OneCity Plan

[ssiguy2]

I meant to mention that, as someone else already noted, that stopping a Queen line at Yonge is a bit foolish.

Yes, things can only be done one bit at a time but not making it go all the way to the Spadina/University line from the get go is very short sighted. It will create a headache for people having to get on a streetcar for 4 blocks just to make a transfer or having to walk the distance. To me that akin to extending the Stubway to Dufferin and making people walk the extra couple of blocks to make their connection to the Spadina Extension.

 

[BurlOak]

In general the ideas behind the plan are sound.

If there is one thing I would do to not only save money but also time and make transfers easier is to realign the Kennedy mess. I would not have the Eglinton LRT swing up to STC but rather have it continue further east to at least Kingston. I would can the Kennedy subway up Midland and instead INTERLINE the Kennedy and express route up to Ellesemere from Kennedy and then have the Express line continue north and the B/D line head east to STC. It would save a lot of money and time.

As I understand it, the subway station at Kennedy is aligned East-West parallel to Eglinton. It is too close to the GO line that it could not make the curve to go north on the existing SRT right-of-way. I do not recall seeing a good diagram showing the exact location of the station and the tail tracks (do they extend straight along Eglinton under the GO lines?). Thus, the two options are to continue along Eglinton and make the curve farther west (Danforth/McCowan seems to be the best bet since it has a bit of a curve and is not a 90 degree intersection), OR, rebuild the Eglinton station along the SRT alignment (which would require a shutdown of Kennedy, not just affecting the SRT but also GO connector routes). The tunnel north of Ellesmere would also require re-alignment since I think it is too tight for subway.

The first option seems by far the better if the subway extension is being done. It also has the benefit of freeing up the entire GO corridor for the Scarborough Express Route (I am assuming it will be some type of S-Bahn and not true subway) and the enhanced GO service that has been talked about for some time.

 

[BurlOak]

I have not seen any comments about the storage/maintenance yards.

Does the Eglinton Crosstown need a yard in the East, or it the one at Black Creek (Kodak) enough. Presumably, the Eglinton Crosstown will be built soon (10 years). The current plan was for a connection to the SRT (and to the SELRT) so it could use the Conlins yard. I recall from Steve Munro's blog that the most recent plan is to have through running from Eglinton to SRT for non-revenue service only. The Kingston-Morningside (I think this sounds better than Scarborough-Malvern, or is there an even better name?) LRT will only be built towards the end of the OneCity 30 year period, so the Eglinton Crosstown would have to survive 20 years with access to only the Kokak yard. Is this a problem?

The other thing is that the Conlins yard can be much smaller with the OneCity plan. I am guessing that about half the capacity would be needed (initially) with the Eglinton LRT not having access to it. It can be expanded in 20 or 30 years time when/if the Kingston-Morningside LRT is built. How much money could be freed up by only building half of Conlins yard now and would this make a dent in the money needed to bring the B-D subway from Kennedy to McCowan/Sheppard. It appears that we are about $480M short.

We would also need a few less LRT vehicles and a few more subways with this phase of the OneCity. I do not think this is a large problem.

 

[unimaginative2]

If there is one thing I would do to not only save money but also time and make transfers easier is to realign the Kennedy mess. I would not have the Eglinton LRT swing up to STC but rather have it continue further east to atleast Kingston. I would can the Kennedy subway up Midland and instead INTERLINE the Kennedy and express route up to Ellesemere from Kennedy and then have the Express line continue north and the B/D line head east to STC. It would save a lot of money and time.

If by interline you mean "run parallel to" then that's a fine idea. If you mean share tracks, it wouldn't work since it would halve capacity on both routes just because of that short shared section. Of course, they couldn't share tracks anyway since they would have a different gauge and likely different system of electrification.

 

[dowlingm]

Changing the tracks to run N-S at Kennedy requires a massive tear out. It's not just the subway that points east west, there are tail tracks which run further east under Eglinton. Cutting back the subway to Warden would be a crazy idea because of the volumes of shuttles which will be required, although if the Eglinton LRT had reached Kennedy and could operate through the construction that would help somewhat. Remember, the subway has a minimum curvature as well - it can't just angle at a corner. This is why Eglinton-Danforth Road-McCowan is an attractive option as the intersection design with Eglinton might allow at least somewhat less land take (and they can always build a new gentrifying Loblaws where the Eglinton-Danforth Road No Frills is )

 

[M II A II R II K]

If possible the BD line from Main Street to Kennedy can be transferred over to the Scarborough Express which is pretty much express on that route and eliminate the redundancy of having 2 separate express lines going from Main Street to Kennedy.

Create a Danforth Junction station to interchange between the BD and the new line and have the BD trains end there and ditch the current Main Street Station.

 

[leopetr]

If possible the BD line from Main Street to Kennedy can be transferred over to the Scarborough Express which is pretty much express on that route and eliminate the redundancy of having 2 separate express lines going from Main Street to Kennedy.

Create a Danforth Junction station to interchange between the BD and the new line and have the BD trains end there and ditch the current Main Street Station.

