118 thoughts on “Where Should We Put the “Downtown Relief” Line?”

1. Steve said:

   The turns onto and off of Sherbourne would be a challenge especially considering that there is a brand new condo about to go on the northwest corner at Front. At John, the CBC building is in the way. The dipsy doodle through downtown is a good example of the “spaghetti planning” I alluded to. It is not feasible to build a line like that. As for Front Street, there is no room left for another line in front of Union Station.

   What I meant was that the transition up onto Sherbourne could begin at George and cut a path underneath the existing building structures to have a station box bordered by Adelaide and Richmond, meaning easy walking transfer onto the 504 King or up to Queen St. This may result in a deeper tunnel bore but grant us a stop in an ideal location (for George Brown students but as well for all those incoming condo dwellers to the downtown east side). On the John side the curve alignment would actually happen underneath Peter Street with the John station box existing in-between John and Simcoe Sts (for direct access to Metro Hall, theatres on King, CN Tower, etc.). Wellington easily could be the east-west alignment through the CBD as it lines up perfectly with Front St E through St Lawrence and could result in a Bay St stop with Spadina Stn style connection to Union, King and St Andrew Stns.

   The “dipsy doodle” alignment may not be as aesethetically pleasing to look at on a map but we need only look at the impressive amount of coverage the Montreal system provides its urban core to realize that rigidly following a single corridor deprives us making major trip destinations not immediately off said corridor accessible by mass transit.

   Steve: My reference was to several plans I have seen where a line weaves its way through downtown oblivious to basic requirements like turn radii, station depth and building foundations. It’s not a question of aesthetics, but of practicality. By the way, just because there are old “shallow” buildings on a site today does not mean that a developer doesn’t have plans for something bigger tomorrow. I believe that Montreal had the advantage of building through a lot of areas where they didn’t have to deal with new buildings and deep foundations.

   I agree with you on Wellington as the alignment through the CBD, and there is an easy point of transition south to Front available just west of Peter.

   What I was really hoping for though was some feedback on using Queen East-Coxwell vs. Pape-Overlea as the guideway up to Don Mills and Eglinton. What is so advantageous about using Pape? Sure there’s Gerrard Square but is that worth building a subway towards to access? And the high-rise apartment cluster at Cosburn spreads from Broadview to Donlands so many commuters may opt to just stay on the bus through to the Danforth Line anyway. Using Coxwell achieves more. Coxwell is roughly the median between Yonge and Kennedy Stn. When I ride the Danforth Line I notice a significant drop-off eastbound at Coxwell Stn and pick-up of passengers westbound. Yes Pape is a busy station but a lot of this is attributable to the 25 bus terminating there. I doubt it’d be so heavily used in its absence.

   Coxwell also minimizes the commute times for outbound/inbound commuters south of Eglinton. People coming in from southwest Scarborough and the Beaches would be able to get downtown faster vs. a surface commute farther in over to Pape/Carlaw. It also would bring mass transit to East York Civic Ctr, which after the Crosstown Line passes through York Ctr, will be the last regional public service centre still inaccessible. Going straight down the Don Mills alignment over the Valley would not only be fast but probably less technically complicated than having to construct two bridge crossings through Thorncliffe Park. And I previously mentioned the simplicity of merging the 81 and 100 buses to feed into a single Overlea Stn, which although may result in a slightly longer commute for CBD-bound TP/FP residents, opens up a wider coverage area of the downtown to them. Even the sewage tunnel complication may be an advantage. What if the tunnel infrastructure could be repurposed as part of the subway, with the sewage main then going underneath the subway line? Let me know what you think Steve.

   Steve: I think we should keep the sewage and subway systems separate. Do you really want to have to close the subway when the sewers are broken?

   If the line is to come south via Coxwell, and presuming the sewer conflict can be worked out, the question then is whether the approach to downtown should be south all the way to Queen or Eastern, or southwest under the rail corridor which crosses Coxwell north of Gerrard. I am not convinced that the extra mileage of going all the way down to Queen/Eastern would be justified by the demand in that part of town, and it would add running time, something we hear a lot about on this blog. Going under the rail corridor has its own challenges, but it provides a reasonably easy way to connect with the existing subway system at Greenwood Yard.

   East York Civic Centre is a relic of the small town era of Toronto, and it does not deserve a subway in its own right. At least East General Hospital would benefit from improved accessibility.

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2. nfitz says:
   May 3, 2012 at 1:09 pm

   “Steve, your rejection of decoupling or breaking the YUS line at Union seems to be based on the assumption that you have to build a complex multi-level station like St. George at the existing Union TTC station.

   “However, there’s another option. If you build the new station as a cross like Bloor-Danforth, and continue the University line south down York, and the Yonge line west along Front, you should be able to instead have a simpler construction, that wouldn’t require simultaneous closure of both legs, but do it one at a time.”

   How do you close University without closing Yonge, at least if you are going to rebuild Union and put it under York-University. Why do you want the University Subway to go south of the railway tracks.

   You later state that you would probably have to lower St. Andrews to get under the Yonge line. How do you do this without closing all of University. In order to lower St. Andrew’s you would need to lower the tunnel coming south from Osgoode. This would remove the pocket track so you would have to terminate University at St. George. This would do wonders for crowding on Yonge Street.

