Updated August 2, 2013 at 6:00am:
André Sorensen has written a commentary in today’s Star expanding on his proposed use of the rail corridor for express airport service and a quasi Downtown Relief line. I’m with him on a more intelligent use of the rail corridor, especially to the northwest of downtown, but not with the premise that this could replace the proposed subway from Don Mills & Eglinton to the core.
Updated July 27, 2013 at 7:00am:
I have received correspondence from Professor André Sorensen, the original author of this proposal, that puts it in a somewhat different light.
This information has been added at the end of this article.
Original article from July 25, 2013:
Another proposed “relief line” surfaced recently with a scheme supported by Councillors Ana Bailão and Karen Stintz (who also is TTC Chair).
At the July 24 TTC Board meeting, Chair Stintz moved:
“That TTC CEO Andy Byford initiate discussions with appropriate Metrolinx staff to determine the feasibility of using the Georgetown and Lakeshore East Transit GO Transit corridors for the Downtown Relief Line, as part of the Downtown Relief Line environmental assessment.”
Regular readers of this blog as well as other other venues where the DRL is discussed and dissected will know that fantasy maps of new lines can consume a vast amount of web browsing time and debates verging on pitched battles develop between advocates of various schemes.
Toronto Council, a body which effectively ceded responsibility for major transit planning decisions to Queen’s Park in response to capital subsidies ranging up to 100%, has shifted to “let’s make a deal” mode. We have already seen a debate nominally about revenue tools be highjacked into series of “subway in every ward” motions. The Scarborough Subway proposal was only one of those on the table, and Council, unconstrained by the need to actually pay for anything, was more than happy to endorse whatever its members put forward.
Remember, this is not a government by latte-sipping pinko Commies, but a supposedly business-minded bunch of tax-fighting conservatives.
Into this environment comes a new proposal marrying some of the existing GO corridors with a local transit scheme. The idea, in brief, is to build a U-shaped route from northern Etobicoke southeast along the Weston rail corridor, through Union Station, out the Lake Shore East corridor to Scarborough Junction, and then north to Kennedy Station. Although it was not part of her motion, Stintz talked about using the rail corridors for an LRT route since Metrolinx was planning to electrify anyhow.
The scheme is superficially attractive, but it needs to be taken apart to see what works, what should be kept, and what needs rethinking.
What Will Fit in the Rail Corridors?
If a new line is to be built on dedicated tracks, there must be some place to put it. The Weston corridor is already full side-to-side thanks to the extra tracks Metrolinx has added for expanded services and for the UPX to Pearson Airport.
Through Union Station, any new service, especially one with a distinct technology, would have to find new space for its tracks, or permanently displace some existing operation.
To the east, Metrolinx already plans or has built more capacity in the corridor, and room for a separate line may be hard to come by.
Any new service on Metrolinx corridors should be provided with mainline compatible equipment such as electric multiple unit cars (EMUs). These are technically the equivalent of a subway car, streetcar or LRV, but built to mainline railway standards. This eliminates issues with locations where, necessarily, the new, local service must cross over existing regional and freight operations (yes, there is still the occasional freight train even though Metrolinx owns the corridors now). It also eliminates issues with cars built to city transit standards (operating voltage, collision strength, platform height, etc.) having to co-exist on a rail corridor.
We could have a long debate about whether Canadian regulations about this are reasonable, but don’t expect them to change anytime soon given the overriding concern with rail safety. Where such operations do exist, there is temporal separation so that a mainline train and LRV never occupy tracks where they could conflict. This is clearly impossible in an already-busy commuter rail corridor.
The UPX is something of an embarrassment, a line dating from the dark ages of a previous federal government, handed off to a PPP (SNC Lavalin) and finally taken over by the McGuinty government at Queen’s Park as a Pan Am Games project. At least two chances to revisit its design as a premium fare express service have been lost thanks to the project’s charmed state, but it will be difficult if not impossible to create a local Etobicoke-Weston-Downtown service in this corridor without taking over the tracks now designated for the UPX.
East of Union, indeed even through Union Station, the situation is more complex. The UPX is on the west/south side of the Weston corridor, but a through service must pass through Union, avoid conflict with tracks turning north at the Don Valley (the Richmond Hill corridor, itself slated for considerably improved service), and then arrive at Scarborough Junction on the north side of the rail corridor to turn north to Kennedy without blocking service on the Lake Shore itself.
This is an example of the problems caused by linking an east and west “DRL” especially if a non-standard technology like LRT were going to be used in the rail corridor.
Metrolinx/GO Electrification Plans
Although Metrolinx believes in electrification in principle, seeing it in practice is quite another matter. Transportation Minister Glen Murray has spoken of having the UPX electrified “by 2017”, but more recently this has softened to merely having the conversion “started in 2017”. That will get electric territory from the west end of the rail shed at Union to the Airport, but will not deal with the train shed itself, nor with electric service on the Lake Shore to a proposed maintenance facility in Oshawa.
The UPX will have a small yard for its small fleet in Rexdale, but any higher-capacity urban line will need more storage and maintenance facilities somewhere, and this pushes the scope of a first stage electrification beyond what is planned for the UPX.
A strong argument can be made that Metrolinx should electrify sooner rather than later, but any scheme for local service on GO trackage should work with the likely rollout first in the Weston corridor to the Airport.
The Function of a “Downtown Relief Line”
There are three major issues about a “DRL” that tend to get in the way of any discussion:
- Wherever it goes, this line will cost a lot of money and be difficult to build.
- The term “Downtown Relief” implies in some political circles that nobody north of Bloor Street will benefit, a problem worsened by the TTC’s insistence on showing only the segment nominally from Pape to Union in their plans.
- Demand for travel to downtown originates in many places, and one line will not solve everyone’s problems. However, only one line is ever drawn on the map assuming that we cannot possibly afford more.
