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Toronto Overground

A modern, elevated light commuter railway system for Toronto

The Premise
Toronto's subway and future RER network will not serve Toronto's inner suburbs well. Subways are too expensive to provide adequate coverage in the suburbs, and the RER network simply does not have the capacity to handle demand from Toronto's inner suburbs. Public transit does not effectively enable travel between Toronto's suburbs (eg, from Scarborough to Etobicoke), or between the suburbs and downtown.

The Solution
A new mode of public transit specifically optimized for travel between Toronto's boroughs, and between the suburbs and Downtown. This system is designed to be complementary with the existing subway and RER network. This will leave Toronto with roughly three modes of rail transport: (1) Subways for medium-distance travel with the City of Toronto, (2) Toronto Overground for long-distance travel within the City of Toronto, and (3) RER for travel between the 905 and the City of Toronto.

The Overground is a modern system with operations completely separate from the exiting TTC system. The system utilizes fully automated light metro vehicles, similar to the ones used on the Vancouver SkyTrain or Toronto's Ontario Line. The system is built entirely elevated or at grade, except for the Downtown segments.

The route
The network layout is optimized for long-distance travel, with stations approximately 2 km apart.

Screen Shot 2021-03-23 at 2.24.07 AM.png


Travel times

Assuming 60 km/h travel speeds, commuters would be able to commute from Jane/Finch to University of Toronto Scarborough in just 38 minutes. This is faster than the same trip would take via the 401 during rush hour.

Between UTSC and Downtown, travel times would be just 24 minutes

Western Segment
Starting from Pioneer Village Station (Steeles), the route will run elevated down Jane Street with stations at Finch, Sheppard and Wilson. The route then travels along Black Creek Drive and Weston Road with stations at Lawrence, Eglinton (Line 5), Rogers Road and St Clair. At St Clair, half of the trains will continue to Scarbrough via Dupont, and the other half will continue to Scarborough via Downtown.

Screen Shot 2021-03-23 at 2.24.48 AM.png


Downtown "Loop"
At St Clair West Station, the route splits into two branches, which form the Downtown Loop. Both branches will reconverge at Laird Station.

Screen Shot 2021-03-23 at 2.25.30 AM.png


Northern Branch
The northern branch of the loop runs along Dupont Street, with stations at Dufferin, Bathurst (511*), Spadina (Line 1), Yonge (Line 1) and Laird. This branch is specifically designed to improve travel times between Etobicoke and Scarborough. I estimate this would save about 8 minutes in travel time, compared to travelling from Etobicoke to Scarborough via the southern segment of the loop.

There might be an oppertunity to use the Midtown Corridor to build the Northern segment. However, that is predicated on CN selling the Midtown corridor, which they might not be willing to do given how important it is to their operations. An alternative option would be to tunnel underneath Dupont Street. Given that there would only be four underground stations in this segment, this should be more affordable than most subway alignments of this length.

* Note that the 511 Bathurst Streetcar would be extended to terminate at Dupont and Bathurst, allowing for commuters on the Northern branch to continue their Downtown without any further transfers. A loop would have to be built at Bathurst/Dupont to facilitate this extension.

Southern Branch
The southern branch runs between St Clair West and Laird Stations via the GO RER/UPX corridor, King Street and the Don River. Between St Clair and Bloor the line would be elevated. The line would then be tunnelled under the RER/UPX corridor and King Street, while running at-grade or elevated alongside the Don Valley Parkway. Note that the Don segment of this line might require the permanent closure of the Downtown segment of Bayview Avenue.

Stations would be located at St Clair, Bloor (Line 2), Queen/Dufferin (501), Liberty Village, Bathurst (511), Spadina (510), Bay Street (transfers to King and St Andrew Stations are provided via PATH) and Laird. Opportunities for Line 2 transfers at Danforth Avenue are not provided due to elevation differences between Danforth and the Don Valley.

