The City of Toronto has issued a proposal call on behalf of Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited (TTIL) for consultants to work on the business model for the extensions of the Sheppard Subway.
One option previously discussed to fund transit expansion has been “Tax Increment Financing”. Comments in various places, including from members of the development industry, suggested that the scale of development needed on Sheppard Avenue to finance the subway extensions was not attainable.
We now know that the Ford regime intends to cast the net much wider to fund their pet project:
The plan will assume that the incremental tax revenues arising from the construction of the proposed Sheppard subway extension corridors as well as from the construction of the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown line can be applied towards funding the capital costs of the Sheppard subway extension projects. The plan will provide a separate forecast of incremental tax revenues for each of the four corridors (Sheppard W., Sheppard E., Eglinton, Scarborough RT).
In other words, additional tax will flow not just from Sheppard, but from the Eglinton-Scarborough line funded by Queen’s Park. This begs the question of how we would ever fund rapid transit entirely with TIF revenue when we must raid the benefits of other projects.
The Memorandum of Understanding between Mayor Ford and Queen’s Park does not specify where TIF would be applied, only that it is an option to be explored and Queen’s Park would assist with any necessary legislative changes.
This is turning into a shell game where future city revenues that would pay for many improvements and ongoing operations will be mortgaged to fund one subway expansion.
[Thanks to Jamie Kirkpatrick at the Toronto Environmental Alliance for spotting this.]
Steve Munro 
Any private investor would be a complete brainless moron to invest in the extension of the Sheppard line, given how underused it is and how much of a hassle it is going to be with building new condos to support the density required for a subway. Now if it was the DRL that would be privately financed, that would be acceptable since the line would get an excellent return on investment with a lot of riders from the Yonge line and the new riders that the line would attract.
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Were I a property owner on Eglinton, I would be furious right about now; I’d be a cash cow for one massive liability of a megaproject. This is not respect for taxpayers.
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This would be funny if it wasn’t happening in a city I love.
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Well, this isn’t that big of a surprise considering that they have been musing about robbing the money from development across the city to pay for it.
Of course now I really want to see the conservatives’ transit platform for the upcoming fall election just to see if Ford would panic if there is any mention of scaling back the Eglinton line.
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Isn’t Deco Labels and Tags interested in becoming private investors of the Sheppard subway extension? Surely, the Mayor has access to private financing in this regard.
The Sheppard subway is fairly busy during rush hour (granted it only operates 4 car trains so ridership is lower when compared to other Toronto subway lines). If an extension is built ridership may increase. That being said, the Sheppard subway is also fairly empty off peak hours.
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Ummm – and where do people think the Queen’s Park money for the Eglinton line is coming from? Taxpayers located only on the Eglinton line? So what if funds are spread around from “general” revenue?
If each service (bus/ subway/streetcar) has to justify its existence on an economic basis – how many routes would survive? Would an airport line even be built?
Who pays fom GO infrastructure? Only those who live close to the lines?
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Tax Increment Financing
— So this is a TAX???
Steve: Shhhhh! You’re not supposed to notice that this is not private sector finance. We borrow money pledging future tax revenue to pay it back. The magic comes from the premise that the growth (and resulting taxes) would not have happened without the subway construction. This is total BS accounting, but the right wing everywhere has taken the world to the cleaners with this sort of thing.
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Isn’t Doug Ford’s councilor salary still being given to charity? Isn’t Doug still being paid for “something” from Deco Labels and Tags? Who actually does pay for the Ford brother’s office expenses?
Couldn’t the same company pay for the Sheppard subway?
…not!
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Steve:
I think you’re being slightly too hard on TIF. At its core, it’s just a way of earmarking property tax dollars to pay down bonds. It’s extraordinarily useful for cleaning up brownfield sites and then putting in place the basic infrastructure they require to develop. No right-wing theft of public dollars or BS accounting there at all.
That said, TIF is wildly inappropriate as a financing tool for the Sheppard subway and applying it to properties along Sheppard & Eglinton is both unethical and insufficient.
