Debate on the merits of the Scarborough Subway Extension

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Is it still to late to review exactly how the Subway is getting built? I mean the alignment and all that, because to me it is absurd that were going to end up paying upwards of $5 Billion for this. Even if its a subway we still need to find ways to reduce the price tag. If there is a way to construct the subway in a cheaper manner than I think it is imperative we do it. Also I believe the City shouldn't pay a single penny for the new stations. We have a plan and a way to pay for it, if Doug wants 2 more stops than the province should foot the bill for those stops.

I don't think so. There has been no serious formal EA and no shovels in the ground...yet. Mabye Doug will prefer the SRT corridor. I know I do.

At one point in time, not following the street grid was precisely how the City planners intended to get mass transit from Kennedy Stn to Scarborough Town Centre:

We're paying a hefty price now for whomever planning team that came after's shortsightedness and the NIMBY screams of adjacent property-owners.

Way better then McCowan.

 

[OneCity]

Hopefully Maltow continues his efforts to ensure democracy is carried out properly.

You mean the guy fighting against 99% democratic subway support in Scarborough? Sounds more like he fighting for a dictatorship carried out by the wealthiest Downtown ridings than a respect for democracy. The guy had every opportunity to respect Scarboroughs democracy to find a better solution yet choose not to help and now wants to cry foul when Tory is trying to push the City forward to see progress.

The only thing that could ever achieved with this infinite fight is for our inner suburbs to start pushing back against subways in other areas that ensure we treadmill further on transit. Thankfully there is enough councillors and all Provincial parties that do respect democracy so this extreme nonsense can be being ignored and no further damage will occur.

 

[OneCity]

I don't think so. There has been no serious formal EA and no shovels in the ground...yet. Mabye Doug will prefer the SRT corridor. I know I do.


Way better then McCowan.

Its possible but keep in mind the length of time its taken to reach almost 30% design. You just cant just start over now and expect to find all around value as the reality is the initiation and desing process is quite long. Also residents wont be supportive of further delay, the RT is on its last legs and when it come to Doug he surely wants to claim he brought the subway to Scarborough as his number one priority so any major delays would compromise that. I imagine they amend the design with stops and the TTC continues to oversee the design, this amendment itself would surely cause some minor delay. The Tory admin already studied the old corridor during the SSE review and its was found to be just under $3B now. Any significant savings could be erased and guaranteed more time wasted.

The BDL extension on the RT corridor always made sense to me, but not at this stage. With Smarttrack and the changes in EELRT at Kennedy which is now nearing design completion in the next couple years we would not be looking at a simple change. The impact would be significant enough to impact all those projects in both time and cost.

 

[JSF-1]

I don't think so. There has been no serious formal EA and no shovels in the ground...yet. Mabye Doug will prefer the SRT corridor. I know I do.


Way better then McCowan.

Well I hope something happens because its lunacy to continue with the McCowan alignment. This ship is clearly taking on water and in my opinion McCowan is the hole that is sinking all the costs. I swear the City is approaching this subway as if it has to be underground when infact it doesn't. If we can realistically run the subway at grade somewhere along the line be it on the Uxbridge corridor or even the Hydro Corridor (fat chance I know) than the cost savings will be worth it. As I stated in another thread, Underground should only be done when absolutely necessary (i.e. having no space).

 

[Rainforest]

We should know fairly soon if it is underground or in the Uxbridge sub corridor.

If inline stops are added to the McCowan route, then it is preferable.

If no inline stops, then the McCowan route loses all advantages, except the fact that some design work has been done for that corridor and any other option will delay the construction somewhat. I don't know what's best in this case, but I'm not in the position to decide anyway.

 

[syn]

I wasn't around for the 1st 10 or 15 years of the B-D subway extensions (i.e. Woodbine, Old Mills, etc.), but I would guess that Sheppard is developing faster than Bloor/Danforth.

What kind of transit did Bloor have before the subway?

