Transit City Plan

[MetroMan]

Really? I can see lots of reasons.

1) Increased operating costs - where is the money coming from to pay for that? One councillor has already asked this.
2) Lost of rapid transit on Finch West and Sheppard east of Kennedy
3) Significant densification to residential Scarborough neighbourhoods.
4) The city would have to take on a huge amount of debt. There are other proposed subway lines that would carry much more traffic.

Agreed. If we're going to go into debt for transit, we might as well spend the money where it is needed. A DRL is far more necessary than a subway on Sheppard. Traffic demand on Sheppard can be satisfied with an LRT. Operating costs for a subway will not be justified here for decades. The first Sheppard line was already a mistake, this is just burying us deeper into the hole trying to fix the problem.

 

[MetroMan]

Double post. Double post.

 

[Voltz]

I don't think taking on debt is an idea that "won't work" as long as there is an appetite for it from the city - they can take on as much debt as they want, whether from private or from public sources.

My argument is that now that Ford has given Torontonians an option of a subway on Sheppard (without the loss of the Eglinton and Scarborough line). The optics will work out good for him. The fiscal conservatives will be silenced since they are under Ford's wings and Toronto is given the chance to have better transit and a way to pay it off.

On the bright side, the Eglinton LRT can now probably be extended since there is money freed up.

The can take on debt if it wants to, but what won't work is that the city will not get an extra $4 Billion + interest in tax revenue from sheppard east to cover that debt, and that is how this plan is supposed to work.

 

[Dan416]

If this plan results in nothing being done on Sheppard, I'm fine with that. As long Eglinton and the SRT replacement with subway go through (although it's unclear in any of these articles what happens with the SRT)

 

[MetroMan]

I think that's the likely scenario CC. Nothing happens on Sheppard after Ford's privately funded plans fall through. In the meantime, Eglinton -- the centrepiece of the Province's plan for Toronto -- gets built anyway.

Regarding SRT, if Eglinton is going to Kennedy, it's most likely that the cheapest solution will be for the SRT to become a part of the Eglinton line, not the Bloor-Danforth. If it were financially feasible to build subways, we'd be building one on Eglinton. SRT will be converted to LRT.

 

[rbt]

It will take years to repay the subway but once the cost has been paid, the city keeps the ongoing revenue.

You realize there is no "paid off". Maintenance costs for the Yonge/University line are in the hundreds of millions per year.

Once that initial investment is paid off, get prepared to write even bigger cheques to replace tunnel liners, redo the signalling, rebuild decaying platforms, reseal the parts water is leaking through, rebuild the ventilation, etc. Many of those things will begin within the first 5 years and get into full swing within 25 years.

 

[nfitz]

If this plan succeeds,

-Sheppard gets built
-Eglinton will most likely be FULLY ROW
-Finch LRT might happen

According to the Globe's article this afternoon (which seems to become more detailed as time passes) the Finch LRT will not happen, and instead there will be enhanced bus service. Eglinton would be underground for "almost the entire route between Jane Street and Kennedy station" - hard to say what that really means.

Better than Transit City by far.

Given that the revised plan is priced at $13 billion compared to about $8 billion for the earlier plan, and yet provides far less transit to far fewer people ... and will increase operating costs - I'm not sure how under any criteria it could be considered better.

Seems to me that instead of building the transit we need, we are building some elite gravy train instead.

 

[superman]

Really? I can see lots of reasons.

1) Increased operating costs - where is the money coming from to pay for that? One councillor has already asked this.
2) Lost of rapid transit on Finch West and Sheppard east of Kennedy
3) Significant densification to residential Scarborough neighbourhoods.
4) The city would have to take on a huge amount of debt. There are other proposed subway lines that would carry much more traffic.

I'm looking at this from a political options perspective. This new transit plan will bring more kilometers to the subway system (including the grade separated LRTs in this term) since the 70s.

Yes, it will bring on cost and debt, but looking at it politically - all the fiscal hawks are on Ford's side anyway and would probably keep quiet. Also, I think Torontonians do feel that we are underinvesting in rapid transit and will be more willing to make this investment.

The only real opposition I can see is to the plan that may have some effect on the debate, as you said, would be that people on Finch West and Sheppard East of Kennedy will be losing their at-grade LRT. However, I don't know how strong this opposition will be. It really depends if Finch West gets a BRT system or not.

