corridor_dweller
New Member
Now that's connectivity!
- Thread starter JasonParis
- Start date
Second_in_pie
Senior Member
I honestly don't understand this obsession with Queen is. Going to Union through a Front/railway alignment would create so much more connectivity than going under Queen would, and would service many more people.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
GO is expected to run out of capacity at Union. The Queen streetcar is at the limits of what it can do in mixed traffic. A subway on Queen can serve areas the exclusive ROWs on Bremner, Queens Quay, and Waterfront West and the GO station at Exhibition cannot. A DRL which connects to GO at either Dundas West or Jane & St.Clair, the Queensway, Don Station, and Pape and Gerrard, adds a new station to the central business district at Nathan Phillips Square, connects to Bloor-Danforth line stations, and potentially connects to Don Mills and Jane LRT lines will add far more new possibilities than a subway along existing railway tracks, near the Waterfront LRT lines, and serving a Union station which will already be bursting at it seams if the GO services visualized in the Big Move are realized.
Dan416
Senior Member
GO's capacity at Union has little to do with TTC's capacity at Union, which is well under capacity.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
I know. But what exactly would the DRL be connecting to at Union that the Queen line wouldn't.
Dan416
Senior Member
I dunno, like the whole PATH system? The major part of downtown?
Really, what's at Yonge and Queen? Eaton Centre and a Bay store.
jwill
Active Member
the PATH does of course go up to Queen St. Its certainly not too far to walk from Queen down to Front (or vice versa).
The Union/Front alignment has the advantage of serving what will soon be a corridor of high density condos along the lake (from the Exhibition to the Portlands). There is little development potential on Queen. For this reason, it will almost certainly go to Union.
TTC capacity at Union is important. The YUS station there will already be overloaded with GO, VIA, and waterfront LRT passengers. Connecting to two less crowded stations at Queen and Osgoode would be better from a station capacity point of view.
The Union/Front alignment has the advantage of serving what will soon be a corridor of high density condos along the lake (from the Exhibition to the Portlands). There is little development potential on Queen. For this reason, it will almost certainly go to Union.
TTC capacity at Union is important. The YUS station there will already be overloaded with GO, VIA, and waterfront LRT passengers. Connecting to two less crowded stations at Queen and Osgoode would be better from a station capacity point of view.
nfitz
Superstar
I don't know if Queen is the answer; but surely a Pape-Queen or Pape-King link would relieve the Yonge line more than a Pape to Union link ... and that's what the objective is ... relieving Yonge.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
A Nathan Phillips station would be an equal distance from First Canadian Place as Union is. It is on the central spine of the PATH system. It would be closer to the new Bay Adelaide towers and the proposed new Richmond Adelaide Centre tower. Union already has more service than anywhere else in downtown and doesn't really require any more. The DRL can be designed to relieve both Union and the Yonge line... it is known that the Yonge line is approaching capacity and so is GO's Union Station. The new Waterfront LRT lines will increase the TTC station loads at Union considerably and provide an east-west connection not far from Front Street. There is no point duplicating coverage areas and Bremner and Queens Quay East is only 300 to 600m from Front St.
I honestly don't think Queen West will warrant a subway after the Waterfront West LRT is finished. The bulk of the riders using the section between Roncesvalles and Bathurst got on prior to Roncesvalles (ie on the Queensway or Etobicoke South portions of the line). When the Waterfront West is finished, the large majority of these riders will be using it to get downtown, and not Queen (this is assuming the 501 service will not continue west of Roncesvalles). This will in essence turn the Queen West streetcar into a local line.
This is another reason why I think the railway alignment makes so much sense in the west, because it bisects so many existing transit lines, but overlaps very few.
nfitz
Superstar
Another thing to remember, is that by intersecting the Yonge (and University) lines at anywhere but Union, will allow for the transfer between the two lines to be dispersed at 2 stations, rather than 1. Can you imagine the mess at the Yonge line platforms at Union when the passengers from Eastbound DRL line, Westbound DRL line, 2 or 3 GO Trains, and Spadina, Harbourfront, Waterfront East and Waterfront West LRTs all arrive at the same time? We need a network ... not a single location in downtown where everybody is going to change.
If you do Wellington you get 3 (King, Union, St. Andrew). New station at Wellington and Bay (still called 'Union' for simplicity sake, same as 'Spadina' has the same name, even though the stations are several hundred metres apart, just build a walkway), and new platforms at St. Andrew (existing St. Andrew entrance and another at Metro Hall/Simcoe Place) and King (existing entrance and another at Church St).
