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Transit City Plan

Which transit plan do you prefer?

  • Transit City

    Votes: 95 79.2%
  • Ford City

    Votes: 25 20.8%

  • Total voters
    120
That's because on Hurontario, LRT is being built where it makes sense and where no rapid transit already exists. Preempting the Sheppard subway and inexplicably accelerating the process ahead of Eglinton is a short-sighted, partisan, petty poke in the eye to Lastman.

The projected 100,000 daily of Hurontario LRT is around the number that Bloor was pulling in before it was converted to subway. Knowing that, it's stupid to see people praising this one project and the same people criticizing the same project on Sheppard for not being able to meet future needs. Urban growth centre!

With Sheppard, we need to cut our losses admit the subway was a huge mistake and just convert the rest eventually as we will not see subway demand for several generations, if ever.
 
With Sheppard, we need to cut our losses admit the subway was a huge mistake and just convert the rest eventually as we will not see subway demand for several generations, if ever.

Converting the Sheppard Subway to an LRT will never happen. It's a subway...it's here...move on!
 
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Converting the Sheppard Subway to an LRT will never happen. It's a subway...it's here...move on!
What if we got smart and ordered high-floor LRT vehicles, and then built high-floor platform with wheelchair ramsp, and designed the whole thing so that it was all compatible?
 
I thought this might be of interest:



Dear Residents;

Over the past week, I have received thousands of emails in support of Transit City. I am in the process of replying to each of those letters, but in the meantime I wanted to be sure that you know where I stand on this important programme.

I have always supported Transit City and continue to believe that it is the best opportunity to provide a mass transit network to the City of Toronto. It is not simply the best we can do under the circumstances; it’s the right thing to do period.

As a municipal project, much more than just transportation needs are addressed by Transit City. The programme delivers train service to virtually every corner of the city while providing opportunities for economic, social and cultural renewal to some of Toronto's most distressed neighbourhoods.

Transit City provides cheap, efficient and environmentally sound transportation to the city’s priority neighbourhoods. These are communities that are struggling under the weight of poor housing, social isolation and diminished economic opportunity. Transit City delivers connectivity and affluence to these areas. With the introduction of Transit City, land values go up and create platforms for revitalization of the housing stock which will bring jobs and economic opportunity to the commercial properties in the area. New tax revenue flows from this investment. City-owned lands increase in value and public investments in local social infrastructure like schools, libraries, community health centres and recreation centres suddenly become more sustainable.

The innovative Tower Renewal Project relies on land values being inflated by proximity to transit. Open fields and abandoned industrial land, like the properties around the Woodbine racetrack, are brought to market with an investment and service like Transit City. Other city projects like the revitalization of the Yonge-Eglinton bus bays also benefit by becoming major transit nodes. Without the additional lines that Transit City provides, these projects will fail to deliver the economic and social benefits first predicted. The city will be left poorer as a result.

Cancelling Transit City will also cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and unneeded studies and Environmental Assessments. Additionally, despite the expenditures the city is left with the status quo. The status quo is a woefully deficient transportation system. According to the Board of Trade gridlock is currently costing Toronto’s economy billions in lost productivity.

Replacing the transit part of the city’s approach to fighting gridlock from Light Rapid Transit (LRT) to subways will cost billions more and actually deliver less service, or at best, the same amount of transit capacity. The only thing that changes is the length of a bus ride and the station you arrive at.

Financing

The incoming Mayor has said development charges can pay for the change in strategy. Intensification was already a controversial part of the Transit City costing estimates. Suburban neighbourhoods are on record as being opposed to doubling the as-of-right heights on streets with proposed LRTs. If jumping from 3 stories to 6 stories is currently unacceptable, what will these communities say when 40 storey towers are proposed along subway routes? To pay for the increased costs for subway lines through development charges, hundreds of buildings in this scale would need to be built. Putting aside whether the residents in these areas could stomach this kind of intensification, can the market absorb this kind of massive infusion of new units along suburban thoroughfares?

