[JSF-1]

Has it been stated anywhere if GO intends on increasing service during the closure. If driving times get bad enough I can see people from the burbs turning to GO to commute into downtown instead of driving (although not all of them obviously for one reason or another). It would be really nice if we had a functioning RER system (at least on the Lakeshore Lines) during this time.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

We need to stop treating cycling infrastructure as optional. With the population of Downtown Toronto set to double, and with Downtown’s subway and streetcar network remaining grossly inadequate, the only way we’re going to move that many people efficiently across the core is with huge upticks in walking and cycling. Cycling is very much key to future growth and vitality of the core.

Trust me it pains me to say it, but bikes will not move anywhere near the amount of people in the downtown core compared to transit.

With hundreds of thousands of people living and working downtown, there’s no reason (besides our lack of will) why a very significant portion of downtown trips shouldn’t be completed by bike.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Has it been stated anywhere if GO intends on increasing service during the closure. If driving times get bad enough I can see people from the burbs turning to GO to commute into downtown instead of driving (although not all of them obviously for one reason or another). It would be really nice if we had a functioning RER system (at least on the Lakeshore Lines) during this time.

GO absolutely is going to be increasing service, it’s been planning to ramp service over time for years.

RER itself won’t be finished construction by the time this starts next year obviously.. but GO service is increasing regardless.

 

[DirectionNorth]

I think you forget buses and streetcars share road space as well, and are far more efficient then cars.

So we ... close the streets to cars? I'm fairly sure I said somewhere that transit lanes would be a good solution.

How do you know this? Will the Yonge Street bike lanes become permanent automatically even though they are currently temporary? I understand your pessimism because we're talking about Toronto, but have a bit of hope.

I'm a pessimist.

Again radical, but get rid of on-street parking on a couple arterials

Can we do that everywhere?

and make them transit/HOV lanes during peak periods at least.

Yes!

Businesses will hate it, but they will already be losing business because of the heavy/lengthy construction.

There's a fairly substantial body of research showing that closing streets to cars will increase business. In an environment like DT, I think we should implement some more King St Pilots.

Trust me it pains me to say it, but bikes will not move anywhere near the amount of people in the downtown core compared to transit.

I don't see a reason for this to be true; you don't need to pay a fare, and they move people with much less road space than cars.

Most especially in the winter time. I'm not saying get rid of them forever, but this is a case where we have a critical infrastructure project that will effect tens of thousands of people for what will be almost a decade. Like I said it's a radical idea, but it needs to be considered in this specific case. I'll give you an example why: a commute via TTC from Etobicoke to Yonge/Queen taking 1 hour today will easily turn into 1 hour 30 mins at the minimum once this project gets underway.

Transit ... lanes?

Which brings me to another point: fare integration better damn well be in place long before this project sees heavy construction, because very few will be willing to put up with that kind of dreadful commute.

Let's hope so.

 

[evandyk]

I think most people going from Etobicoke to Queen station are taking the subway, which won't be affected. The Queen streetcar absolutely will be, which is all the more reason to get the smallish number of cars that use Queen street off of it, so that the streetcar can carry the many people who use it unimpeded.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I'll give you an example why: a commute via TTC from Etobicoke to Yonge/Queen taking 1 hour today will easily turn into 1 hour 30 mins at the minimum once this project gets underway.

Transit ... lanes?

I’m, yea. I was gonna say that the TTC wanted a Queen Street transit priority system, similar to what we want on King, and they were looking to implement it at the same time period anyways. Get on with it.

 

[Forgotten]

The Ontario line is one idiotic mistake compounded on top of another idiotic mistake on top of another.

The subway gets put under Queen because the one term chief planner and failed mayoral candidate thought that her office at city hall needed not one, not two, not three, but four subway stations within 100 metres of 100 Queen West. Her papers also highlighted the importance of bringing much needed rapid transit to the fast growing tent city at Moss Park. And by going Queen we would not be doing anything that might interfere with her precious streetcar mall on King.

Building on that failure, the father of the failed Scarborough RT had to get his two cents in and demand that we use his capacity challenged remote controlled toy trains and we have to bring it above ground just as the city is finally getting ready to bury his first kid/mistake. There must always be one monument to Schabas' failure in the city at all times. Have fun cramming people on to the full from day 1 sardine cans when the Yonge line has an unexpected emergency shutdown.

Third failure is on the professional fools at MetroLinkZ who fall for this snake oil time after time. (Or are they the pushers?)

