The Downtown Relief Line has been in the news a lot lately, what with dreams of vast new revenues to pay for transit expansion and, at long last, a recognition that more people want to travel downtown than we have transit capacity to handle.
Back in the 1980s, the Network 2011 plan included a line from Union Station to Don Mills and Eglinton by way of the rail corridor, Eastern Avenue, Pape, a bridge across the Don Valley, and Don Mills Road. This scheme was turned down in favour of the Sheppard Subway as part of a misguided idea that if we simply stopped building new lines into downtown, growth would stop. In fact, GO Transit did a fine job of providing extra capacity, and more recently the new downtown condos have raised short commutes by streetcar, cycling and foot to levels nobody expected thirty years ago.
The Yonge subway filled up, for a time,but the pressure fell off thanks to the 1990s recession and the general drop in transit use. That’s no longer the case, and suddenly everyone wants to “do something” about transit capacity downtown. The TTC, shamefully, downplayed anything beyond its own mad scheme to stuff thousands more riders onto the Yonge line, a project requiring major changes in signalling, reconstruction of Bloor-Yonge station (and possibly others) for extra capacity, a much larger subway fleet (and yards to hold it) and possibly even the addition of platform doors at all stations.
Council asked the TTC to look at a DRL, and there is even supposed to be a study. However, its web page is the only sign that anything is going on.
Meanwhile, every would-be transit planner in town is busy drawing maps, to the point where a credible plan can be found simply by dropping a piece of spaghetti on a map of the city and declaring this a route. (Post-graduate degrees are available to those who can determine the ideal height from which to drop the pasta and cooking time needed to produce the best results.) What’s missing in a lot of this discussion is a view of how a DRL might fit into a wider network, not to mention a few basics about how a new rapid transit line will, or will not, fit in some of the proposed alignments.
One of the better proposals is on Phil Orr’s DRL Now site. It’s not perfect (no proposal is, including those I have floated from time to time), but at least this is a place to start with sufficient detail to understand what is going on. Drawing a swoosh across a map is easy (politicians do it all the time), but designing something that might actually work is a lot harder.
A major challenge with some versions of this line is that proponents try to do too much. Playing “connect the dots” with a transit route has its limitations, and trying to hit too many of them causes the line to wander out of its way. This ties back to a fundamental question: what is a DRL supposed to do?
If we believe some of the simpler plans (notably one in last week’s Star proposed by Councillor Pasternak), the DRL’s sole function is to get people from the Danforth subway to Union Station. This is far too simplistic and guarantees the line will not be well used except as a peak period relief valve.
Other schemes take the route south of the rail corridor to serve the Port Lands and eastern waterfront. Aside from the problems of building such a line in landfill beside Lake Ontario, the route would not provide the fine-grained transit access possible with a surface LRT, and would vastly overservice an area whose expected demand is lower than the existing Sheppard subway. Connection to Union Station from the south would also be a big challenge.
From time to time, I am asked “what would you do”, but to start that discussion, a few first principles:
- A”DRL” should not exist solely to relieve the Yonge line’s peak traffic problem, but should provide new links within the transit network giving rapid transit to areas of the city that do not have it today. Indeed, the regional function within the network may well be as important as the “relief” function at Bloor-Yonge.
- Any proposed route through downtown must respect the actual built form of the streets and buildings. Diagonal routes through built-up areas should be avoided as they are difficult if not impossible to build.
- Stations must be located where it is physically possible to build them. Some routes use rail corridors without considering how either a surface or underground station might fit or be built.
- A “DRL” is not the complete solution to capacity problems on the subway. These problems originate north of Steeles Avenue, and a major role in trimming peak demand falls to GO Transit which has several north-south routes that could drain traffic otherwise headed for the Yonge line.
The proposed route on DRL Now (click on “Interactive Map” under the “Station Information” pulldown) includes four phases:
- Don Mills and Eglinton to City Place
- City Place to Dundas West
- Don Mills from Eglinton to Sheppard
- Dundas West to Pearson Airport
I have concerns with a few details of this plan, but the basics are good. Another view of the route is available via Google Maps. This has the advantage of showing the detailed alignment rather than a “route map” graphic.
Eglinton to Railway Lands West
A route from Eglinton and Don Mills to downtown will intercept traffic that now flows via three separate bus routes (Don Mills, Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park) to the Danforth subway, not to mention future traffic from the Eglinton LRT (which will have an underground station connection at Don Mills). Because the subway will not terminate at the Danforth, the volume of transfer traffic (as opposed to through rides on the new line) should be lower and the station less congested.
Some plans have aimed for different connection points on the Danforth line, although they have not necessarily considered the problems of continuing north from the connection point. These options are best viewed by zooming in on the Google Maps representation of the line.
- Donlands Station: Donlands is an alternative north-south route except for the fact that the street ends at Danforth and some neighbourhood upheaval will be required to reach the rail corridor. However, this route is closer to Greenwood Yard, and there is the general question of how a DRL might be connected into the existing subway system for maintenance purposes.