A line diagonally to the northwest would serve a travel demand that does not now have a direct route to downtown except for a few peak period, peak direction GO trains. As it heads northwest, the Weston rail corridor goes through a widening swath of Toronto that is remote from the subway network. Rapid transit, whatever its form, would be an addition to this part of the city.
An important design issue, however, is that most of the proposed stations are not at major employment or residential nodes and this is unlikely to change in the medium term, possibly longer. Railway corridors have their limitations partly because of historic industrial areas and because more attractive development sites exist elsewhere.
Good feeder bus services and interchanges will be essential, and by implication, the line should be part of the TTC fare grid. By the time anything like this is built, the long-standing and highly artificial separation of GO and TTC as two separate fare structures must end as this is a barrier to GO’s role in supplementing/relieving subway capacity.
The eastern leg is more of a problem. With a subway interchange at Kennedy (to the presumed, by then, extended Danforth subway), the eastern service could bleed off some subway traffic provided that the interchange were reasonably convenient and service frequent. We have already seen how the supposed problems of a much-simplified LRT-to-subway transfer at Kennedy rank with The Apocalypse for Scarborough riders, and they will need a big incentive to change trains at Kennedy.
The line has stations closer to downtown, but the feeder bus network goes to the subway and is unlikely to be reorganized to feed into the proposed station locations further south on that eastern leg.
Both halves of this line look to divert riders from the Bloor-Danforth subway, but they do almost nothing to reduce the north-south flow on the Yonge line north of Bloor Station. That has always been the challenge for “downtown relief” — shifting north-south travel away from Yonge Street.
Metrolinx recently launched a study of travel in, broadly speaking, the Yonge corridor. This will include not only the existing YUS subway, its northern extensions and the DRL, but also the potential role of the GO corridors.
“Relief” can come in more than one form. At its simplest, if some of the commuter demand can be shifted from the present or future subway to the GO corridors, this reduces the peak demand on the subway. A more complex goal would be to not only shift demand, but to make the new corridor a catalyst for redevelopment and an all-day link between sites with substantial demand. This is more of a challenge that simply running trains on existing tracks. Indeed, a line intended to lure development needs more stops in good locations, more nodes to stimulate, than a line whose function is to whisk passengers from the 905 to Front & Bay as quickly as possible.
Improved service on all of the GO corridors, not just from Woodbine racetrack to Kennedy Station, is essential in the medium term. We cannot wait decades for Metrolinx and Queen’s Park to fiddle around with small scale service improvements and implementation schedules stretching beyond the retirement of most Torontonians.
Over the past month, I have heard comments about the DRL suggesting that the line really isn’t necessary if only we can find some lower-cost alternatives. Even this Weston-Downtown-Kennedy line seems to be couched in the same terms — build this and you can avoid the cost of an underground DRL.
In the wake of the Scarborough Subway debate (whatever one may think of the outcome), it is clear that the DRL and its budget are huge targets for those with vanity projects, the chicken-in-every-pot subway plans. If we go down this road we will return to an era of pure transit fantasy, with lines built for ego and to court votes, and we will continue to defer a long overdue route in Toronto.
The TTC did the city no good by its long insistence that whatever might happen, more riders could be stuffed onto the Yonge subway through:
- diversion of riders to the Spadina line once it is extended to Vaughan
- trains with higher capacity (the Toronto Rockets or “TRs”)
- new signalling that would allow trains to run closer together
The TTC gave only passing thought to:
- constraints on station capacity (except at Bloor-Yonge where a very expensive expansion scheme is proposed akin to what is now happening at Union),
- the limitations of terminals (where the physics of train movements and the speed of operator responses set a lower bound on train departures), and
- fleet size (there is no budget provision for the extra trains a more frequent service would require, nor for their storage and maintenance).
This is a classic case of “just one more project” to attain the goal we have been promised, and the likelihood that we will never quite get there while demand and congestion continue to grow. When the full cost and complexity of fitting everyone onto the existing subway is lowballed, the “high cost” of a DRL can look daunting, and the TTC constantly downplayed it as an option. Going north of Danforth to Eglinton and beyond was rarely mentioned.
To his credit, TTC CEO Andy Byford sees the situation differently:
Mr. Byford stressed that, even if the idea is deemed feasible, at some point the TTC will have to go underground.
“I still think, if we talk about the east, there will ultimately, definitely need to be a separate corridor. A separate subway going from somewhere like the Danforth, or maybe even further north than Eglinton, down along King or Queen, and then up to Dundas West,” he said. [National Post]
Not One, But Many
The heart of the Metrolinx Big Move plan, for all its limitations, is to look at transit service as a network, not as individual projects. Many debates about the DRL have turned on single-line implementations and each of these is coloured by the objectives advocates for each proposal might favour. It is impossible to serve all of these goals with one line — there are too many “dots on the map” as potential areas deserving service, and too many demand corridors for one spaghetti-shaped line to serve all of them.
Metrolinx, the TTC, Toronto Council and the public need to understand the limitations of each scheme, the benefits each will confer (or not), and how each component will fit into a larger plan. Regional service and fare integration will be essential to making this work so that riders ignore the colour of the vehicle when making their route selection. We seem to be prepared to spend billions on subway lines so that riders can have cheap “TTC” fares to downtown rather than looking at what can be achieved for less total cost with improvements to the rail corridors.
Possibly, if Metrolinx churns out its study fairly quickly, we will get some of this info. Meanwhile, “debate” will be driven by each Councillor’s new map, and that is no way to plan a network.
