[TheTigerMaster]

With an a

As much as Queen or King might be desirable for direct connectivity to existing stations, the disruption to the two busiest streetcar lines in the City during construction of those station boxes would be huge. The below map from the 1960s that shows the downtown station boxes.

That's not necessarily true. A way to minimize surface disruptions during construction is to bore the stations, rather than dig them. it's what we did with the University Line to minimize the impact to hospitals.

 

[44 North]

Respectfully disagree. Queen is much better for western expansion between Bathurst and Sunnyside. A King Street alignment for the Relief Line should travel up to Queen via Niagara Street to a station at Trinity-Bellwoods, and continue on Queen from there. (Hitting West Queen West, a future GO-RER interchange station at Dufferin/Queen, Parkdale and Sunnyside)

And let's not forget that unlike St Andrew and King, Osgoode and Queen were underpinned for a station below it (with Queen even having a station box below it). Obviously the Queen sub-station is currently used as a pedestrian passageway, but Osgoode's underpinning may very well come in useful if Queen is shortlisted.

 

[gweed123]

If the Union second platform hadn't been built, I would ask if the idea of splitting the Yonge and University lines had been floated.

I proposed something similar a few years ago. Basically, the Yonge line would terminate at Southcore (or could be extended further west to City Place, the Ex, or up Dufferin). The University line/DRL would continue east along Front, with a partial wye at Yonge, where the subway currently curves north. The Yonge line would then dip underneath the DRL at Front & Yonge, with the current SB -> WB movement maintained for interoperability. A new Union platform would be built more or less in a N-S direction underneath the bus terminal and rail corridor, with connection to the existing Union subway station via the streetcar loop. This was before the plans for 10 (?) Bay were announced, with the new bus terminal integration. That may throw a wrench into the plans, since it would be a medium depth station.

If we go with a CBD station at King and Bay street with connections to both St. Andrew and King stations, I wonder if that would justify a station between Spadina and University at John Street?

Or alternatively, build the Relief Line station west of University with a direct connection to both St. Andrew station and the PATH system heading west towards Metro Centre.

The configuration that I envision is a Financial Station between Bay and Yonge, with a connection to the Yonge Line, and a new E-W platform at St. Andrew that has its east end at University, and its west end around Duncan (or a visual extension of it if Wellington is used). This would provide a direct underground connection to Metro Hall, Simcoe Place, and the CBC building. It would also somewhat indirectly serve the MTCC, since you can access it via Simcoe Place.

You could then have a station at Clarence Square (Spadina) west of there, and a station at St. Lawrence (between Church and Jarvis) east of there.

 

[jaybe]

An incident at Union creates a single point of failure for entire network - GO, YUS and Relief Line. That, and the difficulty of managing the existing volume of pedestrian flow to/from Union, makes an alignment no further south than King critical, to my mind. Anyone who wants to go to Union/Southcore can still use YUS, especially if Relief Line reaches Eglinton and chops a chunk out of what Crosstown feeds into the Yonge line.

I'm not sure how an incident at Union would affect the DRL with a Wellington or King Street alignment. In fact, it might make life easier for commuters by presenting them with a walkable option in the event that there was an issue.

The core is extending both east and west along King (the Well and multiple other developments in the west and the Unilver lands in the east). Union Station will be the point of arrival for suburban commuters. Getting suburban commuters to these destinations needs to be part of the plan.

There are 100,000+ daily commuters who arrive in Toronto at Union Station via GO trains. Doesn't it make sense to give them walking access to the DRL rather than having to make a one or two station connection to the DRL via the YUS subway? This means a DRL alignment along Wellington or King makes very good sense. A very good option is to build a station at Bay and Wellington and build a dedicated path connection to the King Street Station and a separate path connection to Union Station. Both paths would be roughly 100m.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

Just messing around here. The DRL is either going to run down Queen, Richmond, Adelaide, King Wellington, or Front. I also think that its either going to result in changing two existing Line 1 stations into interchange stations on Yonge and University, or creating one new station at Bay with pedestrian connections to existing adjacent Line 1 stations. Going off of that, we have the following combos. I made up some names for fun, and colour-coded the stations as per the City's evaluation:

1. Queen and Osgoode
2. City Hall (Queen@Bay)
3. Richmond East (Richmond@Yonge) and Richmond West (Richmond@University)
4. Richmond (Richmond@Bay)
5. Adelaide East (Adelaide@Yonge) and Adelaide West (Adelaide@University)
6. Adelaide (Adelaide@Bay)
7. King and St Andrew
8. Financial (King@Bay)
9. Wellington East (Wellington@Yonge) and Wellington West (Wellington@University)
10. Exchange (Wellington@Bay)
11. Front East (Front@Yonge) and Front West (Front@University)
12. Union

If we assume if there's no green, it's a no-go, that makes a short list of 5 options for the CBD.

