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Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

Adjei said:
5 billion? That's way too much maybe like 3 billion, unless you also include an extension west to downsview station.
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My bad. I think $5 billion was to STC.

You're right. Maybe $3 billion to McCowan. Still. I don't think it's sellable to the feds. Where there was a case to extend the Bloor-Danforth with existing ridership, and essentially extension of a trunk line that would ever serve some of the 905, extending the Sheppard Subway won't have the same case. And it's even more expensive than this Bloor-Danforth extension, while serving far fewer riders.

Politically, the feds will get to touch quite a few wards with the $330 million contribution. Why would they up that by several hundred million and touch fewer wards? The calculus on the SRT replacement was entirely different. There was the SRT shutdown, the fact that it has been a touchy issue for nearly a full generation now, etc.

In any event, I just can't see it. But you may turn out to be right in the end. We'll see.
 
Bojaxs said:
Countless studies have shown that the more transfers people have to make in order to commute, the more likely the are to drive instead of using transit.

Therefore I would like to see the Sheppard subway converted to LRT and extend eastward to McCowan and westward to Downsview. Make the Scarborough portion above ground, and make the westward extension underground to Downsview.

The Sheppard line doesn't have the ridership for a subway, so why not replace it with a LRT and make it a seamless, transfer-less LRT line?
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This i exactly my preference. Hopefully, somebody does the math and figures out that $700 million on conversion and $1 billion LRT for Sheppard East is still cheaper than a $3 billion subway extension to McCowan/Sheppard, and the use of a technology that won't allow for any economical extension past Downsview.
 
syn said:
If I'm correct this extension still serves less people than the LRT. If you're taking a bus, which many people will, you still have to transfer anyways.
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Ummm. Most people arriving at STC have always had to transfer. And most using the LRT would still have had to transfer. Taking the subway up to Sheppard/McCowan will shorten a ton of bus rides though and get rid of the hated Kennedy transfer.

Today, it would take me about 1:45 from my place in Malvern to Union with 3 transfers. That will go to 1:30 with two transfers with this plan. That's both a boost on convenience and travel time.
 
I can't really say I'm too excited about this announcement. It's "transit expansion" in the sense that it eliminates the transfer at Kennedy and improves capacity. Also, the new alignment is marginally better, since it hits Scarborough General Hospital and crosses the 401 to Sheppard. That said, this is an expensive, pyrrhic victory and it probably cost us a decade of transit improvement elsewhere.

I still don't understand why the costs of converting the RT to subway were so high. How much more would it have cost to expropriate the recycling plant to build a broader curve at Ellesmere? Would it have blown our budget to build a new, diagonal Kennedy station box in the ROW immediately north of Eglinton so that it could transition onto the existing RT alignment? What about buying replacement subway cars for the B-D that could negotiate a much tighter turning radius than our current T-1 cars? Something like a 10-link instead of a 6-link TR (same length, same capacity)?

I'm not a civil engineer, so I don't know the answers to things like this but I'm also surprised that non-fixed infrastructural ideas weren't considered.

I also think that it's hilarious that Toronto will actually abandon a perfectly good 6 km rapid transit line*


*Hey, with this and the defunct zoo monorail, Scarborough can probably lay claim to being the transit graveyard of Canada!
 
This also means that the SRT shutdown may now be avoided. And hopefully will prompt a much simpler through design at Kennedy station for the ECLRT. Perhaps they can consider extending the ECLRT to Kingston Road.
 
I stand corrected. Looking at the map now, travel time from Morningside Heigths to Union could go down to 1:15 for me. That's from a realistic 1:45 today. It never works out to 1:30, doesn't matter what Google says.
 
kEiThZ said:
I disagree.

It is very politically sellable when combined with the right pitch. That would have to include elimination of the transfer at Don Mills, addition of an in-fill station at Willowdale and extension past Downsview.
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I don't think any politician is going to touch it. The Sheppard subway would need to shutdown for a number of years and look at the big deal that has been made about shutting down the SRT and also one of the reasons the Mccowan alignment was brought forward. Also in Toronto where LRTs on the road are toxic and where people feel subways are above LRT's, I want to see the politician that tries to sell converting a subway to an LRT even if it is extended westward and with the elimination of the transfer.
 
Does anyone know if the transfer from LRT to the subway stop at Sheppard and Mcowan will be underground or on street?
 
Hipster Duck said:
I can't really say I'm too excited about this announcement. It's "transit expansion" in the sense that it eliminates the transfer at Kennedy and improves capacity. Also, the new alignment is marginally better, since it hits Scarborough General Hospital and crosses the 401 to Sheppard. That said, this is an expensive, pyrrhic victory and it probably cost us a decade of transit improvement elsewhere.

I still don't understand why the costs of converting the RT to subway were so high. How much more would it have cost to expropriate the recycling plant to build a broader curve at Ellesmere? Would it have blown our budget to build a new, diagonal Kennedy station box in the ROW immediately north of Eglinton so that it could transition onto the existing RT alignment? What about buying replacement subway cars for the B-D that could negotiate a much tighter turning radius than our current T-1 cars? Something like a 10-link instead of a 6-link TR (same length, same capacity)?

I'm not a civil engineer, so I don't know the answers to things like this but I'm also surprised that non-fixed infrastructural ideas weren't considered.

I also think that it's hilarious that Toronto will actually abandon a perfectly good 6 km rapid transit line*


*Hey, with this and the defunct zoo monorail, Scarborough can probably lay claim to being the transit graveyard of Canada!
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. Upthread I gave a whole bunch of suggestions to improve the current SRT which I bet would quiet 90% of the complaints. While we can argue if proceeding with a subway is financially appropriate, to spend hundreds of millions to simply change the track gauge and power supply is hardly the pinnacle of fiscal responsibility, despite what some LRTistas would have you believe.

And if I'm not mistaken, Malvern garage is where the oldest buses in the TTC fleet go, so your analogy of a transit graveyard may be correct.
 
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