Metrolinx: Sheppard East LRT (In Design)

[CDL.TO]

And Smartracks/GO service expansion.

I honestly don't believe that Scarborough voters care that much about either SmartTrack or GO service expansion. It really is just about the subway.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I honestly don't believe that Scarborough voters care that much about either SmartTrack or GO service expansion. It really is just about the subway.

Oh I agree 100% - they have the luxury of thinking about transit with their ass, we don't.

AoD

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Agreed. Shift that funding to the WWLRT, which with all of the construction going on along the Humber Bay, is desperately needed. Get those people from Humber Bay and South Etobicoke off Queen and allow them to access downtown quicker.

Yes please. If anything should receive funding and be started immediately it is the WWLRT.

 

[BurlOak]

This has also been discussed a few months earlier, but if the B-D extension happens then it is truthfully not a big distance to cover with subway on Sheppard.

Since the B-D route is not set in stone, the way I would do it is create a transit hub at Agincourt, have Sheppard Subway and B-D Subway both terminate at Agincourt. Have SmartTrack use the SRT ROW to reach Scarborough Town Centre and continue along the proposed SLRT route to Malvern (with future extension to Seaton on the books).

This way Sheppard Subway extension is a much shorter extension and only needs to have 4 stations built (Victoria Park, Warden, Birchmount and Agincourt), and Scarborough Town Centre has a much quicker commute downtown than they otherwise would have with the subway option. (And of course they're free to transfer to subway at Lawrence or whatever)

Sheppard east of Agincourt really does not need rapid transit.

If a subway is going from Don Mills to STC and then Kennedy, would it not make more sense to make STC the hub. The length of subway and number of stations would be the exact same. STC would be a hub for many GO buses. The Markham GO line intersects both lines.

SmartTrack through STC makes it even more of a Hub than Agincourt.

They won't. Unless you're speaking of the East bus routes, which can be routed to new stations on the extension. There's no reason for someone who gets on at say, Finch or North York Centre to transfer at Sheppard to a train with less frequency. But the passengers already on line 4 will have the incentive to head over to the NW branch of line 1.

If the Sheppard West was interlined with the Spadina line, then those coming from Don Mills would be even more likely to stay on the Sheppard line and just continue south to downtown.

Whether or not the project gets cancelled will most likely depend on who wins the next election cycle in 2018. If the political status quo is maintained (John Tory and Liberals are reelected), this thing will probably be built.

If this thing is planned for 2021 - that would be only a year before the 2022 election. There is no way it will be initiated that close to an election. Most probably, it will be delayed until after that election if LRT is to be built.

 

[gweed123]

I know, can you imagine the gall of these people...

They want us to spend close to $7 billion dollars on subways just for Scarborough. How many new subways are getting built in other parts of the city? How many subways do you see getting built in Etobicoke which is just as transit starved?

This is just one in a long line of cases to be made for de-amalgamation. Each city within the new Metro (expanded in scope to cover the entire GTA) gets a set amount of funding for transit infrastructure from Metro based on population ($X per person). Metrolinx sets out it's plan based on what is needed, and if an individual city decides it wants to "Cadillac it", then the delta between the Metrolinx approved option and the option they want should come directly from ONLY the taxpayers of that city.

If Scarberians really want subways that badly, fine. But they should be on the hook for any capital and all operating costs above and beyond what the Metrolinx preferred option outlined.

Yes please. If anything should receive funding and be started immediately it is the WWLRT.

Yup. Heck, even if you wanted to do it on the cheap you could even build it as a TTC gauge line, and only build the connector between the Ex and the Queensway. That alone would make a huge difference, because it would allow people coming from South Etobicoke to bypass Queen St completely.

 

[ehlow]

The project isn't dead, it's delayed to 2021. It's a little too early to be saying that SELRT is dead so matter-of-factly (this has to the the third time in 5 years that I've seen people declare SELRT dead).

We'll see proposals to replace the line with a subway - those proposals will most likely fail due to lack of funds. Proposals to have the line canceled outright may be more successful, however Mayor JT hasn't responded positively to similar proposals in previous months.

Whether or not the project gets cancelled will most likely depend on who wins the next election cycle in 2018. If the political status quo is maintained (John Tory and Liberals are reelected), this thing will probably be built.

By-elections in the area could also affect the outcome. I know Liberal MPPs have been pushing for the subway option, but I don't think that will be entertained, given how adamant the Liberals are on having a balanced budget before the next election. The balanced budget will likely make or break their 2018 election chances.

In 2020 it's announced that the Finch LRT is delayed until 2022, pushing another election cycle. By that time it's a new mayor, new politicians at Queens Park.

I mean, yeah it's possible it'll actually start in 2021, but it's so far in the future that who knows.

 

[nfitz]

And so it begins. Here is some bullshit we can look forward to for many years to come now that the LRT is dead.

I'm sure we will see no end of BS from the likes of Mammoliti, Ford, and Karygiannis, not matter what the subject. But they've already tried this, and council pushed it to the EC, then deferred it indefinitely (i.e. killed it). I'm not sure how the speaker can let him introduce another motion for a year. But Jim Karygiannis isn't very bright ... he probably doesn't understand that.

It's no wonder Justin Trudeau tossed Jim Karygiannis out of Ottawa! I guess his gain is our loss!

That leaves 2.3 billion. Not too hard to find.