1. Queen and Osgoode
2. City Hall
3. King and St Andrew
4. Financial
5. Exchange

Where it goes would probably be dependent on:

• Station evaluation to the east
• Whether being closer to Liberty Village outweighs cannibalizing ridership for the Waterfront West LRT
• Mayor Tory's desire to do a favour for First Gulf
• Whatever hairbrained ideas councillors come up with

 

[MisterF]

I'm not sure how an incident at Union would affect the DRL with a Wellington or King Street alignment. In fact, it might make life easier for commuters by presenting them with a walkable option in the event that there was an issue.

The core is extending both east and west along King (the Well and multiple other developments in the west and the Unilver lands in the east). Union Station will be the point of arrival for suburban commuters. Getting suburban commuters to these destinations needs to be part of the plan.

There are 100,000+ daily commuters who arrive in Toronto at Union Station via GO trains. Doesn't it make sense to give them walking access to the DRL rather than having to make a one or two station connection to the DRL via the YUS subway? This means a DRL alignment along Wellington or King makes very good sense. A very good option is to build a station at Bay and Wellington and build a dedicated path connection to the King Street Station and a separate path connection to Union Station. Both paths would be roughly 100m.

I would imagine that relatively few of those 100,000+ would want to transfer to a DRL. Those going to the east and west ends of downtown would more likely get off one of several new stations in the downtown area that GO is looking at, like at Spadina and Parliament. Or at a DRL station that would interchange with the GO lines. Most DRL passengers wouldn't be going through Union; they'd be going to the larger downtown area north of Union.

 

[Rainforest]

If we assume if there's no green, it's a no-go, that makes a short list of 5 options for the CBD.

1. Queen and Osgoode
2. City Hall
3. King and St Andrew
4. Financial
5. Exchange

IMO, it is preferable to have at least two DRL stations in the "old" downtown area. Not just one. Two stations will be better for the passenger flow distribution, and in case one of them is temporarily closed due to an emergency, riders will at least have the other.

Therefore, I would go with King and St Andrew, or even Wellington East and West even if the latter pair has less local potential than other options.

 

[Hopkins123]

If they ignore any future west extension I'm pretty sure they will choose Queen. However, when you add King West to the mix (including Liberty Village) I think King has the edge.

However, the downside to King is how far down St Andrew station already is. It will be very deep and will need very long escalators/elevators to transport people to the surface (and we know how well the TTC can maintain escalators). We're talking almost 100 feet deep (proxy is 8 ft for the road and sewers, 12 feet x 2 for the parking garage under University, 20 ft for the University line, 10 ft buffer and then 20 ft for the DRL.

This will mean a station can be as wide as 250 meters (150m for the platform and 35-50 m for escalators on each). The King station can serve the Yonge line, an exit where the PATH goes between Commerce Court and Scotia, and Bay St. St Andrew can serve University (also connected to the PATH) and Metrocentre/Roy Thompson Hall.

Queen honestly is not in the CBD. It is on the north edge. Adelaide or maybe Richmond the end of the CBD and then Queen is the start of the tourist district. People working on King St will not want to walk all the way from Queen and the DRL will not have the effect of reducing traffic in rush how to the extent needed if it is on Queen. Great for the people who want to be downtown on the weekends but not so good for the everyday travellers.

And the other problem with Queen is that there are so many provincial and city gov't buildings. They are so scared of someone else's shadow that it will not morph into part of the CBD.

Like others have said, Queen has the potential of hitting more inner-city nodes overall (Chinatown, Alexandra Park, Queen West/Art+Design District, Roncesvalles Village, Fashion District, Parkdale, Moss Park, Regent Park, Corktown, Riverdale). The developments along Queen Street between Ossington and Dufferin easily rival what's being built along King Street in Liberty Village. Great swaths of King Street are dead in general (apart from the stretch between University and Spadina), no form of street life, no one really walking about the area after work hours. Queen is always vibrant 24/7 bustling by comparison. It passes by OCAD, City Hall and St Micheal's Hospital - big institutional draws. And a new PATH connection could link down to St James Campus of George Brown. Eaton Centre, major destination.

