Updated April 2, 2011 at 6:30 am: Additional details about the plan have been provided by Metrolinx. The dialog below has been slightly edited from email exchanges, but preserves the sense of the conversation.
Q: The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) refers to both Black Creek and Jane as western terminals for the Eglinton line. However, these are over 1km apart. Where will the line actually end? How will the line connect with the GO corridor if it ends at Black Creek?
A: The exact terminus for the Eglinton line, which is in the Mt. Dennis area, will be determined through a future additional study due to the vertical and horizontal alignment (how steep the grades can be climbing out of the tunnel and which side of the road we will be on to approach the yard) between Black Creek Drive and Jane Street. The objective is to make the connection to the GO rail corridor.
Q: When does Metrolinx expect to have a preliminary design proposal for the section of the line east of Leaside that will now be substantially underground?
A: We are meeting with the TTC now to discuss the timing for the preliminary plans and profiles for the underground segment.
Q: The SRT replacement is described as ending at STC. Does this mean that McCowan will be abandoned as a station? Will the proposed right-of-way beyond McCowan to Sheppard and Malvern be protected to allow for future extension of the route? Is there any plan for an eastern yard so that trains would not all have to be based at the Black Creek yard?
A: The Scarborough LRT would follow the same route as the existing SRT and will include McCowan Station. At this time, there are no plans to close McCowan Station. We do see value in potentially re-using the McCowan yard for at least a layover site and we will need to study this further.
Q: Although the MOU states the number of stations on the Toronto projects, it does not mention this with respect to Eglinton. The press release specifies 26 stations. When will Metrolinx produce a station plan for the new line?
A: The exact number and location of stations for the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT project will be finalized as part of the environmental assessment amendment process.
We expect the Eglinton project will have about 26 stations along a 25-kilometre stretch, and we’re pleased to provide this as a single-seat trip for residents from Scarborough to the Mount Dennis Area.
Since the new Eglinton project has changed from the previous concept, the working assumption now is that the station spacing across the route is approximately at 1 kilometre.
We want to make certain that residents get the best use from the Eglinton line, so we are taking more time to study the specifics of the project to determine the exact number and best locations for the stations along the Eglinton line.
The finalization of the Eglinton line and the locations of the station will be part of the preliminary engineering and Environmental Assessment, which is expected to be completed in the coming months.
Comment: The 26-station count includes not just Eglinton but also the SRT. There were 26 stops on the Transit City version of Eglinton, not including Kennedy, and 6 more on the SRT. The new combined route will have to go on a diet, and the roughly 1km average spacing implies that some stations will be dropped. Throughout the Transit City debates, Metrolinx consistently wanted fewer stations on Eglinton, although at the time the underground section was shorter.
Q: Although the MOU makes reference to “LRT”, for certainty does this mean “Light Rapid Transit” as in the Flexity cars recently ordered from Bombardier, or is Metrolinx contemplating a return to ICTS Mark II technology once proposed for this route? This is an important decision as it affects the ability of the line to be extended.
A: On June 14, 2010, Metrolinx announced a $770M purchase of Light Rail vehicles from Bombardier, which included vehicles for the SRT upgrading project. We expect that we will need about 130 LRTs for the adjusted plan, but we will have to sit down with Bombardier and discuss the details. At this time, we do not plan to change from LRT to ICTS MARK II technology.
Comment: “At this time” are three little words that could do a world of damage to future LRT expansion in Toronto. Metrolinx owes us a definitive answer in the context of their Big Move plan.
Q: The Sheppard East LRT’s costs to date are chargeable to Toronto, but one piece of work already underway is the Agincourt Station grade separation. Is this going to proceed independently of the LRT project as a GO improvement? If so, will it be built with room for a future LRT right of way if that scheme is resurrected?
A: At this time, there are no plans to change the current design for the Agincourt grade-separation. The grade separation construction work that is currently underway at the Agincourt GO Station to separate the GO tracks from Sheppard Avenue will proceed independently of the former LRT project.
It is important to note, though, that this grade separation construction work is an important safety improvement for GO commuters and drivers that use Sheppard Avenue. This grade separation is a project that has benefits to GO’s operations and traffic.
Updated March 31, 2011 at 5:45 pm: The Memorandum of Understanding between Queen’s Park, Metrolinx and Toronto is now available. It contains a few items of interest, notably that the document is non-binding and that the Mayor is signing on his own behalf with hopes for approval from others.
I have a number of questions out to Metrolinx for clarification and will update this post when I have more details.
Updated March 31, 2011 at 10:55 am: The details of the agreement are now available on the Ontario Government’s website.
Original post from March 30:
Both the Star and Globe report that Premier McGuinty will announce the long-rumoured “deal” between Queen’s Park and Toronto on the future of Transit City.
Queen’s Park will fund the Eglinton line as an underground LRT from Jane Street to Kennedy Station, with an extension over the existing Scarborough RT line’s route replacing the RT technology. This project will cost $8.4-billion and will be completed in 2020.