   So let’s examine the effects your proposal would cause:

   1) The University part of the subway would be closed for a number of years while the south end was rebuilt.
   2) University Avenue south of Osgoode Station would need to be dug up as far south as York Street and then York would also need to be dug up.
   3) You would need to build another interchange station south of St. Andrew and west of Union.
   4) People would no longer be able to take a transfer less ride around the horn to get from lower University to lower Yonge or vice verse.
   5) It would probably cost close to $2 billion to decrease service, inconvenience many passengers for a number of years while completely destroying traffic and transit in the downtown.

   Are you planning on bringing the DRL south of the railway tracks to connect into the University subway? If so this idea has to be dumber than dirt. The projected ridership south of the rail corridor can be handled by the planned LRT upgrades and the lines would be true LRT down here.

   Also you would sever the Yonge line from the rest of the system and there would be nowhere to store or service the cars. Oh, I know, you will build the “North York relief line”, another well thought out gem.

   Next time you throw spaghetti on a transit map ask yourself what is the downside of this as well as what is the upside and also ask if this is the best way to spend our non-existent transit dollar?

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3. A lot of the discussion is drifting from the important point of “Why do you build heavy rail subway infrastructure?” It’s not because the streetcars and buses aren’t fast enough for competing with private vehicles.

   While it is true that subways are inherently faster than any local mixed traffic operation, the difference is far less for buses and streetcars in their own lanes (especially if there’s properly-applied and functional signal priority), although such comparisons need to be done with comparable stop spacing to be objective (e.g.: If a bus or streetcar in its own lanes stops every 300m, subway station spacing of 500m (e.g.: Spadina-St George) should be used for the comparison, not 2km station spacing (e.g.: Victoria Park-Warden)). Subways provide high capacity at great cost, and it is the capacity that makes them worth their investment – not their speed. That’s important because the design has to be geared towards attaining the critical mass needed to get a sustainable system (and that includes lining up planning initiatives beyond the transit infrastructure itself – which does not have to mean clusters of 50-storey-and-taller skyscrapers at every subway station, an approach that is ideally avoided since it will always draw fierce opposition from the locals).

   Getting the critical mass needed for subways requires getting the maximum practical number of origin-destination pairs conveniently served by any new subway infrastructure. Ultimately, it is convenience that will entice people to use transit. Speed has some role, but it is not the governing factor since many other elements are also part of the door-to-door trip. There isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all principle to figuring out how subway infrastructure fits with these considerations; although there will be similarities, there are different priorities in different parts of town along the line.

   In downtown, there will be less emphasis on transfers with intersecting routes (note that this does not mean transfers are ignored), whereas in the Thorncliffe Park area for example, transfers are a much more prominent factor (note that this does not mean consideration towards attracting good levels of walk-in traffic falls by the wayside).

   The former probably won’t have free-body transfers (except between intersecting subway lines), because the space for such facilities is unrealistic to shoehorn into 20m-wide streets surrounded by densely built properties (often built right up to the sidewalk), but station structures can integrate into adjacent developments, including the PATH if it’s in the area, and have a larger number of access points to get the maximum convenience to the largest number of destinations in the area around the station. Station spacing must be close in this area by extension – about every 500m or less, no different from the downtown portion of the Yonge line (Wellesley-College=~525m, College-Dundas=~450m, Dundas-Queen=~425m, Queen-King=~475m, King-Union=~475m). This costs money, as stations are the most expensive component, but failure to pay for this important characteristic of the line will result in a lower critical mass achieved and the possible creation of patchy quality of place distributions across downtown (i.e. high-quality places in station vicinities, low-quality places around the midpoint between stations), in addition to possibly increased dwell times and passenger congestion issues at stations, even though the demand being carried is lower (this depends a lot on fine-grained details that is difficult to convey effectively in broad strokes). If applied to full effect, the distance between subway stations’ access points would be about 300-and-something metres, which is dense enough to get the economies of scale benefit from retiring the streetcar service on the surface today (note: Usually only one streetcar line can reasonably be replaced).

   The latter, outside downtown, would have a bus (plus streetcar if applicable) terminal for free-body transfers, unless land is still impossible to come by (which will happen in some cases), and would likely have fewer access points per station (two different entrance/exit locations required by fire code), but the main access should be carefully located for best access by active modes to the highest number of people wherever possible. While stations will be somewhat further apart on average simply because significant natural features are being crossed along the way (including at least two Don crossings, once somewhere between the rail corridor and Queen, and again north of O’Connor), the spacing shouldn’t get so wide that bus services along the subway, say Pape Ave (or wherever), need to be retained. Bloor-Danforth is in the right ballpark at 650m through Old Toronto, as Bloor St W east from Jane St demonstrates, and this should be considered the upper limit. Convenience isn’t based on just the downtown portion of the line, as there’s an origin as well as a destination to each trip, and both need to be convenient for any given trip to be taken by a given transit corridor. In some cases, this will result in “Chester-like” stations, but this should not be regarded as something negative to be avoided, as it will become the only transit access for that local community when the bus service is retired upon the subway entering service. In the end, it is more expensive for the operating budget to have buses running on top of subway corridors because the stations are too far apart, and creates inefficient uses of resources that may shortchange service quality in other areas of the network.

