This is a companion article to one of the same name on the Torontoist website in which I argue that Toronto should have a subway line from Front & Spadina to Eglinton & Don Mills. Formerly known as the “Downtown Relief Line”, this should be called the “Don Mills Subway” and there should be no pretensions about it stopping at Danforth.
Drawing subway lines on maps, especially for the DRL, has been a cottage industry among transit advocates and city watchers for several years, and everyone has their preferences. I have stayed away from that territory most of the time because the torrent of comments (including a long thread on this side) is more than I care to moderate.
However, the Don Mills line needs advocacy and a good indication of what it might look like to counter the “downtown has enough subways” drivel dished out by Mayor Ford.
My proposed alignment is not intended to be definitive although parts of it are locked down to make specific connections and to take into account physical constraints on the route’s placement. Other alignments are possible in places, but I don’t want to revisit that discussion in excruciating detail when the basic purpose is to show what a new line could achieve.
Spadina & Front Station: This station would be part of a proposed Metrolinx/GO western Union Station to be used by services originating in the northwest corridor so that capacity at Union can be released for remaining routes. An extension west from this location to serve new development at Exhibition Place, for example, would be possible.
Note that I, like Ed Levy in his own proposal, treat the Weston corridor as a separate “DRL West” service to be operated as part of the rail network, not as an extension of the subway which for technical and regulatory reasons is extremely unlikely. We are far more likely to see the Union Pearson Express trackage repurposed for this than we will see a subway line in the corridor.
Northeast from the intersection, there is an open patch of land between existing buildings that once was the freight lead from Spadina Yard into the freight terminal where Metro Hall and Roy Thomson Hall now stand. This alignment can provide a path for the subway to travel diagonally northeast to Wellington Street.
Front Street through downtown is no longer available for an east-west subway as was once proposed because of the expansion of Union Station. Wellington is far enough south to allow a connection to the proposed Union West station at Spadina without requiring (as a map in a Metrolinx report proposed) a diagonal alignment from Queen southwest to Front through the footings of several new towers.
Wellington makes comparatively easy connections with the existing subway at:
St. Andrew Station: The station is nominally at King, but the structure extends somewhat to the south. A parking garage sits on top of the subway structure, and a pathway through it could link a station at Wellington into the existing St. Andrew Station.
King Station: The box making up King Station extends well south of King Street and includes the Melinda Street exit on the west side of Yonge as a reference point. A station at Wellington would be only a short distance south of King Station.
Continuing east on Wellington, the street merges with Front at Church Street. This is the middle of a large and growing concentration of residential buildings. Stops could be placed at:
Jarvis Street (St. Lawrence Market): This location is a major centre for the community and far enough east of Yonge to serve a distinct set of demands.
Continuing east on Front the alignment from Parliament to the Don River could be via Eastern Avenue or Front, although the latter may be difficult given plans for the West Don Lands already under construction.
Distillery District: There are two possible locations for this station at either Parliament or Cherry Street. Cherry has the advantage that it would be a connection point for the north-south streetcar service that will eventually serve the eastern waterfront and port lands developments. The stumbling block for such a connection is expansion of the underpass at the rail corridor, but that is a question of will, money and the timing of future development.
Continuing east across the Don, the line would be close to the former Lever Brothers site now owned by Great Gulf. A major commercial development will be announced for this property. An important design issue for the subway would be flood control to prevent the tunnel from being an alternate path for river floods against which Waterfront Toronto has build substantial berms in the West Don Lands.
Broadview & Eastern: This station would serve the Great Gulf development and improve access to this corner of the waterfront in general.
At this point, older plans for the DRL varied with the first versions following the rail corridor and later ones going straight along Eastern to Pape. The reason for the Eastern Avenue route was to access property in what is now the Studio District for a yard that would house trains with the same technology as the Scarborough RT.
The rail corridor, formerly owned by CNR, is now GO Transit’s who, one would hope, will be more amenable to a subway tunneled beneath their tracks. The line would curve northeast with possible stations at Queen & Degrassi and at Gerrard & Carlaw (aka Gerrard Square). The real question here is whether the line should simply blitz up to the Danforth or provide connections in Riverdale and Leslieville.
Before writers in the east end descend on me as a destroyer of their neighbourhoods, please remember (a) that I am not saying a station must be at these locations and (b) I live not far away and know the potential effects of a subway here quite well. Indeed that is why I chose the rail corridor rather than a north-south street such as Pape. People will propose stations wherever the line crosses Queen and Gerrard Streets.
For many years, the TTC has shown the DRL as ending at Pape and Danforth. Recent reports on a DRL study mentioned the need for a wye junction with the Danforth subway so that trains could reach Greenwood Yard. Building such a structure would have severe effects on existing buildings at Pape and Danforth.
That is why my proposed alignment continues east (as some of the early TTC schemes did) to the west side of Greenwood Subway Yard. This would provide a link to the existing network without the need to build a new junction somewhere under the Danforth. At the yard, the route would turn north mainly under what is now parkland and cross Danforth at Donlands Station where it would connect to the Danforth subway.
Continuing north on Donlands, there could be stations at Mortimer and at O’Connor. North of O’Connor, the line would cross the Don Valley on a medium height bridge. The exact nature of the bridge would be a trade-off between cost, the depth of the subway at each portal, and the aesthetics of the valley crossing.
On the north side of the valley, the subway could travel under Thorncliffe Park. The alignment shown on the map is a placeholder and should not be read as definitive “dig here” instructions. It must dodge between apartment towers, a school and commercial buildings, but there is still considerable open space where construction would be comparatively easy.
Thorncliffe Park is a major concentration for housing with a lot of underutilized commercial space. The exact location of a station here would depend on the alignment that proves workable. In the map, it is at Overlea & Thorncliffe Park East as a placeholder.
It would not be possible for the line to run straight east to Don Mills and then turn north for various reasons including curve radius constraints, the location of a school on the north-west corner of the intersection, and potential conflict with the road bridge on Overlea west of Don Mills. Instead, the line could turn north through the park lands behind the school and enter Don Mills well north of Overlea.