Setting Priorities & Planning

Then there is the issue of which line to build first. Do we extend Sheppard? Do we replace the Scarborough LRT? Is it the Finch Loop? After that decision is made, there is the cost and time involved in designing a new line, re-structuring a vehicle purchase to add subways and then the timelines for acquiring property, realigning underground infrastructure, switching the tunnelling contracts and building the one or two extra stations to meet the goals of subway first and subways only as a priority. None of this includes the legal fees attached to changing the plans.

Collateral Costs

Surface transportation also offers other opportunities. Once you build a subway, adding additional stops is virtually impossible. History also shows that while surface rapid transit stretches out intensification and distributes economic benefits along routes, subways tend to generate nodal developments with little impact between stations. Additionally, the new LRTs ordered for Transit City are not a good fit for our existing downtown streetcar lines. We may well end up with massive inner city streetcars that propel service cuts to operate.

Subways also need to be fed. In the suburbs massive bus bays will need to be constructed to deliver passengers to the subway. Local density is not enough. This too will cost money or underperforming lines will drive up costs or force service cuts elsewhere.

In other words after billions of new dollars, years of delay and construction and hundreds of other impacts what we end up with is a slightly more convenient subway line for a very few people and the status quo if we are lucky for the rest.

Respect for Taxpayers?

All of this has been decided without a public debate or comprehensive analysis of the impact of a decision made by one person, alone in an office at City Hall. This is not only no way to run a rail road, it’s no way to run a city.

Some of the leadership of City Hall may have changed, but the values, needs and expectations of Toronto residents have not. I am heartened by your willingness to speak up for the kind of City you want to build with us here at City Hall. We need to work together to ensure that residents across our City understand the importance of delivering Transit City and that they join with us in this fight.

Please encourage your networks to send letters and make calls to the Mayor, Executive Committee members, TTC Commissioners and Councillors.

In the meantime I will fight to save Transit City, as a councillor, as a citizen and as a Toronto transit rider.

Sincerely,

Adam Vaughan
 
What if we got smart and ordered high-floor LRT vehicles, and then built high-floor platform with wheelchair ramsp, and designed the whole thing so that it was all compatible?

1) Another orphan fleet (although that matters less if Ford wants to eliminate as much LRT as he can).

2) Stations become more expensive to build, and have a more prominent local footprint. Safety might be an issue, too, if the platform is not fenced and gets slippery in winter.
 
The projected 100,000 daily of Hurontario LRT is around the number that Bloor was pulling in before it was converted to subway. Knowing that, it's stupid to see people praising this one project and the same people criticizing the same project on Sheppard for not being able to meet future needs. Urban growth centre!

With Sheppard, we need to cut our losses admit the subway was a huge mistake and just convert the rest eventually as we will not see subway demand for several generations, if ever.

There's nothing preventing us from building a subway on Hurontario in the future. The BCA was between BRT and LRT. A subway in Mississauga along Hurontario would have to pay for itself immediately since Mississauga is unwilling to fork over that much in operating costs. I live in Mississauga, and I just don't see it as feasible. I'd rather see the Bloor line extended to Square One than try to pull off building a Hurontario subway.

With Sheppard, the only way to really "cut our losses" is to either A) do nothing or B) finish it. Converting it to LRT is simply a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars to decrease capacity. Makes no sense. And the optics of it are political suicide. At least if you extend it, then you give people more of a reason to travel it. As is, it's too short to be very useful unless you're using that corridor anyway. But for the hypothetical Scarborough student it makes a lot of sense to take a bus to STC and then subway it along Sheppard to Downsview aka future Sheppard West and transfer there to the Spadina line and head up to York University.
 
