Transit City Plan

[gweed123]

I think we need to clarify the poll numbers here. This is according to Toronto Star on the figures.

When asked to pick between Subways and Light Rail:
55% favor Subway
40% favor Light Rail

When asked between Subways only, Grade Separated Light Rail, and Transit City Light Rail:
~50% favor grade separated Light Rail
32% favor the original Transit City Light Rail
15% favor Subways only

So the findings from this poll show the majority of Torontonians don't necessarily care what vehicles (subway or light rail vehicles) are being used as long as it is grade separated rapid transit - that's not the vision that Transit City outlines.

So yeah, basically the fact that it's in a tunnel matters more than what will be driving through the tunnel. This poll is good news for the trunk portion of Eglinton, but it's bad news for pretty much every other part of Transit City. I wonder if this study will cause even more of a push to make Eglinton East grade-separated, and connect it with the SLRT.

In any case, it's quite clear from this poll that the majority of people do not want in-median LRT.

 

[k10ery]

Rich Gilbert in the star

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/925600--cost-of-transit-city-seems-way-out-of-line


But isn't he comparing TC's budget including LRVs to other projects' costs without the vehicles?

 

[k10ery]

It was a poll conducted via an online panel by a reputable Market Research and Polling firm. Most pollsters are conducting at least some of their research online now.

It's not like it was a publicly-facing poll on some website somewhere - there's no reason to doubt the methodology here.

That's true. They weight the responses by Census demographic weights to try to make it representative of the population. (These are the weights that won't exist beginning in 2011. Thanks Mr. Harper!)

But it's hard to reweight for the fact that these people are sophisticated enough to have a web presence to begin with. Notice, for example, the "don't know" percentages are very low here. It's a controversial approach among polling experts.

Traditional telephone polls have the opposite problem these days - young professionals who don't have landlines, or who aren't home at dinnertime very often.

 

[gweed123]

Rich Gilbert in the star

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/925600--cost-of-transit-city-seems-way-out-of-line


But isn't he comparing TC's budget including LRVs to other projects' costs without the vehicles?

Yes, but the fact still remains: even compared to other cities, TC is costing way more per km than it should.

 

[Asterix]

Rich Gilbert in the star

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/925600--cost-of-transit-city-seems-way-out-of-line


But isn't he comparing TC's budget including LRVs to other projects' costs without the vehicles?

Plus:

"How does that compare with the cost of a proper subway? Consider the ongoing addition to Toronto’s subway system: the extension of the Spadina line. Trying as far as possible to compare apples with apples by factoring in shares of vehicle and yard costs, and putting everything in 2010 dollars, the Spadina extension appears to be costing about $290 million per kilometre. That is well below the cost of the tunnelled part of the proposed Eglinton LRT."

Do you think he's accounted for the fact that the Spadina extension is going up through low level industrial or even empty land whereas the Eglinton tunnel is dealing with significant existing man-made infrastructure, to say nothing of having to deal with the crossing of several underground streams?

There's at least half a dozen just between Bayview and Dufferin:
http://lostrivers.ca/centralkey.htm (for example, the McDonalds and Bayview & Eglinton had major problems in construction with the water under its foundation.)

What does he think the cost would be to join up the station at Yonge? The LRT tunnel would have to go under the existing subway. Think that would be cheap and easy to connect up?

Contrary to his assertions, he certainly is not comparing apples to apples.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Lets leave Sheppard with nothing so the car can run wild and lets move the TC line to Finch since the western section is already on the drawing board.

At the same time, we close the existing subway since it looses $5-10 m a year and carries next to no one after 9 pm. 22,000 daily riders does not meet the threshold of a subway in the first place.

We should at least just have it run during peak hours, it serves a useful purpose then. And yea it shouldn't have been built, especially given how much of a rarity it is to get subway extensions.

An underground Eglinton line would surely add to the system especially given it's proposed underground length but adding to the system is not enough, there should be an emphasis on also adding lines that not only add to the system but also relieve the current system.