Flemingdon Park is another major housing concentration, but it is fairly spread out and will require a bus feeder to connect most potential riders to the subway. In this proposal, I have sited the station at the north branch of Gateway Blvd. (the south branch is directly opposite Overlea at Don Mills) and near enough to the Science Centre that it could also serve as its local stop.
Finally, there would be a station at Don Mills & Eglinton where the line would connect with the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Future extension could take the subway further north including a possible link to a future GO service on the CPR corridor south of Barber Greene Road. That is years from happening, but so is this plan.
Whether this is the point to end the subway line and switch simply to buses or a future LRT is beyond anyone’s ability to say this far in advance. However, models of the Don Mills line showed riding in the 16,000 per peak hour/direction range decades ago putting the line beyond LRT territory. Moreover, there is no surface right-of-way or arterial road wide enough to host such a line. With 100% grade separation and strong demand, subway is the appropriate choice.
Steve Munro 
There is still the question of where to store the trains. At the moment Greenwood does not have the space to store of BD trains. So transfer the land at six points to the TTC for a west end yard on BD, thereby reducing amount of dead head or unneeded mileage to access car the house while leaving room for the Don Mills line.
Steve: I deliberately did not get into this discussion as there are many permutations of how to address this problem. A related issue is where they will store the trains for the alleged 1’50” headway they plan to run on the YUS.
This article is intended to stimulate discussion about how a easy side relief line to Don Mills could work as part of the network.
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I would strongly support such a proposal, though I really think it should go up to Sheppard or Finch in a later phase. The main benefit would be to relieve the Yonge line (which is packed all the way to Finch). It would also relieve the DVP between Eglinton and 401, which is one of the most notoriously congested sections of the highway system, and much busier than the southern portion of the DVP. I have a suspicion that this line would make the Sheppard subway extension a lot more of a necessity though, building the Don Mills line up to Sheppard would just make the eastern part of the Sheppard subway much more useful than without the Don Mills line and cause ridership on Sheppard East to go way up. One would have to rerun the ridership models, since a Don Mills subway has never been seriously considered before. I suspect that the Eglinton LRT east of Don Mills would be much more crowded as well if this is built.
Steve: I agree with your comment about the Eglinton LRT because of the attractiveness of getting a straight run downtown from Don Mills & Eglinton Station. In my proposal, I wanted to stay away from future extensions because this would just muddy the discussion. As long as the TTC only talks about a “relief” line from downtown to Danforth, it hasn’t got a chance politically. The line must provide a useful network function beyond simply being a Bloor-Yonge bypass. Obviously a further extension north is a possibility, but just getting people talking about a line to Eglinton has been hard work.
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Onward to Sheppard, I say.
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I’d like to make a few comments.
(1) I’d like to thank you, that you are sufficiently vague–you argue only about “general” direction, not specific streets, intersections, important buildings and such.
(2) I am disappointed, that you DO NOT argue in favour of future GO/TTC transfer point in vicinity of Riverdale shopping mall.
In the same manner, you DO NOT argue about an extension of proposed DRL to the spot, where original Don Mills CP RAIL stop used to be (there are several railway signals there and a few office buildings around that area–Aga Khan centre is nearby).
(3) The intersection of Don Mills and Eglinton is always a very busy place with quite high volume of people moving thru that area and it is often reaching a “saturation point”. However it is becoming even more crowded during school holidays when there are many vehicles trying to turn into S/B Don Mills and the related traffic lanes become a sort of a staging/waiting area for the Ontario Science Centre parking lot. I conclude, that detailed design of the “new” Don Mills/Eglinton intersection will have to be approved before proceeding–this design will have to include safe passage of passengers/patrons from TTC to OSC.
(4) There will be many people, who will probably “eat you alive” as you favour DRL in places of fairly low density and that you favour an alignment, that will have to cross-over Don Valley with its own custom-made subway-only bridge, whereas you are not in favour of extending Don Mills s(t)ubway (which is completely different matter).
(5) People from the west of Spadina will condemn you, because you appear to support the “evil of the East”, whereas your proposal does not nothing for the nice people from the West. Be prepared for an onslaught of amateur criticism.
Steve: I will take your points in turn.
(1) Thank you. I deliberately did not want to prescribe a specific block-by-block alignment beyond noting specific constraints along the way as well as major development nodes existing and proposed.
(2) I don’t think a connection at Gerrard Square makes much sense for the following reasons. GO is on a curve and a grade which would make the design tricky, and I doubt there is actually room to add the platforms. People on an inbound GO train would gain little by transferring here to get to Union by TTC, although it could be argued they might want to go north. Also, this would be very close to Danforth Station.
One thing I did not mention is that Gerrard Square itself is a potential redevelopment site mainly hosting “big box” functions (albeit on a neighbourhood scale) and parking. Put a subway station there and the owners will rethink the value and use of their land.
As for a GO station where the CPR crosses Don Mills, south of Barber Greene, the provision of GO service here is a very long way off, if ever, because of operational issues with this being the CPR’s main line. As and when a service is provided, then a subway extension would make sense. However, I preferred to keep the scope of the proposal to things that are either there now, or can be expected in the reasonable future. A GO station at Barber Greene, unless it had very frequent service, would not deserve the investment needed for a subway link considering that the GO riders would be headed to the same destination as the subway. I am not holding my breath for this level of service on the CPR.
While I look forward to the opening of the Aga Khan centre, it does not deserve a subway stop in its own right and is actually much closer to the Ferrand stop on the Crosstown line. Indeed, it would probably be a shorter walk from the Don Mills/Eglinton station than from one located further up Don Mills Road.
(3) The junction between the Crosstown LRT and the Don Mills subway will be underground, and pedestrian traffic can be routed to each corner via passageways just as we do at many other stations. The bus terminal is planned to be on the now-vacant northeast corner. There is a lot of development potential here on all corners, and direct connection into buildings from the subway/LRT junction would be a big selling point.
