The TTC will begin work on reconstruction and expansion at Dundas West Station Loop on Monday April 11, and the project is planned to be mainly completed by June 18. The full notice is on the TTC’s website.
The timing of various stages of the work has changed from the original plan discussed in a previous article.
The original plan was to replace the trackwork on Dundas north from Bloor including the special work at the loop entrance first, followed by the track on Edna Avenue (the north side of the loop), and finally within the loop itself including expansion of platform used by 505 Dundas.
In the revised plan, the area within the loop will be done first working from west to east, followed by the track on Dundas Street, and finally the track on Edna Avenue.
The new phasing also changes plans previously announced for diversion of connecting surface routes.
During phase 1 (April 11 to May 7), the loop will be closed and all surface routes will divert:
- 40 Junction, 168 Symington and 312 St. Clair Night buses will loop on street stopping on Edna Avenue.
- 504C King shuttle buses will divert via Bloor to High Park Station and will serve Dundas West Station with on street stops a Bloor & Dundas.
- 505 Dundas and 306 Carlton Night cars will divert to High Park Loop.
- 402 Parkdale Community bus will divert as required (TBA).
During phase 2 (May 8 to June 18), some of the diversions will change:
- 505 Dundas, 504C King and 402 Parkdale will continue as in phase 1.
- 40 Junction and 168 Symington will divert to Lansdowne Station via Dupont and Bloor Streets respectively.
- 312 St. Clair Night bus will divert to Keele Station.
- 306 Carlton Night service will be replaced with buses and these will operate to Keele Station similarly to the 504C service.
Effective June 19 most routes will return to normal except for two that must await completion of new overhead wiring at Dundas West Station:
- 505 Dundas will continue to operate to High Park Loop.
- 306 Carlton will continue to operate as a bus service, but will terminate at Dundas West Station.
Additional work to be undertaken includes:
- Emergency track repair on Dundas south of Bloor.
- Construction of a “bump out” pedestrian area at the eastbound stop on Dundas just east of Roncesvalles.
There is no effect on subway service, and the station will remain open for access to trains.
Steve Munro 
Is the exit/access to the Bloor GO/UP Express anywhere in these plans?
Steve: That is a separate Metrolinx project.
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What? No new name for the former “Dundas West Station”? “Vincent Station” was the original proposed name when they built Line 2. I would go with “Roncesvalles Station”.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. 😇
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Just thought I’d ask a question on behalf of Mayor David Miller….any updates on that tunnel to the Go/UP station?
Steve: I have asked Metrolinx about the status and will pass on whatever info I get.
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Can you use your connections at the TTC to keep the cyclists out of the crowded subway trains during rush hours? These cyclists hit innocent customers, block the doors, and block up to 5 seats per bicycle all of which are serious safety issues and sometimes you have 6 or 7 cyclists in some train cars. The TTC needs to enforce its own policies.
Steve: I don’t have “connections” that can bring on that sort of thing. I think that the TTC really isn’t enforcing a lot of its policies like no-bikes-at-rush-hour just as the City does not enforce a lot of traffic controls.
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I don’t have too much issue with having a prohibition on bringing bikes on to crowded transit in the crush hours, but it’s more likely a lack of enforcement as Steve notes. And also noted, and totally agreeing with, there’s a massive amount of red-light running, speeding, using of cells/devices, tinted windshields, overall excess from SUV tanks, and subsidy of the main source of injury/death in the streets of Caronto/Carontop.
It’d also be really really nice if the streetcar track margins were made safe as a broad set of repairs throughout the old core, for all of the tens of millions/billions being at times squandered in transit projects, but the bikes are competition to the transit, so yup, keep it dangerous, and blame the victims,almost like jaywalking.
No, bikes don’t work for everyone, and too bad, as we’re talking about Dundas St. W., that we didn’t do that 1985 transit plan up the railtracks from Front St. area, and to be in hot water with some/many cyclists, the highest/best use of the Rail Trail may well be for better transit/Relief, but the transit is horribly done here, and the subsidies to cars are hidden.
Steve: “Bikes are competition to the transit”: utter crap. The reason the pavement is not fixed is simple negligence of road conditions, not some conspiracy to keep people on transit. If you want to talk about conspiracies, talk about how constraining transit from providing better service keeps people in cars. But it suits your agenda to set up this false competition between modes.
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Is this still a single loop or is the plan to split the 504 and 505 into two separate platforms?
Steve: There have been separate tracks for the two routes for years. The 505 platform is to be shifted/lengthened to accommodate two Flexitys at once.
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Obviously, I will disagree about the bike being the better way; Mr. Sewell in Straphangers by Grescoe observed that, can’t quote page, and the blossoming of bike traffic on the not-long Richmond and Adelaide lanes, was a strong indicator of when it’s safe and likely won’t die on a trip, people will bike. The main east-west roads of the old core especially – and yes, I was not specific in my view being a core-centric problem – are very dangerous for biking with the streetcar tracks dictating lane positions, and a very clear pattern of harm/crash, and the TTC and City don’t bother counting all the harms from the track-induced crashes for the most part, though they are fairly frequent. (Deaths are harder to ignore, yes, and it may suit the City and the TTC totally to have a split jurisdiction claim of the public RoW to wear out any litigation from the start, and what would happen if we cut off the tax dollars?)