   Subways are local transit, not regional long-haul lines (that’s a function best provided by GO). It is grossly wasteful to have subways and GO trains competing with each other for the same market – both are government-owned, just owned by different levels of government that, in Toronto, happen to be funded by the same tax base (about 1 in every 5 Ontarians lives in the 416/647). Gear the network towards attracting long-haul trips to GO where practical, allowing the TTC to focus on the local (shorter-distance) market like it was originally created for. Some paradigm shift in fare systems will be needed to achieve this. The sooner that issue gets a real debate, the easier it will be to look objectively and practically at how the DRL should be designed to function in the network.

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4. I’m curious if splitting the tunnels between two streets in the core would make things cheaper and/or easier. For example having the westbound tunnel under Wellington, and the eastbound under King. Station mezzanines would then be north-south oriented under streets like John, University, Yonge and Church. Might make it easier to bore/cut-and-cover the tunnels around the building foundations if you don’t have to squeeze to tunnels under one street. Might not even need traditional mezzanines if we incorporate the PATH network to join station segments and line and use Presto to track transfers.

   Steve: Station mezzanines are not quite as easy as you think. First off, you need two of them per station because fire code requires two separate paths to the surface. Building them the length of the block from King to Wellington would make them at least 150m long (the distance between these two streets), a substantial structure in its own right.

   The need for a mezzanine is dictated by the depth of the tunnel. If you are going with a deep bore, the tunnel cannot be close to the surface and by definition you will need an intermediate level. Also there is the matter of escalators and elevators. The PATH system does not run under the north-south streets, but between buildings. At John, for example, the Metro Hall block provides the route through its large mall under the King-John-Simcoe-Wellington block. A future connection across Wellington will be midblock. At University, a parking garage occupies the space on top of the University subway, and, by the way, any east-west line will have to go under that subway because it is fairly shallow.

   Building foundations are not an issue for a structure in the middle of the street, but if a route goes diagonally across a block, then it’s a big problem. “Dodging” around foundations really isn’t practical, and you have to consider buildings as if they were solid blocks. If you want to go under them, you have to go down a very long way and into bedrock. This will drive up the cost of the line quite substantially.

   At the risk of sounding frustrated, this entire debate with all sorts of schemes to make various DRL configurations “possible” is taking place because the TTC has abdicated the task given to it by Council — to investigate the DRL and, as a necessary part of this, to present information about our options.

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5. Engineering considerations are going to determine how the tunnel is built.

   Restrictions in the core mean that the line will probably need to stick to one street and be reasonably deep so stations can be built. The further from the core the line is the easier it is to change streets and tunnel shallower under smaller buildings.

   The reality is you are looking at one station, who has a western mezzanine facing onto Yonge, with an eastern entrance 200 to 300 metres further east. The mirror situation on University. These stations will need to be large to handle the passenger flows. As the line is east-west it will just have these two stations to handle the majority of its passengers. This section of the line will in effect function as a London Tube line. The next two stations east and west should be at least a kilometre apart. So roughly Spadina and Parliament. The reason for this [is that] with expensive deep stations and long travel times to platforms there is no point in having lots of stations close together.

   This line will not be used to for short journeys within the core, existing streetcars would be better at that. So South of Bloor and Danforth the line is unlikely to function like the existing Toronto Metro with lots of shallow stations, where you can replace local transport, but again more like a London Tube.

   Once you are away from the inner city though the line’s characteristics can change and it can revert to a more traditional Toronto style, if that is what you want.

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6. As the line is east-west it will just have these two stations to handle the majority of its passengers. This section of the line will in effect function as a London Tube line. The next two stations east and west should be at least a kilometre apart. So roughly Spadina and Parliament. The reason for this [is that] with expensive deep stations and long travel times to platforms there is no point in having lots of stations close together.

   So much for a rational plan. The “Toronto style” that you refer to means close together downtown and far apart once it leaves the core. The only reason it wouldn’t be used for short journeys is because you want to place stops 1km apart.

   For Spadina-maybe-depending on where the station box lies but skipping George Brown Campus/St. Lawrence Market is a losing idea. It’s a large generator of traffic on the 504 to and from Yonge.

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7. Look the reality is that Toronto’s downtown employment density is now on a North South axis (mainly because it has grown up around the Subway line). Logically therefore an East West Line will only intersect with the core at 2 stations compared to the 12 stations of the Yonge University line. That means that those two stations will need to be built to handle incredible loads. This means they will be very expensive. If the tunnels can be built at a shallow depth then more stations can be built. But it seems the big tall buildings and narrow streets make this a difficult proposition.

   Logically therefore the line near the centre needs to be deep. Which means stations are more expensive and not so handy for short trips. If the line is to be at all affordable you will not be able to build that many stations anyway. Inner Toronto already has a network of streetcars for local travel a station every 1km or so would act as express routing for the area. With smart cards it easy to manage through ticketing.

   Deep lines also allow easy transition between streets.

   Steve: Not necessarily. It depends on what stands above the tunnel and whether the depth of its foundations forces you down to bedrock.