Updated July 27:
The origin of this proposal is in work done by Prof. André Sorensen from the University of Toronto. He wrote to me about it on July 26:
Hi Steve
Just read your blog on my DRL Pearson idea, that Karen Stinz moved to be examined further. I would be happy to send you a fuller explanation, if you like. You got part of the idea wrong. The proposal is to use the UPX tracks. But the main point is that for regional transit it is time to look at electric express/local services along the rail corridors. Not sure where you got the map you published, but it is just a draft to measure the population along the route. I would be happy to send you a more final version.
André
[The map was taken from Councillor Ana Bailão’s Facebook post.]
In a further note, he said:
The point is that this would use the UPX tracks that are currently in place, and could start as an express service, later being modified to allow the local service. It would certainly have to be done to mainline rail standards, for the reasons you indicate.
I am currently working on an analysis of the development potential of the nodes along the corridor from Union Stn. to the Airport. I think that this corridor has much more development potential than along the Bloor Danforth line, partly because it lies between downtown and the Airport, and partly because of a lot of vacant and lightly used land along the corridor. Bloor did not have those conditions. The corridor is between the two largest employment nodes in the region, the Airport and Downtown. That will drive a lot of potential development.
I agree that local services would have to be reorganized to feed to those new stations.
best wishes,
André
For more information, please read Sorensen’s paper The Logic of Express-Local Rail Service to Pearson Airport and the associated map.
Steve Munro 
We don’t need to waste money drawing lines on maps anymore. We need a funding plan.
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A few points:
1) Metrolinx is currently tendering for a study to look at all the ways to relieve pressure on the Yonge line other than the DRL. (With the probable aim of reducing but not eliminating the amount of new subway). It’s called the “Relief Line Network Study” (the word “downtown” is gone…)
Steve: Yes “Downtown” was removed as a political gesture, and to emphasize that the benefit is not just for we pampered folks who already have our own personal subway lines.
2) If I was to pick a GO corridor to relieve the Yonge line, then the obvious one is the Richmond Hill line. Yes, it’s very sinuous (and hence slow) – but some careful choice of which bits to “straighten” plus double-tracking could get you 10-minute 2-way service. (The current track configuration and signalling allows for hourly all-day 2-way service).
3) The constraint with any GO-corridor based solution is Union Station. Even post-upgrade, the number of trains that can serve Union is limited (~30/hour each way). The signalling on all of GO’s lines could easily support 10-minutes headways — but you couldn’t get 6 trains/hour to/from six lines through Union. (The Barrie line will be signalled this year, I believe). Half-hourly Lakeshore service plus hourly service on the other lines, plus 15-minute UPEx service makes 22 trains/hour. That doesn’t leave much room for a high-frequency service, sadly.
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@Joe: We had a fully funded plan for three LRT lines (Finch, Eglinton, Sheppard) and an LRT conversaion (the SRT), and look what happened there…
And yes, we do need “lines on maps” – otherwise there’s nothing to fund. Governments don’t hand out billions to municipalities to fix transit congestion in some yet-to-be-determined way.
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Great informative article covering it, but latte is spelled latte without an accent.
Steve: We pretentious downtowners include the accent. 😉
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@Tom West – The funding for “Transit City” is not coming from a long term strategy. Although Metrolinx will have you believe such. Just more Politics.
Similar lines have been drawn over, and over, and over again for 40 some odd years. And here we are still hitting the wall of a funding discussion. I know its fun to look at and dream but we need a concrete strategy or your kids will be drawing the same lines as you in a few years.
Steve: The Eglinton, Sheppard, Finch and (maybe) Scarborough LRT lines are all funded from general revenues out of the original $16b “commitment” to transit. Any future lines are funded from the new revenue tools, although given all of the delays on the LRT lines, I would not be surprised to see them slide into that funding pool too.
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Much as it is good for the TTC chair to discuss GO expansion, Karen Stintz needs to think more carefully about this plan:
– LRT rolling stock makes no sense on a GO line. Modern EMU commuter rail stock should be used instead.
– GO expansion needs to include all the lines, not just Lakeshore East and Kitchener. Lakeshore West and Milton are conspicuously missing from this map.
– The lines will go outside city limits, obviously. TTC has a bad habit of pretending that there is nothing outside city limits. This proposal would be a Metrolinx project, not a TTC project.
– If there are going to be more stops added to GO lines there needs to be a local-express system. Like for example on the Georgetown line an express train goes from Union to Bramalea with no stops, and a local train stops at all the minor stops shown on this map.
– Somehow the replacement of the Scarborough RT needs to be integrated into this. If there is any talk at all about electrifying/double tracking the Stouffville line then Stintz’s expensive proposal to replace the Scarborough RT with a tunneled subway makes no sense. I wonder if it would be possible to convert the Scarborough RT to electrified GO technology (obviously would require widening the Ellesmere curve and removing the city public works yard there) and run trains from Scarborough Centre to Union Station?
– As for Union Station – a cheap way of expanding Union Station capacity might be to remove one (or both) of the freight bypass tracks on the south side of Union, widen platform 26/27 and make this the dedicated Lakeshore/Stouffville platform, the idea being that with electrification one could run trains at 2 minute frequencies through here with the wider platform. Is the freight bypass track actually used anymore and if so, is there really a need for 2 of them?
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Well, if you want to use the accent that’s your choice, but the Italian spelling has no accent, and if you thought it was French, the spelling would be café au lait.
Steve: It started out as a mistake on my part, and I then turned it into a joke about pretentious downtowners, a reverse shot at those who consider themselves so superior because they live outside the old city of Toronto. I am going to edit that part out of the article and leave only a mystifying set of comments here.
I’m dumbfounded by the Eastern portion of that proposal, it does very little for the areas so poorly served by the 501 on Queen Street East.
Steve: I agree that the eastern chunk does nothing for the areas it passes through. Looks nice on the map, but it takes more to be a good transit line.
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I agree that this may not be that great at relieving the Yonge line, but it does not meet it is not warrented.
Steve: I presume you meant to say “… but it does not mean it is not warranted.”