Toronto will undertake funding for a Sheppard Subway extension west from Yonge to Downsview, and east from Don Mills to Scarborough Town Centre. This project will cost $4.2b and will be completed in 2019. Although this is touted as a public-private partnership, Toronto hopes to raise money from a Federal program for PPPs, “PPP Canada“. However, this program only has an investment of $1.25b. Obviously, much more money will be required from Ottawa if this is to have additional projects beyond a Toronto subway, or conversely the contribution it will make to the Sheppard Subway will be small. It is unclear where the $333m originally announced by Ottawa for the Sheppard LRT will wind up, but this should be clarified in the formal announcement.
What is quite clear in this shuffle is that Queen’s Park has decided to build something, anything on Eglinton as long as they can get shovels in the ground. That the line will now cost billions more than the original subway-surface LRT scheme seems to be of little concern even though “Benefits Case Analysis” was supposed to be at the heart of the Metrolinx Big Move. As usual, the political benefit outweighs all others.
What we have lost, at least for the coming decade, is any hope of a Finch west line, or a line to the airport (other than the premium fare GO-ARL link from Union), or a line to Malvern or UofT’s Scarborough campus.
Beyond that, Metrolinx and Queen’s Park must wrestle with the “Investment Strategy”, a fancy word for whatever new taxes or revenue generation mechanisms will be used to build the rest of The Big Move. Major expansions of GO, the proposed Richmond Hill subway extension (and all of its follow-on projects to relieve subway capacity limits), and a host of projects in the 905 are all queued up waiting for money.
As for Sheppard, the real problem is to make the numbers work out. I have already commented at length on this, and won’t belabour the point. In brief, $4.2b is a lot to raise from development charges or other similar schemes, and much greater densities will be needed on Sheppard than on traditional suburban arterials to pay for this scheme.
While everyone celebrates this new era in transit, let us not forget the TTC’s operating and capital budget crunch which I detailed in previous articles. None of this money addresses the needs of the existing system for ongoing repairs and renovation, nor does it provide money to relieve the pressure on service capacity. Later this year, we will doubtless see another proposal to cut marginal services “for the greater good”, but they will have to be much more substantial given the expected shortfall in TTC funding. A fare increase, probably a big one, will be needed to make up for the lack of a smaller jump in 2011.
In that context, it’s hard to get excited about $12b going to two very overpriced projects. For years, “transit” in Toronto hasn’t been about providing service, it has been about stimulating the construction industry and generating profits for property developers. These are laudable goals, but they must be balanced against the basic need citizens have to get around the whole city.
Postscript: As a side-deal to this agreement, the TTC will abandon its attempt to implement a separate Smart Card system, and will proceed with the Presto scheme developed by Queen’s Park. It is unclear who will pay for the rollout of Presto as the estimated implementation costs are considerably higher than the funding already committed by various governments. Maybe we will hear about that in Thursday’s announcement too.
Finch West riders lose out, of course, as detailed in The Star.
Steve Munro 
Hi Steve,
I was wondering if construction of the central section of Eglinton will begin this summer as originally planned, or if changes to the station layout will mean that even this section will have to go through new planning and assessment stages. If there are more delays I fear a Hudak government cancellation of Eglinton will be all to easy. Thanks for all your effort.
Steve: Tunneling is to start this fall, and the launch site for the boring machines should be under construction this spring. Leaving out stations is easy to do later because the bore won’t be completed for several years. The intention is to “bore through” many of the stations — build the tunnel before digging out the station around it — and if the station isn’t built, the tunnel is there anyhow.
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So, as it turns out the Sheppard Subway extension was an April Fools joke. Mr. Ford had the cojones to turn up at a press conference and announce the plan for a Sheppard subway that is a mirage. There was no plan and there is no money.
That’s interesting. Maybe he now has regrets about telling the voters in Scarborough that they were going to get a subway. Unlikely. And now he is now making promises about a Finch subway, an idea that comes from no previous subway expansion plans studies or even the wildest fantasy subway maps, except the one in his own delusions.
Well, perhaps before the next municipal election Mr. Ford will have a collision with reality and be brave enough to admit that he gave up the considerable benefits of Transit City for the marginal advantage of having all of Crosstown underground, a de-facto subway. He’d then say that he did us over only to preserve his own narrow interest in cars and suburban votes. That way the Sheppard and Finch commuters could vote on information based on reality rather than Mr. Ford’s fantasy land next time around. Good chance of that happening.
Steve: Given some of Ford’s statements about his projected funding, I think he honestly believes what he says, misguided and idiotic though it may be.
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Steve: “The planned extension of the Sheppard LRT to UofT Scarborough Campus won’t be built, and those riding to the campus will be on buses just as today.”
