Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

[M II A II R II K]

They could build it as part of a Yonge Express line separate from the existing line. Make it a double decker train as well with the same high frequencies. Would benefit everyone and be a true relief for the Yonge Line.

 

[Rainforest]

Current riders on the Sheppard Line are being subsidizes $17.XX per rider per trip by all of us while we are only being subsidizes $1.35(?).

That $17 per ride number does not seem realistic.

We know that Yonge - University - Spadina subway is actually profitable. The average fare (with the Metropass discount for some rides) is somewhere between $2.5 and $3, and some of it must be allocated to the feeder bus trips. So, the operational cost of YUS subway can't be more than $2 per ride.

YUS carries about 16 times more riders than Sheppard subway (670,000 vs 42,000 per day), but has 6.5 times more stations (32 vs 5). Hence, the operational cost of Sheppard should be about $2 x 16 / 6.5 = $5 per ride. Obviously, the subsidy cannot exceed the operational cost.

The fare allocation for Sheppard subway may be low since it is short and many trips start on a feeder bus and / or continue on Yonge subway. Still, if the allocation is $0.5 per ride, we get a subsidy of $5 - $0.5 = $4.5 per ride.

This is still much more than average on the TTC system, but way less than $17.

 

[drum118]

That $17 per ride number does not seem realistic.

We know that Yonge - University - Spadina subway is actually profitable. The average fare (with the Metropass discount for some rides) is somewhere between $2.5 and $3, and some of it must be allocated to the feeder bus trips. So, the operational cost of YUS subway can't be more than $2 per ride.

YUS carries about 16 times more riders than Sheppard subway (670,000 vs 42,000 per day), but has 6.5 times more stations (32 vs 5). Hence, the operational cost of Sheppard should be about $2 x 16 / 6.5 = $5 per ride. Obviously, the subsidy cannot exceed the operational cost.

The fare allocation for Sheppard subway may be low since it is short and many trips start on a feeder bus and / or continue on Yonge subway. Still, if the allocation is $0.5 per ride, we get a subsidy of $5 - $0.5 = $4.5 per ride.

This is still much more than average on the TTC system, but way less than $17.

TTC Looses about $10m on the Sheppard line yearly and this has been raised at Commissioners meeting in the past with the call to mothball it. Can't do that under Ford watch. Under Miller, it was politics not to do so.

The subsidy is higher than it should be, but as long as politics get in the way, the white elephant cannot be shut down. Then TTC doesn't have the buses and driver to go back and make the line a bus route again.

 

[canarob]

I don't think any of the modelling took into account the tens of thousands of new housing units planned for Richmond Hill Centre and Langstaff in Markham. While I agree that the DRL should come first (or ideally at the same time), even Steve agrees that there is not enough detail in these models (see below, which is from the comments section).

From a York Region perspective, we can't win. If we try and build dense housing near higher-order transit (and pay for our share of capital and operating costs), we are seen as only encouraging unneeded transit projects, and if we build anything else we are accused of building more reckless sprawl. There is of course a middle ground, such as building denser communities around GO stations, but that only really helps for rush hour commuters and weekend trips downtown. For VIVA (and the rest of YRT) to work in Southern York Region, it really needs to be integrated with the subway (and possibly some of the N-S LRT projects).

Steve: I think that there are many flaws in the way the demand was modeled judging by the nonsensical results produced in some cases. We really must demand more background detail of this sort of exercise because the model outputs are used to justify all sorts of things.

 

[andrewpmk]

TTC Looses about $10m on the Sheppard line yearly and this has been raised at Commissioners meeting in the past with the call to mothball it. Can't do that under Ford watch. Under Miller, it was politics not to do so.

The subsidy is higher than it should be, but as long as politics get in the way, the white elephant cannot be shut down. Then TTC doesn't have the buses and driver to go back and make the line a bus route again.

