I didn't know you wrote that article. You're perhaps the perfect person to ask then, how such a line could be logistically possible? The DRL borrows heavily from existing and limited GO corridors and would involve a very long tunnel from BD to Thorncliffe Park serving only one intermediate. There's other ways of alleviating YUS besides a line that doesn't really go anywhere (i.e. nodes few and far in between).
The section in the central rail corridor is the easiest part of all. Take a trip down there, or even look on Google Maps (Windows Live Maps actually has better imaging). You'll see that there's a huge amount of completely unused space on the south side of the corridor. It would be as simple as laying down tracks and building simple above-ground stations.
You wouldn't have a tunnel under the Don Valley. You'd have a bridge. If you could somehow run it on the existing Leaside Bridge, even better. The number of intermediate stations vs length of tunnel is irrelevant. In fact, the fewer stations the better: it means for a quicker ride and less expensive construction. Danforth to the Don Valley is hardly unprecedented in terms of tunnel length. It's less than Eglinton to Lawrence. I'd also like to see it cut-and-covered. Sure, it'd be unfortunate for the handful of people on Pape, but it could save a fortune. A lot fewer businesses to disrupt than on Cambie.
Of course there are lots of ways to relieve the Yonge Line, though few are better for the area south of Danforth. You should read the rest of the forum, Dentrobate. Thousands and thousands of units are being built the length of the line in places like the West Don Lands and East Bayfront (both directly served by stations at Cherry and Sherbourne), along with the Port Lands (whose riders could transfer from streetcar to subway at Cherry).
I'm not knocking it per se but it seems improved GO service trivializes the need for a TTC run service in the rail corridors. While downtown needs another east-west subway (BD isn't remotely satisfactory enough) by making it be a DRL, we'd only see stops at Queen/Broadview, the central waterfront and Queen/Dufferin- nice for a suburb but not the core. A cluster of about 15 stops surrounded by trip-generators would be very affective.
Okay, for the tenth time the point of the line isn't that it runs in rail corridors. The fact that some of them are available on the route is simply a pleasant bonus that dramatically lowers the cost. The point of the route is:
- to serve the areas east and west of downtown, including major trip generators that I mentioned above, the Exhibition, Downtown West, the Fort York neighbourhood, the Ex, West Queen West, and others;
- to relieve overcrowding at Bloor-Yonge station and on the Yonge line south of Bloor
- to attract people from areas like the Beach and Long Branch to take the streetcar and transfer to the subway, rather than the bus up to B-D and then subway back down again to get to downtown
- to support development of the waterfront and brownfield areas easat and west of downtown
When extended north along Don Mills, the main purpose is to attract transfers from east-west bus riders who are presently going all the way west to Yonge. This would both relieve the Yonge line and dramatically shorten their travel times. Secondarily, it would serve the major development areas (poorly-served by existing transit) at Thorncliffe Park, Flemingdon Park, Wynford Drive, the Science Centre, the Don Mills neighbourhood, and Seneca College.
I'm not sure where you'd put 15 stops on the route. The ones I've mentioned would serve everybody along it quite nicely. Maybe another stop at Eastern Avenue if the "Studio District" gets re-developed with more than a Wal-Mart. I've also thought about routing it east of the Don along Lakeshore instead of Eastern to Pape/Carlaw in order to serve (and rapidly accelerate) future development in the new film studio/McCleary Park area.
What are your thoughts on the Eglinton-Don Mills initiative Unimaginative? Given that not all 416 trips include the CBD and that new Eglinton subway riders would mostly be converts from Eglinton corridor buses (i.e. won't lead to overcrowding the YUS line), could it in fact be just as effective a relief line to Toronto as the DRL would?
If the ridership projections the TTC has for Transit City routes have any relationship to reality, the Eglinton line would indeed severely overcrowd the Yonge line. I can't fathom how it would relieve the Yonge line in any way. If anything, it would simply extend the congestion further north, with some B-D riders transfering to Yonge at Eglinton instead of Bloor.
That's not to say that I don't support the Eglinton Crosstown streetcar. I think it's a good spot for light rail and I hope the TTC doesn't screw it up by running the surface sections so unreliably that the underground section becomes completely useless. Eglinton west of Yonge isn't a particularly busy corridor so it would be pretty far down on my list for subways. In the Network 2011 study it was supposed to be a busway.
Using it as an alternative for airport access to an express service from Downtown is completely absurd. They serve entirely different markets. Note that Heathrow has four different transit access methods, all serving different markets. I also don't think it would even be time-competitive with the existing Airport Rocket.
I don't think the Don Mills line will be effective at attracting many riders from east-west bus routes because its travel time won't be competitive with simply staying on the bus to the Yonge line. Real rapid transit, on the other hand, could divert thousands of riders southbound at Don Mills rather than Yonge, saving them a great deal of time and relieving the Yonge line to allow for organic growth and extensions north.