The recently-formed Toronto Relief Line Alliance has just launched a campaign to showcase the benefits of a new subway line from downtown Toronto to Don Mills & Sheppard. Unlike the less-than-arms-length SmartTrack advocates, FAST, the Relief Line Alliance isn’t trying to make any politicians look good or prop up the remnants of an ill-considered election platform.
Of particular interest on their site is a map where readers can see travel time savings possible for various trips to downtown. All of the numbers they use are based on published reports notably Metrolinx’ own evaluation of such a route from June 2015.
Now that Toronto can finally discuss something other than John Tory’s signature project, the new Alliance can provide a voice and a forum for a much-needed part of our transit system.
City Hall and Queen’s Park must get their heads out of the sand and make the Relief Line an integral part of medium term, “see it in our lifetime” plans. The time for transit plans pandering to pet projects and political egos is over.
Steve Munro 
Between TTCRiders, Toronto Relief Line Alliance and everything else I am starting to wonder if the general message is starting to become diluted. One of the reasons I feel Streetcars for Toronto along with Jane Jacobs and the group that derailed the Spadina Expressway worked back in your era Steve was because they were one offs. If you have multiple people saying the same thing people start becoming selective and hearing what they want to hear.
With that in mind however this is good news. I highly doubt anything will be built before we have flying cars (at which point we will be debating how much service to provide, who will provide it and at what cost).
It would take a catastrophic collapse of the subway system for this to be expedited.
Oh and as for an earlier reply of yours I concur. They will not build provisions on the crosstown for any potential DRL. What is more likely is to dig deep and build a connection to the existing station. What’s the deepest we can go under code Steve… 3.. maybe 8 KM?
Regards,
Richard
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Lol, Richard, may I correct you? Since the CBC interviewed Steve last week, and the Toronto Sun just published his op-ed, may I suggest Steve is an active and influential figure in the current era?
Sections of the Washington and Moscow Metro are built exceptionally deep, in the regions near the Central Government, so they can be pressed into service as bunkers that could survive a strike by a nuclear warhead.
The London Underground is also built extremely deep, which I think was done because plans of the basements of buildings hundreds of years old, don’t exist, and going four or five stories deep allows planners to be reasonably sure new tunnels won’t bump into an undocumented basements.
With Regard To seriously goofy and wasteful transit plans. For several years following 9-11 there were several panics in Washington DC. Transportation authorities implemented a no-fly zone around DC. There were several incidents when small planes penetrated that no-fly zone. They all turned out to be no cause for alarm — as when small commuter craft were chartered, that lacked modern transponders, whose pilots didn’t know of the no-fly zone.
These alarms would shut down official Washington, for the rest of the day. Hundreds of thousands of Government workers were told to evacuate their buildings, and go home. Instant traffic jam for auto drivers. Instant jam up of the Metros — so crowded that it left a huge number of Metro riders milling around on the surface, waiting for their chance to enter the Metro and ride home.
These surface mill ups, triggered by these false alarms, sparked calls for transit authorities to build additional transit line to the central government area — solely to make it faster to evacuate government workers who were told to evacuate and ride home.
Of course, since these planes were little craft, so far as the authorities knew, the size of crop-dusting craft, whose greatest threat might have been spreading anthrax spores, or nerve gas, those government workers would have been far safer staying indoors, in their offices, than milling around on the surface.
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Site does not give names, which would be helpful, so wonder if you Steve are one of the 20.
Steve: I advised the group when the content existed only as a spreadsheet to (a) avoid overstating the speed of the Relief Line, especially its inner end where stops would be closer together and (b) to include destinations other than St. Andrew Station. I am not one of the 20.
The travel time feature, while potentially useful, leaves me perplexed since routes to accomplish those times are not clear. How, for instance do they get from Warden/Eglinton to St Andrew. Presumably the Today time is a bus to Eglinton Station, thence Yonge subway. It proffers a 51% improvement to 28 minutes by Relief Line, and mentions Eglinton LRT 38 min, and Bloor Danforth Subway 43min. I’m confused. And for commuters coming from east, is not King a more likely destination? Going around the loop adds several minutes to the Today times.
My greatest concern is the choice of downtown route, with King being mentioned too often. Routing via King will kill the 504 King car within weeks of constructions start (remember all those station end walls on Eglinton being installed ahead of the boring machines – 4 blockages per station, about 4-6 weeks each). Choosing King would be Toronto’s dumbest move in an eon. Construction takes 6-10 years, so preserving the King car until Relief Line opening day is as important as the line itself. Wellington Street beacons.
Steve: As you know, I have always advocated a route along Wellington even though some people (this group is not alone) keep drawing it on King Street. Although the technical studies have not officially picked a route, Wellington is the most preferred because it provides easy connection to existing stations without tearing up a major street and carline.
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Can a “no station between” policy similar to new Scarborough subway plan be applied to DRL?
I mean a much cheaper and faster “express line” connecting Pape station to King or Queen stations with no stop in between. This express line would be much cheaper, more attractive to commuters and faster to build.
