saveoursubways (SOS)

[Tdot_one]

What's the position SOS position on the Sheppard line? It seems like not only would extending the line west to Downsview makes sense, but going across Finch possibly to the airport. By doing that a series of trip generators would be hit and North Etobicoke would no longer be isolated. The DRL should be going up Dundas West into Weston and to North Etobicoke as well.

 

[Dan416]

What's the position SOS position on the Sheppard line? It seems like not only would extending the line west to Downsview makes sense, but going across Finch possibly to the airport. By doing that a series of trip generators would be hit and North Etobicoke would no longer be isolated. The DRL should be going up Dundas West into Weston and to North Etobicoke as well.

If you'd look at the website you'd see on our map Sheppard being extended west to Downsview and east to STC. We have no further extensions planned. I don't see Sheppard switching to Finch. They're already planning a Finch LRT, so they should just leave it at that, and if in the future they want, the Sheppard line should continue west along Sheppard to the airport.

 

[drum118]

FWLRT = $1.2 billion dollars in 2007. Since then...
- proposed Don Mills-Finch East extension
- proposed Woodbine Live/airport extension
- six added stops
- underground station at Keele
- possible elevated station at Humber College
Surely the total has gone up exponentially a result.

The lowball end figure alone could build at least 4-5 new kilometres of subways (and nowadays when every cent counts that's important). If the TTC was serious about alleviating Finch and other crosstown bus routes, they'd invest more in east-to-west subway expansion such as to minimize commuters dependency on buses. Replacing rubber tires with steel rail means nothing if they're all just feeders dumping loads onto overtaxed narrow-reaching metros (YUS in particular). Better to least make those rubber tires compatible to the subway instead of just inferior to it. BRT with emphasis on long-distance travel is precisely that and costs less than LRT which in turn frres up funding for metros.

The southern edge of the F.H.C. is within 300m of Finch proper (2 city blocks walking distance or under 4 mins for able-bodied pedestrians). Also the 36 bus would still exist only in reduced frequencies (due to lowered demand since most commuters from Rexdale and Jane-Finch would opt for F.H.C.). Win/win.The goal of the BRT is to create a more humane city, a city not for cars but for people. We dont need to be extravagant, we dont need another debt our children would carry. BRT only needs Political Will.

How are BRTs more expensive to operate than LRTs? The TTC is now wondering how it would continue operating its network. It’s losing a lot of money to think that its underpreforming routes are being subsidized by the provincial government. For it to be able to break even they will have to eventually charge $6 for every ticket. That’s like 200% fare increase. So, soon, the government will have to take over and spend billions for the upkeep of a system which only the ‘chosen few’ can enjoy (since the average Torontonian cannot sustain paying into the fare hike). LRT is not best for a city that can't pay its own maintenance costs because corridors like Finch West, esp. after the Finch-Keele Subway Stn, won’t have the necessary number of people riding it. It is not desirable to rely on national budget just to maintain its LRT scheme. There is no need for road widening, BRT if fully implemented would minimize private car use. So it can utilize the existing lanes. Ongoing passing lanes and road widening are not required.

As a matter of sense, LRT is more expensive to build. As a matter of fact, it is more costly and polluting to operate and slower than BRT. Why? Electricity is made from burning oil, coal or hydro-power. 1 time of changing the energy-form (from oil to electricity) will cause loss somehow. Then later, the electricity will be changed again to make kinetic energy to propel the LRT's cars which is also subject to some energy loss i.e. 2 times of loss. Meanwhile for the bus which burns oil directly, it will suffer from only 1 time of energy transformation. Slower than BRT? Because it doesn't have the exclusive ROW potential which the F.H.C. readily provides, plus more minor stops.

Trains can be longer than buses, packing more people in per pound of steel and per driver (although 3 car TC LRT trainsets will have less ridership capacity than 3-compartmented biartics utilized in European BRT systems). This avoids wasting money moving steel around. HOWEVER, all of this only applies if you have high volumes, of course. If you aren't running very many vehicles per day, the capital costs of the electric wires overwhelm the operating costs of the diesel engines; and of course there's no point running quarter-full trains when you could be running fully-full buses.

Please plan on doing a hiking trip of the Hydro Corridor from end to end next spring as well taking photo's of what next to it as well along it as you will be surprise what you will find. At the same time, time your walking distance to Finch itself at all major roads where you think stops should be.

Then double and triple that time as that what it will be for non able-bodied people and parents with kids. At the same time, calculate the travel time to get from the BRT to a point along Finch as riders will have to do double back tracking to get to/from the BRT vs staying on Finch in the first place.

You need to added the cost of built this so call BRT to your day to day operation cost to see what the real cost is for those few buses. At the same time, figure out what the cost ratio is to carry a rider per km as well the seat turn over ratio.

