OneCity Plan

[TheTigerMaster]

I find it curious that the Wilson BRT doesn't connect with the Jane LRT. I don't see the logic behind this.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The BD will run up mcowan, and probably shuffle over the couple hundred meters necessary to go through STC. And there is still the need for the sheppard east LRT, as the BD extension will just be a higher capacity version of what was planned for the RT LRT replacement.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Which is not nearly enough. Even if the province paid half of this (the feds will not pay a share) the true cost to Toronto families would be more like $1800/yr for 30 years.

The real question is, if this ever gets support, which project would they truly build with their limited funds? Will it be the DRL, or are we going back to the Scarborough subway battle again?

It works out to something like $45 dollars each time you pay, so $180 yearly.

 

[jje1000]

This plan pre-empts Rob Ford's Subways Subways Subways re-election bid. While Ford will be calling for Subways during the 2014 election, Stintz or whoever will be vying to kick him off the Mayor's chair can also fight for subways while calling Ford's unicorn tears subway dream toothless with no plans to pay for it. Anybody with an ounce of perception of reality will call bullshit on Ford's dream and realize that subways in this city will require somebody to pay for them. If this were an LRT vs Subways election, Ford might just win but Stintz & Co. are making this a Subways with money to pay for them vs Subways with no plan. Ford will lose.

I'm relieved.

Still not out of the woods yet. With outlets shilling headlines like:

Stintz pitches property-tax hike to pay for $30-billion TTC overhaul

TTC chair pitches transit tax

And presumed opposition from Ford:

He referred questions to Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, a Ford supporter who, along with four others, was booted from the commission in March.

Mr. Minnan-Wong said he was speaking for himself and the mayor when he called the plan a “massive, backdoor tax increase,†that would hurt seniors, young families and the city’s economy.

Ford can still take the pocketbook route- "solving" the city's finances and cutting taxes. And the uninformed will still think that the money will go to unions/car drivers are overtaxed/etc.- just look at the comments in the Globe article.

Whether this will or fail will depend on carefully crafted media messaging and support from Ford's very ranks.

 

[datamouse]

Also although extending BD to STC is great it would be better if it could have followed the SRT extension enlightenment. That way Centennial College gets served and north of Sheppard at Progress there's an abandoned rail corridor that allows for easy cut & cover. A single route to Malvern Town Centre would be a better service to that area than a LRT spur.

 

[CanadianNational]

Likes:
-The Name. OneCity is a good one.
-the scale and ambition of the plan, plus the start of a real effort to find out how to fund new transit.
-Finch West phase two, and it's expansion to the airport.
-Eglinton's expansion to the airport, and it's extension out to the Scarborough Bluffs area, then up to Sheppard near Malvern.
-The TTC InterRail proposals, with their Etobicoke and Scarborough express.
-The Sheppard West subway extension to Downsview.
-The St. Clair extension resolution.
-The connection to the Zoo. Not the ultimate in penny-sucking prudence, perhaps, but intuitive and lovable.

Hesitations:
-The scale and ambition of the plan. We've seen these sort of things before and they've fallen through. Just look at the political nightmare that two mild LRT lines vs. a fictional subway caused. Also, the timeline. 30 years is too long. This needs to be done in ten years (yeah, I know), twenty at the max. Who's willing to pay double the new feetax?
-The Scarborough Subway expansion northwards from Kennedy. The map doesn't make it quite clear if the existing SRT transit is to remain (and be upgraded to LRT as proposed) or not. Also, will it just end there as shown, or hook into the Ellesmere BRT? The new subway line looks like it will miss Scarborough Town Centre, which I think is a huge mistake.
-The Cherry streetcar line shown (I think it's Cherry) has no provision for Transit into the Portlands. In fact, there's no provision for Portlands transit at all on the map. The Cherry street line looks like it's running along Front here or something (the map is crude indeed!). Shouldn't it be running along Queen's Quay? There's no Waterfront East line on Queen's Quay here either. Urp.
-The little Malvern spur looks a little awkward sitting there. I think it needs a little more somethin'.

Outright Dislikes:
-The DRL (here, Don Mills Line). What the...!? This is not sufficient nor pleasing. It's less than half of what is needed, though it trekking up to Eglinton is good.
The DML (as I'll call it) needs to be extended westward. First, it needs to connect the two stations on King Street - Yonge/King and St. Andrew, if only to relieve pressure on Union. Then it needs to sail west to (take your pick) any of the proposed stations that the DRL was supposed to reach west of University. Roger's Centre, Bathurst Station, Exhibition, Dufferin, etc. Even with the InterRail proposal, King or Queen west could still use the relief. There's no proposal here for a continuous Queen Street or King Street line to take the place of the subway, so it's going to need relief underneath more of it's length. More than is shown here. The new lines proposed could actually add more people to the Queen and King lines. So... DRL West!...er, DML.

