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Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

Let's not forger that these "savings" are compared against a straw-man base scenario that assumes the Scarborough RT does not exist, but is replaced with buses. So the actual time saving from the status quo today would be substantially less than what this bogus report want's you to believe.

It's faster today to take the bus directly to Kennedy from UTSC than it is to go to STC first.

 
If the LRT ride is 26 minutes from kennedy to UTSC, then the LRT ride would actually be closer to 20-25 minutes. The current 905 takes 18 minutes outside of the peak hours and only stops at 9 stops (compared to the LRT's 12 stops). You also forgot to factor in 2 minutes for LRT wait time.

GO currently takes 20 minutes from Eglinton to Union. With additional stops, it won't decrease by 30%. It won't even decrease by 30% with EMUs and electrification assuming no additional stops are added between Union and Eglinton GO.

With these additional assumptions, the true trip time becomes 71 minutes — The same as the current subway proposal.

Guildwood GO is another story. That is a 10 minute LRT ride, but the GO ride itself becomes 25 minutes. The walk from the LRT station to the GO station increases to 4 minutes as well. There is still a 2-minute wait for the LRT.

This trip is 66 minutes — 4 minutes faster than the current subway proposal, but with the assumption that there's BRT on Ellesmere. With BRT, the trip will likely decrease by 4-5 minutes.

It's also worth noting that the current bussing time from UTSC to Scarborough center on an express bus is actually 14 minutes, not 20. So really, even if you do transfer at Guildwood, the bus to subway would still be faster.

You are right that I forgot the 2 minute LRT wait time. So add that, making it 55 mins.

And yes, I used the incorrect GO station meaning travel time assumptions are off. The LRT also passes Guildwood GO, which is what I intended to use.

Guildwood GO is also only 4km from UTSC, so at an average speed of 23km/h for the LRT (which I suspect would actually be a little higher because of the left turn underpass at Kingston/Morningside and the lack of stoplights along Morningside Avenue), the LRT would take 10 mins. Guildwood will be 17 minutes to Union according to the RER Business case (here, page 59).

I've revised the timeline to accommodate these, also including a slightly longer "walk to" time to the GO platform to be conservative. I don't think a 4 minute walk is appropriate provided a direct pedestrian connection is constructed:

4 min walk to LRT
2 minute wait
10 min LRT ride
2 min walk to GO Platform
7.5 min wait
17 min GO ride to Union (per RER Business Case)
3 min walk to subway
1 min wait
8 min subway ride
4 min walk

Total: 60 minutes.

Still significantly faster than the Subway.
 
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Not to be boring; but virtues of the subway aside, I will mention again, it would be cheaper to relocate UTSC to Kennedy Station.

Slightly more expensive if we move Centennial - Progress, but there are real cost advantages.

Alternatively, albeit w/the cost of the subway embedded, we could relocate both to STC, that would move the business case into positive territory.

Those 2 campuses are so foolishly located; and I can't say I like either one; I really wish relocating them was part of the discussion. Sigh. Lost Cause, I know.......
 
Not to be boring; but virtues of the subway aside, I will mention again, it would be cheaper to relocate UTSC to Kennedy Station.

Slightly more expensive if we move Centennial - Progress, but there are real cost advantages.

Alternatively, albeit w/the cost of the subway embedded, we could relocate both to STC, that would move the business case into positive territory.

Those 2 campuses are so foolishly located; and I can't say I like either one; I really wish relocating them was part of the discussion. Sigh. Lost Cause, I know.......


This is really such a narrow view of the City and greater region. It would be logistically, and financially unreasonable. Exactly why the Province should always be the ones making the big picture decisions on large scale infrastructure upgrades.

Both locations are great and where they should be
 
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Not to be boring; but virtues of the subway aside, I will mention again, it would be cheaper to relocate UTSC to Kennedy Station.

Slightly more expensive if we move Centennial - Progress, but there are real cost advantages.

Alternatively, albeit w/the cost of the subway embedded, we could relocate both to STC, that would move the business case into positive territory.

Those 2 campuses are so foolishly located; and I can't say I like either one; I really wish relocating them was part of the discussion. Sigh. Lost Cause, I know.......

It might be cheaper to relocate STC to Kennedy Station than to build this subway extension. :p
 
This is really such a narrow view of the City and greater region. It would be logistically, and financially unreasonable. Exactly why the Province should always be the ones making the big picture decisions on large scale infrastructure upgrades.

Both locations are great and where they should be

What a preposterous set of comments.

Its clearly a reflex to what you think is an anti-subway argument; even though I'm pro-SSE as seen in multiple posts in this thread; though I disagree with some choices made (going north to McCowan and skipping the station at Eglinton/Brimley), 2 moves that would have improved the business case, but I digress.

If you treat people who are on the same side of the issue as you this badly, no wonder you have so few allies.

Secondly, you certainly may disagree with my idea, that's fine. But suggesting that my idea is 'narrow-thinking' when it clearly encompasses larger goals, more players and more geography is patently absurd. An argument you clearly made, because you didn't know what side I was on, presumably because you've forgotten past posts and didn't feel like looking them up.

