Toronto Lower Don Lands Redevelopment | ?m | ?s | Waterfront Toronto

A bit more info from the WT FARM Committee coming up this week:

Area of concern Port Lands Flood Protection project:

Concern relates to the Port Lands Flood Protection project due to realized budget and schedule risks (including utility approvals and installations) that are beyond WTs control, which have deferred substantial completion of project from March 2024 to Dec 2024 and placed budget pressures beyond available contingency.
Refer Items 7 and 14 for further details. (ON CLOSED AGENDA.)

New project on east side of Don For Approval. Broadview Eastern Flood Protection Project (BEFP)

Capital Approval provided for management to confirm the delivery & construction management approaches for the project. This report describes the BEFP project, management’s analysis of potential contracting methodologies and management’s recommendation of the contracting methodology best suited for implementation of the project.

BEFP is enabling infrastructure required to allow for occupancy of the proposed East Harbour development and replaces the Eastern Avenue Grading works proposed in Port Lands Flood Protection Project (PLFP).

The scope for this project includes removal and reinstatement of utilities, implementation of the north and south portions of the Flood Protection Landform (FPL), regrading of the land in the eastern part of the existing BMW dealership and connection to the north and south landform segments and demolition of the Old Eastern Avenue bridge.
BEFP involves significant work on private lands and there are several key adjacent projects with similar delivery timelines including the Metrolinx Ontario Line and East Harbour Transit Hub, City of Toronto’s future Broadview Extension, Coxwell bypass and Eastern Ave bridge rehabilitation and Cadillac Fairview’s East Harbour precinct.

BEFP construction is anticipated to commence in Fall 2023.

The Broadview Eastern Flood Protection Project (BEFP) is a joint City of Toronto, TRCA and Waterfront Toronto project that is intended to address riverine flood vulnerability to 8 hectares of urban land just east of the Don River, south of Eastern Avenue and north of the Metrolinx railway embankment.
• This area is currently subject to the Lower Don Special Policy Area (SPA) which limits new development. Flood protection is necessary to lift this SPA and support key projects such as Metrolinx’s East Harbour Transit Hub, Ontario Line, City of Toronto’s Broadview Extension as well the Cadillac Fairview’s East Harbour Transit Oriented Community.
• The proposed flood protection solution is a Flood Protection Landform (FPL) which is a non-structural earthen landform that provides flood protection by permanently changing the topography of an area to replicate the function of a containing valley system.
• The project area is currently a combination of public and private lands with a significant portion of the FPL proposed on the existing private BMW dealership lands.
 
hawc said:
Where the streetcar goes, prosperity follows. Kind of like how the railways helped conquer the west back in the 1800s! This is great news.
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Not sure the word ’conquer’ resonates with all, but the concept of rapid transit leading to growth (and larger levels of economic activity) is sound.
 
One has to be second guessing one's words these days doesn't one?

Meanwhile I'm also very pleased to hear about the streetcar line around the future Villiers island. What about all the way to Cherry beach and along Commisioners to Leslie? I suppose that's decades away!
 
LUVIT! said:
One has to be second guessing one's words these days doesn't one?

Meanwhile I'm also very pleased to hear about the streetcar line around the future Villiers island. What about all the way to Cherry beach and along Commisioners to Leslie? I suppose that's decades away!
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There has been lots of discussion of this around here but the answer is 'yes' - decades away. The eventual aim is to create a second link to Leslie Barns along Commissioners as they are currently quite easily 'isolated' but this involves another bridge over the (new) Don. See this, for example, from WT and look at the QQE LRT Thread

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15-minute neighbourhoods are better off with streetcars and light-rail (on their own right-of-ways).

See link.

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Better transit when people are less to commute to work than using a subway or GO trains.


We must urgently reinvent public transit for the postpandemic world​

With work-from-home here to stay, the entire model of moving people around needs to be rebuilt. Wholesale service reductions are not the solution

From link.

Andy Byford
Contributed to The Globe and Mail

Andy Byford is the former head of Transport for London, New York City Transit and the Toronto Transit Commission.

Throughout the vast majority of my 33 years in public transit, one of the biggest challenges facing my various employers has been how to match insufficient capacity to ever-growing demand.

In my work for transit authorities in Sydney, Toronto and New York, one of our biggest headaches was figuring out how to squeeze ever more people into networks that were limited by fleet size and line capacity during ever-widening peak periods. Off-peak and weekend travel were also booming, fuelled by increasing urbanization, improvements in product offering and a shift away from the private car in an increasingly environmentally conscious world.