You need to set down and do a full cost breakdown between LRT and BRT to say which is the better way.

At the same time, you need to justify why a few riders get first class service well rest of Finch or what every route get third class service.

You are in a fact helping to create urban sprawl and that is one of my fear for all this GO expansion outside the area where it has operate before. GO in fact is leap frogging the greenbelt and helping to encourage low density and move industry out of the 416.

Looking at front in cost is the wrong way to look transit as it is the back end cost that going to make or break a transit route and system. It is a given BRT is the cheap boy in the room vs. LRT. 80% of operation cost is direct labour cost and that will continue to grow. Transit riders has to pay higher fares to cover that cost while at the same time they get no increase of service and see poor quality of service.

If drivers are getting 3% increase a year, you need to added in the other cost increase of material to put that driver on the road and one reason TTC is looking at a 6-7% yearly increase in operation cost.

Now start increasing transit fares by 6% yearly to see what it going to cost you to use transit and it will not take much to start keeping people in their cars as well use transit a lot less. Cash fare 2010 $3, $3.15-$3.20 in 2011, etc to see what I mean.

Take a guess what oil cost is going to be within the next 10-20 years as it will not be the $1 a liter we see today.

 

[Tdot_one]

If you'd look at the website you'd see on our map Sheppard being extended west to Downsview and east to STC. We have no further extensions planned. I don't see Sheppard switching to Finch. They're already planning a Finch LRT, so they should just leave it at that, and if in the future they want, the Sheppard line should continue west along Sheppard to the airport.

What's along Sheppard West? I don't see many trip generators or passengers taking that route?

 

[Ansem]

What's along Sheppard West? I don't see many trip generators or passengers taking that route?

Sheppard-Jane and Sheppard-Keele have potential...

 

[Fresh Start]

What's the position SOS position on the Sheppard line? It seems like not only would extending the line west to Downsview makes sense, but going across Finch possibly to the airport. By doing that a series of trip generators would be hit and North Etobicoke would no longer be isolated. The DRL should be going up Dundas West into Weston and to North Etobicoke as well.

Oh for Pete's sake, these hairbrained schemes are getting out of hand. I don't know why I'm getting so much flak for my high-concept Finch/F.H.C. busway proposal then have to hear of and entertain multibillion dollar subway projects into deep suburbia done for no other reason than to connect the dots and make the subway map look "world-class". It cannot be for the sake of density nor trip-generation because Jane-Sheppard, Keele-Sheppard and whatever "nodes" you feel exist along Finch that will not already be intercepted by higher-order, do not have anywhere near the numbers needed to justify the expense. FWLRT at rush-hour peak will only see 2800 pphpd. Off-peak it will be far less. Riders of north-south bus feeders have greater incentive to stay on the bus til Eglinton subway than transfer onto a glorified road-median streetcar. The 36 bus today only moves an average of 78 persons per hour per kilometre.

The reality is that it should be Bus Rapid Transit traversing all the way across northern Toronto, not just a limited 17 kilometres of Finch but 42 kilometres beginning from Woodbine Racetrack to Scarborough City Centre. If the pricetag of one limted scope light-rail line can afford us all of that, which is infinitely better? Does the fact that local buses cannot drive on rails but can utilize the shared bus lanes of BRT ROWs not further sweeten the deal? Has the City of Ottawa not demonstrated that Transit Oriented Development can occur just as readily alongside a BRT corridor as would a LRT corridor? No Tdot, to answer your question, there is no justification for Sheppard West subway let alone extending it westward across Finch. That makes less sense than the RHC extension. The days of meanderingly long subways are far past this city. This is why I fear for Eglinton and the DRL, and why subways-to-the-suburbs is such a touchy subject. No sense creating a high-capacity line to suburban town centres to attract and feed more and more suburbanites into the downtown core then subject all those people, not to mention local residents to substandard waits in the cold for go-slow streetcars just in order to get east-west across town. Why the TTC wants to unleash such mediocrity upon the entire city defies logic.

 

[gweed123]

Oh for Pete's sake, these hairbrained schemes are getting out of hand. I don't know why I'm getting so much flak for my high-concept Finch/F.H.C. busway proposal then have to hear of and entertain multibillion dollar subway projects into deep suburbia done for no other reason than to connect the dots and make the subway map look "world-class". It cannot be for the sake of density nor trip-generation because Jane-Sheppard, Keele-Sheppard and whatever "nodes" you feel exist along Finch that will not already be intercepted by higher-order, do not have anywhere near the numbers needed to justify the expense. FWLRT at rush-hour peak will only see 2800 pphpd. Off-peak it will be far less. Riders of north-south bus feeders have greater incentive to stay on the bus til Eglinton subway than transfer onto a glorified road-median streetcar. The 36 bus today only moves an average of 78 persons per hour per kilometre.