Sorry Steve, but that decision is for the best. As a former UTSC student I can tell you for a fact that the 116E is the fastest and best method of getting to/from the campus from/to the greater city. Even 38 Highland Creek inbound towards the Town Centre takes close to a half-hour during PM rush, so when you add-on an additional 10 minutes SRT ride you can see the inconvenience. 116E takes you directly to Kennedy. They just need to make it an all-day service. By contrast, no one would prefer such a meandering roundabout routing as Military+Morningside+12 kilometres and 26 stops across Sheppard East+transfer at Don Mills for Sheppard subway+transfer at Yonge for Yonge subway or 84 to head further west. What was proposed is a disservice both to students and Pan Am patrons and would not have gained in popularity (I could only see a marginal few students from the Malvern area use it, and even then the commute to connect with the 133 Neilson bus from the campus isn’t that far).
For all the complaints that Ford’s proposal has been drawn on a paper napkin style planning; whoever’s bright idea it was to tack on a UTSC spur to the SELRT (perhaps to give it a more purposeful terminus than taking mass transit to the edge of Rouge Park!) should be fired from their post.
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Mike says:
“I don’t think many people understand that a Finch LRT really would not have improved the commute at all. It would still have taken an hour to get to Finch subway station.”
The TTC’s own numbers suggest that a trip across the line (Humber College to Finch Station) will be on average 22-25 km/hr. Assuming the average bus trip on Finch is 17km/hr, an LRT would save 15-20 minutes of travel time from end-to-end.
I love it how some anti-LRT advocates make unbacked claims of how useless an LRT would be, when the TTC numbers just contradict them.
Anyways, as Steve said, speed is not the most important improvement from an LRT; it’s capacity and reliability.
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Mikey: Look closely at the original Transit City plan. The approved EA for the Scarborough-Malvern LRT is designed to connect Kennedy subway to UTSC via Eglinton, Kingston, Morningside and Ellesmere – making it as direct as the 116, but with a new, indoor terminal on campus. The spur line from the north was proposed by Metrolinx to be just the first stage, and provided the necessary connection to the carhouse.
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I’m sorry, Calvin, but these numbers don’t reflect reality, and I really wish that LRT advocates would pay more attention to the chart that the TTC displayed at most of the consultation sessions during the EA that clearly showed LRT has a maximum capacity of about 13,000. It is not 16,000 or higher. LRT advocates have a bad habit of discrediting themselves by not paying attention to that chart and using higher numbers from I-don’t-know-where, a trap that even bodies such as Pembina have fallen into (they recently tried to suggest each LRV could carry 280(!!!)).
The capacity per LRV car is 130, not 180 (T-1 subway cars have a capacity of 167, for reference/comparison) and we also know from past reports on the subway that 90-second headways are not realistic as the margin for error is far too thin to sustain the operation (although TTC has been inconsistent on this, I’d advise anyone to side with the more cautious conclusion). A 105-second headway is the highest that can realistically be planned on. And sure enough; 3600/105=34 trains an hour, and 34 x 3 x 130 = 13,260, the maximum capacity of underground LRT (because you’ll obviously never sustain 105-second headways on the surface). Surface LRT capacity should not realistically be expected to exceed 8,000 given the limitations imposed by traffic signals that affect headway reliability (effectively restricting headways to 180 seconds). Once a line hits 10,000, a subway should be put in place in order to allow the system the space to continue to grow in a reliable operating environment, otherwise it will face situations comparable to south Yonge, a headache which nobody wants.
The tunnel is not being built for accommodating even 4-car trains, nevermind 5-car trains, and nor would it make any economical sense to have 5-car trains as the capital costs for such infrastructure would be greater than that of a conventional subway, no contest; total waste of money. With a 5-car LRV train, the maximum capacity with ATO included is only 22,100, not 27,000, whereas a subway with less infrastructure would be able to carry, theoretically, 37,500 with the same headway applied with its 6-car TR trains (which are shorter than a 5-car LRV train by about 13m) and with cheaper infrastructure than that required for a 5-car LRV system. LRT is ideal for 4-digit capacities, but they are not economical for five-digit capacities.
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Mike says:
“Scarborough people want this, because as a Scarborough resident, I understand Transit City LRT plan did nothing to improve my commute or that of the other 600,000 Scarborough residents. ”
As a Scarborough resident I understand that a Sheppard subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre does nothing to improve my commute. I still need to take a 30 to 45 minute bus ride to Scarborough Town Centre just to access the subway. An LRT line along Sheppard would have been much more accessible and cut down my commuting time considerably.
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Hi there,
As someone who has spent a good part of his life living in both suburban and downtown type neighbourhoods (not all in Toronto – I live in Montreal now, but travel back frequently) – often relying on transit in both cases – I have to admit that I find the level of negativy directed at the new plan quite surprising.
The reality for most city dwellers in Canada today is that our jobs, friends, family, and other activities tend to be quite scattered. We need to cover great distances to juggle all of this. I understand the arguments for Transit City allowing “rapid transit” to serve more people for less money invested. However, I don’t actually think that it’s the kind of transit that many people feel will be helpful (it’s telling that most of the mayoral candidates in Toronto seemed lukewarm towards Transit City). The obvious drawbacks to the Transit City lines was their speed versus subway as well as vulnerability to traffic blockage at intersections. The speed and reliability issues are really key given the distances many people find themselves travelling in Toronto.