- Greenwood Station: Like Donlands, Greenwood is another alternative route, although it goes through a completely residential neighbourhood. A connection to Greenwood Yard should be possible on the east side.
- Coxwell Station: Coxwell is directly south of the line of Don Mills Road and is the easternmost point where a connection is even vaguely reasonable.
- Woodbine Station: Woodbine is well east of Don Mills Road, and a connection there more or less rules out extending the line north to Eglinton.
A related question for those who propose easterly locations for a connection is the function of a “DRL” in the Beach and whether its purpose is to somehow serve traffic from that region (which is not exactly overrun with high density development) to downtown. A westerly connection point like Pape has the advantage that the route cuts diagonally through Thorncliffe Park and across the valley and gets to downtown faster than a route further east. The Thorncliffe Park stop would not be included in any route crossing Danforth east of Greenwood because it would be out of the way for a Coxwell or Woodbine alignment.
South of Danforth, the next major segment takes the line to the Don River. Regardless of which crossing is chosen, the two options are either to go straight south to Eastern (or possibly Queen), then west into downtown, or to follow the rail corridor from (say) Pape southwest. Going under the rail corridor has its challenges, although from a jurisdictional viewpoint, the fact that Metrolinx now owns this line eliminates one possible source of opposition.
The challenge will be to tunnel under a busy rail corridor and to include stations at a few intermediate points. A surface alignment is not practical given the constraints of what is there today and planned for GO’s future expansion. Stations will be tricky unless the tunnel veers away from the rail corridor to adjacent lands. Orr’s proposal sites both the Gerrard and Queen Stations on the south-east side of the corridor where land is available.
Orr’s proposed path through the core is, for me, unattractive because it wanders in attempting to pick up many sites and ignores potential problems with building foundations.
A simpler route into downtown would be to follow Front and Wellington Streets to Peter where (at least today) there is vacant land for a diagonal crossing to Spadina and Front, the site of the proposed Metrolinx “Union Station West” for services in the Weston corridor. Connections at Yonge (to King Station) and University (to St. Andrew Station) would be fairly easy to build given the physical locations of existing stations. This route will not be a simple project, but at least it stays under one street for the distance across downtown.
Any route west of the Don River will have to deal with the built form of the West Don Lands project now under construction.
Eglinton to Sheppard
A few schemes have been proposed for a “Don Mills” line north of Eglinton including:
- The Don Mills LRT to Steeles (Transit City)
- A line running north to the CPR rail corridor just north of Eglinton and thence northeast through Agincourt
- Continuation of the “DRL” north to Sheppard (Orr’s Plan)
I have never been happy with the TTC’s proposals for a Don Mills LRT running on the surface through East York. This always had the feel of a project jammed into the available space with no regard for the effect on the community, and this approach was one of many ways the Transit City team alienated people from their plan. It was always clear that the line would require a lot of infrastructure (bridge, tunnel) south of Flemingdon/Thorncliffe and given the projected demand for a DRL, putting a subway in such infrastructure makes a lot more sense than an LRT line.
The problem arises of where the subway should end and something else should take over. Should this be at Eglinton or at Sheppard? I’m not convinced either way, and would like to see better info on travel patterns and population in the Don Mills corridor. Orr proposes stations only at the concession roads: Lawrence, York Mills and Sheppard. Like other “express” subway lines, this leaves many sites and potential riders at the mercy of local bus service, should the TTC deign to operate it. Is this the appropriate way to serve Don Mills Road, or would a surface route with more stops be better?
The Weston Rail Corridor
This corridor is a monument to the blinkered view Metrolinx has of planning for transportation within the City of Toronto. Although massive capacity expansion is underway, it is intended almost exclusively to provide room for many more trains on the Brampton/Kitchener, Milton and Airport lines.
The “Air Rail Link”, a doomed project inherited from the Federal Government and SNC Lavalin, sits in Metrolinx’ lap as a business-class express service from Pearson Airport to Union. One or two stops enroute will connect to the Bloor and (future) Eglinton rapid transit lines. The real need in this corridor is for local service — “local” not in the sense of stopping at every lamp post, but of service that addresses day-to-day demand between many points on the route as part of the regular transit system.
The rail corridor has been proposed as a “DRL West” and appears as such in Orr’s proposal. The real problem here is how we would build it given that the corridor has already been (or soon will be) reconfigured for expanded GO services.
A vital question for any proposal is “what is it supposed to do”. This will affect many aspects of route design including station location and size, fleet requirements, interoperation with other rail services, and the capacity of interchange points such as Dundas West Station on the Bloor Subway.
If we were starting from a blank slate about 30 years ago, the situation could have been very different, and the Weston corridor might have been configured with a rapid transit line on or under it. Doing this today is not as simple.
At this point, I have to declare my preference that a northwest line not automatically be an extension of the DRL subway. We have yet to see that there would actually be sufficient demand for full subway trains (there is no question of this on the eastern leg), and the use of subway technology imposes constraints on right-of-way and stations. At the very least, we should know what the alternative — an electrified frequent service on GO’s ARL trackage — would require and what it could do.