The Southern Branch will enable commuters to quickly access the Downtown Core, where they can transfer to subway and streetcar for local travel in the core. Liberty Village will benefit substantially with a very fast connection straight to the downtown core. Stations are not provided east of Yonge due to overlapping coverage with the Ontario Line.

The 504 King would retain full service, despite sharing a corridor with the Overground, due to the wide stop spacing.

Thorncliffe and South Scarborough
Starting from Laird, the line will continue alongside the rail corridor to Eglinton Avenue, where it will intersect with Line 5 and the Ontario Line. This would be a very difficult interchange station to build given that the ECLRT is elevated/at grade while the Ontario Line is elevated. I'm not certain that a station would be physically possible at this location, but lets ignore that for now :)

The line then continues at grade in the Gatineau Hydro Corridor towards University of Toronto Scarborough and Sheppard Avenue East. Stations are provided at Victoria Park, Kennedy, McCowan (Line 2), Markham, Midland (UTSC), and Sheppard/Morningside. This should be the cheapest and easiest segment of the line to build.

Screen Shot 2021-03-23 at 2.26.07 AM.png


Sheppard East
The line is elevated along Sheppard East, with station at Morningside, Markham, McCowan (Line 2 and Scarborough Centre), Kennedy and Victoria Park. The Sheppard Subway will then be decommissioned, and its tunnels utilized by the Overground. All existing Sheppard Subway stations will remain (Don Mills, Leslie, Besarrion, Bayview and Yonge).
 
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I disagree with taking Black Creek Dr. The demand is definitely south on Jane till at least Weston Rd. It's cheaper to build but not where people want to go. Taking Jane/Weston Rd would be much better IMO.
 
Great map. I would get rid of Bathurst and add a downtown east station. I know you said you want to avoid duplicating OL service in the east, but the duplication already exists in the west; and I'd say there should be an express connection to the densifying downtown east area. It would also be nice to fill in the conspicuous gap on Sheppard west.
 
I disagree with taking Black Creek Dr. The demand is definitely south on Jane till at least Weston Rd. It's cheaper to build but not where people want to go. Taking Jane/Weston Rd would be much better IMO.
Yea, I don't disagree at all. I avoided this option because it would likely involve tunnelling between Lawrence and Eglinton, as the ROW on Jane south of Lawrence narrows significantly. At a bare minimum, this alignment would necessitate an underground station at Jane/Weston, with the Jane/Lawrence and Eglinton stations likely needing to be underground as well (depending on portal locations). However this alignment would certainly be the most preferred alignment if financially possible. The residential neighbourhood at Jane/Weston in particular would benefit immensely from a station. Without a station there, they are looking at a 1 km bus ride on congested streets to get to the closest station.

If tunnelling is not possible, the fully elevated alignment in red might work. This would retain the station at the Jane/Lawrence intersection, but would drop the potential Jane/Weston station. This would involve the demolition of nearly two blocks of homes and businesses to accommodate the elevated structure, and the station would have to be built on a 90 degree curve. This would be an unorthodox solution for Toronto, but hardly unheard of internationally. The curve radius there would be about equal the the curve radius seen on Line 1, just east of Union Station. Using shorter cars would allow the trains to navigate this tight curve more nimbly, and with less ware and tare on the tracks and vehicles. Trains would have to go slower through this segment, but given that the trains will be stopping here anyways, this shouldn't be a huge detriment to service quality. I'd imagine that there'd be an opportunity to integrate this elevated station into a development, to allow for efficient utilization of the land on the northeast corner of Jane/Lawrence, and also to make the elevated structure a bit less obtrusive.

