Transit City Plan

[rbt]

The ridership isn't' as expected due to the line not being completed.

Sheppard rIdership expectations were reduced when the line was truncated. Those lower estimates were also missed; as such the RTES 2002 numbers are probably over-estimates.

 

[nfitz]

Sheppard rIdership expectations were reduced when the line was truncated. Those lower estimates were also missed; as such the RTES 2002 numbers are probably over-estimates.

I'm not aware that the Sheppard ridership for Don Mills to Yonge were under the estimate. I thought they were quite close, if not slightly (but not significantly higher). I thought we had discussed this in another thread in the last 18 months.

Do you have anything to back up this claim?

 

[ssiguy2]

As much as I don't support the SELRT and should be cancelled immediately I know this won't happen. That said another reason I don't support it is the route. What moron decided that there should be no connection to STC?
At the GO it should head southbound and then interline with the SRT route that is to be converted to LRT. Saves money, a seem less trip, uses existing station infastructure , easy transfers, and can still continue to UT Scar.
Also I get tired of people refering to the "Eglinton cross town". It is nothing of the sort. A cross town route does exactly that while Eglinton stops at Kennedy. This is made evn more obscene by the fact they want to build a new line that is only an extension but, of course, will require a transfer. It could be made a cross town if it continued east to Kingston and then hoped onto the GO rail line for 6km but that would be too easy and affordable. It would also prevent Miller's dreams of turning strip mall, big box, gas station, car lots, fast food invested Kingston into the bohemian wonderland he forsees when the LRT is eventually built.

 

[GraphicMatt]

It would have been barely treading water by 2019, even the plan that called for surface LRT said in the report that other options would need to be examined at that point, something that the "the tunnel is too expensive" crowd seem to want to ignore.

My point was that hitting the reset button doesn't mean the sky is going to fall. This whole idea of "it's TC or nothing" I think is setting up a false premise. Ottawa has gotten nearly back to the point where it was 4 years ago. Given that a lot of the studies for some of the proposed changes have already been done, that timeline can be shortened even more. Resetting certain projects would cause a 2-3 delay, at most. In the grand scheme of things, not the end of the world.

Ottawa's situation is similar in some regards, but different in others. Their timing was good, whereas right now we're relying on an Ontario government that's already cut their funding commitment in half. Give them an opening, and the rest might go too. A recessionary climate changes everything.

The biggest difference, though, is that TC is a more comprehensive plan that contains several lines. Is it really worth jeopardizing the Eglinton line, which will be huge for the city, to get a subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre? Yes, the SELRT-to-subway transfer will be an odd quirk in the system, but really so bad that we should risk losing out on the other benefits TC will bring (particularly Eglinton)?

 

[gweed123]

Ottawa's situation is similar in some regards, but different in others. Their timing was good, whereas right now we're relying on an Ontario government that's already cut their funding commitment in half. Give them an opening, and the rest might go too. A recessionary climate changes everything.

The biggest difference, though, is that TC is a more comprehensive plan that contains several lines. Is it really worth jeopardizing the Eglinton line, which will be huge for the city, to get a subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre? Yes, the SELRT-to-subway transfer will be an odd quirk in the system, but really so bad that we should risk losing out on the other benefits TC will bring (particularly Eglinton)?

I should note that the Provincial Gov'ts initial commitment to TC was very similar to what the current commitment is (~$8B). What they cut was the increase in cost from the time TC was first announced at ~$8B, to when it ballooned to ~$15B. All they did was chop the delta between the cost circa 2006 and the cost circa 2009.

It should also be noted that Ottawa's funding was officially approved AFTER the funding for TC was cut, so using the "they had better timing" excuse doesn't really work. And even with the cuts to TC, Toronto is still getting around 4x more provincial funding per citizen for transit expansion than Ottawa is.

 

[rbt]

I'm not aware that the Sheppard ridership for Don Mills to Yonge were under the estimate. I thought they were quite close, if not slightly (but not significantly higher). I thought we had discussed this in another thread in the last 18 months.

Sheppard ridership has improved and todays ridership is above the expected ridership at launch. The ~40,000 number typically trotted out as a Sheppard projection was for launch. I'm not sure I've seen a forward projection for 2011 or 2021 for the truncated Sheppard.

Since TTC purges older documents from their online repository, the only real evidence remaining is the 2004 budget requests an additional $10M subsidy for operating Sheppard which was unexpected. I don't recall if it mentions ridership though, so alternately one might assume it cost more to operate than expected.


I'm strongly in favour of building out our subway (starting with the DRL), and believe Sheppards numbers are adequate (Transit City should have been Finch East, not Sheppard, IMO) but the pro-subway crowd likes to trot out incorrect facts to back up their case which actively works against them.