Edit: another advantage with Wellington is that by having the King and St. Andrew transfer points so close to the 'bottom' of the lines, peak hour flow at these stations is relatively 1 directional (PM rush hour NB platform is full, SB platform is relatively empty). Having the DRL connect there would take advantage of the rush hour frequencies on trains that aren't really full (compared to the trains heading in the opposite direction at that same time).
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EnviroTO
Senior Member
That is not supported by the documents that I have read. Of the 12,000 people who ride the 501 in Etobicoke, on a daily basis only 50% travel from or to a place east of Humber Loop. There are over 43,000 riders total on the 501 Queen line, that means less than 15% of riders come from Etobicoke. How could less than 15% of riders ever be "the bulk" of those coming from west of Bathurst, especially considering the walkability of places east of Bathurst to downtown?
I was referring to the WEST portion of the 501. In the east it's a completely different story. All I'm saying is that with the Waterfront West LRT 'taking over' the Etobicoke portion of the 501, the number of people travelling along (or through) the section of the line from Roncesvalles to downtown will be significantly reduced, as the majority of people from southern Etobicoke who were using the 501 will then use the Waterfront West LRT. As a result, the ridership along that portion of the line will not warrant a subway. I'm not even going to touch Queen East, because that's a completely different story.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
This makes the assumption that Queen passengers would travel south in significant numbers. The central business district is walkable and indoors from Queen. On a line designed to relieve congestion from the Yonge line and possibly provide alternate GO station connections the target ridership is not going to be people going to Union station.
Benefits to Queen subway:
- Replaces Queen streetcar which is bogged down in traffic.
- Far enough from Waterfront LRTs to not overlap service areas.
- PATH connection which is an equal distance from First Canadian Place as Union station is.
- Closer to new office towers along Adelaide.
- Two connections to Yonge line to distribute loads.
- Avoids increasing the number of passengers in the Union station complex which will be already very busy due to GO and LRT service increases.
- Potential new GO station connection points at Dundas West or Jane/St Clair, along the Queensway, Don Station, Gerrard/Pape.
- Potential connections to Pape and Jane LRT.
Potential Queen stations:
-Jane Yards [Jane / St Clair / Dundas] (Jane LRT terminus, St.Clair streetcar extension terminus, Dundas streetcar extension terminus, Scarlett Rd bus terminus, Lambton bus terminus, Warren Park bus, Milton Line GO, future Crosstown GO).
- Annette [Jane / Annette] (Dupont bus terminus)
- Jane [Jane / Bloor] (Bloor-Danforth subway)
- Windermere [Queensway / Windermere] (Lakeshore West LRT terminus, Queensway bus terminus, Parkside-Swansea bus, Lakeshore GO)
- Roncesvalles [Queen / Queensway / King / Roncesvalles] (King streetcar)
- Jamieson [Queen / Jamieson] (Lansdowne bus terminus)
- Dufferin [Queen / Dufferin] (Dufferin bus, Barrie GO)
- Shaw [Queen / Shaw] (Ossington bus)
- Bathurst [Queen / Bathurst] (Bathurst streetcar)
- Spadina [Queen / Spadina] (Spadina streetcar)
- John [Queen / John]
- Osgoode [Queen / Osgoode] (Yonge-University subway) {180 Queen West, Four Seasons Centre}
- City Hall [Queen at Nathan Phillips Square] {City Hall, Sheraton Centre, PATH Central Spine}
- Queen-Yonge [Queen / Yonge] (Yonge-University subway) {The Bay, Eaton Centre, 1 Queen East, 2 Queen East, St.Michael's Hospital}
- Moss Park [Queen / Sherbourne] (Sherbourne bus)
- Sumach [Queen / Sumach] (Cherry LRT terminus, King streetcar terminus)
- Broadview [Queen / Broadview]
- Carlaw [Queen / Carlaw] (Queen East streetcar terminus, Kingston Road streetcar terminus, Pape bus)
- Riverdale [Pape / Gerrard] (College streetcar, GO Lakeshore, GO Stouffville)
- Pape [Pape / Danforth] (Bloor-Danforth subway, Pape bus)
- Mortimer [Pape / Mortimer] (Mortimer bus terminus)
- Cosburn [Pape / Cosburn] (Cosburn bus terminus)
- O'Connor [Pape / O'Connor] (Broadview bus)
- Millwood [Overlea / Millwood] (Don Mills LRT terminus, Leaside bus, Flemingdon Park bus terminus)