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 
Very thorough analysis Steve. I agree with most of the details. One suggestion I’d like to make is squeezing one more downtown station on the Don Mills subway. If the “Yonge” station is placed just east of Yonge, and the “University” station just west of University, then there should be space for one more station around Bay and Wellington.
The rationale is that the YUS subway line has 7 heavy-duty downtown stations (Dundas to St Patrick), while the Don Mills subway has only 2 according to your proposal. Even if Don Mills subway carries only half of the YUS total volume, passenger traffic at those two downtown stations will be pretty high.
If the third station is added, it can handle some of the passengers who want to walk to Union or to the Financial District offices, using PATH.
Steve: We do not need three stations downtown. East of Yonge, Bay and University are not a long way from each other, and your proposals would probably cost a few hundred millions given the complexity of construction. PATH already extends from Yonge to University.
If nothing else, Scarborough will get jealous.
LikeLike
I wonder if there is a bigger issue here… namely, where will al the job growth be over the next 50 years?
The core, from Church to Spadina, from the lake to Queen, will have few redevelopment sites left in 10 years. Where will new office buildings or office workers go? The “Centres” policy hasn’t worked, and everywhere in the City, land is worth more for condos than for any other use, except in areas already designated at purely commercial.
We need to get away from the hub and spoke, yet at the same time, there is “clustering” – many industries want to be close to their clients, suppliers and even near competitors.
London has Canary Wharf – where a whole new downtown was created with a predominantly office us with residential intensification nearby. Midtown, Yonge and Bloor, used to serve this function, but it to is a condo area with new office tower sites. Maybe Toronto needs to come up with a second Downtown like Canary Wharf…
To use the example of New York, Wall Street is one business area, the other one is close to Grand Central Station – though Penn Station also serves Manhattan. London has a series of stations. At some point, do we create a second main rail station that is not close to Union Station?
The big mistake was not preserving the Entertainment district to be the westward expansion of the financial core with few condos – as it is between the Spadina LRT and University Subway. The Mirvish/Gehry project, which I oppose, would do far more for this city if it were 100% office.
Steve: The proposed Great Gulf development east of the River at the foot of Broadview is supposed to be at least partly commercial. There is a huge block of land in the Port Lands where additional commercial density can go, as well as the eastern waterfront. The main requirement is good transit access.
Canary Wharf could not have been built without the Docklands line, the Jubilee Line and, now, the Crossrail project without which, according to a presentation I saw a few days ago, a further 100,000 jobs could not have been handled in the area.
LikeLike
I fully support a surface Leslie Station on the Crosstown line. But ATO advocates point out that this is a missed opportunity to extend ATO operations all the way to Don Mills Road. I can agree that Don Mills Road may make more sense as the terminus for ATO operations over Laird Drive, from a superficial point of view.
I don’t think ATO is needed to Don Mills Road, but had TTC/Metrolinx started off with a south-side alignment across Leslie Street, ATO could have been implemented at a much lower marginal cost. Now, when starting with the median alignment, any though of extending ATO would require a total redesign of the alignment (including a possible tunnel).
It’s a missed opportunity to appease all sides at a low additional cost.
Steve: For the headways Eglinton will run at, a non-ATO station at Don Mills will not be the end of the world. After all, we have been running the subway without ATO on shorter headways than Eglinton is likely to see for over half a century. I can understand ATO in the main tunnel, but for the rest of the line it is overkill.
LikeLike
After spending a month if The Netherlands, Switzerland, France and Germany I am impressed by the ability of an LRT line to carry lots of people at headways of 4 or more minutes. Nice is running 45 m LFLRVs at headways of 3 – 4 minutes at 6:00 p.m. on a Saturday. It carries about 100 000 passengers per day. The main streets with the tram line are mainly pedestrian and tram only. There has been a lot of talk about the benefit from making Yonge a Pedestrian only street. If this were done with an LRT line running 2 car LFLRVs on a right of way then one could get a capacity increase of at least 10,000 pphpd. This would go a long way to helping relieve congestion on Yonge from Bloor south.
I know that the Downtown and the Yonge bus do/did not carry very heavily south of Bloor and the Church bus died years ago but they ran at awful headways and were not competitive speed wise but a LRT line would be. Since there would be no traffic on Yonge in the rush hour it would be easier to implement traffic priority than on a line with traffic. This is an off the wall idea and would be considered part of the “war on cars” but it would be a relatively cheap way to increase capacity on Yonge. No matter how many people the DML diverts from the Yonge Bloor interchange there will still be a lot of traffic on Yonge and it will be difficult to get on at Eglinton let alone Bloor.
If we are going to think out side the box let’s look at bringing back the Yonge Street Car, at least south of Bloor.
LikeLike
“Don Mills Subway”? But if only goes as far north as Don Mills and Eglinton, then it barely runs on Don Mills and will have only one stop on Don Mills and this is clearly as you say “Formerly known as the “Downtown Relief Line”. This is just another attempt to sell us the Downtown Relief Line under false pretenses. All day more frequent GO service, along with ongoing signal upgrades, and the ongoing switching to newer trains is the all the relief Downtown needs and all the relief that Downtown will get no matter what the line is called. In order for this line to be called the Downtown Relief Line, it should go at least to Highway 7 or Steeles; otherwise you are just trying to deceive us into approving a Downtown Relief Line under false pretenses by calling it “Don Mills Subway” or “Line 5” or whatever.
Steve: I am going to hope that this is a satirical post. If it is not, then “Taxpayer”, you are full of crap. (Hiding your name behind a pseudonym deserves that sort of contempt.)