If you want subway, don't under-estimate the cost because that one will bite you in the ass. Do focus on the good of the investment (show pay-back).

 

[Asterix]

Also I get tired of people refering to the "Eglinton cross town". It is nothing of the sort. A cross town route does exactly that while Eglinton stops at Kennedy.

Given there are plans to eventually extend the line to Pearson (so the westernmost border of 'town'), it looks like the line goes the vast majority of the way "across town".

This is made evn more obscene by the fact they want to build a new line that is only an extension but, of course, will require a transfer. It could be made a cross town if it continued east to Kingston and then hoped onto the GO rail line for 6km but that would be too easy and affordable.

Are you talking about the Sheppard line or the Eglinton line? And hopping aboard the GO line? Have you thought about how that would actually be implemented at all? Once again I'll point out that anyone who suggests any large scale transportation solution is "easy" just hasn't looked at the entire situation.

 

[GenerationW]

Qualified professionals.

Brilliantly vague answer. I didn't know you were working for Ford's campaign.

If you want subway, don't under-estimate the cost because that one will bite you in the ass. Do focus on the good of the investment (show pay-back).

Fair enough, but the cost of TC was also under-estimated. That's par for the course in this debate.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Also I get tired of people refering to the "Eglinton cross town". It is nothing of the sort. A cross town route does exactly that while Eglinton stops at Kennedy.

The TransitCity plan (and by extension, the TTC, Metrolinx, Toronto, etc) call it the "Eglinton Cross Town Line" are you saying we should ignore that title?

 

[Second_in_pie]

Brilliantly vague answer. I didn't know you were working for Ford's campaign.

Fair enough, but the cost of TC was also under-estimated. That's par for the course in this debate.

And I think it's been discussed more than enough the ways of lowering subway costs to a more reasonable number than $300 million/km.

 

[Dan416]

As much as I don't support the SELRT and should be cancelled immediately I know this won't happen. That said another reason I don't support it is the route. What moron decided that there should be no connection to STC?

I consider the fact that the Sheppard East LRT stays on Sheppard and doesn't dip down to STC a good thing in light of making the subway not overly redundant should it ever get built.

Think about what would happen when Sheppard was finished to STC. If the SELRT had gone from Don Mills to STC, the whole thing would be redundant, i.e. useless.

With the SELRT as its being built now, the subway would take the tunnelled portion to Consumers and the only redundant part is from Consumers to Agincourt or wherever the subway leaves Sheppard Ave.

I still think the Sheppard East LRT is very low on the priority list (I agree with the poster who said Finch East would have been better).

But my point is that SELRT is not a total loss, and doesn't completely preclude the Sheppard Subway completion (ultimately).

In the short- to mid-term, yes, no politician will want to give more funding to the Sheppard East Subway because we just built the SELRT. But in the meantime, it'll build ridership and TOD.

Subway-wise, we should focus on the DRL and Danforth to STC for now.

 

[nfitz]

Brilliantly vague answer. I didn't know you were working for Ford's campaign.

It wasn't a vague answer; it was a response I figured would go over your head; it appears I was correct.

 

[nfitz]

Subway-wise, we should focus on the DRL and Danforth to STC for now.

Both of the mayoral candidates still in the run have proposed extending the Sheppard subway to Sheppard/Dufferin (or whatever Downsview/Sheppard West station will be called by then). And the front-runner has also proposed extending to Sherway Gardens.

The former has some merit ... as it's only 4 km and there doesn't seem much point in building LRT along Sheppard East. it also provides some excellent network interconnectivity, and could alow them to move trains at Wilson yards to the Yonge line, saving them having to build a new yard in Richmond Hill.

The latter ... I just don't see how the passenger demand justifies anything past East Mall ... and even that stop provides a lot more service to Mississauga than anything else ...

 

[ssiguy2]

The TransitCity plan (and by extension, the TTC, Metrolinx, Toronto, etc) call it the "Eglinton Cross Town Line" are you saying we should ignore that title?

Yes, at least for now.
Call it the Eglinton Line has case closed but a "cross town" route means it goes across town such as Pearson to UT Scar. Not serving one third of the route means it is not cross town and neither will it be if they build a different Kingston Line. One line, no transfers and then great but if not it's just another route. The lone GO rail ROW has more than enough room for Lrt or subway extension of BD line and could get to UTScar relatively inexpensively. Actually that's only in other cities. Toronto and City Hall would demand it be tunnelled like all of it's other suburban routes.

 

[CapitalSeven]

So, nothing can be called "cross-town" unless it goes all the way across a town. Do we have to rename the Circle Line in London because it isn't round? How about Circular Road in St. John's, because it's straight? Or does the canon of arbitrary and stupid linguistic injuctions limit itself to toronto?