 

[GenerationW]

Lets leave Sheppard with nothing so the car can run wild and lets move the TC line to Finch since the western section is already on the drawing board.

At the same time, we close the existing subway since it looses $5-10 m a year and carries next to no one after 9 pm. 22,000 daily riders does not meet the threshold of a subway in the first place.

With $670 million of Federal money on the table that's specific to transit on Sheppard, you're dreaming.

With the suburbs being key to electing Ford, thinking there's any chance Sheppard will be closed shows you're dreaming in technicolour.

 

[Solid Snake]

Lets leave Sheppard with nothing so the car can run wild and lets move the TC line to Finch since the western section is already on the drawing board.

At the same time, we close the existing subway since it looses $5-10 m a year and carries next to no one after 9 pm. 22,000 daily riders does not meet the threshold of a subway in the first place.

How often do you use it?
How do you know it's not needed after 9pm?
Could you show me a document saying that the line is losing money because I always heard it actually made money

I will agree with you on 1 thing. The Sheppard subway should be better managed.
The line should run every 10 minutes of peak instead of 5 minutes
The line should be closed at midnight instead of 2am. The 85 bus every 15 minutes would be very fast.

Closing the entire line is absurb and it has a higher ridership than the RT and the strongest increase (Station ridership) of the whole network. Sheppard Subway is completely transforming Sheppard Avenue east and it's densifying at a very fast pace. In the long run, it's extra taxe revenue for the city. Why on earth would you want to stop that?????

You are thinking short term and expense on public transit while you should have a long term and investment vision about it. (That's the way Europeens and Asians are doing it)

Unless you believe like a LOT of people on this board that the TTC is indeed the better way...

 

[nfitz]

With $670 million of Federal money on the table that's specific to transit on Sheppard, you're dreaming.

To what are you referring? There isn't $670 million of federal money for Sheppard. The province asked for about $4 billion for The Big Move from the feds, and they only came up with $317 million ... all of which went to Sheppard, with some of that already spent on the Agincourt grade separation.

 

[drum118]

How often do you use it?
How do you know it's not needed after 9pm?
Could you show me a document saying that the line is losing money because I always heard it actually made money

I will agree with you on 1 thing. The Sheppard subway should be better managed.
The line should run every 10 minutes of peak instead of 5 minutes
The line should be closed at midnight instead of 2am. The 85 bus every 15 minutes would be very fast.

Closing the entire line is absurb and it has a higher ridership than the RT and the strongest increase (Station ridership) of the whole network. Sheppard Subway is completely transforming Sheppard Avenue east and it's densifying at a very fast pace. In the long run, it's extra taxe revenue for the city. Why on earth would you want to stop that?????

You are thinking short term and expense on public transit while you should have a long term and investment vision about it. (That's the way Europeens and Asians are doing it)

Unless you believe like a LOT of people on this board that the TTC is indeed the better way...

TTC is not the better way these days nor has been for a long time.

I ride the Sheppard line from time to time at all hours of the day as well 7 days a week to see the various type of ridership on the line. I even ride the various 85's and the 190's.

As for lost $, talk to TTC and asked them what the lost is yearly. At the same time, asked them what happen a few years ago when staff made the recommendation of closing the line 100% and who was the chair of TTC then. This was before Adam came chair.

Every transit line or plan I have looked at, is done in the long run vision, not what taking place today or 5 years down the road. Trying to plan for anything beyond 30 to 50 years is a guessing game and it could go no where.

Take a look at the BD and tell me where all this high development is after 45 years of service considering Danforth is still dead after the streetcars were remove. Same can be said for Yonge St for development.

North York Centre had to have a station built for it after the line was open and is far ahead in development than either Finch or Sheppard area. Sheppard is only starting to see redevelopment now.