The line is called “Don Mills” because that’s where it goes, and it does not, as the TTC’s hapless “DRL” does, end at the Danforth. Moreover, it does a much better job of serving the developing east of downtown and provides a better route through the core than Queen or King.
If you live at Steeles, you should be on the GO train. Meanwhile, there are a lot of folks in between who could use more capacity into downtown. Strange that you complain that I am selling the “downtown relief” line when I am not using that name nor advancing “relief” as the only reason for building it.
LikeLike
Another question…does the Don Mills line have to be compatible with the subway?
If anything, the TTC has learned from past experience that interoperability is not necessarily the best thing. The interlining in the 1960s was not successful, and because the Sheppard line was a subway instead of an LRT it became necessary to build costly wye connections between the two lines … instead of using that money to extend an LRT line further east and west.
If the Don Mills line tracks are completely exclusive, and if Transport Canada follows the FRA in relaxing train strength standards and allowing ‘European’ trains, then perhaps the Don Mills line can share the CN rail corridor rather than running under it. It can still run underground as proposed, and there may be an opportunity to connect the “DRL East” to the proposed “DRL West” which could use the WestonSub.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: No! No! No! The last thing we need is more trains trying to jam through the Union Station Rail Corridor and adding to the passenger demand at Union Station. Also, there is good reason to keep the Weston and Don Mills services separate because you cannot serve the Liberty Village / CNE lands with only one route thanks to their extent from Queen to the lake.
LikeLike
Steve:
Is there anything that can be done to prevent the TTC from playing their favourite trick and splitting the line at the Danforth subway? They did that with most of the bus and streetcar routes back in the 60s.
🙂
Steve: The important part is that they not be allowed to stop building at Danforth.
LikeLike
Where did I say to run Don Mills through the Union Station corridor? Or that the Weston and Don Mills services must interline or be a continuous line? All I said was that it might make sense to share the CN segment of your proposed line while running the rest underground under city streets. I thought that was clear enough.
Steve: Well if that’s what you want to do, you have just added extra traffic to an already busy pair of lines just where they don’t need it. If we have to add trackage to the corridors just to make room for the Don Mills trains, we have gained nothing from the “common” equipment.
London runs many ‘commuter’ and ‘local’ trains on the same corridors. From the Tower Hill/Tower Gateway area the DLR runs parallel to C2C and other commuter trains. Aside from the Thameslink and the Overground that operate today there will also be Crossrail and Crossrail 2.
My point is that if the Don Mills line doesn’t have to be interoperable with the ‘subway’ (Bombardier trains and 1495mm gauge etc.) then let’s buy off the shelf ‘metro’ commuter trains (1435mm) and save costs by using these trains on the Don Mills and GOREx/UPEx services.
Of course this is contingent on Transport Canada and Metrolinx…and yes, it might be a bit early to discuss in depth but it may be worth a look in 2015.
Cheers, Moaz
LikeLike
@M. Briganti,
The Don Mills line (no, I will not call it DRL, as it is a misnomer) would NOT impose double transfer to over half of people riding on the Bloor-Danforth line. People transfering from the BD line to the DM lines would be those who would see a benefit in it. Such a transfer would be advantageous to some, while a transfer at Yonge-Bloor would be better to others.
Nobody would be forced to do anything, there would be less people transfering st Yonge-Bloor (reducing the congestion on the lower part of the YUS line). And I have a hard time grasping the idea than someone transferring at Donlands and getting off at King would be facing more transfers than a person transferring at Yonge-Bloor and getting off at King. Could it be because that person would NOT be facing more transfers?
Besides, the false assumption on how the Don Mills line would affect transit for people travelling on the BD line distracts from one essential purpose that would be served by the DM line – servicing currently underserviced areas along or near Don Mills (Thorncliffe, Flemingdon) and areas in the east end of Toronto that will need improved transit service as they develop further. These are areas that would provide enough ridership to a subway line NOW.
Now, perhaps, it is not worth it to build a subway that serve areas like Thorncliffe and Flemingdon. If so, please feel free at any time to suggest a more convenient transit solution. A thing is sure, the service they get now is clearly insufficient.
LikeLike
Remind us all here of how much of the Yonge-University-Spadina line actually follows Spadina. I’ll help you get started by pointing out it’s nowhere near a third. I’ll also help you along by pointing out that the subway line name is not Yonge-University-Spadina Expressway.
Steve: And of course, the “Spadina” Expressway takes its name from where it would have run south of Davenport, down Spadina to below Harbord Street. The expressway is not on “Spadina” at all.
LikeLike
@Stephen Cheung
The reconstruction work being done at Union addresses the needs related to the lines that are currently going there – one subway line, LRT, the rail lines. There will not be enough space to accommodate a second subway line passing through there, along with the infrastructure (quays). You cannot put the second line under the first, you cannot put it next to it, you cannot put it under the train station.
You would have to either put it south of the current train station (which would force people transitting from one to another to go through the Go train station). Or you would have to put it north of the current subway station – going north, that means under the Royal York Hotel or, ironically, under Wellington Street.
LikeLike
@Taxpayer…
Where do I start… Downtown Relief Line is a misnomer. What needs relief is not downtown… it is subway lines bringing people to downtown. But well, using that name is certainly useful for those who need another excuse to hate downtown (not that I believe, of course, that it is what motivates everyone that uses the DRL moniker).
