Toronto's and Province's New 12.4B Eglinton/SRT/Sheppard Plan

[PL1]

People in the Wizard's castle are starting to look behind the curtains. From today's Sun:

Rob Ford's Sheppard hole: Granatstein
Can the business case be made to build this subway line?
By ROB GRANATSTEIN, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR, TORONTO SUN

The man is charge of making the business case for Rob Ford’s Sheppard subway admits the plan may never come to fruition.

“While everybody is optimistic about the building of the Sheppard subway, it could still not go,†said Gordon Chong, who is entrusted by the mayor with leading Toronto Transit Consultants Limited and putting together a business case analysis for Sheppard.

“It will either be yea or nay,†Chong said in an interview this past week.

Chong said pension funds are interested in investing and he’s optimistic, but there’s a real possibility the train is never going to hit the tracks.

Mayor Rob Ford is making the right call by getting the Eglinton line going. Toronto needs another crosstown connection, it needs to get well into Scarborough and needs to bail out the near-death Scarbough RT line.

It also needs to dig west to help the horrible Eglinton West stretch that’s massively overcrowded and underserved.

This is 20 kms of much-needed underground LRT that will operate like a subway.

It will help Toronto move forward, while making use of the tunnel diggers and LRT vehicles already on order — rather than scrapping the orders and paying the penalty.

Ford deserves congratulations for cutting through red tape and making a deal, though expensive, with the province.

Sheppard, though, is a whole different pile of rails.

I love the Ford brothers’ single-minded determination and they are on the right track in a number of positions they’ve taken.

We need to get the private sector and their megabillions involved. The deficits facing the province and feds makes new billion-dollar promises unlikely.

Moving this city away from government-does-best all the time is massively important.

But dad has to know what’s best on the downside, too.

If, as Ford has said, development charges and revenues from property taxes increasing along the route are going to pay for a large part of this subway line, be prepared for density intensification that will make the new skyscraping neighbourhoods west of the dome or at Bayview and Sheppard look like small developments.

Why? It comes down to numbers. This city’s been in the middle of a massive building boom — luxury hotels, condos, condos, condos, and so much more.

Do you know what that’s brought in to city coffers?

According to City of Toronto figures, all that construction has pulled in development fees worth $85 million in 2008, $44 million in 2009, and about $90 million in 2010. That’s $219 million. For the entire city.

The price tag for the Sheppard line? To link Downsview Station to the Yonge subway line and the existing Sheppard subway, then east from Don Mills to Scarborough Town Centre, it’s $4.2 billion.

With those development charges from the past three years you’ve nailed the 0.2 of the total cost.

The hope is the feds will move their $333-million LRT commitment to Sheppard, and the Eglinton line will come $650 million under budget, which can then be transferred to the Sheppard line. That would reduce the cash needed for Sheppard to $3.2 billion.

Plus, a private sector-managed build should be more efficient. But the private sector needs to make a profit. And there’s a lot of risk involved.

How long will it take the pension funds to get their money out? Thirty years? More?

You pay a premium for that risk, too.

Will the people who live in the suburbs along Sheppard be willing to see 30-storey condos and office buildings rise from the existing strip malls by their homes? Because that’s what it will take.

If the Fords can make their plan a reality, Toronto will be changed forever. Hundreds of thousands of people will have much better access to high quality transit citywide, while our roads will not be crowded with street-level rails.

I want to be onside with Ford’s plan. I want to see it work so my kids will have a subway system that isn’t just better than the one from my childhood, but better than the one from their grandparents’ childhood — which is what we have now.

Doing the Eglinton line is a great start to making that happen.

Gordon Chong has his work cut out to determine if Sheppard should be the next piece of the puzzle.

rob.granatstein@sunmedia.ca Twitter: robedits

 

[lafard]

Wow, even the Sun is calling him out on it ... kind of.

I
Under this plan, they board the SRT, continue through Kennedy, and then transfer at either E-Y or Eglinton West. One less transfer, and fewer people transferring at B-Y, creating a marginal increase in flow through the station. Also, this now gives an opportunity for people in Scarborough to board a near-empty downtown-bound train. How? Trains will be short-turned at Glencairn, one stop north of Eglinton West. Stay on the Eglinton line a couple extra stops, and there's a 50/50 chance you'll board an empty train.

This plan removes a forced transfer at Kennedy, it removes some pressure from B-Y, and it connects rapid transit in Scarborough with the rest of the city. I'd call this a win in my books. Also, with so many people now taking the Eglinton line, it'll make the need for a DRL that extends up to Eglinton even more needed.