Steve: The question is whether we want to express people from the outer suburbs to downtown (for which GO is eminently suited) or serve many areas that could use better transit connections. There is little need for a DRL station between the Don River and Yonge Street given other transit available now (or planned) in this area especially if the line stays north of the rail corridor as is most likely. A station at Don is essential for the new development planned there, and it would provide a good connection point for local services in the eastern waterfront and Broadview. The next station might be at Gerrard where there is a large block of land ripe for development, Gerrard Square, and then north to Danforth. From there northward we would only need three stations enroute to Eglinton at O’Connor (or somewhere in that vicinity), Thorncliffe Park and Eglinton. North of Eglinton, the spacing would probably rise to 2km with stations only at the arterials Lawrence, York Mills and Sheppard.
That’s a total of 10 stations from Yonge to Sheppard over a distance of almost 20km. That will give quite a decent average speed.
The idea of a single subway stop at STC only works in the context that SmartTrack will be available at Lawrence, Ellesmere, Sheppard and Finch. Indeed, the wide spacing should really be on the GO/ST line, but for the inconvenient location of STC itself that was dictated by where Eaton’s owned land and built their mall.
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Steve – I remain confused – why the residents of downtown – would support such a line. Why do we want to make it easier for those in the burbs to compete for our jobs? Why should this take priority over fixing streetcar service from the Beaches or Liberty Village? Those everywhere else in the city – have made a big deal about another subway for downtown, and actively opposed it, but near as I can see, the only people negatively affected are those downtown – so why not oppose it- as it primarily assures access for others, and means that basic service downtown – will remain massively overcrowded, and improvement for it will be delayed again.
Steve: For starters, because a Relief Line will make a huge difference in crowding on the subway downtown. Get used to it — the demand coming from Liberty Village and The Beach is already dwarfed by the number of people travelling in via the subway network and GO. Many people who work downtown can’t afford a house in The Beach or a condo in Liberty Village.
Yes, we need to fix the streetcar lines which once carried far more people then they do today, but that’s not a multi-billion dollar project. Both a Relief Line and better transit service in “the old city” are possible, indeed essential.
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Except that the pretty much the main thing to hear is that same thing.
Politicians deal with numbers of votes, and if multiple people are saying the same thing, THAT becomes what they want to hear.
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Agreed – but it would appear that any subway into the core – will be deemed politically – as a project for downtown – and not the city as a whole, and will thus be seen as showing favor for the downtown. I think the downtown – should be careful – about being too enthused, and thereby consuming its political capital – on a project that does at least as much to help North York and Scarborough residents. Transit – should be about making the entire city work – but that does not appear to be how the politics are being played.
Steve: Sorry, but that’s a bogus argument. As long as we keep saying that any line into downtown won’t be acceptable, we won’t try to build it. What is SmartTrack if not a new line into downtown just like GO/RER. All the bunk about serving surburban nodes in Markham and at the Airport is just hot air when you compare demands along the line.
The DRL is a prerequisite for the Richmond Hill subway, and if that isn’t suburban I don’t know what is. Of course Richmond Hill is not in Scarborough and so might not rank has highly in some politicians’ minds, but that’s another matter.
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I see the importance of the RL but ever since Smart Track (or whatever it becomes) was brought forward, the RL has been shunted aside as if Smart Track is all that is necessary.
In essence, John Tory and his group think Smart Track replaces the RL.
I realise that RL is a long term idea. But, until Smart Track operates, there is unlikely to be the political will to get anything about the RL done.
Steve: (Corrected reply 2016.01.26 at 10:35 am)
Both Jennifer Keesmaat and Andy Byford have said quite strongly that SmartTrack is only a stopgap and that it will not divert enough traffic from the Yonge line to prevent future overcrowding, especially if anyone thinks they will build a subway to Richmond Hill. The time frame for the RL should be 2031, but whether this will be championed with so many conflicting demands for transit and other spending remains to be seen. The important point is for people, especially the TTC, to stop talking of the RL as if it only goes to Danforth.
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You meant ST here, not RL, right?
Steve: Yes, good catch. Thanks. Will fix.
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If we can spend $2.5B on a subway extension to develop the STC, what about extending the RL to Major Mackenzie and change the R from Relief to Richmond Hill? This would run very close to the redeveloping Buttonville Airport and change the equation on pressures along Yonge.
I’m not saying it’s a great idea by system planning, but it could be a political compromise that means the RL would go north of Danforth or Eglinton, and be relatively immune from political short-thrift in later years.
Steve: Note that since you quoted my comment it has been updated to say that SmartTrack is only a stopgap.
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Finally this is a good idea . Might have to fine tune it a bit, but not enough to stall it please . Subway lines belong only in downtown cores where traffic and space demands .
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Would this be an argument to choose to extend the DRL to Markham, then Richmond Hill, before the YUS is extended to Richmond Hill?
Steve: I have corrected that comment since you picked it up, and the correct text is that SmartTrack is only a stopgap. Taking the DRL to Markham is not a good idea. Can we just get that project built?
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Steve: This quote has been corrected. It is SmartTrack that is only a stopgap.
