Rainforest
Senior Member
I think BurlOak is somewhat vindicated. A year ago the idea seemed ridiculous, but after all the latest transit developments, I think not grade separating the Crosstown in Scarborough is proving to be a massive oversight.
That idea never was "ridiculous", as a proposal it was reasonable.
However, it would hit two problems:
1) It is viable only if the Relief line is buit soon after Crosstown, and it reaches Eglinton where it connects to Crosstown.
Otherwise, a lot of riders from Scarborough would stay on Crosstown all the way to Yonge, and overwhelm both the Crosstown and the Yonge line between Eglinton and Bloor.
Since at that time, 2010 - 2012, the future of Relief line was very uncertain, it would be too risky to commit to a network configuration where Crosstown becomes the main transit line for Scarborough.
2) The cost advantage of this scheme only exists if the street-median section of Crosstown is replaced with Elevated. If it is replaced with a Tunneled section, then the cost will be about as high as for SSE.
I personally do not see any problem with Elevated through the Golden Mile etc, but there is a degree of reluctance to build elevated transit in this city.
We will see if whether the Scarborough subway survives the next election cycle. If it gets replaced with a branch of the Crosstown in a cost-saving measure, then surely it would require grade separating between Kennedy and Don Mills, no?
Isn't it a bit too late to change the design of Crosstown? That would result in another delay.
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