(4) Fairly low density you say? The last time I looked, Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Parks were not low density, and even parts of East York south of O’Connor have high rise development that could feed the stations. Donlands and Danforth has been low rise forever, but we have an entire subway serving many low density areas along the Danforth already. It succeeds because of bus feeder services, not because of the density at stations. Further south, as I mentioned, Gerrard Square would be a development site. There is already a very large development planned for the Lever Bros. site at Broadview, the West Don Lands and Distillery districts are full of construction cranes, and then there is the St. Lawrence area which is growing as we speak.
One big advantage of this proposal is that it recognizes the need for stations rather than skipping over huge distances to get to a single destination at a terminal.
Custom made bridges? Yes, there would be one from O’Connor to Thorncliffe, and a smaller one from Overlea to Don Mills Road. The Don River would almost certainly be crossed below grade because of the difficulty of making a transition to and from tunnels on either side of the river.
Our existing system has subway-only bridges at Etobicoke Creek, the Humber River, Rosedale Valley Road, the East Don at Sheppard, Spadina at 401; and there is a proposed subway-only bridge on the Richmond Hill extension at the Don River.
(5) People from the west would use a completely different route. If the Weston-UPX corridor is eventually repurposed for frequent service, it will still be physically separate from a subway-technology “DRL East”. A subway line ending at Spadina & Front could be extended west to serve development in the CNE, or the south end of Liberty Village. I am not sure about either of these generating enough demand, but nothing prevents the idea from being studied.
My purpose was to talk about the “DRL East” as a line to Don Mills to show what could be done. If the whole debate descends into people crying like spoiled brats that they didn’t get “their subway”, then people have completely missed the point. I am not precluding “their” line, but it is a separate project.
Equally, I have little time for those who would prefer to debate the name of the line rather than its purpose. We all know that “Downtown Relief” is poison, and I suggested an alternative that looks outward to Don Mills giving a sense of the true market.
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How much sense would it make once the initial line is built to just take the line up Don Mills and connect it to the Sheppard line making a continuous backwards “C”?
Steve: None at all. Physically, such a connection would require a complete redesign of the station at Don Mills and Sheppard. More to the point, this fetish of linking every subway together in one continuous line is an operational nightmare. The demand on the Don Mills line will be much higher than on Sheppard which, at best, would run as a “stub” of the north-south service.
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Ideally to facilitate cross town (albeit flat U shaped) travel, the east & west sections of the Don Mills/Relief Line should be the same transit technology. As you’ve said Steve many times, the fewer the transfers the better.
Would a mainline rail-car on the western UPX portion that could travel on the eastern subway section be possible? Like the tram-train concept, but subway-railway.
Steve: This is a case where I must disagree. The rail corridor is always going to be subject to mainline operating and safety rules. You may not like this, but if you make changing those rules a pre-requisite just to get a non-stop trip through downtown from the west to the east leg of the U, you will wait a very, very long time. The question should be how to exploit the extra trackage built for the UPX to provide more frequent service with more stops to bring people into downtown.
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Along the Wellington Street section:
How would the walking distances into St. Andrew and King compare to that between the B-D and YUS lines at Spadina station or betwwen the bus bays and the subway itself at some suburban stations?
Steve: The south end of St. Andrew Station is south of King Street (you can see the vent grates in the sidewalk marking the start of the tunnel section). The space above the subway is occupied by a parking garage whose entrance is at Front Street, so this area is already excavated, and could be used in part for a passageway linking the stations. The distance from the vent shafts to Wellington is roughly 200 m.
The south end of King Station is easy to find because of the Melinda Street exit, one short block north of Wellington. This is a short distance north of the south end of the station, and a link to a station at Wellington would be very short, 100m or so.
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Steve, so the residents in the west end do not deserve a portion of the DRL? The idea of connecting the DRL to Dundas West helps people in the west end. The main reason I don’t take the TTC to get downtown is because it slower than molasses. The western leg of the DRL would have helped to get people from ‘western’ Toronto downtown. And if a stop was put in around Queen and Roncesvalles, people on the unreliable 501 could jump onto the DRL there and get downtown a bit faster.
Steve: You lose me with the word “deserve”. The purpose of the exercise was to show what a “DRL East” line presented not just as “downtown relief” but as something that would serve the developing near east side and major populations south of Eglinton could be.
If the DRL (or some western line) goes to Dundas West, it will NOT be via Roncesvalles and Queen. That has to be the most harebrained scheme imaginable. The route will follow the rail corridor, and will almost certainly run with mainline rail technology for reasons discussed elsewhere in this thread.
The purposes of any western leg is not to get people downtown from the 501 (we could equally propose the reactivation of the railway station at Sunnyside), but to serve the rail corridor and developments around it.
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Excellent article, Steve. A well thought out plan taking into account logical reasons why stations should be where they are and why the route should take the route that you have mapped out.
Obviously the demagogue Rob Ford will have none of it since there are no votes to be won for him there! Subways and transit will always be built in this city according to politics and to win votes regardless of logic until some form of planning and execution is put in place that is free from political manipulation (which, of course, will never happen).
Going back to 1995, when the Harris government decided to cancel the Eglinton Subway (which ran through Liberal ridings) and keep the Sheppard subway (which ran through Willowdale, held by PC Charles Harnick and then David Young), every decision has been made on the basis of politics. The Spadina subway extension to Vaughan would not have happened without Greg Sorbara’s involvement (he represented Vaughan) and the Scarborough subway is all about winning Rob Ford votes in Scarborough in 2014 (and the Liberals seats in the recent by-elections). Would the federal government have given money for this subway after never having promised anything before if it wasn’t helping their friend Rob? Never.
I just throw my hands up in the air and realize that there is no hope. If Tim Hudak becomes premier, I am certain that he will force the cancellation of light rail on Sheppard East and order the funds put into a subway … which after cancellation fees might let it be extended one or two stops east to Warden at the furthest! No hope at all!!!
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I agree that this should be the priority. How do you think the extra money and time spent on the Bloor-Danforth extension (and cancelling the Scarborough LR) will affect the building of a Don Mills/DRL/Line 5? Is it likely the feds will kick in another $660 million for new transit in Toronto anytime soon? That, plus any property tax increases from the city, dedicated sales taxes from the province, etc. I worry that’s one of the opportunity costs of spending so much money and political capital on 3 stops at the end of the B-D line.