The reality is that it should be Bus Rapid Transit traversing all the way across northern Toronto, not just a limited 17 kilometres of Finch but 42 kilometres beginning from Woodbine Racetrack to Scarborough City Centre. If the pricetag of one limted scope light-rail line can afford us all of that, which is infinitely better? Does the fact that local buses cannot drive on rails but can utilize the shared bus lanes of BRT ROWs not further sweeten the deal? Has the City of Ottawa not demonstrated that Transit Oriented Development can occur just as readily alongside a BRT corridor as would a LRT corridor? No Tdot, to answer your question, there is no justification for Sheppard West subway let alone extending it westward across Finch. That makes less sense than the RHC extension. The days of meanderingly long subways are far past this city. This is why I fear for Eglinton and the DRL, and why subways-to-the-suburbs is such a touchy subject. No sense creating a high-capacity line to suburban town centres to attract and feed more and more suburbanites into the downtown core then subject all those people, not to mention local residents to substandard waits in the cold for go-slow streetcars just in order to get east-west across town. Why the TTC wants to unleash such mediocrity upon the entire city defies logic.

Very good points. A couple things though:

1) The BRT system in Ottawa has proven that true BRT does work. If it is grade-separated, in can handle some pretty decent loads, especially in suburbs. I personally think that this should be the mode of choice for suburban transit. Stop the subway where it makes sense to stop it, and have a series of BRT lines extending out from it (similar to what VIVA has done at Finch, only the terminus of the Yonge line should be further north, a similar setup will likely be established at RHC).

The Finch hydro corridor does have merits. However, I don't see that and the FWLRT as mutually exclusive projects. They could potentially operate like an express-local subway would.

2) While I agree that there is nothing west of Downview along Sheppard that requires a subway, I would argue that the connection between Yonge and Downsview is definetly needed. The main reason being network connectivity. People will be less inclined to transfer to the Spadina line if it requires a BRT connection to do it. Because let's face it, the Spadina line will always be 2nd place to the Yonge line for N-S travel. Yes, there are some pretty decent trp generators along that route, with the potential for more. If the Spadina subway wasn't there, would that stretch of Sheppard West warrant a subway? Probably not. But it is there, and for the sake of network connectivity, we need to finish it.

 

[Tdot_one]

Oh for Pete's sake, these hairbrained schemes are getting out of hand. I don't know why I'm getting so much flak for my high-concept Finch/F.H.C. busway proposal then have to hear of and entertain multibillion dollar subway projects into deep suburbia done for no other reason than to connect the dots and make the subway map look "world-class". It cannot be for the sake of density nor trip-generation because Jane-Sheppard, Keele-Sheppard and whatever "nodes" you feel exist along Finch that will not already be intercepted by higher-order, do not have anywhere near the numbers needed to justify the expense. FWLRT at rush-hour peak will only see 2800 pphpd. Off-peak it will be far less. Riders of north-south bus feeders have greater incentive to stay on the bus til Eglinton subway than transfer onto a glorified road-median streetcar. The 36 bus today only moves an average of 78 persons per hour per kilometre.

The reality is that it should be Bus Rapid Transit traversing all the way across northern Toronto, not just a limited 17 kilometres of Finch but 42 kilometres beginning from Woodbine Racetrack to Scarborough City Centre. If the pricetag of one limted scope light-rail line can afford us all of that, which is infinitely better? Does the fact that local buses cannot drive on rails but can utilize the shared bus lanes of BRT ROWs not further sweeten the deal? Has the City of Ottawa not demonstrated that Transit Oriented Development can occur just as readily alongside a BRT corridor as would a LRT corridor? No Tdot, to answer your question, there is no justification for Sheppard West subway let alone extending it westward across Finch. That makes less sense than the RHC extension. The days of meanderingly long subways are far past this city. This is why I fear for Eglinton and the DRL, and why subways-to-the-suburbs is such a touchy subject. No sense creating a high-capacity line to suburban town centres to attract and feed more and more suburbanites into the downtown core then subject all those people, not to mention local residents to substandard waits in the cold for go-slow streetcars just in order to get east-west across town. Why the TTC wants to unleash such mediocrity upon the entire city defies logic.

If the aim was providing a link to downtown, the GO would be more effective. That's pretty obvious, and rather the aim is to provide more local transportation outside the downtown-centric paradigm.

 

[drum118]

Take the subway west at this point is to connect to the Spadina line as a Y-tee allowing for every other train to either go south or north on the Spadina line.

It becomes part of a network, but most of all, help to take pressure off the Yonge line and provide another faster way to the core if the Yonge line is down.

It will help to redevelop that section of the road since the Downsview airport is not an issue anymore.

TTC is still leaving the option open to build this extension to connect to the Yonge line.