My originally suggested alignment is in green, your suggestion in purple, and the alignment with the curved Jane/Lawrence Station in red

Screen Shot 2021-03-23 at 10.56.37 AM.png

Screen Shot 2021-03-23 at 10.59.33 AM.png
 
Toronto Overground

A modern, elevated light commuter railway system for Toronto

The Premise
Toronto's subway and future RER network will not serve Toronto's inner suburbs well. Subways are too expensive to provide adequate coverage in the suburbs, and the RER network simply does not have the capacity to handle demand from Toronto's inner suburbs. Public transit does not effectively enable travel between Toronto's suburbs (eg, from Scarborough to Etobicoke), or between the suburbs and downtown.

The Solution
A new mode of public transit specifically optimized for travel between Toronto's boroughs, and between the suburbs and Downtown. This system is designed to be complementary with the existing subway and RER network. This will leave Toronto with roughly three modes of rail transport: (1) Subways for medium-distance travel with the City of Toronto, (2) Toronto Overground for long-distance travel within the City of Toronto, and (3) RER for travel between the 905 and the City of Toronto.

The Overground is a modern system with operations completely separate from the exiting TTC system. The system utilizes fully automated light metro vehicles, similar to the ones used on the Vancouver SkyTrain or Toronto's Ontario Line. The system is built entirely elevated or at grade, except for the Downtown segments.

The route
The network layout is optimized for long-distance travel, with stations approximately 2 km apart.

View attachment 307426

Travel times

Assuming 60 km/h travel speeds, commuters would be able to commute from Jane/Finch to University of Toronto Scarborough in just 38 minutes. This is faster than the same trip would take via the 401 during rush hour.

Between UTSC and Downtown, travel times would be just 24 minutes

Western Segment
Starting from Pioneer Village Station (Steeles), the route will run elevated down Jane Street with stations at Finch, Sheppard and Wilson. The route then travels along Black Creek Drive and Weston Road with stations at Lawrence, Eglinton (Line 5), Rogers Road and St Clair. At St Clair, half of the trains will continue to Scarbrough via Dupont, and the other half will continue to Scarborough via Downtown.

View attachment 307427

Downtown "Loop"
At St Clair West Station, the route splits into two branches, which form the Downtown Loop. Both branches will reconverge at Laird Station.

View attachment 307428

Northern Branch
The northern branch of the loop runs along Dupont Street, with stations at Dufferin, Bathurst (511*), Spadina (Line 1), Yonge (Line 1) and Laird. This branch is specifically designed to improve travel times between Etobicoke and Scarborough. I estimate this would save about 8 minutes in travel time, compared to travelling from Etobicoke to Scarborough via the southern segment of the loop.

There might be an oppertunity to use the Midtown Corridor to build the Northern segment. However, that is predicated on CN selling the Midtown corridor, which they might not be willing to do given how important it is to their operations. An alternative option would be to tunnel underneath Dupont Street. Given that there would only be four underground stations in this segment, this should be more affordable than most subway alignments of this length.

* Note that the 511 Bathurst Streetcar would be extended to terminate at Dupont and Bathurst, allowing for commuters on the Northern branch to continue their Downtown without any further transfers. A loop would have to be built at Bathurst/Dupont to facilitate this extension.

Southern Branch
The southern branch runs between St Clair West and Laird Stations via the GO RER/UPX corridor, King Street and the Don River. Between St Clair and Bloor the line would be elevated. The line would then be tunnelled under the RER/UPX corridor and King Street, while running at-grade or elevated alongside the Don Valley Parkway. Note that the Don segment of this line might require the permanent closure of the Downtown segment of Bayview Avenue.

Stations would be located at St Clair, Bloor (Line 2), Queen/Dufferin (501), Liberty Village, Bathurst (511), Spadina (510), Bay Street (transfers to King and St Andrew Stations are provided via PATH) and Laird. Opportunities for Line 2 transfers at Danforth Avenue are not provided due to elevation differences between Danforth and the Don Valley.

The Southern Branch will enable commuters to quickly access the Downtown Core, where they can transfer to subway and streetcar for local travel in the core. Liberty Village will benefit substantially with a very fast connection straight to the downtown core. Stations are not provided east of Yonge due to overlapping coverage with the Ontario Line.