The moment they decided on a major detour and deviation of the route away from Queen is when it should have triggered a full holistic review of the entire thing. Hell it should have happened when the planning dummies had second thoughts and pulled the subway down to East Harbour. Both bureaucracies failed.

The amount of bending over that morons on every level do just to recycle and reuse the stupid tiny streetcar station under Queen station is baffling. A tiny piece of infrastructure from the 1950s is dictating what to do on a $10 billion project. God damn ridiculous.

Then instead of listening to the career RT shill they need to be looking at the future of this should-be subway and the problems of having trains that will be maxed out on day 1 and incompatible with everything else on the subway system. NO, removing the few remaining seats from the trains is not a solution just because you decided to create the problem to begin with by listening to a senile old consultant and taking his word as gospel.

The line should be a full subway and should be buried under King but because of these idiots and bozos, it zig zags across the downtown and it will royally mess up both Queen Street and King Street for half a decade anyway and what we will get stuck with still won't be adequate for the present let alone the future.

This city loves failure. If only TPTB could put the brakes on failures like this as much as they liked to do it on cool stuff like the canned St. Lawrence rebuild or those definitely-still-happening Gehry buildings.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Couldn't agree more. Ideally, Ontario line should run along Queensway and meet extended Line 2 here.
Building, extending highways is not an option!

The Ontario line is one idiotic mistake compounded on top of another idiotic mistake on top of another.

The subway gets put under Queen because the one term chief planner and failed mayoral candidate thought that her office at city hall needed not one, not two, not three, but four subway stations within 100 metres of 100 Queen West. Her papers also highlighted the importance of bringing much needed rapid transit to the fast growing tent city at Moss Park. And by going Queen we would not be doing anything that might interfere with her precious streetcar mall on King.

Building on that failure, the father of the failed Scarborough RT had to get his two cents in and demand that we use his capacity challenged remote controlled toy trains and we have to bring it above ground just as the city is finally getting ready to bury his first kid/mistake. There must always be one monument to Schabas' failure in the city at all times. Have fun cramming people on to the full from day 1 sardine cans when the Yonge line has an unexpected emergency shutdown.

Third failure is on the professional fools at MetroLinkZ who fall for this snake oil time after time. (Or are they the pushers?)

The moment they decided on a major detour and deviation of the route away from Queen is when it should have triggered a full holistic review of the entire thing. Hell it should have happened when the planning dummies had second thoughts and pulled the subway down to East Harbour. Both bureaucracies failed.

The amount of bending over that morons on every level do just to recycle and reuse the stupid tiny streetcar station under Queen station is baffling. A tiny piece of infrastructure from the 1950s is dictating what to do on a $10 billion project. God damn ridiculous.

Then instead of listening to the career RT shill they need to be looking at the future of this should-be subway and the problems of having trains that will be maxed out on day 1 and incompatible with everything else on the subway system. NO, removing the few remaining seats from the trains is not a solution just because you decided to create the problem to begin with by listening to a senile old consultant and taking his word as gospel.

The line should be a full subway and should be buried under King but because of these idiots and bozos, it zig zags across the downtown and it will royally mess up both Queen Street and King Street for half a decade anyway and what we will get stuck with still won't be adequate for the present let alone the future.

This city loves failure. If only TPTB could put the brakes on failures like this as much as they liked to do it on cool stuff like the canned St. Lawrence rebuild or those definitely-still-happening Gehry buildings.

Unfortunately, when Doug Ford "cancelled" the Downtown Relief Line" and replaced with his Ontario Line, that added several years (and money). To "cancel" his Ontario Line and put in your napkin drawing (that's the stage your proposal is at now) would mean adding more years (and more money). Don't want to wait any more, just build "something", even if it is not "great".

Instead, look at planning for the extensions now. Better to plan for the extensions now instead of later. For example, with the Sherway Gardens Phase 1 infill (see link) and the Queensway Health Centre Expansion (see link), they are good candidates for a western expansion. (Line 2 extension from Kipling, Ontario Line from Exhibition Place, and/or Lakeshore West LRT)

The proposal to extend the Ontario Line west along The Queensway, does not look good. The 80 QUEENSWAY current 30 minute headway is terrible. At 30 minutes separating the buses, no wonder it is not busy. Want to increase the emphasis to use The Queensway as the Ontario Line extension (with a 5 minute headway)? Increase the current 80 QUEENSWAY headway. However, having pro-automobile councillors in Etobicoke, they don't have the incentive to improve any public transit services in Etobicoke, much less seeking rapid transit lines in Etobicoke.

See link.

