[innsertnamehere]

we clearly need the highest capacity possible.

That's the thing - do we really? Realistically what's the chances of the OL having higher passenger loads than the Yonge Line within our lifetimes?

 

[W. K. Lis]

That's the thing - do we really? Realistically what's the chances of the OL having higher passenger loads than the Yonge Line within our lifetimes?

Depends if we replace all or most of the current parking lots along the Ontario Line route with high-rises or not.

 

[ARG1]

From going through the EA, one thing that I'm not a fan of is they are keeping the deep station design for Queen and Osgoode stations. These are going to be very busy interchange stations and the current plan has passengers going through 4 sets of escalators/stairs to get from Line 1 to the OL and vice versa. They should keep interchange stations as bi-level designs to maximize speed and convenience of transfer from one to the other. This is actually even worse than the transfer from the BD subway at Kennedy to the SRT.

Was there any reason given for this design decision?

Here is the rendering from one of the open houses for Queen Station:
View attachment 392207

This is arguably the biggest issue with the line as planned. It is part of this god awful North American trend of building subways super deep to minimize "disruption". It is actually the same logic that is keeping EW and SSE buried to some extent, and is the same backwards logic that is forcing Seattle to bury its 2nd downtown tunnel at like 40m deep, and St. Jose to build its BART extension with a massive mega bore.

 

[ARG1]

Depends if we replace all or most of the current parking lots along the Ontario Line route with high-rises or not.

Even then I doubt it. Remember, high density doesn't bring a lot of ridership as many people think it does. Bus connections and feeder services are almost universally a much larger source of ridership than high density clusters. For the Ontario Line to get to its capacity troubles, not only does the entire corridor need to look like southern Manhattan, but also there needs to be significantly more development occuring on Eglinton, Danforth, and all of the areas that would theoretically easily feed into the Ontario Line. Even if the Ontario Line is extended north however, we still have to factor in GO RER and how that will impact ridership.

Here's a crappy drawing of a potentially OL North extension to finch that I drew for the sake of example. Realistically, the area highlighted in red here is the areas that will be most affected and well served by the Ontario Line (and even that is questionable since a strong argument could be made that people living near Pharmacy might prefer to use Stouffville RER). In order for the Ontario Line to get such a massive need for capacity, realistically you'd need like 10% of this red square to just be jam packed with high density development, and the moment that happens, you're probably better off solving that capacity problem by just building another line on Victoria Park.

 

[syn]

That's the thing - do we really? Realistically what's the chances of the OL having higher passenger loads than the Yonge Line within our lifetimes?

Toronto is still one of the fastest growing cities in North America. Yonge Line ridership grew at a far faster pace than anyone expected. I'm glad the planners at the time were forward thinking.

This line is going to have very significant ridership from the start. Out of all the transit expansion happening in Toronto, this is the one line we should be maxing capacity on.

And again, we are ignoring the impact on potential GO capacity.

 

[tsm1072]

And again, we are ignoring the impact on potential GO capacity.

I don't think people are ignoring it, it's just been stated many times in this thread that the capacity of a 4 track mainline railway corridor is going to be more than sufficient for a very long time. Signalling and operational upgrades should happen well before we need more than 4 tracks heading downtown. We should also be investing in new or upgraded corridors before we reach the capacity of the GO corridor.

 

[fanoftoronto]

This is arguably the biggest issue with the line as planned. It is part of this god awful North American trend of building subways super deep to minimize "disruption". It is actually the same logic that is keeping EW and SSE buried to some extent, and is the same backwards logic that is forcing Seattle to bury its 2nd downtown tunnel at like 40m deep, and St. Jose to build its BART extension with a massive mega bore.

That's the frustrating part, though. The stations on the Eglinton West LRT extension are all much shallower, only one concourse before heading down to the station platform, maybe 15 to 20 m below street level? This is the same level at which the Ontario Line platforms should be built. Instead, the OL tunnels are bored at ~35 m, well into the bedrock in the downtown section causing the 4 flights of stairs/escalators to get between Line 1 and the OL.