I still dont' think Finch should be sacrificed, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense to have it fully buried. The simple reason is that this will almost entirely divert SRT traffic off the BD. With the new trains and new signalling the biggest bottleneck on the system is Bloor-Yonge Stn and the TTC has cooked up some pretty extravagant schemes to renovate it and fix those bottlenecks. By diverting a third of the traffic off BD onto a new transfer point at Eglinton (and possibly Eg West, though I'm not sure how many would actually make that transfer) we avoid the need to renovate B-Y and in effect, this savings would cover much of the added cost of burying the line. Finch Stn is incapable of handling the reduced headways and if they can slot the extra service in at Eglinton rather than Davisville as they do now (apparently there is a pocket track just north of the station though I'm not in the area often enough to notice) then the empty-train argument holds true there as well.

It would also make the DRL a significantly less pressing issue. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

 

[freshcutgrass]

Mayor Rob Ford is making the right call by getting the Eglinton line going.

Uh...it was ALREADY "going".

All he did was STOP things from going (Finch & Sheppard LRTs).

Ford deserves congratulations for cutting through red tape and making a deal, though expensive, with the province.

How is killing two already planned, funded and started LRT lines and replacing it with an unplanned, unfunded subway line "cutting through red tape"?????????

According to City of Toronto figures, all that construction has pulled in development fees worth $85 million in 2008, $44 million in 2009, and about $90 million in 2010. That’s $219 million. For the entire city.

The price tag for the Sheppard line? To link Downsview Station to the Yonge subway line and the existing Sheppard subway, then east from Don Mills to Scarborough Town Centre, it’s $4.2 billion.

With those development charges from the past three years you’ve nailed the 0.2 of the total cost.

Yea right...as if that $219 million is just extra cash sitting around. Even if it was, it's already spoken for, as is future revenue. With a $1 billion hole in next years's budget, how can you come up with any extra capital funds to build a subway from an operational budget that's already $1 billion short? Where does one sign up for this Ford math anyway?

If the Fords can make their plan a reality, Toronto will be changed forever. Hundreds of thousands of people will have much better access to high quality transit citywide

What the Ford plan will do, is guarantee 100's of thousands of people will NOT have better access to quality transit. Transit city LRT lines would have served what was it....650,000 vs 65,000 for the Sheppard subway. And how is a Sheppard extention (already part of TC anyway) "citywide"???

while our roads will not be crowded with street-level rails.

Right...cause as we all know, removing LRT from the roads means there's no longer traffic congestion.

I think there should be minimum IQ levels before you should be allowed to write for newspapers (or tabloids in the SUN's case).

 

[W. K. Lis]

It is Rob Ford's plan, not city council's plan... yet. At the moment, he has the support of the newbies, middle-of-the-road, and conservatives on council, but the newbies haven't yet learned that they can say no. The middle-of-the-road have to hear from the residents in their ward, and act accordingly.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Mayor should put his money where his plans are


April 1st, 2011

Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...his-money-where-his-plans-are/article1966387/


.....

Where is the money going to come from? On this vital question, our businessman mayor is frighteningly vague. “Under our plan,†says Mr. Ford with his usual bland confidence, “the private sector will pay for the construction of the subway and the city will own and operate it when it is finished.†Now, doesn’t that sound grand? They pay for it, we own it! Sadly, it is more complicated than that. Behind closed doors, the mayor’s people are cooking up a plan to get private companies to build the subway in return for a slice of the higher fees and taxes that are supposed to materialize when developers flock to build condos and offices around the new subway stations. But to persuade any private firm to foot the cost of a $4-billion subway, the city will almost certainly have to make a big financial contribution of some kind.

As Mr. Ford knows well, Toronto doesn’t have $4-billion in its back pocket. In fact, the mayor’s decision to kill Transit City has left the city even more skint than before. As Thursday’s transit agreement makes crystal clear, Toronto will be forced to repay the province the tens of millions spent on wasted design work and broken contracts for the abandoned project. Glenn De Baeremaeker of Ward 38, Scarborough Centre, points out that “not one single penny†was put on the table on Thursday to pay for the subway Mr. Ford so grandly announced. Mr. De Baeremaeker said it would take the fees and taxes from at least 1,000 new 40-storey condo buildings to underwrite the cost. If Mr. Ford really thinks he can get the private sector to build a $4-billion subway, added Anthony Perruzza of Ward 8, York West, then “show me the magic beans.â€

The troubling thing is that the mayor does not even seem to grasp the risk in what he is proposing. Asked by reporters where he was going to find that $4-billion without tapping his treasured taxpayers, he repeated the words “private sector†over and over like a mantra. “I’m not quite sure where taxpayers’ money is coming in when we’re raising money from the private sector,†he said. “All the details will have to come out, but t will be built with private money.â€

.....