   Once out of the core the line can get closer the surface and then it is up to the planners how many stations they can afford or how fast they want the line to run.

   Looking at the old Network 2011 plan for DRL, the line had 13 stations. After measuring the gaps only 4 station pairs had gaps less than a 1km. 3 were between 600 and 700 metres and one was 750 metres. Only two of those gaps pairs were near the city core. So I don’t see what I was saying that was so objectionable.

   Steve: The Network 2011 plan presumed that the DRL would be built with Skytrain technology on an elevated structure (if you can imagine this directly in front of Union Station). Having more stations was easier with that mode of construction.

   What ever options chosen will have to balance all these factors. Too many stations and the line will cost a fortune and you won’t be able to afford a very long line.

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8. One major problem that we’re not thinking of is the geology. It’s alluded to in the comments about digging south of Front and the low-grade fill they tossed in the lake, but even further north I imagine it will be an expensive consideration.

   Mostly, the bedrock lies at a very inconvenient depth through most of downtown. One of the side effects of the condo boom is seeing just how shallow it really is through downtown, about 40-50 feet down. I’m thinking, in particular, of that condo at University and Adelaide, where they hit bedrock about 50 feet down. We’ve gotten spoiled by the suburban construction where the overburden is glacial gravel hundreds of feet thick. I doubt there’s enough space between the existing University line (and the various other subsurface clutter) and the bedrock to fit another line in without having to partially chip into the rock, which will get very expensive, and we know there isn’t space on the Yonge side. Tunnelling would have to go deep enough to avoid the interface entirely and remain in bedrock (TBMs are generally optimized for either soil, or rock, but not both), and that would be very deep indeed. On the other hand, at that depth you can pretty much just mine it out with nobody noticing as Enwave did for the deep lake water cooling project, though surface access is a difficult problem.

   Another reason to think carefully about the “spaghetti on a map” proposals.

   Steve: Thanks for laying out the many concerns related to the geology of downtown Toronto. I have alluded to many of these issues in various comments, but you pulled it all together. One of my many reasons for disappointment that the TTC (and Metrolinx?) have not conducted reviews of the DRL in public is that precisely this sort of information, together with a map of building foundations and utilities, is essential to knowing our options for routes through the core. A great deal of the spaghetti planning would probably be eliminated if everyone know where a line is physically possible, and where not. There are cases (as in going through bedrock) where it might be technically possible, but prohibitively expensive.

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9. The DRL appears to be largely a City/TTC solution to Yonge line crowding, but is planned in a vacuum of not being able to consider all options available, specifically the Metrolinx controlled Go lines to the north. If all options were available, it seems likely a frequent all day service on Go lines would be less expensive and quicker to put in place than the DRL. The DRL then, likely with some different priorities, would be a longer term project.

   What is missing here is a regional overview, regional transit planning, precisely the task Metrolinx was set up to do. Metrolinx should be participating with the City in any DRL planning; it should make sure all options are on the table. What is the best way to do something irrespective of jurisdiction. Not only is Metrolinx failing in this regard, but there seems little prospect it will change soon.

   Metrolinx is all caught up in the ARL, building a completely separate railway at the expense of other projects. Suddenly all day service on the Georgetown line is pitched way into the future, because they cannot afford a fourth track they say!

   A quick look at the existing Go rush hour schedule and some guesses re ARL timing demonstrates that a Go train running 3 minutes behind the ARL at the airport junction will get to Union 4 minutes before the next ARL. Thus two tracks are plenty for BOTH Go and ARL. Restricting a double track railway to a little passenger train every 15 minutes is very poor utilisation of resources, and why?

   And it is due to this unnecessary exclusive use plan that triggers the notion of terminating some Go services in the Spadina Yard. Then we need a subway to finish the journey, which, if it comes from further west, will already be full, and expected to handle Go train (1600 seats) loads. Then we will need a SRL!

   With all this as background, it is obviously too much to expect our Regional Transit Planner to participate in, let alone lead DRL discussions.

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10. MarkE says:
    May 6, 2012 at 1:34 pm

    “A quick look at the existing Go rush hour schedule and some guesses re ARL timing demonstrates that a Go train running 3 minutes behind the ARL at the airport junction will get to Union 4 minutes before the next ARL. Thus two tracks are plenty for BOTH Go and ARL. Restricting a double track railway to a little passenger train every 15 minutes is very poor utilisation of resources, and why?

    “And it is due to this unnecessary exclusive use plan that triggers the notion of terminating some Go services in the Spadina Yard. Then we need a subway to finish the journey, which, if it comes from further west, will already be full, and expected to handle Go train (1600 seats) loads. Then we will need a SRL!

    “With all this as background, it is obviously too much to expect our Regional Transit Planner to participate in, let alone lead DRL discussions.”

    Mark, you are assuming that you are dealing with rational people who can build a rational network. How silly of you. You are dealing with the dumb mainline railway rules that have to protect against a 12,000 foot long freight running at 79 mph even if they will never run on this line. Any transit operator would have no trouble doing what you suggest but don’t try it on and line that meets DOT/FRA rules. It can’t be done. That is why I want Metrolinx to establish time and space isolated rights of way so they can use transit rules instead of railway rules.

