[jje1000]

I wonder if interim frequent bus routes mimicking the future route of the LRT would help as a stop-gap measure in the future once the infrastructure works in the Portlands reaches a point of completion?

Then again, with the TTC and the SRT busway, maybe not lol

 

[Islington Express Bus]

Forget waiting 20 years and spending a gagillion dollars to rebuild the union loop.

Just divert Spadina streetcars away from union and send them along QQE to the portlands instead. Is it a perfect solution? No. But it can be accomplished easily.

 

[DSCToronto]

Forget waiting 20 years and spending a gagillion dollars to rebuild the union loop.

Just divert Spadina streetcars away from union and send them along QQE to the portlands instead. Is it a perfect solution? No. But it can be accomplished easily.

The aim of the QQE streetcar is not to provide some sort of scenic route but is supposed to take customers where they need/want to go and that is the subway. The best route is to take it to Union BUT it would certainly be possible, for far less money, to extend more of the north-south lines. As was suggested decades ago, the Parliament Street line COULD be extended to QQE and to Castle Frank (and it goes right by the new Ontario Line Corktown/St Lawrence station) and the Cherry line could certainly be brought south of the rail berm and, in due course, the Broadview tracks could be brought to Commissioners via the East Harbour Ontario Line station..

 

[tsm1072]

The aim of the QQE streetcar is not to provide some sort of scenic route but is supposed to take customers where they need/want to go and that is the subway. The best route is to take it to Union BUT it would certainly be possible, for far less money, to extend more of the north-south lines. As was suggested decades ago, the Parliament Street line COULD be extended to QQE and to Castle Frank (and it goes right by the new Ontario Line Corktown/St Lawrence station) and the Cherry line could certainly be brought south of the rail berm and, in due course, the Broadview tracks could be brought to Commissioners via the East Harbour Ontario Line station..

I know one of the issues with a Cherry St extension is the need to tunnel under the rail berm. But, if the city decided to close Cherry St to traffic and run it as a dedicated Streetcar ROW under the berm, would the existing underpass allow for that? It would definitely be a controversial move, but would allow for two straightforward route changes, and one new route to provide access to the portlands (assuming QQE extension is built).

• Extended the 504A to loop in the portlands (leave Distillery loop as a short turn option)
• Re-route the 509 to loop in the portlands instead of at union.
• New route from Union along QQE that loops in the portlands.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Forget waiting 20 years and spending a gagillion dollars to rebuild the union loop.

Just divert Spadina streetcars away from union and send them along QQE to the portlands instead. Is it a perfect solution? No. But it can be accomplished easily.

I don't think you need to divert all of them even - if the T-junction at QQ and Bay is built then you can run a portion of the streetcars to Union and the remainder as bypass service along the full length of QQ. It might be an issue with reducing capacity at Union, but something got to give.

AoD

 

[evandyk]

The issue with any of those plans to run a streetcar the length of Queens Quay from east to west is that nobody wants to go from QQE to QQW or from QQW to QQE. Pretty much all of the people on both ends of QQ want to go to Union Station. So if the majority of the streetcars don't go into Union Station, you're running what is a very compromised service for almost everybody who wants to use it. Sure, people will get out at Bay and find their own way to Union, but the city and the TTC just need to sit down and figure out how to run the service into Union, and they need to do it before building thousands more units of housing on QQE.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

The issue with any of those plans to run a streetcar the length of Queens Quay from east to west is that nobody wants to go from QQE to QQW or from QQW to QQE. Pretty much all of the people on both ends of QQ want to go to Union Station. So if the majority of the streetcars don't go into Union Station, you're running what is a very compromised service for almost everybody who wants to use it. Sure, people will get out at Bay and find their own way to Union, but the city and the TTC just need to sit down and figure out how to run the service into Union, and they need to do it before building thousands more units of housing on QQE.

It's better than not having any transit service on QQE at all, and doing it remove the problem one element holding off building transit infrastructure along the entire route,

AoD

 

[evandyk]

Well, the transit service on QQE they propose is buses that run partly on dedicated lanes, up Bay St to Union. It's not as good as a streetcar into Union, obviously, but I'm not sure a streetcar that drops you off at Bay and QQW is any better than the bus.