The most interesting thing about this plan, at the level of city politics, is that it's got the Fords in a complete crossfire. It outstrips anything the Mayor has dared, and contains more subways than he's ever dreamed of. It contains his obsession - a brand new subway line right through the entire heart of Scarborough - and ups it. Plus, the Sheppard West extension.
It unifies the entire city. It's vast, comprehensive...and has as the centre of it's foundation, a funding plan. So Ford can basically say that there should be no new taxes for such a thing, and that Stintz was right to make Scarborough have to settle, for the foreseeable future, for LRT. Or he can say that new taxes should be allowed for his election-promise projects - which means he never had a plan figured to begin with, which means he lied on the campaign trail. Also, why couldn't he have managed to do it himself when he had the chance, in that first year and a half? Again - Stintz wins. The Ford's don't know whether they're coming or going. I'm afraid Stintz has them chasing their own tails.

 

[Thoughtless Miscreant]

Eliminate the useless transfer at Kennedy? Check

For 484 million more dollars! A half billion premium so that people that are already going to be served by rapid transit don't have to switch trains. Oh and for all that money we also lose service to Centennial College.

This is subway fetishism at it's worst. No logical plan would ever spend money on this (as its first priority no less!) when we have so many pressing needs elsewhere in the city.

 

[nfitz]

Oh wow, looking at the map, it's very clear that the DRL connection is at King Stn, not at Queen. It only jumps up to Queen when King St merges into Queen.

We're suddenly going to rely on a Star graphic for accuracy? Remember the debate they created when they showed Metrolinx's DRL line going through Woodbine station, when the Metrolinx report actually said Pape?

Perhaps we should save the "where should the Don Mills line go" debate for all the threads already set up for that, and not read too much into this.

 

[Voltz]

For 484 million more dollars! A half billion premium so that people that are already going to be served by rapid transit don't have to switch trains. Oh and for all that money we also lose service to Centennial College.

This is subway fetishism at it's worst. No logical plan would ever spend money on this (as its first priority no less!) when we have so many pressing needs elsewhere in the city.

I agree, plus changing plans now only risks derailing the entire project.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I have a feeling that this is only a rough copy of the final plan, and the details can be worked out later. I would love to see the DRL extend along King and connect to become the western rail line, as that is bascicly what was the original routing for the western DRL.

I also love how this puts Ford in political checkmate. He loses whether he supports it or is against it.

 

[leopetr]

They seem to also mention that the Waterfront West LRT and Waterfront East Streetcar will be separate lines. I wonder if it makes more sense to build these as a single through-line, connecting to YUS just south of Union?

I don't think it makes sense. Shorter lines are easier to operate reliably, both lines go through an expanded Union Station streetcar loop so a hypothetical transfer is easy, and I don't think platform dwell time is a concern.

Waterfront West would come in via Bremner and the Air Canada Centre basement, while Queens Quay East would come in via a new portal at Queens Quay and Bay.

 

[js97]

Karen Stintz's new transit plan

At first, this seems to be a ground breaking plan... but after closer scrutiny, it becomes clear that it's more politically driven than it is an actual transit plan.

If you look closely at where all the upgrades are, the happen to be NOT in wards that are Rob Ford friendly.

Ambitious plan, we'll see if she can actually pull it off.


http://www.thestar.com/news/transpo...osal-floated-by-stintz-debaeremaeker#comments

 

[gweed123]

Also although extending BD to STC is great it would be better if it could have followed the SRT extension enlightenment. That way Centennial College gets served and north of Sheppard at Progress there's an abandoned rail corridor that allows for easy cut & cover. A single route to Malvern Town Centre would be a better service to that area than a LRT spur.

I disagree.

1) The SRT alignment isn't where the people are. Look at the stations in between STC and Kennedy, they're some of the lowest-used stations on the system.

2) Using the SRT alignment would still mean an SRT shutdown.

3) New line or spur, it makes no difference when serving Malvern. It will still mean 1 transfer to reach the subway, all that changes is where that transfer takes place.

All of those can be solved by using a Danforth-McCowan alignment. It can keep the SRT in operation while the line is being built. It keeps the current configuration of the Kennedy subway platform intact. And most importantly, it goes where the people are.

We're suddenly going to rely on a Star graphic for accuracy? Remember the debate they created when they showed Metrolinx's DRL line going through Woodbine station, when the Metrolinx report actually said Pape?

Perhaps we should save the "where should the Don Mills line go" debate for all the threads already set up for that, and not read too much into this.

I was looking at the link that CC posted, not the Star graphic. They seem to both be showing the same thing though.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I thought Waterfront west would run down queens quay and go underground at the same point as waterfront east..

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

If you look closely at where all the upgrades are, the happen to be NOT in wards that are Rob Ford friendly.

Huh? Like how exactly, considering the majority of lines are slated for Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough. The plan is not friendly to Rob Ford, not the wards that supported him.

AoD