I've been saying the same thing since Ford started pitting downtown vs the outer city. Calling it Downtown anything is picking an unnecessary fight, as stupid as that is. The 'Don Mills line' would get near unanimous support on City Council, amongst downtown and suburban councillors alike.

The name would instil a mental goal of reaching Don Mills which would help bury the need to extend the Sheppard line east as a subway. Instead, Line 4 could be merged into the Don Mills line and eventually form a loop around the city:

City Hall to Pape, up to Don Mills, across Sheppard to Dufferin, down Dufferin to Queen, across Queen to City Hall.
 
I've been saying the same thing since Ford started pitting downtown vs the outer city. Calling it Downtown anything is picking an unnecessary fight, as stupid as that is. The 'Don Mills line' would get near unanimous support on City Council, amongst downtown and suburban councillors alike.

The name would instil a mental goal of reaching Don Mills which would help bury the need to extend the Sheppard line east as a subway. Instead, Line 4 could be merged into the Don Mills line and eventually form a loop around the city:

City Hall to Pape, up to Don Mills, across Sheppard to Dufferin, down Dufferin to Queen, across Queen to City Hall.

Good name choice indeed. Ford just tapped into something that existed for his own gain and then put an ugly Political amplifier on it which surely did nothing to resolve the problem . But it did bring this Political issue that already existed and certainly still does to the surface for better or worse. The more compromise towards decisions in other areas of the City, the less important the naming of future lines becomes
 
I've been saying the same thing since Ford started pitting downtown vs the outer city. Calling it Downtown anything is picking an unnecessary fight, as stupid as that is. The 'Don Mills line' would get near unanimous support on City Council, amongst downtown and suburban councillors alike.

Except Don Mills is in North York, and North York has "enough subways" and Scarborough doesn't because everyone hates Scarborough and we deserve subways please vote for me. This is the level of debate that passes for transit planning in Toronto. When the merits alone are not enought to win over some politicians without including all their various pet projects too (whether it's Yonge extension, Sheppard subway extension, SSE, or SmartTrack), I think it's naive to expect that calling it by a different name will somehow change anything.
 
Last edited:
Political support in City Council is the least we have to worry about with regards to the Don Mills Line. I know a range of downtown and suburban councillors already support the project. This should sail through Council easier than any other proposal of this generation.

Financial support is the bigger hurdle for us. This extension is going go be expensive to build. Metrolinx estimated at least $4 Billion for the section between Danforth and Sheppard, and with the cost escalations we've seen on other projects, I'm expecting it to cost billions more. Toronto needs strong provincial and federal support to get this done.
 
I see the rationale with the Don Mills naming, even support it - but it is premature considering the EA work isn't even done. This choice in essence dictated the future alignment when the preliminary work hasn't even been completed. So if you want to talk about politics overstepping into transit planning, this would be a transcendent case of it.

AoD
 
Last edited:
The idea of naming it for the end destination is a good one, for the very reason we have been discussing, ie maintain continued focus on the Long objective of the project.

I never thought much of it at the time, but in today's political climate Line 2 would never have reached Kipling or Kennedy.....the line would still be stuck at Keele and Woodbine. Can't allow that to happen with the DMWRL

- Paul
 
The idea of naming it for the end destination is a good one, for the very reason we have been discussing, ie maintain continued focus on the Long objective of the project.

I never thought much of it at the time, but in today's political climate Line 2 would never have reached Kipling or Kennedy.....the line would still be stuck at Keele and Woodbine. Can't allow that to happen with the DMWRL

- Paul

Except that do we even know where the end destination for long is? That's what's been thrown around, but not what's been informed as the final choice.

AoD
 
The idea of naming it for the end destination is a good one, for the very reason we have been discussing, ie maintain continued focus on the Long objective of the project.