To suggest that either campus is well located is so absurd at to be beyond imagination.

The location of any campus needs to meet a simple test, how many people find it easy to get there?

There are plenty of other tests when you get past #1, but when you fail number one its a serious problem.

There is no version of any transit plan under which a subway or other higher-order transit ever serves UTSC directly. As such, it is poorly located.

Centennial, at least, might have been served by an SRT extension in one iteration of a transit plan.

That said, the Centennial campus has no adjacent retail, very little residential density, is undesirable to walk to, cycle to, or live near; all while having mediocre transit connections.

Moving the campuses is not an excercise is denying Scarborough a subway, its an exercise in justifying that investment, and making any subway more successful; while making the lives of more students and more faculty easier.
 
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Over time I've some to support the subway extension, but only because we've been going in circles about this for nearly twenty years. I could very easily be persuaded to support cancelling the Line 2 extension and mothballing the SRT entirely (the SRT is something I never found to be particularly useful), in favour of building a network of BRT across Scarbrough, improvements to GO regional transit, and perhaps the construction of the Relief Line North. I've run the numbers on those options before, and unlike the SSE, those would've shaved an enormous amount of time off my commute both within Scarborough, and between Scarborough and Downtown. The Scarborough Subway has no reason to exist with this network in place.
This is the way.
 
What a preposterous set of comments.

Its clearly a reflex to what you think is anti-subway argument; even though I'm pro-SSE as seen in multiple posts in this thread; though I disagree with some choices made (going north to McCowan and skipping the station at Eglinton/Brimley), 2 moves that would have improved the business case, but I digress.

If you treat people who are on the same side of the issue as you this badly, no wonder you have so few allies.

Secondly, you certainly may disagree with my idea, that's fine. But suggesting that my idea is 'narrow-thinking' when it clearly encompasses larger goals, more players and more geography is patently absurd. An argument you clearly made, because you didn't know what side I was on, presumably because you've forgotten past posts and didn't feel like looking them up.

To suggest that either campus is well located is so absurd at to be beyond imagination.

The location of any campus needs to meet a simple test, how many people find it easy to get there?

There are plenty of other tests when you get past #1, but when you fail number one its a serious problem.

There is no version of any transit plan under which a subway or other higher-order transit ever serves UTSC directly. As such, it is poorly located.

Centennial, at least, might have been served by an SRT extension in one iteration of a transit plan.

That said, the Centennial campus has no adjacent retail, very little residential density, is undesirable to walk to, cycle to, or live near; all while having mediocre transit connections.

Moving the campuses is not an excercise is denying Scarborough a subway, its an exercise in justifying that investment, and making any subway more successful; while making the lives of more students and more faculty easier.


Look at the large parcels of land, not to mention the surrounding beautiful landscape UofT owns in East Scarborough which it has planned to grow into for the future. The cost to buy anything remotely close to this in magnitude around Kennedy is absurd even if it was possible to acquire. Which it is not, and even more importantly then the campus is needed for to be in reach from Durham and Central/East Scarborough for the larger need now and towards the future as we grow.

Im sure we may see satellite campuses around the Centre as is grows and is connected to the there campuses but there is really no need to being relocating any of them. The connection now should be the focus. UTSC will be connected to the Centre by the Durham-Scarb BRT and EELRT, and focus will need to go back on a Centennial feeder for the next phase since it wasn't allowed to be discussed in ugliness of the SLRT - subway debate.

Reality, if we didn't waste so much time fighting off efforts to hack in Scarborough Centre with transit from every which way we could have been planning the more localized BRT or LRT extensions from other key destination feeding in. All these institutions and locations are in fine places if not exactly where they should be as place to grow.
 
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Only on Urbantoronto would the suggestion to demolish and relocate tertiary campuses to suit the anti-subway narrative even be entertained; meanwhile Keele Campus of York U, though remote in a far-flung corner of North York, had a subway built out to reach it; and we are in the near construction phase of a grade-separated station at Humber College north campus.

Seems like only Scarborough's transit needs gets shat on.
 
Only on Urbantoronto would the suggestion to demolish and relocate tertiary campuses to suit the anti-subway narrative even be entertained; meanwhile Keele Campus of York U, though remote in a far-flung corner of North York, had a subway built out to reach it; and we are in the near construction phase of a grade-separated station at Humber College north campus.

Seems like only Scarborough's transit needs gets shat on.

I rarely get genuinely angry. This post makes me angry, and I'm going to ask you to leave UT and never come back. This is a forum for literate people, with at least some modicum of decency and willingness to read; clearly, you don't qualify.

I'm pro-SSE and just said that again.

I'm completely fed up with posters so lazy that they literally can't read up the page before commenting.
 
Look at the large parcels of land, not to mention the surrounding beautiful landscape UofT owns in East Scarborough which it has planned to grow into for the future. The cost to buy anything remotely close to this in magnitude around Kennedy is absurd even if it was possible to acquire. Which it is not, and even more importantly then the campus is needed for to be in reach from Durham and Central/East Scarborough for the larger need now and towards the future as we grow.

Really?

