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Eglinton-Crosstown Corridor Debate

What do you believe should be done on the Eglinton Corridor?

  • Do Nothing

    Votes: 5 1.3%

  • Build the Eglinton Crosstown LRT as per Transit City

    Votes: 140 36.9%

  • Revive the Eglinton Subway

    Votes: 226 59.6%

  • Other (Explain in post)

    Votes: 8 2.1%
  • Total voters
    379
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
I wonder how Bombardier would react to Ford asking to replace the Eglinton LRVs with the equivalent in Toronto Rockets? You know, assuming either A) there was the money to switch over the whole Eglinton Crosstown LRT to subway or B) Ford would only take the parts of Eglinton that are underground and in the Richview ROW and build that as subway.
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I think it would be quite simple to switch the order to Toronto Rockets at this point since the order for TCLRVs is not very far along and very little (if any) work has been done so far. However, Bombardier is in a situation where they can charge a very large fee for doing so. As a profitable business, I don't think it's very likely that they would dismiss an option where they get millions of dollars for absolutely nothing. From what I understand, it's all up to Bombardier.
 
gweed123 said:
They're only doing core samples now??? Weird. They were doing them all summer in Ottawa for the DOTT project, and they aren't supposed to start construction until 2014, finishing in 2019. Can an engineer explain how the Eglinton LRT can open earlier, having done the core samples later?
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Don't need an engineer to answer that one! Eglinton doesn't open earlier, it's scheduled for 2020.
 
kEiThZ said:
Is there anyway they can do more concurrent activity and speed things up?
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Probably increase the flow of cash. May require duplication of resources so as to be doing the same work at different locations simultaneously. That would entail a trade-off between spending and speed.
 
gweed123 said:
Really? For some reason I thought it was scheduled for 2018... May have just gotten my dates mixed up though.
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The first phase was scheduled to open earlier before McGuinty delayed much of the funding.

Also keep in mind that the Ottawa transit tunnel is relatively short - only 3.2 km with only 4 underground stations, compared to about 10 km with 12 underground stations for Eglinton. (closer to 11 km with 13 underground stations if you include the Don Mills Road stop.
 
nfitz said:
The first phase was scheduled to open earlier before McGuinty delayed much of the funding.

Also keep in mind that the Ottawa transit tunnel is relatively short - only 3.2 km with only 4 underground stations, compared to about 10 km with 12 underground stations for Eglinton. (closer to 11 km with 13 underground stations if you include the Don Mills Road stop.
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Very true. However, I would think that the Ottawa LRT tunnel is a bit more complicated (at least on a per km basis) because of a) how deep it's being tunnelled, and b) the area that it's being tunnelled through (ie downtown Ottawa). Either way, they seem to be on about the same timeframe.
 
gweed123 said:
Very true. However, I would think that the Ottawa LRT tunnel is a bit more complicated (at least on a per km basis) because of a) how deep it's being tunnelled, and b) the area that it's being tunnelled through (ie downtown Ottawa). Either way, they seem to be on about the same timeframe.
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How deep it's being buried only complicates the stations - and there's only 4. The depth makes it easier to deal with services, etc. And it's in bedrock, so some things are easier to deal with ... others aren't.

Montreal tunnelling has always been cheaper than Toronto, and it's also deeper in bedrock.
 
nfitz said:
How deep it's being buried only complicates the stations - and there's only 4. The depth makes it easier to deal with services, etc. And it's in bedrock, so some things are easier to deal with ... others aren't.

Montreal tunnelling has always been cheaper than Toronto, and it's also deeper in bedrock.
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Ironically, downtown Ottawa is one of the only places in the NCR that has near ideal tunnelling conditions (or so I've been told). The depth does complicate the tunnelling too, because the emergency exit and ventilation shafts have a longer distance between the tunnel and the surface. It will be interesting to see a comparison of the construction methods (and the effect they have on surface operations) when construction is in full swing on both of them.

The stations alone will be very interesting to watch engineering-wise. They're basically being built underneath the foundations of 30+ storey buildings, with multiple underground connections to adjacent buildings, as well as to the surface. From what I can tell, very different from almost any of the stations ever built in Toronto, with the exception of maybe NYC station (as it was built later, and had to contend with existing buildings). The underground complexes that have grown up around the stations on the Yonge subway all post-date the subway itself (ie none of those underground connections, or even the buildings themselves, at least in their current forms, existed when the subway was built, except for maybe Union). The construction of those extra entrances was relatively piecemeal. It will be interesting to see the process engineered in reverse, with the stations having to connect to existing buildings, and not the other way around.
 
Asterix said:
They've been moving their way eastward and generally have an electronic message board beside Eglinton say it is work for the LRT. A few weeks ago they were near Bathurst. They then spent about a week with a truck on the Beltline @Chaplin (which disappeared the day after Ford commanded a halt to TC work). Seems to be correlated with planned stations.
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Looks like things are still moving forward despite Ford declaring a halt.

I noticed a truck at Eglinton/Dunfield today with 'Transit City - Eglinton Crosstown' clearly marked on it. More drilling I presume.
 
stopping current activities like soil sampling will cost more than letting them proceed. That's part of the $130+million "sunk costs".

stopping them now means we'll just be paying the contractors to do nothing, which seems to be acceptable for our gravy-fighting mayor but I don't think Metrolinx is nearly as motivated as he is to cancel stuff. They're not city employees.
 
Contractors have a signed contract to complete certain work on a certain timeframe. They can't be relieved of their contractual obligations so simply. Particularly as even Ford has mad comments about not objecting to underground LRT such as on Eglinton.

If the Sheppard East LRT is cancelled, I wouldn't be surprised to see work on the underground section of the Eglinton LRT accelerated, as there are no other shovel-ready underground projects in Toronto where the money Metrolinx has set aside from 2010 to 2014 could be spent. Unless Metrolinx decides instead to spend the money where they'll get more bang for their buck, such as Viva, the Hurontario LRT, or the Waterloo LRT.
 
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