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What is the best next transit upgrade in the Sheppard East corridor

What is the best next transit upgrade in the Sheppard East corridor

  • Extend the Sheppard subway to STC

    Votes: 9 31.0%
  • Extend the Sheppard subway to Agincourt (GO RER station), but not to STC

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • Build Sheppard LRT (Transit City / low floor), retain a transfer at Don Mills Stn

    Votes: 3 10.3%
  • Build Sheppard LRT, convert the existing subway tunnel to LRT even if it costs a lot

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • Convert and extend as high-floor LRT that can fit into the subway tunnel more easily

    Votes: 14 48.3%
  • Convert and extend as a narrow-body subway or ICTS to save the extension costs

    Votes: 5 17.2%
  • No rail changes, enhance the bus service east of Don Mills (BRT or more express)

    Votes: 6 20.7%

  • Total voters
    29
  • Poll closed .
What limited pool of funds? Are you seriously falling for that pitch/ploy? Where there's political will to do it, it can be done. We just need politicians of action and not weaklings.

Here you are right, at least in part. Popular transit projects tend to attract funding easier than projects born by transit experts, if the latter are not appealing to the public.

The need for a crosstown grade-separated mass transit line north of the 401 simply will not go away no matter how much we may wish it to be the case. Back in the old days, when one part of the city got subway expansion it was in tandem for expansion in another part (University Line and Keele-Woodbine Bloor-Danforth Line built concurrently; Keele-Islington and Woodbine-Warden; Kipling and Kennedy; Yonge North and the Spadina Line). What is wrong with today's set of politicians and city planners that they can't seem to come up with a way to please the majority of constituents and leave no one out? DRL can and should be built at the same time as the Danforth expansion and the Sheppard expansion.

There is no way for the DRL, Danforth expansion, and Sheppard to be built at the same time; for the simple reason that Danforth expansion has committed funding and is under detailed design, while the two others are stuck in limbo.

Furthermore, DRL (Long) alone can't be built all at the same time, due to its huge costs. It will be built up to Danforth or to Eglinton at first, with the Eglinton-Sheppard leg following a few years later at best.

Like I inferred in my original post, the Sheppard expansion would have happened 15 years ago had David Miller not won the 2003 election. Built back then, we would not be talking about the highly inflated $500 per kilometre figures of today. But that's not an excuse to indefinitely do nothing to resolve the issue. Mixing the tunnel with an at-grade section with stops every 500 metres is kind of foolhardy a "solution" to me. It just seems like we're contorting ourselves into knots to justify at-grade road median LRT in this corridor, when everywhere a subway stop would occur already has an abundance of high rises and transit oriented developments nearby - and ergo is much more suited to grade separated mass transit.

Miller tried to push the Sheppard subway, shortly after he got elected. He even positioned it ahead of TYSSE. Since he didn't succeed, I doubt any other mayor would succeed.
 
  1. My first choice is #7 - do nothing, or just add a few express buses. As long as the dream of extending the Sheppard subway exists, there will not be great protests when other transit projects are done before Sheppard. Since there is another thread relating to the timing of construction, I will not vote for #7 because eventually something has to be done here - and there is another thread for what the timing of Sheppard should be).
  2. If I could back in time 5 years, mini-metro (#6) would be my top choice. It would have been used for Eglinton, SRT, Sheppard conversion, and even Eglinton East and Finch. This would have been a whole network of rapid transit. There could have been interlining as well with Sheppard going to Zoo, Malvern and UTSC (via STC). Eglinton could have gone to Malvern and UTSC. A Michael Schabas style "Scarborough Wye" comes to mind - although not exactly his routing ( https://darylvsworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/scarborough-wye-proposal.jpg ).
  3. But now, Eglinton is too late to change and is an on-street LRT. Probably the same for FWLRT. SSE (B-D extension) also appears to be going ahead as heavy rail subway. With all these assumed to be unchangeable, Sheppard as a mini-metro would simply be an orphan technology.
  4. (If only Eglinton is assumed to be unchangeable, then I would still vote for the mini-metro (#6), as the LRT would become the orphan technology for Toronto, but it does exist elsewhere in the Province).
  5. Thus, I think there is no choice but to complete Sheppard as an underground subway from Downsview to STC (only above the West Branch of the Don River near Bathurst). Cut-and-cover could be used for the entire West extension and part of the East extension.
  6. Interesting that the push to defeat Fords connected Eglinton-SRT has lead a lot more subways being built/required.
 

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