[Leo_Chan]

Are they going to be using Lower Queen?

The new structure does not use the existing underpass at Queen Station which was originally provided for a streetcar subway.

From https://stevemunro.ca/2018/04/29/relief-line-south-station-and-alignment-plans/

 

[CapitalSeven]

That's not completely true - lower Queen is already half in use for the underpass, and the rest of it would be opened up. The trains would be a couple of levels below that.

I don't agree at all about the "stupidity" of the station placements. Putting the Yonge-Bay station between the two streets means Yonge street doesn't have to be shut down at all, Bay not too badly, and likely there would be very little disruption to subway service or the use of Queen station. Trying to build a deep box station around the current operation would be a huge, expensive, and time consuming mess. Having exits at York and Bay puts the stations in close walking distance to a larger numbers of users, but of course it's a trade-off.

I don't foresee a huge mess with transfers. Many or most riders will get off the system entirely at one of the two stations, and those that do transfer will be going in any of four directions at two station, whereas Bloor/Yonge has an overload of riders from three lines trying to go south. That said, I think they might need to check very carefully they have enough stairs and escalators.

 

[gweed123]

I don't foresee a huge mess with transfers. Many or most riders will get off the system entirely at one of the two stations, and those that do transfer will be going in any of four directions at two station, whereas Bloor/Yonge has an overload of riders from three lines trying to go south. That said, I think they might need to check very carefully they have enough stairs and escalators.

Exactly. Placement of entrances/exits is far more important in this location than transfer configuration. The platforms should be placed in such a location that they maximize the access radii of the stations. "X" configurations for the platforms just happen to work best because for Queen-Yonge, it would allow end-of-platform exits at Victoria and James/Old City Hall. For Osgoode, it would allow for York and Simcoe. It just so happens that these configurations allow for easier transfers between lines.

 

[smallspy]

Still doesn't seem like a great solution, at least for the long-term. Having an out-of-service RL train head all the way from Pape to Broadview storage tracks, then double-back to Greenwood is a bit convoluted. Tbh I wouldn't have thought it was a big deal until I read your explanation a few weeks back re: U/S trains crossing tracks into Wilson leading to current service headaches.

It's convoluted, but it's also the most efficient way of dealing with the TTC's realities. And the way they have it configured has absolutely zero with the current cluster of trains running out of service into Wilson, as they won't be crossing an active mainline.

Also, it's been confirmed that the majority of the equipment will layover on the line and not at Greenwood anyways, so the only equipment using those connecting tracks are going to be when they cycle trains to and from the line on a weekly-ish basis.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

It's convoluted, but it's also the most efficient way of dealing with the TTC's realities. And the way they have it configured has absolutely zero with the current cluster of trains running out of service into Wilson, as they won't be crossing an active mainline.

Also, it's been confirmed that the majority of the equipment will layover on the line and not at Greenwood anyways, so the only equipment using those connecting tracks are going to be when they cycle trains to and from the line on a weekly-ish basis.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

Along the Relief Line North route, there are at least five train storage locations: two at the University terminal and three at the Danforth terminal. There might also be a storage track midway on the line too. The DRL will need six trains to operate the initial phase. So it looks like the Danforth wye connection will be seldomly used.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The tracks runs about 700m north of Pape station. That means there is enough space with triple tracks to store 12 trains, with another 4 stored past Osgoode.

 

[Forgotten]

Distillery is still easily accessible. It's a 3 minute walk from one of the proposed station entrances.

St Lawrence isn't really close to any stations, even if the line was on King instead.

Southcore and the Financial District are huge rush hour drivers, but after 6pm and on weekends they provide very, very little ridership. The vast majority of the financial district is a short walk from the DRL as well. Moving the line to Queen improves access to the courts, malls, hospitals, etc. that are north of Queen Street and are also huge transit ridership drivers, while maintaining easy access to the vast majority of financial district office space.

Also, Southcore isn't really accessible from either a King or Queen alignment.

As for transfers, yes, the only major one is Pape. the downtown transfer volumes will be low.

What post is this? Looks like you've bought into the same uninformed junk that the puppet planners are puffing.

If the core along King provides very very very very little ridership then why is the TTC wasting so much of our money paying two times the number of drivers to drive empty streetcars along King Street until late at night? Why do all of their drivers start and end their shifts with a jog down King instead of Queen?