It’s already valuable land without much barrier to redevelopment and is priced accordingly–i.e. the tax increment even for both won’t pay the bills–and pretending the Sheppard subway is responsible for the improvement along Eglinton is a transparent slap in the face.
The project doesn’t really fit with the 2006 TIF Act. The feasibility study required by Section 2.(2) of the TIFA must identify the district which will have its assessment increase due to the financed project (i.e. not Eglinton).
And Section 2.(3) restrict the TIF district’s tax earmarks to less than 1% of total municipal property tax revenues. Toronto’s 2010 operating budget raised $3.534 billion from property taxes. That would seem to restrict the amount of money raised from TIF to about $35.3 million/year, which is a pretty small chunk of the subway budget.
Steve: My complaint with TIF is twofold. First, as you agree, applying it outside of the area where the benefit of the project it funds would actually occur is just plain wrong. Second, there is a contradiction in claiming that “the private sector” will fund a new subway when what we are really doing, one way or another, is borrowing money and earmarking future revenues to pay back the loan. In the process, we throw the burden generated by new development for facilities other than the transit project onto general revenues. This is a shell game.
Only if we can demonstrate that the incremental tax revenue, net of any new costs the development might generate (sewer and road improvements, for example) are positive can those funds be truly considered as “incremental” and available to pay down debt. The cost of the subway is vastly more than TIF is likely to generate, and to pretend otherwise misrepresents the financial situation. The fact that Ford has to pillage revenue from the Eglinton project shows that Sheppard on its own cannot support financing of the subway.
There’s a direct analogy here to the collapse of the financial system thanks to people buying houses they could not afford. Toronto will be burdened with a “mortgage” on the Sheppard line with no guarantee that the development to finance it (even on an expanded scope) will ever materialize, but will have to give away to store on development schemes just to generate the density needed to pay off the loan.
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Let me get this straight: instead of raising tax revenue for a project from levies and the additional tax base created by development close to the project, we are looking at doing that for a larger scope of development across the city.
This gives me an idea: I could get some people to give me their money to invest in something. As I get more people on board, I could use the money I get from them to pay the first group of people a return on their investment that would make them feel really good about continuing to invest with me and… oh yea, there are laws against doing this! 😉
Applying TIF to developments beyond those along one transit line to fund that one transit line strikes me as closely resembling a pyramid scheme.
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Hi Steve:-
What we need immediately is the little boy crying out that the Emperor (Er Mayor) has no clothes. 70% approval indeed!
Dennis Rankin
Steve: It’s worth noting that the 70% poll included people who live in the 905. I love pollsters who can’t even get their sample right!
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“If an extension [for the Sheppard Subway] is built ridership may increase.”
Not enough though. According to the TTC’s own FAQ presentations on the Sheppard LRT, a Sheppard Subway extension would attract a peak-point ridership of only 5 000 pphpd, still far below the 10 000 pphpd needed to justify subways.
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Ron writes:
“Ummm – and where do people think the Queen’s Park money for the Eglinton line is coming from? Taxpayers located only on the Eglinton line? So what if funds are spread around from “general” revenue?”
Ron, the point is that Ford is struggling to come up with a viable way of paying for the Sheppard line without raising property taxes. If he was willing to do that — or possibly issue a special levy on the city — I think that would be an honest approach that we could debate and, if implemented, would bring in the bucks and get us the trains. But there’s no way on God’s green earth that Ford is going to accept a significant increase in property taxes in order to pay for such a large piece of capital infrastructure. Thus the desperate search for magic pixie dust in the form of development charges, contracting out and tax increment financing.
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As an aside, the 70% approval rating doesn’t particularly surprise me. Ford has had Miller’s $300 million surplus to coast on, and the cuts required to maintain a balanced budget have been pushed back to 2012. Most Torontonians don’t read this blog, and have other things to do in their lives than to really take an interest in this political debate. Except for those individuals who have been hit by the TTC’s reallocation of services on 41 routes, Ford’s mayoralty hasn’t hurt them yet.
