syn
Senior Member
This is completely false.
Kind of like the idea that North York and STC are the same distance from downtown, or that Scarborough is funding downtown transit expansion.
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Debate on the merits of the Scarborough Subway Extension
- Thread starter kEiThZ
- Start date
This is completely false.
Kind of like the idea that North York and STC are the same distance from downtown, or that Scarborough is funding downtown transit expansion.
OneCity
Senior Member
False huh?
First off I never said they were same distance? But you chose to read it that way or want to manipulate it as such a single handed fact . What I said was NYCC and SCC are that not far off geographically whatsoever and North York and Scarborough are extremely similar otherwise in size and population. So why the deep desire after all this political nonsense to want to exaggerate as a place so far away and so different? Scarborough is not some far away land compared that should be treated much differently. There is a case to be made for LRT, but fighting this hard to justify Scarborough as something far less than North York or Vaughan after the previous elections and the RT debacle is over the top and out of lie with what is built elsewhere in a comparable part of the City and now beyond. There were compromising solutions to better integrate or improve on the RT, unfortunately it didn't happen. So here we are.
As far as your recent claim of falsehood for the LRT cost, please give me an estimate $$ for all the sunk in cost of cancellation with estimated delays (even without the political backlash), include the bus terminal cost and inflationary numbers in you rebut. I would safely assume the savings you believe are there are not that significant. The cost of adding stops is certainly unfortunate, but even then the cost of going back to the drawing board could cause greater issues. Because the LRT is not the old $1.8B and Subway is not the fake estimate of $5B thrown around to make it look worse. Estimating here and feel free to disagree but the LRT would likely not be far off from $3B in 5 years which would like be the earliest it could be ready to break ground on the most positive track although in reality it has had minimal to zero chance of happening since cancellation. Other alternatives were proposed and rejected where saving could have been found. So IMO the best solution is to move forward, and if a stop can be added this alignment is more optimal then the RT.
And yes Scarborough will be funding many expensive Toronto transit, and other projects now and into the future. And vice versa. Vaughan not so much. False again? Of course, surely you will find some small point somewhere to magnify and use it illegitimze the overall points
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Leo_Chan
Senior Member
Just a random question here: Will the SSE actually INCREASE capacity on Lines 1 and 2 due to there being longer bus times, resulting in more people driving instead to taking transit?
sixrings
Senior Member
I will speak on behalf of LRT advocates for thinking that the LRT cost may go up by say a billion. However at the same time the Subway costs are going to rise by a similar if not larger amount. There is no way this one stop is going to be built for less than 4 billion.
OneCity
Senior Member
LOL. Any more congestion in the coming decades will surely push commuters closer to public transit.
But I don't see it here at all. Those that took the RT, took it mainly because they had no other choice and Ellesmere, Midland are quite the extreme minority in the bigger commuter picture should they chose to drive. They will more likely continue to use public transit out of necessity on their short commuter to the subway or in between. Lawrence may have arguably a better solution aside from frequency with Smarttrack and if they add a subway stop a few KM's east in a more central location id argue more people will be out of cars.
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syn
Senior Member
But they are far off in their proximity to downtown, along with geographic locations that should make it quite obvious why a subway connection at any cost makes little sense.
If you want a proximity comparison, Square One and Scarborough Town Centre are almost the exact same distance from Union Station. It makes much more sense to plan for Scarborough based on it's location and density.
Yes. And the the subway, right now, is at $4 billion - that's still with a large margin for increase. $5 billion is probably a conservative estimate when it's all said and done.
The LRT would be substantially cheaper and service more riders. That's what they call a win-win.
How is Scarborough funding downtown expansion when it doens't generate the tax revenue to support such investment?
Let's see some actual numbers.
BurlOak
Senior Member
Here's some cost benefit analysis for you.
http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regiona...itscases/Benefits_Case-Eglinton_Crosstown.pdf
And Provincial - you can't forget Mitzi (the Subway Champion) Hunter.
syn
Senior Member
I don't see a one stop Bloor Danforth subway extension anywhere in that cost analysis.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
You're expecting a cost analysis? These politicians couldn't even be bothered to undertake an analysis of whether or not removing multiple rapid transit stops and consolidating them into a single stop would save commuters any time.
BurlOak
Senior Member
No. B-D extension was not in this report. If was in another report and found to be the worst, although they looked at slightly different things then.