And then, there’s your claim that calling the proposed line Don Mills is an attempt at at deceiving people into accepting a DRL line under another name, which (if a follow your logic) is bad because that line should not be called a relief line. Excuse me if I believe that doesn’t make any sense.
Steve: I will agree that the name “Don Mills” is in part a rebranding exercise, but it’s also intended to get people thinking of the outer, rather than the inner end of the line and its function.
LikeLike
@Robert Whightman
Interesting idea — a LRT on the lower Yonge. The one problem with it is that the source of the congestion on the below Bloor portion of the subway starts way way above Bloor. People coming from the Bloor Danforth line might be willing to use a lower Yonge LRT, people travelling between sports on lower Yonge might be willing to use it, but I don’t see people going from Sheppard to King switching transit mode at Yonge.
What we need is ways to reduce the congestion at the source — better Go service to Richmond Hill, a line that would (among other things) allow some of the people travelling on the Bloor-Danforth line to avoid Yonge-Bloor. With a lower-Yonge LRT, we would be trying to solve the problem in the wrong place.
LikeLike
Easy for you to say… GO is more costly, trains run less frequently, doesn’t operate during the same hours, and not everyone needs to go as far as Union Station, and then have to transfer back onto the YUS to get where they want to go.
Steve: Your response is exactly the problem caused by the fact that GO operates as an independent service with discriminatory high fares for short trips and poor service relative to the subway. The result? People demand billions of dollars worth of subway construction (not to mention the cost of operating the line and providing relief capacity in the core) all to get that single TTC fare and a train every five minutes at all hours of the day and night. Imagine what the same money invested in GO Transit might provide?
Have you ever been to a Metrolinx electrification meeting and watched the hand-wringing about the billions needed to electrify their lines so that they can run more frequent service? Have you listened to them trumpet GO’s high farebox cost recovery figures as a badge of honour, rather than as a shameful admission that they don’t invest money in more frequent and all-day service because it would drive down their recovery rate?
Of course the Richmond Hill line won’t take everyone where they want to go and some back-tracking would be needed by some trips. The whole point is not to replace ALL of the traffic from the 905 to the 416, but to divert the large block of demand that is going to the core area.
Regardless, I was wondering if there is something like the Budd “dayliner” type single car rail vehicle that could be used in hours when a full GO train isn’t needed… like the O-train in Ottawa but maybe shorter.
Steve: If we own sets of “regular” GO trains for peak demand, having a separate fleet for off-peak just adds capital and maintenance costs. For the same reason, the TTC does not swap out big buses for small ones between the peak periods.
LikeLike
Great job explaining, Steve.
I’ve been thinking about a Donlands/Greenwood yard connection too and had a slightly different alignment in mind.
First of all, a question of logic. I’m assuming south of Danforth it would have to be deep-bored, since cut-and-cover under the rail corridor would take GO out of service on Lakeshore East.
If we have to bore twin tunnels under that rail corridor, then why does it need to be under the rail corridor at all? The main constraints (as long as soil conditions and bedrock cooperate) are curve radii, and being able to cut-and-cover at the stations and tunnel launch sites. Otherwise, as soon as you start boring, there are a lot more options about where you go, right?
If this is true, then why not let it go more directly south from the Greenwood Yard, a station at Gerrard, and a gentle curve to an E-W station near Leslie and Queen East. That would reach closer to capture Beaches riders on the 501, 502 and 503, and would connect to a future Portlands streetcar via the new route down Leslie (i.e. going to Leslie Barns) and eventually across Commissioner’s to East Bayfront.
That could distribute service so more people in the East are closer to high-speed service. It would also capture Gerrard streetcar passengers — and Gerrard Station would be MUCH cheaper to build if they could dig it under Greenwood Park!
Going back to Greenwood Yard: Another advantage that makes the connection so nice is that trains from Scarborough could continue downtown if there’s a shutdown on the BD near Broadview. That’s IF the connection is configured well for high-speed through-routing. I’m imagining the DML’s two tunnels twisting to one-above-the-other, right at that park by Seymour Ave., so the NB/SB track switch-outs don’t cross each other. The two B-D tracks are already basically one-above-the-other by Greenwood Yard, to accomplish basically the same thing.
Steve: A connection with the streetcar lines will occur wherever the line crosses Gerrard and Queen Streets. As for Gerrard Station, the northwest corner of Greenwood Park is not at Gerrard, but a block south, and this would put the station at a local street, not a location of potential development (Gerrard Square).
LikeLike
I believe you mean millions.
Steve: Ooops! Yes, fixed! Thanks.
LikeLike
To Moaz,
Great idea separating the university line from yonge, maybe we can interline the east bloor trains into using the wye if we did this. I think the separation should occur at lowther avenue, (present spadina north station) and continue along spadina avenue to downtown, via bremner, to york street. Stops on Bloor, college, queen, king, front(future union west station) then it would continue under bremner to York st. It could connect to the future Don mills subway, under the ACC. if I’m not mistaken Steve, there is provisions for a tunnel there, as you have stated in your blogs regarding the bremner streetcar. This build can get a little hairy where front and bremner are concerned but if its possible, it should be explored. I know union is constrained but having the terminus at York/bremner, it shouldn’t be as bad. Connect the future York st path to it. It would suck though if these riders would need to use the yonge/university line too, but the benefits for others outweighs this. The Yonge line would terminate at St george, allowing more capacity on university trains for Bloor west riders, an actual seat to downtown. Run every 2nd yonge train to st george, while others would turn back at union. This scheme might even allow bloor east trains to use wye too. ATO should make this happen. Spadina’s streetcar ridership now is near subway territory anyway so trains would be full on this line all the way through to York, no sheppard subway subsidy here. crazy idea or what.
