This is part of a series covering various aspects of the Transit City announcement of March 16. In previous posts I have looked at various aspects of the network both as presented and as in might evolve and improve. Now let’s look at how this stacks up against other transit proposals for funding.
The total cost of all seven lines is $6.1-billion. Assuming that this is spend over a 15-year construction period, that’s about $400-million per year. The value includes a fleet of 240 vehicles at a presumed cost of $5-million each. These would be much larger than present-day streetcars and have a capacity close to that of a subway car. Examples of cars in other systems can be seen both on the Transit City site and on many other transit activists’ and ethusiasts’ pages. I’m not going to get into cataloguing the options here.
Of these lines, by far the most ambitious is the Eglinton line which consumes over 1/3 of the total program cost. This line has the highest cost/km ($73-million) due to its tunnel section for about 10km across the central part of the city. This line can be built in stages with a good chunk of the underground part coming last.
A major purpose in getting out the Transit City proposal was to allow the City, the media, the citizenry and the politicians at many levels of government to have something concrete to talk about. We all know that cities, especially Toronto, want more money for transit. Everyone knows what a subway is, but few know about LRT. Discussions about the future of transit inevitably bog down in a hopeless circle of “I only want a subway” and “We can’t afford subways”. Being a transit advocate in that environment is challenging. Continue reading