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Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

Called it. No alternatives outside of the LRT original 7 stop plan in the SRT corridor is what makes the subway all but a certainty.
Correction - there was 1 alternative from Councilor Mammolitti.

Did any councilor raise the fact that the connected SRT / ECLRT had a business case in 2012 and was found to have the best benefit cost ratio? They could have also mentioned how the Provincial Liberals decieved councilors by hiding that report during the 2013 subway debates.
 
So what does bundling of eg east lrt mean? They will be built at same time? With what money.

They should have done the damn Lawrence station, smart track ruining everything.

I expect the Provincial Liberals will likely commit to Eglinton East in the coming weeks in their budget. Keep in mind even if they do it doesn't mean its safe next term given Wynne's support right now. If they don't committ Tory is in a heap of trouble going into next election.

The Lawrence vote is a shame as it basically gave Ford a big push. Smarttrack is certainly not needed with the Subway. Ford with the support of Brown will likely propose this in the next election. There should also be a vote at 30% design where this stop might come up again.

Should be interesting. If Tory wins the next election the one stop will very likely be under construction during his term. If Ford or wins the subway is delayed a year or two out id assume. If a subway opposition candidate wins, well likely see harsher debates and push to study for another decade
 
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Correction - there was 1 alternative from Councilor Mammolitti.

Did any councilor raise the fact that the connected SRT / ECLRT had a business case in 2012 and was found to have the best benefit cost ratio? They could have also mentioned how the Provincial Liberals decieved councilors by hiding that report during the 2013 subway debates.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how no politician brought up the pre-SLRT plan to simply upgrade the rolling stock of the current line. No guideway rebuild, no useless teardown of every station for silly low floor, no multi-year shutdown. Just a simple vehicle upgrade. Nobody talks about this cost-effective solution and it's simply mindboggling. The savings could extend Line 3 to Malvern, or pay for a good chunk of Crosstown East East.
 
I'm still trying to wrap my head around how no politician brought up the pre-SLRT plan to simply upgrade the rolling stock of the current line. No guideway rebuild, no useless teardown of every station for silly low floor, no multi-year shutdown. Just a simple vehicle upgrade. Nobody talks about this cost-effective solution and it's simply mindboggling. The savings could extend Line 3 to Malvern, or pay for a good chunk of Crosstown East East.
Its all about supporting the David Miller legacy versus those supporting the Liberal subway.
The funny thing is that I don't think Tory cared what got built - he just didn't want to go back to planning. He just wanted to follow the direction of the previous council because it seemed like the fastest, least controversial way forward.

I think there is still a big fear of the Metrolinx and a Liberals (they may still hold power in 16 months) and no councilor want to go public and criticize the 2008 decision to not go with the SRT upgrade, or the 2012 plan for a connected SRT/ECLRT. Both of these were found to be better plans, but were ignored by Metrolinx and the Liberals for political reasons.
 
American (and might as well include Canadian) infrastructure projects often cost five to six times what they cost in other developed countries.

From link.

Where the Second Avenue Subway Went Wrong
American infrastructure projects often cost five to six times what they cost in other developed countries. Can we learn to be thriftier?

On New Year’s Eve, at a party to celebrate the opening of the long-awaited Second Avenue subway, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the project showed that government “can still do big things and great things.” What he didn’t say is that the project also shows that government can do really expensive things. The line, which so far consists of just three stations and two miles of track, is, at a cost of roughly $1.7 billion per kilometre of track, the most expensive ever built. And it will keep that record as Phase 2 begins, at a projected cost of $2.2 billion a kilometre.

Construction projects everywhere are subject to delays and cost overruns. Bent Flyvbjerg, a Danish economic geographer, has found that nine out of ten infrastructure mega-projects worldwide ran over budget and the same number finished behind schedule. But the U.S. is the world’s spendthrift. A 2015 study by David Schleicher, a professor at Yale Law School, and Tracy Gordon, a fellow at the Urban Institute, looked at a hundred and forty-four rail projects in forty-four countries. The four most expensive, and six of the top twelve, were American, the Second Avenue subway among them. In a study of transit construction costs worldwide, Alon Levy, a transit blogger, has found that they are often five to six times higher here than in other developed countries.

We used to do better. Hoover Dam was completed under budget, and two years ahead of schedule, and the Golden Gate Bridge, too, was finished early and cost $1.3 million less than expected. So what’s going wrong? It’s complicated: one analysis of the problem cited thirty-nine possible causes. And factors that immediately come to mind, like higher land costs or labor costs, don’t explain the difference between the U.S. and places like Japan or France. But some problems are clear. A plethora of regulatory hurdles and other veto points drag things out and increase costs. When New Jersey wanted to raise the roadway of the Bayonne Bridge, it took five years, and twenty thousand pages of paperwork, for the project to get under way. Obviously, environmental and workplace standards are important, but a recent paper by Philip Howard, the chairman of Common Good, suggests that a more streamlined regulatory process, like those found in many developed countries, could save hundreds of billions of dollars.

Then, too, because most infrastructure decisions in the U.S. are made at the state or local level, involving multiple governing bodies, projects must also satisfy a wide range of constituencies. Political considerations are often as important as technical ones, and schemes that are initially well defined can end up like Swiss Army knives, fulfilling any number of functions. Long-suffering engineers call this “scope creep.” Washington and Oregon, for instance, spent years collaborating on plans for a new bridge on I-5, spanning the Columbia River. What started as a simple proposal quickly morphed into a full highway expansion (including the rebuilding of five miles of interchanges), along with a light-rail extension. The cost rose to more than three billion dollars, after which the idea was abandoned.