 

[Chuck]

With potentially large ridership increases at Sheppard and Eglinton Stations, will we be creating two additional Bloor-Yonge bottlenecks? The subway system doesn't have enough spare capacity to absorb these new riders without a new north-south trunk line.

I haven't posted in a while, so my two cents are that Eglinton is sorely needed and should indeed be grade separated for its full length. Sheppard should not be a priority right now, and the money should instead be spent on the DRL. I'd have also preferred to see LRT along Finch West and Sheppard East remain, but the underground portion of the Sheppard LRT should be built to subway standards to allow future eastward extension of the Sheppard subway.

 

[archanfel]

It is Rob Ford's plan, not city council's plan... yet. At the moment, he has the support of the newbies, middle-of-the-road, and conservatives on council, but the newbies haven't yet learned that they can say no. The middle-of-the-road have to hear from the residents in their ward, and act accordingly.

Don't you mean those people who got elected to replace the old guards? Or should we ban newbies from voting for a couple of years? People were elected for a reason. Ford never hid his hatred for the LRT, yet people voted for him. That's called democracy and I am kind of glad we have that.

Regarding to the Sun article, I thought that was what people wanted, i.e. high population density, everybody lives in energy efficient condos instead of wasteful houses and take public transit. I doubt it would happen, nor do I wish it to happen. Not everybody wants to live downtown. However, if Ford can find the money from private sources, I am not particularly against it either.

 

[archanfel]

Mayor should put his money where his plans are

The troubling thing is that the mayor does not even seem to grasp the risk in what he is proposing. Asked by reporters where he was going to find that $4-billion without tapping his treasured taxpayers, he repeated the words “private sector†over and over like a mantra. “I’m not quite sure where taxpayers’ money is coming in when we’re raising money from the private sector,†he said. “All the details will have to come out, but it will be built with private money.â€

.....

What risk? No private money, no subway. Make a business case, the private sector will invest (they invest in all kinds of weird stuff). Without a business case, it shouldn't be built.

 

[gweed123]

Wow, even the Sun is calling him out on it ... kind of.



I still dont' think Finch should be sacrificed, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense to have it fully buried. The simple reason is that this will almost entirely divert SRT traffic off the BD. With the new trains and new signalling the biggest bottleneck on the system is Bloor-Yonge Stn and the TTC has cooked up some pretty extravagant schemes to renovate it and fix those bottlenecks. By diverting a third of the traffic off BD onto a new transfer point at Eglinton (and possibly Eg West, though I'm not sure how many would actually make that transfer) we avoid the need to renovate B-Y and in effect, this savings would cover much of the added cost of burying the line. Finch Stn is incapable of handling the reduced headways and if they can slot the extra service in at Eglinton rather than Davisville as they do now (apparently there is a pocket track just north of the station though I'm not in the area often enough to notice) then the empty-train argument holds true there as well.

It would also make the DRL a significantly less pressing issue. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

I think it could really go either way. It could reduce the bottleneck at Bloor-Yonge, but if the interchange at Eglinton-Yonge isn't designed properly or designed to handle the increased loads, I really think it could be a nightmare. What I think they should do there is do the same thing that they're doing at Union (add a 2nd platform). Or go really wild and add platforms on both sides of the tracks to 3 track it (exit to the centre platform, wait on the side platforms). It's much easier to 3 platform a centre platform station than it is a side platform station.

And I think that if they really push the fact that there are empty trains waiting at Eglinton West, people will stay on Eglinton an extra couple of stops to get onto those.

One thing that I hope the TTC really takes into account is the increased projected ridership (~10,000 pphpd from the SRT section alone) now running west along Eglinton. They may need those longer LRT trains and platforms sooner than they expect. They may need to run triple or quad cars on opening to handle the demand.

And I think this will be a positive thing for the DRL. While it may reduce the pressure on Bloor-Yonge specifically, it won't reduce the number of people on YUS heading into downtown. In fact, it will make the situation worse for those getting on between Bloor and Eglinton (St. Clair specifically). That will increase the pressure on the City to build the DRL, because the number of people (and the areas) directly affected by the overcrowding will increase.