My satire detector is failing.

That sounds like a very expensive way to junk 8km of well used subway in favour of a less direct alignment.

Considering how many proposals we get on this forum to tunnel the Richmond Hill GO line through Leaside in order to shave a few minutes, I have to assume this is satire.

 

[gweed123]

If possible the BD line from Main Street to Kennedy can be transferred over to the Scarborough Express which is pretty much express on that route and eliminate the redundancy of having 2 separate express lines going from Main Street to Kennedy.

Create a Danforth Junction station to interchange between the BD and the new line and have the BD trains end there and ditch the current Main Street Station.

Interesting idea. But that would still require a complete teardown of Kennedy, as it would need to be reoriented N-S.

The more likely scenario from my point of view is that they add a couple extra stops on the eastern end of B-D (one just south of Firvalley), another one at Birchmount), in order to make it less of an express line. Of course, this would all take place once the Scarborough Express line is open.

 

[M II A II R II K]

The Danforth Junction would also be an interchange for Lakeshore, Stouffville, and perhaps even VIA rail as well.

Also the existing GO corridor will still be used for what it's used for now.

 

[dowlingm]

Yes, let's by all means load even more expense onto a corridor proposal costing SIX POINT NINE BILLION FREAKIN' DOLLARS (most of which will probably go to grade separating roads in Markham for the convenience of motorists)

 

[gweed123]

Yes, let's by all means load even more expense onto a corridor proposal costing SIX POINT NINE BILLION FREAKIN' DOLLARS (most of which will probably go to grade separating roads in Markham for the convenience of motorists)

I prefer to see it as safety for pedestrians.

And I wonder if that also includes the electrification of the Lakeshore corridor from Union to Danforth Junction, as well as a refurb of the tracks leading into Union. That could add a pretty significant expense to it.

Conversely, if the electrification of the Lakeshore line happens first, I would expect to see the cost of the Scarborough Express line drop significantly.

 

[M II A II R II K]

There can be a similar Bloor Junction Station at Dundas West. Or maybe at Parkdale to include the Barrie Line in it as well.

 

[CanadianNational]

Has anyone read Lorinc's article in Spacing this week?
http://spacingtoronto.ca/2012/07/03/lorinc-two-solitudes-one-city/

July 3rd, 2012
LORINC: The two solitudes of the One City transit plan

For my next party trick, I’m going to solve the stand-off between the Stintz/DeBaeremaeker One City faction and the Ontario Liberals in three easy steps:

One, the McGuinty government passes a law — let’s call it the Greater Toronto Council Act (2012) — establishing a regional body, which is made up of politicians appointed from their GTA municipal councils and includes a chair elected by the members of this group, plus an executive committee comprised of the mayors (or designates) of the region’s five most populous cities.

Two, the province gives this new GTA council a formal mandate to (i) implement the regional planning goals of the GTA portion of the Places to Grow Act (2005); and (ii) approve the infrastructure investment recommendations of Metrolinx, which will answer to this body instead of a provincial ministry.

Three, Queen’s Park passes legislation allowing this GTA council (shall we call it One City?) the power to levy two classes of revenues: first, a regional property tax levy sufficient to cover administrative and planning costs; second, a menu of other revenue tools that must be dedicated to the construction of new transit infrastructure across the region.

This, of course, is not my party trick. Seventeen years ago, Anne Golden led a taskforce that recommended the creation of a democratically-accountable GTA council tasked to deal with various regional problems. Very high on her list of said problems was transportation. Mike Harris’s Tories ignored her, and so have Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, who diligently pursued a passive-aggressive approach to growth management in the GTA. (Note to web archivists and urban policy nerds: Golden’s 1996 GTA Taskforce report is not online — and should be!)

Which brings me back to last Friday’s perplexing head-on collision between a provincial regime that needs to raise one heck of a lot of money to build transit and a municipal council offering up its own constituents to do precisely that. Go figure.

With the winds of public opinion at their backs, Stintz et al have vowed to press on in the face of transportation minister Bob Chiarelli’s knee-jerk objections.

The question is, how to proceed?

I’d say both sides in this complicated mating dance need to think about short, medium- and long-term solutions to the two solitudes crisis that lies at the heart of the structural disconnect between the City of Toronto and Metrolinx.

Short Term: Council, by itself, should move swiftly (i.e., in this budget cycle) to approve a dedicated, time-limited levy to raise the $200 million needed to build the waterfront LRT line to the newly developing waterfront areas (West Donlands, East Bayfront and the Portlands). This tax hike can be packaged as a city-building move that will not only attract development but also, in a conciliatory gesture towards the province, help Infrastructure Ontario recoup its substantial investment in the West Donlands properties being developed for the 2015 Pan Am Games.

Such a move is a no-brainer. Everyone save Mayor Gypsy Moth and his taxophobic brother agree that rapid transit to these new waterfront communities is indispensible. Further, the cost only rises over time. Suck it up and get the thing built by 2015 so the city doesn’t look foolish in the eyes of the world (doubters should just imagine the inevitable shuttle bus disaster stories in the international media). Waiting means wasting taxpayer money in the future. Simple as that.