The Sheppard subway carries more people than the SRT. You would need a huge number of shuttle buses to replace it. Closing the Sheppard subway was just an absurd proposal that lasted about a day or so under Miller. Given the huge number of new condos there and the huge traffic volumes on the 401 (almost an order of magnitude higher than the Sheppard subway) I think if you actually extended that line east and west ridership would be much higher. Of course all transit lines lose money, even the Yonge line with its costly maintenance loses money.

 

[salsa]

The Sheppard subway carries more people than the SRT. You would need a huge number of shuttle buses to replace it. I think if you actually extended that line east and west ridership would be much higher.

It also carries less riders than the Spadina streetcar, and less than 10% of the Bloor Danforth or YUS ridership. Outside of rush hour, the amount of passengers (or lack of) is so absurdly low that they can easily fit in a single bus. Extending it will not make the ridership "much higher". Throwing more money at this white elephant is the last thing anyone should be doing with our scarce transit dollars. I regularly take the 84 Sheppard West and it's hardly busy enough such that a westward extension is justified. As for the eastward extension, that's even more useless now thanks to the decision to replace the SRT with a subway that will provide a 1 seat ride to downtown.

2012 Daily Ridership:
- YUS: 734,990
- BD: 519,180
- Sheppard: 50,410
- SRT: 40,010

2012 Daily Station Usage (excluding terminal stations)
- Bayview: 9330
- Bessarion: 2080
- Leslie: 5510

Those numbers are pathetic. Please compare that to other subway stations

Given the huge number of new condos there and the huge traffic volumes on the 401 (almost an order of magnitude higher than the Sheppard subway)

There are definitely condos going up, but that hasn't translated to many more riders. I read somewhere that most of the condo dwellers choose to drive on the nearby hwy 401 rather than take the subway. It will take a lot more condos do made any substantial difference.

Of course all transit lines lose money, even the Yonge line with its costly maintenance loses money.

The Yonge line actually makes a small profit. The tiny Sheppard line costs 10 million a year in subsidies.

 

[innsertnamehere]

there is actually much more demand on the SRT corridor, its just that it is over capacity at rush hours (due to the limited capacity of 4,000PPHD) meaning only so many people can take it. I expect the sheppard subway to get even emptier once the scarborough subway opens.


Yonge extension is justified in my mind. Munro seems to really want to disprove a line that actually is justifiable, many of his arguments are grabbing at strings.

 

[BurlOak]

TTC Looses about $10m on the Sheppard line yearly and this has been raised at Commissioners meeting in the past with the call to mothball it. Can't do that under Ford watch. Under Miller, it was politics not to do so.

The subsidy is higher than it should be, but as long as politics get in the way, the white elephant cannot be shut down. Then TTC doesn't have the buses and driver to go back and make the line a bus route again.

So the subsidy is 76 cents per passenger?

$10M per year / (50,410 passengers per day x 365 day per year x 5 / 7 weekdays per week ) = 76 cents. And that assume no riders on the weekend.

 

[andrewpmk]

there is actually much more demand on the SRT corridor, its just that it is over capacity at rush hours (due to the limited capacity of 4,000PPHD) meaning only so many people can take it. I expect the sheppard subway to get even emptier once the scarborough subway opens.


Yonge extension is justified in my mind. Munro seems to really want to disprove a line that actually is justifiable, many of his arguments are grabbing at strings.

The Sheppard subway has far more development than the SRT. I think that this is the reason that the SRT has lower ridership than Sheppard. The problem is, obviously most of the condo residents are using the 401 instead of taking the subway because they work somewhere in the suburbs. A short stub line is not a useful alternative to the 401. The traffic at Bayview and Sheppard in rush hour is dreadful. Extend the line west to Mississauga and east to Scarborough and see the ridership go up by an order of magnitude.