Steve: I too despair of how this project gets funding priority, but at least it’s part of the Metrolinx plan and is strongly advocated by many transit professionals as an important line essential to relieving subway congestion. The challenge is to “think big” and not simply stop at Danforth with a line that would, at best, have a rush hour only purpose.
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The good news is, Hudak will build this for you. The bad news is, no LRT, anywhere, anytime.
If we’re going to call this the Don Mills Subway, it would make sense that it travel more along the road with this name, i.e. further north. I would like to see a demand estimate at least up to Finch.
Steve: That would be interesting, but for now I stopped at Eglinton as this is the last place where there is, or will be in the reasonable future, a major concentration of development. The section north of Danforth picks up Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Parks, important population centres, and then connects to the Crosstown.
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The Broadview and Eastern stop doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, unless there’s a plan for the car dealerships and self-storage places to go away. You mention a Great Gulf development, do you mean the handful of condos already built on the west side of Broadview?
Steve: No. The land now occupied by the former Lever Brothers plant, a huge chunk of real estate south of the car dealership, is to be redeveloped in a major commercial and residential node. It is bounded on the north by the rail corridor, on the west by the DVP (and the Don Roadway), on the south by Lake Shore.
The details are not public yet, but any planner who talks about the area includes mention of this development to come. I would not have included a Broadview stop in the line otherwise.
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Interesting choices for discussion. However I would add a small reminder that while you are suggesting that a station be at an intersection, you are not indicating that the platform(s) should be centred at that intersection. For example, someone might think that Jarvis and Yonge-King might be too close together, particularly those who want an “express” focus for this Don Mills line, until they realize that only the west end of Jarvis station may be at Jarvis and the east end of Yonge-King may be at Yonge.
And while I assume that you included platform position when you mentioned your desire for this to not be the definitive Don Mills plan with every detail planned out, one can never be too overt with a subject that has unfortunately become poisoned by politics.
Steve: Yes, I thought of that, but it’s a level of detail beyond this discussion. The whole point is to show the function such a line could have and the districts it could link together.
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I would again voice concerns about using tiny Donlands, with the tightest surface turning radii in the system, as an exchange point. There is at least more land (and more elevation) at Coxwell.
Steve: Coxwell is too far east. The bridge across the Don would be much longer because of the valley’s orientation, and the line would completely miss Thorncliffe Park. Turning radii? Who cares about that when Donlands Station will not be a major hub for surface transit beyond, at most, what is there today.
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I am still of the opinion that any subway or LRT that runs east of the don valley is pointless. why would we want a subway on Pape or Donlands? This area is not slated to intensify and where we are getting extra density, within the downtown, there is no new transit. A subway on King doesn’t provide much a new benefit in terms of capacity or serving underserved parts of the Downtown.
So, I would do a tuneld LRT – start at the roughed in station at Queen and Yonge – run a line east under Queen (and west to University or Spadina) and then turn up Jarvis or Parliament – going to Parliament would provide better transit to Regent Park. The line would continue to Parliament and Bloor, serving St James Town – so this would give the east side of the core a mjor north-south transit line (about 1km east of Yonge) where currently there is no major north south line like the Spadina LRT.
The Ltunneled LRT would use the leftover bridge west of Castle frank – which is already ready for transit but was not used when the Bloor line was built. The LRT line would then connect as Castle Frank to the Bloor Line.
The line would emerge along the west side of the Don Valley, with stops at the Brickworks and to connect to buses on Bayview – it would run along the railway line to Overlea and Millwood, then do through Thorncliffe Park, then to Don Mills just north of Overlea, where it would then become a surface LRT running in th emiddle of Don Mils, or else be tunnelled underneath. It would then connect to the Eglinton LRT, and could continue north on Don Mills up to Sheppard.
another possibility with this line would be to bury the Queen streetcar from just east of Spadina to Moss Park, with both the Queen streetcar and the Don Mills LRT sharing this section of underground track.
Rather than building a subway through lower and middle density areas of Riverdale, there is a need for better transit in the core (and serve higher density areas like regent Park and st. James town) so as to allow people to walk to or from destinations from a new DRL instead of them having to transfer to the Yonge line to get to, say, Wellesley or College.
Instead of Queen, the route could still go farther south, to King or better yet, to front street and tie into Union Station as the south end of the Don Mils line.
Stupidly, a DRL should have been roughed in under Bremner Boulevard but wasn’t.
Steve: I am not going to comment in detail on this beyond saying that I think you are hugely off-base and your comment is filled with factual errors. You have completely missed the point that the goal of the line is not to serve Riverdale (although two possible development sites at Broadview and at Gerrard are self-evident), but to continue north. The last time I looked, the Danforth subway runs under a lot of low density neighbourhoods (I live in one of the few high-rises along that corridor), but this doesn’t prevent it from being packed at rush hour thanks to passengers originating further east, mostly from feeder bus routes.
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I have no major objections with your alignment. When I made my own, I ran it under Adelaide as much as possible to avoid messing up King. This puts it far from GO’s proposed Bathurst station, but I put a GO stop in at King to compensate. To give it lots of spare capacity, I designed it with 200M platforms (9 cars), which also gives it the benefit of only needing one stop to serve both Bay and Yonge. And I expect the condo rush to hop across the Don sooner than later so I put a stop at Carlaw and Lakeshore.
Here’s a thumbnail of it.
Steve: Don’t get me started on the madness of the Roncesvalles subway. Your route has widely spaced stations (only one between Bathurst and Ronces, and one on Ronces at Howard Park) and will not replace the King car (although the construction will destroy service for years). As for the extra long platforms, this line will not have a demand requiring huge trains, and this kind of design imposes constraints throughout the system all for the benefit of a single Yonge-Bay platform.
As I have said in other responses, the purpose is not to get into detailed design of “my” or “your” subway, but to talk about what the line will do. When this becomes an exercise in station and line naming (or numbering), we have lost sight of the real goal.
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Thanks for this Steve; it’s useful.