Financing

The incoming Mayor has said development charges can pay for the change in strategy. Intensification was already a controversial part of the Transit City costing estimates. Suburban neighbourhoods are on record as being opposed to doubling the as-of-right heights on streets with proposed LRTs. If jumping from 3 stories to 6 stories is currently unacceptable, what will these communities say when 40 storey towers are proposed along subway routes? To pay for the increased costs for subway lines through development charges, hundreds of buildings in this scale would need to be built. Putting aside whether the residents in these areas could stomach this kind of intensification, can the market absorb this kind of massive infusion of new units along suburban thoroughfares?
Hmmm... This just comes off as scare mongering, and IMO is bass ackward thinking.

Heck, the Kingston Road Avenue Study just got approved in the past year... ie. under Miller's reign... which effectively changes the streetscape from 2-storey buildings to potentially 11-12 storey buildings. There was some resistance initially, but when it came right down to it... the people who were truly interested in the process agreed that such mid-rise buildings are a necessary change, and would represent a positive change to what you some of guys here would consider a suburban area. Sure, these aren't 40 storey buildings, but this area isn't even in the proposed subway or LRT area either. Now, if subway were proposed to come to our neighbourhood, I'm sure many of my neighbours would be overjoyed, even if it meant getting 40 storey buildings along the subway corridor.

Whether or not this is good for funding sources is another question, but if Adam Vaughan supports or capitulates to those who resist such relatively minor changes from 3 to 6 storey buildings, then I'd say he's completely out to lunch.

Here's what was approved by City Council, with general support from the neighbourhood.

KingstonRoadDesignGuideline.png


KingstonSouthSide.png
 
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With Sheppard, the only way to really "cut our losses" is to either A) do nothing or B) finish it.

Cutting your losses means not putting more chips in and leaving the table.

Converting it to LRT is simply a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars to decrease capacity.

Cancelling Transit City is a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars to not change capacity at all. Converting to LRT reduces unused capacity, removes a transfer, and makes line extensions cheaper. The savings of converting to LRT are realized when you make the line go further.

And the optics of it are political suicide.

During project launch, yes. But with the end result people probably would view it favourably. I think focusing on the Eglinton LRT line and leaving Sheppard alone would eliminate the political suicide on Sheppard because there would be a working example of what Sheppard might look like after LRT conversion whereas currently St.Clair is used as reference.

At least if you extend it, then you give people more of a reason to travel it.

I agree and it is cheaper to extend as an LRT.
 
^ We can debate whether subway or LRT should be built east of Don Mills. In fact, each option has its pros and cons.

However, I can't see how spending $670 million to convert the existing subway to LRT is justifiable. It only saves 2 min by eliminating a same-platform transfer.
 
I think at this point the debate should be whether or not any form of transit upgrade along Sheppard right now is a good idea vs. Eglinton and BD extension to STC. Getting all bogged down on what form Sheppard should take just misses the bigger picture.

AoD
 
I think at this point the debate should be whether or not any form of transit upgrade along Sheppard right now is a good idea vs. Eglinton and BD extension to STC. Getting all bogged down on what form Sheppard should take just misses the bigger picture.

AoD

I agree, get Eglinton and B-D to STC worked out, funded, and under construction, THEN worry about Sheppard. The only reason we're even talking about Sheppard now is because the brains behind TC inexplicably put Sheppard East at the top of the to-do list. Had it not been for that, Sheppard East would be just as overlooked as Finch West is right now.
 
I think at this point the debate should be whether or not any form of transit upgrade along Sheppard right now is a good idea vs. Eglinton and BD extension to STC. Getting all bogged down on what form Sheppard should take just misses the bigger picture.

AoD

+1

I'd give up anything on Sheppard for a BD extension and something on Eglinton anyday.
 
I agree, get Eglinton and B-D to STC worked out, funded, and under construction, THEN worry about Sheppard. The only reason we're even talking about Sheppard now is because the brains behind TC inexplicably put Sheppard East at the top of the to-do list. Had it not been for that, Sheppard East would be just as overlooked as Finch West is right now.

Might have something to do with the fact that there's already a subway line on Sheppard.
 

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