This line should go from Brampton to Markham so it could also get some Regional support – but I can see why TTC only thinks of the Toronto portion. A couple of stations could be removed in the West, and a couple of them added in the East – most notably by extending this to at least Agincourt or farther. I guess nobody even dared give a cost estimate for this proposal.
Steve: Your proposal gets us to the inevitable tug-of-war between regional and local services. I did not say, by the way, that the line was not warranted. I am much more supportive of the western leg (because it serves a new, distinct travel pattern) as opposed to the eastern one (because it duplicates the Danforth subway).
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This may be silly, but would a Don Mills LRT (tunnelled where necessary in narrower parts) create a feeder to this that better connects ridership / “transit nodes” / etc with this proposed line??
Steve: The inner end of the eastern part of this proposal duplicates somewhat the bottom end of the DRL. The problem with doing this on the rail corridor is that there is limited room for this. As for bringing the Don Mills LRT down to meet this line, there are two challenges. The first is that the demand on a Don Mills line south of Danforth is likely to be close to if not over what LRT can handle. The second is that you will introduce a transfer off of this line when it is quite close to downtown and at a point where the eastern leg coming from Scarborough will be heavily loaded. The analogy I would use would be for anyone who tries to get on the Danforth subway westbound at Broadview in the am peak.
If a Don Mills line is going to come that close to downtown, it may as well continue all the way, not force a transfer for the last few kilometres.
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Councillors, especially Scarborough Councillors, keep raising ideas like this.
Surely adding it to the EA as an option, studying the benefits and disadvantages of it are exactly what should be done. If it all goes how we think it goes, it would not serve to divert enough traffic from Bloor-Yonge to do the job as a relief line, and is probably technically infeasible from a ROW perspective (or will be very expensive). There’s no way it would be the preferred option.
So adding it to the EA, demonstrating it’s not feasible, is a good thing. When we get down the nuts and bolts of trying to fund this in the next few years, we shouldn’t have a fifth column of Scarborough councillors trying to subvert the process.
Kudos to TTC for looking at options like this now, when there’s time to figure it out. Rather than after Option X has already been funded and it’s being tendered.
Steve: I agree in principle up to the point where we study the option if only to disprove its value. However, there is a mindset I have encountered a few times now in different contexts that appears to be trying to kill the DRL and divert its funding elsewhere. This prejudges the outcome of such a study, and if it’s a political mindset, that prejudgement could override any “facts” the study provides. It would not be the first time this has happened in Toronto.
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No to so-called replacement … but electrified service on the GO corridors would be a great addition to (or precursor to, depending on the timing) a Don Mills and City line running from Don Mills and Eglinton to Exhibition/Liberty Village via Downtown.
Frankly the extra money to be spent on the Bloor-Danforth extension would go far to build a frequent service on these GO corridors.
Too bad this is really just another step in Stintz’s mayoralty campaign … the Scarborough Subway being an attempt to lock in votes and council support (especially in Scarborough) and this electrification proposal being an attempt to show Karen Stintz has a vision for the whole of Toronto. It’s “One City” by proxy and no other name.
Cheers, Moaz
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A Brampton – Markham urban frequency electrified service makes all the sense in the world, but this service really seems to do more to damage that idea’s credibility than advance it IMO. Especially on the Western leg there are too many inner city stops to well serve the regional purpose that will get the core ridership. The eastern misses the major justification for a DRL. Selling it as a Toronto ONLY line hurts it politically and sets up for a dangerous appearance of cost escalation when the project inevitably morphs into a more reasonable scope.
The DRL really should be separated from inner suburban and regional services IMO. It’s core purpose really is to relieve the existing services and open up a couple of very urbanized areas far removed from rapid transit. It is very much an urban subway, much more in the spirit of the original Yonge and Bloor Danforth lines than any of the suburban subways are building and contemplating now (I say this as someone not categorically opposed to suburban subway projects). There might even be some potential for a DRL that links into the Richmond Hill GO corridor, but consuming capacity in the Union Station Rail Corridor, intercepting Danforth and Eglinton so far east, badly compromising connections to the surface network and missing Thorncliffe and Flemingdon this line fails as a DRL and fails as a regional rail line.
Even from the political angle getting the subway crowd to buy into a regional express network makes a lot of sense to me, especially given the provincial and federal appeal of lines that reach far beyond the city of Toronto (consider the riding’s involved in a properly scoped high frequency network running from Kitchener to Markham and Oshawa to Hamilton both via Union) but this proposal is not at all the way to go about it.
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I think that we should not be using heavy rail (electrified or not) to act as a subway substitute. Heavy rail should be used for longer distances and with fewer stops.
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My dream has always been to see that Go/Metrolinx beefs up service and frequency on their lines running through Toronto (in a similar way that the RER works in Paris, as good example: For those of you not familiar with the RER, it’s a regional heavy rail network that penetrates deep into the suburbs of Paris but is fully integrated with the Metro/Tram/Bus network within Paris proper and is good for local trips of more than 2km in downtown Paris. Stations are generally 1k apart down-town.) Impossible in Toronto, you might say? Well, it’s becoming more possible as Presto gets rolled out. This would definitely mean increased service levels in both directions on the GO lines running through town. It would also mean that the TTC would have to properly feed into the GO-Rail network as well as subway network. We literally have a lot of transit relief already underfoot with infrastructure already in place. And it’s a really cheap solution that can be enacted in a few years with little disruption. Imagine getting on at Kipling station (on the Milton line) and being downtown in 15 to 20 minutes or Danforth or Guildwood and being downtown in an half hour! Until the TTC and Metrolinx stop bickering, I guess I’m just dreaming.
Steve: Much of the bickering comes from provincial funding policies that have always been heavy on capital construction and light on operating subsidies. Fare integration will not happen as long as each agency is protecting its revenue stream to ensure it doesn’t lose out by giving cheaper fares to intermodal passengers.
