Last year I wrote about the unique LED holiday lights that run along Yonge Street from Dundas Square up to Alexander Street. They’re back this year and I still like them — they give the street a cozy feeling, almost like it has a ceiling — but opinions varied. Uptown, the rather beautiful and dramatic blue tree that towers over Yonge Street on the Summerhill Railway bridge has also returned. Walking north on Yonge it has quite a presence in the middle of the street. During the early hours of the blizzard on Saturday night I noticed the display includes lighting details that highlight the structural bits of the old railway bridge along the windows of the world’s grandest liquor shop. Altogether, it’s one of the most elegant big lighting schemes I’ve seen in Toronto this year.
There is an interesting story behind the tree though. It is seen by some as a “goodwill gesture” by developer Paul Oberman whose Woodcliffe Development Corporation owns both the old North Toronto railway station that houses the LCBO, and the Five Thieves (the famously high-end food shops that are currently being refurbished) just to the south. Oberman wants to build a linear, glassed-in restaurant over Yonge where the tree is along an unused stretch of tracks (see a rendering of it in this CBC Story). Woodcliffe also has a contentious plan to build a 38-storey condo tower approximately where the The Beer Store is now (behind the Five Thieves). The tower has run into expected resistance for being somewhat taller than what is ideal for that neighbourhood, but the CBC article above reports a representative of the local resident’s association is also “skeptical” about the restaurant that, on the face of it, seems like an interesting adaptive reuse of old, unused infrastructure (though trains still rumble along some of the tracks — the same tracks that run just north of Dupont out to The Junction).
Throw in a Go Transit proposal to establish a commuter hub here (a seemingly logical choice as this was an important hub in Toronto for many years) and these holiday decorations do more than just celebrate the season, they are the festive peak of the debate about this neighbourhood in transition.
20 comments
Does anybody know the details for this circumvented GO line? Will there be new stations from the Junction to Summerhill and will this new corridor be part of an expanded Milton line? Looking at the map it would seem a logic way to connect Mississauga Town Centre to the Yonge subway line and give Union station some relief.
The trains more than ‘rumble’ along here. They tear past at all hours of the day and night! I certainly wouldn’t want to eat in a restaurant perched up there. The dishes, glasses and cutlery would jump off the table a couple times an hour! LOL
Juliana> Until a few months ago I lived on Dupont backing on to these tracks and indeed the house did rumble, which I grew to sort of like. People eat *on* trains, why not next to them? At any rate, I suppose as business people, if they thought it wouldn’t work, they wouldn’t want to build it.
the proposed restaurant could deal with the shaking issue by making use of building technologies developed for earthquake zones. these are neat technologies; the buildings are somewhat flexible (literally) so that they won’t break when the shaking starts. not so sure what to do about the noise of freight trains passing at 15-minute intervals, however.
as for the business people, don’t be too quick to assume that there is a viable business behind every proposal. sometimes a proposal is made for bargaining or other purposes. consider the proposal to build a large condo tower where the planetarium currently stands. many people speculated at the time that there was never any intention to build such a thing. Rather, the proposal was something to be bargained away in exchange for something else that was otherwise difficult to get.
if the people who are proposing the restaurant happen to own a lot of surrounding real estate, perhaps there are other motives for proposing this seemingly impractical idea.
It will be very interesting to see how this whole thing shakes out, with the multiple stakeholders in the area (GO, LCBO, Woodcliffe, the local merchants etc.) combined with residents who are, to put it mildly, a bit NIMBYish. This is going to be a development fight every bit as complicated as that in the Queen triangle, if not more so.
I would love to see a small GO station, especially one geared to more ‘urban’ crosstown service than the commuter model, although putting the big in-town terminal for GO-midtown at Dupont makes a lot more sense–more room on the Spadina line, and in the immediate area.
And there’s no question Scrivener Square can stand some intensification, although I think a 38-story tower is way too much.
I love the idea of the rumbling. It would remind me of my childhood where my family used to go to this old train station turned into a restaurant in Grimsby called the Railhouse. The whole restaurant would shake and rumble as a Via train flew by at full speed. People would cheer after and it became a great attraction in the town.
Cute idea but transportation is the priority here. There’s enough space for restaurants elsewhere but once you convert track space it won’t be easy to get it back again when needed.
People should not hold their breath waiting for GO to start running a service along those tracks. It really must be remembered when discussing GO trains that for the most part, they run on privately-owned tracks. They are not ready and waiting for public transit to do with it what they will.
As noted by others in the comments, this stretch is used full time by the CPR. It’s their principal cross-town trunk line, and they will fight very hard against the idea of frequent GO trains running (and more importantly, stopping) along that stretch. It’s only a double track, and there is NO space in the right-of-way to add more.
Even if you could somehow get the CPR on board, there are plenty of reasons it isn’t likely to happen:
-For CPR, freight is what pays the bills, so GO trains would regularly be shunted to sidings to let long (and slow) freight trains pass, which would wreak havoc with on-time performance (ask anyone who regularly uses VIA, which gets the same treatment from CN, what that’s like).
-Adding GO service to the CPR tracks wouldn’t actually expand service much beyond what is already being provided. Union Station is in the heart of many different employment and cultural activities. It is a destination. What is around Summerhill, besides some nice houses and boutique shopping? Anyone taking a train to Summerhill would immediately transfer to the already over-crowded Yonge line, which they can already do at Union. So what have you gained?
-Depositing hundreds of passengers into this area would further clog the very limited road network in the area. Again, this area isn’t a destination, so people would immediately be looking to transfer to another transportation mode. Both the road and subway systems in the area will be overburdened for what would essentially be a redundant service.