I like the name being more honest; the DRL moniker doesn’t relieve core problems, but allows some to be dismissive of more transit in the core, and allows others to be sucked in to thinking it will benefit the core.
It’s good to send it further east too: so much of what is within the boundary of Pape is really quite bikeable, if we were to make things safer and connected.
Using Wellington was part of a Front St. transitway idea I’d pitched when there was the road folly to struggle against–not that anyone from officialdumb really stood up for transit options instead of the road/Pantalone Porkway.
But is the demand really there to warrant a full subway? Could we not think of doing more with surface/LRT tech? (though absolutely in some areas tunnel it). Part of it is that what you’ve outlined is remarkably close to the overall route of the DVP and gee, if we put on a batch of express buses isn’t that a possibility?
And that parallel also means maybe it’s time for tollings, proceeds directed to a real project, just as there should be a Vehicle Registration Tax within say 2kms of any proposed new subway in Scarborough, proceeds to that transit project.
Steve: The projected demand on this line almost 40 years ago was 16k/hour going up to 18k/hour in the peak winter period. That is beyond LRT territory.
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I’ve taken to calling it the “Commuter Relief Line”. Is Rob Ford willing to wage war against commuters?
It seems like a pretty good alignment, and connecting it to the Greenwood yard is a pretty insightful move.
Steve: Thanks, but the TTC planned that part about 50 years ago in their “Queen Subway” that took the line all the way to Eglinton on a route similar to the one I have shown.
One change I would make is to move the Carlaw stop to Pape (ie Gerrard Square). I’d do this for two reasons:
First, Pape is already a really busy stop on the Danforth line. A southern Pape stop would be a really good way to pull a lot of riders off that line.
Steve: The bus makes the connection at Carlaw, not at Pape, where there is also the Carlton streetcar. A station at Pape connects with nothing.
Second, Pape Ave is currently divided into a northern and southern segment. There’s a really awkward pedestrian bridge connecting the two, and nobody likes crossing it. If a station were dug under Pape, it could include a new underground walkway that could better connect these neighbourhoods.
The TTC report suggested building new GO-TTC interchange stations where the relief line crosses the Richmond Hill and Lakeshore East lines at Bayview and Gerrard Square, respectively. Since your alignment follows the Lakeshore East, it’s trivial to make an interchange anywhere along there, but you didn’t put a stop at the Richmond Hill line. I’m not sure how important that is, but a Bayview stop could also potentially play into some of Waterfront Toronto’s plans for the eastern-Gardiner redevelopment.
Steve: The stop at Cherry and Front is roughly where a Bayview stop would be anyhow. The TTC’s version presumed that the line went straight west on Queen, not further south to serve the Great Gulf site and West Don Lands to a Front Street alignment. As I said in the main article, the alignment is chosen to serve the developments along and south of Front Street many of which are already under construction.
Finally, one of the Metrolinx considerations was extending the subway to the Ex. Since your alignment doesn’t consider tunnelling the western leg of the DRL, that seems like it would be a fairly easy extension.
Steve: Yes, I know, but there is a point where things have to stop, and Bathurst Yard (the Spadina/Front station) seemed the right place for this discussion. Nothing substantial is yet planned for the CNE grounds, and one could equally argue for continuing west along Front to serve Liberty Village and the developments around Bathurst Street.
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I still like the idea of a Subway along King instead, it can replace an overloaded King streetcar. Rough route would go like this: Don-Mills/Eglinton – Thorncliffe Park – Cosburn – Donlands – Gerrard – Carlaw (this station would be on Queen, a nice transfer spot for downtown bound streetcar passengers) – River – Parliament – Jarvis – King/Yonge – St. Andrew – Spadina – Bathurst – Strachan – Atlantic – Dufferin – Jameson – Queensway – Roncesvalles – Dundas West
You could cut 504 service with this, and 501 service wouldn’t be as busy. I would keep 504 running on Roncesvalles, but the central King portion could probably be eliminated. This routing would both relieve the King streetcar as well as act as a Bloor-Yonge relief.
Steve: And in the process you would completely miss the point of the route via Front/Wellington which is to serve developments in the eastern waterfront and connect to a proposed GO terminal at Spadina. If you want to get rid of the King car, argue for it, but don’t expect a subway. The TTC and City could do a lot to improve that line, but they prefer to wring their hands.
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Thanks for this Steve. Sometimes it takes a prominent voice of transit such as yours to spark some real engagement. Whether or not people and politicians will listen and really think about how this line(or any other for that matter) will play into a network capacity as opposed to a line capacity mentality is anyone’s guess.
Just as a few observations of my own. I dont think the line will be politically viable without a mayoral leadership change or a Tsunami of rationality flowing into council. The voices on council who have been consistent in their support need a megaphone not just a microphone to get their message across I believe.
The Don Mills Subway is a far better name. Its sexier, easier to say and less divisive/”elitist” which should translate into support for it from a broader spectrum of people. I’m sure folks downtown know they want it, but its convincing people in the burbs that its necessary thats the issue with all the misinformation of the past many years.
With discussions about yard capacity, and I know this is not the discussion that needs to take place to get political momentum, but has the ttc considered converting its vast parking lots at Kipling station into a small yard simply used for storing while upgrading its other yards maintenance capabilities. Add back parking capacity in the form of GO’s mega garages.
Steve: Those “vast” parking lots at Kipling are not big enough to fit a set of yard tracks–just compare the length of the station itself with the parking areas in Google Maps. Also, some of that land is slated for redevelopment/reconfiguration as part of the Six Points project.
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This is a great proposal. One question I have is why stop the line at Spadina and Front?
There is a huge demand in Liberty Village and Fort York neighbourhood. The King car is overwhelmed. It would be great if the line could go a far west as Dufferin. It would link up Fort York, Liberty and the Ex with a quick ride downtown.
Steve: That is a possible extension, but for the purpose of this article, I wanted to concentrate on the “DRL East” to show how it could aid travel between many neighbourhoods.
As for Liberty Village, there are two issues. Yes, an extension to Dufferin could serve it, but I am not convinced that this is a complete answer, especially in the short-to-medium term when “relief” there is badly needed.
