Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

[nfitz]

I wouldn't be surprise if Eglinton East gets elevated either by Metrolinx' s own will or the election of a conservative government.

Not sure how an election of the Conservative government would change things. They've announced they will award the tender in fall 2014, and the election isn't currently due until 2015. I suppose it might come earlier, though the NDP and Liberals seem pretty chummy of late ... might even come later, given the precedent Manitoba has set about delaying their fixed fall 2015 to spring 2016, because it conflicts with the federal election.

And even then, Hudak has promised to cancel these projects. I'm not sure why you'd think he'd throw more money at it.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Hudak has promised subways, and no new transit until we can afford it. No detailing other than that. I have a feeling we would see rob fords plan, and no new transit funding until 2018 at minimum.

If pupatello wins, she has expressed interest in another election. Wynne has stated she wishes to hold government. We will see what happens.

 

[nfitz]

Hudak has promised subways, and no new transit until we can afford it. No detailing other than that. I have a feeling we would see rob fords plan, and no new transit funding until 2018 at minimum.

Which pretty much means another Harris cancelling Eglinton when he was elected, and delaying construction by 20 years.

He's talked about 5 years to balance the budget ... but he's also talked about cutting taxes immediately.

One would have to hope for the SRT and Eglinton lines, that there won't be an election until after 2014.

If pupatello wins, she has expressed interest in another election.

Has she? I hadn't heard that - but I haven't been following all that closely. She was talking today of not bringing back the legislature until after she runs in a by-election ... I don't know how that jibes with wanting an election ...

Wynne seems to be the best choice for transit. She seemed quite keen on pushing these projects when she was Minister of Transportation. And as a Toronto MPP she's also pushed for these projects.

I'm not sure I know where Pupatello or Kennedy stand.

 

[gweed123]

Wynne seems to be the best choice for transit. She seemed quite keen on pushing these projects when she was Minister of Transportation. And as a Toronto MPP she's also pushed for these projects.

I'm not sure I know where Pupatello or Kennedy stand.

If I recall correctly she has also stated that she is in favour of giving Metrolinx additional revenue generation opportunities. She was one of the only candidates to explicitly say so. Most others gave vague mushy answers that didn't really say anything.

So yes, in terms of transit, Wynne is the best choice.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Who knows, the NDP might win as well. But that is equally a scary thoughts as the cons winning.

 

[nfitz]

Who knows, the NDP might win as well. But that is equally a scary thoughts as the cons winning.

For Transit? They certainly didn't do much for transit while in power last time, but they aren't promising to cancel stuff.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I wasn't talking scary for transit, I was talking scary for the budget.

 

[nfitz]

I wasn't talking scary for transit, I was talking scary for the budget.

How does that effect the RT replacement?

 

[M II A II R II K]

Eglinton getting cancelled is probably for the best, because then we would have ended up with a stub with an LRT transfer attached to it. Probably on both ends. At least now we get a single route.

 

[nfitz]

Eglinton getting cancelled is probably for the best, because then we would have ended up with a stub with an LRT transfer attached to it. Probably on both ends

The cost of the current LRT construction from Allen Road to Don Mills is about the same per km as subway. If the whole thing is being built at once, LRT makes sense. But if there was already a subway line there, given the costs of the putting the LRT in the tunnel, I'd think that what we'd have actually have seen is that we'd be extending the subway to at least Don Mills road ... and perhaps we'd have seen LRT then ... or not ... but surely a subway from Don Mills Road to York Centre station (where Mount Dennis station is now going) is significant enough that it wouldn't have been a stubway. And if Phase 2 of the Eglinton West subway had been built in the 1990s, instead of the line being cancelled, we'd now be looking at a line that would stretch from the Mississauga transitway at Renforth station to Don Mills!

