TTC: Sheppard Subway Expansion (Speculative)

[Dan416]

you cant simply get over the 670 million but wasting 10 million on steve chungs report and 65 million to cancel tc makes sense to you?

you would rather...

pay significantly more money, have too much capacity. yes that makes NONsense.

Too much capacity is better than paying money to reduce capacity. It's not exactly a hard concept to grasp.

An odd comment, as only someone with no brain would suggest spending $1 billion to extend it 2,000 metres.

I agree 100%. We should extend the line further to bring down the per km cost. At least from Downsview to STC and then the $/km cost would be more reasonable. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Dan416]

The TTC's construction costs are getting so ludicrous that we're going to be as bad as New York in a few years. Munich just opened a 1.7 km two-stop underground subway extension. Cost? 180 million euros, total. And it's reasonable for it to cost four times as much to build subway in Toronto?

A further tragedy is that in all of this bizarre surface vs underground political debate, we've forgotten about the potential about fully-separated surface and elevated alignments. Many of these new suburban subways would be perfectly fine being built as elevated trains. The Sheppard subway, once it turns south from Sheppard, is running through undeveloped and industrial lands. There would certainly be no impact from an elevated rapid transit line being built. Any new developments could easily be designed around it to mitigate any visual and noise issues. The same goes for the Vaughan extension. It's ludicrous to be boring deep tunnels and digging down massive stations through virtually empty fields. At the very least, it should have been cut-and-cover. Look how much Vancouver saved on the Canada line with that approach. They built the equivalent of pretty much the entire Eglinton line, fully grade-separated, for less than $2 billion.

I think the blame for this lies squarely on the TTC's shoulders, and it seems to have started with TYSSE (correct me if I'm wrong).

That's what I liked about Eglinton--we were getting back to reasonably-sized stations and (seemingly, at first) a reasonable cost. But then Ford wanted to bury the whole thing without looking at elevated alternatives.

There is clearly something very wrong with how the TTC is building our subways.

 

[ssiguy2]

Not sure how something with such tiny stations qualifies as "full Metro". You couldn't even get two of the new streetcars into those stations.

By full Metro standards I meant that it is standard third rail.......you could run any of the TTC subway cars off it. It is true the stations are small but if Eglinton goes at grade even for a small portion the Canada Line will still have higher capacity due to being able to have 55 metre Metro cars running every 90 seconds whereas the highest at grade for TC will be every 3 minutes with 100 metre thinner LRT cars. The full ROW of the CL would also be faster and more reliable to say nothing of the fact that it is also cheaper to run as Vancouver doesn't require a somebody to make sure the doors close at $35/hr.
I also love how the TTC says it will cost anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion..........you call that a cost estimate? Imagine buying a house and the realtor tells you the price tag will be somewhere between $500k to $1 million.
For get these arguments about whether the TTC or Metrolinx should build and/or operate the Eglinton line........let Translink do it.

 

[Dandy Horse]

expanding only to vic park makes no sense. 1. building one more station means it has to be an end type station, which is super expensive and unnecessary, if higher order transit is going to be used on the rest of shepherd. to extend a subway for (lets be honest, over) one billion $, to a place that is SUPER suburban, and also within 20 minutes walk of a subway already is f-ing retarded.

 

[superman]

No kidding! The new Evergreen totally grade separated using so-called "expensive" SkyTrain tech is going to cost $1.4 billion for 11km. It is also worth noting that that INCLUDES a 1 km tunnel.
Thes "estimates" are getting truly obscene. Nott only are these prices ridiculous but they are made worse by the fact that these are suburban streets.
Vancouver's 20km Canada Line included 14km of tunnel thru the city including right downtown. It requires a tunnel above another rapid transit tunnel downtown, tunneling under False Creek, going up a very high grade, a high bridge over the mighty Fraser with a ped/bike levle underneath it, another bridge over to YVR, and another over to Richmond Centre. It required the building of 16 station with a "roughing in" of 2 future ones, a new maintenance and operational centre, and had a very tight time schedule.
All this for $2.4 billion with full Metro standards. When it was all said and done the whole project worked out to about $130 million/km.
Toronto, however, needs $1 billion for a 2km stretch of subway down a suburban street.
Even if the price tag is half that amount heads should be rolling.

Exactly, why aren't we looking at grade separated rapid transit above ground. You get it for cheap, it's fast, rapid transit (can basically pass off as a subway), and it could be used on ALL the proposed lines.

 

[LAz]

Exactly, why aren't we looking at grade separated rapid transit above ground. You get it for cheap, it's fast, rapid transit (can basically pass off as a subway), and it could be used on ALL the proposed lines.