I agree it might get looked at if Horwath wins (and gets no seats in Scarborough.)
If Ford wins, they might find ways to lower the cost.
If Liberals win, it will continue as is, but perhaps dragging it (and thus all other projects) out to some time in the future.

They've been trying to lower costs for years. Eliminating two stations was done to lower costs. The cost was lowered to $2 billion, and is now back to around $4 billion, nearly the same price as the three stop plan from just a few years ago.

It's pretty obvious what the trend is.

 

[JSF-1]

We should know fairly soon if it is underground or in the Uxbridge sub corridor.

If inline stops are added to the McCowan route, then it is preferable.

If no inline stops, then the McCowan route loses all advantages, except the fact that some design work has been done for that corridor and any other option will delay the construction somewhat. I don't know what's best in this case, but I'm not in the position to decide anyway.

What advantage does McCowan have over another alignment though? Regardless of how the line gets to STC it will cross Lawrence so a connection to the 54 is inevitable. It doesn't have any development potential save for possibly Brimley and Eglinton. The only place along McCowan of any real importance is the Hospital and I don't consider a Hospital alone to be enough to justify a station. As well McCowan is the reason STC station will be built with side platforms instead of a centre platform, so the station is going to be really inefficient as far as passenger flow is concerned.

 

[Rainforest]

What advantage does McCowan have over another alignment though? Regardless of how the line gets to STC it will cross Lawrence so a connection to the 54 is inevitable. It doesn't have any development potential save for possibly Brimley and Eglinton. The only place along McCowan of any real importance is the Hospital and I don't consider a Hospital alone to be enough to justify a station.

You just named it: the Hospital, and in case of Brimley and Eglinton, the possibility of local development.

The Hospital on its own may not be enough of a reason to build a station, but if we want a station at Lawrence anyway, why not serve the hospital as well.

As well McCowan is the reason STC station will be built with side platforms instead of a centre platform, so the station is going to be really inefficient as far as passenger flow is concerned.

It is sub-optimal, but is it really a big problem? Off-peak, they can use just one platform, the other will be spare for emergencies.

 

[JSF-1]

Well it is bad because trains are more inefficient in this scenario. Remember trains terminating at STC will need to pull into the tail tracks and then pull back in to the other platform to return towards Kipling. This is a waste of time and given how the TTC can't even manage its current termini without backups the STC station is going to be terrible. STC won't have a cross over to the south of the station because the City said that they wouldn't tear down the Frank Fubert Woods, so the crossover will need to be built north of the station. For all intents and purposes STC will pretty much have only 1 platform, since the other can only be used by outbound trains. A single delayed train will have the entire station shut down because only 1 track is accessible per direction.

 

[syn]

Well I hope something happens because its lunacy to continue with the McCowan alignment. This ship is clearly taking on water and in my opinion McCowan is the hole that is sinking all the costs. I swear the City is approaching this subway as if it has to be underground when infact it doesn't. If we can realistically run the subway at grade somewhere along the line be it on the Uxbridge corridor or even the Hydro Corridor (fat chance I know) than the cost savings will be worth it. As I stated in another thread, Underground should only be done when absolutely necessary (i.e. having no space).

I'd hope they put it above ground, but the political nature of this project means putting it underground is the only choice they have (at least it is at this point). Remember, they 'deserve' underground transit like the elites downtown.

 

[Rainforest]

Well it is bad because trains are more inefficient in this scenario. Remember trains terminating at STC will need to pull into the tail tracks and then pull back in to the other platform to return towards Kipling. This is a waste of time and given how the TTC can't even manage its current termini without backups the STC station is going to be terrible. STC won't have a cross over to the south of the station because the City said that they wouldn't tear down the Frank Fubert Woods, so the crossover will need to be built north of the station. For all intents and purposes STC will pretty much have only 1 platform, since the other can only be used by outbound trains. A single delayed train will have the entire station shut down because only 1 track is accessible per direction.

I didn't look at the design docs, and didn't know they will have a cross-over north of the station.

