Its funny that if you look at the scoring grid (Table 15, page 41), and take away the financial indicators, the LRT still wins hands down.
I think these experts were a little too biased.
You can call it what every you want and split numbers tell the cows come home, Sheppard cannot support a subway for 50 years and this includes STC.
Unless the residents of Scarborough are willing to pay an extra $2,000 yearly in taxes to build and operate the line, not going to happen. I will lay dollars to donuts that if a formal vote was held for the residents north of STC on paying for this lines, it will loose hand down.
As for the rest of the city helping to pay for this line, they will be looking at covering their cost for their lines in their areas.
Even if you went out and held a referendum not only for this line, but others city wide, you are looking at 12-18 months to come up with a referendum that people will understand what they are approving or rejecting for this master transit plan.
Even if you built 1km of the line per year, you will not be ridding the line until 2025 at the earliest.
The DRL is more important than this line follow by the Yonge extension to Steeles and the Bloor line to Cloverdale. I would have said the Danforth extension to STC, but its an extra cost at this time with the SRT being converted to LRT, as well running to the west side of the city.
Employment centers is really lacking for this line and only have to go over to VP & Consumer Rd area to see empty buildings there now. Yonge is going out strip this line for everything north of Sheppard.
I could never understand the idea of building this line back in 90's in the first place and nothing has change my mind since then, other than there will be one there in a 100 years or less.
As long as you keep building residential units with 1.3 to 2.7 cars each, not going to get people out of their cars. Maybe once gas gets to $5/lt with 7/24 gridlock.