The Downtown Streetcar Lines
The DRL is cited by some as a way of solving the problem with the Queen and King streetcars. I do not agree. This is an unfortunate example of trying to make the DRL do more than it reasonably can.
Condo developments are thick on King Street, and the new buildings are moving north to Queen both west and east of downtown. These cannot be served by a single route, especially one with the wider station spacing typical of subway lines.
These are two separate networks — a rapid transit line coming into downtown, and a streetcar network serving not just Queen or King, but Dundas and College as well. The problem we have with the streetcars is that there is not enough service, and what we do have is not well-managed. Some of this is traffic congestion which, in turn, begs questions of enforcement. Spend billions on a subway, or much much less on better service and a fleet of tow trucks? That’s an oversimplification, but it’s a debate we avoid.
GO North
In every discussion of Yonge subway capacity, the potential for additional service on GO tends to be ignored even though it is part of the Metrolinx “Big Move”. GO management seems content to run a few new trains here and there, but their comments about major service increases and electrification are tempered by years of underfunding. The word “if” is more common than “when” in remarks about GO expansion.
There are big challenges, not the least of which are track and station capacities downtown. Electrification is essential for frequent service, but funding is a mystery and has not been integrated in the Metrolinx long-term plans.
GO could be handling more riders into downtown Toronto and, thereby, shaving the peak off of demand on the subway system on several existing and future routes. What is needed is the will to fund and operate these services.
Fares and subsidies will be a big issue as GO grows. More service, especially in the counterpeak and offpeak, will drag down the farebox recovery for GO.
Similarly, the fare structure’s penalties against short-haul riding discourage travellers who should be on GO but chooses instead to put up with the TTC (or drive).
What do we want? A profitable system, or one that provides service? Discussions of new funding schemes must address fare levels, not just the cost of building new infrastructure.
Conclusion
Expansion of Toronto’s rapid transit system involves more than “just one more” subway line and must be done with a view to how the network will carry riders, not just that one line.
Toronto and the regions beyond need to understand how that network might work, how the contribution of many routes will make something valuable for everyone even though they will not ride every route or visit every station.
Metrolinx and the TTC owe us a much more public, informed debate about the options and how we might spend the billions new taxes or tolls will bring.
The “Downtown Relief Line” is important, but it is only part of a much larger regional plan, and we must not try to make it solve every problem of our overburdened transit system.
My 3 Cents – Once the TTC finally gets it’s new signalling technology in place (supposed to be 2015 ? or is it delayed ?) would it not be possible to say run every 2nd Sheppard Line train during peak periods down the Yonge Line then turning them back North at Union ? As a quick fix measure I think this would add some relief to the crowding on the Yonge Line trains that occurs south of Sheppard Station. There is already a Tunnel from the Sheppard Line for the Trains to get to the Davisville Yard. If this idea were possible it would make sense to continue the Sheppard Subway Line to Victoria Park since they are tunneling to Vic Park under Sheppard as per the LRT plan anyways.
Steve: There is no track connection allowing a west to south movement of trains from Sheppard onto the Yonge line, leaving aside the issue of 4 or 6 car train lengths. Presuming that Sheppard trains continue to operate every 5’30″, that’s one train merging in every 11 minutes by your plan, or 5 per hour. In theory that could be fitted in, but the track connections at Sheppard Station are not set up for revenue service.
The north-to-east curve misses Sheppard Station completely so that a train would stop at York Mills and then at Bayview. To go south on Yonge, a westbound train must come all the way through Yonge station into the tail track to the west, then reverse south through the connecting track onto the Yonge line.
Maintaining something like regular service on Sheppard would require that the northbound trains from Union arrive fairly reliably every 11 minutes.
As for Union, yes turnbacks could be done there, but this would put gaps into the University subway service that would produce uneven loadings.
Just a few questions, to Steve or anyone else interested in answering, mostly about the DRL and the proposed “Union West” station:
1. If the DRL is to go to Union West, and possibly beyond (as some of you have proposed) to the Exhibition, then how on earth could the DRL replace the King Car? Either
a) A new streetcar interchange would have to be built somewhere like St. Andrew or possibly John St. If a station is built there, and the Broadview portion of the streetcar would have to be dropped off the map (which would then leave Riverdale residents without an established connection to the BD line.)
b) An interlined route would have to be built on King, where one portion diverts to Union West, and the other continues into a portion of the city that doesn’t have the density to support it.
Steve: There are times I find the zeal for replacing a streetcar line or two with the DRL a bit unsettling among some of the comments here and elsewhere. The line serves a different market, and the assumption that all of those folks on the King car originate in locations that would easily shift to a DRL is false. Just ride the line to see where people get on. If anything the amount of local origination will increase with new developments along the route.
