Transit City Plan

[Asterix]

And overall, I can't see a difference of $130 million coming between a completely workable transit plan, and having nothing at all. The province isn't going to let that much go to waste over what, at the end of the day, is quite a small sum of money (in the grand scheme of things). When you're talking in billions, $130 million is a rounding error.

All sounds generally reasonably plausible, although one might quibble with whether the province is really going to worry about coming up with even $130 million when they have a good cover story in blaming Ford for Toronto missing out on transit.

My fundamental problem though is that you are cutting many kms of surface Eglinton route (presumably several from the west as well as those from the east). I simply do not see the benefits to be gained by making the rest of Sheppard subway as being greater than going with the LRT plan AND getting significantly improved transit to thousands of people with access to the proposed surface parts of Eglinton.

The LRT proposals are enough to easily handle to projected demands (making extra expenses on subways 'gravy trainish') while providing much better transit speed to many more people than could be served by the same amount of spending on subways.

 

[GraphicMatt]

$130 million could easily be financed by the City and added to its debt load - it'll be interesting to see if Ford is willing to do that, though, as he seems to regard capital debt as a terrible terrible thing.

I doubt we'll see any kind of bus lanes anywhere - too war-on-car-ish.

 

[Eug]

I doubt we'll see any kind of bus lanes anywhere - too war-on-car-ish.

Several of the routes (like parts of Eglinton) already have bus lanes... in the form of HOV lanes. Making them BRT won't actually decrease available lanes during rush hour.

If he wanted to support cars better, he'd change those HOV lanes from 3+ to 2+, cuz with 3+ they almost only get used by busses in rush hour.

 

[gweed123]

$130 million could easily be financed by the City and added to its debt load - it'll be interesting to see if Ford is willing to do that, though, as he seems to regard capital debt as a terrible terrible thing.

I doubt we'll see any kind of bus lanes anywhere - too war-on-car-ish.

It would be much more palitable to do bus lanes as opposed to in-median LRT though. 1) The bus lanes can be seen as being "temporary", until higher order transit (ie a subway) is put in place (or at least that's the excuse Ford can use), and 2) It's not taking away any more space from cars than they already have. I know it logically doesn't make much sense in the scheme of things, but it's Ford we're talking about here.

Also, he could then say he killed some streetcars and replaced them with buses. Not exactly ripping up the legacy network, but something he can spin none the less.

And yes, I think $130 million could be pretty easily absorbed as well.

 

[gweed123]

Several of the routes (like parts of Eglinton) already have bus lanes... in the form of HOV lanes. Making them BRT won't actually decrease available lanes during rush hour.

If he wanted to support cars better, he'd change those HOV lanes from 3+ to 2+, cuz with 3+ they almost only get used by busses in rush hour.

Add an express route from Kennedy to Don Mills along that route, and you have an alternative that has $0 capital cost, and will be just as fast as the LRT. It's not ideal, but it'll do until more funding comes around.

 

[lafard]

$130 million could easily be financed by the City and added to its debt load - it'll be interesting to see if Ford is willing to do that, though, as he seems to regard capital debt as a terrible terrible thing.

I doubt we'll see any kind of bus lanes anywhere - too war-on-car-ish.

Don't worry, he wants to freeze property taxes so we'll easily afford this small added business cost.

I also kind of wonder if this might piss off the contractors enough to stop doing business with Toronto. You can argue about which company doesn't like half-billion dollar contracts, but at the same time, what company likes half-billion dollar contracts being pulled out from under them? Something of that size, they start ramping up and pencil it into the multiyear plans as soon as the tender is awarded and losing the contract is hugely disruptive to company operations.

Think about Bombardier: we've ordered LRVs. By now the engineering is complete, the people have all been hired, the factory floorspace found, subcontracts arranged, tooling is being put together, they might even be doing some of the early prototyping at this point with serious construction only a year or so away. Toronto comes along and says "never mind, we don't want them. We might need some subway cars in a decade or so though". Although cancellation penalties cover the costs of it, the disruption of cancelling a huge building project halfway through are enormous.

I don't know if it means the contractors will stop playing ball entirely, but it certainly means the tenders that do come in will probably be much higher than expected due to "cancellation premiums".

 

[Eug]

Add an express route from Kennedy to Don Mills along that route, and you have an alternative that has $0 capital cost, and will be just as fast as the LRT. It's not ideal, but it'll do until more funding comes around.

Yeah. While I'm not exactly overjoyed with that idea, I do think it would be a reasonable approach from Ford's perspective if he was willing to keep the Eglinton underground. BTW, wasn't the Eglinton underground LRT supposed to be built for possible subway conversion in the future anyway? This way he could keep the underground LRT and just re-emphasize for his PR showings that if necessary it could be converted to subway, even if it's quite possible that will never happen.

 

[SimonP]

Based on the Globe poll and previous statements here is a map of who would support Transit City.

19 are in favour and 14 outright opposed. There are 8 exec members who have agreed to vote with Ford on any major issue, but these include several people who've supported Transit City in the past. 3 we don't have any good information on.

 

[nfitz]

Cutting the east portion of Eglinton saved roughly $420 million.

Sheppard:
Doing a subway extension to Vic Park (assuming $310 million/km)
queue jump lanes between Vic Park and Agincourt ($7 million/intersection)
keeping the LRT ROW but running buses down it from Agincourt to Morningside ($50 million/km)
and curbside bus lanes along Neilson to Malvern, and McCowan to STC ($40 million/km)
Totaled about $940 million ($50 million less than the SELRT proposal)

That leaves $470 million to cover a $600 million funding gap to fund the B-D extension to STC over the SRT replacement and extension. In short, the plan that I have proposed has a $130 million funding gap (approximately). Given the scope of the project, if Rob Ford wants to fund this, I'm sure he could come up with $130 million from somewhere in the Capital Budget.