The solution for Queen/Parkdale is to move the Queen tracks north about a metre from a bit east of Niagara over to Brock St. in Parkdale, as there aren’t any north-half/north-leading TTC tracks on either Shaw or Dufferin, so it’s technically possible. (And if the federal level can be pouring billion$$ in to stupid transit in Caronto, then it’s well past time to have something quite good for commuting cyclists done in an obvious Problem area).
And my logic is: suburban carservatives tend to NOT approve bike lanes, and they favour the car, the most subsidized and space-taking/dirtiest mode. Transit is more cost-efficient with the densities of the core vs. suburbs, and because all the costs are plain with transit vs. buried in multiple budgets, and as the TTC tends to make $$ in the core, and suburbs tend to cost (where the bike isn’t so competitive agreed, though e-bikes may be changing that), then yes keeping bike dangers in the core suits the broad civic agenda of carservatives.
Do try some bike riding yourself/selves to get the sense of the dangers, though it’s not from the operators of the transit vehicles, usually.
So yes, take a bike; maybe the Bikeshare?
Steve: All this ignores your specious claim that cycling is downplayed because it competes with transit. The streetcar tracks on Queen are not going to be moved especially considering how recently some of them were rebuilt. It should be noted that in general utilities are placed under what is now the curb lane, and so shifting the streetcar tracks is not necessarily a straightforward job. What you propose would also require permanent removal of parking. Maybe a rededication of the curb lane might achieve what you’re looking for without the physical upheaval of moving the streetcar tracks.
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Edna Avenue needs traffic signals.
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If the TTC is short of revenue, then why does it not enforce things like no bicycles on the subway during rush hours? I see lots of people (including bus drivers) smoking unlawfully at bus terminals and if the TTC is short of revenue, then why does it not enforce these things? The answer is simple: the TTC does NOT have a revenue problem but an INCOMPETENCE problem. For instance: when the Scarborough RT is closed for over half of winter, the escalators to and from it at the Kennedy Station and the Scarborough Centre station kept running. No matter how much money we allocate to the TTC, the TTC will find a way to waste it and then complain of being short of revenue.
Steve: FWIW I don’t think that revenue from fines comes back to the TTC. If anyone out there knows differently, please add to this thread.
As for escalators, there is a problem that if they are left out of service long enough, they won’t start up again reliably without some maintenance work. But yes, simply turning them on for a few hours to “blow the dust off” might nt hurt. However, usually when the RT is down, they have more to worry about than a few escalators.
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And that would start with wearing masks. In London, UK, 1,552 fines issued, and 42,377 people stopped for not wearing masks on London Transport, in a two month period alone!
TTC and GO? Zero.
Steve: I do not believe that there are any “teeth” in the mask “mandate”. It’s a suggestion, not a hard rule.
What’s interesting is how crowded the TTC has become again *outside of peak*!
At present, I have a mobility issue (I’m recovering, will be doing cycle trips of up to 100km a day again soon) and I found that travelling outside of peak with a service dog was a huge challenge, not least people treading on his toes in the crush.
Something isn’t right with the claimed passenger loads, let alone the utilization/misuse of Priority Seating.
Steve: There is a related problem with uneven service headways. This causes passengers to bunch onto some buses while others run light. Most passengers are on the full buses, and so the average crowding experience is worse than the average load measured over, say, an hour. This is a basic fact that the TTC simply refuses to deal with.
This ties into a much larger discussion of what was planned, and what ostensibly still is for the whole redevelopment of that corner (I live right by it). The ‘theory’ of the Bloor Station-Dundas Station direct passenger interconnection isn’t the only dangling end in the greater plan theory.
Dundas West station was supposed to be the ground floor of a massive redevelopment of the Giraffe property, and that was supposed to include pedestrian tunnels to cross Dundas, and tie-in to the massive Loblaws development on the SE corner of Bloor-Dundas.
Certainly, until any of that theory is proven. *pedestrian crossings alone* demand a light at Edna.
I remember the track work at Dundas West being redone just a few years back. I can understand the need to extend the platforms to accommodate two Flexities, I don’t understand the need to replace the track that was done just recently.
And only to be done all over again when the City plans for that corner come to fruition in…whenever. It’s Toronto.
Dundas and Bloor remains a disgusting, dirty, Third World intersection. The TTC really doesn’t help. The neighbourhood deserves far better.
Steve: The alignment of the 505 track will change, and this affects the curves into the station requiring the special work on Dundas to be replaced. Yes, there is a co-ordination issue there, but the problem with the Flexitys backing up on the platform only became obvious relatively recently.
