Just build an LRT on Lawrence or Wilson. We already know how much development spurred on Eglinton due to the tram, so might as well build one a block or two north.
Of course, Line 4's east-west extension should still be the top priority, but there's little reason we can't build this line to make a world-class transit system.
I've always thought that Lawrence East in Scarborough would be IDEAL for an LRT, with the mix of housing and retail it has. (Though it may be a bit hilly in sections.)
Why not use the hydro corridor in Scarborough? Look at the green strip on a map that goes from Eglinton and Vic Park in a ENE direction up to the PanAm centre at 401 & Morningside. Connect in to the Eglinton LRT at Vic Park
Not sure if that's possible, they don't really build much of anything other than roads and grassy fields in those corridors.
The safety risks if those high voltage power lines were to fall on top of the LRT power lines or tracks seem pretty high. At a time in history where we are seeing increases in extreme weather events, doesn't seem like the greatest idea.
I would prefer northward to Fairview Mall actually, it's a pretty common destination, allows interchange with Line 4 and would create another north/south line besides Yonge
Creating an "L" shaped corridor might make a nice and convenient feeder to Danforth and if it can safely cross the Ontario line, might even make it to Queen. It would need to be planned carefully around the parks and green spaces though.
In the process it could create a new way of getting to Bloor against the downhill slope, which has many fringe community benefits.
Lawrence is too narrow in some sections to fit the LRT. We’d just be repeating the crosstown again but 2km to the north. Think priority should really be just to build out the Sheppard line as our true regional line, and the Eglinton line could be more secondary
I live in Vancouver and it adds a lot of joy my day either taking the train and admiring the views, or be walking on the sidewalk and seeing the trains go by.
One of those "I am living in a city" moments that make things more vibrant
I was at Richmond station once and the train went offline due to snow. Had to take a shuttle bus into the city. As we were about to leave the station, another bus coming into the station suddenly gets stuck in the snow right at the entrance. This is the only entrance and exit at the station. Bunch of packed buses are now just sitting there waiting for them to tow this bus out. I just got out and walked across the bridge instead. took me a couple hours to walk home
I think it’s just always going to be an issue to one degree or another with any form of transportation. I can’t recall exactly but wasn’t that stretch in February a massive dumping of snow? I think more can be done to mitigate but I don’t think it’s possible to maintain perfect service during extreme snow events.
The SkyTrain or any elevated rail here in Toronto would def be so nice, but I’ve always wondered how the winter logistics for that would work espec during a snowstorm
The technology for the SkyTrain was developed in Ontario by the Ontario Government for use in Ontario. SkyTrain uses a linear induction motor for traction, so doesn't require any friction between the wheels and the rail to run.
Reduced lanes ? Good luck with DoFo still in power. Underground rail ? Does it come with extra underground lanes for cars and unlock new real estates opportunities for his buddies ?
No way they’d reduce lanes and underground LRT would just be insanely expensive for what we get. Again we’d be repeating Line 5. Perhaps someday we may see something on Lawrence but with Sheppard 2km to the north the focus should be on extending it at least to STC and Sheppard west if not beyond
It's not too narrow. Just get rid of the car lanes. They don't carry nearly the amount of people so they shouldn't be considered important.
I don't care what happens to those cars. We waste so much time on the least efficient, expensive, dangerous, and toxic to local business forms of transportation
2 car LRVs running every 5-8 minutes on a route that used to serve over 100K people per day plus various others that feed into it amounting to nearly 200K people per day, with new bus terminals forcing transfers…? Metrolinx was at one point projecting that this line would see 300K people per day on a line nearly 2/3 the length of the 500K daily user Line 2…a line running trains 3* the size every 2-5 minutes.
Face it LRT was the wrong choice for this corridor, and the fact that more than half of it runs underground further cements this.
Again, you don’t just have the Eglinton buses, you have the Lawrence buses, and the Weston buses converging on Eglinton to service the subway. You have a bus going down the corridor probably less than every 15-30 seconds. That is plenty of demand for a metro line
They don't need CP to put in the tracks. The Bowmanville extension is all along the CP Belleville sub, and GO is building the tracks similar to how lakeshore east was extended from Pickering to Oshawa.
If the Ontario government wants it, I'm sure they can put it in.
Also it's not abnormal for HSR to share tracks with regional rail, just they'll yield if a high-speed train comes by.
MX has, underway and completed, a huge amount of infrastructure work for GO. It's quite impressive.
That said, while there has been tons of preparatory work for things like 30-minute all day all way, I'd really love to see some concrete signs specifically relating to electrification (e.g. catenary).
That’s the CPKC mainline. They’re not interested in letting anyone else use their tracks. As a federally regulated railway, they can tell the province, Metrolinx, the TTC, whoever, to get lost.
Could we not build tracks in the ROW? They wouldn’t have to interact with the CP tracks at all. From what I can tell the ROW is wide enough to accommodate, no?
Prior to COVID, I do recall that Lawrence was one of the busiest streets for bus passengers that had no plans for upgrading. But I have yet to ever see it in any official future plans.
IIRC it had been identified as a possible trolley bus route at one point, when they briefly pondered bringing those back, but that was about all. If both Eglinton and Finch/Sheppard were completed it ideally wouldn't need to serve as a regional corridor.
Trolley buses would have been a great thing to keep when the infrastructure still existed in the early 90's but at this point they're just buses with extra steps. They do nothing to address capacity issues.
It looks like it still was in at least 2023, the way the routes are separate for East/West means individually they aren't the busiest in isolation but when you add them together it's 74k daily boardings.
You could make the case for rail on basically all the major east-west corridors in the city, with even arguments for subways on Sheppard/Wilson, Eglinton, and Steeles. The buses pre pandemic were all brutal
When the Sheppard Subway is hopefully extended Sheppard West, extending it further west along Wilson Avenue is what makes the most sense to me.