How far apart should subway stations be? How far apart should the Crosstown stations be? Stopping to let riders on and off is always going to make for a longer trip. The stations on the underground portion of the Crosstown are farther apart — meaning that riders will be able to travel from Weston Road to Yonge at a comparable speed as a rider 4 kilometers south will be able to travel from High Park to Yonge. But the ride from Kennedy to Yonge and Eglinton on the Crosstown will be five to ten minutes longer than the ride from Kennedy to Yonge and Bloor, because the above ground stops are so close together.
I think if Metrolink wants to see rapid transit extended to Vaughan, Markham, Mississauga, Pickering, the stops on the longer distance higher capacity routes should be farther apart, with more local routes providing more granular stops.
Steve: Which is precisely what is happening on Eglinton. It is not a regional line.
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All GO rail use legacy rail corridors, from a hundred years ago, and, if I am not mistaken, the maximum speed of the rolling stock on GO’s regional rail aren’t substantially greater than subways, or cars on the 401, under ideal conditions.
Steve: GO can operate at 90 mph compared to subways at 50 (that’s 145 vs 80 km/h).
Ideally, shouldn’t big cities, the GTHA, Chicago, London, NYC, have a regional rail that quickly connects hubs that are far enough apart that it can speed up to a speed that connects riders noticeably faster than subways or expressways? I know, high-speed requires routes with shallow grades, more precisely positioned rails, electrification. If we were designing a regional rail system, and we had no legacy rail corridors to use, where would we place the hubs where they connected to the more local subways routes, and other more local routes?
Am I correct that engineering a maximum speed for GO’s rail rolling stock, that would be greater than that of a car on an expressway, has never been important because those big trainsets could never get to that maximum speed when the stations are so close together, and they were being propelled by diesel locomotives?
Steve: No, because your original premise is wrong.
But, am I correct that if the GTHA’s regional rail had never used legacy corridors, planners would have been able to argue for using electrified vehicles, from day one?
Since GO used legacy rail corridors, trains don’t get above cyclist speed for the first ten minutes or so, after leaving Union Station. That is far from ideal. If this ideal regional rail system could get up to a higher speed, within its first few minutes of leaving downtown, maybe the first stations it stopped at should all be outside the boundaries of the original borders of Toronto, in North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough, and the second or third stops should be in 905. How many of the GO stations on the Lakeshore line are currently well connected to the TTC?
I think almost none of them are. Some residents of Liberty Village may travel downtown boarding the infrequent GO rail train — but only because they can’t get on-board the already full to capacity 504. But really, shouldn’t those riders be riding a local route for what is really a local trip, one that doesn’t justify a stop on a regional rail network? Liberty Village 504 riders could board their vehicles if the TTC had enough vehicles, and the will to short turn enough vehicles at the nearby Dufferin Loop. I think it was Steve who suggested that vehicles leaving the new Cherry Street loop terminate at Dufferin loop.
Since GO used legacy rail corridors it used a radial topology, where all routes intersected just once, at Union Station. If we had designed a regional rail system, from the ground up, wouldn’t it have had at least one route that connected peripheral hubs, without going downtown, at all? Connect a hub on the Spadina branch of YUS, maybe Yorkdale or Downsview, to a hub on the Yonge branch, maybe Finch, or Sheppard, with no pesky time-wasting stops in between, connect it to a couple of more eastward hubs, like STC, and to a couple of hubs westward.
In addition, would we design an outer ring, that would allow a rider a fast route from Pickering to Richmond Hill, or Newmarket, to Pearson, Square One, or Port Credit, that didn’t require going through Union Station?
Steve: This is all very nice theory, but the rail corridors are a century old when travel patterns were radial to and from Toronto, and the lines were not used for local travel. Adding any new rail corridor is almost impossible now because land it might use is occupied by new development.
Why are the GO trainsets so large? Is the main reason to pack as many passengers as possible into the windows when the rails are available for GO use? If our regional rail had been designed to go where we want it go now, and it used its own dedicated rail, would we use smaller trainsets, that ran more frequently?
Steve: GO can only handle a certain number of trains/hour and this dictates large trains to get the capacity they need.
Okay, it is too late to redesign GO rail’s existing facilities. But if a new rapid transit route were to connect Aurora, Richmond Hill and Newmarket to Toronto, and ultimately downtown Toronto, should it be a subway, an extension of the Yonge line? If we could afford it, maybe it should be a route that stops at Union, Wellington, Bloor, Eglinton, Sheppard, Highway 7, Aurora, Richmond Hill, and possibly Newmarket. It takes about ten minutes to get from Union to Bloor, or St George, now. But this is barely more than 2 km. On an express route with no intermediate stops, this distance would be traveled in about two minutes, even using our existing subway technology. Wellington, to Richmond Hill, in the time it now takes to get to Finch, would that make transit more attractive to fans of the car?
I suggested those stops, in Toronto, because those are the stops that intersect east west rapid transit lines. Yes, Union and Wellington are close, but not quite a convenient walking distance if you are burdened with luggage, or a stroller with a kid in it, or you are a senior.