I suspect that this will change once the realities of closing the $700 million shortfall come home to roost in 2012, and the expected gravy train savings don’t materialize. Once people start dealing with closed libraries, pools and community centres, not to mention significant TTC service cuts, Ford’s political trajectory may start lining up with that of former mayor Larry O’Brien in Ottawa.
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Are there any real studies of the quantity of development expected along the Sheppard and Eglinton lines? There is no way that the good burghers of Scarborough are going to allow North York Centre like condo development along Sheppard.
I understood the levies went to pay for things like the city hooking up expanded density with sewer and electrics, and for local parks and libraries….i.e. services beyond running a subway between two malls. How is that stuff going to be paid for? If I was a developer along the Eglinton line, I’d balk at paying a fee so Rob can say to somebody in Chicago , “You know, I built a subway once.”
Yeah, its wacky accounting. But….hey, we’ll have a football team with a monorail.
Steve: The TTIL consultant is expected to come up with info about the development prospects along the lines.
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Jacob Louy says:
“Not enough though. According to the TTC’s own FAQ presentations on the Sheppard LRT, a Sheppard Subway extension would attract a peak-point ridership of only 5 000 pphpd, still far below the 10 000 pphpd needed to justify subways.”
Oh no, facts. Ford no like facts.
My bad jokes aside, thanks for posting those figures. I completely forgot about them. The 5,000 pphpd is exactly why the previous administration chose light rail for Sheppard rather than a subway. I was looking for those figures for all of the planned LRT routes but couldn’t find them. They were available just last year but I can’t find them now.
Steve: Much of the info about the LRT proposals was taken down on the City’s website at the direction of Mayor Ford’s office.
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From Tuesday’s Globe
I’m getting a feel for how easy Tina Fey had it.
Steve: Considering that the good doctor used to be in charge of GO Transit, it’s a wonder we have such a downtown centric commuter system. Of course, Transit City wasn’t downtown-centric, but he probably didn’t notice.
As for doing nothing right, let him look at that precious downtown North York and compare it to the real downtown. The tourists do not flock to Yonge and Sheppard.
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Does this mean that he thinks the Lighter Rail service on Eglinton will be so attractive to developers that they can Finance a Heavy Rail Subway out of it?
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The EA’s are still up. And here’s the page where the 5 000 pphpd for a Sheppard Subway came from (page 9 of the PDF).
The response to that comment specifically refers to a Sheppard Subway extension to Scarborough Centre.
Steve, did the TTC make projections on peak point ridership for Eglinton or Finch, if they were to be built as full-blown subways? The figure I found for Sheppard was in some random presentation on Frequently Asked Questions, not in the formal EA report.
Steve: Metrolinx included projections for Eglinton in one of the backgrounders to The Big Move, although this was predicated on a technology with the speed and presumed station spacings of a Skytrain implementation. City Planning and the TTC had a hard time swallowing these numbers because their own models produced much lower results. I don’t think the TTC has published any recent figures for Eglinton or Finch based on a subway implementation.
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Ford’s already been seen with no clothes, and it wasn’t pretty… (ya, I know, photoshop)
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Steve thanks for noting the worldwide “phenomenon” of TIF (and its partners in crime, PPP and PFI). It’s a loan from the private sector posing as private-sector capital investment. Once the private sector fails to see the promised profits materialise, they’ll be looking to the government for payouts.
As it is, extending Sheppard eastward is a good, though LOOONG overdue idea (this dates from the 1970s if I recall); but the problem with the Sheppard subway as it is built is that it might as well be another RT, with buses being fed into Don Mills. A Sheppard East LRT would make this worse, especially given their design for multimodal transfers being the stairmaster marathon at Kennedy (or worse, that interminable tunnel at Wilson to the old North Terminal). The best thing I can see for Sheppard is a single line running from Yonge (or Allen) east to Morningside; and if this means LRT, then the existing Sheppard tunnel can be converted to take those vehicles.