The first issue is that the “village” now extends north to Queen, although many of the newer buildings are not yet occupied. A station at Dufferin and “Front” is a fair hike for these folks who would still prefer better service on King and Queen/
The second issue is that the TTC should be running more frequent service on Queen, and with the new cars, should be increasing capacity on King even if they stay at the current scheduled headways. There is the general issue the City (and neighbourhoods and businesses) must face that a great deal of congestion is caused by using King and Queen as parking/loading areas even when they are jammed with peak period traffic.
The earliest we are likely to see anything built of the “Don Mills” line is the mid 2020s, and even then only with much stronger support from city and provincial politicians than we have today. Do you really want to wait that long to be able to get on the King car?
In the ongoing discussions of subway extensions, we forget that there are surface routes that badly need attention too, and could get it much faster if only there were the will to do so.
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I swear a saw a quote from Rob Ford last week mentioning the DRL is going ahead. Not that we should believe any politician. But at least it seems his intentions are not to delay any further.
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If I have my bearings correct, Donlands station lies entirely to the west of Donlands Avenue. Having a new north-south aligned station there seems to be a recipe for recreating the chokepoint at the Bloor-Yonge interchange.
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I think the benefit of a Wellington alignment is that you don’t need to build 2 YUS interchange stations. If the station box was under Wellington/Bay then by the time the escalators rose a couple levels they would be most of the way to the TTC Union mezzanine.
Steve: But you would also have to make room for that connection in a street already crowded with utilities and the PATH.
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He did. However, he says it will be built only after the Sheppard line is complete and a subway along Finch is built because North York and Scarborough don’t have subways.
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I’ve always assumed that any alignment through East York, be it Pape or Donlands or Coxwell, would only have one stop between Danforth and the Valley, and that it would likely be at Cosburn. Not that I agree with it, but it seems to me that we’re stuck with very widely spaced stops for any future subways. Steve, do you have any idea what route Metrolinx is currently studying or considering for this line? Your proposal is probably the most logical one I’ve seen.
Steve: Metrolinx is looking at both the Pape and Donlands alignments. Earlier in the process, Pape seemed to get the nod, but now Donlands is at least getting some attention. I suspect this is partly because of the potential link to Greenwood Yard.
Yes, a single stop at Cosburn would be possible too, but I was feeling generous as East York has so few stations to call its own.
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Eglinton is a slam dunk in my books. Besides, since it involves significant valley crossings, any design that concentrated only on getting to Danforth might make for impractical valley routing later. So any plan should include a route to Eglinton from the start.
That said, further north than Eglinton deserves study. It is no secret that this line by any name is being built to relieve Yonge and allow extension to Richmond Hill. The further north it goes, the more relief it can provide, and shorten commutes for many, not least those downtrodden folk in northern Scarborough.
My hunch is that there is enough demand (beyond or near enough LRT capacity) to warrant getting it up to Finch before the Don Mills LRT heads to Hwy 7 or Major Mack. But even Sheppard would have a lot of value (although not for the Sheppard Subway). Yes, I’m drawing lines with my crayon. But in my line of work I have access to private sector OD data and non-public TTC data that informs this hunch.
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This certainly looks like a good plan to me. Certainly, it should rank ahead of any other subway project in the city, including the Eastern Bloor-Danforth extension.
I strongly agree about the name Don Mills Subway. Is it too much to ask that use of the former name cease immediately? Calling it the “Don Mills Subway” describes better where it needs to go and has to be better politically.
I could make all sorts of other comments about it, but I’d just like to offer one: this post should permanently stop any talk of Steve being an LRT zealot. Not anything new, but I don’t think there could be a more clear explanation of Steve’s carefully thought out and nuanced position, the exact opposite of the “Subways! Subways! Subways!” we get from the mayor. So from now on, anybody who claims Steve is an “LRTs! LRTs! LRTs!” idealogue marks themselves as a troll.
Steve: As I must often point out, I have favoured the DRL for years, and once it was clear that (a) the alignment had no possibility of surface running and (b) the demand was at the high end of LRT capacity, then subway was the obvious technology for the line. The right mode in the right place has always been my argument, especially for LRT.
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I don’t believe this — Steve Munro advocating for a subway? The world is coming to an end. Nice plan, but with that many stations the cost will probably be double what you’re estimating.
Church St. Relief Concept …
If you look at things realistically, the Yonge subway is overcrowded only during rush hours. Why don’t they just build a short line under Church St. and connect it to the Yonge subway north of Bloor? The existing Yonge-University subway would then have a northern terminus of Bloor-Yonge during peak periods (to take all of the BD transfer traffic), while the Church St. line would be a continuation of the existing Yonge line during peak periods and have mirror stops (Wellesley, Carlton, Dundas, Queen, King), which would all be within a 2-3 minute walk of the existing Yonge line stations. No PATH to worry about, no extra transfers for any rider, and you won’t see what we saw in the 60s where people still wanted to use the Yonge line because University was too far out of their way. The Church St. segment would then not operate during non-peak periods, and trains would continue down Yonge as they do today. What this does is essentially double track the Yonge line south of Bloor at the lowest possible cost — the cheapest and most economical relief service to build and operate.
Another option is to take the existing Spadina subway down Spadina to Front. By disconnecting it from St. George, University becomes the relief valve, with, or without the old wye. Of course a DRL such as the one you’re proposing is nice, but the cost would run close to $8-9 billion.
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With all due respect Steve, but you still need to remember that wherever the western end of your “Don Mills Subway” is, you need the option to deal with the western portion of the original DRL.
I hope you will be discussing the western portion at some point, as both ends are important here.
The western end will bring in people from the west (just like the eastern end) and will need a connection to the rest of the system to move consists to and from the yards. Thus connecting it to the western end of the ‘Don Mills Subway’ will allow for ease of operation.
As for the suggestion of ending at the North Bathurst Yard, this is good – there is the possibility of GO using the yard for terminating some of its trains, there is a venue there (SkyDome) and a number of condos in the area. A connection west to Liberty Village, the CNE grounds, and possibly the western leg of the subway line are also good.