We are already planning to excavate additional levels under the Yonge-Eglinton station, for the Crosstown. Does this establish that excavating additional levels is possible? Would there be safety problems boring an additional set of tunnels somewhere more or less beneath the existing Yonge line? If they were bored more or less beneath the existing line, at least the TTC wouldn’t have to acquire an additional right of way.
Steve: Going under the existing subway is a temporary situation that will require a shutdown of the subway above while excavation work is underway. It is also only reasonable where gradients and local groundwater make it feasible. On the existing subway, you would be tunneling continuously, not just across the structure, and there are locations (notably Bloor-Yonge) where groundwater would pose a major problem. The station already is deep because of the two levels for YUS and BD.
Someone mentioned the Spanish station design, where vehicles use both sets of doors to load and unload passengers, at the busiest stations. Ideally the existing Yonge-Bloor stations would benefit from this design. Could the TTC argue for spending a couple of hundred million dollars to expropriate basements, and mine out room for wider stations, that provided room to rebuild the existing North South level, or both levels, according to the Spanish design.
Steve: The TTC had a design to rebuild Bloor-Yonge with a centre platform. It would have cost nearly $1 billion and would have required that the subway be closed for months at a time. This is a classic case of trying to pack too many people into one corridor, and it is much better to spend the money on a parallel route.
Should the Crosstown’s platforms at the stations it shares with the subway be built to allow riders to use all doors?
Steve: Demand on the Crosstown is nowhere near the level requiring loading from both sides of the trains at once. And, by the way, those designs are already frozen. They use a single centre platform to simplify vertical access that would need three sets of stairs, escalators, etc in your version.
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I wish someone would slap this idea into the politicians up here in Richmond Hill, as well as Markham, and York Region’s council. From the drivel I see in the mail from my various representitives, they have this belief that funding approval is all that is needed to start construction on the subway to Richmond Hill.
I wish I had a copy of something recent from either my town councillor or my regional councillor that I could actually quote here. Though, you can see for yourself how this “Union Station of the North” will be possible through Yonge line capacity improvements such as new signals (10% more capacity), ATC (36% more capacity – they count these as adding, but I believe the new signal capacity ought to be included in this bloated ATC capacity number!), and Rocket Trains (8% more capacity).
Steve: Yes, there is definitely some double-counting going on there, but it’s based on figures the TTC no longer uses.
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I realize that – and frankly it is also for any substantial growth in core bound traffic from Scarborough – as I expect ST to be a bust that way. I was referring entirely to political capital. I am all for the DRL and believe it should be supported as long as nobody in the burbs – asserts the line is for downtown – and therefore downtown has already gotten its share.
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It’s been said here before, and by others, that proper transit planning is urban planning, and for efficient transit, we need to build things that can be connected linearly.
The entire mess in Scarborough seems to stem from the folly of STC’s location.
I seriously wonder if there isn’t a better ROI for relocating STC onto the Uxbridge sub (or choosing a different location in Scarborough to be the transit hub) rather than trying to make STC work.
Eaton’s has cost us all a fortune that few could have foreseen at the time.
Steve: It made perfect sense as an auto-based scheme, just as with Yorkdale.
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Densities are too low north of Finch on Don Mills/Leslie. Demand is more on the scale of BRT.
I think there’s a good argument for building the RL as far as Finch, to terminate and serve Seneca College. This would also allow for lots of parking in the hydro corridor, as at Yonge/Finch (Seneca has some parking there now, but the college would need less parking with the subway connection).
BTW, York Region is building a low-end BRT on this route (Major Mack to Sheppard), for completion in 2018. Apparently it doesn’t even warrant a BRT with its own ROW.
More importantly a RL into York Region wouldn’t serve the main transit artery where the constraint on buses exists, which is Yonge. We’re pretty much already out of road capacity on Yonge up to Steeles, and by 2031 this state of affairs will have extended up to Hwy 7, only worse with the constraints in Thornhill.
That is to say, we need an RL to Sheppard (or Finch) by 2031, and a Yonge LRT or subway to 7 by about the same time. I would think LRT from Steeles to Bernard or Gamble by 2031 would be ideal, with a tunnel under ‘heritage’ area(s) where there isn’t room.
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The DRL (and, indirectly, the Gardiner rebuild) is also necessary to let downtown expand to the east and west. I’m starting to see a lot of companies open up shop adjacent to downtown like at Spadina, Bathurst, or Sherbourne. The demand is there, but the transportation links are not. I often find it faster to go by foot there from Yonge street than to take the streetcar. Unless they make lanes streetcar-only (that’s never going to happen), then the DRL is the only feasible fix for downtown’s streetcar issues. Like it or not, the DRL is downtown’s share of the transit pie. No one has suggested building any other major piece of transit infrastructure downtown. Downtown will need to expend its political capital to ensure that the DRL has enough stops to end up being beneficial for locals in downtown too.