I take a holistic view of transit myself – that is, how do all the different modes work together to create an accessible and efficient network for getting from point A to point B? In my experience Montreal’s reputation of having the best transit system in Canada comes from having a well connected subway network backed up with a variety of bus services that receive regular tweaking to deal with congestion and area needs. Toronto can do this too without at-grade LRT.
What I see in the new SRT plan is finally a well connected subway network for Toronto. As a subway layout, I think it’s a great one to build off of. Apparently, Royson James seems to think so too.
I agree that skepticism regarding the funding of the Sheppard line is warranted. But let’s not mix up a great transit idea with a bad funding plan.
Steve: The part of Montreal that contains almost all of its subway system is considerably smaller than the City of Toronto. It is not fair to compare the two systems unless you are going to do this on the basis of comparable areas and populations. If we built Montreal’s density of subways over the entire 416, as some would have us do, it would be a magnificent, but very expensive network. Oddly enough, we never hear about money wasted on transit for such schemes, and yet people who complain that they will lose their late night bus service are called selfish. There is a huge disconnect here between what we are prepared to spend on day-to-day transit service and what we hope someone else will spend on transit expansion without raising our taxes.
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I hope all of those good souls who commented here have also made points to their local councillor, or intend to.
This may not be a popular enough compromise with many Councillors, and the trick is to drive a few wedges in between the Fordites and the Council majority, in the strong and fond hope he starts losing votes, assuming that at some point/year, this pile of crap may actually make it on to some agenda somewhere for public comment.
The $49M costs of cancellation/reimbursement are a Wonderful Place to begin…
Oh, and didn’t gas prices just go up? Don’t forget that….
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Mikey said: “For all the complaints that Ford’s proposal has been drawn on a paper napkin style planning; whoever’s bright idea it was to tack on a spur to the SELRT (perhaps to give it a more purposeful terminus than taking mass transit to the edge of Rouge Park!) should be fired from their post.”
So I guess whoever suggested that UTSC should only get an LRT connection when the Scarborough Malvern LRT line was hopefully constructed sometime after 2020 rather than 2015 for the Pan Am games with the SELRT line should be promoted?
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Errr… add ATC? Why would anyone build a grade-separated rapid transit system and NOT use ATC these days? That would be insane.
Speaking of grade separation… does anyone know if the savings of doing an elevated line (vs. tunnelled) are relatively significant? I know here in the GTA that probably stirs unhappy associations with the SRT but other than that unfortunate example, it seems like it’s worth considering to avoid the obvious pitfalls of at-grade without paying the super-high costs of tunnelling.
Steve: Elevated structures are generally cheaper than tunnels. The problem is how to integrate them into the existing and future landscape. This varies with street width and land use (present and future). For those who have a fetish for preserving road space, I must also point out that elevated structures are not held up by hot air, and stations can, depending on the site, consume a lot of space at ground level for little things like stairs, escalators and elevators.
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Karl Junkin said: “The capacity per LRV car is 130, not 180”.
I found data for one modification of Flexity-2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexity_2_(Blackpool)). The stated capacity is “74 seats, 148 standing per tram”. Though, I realise that the capacity might vary between models.
Btw, the stated capacity for Toronto’s ALRV (http://transit.toronto.on.ca/streetcar/4504.shtml) is 155 for “normal service usage”, and 205 for “crush load”. I thought that the new light rail cars will be slightly larger than ALRV.
Steve: The capacities stated there are engineering figures that bear no relationship to normal service. When the TTC plans service (see 2008 Service Plan at page 8), they base capacities on how a car or bus can reasonably be expected to perform without being stuffed to the roof. The planning value used for an ALRV is 108. More will fit on the car, but passengers (and service) have a bad habit of not being uniformly distributed in time. If service were planned based on 155 average, many cars would have to carry more than their “normal service load” to keep the overall crowding at the average. In fact, service is planned on the assumption that over an hour, some vehicles will have more passengers and some fewer, but it will average out to 108.
It is possible to use a planning value closer to the theoretical one when the TTC moves to all-door loading with self-service fare validation and low floor cars because, as on the subway, passengers can flow in and out much more easily over the length of the vehicle/train. PoP was instituted on Queen for this purpose.
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@Michael Forest:
The interior passenger space of both the new LRVs and the T-1s are almost identical before seating, but the LRVs will have more space lost to seating that the T-1s due to both layout styles and due to vehicle width differences. It is impossible for the new LRVs to hold more than the T-1s. The T-1s can hold 167 based on the loading standard of 1,000/train (6 cars), so the TTC’s stated capacity of 130 for the new LRVs is credible.
