Transit City Details

How am I not surprised that they do Sheppard first to preclude any possibility of a subway extension. In 20 years, people are going to curse today's government for saddling Agincourt with as infuriating a system as the Scarborough RT. Best part: this streetcar won't even go to Town Centre! People will still have to transfer to a north-south bus. This means that a hypothetical trip from North York Centre to Scarborough, less than 20 minutes and no transfers with the once-planned subway, would mean a subway to Don Mills, a transfer to a streetcar, then standing at the street corner at Brimley waiting for a connecting bus.

unimaginative2 said:

How am I not surprised that they do Sheppard first to preclude any possibility of a subway extension. In 20 years, people are going to curse today's government for saddling Agincourt with as infuriating a system as the Scarborough RT. Best part: this streetcar won't even go to Town Centre! People will still have to transfer to a north-south bus. This means that a hypothetical trip from North York Centre to Scarborough, less than 20 minutes and no transfers with the once-planned subway, would mean a subway to Don Mills, a transfer to a streetcar, then standing at the street corner at Brimley waiting for a connecting bus.

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What's to stop subway conversion down the road, and don't forget the new LRT will interface directly with the subway at Don Mills (just think how the platform at Leslie extends the past the actual station). Seriously commuters made due with mere buses not even a decade ago so how much more pampering can they expect now? The path of the LRT will still mass develop regardless of whether subway's ever built there (both Queen and Eglinton are despite never receiving their long anticipated lines). And commuters will be no more inconvenienced if and when the BD line's extended to Sheppard.

Subway "conversion"? What does that even mean? Tearing out the $600 million streetcar in 15 years and building the subway that we should have built in the first place? Never gonna happen. Everybody knows there should be a subway to Scarborough Centre, but it's never going to be built because they built the RT first.

What about the additional connection to the north-south bus to get down to Scarborough Centre? Because of all the people riding the streetcar out to Twin Rivers.

All the Sheppard platforms extend past the actual station. It has nothing to do with streetcars. It's so that the line can start using 6-car trains down the road.

unimaginative2 said:

Subway "conversion"? What does that even mean? Tearing out the $600 million streetcar in 15 years and building the subway that we should have built in the first place? Never gonna happen.

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It seems unlikely, but I don't think you can rule it out entirely. Even Giambrone himself said for example that the tunnelled portion of the Eglinton LRT will be built to a size that can accomodate a future upgrade to full subway service. Although if that were to happen, I can't picture them running HRT in the middle of the street for the other sections - at that point they'll probably have to tunnel the rest of the line as well.

So, once Transit City has been fully completed, what do you guys think phase 2 will include? A Dufferin line? St. Clair extension to Jane and then along Dundas to Kipling station? Lawrence-Dixon? Ellesmere-York Mills-Wilson-Albion? Sheppard west? Finch east? Steeles? Queensway? Kipling? Highway 27/427 corridor? I'm excited just thinking about all the potential routes. Hell, I'd even love to see tons more streetcar tracks laid even if they have to be in mixed traffic, like a nice single route all the way down Parliament from Castle Frank station.

I can't think of anywhere that they built a modern LRT and converted to heavy rail down the road. The Scarborough RT is the perfect example. So is the entire city of Ottawa - the transitway was built to LRT specs for conversion but none of their recent LRT plans included replacing the transitway. It would include shutting down the whole mass transit system for years.

As much as I think the Sheppard line should have been LRT in the first place, it's already built as a subway so to continue it as LRT is just stupid. Not making the line go to STC is even more stupid.

unimaginative2 said:

How am I not surprised that they do Sheppard first to preclude any possibility of a subway extension. In 20 years, people are going to curse today's government for saddling Agincourt with as infuriating a system as the Scarborough RT. Best part: this streetcar won't even go to Town Centre! People will still have to transfer to a north-south bus. This means that a hypothetical trip from North York Centre to Scarborough, less than 20 minutes and no transfers with the once-planned subway, would mean a subway to Don Mills, a transfer to a streetcar, then standing at the street corner at Brimley waiting for a connecting bus.