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Thank-you Steve and keep up the good work. What I like and what has been stressed by the Relief Line Alliance is their sources. I do not think I can recall such work on transit chat. At this time, the numbers are still out for the Scarborough subway, I seem to recall the numbers are borderline and do not support a Scarborough subway. The Relief Line Alliance sourced numbers seem to support a DRL and all the way up to Don Mills/Sheppard. The travel time to destination is a nice touch.
Their argument is very persuasive. Can our politicians handle the truth in numbers? We shall see. So far, it has not worked out so good for us. The Relief Line Alliance website is a great starting point … and for no political gain.
Cheers.
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Exactly, just like the way the Region clings to the idea now dropped by the TTC that enough capacity can be squeezed out of the existing Yonge line. Not only does it involve double-counting, but also a bit of double-face as will while they talk out of one side of their mouths about how ahead of the game they are with plans and approvals all done and only funding standing in the way, while the other side of their mouth spouts decade-old beliefs that the capacity is there.
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If I recall correctly, the 800 metre Cherry Street streetcar, scheduled to open in early 2016, was projected to cost $90 million.
Steve: You do not recall correctly. The project is priced at $5.7 million in the TTC’s capital budget. Nice try.
Okay, small potatoes.
Steve: Even smaller with the right number.
But there are also plans to build an East Bayfront LRT, from Union to… maybe meet up with the Cherry Street route, or maybe to the Unilever site. I can’t remember the projected cost — more than the initial Cherry Street line. There was discussion to extend the Cherry Street line south of the Keating Channel, to service the new developments planned in the Port Lands. I remember $350 million.
The East Bayfront route, which was not part of Transit City, has been delayed. This has delayed construction of a wall of Condos east of Sherbourne Commons. This has been good for me as those condos would block the excellent view of the harbour from my building’s roof. Anyhow, those two planned routes would probably cost close to a billion dollars. Does that count as a major piece?
Steve: Actually it’s about half a billion, of which over half is for the Bay Street tunnel work. The condo construction continues apace, although developers are starting to complain to the city about the LRT line they were promised, and whose value forms part of the development charges they are paying.
The biggest part of the EBF LRT is the need to make a new underground connection to the tunnel at Bay, and very substantially increase the capacity of Union Loop. That loop was too small from the day it opened 25 years ago. It’s ironic with all the talk of efficiency in spending that at least some of the expansion work didn’t take place while the line was closed for the Queens Quay project, but that was a time when any spending “downtown” was not going to happen thanks to Rob Ford (and to some extent the TTC’s own foot-dragging on the EBF project). Also when quoting costs be careful not to mix costs for the street reconstruction with the cost of the LRT line itself. A big chunk of the Queens Quay West project was for utility relocation and reconstruction, not for the TTC. The new utilities make possible the redevelopment in that neighbourhood that could not occur otherwise.
All of the money for eastern waterfront transit would build the Scarborough subway, at best, as far as Brimley and Eglinton.
Incidentally, the Transit Toronto site says the TTC used to serve the Portlands with a streetcar, 80 years ago.
Steve: You are thinking of the Ashbridge car that came south from Queen to Commissioners and then west to Cherry.
41 years ago, in 1975, when I was a high school student, I attended the last public meeting connected with the development of a new transit plan for Toronto, called MetroPlan. The very last question from the audience concerned accessible transit. I thought I was pretty well informed on transit issues, for a high school student, and my reaction to the idea that substantial extra resources should be devoted to enabling a public transit system carry mobility challenged riders was absurd a “never going to happen” to use your term.
Steve: Who is the “your” here? That’s not a quote from “my” text.
In answer to the question, “when is the TTC going to provide service to the mobility impaired?” the nice senior planner who led the session explained that it was certainly possible for a public transit service to provide that service. He explained that he couldn’t predict when those services would be available, because it was not a technical question, it was a political question. It would happen a reasonable amount of time after politicians changed the TTC’s mandate, and provided additional funding.
I visited the sales center for the expensive condos developers want to erect on the East Bayfront. Most of the owners of those expensive condos will have to forgo owning a car, as the buildings were designed with a third as many parking spots as condos. If Toronto brings in a London style congestion surcharge maybe the legacy streetcar routes will have lanes for transit vehicles only after all? Maybe those vehicle will finally get priority at traffic lights?
This requires a paradigm shift. Us older folks remember previous paradigm shifts. University students used to smoke in lecture halls. Movie patrons used to smoke in movie theatres. That seems absurd now. Or consider the friendly acceptance of LGBTQ rights, including the right to marry? That seems to have happened just in the last decade.
Steve: And your point is? The TTC is mandated like all transit agencies, not to mention other types of public service, to provide accessibility. Transit has an unusually long lead time allowed, to 2025, in view of the complexity and scope. However, the issue of accessibility (which attempts to create an equal playing field for all would-be riders) is very different from whether we will take King Street away from one class of users (motorists) for the benefit of others (transit riders, cyclists and pedestrians). Yours is an apples and oranges argument.
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@arcticredriver,
We don’t have “high speed” (200-375 mph) rail in the GTA for the same reason we don’t have the Allen Expressway. The neighbourhoods that would be displaced to build the system complain loud enough that it doesn’t get built.