---

From a transit perspective:
- We are now getting more underground/elevated transit expansion than we did in many decades
- The Eglinton line being fully separated and interlined with the SRT will probably help easy congestion on BD and Bloor-Yonge station, and it will save SRT riders a transfer
- The Sheppard subway will be completed as per the original vision before Miller scrapped it
- The Eglinton West subway will be finally built as per plan
- The Scarbroough line is going to get more capacity (although this was in the TC plan anyway)
- We will now have 3 east-west subway lines (Sheppard, Eglinton, Bloor-Danforth), added to the 3 north south lines (Spadina, Yonge, Scrarbrough)

With the DRL study coming out this year... and the chance for the Sheppard and Eglinton subways to be built out now - maybe 2011 is the year that Network 2011 will finally be built.

 

[reaperexpress]

This morning on Metro Morning on CBC, Doug Ford claimed that the Sheppard Extension would reduce the trip time from northeastern Scarborough to downtown from 2 hours currently, to 30 minutes.

I was surprised that Matt Galloway didn't call him on many of the things that he said that were either false or misleading. For example, Ford was giving the impression that private companies would just give away 4 billion dollars for the sake of helping Toronto, and didn't answer the question of how they will benefit from doing so.

One questions that popped into my head while listening is this: If we want to decrease commute time from Scarborough to Downtown, why don't we build a subway line from, you know, Scarborough to Downtown? The DRL, built from downtown to Sheppard/Don Mills would do this while actually benefiting the entire city, as well as Markham and Richmond Hill, unlike the Sheppard Extension which would only benefit a small portion of Sheppard.

 

[Asterix]

This morning on Metro Morning on CBC, Doug Ford claimed that the Sheppard Extension would reduce the trip time from northeastern Scarborough to downtown from 2 hours currently, to 30 minutes.

Worth noting (yet again) that it is Doug Ford as the front man for the administration. These plans are apparently between the Mayor's office and Metrolinx, but instead of having the Mayor or the TTC chair (who isn't involved) being the public face, it is another councillor whose closest official ties is being the deputy chair of the budget committee. He's not even on the TTC.

It's kinda surreal.

 

[sixrings]

So in theory the new subway plan is extremely similar to Sarah thomsons Plan. What isnt similar is the financing. What are the odds that to pay for this we eventually have "Tolls"?

 

[gweed123]

After reading several articles in a couple different newspapers about the topic today, the one that struck me the most was the article in the Star, stating that "Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne said provincial analysts will go to work on the proposal. But she reiterated that the province won’t spend any more than the $8.15 billion it has already committed to Toronto and that the Eglinton line must go ahead."

Very interesting comment, it's almost as if Metrolinx is saying "we'll do what we want to do with our money, and you can do what you want to do with whatever money you come up with". Personally, I'm totally fine with this. Let Ford use Sheppard as his little playground, while Eglinton and the SRT get combined into a single grade-separated crosstown line. Even if nothing else gets built besides that, we'll see more KM of grade-separated rapid transit built in this city than in the previous two decades combined (maybe even 3 decades). Even if the funds from Finch West end up going to extending Eglinton further west, that's still a win in my books.

 

[jeffreym]

Yea it sure could be worse.... it would be nice if the Finch W LRT went ahead though - we'd still have the 1.13B (http://stevemunro.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/201012TTCBriefing.pdf) from the Sheppard East LRT to put towards Eglinton.

 

[gweed123]

Yea it sure could be worse.... it would be nice if the Finch W LRT went ahead though - we'd still have the 1.13B (http://stevemunro.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/201012TTCBriefing.pdf) from the Sheppard East LRT to put towards Eglinton.

That is true, unless Ford is counting on using that money for part of Sheppard. Time will tell, but at least we know that the Eglinton plan isn't going to be scrapped. That's undoubtedly the most important piece of Transit City, and pretty much the only piece that I actually support. If they built a grade-separated Eglinton LRT from Pearson to STC, I'd be a very happy camper. Bookmark some money to do upgrades to key intersections along Finch West, and put in bus lanes in select choke points, in order to make the existing bus service flow more smoothly. It's not a long term solution, but it's a relatively inexpensive stop-gap solution that can be done relatively quickly (far less time than building an LRT), and will have immediate effects.

 

[sixrings]

in Rob Fords Sheppard plan it looks like the subway would dip south of Sheppard.. Where specifically would it be located? What is the benefit of a southern allignment? why not Dip south of sheppard after the Agincourt GO stop?