For Eglinton, at least burying it from Black Creek to Laird Drs would be a start, and adding $2bn to the cost of burying Laird Dr to Kennedy would be better off used elsewhere (Finch West perhaps?)
Oh well, at least we can rest assured that nothing will happen before 2014 anyway, and if things go as they are, we’ll still be here in 2034 chin-wagging, and the most Sheppard will be is a pointless purple stub, and Eglinton and Finch West will still just be pretty lines on maps.
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This quote is from the same article Karl Junkin posted above:
“As much as I’d like to say we’ll get shovels in the ground soon,” he said, “I suspect that won’t happen for another two or three years.”
Well here’s a broken Ford promise. He said he’d magically have the Sheppard subway extension completed either by the end of his term (2014) or in time for the Pan Am Games (2015) — I think it was the latter but I don’t remember for sure.
If they do somehow manage to start construction in 2013 or 2014 then the Sheppard subway extension won’t be open for revenue service until 2020 or 2022. He will clearly miss his deadline by 6 to 8 years and that’s if it ever gets built.
I knew he had no hope of keeping this promise as soon as he made it since subway projects typically take 8 to 10 years to complete in this city. Add in the fact that he has no funding and no clue how to fund the project and you end up with a politician who looks like he just plain doesn’t know what he’s doing.
It’s too bad for Toronto and Torontonians that so many people in this city didn’t even bother to think critically about Ford’s platform during the election and let themselves get suckered into believing what they wanted to hear.
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There are ways to speed up metro contructions. In Hong Kong, they hire guest workers who work around the clock to build their metros. Today, they announced two new lines. Even the South Island Line will be built by 2015 with a contruction starting this summer. This line is more challenging than Sheppard. It goes through mountain and water. Using guest workers also lowers the cost.
The Hong Kong governmnet assists the contruction by providing land for the stations. This also includes land around the station and yards. It is the responsiblity of the MTR corporation to develop the land and sell condos to recoup this financial assistance. If the real estate market tanks, the government is under no obligation to provide additional subsidies.
Here is a wild idea that requires help from Mr. McGuinty. The Government of Ontario can create a special entity than can issue bonds and take on debts. This entity can borrow the money needed for the construction. A special toll on Sheppard (for example $1 surcharge per ride), concessions (stores inside the station) and development can eventually pay off the debts.
This method was used in Japan many times. The Yurikamome line and Kansai International Airport (KIX) were the more recent examples. The special entity that built Kansai International borrowed over 1.3 trillion Yen in the open markets. It is in the process of paying that off. The Yurikamome line in Tokyo used this method and has paid off al debts ahead of time.
Steve: I am not sure there would be widespread acceptance of HK’s labour practices especially among the thousands of unemployed Canadians. Hmmm, using government land to subsidize the rapid transit line. Doesn’t quite sound like Rob Ford’s original promise that the whole thing would be privately financed. Also, I love the idea of a surcharge to ride on Sheppard (something that would be easily implemented with any form of automatic fare collection) — as if the line won’t have low enough demand already, we would drive riders away with a surcharge.
Yours is an apples and oranges argument that, at best, shows why the “success” of HK cannot be transferred directly to Toronto. The economics of Sheppard don’t work, but we will spend the next four years watching the Fords try to prove otherwise.
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The $1 surchage idea should not discourage riders. After all, when one chooses courier over Canada Post for mail, one pays more. Riding the Sheppard line is a premium experience over the 85 or even the 190 buses. What would you pay to get home earlier is a better question.
When the Sheppard line is completed along with the Spadina, one can travel from York University to Scarborough Center completely by rail. Right now, the GO 51A or 51 bus travels has the same origin and destination. GO charges $4.50 per ride (from memory). Even with the $1 surcharge, it is only $4.25 per ride. Considering that rail cars are quieter and smoother compared to motor coaches, it should not be a deterrent. I would pay it. It is only $40 ($2 x 20 business days) more per month for not getting stuck in traffic jam.