Japan operates 16-car consists (1323-seat capacity) with each car being 25m long x 3.4m wide x 4.5m tall, so the size of GO cars.
The issue with trains within the USRC is the number of switches and ongoing work projects resulting in slow orders. The ideal situation for “faster” service is to have stations on the outskirts of the USRC and allow people to transfer to the TTC or foot unless they are going to the exact center area.
A “regional” rail system from the ground-up flies in the face of the developmental history of Toronto and the GTA. Consider that both the 401 and 407 were built as “by-pass” routes around Toronto, but now lie in the center of developed areas. What was your western developmental node in 1964? Beyond that, it’s just a matter of huffing and puffing, as we can’t go back, and we can’t build a green field system.
We had set travel patterns in 1884 when the Grand Trunk Railway built the Bathurst overpass, and it continues to dictate transit development in the area.
Until recently, GO was always commuter trains run on freight tracks. They maximized their track occupancy by having longer trains and going to the bi-level design. Now that GO owns most of their network, they are working on removing capacity choke points (West Toronto Diamond, Snyder Diamond, etc), but the kicker is Union Station platform space, concourse passenger flow capacity, and USRC track space. At this point, shorter and more frequent trains would represent a decrease in peak-hour capacity.
There are plans to shift to an EMU model, but it’s a generational change (electrification in the next 10-15 years being the first step).
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@Ross Trusler,
Thanks for the details. I was thinking more of capitalizing on the political will for these projects. Curb-side ‘BRT’ on the surface, TBM tunnel with cut-and-cover stations (4km spacing is Steeles, Hwy 7, Major Mack) could cover the mix of local and commuter traffic. It’d be interesting to see actual demand and growth models, as the low BRT service makes sense if you’re going to have to take the Sheppard Subway back to Yonge anyway. The other side of things is what relief an “express subway” would give to the DVP/404.
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We don’t have high speed rail because nobody wants to fund it. I don’t think any HSR plans have gotten far enough along to be stopped by opposition (rather than just disappearing into the black hole of archived reports).
There is, typically, no need to displace any neighbourhoods to install HSR. The trains can use existing tracks to get to existing stations. They just can’t travel at high speed until they get out to where their dedicated tracks have been built to high speed specification. This is one big reason to prefer trains that run on a normal style of tracks, rather than maglev or some other exotic technology.
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Steve, I thought that TTC Subway Car Yards capacity is near/at max now.
Where, oh where do they expect to hide the trains? Are they planning a dip into East Bay Front and building a facility down there? Once they get up to Don Mills, will they tie into the Sheppard, finish the West Sheppard and link to Wilson Yard?
Steve: TTC is looking at property in the west end for a new yard. This would offload some of the BD trains from Greenwood.
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How close is the EA for a route to being complete? We seem to be looking at an optimal configuration; Recognized need by TTC, A federal government who wants to build some infrastrucure, and some ex-TYSSE TBM’s sitting around. If they can get the route figured out and turn the TBM’s loose we could get the tunnels started/built. Layout the stations and build them after the tunneling is done – just get started – if you build it they will come.
Ideally, once they start tunneling, they just keep going, a few Km’s every year, adding a station every 3-5 years – constantly expanding the subway.
Steve: There isn’t even an EA started, although City Planning will report soon on a preferred alignment at least for the south end. The work to date has been at a general superficial level looking broadly at corridors rather than specific details along each route. Moreover, the has been no consultation on a route north of Danforth to Eglinton or beyond.
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That is the thing – where will the stations be for the DRL? There are grave questions to how much it will help. Having a handful of stops south of Danforth – and not going west of University – will not really help the downtown that much. If it acts to provide effective transfers for people making longer trips on streetcars fine, but well – a subway that ends at University – does not help Liberty Village, a line at Pape – without good coordinating stops – does little to help the Beaches, and there is an awful lot – including the larger cars – and simple enforcement of left turn rules and lane restrictions that could help the streetcar service downtown to be much more effective. Bringing in substantial improvements at Union Station for streetcar service, building the East Bayfront LRT – and a further extension to the east and building capacity at Union and real Transit priority on Harbourfront to run real service to the CNE with the new large cars, and large cars on King – would go a long way to address a lot of these issues.
As Steve has frequently pointed out in the past – there is a lot that can be done to improve service for the streetcars downtown. While I fully support the DRL – it is for the city as a whole, and from a purely downtown resident’s perspective – there should be higher priorities. I worry a great deal that this is going to be used as a reason not to do those other projects that are much less costly and have a broader effect for more of the downtown. The DRL is important to allow the financial core and employment in that district to grow and spread – but that is for the city as a whole. This kind of employment is likely easiest to serve if the growth remains focused – but that is a regional employment and development issue – not a primarily a downtown residents issue.