The funny thing about Southcore, for something that a lot of people swear wouldn't be served by a King line, it's actually a shorter walk to Southcore from University and King than it is from Queen to hospital row or Ryerson and many of the other locations that people here say are easily accessed by having a Queen line. Using your same reasoning then the massive office buildings on King Street east aren't really served by a station at Moss Park either which would be another planner fail. It's more of that Planning Koolaid. All of what you said also ignores the fact that those spoiled malls and hospitals already have 6 subway stations.

 

[wolfewood]

What post is this? Looks like you've bought into the same uninformed junk that the puppet planners are puffing.

If the core along King provides very very very very little ridership then why is the TTC wasting so much of our money paying two times the number of drivers to drive empty streetcars along King Street until late at night? Why do all of their drivers start and end their shifts with a jog down King instead of Queen?

The funny thing about Southcore, for something that a lot of people swear wouldn't be served by a King line, it's actually a shorter walk to Southcore from University and King than it is from Queen to hospital row or Ryerson and many of the other locations that people here say are easily accessed by having a Queen line. Using your same reasoning then the massive office buildings on King Street east aren't really served by a station at Moss Park either which would be another planner fail. It's more of that Planning Koolaid. All of what you said also ignores the fact that those spoiled malls and hospitals already have 6 subway stations.

Jesus Christ man. I get that you disagree with the Queen Street alignment but reading your posts you'd think city planners murdered your family in front of you... Do you have to make every post about the DRL so hyperbolic and, frankly, deranged?

 

[dowlingm]

The need for a Queen alignment can be seen every evening as people at Queen and Dundas are left on the platform for train after train because the trains are filled to bursting at King. Southcore riders will benefit from the service increase from LaughTrack, RER, etc. as they already do on the west side by the UPX fare cuts.

 

[gweed123]

The need for a Queen alignment can be seen every evening as people at Queen and Dundas are left on the platform for train after train because the trains are filled to bursting at King. Southcore riders will benefit from the service increase from LaughTrack, RER, etc. as they already do on the west side by the UPX fare cuts.

If the trains are full after departing King, wouldn't that be a rationale to have the RL intersect at King? That's where the greater demand is. Just saying.

 

[Leo_Chan]

If the trains are full after departing King, wouldn't that be a rationale to have the RL intersect at King? That's where the greater demand is. Just saying.

In my view, assuming Relief Line on Queen (with local Queen Streetcar), better King Streetcar priority, and RER/ST, having a spread out load between Relief Line and RER, both being "express" services (insert SSE Express Subway joke here) will allow for more choice for riders coming in and out of the Downtown Core.

This is just my view and it might be wrong, but if there Relief Line was on King, the "centre" of the downtown offices, then EVERYONE would take the King Subway and it will be at capacity. Very little people will chose RER or the local streetcar routes as the subway is right next to where they work.

Of course any Relief Line alignment, even one that only has 2 stations at City Hall and Pape, will be an improvement of the status quo and we shouldn't be picky about the specific alignment for a line that will be greatly used.

 

[micheal_can]

Queen St is a good alignment for the DRL.

If there was ever an even lower DRL, say, one that follows the lake shore, then going through King would make a great place too.

 

[dowlingm]

If the trains are full after departing King, wouldn't that be a rationale to have the RL intersect at King? That's where the greater demand is. Just saying.

King is within the Union catchment. A DRL at Queen pulls people up from Richmond/Adelaide but also down from the Dundas direction. One other important thing to consider is the lower core as a single point of failure. In the event of a security event in the King-Union stretch, or a power failure, it is conceivable that DRL, Line 1 and Union would all stop service at the same time. Spacing the services further apart likely improves total resilency.

 

[aquateam]

Except that even a wye to the south wouldn't be enough to allow service trains to divert to the DRL - you would need a huge loop track either to the north/east or to the south-west to allow that to happen. And even then, you're going to have north/eastbound trains bypass Pape Station.

Considering the cost of what you're suggesting, and for the infinitesimally small number of times that it will be required, it's better to keep things separate - like the way that they are designing them.

Why would you need a loop track? St. George doesn't have one. The net cost difference between having it south of Danforth and north of Danforth is nil, not some kind of astronomical add-on.

The idea is that once the whole thing is running on ATC, you could put the wye into play just like St. George with the interlining. During non-peak times, you could blend the service if there is room on the headway, so half the trains go directly downtown (there's an old DRL fantasy map by someone named dmz(?) floating around that I can't find that showed this better than I'm describing.) And yes, there are occasionally track-level disturbances on those 5 stations.

