smuncky
Senior Member
I could swear I have seen this exact conversation before.
i think the mods cleaned up the other threads a bit and moved certain posts to the appropriate threads.
I could swear I have seen this exact conversation before.
I think just about everyone here, and indeed most Torontonians, agrees that a DRL of sorts is necessary and should have been built a long time ago. That doesn't somehow translate into a beggar-thy-neighbor approach to transit planning. In my mind, the Richmond Hill extension is clearly more beneficial to Toronto than the coming LRT fest in Malvern and the inscrutable Jane Line (where does it go? who does it carry?).
$2.4 billion 6.8 km 6 station Yonge subway extension from Finch to Richmond Hill Centre ($352.9 million/km)
$2.8 billion 8.6 km 6 station Spadina Subway Extension from Downsview to Vaughan Corporate Centre ($325.6 million/km)
http://www.thestar.com/article/538111
Note: The entire Yonge Subway Extension is UNDERGROUND. Most of the Spadina Subway Extension is underground with the exception of a bridge over Hwy 407,.. BTW, that part north of Steeles to Hwy 7 will cost $1 Billion.
I'm wondering where you get your $70 million per Km for LRT line? Oh, that's right you're only looking at the most expensive line,... the $2.2 Billion 31 km Eglinton LRT crosstown that includes UNDERGROUND between Laird Drive in the east to Keele Street in the west ($71.0 million per km). And not all the others!
By using the most expensive of ONE LRT line and failing to acknowledge the OTHER LRT lines, your argument is pathetically weak!
The other Transit City LRT lines are still in the $40 million per km area, since they are above ground.
"In total, 120 km of service will be added over the entire city. By 2021, the new lines would carry 175 million riders per year. The estimated cost including vehicles is $6,100 million."
($50.8 million per km) This is the average of all LRT lines, both above ground and underground!
http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/transit_city/index.htm
BTW, subways are extremely expensive in Toronto because the TTC uses such wide cars,... most other subway systems uses much narrower subway cars,... and thus only have to dig one tunnel that can be used to lay down two sets of tracks going in both directions,... whereas the TTC needs to dig out two parallel tunnels, one for each direction. Since LRT are much narrower than the subways TTC uses, I'm sure they'll only be digging out one tunnel for the underground LRT instead of 2 parallel tunnels.
Just to be clear, this is a joke right?Are you suggesting that those predominately White and Asian folks of "the Richmond Hill extension is clearly more beneficial to Toronto than the coming LRT fest in Malvern and the inscrutable Jane Line" where there are a lot more minority of darker skin colour? "(where does it go? who does it carry?)."
Are you a racist?
Originally Posted by sunnyraytoronto
http://lrt.daxack.ca/LRTvsHRT/CostCompare.html
Usually, 1km of subway can buy you about 6km of above ground LRT. But with both the Yonge and Spadina subway extensions both costing about $300-350 million per km. Whereas regular above ground LRT would cost about $40 million per km; the 1 km of subway would buy about 8-9km of LRT in Toronto.
In terms of Transit City,... 7 LRT lines,... with the most expensive Eglinton crosstown being about $2.2 billion because part of it is underground (the underground part is basically as expensive to build as an underground subway). Pick the average Transit City LRT line (can't be Eglinton!) and if you were to convert that one average Transit City LRT line to underground Subway, it would basically cost the same as the entire Transit City budget (well money they still need to get) for all 7 LRT lines.
$2.4 billion 6.8 km 6 station Yonge subway extension from Finch to Richmond Hill Centre ($352.9 million/km)
$2.8 billion 8.6 km 6 station Spadina Subway Extension from Downsview to Vaughan Corporate Centre ($325.6 million/km)
http://www.thestar.com/article/538111
Note: The entire Yonge Subway Extension is UNDERGROUND. Most of the Spadina Subway Extension is underground with the exception of a bridge over Hwy 407,.. BTW, that part north of Steeles to Hwy 7 will cost $1 Billion.
I'm wondering where you get your $70 million per Km for LRT line? Oh, that's right you're only looking at the most expensive line,... the $2.2 Billion 31 km Eglinton LRT crosstown that includes UNDERGROUND between Laird Drive in the east to Keele Street in the west ($71.0 million per km). And not all the others!
By using the most expensive of ONE LRT line and failing to acknowledge the OTHER LRT lines, your argument is pathetically weak!
The other Transit City LRT lines are still in the $40 million per km area, since they are above ground.
"In total, 120 km of service will be added over the entire city. By 2021, the new lines would carry 175 million riders per year. The estimated cost including vehicles is $6,100 million."