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Another pair of platforms has already been added at the south side of Union. The capacity issues are partly a matter of routing trains in/out of Union, not just the number of platforms.
Further, using the south-side platforms for Lakeshore/Stouffville line trains would mean they would cross other all the empty stock moves between the Don Yard and other platforms at Union. The current allocation minimizes the number of paths crossing.
Everyone, please repeat after me: “electrification does not change the maximum frequency of service.”
(Frequency is dictated by the signalling system in place. The current system could support 5-minute headways, and the technology could support 3 minute headways. Electrification would change neither of those numbers.)
Steve: Electrification does allow trains to accelerate and decelerate faster, and this affects design distances for control of closely spaced trains. However, the biggest issue would be platform capacity at Union where a trainload of passengers will be boarding or leaving, and the platform space has to be ready for the next train within one headway.
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What exactly is stopping Metrolinx from lobbying hard to reform “safety” practices to make them more conducive to regional rail? They run Canada’s largest passenger rail system. If they really wanted to flex their muscle to reform operating procedures (which incidentally would vastly increase performance and reduce operating costs), who would realistically oppose them? If Ottawa can get a waiver to run the O-Train, surely Metrolinx could enact some form of change.
Steve: The O-Train uses temporal separation, something that is not available to Metrolinx. Moreover, we need to distinguish between rules that may directly benefit GO train operations as opposed to those affecting interoperation of other technologies like LRT or subway on rail corridors.
With the recent high profile issues of rail safety, nothing is likely to be changed that would compromise the regulations.
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I find this an intriguing idea. A one seat ride from Malvern all the way to Union Station is political gold. With any major public works project the most important element is not design or funding, but sustained political will. Without sustained political will the project will die, no matter how “good” it is.
Although to get true “relief” they would have to expand the carrying capacity of the Don Valley corridor. I would be interested to see how a Don Valley express bus service (both TTC and GO) could integrate with a dedicated King St. transit corridor.
Steve: A Don Valley Express Bus must, at some point, emerge onto the local street system. Even if this were a King Street transit corridor, they would quickly become bogged down. This is the problem faced by Ottawa and one reason behind their conversion to LRT.
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It seems like all the “Relief Line” talk seems to assume that many, if not most riders who transfer at Bloor-Yonge and St. George have their trips terminate at Union/King/St. Andrew. As someone who takes the Yonge line down everyday, I would say with the exception of Wellesley, there is almost an equal amount of riders who alight at all of the stations between Bloor and Union. Although yes, more people seem to get off and Queen/King/Union.
I think the Relief Lines are essential and should have been built decades ago, but it seems like [the proposal] serve[s] the purpose of providing better transit where it’s currently needed and the density supports it, as opposed to “relieving” the YUS which I think would continue to see very high ridership.
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If the UPX gets in the way, couldn’t it be converted directly into the western end of the DRL?
It will be, even by Metrolinx’s estimates, a real money loser, and it won’t be used by commuters at the price they are proposing ($25 or so).
Yes, it won’t connect to the east, but I’d guess that few people go past Union. And yes, it needs to be electrified. But is there something that prevents it being a good stopgap measure, which is, after all, what we’re looking for here?
Steve: As I said in my article, the UPX and its trackage should evolve into a western line once the political imperative to pretend that UPX is worthwhile in its own right evaporates (after the Pan Am Games). The eastern branch of the proposal offers little to the network.
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Drawing lines again is right… Too many stops in this proposal, and the Western leg goes the wrong way to help as a relief line… If they want to release some of the load on the Bloor line they should swing it down the CP/GO Milton corridor instead of up through Weston. This would also reduce the complications on where to put the extra trains as there is more space in the corridor south of Dundas West/Bloor than up through Weston.
Lets do this, station review East to West:
Kennedy, obvious…
St Clair East (just call it Midland to avoid confusion?), ok
Warden, ok…
Main, yes, if they keep the existing streetcar connection especially.
Greenwood… i wouldn’t expect a whole lot of demand but it’s a distance choice?
Gerrard Carlaw, sensible
The next 3 are problematic:
Queen east is too close to G/C, especially if the G/C station goes between G/C and Dundas which is the most reasonable as the corridor is straighter there.
Distillery Portlands and StLawrence East Bayfront are located too close together and run foul of the Union approaches…
One of them, i’d pick Distillery, forget the other 2.
Union… if there was any way to put the line down King instead… but its the necessary evil.
Bathurst City Center, King Liberty and Queen West, again too close together…one stop south of King in the west (along Douro St would make sense?)… then Lansdowne, Bloor, Scarlett, Royal York/Dundas(ish… complicated spot), Kipling… and if you want put in another stop north of Sherway somewhere.
Run it with full size EMUs 4-6 cars long (2 or 3-dual units coupled makes the most sense, run single dual units on weekends?) every 10-15 minutes at TTC fares and there might be some relief for Bloor/Danforth, but very little for the YUS.
Problem is even with very good EMUs they can’t run Subway station spacing and still keep trains moving. Heavy rail just has more mass and more momentum to overcome, and unless you totally isolate the line you aren’t going to get Subway style/weight trains on it and keep GO/VIA/freight traffic running. To isolate the line we are talking about 2 NEW tracks the whole length minimum… with complicated bridgework near Union and the Junction, doesn’t seem worth it over building the actual DRL subway?
Steve: I’m not even going to bother fixing the formatting this comment. The nub of its argument is in the last paragraph.
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Hmm, well you really need both. Some form of DRL to relieve Yonge and widen the city centre. Plus a new commuter train tunnel that either has one stop under Union or slightly North with a couple [of] extra underground stops to spread passenger distribution.