Transit systems are rarely privately built in today’s world. Government always has a hand in it even in Hong Kong. By the way, the MTR corporation makes more money from real estate than metro operations. So, there is no one dying to invest in transit building. Fund Managers do not actively seek to invest in building infrustructure. I mean if Mr. Ford can give developers the equivalent of Agincourt Mall (area wise) around every station, we may have a chance.
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Jacob Louy says:
May 17, 2011 at 1:55 pm
“According to the TTC’s own FAQ presentations on the Sheppard LRT, a Sheppard Subway extension would attract a peak-point ridership of only 5 000 pphpd, still far below the 10 000 pphpd needed to justify subways.”
The TTC’s own numbers justified its own proposal? Shocking!
And yet according to Mayor Miller’s first term, a Sheppard subway extension was perfectly justified since that was what he was promising and pushing for, only to lose out to Spadina thanks to York Region and Greg Sorbara.
Miller’s mistake in Transit City (second term) was not proposing that Sheppard get, at the very least, a two stop extension to Vic Park. An E. A. already existed for that stretch, it would have been justified in terms of ridership, and would have gone a ways to eliminating the “stubway” tag. Instead, the Mayor (or Adam Giambrone, if one believes he created and sold Transit City to Miller) spit on the suburbs and his own TTC commissioners by proposing LRT from Don Mills to Meadowvale (which would have caused another transfer, but that’s another story). And let’s not forget how they awkwardly tried to sell Finch West and Sheppard as one line before that died an early death.
As for Ford’s current proposal for Sheppard, it’s not happening unless he gets contributions from Ottawa and Queen’s Park, and it will be at least three years before those stars might align. Without that, Ford’s numbers won’t work.
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5000 pphd! Even a tram line can do that, light rail, busways easily.
Why did this have to be subway again? Light Rail 50 million/km much cheaper than subway…, and can be financed the same way as subway at least in theory.
Land development will only ever generate a small % of funds. That’s because Toronto isn’t Hong Kong, it takes time to develop land and how many properties do you need to generate say even 1% of 100 million per kilometre? You would need condos popping up like mushrooms everywhere for this to work.
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A surcharge for riding on the Sheppard subway… watch how busy those 85 Don Mills-Sheppard Stn buses will get!
Vancouver does that too on the Canada Line trains from the airport; if you have to buy a ticket from any of the machines at the 3 airport stations, you have to pay a $5 surcharge.
So the way to do it is to slap on the surcharge, and eliminate the alternatives, or make the alternatives so undesirable that the surcharge seems like a blessing in disguise; something like, have 5 minute service east of Don Mills and only 20 minute service west of Don Mills, and not even on through vehicles (and use creative manipulation of signage to disguise that the 85A Rouge Hill-Don Mills is separate from the 85/85A (85J?) Don Mills-Sheppard Stn).
But maybe we shouldn’t be giving Ford any ideas.
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Trams, yes, but busways? Unless you’re building something like OC Transpo’s Transitway, which is fully grade-separated bus-exclusive right-of-ways, which has a high cost, you will have difficulty getting 5,000pphpd with a busway. It’s possible, but costly and difficult; not “easily.”
Of course, if Sheppard were to run with a busway, its demand might not even hit 2,500, only half of its projected subway ridership, making the 5,000 projection a non-issue for a Sheppard busway.
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“And yet according to Mayor Miller’s first term, a Sheppard subway extension was perfectly justified since that was what he was promising and pushing for, only to lose out to Spadina thanks to York Region and Greg Sorbara.”
It’s one thing to muse about a faulty idea for a short time than to actively pursue it in light of all the criticism and short comings of that idea (which is what Rob Ford is doing with the Sheppard Subway). Frankly, if I were a newly-elected mayor, I would have thought the Sheppard Extension would have been a good idea, until the experts and staff convince me it’s not by using facts. I wouldn’t bash Miller over that.
