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Originally Posted by powderjunkie
Seems a little silly to only do one of the lines underground, but not both? Even if Blue/red are tripping over each other a little bit right now, it's not like they'd be able to increase the rush hour frequency of either by much if they were separate? For travelling within downtown, it's really nice to be able to hop onto either train any time of day...so it's one slight improvement at the cost of another, plus infrastructure costs...
If the tunnel runs under 8 ave right to City Hall, I'm curious how it routes down to Victoria Park station? Perhaps it's already starting to make the turn south at City Hall? I've never been able to find a drawing of what exists today, and what the original plan was (admittedly only ever tried a few google searches) - just keep finding the same few blog posts and tv news clips...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by powderjunkie
It would seem more apt for the Blue Line, then? It would be almost a 315 degree angle to turn back to Vic Park station from there? Compared to a 135 degree angle to link up with the Blue Line...
Probably a similar problem at the west end of DT, too?
Do we really need that massive of an increase? Wouldn't getting away from stop lights alone be enough that you could run both Red and Blue on the same line a whole lot more efficiently?
It all still seems crazy to me - I would have thought that drilling the actual tunnel would be the biggest expense? Building indoor stations and access points would of course be more expensive than what we have now, but by how much?
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I used to have a more official drawing, but this is the rough location of the tunnel in blue, the partial station shell in green, and the existing line in red.
That is all of the tunnel infrastructure that exists.
On the east end, connecting the existing red line to the eventual fully-built 8th Avenue tunnel is (basically) as simple as taking down the cinderblock wall in the CP Tunnel.
The west end to connect the northwest line is much trickier, but not impossible.
There's been some other things brought up and discussed. Probably best to point-form my responses:
- The most important reason for building the 8th Avenue tunnel is to de-bottleneck 7th Avenue by not having the blue and red lines share track. It is a much bigger problem than them "tripping over each other a little bit." 7th Avenue is at (actually over) capacity and has been for a couple decades. Therefore, achievable ridership on all existing corridors is stunted. Theoretically, capacity on all existing lines would be doubled or more. Not all of that capacity may ever be needed, but a good lot of it is needed.
-The red line is the much better option to move into the tunnel. Firstly, the south line is already connected to the tunnel. The south line also has the highest ridership by a fair margin, and the west line has the least. Northwest and Northeast are about equal.
-Not sure about relative expense exactly, but the stations on a subway line would be much more complex and disruptive than boring the tunnels. More space and works near the surface are needed for the station boxes. In subways built in the past, large areas at the surface have been excavated to build the stations. This may be mitigated a bit by a newer technique of "mining" out the stations. Still complex and not absent of surface disruption though.
-You mentioned High Speed Rail to Banff. Honestly, the only high speed rail corridors that will ever make sense in Canada are Quebec City to Windsor and Calgary to Edmonton. Rail to Banff is a good idea, but it need not be (super) high speed rail for the traffic it will see and the distance it will cover. Rail to Banff, a return of Via rail, and commuter rail to the satellite communities can do with agreements and upgrades to the current surface heavy rail corridors. Land for station locations in Edmonton and Calgary and some right of way has been purchased by the Province of Alberta for a high speed rail line.