    Because of the narrow platforms and stairs Union Station can not handle much more than one train every 10 minutes per platform. This is also about the minimum headway that can be handled on each track that meets DOT regulations. I want Metrolinx to use transit rules to run trains more frequently. In order to do this they need to remove tracks 3 and 6 to widen the platforms and stair wells on tracks 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7. Even if GO could only manage one train every 5 minutes with the widened platforms this would give 60 trains per hour or 120,000 pph in the peak hour. The subway couldn’t handle it nor could the sidewalks but it is possible for the station.

    Your problem MarkE is that you have not been totally inculcated in the Metrolinx mindset. You are still thinking logically and this is dangerous when dealing with bureaucrats. Everything you say is possible, but unfortunately it can’t happen. Keep attacking those windmills, maybe someone will eventually listen to the Man of La Mancha.

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11. Just to further andrewS’s comments about geology, I’m an environmental consultant and have supervised a number of geo-environmental investigations south of Bloor. For anyone wishing to throw spaghetti at the map you could consult Sharpe’s Quaternary Geology of Toronto and Surrounding Area. It’s excellent for the purpose as the North-South cross section is the Yonge Line, while the East-West cross section is the Bloor-Danforth Line.

    Looking at it you can see the middle Wisconsin tills become a thin mantle above Georgian Bay formation bedrock south of College, likely explaining the lack of a mezzanine at Dundas. At Wellington you’re probably looking at only 30 feet of silty/clay or silt tills before hitting bedrock. I imagine to get under the Yonge-University line you’re talking going through bedrock. Of course this isn’t the gospel and actual conditions can be highly variable. Another reason why Toronto is not Madrid. Drilling through a couple of hundred feet of sand must be nice.

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12. This time I am writing to disagree with Karl Junkin. 500 m spacing for DRL stops will lead to almost all Chester-like stations. That spacing works on YUS through downtown because of the streetcar lines – because each stop has a transfer to another line that is higher order than buses. And the stops being proposed have anemic bus routes on them, if any at all. Jarvis? The 65 Parliament serves less than 5000 people per day. Additionally, B-D will run parallel further north and there is not a lot of land before the lake to the south. “Chester-like” might actually be considered busy for these DRL stops.

    Almost every DRL plan between the Financial district and the Don Valley has at least one if not two parallel streetcar lines within one kilometre. With 100 m – 200 m stop spacing. If you want local service, it is already being supplied. I’d support 500 m stop spacing for an LRT, but there is no way that subway makes sense.

    As for your contention regarding competition with long-haul GO-routes, you’ll note that there are no GO stations (except Union for the plans that include them) located on most DRL plans. The first GO station heading east is at Main and Danforth. I seriously doubt that you meant to imply that Leslieville to downtown is a “long haul” trip better served by GO Train.

    I’m a Scarberian, but I fully support LRT over subways here. Because that’s what makes sense. Because that’s what the density and usage supports. But DRL plans like these, with multi-million dollar stops scattered every couple blocks try my patience. To me, your entire justification is “build it and they will come.” That is the exact same magical pony argument that Scarborough subway folks have been clinging to and if I reject it from my Ford-ite neighbours, I reject it from you too.

    Steve: Regarding GO Transit’s role, I believe that it is not to provide services within neighbourhoods downtown, but to offload long-haul trips from the outer 416 and inner 905 that might otherwise use the subway for want of any other way to travel. The absence of good peak and off-peak service on several north-south routes means that most riders are forced to count on the subway as their only option.

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13. Given the move to all-day more-frequent service on the GO rail network, I’m doubtful that Don Mills Road north of Eglinton would ever be relied upon as a high-capacity regional corridor.

    Steve: I agree, and that’s why I think the “Don Mills” subway should end at or near Eglinton. LRT should be all we need from there north.

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14. hey steve,

    There seems to be an awful lot of confusion regarding the parameters, including alignment issues, of the DRL. Yet doesn’t the latest Metrolinx offering–in the form of their latest study which combines a new Bathurst train station in combination with a downtown rapid transit line–which itself stretches from Exhibition Place through Spadina/Front, Downtown and then up to the Danforth–offer a glimpse of a real and elegant solution. Not one person here has offered any real insight into this proposal. Surely, they’ve put a minimum amount of thought into this study before releasing it to the general public.

    And what do you think of an integrated Don Mills Lrt, which has also already been theorized, terminating at the DRL terminus at Pape and Danforth? This seems like a realistic and cost effective solution. The notion that the communities along Don Mills and Pape between Eglinton and the Danforth can justify a subway line seems even more outlandish than the oft ridiculed completion of the Sheppard line.

    Steve: I think that the Metrolinx proposal has little detailed study behind it especially considering it shows the line coming west across Queen and then somehow making the diagonal all the way down to Front through a forest of existing high rise buildings. It’s an indication of an idea (that actually works better on Wellington) rather than a detailed review.