Competing routing schemes use either the rail corridor or Roncesvalles Avenue. If you’re going up the rail corridor, you are not going to pick up the major markets for the 504 in the west end, and if you go up Ronces, you have diverted what should be an important route to the northwest miles out of its way just to “justify” getting rid of the streetcar. This should not be an exercise in finding ways to slash away at the dense service within the old city just to produce “savings” to plough into a subway proposal.
This reminds me of how the TTC slashed service on the King car by over 50% when the BD subway opened in 1966. They assumed that a
vast majority of riders were transfer traffic from the Bloor streetcar when, in fact, they get on all along the line inward from both ends. That ridiculous assumption and plan was mostly undone a few months after the subway opened.
2. If we consider nfitz’s proposal for just a second (that is, getting rid of the interlined University and Yonge Routes), the Yonge Line could be extended to Union west Station. In doing so, service would be much more equally balanced, as those who got off at Union West would not all be diverted onto one subway line but, as at Union, two of them.
Steve: That’s an exercise in drawing lines on a map without looking at how you would actually build them. Just getting a DRL through the core will be hard enough.
@Nikolas Koschany:
I would expect Cherry St to have a streetcar line along it well before the DRL gets built. That line can provide a north-south corridor to/from Broadview station at Danforth Ave (or should I say Erindale?).
I don’t find it necessary to replace an entire streetcar line – that gets into blind ideology without looking at the influencing factors at play in the system. Downtown has enough trackage to make a number of streetcar route reconfigurations viable after service on the DRL is running. While I do think King East would likely and best be replaced (but only if the subway is local like Toronto’s oldest lines), I would still expect King West streetcar service to hit Church St, as the King West cars should continue to roll by both Bay St and Yonge St, even though this stretch tends to be where traffic is worst (the bad traffic actually extends to York St). I tend to agree with the view that a west-end DRL is unnecessary given the potential of existing infrastructure corridors in the west that can provide far cheaper and conceivably more effective solutions. As such, King West should continue as a streetcar corridor (without its eastern counterpart between Church and Sumach Sts.), and I would expect the King West car to overlap with the DRL in the core for something in the ballpark of 2km, because it wouldn’t make sense to force transfers 1km-and-change west of the Y-U line.
Regardless, would you not agree that some form of transportation would have to be established directly between Union and Union West? Otherwise, the DRL will end up simply becoming a bottle neck at UW because riders on GO who arrive there will only have access to one route, not (as Union has) two of them.
Steve: No, I don’t agree. People coming down the Weston corridor can connect with the BD subway at Dundas West, that is if Metrolinx ever gets around to building a decent connection. They will also be able to connect to the Eglinton line. The world does not revolve around Union Station.
My main concern with the DRL alignments you show is that a connection at Union implies you are using Front Street, an alignment that is physically impossible between Yonge and University as the space under Front is completely occupied.
It seems to me that a DRL line could come into downtown anywhere between Queen and Front; people can use the PATH system or get outside and walk to get to and from their workplaces, just as they do now. As long as the DRL line provides direct connections (even if it means some walking – honestly New Yorkers and Londoners do a lot of walking between lines, and nobody says they have second-class subway systems) at either King or Queen and St. Andrew or Osgoode, there’d be no need for transfers at Union.
Karl Junkin: I would expect Cherry St to have a streetcar line along it well before the DRL gets built. That line can provide a north-south corridor to/from Broadview station at Danforth Ave (or should I say Erindale?).
The Cherry Street Streetcar is supposed to continue onto Queens Quay East if I’m not mistaken though; it’s also supposed to be on its own ROW. How would this work?
Steve: The street layout at Cherry, Lake Shore and Queen’s Quay is supposed to be substantially revised as part of the Don Mouth reconfiguration. A new underpass will be added to split up the Cherry Street traffic so that it will all fit, and the Cherry right-of-way which is on the east side of the street will swing into the Queen’s Quay right-of-way on the south side of the street.
Steve: No, I don’t agree. People coming down the Weston corridor can connect with the BD subway at Dundas West, that is if Metrolinx ever gets around to building a decent connection. They will also be able to connect to the Eglinton line. The world does not revolve around Union Station.
This logic is the same as building the “U” shaped DRL though. Despite the fact that people would have been able to get off at Cherry Street and Liberty Village and transfer to the DRL in the Metrolinx proposals, Metrolinx deduced this would not provide adequate relief to Union – this is why the entire “Union West” concept came to be.
Steve: Actually “Union West” came about because Metrolinx cannot fit all the trains they want to run into Union Station. This could also be seen as a dodge to avoid having to electrify sooner rather than later, but I’m not sure Metrolinx is devious enough to think of that. As for transferring to a DRL from the streetcar network, that’s a hopeless expectation on two counts. First, people would already be close enough to downtown that the transfer could be counterproductive for many trips. Second, the people we need to divert onto the DRL are not riding the streetcars today — if they were, they would not be a problem. “Diverting” this traffic does not address riders originating farther north in catchment areas that would take them through Bloor-Yonge.
I would like to suggest that the most probable form of downtown “relief” would come from the following.