Steve: Crazy.
LikeLike
@Brian,
GO service does not currently meet the needs. I would say it’s a good reason to improve it.
The Yonge line is overcrowded at rush hour basically from Finch down. Mostly due to the ridership feeding into that station from the York Region. No matter what one may think of extending the line to Richmond Hill, that by itself won’t make it less crowded, that’s for sure.
What is needed is a transit option that attracts at least some of the ridership away from the subway line. If it’s not improvement to the GO service, what do you suggest instead?
LikeLike
@libby sotenez
I want to cringe every time I hear about separating the Yonge and University lines. Having them as two separate lines could have been a good idea at the time the University portion was built, and even then I am not convinced on it. But now… No matter how one proposes to do it, there are so many issues that would need to be dealt with, and some that couldn’t be dealt with period, that it makes the whole notion, quite frankly, absurd.
LikeLike
With GO Trains running every 30 minutes off peak, VIA trains running less frequently and very infrequent freights, I’m sure that the space can be found.
Adding trackage to a surface corridor may negate the benefits of common equipment but a fully tunneled line (especially one partially tunneled under an active rail corridor) isn’t going to be cheap either.
I think your idea is a great one, it is long overdue and necessary for Toronto’s growth…but in the current political & transit climate the idea of a fully tunneled subway serving “downtown” is a very hard sell.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: It really does not matter whether GO or VIA run ANY service off peak. If there isn’t track time during peak periods, especially considering planned service improvements on the Lake Shore and Weston corridors, then there is no room for an additional service.
LikeLike
Not quite:
Having 2 sets of rolling stock means that during peak hours the new small trains can be used for new lines at the edge of the GTA (extending service to new cities etc.) or where demand is weak, and in off-peak hours we could have service running much earlier, later, or more frequently during the day.
Steve: That might, just might, be a valid argument if we actually had lines such as you describe. The problem is that while the outer ends of some corridors may fit your description, those trains still have to serve the busier inner ends too lest they consume track time that could be put to better use with larger trains. As for hours of service, that is more a question of crew costs, not of train length.
Same thing should apply to the TTC and streetcars – why have only the new behemoths as opposed to something like the current fleet – running the much longer vehicles in hours when they are near empty.
Steve: I will repeat the point. The biggest cost is the operator, and in the case of the subway, the fixed cost of staffing the stations and having a large pool of infrastructure maintenance staff on call. If you were really serious about partly empty trains, you might start talking about the Sheppard subway, and even parts of the Yonge line during quiet periods. We wouldn’t save much, but it would make the bean counters happy not seeing those “empty” cars. The empty stations would be a more difficult problem as it’s hard to downsize them outside of the peak.
LikeLike
Steve, it it is so important to get people from Don Mills and Eglinton Downtown, then why are we building the Crosstown LRT going to there to Yonge and Eglinton – feeding people into the YUS line, instead of just turning it south?
Steve: In case you have not noticed, the Crosstown does more than take people to Yonge and Eglinton. It acts as a link across the city between north-south routes and improves cross-city travel.
What we end up with is 2 major transit lines at this intersection – why is this such an important node deserving of all this transit? Is the Ontario Science Centre that important?
As an employment Area, Don Mills and Eglinton has been in decline. If we want office buildings in the east end of North York, far better to extend the Sheppard Subway to 2 more stops at Consumers Road and VP. Any office development in the older suburbs will draw in drivers from the 905, and having office building south of the 401 just makes the bottlenecks at the 401 worse on streets such as Leslie, Bayview (and Don Mills Road doesn’t have an interchange with the 401 – maybe it needs one?)
What are the plans for the former IBM/Celestica property on the North West corner?
Steve: Of course this isn’t for the Science Centre. There is already a development proposed for the SE corner of Don Mills & Eglinton. The NE corner is city land that will be the bus terminal for routes feeding into this station, but development will go above the terminal. The SW corner is the Science Centre’s parking lot. Who knows what they have planned, but it’s probably a juicy site of Queen’s Park wants to use it. As for the NW corner (Celestica), I have a hard time believing that a sprawling manufacturing campus will still be a cost-effective use of this land in, say, 15 years especially with two rapid transit lines at the front door.
I won’t mention those small residential communities called Thorncliffe and Flemingdon Parks.
If I took the same attitude as you do but translated it to Scarborough saying that STC and Scarborough in general are “yesterday’s city”, I would get howls of outrage. The problem with STC is that it is an artificial node whereas Don Mills is an established one ripe for further intensification.
LikeLike
What do you think about making the Scarborough subway a branch of the Don Mills subway? I initially thought it was crazy, but it actually looks like a great way to maximize the use of the Don Mills subway.
It would work by branching off of your proposed Don Mills line after Gerrard Station, continuing east along the rail corridor and going underground for a few hundred meters to connect to Victoria Park Station on the Danforth subway. This section would be an “express subway”, without any stations. East of there, the track that is currently part of the Bloor-Danforth would now become part of the Scarborough branch of the Don Mills (DRL) line. That means that Victoria Park would become the eastern terminal for the Bloor-Danforth.
This would be beneficial for several reasons. It would help to divert riders away from the crowded Danforth subway and Bloor-Yonge interchange. It’s also a more direct route into the downtown core than any of than any of the other proposals. Riders from Scarborough wouldn’t have to transfer at Bloor-Yonge or Danforth-Donlands stations. Combine this with the lack of stations on the express portion (Gerrard to Victoria Park) of the line, this could shave 10 minutes off of trips to Scarborough.