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I just had a crazy thought: If Dalton McGuinty somehow survives the election in the fall, would it be possible for Metrolinx to proceed with the original design of the Eglinton line with the above ground sections instead of the new underground plan since the agreement they signed with Rob Ford is non-binding? The lovely thing about non-binding agreements is they are easily breakable after all, but the downside is it also gives Tim Hudak an easy out for canceling the whole thing if he comes into power.
Steve: More to the point, the MOU is signed only by Ford, not by the City, and isn’t binding in anyone. If Ford loses in 2014, we could revert back to the current plans before much, if anything, that wasn’t in them is built. Ford’s real challenge is to get his vision far enough “down the road” that it cannot be turned around by a successor. Miller’s failing (with a lot of help from Queen’s Park) was that Transit City was easy to stop because it never really got started.
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Yes, that may be the better way forward, splitting up the contracts so that the original part that was to be underground, remains underground, and the extremities, the new parts to be buried, don’t get done till later, AF being preferred.
I had a swipe at this change in the Star today; hope it helps.
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Not the best place for this question, but I’m wondering how (or if) the GO bus terminal at Yorkdale will be impacted by the Spadina subway extension.
Steve: Given the importance of the 401 as a feeder route to Yorkdale, I suspect that many GO operations will stay the same. Only those that feed in from the north would make sense for relocation, and even then, the simple 401-to-400 route may make it just as easy to leave them at Yorkdale where there are existing passenger and ticketing facilities.
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Karl Junkin said: “The interior passenger space of both the new LRVs and the T-1s are almost identical before seating, but the LRVs will have more space lost to seating that the T-1s due to both layout styles and due to vehicle width differences. It is impossible for the new LRVs to hold more than the T-1s. The T-1s can hold 167 based on the loading standard of 1,000/train (6 cars), so the TTC’s stated capacity of 130 for the new LRVs is credible.”
My response:
But Flexity 2 (at least the Blackpool model described in Wikipedia) is longer than T-1. For T-1, the stated dimensions are 23 m x 3.14 m (72.22 sq. m) (See Wikipedia). For Flexity 2, they are 32.2 m x 2.65 m (85.33 sq. m) (Wikipedia again).
I understand that capacity is not exactly proportional to square footage; as you mentioned the layouts and the numbers of seats are different, and low floor vehicles must lose some floor space to wheels. Yet, if T-1 has a design capacity of 167, expecting only 130 for LRVs with larger overall square footage seems a little surprising.
Or, perhaps the light rail vehicles ordered by Metrolinx are smaller than the above mentioned Flexity 2 …
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@Mikey: You are assuming people live downtown. I’m also a former UTSC student. I commuted from Richmond Hill, and I had friends who commuted from Etobicoke. A direct way to get to the Sheppard subway would have been great.
Currently:
– 38 to STC. 190 to Don Mills. Long walk down to the platforms. Subway to Yonge.
With a hypothetical Sheppard LRT:
– LRT to Don Mills. Walk across the platform. Subway to Yonge.
I have to say that Sheppard was my least favourite of the proposals, but it would have helped. (I also like the mega-Eglinton plan.)
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Steve said: “Elevated structures are generally cheaper than tunnels. The problem is how to integrate them into the existing and future landscape. This varies with street width and land use (present and future).”
My response:
To my understanding, Eglinton between the DVP and Kennedy (Golden Mile) is the potential candidate for an elevated line. Since the corridor is wide and the area is largerly low-rise commercial, an elevated structure in the middle of the street would be a lesser problem there than in a residential area and / or narrow street.
Steve: I wanted to make sure you were not proposing an el across the entirety of Eglinton.
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The interior passenger space of both the new LRVs and the T-1s are almost identical before seating, but the LRVs will have more space lost to seating that the T-1s due to both layout styles and due to vehicle width differences.
@Karl:
Is there any reason why we can’t buy wider LRVs should we need more capacity? From what I understand, the tunnels will be quite wide to accommodate the overhead.
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Steve said: “I wanted to make sure you were not proposing an el across the entirety of Eglinton.”
Yeah, that’s not workable. An el might be OK through the Golden Mile, across the rivers (East Don, West Don, Black Creek), and perhaps in parts of Etobicoke. Hopefully that can save some money, compared to tunneling the entire length.
In the central part of Eglinton, tunnel is the only practical way. The street is narrow, and mostly residential. The residents would sue the city into bankruptcy (and rightfully so) if it tried to build an el in front of their windows.
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Mike says “Scarborough people want this, because as a Scarborough resident, I understand Transit City LRT plan did nothing to improve my commute or that of the other 600,000 Scarborough residents. “
Mike, I hope you have done due diligence on the various claims. I heard Doug Ford claim that Scarborough people with “two hours commutes” would be able to get downtown “in twenty minutes” with the Sheppard extension to STC.
Considering that it takes more than 20 minutes to travel from Don Mills station to Bloor-Yonge today, it’s fair to ask if Doug was really as clueless as his claim makes him appear. Maybe his conception of “twenty minutes” or “downtown” are….unusual?