A major cause of scope creep is the fact that infrastructure spending is at the mercy of political winds. Planners know that opportunities to build are limited, so when they do get a chance they tend to milk it for all it’s worth. Politicians, meanwhile, like big, splashy projects that will win headlines and capture the public’s attention. This is why we end up putting money into new projects while skimping on maintenance, even though the return on investment from simply keeping roads and bridges in good shape is usually higher.

Politicians are fond of a quote commonly attributed to Daniel Burnham, the father of Chicago’s Exposition of 1893: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” It’s an inspiring sentiment, but emblematic of what you might call the Edifice Complex, a habit, among politicians, of imagining that anything big and glitzy must therefore be worth doing. That’s how Detroit ended up with a People Mover monorail that moves very few people, why San Jose is set to spend more than a hundred and fifty million dollars on a transit station intended as “the Grand Central Station of the West,” and how New York managed to spend four billion dollars on a Path station designed by Santiago Calatrava. On the Second Avenue line, too, the stations, which account for most of the cost, are lavish structures with huge mezzanines. They’re a pleasure to walk through, but more modest stations would have worked just as well.

Conservatives often reflexively dismiss infrastructure spending as a boondoggle, and liberals, perhaps in reaction, often reflexively defend it, no matter how wasteful. But the pool of dollars available for something like public transit is limited. The result of extravagant spending on subways and the like is that we end up with fewer of them than other cities. For the price of what New York spent on Calatrava’s PATH station alone, Stockholm is building nineteen kilometres of subway track and a six-kilometre commuter-rail tunnel. Worse, cost overruns fuel public skepticism toward government, making it harder to invest the next time around. It’s good for government to do big things, great things. But it’s better if it can do them under budget.
 
Its all about supporting the David Miller legacy versus those supporting the Liberal subway.

Bingo. This debate has NOTHING to do with whats best for Scarborough, for Toronto, or what is best from an engineering, analytical, logical standpoint.

Almost all the university professors dealing within urban planning who have been asked feel that the SRT upgrade was the best plan.

This has everything to do with us vs them non-bipartisan politics. Which is what Toronto has become ever since the amalgamation. The snobby uptight downtown elites vs the hard working, middle class suburbanites.
 
No guideway rebuild, no useless teardown of every station for silly low floor, no multi-year shutdown. Just a simple vehicle upgrade. Nobody talks about this cost-effective solution and it's simply mindboggling.

The cost of that would be pretty significant. Kennedy station would need to be rebuilt since the turn is too sharp for newer ICTS vehicles. The tunnel at Ellesmere would also need to be rebuilt, and all the stations (except Scarborough Centre and Kennedy) would need to be significantly renovated for wheelchair accessibility.

The other problem is that any orphaned technology increases costs. It would be a lot cheaper to operate and maintain the same fleet of LRT vehicles that would be in use throughout the GTHA - easier to get parts, easier to train staff, etc.
 
The other problem is that any orphaned technology increases costs. It would be a lot cheaper to operate and maintain the same fleet of LRT vehicles that would be in use throughout the GTHA - easier to get parts, easier to train staff, etc.
Does that really matter when the net present value of the increase in operating costs due to this is likely less than the difference in upfront costs between these two proposals?
 
I expect the Provincial Liberals will likely commit to Eglinton East in the coming weeks in their budget. Keep in mind even if they do it doesn't mean its safe next term given Wynne's support right now. If they don't committ Tory is in a heap of trouble going into next election.

The Lawrence vote is a shame as it basically gave Ford a big push. Smarttrack is certainly not needed with the Subway. Ford with the support of Brown will likely propose this in the next election. There should also be a vote at 30% design where this stop might come up again.

Should be interesting. If Tory wins the next election the one stop will very likely be under construction during his term. If Ford or wins the subway is delayed a year or two out id assume. If a subway opposition candidate wins, well likely see harsher debates and push to study for another decade

I thought SmartTrack is basically just GO RER? Is Tory still talking about something separate? If it is just GO RER, I don't think the PCs will cancel it. Construction is already underway to add a second track to the Stouffville line. I believe GO RER is pretty popular for the suburbs (the one thing the Liberals have goodwill on). It will be easiest win for Tory if he just goes along with GO RER and their couple of new Toronto stops.
 
I thought SmartTrack is basically just GO RER? Is Tory still talking about something separate? If it is just GO RER, I don't think the PCs will cancel it. Construction is already underway to add a second track to the Stouffville line. I believe GO RER is pretty popular for the suburbs (the one thing the Liberals have goodwill on). It will be easiest win for Tory if he just goes along with GO RER and their couple of new Toronto stops.

I thought the same until I saw Tory (Toronto) needs 3ish billion for Smart Track, in addition to what Metrolinx is building now. Not sure what that money for.
 
Reviewing some questions directed to staff from this morning.

According to the TTC deputy, we'll be at 30% design work complete for the subway by the end of Q2 in 2018.

That is timed nicely for the municipal election.
 
While it's obviously too early to tell who may run, I'm pretty sure this will cost Tory my vote (and quite a few others) come the next election.

It's really quite embarrassing.
 
Josh Matlow vs John Tory
(skip to 8:05:35)



Also see Gord Perks at 8:21:20. I love how calm he is as Tory stammers out his usual excruciating non-answers.
 
Bingo. This debate has NOTHING to do with whats best for Scarborough, for Toronto, or what is best from an engineering, analytical, logical standpoint.

Almost all the university professors dealing within urban planning who have been asked feel that the SRT upgrade was the best plan.

This has everything to do with us vs them non-bipartisan politics. Which is what Toronto has become ever since the amalgamation. The snobby uptight downtown elites vs the hard working, middle class suburbanites.

Was there some sarcasm here that I'm not detecting? In one sentence you're decrying partisan politics in Toronto, and then in the very next sentence you're perpetuating it with a statement that can only widen the rift between the core and the suburbs.
 

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