City
By the numbers: The Union Station revitalization project
Deep in the belly of Union Station a major construction project is underway. Workers are digging down through the floor of the basement, expanding and renovating the concourse level to handle the increased demand on the venerable old limestone giant. The miserable train shed is getting a new glass atrium (hooray for natural light) and the TTC is adding a new platform to its station.
When it's finished, subway riders will be able to saunter from the station into the new GO concourse without facing so much as a set of stairs.
One of the most precarious parts of the build is the creation of a new level below the station where there was previously only dirt. To do this, builders are literally propping up the building's existing support columns on brand new extensions.
The mammoth project is projected to cost around $715.4 million (the original budget was $640 million) and will drastically improve the quality of the busy transit hub. Workers are roughly halfway through the anticipated construction period, so here are some numbers on the project as it currently stands:
- 2.5 - The area of the dig down in football fields
- 115,400 - Square feet of space already excavated
- 193 - Support columns replaced so far
- 447 - Support columns due for reinforcement or replacement
- 45 - Truckloads of soil removed from the site daily (600-900 tonnes).
- 160,000 - Square feet of new retail space
- 300 - New jobs created
- 1,271,772 hours - Number of work hours completed so far
- 30,000 - Square metres of green roof on the new train shed
- 48 - Number of steel columns in the new glass atrium
MORE IMAGES:
Cement truck at work
Recent aerial view
Projected look of the finished extrior
Revitalized GO concourse
New moat roof
Finished retail concourse
Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.
Images: City of Toronto, NORR Architects
Discussion
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Not really realistic IMO.
I don't know where you get 250 yards (= 750 feet) out of 2.5 football field lengths. An NFL football field is 120 yds long (360 feet). Two-and-a-half times that means 900 ft.
In the unlikely event that they mean a CFL field (150 yds), that would be 450 ft x 2.5 = 1125 ft down.
Wait, it says area ... so that means the area of the underground part measures 16,000 sq yd?
They'll just have to tear the dang thing up again.
Electrification will happen, as long as we can find a way to pay for it. Considering the opposition to new funding for any kind of transit expansion, I wouldn't hold my breath.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPI_MPXpress
The current Union Station project is a much more practical idea.
Sure, it'd be great to have 5 minute service like Paris' RER, but nobody is willing to pay for the 20 year investment (including many transit riders).
I can't wait for Union to be done - the train sheds are dreary and crumbling and stepping into the GO concourse is like entering the 60s/70s.
@Craig: I'm sorry, but the whole thing about said GO trains being state of the art is balderdash, and has been disproved:
'There is no such thing as “clean diesel.” The cleanest standard, Tier 4, is indeed the least polluting form of diesel. But Metrolinx doesn’t intend to use Tier 4 for any of its trains. Metrolinx hopes that the new air-rail link trains will be Tier 3, but these have not yet been purchased and the decision will be in the hands of a private operator. The bottom line is that the majority of train traffic on this corridor will be a combination of dangerous Tier 0, Tier 1 and Tier 2 diesels.'
http://zeta.srv2.com/~ctc/media/CleanTrainCoalition-TheBetterMove.pdf (page 2)
Of course, people like you'll get what you want with this and be satisfied, but the rest of us who know that the city and the province can do much better will be disappointed, and we deserve to be.
@Me; Go frack yourself.