Any thoughts, Steve?
Steve: No. No. No. If you really want to take the Don Mills line (or even a branch) to Scarborough, make a right turn off of Don Mills south of Eglinton and follow the Gatineau hydro corridor. A related issue is the use of the CP corridor that crosses Don Mills north of Eglinton and runs northeast into Agincourt and North Pickering. This is an problem for GO and also gets us back to the matter of fare integration.
Duplicating the BD subway is not something we need to do.
LikeLike
There may be ways to use smaller fleet in a fashion that actually reduces capital and maintenance costs for the level of service provided.
I will use the Stouffville GO line as an example, although the concept may be applicable to some other lines as well. Let’s say, we determine that due to the Union station constraints, the highest possible peak-hour frequency of the Stouffville – Union trains is once in 30 min. We use large trains to provide that level of service. In addition, we run small (say, 3-car) DMU or EMU trains only between the Stouffville and Kennedy stations. Those complementary trains are of little use for riders going to downtown, but can be quite handy for riders who board in Markham and head to destinations along the eastern section of the BD subway line; or board the BD line and head to Markham.
The blended peak-hour frequency between Stouffville and Kennedy station will be 15 min both ways, alternating between large Union-bound and small Kennedy-bound trains. Of course, I assume that the fare integration problem will be solved; the scheme will not work without it.
During off-peak periods (midday and late evening), we park the large trains and use the 3-car consists only. They run from Stouffville all the way to Union. We do not have enough of those small trains to support 15-min service off-peak, but we can support a 30-min frequency. That is still better than what we have now, and on par with what is planned for this line in the near future.
With this scheme, the capacity and demand will be matched better than with any scheme that use large trains only. Hence, we can expect capital and operational savings (less wear-and-tear, and less fuel / electricity consumed off-peak).
Steve: I have stated my opinion on this issue in an earlier reply.
LikeLike
Oh, and wasn’t the cost of the DRL around 7 billion dollars… so presumably this Don Mills line, which is would cost even more…
Steve: The $7b cost estimate took the line under well established city streets for a greater distance than my proposal. In any event, and your argument below seems to follow this line, the question is what a Don Mills line can do and how we can get the most benefit for its substantial cost. The TTC has been so set on simply linking Danforth to downtown that their proposed route does not achieve as much as other options might especially considering changes in development patterns.
The real issue is the sustainability of population growth, particularly in cities where most of the area is car dependent, and always will be.
If you have a city composed of very dense urban fabric, where few people own cars (like Manhattan) then transit is mainly paid for through higher taxes and through user fees.
The suburban model, while wasteful of land, also works in that governments pay for roads, which they have to pay for mostly in any case for trucking, emergency vehicles etc. — so the cost of transit is purely through car ownership and gas — but of course, people who can’t afford a car are in trouble as usually bus transit is poor (think Detroit).
The problem we have in the Toronto area/gta is that we are in the middle — most people will still need to rely on their cars, and thus pay for having insurance, gas, and the cost of ownership (depreciation and interest) while at the same time, facing higher taxes and user fees for public transit for both capital and operating costs.
This is the issue that nobody is talking about — public transit doesn’t pay for itself — in therms of operating costs yet alone in terms of the initial capital expenditure. as a greater share of transportation usage shifts to public transit from private cars, as we build more lines, the subsidies have to increase — faster than the population is increasing. This means higher taxes if we decide to keep fares at a low or moderate level — insisting that public transit users pay the full cost of course means much lower ridership and more car use.
Population growth thus means that for typical families in the gta, the cost of buying a home will continue to increase, the cost of taxes and using transit will continue to increase, and there will be little offsetting savings for most families (but not all families) in terms of reduced car usage or having one car instead of two.
LikeLike
You know, to go along with the spirit of the crazy (some may say insane) ideas being thrown around over this Don Mills subway proposal and the fact that the line will have ATC operational on opening day, I wonder if there would be any benefit to build a single station spanning between Yonge and University. The idea would be that this “mega-station” would have the flexibility to handle between 1 and 4 trains unloading along that stretch at the same time and lessen crowding and dwell time by expanding or contracting the number of loading-unloading areas as demand dictates.
Steve: (sighs and just promotes the comment without saying anything)
LikeLike
Steve, I saw your pic in today’s Toronto Sun, in Mike Filey’s column “A Desire for Streetcars”! (Photo of Streetcars for Toronto Committee presenting to TTC commissioners in 1972.)
Steve, your Donlands route used the CNR line’s right-of-way to reach the Greenwood Yard at its southwest corner. I had envisioned the DML alongside the CNR tracks, but now I read that it has to be tunneled.
I was looking at an aerial photo of the Greenwood Yard, and there appears to be no spare space. So, either the DML reduces capacity of the yard, or we have to expropriate from the backyards of the homes along the west side, or we continue to go underground beneath the Yard and all the way to Danforth & Donlands and beyond.
I suppose that after the cut & cover between Greenwood Yard and Donlands, that the reclaimed space be used to expand the small park and maybe install a small Green P parking lot on the south side of Danforth.
Steve: Yes, of course the line would be underground. If it were on the surface the grade down to a tunnel to get under the Danforth subway would be very steep. Also, it would be cut-and-cover because this section would include lead tracks up to Greenwood Yard.
LikeLike
Relax Steve, it was mostly a joke. However, it was a joke based on the State Street Subway in Chicago which has several stations sharing a single long platform.