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Karl Junkin wrote, “I really wish that LRT advocates would pay more attention to the chart that the TTC displayed at most of the consultation sessions during the EA that clearly showed LRT has a maximum capacity of about 13,000.”
True, if one limits the operation to what the TTC was planning. While I tend to use a more critical analysis of LRT examples while giving the benefit of the doubt on subway figures when comparing in order to avoid criticisms of over-stating what LRT can do, the numbers I suggested are not as unreal as Karl suggests. In any event, the issue at hand is whether subway can be justified using projections into the next 30-50 years and whether LRT would be completely beyond its capacity in that time.
Karl noted, “The capacity per LRV car is 130, not 180”
The capacity of a Bombardier Flexity LRV is about 66 seated and 120 standing (based on 3 people per square metre loading, not crush loading), and that is 186 in total. Siemens Combino Plus has a seating capacity of 67 and room for 117 standees at the same loading standard, and that is 184. I will admit that I do not know why I used 180 as my reference value as I usually use 175.
Karl noted, “A 105-second headway is the highest that can realistically be planned on.”
I would agree, which is why I used 120. ATC could bring it down to 105, but I will stick with 120. With a three car train, this gives a capacity of 15,750 (using my usual 175 peak loading figure).
Finally, Karl noted, “The tunnel is not being built for accommodating even 4-car trains, nevermind 5-car trains”
This is why I said, “I would add that for a fully tunneled line, pocket tracks and station “utility” areas should be built for the possibility of 5-car trains…”
Note the use of the word “should”. The TTC’s diagrams of the Eglinton plan had platforms built for 3-car trains, with only a 2-car length initially finished. Each station had a utility area at each end that could conceivably make the combined length long enough for 5-car trains, but certainly for 4-car trains. That is not to say that it would be feasible to extend the platforms to make use of this space, but perhaps something that should be worked into the plans. All that aside, to the best of my knowledge, nothing in the plans showed a pocket track that was significantly longer than a 3-car length. Given the added cost of finding a level stretch for 5-car trains, even a 4-car train length for pocket tracks would provide additional expansion.
The key is what is the capacity requirements now and in the foreseeable future. I would suggest that the 10,000 number to justify full subway as far out as ten years should trigger the selection of full subway. The TTC’s own projections for Eglinton have it at 5,400 in 2031, and I personally believe that is low, but even if it is 10,000 in 2031 I do not believe that is justification to build subway now, because it won’t be justification to change at that time. Three car trains at 120 second headways is still only at 65% capacity.
The point I am making is that while a projection of 10,000 in the next decade is a valid threshold for building a full subway today, that number is not valid for a projection further into the future. I don’t know what the magic number should be, but if one could show a need for 17,000 within 25 years, then the justification for building a line as full subway today becomes feasable even if 10,000 won’t be reached within ten years.
Steve: In this whole debate, what is also missed is the reason for an LRT network in Transit City to start with. The section of the route where there will be highest demand is within the tunnelled portion (as originally designed). The stretches east of Don Mills and west of Black Creek/Weston are territory for surface operation. There is a similar issue with service levels and scale of infrastructure on the northern extension of the SRT. If we build as full subway, we preclude future LRT extensions with less expensive infrastructure and service levels.
I for one have not given up on LRT, although as I have written before, the Transit City network as designed is not perfect. The Fords won’t be in power forever, and we need the flexibility to revisit LRT options when they are gone.
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How does this affect schedules? I’ve heard 2019 as the complete date for Eglinton. But surely they’ll be working in stages? When can we expect the first passengers on the line? Is it the center section that will open first?
Steve: The opening is announced for 2020, the same as it was in the previous Metrolinx plan. There is no word on a staged opening, but if one were planned, it would be the western half first as (a) that’s where the carhouse is and (b) that’s where they will start tunnelling.
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The City’s posted a map showing Rob Ford’s solution to Toronto’s transit woes. It must have looked pretty sparse compared to Transit City, so they decided to spruce it up by pretending a bus stuck in heavy traffic is rapid transit and tossing it on the subway map.
But this is great news! Looking at the existing express bus services, we now already have a line that goes to the Airport, the Beaches, Humber Bay, the DVP, and up Mount Pleasant and Avenue Road without spending an extra penny.
A little scribbling with a pen and Toronto will have a network to rival Madrid!
Steve: It’s amusing that the Mayor’s map claims that Eglinton will be underground for its entire length even though the MOU with Queen’s Park clearly states that this will not be the case for the Don River crossings. Also, the section west of Black Creek is not shown, and that is the subject of a future design exercise.
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I think the real problem here isn’t the capacity or the technology or the fact the whole thing costs more then it should, it’s that by the time they are ready to build it, some group of politicians will get changed out and the next group will toss out this plan and come up with another one. I fully expect that in 2020 they will still be arguing about it because politicians who are elected to 4 year terms are dealing with 10 year plans, and they don’t care about 10 years from now, when they may have been tossed out.
