MoveOntario 2020

[unimaginative2]

Among the many routes in Toronto which I think are well-suited to LRT would be STC along Ellesmere to UTSC, perhaps continuing to the West Hill area. LRT is very useful as a feeder to the subway, rather than as long cross-city routes that would take an hour or more to run. I really doubt anyone's going to take a streetcar from West Hill when they have a GO Train every hour -- or better, by the time the streetcar gets built.

 

[ShonTron]

It really is remarkable, isn't it. Maybe I should get together with a tiny handful of my Cityplace neighbours and form a gang. We'd be sure to get the DRL, and maybe a subway on Spadina for good measure.

Wait. You're at Spadina and Front. You've got a 'Transit City' line already - Spadina!

Now if Malvern was getting a subway, I could see your point. Once you form your gang, than it will add a new twist to the "CityPlace the next St. Jamestown" debate!

 

[unimaginative2]

Wait. You're at Spadina and Front. You've got a 'Transit City' line already - Spadina!

True, true. Lucky me!

Now if Malvern was getting a subway, I could see your point. Once you form your gang, than it will add a new twist to the "CityPlace the next St. Jamestown" debate!

Oh but they are! On top of the two streetcar lines, they're also getting the RT extension that's somehow better than replacing the whole RT with a subway for the same cost. God only knows what my illustrious councillor would do!

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Although it was decided to refurbish the Scarborough RT (at 30% of the cost of extending the subway), it hasn't been decided to extend it. IIRC, it was only decided to re-study extending it. The economics of doing so, when an LRT system is already being started in the area, will probably kill the extension.

The extension's included in MoveOntario...one of the main reasons the RT is being kept is so that it can be run to "Malvern." When it's all done, they'll have spent well over 30% of the cost of a Danforth extension, and local riders will suffer.

Two LRTs fringing the Malvern area's overkill.

Yes, especially since GO service on the Oshawa and Midtown lines will be much better, since the RT's being extended, and since the two lines manage to somehow avoid Malvern.

 

[unimaginative2]

The TTC study claims that the refurbishment alone will cost $360 million with the subway costing $1.2 billion. There's no way that the TTC will do the extension for less than $600 million. The subway would have vastly lower operating and maintenance cost since it would simply be a two stop extension of an existing line, while the refurbished RT would remain a different technology with a separate staff and maintenance facility. The refurbished RT plus extension will still require the transfer at Kennedy and will provide less net travel time benefit even to Malvern residents than the subway extension, especially with a 401 bus lane from Malvern to STC, and no travel time or reliability benefit at all to anybody else in Scarborough. Do you think that's worth a capital cost savings of, optimistically, $240 million?

 

[DENTROBATE54]

Among the many routes in Toronto which I think are well-suited to LRT would be STC along Ellesmere to UTSC, perhaps continuing to the West Hill area. LRT is very useful as a feeder to the subway, rather than as long cross-city routes that would take an hour or more to run. I really doubt anyone's going to take a streetcar from West Hill when they have a GO Train every hour -- or better, by the time the streetcar gets built.

There's not much along Ellesmere either though. The 38 bus essentially exists as a feeder between STC and Centenary/Centennial/UTSC. At least along Eglinton and Kingston there's alot of dense proximity to high-rise apartments and storefronts plus three potential inter-regional stops: Bellamy, Guildwood and Highland Creek to keep ridership viable at all points along the route. However instead of running up into Malvern, the Scarborough Line could run to Hwy 2 then via Military Trail head up onto Ellesmere, in the long run looping into STC.

and since the two lines manage to somehow avoid Malvern.

Yeah if the lines veer into Neilson/McLevin it'll definitely dead-end any further expansion into Rouge Park !

Do you think that's worth a capital cost savings of, optimistically, $240 million?

That's ridiculous! For what their wasting on this refurbish they may as well raze the current tracks and stations and run BD trains in the SRT alignment. Even without extending the line, the time saved by not interchanging at Kennedy would be well worth it.

 

[unimaginative2]

That's ridiculous! For what their wasting on this refurbish they may as well raze the current tracks and stations and run BD trains in the SRT alignment. Even without extending the line, the time saved by not interchanging at Kennedy would be well worth it.

Absolutely! The TTC claims that re-using the existing SRT alignment is "impractical". I'm not inclined to believe their studies, but I do accept that it would have a significant impact on service since they'd have to shut the line down for a time, as they will be doing anyway with the refurbishment. The TTC favours a more-or-less direct underground (of course) routing continuing northeast to Brimley or McCowan and then straight north to STC. I'm pretty indifferent to the route they choose. I'd like to see a detailed cost/benefit study done by someone other than the TTC evaluating the two routes, and they should pick the cheapest.

Oh, and if you read the studies they all go on about how they'll rebuild Kennedy to make the connection less inconvenient. For all you Scarberians out there, you should be aware that less inconvenient will indeed mean eliminating one flight of stairs. The new RT station will be located at ground level. Unfortunately, you'll have to walk down a long corridor to get there. Instead of 2 escalators, you'll have one escalator and a long walk down a corridor. Big improvement.

