News   Jun 14, 2024
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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
The roads will be widened to maintain vehicle lanes. In places where this is not possible (such as through central Eglinton) the LRT will be buried. The only hindrance to cars will be the inability to turn left out of mid block intersections, which with the amount of traffic on the streets today is essentially impossible already.


I think there are many people that think that a lane will be lost to vehicles. I wonder if it would be possible to have these LRT lanes used as toll lanes for vehicles? There would be no LRT's, but this could help build an underground transit. Maybe this is not possible and I don't like the idea of tolls on existing roads, but something like this I think many people could live with.
 
I think there are many people that think that a lane will be lost to vehicles. I wonder if it would be possible to have these LRT lanes used as toll lanes for vehicles? There would be no LRT's, but this could help build an underground transit. Maybe this is not possible and I don't like the idea of tolls on existing roads, but something like this I think many people could live with.

I'm sorry, but I'm not clear what you are suggesting. Are you suggesting not building the LRT ROW, building a separated toll road in the centre of Eglinton, putting a toll on it, then using the resulting fees to build a subway? Did I parse that correctly?
 
Yes, that's what meant to say. I don't know how or if it's possible considering the complications with all the traffic lights and intersections, but I'm just thinking out loud for possible alternative solutions.
 
Yes, that's what meant to say. I don't know how or if it's possible considering the complications with all the traffic lights and intersections, but I'm just thinking out loud for possible alternative solutions.

Impossible to do a tthis stage in the game. The transit is needed now, and although, IMO, the LRT will not be the ideal answer to the problem. It's better than a kick in the butt.
 
Unless you are charging an exorbitant amount for driving on that section of Eglinton, it wouldn't come to close to funding an underground subway. In any case, I am fairly certain it won't be hugely difficult to convert the at grade LRT to an elevated one (save the tricky Kennedy Station)

AoD
 
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Unless you are charging an exorbitant amount for driving on that section of Eglinton, it wouldn't come to close to funding an underground subway. In any case, I am fairly certain it won't be hugely difficult to convert the at grade LRT to an elevated one (save the tricky Kennedy Station)

$300M/km amortized for 50 years at today's government bond rates (historically low 3.1%), and capacity of a typical street with lights (50,000/day) gives an optimistic toll around $1300 per km.
Some people think Highway 407's rate of $0.22/km is high, just wait till they see this!

That toll is optimistic because we assume the toll will not stop anybody from using the street, everybody pays, and there is no cost to collect it.

Sometimes it's fun to do the math to see just how crazy a crazy idea is.
 
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^True, but I think there might be some crazy math there too. $300M/km at 5% per year and 300 effective travel days per year implies the carrying cost of the underground LRT is just $50,000 per km per day. A lot to put on tolls, but not $1300 per vehicle km!!!
 
^True, but I think there might be some crazy math there too. $300M/km at 5% per year and 300 effective travel days per year implies the carrying cost of the underground LRT is just $50,000 per km per day. A lot to put on tolls, but not $1300 per vehicle km!!!

We both made mistakes. I forgot to divide by 50 ($850M as total loan value to be repaid per km over 50 years) for $26 per vehicle per km and you failed to pay down the principal amount owing when getting your $50k number.

Paying down the principal is important because it really never stops coming. 50 years after construction a large amount of what was built will have been or need to be replaced or fixed.
 
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Er, 5%=3%+2%

But the important point is that we should look to road tolls to get cars off the road - which has nothing to do with using them to pay for transit. And a toll on a single city street is a total non-starter
 
From The Star, at this link:

Metrolinx firm on Sheppard, Finch LRT plans

Toronto’s decision to build a subway in Scarborough could even move up construction of the two light rail lines.

The province says its plans to build LRTs on Sheppard East and Finch West remain firm and could even start construction sooner in the wake of Toronto council’s decision to abandon a seven-stop LRT in favour of a three-stop Scarborough subway.

Metrolinx president Bruce McCuaig said the provincial transportation agency will look at whether it can move the schedule forward, given that the TTC has said subway construction wouldn’t begin for five years.

“I think we’re going to take some time to look at the entire program and see if it still is optimal to start Sheppard in 2016 and start Finch in 2015,†he said on Wednesday.

The LRTs, which would take five years each to build, are part of an $8.4 billion provincially funded transit expansion that also includes the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT, which is already under construction.

Mayor Rob Ford told city council Tuesday that Sheppard and Finch would be his next targets for subways rather than LRTs. The province has agreed to give the $1.48 billion it budgeted for Scarborough transit to the subway.

The extension of the Bloor-Danforth line is expected to cost between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. Even with $660 million from Ottawa, the city is expected to implement a 1.6 per cent property tax increase toward the $910 million funding gap.

McCuaig refused to speculate on whether Metrolinx might reconsider the other lines in the agreement, if city council made such a request in the future.

“We have no mandate ourselves and I don’t believe the city has a mandate in terms of seeking any other changes to the master agreement,†he said, adding that Sheppard plans are already well along.

Construction on a grade separation near the Agincourt GO station was already underway when Ford was elected three years ago and declared the LRT program dead. City council subsequently overruled him.