I never thought much of it at the time, but in today's political climate Line 2 would never have reached Kipling or Kennedy.....the line would still be stuck at Keele and Woodbine. Can't allow that to happen with the DMWRL

lol, the Denzil Mills line. If this is to be considered an upgraded Don Mills LRT (which in a way it is) I guess the terminus would be Hwy 7 in Markham. I personally kinda like the idea of doing something vague like how Vancouver has with the Canada Line and Millennium Line, or with Ottawa's Confederation line. Maybe we could do Ontario Line or Coronation Line.
 
lol, the Denzil Mills line. If this is to be considered an upgraded Don Mills LRT (which in a way it is) I guess the terminus would be Hwy 7 in Markham. I personally kinda like the idea of doing something vague like how Vancouver has with the Canada Line and Millennium Line, or with Ottawa's Confederation line. Maybe we could do Ontario Line or Coronation Line.

Sure, with the proviso that it will be naming by fiat and not by committee (or lord forbid, naming competitions) - because it is going to drag on for ages and turn into yet another energy sucking exercise that pleases no one.

AoD
 
I thought that one of the stated benefits of the Queen alignment was that it was closer to bedrock than Kinghttp://reliefline.ca/pages/corridor-b.

View attachment 108690

And it was pointed out in the Pape vs. Carlaw debate that this would be the deepest subway in Toronto, deeper than Sheppard, since it needs to get under the Don River. So either it would have to be very deep cut and cover, or they'd mine the section under Yonge and under University and keep boring?

Subway%20Depth.jpg

I don't think that has been stated anywhere and a person would expect bedrock depth to decrease while approaching the lake but I'm not surprised at the confusion. The messaging from the project team and staff has been confusing at all times. They say one thing today which contradicts something said yesterday and this happens all the time. They made the case for disregarding a higher performing alignment for cost reasons but added the lower Don crossing back into the project anyway (only without folding back in half of the benefits) and they're about to add several hundred million more to the project cost to Protect Our Pape street.
 
I personally kinda like the idea of doing something vague like how Vancouver has with the Canada Line and Millennium Line, or with Ottawa's Confederation line. Maybe we could do Ontario Line or Coronation Line.

They use those names because their transit lines don't adhere to the road network like ours do.
 
What do you guys think about this?
  1. Canvass the readers of this thread (and all UT'ers) to submit suggestions for a new name for the Relief Line.
  2. Make a poll in this thread for a new name, and close it at a certain date.
  3. Allowing UT'ers to privately submit the poll results to city council/committee and Metrolinx, but in a way that doesn't say 'our choice should be the new name' but just generally highlighting the need for a name change.
I'd want the City to consider a proper name that makes sense, not have politicians try and name it after someone. Screw that, one single person has not championed this line for half a century, it has taken public pressure to get it to this point and it still crawls at an agonizing pace.
 
They use those names because their transit lines don't adhere to the road network like ours do.

The Canada line is almost entirely underneath Cambie street, in a straight line... but at that point they already had a tradition of giving their lines more creative names. The working name for the line was "Olympic Line".

What do you guys think about this?
  1. Canvass the readers of this thread (and all UT'ers) to submit suggestions for a new name for the Relief Line.
  2. Make a poll in this thread for a new name, and close it at a certain date.
  3. Allowing UT'ers to privately submit the poll results to city council/committee and Metrolinx, but in a way that doesn't say 'our choice should be the new name' but just generally highlighting the need for a name change.
I'd want the City to consider a proper name that makes sense, not have politicians try and name it after someone. Screw that, one single person has not championed this line for half a century, it has taken public pressure to get it to this point and it still crawls at an agonizing pace.

My contributions:
1. Subway McSubwayface
2. The Respect for Scarborough Line
3. The Line that Time Almost Forgot
4. The Rob Ford Memorial Gravy Train
5. Tubey McTube
6. The "Eat Fresh"(TM) Subway (pending sponsorship agreement)
7. SMART-RAIL
8. The Reactine Congestion Relief Line (pending sponsorship agreement)
 
I'm not sure changing the name will have any kind of impact in terms of getting it accepted by all corners of the city.

If other councilors decide to play identity politics, it won't matter what it's called.
 

Back
Top