    As for Pape and Danforth, the evolution of my feelings about a subway through East York went roughly like this. During the Don Mills LRT study, it quickly became obvious that once the line came south of Flemingdon/Thorncliffe it would require substantial infrastructure. The original idea of following Overlea to the Leaside bridge ran aground both on structural concerns for the bridge and on curve radius problems in the transition from the bridge to Pape. From there south, the TTC’s attempt to shoe-horn an LRT line into the narrow four-lane street was both laughable and pathetic at the same time. Why they would expect to do this in East York when comparable streets downtown are operated as streetcar lines I don’t know.

    All that said, it became obvious that grade separation would be necessary from Pape Station north to at least the Don River crossing. If we are going to build that sort of structure, the question then is whether the DRL should continue north to the point where a surface alignment becomes possible again. Hence a DRL to Eglinton.

    Another advantage of this arrangement is that we would not have to figure out how to fit two lines (DRL + LRT) into a very cramped site at Pape and Danforth including all of the transfer traffic between the these lines. There is much more room at Eglinton for a major interchange.

    What annoys me in all this is that the TTC studies so consistently looked at single options and one line at a time (LRT study, DRL study, Eglinton study) rather than considering how options for a cluster of lines in this area might stack up against each other. More public information about options is always a good thing — informed debate is preferable to people drawing arbitrary lines on maps.

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15. I created a few maps showing the possible route for a Downtown Relief Line.

    In the first map, the DRL runs from Jane-Sheppard to Steeles East. It also shows what Toronto’s subway system might look like in the distant future. Admittedly it’s a long shot that the system would see such expansion since it’s not affordable.

    In the second map, I show a more common routing for the DRL running from Dundas West station to Don-Mills and Eglinton. It also shows what the transit system might look like once the proposed subway extensions and LRT lines are built. I will have to update the map now that the Eglinton and Scarborough LRT lines won’t be through-routed.

    The final map shows what the TTC network will look like once the 3 LRT projects are completed by 2020. The DRL is not on this map.

    Steve: 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. Going under existing structures is not a viable option. Otherwise, it’s good to see the evolving network actually drawn to show how its parts might relate to each other.

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16. There is (was?) a proposal for LRT line running from Etobicoke, along the PROW on the Queensway, through Parkdale (on some routing) and then along Bremner to Union.

    (This was probably at the bottom of the list for Transit City projects.)

    How would a western arm of a DRL line affect this?

    Steve: Yes, the Waterfront West line was at the bottom of Transit City’s list in part because of major disagreements about the routing in various places, and in part because there is a competing service called GO Transit that in a more sensible world than Toronto would have a competitive fare structure and service for southern Etobicoke.

    A western DRL would affect this to the extent that it competed with the inner part of the route. If the DRL West goes up the rail corridor, then it does not come anywhere near the WWLRT. If, however, it goes up Ronces or Parkside (both of which I consider to be poorly thought-out schemes), then the “WWLRT” will simply be the Long Branch car connecting to an express, grade separated route somewhere around Sunnyside. All of this is so far in the future that I can’t work up much excitement over the question. The real challenge on the waterfront today is east of Bay and down into the Port Lands. This is a far more pressing issue, one that needs to be solved in the immediate future.

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17. Steve says:

    “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. Going under existing structures is not a viable option. Otherwise, it’s good to see the evolving network actually drawn to show how its parts might relate to each other.”

    Thanks for pointing out the impossibility of running the DRL along Front St. The design I use in my maps for the DRL is based on Network 2011 I believe, which I guess is based on outdated information.

    Steve: In Network 2011, the DRL was a Skytrain line, and passed in front of Union Station on an elevated structure after dodging north from the rail corridor at Bay Street.

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18. I have become addicted to updates from this pleasantly geeky forum! I have thoughts.

    1) Learning about the geological restrictions of the downtown core is the most sobering bit of the discussion; I always figured it would be easier to push lines through the core.

    Steve, it seems inevitable based on earlier discussion that expensive deep mining through the bedrock is the only way you’d get an east-west line through the core on any alignment south of Queen. Given that is the reality and we’ll have to wait for fairy government godfather to fund the big dig, isn’t “spaghetti on a map” routing, or a southwesterly curve beneath buildings west of University, easier because excavation would be too deep to affect foundations? We would end up with Montreal (Snowdon) or Moscow or Washington DC (Dupont Circle) stations with escalators making very long descents, but that’s not the end of the world.

    1a) if deep excavation in some ways gives us more routing freedom, shouldn’t we be thinking of what the city will be like in 2050 and curl the DRL through the northwestern part of the port lands before swinging north up Pape? Canadian immigration-driven population growth means demand for Waterfront Toronto’s long-term plan to create a more humanistic Canary Wharf over there will come sooner than any of us think. There doesn’t need to be a station over that line built for decades, obviously.

    1b) If a DRL must use deep bedrock mining, wouldn’t this also be needed for Metrolinx’ GO tunnel under Wellington for the Lakeshore line? Could both be built?

    2) Do we need to rule out expropriating large buildings? My personal SimCity construction for the central DRL terminal would be to expropriate the Sheraton brutalist monstrosity immediately south of Nathan Phillips Square, perhaps by bribing the hotel’s owner with free city land for a new, less ugly hotel somewhere else, or some air rights for a smaller and prettier project over the terminal. Dig a very deep hole like Les Halles in Paris on that huge city block — Queen/Richmond/York almost to Bay. you could even put the Queen streetcar line subsurface for easy transfer. On top you’ve then created a plaza that’s got rid of downtown’s worst Soviet eyesore and effectively doubled the size of the city’s most beloved public space.

