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Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

innsertnamehere said:
doesn't change the fact that we are spending $4 billion on a 10km long tunnel (longer than Scarborough) for a transit line that will peak at roughly half the demand during rush hour.
Click to expand...

Valid numbers and answer. But the fact is that the only way to put a rapid transit line on Eglinton through midtown is to have it tunneled. How its ridership compares to Scarborough is inconsequential. Scaborough has options in place of tunneling, central Eglinton doesn't.

IMO the only real valid argument for a Scarborough Subway is what Lead82 says above: that Vaughan got the Spadina extension.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Hello Duck,

I was talking to the ICTS vs. LRT debate. LRT is the superior option.
Click to expand...

It is the 3 year conversion (vs. 8 months for SkyTrain Mark II) and the forced transfer at Kennedy that led to the LRT's downfall. With smaller tunnels and shorter stations along Eglinton, the fully grade separated Eglinton Scarborough Crosstown would have been the same cost as the LRT with tunnel and at-grade, and the discontinuous SRT. http://skytrainforsurrey.org/2012/0...uing-this-technology-and-not-lrt-on-eglinton/

So the decision to go with LRT resulted in $1.5B extra being spent - because the subway became a neccesity.
 
44 North said:
Valid numbers and answer. But the fact is that the only way to put a rapid transit line on Eglinton through midtown is to have it tunneled. How its ridership compares to Scarborough is inconsequential. Scaborough has options in place of tunneling, central Eglinton doesn't.

IMO the only real valid argument for a Scarborough Subway is what Lead82 says above: that Vaughan got the Spadina extension.
Click to expand...

They could have put the LRT in the median through the core - provided they were willing to reduce the number of traffic lanes. But I guess there is no way that reducing Eglinton to 2 or 3 lanes would ever be accepted.
 
BurlOak said:
http://skytrainforsurrey.org/2012/0...uing-this-technology-and-not-lrt-on-eglinton/
Click to expand...

Excellent article; thanks for that. The decision to abandon ICTS boggles the mind, doesn't it?

I can only think of one other urban instance where a city actually ripped out an existing transit technology to replace it with another, and that would be Jacksonville, Florida. They used to run a MATRA VAL system (256, same as O'Hare and Taipei), and that was gutted and replaced with a Bombardier (Universal Mobility, really) monorail - the beam rides in the same concrete support structure that the VAL guideway did. It's really weird. I don't know what was so awful about the VAL that they felt the need to tear it out - it was operating in several French cities and other places around the world. Sound familiar?
 
BurlOak said:
They could have put the LRT in the median through the core - provided they were willing to reduce the number of traffic lanes. But I guess there is no way that reducing Eglinton to 2 or 3 lanes would ever be accepted.
Click to expand...

That's probably just as well. The original pre-Harris plan was a subway, after all. Eglinton is a pretty major artery and is fed from all directions. Nothing wrong with putting LRT underground in those segments where it matters, and nothing gained by making LRT an irritant where it doesn't have to be.

Personally, This armchair planner is betting that ridership on The Crosstown significantly exceeds experts' predictions.

- Paul
 
BurlOak said:
They could have put the LRT in the median through the core - provided they were willing to reduce the number of traffic lanes. But I guess there is no way that reducing Eglinton to 2 or 3 lanes would ever be accepted.
Click to expand...

That's the plan with Eglinton Connects. More or less - two lanes with a central turning lane. A ROW might barely fit, but it would come at the expense of having any turning lanes, and might impinge on sidewalk space too. I suppose it's debatable whether it needed to be tunnelled, but here we are. What does this have to do with the LRT replacement for the RT anyway? It was always going to be completely grade-separated, whatever Rob Ford might have thought.
 
BurlOak said:
It is the 3 year conversion (vs. 8 months for SkyTrain Mark II) and the forced transfer at Kennedy that led to the LRT's downfall. With smaller tunnels and shorter stations along Eglinton, the fully grade separated Eglinton Scarborough Crosstown would have been the same cost as the LRT with tunnel and at-grade, and the discontinuous SRT. http://skytrainforsurrey.org/2012/0...uing-this-technology-and-not-lrt-on-eglinton/

So the decision to go with LRT resulted in $1.5B extra being spent - because the subway became a neccesity.
Click to expand...
Indeed. If we'd simply gone with the decision 10 years ago to extend the existing SRT to Malvern, upgrade the single troublesome curve for Mark II equipment, and extend the existing platforms a bit for longer trains, we'd have a lot more transit now, for far less than we are going to spend in the next decade on this subway.
 
