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

[rbt]

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.

Some work can carry over. A large chunk cannot.

Advances and changes in material sciences typically invalidate engineering within 10 years. Likewise, ground samples will need to be taken again as water-tables can and do change. The Business Case and EA would likely need to be done again as most of the underlying assumptions will have changed. So, within a decade nearly all work done on Finch will need a substantial refresh.

If Ford and Hudak manage to get 2 terms each, that pretty much brings us up to 2020. Assume another 3 to 4 years for refreshing rolling stock (see budgets from 2003 through 2008). It will be 2023 before a mayor gets a chance to bring it up again UNLESS the GTA suddenly gets a new revenue stream (tolls, sales tax, etc.).

That said, if the Ford brothers are serious about tackling the operating cost of the TTC they will eventually look at dramatically increasing vehicle size on busy routes. That, and the deferred (now cancelled) Finch and Sheppard means a $150M bus order and $50M garage needs to be done in a year or two -- province doesn't cover buses at the moment.

 

[freshcutgrass]

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

Yes it will...but it will be LESS than what we had on the table to begin with.

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 assume you want to just keep buses on Sheppard then, as extending it with a subway is an even bigger white elephant.

All public transit are "white elephants". The question is, are we all willing to pay the higher cost of putting subways on routes that can't be justified by ridership levels on those routes that make it less cost efficient? Toronto seems to be in this twilight zone where we want subways, but want it to cost the same as buses.

Personally, I am willing to pay the price for less cost-efficient, but better transit service, if the routes are very well executed. But running subways everywhere is simply never going to happen. Replacing carefully selected bus routes with LRT on ROWs will increase service and attract new ridership, while doing so at a much better cost efficiency than a subway.

Subways aren't just incredibly expensive to build...they are incredibly expensive to operate. Without sufficient ridership/revenue levels to keep these costs reasonable, the TTC's operational budget will skyrocket, meaning higher taxes and/or higher fares to bridge this operational gap. Nobody seems to want to pay higher taxes and increasing fares simply translate into lost ridership, which just puts the TTC into a death spiral like it had in the 90's.

And I don't understand why "cars" are even brought into the discussion....they are a moot point. Traffic congestion is made up of 99% private vehicles. Public transit vehicles are by far, the most efficient users of our shared road system...cars are the least. It doesn't matter anyway, because no matter what you do, traffic congestion of private vehicles will always find its equilibrium....take a lane away from them, or give them an extra lane...they will still end up with the same congestion levels. The ONLY way to increase efficiency of the road system, is to promote more public transit. At least that way, one mode of travel improves and can grow, bring with it increased economic activity within its catchment area. The status quo means EVERYBODY loses.

 

[nfitz]

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

Lost in all this is we lost the SRT extension from Scarborough Centre to Sheppard/Markham Road.

 

[nfitz]

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.

Your think an LRT would have been a white elephant, but building some of it as subway isn't???

This goes with your LRT isn't rapid transit, but BRT is rapid transit theory, right?

 

[M II A II R II K]

Maybe the Finch West riders can take the Spadina extension and the Sheppard West line instead.

 

[Rainforest]

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

Unfortunately, no. The Ellesmere - Midland curve can only handle Mark-I ICTS vehicles. The TTC studied both the option of upgrading to Mark-II, and the option of converting to LRT. Both designs included a rebuild of that curve.

Indeed, SRT was originally intended as a streetcar line, then changed to ICTS midway through. Some even think that elements of the design were intentionally modified to be incompatible with light rail, to reduce the likehood of conversion and protect the turf for ICTS. If that's true, the strategy backfired against ICTS (if the line could handle larger cars like Mark-II, the TTC would buy them long ago and would not even think of converting the line).

 

[syn]

I know the focus seems to be on the first phase of construction, but I'm assuming the Jane and Waterfront LRTs are history too, right?

 

[nfitz]

Both the studies are still active in theory ... though I think it's safe to assume that Jane, Don Mills, and Scarborough-Malvern are going back to the back-burner.

Waterfront West predated Transit City. It's more of a collection of upgrade projects for the current system than a large-scale project. It could be built a piece here, a piece there, with various low-key projects over the years.

 

[Rainforest]

I know the focus seems to be on the first phase of construction, but I'm assuming the Jane and Waterfront LRTs are history too, right?

Pushed back indefinitely.

Those lines were originally planned as being fully on surface. However, when the TTC started more detailed design work, they realized that a large part of Jane LRT does not fit on surface, and Waterfront West requires a short but expensive tunnel under Bremner. As a result, they never got funded.

Actually, Waterfront West LRT would be easy to do after DRL West is done.

 

[drum118]

I know the focus seems to be on the first phase of construction, but I'm assuming the Jane and Waterfront LRTs are history too, right?

At this point and before, the Western Waterfron Extension would not seen the light of day until 2020, but will be 2040 or later now. Never supported TTC plan from day one and more so since they lost the land where the new track 7 is going to go.

As for Jane, don't look for it until 2030 at the earlest, but it will remain on the books like the extension for St Clair. It has to be underground from either Wilson or Eglinton due to the road width.

 

[dowlingm]

@drum118: "more so since they lost the land where the new track 7 is going to go."
Where was this exactly?

 

[lafard]

Jane, were it built, would likely never make it south of Eglinton. In the longer term plan it probably made more sense to interline it into the Eglinton tunnel and feed into the Spadina subway rather than continue south.

Waterfront West - given that it moves pretty well even in mixed traffic between Mimico and Long Branch (though the TTC sees the width adequate for a full RoW and simply must have it) really, the biggest component there is getting it from Roncesvalles to Union Stn, and even that's fairlytrivial west of Bathurst given the amount of space available around the various corridors along Lake Shore.Further East is a bit more complicated, the original plan was to go through Cityplace and then dip underground - that's a much more expensive project.

 

[dowlingm]

Jane, were it built, would likely never make it south of Eglinton. In the longer term plan it probably made more sense to interline it into the Eglinton tunnel and feed into the Spadina subway rather than continue south

and it would have served to connect Eglinton with Finch West in case of a yard problem on either line. The problem is that Jane north of Eglinton was predicated on similar terms to Finch - take away the stripmalls and boulevards and you keep the same roadway - and that doesn't fly in Fordistan.

 

[Towered]

So, what does everyone think of the idea Ford tossed out there of the possibility of a Finch subway in 10 years?

 

[jje1000]

So, what does everyone think of the idea Ford tossed out there of the possibility of a Finch subway in 10 years?

It's like the idea of the gravy dripping out of every corner of city hall.