Having been in Chicago for years, I can tell you that rapid transit on the ground simply sucks so bad that you can not imagine. It 'causes such traffic problems that it's simply miserable. Underground is the better long term investment. Now you might say hey, it need not be ON THE GROUND. And so suppose we took that out of the picture. There are two options... underground or elevated. And elevated is a really ugly noise generator, plus an eyesore.

The only way to build a metro that is not underground is if it goes along the highway. Chicago was the first to experiment with that, and I honesty think that it is not worth it. The stations kinda suck, as they are often in the middle of nowhere.

TTC will find funding to extend the subway to Vic Park, according to the Stinz plan or in some other way. That will slightly improve the commutes by bypassing the 404 gridlock.

I say one stop beyond Vic P, or all the way to Agincourt.

 

[Palma]

Your numbers don't work. Stintz is estimating that it will cost $500 mil/km to extend Sheppard 2 km to Victoria Park station. Yet by your numbers there's 6.9 km to go after for $1.7 billion at only $245 million/km?

Also there's nothing in your $ to upgrade or do anything to the SRT. What do we do when it reaches the end of it's life around 2018 or so ... simply tell people to walk? It's not like those currently using it would find the Sheppard subway to North York useful.

What you guys are missing is that no matter how much money is left over from Eglinton ,only 650 million would be available for Sheppard. And this is most recently coming from Del Grande just this past weekend on 1010 Talk Radio. But everyone discussing this (including Stinz) seems to be oblivious to this fact.

 

[Palma]

The only way to build a metro that is not underground is if it goes along the highway. Chicago was the first to experiment with that, and I honesty think that it is not worth it. The stations kinda suck, as they are often in the middle of nowhere.

.

Like the way Spadina was built

 

[unimaginative2]

The only way to build a metro that is not underground is if it goes along the highway.

No it's not. There are all kinds of elevated lines around the world that aren't built along highways. Look at Vancouver for a Canadian example.

 

[rbt]

What you guys are missing is that no matter how much money is left over from Eglinton ,only 650 million would be available for Sheppard. And this is most recently coming from Del Grande just this past weekend on 1010 Talk Radio. But everyone discussing this (including Stinz) seems to be oblivious to this fact.

That's enough. $650 from the province and $330 from the feds makes $1B. That gets you to Vic Park which is the proposed termination point.

 

[wopchop]

If they are so set on building this line, then this should either be extended to Agincourt GO or not at all. Going only to Victoria Park is a waste, as the start-up and wind-up costs for this type of construction are exorbitantly high. This one-stop extension is a complete waste of money.

 

[nfitz]

What you guys are missing is that no matter how much money is left over from Eglinton ,only 650 million would be available for Sheppard. And this is most recently coming from Del Grande just this past weekend on 1010 Talk Radio.

Only $650 million from the province. But there's also $333 from the Feds from the Building Canada Fund. That's $983 million.

But everyone discussing this (including Stinz) seems to be oblivious to this fact.

How is Stintz oblivious? She's been using a $1-billion number. Which is what you get when you round $983 million.

Surely if it's really $1 billion instead of $983 million, the city themselves can toss in $17 million.

Also the $650 million was arbitrary based on Eglinton being underground. There was over $2.4 billion or so available for Finch and Eglinton East ... and $2.5 billion for the SRT upgrade and extension.

As about $1-billion of that would be for the 3.5 km SRT extension to Sheppard, there's almost $3.5 billion available if Eglinton goes back to the original (2010) plan and the SRT is rebuilt to McCowan.

 

[Tulse]

Exactly, why aren't we looking at grade separated rapid transit above ground.

Because it is hugely ugly and loud. An el on St. Clair would have changed the character of that neighbourhood far more than the LRT did.

 

[k10ery]

What you guys are missing is that no matter how much money is left over from Eglinton ,only 650 million would be available for Sheppard. And this is most recently coming from Del Grande just this past weekend on 1010 Talk Radio. But everyone discussing this (including Stinz) seems to be oblivious to this fact.

You're missing the point. People are debating abadoning the MOU and going back to something more like the Transit City plan. If that happens there will be a new negotiation with McGuinty, and the money freed up, inside the $8 billion envelope could be spent on something else.

The line in the MOU about $650 million referred to what would happen if Metrolinx brought the tunneled ECLRT in under budget. I don't think anybody really thought there was any chance of that happening!

 

[k10ery]

Only $650 million from the province. But there's also $333 from the Feds from the Building Canada Fund. That's $983 million.

Isn't that the money being spent on grade separation? Which is mostly wasted if we don't build surface LRT through Agincourt.