As a side note on the TTC's obsession with tunnelling... I was reading the old Eglinton West study. West of Jane, Eglinton has that wonderful wide strip of open city-owned land that was intended to be the other half of the Richview Expressway. It's now called the Eglinton Transportation Corridor. The TTC, however, felt that putting the subway in that transportation corridor wasn't a good idea. They preferred tunnelling under the empty city-owned land. Apparently Toronto is the only city in the world where tunnelling has the same cost as open-cut construction.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Actually, from what I hear from inside the TTC is that it turns out that it probably won't be necessary to reconstruct the line in order to accommodate the MkII vehicles. They will probably still invest a large amount in improving the transfer at Kennedy. How, I haven't heard. I've always envisioned tunneling the SRT onto subway level into a centre track, but I don't know if that's possible there.

As a result, the SRT cost will probably be just the cost of improving the transfer and the new vehicles.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

There's more than 2 alignment options...I see 3 general ones, depending on where the line hits Lawrence, thus dictating where Lawrence East station goes. I agree that the 'straight line,' 2 stop path via Brimley is the leading contender, mainly because it's the only option currently being offered.

Every potential Danforth extension alignment between the GO/RT corridor and McCowan has pros and cons, but, ultimately, any of them are satisfactory. The possibility of having no rapid transit east/north of Warden station for a year or more isn't too appealing, but since people don't live in Scarborough to take advantage of the wonderful transit access, it's not like they'll move away and never return...they'll just put up with it like they've put up with the RT for a generation. Obviously, GO improvements and TTC bus route tweakings are prerequisites.

The new N/S Kennedy RT station - the one at ground level connected to the subway by a corridor - will still have perpetual overcrowding at the end of the RT closest to this corridor. The transfer may actually take longer since walking more than the length of a platform takes longer than riding an escalator down one storey.

 

[unimaginative2]

299 bloor, I've always heard that they'll have to reconstruct the sharply-curved tunnel north of Ellesmere. Is that no longer the case?

The TTC released pretty detailed plans of the Kennedy reconstruction. It involves a new RT station which would be parallel to the railway line. It would no longer turn west to be on top of the subway station. Being at ground level, you could access it with one escalator trip from the subway, but you'd have to walk through a long corridor in what is now the parking lot.

Transit service to Malvern and Morningside Heights does need to improve. It's just that there are much simpler, more cost-effective, and better ways to do it than the wild schemes of Transit City. A shoulder bus lane on the 401 from Neilson to McCowan, like on the 403 in Mississauga, would shave at least 10 minutes off the Neilson bus, a much better time savings than any streetcar or the RT extension to Sheppard and Markham. It would also get them to Scarborough Town Centre, where many of them are going and where they could easily connect in one place to the subway and to buses going all over Scarborough. Best of all, the total cost would be, at most, about a million dollars. Absolutely nobody loses. It would take the Neilson bus off Ellesmere, but that street already has two other full-service bus routes.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

from my conversations, the Ellesmere curve can handle MkII cars and won't need to be rebuilt. It and Kennedy were the two big ticket items in the budget. THis is a really good thing, as the line will not need to be shut down other than to connect the existing tracks to the new ones at Kennedy, instead of having to sever it in the middle while the curve is reconstructed for 18-months. Now it'll just be a 3 month shut down probably at most.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

There's nothing good about keeping the RT.

 

[Long Island Mike]

The Scarborough RT...or a TTC Subway extension?

Everyone: Looking back I now feel that the TTC in the 80s should have extended the Subway to Scarborough Town Centre instead of the UTDC-built LRT-but what would have happened if GO had gone through with its GO-ALRT proposal to replace most of their train services and construct a needed crosstown central line? I feel the system would have had less capacity then GO's rail service and it is a good thing that GO did not go thru with this plan-seeing how much the rail system has expanded since the 80s. A central line is still needed-the Sheppard Subway is a start but a line should have been built across the North Central area sometime sooner.

I remember the Scarborough LRT was a demonstration line of sorts built to exhibit the then-new LRT technology-it works well as it was built in Vancouver as the SkyTrain but the SLRT could have been different-a TTC Subway extension offering that elusive one-seat ride towards Downtown.
It seems to me that the SLRT has never reached its high expectations stated when it was built. My thoughts here-LI MIKE

 

[CDL.TO]

LIM:

Things get confusing when you start getting in to terminology. The Scarborough RT is not LRT. The term used prior to it becoming "Skytrain technology" was "Intermediate Capacity Transit System". Basically, lighter than heavy rail but heavier than light rail.

The government confused things with the GO-ALRT plan which would have used basically the same technology. Capacity should not have been too much of an issue because the system was to be designed to run at frequencies as high as every 2 minutes and trains would have been larger than on the SRT. I think the failure of GO-ALRT to come to fruition is one of the greatest losses in the GTA.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Scarborough ALRT-is ICTS.

CDL: That ICTS term is now coming to mind-as used by UTDC to describe the Scarborough ALRT-Advanced Light Rail Transit. To an extent you are right-the GO-ALRT could have been used to construct that needed E/W North Central crosstown line but as for replacing the GO commuter rail system-I say NO. I am all for GO rail service expansion-like electrifying the Lakeshore route.
The ICTS mode has its appeal-but to me it was designed for smaller cities and niche markets-like the Scarborough ALRT is. LI MIKE