This transit renaissance developed over many years, with cities such as London and New York carrying record numbers of riders, enabling them to rely heavily on fare revenue to cover day-to-day expenses. Transport for London (TfL), more specifically the London Underground, was virtually at the point of break-even back in the halcyon days of 2019, a remarkable achievement born of booming ridership, tight cost control and targeted system expansion.

In both Toronto and New York, my focus was on enhancements to system capability across the various modes. Our plans included upgrades to signalling systems to enable trains to run closer together (thereby increasing the number of trains that could be run each hour), procurement of larger vehicles, expansion of vehicle-storage facilities and progressive (and expensive) enlargement of customer facilities such as subway stations, all designed to accommodate what seemed to be a limitless pipeline of new customers. Business cases were compelling and political support was (largely) forthcoming; we’d never had it so good.
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Go to the link for the complete article.

And then came COVID-19.

Almost overnight, ridership collapsed as agencies scrambled to implement government directives to restrict transit usage to key workers, and customers stayed home to avoid perceived or actual infection risk.

London’s tube ridership dipped to levels not seen since Victorian times, a situation mirrored on the capital’s previously clogged streets and bridges. The financial impact was calamitous, as the risks of an overreliance on fare revenue became horribly apparent. Where most transit agencies enjoy a fare-box recovery ratio of around 40 per cent to 50 per cent (meaning the proportion of fares paid by riders compared with other sources of funding, such as subsidies), London was exposed to the tune of 72 per cent. That can work in good times, but the pandemic brought realization that such a model cannot withstand a major prolonged economic hit.

The previous challenge of how to match insufficient capacity with excess demand was reversed. Where marketing efforts previously tried to encourage ridership outside the peak, campaigns now need to win riders back. In London, Toronto and New York, ridership is recovering as the pandemic and its associated restrictions recede, but there is still a major shortfall from the previous norm – and some evidence suggests patronage will never get back to its previous highs. The work-from-home genie is proving hard to force back into its bottle.

This all comes at huge cost. One of my main priorities as commissioner of TfL was to secure government support to keep the organization going while we worked on changing the funding model to one that reflected the new reality and reduced exposure to future economic shocks. We successfully secured £6-billion ($9.6-billion) in funding through arduous negotiation with central government, but it came with conditions that honed in on costs and commitment to structural reform. It was never easy to persuade government to support transit, but that job became exponentially harder.
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Paywall free version : https://archive.is/fezFZ
 
jsmith77 said:
They removed all the scaffolding from this guy… time to move it over for the streetcar pass-through.View attachment 457411View attachment 457412
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Good to see that Metrolinx finally finished re-roofing this old 'signal box' - of course the next thing is that it needs to be moved several hundred meters east to allow for the extension of the Cherry Street streetcar line.

They also finished the equivalent shed at Scott. Shown in this photo by @Mburrrr at post 2016 on https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threa...lacement-track-upgrades-zeidler.3222/page-135

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The massive Lower Don Lands redevelopment project was still a pipe dream when we moved into the Distillery in 2014. We are lucky to have a view from within our unit and balcony to witness the incredible progress and transformation being made here, especially the creation of Villiers Island, renaturalization of the Don River mouth and addition of the sleek new bridges. A higher unit would have afforded us a better view, but still not bad. Unfortunately the eyesore that is the elevated Gardiner Expressway East is here to stay.

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City Planning has announced their 2023 Work Plan. Included are two items we have often spoken of here: See: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/ph/bgrd/backgroundfile-234510.pdf

  • Removal of Harbour Lead Line and Keating Rail Yard - Update
  • Waterfront East LRT Business Case

As Metrolinx has 'severed' the rail line from their main line, and as far as I know, the rebuilding of Lake Shore Blvd East is proceeding without space for it, I am not quite sure what discussions can be had on it except to say it is 'gone'.

On the Waterfront East LRT I would have thought the business case had been made over a decade ago and has only got stronger.
 
DSC said:
There has been lots of discussion of this around here but the answer is 'yes' - decades away. The eventual aim is to create a second link to Leslie Barns along Commissioners as they are currently quite easily 'isolated' but this involves another bridge over the (new) Don. See this, for example, from WT and look at the QQE LRT Thread

View attachment 457385
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in this diagram it looks like the Cherry streetcar travels north of King to Queen (along Sumach). is this accurate?
 
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