 

[ARG1]

That's the frustrating part, though. The stations on the Eglinton West LRT extension are all much shallower, only one concourse before heading down to the station platform, maybe 15 to 20 m below street level? This is the same level at which the Ontario Line platforms should be built. Instead, the OL tunnels are bored at ~35 m, well into the bedrock in the downtown section causing the 4 flights of stairs/escalators to get between Line 1 and the OL.

View attachment 392290

The case with Eglinton that's important to point out is that it seems like the government is well aware about the cost problem so they want to have it both ways. They want to bury it (because Doug Ford), but they also want to cut costs on stations. Now the obvious solution here would be to Cut and Cover it, however because there's a massive gas mainline in the way they can't. So they try to TBM as shallow as possible in order to save on construction costs. Plus Eglinton has the benefit of being mostly greenfield so there is less to disrupt. As such, maybe my example of EWLRT was a bit misleading and presumptuous.

SSE on the other hand: Remind me how deep Lawrence East station is?

 

[KhalilHeron]

Just speculating, do you think they are making Queen and probably Osgoode stations so deep to avoid the issues they encountered underpinning line 1 at Eglinton station?

 

[M II A II R II K]

People exiting from the Ontario Line to go outside will still have to go up 4 flights of stairs if they're not transferring.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The Eglinton west extension also benefits from lower passenger volumes and much larger spaces for construction. Harder to do that kind of thing at Queen and Yonge.

 

[fanoftoronto]

The case with Eglinton that's important to point out is that it seems like the government is well aware about the cost problem so they want to have it both ways. They want to bury it (because Doug Ford), but they also want to cut costs on stations. Now the obvious solution here would be to Cut and Cover it, however because there's a massive gas mainline in the way they can't. So they try to TBM as shallow as possible in order to save on construction costs. Plus Eglinton has the benefit of being mostly greenfield so there is less to disrupt. As such, maybe my example of EWLRT was a bit misleading and presumptuous.

SSE on the other hand: Remind me how deep Lawrence East station is?

Fair enough.

Honestly, I don't know how deep the SSE tunnel is going to be, but I'll take your word for it.

For the Ontario Line, it is simply non-sensical to force the passengers to move through multiple levels to go from one line to another.

Would people actually be transferring at Queen or Osgoode stations? Wouldn't the blocks around the stations be the final destination for most?

View attachment 392231

From link.

There should be underground passages that lead to both the Ontario Line and Line 1 stations from the surrounding building. In fact, the PATH could be expanded to include currently unconnected buildings. For example, they could add underground passages to and from St. Michael's Hospital, maybe even bypassing Line 1 and going directly to the Ontario Line stations.

So, the current estimates for transfers is as follows from the Ontario Line Metrolix page.

Osgoode Station

Queen Station

I'd say the demand for transfers are high enough to warrant designing these stations as close to the Line 1 platforms as possible. Similar to what Yonge-Bloor station layout looks like.

Just speculating, do you think they are making Queen and probably Osgoode stations so deep to avoid the issues they encountered underpinning line 1 at Eglinton station?

Definitely likely. Though, that's hardly a legitimate reason to make transfers 4-5 times more difficult forever.

 

[afransen]

From Victoria Park to Roncesvalles.

The parking is just madness. The delays caused just by people stopping to park is absurd.

 

[ARG1]

Fair enough.

Honestly, I don't know how deep the SSE tunnel is going to be, but I'll take your word for it.

Granted the issue is isolated to just Lawrence East station, MCC and Sheppard East are generally going to be fine, however Lawrence East is going to be like 40m deep. It is so bad, that the original plans for the tunneling was that it was going to be 2 tbms digging towards each other that would be extracted at Lawrence East. They changed their mind and now its going to be 1 TBM going all the way from Sheppard to Kennedy because they realized that the time it will take to excavate the extraction shaft and take out the TBMs, it would take just as long to keep the TBM running to kennedy and extract it there.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Toronto is still one of the fastest growing cities in North America. Yonge Line ridership grew at a far faster pace than anyone expected. I'm glad the planners at the time were forward thinking.

I just realized that I haven't been on the TTC or GO since March 2020. At this rate I'll have no idea what our transit looks like in a few years.