“And let’s not forget how they awkwardly tried to sell Finch West and Sheppard as one line before that died an early death.”
Same response as first one. And did Giambrone/Miller publicly endorse the [Finch East] route?
“An E. A. already existed for that stretch [west of Victoria Park], it would have been justified in terms of ridership,”
What would the ridership have been according to the E.A.? Near 10 000 pphpd?
“Instead, the Mayor (or Adam Giambrone, if one believes he created and sold Transit City to Miller) spit on the suburbs and his own TTC commissioners by proposing LRT from Don Mills to Meadowvale (which would have caused another transfer, but that’s another story).”
Wouldn’t an extension to Victoria Park just create another transfer as well? Even if the Sheppard Subway were to be completed as planned (to the STC), there would still be a transfer at Sheppard/Kennedy (or wherever the subway would veer south). In fact, the only way I can think of to eliminate that petty transfer is to build the entire Sheppard Line to Meadowvale as Subway, but do you honestly think that will happen, let alone be the smart thing to do?
I always wonder why everyone blames a pro-LRT mayor for recognising the appropriateness of LRT for the suburbs (Sheppard in particular), when no one blames the previous pro-Subway mayor (i.e. Lastman) for choosing the stupidly-expensive and inappropriate technology in the first place, forcing us to create a needless transfer somewhere on Sheppard.
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I think what we’ve got here is “Totally Incredible Fantasy Financing”, I’d call it TIFF for short but that acronym has been taken.
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That seems like an argument to charge a surcharge to all riders of the subway, not just those on the Sheppard line.
Unrelatedly, what I find most interesting is that the (faulty and dishonest) premise that sufficient development will take place along Sheppard to financially support the construction of a subway is essentially admitting that there isn’t sufficient demand at present to justify a subway in that corridor. If there was, then all this fantasy new development would overwhelm it.
In fact, it sort of turns the whole idea of improving a transit system on its head–following this logic, we should build subways where there is no development and no demand currently, because those areas provide the greatest potential opportunity to increase land value.
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Note that HK’s South Island Line is being built as a “mini-metro” with shorter trains, etc. So even in Hong Kong, they acknowledge that “subways” don’t need to be “over-built”.
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All I can say about extending the Sheppard line is that if any of this extension ever does get built, I just hope it at least does something to mitigate the underuse of the line. I’ve always believed, and still do, that being a stubway has always at least part of the reason it’s been so underused.
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Benny Cheung says:
“What would you pay to get home earlier is a better question.”
Considering the shoddiness of the service, the length of time of my commute, poor customer service, rude TTC employees, other passengers who are always hitting other people with their bags when they walk by, the stress related to waiting at crowded platforms or stops without knowing when the next bus is coming (10 minutes? 45 minutes?) and the stress of not knowing if I can actually make it home using transit and if I’ll need to call someone to pick me up, I would be willing to pay more to get home earlier.
That being said, if I could afford it, I would ditch the TTC altogether and pay the cost of a car, insurance, gas, parking and maintenance for the convenience of cutting 9o to 150 minutes off my daily commute. I am not willing to pay more for the TTC due to all the problems I outlined above and because of some issues I have not listed (I do not wish to share the latter).
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“Instead, the Mayor (or Adam Giambrone, if one believes he created and sold Transit City to Miller) spit on the suburbs and his own TTC commissioners by proposing LRT from Don Mills to Meadowvale (which would have caused another transfer, but that’s another story).”
The LRT trains were literally going to arrive ON the Subway platform. We’re talking about what would have been the least arduous transfer in the entire city. Can people seriously not handle that?
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“All I can say about extending the Sheppard line is that if any of this extension ever does get built, I just hope it at least does something to mitigate the underuse of the line. I’ve always believed, and still do, that being a stubway has always at least part of the reason it’s been so underused.”
I’m starting to think that the Sheppard Subway would only be viable with the Sheppard LRT east of Kennedy to feed the subway, if that’s where Sheppard East passengers are going to. The Subway extension alone won’t be enough to increase ridership, as already stated.