Ontario Transportation Minister Glen Murray also offered assurances that the change in plans for Scarborough won’t alter the other LRTs.

An agreement with the city to build light rail transit on Sheppard and Finch “absolutely†remains in place, he said, adding that none of the funding for those projects will be cannibalized for the Scarborough subway.

“We’re locked in now to those routes. We can’t constantly be changing them. Scarborough was a 30- or 40-year-old grievance that needed to be resolved and there was a very clear position from a mayor and council by majority vote. It is a democracy and there is always a tension between sticking to the plan and being respectful of overwhelming mandates,†Murray said.

He said the province was duty-bound, however, to listen to the city.

“There are always tensions … if in next year’s election a mayor ran on a very clear agenda on transit, received a majority of votes and council got elected, you have to workwith that reality,†Murray said.
 
Will the Scarborough subway kill LRT in Toronto?

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/10/11/will_the_scarborough_subway_kill_lrt_in_toronto.html#

LRT supporter Gord Perks should have been weary with defeat.
But at a moment when reasonable people were declaring the death of LRT in Toronto, the city councillor sounded anything but crushed on Wednesday.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Perks was on the losing side of a 24-20 council vote that killed a fully-funded, seven-stop LRT in favour of a twice-as-costly, three-stop subway in Scarborough that is likely to put Toronto in debt for 30 years.
Subway campaigner Mayor Rob Ford crowed that plans for LRTs on Sheppard Ave. East and Finch Ave. West are next on his hit list.

But Perks points to the narrow subway win as proof that LRT is gaining ground in Toronto. The subway decision, he says is “the last gasp of the Toronto myth that subway is the only good form of transit.”


Doug Ford at Ford Fest in Centennial ParkDoug Ford at Ford Fest in Centennial Park
Juice throwing charges droppedJuice throwing charges dropped “We’re going to have light rail and we’re going to have it soon . . . We simply cannot cover the vast size of the amalgamated city with subways. It’s not technically or economically possible to do that,” said Perks.

The Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT, already under construction, will let transit-hungry, cash-poor Torontonians taste the technology that cities across North America and Europe are clamouring to build — and they will want it too, he insists.
Other LRT supporters are less optimistic.

“I don’t think (LRT) is dead. But it’s certainly on life support,” says transit blogger Steve Munro.
If Mayor Rob Ford and the Ontario Liberals both win elections next year, he fears for the Sheppard and Finch LRTs. Munro isn’t even confident that the city or province won’t try and convert Eglinton Ave. — which will run about 10 kilometres in a tunnel — to a subway.

“I worry that at some point the (Eglinton) technology choice will be changed, which will require a redesign and greater expanse of the (tunneled) section east of Leaside, as well as pretty much deep-sixing forever the extension west to the airport because there’s no way we’re going to build a subway all the way to the airport,” he said.
During months of debate about which kind of transit should replace the Scarborough RT, transit officials and politicians did a poor job of communicating the differences between the lumbering downtown streetcars and the light rail technology being planned for the suburbs, adds Munro.

Not only do the LRTs run in their own lanes, outside of traffic on wide streets, they are faster. By way of comparison, he offers the mayor’s favourite target of derision, the St. Clair Ave. streetcar.
Between Keele and Bathurst Sts., there are 20 streetcar stops on St. Clair. If St. Clair used LRT stop spacing, there would be six.

One justification used to favour a subway in Scarborough was that it would eliminate a transfer between the originally planned Scarborough LRT and the Bloor-Danforth subway platform. Subway proponents argued that commuters wouldn’t like it, they wanted a one-seat ride.

How big a deal was the transfer? On Thursday, Metrolinx told the Toronto Star it was estimated to take 40 seconds, plus the time a rider might wait for the subway to arrive.

But one powerful argument in favour of LRT wasn’t discussed in the Scarborough debate because it simply didn’t apply. That LRT was never going to run in traffic on a street.

So LRT’s potential to bring new life to deadened streets has been largely overlooked in recent transit technology debates.
“I’m holding out hope that the Sheppard and Finch lines are really going to show what above-ground rapid transit can do to revitalize parts of the city,” said Cherise Burda of the Pembina Institute, a sustainability think tank.
It’s not viable for everyone to go to Denver where an LRT — paid for in part by a sales tax increase — is part of “an incredible downtown revitalization,” she said.

But Torontonians could look north of Steeles Ave. at York Region where new lane-separated bus rapid transit will operate very much like an LRT until transit ridership justifies laying tracks on the roads.
“It’s just LRT without the rails. It’s all about right-of-way,” says Burda, who says Torontonians have trouble imagining transit operating away from cars on the street.

As for the cost of subways, don’t even get her started.

A member of the Anne Golden panel appointed by Premier Kathleen Wynne to look at raising taxes for transit expansion, Burda worries that the council-approved 1.6 per cent property tax levy to pay for the Scarborough subway means the city is tapped out.

How will it contribute to the provincial transit investment strategy that is supposed to pay for the badly needed downtown relief subway?

But the lack of transit funding could be the salvation of LRT on Sheppard and Finch, she said.
“What are we expecting to do — to triple the cost on each of those lines? Go to the federal government and raise property taxes again and again?”
 
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