The route line south of Danforth will pull passengers off the Bloor-Danforth Line (sorry the ‘2 Line’ for points downtown, but potentially off other lines too. And that’s really part of my point – a new subway can’t just be for ‘new customers’, but a benefit to the rest of the system (i.e. taking pressure off other routes, whether they be subway lines, LRT lines, streetcar routes, or bus routes.) Plus all the potential new customers that those routes would feed into the new subway line.
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I never thought about Wellington as the route for the core downtown portion of the Don Mills line. Now that you mention it Steve, I like it, I like a lot. And I too would go through Donlands instead of Pape. But as you mentioned yourself, the point of the exercise is not about the exact alignment of a new line and the placement of stations, but to show such a line would service areas with high ridership potential, either current (Thorncliffe, Flemingdon Park) or future (Portlands).
Looking into this line through what areas it would service is a welcome change from talks about it being merely (or mostly) about relief. Especially since so many people have used the relief angle to attack the very idea of the line (or are at least argue for delaying it after such essential projects as the Finch subway and extension to the Sheppard stubway). When one considers what area the Don Mills line would service, it becomes more difficult for downtown-haters to argue against it. Mind you, some will try to us each and every station you propose south of the Danforth to argue the primary purpose is to serve downtowners.
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I know, I know, this is not about the “DRL West”. But since others will not hesitate to comment on it, I’ll do it too.
Two comments. First, looks to me that the best choice to link the core to Dundas West station (and beyond) is regular GO train service. We have the corridor, and we have the tracks. Building a subway underneath the corridor looks to me like a duplication of services. Some will argue that continuing the Don Mills line to Dundas West has the advantage of no need to transfer for people going from, let’s say, the Distillery area to Dundas West. But is the potential numbers of people traveling between these two areas high enough to warrant the subway going all the way to Dundas West when the simplest choice is to improve service in the train line?
Second, message to the TTC – do not, DO NOT even think of a subway underneath Roncesvalles. For two stations (at Queen and Howard Park) you would bring chaos to that neighbourhood. If there has to be a subway from the core to Dundas West, use the rail corridor. Existing streetcar lines could easily bring people from Roncesvalles to the subway, and you would not destroy the neighbourhood. Besides, even with the subway, you would need to keep the streetcar on Roncesvalles, so what is the alleged benefit of a subway going up Roncesvalles?
Steve: My sentiments exactly.
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Steve: A well thought out plan. How do we get the by-elections organised so it can be funded?
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Man, those icons look more the sad Cybermen then subway stations.
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I understand that the purpose of this line is to reduce conjestion on the main subway line at bloor-yonge. However, this does not solve the issue of the Yonge Line capacity coming from Finch. Futurermore, why does the east component get relief before the west or north? I strongly believe there is a misconception that this DRL will solve our capacity problems. I also suggest this DRL wouldn’t have any stops besides don mills, donlands, and the ones you suggested south of Quuen. DRL is a express line to downtown and not a regular line in my opinion.
There needs to be a focus on transit networks within the GTA and assessments of these routes and lines. I find that there are so many inefficient community networks and long surface routes that there needs to be realignment. This DRL is a classic example of ignoring the root of the cause which is finding a way to manage the ends of our transit network.
I strongly believe the biggest mistake almagation was for the TTC to assume a full Toronto network and these “small cities” remain in charge of their networks and establish their “core” centres and communities instead of having everything feed towards downtown Toronto.
There needs to be a plan, not just only projects that will solve transit going forward, sure we build the DRL, but it won’t solve our problems of having no framework, philosophy, and approach for transit on the next 25-50 years, we need to establish an identity and stick with it.
Steve: The DRL would be part of a larger package of network improvements including substantially improved GO service on the Barrie, Richmond Hill and Stouffville routes. Demand originating outside of the 416 is a major contributor to subway congestion. That said, more capacity into the core serving trips inside the 416 is needed, and that’s what the Don Mills line addresses.
As for the west, as I have written already, the Weston rail corridor could be used by repurposing the UPX tracks for frequent service between the airport area and downtown. It was not my intent to exclude the west, but to present an eastern corridor in the context of what it could achieve and the neighbourhoods/developments it would serve, not simply as an express route of use only to peak period commuters from Don Mills.
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An excellent plan!
Station names should avoid street references, thus ST LAWRENCE (not Jarvis), GERRARD SQUARE (not Gerrard, and FLEMINGDON PARK. Yet another might be MUNRO. And what about calling the line just ‘DON’ line.
Your insistence that this line be entirely separate and not be connected to the heavy rail line toward Georgetown is understood.
Is there any space to swing the line parallel to the Danforth line at Donlands so as to facilitate cross platform connections. One of the big limitations at Yonge/Bloor is the huge traffic of people changing trains. Cross platform connections for the two principal flows, Danforth westbound to Don south and Don north to Danforth east would be a blessing for everyone and actually reduce requirements for pedestrian walkways, escalators and elevators within the station, and increases capacity. This would effectively require widening the station box by one track each side and use existing platforms. Expensive but worth it? It would also be another way to facilitate connection to the Danforth line and access to Greenwood. It might even add the term ‘Cross Platform Transfer’ to the popular lexicon of those advocating Subways Subways Subways.
Steve: There is no room for a side by side or St. George style double deck station. One thing I did not mention in my article is that the TTC proposes to build a “wye” at Pape and Danforth to link the lines, something that is avoided by going east to Greenwood Yard. Such a wye could not be built without demolishing at least two of the four corners of the intersection.
Taking the line north to Eglinton also eliminates all of the transfer traffic between bus feeders and the subway from the north that would occur at a Danforth terminal.
Has the TTC issued projections of Yonge line and Yonge/Bloor station loadings over the next ten or so years specifically compared with what the system can handle at those times given various planned increases in frequency due to new signaling and ATO? What for instance is the absolute maximum volumes, and when will those figures be reached and incur usage restrictions? This might well be developed to spell out in some graphic detail that the DON line can relieve that crush and is thus more important than both the Scarborough and Yonge extensions, and should take precedence over both.