    I realize that the more you tack on to this project the more readers and perhaps our esteemed moderator roll their eyes, wanting to get something, anything built on a budget instead of people like me projecting their endless spaghetti fantasies. But it really does seem like a once in a century opportunity for city building, like London’s Embankment, and too expensive to ever remedy if we under-build the thing.

    I also find some of the discussion here is reminiscent of how engineers would approach a problem — Wellesley station is justified because it hits bus lines! (Rather than it being an integral part of the Yonge strip and Church & Wellesley as an urban experience.) Subway is never justified north of Eglinton on Don Mills because the rider numbers are there and it would be appropriate to force people to time consumingly switch to a little toy train after which they can switch again to more buses!

    None of it reminds me of how I holistically enjoyed much of Toronto as a downtowner when I lived there, but how certain trips were just too tedious to bother with (took me 45 minutes to get from Little Italy to Bay Street on streetcar/subway, unacceptable in winter; live in Parkdale, want to hang on the Beach on a hot day with your toddler? Get a taxi or else broil for the better part of an hour in an antique overcrowded streetcar.)

    I live in London, UK now, with so many commutes, realities, nights out possible as multiple points on a grid are connected. The DRL would be foremost to relieve Yonge/Bloor and the east end, but it would create new realities along its route. Yeah TO isn’t London but in 2050 it’ll be getting close.

    Thanks for indulging my rant..

    Steve: Some eye rolling is definitely required! We’re not talking about deep mining for the entire length of a DRL route, and you should be careful of presuming that technique to “justify” meanders in your alignment. The problem in the Port Lands is that it is all landfill in an old lake bed. Construction and maintenance would be a huge challenge. As for transfers, that’s been done to death here. At some point, we cannot justify continuing underground construction and a transition from subway to another mode is required. I am amused that you have no qualms about sending people into long descents to deep stations (itself a time consuming effort), but dislike a transfer connection which, if properly designed, should be an easy move for that relatively small proportion of riders who would ride through. Motorists “transferring” from a GO train to their parked car endure treks much longer than any transfer connection on the TTC, and they do so because overall the trip is still deemed “convenient”. I certainly agree about the attitude that any problem can be solved if one has only the will to do so, although that outlook can equally be found among politicians and others who don’t want to be troubled by the real world.

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19. Steve says:

    “In Network 2011, the DRL was a Skytrain line, and passed in front of Union Station on an elevated structure after dodging north from the rail corridor at Bay Street.”

    Wow, I had no idea. All this time I thought it was underground using traditional rolling stock. Were they planning on using ICTS technology?

    Steve: Yup. When I think what the elevated would have done to Front Street and Union Station (there are illustrations in the reports), it makes me extremely happy that technology never got beyond the SRT.

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20. Ka-Ming Lin said: 500 m spacing for DRL stops will lead to almost all Chester-like stations. That spacing works on YUS through downtown because of the streetcar lines – because each stop has a transfer to another line that is higher order than buses. And the stops being proposed have anemic bus routes on them, if any at all. Jarvis? The 65 Parliament serves less than 5000 people per day. Additionally, B-D will run parallel further north and there is not a lot of land before the lake to the south. “Chester-like” might actually be considered busy for these DRL stops.

    The Yonge line has 400-500m station spacing because it’s a local subway corridor that replaced a local streetcar corridor unable meet its crushing demand (in addition to alleviating the Bay and Church corridors that also had streetcar service trying to meet very high demand, but were not being replaced by the subway (even though the Church car ended up disappearing anyway for other reasons)). While the stops do coincide with connecting perpendicular corridors in the core, the bigger factor was the fact that there were many destinations in the core served by the streetcar that was being replaced, and since that streetcar was being replaced, the subway had to be designed to serve the same market at a comparable level of convenience to keep its market share (remember, transit was a profitable business for the City at this point in history).

    Since then, there are more destinations downtown along the Yonge corridor than ever, and more continue to unfold. Your claim that the downtown stations are sustainable only because of the connecting streetcar services is mathematically impossible. St Andrew and King stations combined clock about double the King streetcar’s ridership each day. It is known that there are many trips made along the streetcar corridors that don’t involve a transfer to the subway, so the percentage of King and St Andrew traffic that can be attributed to the streetcar must be less than 20% (and even 20% would represent such a high figure that its mathematically probability is questionable). Similar would be true for Queen (43K on streetcar vs. 82K at connecting Y-U stations) and College (41K on streetcar vs. 80K at connecting Y-U stations) as well, and for Dundas (32K on streetcar vs. 100K at connecting Y-U stations) I’d expect the figure to be 10% or less. See the subway ridership (direct PDF link) and surface routes’ ridership if you want to see the numbers for yourself.

