[ehlow]

I do not personally live near Weston Road. Considering most everything i read states Sheppard should never have been a subway how is it warranted that DRL go up to Sheppard? Except if you personally live there.

No, I don't live there .

I fail to see how the Sheppard subway has any relevance when discussing a subway on Don Mills from Sheppard to downtown. The Sheppard line basically acts as a feeder route into Yonge for people who live near it or for riders of the Sheppard East bus who transfer to it at Don Mills.

There are currently a massive amount of people who take the Sheppard, York Mills & Eglinton East bus lines (or future LRT) to Yonge and take the Yonge subway downtown. Many of those riders could take the Don Mills subway south instead of Yonge, which relieves Yonge.

Personally I'd like to see both the DRL extended north as well as some sort of rapid transit along the Weston corridor. If the goal is to relieve Yonge though, the Don Mills would do more, since people from the West can already take the university line south. If you're at Weston & Eglinton, you can take the future Eglinton LRT to Eglinton West station and go south from there.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Because the west has a relief line already: The University Line.

I wouldn't discount it eventually going towards Weston/Eglinton. There is a lot of talk about making Mt. Dennis a transportation hub.

It shouldn't be a priority though.

I do not personally live near Weston Road. Considering most everything i read states Sheppard should never have been a subway how is it warranted that DRL go up to Sheppard? Except if you personally live there.

So you are saying they built Sapdina as a relief for the west? Really? Well if its a relief line for the west and it is just 2 more stops from
Yonge, people can just stay on from the east for 2 extra stops and avoid Yonge and congestion. That should provide relief for the east to if you ask me.

I agree with Palma. Yonge University Spadina line is one line. But the DRL should go up to sheppard. For political reasons.

No, I don't live there .

I fail to see how the Sheppard subway has any relevance when discussing a subway on Don Mills from Sheppard to downtown. The Sheppard line basically acts as a feeder route into Yonge for people who live near it or for riders of the Sheppard East bus who transfer to it at Don Mills.

There are currently a massive amount of people who take the Sheppard, York Mills & Eglinton East bus lines (or future LRT) to Yonge and take the Yonge subway downtown. Many of those riders could take the Don Mills subway south instead of Yonge, which relieves Yonge.

Personally I'd like to see both the DRL extended north as well as some sort of rapid transit along the Weston corridor. If the goal is to relieve Yonge though, the Don Mills would do more, since people from the West can already take the university line south. If you're at Weston & Eglinton, you can take the future Eglinton LRT to Eglinton West station and go south from there.

Imo, I was in favor of the DRL going up to Weston/Eglinton then going up Jane but with the YUS going to Vaughan that is redundant. But the DRL should be Weston Eglinton to Sheppard/Don Mills. Or Finch/Don Mills which would be better.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

I expect the UP express to last only 5 years before they start adding stations. At which point, transfers from the DRL to the rail line at Liberty Village and Bloor-Dundas begin to make sense.

They will have to build eglinton west lrt too at some point.

 

[innsertnamehere]

DRL will have light ridership between the Danforth and Eglinton, bringing it to Sheppard is nuts, at least in the near term. Mind you by the time it is built to Eglinton, we very well may be able to discuss bringing it to sheppard, but opening day for something like that is 30 years off minimum.

UPX will get a station added at Eglinton in 2020, that is it.


Apparently the reason the consultations were cancelled is because Metrolinx decided that instead of them and the TTC doing separate studies, it would be best if they did a joint study. (Whodathunk?)

 

[ehlow]

Well based on the studies released so far such as: http://www.ttc.ca/PDF/About_the_TTC/DRTES/DRTES_Commission_Presentation.pdf, as well as the poster of the public meeting, I think we can all agree that the following is likely:

Danforth & Pape to King & University/Spadina (approximate locations) is the part that will likely be mandatory. This could possibly be all that is built in phase 1.

There are two more sections that could either be included or the next extensions:
Dundas West & Bloor to King & Spadina AKA Western section
Danforth & Pape to Don Mills & Eglinton AKA North section

Anything beyond that is fantasy until the above is built I think.

 

[gweed123]

So you are saying they built Sapdina as a relief for the west? Really? Well if its a relief line for the west and it is just 2 more stops from Yonge, people can just stay on from the east for 2 extra stops and avoid Yonge and congestion. That should provide relief for the east to if you ask me.