Steve: This is a bit tricky. First off, the TTC has ramped down their projections of the capacity increases possible through ATO and related changes because they recognize that there are physical limits to turnarounds at terminals and because there are concerns that some stations could not handle the increased traffic that more frequent service would bring (including the lower level at Bloor-Yonge). Second, riding on the system as a whole is growing faster than earlier projections and it is likely the capacity constraint on the subway that limits the effect at the peak points/times. In other words, if new capacity is provided, it would backfill with latent demand much as happens on the GO network. This begs the question of how much capacity is “left over” after the ATO changes to absorb growth for the 2020s and beyond.
I do know that Andy Byford is adamant that the new line, whatever we call it, must be built because we cannot continue to pretend that the Yonge line has infinite capacity for growth. In the Torontoist piece, I mentioned that this capacity crisis hit us before in the late 1980s, but we were saved from having to deal with it by the recession of the 1990s, and built the Sheppard subway instead.
The DON line however will not be up and running in under ten years and likely more, even if serious work starts immediately. What happens in the interim? Will ‘do nothing’ work? Do we put all our eggs in one long ways off basket? I believe we need quicker fixes for the short term, and these are in fact available. If the King car was given a restricted lane and turn priorities it could offer significant relief – it’s timing from Broadview to King and Bay would be comparable to the Subway believe it or not. Ditto the west side. The other short term options lie in developing two or even three GO lines to handle a 15 minute service. The Richmond Hill line, properly developed could ease the top end loading on the Yonge line and might well further downgrade the need for the Yonge subway extension.
You start the line at Spadina to connect to one or more truncated west side GO lines, due to Metrolinx’s deemed capacity limitations at Union, something I find very dubious to say the least. It seems to me we have heard little in last two years from Metrolinx about that study, and I for one would like to see some info that argues this conclusion, rather than just accept it as a ‘God knows better’ dictum. And to what extent is the ARL choking off other uses? This is very significant issue, predicating all manner of work and costs over many years, and needs to be done right; to pull out all the stops to maximize Union’s capacity. Are routes kept separate or do they criss cross one another and soak up capacity, how many escalators per platform, are east and west routes joined? Would this truncation be needed if the ARL were combined with a 15 minute frequency GO train (with people mover between the Airport and Georgetown line) starting variously at Bramalea, Brampton, or Georgetown. A further quite technical report and perhaps an open house by Metrolinx is long overdue.
Steve: The capacity issues at Union are a combination of platform size, stair/escalator numbers and widths, and operating practices such as stub-ending trips at Union thereby requiring time-consuming direction changes. Shifting traffic into a new “Union West” terminal frees up track and platform time. Another issue would be whether Union would actually be more productive if some tracks were closed and the platforms extended over their space to give more passenger circulation space.
The Metrolinx study of downtown capacity including the satellite station is in progress and we should see preliminary results early in 2014. Probably the biggest issue at Metrolinx is that old word “transparency” — they don’t seem to want to be open about the discussions and options because this might bring political interference, or worse show that The Big Move needs to be even Bigger. We cannot build support for big dollar spending on transit when the very arguments that would support this are hidden away from view.
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Neil wrote:
The connection should not be at Union. There is enough passenger movement between GO and the subway that would be componded by a load of people being dumped off of the Don Mills Subway at the same point.
I used to feel that such a line should be further north, perhaps Queen or Dundas so that the passengers needing to transfer to the Yonge line or the University line would be divided between those needing to go north and those needing to go south and those who would exit at that location. I don’t believe that this level of spreading the foot traffic is necessary, but Steve’s Wellington approach at least removes the choke-point at Union, while still being close enough for walking distance for those with a destination near Union.
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A well thought out plan that I couldn’t agree with more. The priority should be on the east side to downtown. The west side has the University/Spadina and any additions there should be electrification and additional stations, as well as lower fares, on the Union Pearson rail link.
Glenn
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So, in other words the people in the westend of Toronto should not gain anything. You are both missing the obvious advantages of having a DRL station at Queen and Roncesvalles, plus having it go to Dundas West:
1) It gives people using the western leg of the Bloor-Danforth line an alternative to St. George or Bloor-Yonge stations. I am under the impression the St. George would not benefit as much, but Bloor-Yonge certainly would (i.e. people travelling east along Bloor Street are not going to connect to the Y-U-S line at St. George if they are travelling to a point on Yonge Street.)
2) Using the rail corridor, unless the line hooks up at Spadina/GO’s North Bathurst yard, means using Union Station. I use Union during the rush hour – and it is madhouse – the DRL (with both sections – east and west) will take pressure off Union too. And the subway trains are crowded at Union, with people riding through the station, plus getting on or off. I rarely find a seat when I get on at Union, and that’s in the evening rush hour when one would think that most people heading south on University or Yonge would be getting off at Union, not riding through the stop!
3) You don’t have to have a stop along Roncesvalles Ave. People could travel to either Dundas West or Roncesvalles/Queen. The 501 already has lousy service, so this would make travelling into or out of downtown easier if you use the 501. But I don’t see how a stop at Roncesvalles/Queen is going to be so hard on the residents. If you use that argument for that one stop, it means no subway station would ever have been built, especially along the Bloor Danforth Line where there is a lot of residential communities near the stations.
Okay Steve, I am waiting for a post specially about the western leg of the DRL so we can have a proper discussion there.
Steve: And when you stop repeating the claim that people in the west end “should not gain anything” according to me, then I might have this discussion. Meanwhile, you know my position. Use the rail corridor and the UPX trackage. It doesn’t need a separate post. A subway via Queen & Roncesvalles is complete madness on a par with the Scarboro line, and with the potential for very serious damage both to the neighbourhoods through which it would pass. As for the 501, there is a lot the TTC could do to improve the service that would not cost billions. We need to stop assuming that there will be a subway under every street as the solution to our problems.
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Great idea, but I still would like to see most of the LRT lines funded as well, and the Scarborough Stubway cancelled completely. I especially love the station at St. Lawrence Market, since I live at Front and Jarvis!
Steve: I didn’t say that this should preclude other lines, only that this demonstrates the value this line could provide.
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