Did you use the money from Finch West?

Other than that, your thinking similar to me, but I was using money for Sheppard West subway and you are using it for BRT.

 

[gweed123]

Did you use the money from Finch West?

Other than that, your thinking similar to me, but I was using money for Sheppard West subway and you are using it for BRT.

No, I didn't even factor Finch West into the equation, it just complicates things too much. The costs I have there just shuffles money around between Eglinton, Sheppard, and the B-D extension.

Sheppard West is another possibility, however I think the BRT would be more useful. It would connect Malvern to STC, one of the main goals of the SLRT extension (which obviously wouldn't exist if the B-D extension were put in place instead). It would also greatly improve efficiency for all bus routes using McCowan north of STC, and all bus routes from Malvern. Not only that, it would let the TTC run a bus route from STC to Vic Park via Sheppard, pretty much duplicating the route the proposed Sheppard Subway would take (minus the McCowan part, but close enough). This would be a pretty good indicator of the amount of demand that actually exists between those two points.

EDIT: Doing BRT also keeps the rapid transit investment on the corridors they were intended to be on. The mode may change, but at least the community won't feel like they've had the rapid transit rug pulled out from under them. They may not be getting what they were promised, but at least they'll be getting something. Taking the money from Sheppard East and putting it on Sheppard West I would imagine would piss quite a few people off.

 

[nfitz]

Sheppard West is another possibility, however I think the BRT would be more useful.

I agree with you. I think a lot of things would be more useful than subways where have other options.

However Ford is looking for a subway plan - or at least grade-separated transit ... that probably doesn't involve elevated rail.

 

[gweed123]

I agree with you. I think a lot of things would be more useful than subways where have other options.

However Ford is looking for a subway plan - or at least grade-separated transit ... that probably doesn't involve elevated rail.

But it's not all about what Ford wants. Metrolinx will concede some things to him, but I really think BRT on places like Sheppard will be something they will say "we're doing regardless of what you think". They'll give him a few subways just to shut him up, but that doesn't mean Metrolinx is going to allow a subway-only plan. Nor should they. In order to keep the balancing act, if you want to upgrade some corridors, you need to downgrade others. Downgrading to BRT is less of a blow to the community than downgrading to nothing. If the corridors affected stays the same between TC and this new plan, I think it will be a success. Some will get at upgrade, some will get a downgrade, but they'll all still get something that's better than what they have now. Returning certain corridors to status quo isn't an option.

 

[kEiThZ]

@gweed and nfitz (yes I'll admit it).

Those are sensible plans. And pretty much what I would have done for Scarborough to begin with...though I would rather see the subway reach Agincourt at least.

For Scarborough, BD to STC is priority 1. This is why I don't get Ford's obsession with Sheppard. I guess something has to be done since the SELRT is already underway. But realistically, if that was canned and traded for an extension to STC, few Scarborough residents would be crying tears over the decision.

I think nfitz's vision for Eglinton will hold true....Jane to Don Mills undergournd using LRVs.

And I actually think there might well be a small chance we'll go all HRT. And some arrangement will be worked out between Metrolinx, the TTC and Bombardier on how to shuffle around LRVs and get more HRVs.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

This is why I don't get Ford's obsession with Sheppard.

It is easy to get if you put aside looking at the issue from a transit lens and consider things from a purely political perspective - it is all about not losing any existing traffic lanes to any form of mass transit - and there is nothing that sends that message out more than canning the very first line that will produce such an outcome. The code words are everywhere - ending the war on cars, transportation over transit, etc.

AoD

 

[gweed123]

@gweed and nfitz (yes I'll admit it).

Those are sensible plans. And pretty much what I would have done for Scarborough to begin with...though I would rather see the subway reach Agincourt at least.

For Scarborough, BD to STC is priority 1. This is why I don't get Ford's obsession with Sheppard. I guess something has to be done since the SELRT is already underway. But realistically, if that was canned and traded for an extension to STC, few Scarborough residents would be crying tears over the decision.

I think nfitz's vision for Eglinton will hold true....Jane to Don Mills undergournd using LRVs.

And I actually think there might well be a small chance we'll go all HRT. And some arrangement will be worked out between Metrolinx, the TTC and Bombardier on how to shuffle around LRVs and get more HRVs.

Thank you, haha. One of the things I did when I did my cost estimate for the Sheppard BRT stuff is I only did signal priority at intersections between Vic Park and Agincourt. Why? Because I figure that one of the next transit projects on the book is to do the Sheppard subway to either Agincourt or STC. No sense in spending millions to put in a ROW that will be almost useless once the subway is put underneath. I priced each intersection at around $7 million a piece, which is peanuts in the grand scheme of things, yet it'll definitely help the buses reach Vic Park faster.

And I agree that B-D to STC is priority #1 for Scarborough. Also, by putting in curbside bus lanes on McCowan, you open up the opportunity to do a borough-wide BRT network, all connecting to STC. Funnel most of the downtown-bound traffic in Scarborough to STC via BRT, and then let the subway ship them out from there. Any future BRT in Scarborough would be a relatively modest investment, and would plug into the currently proposed network pretty nicely (ex: extending the bus lanes further up McCowan to Finch).

Side question: Have the LRVs for Finch West been ordered yet? Or were they all part of the same order (for all 4 lines)?