The 504 King would retain full service, despite sharing a corridor with the Overground, due to the wide stop spacing.

Thorncliffe and South Scarborough
Starting from Laird, the line will continue alongside the rail corridor to Eglinton Avenue, where it will intersect with Line 5 and the Ontario Line. This would be a very difficult interchange station to build given that the ECLRT is elevated/at grade while the Ontario Line is elevated. I'm not certain that a station would be physically possible at this location, but lets ignore that for now :)

The line then continues at grade in the Gatineau Hydro Corridor towards University of Toronto Scarborough and Sheppard Avenue East. Stations are provided at Victoria Park, Kennedy, McCowan (Line 2), Markham, Midland (UTSC), and Sheppard/Morningside. This should be the cheapest and easiest segment of the line to build.

View attachment 307429

Sheppard East
The line is elevated along Sheppard East, with station at Morningside, Markham, McCowan (Line 2 and Scarborough Centre), Kennedy and Victoria Park. The Sheppard Subway will then be decommissioned, and its tunnels utilized by the Overground. All existing Sheppard Subway stations will remain (Don Mills, Leslie, Besarrion, Bayview and Yonge).
I actually like this a lot, although there's a few questions I have to ask. First, what do you mean by RER will not have the required capacity to handle Toronto's inner suburbs well? 12 car trains that can theoretically run as frequently as every 5 mins or potentially even less with minor infrastructure improvements sounds like a system that should never have capacity issues period.

Apart from that, two things stick out to me. First, the etobicoke leg of the branch always felt like it made more sense to run it as an Ontario Line extension west (which I guess they use the same technology so its not that big of a deal), but perhaps maybe a western extension to serve southern etobicoke such as New Toronto might be a better idea? Sure GO RER will be there but LSW is also in a weird corridor where its difficult to have properly placed infill stations to serve the area properly mainly due to the Mimico Yard, but I guess in this case Ontario Line could run to New Toronto, so I guess its whatever. Second, I find using the Don Valley corridor to run these trains a bit... odd. First, its because this is supposed to be part of your "downtown loop" meaning that it should theoretically serve downtown travel kind of like the circle line in London, so having a section with no stations or connections feels very strange. Second, part of the reason why Metrolinx is building Yonge North instead of RH RER is primarily because of this segment. Running at the bottom of the valley meaning that there will be poor connections to other lines or have infill stations makes the line difficult to justify having RER service, and since the area is in a flood plain, a lot of money would have to be spent on flood mitigation and protection to avoid stuff like this happening:
1616515133391.png

While this might not be a perfect solution for these issues, perhaps it might make sense to instead utilize the CP rail bridge that VIA HFR wants to use and run the line like this?

It would be more direct and would be more resistant to flooding due to the lower don flood mitigation project being built for GO RER.

Aside from those few questions this is actually really good. While I would like to see Sheppard become its own line and extended east to Pickering or the Toronto Zoo or Rouge Hill (if you don't want this project to ever leave Toronto), I think using the midtown corridor for a downtown loop is really smart and properly takes advantage of having automated trains, and having the etobicoke branch sort of become what the Jane LRT was supposed to be is also an extremely good use of vital corridors.
 
Caledon Rail.png


This is my proposal for the use of mostly existing corridors in Caledon and environs to construct a new rail line to adequately serve the area, in the event of... *shudder* suburbanization.

There are two branches: the western branch cuts north of the CP Intermodal yard, up through the northern tip of Brampton to transform Coleraine into a dense, Mount Pleasant-style suburb, and along the GTA West corridor to Hurontario. At Hurontario, the route takes the northern leg of the OBRY up to Forks (serving Erin and Caledon Village) and Orangeville South.

I envision the line having service similar to the Richmond Hill GO line, with each branch having peak-direction trains every 20 to 30 minutes. The eastern branch has the potential to be extended northwards up to Alliston, but for the time being, negotiating for shared use of the CP corridor to service towns so far separated does not seem worth it.
 