Steve: I thought it might be. The whole thread is getting buried in details like this rather than looking at how any route on this general alignment might function in the network.
LikeLike
I agree that Don Mills and Eglinton has been in decline in recent times as an employment area. But you have to remember that this area was one of the first post-war planned communities that was built around the automobile. As such it went through a period of ascendancy and then decay like any other suburban community over 60 years.
Now there is an opportunity to re-urbanize Don Mills and Eglinton. The Eglinton Crosstown LRT and the potential Don Mills Subway could be major contributors to this process. Redeveloping decaying suburbs will be one of the major challenges of North American cities over the next 50 years. Anyone who can figure out how to do that could make a fortune as a consultant.
Most of the office development at Consumers Road and Victoria Park is more recent and it does have the better highway access which is very important for low-rent suburban office parks. However, its very success as is also its Achilles heel. The traffic congestion at peak periods is very bad. Although there are some workers who commute there from downtown the majority arrive from North York, Scarborough, and the Durham and York regions. Extending a subway there from downtown will do little to alleviate this congestion.
LikeLike
There is not a huge amount of demand for people to travel from Don Mills and Eglinton to Dufferin and Eglinton… but what other major north-south routes are there? Maybe somebody traveling from Victoria Park and St. Clair to Kennedy and Ellesmere will benefit – but it means an extra transfer as opposed to just taking VP north and transferring to the Ellesmere bus.
If the idea were to speed up and link transit from the north south routes, then likely the best and cheapest solution would have been a surface LRT line using the hydro corridor that cuts diagonally across Scarborough. The Crosstown will mainly be faster than an HOV lane by having fewer stops… which only means longer walking times for many people. It doesn’t really add new capacity except that the vehicles are longer.
Let’s face it, the real reason for the Crosstown is to speed up and increase capacity on Eglinton mainly so as to feed the YUS during rush hours… there is not actually a huge need for the Crosstown between Allen Road and Yonge (except for people headed to somewhere on the Yonge line north of Bloor)
It is very easy to throw around a billion here and a billion there, but where is this new money coming from? It makes sense for the TTC to plan a line only so far as Danforth if the big issue is Yonge/Bloor station, and given that there might not be an extra couple of billion lying around to run a line up to Don Mills and Eglinton for 20-30 years, if it ever happens, just as the plans for the Sheppard Subway were only partially achieved.
Scarborough Town Centre is “Yesterday’s City” and most of the population growth in the GTA over the last 40 years has been to the west of Toronto – Scarborough is “Yesterday’s City” when compared to Mississauga and Brampton and Oakville and Milton etc.
The shift west is partly due to Peasron Airport, partly due to trucking and the west side being closer to the US border, and also because of geography (the grid, there being little population east of Oshawa compared to Hamilton, Kitchener and south western Ontario on the west, etc.)
Given that the geographic centre of population and jobs is clearly west of Yonge, one would think that the emphasis on transit would also be west of Yonge, running lines through Etobicoke such as to Sherway Gardens, Airport Corporate Centre and Mississauga City Centre.
A subway or an LRT will do little to give Scarborough the economic vitality of Mississauga. The city’s visions for the “Centres” has been a failure – only 9% of the city’s growth will be going there and instead Toronto is stuck with a hub and spoke pattern with the new jobs almost all being downtown and dependent on transit, or in the fringes like Meadowvale and being mostly dependent on cars, with the older suburbs being bypassed except for some condos.
LikeLike
Steve: @Brian: The comment above was from Bruce K., not from me. I have changed the attribution.
I grew up in Don Mills, and the success of this intersection until 15 years ago can be summed up in 3 letters: IBM.
This is why the Inn on the Park was built and why it was ultimately demolished, after IBM fled and only Celestica remained.
Because it is dependent on the DVP, and the DVP has a huge problem at the intersection with the 401, it is not an easy area for leasing office space – 2 buildings have been demolished/converted, and a third was renovated into an LDS church.
The big problem is that there is little or no market for new office space in the inner suburbs – STC and North York (save for Menkes 5000 Yonge Street built about 8 years ago), and clearly Consumers Road would have an advantage, particularly if the Sheppard Subway was extended by 1 or 2 stops – more so it the Sheppard line connected with a GO train at Agincourt.
The rents are nowhere near the cost of new construction, even with the current tax breaks for head offices. Frankly, Don Mills and Eglinton might become a major condo hub, along with the one CF is building on the Donway. But nobody wants to drive to Don Mills and Eglinton – they might as well drive downtown when it comes to traffic, though the parking cost is higher. Don Mills offers none of the advantages of Markham, or of Downtown or even Yonge and Bloor.
And that the way it is, the inner suburbs are still a poor “compromise” location for employers – not as cheap and as easy to drive to as the 905, lacking the transit and cache for younger employees of being in the Core. Spending a few billion on transit will help a little, but it is risky to assume it will have much of an impact or economic benefit.
LikeLike
Steve, let us look at a potential Pape alignment again. With Pape, there is no need for a wye to the BD line at Pape & Danforth, because you could have a spur about 500 m to 600 m in length going up the CNR right-of-way, just as if it was the Donlands route. Except that, once the spur line reaches Greenwood Yard, it is not a service line, and it does not need a thoroughfare, saving construction cost. The only wye needed is the existing one for Greenwood Yard. There would be less expropriation of property, specifically, for the section from Greenwood Yard to Donlands Avenue. On the other hand, the spur line would be tunneled underneath the CNR, not adjacent.