At the same time, you need to provide an extension of the line to go west to get to Weston Rd and then to the airport.

I still say close the current subway and convert it to LRT as it would cost less to get service to Downsview as well be faster to do so. This way will allow ridership to increase to where a subway cost can be justify in the first place down the road.

I don't support the extension to STC as it should stay on the road in the first place.

I can say for a fact that there is nothing east Kennedy that can support a subway now or 20 years down the road. I have over 600 photo's of each street that connects with Sheppard, all the bus stops and other things from 404 to Meadowvale. Lines feeding into Sheppard does add more riders, but not enough for a subway.

As for ridership to STC. just look at the numbers for the express bus to see the numbers are not there for that extension to it.

 

[Dan416]

Take the subway west at this point is to connect to the Spadina line as a Y-tee allowing for every other train to either go south or north on the Spadina line.

It becomes part of a network, but most of all, help to take pressure off the Yonge line and provide another faster way to the core if the Yonge line is down.

It will help to redevelop that section of the road since the Downsview airport is not an issue anymore.

TTC is still leaving the option open to build this extension to connect to the Yonge line.

At the same time, you need to provide an extension of the line to go west to get to Weston Rd and then to the airport.

I still say close the current subway and convert it to LRT as it would cost less to get service to Downsview as well be faster to do so. This way will allow ridership to increase to where a subway cost can be justify in the first place down the road.

I don't support the extension to STC as it should stay on the road in the first place.

I can say for a fact that there is nothing east Kennedy that can support a subway now or 20 years down the road. I have over 600 photo's of each street that connects with Sheppard, all the bus stops and other things from 404 to Meadowvale. Lines feeding into Sheppard does add more riders, but not enough for a subway.

As for ridership to STC. just look at the numbers for the express bus to see the numbers are not there for that extension to it.

Downgrade the subway to LRT? Are you effing kidding me? Let's put the subway out of service to downgrade it, and then see how the LRT does? Yeah, lemme think about that...

Here's a better idea: how about we take the money you wanted to use for downgrading the line (estimated in the Finch West-Sheppard East BCA to be $600 million) and use it instead to make the Sheppard line slightly longer than a stump, maybe say, a branch. For $600 million, you could build what, 3 stops? Say, Consumers, Victoria Park and Agincourt. Even that'd make it more useful than it is now. On a short subway line like Sheppard, ANY extension would help to make it more relevant.

People love to bash Sheppard, but it's easy to bash a subway line that's only 6 km long and doesn't even connect anything. Connect NYC to STC and you'd suddenly have a rapid transit line worth taking!

 

[Second_in_pie]

People love to bash Sheppard, but it's easy to bash a subway line that's only 6 km long and doesn't even connect anything. Connect NYC to STC and you'd suddenly have a rapid transit line worth taking!

I agree, it's pretty illogical... like criticizing a dwarf for being bad at football, if you want to keep the short metaphor

 

[gweed123]

A little bit off-topic, but does anyone know if the TTC has ever looked at expropriating land for cut and cover, and then selling it off to developers to help finance the project? It would seem to me that that would be a logical thing to do. It would also work very well if we did one day decide to tunnel the Gardiner. The land that thing is sitting on is worth either in the high millions or maybe even a billion.

 

[Dan416]

A little bit off-topic, but does anyone know if the TTC has ever looked at expropriating land for cut and cover, and then selling it off to developers to help finance the project? It would seem to me that that would be a logical thing to do. It would also work very well if we did one day decide to tunnel the Gardiner. The land that thing is sitting on is worth either in the high millions or maybe even a billion.

I highlighted the word that the TTC would have a problem with regarding your suggestion.

 

[gweed123]

I highlighted the word that the TTC would have a problem with regarding your suggestion.

Maybe that's something we can mention in our report, perhaps a "Financing Options" section? The idea that funding has to come purely from governments and cannot come from any real estate deals is pretty narrow-visioned. I realize that a lot of the Move Toronto projects will be tunnelled and not cut and covered, so there is less potential for this, but the stations still need to be dug out, and that's where the land value would be highest anyway (theoretically). People pay huge premiums for direct subway access, so I'd imagine developers would be willing to as well.

 

[Dan416]

Maybe that's something we can mention in our report, perhaps a "Financing Options" section? The idea that funding has to come purely from governments and cannot come from any real estate deals is pretty narrow-visioned. I realize that a lot of the Move Toronto projects will be tunnelled and not cut and covered, so there is less potential for this, but the stations still need to be dug out, and that's where the land value would be highest anyway (theoretically). People pay huge premiums for direct subway access, so I'd imagine developers would be willing to as well.

Ideally I would like to see this happen. But I'm sure the TTC would find some way to bungle it. But if we want the TTC to start being profitable, it should definitely pursue developing real estate along its lines, because any development along the subway would help make the subway more used.