Kraus Development (525-565 Conestogo Road) | 3-35 fl | Proposed

[ijmorlan]

Also I would just point out that any talk of tunnelling under the LRT facility is completely missing the point of what Dan is suggesting. As I said, I’m skeptical of tunnelling vs. bridging, even though he raises some interesting points, but a quick look at the map will instantly reveal that he cannot reasonably be interpreted to be proposing to tunnel under the LRT facility. The tunnel would be around 70m at most and due to the elevation of the highway vs. surrounding land the exit ramps at either end would be relatively short compared to what would be required for a bridge.

I'm struggling to figure out where he imagines a tunnel to go, though. I'll refer to the image below.

The tunnel would go along the same path as the bridge, except much more of the path would be a regular ground-level path, so the actual tunnel would run only under the expressway and its embankment. I believe the proposed route for the bridge is in line with the north border of the LRT facility. The tunnel would take less space to reach ground level, so the ground level path would probably start somewhere between the expressway and the LRT driveway/parking lot rather than further west, and would extend along the yellow line border over to the mainline tracks.

Then access to Dutton could be done by just building a sidewalk on the LRT facility driveway. It’s inside the current perimeter but doesn’t need to be, at least not at present, since the building separates the space from the tracks.

I’m assuming the treed area is not intended for future expansion. I believe the intended future expansion is essentially more storage tracks in the empty space immediately adjacent to the existing storage tracks; any expansion past that would be done by building another facility down in Cambridge (probably not with full maintenance capability; primarily storage and daily servicing). If I’m wrong and the treed area is intended for future expansion then this specific layout doesn’t work; but using the portion of the treed area immediately adjacent to the expressway right-of-way for a path might be possible.

I’m skeptical too, but my suggestion would be to clarify the intended route before arguing that tunnelling under the LRT facility would make it infeasible.