1) Presto fair integration that is structured to encourage short commutes from the inner suburbs
2) Increased number of inner suburb GO train stops (ideally structured in a way that does not discourage express commuting from the outer suburbs)
3) Expanded Union Station capacity coupled with the electrification of GO’s train services (including some form of tunnelling along the approach to the station)
4) Increased utilization of the Don Valley corridor for express bus service to the downtown
I think it is important to separate the concept of “downtown relief” from the idea of building subways. Although I am in favour of subways, I feel they are more useful as tools to build growth potential than congestion relief.
The focus should be to spread congestion relief to much of the city and offer a SUBSTANTIAL reduction in commute times. An inclusive system of downtown relief can overcome one of the most vexing obstacles to any form of “DRL”, the absence of political consensus.
Steve: Yes, “downtown relief” is more than one line providing a bypass for Bloor-Yonge. It requires substantial improvements to GO services in areas that otherwise feed into the most congested part of the subway.
I would like to comment on the value of some form of “DRL” and the historic opportunity to actually build something worth while.
I would like to remind the reader that for significantly more than half a century the province of Ontario has relied on the tax revenues garnered from a growing prosperous automotive parts and assembly sector to fund generous government programs. The Government of Ontario invested this money in programs that reached out and touched everyone in this province in a very positive way. However due to the high Canadian dollar the foreseeable long term growth potential of this industry is not sufficient to satisfy the needs of a growing society.
My suggestion is that downtown Toronto has incredible potential for significant economic growth, growth that is for the most part limited by the ability of people to get in and out of the downtown region. The economic potential is limited only by the willingness of all levels of government to invest in the region. I believe that the Government of Ontario and the City of Toronto have a fiduciary duty to make the necessary investment to realise the full potential of the downtown, and to do it in a way that is inclusive and in harmony with the needs of people across the region. It is for these reasons that I believe that the potential to build some form of “DRL” is significantly higher now than it has been at any time in the last quarter century.
I would like to thank you for hosting this very good discussion.
I thought Phil Orr’s proposal, your critic and most of the comments are of the highest quality and served to flush out most of the issues.
The thing that caught my eye was the $6B price tag and the mid 20k pppd/h estimate.
I have a perhaps stupid question, but I’m wondering if anyone has a comment on it:
Would it be worthwhile for the TTC to consider putting streetcars back on Yonge St., up to St. Clair or maybe even Eglinton? There are a few reasons I bring this up.
1. The Yonge subway is at crush load most of rush hour, and people can’t get onto many trains south of York Mills in the morning. (So there is probably more demand for services along the corridor, at least to Lawrence probably, than is currently being supplied.)
2. There is a growing level of demand downtown for North-South transit.
3. Traffic on Yonge is considered light enough south of Bloor that we can talk about removing two lanes without causing problems.
Would the return of the Yonge line provide some inexpensive relief of the Yonge subway?
Steve: Aside from the cost of implementing an operating a service on Yonge Street, there are a few important issues here.
The section of Yonge south of Bloor is already proposed for major changes to the street configuration to increase pedestrianization. Locations like Dundas Square are regularly turned over to large festivals, and at a minimum these would have to be organized so that they didn’t interfere with surface transit operations during peak periods.
Next, we need to know the proportions of subway riders who would actually use a surface route for their trip. The further north a surface line runs, the greater the penalty in speed and the lower proportion of riders you are likely to attract. Moreover, someone whose destination is Eglinton Station may actually live there, or they may want to transfer to any of several bus routes. The latter group of trips may be better served by an alternative route to downtown (say the DRL to Don Mills & Eglinton).
There is also the small matter of weather. Whatever “alternative” service we implement must be reliable when the weather is bad and subway demand is at its greatest. There is little point in having 3k of frequent surface capacity unavailable because some idiot motorist is stuck in a snowbank blocking the tracks.
Relieving subway capacity will be done only by implementing a collection of new services, not by one magic bullet. Some will come by diverting long-haul traffic to much-needed improvements in GO Transit (something Metrolinx is dragging its feet on to the point of total inactivity), part by a “DRL” to divert some traffic onto a roughly diagonal approach to downtown and away from lower Yonge Street, some by technical changes such as capacity and operational improvements. Surface operations may help, but I suspect the market will be mainly for people living not much further north than St. Clair. It would certainly be interesting to know what the potential market for this looks like.
You reminded me of when I wondered if an improved and well-advertised Bay St. bus service might work wonders for Yonge Line relief south of Bloor, particularly in the case of subway shutdowns. Whenever I’ve had to take this bus route the service has been virtually non-existent. Because of this it is almost always faster and more reliable to take the subway and then walk over to Bay St.
