Transit City: Sheppard East Debate

[nfitz]

... much frothing ...

It simply get's down to money. You can't build 7 subway lines ... it would cost about $45-billion. We'd all love our pet line to be subway ... it's not feasible. It's a start.

And how many subway stations are we going to build in that part of town? There hasn't been a subway station built south of York Mills/Ellesmere in over a quarter-century, and 12-more are planned to the north.

Sure I'd like to see it subway one day ... let's give it another 15-20 years and revisit.

 

[nfitz]

Faster???
22Kph+transfers?

They ain't doing 22 km/hr on Sheppard East now in rush-hour ... and traffic has been forecast to get a lot slower in the next decade or two.

 

[kEiThZ]

They ain't doing 22 km/hr on Sheppard East now in rush-hour ... and traffic has been forecast to get a lot slower in the next decade or two.

They most certainly are in Malvern (which is over a third of the line). It's the portion between Don Mills and Agincourt that gets congested with traffic. A diamond bus lane would easily get the whole route up to 22 kph for a fraction of the cost.

LRT should be deployed on high ridership routes to save money (through larger capacity vehicles) and prevent bunching. Sheppard East is not in that category. Anybody who takes a bus on Sheppard East can see that. Finch East or Steeles East would have been better candidates. Face it, the only reason they are building LRT on Sheppard is because the stubway is already there and they want to be done with the corridor.

 

[rbt]

A diamond bus lane would easily get the whole route up to 22 kph for a fraction of the cost.

I think you will find this is an impossible solution to make work due to:

1) Enforcement is required
2) Police are hands-off politically. They cannot be told what to enforce and what not to.
3) The city cannot use anything but police for that type of law enforcement.

This is the difference between theory and practice. In theory diamond lanes like the ones on King Street should have allowed the streetcars to flow quickly and easily through downtown.

In practice, they have been useless for accomplishing their goal (fast/effective/cheap transit) and actively hindered improving the situation because "all we need to do is enforce the diamond lane policy".

 

[kEiThZ]

I disagree. And while it might not be perfect, it would certainly come fairly close to 22 kph from the 17 kph today. And be achievable for a fraction of the cost. And if we really want enforcement, we can simply build in a curb to separate the road and the bus lane for most of the way (save the turning lanes).

It's not King street. It's Sheppard East. The context here matters. I think bus lanes are more likely to work in surburbia than in the core. The broader point here is that we can achieve a good proportion of the supposed speed benefits of LRT for a fraction of the cost using bus lanes. Even if we achieved just 20 kph that would still be a good value proposition over 22 kph from LRT with double the stop spacing of what's there today.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

There's plenty of simple and cheap things that can be done to improve transit along corridors like Sheppard, but the city is far less interested in actually improving transit than it is in adding LRT for its own sake. Building an exit ramp from Don Mills station to eastbound Sheppard would probably slash over a minute of average travel time off, a few queue jumps could be added, Rocket/express service could be added east of Kennedy, etc.

It'd be interesting to compare 17km/hr vs 22km/hr along the entire route, in both directions, both at rush hour and off-peak...when and where is the service currently 17 and when and where will it be 22? 17km/hr assumes absolutely no improvements and hides the fact that the 85 is already faster than that in places, during the middle of the day, on Saturday, etc.

 

[nfitz]

I think you will find this is an impossible solution to make work due to:

1) Enforcement is required
2) Police are hands-off politically. They cannot be told what to enforce and what not to.
3) The city cannot use anything but police for that type of law enforcement.

We've had a lot of dissing here of the diamond lanes based on ancedotal evidence on King. However I'm frequently on the Don Mills bus, and the diamond lanes are very effective. There is some enforcement (and I frequently complain to the police when there isn't, and they are very responsive to citizen complaints), but best of all, the lanes are normally much, much clearer than the other 2 lanes allowing the buses to often move faster than cars.

As to the politics, I completly fail to understand why it is difficult for the police to enforce diamond lanes, when they are so completely ruthless about enforcing street parking - having created an entire unit to do so!

IIn practice, they have been useless for accomplishing their goal (fast/effective/cheap transit) and actively hindered improving the situation because "all we need to do is enforce the diamond lane policy".

My experience is that they are very effective. Most people obey them, and there is a lot less traffic in them. Sheppard East is a lot more like Don Mills Road than it is like King Street.

 

[doady]

It simply get's down to money. You can't build 7 subway lines ... it would cost about $45-billion.

And exactly who has proposed building 7 subway lines?

 

[Second_in_pie]

^^ I can just think of 2 1/2 that've been discussed: Eglinton, DRL/Don Mills, and making Sheppard a true Subway.
Considering the alternate construction they could do on the peripherals of Eglinton as well as most (if not all) of Don Mills, I'd say that even $20 billion for all those full subways (which could easily be eased over 20 years) is a gross overestimation of what the cost would be.

 

[doady]

Only two totally new subway lines have been seriously proposed for the relative short term: Pape-Don Mills and Eglinton West. Others have called for the extensions of existing lines: Bloor-Danforth to SCC and East Mall, and the completion of Sheppard.

Pape - $2 billion
Eglinton West - $5 billion
Sheppard - $4 billion
Bloor-Danforth - $2 billion

$13 billion total. Not even close $45 billion. You can add another $3 billion if you want to build the Pape-Don Mills in its entirety (the most important part of the DRL), but $16 billion is still not beyond the capability of Toronto and the higher levels of government.
...