 

[asher__jo]

The subway gets put under Queen because the one term chief planner and failed mayoral candidate thought that her office at city hall needed not one, not two, not three, but four subway stations within 100 metres of 100 Queen West. Her papers also highlighted the importance of bringing much needed rapid transit to the fast growing tent city at Moss Park. And by going Queen we would not be doing anything that might interfere with her precious streetcar mall on King.

The reason it's on Queen is because it's closer to the midway point between union station and Bloor.

 

[evandyk]

The "streetcar mall on King" is one of the best things about the city. Before the "streetcar mall", nobody could get across King in anything close to a timely fashion. Now almost 100,000 people a day (pre-pandemic) can get across the city quickly. At essentially no cost to anyone else.

 

[W. K. Lis]

The "streetcar mall on King" is one of the best things about the city. Before the "streetcar mall", nobody could get across King in anything close to a timely fashion. Now almost 100,000 people a day (pre-pandemic) can get across the city quickly. At essentially no cost to anyone else.

We need "streetcar malls" on the streetcar detours. Maybe even "bus malls" where appropriate. Putting the streetcars and buses on and around the construction in "right-of-ways" would be better than having transit vehicles in mixed traffic detours.

 

[ARG1]

The subway gets put under Queen because the one term chief planner and failed mayoral candidate thought that her office at city hall needed not one, not two, not three, but four subway stations within 100 metres of 100 Queen West. Her papers also highlighted the importance of bringing much needed rapid transit to the fast growing tent city at Moss Park. And by going Queen we would not be doing anything that might interfere with her precious streetcar mall on King.

It was put under Queen Street for a multitude of reasons. 1) It was cheaper and easier. 2) They wanted to better serve the northern part of downtown, instead of duplicating the Union Station Rail Corridor. This also meant better serving locations of interest namely ryerson students. Since the line will be travelling between the Financial District and the University, they can better convince both groups to use the DRL rather than going through Bloor-Yonge.

Building on that failure, the father of the failed Scarborough RT had to get his two cents in and demand that we use his capacity challenged remote controlled toy trains and we have to bring it above ground just as the city is finally getting ready to bury his first kid/mistake. There must always be one monument to Schabas' failure in the city at all times. Have fun cramming people on to the full from day 1 sardine cans when the Yonge line has an unexpected emergency shutdown.

Third failure is on the professional fools at MetroLinkZ who fall for this snake oil time after time. (Or are they the pushers?)

Toy trains? Do not compare the Ontario Line with the SRT. The Ontario Line isn't some new fangled technology, its extremely standard metro technology that is being used in Paris, Sydney, and will be used in Montreal and Honolulu; amongst a ton of other cities. It is far more standard than the TR. If we're being objective for a moment, the existing TTC Subway system is more of a snake oil toy train system than this line.

The moment they decided on a major detour and deviation of the route away from Queen is when it should have triggered a full holistic review of the entire thing. Hell it should have happened when the planning dummies had second thoughts and pulled the subway down to East Harbour. Both bureaucracies failed.

The moment they decided to tunnel the DRL directly underneath a Rail Corridor they should've triggered a full holistic review of the entire thing, which they did and the result is the Ontario Line, a far more reasonable use of money for a service that will be just as good if not better than the original DRL plan in terms of alignment (no more going down 4 storeys just to get to the station platform).

The amount of bending over that morons on every level do just to recycle and reuse the stupid tiny streetcar station under Queen station is baffling. A tiny piece of infrastructure from the 1950s is dictating what to do on a $10 billion project. God damn ridiculous.

Who is doing this? Reusing the stupid tiny streetcar stations (and by reusing what they actually mean is the section will be reconfigured to a new concourse level, so nothing is actually being "reused") is more of a "haha check out what we're doing with this cute piece of Toronto History" rather than actual policy that politicians are bending over for. Do you seriously think someone at the highest level is going "We have this tiny streetcar station under Queen, we must do everything we can in order to reuse this segment for our station"? Of course not.

Then instead of listening to the career RT shill they need to be looking at the future of this should-be subway and the problems of having trains that will be maxed out on day 1 and incompatible with everything else on the subway system. NO, removing the few remaining seats from the trains is not a solution just because you decided to create the problem to begin with by listening to a senile old consultant and taking his word as gospel.

The line should be a full subway and should be buried under King but because of these idiots and bozos, it zig zags across the downtown and it will royally mess up both Queen Street and King Street for half a decade anyway and what we will get stuck with still won't be adequate for the present let alone the future.

