King-Victoria Transit Hub

[ijmorlan]

Honestly, I don't think they'd close it off for a single reason - the fire station on Lancaster/Guelph is the station that directly services downtown. There's been vague rumours for a while that a new downtown station might get built, but cutting off a direct fire route to the core seems extremely unlikely, especially considering their response times right now are over the desired time.

I don’t think a 2 block detour to Margaret will make much difference. Anyway, the problem now is that Lancaster is already closed at the tracks, just not all the time. The fire trucks probably already jog over to Margaret or St. Leger some of the time, when they see train activity at the crossing. While I’m sure the detour would worsen response times right near Lancaster/Victoria, I can’t see it making much difference for properties further from the level crossing.

We can put an absolute ceiling on the problem by looking at the distance/time from Breithaupt/Lancaster to Victoria/Lancaster via the Margaret St. bridge:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/TZPTzZHEdJ3k9aMv5

3 minutes. But this is the absolute worst case where the section of road I’m proposing to close is most of the shortest route on the current road network. For almost all trips that reasonably use that block of Lancaster, the best route without using that block of Lancaster will be less, and often much less, than 3 minutes worse.

All that being said, as the fire department is upgraded, a new location on a road more optimized for moving vehicles might be appropriate. It wouldn’t be the first time fire stations move around as the city develops.

Final word, the fire department issue is actually the first reason given I’ve seen that I find plausible for why we actually do need a Lancaster St. grade separation. I’m not convinced, but I find it believable that a proper study of fire access times would reveal that a good link there is important due to the importance of quick access times by the fire department. Everything else has basically been “I [or some people] like using that road”.