 

[EnviroTO]

And exactly who has proposed building 7 subway lines?

They are building 7 routes: Finch West, Sheppard East, Eglinton, Don Mills, Jane, Eglinton-Morningide, Waterfront West, and the Scarborough RT replacement. Increasing the cost of one project decreases the likelihood the funding will be available for another. If Sheppard East LRT is replaced with subway, Eglinton LRT is replaced with subway, and Scarborough RT is replaced with a subway then Finch West LRT which goes to the area of the city with the worst transit and Don Mills LRT which serves one of the densest corridors in the city with a good mix of residential (Thorncliffe, Don Mills, Parkway Forest, Seneca Hill) and business (York Mills and Eglinton) destinations would likely not get funding. By building everything as LRT now all areas of the city will see service reliability and speed improvements.

Some on this forum are convinced that the Sheppard East LRT will ensure the Sheppard subway never gets extended but the opposite is likely true. Studies have shown that LRT and tram routes lead to an increase in developments along a route. The creation of the LRT on Sheppard will eliminate a lane of traffic. The growth of the area and the fact that streets and the 401 are unable to grow any larger will ensure ridership growth which will eventually overload the LRT route at Don Mills. In 25 to 30 years when the line's infrastructure needs replacing the subway will be extended if required, but money will have been saved by not overbuilding a subway before it is actually required.

 

[Dan416]

In 25 to 30 years when the line's infrastructure needs replacing the subway will be extended if required, but money will have been saved by not overbuilding a subway before it is actually required.

In 25-30 years, subways will become prohibitively expensive. If you think they're too expensive now, then we'll never be able to build them.

And yes 7 routes sounds right

1. west from Kipling
2. northwest from Downsview
3. north from Finch
4. east from Don Mills
5. northeast from Kennedy
6. Eglinton
7. DRL

If anything, I think the more we build, the less it will cost as we'll benefit from economies of scale. Especially if we develop some kind of actual subway-building plan so that we always have something under construction. Take a page from Madrid.

 

[EnviroTO]

In 25-30 years, subways will become prohibitively expensive. If you think they're too expensive now, then we'll never be able to build them.

Labour will be cheap. China, India, and Brazil will have left us in the dust.

If anything, I think the more we build, the less it will cost as we'll benefit from economies of scale. Especially if we develop some kind of actual subway-building plan so that we always have something under construction. Take a page from Madrid.

How long do you predict it will take to tunnel the Spadina extension to Vaughan, the Eglinton LRT, the tunnelled parts of the Don Mills and Jane LRT, the Yonge subway extension, and the Queen line? Maybe things will line up nicely to start the Sheppard West extension tunnel at that time.

 

[kEiThZ]

Labour will be cheap. China, India, and Brazil will have left us in the dust.

Too bad the city requires so much Canadian content that saving from developing world labour would not be possible. Besides which, labour is hardly the source of inflating infrastructure costs.

How long do you predict it will take to tunnel the Spadina extension to Vaughan, the Eglinton LRT, the tunnelled parts of the Don Mills and Jane LRT, the Yonge subway extension, and the Queen line? Maybe things will line up nicely to start the Sheppard West extension tunnel at that time.

If they had a coherent plan to build more subways, this could all be accomplished quite smoothly. It's the LRT tunnel here, subway tunnel there business that creates haphazard scheduling leading to such long project timeframes. Sheppard should be slotted in the same time as the Yonge extension I would think. Then deploy all that labour on Eglinton and the DRL after that.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Labour will be cheap. China, India, and Brazil will have left us in the dust.

Actually, there's an idea! Import foreign laborers and let them work for a lower wage than minimum wage (assuming they're not canadian citizens means they don't apply; I doubt it, but you could probably pass it at minimum wage) which would still be better than at home (at least India and China,) and then give them a leg up on Canadian citizenship when they're done work! Probably would never happen, but it would be awesome!

If they had a coherent plan to build more subways, this could all be accomplished quite smoothly. It's the LRT tunnel here, subway tunnel there business that creates haphazard scheduling leading to such long project timeframes. Sheppard should be slotted in the same time as the Yonge extension I would think. Then deploy all that labour on Eglinton and the DRL after that.

Pretty much hits the nail on the head. Transit City should really be getting all these projects started, ready for extension later.

They could build their Eglinton Subway from Jane to Don Mills, already making plans for westward and eastward extensions. Once you're finished, start working on the western section, then work on the eastern part to Kennedy, then to Kingston Road.
With Yonge, they could extend to Steeles (to alleviate some pressure off Finch) and then start working on the extension to Langstaff. Heck, if Langstaff comes in after 2020, there might be enough density to go to Major Mac or something! Probably not, but it's always a possibility.
With the DRL, they could do Pape-Union, then after that do Pape-Eglinton and Union-Dundas West. Depending on the route they take, they could even split it up to Union-Exhibition-Dundas West. Different sections being different projects means you don't need the entire workforce employed the whole time, which can save a bunch of money. It also means you get the line opened a lot quicker than if you decided to go Eglinton-Dundas West all in one go.
I have to admit, for Spadina, they should just be going to York U and leave VCC for later. While I reject the notion that VCC will remain a couple big box stores for the next 20 years, it certainly won't get far enough in 6 years.