The subway/GO connection work by Metrolinx might actually reach construction in 2023. I await confirmation from them.
The development of the Loblaws site on Dundas south of Bloor as well as the school on the SE corner is well into the planning stage. The last scheme I heard involved the school being rebuilt inside the block so that the corner would be available for a major tower. As for the NW corner where “Giraffe” might have gone, this building was not going to encompass the subway station, only the land south of the laneway between the station and Bloor Street.
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Some of these comments….yeesh…. Any word on when the 505 will return to Broadview? That watermain work seems to have dragged on for ages.
Steve: Just in the last week, work has resumed on the remaining hookups to the new watermain. I believe that a tentative date for the return of streetcars is mid June, but the TTC has an annoying habit of stretching out bus replacements as long as possible due to the “shortage” of streetcars even though only 16 cars remain to go through the weld repair program at Alstom, and fewer than that are out of service at any one time.
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Steve writes in answer to a point I made:
It is a Bylaw, albeit a legal oddity it appears now I’ve researched it:
Global News:
TTC Website:
Curiously, I can’t find this in their published Bylaw #1. But I do find this:
This looks like an excellent read, will absorb it in detail later.
‘Only in Canada you say? Pity’….
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Steve writes, in reference to my puzzlement of the need to replace the track and concrete on Edna:
I was referring to the need to redo Edna Ave (Phase 3), but alas, I didn’t directly reference that, but did indirectly in the text prior to my post, but I got an interesting reply to the question from an ‘administrator’ on the site today (she was taking pictures of the work, I asked if she was ‘PR’ or ‘Engineering’. She acknowledged the latter.
The arc coming out of the station onto Edna is exactly the same new/old, so I asked “Why is it necessary to redo work done just a few years back?”.
She answered: (gist) “It’s scheduled to be done every twenty years”…I pointed out that the track was put in new some two or three years back. I watched the work intently, noting the newer methods of wrapping the track in butyl rubber sheaths to limit cathodic action, and float the top concrete layer on the lower one, rather than being a rigid bond, let alone the Pandrol clips and plates for the track.
So she retorted: “Oilers, they have to dig it all up to install them”. Which I find odd. Not that there isn’t a need for squeal-suppression, but if installed, they are done local to the radius causing it.
I’ve Googled to see what more I can find, not much:
I do see reference to other locales where screeching is an issue, and the ‘fixes’ the TTC has undertaken. It was addressed on the actual curved track to the best of my understanding.
Any further info on this most appreciated. Digging up straight track doesn’t make sense with the factors I have before me.
Steve: There already was a wheel greaser at Dundas West. I think this is simply a case of bad corporate memory, and of treating the whole loop, including track on Edna, as a single project.
As for the rubber sleeve around the track, its primary function is mechanical isolation of the track from the roadbed to reduce concrete breakup from vibration, as well as reduced noise.
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I’ve tracked down some interesting information, too much to include here, save to say that Toronto’s tight radius streetcar tracks are tough on wheel flanges. It’s an interesting subject, well worth Googling on. I’m reticent to discuss findings here.
What I did find which is totally germane to this discussion is this webpage.
YouTube hosted video from above.
Steve: These wheel greasers have been used on the TTC for several years. There was a plan to have onboard grease applications driven by GPS on the Flexitys, but I don’t think it has ever been activated. A general issue is that neither system addresses unscheduled turns such as diversions either because no greaser is installed at these locations, or because GPS only tells you where a car is, not whether it will be making a turn.
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Apologies for repeat postings, but but the more I dig on this, the more questions arise.
Steve posted a prescient point on this over a decade ago:
“wheel flange lubrication…noise necessity (e.g. flange lubricator)”.
Have those proven to be inadequate? Below stated spec/performance? And is the TTC once again paying for something that the manufacturer should have?
Steve: The lubricator systems were not installed during manufacture, and I don’t know if they were ever retrofitted to the cars.
An Australian parallel?
JANUARY 29, 2016
Another look at the V-Line Wheel and Metro Track Problems
There’s a lot more on-line on this problem. Is it the same bogie design as used on the Flexitys? (Bombardier is the supplier in both cases) I wouldn’t have raised this reference save that Googling tipped me to Steve already raising the point of flange lubrication before it became an issue.
Steve: There are major differences on the V-Line equipment notably the speed of operation and the track structure. Issues with crossing protection failing to work is more related to train detection and the signal system (as the article notes). Curves on this network will be considerably less restrictive than on a street railway like the TTC where road geometry dictates tight curves.
One point in the article is that track is typically laid to a wider gauge on curves, and concrete ties can restrict this. You have probably noticed that the TTC still uses wooden ties under special work track panels because the mounting requirements do not match standard spacing on concrete or steel ties (which have mounts for Pandrol clips built in).
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Weren’t wheel greasers installed on the first half of the new fleet? It’s something I recall being in some contract option for the back half of the fleet.
Steve: There was talk of this, but a lot of things stopped due to covid. I will have to check.
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