 

[DSCToronto]

@kotsy published this photo in the Ontario Line thread yesterday https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/toronto-ontario-line-3-m-s-metrolinx.6155/page-1657

This is a view I had never seen before of the portal at the start of the underground section just east of Cherry. Street.

I post it here because if (when??) the TTC and WT manage to collect the $$ they want to punch a new streetcar 'tunnel' through the rail berm about where the signal switching building is now (@ the current TTC loop). (The plan is (was?) to relocate the (unused?) but historic signal tower a bit further east.)

This new streetcar tunnel through the berm will be immediately above the new Ontario Line tunnel - this will certainly not make building it easier and I wonder if it would not have been best to punch the tunnel through at the same time as they are working on the portal. Of course, this would involve silos being aware of each other and being prepared to talk and that seems impossible!

 

[crs1026]

^I’m not an engineer, but my layman's guess is that it is a lot easier to add a tunnel on top of a bored subway tunnel than it is to go under one, so the effort to add the LRT tunnel afterwards may be simpler than you fear.
And since the Ontario Line tunnel is bored, one likely can’t alter the boring method to add in any underpinning or additional structure beyond the tunnel liners that the TBM is built to insert.
The only change I can imagine would be to move the extraction point further west so the crossing is a single cut and cover task roughing in the LRT tunnel over top… and I imagine that would be hugely problemmatic, and we are likely well past that point.
So if the current plan creates challenges or costs for the LRT - that may just have to be.
But yeah, there’s something wrong when we have the funding quickly provided to let the provincially sponsored subway go ahead at full speed while the funding for the LRT - which is critical to developing the east harbour - can’t be found. It’s Humber Bay all over again - development racing ahead of infrastructure. Dumb as a box of rocks.

- Paul

 

[dowlingm]

The issue with any of those plans to run a streetcar the length of Queens Quay from east to west is that nobody wants to go from QQE to QQW or from QQW to QQE. Pretty much all of the people on both ends of QQ want to go to Union Station.

they don’t cancel 509/511 when Union Loop/tunnel is OOS because ridership evaporates - they truncate it. If the loop expansion goes ahead it will be OOS for a long time. At least if the connection to QQE goes in first, there will be some concurrent suspension of service while hookups are made and testing occurs, but after that people going to/from the ferry dock will have streetcar access via 510 to Line 2 if they can’t walk up Bay or Yonge.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

North York Centre Station was built as an "infill" station on the Yonge-University subway line, meaning it was added to an existing line after it was already in operation. Construction involved excavating alongside the existing tracks, which were kept operational during the process. This unique approach resulted in a station with more solid concrete walls between the platforms than typically found in other stations.

The new platforms for the expanded Union Station streetcar loop/station should use almost the same technique. They could build on the outside of the current track tunnels, and only shut it down to cut out the connections.

 

[dowlingm]

North York Centre Station was built as an "infill" station on the Yonge-University subway line, meaning it was added to an existing line after it was already in operation. Construction involved excavating alongside the existing tracks, which were kept operational during the process. This unique approach resulted in a station with more solid concrete walls between the platforms than typically found in other stations.

The new platforms for the expanded Union Station streetcar loop/station should use almost the same technique. They could build on the outside of the current track tunnels, and only shut it down to cut out the connections.

“Almost” doing an awful lot of work there. I would not consider those situations comparable at all.

 

[drum118]

North York Centre Station was built as an "infill" station on the Yonge-University subway line, meaning it was added to an existing line after it was already in operation. Construction involved excavating alongside the existing tracks, which were kept operational during the process. This unique approach resulted in a station with more solid concrete walls between the platforms than typically found in other stations.

The new platforms for the expanded Union Station streetcar loop/station should use almost the same technique. They could build on the outside of the current track tunnels, and only shut it down to cut out the connections.

Impossible as the tunnels have to be rebuilt to meet current code, the sides of tunnel area where the new platforms and crossovers have to be dug out that will remove the current platform. There is a ton of stuff to be done that will effect existing service that it has to be close 100%