Sheppard Line 4 Subway Extension (Proposed)

[DB9]

It would take a lot of property expropriation. What's the point of saving a couple hundred million on the cost of tunneling and station boxes when you have to spend most of that acquiring land and removing whatever's currently on it?

The costing for SSE is working out to $500+mil per km (and still escalating), and that's only for one station. How could the total cost savings of building at grade be only a couple hundred million?

 

[OneCity]

I don't disagree with that, but then we don't know what the current real preferences of the residents are. Once presented with the choice of expediting DRL Long vs extending the Sheppard line, they might actually prefer DRL Long.

Some of the local councilors may just be playing the old song because that's the only one they know.

No one is really arguing against the DRL so it doesnt need to be pitted against another line. Its needed, plan ,fund and build it.

There is also an economic impact of the subway with investment growth and if pitted against each other I think we may find greater support for the Sheppard line in Scarborough. Its in the "backyard" and touches more voters. The DRL long mainly impacts only those that ride TTC which is far from the majority voter with the infrastructure in its current sad state so pitting relief vs. growth could have consequences. We need to plan for both inevitably.

 

[DB9]

No one is really arguing against the DRL so it doesnt need to be pitted against another line. Its needed, plan ,fund and build it.

There is also an economic impact of the subway with investment growth and if pitted against each other I think we may find greater support for the Sheppard line in Scarborough. Its in the "backyard" and touches more voters. The DRL long mainly impacts only those that ride TTC which is far from the majority voter with the infrastructure in its current sad state so pitting relief vs. growth could have consequences. We need to plan for both inevitably.

That's where I feel Scarborough residents are getting duped - the economic impact of the DRL will likely be far greater than the Sheppard Subway, if we're forced to pick one line over the other. From a regional perspective, one of the primary reasons Scarborough's growth has been depressed, is because it has terrible and slow transit/transportation connections to the region's main employment hubs - namely downtown and the airport. The DRL would at least greatly enhance Scarborough's access to one of these mega employment hubs.. as it's a diagonal trek to the heart of downtown. The shorter commute would make many parts of Scarborough more appealing, and many more professionals would consider living in Scarborough due to its relative affordability (and generally stellar public schools). This virtuous cycle would spin-off more jobs and economic growth.

The Sheppard subway on the other hand wouldn't be as consequential to the growth of Scarborough. It wouldn't really help shorten or quicken inter-regional travel. If an LRT took its place, we wouldn't really blink an eye.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

But drl long is currently in discussion which means that there is no real need to push for Sheppard extension since the majority of the lrt riders would be heading downtown not to y&s. If anything scarborough should want drl long and be fighting for a shepherd stop on the bloor extension

I don't disagree with that, but then we don't know what the current real preferences of the residents are. Once presented with the choice of expediting DRL Long vs extending the Sheppard line, they might actually prefer DRL Long.

Some of the local councilors may just be playing the old song because that's the only one they know.

If Scarborough residents and councillors were smart, they'd pridorise DRL Long over the Sheppard extension. For Financial District bound trips originating in Scarborough, the DRL will have faster trip times than any subway proposal within Scarborough. The DRL is faster even for many trips from far easterly Scarborough.

It's not hard to see why the DRL is so much fatser than any other options. Trip times from Sheppard/Don Mills to Finacial District were estimated to be only 19 minutes, because most of the DRL Long route has low station density.

In comparison, the Sheppard Subway extension would not be remotely competitive with the speeds the DRL offers. It takes 28 minutes to get from Sheppard-Yonge Station to King; this leg of the trip alone makes the Sheppard Line completely uncompetitive for Downtown-bound travel.

Likewise, the Scarborough Subway Station has to travel half of Line 2, with stops every 700 meters or so, making it uncompetitive with the DRL.

It'll take roughly 10 minutes to travel from Eglinton/Don Mills to the Financial District via DRL. This is so quick that it'll be faster for Crosstown East passengers to bypass Line 2 at Kennedy Station and take the DRL instead. From Kennedy Station, you'll be able to travel downtown in only 25 minutes (vs 35 mins today).

So the Sheppard East LRT/BRT, Crosstown East LRT and Relief Line Long is the most beneficial plan for Scarborough, in my opinion.

Finally, regardless of if Sheppard East LRT is built, I expect that the DRL Long will be the death knell for any Sheppard Subway extension proposals. The DRL will divert much of the demand for Sheppard Line trips west to Yonge, making Sheppard's already weak peak point/direction ridership numbers even more anemic. The DRL will also put an end to the Sheppard Line ending awkwardly at an arbitrary point, meaning they'll be less motivation to extend the line so it looks less awkward on the map.