Then you could develop a proper RER/S Bahn Crossrail network with the highest use lines using the tunnel with other routes using Union station.
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Great post Steve.
Regarding the limited track space due to the UPX problem. Would it be possible to run a shorter-distance airport express train from Pearson to Weston, and then continue down the corridor with an above grade subway/LRT with local stops from Weston to Union? This is similar to the JFK Express to the New York MTA line.
Steve: The problem is more simply addressed by converting the UPX into a local service which is what it should have been designed as from day 1.
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A New (Downtown) Relief Line
There is an obvious fascination with drawing lines along existing Rights Of Way and saying “Here is a new Line.” While I’ll admit that the Weston Sub does appear to be a natural transit corridor because it follows an old established route and it has lots of room along most of its R.O.W., it, and all other lines that use rail corridors, still have a problem at Union Station. Even if the station could handle the trains the pedestrian system would be overwhelmed.
UPX is a disaster in its planning and proposed method of operation. I have not seen the newest plans but originally it was only going to have 3 car platforms and a single track into the airport that could not take locomotives or double deckers. Who would build part of a system that was completely incompatible with the rest of its System? The province of Ontario á là ICTS in Scarborough, now SRT.
I have a totally off the wall hare brained proposal, mainly to stimulate other “Out Side The Box” or “We Need A Paradigm Shift” or what other buzz word/phrase you would like to throw in.
1) Join the CP Belleville Sub to the York Sub east of Toronto where they cross and join CP’s Galt Sub to the York Sub near Milton and widen the York Sub. This gets all mainline freights out of Toronto and frees up a lot of track in Toronto including the North Toronto Sub. It would also free up Agincourt Yard, or most off it, for transit operations. CP would need to build a new yard but there should be plenty of facilities outside Toronto that would be more convenient to highways. There will be a problem where the MacTier(sp) Sub crosses the York.
2) Have GO take over responsibility for what little freight switching is left on its tracks. This would insure temporal separation of equipment.
3) Use the lines that would be totally free of CN or CP operated trains; Stouffville Sub, Newmarket Sub, Weston Sub to Bramalea, Belleville Sub to Agincourt which could be joined with the Havelock Sub to keep Harper’s Parliamentary Secretary happy to make a “City Rail” type of service that runs in Sydney Australia. Designate them as Transit, not Rail lines and tell Ottawa and Transport Canada to get with the 21st century.
4) It might even be possible to get most of CP’s freight traffic off the Galt Sub east of Milton and this would free up another line for city rail type service. It would make a perfect connection with the Subway at Kipling.
5) Agincourt Yard could become the main maintenance facility for these lines as well as a site for redevelopment.
6) The Line up the Don Valley is really not conducive to anything except rush hour commuter service because of its sinuous alignment.
7) I would take a serious look at running the relief line from Bramalea and Pearson, alternate trains along the Weston Sub to Downtown but branch off and go Under Wellington, Richmond or Adelaide and then up that undetermined Right of Way to the Don Valley where it would join the Belleville sub to North East Scarborough, or perhaps beyond Northern Durham and then Peterborough even, keep DDM happy. I would remove a number of Stintz’s stations in the west because it needs to be a faster line.
8) The (D)RL line would not be to replace any of the current street car services because the station spacing would be too great.
9) This leaves the North Toronto Sub and the CP line from Leaside; what to do with them. While cross town City Rail line looks wonderful how do you handle transfers to Yonge and Spadina?
10) Since most of these lines have a large degree of grade separation put bicycle trails along side them wherever possible. To widen a bridge to take bikes is not a major structural change and could you imagine the view from the CP bridges over the Don Valley? (Take a picture for me Hamish.)
11) I would take a serious look at 3000 VDC instead of 25 000 VAC because:
a) It would reduce vehicle weight because no transformer would be required.
b) IGBT controllers are now available for 3000 VDC.
c) It would reduce clearances needed in the sections that must be tunnelled.
d) It might reduce the phase imbalance that sometimes results from single phase AC.
I am not saying this plan is perfect or even feasible. I want it to start people thinking about something different from what has always been done and to get them off the corridors that are basically untouchable.
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OK, yes in the extreme case, electrification can lop a small amount off the headway, (maybe 20-30 seconds), but the idea that electrification will allow 20minute headways was simply wrong.
Steve: I agree, and moreover, if the headway target is 20 minutes, electrification is not worth the effort.
The limit (based on London, UK) seems to be stations every 2km and ~25 trains/hour. That’s not too dissimilar from parts of the subway system.
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Robert Wightman … those are some great thoughts. 1 & 2 require pressure from Metrolinx, MPs & MPPs and Transport Canada to get the railways to agree to move the majority of their traffic outside Toronto. The past example of Toronto Terminals Railway suggests that cooperation is possible.
On 7. I agree that a branching service (one train to Bramalea, one train to Pearson) would probably be the best solution. I see no reason why there cannot be multiple tracks available for both a UP Express, UP local as well as express and local electrified GO trains.
The big challenge would be the frequency of all the different trains on the corridor since the UPEx has to cross the railway corridor to get to the airport spur.
On 3. Any improvement to the current state of GO rail service that brings frequencies of 20 minutes or better would be a huge economic boost to the GTA.
On 4. It would be great if GO could add a Milton line stop at Bloor to allow people to connect with the subway further in to Toronto than Kipling. For many living in the Western GTA this could be an alternative to driving along the 401 because it would provide better, faster access to the subway instead of forcing a transfer at Kipling (too far to the west) and Union (too far to the south). Of course the numbers are limited but the benefits are there.
Cheers, Moaz
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I really doubt that the current system could handle 5 minute headways because the signal spacing is too great. As long as they insist on using main line heavy rail spacing of signals 10 minutes is close to he lower limit. The technology can handle a lot less but not the system as implemented.