They could also use the Mactier sub. I think this would be a very wise way to ensure that area is well serviced with surface rail before the development goes in.
 
I'm still not a huge fan of using the Barrie corridor, but the subway connection is getting more appealing... I do still want to be 100% certain the corridor will accommodate dedicated CP tracks separate from CN before we put any GO service on the crosstown. It would not be good to create a serious blocker for Missing Link CP diversion for the sake a Bolton/Orangeville service.

In any case, I'm feeling like this should have a Bolton East station on the eastern branch, but that this is in general a more palatable approach than using OBRY directly or building a Bolton only line. It's certainly both a bone to throw to vague sustainability if GTA West happens, or a good way to get something of value out of the corridor work if it's cancelled.

That said, with the amount of new track involved, don't aim for peak only. Hourly all day would need almost nothing in terms of passing sidings, is a much more reasonable basis for actually transit focused development and while the additional infrastructure on the CP tracks is probably substantial, NOT accommodating all day from the beginning just creates another Milton line situation where an eventual fix is a certainty, and one that will only ever get more expensive.
 
An unrealistic and silly idea I came up with today, the great circle lines.
1617058249031.png

It occurred to me that if the Eglington West LRT and Finch West LRT both get extended to the airport, you could in theory run through services from Kennedy to Finch West. There isn't much point in doing that, but if you complete the circle it may be fun. My map only shows some stations.
 
Quick map I made of what I think the Richmond Hill Subway extension should be instead.

An in-between the original all-underground alignment and Ford's new less-undergound-as-possible alignment. From Finch, it would go up north and turn east at the border of the Holy Cross Cemetary. It would come up to surface and then turn north when it comes to the train tracks to Richmond Hill Centre.

Obviously build Cummer/Drewry and Clark stations. A recent York Region News article outlined that residents are already unhappy with Ford's alignment of tunnelling under the neighbourhood near Royal Orchard. They would be even more unhappy if Ford tunnelled under their neighbourhood and does not even build Royal Orchard station to serve them. Royal Orchard Station was previously dropped from the original subway plan because it would have lower than Bessarion levels of ridership and growth. I propose putting a station slightly north at Baythorn to add more ridership closer to more existing homes and would allow more developable area, where there are many strip malls ripe for condos. It would be a shame if this neighbourhood gets zero rapid transit and just skips over, or under, them.

The residents complaining suggested digging under the cemetary instead as that would only disturb dead people. So I would suggest the subway to dig north and come out from the cemetary, thus saving tunnelling costs as per Ford's request. Then a station at Langstaff below Highway 407 as that is a high density urban plan area and would connnect to Langstaff GO Station. A station across the highway at Richmond Hill Centre would serve the high density urban plan area there and connect to Viva. The spacing in my proposal between these two stations would be closer to 700 to 800 metres as opposed to Ford's plan of High Tech and Bridge stations at 400 metres spacing.

Richmond Hill 2-01.png
 
Here is a fantasy map of eventually higher-order transit infrastructure in the GTA. I tried to maintain a somewhat consistent scale to properly show the coverage. I lean heavily on BRT for peel and york, as I think most of the area won't be dense enough to require LRT or grade-separated rail. But I think one of the east-west routes in Mississauga would likely warrant a conversion to rail. I also haven't attempted to plan out actual routes for the buses, as there is likely to be significant interlining.

Eventually, I'll start posting the routing and station details for some of the lines.

 
Wow, that is beautiful! It always bothers me SEPTA gave up on moving towards a true S-Bahn/RER system back in the 80s due to complete mismanagement. Philly has far better infrastructure in place for an S-Bahn/RER than Toronto does. They have the S-Bahn infrastructure in place but they operate it to North American Commuter Rail standards. Luckily, SEPTA does seem to be moving towards this vision with their 2045 plan.

1617739714142.png
 

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