And Liberty Village already has the rail corridor wherein a station can be infilled in addition to Exhibition GO, Queen Street is more isolated and in need of its own solution. A Queen-Yonge station could have exits onto Bay Street putting in within easy walking distance of King and Bay. Where's a DRL going to fit in across King or Wellington or even Adelaide anyway considering the PATH network? A super-deep DRL would require so much additional walking time, it makes the simple walk south from Queen/Richmond seem like a cakewalk by comparison.

This isn't a knock on a King alignment, just an unbiased observation. The limited advantages of routing a DRL through centre of the Financial District misses out on capitalizing on providing access to other areas of the downtown which can be just as prominent trip-generators. And to anyone who says that the character of Queen Street and its shopping districts would be destroyed by building a subway there - is Eglinton being destroyed or enhanced by the Crosstown? Does the Bloor-Danforth not have numerous commercial districts dotted throughout its length?

 

[WislaHD]

This isn't a knock on a King alignment, just an unbiased observation. The limited advantages of routing a DRL through centre of the Financial District misses out on capitalizing on providing access to other areas of the downtown which can be just as prominent trip-generators

The two options do not have to compete with one another.

Is Niagara Street curved enough to allow a a big enough curvature to bring the Relief Line up to Queen? I'm pretty confident it is.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

A similar option was modelled in the Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study

 

[BurlOak]

If the transit line is straight, then I can easily understand deciding the technology later. However, in this case there are many curves and a number of routes are only possible with certain types of technology. For instance, if you want to be at grade, it must be LRT. If the curves are tight, it can't be TTC subway.
There is also a big cost difference between technologies. The key to everything is the "bang for the buck" factor. As a minimum, it must meet the demand with adequate allowance for tolerance for the estimates. But spending $450M/km for subway compared to $250M/km for subway just to go from 30k to 40k ppdph may not be worthwhile.

 

[crs1026]

We need to be careful not to let mixed agendas create a muddle. If a key imperative is to wean east Line 2 riders and north Line 1 riders away from Yonge, then we need an alignment and station placement that is as close to where those people access Line 1 today. My unscientific gut says a King Street alignment is most probable in this respect. But if the agenda is to build a cross downtown transit line, we should be looking at traffic relief, and where all the 501 and 504 riders need to go.

One could debate whether streetcars 'feed the street' - in my view they do. Danforth (and some parts of Bloor) have thrived even with the streetcars gone, but it's a different street experience than College west or Queen west. Of course, many stretches of King Queen and Dundas have remained tawdry for decades, so street cars don't guarantee anything.
Today, street cars perform a helpful (if dysfunctional) traffic calming role on Queen. If you take streetcars off Queen, you speed up traffic and risk detracting from the street's pedestrian ambience. Whereas if you put the transit line under King, nd remove streetcars there, you make it a useful arterial road for cars and you improve transit for a greater number of riders.

In the end, the engineering may have the final say. If Queen is already underpinned at the key crossings, and King isn't, the cost and disruption factor may force that routing. I'm fearful that once the Eglinton station closures on Crosstown get started, public appetite for subway construction disruption downtown may dry up.

- Paul

 

[WislaHD]

We need to be careful not to let mixed agendas create a muddle. If a key imperative is to wean east Line 2 riders and north Line 1 riders away from Yonge, then we need an alignment and station placement that is as close to where those people access Line 1 today. My unscientific gut says a King Street alignment is most probable in this respect.

True enough. The DRTES study (2013) suggests that King and St. Andrew Station have the best numbers for alightings. (As does its proximity to Union Station, which is in walkable distance from King/St. Andrew via the PATH)

 

[M II A II R II K]

A stop on Richmond between Bay and Yonge could still be connected to Queen station whilst still have direct access to City Hall and just a block north of where the CBD starts.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

A stop on Richmond between Bay and Yonge could still be connected to Queen station whilst still have direct access to City Hall and just a block north of where the CBD starts.

Sure, but it is points against it that the connection is not direct. It was not an ideal candidate location for other reasons outlined in the evaluation:

• Low inbound surface transit riders
• Continuous ROW not available
• No convenient stopping locations for surface transit, taxis or vehicles

This is why I made that short list of 5 options (Queen+Osgoode, City Hall, King+St Andrew, Financial, Exchange). I'm not trying to rain on peoples parades here, I'm just trying to convey the fact that stations have gone through thorough evaluation of multiple factors to try and see which locations have the best balance of conditions. We can speculate from there how other factors will influence a choice.