There are certainly many good options for heading west from Spadina. But I think Liberty Village will be quite well served with a combination of a GO RER/SmartTrack station and some kind of ROW along King. GO RER will shave off enough of the express trip patterns that the ROW can effectively service the local trip patterns. I'm not saying that a subway to Liberty Village wouldn't be a good idea, I just don't think it's the best option of what's available.

IMO it's of far greater utility to turn the RL north at Spadina and connect it with the Spadina Subway. That would put the wye back into play and allow B-D trains to head downtown, potentially negating the need for a billion dollar expansion of Bloor-Yonge.

IMO making it sharply turn north onto Spadina would be a huge mistake, although this shows up on a few fantasy maps.

You would be running under a corridor that already has rapid transit coverage, within a couple hundred meters of another rapid transit line. Why would you do that when there is so much potential ridership from continuing west?

If relieving St. George is a concern then you could do that by building the full downtown U and actually improve transit coverage in a large densely populated employment district instead of duplicating existing services.

In my view, assuming Relief Line on Queen (with local Queen Streetcar), better King Streetcar priority, and RER/ST, having a spread out load between Relief Line and RER, both being "express" services (insert SSE Express Subway joke here) will allow for more choice for riders coming in and out of the Downtown Core.

This is just my view and it might be wrong, but if there Relief Line was on King, the "centre" of the downtown offices, then EVERYONE would take the King Subway and it will be at capacity. Very little people will chose RER or the local streetcar routes as the subway is right next to where they work.

The relief line would be too crowded if it were on King
Generally, when building ultra-expensive deep-bore subway stations we should be trying to maximize ridership to make the most effective use of our new high capacity line. Unless we are talking about the Scarborough subway extension, in which case there is no need to match mode to ridership

Nobody would take the streetcar
We shouldn't be gerrymandering the route in order to preserve parallel surface routes out of a sense of sentimentality. If more people take the subway on King, it means that it's a more convenient option for them. There is still a role for streetcars downtown (Spadina, Bathurst, Queens Quay, College, Cherry, Dundas, etc.), but it is normal and much more cost effective to have a new subway line absorb the ridership of the surface routes that it replaces.

Besides, I'm worried that switching back and forth between King and Queen would do more to pilfer ridership than just staying on one street and letting the other function as a one-seat-ride local line for those who don't want to transfer. If it overlaps with both lines, then you enter a "transit death spiral" where ridership drops cause service drops which cause more ridership drops.

Nobody would take RER
Union station is already bursting at the seams with all the ridership from the 'burbs. Metrolinx is looking at Union relief with the same seriousness that the city of Toronto is looking at Yonge line relief. The relief line serves Union relief by offloading GO demand before it reaches Union, allowing people to transfer to be closer to their destinations.

With the projected increase in GO ridership with RER, siphoning GO ridership should be the least of our concerns.

King is within the Union catchment. A DRL at Queen pulls people up from Richmond/Adelaide but also down from the Dundas direction. One other important thing to consider is the lower core as a single point of failure. In the event of a security event in the King-Union stretch, or a power failure, it is conceivable that DRL, Line 1 and Union would all stop service at the same time. Spacing the services further apart likely improves total resilency.

I don't see what conceivable situation could cause a security event impacting underground transit within a 500 metre radius of Union but not an 800 metre radius of Union. Neither alignments have a single point of failure. There is zero impact on resiliency.

 

[smallspy]

Why would you need a loop track? St. George doesn't have one. The net cost difference between having it south of Danforth and north of Danforth is nil, not some kind of astronomical add-on.

St George was designed to be grade separated but have multiple connections to each other, and was built with the lines parallel to each other. Pape and Danforth were not, and are not. You could build two lines paralleling each other in the south-eastern quadrant of the interchange, but that will now introduce the new issue of starting the new west-to-south trackage at Donlands or even futher east and having it end futher south along the DRL, greatly increasing the cost. And then there's the issue of having all DRL service missing Pape Station.

The idea is that once the whole thing is running on ATC, you could put the wye into play just like St. George with the interlining. During non-peak times, you could blend the service if there is room on the headway, so half the trains go directly downtown (there's an old DRL fantasy map by someone named dmz(?) floating around that I can't find that showed this better than I'm describing.) And yes, there are occasionally track-level disturbances on those 5 stations.

I don't see what is the point of interlining the service if you can't even do it when the system would in theory need it most. Capacity is not a problem in the off-peak times, and interlining the service isn't going to make the service that much more attractive to warrant the requisite changes in scale to the fixed plant - or the additional costs of staffing and operating that many more trains than are otherwise needed.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.