EMUs cut the Deux Montange time from 55 minutes to 35 minutes. Having all the vehicles powered really improves your acceleration rate. Initial acceleration depends on tractive effort or weight on driving wheels. With EMUs all wheels are drivers so acceleration starts higher and lasts longer than with locomotive hauled trains. Maximum speed is a function of propulsion power but on start and stop service that has little bearing on the speed. EMUs speed service up because the acceleration rate is higher and lasts longer than with locomotive hauled trains and if they use regenerative braking they can also decelerate faster because they don’t have to dissipate waste energy as heat in the brakes.
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Subways are EMUs. You are using the wrong argument. It is the weight and spacing requirements for main line rail that limit the headways. Very good EMUs can run any headway that your switching and signalling system can handle. You conclusion is correct but I have problem with your attributing the problem to EMUs instead of where it belongs.
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This needs to be brought up, because there seems to be a huge misconception about any potential motive power options.
Below about 32mph, there is no difference in acceleration between an EMU or a DMU. Nor is there any difference in acceleration between an electric loco pulling 10 Bi-Level cars or a diesel pulling 10 Bi-Level cars. And braking is very similar between all, as the limiting factor is the amount of traction available when dealing with steel wheels on steel rails.
The only thing that electrification gets you is the improved acceleration above 32mph, where the diesel powerplant is producing its maximum power but the traction motors are demanding more voltage that the motor/alternator is incapable of providing.
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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But if we are talking about subway style frequencies, then the pollution factor, both real and perceived, has to be taken into account. The Weston residents made enough fuss about UPX on 15-min headways. They will scream bloody murder when they hear about DMU service on 5-min headways; and residents of other areas along the route will join them.
Furthermore, if the route has to be tunneled through the CBD due to the lack of space in the railway corridor, DMUs will have additional requirements for ventilation.
Perhaps DMUs are sort of acceptable for the UPX as designed. But if we want to design a really frequent GO service with an emphasis on trips within 416, that is hardly possible without electrification.
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This Relief Line proposal, and others as well, does show that we should consider it to be an express line only. Leaving local service to the streetcars and buses. By not following or going under current existing TTC routes, it leaves them to their best function, local frequent feeders.
This is unlike the current 15 m (IE. Saturday service) headway on the 97 Yonge bus (at Lawrence Station, for example) that provides terrible local service in comparison to the more frequent service on the subway.
Any Relief Line should lead to a breaking up of existing streetcar routes, into separate individual streetcar routes. Should be done now, but not under the current TTC management. Maybe the consultants for any Relief Line EA should consider this as well, if TTC management wouldn’t do it.
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Do you know how many people board at Kennedy Station today in the morning? Is there a link you can share with such boarding numbers. thank you
Steve: No I don’t. The TTC only publishes all day counts, not by time of day or origin (e.g. from SRT, buses, GO, parking).
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My primary concern with this whole proposal is that when you factor in all the work needed to pull this off successfully, it’s possible we might find that it’s comparable in cost to building the first phase of the DRL subway line anyways.
In addition, why do some people think that riders will want to use the Main-Danforth connection when so much effort is being put into demonizing the transfer at Kennedy?
Steve: You are not supposed to mention that. Just about every proposal that surfaces has a transfer connection in it and some, like Main, are far worse than the proposed LRT-to-subway link at Kennedy.
We are in a catch-22 situation right now. People with more vanity subway projects to build are looking hungrily at the high capital cost of the DRL and hope to supplant it with anything else. However, unless we actually study the alternatives and debunk them, the failure to do so will be portrayed as those nasty DRL advocates prejudging the situation.
Until a few elections are out of the way, real leadership on transit is unthinkable.
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I think you will find a great deal difference between DMU and EMU acceleration rates at low speeds. It’s Electric low speed power application that makes a big difference.
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Prof Sorenson wrote this
Oh dear.
Are we really going to attempt, once again, to suggest building higher order transit towards places where we think development may occur, as against where people want to go?
Steve: A strong argument can be made that there is a demand originating along the Weston corridor and feeders to it and headed for central Toronto.
It is worth noting that people in this corridor do not feel hard done by because they aren’t getting a subway, and they have been fighting for years for upgraded service on the GO corridor.
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I like Professor Sorensen’s reasoning for the Western leg. Hopefully, it will help transform UPX into a more useful common-purpose city rail service, at some point after the 2015 PanAm games.
I still have concerns about the Eastern leg. There might be not enough space in the eastern rail corridor for the “DRL” service. Even if it fits, Main Station may not be the right place for transfers between the Danforth subway and DRL.
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The Sorensen plan is an adept way to better utilize the investment in Blue 22/ARL/UPX, and introduces the concept of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ suburban services (to use UK terminology), wherein the outer runs ‘fast’ (non stop) thru inner territory except for some interchanges. Go has long been criticized for not serving 416 (except Union) and this proposal addresses that. Who operates what is irrelevant. And, very important, it is an incremental, bit at a time plan, with schedules measured in months and years and not decades. Of interest on the map is the last station, Woodbine, not the Airport, which although not stated by Prof Sorenson, suggests this link would become a shuttle (especially since train length is so limited at the airport end), perhaps using Transit City LRV’s, and perhaps too, automatic. One hopes Metrolinx has specified high level platforms that dismantle easily to reveal low level ones!
While it is true this line would have only a minor relief effect for Yonge, it has lots of merit in its own right. Notably it incorporates the only two northern Go lines which are free of conflict with freight ROW’s. While another ‘U’ shaped line, incorporating the Newmarket and Richmond Hill lines, would have a more significant Yonge relief effect, the conflicts need resolution first, so time is now for the necessary EA’s. And the many comments about the slow meandering nature of the Richmond Hill line could be resolved by using the CP line in the Don Valley and the old CN Spur. I wonder if Metrolinx has considered this in Eglinton LRT plans???