Note that it isn't necessarily bad. A disabled train will be a nuisance, but they might be able to use another train to push the disabled one past the station and out of the way. This is not much different from a train being disabled between stations, or at a minor station with no cross-over, on the existing subway network.

On the other hand, normal train operation should work faster with the cross-over past the station than at stations like Finch. At Finch, the approaching northbound train must move very slowly in order to avoid a collision with a southbound train, because the southbound train can come from either platform. It is easy to notice that the travel time from Sheppard to Finch is substantially longer than from Finch to Sheppard.

If the northbound train will always arrive to the eastern platform at STC, and the southbound train will always depart from the western platform, then there will be no need to slow down approaching the station.

 

[JSF-1]

Those problems however can be easily fixed with better management of the terminals and the new ATC system. The only reason trains need to slow down is because the current Block signal system tells the operator nothing about where the train ahead is; ATC will eliminate this problem (or at least it should) and this leads to the second point. Its no secret the terminal stations are horrendously managed since ideally there should always be a track free (one train comes in, the other pulls out shortly after), but there never seems to be due to awful scheduling (due in part to the Block signal system) and the "Human Factor". One problem can be fixed, the other will persist no matter what track layout we use, however centre platform plans have the benefit of being more versatile and pretty much 2 steps; pull in, pull out.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

You mean the guy fighting against 99% democratic subway support in Scarborough? Sounds more like he fighting for a dictatorship carried out by the wealthiest Downtown ridings than a respect for democracy. The guy had every opportunity to respect Scarboroughs democracy to find a better solution yet choose not to help and now wants to cry foul when Tory is trying to push the City forward to see progress.

The only thing that could ever achieved with this infinite fight is for our inner suburbs to start pushing back against subways in other areas that ensure we treadmill further on transit. Thankfully there is enough councillors and all Provincial parties that do respect democracy so this extreme nonsense can be being ignored and no further damage will occur.

There is not 99 percent support for the subway. It's not even half that. And you guys already lost that battle with the DRL expansion. Although scarborough probably should have pushed back again Vaughan a bit harder...

 

[BurlOak]

There is not 99 percent support for the subway. It's not even half that. And you guys already lost that battle with the DRL expansion. Although scarborough probably should have pushed back again Vaughan a bit harder...

Who are "you guys"?

Are you referring to the David Miller NDP supporters who wanted it to be an on-street LRT north of Danforth?

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Well I hope something happens because its lunacy to continue with the McCowan alignment. This ship is clearly taking on water and in my opinion McCowan is the hole that is sinking all the costs. I swear the City is approaching this subway as if it has to be underground when infact it doesn't. If we can realistically run the subway at grade somewhere along the line be it on the Uxbridge corridor or even the Hydro Corridor (fat chance I know) than the cost savings will be worth it. As I stated in another thread, Underground should only be done when absolutely necessary (i.e. having no space).

I agree. Above ground is the way to go. Burying this thing means nothing with one stop.

Its possible but keep in mind the length of time its taken to reach almost 30% design. You just cant just start over now and expect to find all around value as the reality is the initiation and desing process is quite long. Also residents wont be supportive of further delay, the RT is on its last legs and when it come to Doug he surely wants to claim he brought the subway to Scarborough as his number one priority so any major delays would compromise that. I imagine they amend the design with stops and the TTC continues to oversee the design, this amendment itself would surely cause some minor delay. The Tory admin already studied the old corridor during the SSE review and its was found to be just under $3B now. Any significant savings could be erased and guaranteed more time wasted.

The BDL extension on the RT corridor always made sense to me, but not at this stage. With Smarttrack and the changes in EELRT at Kennedy which is now nearing design completion in the next couple years we would not be looking at a simple change. The impact would be significant enough to impact all those projects in both time and cost.

If we add stops, that will also cause delay. Better to just go and do it right from the start.

Who are "you guys"?

Are you referring to the David Miller NDP supporters who wanted it to be an on-street LRT north of Danforth?

Pro subway scarberians.