Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

[BurlOak]

Council should direct staff to prepare a benefits comparison of the merits of the one-stop subway vs LRT vs SRT refurbishment vs Sheppard extension. We still haven't had a comparison of the benefits of the one stop extension to the alternatives.

Council should advise staff to ignore the subway extension, and the transfer LRT, and come up with the next 3 ways of serving STC.

 

[epcjay]

And the LRT is 2.4B at minimum now?
http://www.torontosun.com/2017/03/27/scarborough-lrt-plan-incomplete-metrolinx

 

[OneCity]

You're right, they're double counting. It looks like they simply added the station totals from here without doing any analysis:

https://www.ttc.ca/PDF/Transit_Planning/Subway ridership 2015.pdf

She already had to apologize in an attack article the other week for chopping the SSE ridership numbers in half. If they were just reporting weren't directly telling people what they should vote for in this debate it would be acceptable. We can bag on our dumb ass Politicians when they talk nonsense but we also have the ability to vote them out at some point. When the media gets this involved, spews nonsense and tells people how to vote to this extent there's zero accountability and recourse. People believe them. It's dangerous.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Yea. I'm all good with reporting an angle, but make sure the angle is correct.

Jpag has gotten into a bad habit of reporting bad numbers for the subway no matter what and ignoring anything that could possibly be a pro. Shes trying to poke holes in the 64,000 number, which is respectable, but make sure its more than back of the napkin additiona if you are going to make such a bold claim.

 

[salsa]

She already had to apologize in an attack article the other week for chopping the SSE ridership numbers in half.

Now when are we gonna hear an apology from John Tory or Glen De B for all the far more egregious misinformation they repeat every day?

As for Jennifer, honestly I don't think she's doing a great job covering Scarborough transit. I much prefer Oliver Moore.

 

[OneCity]

Now when are we gonna hear an apology from John Tory or Glen De B for all the far more egregious misinformation they repeat every day?

As for Jennifer, honestly I don't think she's doing a great job covering Scarborough transit. I much prefer Oliver Moore.

As I wrote above we can vote out our lying Politicians and they all do it not just GDB or Tory. But I agree both do. We cant vote out the media and they are the ones in the eyes and ears of the public everyday.

The fact is they are telling people how to vote and there is zero accountability. With Politicians there is atleast a tool when the majority of people agree enough is enough. Unfortunately the only recourse to when the media gets this excessively involved in our Politics is through excessive Politicians.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

We cant vote out the media and they are the ones in the eyes and ears of the public everyday.

Yes you can't. By not clicking onto or sharing their content. Evidently, the Scarborough Subway issue is popular enough that the Star has no problem writing about it.

 

[OneCity]

Yes you can't. By not clicking onto or sharing their content. Evidently, the Scarborough Subway issue is popular enough that the Star has no problem writing about it.

If they want to be known as trash click-bait journalism than lets call them what they are. But they are trumpeting themselves to the public as "fact" based and many believe it. Should not be ignored.

 

[Palma]

No, he wants to make decision-based facts.

he wants to get re-elected

 

[salsa]

As I wrote above we can vote out our lying Politicians and they all do it not just GDB or Tory. But I agree both do. We cant vote out the media and they are the ones in the eyes and ears of the public everyday.

Except John Tory and others have written their own articles in the media that are full of lies. Then they use the bully pulpit to amplify those lies.

 

[lead82]

St. Clair was never going to be a showcase for LRT as it is a local streetcar route serving local demand. St. Clair has absolutely nothing to do with this SRT/SSE screw-up. It is exactly as it was intended to be - as you note a local line with close stop spacing. Could that have been tweaked a bit to get rid of some stops? sure - but it wouldn't have turned St. Clair into a route that could compare to the SRT (grade separated, longer multi-car LRT trains, etc.).

The political push has been from misinformation ("subways, subways, subways", streetcars are terrible, and poor Scarborough is getting screwed by the Downtowners). Its clear the decision to eliminate the transfer at Kennedy is only based on ideology and the political pressure that this is "the right thing to do". When the dust settles, there will be nice new subway running to STC to make Oxford and the subway or nothing people nice and happy while the majority of the residents will still spend the majority of their commute in traffic on a bus. There will be no increase in rapid transit service in Scarborough beyond eliminating a transfer and spending all this money now will essentially eliminate future work on transit expansion there. The money will be spent, people will claim a glorious victory and then you will not see another major expansion of any part of the network (outside of RER) for a couple of decades.

We can get upset about the subway expansion - and it only shows how backwards political planning of transit can be - but the political victory was won when Tory flip flopped.

Yes you are right that St. Clair was not intended to be an LRT, but because it was done before any of the others it should have been an LRT standard line, paving the way for Toronto to familiarize itself with the technology. Yes it got bogged down in legal delays due to the stupid SOS group. The city didn't do any favours though as this route is reliable now yes, but it's super slow to travel along it if you're in a hurry -- This is a big issue for the LRT's that Toronto is proposing. If they are not going to be much faster than the buses they replace then outside of reliability, what is the point of investing so much money in rail infrastructure? The big problem for remote areas in Toronto is the long travel times to get anywhere. Put in proper stop spacing, light signal priority and watch LRT become a popular technology. Without any showcase line, Toronto will never opt for LRT over subways, which is known and loved here as they go fast. This in my opinion is the fault of politicians - peddling their transit plans on the residents without getting grassroots buy-in for the plan and technology so that it can survive beyond election cycles. The subway will survive due to the sheer strong will of political support it has (regardless of how flawed the plan is).