The report did, however, show that the connected SRT/ECLRT was better than the transfer LRT. So why did City in 2012 revert back to the worse plan?
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
Because, for the 11 Billionth time, connecting the SRT and ECLRT would’ve come at the cost of canceling FWLRT, SELRT, ultimately moving fewer commuters.
BurlOak
Senior Member
That plan had the best Benefit-Cost ratio. It was obvious that it should have been considered the base case, and ways looked at to improve the benefit side (i.e. extension to Malvern*) and reduce the cost side (i.e. elevate the line from DVP to Kennedy, and south side through Leslie, maybe eliminate a station or 2).
FWLRT could easily been fit into that budget (if someone would have actually wanted to build it), and SELRT appears that it was cancelled either way. If you add the $1.5B into the budget (from tax hike and Feds), then all (connected SRT/ECLRT, FWLRT, SELRT) could have been built (again, if they wanted to).
* - I should add elevation as a benefit as well, because I fear that this trend to continually build deeper and deeper subways is counterproductive. It takes much longer to construct a station due to the deep excavation. It takes passengers longer to get from street level to train. It doesn't provide the view of an elevated line (daylight, cell coverage).
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Personally, I view the Scarbourough $3 billion "single station" as an unfortunate deal with the devil.
The SSE deal-with-the-devil exists to save DRL, ECLRT, FWLRT, and SELRT. Without SSE, the DRL wouldn't even be this far along.
Fewer riders will benefit than under an ideal plan (intelligently designed for the whole GTHA), but politically, SSE's existence (and few riders) will immensely increase transit ridership elsewhere simply by sheer protection of DRL's existence at all. Very ironic, that by Scarborough voters deciding to vote to hurt their transit ridership, they agreed not to block the increase of transit ridership elsewhere. (by not blocking the DRL)
Thus, that's why it's a "deal-with-the-devil"
Note: DRL is actually a "Downtown Temporary Relief Line". Induced demand typically gradually happens to downtown subway expansion in most world cities, making transit even more popular. While I use "induced demand" more for freeways, it also happens to subways -- and it's better for induced demand to happen to subways since Toronto's Yonge Line handles more people than an 8-lane-wide freeway. Shanghai/Beijing's equivalents of DRL quickly got overloaded. Amazing for cities that had no subway systems when our Line 1 opened. See here for more explanation about subway induced demand.
So you see, now that SSE exists to mollify politicians, means more ridership for whole of GTHA, even if fewer people benefit in the Scarborough area.
I can economically understand improving/extending an already-built SSE (to make it less deal-with-the-devil) but getting a $3+ billion stop built now is a political move that doesn't help many transit riders quicker and sooner in this area.
A more optimized transit plan should have happened, but at least, DRL is now finally going ahead (plans are being made, various studies are under way, it's now partially funded, and now it finally "feels real, feels like it'll finally happen within my life" if it keeps up). If SSE politically made DRL possible, then I can live with the SSE (while holding my nose) because it'll increase transit ridership elsewhere. Simply because DRL now exists as a real plan, now uninterfered by Scarborough having been given candy.
If built, it will probably be many decades before SSE finally "pays for itself economically" with infill stations & connecting to a fully-densified Sheppard Subway line into the big sideways U. Maybe not till the end of this century. Then, it might finally redeem itself cost-wise as a super-busy line. But right now, it is a "Big Owe" league of a deal that's being tolerated by other GTHA politicians in order to protect all the other transit projects elsewhere in GTHA.
Voters who used not to stand for this (and thus, delaying things like Transit City or cancelling projects) -- are now faced with the choice of denying Scarborough (and delaying your favourite local transit project) or letting Scarborough keep its candy (and getting your transit project). Increasingly, more people voted towards the tolerating of a certain amount of candy.
That is some of what happened in 2014 -- but will it happen for 2018? That is the question. Choices for protecting expansion of transit projects has always been a domino-effect minefield in GTHA politics.
More than $3bn, combined, has been wasted in 20 years of transit cancellations, so it's no small wonder that SSE is actually en edible, albiet bitter, choice, for many out there. Even if I disagree with the decision to go for the SSE, I can at least fathom why the decision is occuring.
20-years of exploding mines (everything between the cancellation of the Eglinton subway in year 1995 through the cancellation of Transit City in 2013) has made many politicians, government agencies, and voters alike want to tolerate SSE to protect other key GTHA transit projects.
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syn
Senior Member
Then it's irrelevant.