On the other end, initially to Main Street but later to Kennedy, where Metrolinx is starting its second set of rebuilding plans, space needs to be made on the Go line for four tracks/platforms to facilitate the cross platform interchange between the outer suburban and inner suburban services that Prof Sorenson calls for. And if the subway extension ever gets built, and SRT dismantled, then the sunk catchment at Lawrence and Ellesmere could be picked up with inner suburban stations at one or both.
One wonders how far Metrolinx has got in procuring 85’ high capacity bi-level low platform EMU’s and DMU’s, and in finding an eventual home for the single level high platform nonsense. Go did so well keeping to one car and one locomotive.
Maximising capacity thru Union’s approaches requires keeping the track pairs for each route completely separate from the next, no conflicts whatsoever. All these slow speed double slip switches and go anywhere ladders shriek of low capacity and are precicesly what we do not need. Newmarket/RH tracks hug the north side and tracks 1 and 2; and Lakeshore the south side. Via, with barely any trains off the lakeshore route any more also the south side. And at least 6 of Unions platforms could handle 16 car trains.
Robert Wightman’s suggestion of CP using the York Sub is not as far fetched as one might think. There seems little doubt the McCowan yard is the subject of evaluation, keeping in mind that trains do not earn money when parked in a yard, and those oil trains running thru town are a serious liability. Metrolinx might be a facilitator here.
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Acceleration Versus Speed, Locomotive Hauled Versus MU, Electric Versus Diesel
I apologize to all the physicists out there because I use weight for mass because that is what normal people use. Perhaps it is about time we started using common meanings for words instead of our own specialized vocabulary.
For transit service with frequent stops acceleration is much more important that maximum speed. Subway, LRT and local GO trains spend very little time at maximum speed and a lot of time accelerating and decelerating. If you can increase these rates you make a much larger impact on travel time than top speed would. For intercity trains maximum speed is obviously the more important factor.
Acceleration is equal to net force (tractive effort – friction force) divided by mass. Reducing mass is a more cost effective way to increase acceleration because it is a one time cost. Tractive effort depends on weight on drivers. For d.c. motors its maximum is 25% of weight on drivers or 72,000 pounds (320,000 N if I did the conversion correctly) for a normal locomotive while for a.c. motors it is closer to 40% or about 120,000 pounds (535,000 N). This force has to accelerate the weight of all the cars, passengers and locomotive which results in a rather leisurely pace.
For multiple unit operation with all wheels driving d.c. motors could give an initial acceleration of 0.25g or 2.4 m/s/s while a.c. motors could give closer to 4 m/s/s. This is too high for human comfort and would probably result in wheel spin so normal acceleration and deceleration rates are limited to 1.1 m/s/s. Acceleration continues at this rate until the constant power point is reached. This is the speed at which the tractive effort time the speed in the appropriate units equals the power rating of the motors. Higher power has no effect on initial acceleration rate but it does raise the constant power point.
GO had to increase travel times with their higher horsepower locomotives because they added more weight in extra cars and passengers. They actually should have done his some time ago because bi levels with standing loads weigh a lot more than the old single levels upon which the timetables were developed did. GO could improve their acceleration rates by using a.c. motored diesel engines. New Jersey Transit’s latest locomotive order is for a.c. transmission.
Montreal dual power locomotives, diesel and 25,000 VAC are not really a good item for GO because they cost nearly $13 million versus $2.5 million for the newest diesels but they can only haul 8 coaches in diesel mode because they use power from their main engines for hotel power. GO should use EMUs for their electrification as it cuts running times and reduces crew and eqipment requirements.
Main line railway rules from the AAR and Transport Canada add a lot of problems to the mix. Locomotives, and this includes cab cars, must receive a major inspection every 92 days. All multiple unit cars are considered locomotives so they too require these inspections. Also the break test requirement when changing end adds to terminal time. The need to withstand a compressive load of 1,000,000 pounds for each car adds to their weight. Signal spacing that is set up with block lengths suitable for freight trains rather than transit service result in lengthy minimum headways.
Using GO transit to carry subway like headways and passenger volumes is a non starter until there is a major rule change. This is unlikely to happen so as many lines as possible should be segregated, at least temporally, from any main line train service. I wonder if the designation of interurban still exists.
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If the Scarborough LRT could be extended south from Kennedy along the Stouffville GO line to Scarborough GO station, then along the Lakeshore GO line to Union, then it would be a single seat ride from Malvern to downtown. This would make Scarborough support the LRT and act as a relief for Bloor-Yonge. All above ground and for a lot less $ than a buried DRL.
Steve: Your proposal would require a significant investment in duplicate infrastructure using a mode (LRT) that may not be best suited to what you are trying to do. Running via rail corridors all the way to Union with a distinct technology requires more infrastructure than integration of this service with mainline rail operations.
Having said all of this, the problem with overcrowding in the Yonge corridor arises from the north, and the need for a parallel north-south corridor near Yonge (e.g. Don Mills) does not go away. This is not a question of building either a DRL or GO upgrades, but of doing both.
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If “the old CN spur” is the line connecting Oriole to Leaside, it is probably too late to convert it back to railway use. It has been redeveloped as a park with a paved walking/biking path between the CP line and Bond Park. There are plans to extend the park from Bond Park to York Mills.
Steve: It is amusing how many “professional” studies have made reference to this connection even though it has not existed for years. Even people whose walkabouts consist of looking at Google Maps would know the line isn’t available (aside from the fun you would have at any public meeting where you propose running full size GO trains essentially through people’s backyards).
The Google Maps view looking north at Lawrence shows the bike path under construction. The date on the image is October 2011.
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I think my comment of GO MP40s costing $2.5 million is a little low, by a factor of $2.5 million; I broke a rib and was on too many pain killers.
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