 

[gweed123]

The cost of the current LRT construction from Allen Road to Don Mills is about the same per km as subway. If the whole thing is being built at once, LRT makes sense. But if there was already a subway line there, given the costs of the putting the LRT in the tunnel, I'd think that what we'd have actually have seen is that we'd be extending the subway to at least Don Mills road ... and perhaps we'd have seen LRT then ... or not ... but surely a subway from Don Mills Road to York Centre station (where Mount Dennis station is now going) is significant enough that it wouldn't have been a stubway. And if Phase 2 of the Eglinton West subway had been built in the 1990s, instead of the line being cancelled, we'd now be looking at a line that would stretch from the Mississauga transitway at Renforth station to Don Mills!

Yup, it was still definitely a setback. Phase 1 of the Eglinton West subway was supposed to open around the same time as Sheppard, correct (2000ish)? We would have probably seen both a west extension to Renforth and an east extension to Don Mills either built by now or just finishing up. It would have brought up an interesting debate as to whether the subway should be extended further east to Kennedy or even to STC, or whether the SRT extension/refurb would have been both eastward AND westward to Don Mills.

Ah, what could have been.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Sheppard should have been the one to be cancelled instead, but of course someone would have made a huge noise about it.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Yup, it was still definitely a setback. Phase 1 of the Eglinton West subway was supposed to open around the same time as Sheppard, correct (2000ish)? We would have probably seen both a west extension to Renforth and an east extension to Don Mills either built by now or just finishing up. It would have brought up an interesting debate as to whether the subway should be extended further east to Kennedy or even to STC, or whether the SRT extension/refurb would have been both eastward AND westward to Don Mills.

Ah, what could have been.

I maintain that we would likely have seen a subway to kennedy on eglinton if the initial subway was built. Still would have had LRT on finch and Sheppard though, as the new subway all the way to kennedy would likely have cost around $5 billion, the same price we are currently paying for eglinton. but alas, what could have been isn't.

 

[nfitz]

Sheppard should have been the one to be cancelled instead, but of course someone would have made a huge noise about it.

Oh, Lastman went apocalyptic. Nothing much was said when the Spadina extension and Scarborough RT extensions were cancelled earlier in 1995. But when the province started giving forewarning that the then under construction Eglinton subway and going-to-start construction in 18-months Sheppard subway were about to be cancelled, and asked for costs, Lastman when into full battle mode, and somehow managed to get the Sheppard subway saved - even though it was the smaller $760-million or so Eglinton line that was already well under construction. TTC awarded the Eglinton tunnelling contract a day after the Tories started talking about cancelling it (with an escape clause that it wouldn't count if the project was cancelled). Colle and Pantalone went apocalyptic too, but I guess it was Lastman who had the connections in the Tory government.

Reading the Toronto Star from that two-week period in July 1995 is fascinating.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Apart from the fact that Mel Lastman would have yelled bloody murder, it makes sense from the perspective of a decision-maker in 1995 that Sheppard would go ahead and not Eglinton.

It was 18 years ago, and everything about Toronto: ridership, development and governance was completely different back then. Nobody would have been able to anticipate a forced amalgamation of the Metro municipalities; ridership was at an all-time low (wasn't it around 350M/year?), reeling from the closure of major manufacturing plants (Inglis, GM on the Golden Mile, etc.) and the loss of jobs south of the 401. Gas prices were at an all-time low, and almost all of the growth was being directed to 905 auto-oriented sprawl. If a ridership case could have been made at all, it made more sense, at that time, for a subway along Sheppard.

Transit technology thinking was also completely different back then and LRT was still relatively unpopular in North America in the early 1990s. In the US, there were a handful of relatively new systems in California and some expanded legacy streetcar networks like Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, etc. as well as some abject failures like Buffalo. In Canada, there was the line in Edmonton, expensive and overbuilt for what was then a stagnant city of 700,000, and Calgary, which was reasonably successful but not quite the success story it is today. You would have had to be a policy wonk or transit enthusiast to really know what LRT was. I wasn't very old back then, but I remember serious ideas of floating an LRT along Sheppard (which, with the same amount of money as the subway could have been built from Yonge to STC at the time) were only voiced after the subway was under construction and was already a fait accompli.