Size of functional UTSC campus (including some streetscape/public space, but not the valley lands, and not surface parking which can be moved underground) = 16ha
Size of functional Centennial campus, including some parking to allow for an extra building, 10ha

Size of public land, City ownership, Kennedy Stn lands, GO Stn lands, and adjacent Rec. Ctr 7.7ha

Acquisition of private lands, 3 parcels, all directly bordering Kennedy/Eglinton, little/no residential displacement: 6.3ha

Total available: 14ha

Estimated cost of private-land acquisition, based on a recent sale of a comparable Scarborough plaza, 60M for all 3 sites, allowing for extra costs due to location, and expropriation, I'll go for 100M

Total cost of land 100M.

Cost of building replacements, approx. 1.6B for UTSC, based on recent projects and NASM requirements. Approx. 600M for Centennial.

Total cost for moving the larger campus, 1.7B

Entirely feasible.

Now, I'm done w/this, it was a tangential digression, nothing more, back on topic.
 
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You are right that I forgot the 2 minute LRT wait time. So add that, making it 55 mins.

And yes, I used the incorrect GO station meaning travel time assumptions are off. The LRT also passes Guildwood GO, which is what I intended to use.

Guildwood GO is also only 4km from UTSC, so at an average speed of 23km/h for the LRT (which I suspect would actually be a little higher because of the left turn underpass at Kingston/Morningside and the lack of stoplights along Morningside Avenue), the LRT would take 10 mins. Guildwood will be 17 minutes to Union according to the RER Business case (here, page 59).

I've revised the timeline to accommodate these, also including a slightly longer "walk to" time to the GO platform to be conservative. I don't think a 4 minute walk is appropriate provided a direct pedestrian connection is constructed:

4 min walk to LRT
2 minute wait
10 min LRT ride
2 min walk to GO Platform
7.5 min wait
17 min GO ride to Union (per RER Business Case)
3 min walk to subway
1 min wait
8 min subway ride
4 min walk

Total: 60 minutes.

Still significantly faster than the Subway.
I still wouldn't trust those GO numbers, unless they were referring to express service (which would likely be hourly and not every 15 minutes). The current trip time is 25-29 minutes as per the current timetables (29 westbound, 25 easbound generally). Claiming it would get down ton 17 minutes is a > 40% reduction in trip times. Even their own business case says that electrification will only shave off 20 % of dwell times at the very best. There is the argument that the trains wouldn't have to succumb to slow track speeds on the Union station corridor, but with all the traffic going through there now (and all the future traffic going through there), I don't see it happening. Trains have to spend like 5 minutes there to load and unload people during peak periods. Those trains need to be stored somewhere. At a 20% reduction rate from 25 minutes, the trip is still 20 minutes, which is the most optimistic you can get. In this best-case scenario, you'd see at the trip time is 64 minutes, which is insignificant compared to the subway's 70 minutes (which as previously mentioned is a flawed measurement given that an express bus from UTSC to STC is 14 minutes, not 20, and doesn't make a case for the Ellesmere BRT).

tl;dr they still take the same amount of time assuming BAU including the SSE. With additional stations at Gerrard and East Harbour, trip times will likely be higher via GO.

Where Eglinton East really shines for UTSC is not getting students downtown faster, rather, it's giving them access to the future RER network. Students from Brampton, Milton, Mississauga, KW, Guelph, Pickering, Ajax, Oshawa, etc will now have easy access to UTSC.

It'll help get them to the CBD as well and improve reliability (and likely the streetscape) of the Eglinton East corridor as a whole.

I'm not at all against the project, but it won't make the lives of UTSC students much easier. GO RER, fare integration, and a Scarborough Subway will.
 
My understanding is that most of the Lakeshore East travel time savings will come not only from Electrification, but also from improvements to the USRC. Right now trains crawl into Union from the east, which will change once the track and signaling upgrade project is complete. I seem to recall hearing that project alone will chop 4 minutes off travel times, which results in a 21 minute travel time. Do the basic 20% reduction for Electrification, and you get 17 minutes. Makes sense to me.

And again, the 17 minute travel time is literally from the mouth of Metrolinx. I'm guessing that they know what they are saying.

Also remember that the 60 minute travel time includes an 8 minute wait for the GO train.. if you timed your trip to match the GO schedule you could drop that.
 
My understanding is that most of the Lakeshore East travel time savings will come not only from Electrification, but also from improvements to the USRC. Right now trains crawl into Union from the east, which will change once the track and signaling upgrade project is complete. I seem to recall hearing that project alone will chop 4 minutes off travel times, which results in a 21 minute travel time. Do the basic 20% reduction for Electrification, and you get 17 minutes. Makes sense to me.
It'll chop off 4 minutes coming from the east. Remember, westbound trains take 29 minutes to get into Union station. I used the lower 25 minutes (the eastbound train speeds — they don't have to deal with the 4 minute interlocking delay) for the 20% reduction. 20 minutes makes the most sense before factoring in Gerrard and East Harbor stations.
And again, the 17 minute travel time is literally from the mouth of Metrolinx. I'm guessing that they know what they are saying.
I can name at least 10 things that prove they don't.
 

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