Transit City Plan

[MetroMan]

Here's my suggestion:

If the Mayor and Scarborough councillors can't agree on what to do with the $4 Billion dollars allocated to construction of a Sheppard LRT and the above ground segment of the Eglinton LRT then...

1 - Take the approximately $4Billion and build the Downtown Relief Line which should have been the priority all along and will carry commuters from Scarborough anyway.
2 - Make a Sheppard subway extension and SRT subway replacement the next project. By the time we get funding, the density will be there.

Build Eglinton's underground segment to Don Mills and the much needed Finch LRT as currently planned. Allocate the remainder of the $8B which I believe is around $4B and build the DRL from Union up Don Mills to connect to the Eglinton LRT. I'm aware that this leaves the SRT falling apart with no replacement, but that is intentional. Watch how fast Scarborough residents beg the Mayor and their councillors to start taxing them to pay for an extension of the Bloor-Danforth line to Scarborough. In 10 years, it may make more sense to extend Sheppard and loop it into the Bloor/Danforth line.

Right now the priority should be midtown Eglinton, Finch and the DRL.

 

[11th]

Here's my suggestion:

If the Mayor and Scarborough councillors can't agree on what to do with the $4 Billion dollars allocated to construction of a Sheppard LRT and the above ground segment of the Eglinton LRT then...

1 - Take the $4B to $5B and build the Downtown Relief Line which should have been the priority all along and will carry commuters from Scarborough anyway.
2 - Make a Sheppard subway extension and SRT subway replacement the next project. By the time we get funding, the density will be there.

That's a good compromise - all parties get what they really want, eventually.

 

[gweed123]

Here's my suggestion:

If the Mayor and Scarborough councillors can't agree on what to do with the $4 Billion dollars allocated to construction of a Sheppard LRT and the above ground segment of the Eglinton LRT then...

1 - Take the approximately $4Billion and build the Downtown Relief Line which should have been the priority all along and will carry commuters from Scarborough anyway.
2 - Make a Sheppard subway extension and SRT subway replacement the next project. By the time we get funding, the density will be there.

Build Eglinton's underground segment to Don Mills and the much needed Finch LRT as currently planned. Allocate the remainder of the $8B which I believe is around $4B and build the DRL from Union up Don Mills to connect to the Eglinton LRT. I'm aware that this leaves the SRT falling apart with no replacement, but that is intentional. Watch how fast Scarborough residents beg the Mayor and their councillors to start taxing them to pay for an extension of the Bloor-Danforth line to Scarborough. In 10 years, it may make more sense to extend Sheppard and loop it into the Bloor/Danforth line.

Right now the priority should be midtown Eglinton, Finch and the DRL.

I would say I agree with you, except for 1 little thing: The SRT doesn't have that much life left in it. It needs to be replaced within this decade, with something. If it had lots of life left in it, I would 100% agree with you. But unfortunately it doesn't.

 

[snowystar]

I would say I agree with you, except for 1 little thing: The SRT doesn't have that much life left in it. It needs to be replaced within this decade, with something. If it had lots of life left in it, I would 100% agree with you. But unfortunately it doesn't.

Can they refurbish the vehicles to extend their life for a bit? Vancouver is planning to refurbish 114 older vehicles to extend their life to 2026, for a cost of 55M. Is SRT's vehicle in such a bad shape that no repair will work and have to be thrown out within 3 years?

 

[nfitz]

Is SRT's vehicle in such a bad shape that no repair will work and have to be thrown out within 3 years?

Hard to say. They weren't supposed to last to 2016. How many times have they had to reduce service now because it can't do it anymore?

 

[M II A II R II K]

They could get the Mark 3s that are now available and cut out the parts of the track that are inconvenient and just replace those parts so it wouldn't be restricted to only being able to run Mark 1s.

 

[nfitz]

They could get the Mark 3s that are now available and cut out the parts of the track that are inconvenient and just replace those parts so it wouldn't be restricted to only being able to run Mark 1s.

The estimate to do this (6 years ago) was $360 million in 2006 dollars. http://www3.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Co...06/Aug_30_2006/Other/Scarborough_Rt_Strat.pdf

This was what TTC approved back then, before Transit City started. It then got rolled into Transit City, with the replacement to be done by 2015. And now we are in 2012, and we are talking 2020.

Will that be Cash or Chargex?

 

[gweed123]

The estimate to do this (6 years ago) was $360 million in 2006 dollars. http://www3.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Co...06/Aug_30_2006/Other/Scarborough_Rt_Strat.pdf

This was what TTC approved back then, before Transit City started. It then got rolled into Transit City, with the replacement to be done by 2015. And now we are in 2012, and we are talking 2020.

Will that be Cash or Chargex?

Good digging. Yeah, that's what I suspected. Seems like we're paying a really big penalty now for such restricting design standards when the line was first built. That's what happens when you design the infrastructure to just meet the requirements of a single technology. It leaves you very little wiggle room for anything else.

