King-Victoria Transit Hub

[trainspotter139]

Overall I like the design. At first I wasn't a fan of the white, but it is growing on me. It will definitely be one of the nicest structures in the region. If you look at the night render on AD 605, It would be cool if they could have the exterior white panels have some sort of lighting feature to highlight the building at night.   Personally I prefer the bus entrance off duke as oppose to king. I also think it is ridiculous that the regions hand is being tied on the closing of duke street. Also can't help but notice they are realigning Victoria street, but I see no mention of a separated bike lane? The plaza is alright, I do question municipally run water features, I know when i lived in Vancouver there were so many beautiful old water features and none of them worked.  I can live with the parking for now, as long as there is a plan in place to sell the parking lot to a developer that will provide 65 underground/ garage parking in the future.

There are at least 3 other municipal water features in DTK right now (not including splash pads and pools), including one run by the region at the Charles Terminal. They are all operating. I think it's a question of investing in maintenance and operation. Given that this would presumably replace the Charles Terminal feature, which I assume has been running for 30+ years (the length of operation of the terminal), I am not too worried.

For closing Duke St....its' annoying that we are at the whims of metrolinx, but I'd say if the road remains open for cycling and pedestrians, that's the important use of the road. The lack of infra on Victoria doesn't surprise me, there is basically zero space around the Rumpel Felt building (the sidewalks don't even fit past the entryway), so I think the only way Victoria would get cycling infra is a road diet. But it makes it all the more important that Duke remain open because Breithaupt provides access to the terminal from Duke.

It's not that we are at the whims of Metrolinx, Metrolinx is at the whims of Transport Canada's grade crossing regulations. Because of the regulations, and future plans for GO/VIA train frequency, closing Duke St. would unfortunately be required since the end of the designed platform is so close to the street that keeping it open would end up resulting in grade crossing signals closing the road for extended periods every time there was a train at the station for the "just in case" scenario of platform overrun or brake failure by an eastbound train (you can see an example of this at the ION stations at Northfield and Laurier-Waterloo Park). The platform as pictured is also only 12 passenger coaches in length. The longest GO Train is 12 Bilevel coaches + 1 or 2 Locomotives, depending on the type attached (and they can be attached with 2 on one end or one on either end). That means a strong likelihood (since Metrolinx likes to configure their trains with locomotives on the eastern or southern-pointing end) of locomotives extending past the platform into the space that is the current Duke St. grade crossing.