In my crazy dreams I saw a central relief LRT line on Bay, going underground at Bloor (like at Spadina Station), then across Cumberland to surface on Avenue Road running north and east to St. Clair or St. Clair W. Station at least. Shades of the past anyways…
Steve: Getting from Bloor to Cumberland will be a challenge. At that point (counting down from the road surface) you have utilities, the PATH connection across Bay, and then TWO levels of subway structure (Bay upper and lower stations). That will be a very long approach ramp on either side, not to mention a very expensive station. You probably would be north of Yorkville before you resurfaced. As for the Bay bus, demand for this service is concentrated at the north end of the line (hence the Dundas short turn). Also, as I said in a previous reply, it would be worthwhile to know just what the demand pattern would be for better service here. It’s not much good just shifting Yonge-to-Bloor transfer traffic west one station.
Apologies for the untimely response.
Karl Junkin,
So basically what you are saying is “if we build it they will come”. That 500 m DRL stop spacing makes sense because you’ll get all sorts of amazing development because subways are awesome. Do you also agree that this would be the case on Eglinton East through Scarborough?
re: Streetcar contribution to YUS ridership and not thinking about networks.
I wasn’t suggesting that those stops are driven by streetcar feeders, but that the higher order transit connections help justify the closeness of the stations. Because of the network they deliver. That with only one transfer, anyone on the longest streetcar line in the world can go to anywhere on the busiest line in the city.
Yes, on Yonge and University and with PATH connections – there’s going to be a lot of pedestrians walking to and from the subway stations. But what you are suggesting is that Front Street will bulk up in the same way. That the distillery district is going to rival the financial district. That it makes sense to put the stations so close together – absent any substantial feeder lines – because if you build it they will come. Even if we accept your model of transit magically creating development in all places not Scarborough, you do realize that some of the folks who take the streetcar to a subway stop, don’t get on the subway. That the development you see along YUS isn’t just because the subway’s there – but also all those other lines feeding into it. DRL west of the Don doesn’t have that. In fact, you’re talking about ripping out streetcar tracks.
I’m not sure how long a DRL you’re talking about. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d be happy if it never crossed the Don. If we’re talking about stopping at Pape Station, that’s about as much rail as the Sheppard Stubway’s got. And Sheppard at least has some decent feeder routes going into it. The only traffic you’re getting, especially with King streetcar line ripped out, is pedestrian. Maybe you’re right – maybe Toronto does have the capacity to massively increase its downtown core density exactly the way you envisage – with a total of 100K to 150K people walking to your three subway stops. And we’re just presenting out visions of what a DRL mught be, so maybe griping is inappropriate. Still, as I pointed out in my original comment on this thread, If anyone ever wonders why the “Scarborough get shafted” narrative plays so well, this is part of the reason.
Finally, you don’t have to go on about these original/destination pairings so much. We can tell what you mean. You can just come right out and say that the only places worth going to are downtown and that’s the way it’s always going to be.
Steve: One thing I find odd in some of the arguments that come forward bundled with the DRL is the idea that we can get rid of one or two streetcar lines as an offsetting saving. The DRL will serve a completely different market, and if it is gerrymandered to pick up more “streetcar” load, it may lose some of its attractiveness to other potential customers. Of course, trading a new subway for a few streetcars would play to the brains trust in the Mayor’s office, but it’s not necessarily good planning. The DRL should justify itself for its role getting people on a north-south axis into downtown, probably only from the east initially.
@ Ka-Ming Lin
You can read what I said in the last comment in response to yours regarding “build it and they will come” (copied below for your convenience):
Development won’t happen because of the subway, development will have already been built by the time the subway is actually built, as there is lot of it already happening. I live downtown, I can walk south and in 10-15 minutes am seeing the construction with my own eyes. The potential problem is that this development will happen even if no subway is built, potentially further overloading already overloaded services unless most of the new demand is using active transportation (there is a sizable chunk of the downtown population that does walk to work) or driving (which has consequences for streetcar service). The density of downtown is spreading, and the level of construction activity in Toronto is tops in North America, primarily (but not exclusively) from downtown projects.
The projections for a surface LRT along Eglinton in Scarborough are less than what the King car currently carries with single cars operating in mixed traffic. Eglinton at-grade in Scarborough will have well over double the capacity of the King car, even after accounting for the larger vehicles of the new streetcar fleet now on order – after crossing Don Mills Rd westbound, Eglinton is projected to be carrying more than King does currently at peak. The DRL is projected to have a demand around 5 times what the King car currently carries in the peak hour, and around 3 times what Eglinton is projected to carry in the peak hour. As has been mentioned on this site before by several people, LRT is not capable of handling the DRL demand projections (and even if it could, it would still be forced underground for a variety of reasons, which would mean there’s no appreciable savings between technologies – capital or operating).
Actually, you did; you said the streetcar lines are what make those stations work – look:
I’ve mathematically proven in a previous comment that the streetcar connections at the downtown Yonge subway stations are not what makes them “work,” rather the key driver is the stations have lots of destinations around them that people want to go to, and it is destinations which drives the high ridership. How far the streetcar line goes from downtown Yonge St is not relevant; a streetcar could run from West Hill to Port Credit (with no Bloor-Danforth intercept point) and it wouldn’t have an impact on downtown Yonge subway stations (especially considering that the streetcars are largely maxed out before reaching Yonge St).