44 North said:
Valid numbers and answer. But the fact is that the only way to put a rapid transit line on Eglinton through midtown is to have it tunneled. How its ridership compares to Scarborough is inconsequential. Scaborough has options in place of tunneling, central Eglinton doesn't.

IMO the only real valid argument for a Scarborough Subway is what Lead82 says above: that Vaughan got the Spadina extension.
Click to expand...

We made a stupid decision once... Let's keep making stupid decisions in the name of rareness. Only once we've exahused all possible stupid decisions shall we return to making smart decisions!
 
innsertnamehere said:
doesn't change the fact that we are spending $4 billion on a 10km long tunnel (longer than Scarborough) for a transit line that will peak at roughly half the demand during rush hour.

Reminder of current and projected demands for different projects:

Line 1 today: 28,000
Line 2 today: 22,000
Full DRL (Eglinton to Dundas West): 14,000
Yonge extension to Highway 7: 11,500
DRL phase 1: 11,000
Scarborough Subway: 9,500 - 11,000
Spadina Extension: 7,500
Fully built Sheppard subway: 6,500 - 7,000
Eglinton LRT: 5,600
Sheppard / Finch LRT: somewhere around 3,000
Click to expand...

Eglinton: In a perfect would it would be scrapped, but this is the only way to get higher order transit on the corridor.
Spadina: Most of the extension should be scrapped
Sheppard: Scrap it
Scarborough: Scrap it
DRL: Reevaluate taking into account RER alternatives and consider scrapping. However it shouldn't be scrapped if Yonge North is built
Yonge North: build it

Honourable mention:
John Tory's Eglinton West Subway: KILL IT WITH FIRE. Die!

Comparing Eglinton to Scarb is a little nonsensical. Unlike Scarborough, Eglinton does not have a plethora of cheap rapid transit corridors at our disposal. If it did, then the Eglinton Crosstown should be immediately scrapped. Unfortunately Eglinton is too important a corridor to go without higher order transit.

Usage on Spadina is low and I think we would have been better off terminating the line at a Finch West (only because it serves as relief for Yonge and the FWLRT). Vaughan Centre could be served by RER.

Sheppard Subway is the most wasteful municipal project in recent history in Toronto. Should have never been built.

Usage on the Scarborough Subway is low and there are cheaper alternatives available. The 11,000 pphpd estimation appears to be conviniently fudged by assuming that thousands of Markham residents will use the line, rather than using the more convinient RER rapid transit lines in Markham. Also, the 9,000 and 11,000 pphpd estimations fail to take into account two of the new rapid transit lines that run through Scarb. This will certainly reduce actual usage on the subway. Assuming that RER is built as planned, this subway will be in the same league as Sheppard in terms of wastefulness.

The DRL certainly needs to be built with Yonge North. Without Yonge North, we should consider cheaper RER alternatives. But RER probably won't provide the relief or coverage we're looking for, so RL will still need to be built.
 
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Duck said:
I can only think of one other urban instance where a city actually ripped out an existing transit technology to replace it with another, and that would be Jacksonville, Florida. They used to run a MATRA VAL system (256, same as O'Hare and Taipei), and that was gutted and replaced with a Bombardier (Universal Mobility, really) monorail - the beam rides in the same concrete support structure that the VAL guideway did. It's really weird. I don't know what was so awful about the VAL that they felt the need to tear it out - it was operating in several French cities and other places around the world. Sound familiar?
Click to expand...

So you think that there was no transit at all on Yonge Street before the subway? How about Bloor and Danforth?

Ottawa is rebuilding many sections of their bus-based Transitway to handle light rail. Seattle's done the same with their transit tunnel. And a number of different cities in Europe have moved sections of their streetcar - sorry, light rail - lines underground downtown where the ridership was heaviest.

Upgrading transit technologies to higher-capacity ones when necessary is not new, nor unique to Toronto.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
If we are going to spend 3.56 billion dollars on a subway, an additional 150 million isn't the end of the world. That's like an extra $60 per citizen of Toronto.
 
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