I decided today to look at the Metro Toronto/TTC's Summary Report from 1985 for the Eglinton West subway at my university library today. It had some interesting conclusions.
- First of, ridership. Projected at
7,100 peak hour direction heading westbound to Spadina at opening-day in 1991, and 9,300 by 2011 (if expanded to Mississauga City Centre). We always hear that these reports overinflated the subway numbers for Eglinton and Sheppard because the plan at the time desired and wanted to justify subways. However, from reading this report it is quite clear that Metro Toronto quite clearly
did not favor the Eglinton Subway as it ran contrary to their "Central Plan" at the time. The Central Plan was to spread employment out to the suburbs and they found that the Eglinton Subway would center employment in Central Toronto. As such, Toronto, Scarborough, North York, East York and Etobicoke were all against the Eglinton Subway while only York favored it.
Further, they predicted very low redevelopment potential for the Eglinton corridor. Which is obviously not what has happened the past 30 years, and is contrary to our present Avenues plan. So what does this all mean for our Crosstown? Obviously ridership projections back then used outdated and outmoded projection formula, but it fuels my suspicion that we will exceed opening day projections.
- An example of those outmoded projection formula is the reasoning for building an Eglinton subway west of Spadina as opposed to east of Spadina. They believed that it would relieve the Bloor-Danforth line, which they projected to be over-capacity west of Spadina by year 2000. Their reasoning being that Eglinton would absorb N-S bus routes. The bus routes in that part of town don't really work that way so I don't know why they thought it would provide Bloor-Danforth with relief. Additionally, they projected that an Eglinton subway (and Sheppard/Finch) would have negligible impact on the Yonge-University-Spadina line, haha right...
- Thirdly, and I believe this is commonly known, the Richview corridor was expected to be used as an at-grade subway corridor for Eglinton West expansion. They certainly believed it was wide enough back then to a subway, so why not an LRT?
If Harris did not bury it, I actually don't think that the Eglinton subway would have been that bad. It would have been inexpensively and easily expandable to the airport using the at-grade Richview corridor, and we would likely have built it out to Don Mills in the east under the Lastman or Miller eras. Obviously a subway would have made expansion to Scarborough prohibitively expensive, however that just justifies building the SLRT and the Scarborough-Malvern LRT all much more. (Interline both of them at Eglinton-Kennedy, send them both to Don Mills)
But, I think the Crosstown is marvelous nonetheless.