I never suggested that the Distillery District would generate more traffic than the Financial District at rush hours, but the Distillery District is a popular location with what looks like a bright and promising future ahead of it – great off-peak usage potential. However, the notion that the financial district is unsurpassable in ridership is folly, as Dundas station demonstrates with a daily ridership that exceeds King station. Dundas and King also see very similar alighting counts in the AM peak. 25 years ago, if anyone had suggested that Dundas station would be on par with King station, laughter would ensue. Yet a perfect storm gradually built up in Dundas’s favour; huge changes in that area have taken place over the past 15 years.
The streetcar lines have an influence on the character of their corridors. While they are part of a network that goes through the core, they serve popular destinations not in the core, and this factor is a key part of their market in the local trip making that doesn’t necessarily involve a transfer from the subway. King East, while some might look at certain stretches as a late bloomer, is not an exception. So yes, DRL west of the Don does have that potential, although there’s a lot near the Don that is under construction right now.
As for tearing up tracks, I’m on record as only supporting about 1.5km between Sumach [Cherry] and Church being discontinued, and that’s only if the subway spacing is local so as to provide an adequate replacement.
Actually, Sheppard’s feeders provide less than 5,000/hr for the whole line, which is poor. Both Kipling and Islington each draw a comparable amount to Bloor-Danforth in the peak hour, meaning that Islington eastbound in the morning is pulling 9,000/hr. As for Pape, are you implying that the Bloor-Danforth line is not a decent feeder? Bloor-Danforth is pulling about 22,000/hr at Pape in the peak hour (I’m not implying that all would transfer, that would be a complete disaster; I’d expect 30-something % would transfer – almost double what Sheppard carries at peak).
It needs to be recognized by everyone that the increased density in downtown is not going to be all residential; a large part of it is going to be employment, and that makes a very big difference as this is a key factor in the failure of the Sheppard subway (and would have applied equally to an extended Sheppard subway). There has been no job growth along the Sheppard subway. Employment has been stagnant at both North York Centre and Scarborough Centre for decades. Residential has exploded at both, and along the Sheppard subway corridor, but residential development doesn’t translate so easily to transit ridership – employment does, and downtown has employment growth happening. While downtown has the employment growth, it’s short on transit capacity. More destinations with convenient access to new subway infrastructure downtown will mean less stress on both Yonge and King. You don’t need 100K-150K new residents near the DRL, you just need 100K-150K new daily rides, which can be generated by residential or non-residential developments. Non-residential development is more conductive to increasing transit usage though.
Origin/destination pairings are critical to transit planning, so I will stress it as necessary. When talking about networks, you have to know where people are coming from, and more importantly, where they want to go to. It’s true that not a heck of a lot of people want to go to Scarborough Centre (as mentioned earlier, job growth hasn’t happened there) – the Scarborough Centre station is busy because it is effectively a terminating station (not technically, but McCowan has no bus terminal and Scarborough Centre does), and any terminating station with a bus terminal has artificially high traffic from a forced transfer that is not indicative of that location being a destination.
With the talk about local north-south service on Bay, Yonge Streets, etc.
Steve, do you consider it a good thing that the northern terminus of the 510 Spadina streetcar is underground? Yes, I know of the resident’s demands to put the loop underground over noise issues, but I can’t help but feel that grade-separating the loop would forever shortchange any future extension of the streetcar line north, should the need ever be recognised. This reminds me of the Queens Quay Portal – with one costly decision comes several costly implications in the long-term future.
Grade-separated facilities can handle higher passenger traffic, but I’m not convinced that an off-street surface loop would have been inadequate.
Steve: A northerly extension of the Spadina car is highly unlikely given that the street itself ends, about 1km further north. The politics of a surface loop vs underground were not just a question of noise, but also some serious lobbying by the owners of the house that sits just north of the station entrance to avoid demolition. It is a very quaint house, I must admit, and there are advantages of the underground connection considering passenger volumes. That said, the TTC is going to have to get used to a new way of operating that loop once the LFLRVs are in town because they won’t be able to stack cars several deep. Two LFLRVS will barely fit on the platform, and it will have to be pull in / offload / pull up / load / leave with no dallying for chats among the staff.
For there to be a true “relief” to the downtown relief the line should intersect with Danforth further east than the previous proposals. What was relief in the early 1980′s is no longer relief today. Where is particular I do not know (Woodbine as per Metrolinx plan, Main for long-term tie-in with the Go or even as far over as Kennedy). It should also head up as far at Eglinton with long-term opportunities to connect with Sheppard. I understand that this is not the line that was proposed in the past (and thus loved by many supporters of the DRL) but this is the scope of a relief line needed for the future.
The Metrolinx plan wasn’t Woodbine. It was Pape. Check the Metrolinx documents. The Toronto Star did a very poor graphic that showed Woodbine … but Metrolinx never proposed that.
Hey Steve, what do you think of this idea of ‘I-Metro-E’; GO twinning their tracks to get more local service going? If they can bring the prices lower to that of the TTC, isn’t this a much cheaper solution than the DRL?