Toronto, Queens Park and Ottawa need to get their act together, plan on funding 5 years out, say $600 million a year (1/3 each), this is what the TTC has as a subway expansion budget, with the provision that they must add a minimum of 1km a year. That has to cover stations, tracks, signals, lighting equipment, etc. does not include additional rolling stock or operational costs, the TTC has to cover those. Each year the City, province and feds need to argue the funding another year out, so next year you would argue funding for 2017. Yes I know that you might not open 1km a year, but in 3 years your opening a station every 8 months or so, and that would make the people happy, because they actually see something happening.
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Looking back at the Big Move’s 25-year passenger forecast, they had a peak point ridership of 7,800 on the Eglinton LRT (presumably somewhere near Yonge) and 6,400 on the SRT (presumably just east of Kennedy).
With just the Eglinton LRT, we would have expect to have the highest ridership between/near the Spadina and Yonge subway lines, then getting lighter out to the terminus. Now with the combined line, we will also see a high load east of Kennedy.
Previously it was anticipated that there would be short-turning (at Don Mills?) so that there wouldn’t be as much service on the lesser used part of the line. Is there any point now … I wouldn’t be surprised if the operation of the line sees all trains that leave Scarborough Centre getting to Black Creek.
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Mayor Ford’s consultant is quoted in the Sun admitting that the Sheppard Subway extension might be a ‘no go’, if the all-mighty private sector doesn’t come to the table. This confirms what we all knew all along, that when the Mayor talked about building a subway, he had no idea whether or not it could be done.
Normally this could be some kind of scandal. However, when the Mayor comes up for re-election, around the time the Sheppard LRT would have been build, he’ll find a way to explain away any lack of progress on the subway. Eglinton’s a subway, sort of. He’ll say he kept his promise and the Feds/ Province/ or maybe even, God forbid, the private sector even may get the blame for his own ineptitude for doing a ‘Mike Harris’ on Sheppard.
When that happens we ought to let him get away with it. It’s really us voters who should accept the blame for electing a man to the highest office, in the biggest city in the land, who is completely out of his depth.
So while the Crosstown metro/subway/RT/Underground LRT/, whatever they’re calling it today will be a nice seamless ride from Jane to Scarborough Centre in 2020, enjoy it. Remember, it cost us a city-wide transport system.
Steve: Rob Granatstein’s analysis misses one important point — even if we could build all of the density needed to make the numbers work, someone has to buy all of those condos. Developers won’t build where there is no market, and they certainly won’t dilute the value of their other projects in more attractive areas (e.g. downtown) by overbuilding in the suburbs.
Is is astounding how the Fords don’t seem to understand the most basic economics of the real estate business.
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Christopher says:
“When that happens we ought to let him get away with it. It’s really us voters who should accept the blame for electing a man to the highest office, in the biggest city in the land, who is completely out of his depth.”
My response:
I completely agree with you here. I hope the people who voted for Ford enjoy $1.30/litre gas. The price will only increase in the future and on top of that their man Ford canceled a reliable alternative to the automobile: a 120 km light rail network.
Gas is unaffordable now and will become more so in the future. Today’s drivers will become tomorrow’s transit users, not by choice but because they can no longer afford to drive their cars. The people in the inner suburbs who voted for Ford will have a lot of time in the future to think about the day Ford canceled Transit City. They’ll have a lot of time while they’re waiting for 45 minutes to get onto overcrowded buses for their daily 2 hour commute to work.
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I wish to refer everyone here to the an article at thetransportpolitic about the current Toronto situation. If something new gets posted by the time someone gets around to looking for the article just scroll down. Plenty of comments all over the spectrum on the current debacle.
Steve: I have corrected the URL David supplied, and set it up to point to the specific article he’s talking about.
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The LRVs Metrolinx ordered are slightly smaller than the ones in Blackpool, as Bombardier itself outlines on slide 28, but there’s another shortcoming to the calculation you are using: Space for cabs at both ends. For a subway car, this is a pretty compact space, with only one cab at one end of the train and shared access to the cab through passenger areas (T-1 model, not TR), and is probably about only 1.5m^2 (guestimate). The Flexity 2, however, would probably lose about 8m^2 as its cabs span the full width of the vehicle and require more room to move around for getting in and out compared to the subway design as it isn’t accessed via passenger space like that of the subway is. So the area calculation works out to 2.65 x 30.78 – 8; about 73.5m^2, before articulation joints (which are narrower than the rest of the car), compared to the subway at 72.2 as you already identified, minus the cab at 1.5, to 70.7m^2. The square footage is about equal when adjusted for the LRV articulation joints, and more space is lost to seating and the aisle space is notably tighter than that on the subway. As I said earlier, it is not possible for the loading standard on the LRVs to be higher than that of the subway. If the subway is at 167, 130 for the LRVs is very believable.
Steve: Also, the LRVs will have a cab at each end of each car, while a TR train will only have a cab at the ends of the trainsets.
