonge as a reference point. A station at Wellington would be only a short distance south of King Station.

- Jarvis Street (St. Lawrence Market): This location is a major centre for the community and far enough east of Yonge to serve a distinct set of demands.

- Distillery District: There are two possible locations for this station at either Parliament or Cherry Street. Cherry has the advantage that it would be a connection point for the north-south streetcar service that will eventually serve the eastern waterfront and port lands developments. The stumbling block for such a connection is expansion of the underpass at the rail corridor, but that is a question of will, money and the timing of future development.

- Broadview & Eastern: This station would serve the Great Gulf development and improve access to this corner of the waterfront in general.

- For many years, the TTC has shown the DRL as ending at Pape and Danforth. Recent reports on a DRL study mentioned the need for a wye junction with the Danforth subway so that trains could reach Greenwood Yard. Building such a structure would have severe effects on existing buildings at Pape and Danforth.

- That is why my proposed alignment continues east (as some of the early TTC schemes did) to the west side of Greenwood Subway Yard. This would provide a link to the existing network without the need to build a new junction somewhere under the Danforth. At the yard, the route would turn north mainly under what is now parkland and cross Danforth at Donlands Station where it would connect to the Danforth subway.

- Continuing north on Donlands, there could be stations at Mortimer and at O’Connor. North of O’Connor, the line would cross the Don Valley on a medium height bridge. The exact nature of the bridge would be a trade-off between cost, the depth of the subway at each portal, and the aesthetics of the valley crossing.

- Thorncliffe Park is a major concentration for housing with a lot of underutilized commercial space. The exact location of a station here would depend on the alignment that proves workable. In the map, it is at Overlea & Thorncliffe Park East as a placeholder.

- Flemingdon Park is another major housing concentration, but it is fairly spread out and will require a bus feeder to connect most potential riders to the subway. In this proposal, I have sited the station at the north branch of Gateway Blvd. (the south branch is directly opposite Overlea at Don Mills) and near enough to the Science Centre that it could also serve as its local stop.

- Finally, there would be a station at Don Mills & Eglinton where the line would connect with the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Future extension could take the subway further north including a possible link to a future GO service on the CPR corridor south of Barber Greene Road. That is years from happening, but so is this plan.

.....
 
Wellington alignment through downtown and Front alignment through the St. Lawrence area looks good. Using Donlands station is also a plus. Very interesting alignment over the Don Valley though, and cutting through Thorncliffe Park in a much different way than most alignments I've seen. Makes a lot of sense though.
 
I'm not suggesting that BRt would do the trick for a DRL but I don't agree with the figures. Bi-articulated buses are up to 26 meters and some in Europe now 30 meters. Also the Canada Line states that one of it's trains has crush capacity of about 375 but they are 40 meter trains or the equivalent of 2 TTC subway cars.................how you could pack 315 people into a 20 meter long train is beyond me.

Interesting to note that most Vancouverites after having been exposed to both ART and standard subway cars prefer the ART. They are smoother, quieter and noticeably faster especially around curves and acceleration and deceleration. You really can notice the difference.
 
The western arm would probably evolve from a failed Union Pearson Express into a Union Pearson Rapid Transit line, with additional stations along the way.
 
because, as usual, nothing Toronto does is right.

Toronto has gotten this far and has pretty much always run this way. Montreal too is a little oddball on the world stage for how things get done.

There was nothing normal about our tram network in the 20's (3 over-capacity parallel lines, 100m apart?); or our subway (subway, not highway construction in the 50's? Really?), or a host of other transportation related decisions we've made.
 
Toronto has gotten this far and has pretty much always run this way. Montreal too is a little oddball on the world stage for how things get done.

There was nothing normal about our tram network in the 20's (3 over-capacity parallel lines, 100m apart?); or our subway (subway, not highway construction in the 50's? Really?), or a host of other transportation related decisions we've made.

Kind of a non-argument. It's gotten "this far" despite a lot of very poor decisions and leadership. Not because of it.
 
Kind of a non-argument. It's gotten "this far" despite a lot of very poor decisions and leadership. Not because of it.

"This far" includes average commute times among the longest in North America, a transit system that's a museum to 1940's technology, and the inability to build heavy rail rapid transit anywhere except in very low density suburban areas for the past 40 years.
 

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