 

[agoraflaneur]

And I think this will be a positive thing for the DRL. While it may reduce the pressure on Bloor-Yonge specifically, it won't reduce the number of people on YUS heading into downtown. In fact, it will make the situation worse for those getting on between Bloor and Eglinton (St. Clair specifically). That will increase the pressure on the City to build the DRL, because the number of people (and the areas) directly affected by the overcrowding will increase.

I completely agree with this analysis. While there will be some easing of the Yonge-Bloor connection at first, ridership on the Yonge line will increase, both organically because of population growth and increased transit use, but also because of the addition of Eglinton Line riders. Now, many of these new riders may choose to go from Eglinton east to Yonge and down to Yonge-Bloor to continue west, so that could actually increase the Yonge-Bloor interchange anyway.

But regardless, the Yonge line will become too inaccessible to those living south of Eglinton. Yorkville residents may find the subways totally full every morning (as though they aren't already). My hope is the not only will this spur discussion of the DRL (in addition to the East and West side development occurring organically), but it will spur discussion of an enlarged DRL which extends up to Eglinton, forming a loop between Eglinton East/west and downtown east/west. The new line would likely continue north of the current debated locations at Bloor, up Don Mills and Dundas West/Weston/Keele.

That would be my hope, anyway.

 

[Amy Rose]

That's true. But doing so would result in being tied to a single supplier in future, when more vehicles are needed or when existing vehicles approach their end-of-life. Many manufacturers can supply LRVs, but only one makes SkyTrain-type vehicles.



LRVs would not fit, either. The point is that with a rebuild needed for either LRV or Mark-II, the latter does not bring a lot of saving.



That's a good point. It seems they want to do some elevated sections where the line crosses Black Creek, West Don, and East Don, presumably to avoid deep tunneling under the rivers. But they should consider elevated from East Don all the way to Kennedy.

You got yourself wrong. SRT was originally designed for a high speed streetcar line, or what is now known as LRT, so LRVs should handle the curve no problem

 

[freshcutgrass]

The reality is we got a semi-subway for Eglinton and both Eglinton and Sheppard are spared of surface rails for the most part. That's not a bad deal.

Your version of "reality" is a little skewed.

We LOST an entire Finch LRT line.
We LOST an LRT Sheppard extension

All we gained was an extended underground portion of the Eglinton line.

Remember, Ford's Sheppard subway extension is still fiction...not reality.

So I don't see how that is not a bad deal.

 

[Dan416]

The loss of the Finch LRT is unfortunate. The cancelling of the Sheppard East LRT is wonderful and what I've been calling for for months now. Now that would have been a white elephant.

I also dislike the linking of Eglinton and the SRT, but what can you do. Transit plans never seem to be followed through.

Really, if just Eglinton gets built that will be something at least.

 

[gweed123]

One thing that people don't quite realize, and this goes for people in Ottawa too, is that just because a plan is scrapped in favour of a different plan, doesn't mean the work on that plan suddenly becomes invalid.

The FWLRT work was not done for nothing. The plan is nearly shovel-ready, and it will continue to be nearly shovel-ready until the time comes that the funding comes around. Secure funding while at the same time doing whatever updates you need to the plan, arrange contractors, and then get shovels in the ground. That could likely be done in just over a year.

Why I mentioned Ottawa earlier is because there seems to be the same line of thinking with Ottawa's North-South LRT. Yes, it was canned in favour of an E-W line with a tunnel through downtown. But 3/4 of that line is still in Phase 1 of the City's TMP, and is currently 3rd down the list of priorities (DOTT project, western LRT extension to Baseline, and then N-S LRT). That project was literally shovel-ready. 6 months to secure funding and to update the plan, and then another 6-12 months to tender construction bids, and that thing is good to go.

I guess what I'm saying is that just because the plans were put on the shelf doesn't mean that they're instantly irrelevant. It's not like the FWLRT is the Avro Arrow, and all plans were burned or anything. In 5 years, the EA and plans may need a minor update, but that's in the timeframe of months, not years.

 

[lafard]

Yes, I suspect the planning will be used in the future. With two LRTs and the SRT extension basically ready to go, it's a matter of months to restart construction.

I don't expect any Transit City line is dead. Finch is almost certain to proceed as soon as the money becomes available, the SRT extension is perhaps lower priority but shovel ready too. Even Sheppard is likely to return in the future - if Ford's plan fails that's really the last gasp of the subway, though even then perhaps continuing east on Finch is better - but would require EAs and the politically difficult admission that the subway is a white elephant.