O-Train Line 1/3 [Stage 2 | West Extension | Tunney's to Baseline/Moodie] | U/C

[Richard Eade]

So, magical ponds that generate water? I think that you will find, kitchissippi, that the water that runs in the Pinecrest Creek comes from where it has always come from, further south. The ponds are simply a wide bow added to the creek in hopes of slowing large flows.

Jump onto Google Maps/Earth and take a look. Between Royal Paan and Dulux Pain there is a diversion of the creek. Where the creek used to flow west (along the dry-ish looking bed), it now turns north into the deeper half of the pond. I believe that there is still an overflow out to the west bed. Once in the pond, the creek flows through metered openings around the big bend. If flow is too high, it backs up into the ‘holding areas’ of the pond. This structure is only a buffer so that high flows do not go further downstream. (The addition of this pond is another reason that moving the LRT away from the ‘flood zone’ near Lincoln Fields was only spin.) Just as a lake behind a hydroelectric dam does not become the headwater of a river, this pond has not become the headwater of Pinecrest Creek.

And, yes, the creek was a major factor during the selection of the train’s alignment between Baseline Road and Iris. In the early stages, the ‘plan’ was to have the tracks go OVER the creek as it crossed diagonally under Iris. This was one of the reasons for Iris being built up so high to go over the train. Eventually, it was decided to move the creek west. That removed some restrictions in the Train/Iris crossing. Unfortunately, not all of the restrictions were removed, since they kept the mid-section of the creek crossing to the east and then back.