[APTA-2048]

Union Station is about to get a pretty major artwork. It's the reason that the rest of the station has a neutral palette.

42

Makes the artwork at Pape look really half-assed.

 

[kram74]

 

[Kitsune]

it looks like they didn't do much to the union street car platform - the same tiles are still up. I was really hoping they would widen it a bit.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The plan is to widen the streetcar platform when the east bay front streetcar is built

 

[salsa]

When that happens, streetcar service will be stopped yet again for a long period of time. Ideally the work should have been done together with the union station and queens quay revitalization.

 

[dowlingm]

When that happens, streetcar service will be stopped yet again for a long period of time. Ideally the work should have been done together with the union station and queens quay revitalization.

you're right, but since it's in a project budget not yet started... and there would have been no desire to transfer to an existing budget lest it be considered an overrun.

 

[nfitz]

When that happens, streetcar service will be stopped yet again for a long period of time. Ideally the work should have been done together with the union station and queens quay revitalization.

Tell that to your incompetent Mayor who failed to try and find funding for that project, and instead spent his time trying to get crack and ...

 

[dowlingm]

Can we leave statements such as nfitz's latter one above to "Rob Ford's Toronto", if we have to have them?

I like this board and wouldn't like to see it neutered by a brush with the legal beagles as some others have been.

 

[nfitz]

Can we leave statements such as nfitz's latter one above to "Rob Ford's Toronto", if we have to have them?

I like this board and wouldn't like to see it neutered by a brush with the legal beagles as some others have been.

Like many city projects, the reason that the expanded streetcar loop hasn't gone ahead comes down is the mayor's failure to even attempt to obtain the necessary funding. By his own admission he's spent much of his term in a drugged haze.

When the 509 service is replaced with buses from Union to Spadina for them to build the expanded loop, and new portal for the Queens Quay East streetcars, I'm sure we'll have no end of whining about how TTC should have planned better.

Let's be very clear whose fault it is though. The truth of the matter is that Rob Ford is much more interested on spending money on drugs, than what the city needs to build. Let's not whitewash that. If the mayor wasn't an incompetent drug addict, he might have been able to negotiate the earlier funding of this project with the province, who have recently indicated they will fund it - too late to be done simultaneously with the current shutdown.

 

[dowlingm]

I agree with who is at fault. I disagree that his sobriety (or social issues of other sorts, proven or otherwise) had any bearing. Blaming it on drugs actually helps his narrative that going to rehab solved his problems so he should be re-elected. He values the wrong things and his assumptions are usually wrong - that's why he hasn't gone to bat for Waterfront East LRT.

Here's how I feel the projects in the area could have gone better:
1. Expedite the infill of Parliament Slip and realignment of Queens Quay, Cherry etc.
2. No Cherry or Parliament loops, just a single loop at Cherry and Queens Quay (as part of QQE LRT build).
3. Full delta junction at Queens Quay/Yonge.

doing these before the QQW rebuild would have kept Union active during QQW closure with QQE service, and QQW active during Bay tunnel rehab and Union rebuild by running 509 (and 510 when Spadina not dug up) to the aforementioned Grain Silo loop. Basically the only period of complete shutdown in both directions would have been the delta junction construction. But that would have linked the QQW and QQE projects together, and I guess risk the possibility of the city chickening out of both.

 

[nfitz]

I agree with who is at fault. I disagree that his sobriety (or social issues of other sorts, proven or otherwise) had any bearing. Blaming it on drugs actually helps his narrative that going to rehab solved his problems so he should be re-elected. He values the wrong things and his assumptions are usually wrong - that's why he hasn't gone to bat for Waterfront East LRT.

That's ridiculous. He could easily have gone to bat for alternative solutions that didn't require LRT on Queens Quay, which would also have solved the problem. He didn't do this either.

Besides, given the number of times he's appeared in public since his "rehab", and the denouncement of his "rehab" by employees of the company doing the rehab ... I don't see how that helps the narrative. At the same time, he comes out with bald-faced lies that he wasn't ever on the Waterfront Toronto Board, that made the decisions. Simply deciding your going to skip all the meeting, and not designate a replacement, doesn't rid him of the responsibility.

 

[W. K. Lis]

For those who don't know what is NOT being built now, its the enlarging of the Union Station streetcar loop.

The enlargement being postponed means the roadway may have to be dug up again, and at a inflationary higher price. Provision could have been put in for future streetcar/LRt expansion (a turnoff along Bremner).

 

[ehlow]

For those who don't know what is NOT being built now, its the enlarging of the Union Station streetcar loop.

The enlargement being postponed means the roadway may have to be dug up again, and at a inflationary higher price. Provision could have been put in for future streetcar/LRt expansion (a turnoff along Bremner).

This would've been for an east waterfront LRT right? So this basically has no chance of happening anytime soon, right?

 

[nfitz]

This would've been for an east waterfront LRT right? So this basically has no chance of happening anytime soon, right?

Why not? It was one of very few Toronto projects explictly mentioned in the provincial budget last month. Construction has already started on the rebuild of the Queens Quay east, which sets aside the ROW.

I'm hopeful that construction on the LRT itself can start in late 2015 or 2016, stopping LRT running into Union until 2017 or 2018.

 

[DSC]

I'm hopeful that construction on the [Queens Quay East] LRT itself can start in late 2015 or 2016, stopping LRT running into Union until 2017 or 2018.

Obviously when the QQE LRT is built there will be some disruption to the loop and the Bay Street tunnel but I doubt it will result in closure of the existing tunnel and loop for the whole of the construction period. Hopefully not more than maybe 6 months. The plan is for the new line to start to go underground at Cooper Street and they will need to create the Y or T junction at the Queens Quay end of the existing tunnel and then expand the loop. I suspect they can make the T or Y connection without a long closure but I am not sure if the current loop can be kept functioning while an extension is built and then speedily connected. We shall see, I hope!