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TTC York University BRT

2010 not 2009 for opening

Visited the York U BRT ROW on Sunday and not much has really taken place since my May visit.

Sounds like this project has been move to 2010 for budget reasons. The Dufferin St intersection is completed as well the new lane at Sheppard.

There is no way this project will be ready for service come late Aug that 5 weeks away nor Sept, 9 weeks away. If one looks at the photo's shot in May and the ones today, you can see the area west of the tracks looks the same, other than a retraining wall as been built. The area east of the tracks have seen some grading as well light poles installed.

I will let the photo's speak for themselves as to what is taking place starting at Dufferin St to Keele St.

I know TTC has plans in place for when it opens, but that will have to be for 2010. It also explained why TTC is teaming up with VIVA for fall service.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux92PbhbDis

The only section of the ROW to open this year, will be on York U lands that has been ready for months.
 
Was told today that the ROW is supposed to open in Nov and said they need to look at the photo's I shot to comfirm this. After telling them what I saw, they said they would have to look into it as well look at the photo's.
 
Took a walk on Sunday and time to start throwing darts as to when this thing is going to open. Nov 2nd opening date is not looking good.

They are rebuilding the entrance and exit at York Blvd for some reason and why so late considering it was ready in May??

Taking their time for building the entrance and exit at Downsview station terminal.

Who made the error for not knowing the pipeline was closer to the surface than design for???

Who did the surveying of this corridor to come up with the design engineering drawing in the first place??? They should measure for the location of utilities as well the depth of them before the drawings were issue for tender.

You need that info to come up with a budget as to how much this thing should cost in the first place.

Who pickup this cost over run???

Still got to remove the existing traffic signals as well the intersection on Keele St
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZu22y18sBg

At Downsview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUtVJ-z4dRg

ROW Corridor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dF0G3VUiKw
 
Where are the construction crews? They still have a long way to go and looks like no progress has been made on this since June.

What gives?
 
lead82 said:
Where are the construction crews? They still have a long way to go and looks like no progress has been made on this since June.

What gives?
Click to expand...

It's Sunday and crews don't work unless $$$$$ paid to them.

There has been work done since my last visit around the track area and to the east. Look at the July photo's to see this.
 
oops, did not catch the sunday part. I am glad they are making some progress. I would never imagine such a simple project would take over 2 years to complete.
 
Life in the fast lane delayed for York U students

http://thestar.ca/news/gta/article/687080


York University students who thought they would be getting a shorter trip to school this fall won't be able to hit the snooze button after all.

A new express lane for buses that was supposed to shave seven minutes off the typical 20-minute rush-hour trip to campus from the Downsview subway won't open in September as was promised.

And a policy that would allow students and staff to use the same ticket for York Region Viva or TTC bus service from Downsview also is being delayed until January.

The TTC's Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, which also represents Viva drivers, had some concerns and transit officials have agreed to delay the integrated service, said TTC spokesperson Brad Ross.

He would not discuss the nature of those concerns.


The TTC says a key stretch of the new busway along the Finch hydro corridor won't be ready until November because of engineering issues around the TransCanada pipeline below the hydro corridor.

A small portion of the bus route onto campus will be complete in September.

The $38 million project was originally slated to be finished last year but was held up by delays in environmental assessments and funding approvals from senior governments.

Toronto is paying about half the cost, with Queen's Park and Ottawa each contributing $9.7 million.

The TTC came up with the idea of the 6-kilometre busway before the Spadina subway expansion was announced, said Bud Purves, president of the York University Development Corp.

"We're focusing on the subway and this is just an interim solution," he said.

The subway isn't expected to reach York until 2015.
 
Gone from $25m to $38m and not bad for an cost overrun at a rate of 52%.

I guess Miller was right about canceling this project when he sat as an Commissioners years ago.

TTC has no idea why the entrance/exit is being rebuilt at York Blvd now and this include me also.

By right, it has been ready to open for months on York land.

Lets see if the Hydro section will open In Nov as plan, otherwise, TTC will totally piss off as there are plans to use some of those spare buses else where.

As for VIVA, a number of things come to mind as why the delay is taking place, and this is what happens when 2 transit systems have the same union.
 
I'd LOVE to hear the union's excuse.
As far as I can tell it's the same number of buses and the same number of riders.
The only difference - and I know this idea is revolutionary - is that they will allow people who would otherwise be cramming themselves onto packed TTC buses on to empty Viva buses.
I guess the union figures if the riders are being more sensibly distributed that somehow affects their workload or something...?
 
TTC sucks at life because it has incompetent project managers that can't plan projects properly, and there are always unforeseen challenges that arise. Give me a break. For an organization that has been around for decades, building a BRT should be a trivial task, yet it's slowed down by 'discovering' a gas pipeline (was not proper analysis done during all those years in preparation for this?)

In my personal opinion, this BRT is a complete waste of $38M dollars. The portion on Allen/Dufferin is not needed, and all that would suffice was better lane enforcement during peak hours. It propably would have been easier to just widen Finch between Dufferin and Keele (in preparation for LRT), than paving a hydro ROW.

York students will just have to wait for the subway in 2015 to see the benefits of faster travel times. At this rate, I don't foresee this BRT opening until after the current school year. I estimate a May/June 2010 opening.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
I guess the union figures if the riders are being more sensibly distributed that somehow affects their workload or something...?
Click to expand...

In fairness, if you can have union members paid to drive empty buses around, doesn't that increase the demand for room on the crammed buses to the point that there are just more buses being driven around -- and more union members being paid to drive them?
 
lead82 said:
TTC sucks at life because it has incompetent project managers that can't plan projects properly, and there are always unforeseen challenges that arise. Give me a break. For an organization that has been around for decades, building a BRT should be a trivial task, yet it's slowed down by 'discovering' a gas pipeline (was not proper analysis done during all those years in preparation for this?)

In my personal opinion, this BRT is a complete waste of $38M dollars. The portion on Allen/Dufferin is not needed, and all that would suffice was better lane enforcement during peak hours. It propably would have been easier to just widen Finch between Dufferin and Keele (in preparation for LRT), than paving a hydro ROW.

York students will just have to wait for the subway in 2015 to see the benefits of faster travel times. At this rate, I don't foresee this BRT opening until after the current school year. I estimate a May/June 2010 opening.
Click to expand...

While the TTC is legendary for its incompetence, no one can know exactly where a gas line is until they start digging for whatever is being built on or around it. If the gas line is not where the charts say it is, then it is certainly not the TTC's fault.

The portion on Allan and Dufferin does not consist of much other than the entrances and exits, most if this section is just the existing HOV lane converted to a bus only lane. So there is not much her that could be saved and spent on enforcement instead.

They also never knew the Finch LRT was coming, so in the planning for the BRT, (when they did evaluate finch ave) there was no way of knowing that widening finch would be useful later on.
 
The TTC has known about the Finch West LRT since plan was announced in March 2007 by Giambrone to the public. I'm sure the TTC knew about it in 2006, in time to consider that as an alternative to building in the hydro corridor.

In any case, this is why people here have lost all faith in transit projects. Why is it that highway and road widenings can just happen fairly easily, while all transit projects and repaving road projects are like passing kidney stones - slow and brutally painful.
 
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