    Considering that the King car is the busiest streetcar route (albeit nowhere near what Yonge was carrying in the 1940s), it is a natural candidate for a subway corridor because it is an established corridor with existing healthy ridership levels – and full of destinations along it, although some are still up-and-coming to some extent. The proximity to Queen also boosts the candidacy of the DRL through the core, although I don’t think the Queen car should be replaced (although the current route length can’t stand), just alleviated.

    You mentioned Jarvis: Nearby are St Lawrence Market, St Lawrence Hall, George Brown College, and numerous popular smaller establishments as well as numerous existing and new developments for local residents. This is a far cry from a “Chester-like” station. Sherbourne is surprisingly dense between Richmond St and the rail corridor, too, and growing. I agree that Parliament St doesn’t look like much now, but I wouldn’t be so quick to write it off – it’s known to be an area that’s gaining popularity. Yonge-Dundas used to be pretty ho-hum once upon a time, too, and now it has ridership higher than King (it should be highlighted that change of that magnitude did not and does not happen overnight). Then there’s Cherry [still Sumach at King] and the West Don Lands, a massive project now under construction. Similar to what Yonge did (particularly with King and Queen stations), this allows the subway line to hit most of the existing streetcar stops if stations have more than one access (which they are required to in modern fire codes). This is how a healthy heavy transit corridor gets maximum effect.

    The “Chester-like” station or two I was anticipating were in the area east of the Don River south of Danforth.

    Ka-Ming Lin said: Almost every DRL plan between the Financial district and the Don Valley has at least one if not two parallel streetcar lines within one kilometre. With 100 m – 200 m stop spacing. If you want local service, it is already being supplied.

    Like with Yonge and Bloor-Danforth, and as I stated in the previous comment I posted, the closest streetcar line to the new subway would in all likelihood be replaced by the subway in order to get the highest system efficiency (not just in the subway corridor, but also by freeing up resources to be deployed in other areas needing surface service improvements), so no, once the subway is in service that stop-every-200m-streetcar service is no longer being supplied, as that’s wasteful duplication.

    Ka-Ming Lin said: As for your contention regarding competition with long-haul GO-routes, you’ll note that there are no GO stations (except Union for the plans that include them) located on most DRL plans.

    You’re not thinking about networks. The DRL fits into a network, and does not exist in isolation as a standalone entity. Riders come from places beyond the subway stations’ immediate areas; people flow into Finch station from substantial distances away (in many cases, their bus trip to the subway is longer in kilometres than their trip on the subway). While there is an interesting phenomenon in which a large chunk of southbound Yonge traffic that transfers to become westbound traffic at Bloor, there’s a chunk of that downtown-bound traffic that could and should be carried by GO trains, but GO lines doesn’t have enough connections with TTC routes (and those connections that do exist have room for improvement), nevermind the unsettled issues relating to fares. With the Stouffville line especially, if GO lines were an integrated component of Toronto’s transit network, that ran trains all day, a portion of Scarborough-originating traffic that transfers at Bloor-Yonge may be diverted off the subway system. The GO corridors need better coordination with the transit planning future for Toronto, an issue that has lingered for a long time and remains still unresolved today, mostly (but not solely) because Queen’s Park isn’t prepared to put money into fare reform. This affects what the DRL may or may not need to do, or at least affect when the DRL needs to do it (whatever “it” ends up being).

    Ka-Ming Lin said:But DRL plans like these, with multi-million dollar stops scattered every couple blocks try my patience. To me, your entire justification is “build it and they will come.” That is the exact same magical pony argument that Scarborough subway folks have been clinging to and if I reject it from my Ford-ite neighbours, I reject it from you too.

    You aren’t recognizing the importance of origin-destination pairs in a transit system. Good systems cost money, and politicians need to accept this – as do you. Cutting corners in capital will mean less ridership and worse congestion on the road network. As for “build it and they will come,” it doesn’t apply here since “they” are to a large degree already there – and those that aren’t already there, the market has already been moving at a pretty aggressive clip expecting them to be there, all without any announcement of a subway funding commitment to build a DRL in these areas. They are there, and more are coming, but the subway hasn’t and isn’t being built, and if you weren’t aware, the Yonge subway and King streetcar are difficult to get on at peak periods in the peak direction. The DRL is an established corridor with existing strong ridership in addition to credible projections that show more latent demand (you can’t carry 17,500 an hour with LRT). The numbers and the history of Toronto’s different subway implementation practices paint a different picture than the one you are presenting.

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21. 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.

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22. 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.

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23. @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.

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24. 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.

    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.

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25. 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.

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26. 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.

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27. 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.

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28. 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.

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29. 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.

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30. 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.

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31. 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.

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32. 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.

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33. @ 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):

    …“they” are to a large degree already there – and those that aren’t already there, the market has already been moving at a pretty aggressive clip expecting them to be there, all without any announcement of a subway funding commitment to build a DRL in these areas.

    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).

    Ka-Ming Lin said: 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.

    Actually, you did; you said the streetcar lines are what make those stations work – look:

    Ka-Ming Lin said: That spacing works on YUS through downtown because of the streetcar lines – because each stop has a transfer to another line that is higher order than buses.

    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).

    Ka-Ming Lin: 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 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.

    Ka-Ming Lin said: 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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

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34. 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.

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35. 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.

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36. 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.

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37. 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.

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38. 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.

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