There's a problem with that though: a lot of the bus routes along suburban arterials are split at Yonge. It isn't just a matter of "staying on a few more stops" when you're heading westbound. In many cases, you physically have to transfer buses to continue westbound at Yonge.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I think he means on the B-D line, but you are so close to your destination at that point that waiting the two stations takes too long, its faster to use Bloor-Yonge even if you have to wait for a train to pass by before getting on the second one. If people don't do it now (which they don't), they will never do it. The DRL on the other hand will provide a faster ride with plenty of space to spare, as it will be a whole lot emptier than the spadina line.

 

[drum118]

I don't undersatnd this taking the DRL in the east all the way to Sheppard yet somehow in the west it can't even go up to Weston on Eglinto.. This does not make saense to me. And considering lack of ridership on Sheppard I do not seee why getting the DRL up there is a prioroty over getting the DRL up to Weston Rd and Eglinton which makes more sense.

You need to look at the big picture and it includes future development as well today transit issues. Today issues are compounded by the future needs.

I am only looking at the eastern leg and that is where you will take most of the riders off the Yonge Line going to Steeles.

If you look at the ridership on all the lines feeding into the Yonge line and take 35% of those numbers, that is what the DRL will be today if the line was there today.

The south-east corner of Sheppard and Don Mills is going to increase 50% in size and residents with almost 35% new development built now. There is another project down the street doing almost the same as well one plan for Finch. You have Concord Place to the West of the Sheppard intersection similar to City Place that will have the choice of using GO or traveling 1 stop to the DRL than go to Yonge.

There are a vast number of development on the books for the major east-west routes that will increase ridership on the DRL as well noted above. In time, the numbers on the DRL will increase to what the Yonge Line has today.

There are vast number of projects underway along the Yonge Line, on the books to be built that those new riders will replace the ones using the DRL. If you look the Yonge Street from Steeles south, there are great number of areas waiting for development plans and these non projects at this time will replace all the riders that have move to DRL 150%. Between the current development taking place as well the non ones, the Yonge Line will exceed it capacity before 2050 that a new Yonge Line will have to be built, but not like it is today.

The DRL going to Danforth is only taking some pressure off the Yonge Line south of Bloor, but going to be replace by the new development underway or will be built in the next 10-15 years. The 3 corners of Eglinton & Yonge are to see major development by 2020 as well along Eglinton that are underway or plan. You need to look at a 3 block radius around this intersection to see what has been built in the last 5 years, underway and to be built by 2020. That one hell of an increase of ridership for the station and the line south of it.

If I look at the west section, the ridership as well development doesn't support the line at this time, but most of all where it goes north.

I have always seen the line going over to Jane St and then north on it since Jane can't support a surface ROW until Wilson, but you can try it at Eglinton.

It will take decades to get any development in the west to come close to the east.

I saw the western leg going up Jane to Major Mack before the Spadina extension surface and got underway. It still can happen by having both lines interline north of Steels as a Wye.

The western section of the BD sees more riders than the east today as well most of its history. The University Lines save the Yonge line from these riders as long they have no need to use Yonge in the first place. I have started to use the University line at PM peak as I can catch a train most of the time compare to waiting for 6 trains going north on Yonge line

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

DRL will have light ridership between the Danforth and Eglinton, bringing it to Sheppard is nuts, at least in the near term. Mind you by the time it is built to Eglinton, we very well may be able to discuss bringing it to sheppard, but opening day for something like that is 30 years off minimum.

UPX will get a station added at Eglinton in 2020, that is it.


Apparently the reason the consultations were cancelled is because Metrolinx decided that instead of them and the TTC doing separate studies, it would be best if they did a joint study. (Whodathunk?)

So then just do Dundas West to Danforth and call it a day. But the thing is, the DRL up sheppard could be as sucessful as the western part of the YUS, peeling off may bus riders before Yonge. It's not about Don Mills it's self, it's about the bus routes.

 

[TOareaFan]

I think he means on the B-D line, but you are so close to your destination at that point that waiting the two stations takes too long, its faster to use Bloor-Yonge even if you have to wait for a train to pass by before getting on the second one. If people don't do it now (which they don't), they will never do it. The DRL on the other hand will provide a faster ride with plenty of space to spare, as it will be a whole lot emptier than the spadina line.