The me before them crowd – that has been a force in Scarborough and North York – needs to understand this – as they have in the past opposed the DRL as a subway to serve downtown – as “downtown already has enough subway”. Hear me – I do not oppose (in fact strongly support) a DRL – but as a critical regional piece – it is not a subway for downtown – it is a subway to downtown – may seem like a minor difference – but it is not from an issue of who should support it and why. It does not solve the issues for people trying to access initial service in the shoulder areas – except the few that will live close to stations. It is a first and foremost an answer to a capacity question – to get to the core, and a way of improving service to people headed to the core on the Crosstown, the BDL, and buses it will intercept in East York, and possibly North York (and hopefully a Sheppard East LRT), and a substantial development opportunity for Eglinton and Don Mills and points north should it go there. However – it should not be seen as a subway for downtown – any more than one for North York, East York, Scarborough or Richmond Hill.
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Slight catch with using the TYSSE TBM’s; they weren’t designed to handle the bedrock issues that the RL is facing.
Steve: Yes, when people blithely draw new subway lines on the map, it is important to understand the geotech conditions those lines go through. Construction techniques vary a lot from one location to another.
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This is certainly a very seductive idea but I think it is impractical as I assume one needs extra ‘stuff’ at terminus stations (tail tracks, switches, more surface connections and ??) Comments?
Steve: Provided that the incremental chunks built are far enough apart that they would have a crossover for emergency short turns anyhow, this does not make for an extra cost. This is particularly true with computer based signalling where reconfiguration from a “line station” to a “terminal” is not as complex an update as with relay-based logic. As for bus connections, yes, there is always the problem of a temporary terminal having either too much or too little capacity, before or after an extension. Pick one. It’s part of the cost of opening a line incrementally rather than end-to-end.
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You seem to be missing the basics of HSR horizontal and vertical curve radii or the length of switches and signal blocks.
For 200 kph, you need a minimum horizontal curve radius of 1.3km with 160mm cant and tilting trains. You need to build dedicated tracks to get to the ‘high speed’ part of HSR. For example, the only ‘high speed’ part of the proposed London-Kitchener-Toronto HSR is between London and Kitchener, the remainder would still top out at 90 mph, as we currently have, and lower the closer you get to Union.
Steve: As many others have pointed out, if we could just get back to a situation where the existing line was brought up to the quality it once had, and ran trains at “normal” rather than “slow order” speed, it would make a big difference in travel times. Add to that more frequent service on the “north route” to London, and many of the benefits of HSR would already be in place. I can’t help thinking of an the analogy with the SRT which gives the worst possible “existing” conditions on its route, but has been like this for so long, nobody knows what this line could be. Similarly, present day travellers on Via barely remember the speed trains could travel on that route even with the constraints of wandering the streets of Guelph and making do with the single track line from there westward. “HSR” is a seductive proposal when you don’t know what could be done with the infrastructure that is already in place.
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Sitting around? Didn’t council vote to sell off the TYSSE TMBs last year sometime? I can’t recall when, but I do recall that Rob Ford was against it because keeping them would be of value for building future subways (subways, subways!). The counter-argument was that better TBM technology was already existing, but there is the geotech condition point Steve made as well.
As for the Crosstown TBMs, does anyone know their fate yet? When the move was being done last year at Allen Road, I overheard a project representative say (about the two eastbound TBMs) that it had not yet been decided if they would be recovered, or if they would be abandoned underground (the way at least one of the Chunnel TBMs was).
Steve: That does not make sense. They have to be recovered because they will be sitting where Yonge/Eglinton Station will go. That task is part of the station contract which will excavate from above and uncover them. There was a badly written article in the Star that made the same comment, but it was written without understanding that recovery would be in a separate contract. Metrolinx confirmed this some time ago.
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I have a hard time not seeing a start being from core to Don Mills and Eglinton. The next logical piece would then be all the way to Sheppard. It is hard to really imagine building sections shorter that would both make sense and be politically viable. Building just the section from the BDL to core, would be politically very problematic, however, even then it would only be 3 relatively long segments.
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Steve, with regard to your interlined comments here you corrected my recollection of the cost of the Cherry Street streetcar. I checked my notes. In 2012 there was a Globe and Mail article entitled A tiny perfect streetcar line is being laid along Cherry Street, which started off talking about the Cherry Street streetcar route, and mentioned a $90 million price tag. But when I read that 2012 article again, I saw the $90 million was a projected cost for the first leg to the East Bayfront LRT.
My apologies. I was completely mistaken. Thanks for the correction.
No, you were not the person who claimed that we were never going to see dedicated lanes on the TTC’s legacy streetcar routes. The two quotes in my comment were from this comment from reader Ming. I was trying to disagree with Ming’s absolute dismissal that we could see dedicated lanes, and I tried to lay out some conditions were we might see them.
I don’t think my comparison was an apples to oranges comparison. I was trying to explain why the paradigm shift required to agree that dedicating a pair of lanes to transit vehicles on the TTC’s legacy streetcars benefitted everyone in Toronto, was like the paradigm shift required to agree that providing affordable transit to the mobility challenged benefitted everyone.
Don’t you remember a time, decades ago, when accessible public transit, both wasn’t available, and seemed impossible to justify?
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It could get broken into 3 logical sections – Core to BD, BD to Don Mills/Eglinton, and Eglinton to Sheppard. It makes sense to build the “bottom” as it will ease interchange congestion at Yonge-Bloor. The “top” would allow connection to the Crosstown LRT line giving alternate routing for trips. Lastly the “middle” section to join up the other two sections, bridge work would be the longest delay.
