Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group

Do they plan on letting us know that tunnelling is completed? Its probably been completed over a week ago yet the website hasn't been updated.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
I question if people back then had any concept of road capacity.
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I believe that oil was at record low prices which gave driving a better advantage. Also, there was a big recession so TTC ridership was dropping for that reason as well.

It is interesting to note that in the past 30 years since subway construction has come to a virtual halt in Toronto, the Conservatives have been in power for only about 1/3 of that time.
 
Sheppard was built in that time frame, Spadina to Hwy 7 is well on the way to completion and Eglinton is in the early stages so it hasn't been a total bust. And let's not forget Eglinton was under construction when the Conservatives stopped that project the first time around.
 
BurlOak said:
I believe that oil was at record low prices which gave driving a better advantage. Also, there was a big recession so TTC ridership was dropping for that reason as well.

It is interesting to note that in the past 30 years since subway construction has come to a virtual halt in Toronto, the Conservatives have been in power for only about 1/3 of that time.
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Yeah, interesting...The NDP built Sheppard and Eglinton, which the Conservatives curtailed and killed, respectively.
Then, not only did they not build, they severely stripped the TTC's longstanding funding for both capital and operations. They spent a decade doing less than nothing.
Then the Liberals got elected and announced a $50B transit plan with $11B in the pot for starters; $18B if the federal CONSERVATIVES would chip in 33% of the total costs on their own. Of course not everything in the Liberal plan is a SUBWAY...

...but the larger point is that it's easier to destroy than to build and the 10 years the PCs reigned in Ontario did irreparable harm here. It takes 7 years to build a subway; took Harris a week to stop it. To use a simple example I've used before, Mike Harris "saved" $1B by not building Eglinton. But now we're building it. So it would have opened, what, around 2000? So, in the 20-or-so years between when it will open and it when it should have, how much was lost in jobs? In new businesses? In new construction? Tax revenue for the city from increased property values? $1B? More? Maybe.

And the federal Conservatives have been up in Ottawa the rest of the time, making a couple of crucial, but very much singular investments in subways. So, I feel on pretty safe ground saying that the damage those governments have done is disproportionate to the time they were in office.
 
Uncle Teddy said:
Sheppard was built in that time frame, Spadina to Hwy 7 is well on the way to completion and Eglinton is in the early stages so it hasn't been a total bust. And let's not forget Eglinton was under construction when the Conservatives stopped that project the first time around.
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Though, retrospectively, that was surely the right decision to cancel Eglinton. The Eglinton West subway was a poorly thought out idea, which seemed more a product of giving something to York and Etobicoke than transit planning. There's no way demand justified a subway. Given ridership subsequently collapsed, the TTC would have been stuck with the operational burden of yet another under used subway which would have drained money from everything else.
 
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