Steve: I have avoided writing about this proposal because I get a headache trying to read the full report (which is available in hard copy but not online). It is riddled with poor assumptions, outright errors, and a financing scheme that makes Rob Ford’s Sheppard proposal look positively good. I don’t want to spend my time writing an article that tears this proposal apart.
There is a valid question of the role of GO corridors as part of a regional rapid transit network, but GO/Metrolinx are so busy trying to ignore local demand that they don’t want to address the problem. As for Cllr. Jones’ proposal being an alternative to the DRL, that’s apples and oranges. The GO Uxbridge Sub service is too far east top intercept as much traffic as the proposed DRL will.
Steve,
Apologies for continuing this argument here. This will be my last comment on this thread.
Karl Junkin,
Thank you for clarifying. That you aren’t of the belief that subway will magically turn the distillery district into a a source of 50K per day pedestrian demand for subway – just that it’s magically going to happen for some other reason. It’s not subway powered fairy dust and rainbows – just regular old unspecified fairy dust and rainbows.
Sure St. Lawrence Market is a pretty awesome place. Is it the best source of perogies outside of Parkdale? Despite efforts made, I have not sampled enough of Toronto’s perogies to say for certain – but I wouldn’t be surprised. But still, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets less average traffic per day than the big box stores on the stretch of the Crosstown through Scarborough that’s not being buried. Despite St. Lawrence Market being walking distance to the core.
That “to a large part already there” thing? It is true for a lot of the city outside of downtown. One of the densest residential neighbourhoods in Toronto is by Victoria Park subway station. What about the cluster of buildings at Warden and Finch, or the developments on Overlea in Thorncliffe – is it that these people just don’t exist? I’m not saying there’s a problem with planning transit around potential origin or destination points – just a problem with refusing to acknowledge that these points can and do exist east of the Don River.
No one goes to Scarborough Centre? As compared to St Lawrence Market or the Distillery District? Come on. You have got to get out of downtown on occasion. Sure the employment numbers are pretty dismal, but Scarborough’s not a ghost town.
Re: the feeder streetcar routes at King, Queen, Dundas, College – I don’t see how you get what you say I said from what I actually said. I claimed the feeder routes make the stop spacing possible. The higher order transit connections provide significant incentive to place the subway stops closer together – for the benefit of the network.
Then again, considering that your “mathematical proof” consists of saying one in five riders at a subway station don’t count for anything helps explain it.
Sheppard’s feeders are poor? Maybe – I’m not sure how you worked out 5K per hour. The 25 Don Mills carries 40K per day. Still even taking your number of 5K per hour – Your 500 m spaced stops would have 5K per day. That’s my point. Sheppard’s feeder routes may be poor, but your downtown DRL subway stations feeders are non-existant. Not that it matters – we’re pretty much in agreement here since you’re saying that all the new riders will be pedestrians.
So here’s what it comes down to. You contend that there are 100K – 150K new rides within walking distance of that stretch of King street. I don’t have a crystal ball, but to say that I am skeptical is an understatement. You say that it’s not just residential, but jobs will add a ton of rides. 50K new jobs is more than a tenth of all downtown jobs. And the total catchment area for the downtown portion of DRL is less than a tenth of downtown’s area. So what you’re saying is that development on King Street East is going to be essentially as dense as King Street between Yonge and University. So “a lot of it is already happening” really means what? Ten to fifteen percent of the required density? Less than that? Around the same density as there is at Fairview Mall and the business park on Consumers Road?
And you know what else? Sure, maybe that is possible. Maybe there’s room for a million jobs in the newly expanded core. But is it even desireable? Is the balance of downtown-suburb in TO so suburb heavy that downtown needs to be built up more? One of the reasons we’re having this discussion is that YUS is pretty much maxed out. Surface traffic through the core is pretty much maxed out with regular traffic jams and not infrequent gridlock. Highway and arterial traffic feeding us surburbanites to the core is pretty much maxed out. Downtown parking is pretty much maxed out. Adding more jobs here makes sense how? Because your overall plan isn’t so much to relieve YUS with alternates – it’s to facilitate massive growth on King Street East. We weren’t arguing “DRL or not” (we are agreed in recognizing the need for one) – we were arguing about three or four subway stations in a 2 km span.
Anyways to close this out, my original point was that this type of downtown-focus-to-the-exclusion-of-the-rest-of-the-city is part of why Scarberians feel that they get ripped off. At this point I am more convinced of that theory than before.
Steve: The one thing I will point out is that development happens where landowners and investors feel there is a demand and they can make a profit. That’s why there is a lot of new residential and office construction downtown. It’s not an attempt to screw Scarborough or any other part of the city, it’s free enterprise at work.
In any event, as we have discussed here many times before, ridership on any line is not simply a product of development around it, but of the combination of residential and work densities that generates work trips along various corridors. By analogy, most of the people who drive on the 401 don’t live right beside it.