This is a subway, full stop. This isn't light rail, this isn't light metro, this is a metro/subway. This is standard Metro technology that will have more capacity on opening day than Line 1 has today. Sure there could be an argument for wanting to make this line compatible with the rest of our network, but that doesn't mean this is some cheap toy train. This is as Subway as you can possibly get. As for why its under Queen Street, I already explained why.

 

[TossYourJacket]

Toy trains? Do not compare the Ontario Line with the SRT. The Ontario Line isn't some new fangled technology, its extremely standard metro technology that is being used in Paris, Sydney, and will be used in Montreal and Honolulu; amongst a ton of other cities. It is far more standard than the TR. If we're being objective for a moment, the existing TTC Subway system is more of a snake oil toy train system than this line.

The TRs have become another great example of "Toronto Exceptionalism", in that some people believe this city is somehow so unique and different we can't possible use the same solutions as other places (City Council perpetuates this constantly though, with their need for time-wasting "Made In Toronto" approaches to even the smallest problem, to be fair). For once we're actually looking at what works in other places and implementing it, which seems like a pretty solid plan.

The moment they decided to tunnel the DRL directly underneath a Rail Corridor they should've triggered a full holistic review of the entire thing, which they did and the result is the Ontario Line, a far more reasonable use of money for a service that will be just as good if not better than the original DRL plan in terms of alignment (no more going down 4 storeys just to get to the station platform).

Also, in addition to the station depths, the DRL station alignments were often incredibly bad. All the subway transfers were somehow even worse than Bloor-Yonge is, especially Queen. Plus the total insanity of putting Queen and Osgoode's platforms both inside the Line 1 U, as if the only place anyone would ever go to on the subway was City Hall. It was like the line was only invented to ferry people from Pape to City Hall and back again, and they didn't consider any other uses for it (the absurd Queen transfer would have been really annoying for anyone trying to go from Line 1, to the DRL, to go work at East Harbour, for example). For the many issues there can be with Metrolinx, they've done a much better job designing a subway that actually works as part of a user-friendly network of transit (at least in terms of transfers anyway) than the DRL would have been.

 

[W. K. Lis]

The TRs have become another great example of "Toronto Exceptionalism", in that some people believe this city is somehow so unique and different we can't possible use the same solutions as other places (City Council perpetuates this constantly though, with their need for time-wasting "Made In Toronto" approaches to even the smallest problem, to be fair). For once we're actually looking at what works in other places and implementing it, which seems like a pretty solid plan.

Also, in addition to the station depths, the DRL station alignments were often incredibly bad. All the subway transfers were somehow even worse than Bloor-Yonge is, especially Queen. Plus the total insanity of putting Queen and Osgoode's platforms both inside the Line 1 U, as if the only place anyone would ever go to on the subway was City Hall. It was like the line was only invented to ferry people from Pape to City Hall and back again, and they didn't consider any other uses for it (the absurd Queen transfer would have been really annoying for anyone trying to go from Line 1, to the DRL, to go work at East Harbour, for example). For the many issues there can be with Metrolinx, they've done a much better job designing a subway that actually works as part of a user-friendly network of transit (at least in terms of transfers anyway) than the DRL would have been.

The passengers may not all "transfer" to or from the Ontario Line to Line 1 at Osgoode or Queen stations. Why should they? When they can walk the last blocks to the office buildings where they work, or shop at Eaton's Centre. They are not like Bloor-Yonge or St. George Stations, which was NOT their final destination.

 

[daniel_kryz]

as if the only place anyone would ever go to on the subway was City Hall

Would've been really convenient for the City Hall bureaucrats! I admit that it is kind of romantic to have a "City Hall Station", but it makes no sense and it would've just bypassed two important subway stations! Honestly, what were they thinking?

The passengers may not all "transfer" to or from the Ontario Line to Line 1 at Osgoode or Queen stations. Why should they? When they can walk the last blocks to the office buildings where they work, or shop at Eaton's Centre. They are not like Bloor-Yonge or St. George Stations, which was NOT their final destination.

Yes, but not everyone wants to walk such a long distance. Doesn't seem like a good argument, considering how many people commute to the Financial District and how important Union Station is as a transportation hub. The fact that this is of the most important employment hubs in the entire region means that we can't dismiss the convenience of hundreds of thousands of people. Some people like to walk, but many are commuting in from faraway suburbs and the last thing you want to do is make their journey even more tedious.
We can't just say, "it's okay, we'll build a City Hall station for the bureaucrats, but the rest of you people can just walk 10-15 minutes."