The SRT only serves one high density area (Scarborough Centre) and goes through low density industrial areas the rest of the route. The only reason it is overcrowded is because Mark I cars are tiny. I expect that the SRT replacement subway will be pretty empty.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

The Sheppard subway carries more people than the SRT. You would need a huge number of shuttle buses to replace it. Closing the Sheppard subway was just an absurd proposal that lasted about a day or so under Miller. Given the huge number of new condos there and the huge traffic volumes on the 401 (almost an order of magnitude higher than the Sheppard subway) I think if you actually extended that line east and west ridership would be much higher. Of course all transit lines lose money, even the Yonge line with its costly maintenance loses money.

For the Sheppard Subway to be viable, jobs and population growth along the corridor will have to be several times that what we see in the downtown core. That won't be happening in our lifetimes.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

TTC Looses about $10m on the Sheppard line yearly and this has been raised at Commissioners meeting in the past with the call to mothball it. Can't do that under Ford watch. Under Miller, it was politics not to do so.

The subsidy is higher than it should be, but as long as politics get in the way, the white elephant cannot be shut down. Then TTC doesn't have the buses and driver to go back and make the line a bus route again.

I'm not sure if it makes any sense to abandon the Sheppard Subway. To replace that with an extension of the Sheppard LRT would capital expenditure of $300 Million. Assuming that the Sheppard LRT won't be a money loser, that's about 30 years for us to start gaining on that investment. I'm sure we have better ways to spend that $300 Million. And of course, a $10 Million loss is tiny compared to the $1.6 Billion TTC budget.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

http://stevemunro.ca/?p=8964


The big surprise is that there is almost no difference between the total demand with or without the Richmond Hill extension. Indeed, most changes are re-assignments of trips from GO lines and the University subway in the “reference” network to the Yonge subway in the “reference + YSE” network.

...
Why would we spend billions of dollars building a subway to Richmond Hill to carry no more total riders on the network than we do without it?

There are two obvious responses to this question:

Some of the new trips have destinations at or north of Bloor Street and therefore they do not contribute to the count of riders into the core area.
In the model’s world, the subway extension does not attract any net new trips beyond what would occur simply with better service on the subway to Finch and enhanced GO services (i.e. with the reference network).

Man...I feel like myself and others have answered this 50X on this thread but I'll try one more time to provide the obvious responses you missed.

First, and most superficially, the reason there is almost no difference right now is because most of the riders are coming from up north anyway. So, by building the subway you are taking thousands of cars and hundreds of buses per hour off of Yonge Street. Given the infrastructure, traffic and GHG impacts, that alone justifies the extension for me. to argue otherwise is to argue that there is no advantage to bringing transit closer to where its riders actually live.

I'll also add that this substantiates, for the umpteenth time, that the system will NOT be immediately overburdened if it is built before the DRL. Given that the EA is done, it is ridiculous that York Region should have to wait years for Toronto to go through the whole process of building and planning the DRL. The system can handle the minimal impacts for the few years between when Yonge and DRL are built, assuming there is an actual transit/revenue plan in place for the GTA. I guess we'll know that soon enough.

Secondly, everyone talks about ridership and capacity and totally ignores the relationship between transit and land use. The question is, "Why would we spend billions of dollars building a subway to Richmond Hill to carry no more total riders on the network than we do without it?" and the answer is that the subway terminal is a planned transit node that will house 50,000 people and 30,000 jobs. Without the subway you'll be lucky to get half of that and all the people who are still coming to Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan will go live in sprawling subdivisions etc. THAT is why you would spend billions: to stop unsustainable development in the suburbs. It seems obvious to me but it keeps coming up here every 10 pages or so.

Ignoring the connection between land use planning and high-order transit is how you get dumb plans like the Scarborough subway (which will probably do more to overload Bloor-Yonge in the short term than this extension would).

The idea that there is no business case by 2031 strikes me as absurd. The ridership is already there, they're just driving to Finch or crowding onto buses. you could maybe make an argument for LRT (not a good one, but you could make one) but BRT on Yonge up to Highway 7? That's just absurd. I'm not going to go look up the numbers now but the number of buses that cross the Yonge/Steeles border now every day is literally over 100 per hour. Thinking that moving those buses faster is a solution is just nonsensical.