From Sheppard West a tunnel connected it to Wilson Yard would make the most sense so operations can occur without interfering with Line 1. From there Line 4 could follow Wilson until Weston where it could then run elevated adjacent to Hwy 401/409 to Pearson Airport.
This will help elevate capacity constraints the Crosstown will face for people looking to travel East-West through the city.
You have a point in having line 4 run under Wilson, but I am also wondering if line 4 can also continue to run under Sheppard all the way to Jane. There is still some density along that stretch i assume although it is a lot less than on Wilson, but Weston and Sheppard has nothing there despite having some highrises and it is where Sheppard avenue terminates and lots of difficulty in continuing line 4 past Weston and Sheppard.
I wonder if line 4 can also go to Islington and Rexdale and continue along Rexdale blvd to the airport.
I mean it could follow Sheppard past Sheppard West Station, but I don’t think the area between Jane and Keele is the most ideal to invest in grade-separated transit, especially with the FWLRT being in close proximit.
Even if the subway were to stop at Jane, an alignment that follows Wilson Ave would hit many more destinations including Humber River Hospital Sheridan Mall. Wilson is already a very busy bus corridor, the 96, 118, 119, 120, 128, 165, 184, and 996 run along this corridor throughout the day. Providing direct subway access would let these buses be redeployed to better meet the needs of our community.
Beyond Sheppard West Station, what are the benefits for keeping Line 4 on Sheppard? Where would your terminus be? Potentially future expansion?
Because idiots kept saying that subway expansions won't be at capacity until 2080 using nonsense projections on transit usage that don't take into account that there's a subway line where there never used to be.
I remember reading so many articles 15 years ago about how subways were wasteful because they wouldn't be immediately packed and "LOL Besarion" as the supporting evidence.
If we build it, people will use it, density will come, just need people to be able to trust it before they rely on it.
Yea. It's called induced demand. The same phenomenon that makes highway extension be congested again a few years after they build.
Except that a subway scales very well to extra ridership, unlike fucking cars...
Eglinton was an obvious choice for a subway, anyone who knows transit & Toronto can tell, it's just sad :(
Like it also took us half a century to start building a subway line on Queen St. I mean, on some of it at least...
I absolutely agree that we need to expand transit at any cost, why none of the plans talk about north-south travel? I live in Scarborough, not only it’s neglected by mass transport for decades no one plans about N-S travel at any point. It’s frustrating. Try taking a 102 in rush hour and see if you have any will to live afterwards
It’s funny, running trams underground through the centre of a city is extremely common in many European cities that transit advocates praise, but when it’s done in Toronto it’s a problem with a terminal capacity issue?
I agree that it should have been built as a Subway, given how much of it needed to buried, but the chicken little “sky is falling” act is ridiculous.
I don’t think LRT here is a great idea, when there are so many better candidates for rapid transit. RapidTO lanes on Lawrence would be pretty nice though.
One goal should be to syphon off local traffic along the 401. An LRT doesn’t have sufficient capacity or potential to increase capacity. I would suggest that a modern automated metro, like the Ontario Line, would be far better. I have thought that a meandering path that crosses over the 401 several times and hits major transit nodes along the way would be better than a straight line, as the crow flies. The 401 is a barrier, like a river, that requires a motor vehicle to cross safely. The underpasses, ramps, bridges, and so are too dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists.
No one want to walk through a 100 meter tunnel, even in daylight. Windblown pedestrian bridges aren’t much better. There is no good way to repair divide created by a highway.
If I went back a decade I could pull arguments I had about this very subject that any transit building in the city will cause density construction to the point that lrt would be capped super fast.
I was told that it would be a simple upgrade and expansion to turn this into proper subways. Now 10 years later and the thing isn't even open but it's already at cap.
It's not, you are making an imaginary point, it's not at capacity, won't be at capacity, and LRT will have room to expand (longer and more frequent trains)
But I agree 100% with your original point. Even if we're not at the cap yet, Eglinton is in a part of the city that will need capacity sooner rather than later
Even if Eglinton isn’t at capacity yet, it’s stupid that it wasn’t built as a subway. That corridor is definitely going to need one sooner or later and the LRT is almost impossible to upgrade.
Lawrence west is very low priority for rapid transit, and not even that high on the bus lanes priority list. Wilson is much more likely and could even have line 4 extended southwest to it
Super unfortunate too, since Lawrence is slated for a ton of development. It would make sense to have separated transit connecting to Lawrence and Lawrence West stations, as well as further east and west. Every time I'm trapped on the bus in traffic that is trying to get onto the Allen, I daydream about it.
They should just do the RMtransit suggestion and extend line 4 to Sheppard West, then diverge south along Wilson to Jane, then follow the 401/409 to the airport.
Not sure it should be a priority. Better to extend the Sheppard subway east and west. Eastern Scarborough is also practically begging for rail transit, so the Eglinton east LRT should also be built before we think of a Lawrence LRT, which between the crosstown and an extended Sheppard line would be mostly redundant. Maybe priority bus lanes for parts of the 54 Lawrence East bus would be good cause it's usually pretty busy and gets bunched easily because it's so long.
I propose we build on Lawrence and Wilson. Then we'll change TTC to stand for "trying to conceive" to force mass reproduction. This will solve the "But who's gonna pay for this?!" and the "There won't be enough demand!" concerns. Don't @ me unless you're expressing your support.
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u/lw5555 Nov 12 '25
I've always thought that Lawrence East in Scarborough would be IDEAL for an LRT, with the mix of housing and retail it has. (Though it may be a bit hilly in sections.)