Not all LRVs are created equal, as per the above area comparison. There are also the issues associated with various types of passengers riding these vehicles. Passengers come in all shapes and sizes, and some come with equipment that takes up space, others have bags big or small that also occupy some level of space or another. Cumulatively, these impact the practical capacity; you are using a theoretical capacity, which, if I’m not mistaken, assumes no strollers, no students with backpacks, no passengers with large mobility devices, no cyclists, etc. Taking Finch West as an example, Humber would be generating traffic, and with it comes the stuff people bound for Humber have to lug with ’em. These kinds of passengers can take up more space than others. Therefore, I think 130 is significantly more realistic than 180 for the vehicle model in question.
Except that by that vehicle length (123m), you’re spending the same amount of money in capital for either technology when you combine both infrastructure and vehicle costs. Why pick the lower capacity for at least the same capital money, and incur millions in higher operating dollars every year? Fewer vehicles and drivers are required with wider headways to provide the same capacity with a HRT subway, meaning no savings at all from underground 4-car LRT. Don’t forget that 4-car systems cannot run in-street according to Toronto Transportation Services, so there’d be no savings from in-street operation on the outer ends with a 4-car system; you’d have to have a transfer, which I frankly would not classify as the end of the world.
85% if the capacity per car is adjusted to 130, and that’s before surge loads. I agree that TTC’s figures are low as TTC assumes no GO improvements in their model (this is also the cause for the big 56% difference in SRT projections between TTC and Metrolinx). Metrolinx projects 7,800 for Eglinton in 2031, and that’s long before the latest change in plan, a change that would likely drive that figure higher (how much higher is an excellent question and I’d be very interested in the answer if Metrolinx bothers to check). When the justification to switch to subway materializes later, which the Metrolinx projection clearly and strongly suggests is conceivable since growth won’t magically cease in 2031 (meaning it’s not an “if”), it’s at least a billion dollars to upgrade the line. By contrast, it would be considerably cheaper if the design were tweaked to run as a subway from the outset, and if we’re going to have a political environment that won’t entertain any on-street operation, that makes a lot more sense in my opinion (especially considering the current environment where LRT is politically popular in other jurisdictions that would gladly take the existing vehicles ordered not needed for the SRT off of Toronto’s hands).
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The whole argument over whether Eglinton should be build HRT or LRT from the start seems to be getting bogged down in details that tend to cloud things.
The key is that the capacity capabilities of each technology have an overlap to some extent, depending on what infrastructure is in place. Aside from this, there are other considerations that need to be considered such as whether or not future transit expansions are better served with a change of modes or an extension of a mode that can move from fully isolated to partially isolated to not isolated at all.
While overall growth will not magically cease in 2031, or at any other time, demand for a particular part of the network is likely to level off if we continue to enhance the network. In other words, if we build Eglinton (and maybe something along more of Sheppard than what is there now) and never build anything else substantial, the demand for it will keep growing and growing until it is bursting at its seams (can anyone say ‘Yonge’?).
If, on the other hand, the plan will be to continue to enhance the network with the additions of higher order transit that runs north-south as well as other east-west lines, or even a wide U shape of a DRL, use and demand patterns will shift. How steady we continue to enhance the network will determine how well demand patterns spread out across the network and overall increased demand is taken up by new additions to the network instead of continuing to dump on one single line.
Then again, we have always worked on a sort of “let’s get what we can now because that’s all we will ever get” principle, so maybe Eglinton should be built as if nothing will ever be built that will spread out some of its load. This has worked so well for us in the past.
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Karl Junkin: Thank you for the detailed analysis, and it makes a lot of sense.
Nonetheless, I’d be concerned if Eglinton line goes through another re-design (LRT to HRT) in the present political and fiscal environment. It might simply not survive (comes Hudak; sees that Toronto still can’t agree how to spend the transit funding; thinks Hey why don’t we use it for deficit reduction instead).
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Will the Scarborough RT ever be extended to Sheppard and Markham or Malvern Town Centre? I know when Miller was still Mayor and before Ford came in and ruined everything, the TTC Open Houses were talking about renovating the SRT into an SLRT and extending the line to Markham and Sheppard. There was also a movement by transit or community activists to add Brimley station. I realize this is off the table now but is there any chance of this happening if the project is under budget?
Steve: This all depends on the evolution of politics at the City and Provincial levels.
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Answer to the problem is simple. Eliminate Democracy, install a dictator that will solve all these problems. There was an article comparing Toronto’s slow subway progress Vs Beijing’s large and rapidly expanding subway system. Fmr mayor David Miller said “Chinese don’t wait, they act”. What should be done is simple, Have city goverment do a study of where is the best area to build transit and start construction. Eliminate the public meetings, they go nowhere and waste more time then necessary. Most of the time, commuters, in Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough, (areas that voted for Ford) simply don’t know how to make rational decisions regarding the future. I don’t like bringing up politcs, but I feel that the political system is an obstacle to progress and in order for real change to happen, the politcal system has to change itself.
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