Not too sound to cynical but your post could be read as "there is an alternative to the crush at YB but it is not used by people as the crush is not worth going out of their way to get onto a less crushed ride.....so we should spend billions building another line that will be even less used to help them avoid the YB that they are not making any effort to avoid now."

that independent study that criticized the DRL did so for the same reasons. They felt it was a poor allocation of resources cause it will not generate much new ridership (therefore won't come anywhere close to recovering the cost) just uses a ton of cash to move essentially the same people differently.....I guess you agree.

 

[innsertnamehere]

haha nope, just human psychology. People do what is best for them, that simple. Nobody will change their daily commute unless it benefits them, so telling them to switch at St. George is silly, as nobody will do it. Its like telling people to take highway 7 to Ottawa instead of the 401 to reduce congestion, nobody will do it..

as for the DRL, it will have sufficient ridership, just not crush loads a la Yonge or spadina, especially at its first stop where B-D transfers will be getting on. St. George will have 20km of subway feeding into it before it reaches it.

and that was the major criticism of that report, the fact that it considered congestion to only be on the roads, and thus considered "new riders" to be paramount in transit expansion. it completely ignored existing ridership, throwing it at the wayside for getting new riders at all cost. In reality, there absolutely is congestion in transit, and that is Bloor-Yonge. The DRL aims to fix that congestion, that simple. The DRL frees up not only large scale development across downtown, and existing lines as well (especially the Danforth between Pape and Bloor Yonge, but also entire eastern B-D line and the Yonge line).

 

[TOareaFan]

haha nope, just human psychology. People do what is best for them, that simple. Nobody will change their daily commute unless it benefits them, so telling them to switch at St. George is silly, as nobody will do it. Its like telling people to take highway 7 to Ottawa instead of the 401 to reduce congestion, nobody will do it..

At some point, if the crush/inconvenience is so bad at YB they will switch their patterns....what you seem to be saying is "its not quite bad enough yet for them to take the existing alternatives." I would go so far as to say that someone at, say, Yonge and Dundas could reach the point where rather than go to YB to switch to the WB BD on their way home they may go south and around or take the streetcar to St. Patrcik...or walk. What you seem to be saying is that they are not exercising their will to choose existing alternatives that would ease the congestion so we should build them a new alternative.

On roads people do do this all the time.......on my drive to DT (410/401/427Gardiner) I often call an audible and take the seemingly less convenient 410/403/Cawthra/QEW/Gardiner) to avoid that days congestion on the, say, the 401. Admittedly there are, typically, less options like that on transit but to hear that people are avoiding one that does exist is a bit discouraging.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Surely letting our transit get so congested that people are forced to take alternate routes is a great way of dealing with congestion.. no, the entire point is to try and eliminate situations such as that. You seem to be suggesting that the solution to congestion is, well, more congestion.

 

[TOareaFan]

Surely letting our transit get so congested that people are forced to take alternate routes is a great way of dealing with congestion.. no, the entire point is to try and eliminate situations such as that. You seem to be suggesting that the solution to congestion is, well, more congestion.

No....I am just saying that there are a lot of transit needs and it is not as clear to me as it seems to be to other people that this is a no brainer first priority....so when I ask others who feel that I get this common reply that it is all about YB's congestion.....and it would seem to me that a) if the congestion is so bad why are not people using already existing alternative routes that avoid YB and b) for the money being spent on the DRL is there not something that can be done to YB for less that addresses that congestion?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I do not personally live near Weston Road. Considering most everything i read states Sheppard should never have been a subway how is it warranted that DRL go up to Sheppard? Except if you personally live there.

1. Some of the TTC's most used surface routes would connect to a Don Mills Subway. In fact, these surface routes carry far more passengers than their counterparts that connect to the Spadina (Allen Road) Subway. Considering that most people enter subways from surface routes, it's not unreasonable to expect that a Don Mills Subway would have even more ridership than the Spadina (Allen Road) Subway. This would have the added benefit of diverting bus passengers coming from east of Yonge away from the Yonge Subway.

2. It is an alternate route for passengers from Richmond Hill to get downtown.

Of course, travel patterns still need to be thoroughly studied. And we don't yet know if the Bloor-Danforth Subway Extension that is replacing the Scarborough Rapid Transit will have any effect on ridership levels on a Don Mills Subway.

A Don Mills Rapid Transit line (presumably an extension of the Relief Line) is being studied by Metrolinx as a relief option for Yonge. Hopefully we'll soon see some solid data on this candidate route for rapid transit.