 

[LNahid2000]

Yes you are right that St. Clair was not intended to be an LRT, but because it was done before any of the others it should have been an LRT standard line, paving the way for Toronto to familiarize itself with the technology. Yes it got bogged down in legal delays due to the stupid SOS group. The city didn't do any favours though as this route is reliable now yes, but it's super slow to travel along it if you're in a hurry -- This is a big issue for the LRT's that Toronto is proposing. If they are not going to be much faster than the buses they replace then outside of reliability, what is the point of investing so much money in rail infrastructure?

Not really. St. Clair is a feeder route with 250m average stop spacing. The Transit City LRT's would have had ~600m stop spacing (not to mention that the route to STC would have been grade separated). I'm not sure how they're similar at all.

 

[lead82]

They are not similar. That wasn't my point. My point was that Torontonians will not buy into the notion of LRTs as good until we have at least 1 line running that they can compare to. St. Clair was an opportunity for that, as is Spadina, or Queens Quay. All these lines are built to streetcar standards with stops 250m apart or shorter. Travel times are slow, and these lines are feeder lines to the subway but they are not rapid transit. Had they been built to rapid transit standards, we would have had something to show citizens of what LRT technology is. Right now it's very abstract and no matter how it's explained to people, the average person will not care or accept it.

In Scarborough the issue is travel time around Scarborough and the annoying transfer to the core. The subway extension removes one transfer and does accelerate travel to those headed downtown. It doesn't address getting around Scarborough, which is where the Eglinton East LRT would help but it's not funded. Sadly the feds 2017 budget offering nothing bug vague funding announcements spread out over 11 years (which deems them almost meaningless for having anything built anytime soon).

 

[salsa]

I have seen on more than one occassion that city staff reports present mathematiclly correct numbers that are taken out of context and therefore are misleading. Case in point, the recent "report" that the ridership at STC will drop once the subway is built; which is physically impossible. Hopefully you remember that, as it turned out, they counted "daily riders" instead of daily rides. Daily rides is the commonly used metrics in transit.

It wasn't the staff report that was wrong in that case. It was the Star reporter who misread the numbers.

I explained why I take the city staff data with a grain of salt; please check a few posts above.

If you can explain, in details, why my number are incorrect, then we can have a discussion. And, I will be ready to admit that I was wrong if you provide convincing arguments.

On the other hand, if you prefer to take the city staff data as a gospel, you have a right to do so. But you cannot force me to do the same.

Staff estimated the subway would save five minutes off travel times between STC and Kennedy due to the elimination of station in between. And if you're travelling past Kennedy, the elimination of the transfer saves up to 3 more minutes, so that's 8 minutes in total for this subset of riders. Since the numbers are in comparison to the existing RT, not the LRT plan, they don't account for the riders on Lawrence and Northeast Scarborough who who will see their commute time increased compared to the LRT.

These numbers are not imaginary or created out of thin air like yours. They were produced by knowledgeable people based on their analysis of the proposed alignment. Variables like how quickly a vehicle can make a trip without stopping (versus how quickly the current vehicles do make the trip) are fairly well understood by those doing the planning. So if you wish to reject their findings in favour of your own fictitious version of reality, and just assume that the real savings are actually double because somehow you know better, then I can't help you. While you're at it, feel free to also keep pushing your Brimley alignment as if it would save money and travel time, even though staff concluded that it's only 200 metres shorter than McCowan.

 

[salsa]

I also have to address councillor DeBaeremaeker's presentation. It was essentially the same point over and over again with different slides, which is that the subway station will be one of the busiest in the TTC. But that's only because we've eliminated two other stations and rerouted all the buses to STC. He then presents this slide as further proof that the subway is the way to go.

First of all, this chart is not a fair comparison when the Scarborough number includes the bus bays for GO & Durham transit, yet for Finch and Kipling he omitted the non-TTC terminals. But more importantly, I actually see this as an argument against the subway. 34 buses at STC station tells me that we're building a network where all buses lead to STC. This is not the foundation of a network that provides interconnected trips throughout Scarborough. This is not a network that connects people from where they live to where they want to go. It's just a whole lot of buses entering a huge bus station to access ONE station.

Such a STC-centric plan does not reflect the actual travel patters of Scarborough residents. For all the hoopla about a "forced transfer" at Kennedy, what this plan does is create a forced hub at STC while doing little to attract new riders. All that dark blue you see all over Scarborough shows that even for trips within Scarborough, STC is not the centre of the universe that its made out to be.

At the same time, if the goal is to promote a "dynamic, vibrant urban environment" at STC that people will want to spend time in, putting an enormous 34 bay terminal in the middle of it doesn't help. The thousands of diesel buses that will be pouring in will turn the place into a traffic sewer that might even surpass Yonge & Steeles. I would rather be somewhere else.