 

[OneCity]

That's where I feel Scarborough residents are getting duped - the economic impact of the DRL will likely be far greater than the Sheppard Subway, if we're forced to pick one line over the other. From a regional perspective, one of the primary reasons Scarborough's growth has been depressed, is because it has terrible and slow transit/transportation connections to the region's main employment hubs - namely downtown and the airport. The DRL would at least greatly enhance Scarborough's access to one of these mega employment hubs.. as it's a diagonal trek to the heart of downtown. The shorter commute would make many parts of Scarborough more appealing, and many more professionals would consider living in Scarborough due to its relative affordability (and generally stellar public schools). This virtuous cycle would spin-off more jobs and economic growth.

The Sheppard subway on the other hand wouldn't be as consequential to the growth of Scarborough. It wouldn't really help shorten or quicken inter-regional travel. If an LRT took its place, we wouldn't really blink an eye.

Pitting these lines which serve different needs would only the show the City has leaned absolutely nothing from the past 10 years and asking for all the trouble that would follow. The DRL is needed to relieve the congestion from past growth investments. Plan, fund it an build it. No questions needed.

Scarborough is far to large, with a current crappy public transit system that is used by those that need to. So to think majority of people will care about relieving the Yonge line of asked to choose between an investment much closer to home is just asking for the trouble that will come. The economic boon of subway stops is likely a bigger priority to the majority who don't ride public transit and will be pointed out by Politicians should such a ridiculous question be put forth to Scarborough residents. No one is arguing the DRL to begin with so why open this can of worms? The question should never be put the residents as an either or. The DRL long is the priority so build it, but that doesn't alleviate the need to plan for growth and plan to well connected transit to areas like Agincourt in the near future.

So there is no excuse for pitting people against people.

 

[amnesiajune]

The costing for SSE is working out to $500+mil per km (and still escalating), and that's only for one station. How could the total cost savings of building at grade be only a couple hundred million?

I don't know the answer to this question, but I'm not going to question the work of city staff who are actual experts in this field.

 

[sixrings]

Scarborough is pitting itself against the rest of the city attempting to monopolize the few dollars we have. You were content with your scarborough town center extension for a minute. Now you're back to telling the rest of the city how under served you are and how we should all gladly pay to rights t these injustices. You must go through a lot of tissue paper while writing your make scarborough great again propoganda

 

[OneCity]

Scarborough is pitting itself against the rest of the city attempting to monopolize the few dollars we have. You were content with your scarborough town center extension for a minute. Now you're back to telling the rest of the city how under served you are and how we should all gladly pay to rights t these injustices. You must go through a lot of tissue paper while writing your make scarborough great again propoganda

Scarborough is not pitting itself against any other area. The only ones crying are those opposed to only changes from Miller flawed Transit City plan. Id argue there is propaganda still going on what has empowered the minority to think this plan was the cats ass and to keep fighting a losing battle against the people. Quite divisive, great for selling media in this City I suppose, but very counter productive in City building. I advocate for building the City together and integrated better without vile and false negative insults towards other areas. The ones who failed to try to improve the flaws in the Transit City plan really have no one to blame if they refused to take part in finding better solutions in the last decade. It wasnt a bad plan but it also wasn't that good, its obvious flaws got called out the people agreed.

The subway was the easiest solution and once Fords LRT improvement to SCC was rejected that was the door. The opposition can complain all they want but they did nothing to listen, adapt or attempt to work with the majority vote. That type of stubbornness and disrespect can only help fuel the polarizing candidates you surely don't want to see. We can extend a subway to Vaughan and to Richmond Hill Centres to the TTC with barely a peep, no local propaganda and therefore no excessive outrage in UT forums, but the idea of building a subway in a denser, heavier populated Centre of 650,000 residents in the City of Toronto, on the same technology as to what exists... well, the pitchforks came out. Continue to blame Scarborough as you surely will, to me things like this and the stubway are obvious optical problems. The one problem helped solidify the SSE and the other being the stubway will likely be the cause the Sheppard subway. Just my take

And the idea we have to pit Scarborough's future growth against the City's core relief from past investment will continue to be a really bad idea. The details matter and Transit City failed a some very important ones. Partial blame to the lack provincial funding, partial blame to many aspects of the original RT, and partial blame to the transfer locations on Sheppard. Far from propaganda. Just reality we need to do better. All you, I or other people can do is vote for whats at hand and if you need a tissue at election time again, ill be happy to provide. Again just my take. Continue to throw stones, call names and push for rejected lackluster transit projects as you please.

 

[aquateam]

City council had that conversation, asked city staff to prepare a formal comparison, and found that building the subway above ground would save less than $200 million, minus the cost of replacing the SRT with bus service for several years.

You're talking about the "Glen Murray" alignment? That's because, to switch from an east-west to north-south alignment, most of the route was tunneled anyway to meet the minimum curve radius, so only a short amount of it would be on the surface, which is why cost savings were minimal.