Is that a joke? The city is approaching it's debt limit, and I can't see the province making available money for an extension that comes no where near the current Sheppard ridership, let alone the much higher number needed to justify subway!

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Oh and I forgot, for completeness' sake ECLRT also services Scarborough.

AoD

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Or make sure whoever gets their vote by this whining BS will lose the rest of the city's. Enough is enough. If it requires labelling Scarborough as the armpit of the GTA, so be it.

AoD

Scarborough already got they want, they got a $3.5 billion dollar subway.

And Smartracks/GO service expansion.

AoD

I know, can you imagine the gall of these people...

They want us to spend close to $7 billion dollars on subways just for Scarborough. How many new subways are getting built in other parts of the city? How many subways do you see getting built in Etobicoke which is just as transit starved?

I honestly don't believe that Scarborough voters care that much about either SmartTrack or GO service expansion. It really is just about the subway.

Of course. They always wanted two subways, never one. I said it many time, caving on the Bloor Danforth is a bad idea, very bad. They want another subway to close the loop, because that's what the original goal was.

The project isn't dead, it's delayed to 2021. It's a little too early to be saying that SELRT is dead so matter-of-factly (this has to the the third time in 5 years that I've seen people declare SELRT dead).

We'll see proposals to replace the line with a subway - those proposals will most likely fail due to lack of funds. Proposals to have the line canceled outright may be more successful, however Mayor JT hasn't responded positively to similar proposals in previous months.

Whether or not the project gets cancelled will most likely depend on who wins the next election cycle in 2018. If the political status quo is maintained (John Tory and Liberals are reelected), this thing will probably be built.

By-elections in the area could also affect the outcome. I know Liberal MPPs have been pushing for the subway option, but I don't think that will be entertained, given how adamant the Liberals are on having a balanced budget before the next election. The balanced budget will likely make or break their 2018 election chances.

So the Tories can get in promising to build the sheppard extension in full? The Liberals will fall on their sword again. The sheppard subway will be election issue #1 in Toronto in 3 years.

 

[k10ery]

At most the Sheppard Subway will cost the same as the Bloor Danforth Extension - 3.5 billion. Maybe 4 because they have to pass the don valley and the 404. There is already 1.2 billion on the table from the LRT. That leaves 2.3 billion. Not too hard to find.

$1.2 billion is a very bad estimate that nfitz pulled out of... somewhere unexplained. With cost escalation and a more realistic number for the yard, we're talking $2 billion today.

 

[Adjei]

The Tories were promising to build the Sheppard subway last election, they still lost.

 

[k10ery]

Experiences in Paris and elsewhere seem to suggest that, in general, people aren't willing to trade additional travel time for extra comfort (for city-level journeys, long distance journeys are likely different). It seems that 99% of the people will simply deal with a quicker, more crowded journey than accept a longer journey with more space.

Once Presto is implemented, I think we can deal with that by charging more to people who board on the north part of Yonge and disembark between Bloor and Union. Even a 50 cent "congestion charge" should be enough to get people switching to the west arm of the U.

Or am I being unrealistic about the power of congestion pricing?

 

[nfitz]

$1.2 billion is a very bad estimate that nfitz pulled out of... somewhere unexplained. With cost escalation and a more realistic number for the yard, we're talking $2 billion today.

I took the 2010$ provincial promise of $0.95 billlionn. Reading more carefully, this includes the cost of Conlins Yard, so that should have been $1.0 (2010$) not $1.2 billion. Metrolinx themselves in 2010 estimated that escalated to year of spending (opening in 2014) would be $1.105 billion. So in current $ we are still about $1.2 billion.

Not exact, but a good starting point.

 

[CDL.TO]

Once Presto is implemented, I think we can deal with that by charging more to people who board on the north part of Yonge and disembark between Bloor and Union. Even a 50 cent "congestion charge" should be enough to get people switching to the west arm of the U.

Or am I being unrealistic about the power of congestion pricing?

It's an interesting idea, but Presto, as planned, won't require people to tap off, so you have other complications that you would have to work out.

 

[44 North]

By "regional benefit" I would mean offering substantive travel benefits to a substantive part of the GTHA region. It's pretty clear that the SELRT was still primarily a local transit project (as is the FWLRT, Hamilton LRT, PULSE, etc...).

I grasp that, and I’d agree the SELRT was predominantly a local service line – particularly when compared to a suburban/905 subway. But IMO it was a local service line because it essentially devolved into a local service line. At the end of the day the corridor still connected two major UGCs (albeit, indirectly), while offering a crosstown service where no other nearby higher-speed crosstown services existed.

There’s no denying Sheppard is currently a relatively busy corridor, it was proposed to get busier and more developed, and that STC and NYCC are fairly important hubs. Many would ride from end to end, or long enough on it that the SELRT could be considered regionally significant. And if extending subways to some parking lots in Richmond Hill, or some fields in Vaughan, is considered 'regionally significant' - I don't see why LRT on Sheppard wouldn't be.

I guess my point is ultimately that it was a 'regional' line as far as its $1.3bn pricetag (and TO’s aversion to affordable non-underground light metros) allowed it to be.

The Tories were promising to build the Sheppard subway last election, they still lost.

And in 2011 the Prov nonchalantly offered $2bn for a Sheppard Subway prior to signing the MOU with Ford. That’s quite a tidy sum to propose pouring into on a corridor that many deem unworthy of subways and not regionally significant.