($50.8 million per km) This is the average of all LRT lines, both above ground and underground!
http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/transit_city/index.htm
BTW, subways are extremely expensive in Toronto because the TTC uses such wide cars,... most other subway systems uses much narrower subway cars,... and thus only have to dig one tunnel that can be used to lay down two sets of tracks going in both directions,... whereas the TTC needs to dig out two parallel tunnels, one for each direction. Since LRT are much narrower than the subways TTC uses, I'm sure they'll only be digging out one tunnel for the underground LRT instead of 2 parallel tunnels.
Please inform yourself about these projects' true details - your rebuttal is flimsy. The cost of Transfer City is not going to be $6 billion, it'll be several billion dollars higher (the city guessed $8.3B in Nov. '07, and the final costs are sure to be higher). Current projections are at least $70M/km for the entire scheme, and the bulk of that is still middle of the street ROWs (Eglinton will be over $100M/km). Also, Jane and Don Mills will almost certainly have substantial tunnelled segments, adding handsomely to their costs.
Are you suggesting that those predominately White and Asian folks of "the Richmond Hill extension is clearly more beneficial to Toronto than the coming LRT fest in Malvern and the inscrutable Jane Line" where there are a lot more minority of darker skin colour? "(where does it go? who does it carry?)."
Are you a racist?
Last time I checked,... those folks in Malvern and along "the inscrutable Jane Line" pay municipal property taxes that goes towards the TTC. Richmond Hill does not pay any property tax that goes to the TTC!
Re: http://lrt.daxack.ca/LRTvsHRT/CostCompare.html
I find that site quite informative and helpful (contrary to the opinion expressed in one of earlier posts).
Note that the author (Calvin Henry-Cotnam) is not affiliated with TTC or its potential suppliers, and has undertaken that research on his own time.
Now, while Calvin's historical data on construction costs in Toronto and elsewhere are accurate, the estimates he uses for the upcoming LRT and subway projects are somewhat out of date, and hence lower than the most recent figures. This is not due to any kind of pro-LRT / anti-subway bias, and as mentioned, both his LRT and subway projections are somewhat lower than the latest TTC data.
Here's a thought, if you have more accurate numbers to back up what you have to say,... why don't you provide some proofs,.. like links,.. perferably links to city websites or links to recent news articles (like I have!),... something,... anything,... would be better than pulling numbers out of your butt.
Otherwise, your rebuttal is,... flimsy!
We know that the real cost of LRT lines is not $40M/km, yet must subway projects be $300+M/km? Of course not. Subways do not need to be 100% underground, which would save billions of dollars should such reasonable design be built into a subway scheme as large as Transfer City. The two subway projects each have massive contingency components, adding almost $1B combined between the two of them...final project cost breakdowns for the Transfer City lines have not been released (partially because they haven't finalized how much will need to be grade separated) so we don't know if 25% contingency costs have been added, which would automatically raise the bare minimum LRT cost to $50M/km and alter your precious ratios.
... I'm kind of curious as to why the author of that web site didn't compare Transit City's LRT plans to Pittsburgh's T system, as the T is one of the few systems that becomes a subway in the central city (and has other tunnels such as between the suburbs of Dormont and Mt Lebanon, PA).
For example, some fare systems are radically different from the platform stations mentioned in Transit City.
When you create a higher quality LRT system, you get something like what Pittsburgh has. And Toronto will still need platforms that take more than 2 cars per train. Trust me... 2 cars is not enough for the demand along Eglinton and other corridors. And as I already stated, with no one making any comments, to bore 2 tunnels for a 1.2 mile extension of the T it has cost $435 million USD.
$400 million per mile for a higher quality LRT system is what you're looking at for the Eglinton underground line, and it still needs bigger platforms than the Pittsburgh T.
If Eglinton crosstown is going to be LRT, they are going to have to pour a little more into the system than what the estimate is right now. For a full-featured fare booth attended system with large platforms both above and below ground, it'll be significantly more than the estimate provided. To be honest, if done right, the LRT version of an Eglinton crosstown line might actually work well. But again, without sounding like a broken record, it has to be able to handle more than 2 cars per train and all of the other features like attended fare booths.
If you're unable to find some of these documents (they're linked to repeatedly in all kinds of threads), here's a few:
http://www.ttc.ca/postings/gso-comrpt/documents/report/f3405/_conv.htm
http://www.ttc.ca/postings/gso-comr...8/TYSSE_Project_Delivery_Strategy_Process.pdf
http://vivayork.com/downloads/november_28/Dec_3_Final_08_12_04.pdf
http://www3.ttc.ca/PDF/About_the_TT...ion_recommended_concept_project_issues_de.pdf
www.stevemunro.ca
Hell, you can find more accurate information in wikipedia than in your posts.
Note: these sites use words instead of emoticons and exclamation marks.