The two options, a Donlands alignment and a Pape alignment, are, in my opinion, very similar in merit. However, I think that Pape has a slight advantage. Perhaps this should be left to the local citizenry to decide?
Steve: Your proposal works too, although I can think of interesting problem with either a turn from the rail corridor into Pape (which would affect Gerrard Square) or a turn from a north-south alignment on Pape (presuming it came straight up from Queen or Eastern) into the rail corridor to reach Greenwood. As I have said many times already, the purpose of the article was to stimulate discussion about what a route, generally speaking, could do, not to pick the colours of the station tiles.
One issue about a Pape route is that the valley crossing north of O’Connor would probably be longer because you would start the diagonal path across to Thorncliffe Park further west than with a Donlands route.
LikeLike
I agree with you completely Brian and my comments were not meant to contradict you. My feeling is that most of Toronto’s inner suburbs have decayed to the point where they are no longer viable locations for retail, industrial, office, or other commercial uses.
Older multi-unit residential areas are also in a poor state. Areas with single family detached homes are still doing well providing they are not in close proximity to a decaying commercial and/or multi-unit residential area. Some areas which have attracted a critical mass of new Condo construction also seem to be doing well.
However, the re-urbanization of the decaying inner suburbs will not be successful if they remain automobile dependent for the exact reasons you mention. You can always go further out into the suburbs to get better road access and cheaper land. The inner suburbs cannot compete with that so they will have to find new ways to attract development.
Providing better transit in the inner suburbs will help but it will not be enough by itself. Some new form of post-suburban planning is required. I don’t know what form this will take but trading one auto-dependent suburban form for another auto-dependent form with higher density is guaranteed to fail.
A Don-Mills relief line makes sense not because it will revitalize employment at Don Mills and Eglinton but because:
1. It will take much of the load off the Yonge line south of Eglinton (not just south of Bloor like stopping at the BD line would do).
2. It will provide decent transit for the first time to the high-density priority neighbourhoods of Flemingdon Park and Thorncliffe Park.
3. It will transform Don-Mills and Eglinton into a mobility hub which will make it a preferred site for Condo dwellers who want to avoid or minimize their dependency on the automobile. Although the lifestyle will never equal downtown, going downtown will only be a 30 minute subway ride.
LikeLike
Bruce K.:
Transit doesn’t draw jobs as even downtown, some percentage of people drive all the way, or at least part of the way. Expecting office development in Don Mills that is mainly dependent on transit isn’t going to happen, or at least, not without some other major shift.
The inner suburbs are a real mix – lots of healthy areas of detached homes, and a few big shopping malls worth billions, but the “Avenues” are a mess – big box, 50s strip malls and older multi-res buildings, while the industrial areas are a real issue, but also a real opportunity.
The north-east part of the GTA, including Scarborough, might change if the Pickering airport gets built (assuming no long haul international flights, but medium range passenger and cargo). Generally speaking, anything dependent on semi-trucks won’t locate in the 416 nor do we want it. Trucking related industries want to be close to the airport, CN and CP rail yards, with easy access to the US border, or generally on the fringe where land is cheap.
What the city has been doing over the last few years is cutting non-residential taxes relative to residential taxes. This is great for the big office towers downtown or the big malls and big box plazas, but has yet to do much for the other commercial and industrial. Frankly, I would halt that for a few years and just make a massive cut to industrial taxes. So much of the industrial land in the city is wasted and not competitive, and cutting industrial taxes would be the smartest move.
As for the priority neighbourhoods, using transit won’t help much – in the sense that poor people get the housing that others don’t want and is cheap (except for government/non-profit buildings or units). So ironically, improving transit in Flemingdon Park and Thorncliffe might just end up gentrifying those areas up to middle income instead of being the home of new immigrants. Just as the older multi-unit buildings near Yonge and Eglinton/Davisville are desirable.
Frankly, if we spend 4-5 billion on a DRL that stops at Danforth, I am not sure that the extra 2-3 billion to continue the line up to Eglinton is the top priority and best investment. Maybe a new GO line on the tracks running next to Overlea running east through Scarborough would be a better investment, or something else.
Unless we cancel other transit projects, a DRL that goes north of Danforth won’t get funded, whereas a cheaper one that is shorter might be next in line.
Frankly, increasing development charges for condos, and also combined with preserving the zoning for office near subway stops, would be something to help shift things in the right direction. I don’t think that the city has a viable long term plan for employment lands to bring back the jobs that have fled to the 905.
Steve: First off, the rebalancing of residential and commercial tax rates is mandated by Queens Park and the process is nearly done. For all the complaining about “high taxes” in Toronto, they are cheaper than parts of the 905, especially now that the 905 is running out of cheap sources of tax through development charges.
The DCs in Toronto are set to roughly double over the next few years in response to the considerable amount of new infrastructure needed to serve all of the new development. The developers are screaming about this, and so I’m not sure how they would react if we jacked the charges up even more. In any event, the total take from DCs which can be applied to transit is a small proportion of the total capital we need. There are limitations to how much we can charge via DCs that are set by provincial legislation. If you want it changed, ask Queen’s Park, not City Hall.
As for industrial property, the city tried to preserve industrial land for years in the hope of saving or re-establishing a manufacturing base in the city. It didn’t work because industry wants easy, fast access to the highway system and much of our old industrial land is located around current and former rail corridors which are no longer the transport mode of choice. Cutting industrial taxes won’t have any effect on the uptake of that property for industrial purposes because it’s generally in the wrong place. As you said, industry wants to be close to the airport, or if they are rail-oriented, in a location where it is easy to switch large shipments without wandering down some a line that is busy with commuter trains.