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Aren't they expanding the SRT up to Sheppard too?

Yeah, Markham and Sheppard. Look at a map. That's way, way to the east. I almost think that some of the geniuses coming up with these plans expect people to ride all the way east, past McCowan to Markham Road, and then all the way back again to STC.

Do you really think that they're ever going to convert Eglinton to subway if it's successful? Are they going to shut down this entire LRT for a year or more, 15 years after they built it? Moreover, Steve Munro and others are leading a campaign to oppose building the tunnels big enough for subway conversion.

You're absolutely right, Mistah F. Even the vaunted "premetro" in Brussels is never going to be converted. They can't afford to take it out of service for the year or more that it would require. Meanwhile, its LRT vehicles operate at crush load capacity on Sunday afternoons.

Finch West, Eglinton, Jane, Kingston, 905 routes = Great for LRT
Sheppard, York U, Yonge North, Scarborough RT, Waterfront/Downtown Relief = Should be subway

unimaginative2 said:

Even the vaunted "premetro" in Brussels is never going to be converted. They can't afford to take it out of service for the year or more that it would require

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Both existing lines in Brussels started as tram Premetros and were converted to full-fledged metro later. The main current Premetro line provides a transfer-free service for all over the city in to the core. Though I'm sure there's plenty of people in Brussels who believe it should have been a full-fledeged metro right from the start, I'm sure others prefer the transfer-less service. As for being crowded on a Subway night, that's clearly a frequency issue (or simply hearsay) as it's obvious that there's no line anywhere in the world that runs at capacity on a Sunday night. My personal experience with the line was around 3pm on a weekday and there were no crowding issues at all.

Towered said:

There's also a comment that "Sheppard East, Etobicoke-Finch West, and Eglinton-Crosstown ... may have to initially operate independent of the existing TTC streetcar network and each other, possibly based out of interim storage facilities".

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Odd, I'm getting this strong deja-vu reading this.

unimaginative2 said:

How am I not surprised that they do Sheppard first to preclude any possibility of a subway extension.

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I don't see how building the Sheppard East LRT precludes a subway extension. Over half of the Sheppard East LRT is east of where the proposed Sheppard subway would have left Sheppard (at Kennedy North) and headed south of the 401 towards the Scarborough Town Centre. Physically the LRT will be on the surface, so construction of a future subway won't physically impede LRT operation much during the 5-year or so construction period. If a subway is built in the future, the LRT could be cut back to Kennedy (or Victoria Park - perhaps it would make more sense to simply run the subway non-stop to STC and perhaps Agincourt if there is a surface route that will allow people to get to local stops.

And most importantly - there isn't the the $2.5 billion (not including vehicles) or so sitting there to build a 6.5 km subway. So if you don't build the LRT, it's not like there's going to be a subway instead! For the cost of that $2.5 billion instead you can build the Sheppard East LRT all the way to Morningside, plus the Scarborough Malven LRT from Kennedy to Malvern, plus the Finch West LRT and the Don Mills LRT. That's a total of 64 km of LRT including vehicles!

Sure, if there was a quasi-infinite supply of money - then build the Sheppard subway to SRT. Heck, also extend it to Downsview and extend the Bloor-Downsview subway to SRT - and build a Queen subway while your at it. But wouldn't be better to have 64 km or LRT instead of 6.5 km of subway?

nfitz said:

Odd, I'm getting this strong deja-vu reading this.
Sure, if there was a quasi-infinite supply of money - then build the Sheppard subway to SRT. Heck, also extend it to Downsview and extend the Bloor-Downsview subway to SRT - and build a Queen subway while your at it. But wouldn't be better to have 64 km or LRT instead of 6.5 km of subway?

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Here here!

Where where?