That's why, as far as I'm concerned, the City should be undertaking these two projects simultaneously:

1) The DRL.

2) Downgrade the SELRT to a BRT, saving roughly $600 million. Pour that $600 million into digging a Bloor-Danforth Subway extension to McCowan & Sheppard. It may cause a bit of delay with the SRT, but at least you can get a BRT service up and running along Sheppard a lot faster, to take some of the load off of the SRT.

 

[nfitz]

It may cause a bit of delay with the SRT, but at least you can get a BRT service up and running along Sheppard a lot faster, to take some of the load off of the SRT.

I don't think you can delay the SRT much longer, or else you'll be needing to put a BRT in there as well.

Note in the 2006 report, that the frequency of the SRT was every 3.5 minutes - carrying 4,000 per hour in the peak direction. The SRT trains carry a maximum of 220 people; every 3.5 minutes is 17.1 trains an hour, for a capacity of only 3,771 per hour. However in September 2012 they reduced the frequency of the SRT to one every 4.5 minutes, because it just can't operate at the higher frequency any more.

That means the capacity has been reduced from 3,771 per hour to only 2,933 per hour. But the demand is 4,000 per hour.

This will only get worse as ridership increases, and the frequency further decreases.

 

[snowystar]

I don't think you can delay the SRT much longer, or else you'll be needing to put a BRT in there as well.

Note in the 2006 report, that the frequency of the SRT was every 3.5 minutes - carrying 4,000 per hour in the peak direction. The SRT trains carry a maximum of 220 people; every 3.5 minutes is 17.1 trains an hour, for a capacity of only 3,771 per hour. However in September 2012 they reduced the frequency of the SRT to one every 4.5 minutes, because it just can't operate at the higher frequency any more.

That means the capacity has been reduced from 3,771 per hour to only 2,933 per hour. But the demand is 4,000 per hour.

This will only get worse as ridership increases, and the frequency further decreases.

I wonder what determined that a SRT train can only carry a maximum of 220 people. The same train used in Vancouver have a capacity of 320 and a crush load of 360 people. A driver cab doesn't take up that much space.

Using a capacity of 320 per train would give 4,266 per hour under current operating frequency.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

gweed:

1) The DRL.
2) Downgrade the SELRT to a BRT, saving roughly $600 million. Pour that $600 million into digging a Bloor-Danforth Subway extension to McCowan & Sheppard. It may cause a bit of delay with the SRT, but at least you can get a BRT service up and running along Sheppard a lot faster, to take some of the load off of the SRT.

Agreed with slight modifications - upgrade SELRT to Vic Park as a subway extension, leave the rest as BRT and start the BD extension. It will cost more, but not THAT much more.

AoD

 

[ybountiful]

We are working on a film about the densification of Canadian cities -- the dream of condo life and how it's working out in reality.
We would love to talk to people who live in the Murano or Festival Towers or one of the similar vertical villages to tell their story.
Take us from that day in the show room to your current living room. We want to take a look at how city plans affect city dweller - and how
Canada could improve protections for the condo set.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Yvette Brend
(604) 931-5225
yvette@bountiful.ca

www.bountiful.ca

 

[gweed123]

gweed:



Agreed with slight modifications - upgrade SELRT to Vic Park as a subway extension, leave the rest as BRT and start the BD extension. It will cost more, but not THAT much more.

AoD

Normally I would agree, but we're probably talking ~$600 million for a Sheppard extension to Vic Park. That means that the Bloor-Danforth extension needs to find $600 million from somewhere else, which is unlikely to happen. And even if they did find funding, that would probably be dipping into the same funding pot as the DRL. I'm all for a Sheppard extension to Vic Park, but I'm not willing to compromise the DRL's chances of getting built in order to get it.

Don't forget, with a Bloor-Danforth extension to Sheppard & McCowan, it's going to create a lot more peak counter-flow along Sheppard, which will mean fewer people funnelling into Don Mills Station, which means the current infrastructure leading into Don Mills may be enough, at least until separate funding can be secured for a Sheppard extension to Victoria Park or Warden.

 

[nfitz]

I wonder what determined that a SRT train can only carry a maximum of 220 people.

That's what TTC reports at http://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2011.jsp Presumably it's full, not crush. Thought that would be a heck of a crush to get 80 people on a car!

The cars are only about 12.7 metres long, shorter that a TTC CLRV - about 18 inches longer than a bus - and a similar width to a streetcar or a bus. A full CLRV load is 74 and a full bus load is 48. Elsewhere I've seen a full CRLV full load reported as 102 passengers, and a crush load as 132 passengers. I'm not sure these crush loads are realistic - I've been on some pretty packed CLRVs and they didn't have more than 100 people on them, let alone 132.

It doesn't really matter what loading standard you use. The thing was already at capacity years ago, and there were 28.6% more scheduled trains last year, than there are this year (though the number of actual trains has been diminishing for a while). The system is at the end of it's life, and expecting almost another decade of operation from it is not realistic.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Isn't doing another study into subways for Scarborough, just more "gravy"?