Sort of off topic – would running up O’Connor to Vic Park/Eglinton be cheaper/easier? Or is ridership demand strong enough to overcome the costly bridge re-engineering the Thorncliffe/Flemingdon Park route will need?
Steve: Too far east. The line would miss Thorncliffe/Flemingdon and also be getting into the same territory mined by SmartTrack just a few kilometres east of Victoria Park.
As for the TBM’s, do not forget that the cutting head could be modified or replaced to meet the local conditions. The tunnel placement and spoil removal sections would still work fine. I guess I am just cheap – why throw out the whole machine when it can be retrofitted. And we can spend the savings on another project. Having these units just sitting seems wasteful, when there is a short list of tunnel projects these could be used for…DRL, Sheppard to Wilson (close the loop), extend the BD to STC and/or Sherway, climb up to Richmond Hill, maybe sell one or two units to York Region and they can go from VMC to Vaughan Mills Mall and beyond.
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I am fully aware of the need for extremely high-quality infrastructure, including but not limited to high-radius curves, for HSR to run at “H” speeds. I am not aware of the exact details, but I’m not somebody who appears to believe that every rail line is the same, or that trains can get up to full speed between stations that are a train length apart.
My point is precisely that HSR trains can use lower-quality tracks at lower speeds. That is all I’m saying. Of course to get benefit from the HSR trains, most of the route should be HSR track. But I repeat that there is no need to level existing neighbourhoods to bring HSR track all the way in to existing stations: the existing right of way is fine. If I were planning HSR anywhere around here I would use existing stations, upgrade existing track to the maximum quality possible, and start the HSR trackage wherever right of way can be had for reasonable expense. The trains can’t travel at full speed near stations anyway if they plan to stop there.
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We don’t need HSR yet. We just need functional transit to the areas that need it most. HSR supplements good transit, not the other way around. We don’t need a fast train to nowhere. VIA Rail could shorten boarding times instead of going 100+mph to gain a higher average speeds anyways with far less “infrastructure”. Nobody should fund big HSR until we solve the little (local) things first.
Steve: The problem with “HSR” is that like so many other schemes in Ontario, it has much more to do with a big engineering/construction project than with spending money where it can have the best effect on the network.
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While I agree this makes the most engineering sense. I think not committing out of the gate all the way to the Crosstown – would ignite substantial political issues, as it would be then reacted to as though it served only downtown, even though it would remain a subway to the core, and meant to enable growth in population elsewhere. I think the issues that will (have) emerge(d) Eglinton and south, are important enough to make this a critical requirement anyway. It would likely mean, that to keep all happy, construction north and south of the valley would happen at the same time, but it would likely mean from a terminus perspective the 1st northern terminus could indeed be at or north of Eglinton. However, building the segment from Sheppard to Eglinton, then using the Crosstown to route traffic along Yonge would seem to me to be problematic, in that there are already issues at Eglinton and points south, that are rapidly getting worse. The Crosstown itself will add load here, increasing this would to me at least beg questions.
You could reasonably be building the bridge while building the tunnels, and since this is all years in the making, and the politics being as nasty as they are and the need to points north as pressing as it is, I think it would be easier,simpler and better to start all the way to Eglinton, as a first step. The area immediately south of there needs and deserves a massive improvement in transit.
Steve: It is not practical to build the northernmost chunk from Sheppard south first because the most likely track connection to the existing system will be in the south, to Greenwood Yard. No connection, no trains.
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Isaac, we seem to have the same stance with a disconnect being that I was replying to arcticredriver’s comment.
GO has been rebuilding the network to maximize running speeds to 90mph. They aren’t trying to go beyond that because it’d be disruptive to existing neighbourhoods. I’m very supportive of optimizing the existing Right-of-Ways. In arcticredriver’s theory, if the legacy rail network didn’t exist or wasn’t used, we’d have built a regional HSR network instead, while my counter-factual was that there would be resistance in line with the Allen Expressway.
My continued point was the London-Kitchener-Toronto HSR alignment was only HSR in a new corridor between London and Kitchener, while the Kitchener-Toronto section would operate as now.
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Steve, is there a reason that no serious thought is given to building cut-and-cover where possible (and not just for station boxes)? Even with the utility relocations, you’d think the costs would be more than worth it in all but the most heavily urbanized locations. I’m thinking of Vancouver saving a bucket of money by doing that on the Cambie portion of the Canada Line. With the substantial disruptions you see on Eglinton related to boring for the underground segment of the Crosstown anyways, you may as well dig up all of Pape or Wellington and just be done with it, save a few bucks and maybe a bit of time on construction.
Steve: The situation varies from line to line, location to location. Cut-and-cover has a bigger neighbourhood effect than boring. Much of what we have seen already on Eglinton is preliminary work for stations, and that route has a lot of stations particularly west of Yonge. I’m waiting to see the alignment details including things like the curve between Pape and Queen.
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