Why is absurd using buses for 22,000 riders on Sheppard when Dufferin see more riders in the first place and they have to deal with buses?? I guess buses are below your level of expectation. I like riding on the surface and seeing what is going on along the route as well seeing real light that cold blank wall.

If the RT had more equipment and it work like it should, the ridership would be twice than it is now.

Tell me where all this real development is taking place on Sheppard as I 1,000's of photos of the development along this route and they only shows a few small areas??

If you got the money and willing to pay the higher taxes, then you can build all the white elephants for future generation as you will never see this development in your life time to support these elephants in the first place.

Toronto was built by streetcars, not the car or subways. Suburbs were built by cars, not transit.

There was more vision for transit back in the late 1890's to 1920 than there is today or after 1970's that would had seen more subways now in service. The vision of the BD was first proposed in 1910.

Again, why should a small section of the ridership get first class service while the major of the ridership get 3rd class service since there is no money to provide then 2th class service in the first place because of the cost to built the first class service??

 

[nfitz]

Take a look at the BD and tell me where all this high development is after 45 years of service considering Danforth is still dead after the streetcars were remove. Same can be said for Yonge St for development.

Same can be said for parts of Gerrard East. Explain that.

Tell me where all this real development is taking place on Sheppard

Are you kidding me?

Generally I agree that Sheppard isn't the place for subway, and we could have had better solutions than building the subway we did.

But creating fiction to support your case helps no one.

 

[jje1000]

Real development probably means transit-orientated development. Most of the new condos in North York are basically vertical gated communities.

 

[Dan416]

Real development probably means transit-orientated development. Most of the new condos in North York are basically vertical gated communities.

I fail to see how there's some magical line between condos going up these days and "transit-oriented development". How is what's on Sheppard now anything but transit-oriented? It's on a goddamn subway line! You don't get much more transit-oriented than that! Unless there's some definition of transit-oriented development I'm not seeing. To me, transit-oriented development is development on a transit line. Just because it's high-rise instead of low-rise doesn't mean it's not transit-oriented. If anything, low-rise (e.g. townhoses) are less transit-oriented than high-rises (condos) because townhouses tend to be more expensive than condos and consequently those people are more likely to drive a car than a condo-dweller.

 

[lafard]

The stuff on Sheppard is as much a factor of zoning as anything else. If you zone a site that's currently suburban strip malls and forward-lotted bungalows so you can build 30 storey condos, they will. Development land out there is dirt cheap relative to closer in locations; pure profit. Buyers, who out there will mostly have cars anyways, are more enticed by lower suburban prices than anything else.

If we're going to talk about transportation issues along Sheppard East, it is more important to discuss the larger, much more heavily used transportation corridor on the other side of those condos. Because that's what sells those condos.

 

[andrewpmk]

Perhaps this is because of the proximity of the 401, this highway is much more of a factor than the subway in many purchasing decisions. Note that there are a LOT of new condos in the GTA now that are near highways but nowhere near a subway line, it is pretty clear that the residents of those condos drive. Also because Sheppard used to be a suburban arterial road, there is a lot of suburban-scaled development there, so it is not as pedestrian friendly as it could be. Not this can't be improved. Sidewalks should be widened in certain areas, and there needs to be more ground level retail e.g. there is only one grocery store along the Sheppard subway (the Loblaws in the Bayview Village Mall; the Metro at Yonge/Sheppard closed recently for redevelopment though a Whole Foods is supposed to go there eventually).

Though it is interesting how many condos there are on Sheppard that are not served by the current subway line - e.g. from Allen Rd to Bathurst (some of which are quite a hike from the Downsview subway station, closer to Bathurst than Allen) and some on Sheppard Avenue East (e.g. at Kennedy Rd and a few others). While unfortunately it is pretty clear that most of the residents of these condos drive, there is clearly some speculation going on that the subway will be extended in the future to Downsview and STC, and that property values will go up as a result. One does not see much condo construction on York Mills/Wilson even though it has equally good access to the 401.