Where on earth does $2.5 billion for 6.5 km come from? Sheppard cost just over $1 billion for 6.5km and that included political interference with the cancellation and re-starting of the project, the expensive Don bridge, and massively overbuilt stations.

CDL.TO said:

Where where?

Where on earth does $2.5 billion for 6.5 km come from? Sheppard cost just over $1 billion for 6.5km and that included political interference with the cancellation and re-starting of the project, the expensive Don bridge, and massively overbuilt stations.

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Regardless of the numbers, his point is still valid. We could build a lot more Light Rail for the cost of a subway line, regardless of it being free of political interference, indecision, expensive bridges or overbuilt stations.

CDL.TO said:

Where on earth does $2.5 billion for 6.5 km come from? Sheppard cost just over $1 billion for 6.5km and that included political interference with the cancellation and re-starting of the project, the expensive Don bridge, and massively overbuilt stations.

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It was back of the envelope measuring distances on Google Maps with my fingers, and comparing to the $2 billion cost to build the Spadina extension - so accuracy may not be great. No Don Bridge, but you have to go under the 404 which is apparently an issue, and presumably the 401 ... and then you have to integrate with the existing facilities at STC.

Let's look at the numbers in more detail - original Sheppard was only $1 billion, but this was started construction 1994; with 2-3 years of design necessary before a construction start, we wouldn't see digging until 2010 or so; so that's 16 years of inflation. It's hard to find a good inflation rate, though Stats Can reports that for Toronto the non-residential construction inflation rate is 154% from 1997 to 2007 - so if you extrapolate this by another 6 years you get 199.5%. Then correct for length. I've found some detailed reports that give a length of 8.03 km for the Sheppard extension compared to 5.47 km for the existing service. And a cost of the initial subway of about $900 million. So 900*1.995*8.03/5.47 = $2.64 billion.

I think I'm comfortable using $2.5 billion as a comparison cost!

RedRocket191 said:

Regardless of the numbers, his point is still valid. We could build a lot more Light Rail for the cost of a subway line, regardless of it being free of political interference, indecision, expensive bridges or overbuilt stations.

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How can the numbers be disregarded? For $2.5B we could have basically unlimited km of rocket bus routes, or hundreds of km of proper commuter train routes, etc....the cheaper = better argument doesn't work. The main problem with TransitCity is that everything will be LRT, including routes that should be left as buses and some that should be subways. It is amusing how a vision that includes a mix of practical options based on reality (instead of a one-size-fits-all plan based on politics) is deemed absolutely unaffordable.

$2.5 billion is absolutely absurd, and I think that's pretty well-understood. I might go ahead and say that $6 billion for streetcars that offer no improvement in travel time from a local on-street bus is a bit absurd, too. Who's to say they won't have mega-cost-overruns, too? St. Clair is hardly on-time, on-budget. Unlike subways, local residents do not want streetcar routes, especially once they discover that Transit City will cost hundreds of lawns and thousands of trees. These will all be held up in consultations and neighbourhood fights for years, when a subway that will last forever could already be done construction.

It's amazing how no money is ever available for subways, how it's absolutely unaffordable, but $6 billion for streetcars to places that I guarantee many of you have never visited is perfectly reasonable. Tell me why TTC-run streetcars are so great? They built St. Clair, supposed to be the model for all these lines, and the travel time savings (by the TTC's own optimistic numbers!) is less than 10%. A few hundred million on the things -- fine -- but $6 billion when we supposedly have not-a-dime for any other mode? Why, other than extreme streetcar fanboyism, has York Region asked for and received two subway lines, but Toronto doesn't want a single one, even with 100% of the money available from the province.

Why the hell should we spend $400 million or more (including an elaborate underground transfer facility at Don Mills) for a streetcar west of Kennedy when you suggest that we may well tear it out again in 15 years? It's not gonna happen. Once that thing is built, we have it forever, just like the Scarborough RT.