As Matt noted, you might be able to pull off a simpler cross-town transit service, perhaps along the lines of Ottawa’s O-Train, from, say, Kipling to somewhere in Scarborough, but it won’t run on CPR tracks, so you have to shoehorn in an exclusive track (actually two tracks) and there really isn’t the space for it.
There are better places to put scarce transit investment dollars that would produce a whole lot more bang for the buck. And GO knows this.
Have to agree with Daemon. Transportation should be priority here. Besides, using technology to stabilize the restaurant against the vibrations might work, but it won’t change the fact that you’re eating within feet of a passing freight train.
As for the midtown GO corridor plan, it’s likely that proposed trains to Bolton, Seaton and North Pickering (with possible extensions to Peterborough) will call at North Toronto. Milton line trains could call, if Union is unable to handle more traffic once all the lines reach hourly or better service.
Andrae> I should have linked to your blog as well, as when researching around for some of this stuff I came across this post of yours:
http://gttavisions.blogspot.com/2007/09/all-aboard-call-for-railway-bridge.html
Perhaps you can answer this — I recall, but I may be mixed up here, that a track (or two) has been removed from this corridor. Behind my Dupont house there seemed to be what looked like “former track.” This is where I thought the cafe would go in over Yonge — where it’s a fairly wide bridge. Was some some track removed? Is this the case? This google map shot would seem to confirm that.
But I also recall from further urban explorations that the bridge over the Vale of Avoca (eventually leading over Mt. Pleasant) is a one-track bridge. So whatever I recall eventually becomes on track.
that “former track” appears to be the current service lane. but i cant be sure either.
People need to get over this knee-jerk, negatory, anti-rail transit attitude. The line may be private now but private lands are expropriated all the time for highways. In Europe they would kill to have so many underused ROWs. Whether or not it is needed for imminent use isn’t even the issue. If this city grows as it’s projected to do it will be needed eventually, for freight, people, or both.
Asher:
You’re right that a service like Ottawa’s O-Train would need its own track, but it wouldn’t need double track the whole way. Ottawa single-tracks it, runs two trains, and has a very short double-track section at the Carleton stop for the trains to pass. I haven’t worked it out, but I assume that a longer run could have more passing sections and more trains running.
The O-Train vehicles are Bombardier Talent DMUs, meant for use in Europe. Transport Canada apparently doesn’t like the idea of running them in mixed company, because European and North American approaches to passenger rail safety are more or less opposite. In Europe, the trains are light and the signalling systems are complicated, supporting rigorous scheduling. In North America, signalling is more basic, scheduling is in many cases ad hoc, and the train cars are built like tanks. That’s one of the reasons that GO cars have two levels: it’s a way to get enough passengers per tonne of car-weight.
European safety records are at least as good as North American. Are we somehow incapable of using their more-advanced switching technology?
It’ll be a great place to order a martini shaken, not stirred.
Lets get real about the possibility of a GO line here, we can’t even get enough money to maintain what we have nor is there any interest from higher levels of government to service existing demand let alone start a brand new GO corridor from scratch. The tracks that connect the CPR to the Richmond Hill line through Don Mills along Leslie Street have already been pulled up and you can bet that the people who back onto that track will never allow them to return for GO service. So, who’s going to use this line?
A GO line along the CPR crosstown will never happen in our lifetime.
Clide writes: A GO line along the CPR crosstown will never happen in our lifetime.
Do you plan to die within the next decade? Crosstown GO is what the GTTA was created to fascilitate. If not GO, than the TTC may lay claim. There is a real appetite for better transit options and the public is starting to vote for politicians based on their transit platform.
I’d like to weigh in on a few things here from an engineering perspective.
Although the idea of a restaurant on the rail bridge is possible, it is hardly practical. The engineering designs and components are of a far more complex scale than your average restaurant, and would certainly be cost-prohibitive (at least to obtain sufficient vibrational & mechanical isolation to ensure comfort and safety for patrons). Such projects are more typical of large institutional and industrial uses; for example, the Four Seasons Centre (Opera house) on University was vibrationally isolated to avoid disturbance from passing subway trains, and that was itself a very complicated and expensive scheme. And as mentioned, buildings in earthquake zones are constructed to withstand intense vibration; however, even those buildings aren’t meant to be used normally while the earthquake is happening, not to mention every 15 minutes! Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that this is anything but a (brilliant) decoy project to try and gain some bargaining leverage in other matters (as mentioned). Mr Oberman is no doubt well aware of the serious proposal to establish a transit line on the corridor.
And briefly to the proposed transit line: it would be quite foolish to permanently write off an available corridor just because the money or political will are not around today. Times change, and it can be sobering to look back at all of the opportunities for better transit that we’ve missed in this city due to short-sighted attitudes that “things will always remain as they are”. From a purely engineering perspective, the possibilities for transit operation on this line are real and feasible (previous arguments about track capacity are based on a few faulty assumptions which I won’t get into now); further, all indications point towards a quickly improving political climate for projects such as this.
Thank you, David. You nailed it.
The developer could slap up a restaurant and then cash in big when the time comes to expropriate for Go or TTC or whatever.
Pursuant to the discussion of midtown GO being some sort of fantasy: you guys are aware that this plan was included in the MoveOntario funding announcement, and is getting major airtime at the GTTA? This is for real, though so are the ownership issues with CP.
The trains almost ride right over the Vintages section of that LCBO. If $120 bottles of Petrus can handle the train traffic then I don’t see why a few diners couldn’t.
This project is indeed covered by items 13,14 and 16 in the Move Ontario 52 projects.