Finally, parts of Flemingdon and Thorncliffe are not what I would call low-income. What, pray tell, is wrong with new immigrants, by the way? Without them, the economy of Toronto and the GTHA would have collapsed years ago. As for your attitude to poor people and housing, well I will just stop now.
LikeLike
Steve, you have a lot of great ideas in this article, and it has sparked an excellent discussion. I wanted to elaborate a lot more than was possible in a comment, so I decided to write an article! It is more of a big picture look at what the Don Mills Subway could do for Toronto, as well as alternatives for reducing congestion at Union and creating significantly better connectivity across the city.
LikeLike
The shorter and cheaper DRL is not necessarily easier to fund. It is quite possible that a line to Don Mills and Eglinton, potentially extendable further north, will draw much more inspiration and public support than a shorter line that serves downtown only.
Straight arithmetic does not always work when public perceptions and political factors dominate the decision-making process.
LikeLike
How feasible is a route that tunnels under Pape, Minton Place (extending off Pape to the Valley) then crossing the valley to the buffer lands east of the water treatment and continuing under Overlea in the eventual direction of Don Mills (with the adjustment you proposed.
I see a more gradual curve, a short straight crossing over the valley, and city land on the other side…with no need for a sharp turn at Thorncliffe Park and Overlea. Plus Overlea has that grassy median so construction might not have as much of an impact.
Aside from objections of residents of Minton Place there are some (4?) houses on the North side that would probably need to be expropriated if the tunnel passes under.
Cheers, Moaz
Ps. Do you intend to take your proposal to the local councillors, TTC, Metrolinx and the Transit Panel?
Steve: Basically, you are talking about a bridge running parallel to the Leaside Bridge and then turning under Overlea. It could work too as an alignment.
I suspect that sundry political and professional folks have already read this proposal in detail based on feedback I am getting.
LikeLike
Industry is an interesting point. Really heavy industry will still want access to shipping on Lake Ontario, but I guess that’s kind of been driven out of Toronto proper as well.
LikeLike
Steve:
The rebalancing of taxes was not mandated by Queen’s Park, as far as I know.
Enhancing Toronto’s Business Climate
DCs are set under provincial rules, but Toronto didn’t take full advantage of them, and DCs are part of what the province is now studying in the recent announcement, which excluded a full review of the OMB.
About 15 years ago, I noticed that many of the older industrial buildings (Chesswood , etc) were being used as indoor used car dealerships! If you believe in Jane Jacobs, cheap space is critical for innovation and new businesses – this is what should be going on in those older industrial areas, particularly since the redevelopment of the Kings and the lack of cheap brick and beam space forces businesses to look elsewhere. This is the type of stuff that doesn’t need a lot of trucking.
Without new immigrants, our economy would have collapsed years ago? Say what? I have nothing against immigrants, but cutting immigration in half (I don’t think anybody would propose zero immigration) would actually have prevented a lot of the congestion we now experience. Prior to the 1990s, Toronto had below average unemployment and immigrants who came here were doing better than average after 10 years (incomes and low unemployment). Since the 1990s, when Mulroney cranked up immigration to over 200,000 per year, is when we started having serious problems with poverty, food banks and stagnant incomes. There is no shortage of labour, and even skilled labour shortages are now being questioned (and of course, shortages of skilled labour are in construction – but here we are like a cat chasing its tail – immigration increases population which increases housing demand which increases the need for skilled construction trades, but the immigrants we let in are based on post secondary education, not hands-on skills in construction trades – so the shortage never gets reduced!)
Want to stop congestion from getting worse – the cut immigration for a decade or more so that transit can catch up with demand and the lack of adequate investment since the 1980s. The problem with the Big Move etc. is that this is a moving target – the proposed lines won’t solve the current congestion problems, yet alone handle the extra 100,000 extra people per year we will get over the next 20 years.
Steve: My apologies re tax policy, although if memory serves, there was a lot of kvetching from Queen’s Park about how Toronto’s commercial taxes were too high. In any event, the effect of the reduction plan will start to wear off as Toronto will have reached the target level of residential:commercial taxes for small businesses by 2015, and for other commercial property by 2020.
What happened in the early 1990s was that there was a serious recession, especially in Ontario, and the economic situation took a long time to recover. Now we are feeling the aftereffects of the 2008 banking crisis, and the well-known problem that “middle class” or “professional” wages are not growing as they once did. This has not stopped immigration from overseas and from other parts of Canada.
LikeLike
I am curious what the community feels about the momentum there is going on the Don Mills line. It seems as this point there is some sort of alignment between city staff & planners, some of the politicians and the provincial parties to finally get this thing built. The Feds will kick in their 1/3 contribution I’m sure…
So Steve, I know we’ve talked about your skepticism with all of this momentum, but do you still feel negative about the prospects of this line?
Steve: What troubles me is that there is a lot of talk about alternatives to the “DRL” or “Don Mills” line as it has been discussed, most recently from the Transit Investment Panel who are talking about a “Big U” based on GO. This will not eliminate the “in town” demand, especially if GO does not invest in the ability to run enough service to carry riders inside the 416, not just those from the 905. We risk building the Richmond Hill subway and still not having enough capacity for riders inside Toronto.
The “Big U” perpetuates the idea that we are focused on Union Station rather than providing a network with links between many places, some of which are wholly contained in the 416.
LikeLike