Medium Term: The city, the inner-ring 905 municipalities, Metrolinx and the province must set up a working group now to take stock of both the Big Move and One City, with the goal of figuring out whether and how new proposals such as the Scarborough subway extension can be incorporated. (Josh Matlow has moved a motion that would see council ask Metrolinx, the 905 municipalities and the province set up a working group to talk about the elusive investment strategy.)

Metrolinx, in fact, is undertaking a highly controlled mini-review of the Big Move this year, and there’s a formal review required in 2013 under the terms of the Metrolinx legislation.

My question: why wait? By any objective standard, it makes far more sense for the parties to have an updated, consensus-based plan to sell to the public before we all start bickering and bitching about the money required to build it.

Stintz told me Friday that Metrolinx and the minister’s office have long been resistant to such suggestions. To give Metrolinx its due, I understand the agency’s reluctance to tinker. It has an enormous technical job on its hands, and there are large projects underway that can’t simply be turned on and off at whim.

Exhibit A: the Air-Rail Link. The One City group, in my view, made a tactical error in demanding that the province to transform this premium service into a local express train. Time will tell whether there’s sufficient ridership to justify the premium price for an ARL ticket; if there isn’t, Metrolinx will have to come up with a Plan B to recoup sunk costs, which will likely be an affordable localized service.

So if council truly wants to cut deals with the province/Metrolinx, it has to look for opportunities to engage that aren’t unduly provocative. By the same token, the province has to not only recognize the legitimacy of the political feedback it receives from the city, but also find meaningful ways of incorporating said views into its planning processes. Sorry, but narrow legislative reviews don’t cut it.

Metrolinx’s default mode is to defend GO — that’s very clear. But GO, the City of Toronto and the 905 have a symbiotic relationship: those tens of thousands of suburban commuters fill the downtown skyscrapers, which, in turn, produce vast troves of commercial property tax revenue for the City and equally vast troves of residential assessment for the 905. Metrolinx’s governance, planning and policy development processes must reflect this interwoven urban/suburban reality. Yet at the highest level — and notwithstanding the efforts of their respective staffs to collaborate operationally — Metrolinx and the City remain two solitudes.

Want proof? When a provincial cabinet minister gets the nod from the premier’s office to rain negativity down on the heads of two ideologically friendly TTC commissioners who, in all likelihood, have the votes to create a council process and a helpful funding decision, it is prima facie evidence of a political disconnect.

Long Term: As it looks ahead to decades of transit infrastructure expansion and all the planning changes needed to make those investments pay dividends, the Liberals must come to grips with the fact that the governance process they have set up for, and around, Metrolinx since 2005 is fatally flawed. At heart, it’s a tenacious structural problem born of the Harris regime’s governance moves.

How else to account for the strange fact that Metrolinx, without a single elected official on its board, has quietly inserted itself into land-use planning through its “mobility hub†process? Yes, there’s a certain bureaucratic logic behind Metrolinx’s attempts to rethink the future of GO’s suburban parking lots. Still, if ever there was an example of mission creep, this one fits the bill perfectly. Last I checked, municipalities in Ontario do land use planning, not provincial operating agencies.

Coming back to One City, the leadership on Toronto council could and should enjoin the 905 municipalities to put pressure on Queen’s Park to confront the region’s governance deficit as a pre-condition for the investment strategy, and the long slog of transportation reform that awaits this region in the next 30 years.

After all, their constituents will also be paying these various levies and, one would hope, helping to guide the land use decisions that accompany the related transit investments. It only is reasonable that they/we have a democratic forum in which to express their/our goals and concerns, and to hold the decision-makers accountable.

Needless to say, Ontario’s ministry of transportation is not that forum.

 

[unimaginative2]

Yes, let's by all means load even more expense onto a corridor proposal costing SIX POINT NINE BILLION FREAKIN' DOLLARS (most of which will probably go to grade separating roads in Markham for the convenience of motorists)

We don't have to take that figure at face value. It's completely out of line for a surface rail route in an existing corridor. All it will really require is some station rebuilding, another track, electrification, and new rolling stock. Brussels is building a 350km regional rail network including extensive quad-tracking, a new tunnel, and dozens of station reconstructions for a few billion. Denver is building a couple electric regional rail corridors, which will likely be the first implementation of real regional rail in North America. The 38km East Corridor is estimated to cost $1.14 billion, including new tracks, electrification, and some greenfield segments. That should be an upper limit for the Stouffville corridor, which is shorter and won't require any greenfield construction.

Now, it may be including an entirely new underground station at Union. If that's true, it shouldn't be included in the cost and I think it's unnecessary anyway, but it could help explain the huge price tag (though still not fully justify it).

 

[gweed123]

Why create a whole new body when they can reconfigure Metrolinx in order to get the same goal?

Theoretically, it's going to be Metrolinx doing the building anyway, so why not cut out the middle man of the GTA Council? Create a GTA Council within Metrolinx that defines priorities.