Also for the 50th time, the GO line only goes to Union Station. It doesn't help people get from Thornhill to Eglinton or St. Clair or Sheppard or, indeed, anywhere else whatsoever in the GTA. What we're trying to do is build an actual, interconnected transit network and intensify development in the suburbs. Expanding GO but not the subway is just encouraging more people to live out in the sprawl and haul into downtown every day. I don't see the future in that, personally.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Man...I feel like myself and others have answered this 50X on this thread but I'll try one more time to provide the obvious responses you missed.

First, and most superficially, the reason there is almost no difference right now is because most of the riders are coming from up north anyway. So, by building the subway you are taking thousands of cars and hundreds of buses per hour off of Yonge Street. Given the infrastructure, traffic and GHG impacts, that alone justifies the extension for me. to argue otherwise is to argue that there is no advantage to bringing transit closer to where its riders actually live.

I'll also add that this substantiates, for the umpteenth time, that the system will NOT be immediately overburdened if it is built before the DRL. Given that the EA is done, it is ridiculous that York Region should have to wait years for Toronto to go through the whole process of building and planning the DRL. The system can handle the minimal impacts for the few years between when Yonge and DRL are built, assuming there is an actual transit/revenue plan in place for the GTA. I guess we'll know that soon enough.

Secondly, everyone talks about ridership and capacity and totally ignores the relationship between transit and land use. The question is, "Why would we spend billions of dollars building a subway to Richmond Hill to carry no more total riders on the network than we do without it?" and the answer is that the subway terminal is a planned transit node that will house 50,000 people and 30,000 jobs. Without the subway you'll be lucky to get half of that and all the people who are still coming to Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan will go live in sprawling subdivisions etc. THAT is why you would spend billions: to stop unsustainable development in the suburbs. It seems obvious to me but it keeps coming up here every 10 pages or so.

Ignoring the connection between land use planning and high-order transit is how you get dumb plans like the Scarborough subway (which will probably do more to overload Bloor-Yonge in the short term than this extension would).

The idea that there is no business case by 2031 strikes me as absurd. The ridership is already there, they're just driving to Finch or crowding onto buses. you could maybe make an argument for LRT (not a good one, but you could make one) but BRT on Yonge up to Highway 7? That's just absurd. I'm not going to go look up the numbers now but the number of buses that cross the Yonge/Steeles border now every day is literally over 100 per hour. Thinking that moving those buses faster is a solution is just nonsensical.

Also for the 50th time, the GO line only goes to Union Station. It doesn't help people get from Thornhill to Eglinton or St. Clair or Sheppard or, indeed, anywhere else whatsoever in the GTA. What we're trying to do is build an actual, interconnected transit network and intensify development in the suburbs. Expanding GO but not the subway is just encouraging more people to live out in the sprawl and haul into downtown every day. I don't see the future in that, personally.

That was a recent post. They just finished the modelling. The point was the TTC is incompetent. Munro already acknowledges the system wil not be overburdened. In fact, the ridership won't change that much at all, and the TTC will lose money from operating this, just like the Vaughan extension.

 

[Johnny Au]

That was a recent post. They just finished the modelling. The point was the TTC is incompetent. Munro already acknowledges the system wil not be overburdened. In fact, the ridership won't change that much at all, and the TTC will lose money from operating this, just like the Vaughan extension.

...and Vaughan, Markham, and Richmond Hill would be partially paying for both extensions.

 

[andrewpmk]

Why should we justify a subway to Yonge and Highway 7 based on hypothetical redevelopment at Highway 7 in an area that is currently big box stores, while claiming that no subway is needed on Sheppard based on claims that there will be no development? I am pretty sure there is more actual development at the eastern end of the Sheppard subway extension than there is at the giant big box development at Yonge and Highway 7. Somehow I think that the high voltage power lines at Yonge and Highway 7 make that area hard to redevelop. There is no way there will ever be 30000 jobs there but simultaneously there will be 0 square feet of new office space along Yonge between 401 and Finch, a much more desirable area.