For Sheppard, a surface route isn't feasible, and an elevated guideway above a major road normally isn't much cheaper than tunnelling in the 21st century. When city staff looked at the possibility of a fully elevated route above Midland Road, it came in at just $116 million cheaper than tunnelling the same route. When you factor in the other costs of elevating the subway - things like lost tax revenue from lower property values, lost tax revenue from the traffic disruptions, etc. - it's not worth the tiny amount of savings.

Where did this estimate for an elevated vs tunneled midland alignment come from? That would be interesting to see.

Generally elevated alignments are much cheaper than tunneled ($125 million/ km vs $330/km is the number I've seen). For instance, the Evergreen line (opened this year, if that's 21st century enough for you) was $1.4 billion for 10.9 km, for $128 / km (although 2 km was bored tunnel and parts were at-grade, it was mostly elevated.)

The general conclusion is that elevated rail is much more cost effective, and should be considered much more often.

It's been shown that being near transit, even elevated transit, uplifts property values. And what kind of tax revenue is forgone by elevating a line? There are significant construction impacts no matter what kind of line is being constructed (at grade, bored, cut and cover) and the "costs" of congestion during construction are soft "costs" borne by the individual, not hard costs that can be monetized by the city.

Meanwhile, ridership on several surbuan bus routes was rapidly increasing and was expected to outstrip what could realistically be moved by buses. This is especially for for Eglinton Avenue and Finch Avenue West. Transit City addressed that issue. The Transit City LRT lines will collectively move more people than the Relief Line.

Being "serious about transit" in Toronto doesn't begin and end at the Relief Line. There will always be investments necessary elsewhere in the city to keep the network healthy.

That rapid increase in ridership was a direct result of the Ridership Growth Strategy that Miller established that improved bus service. I think it's important to note that the transit ridership is a direct result of offering a high quality of service, it's not a fixed demand that needs to be addressed by whatever mode is appropriate. Saying that ridership might eventually outstrip what buses could do is not true, because when people get sick of not being able to cram themselves into packed buses, they find other options and ridership will drop.

The first time I saw the Don Mills subway line proposed was around five years ago on Steve Munro's site. It seems to me that nobody at the TTC even considered that the Don Mills corridor would one day, by necessity, be home to a subway line. Even around 2011, when TTC concluded its Downtown Rapid Transit Assessment Study, they never considered a relief subway line on Don Mills. The furthest north proposal they examined brought the DRL to Eglinton.

Seemingly the only reason a Don Mills subway is being very aggressively pushed today is because of Metrolinx's stunning 2015 Yonge Relief Network Study report, which asserted that none of the relief options on the table today could handle Yonge Line demand, and that a subway on Don Mills would be necessary. Suddenly the Don Mills subway proposal went from a ridiculous fantasy to urgent necessity virtually overnight. Since then we've seen the Province and City act swiftly to amend their plans and make the necessary investments necessary to see the Don Mills subway built as quickly as possible.

A subway to Don Mills has been on the books since the early 1960s. Maybe you're just talking about the extension from Eglinton to Sheppard along Don Mills?

 

[kEiThZ]

lived in scarborough for 20 years and still visit family and friends from there. I'm not out of touch at all.

Claiming that most of these people are transplanted downtowners makes your out of touch or ignorant. Perfect example right here:

People are just pissed with their investment choices and expecting the rest of the city to pay for it.

You can decide which tag you prefer.

 

[sixrings]

So I guess downtowners when they moved to the burbs moved everywhere but scarborough. Those downtowners aren't too dumb are they? Or maybe a smiliar percetange did move to scarborough but when they saw scarborough crumbling a good percentage of them were bright enough to move again, either back downtown or somewhere else in the gta.

 

[kEiThZ]

It's unfortunate the Sheppard stubway conversion is not championed by anyone. It is the only feasible way to make Sheppard work, even it it's a temporary annoyance for those currently living on the line.

With you on this. I totally do not understand the argument that it's a capacity downgrade. So what? That capacity isn't required. And LRT conversion enables through service with lots of surface running in Scarborough. I wish LRT champions would push this. It's the best way to sell LRT on this corridor in my opinion: advertise the elimination of a transfer and extension of service.

 

[kEiThZ]

So I guess downtowners when they moved to the burbs moved everywhere but scarborough.

More unsubstantiated garbage. Do you have a single stat back up your "alternate facts"? Show me an actual stat on what percentage of suburban residents use to live downtown.

 

[kEiThZ]

Scarborough is pitting itself against the rest of the city attempting to monopolize the few dollars we have.

Bullshit.

This is conflict created by artificial scarcity by politicians (of all stripes and levels) too cowardly to raise taxes. I do put a lot of blame on city councillors and the mayor. They don't want to make the hard choices.

And then you get guys like Miller who decided that the best way to win support was to find a cheap to build mode of transit and try to get a line in every ward. His alternative to having a tough discussion on raising taxes to pay for the DRL.

 

[sixrings]

You never heard of white flight? Try google