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“Giambrone and Miller spit on the suburbs by proposing LRT in the suburbs … and nothing downtown??”
What a bizarre and partisan post.
Steve, can you just not post stuff from those who are either a) mentally ill, b) conspiracy theorists, or c) so totally partisan that they can’t be differentiated from a) or b)? It doesn’t help the debate.
Steve: Occasionally I have to let some drivel like this through to show that (a) I am not too biased, and (b) that there are people out there with a seriously compromised understanding of the facts. Unfortunately, they are prime fodder for the Ford faction for whom creative writing and blatant misrepresentation are stock-in-trade.
Note that this reply by me illustrates the concept of “not too biased”.
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Just stumbled across this on planetizen.com – CATO has come out strongly against TIF.
CATO Report
Steve: Amazing to see that Randall O’Toole of all people sees through the shell game that is Tax Increment Financing.
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Jacob Louy says:
“It’s one thing to muse about a faulty idea for a short time than to actively pursue it in light of all the criticism and short comings of that idea (which is what Rob Ford is doing with the Sheppard Subway). Frankly, if I were a newly-elected mayor, I would have thought the Sheppard Extension would have been a good idea, until the experts and staff convince me it’s not by using facts. I wouldn’t bash Miller over that.”
I consider Miller to have been a fine mayor, but 2-3 years was plenty of time for experts and staff to talk him out of a Sheppard subway extension. He never wavered publicly by the time Spadina won basic approval in early 2006.
Steve: Some of us tried to shift Miller on this issue, but the political momentum of the project was such that he would have wasted a lot of capital in opposing it, and been weaker with nothing to show for his effort.
“What would the ridership have been according to the E.A.? Near 10 000 pphpd?”
As far as I remember it did, and I’ve never heard anyone say that a V.P. extension wouldn’t be justified.
“Wouldn’t an extension to Victoria Park just create another transfer as well? Even if the Sheppard Subway were to be completed as planned (to the STC), there would still be a transfer at Sheppard/Kennedy (or wherever the subway would veer south). In fact, the only way I can think of to eliminate that petty transfer is to build the entire Sheppard Line to Meadowvale as Subway, but do you honestly think that will happen, let alone be the smart thing to do?”
The net effect obviously would be zero — the transfer at Don Mills would be moved to V.P.
Even the most ardent subway proponent has not suggested a subway extension to Meadowvale, and I oppose any extension beyond V.P.
Steve: Wherever the transfer might have been, it had to be convenient. The Don Mills link was planned as an across-the-platform transfer from LRT to subway, but people tend to think of places like the Kennedy subway-to-RT mess as the prototype for “LRT” schemes. If the subway were extended to VP, then a proper underground link between the two modes would have been an essential part of the station’s design. A proposed scheme extending only to Consumers Road, with the LRT at the surface and the subway a few levels down, would not have been ideal.
“I always wonder why everyone blames a pro-LRT mayor for recognizing the appropriateness of LRT for the suburbs (Sheppard in particular), when no one blames the previous pro-Subway mayor (i.e. Lastman) for choosing the stupidly-expensive and inappropriate technology in the first place, forcing us to create a needless transfer somewhere on Sheppard.”
Sure, Lastman’s subway should have gone to Eglinton, but then the SRT should have been a subway extension, and Yonge should have gone to Steeles instead of Finch in ’73, or should have been extended some time after. We can only deal with what is.
Lastman tried to extend Sheppard to STC in his second term, Miller tried the same in his first and then proposed LRT in his second, and Ford campaigned for a Downsview-STC subway. Sheppard has never been off the table, and it could well have been at the top of the list today if not for how far along contractual arrangements were for the Eglinton line (thankfully!).
My argument is that a two-stop extension as part of T.C. was justified and would have been enough to satisfy the suburban wolves. I’m not suggesting suburban resentment over transit led directly to Rob Ford’s victory, but it surely played a factor in my opinion.
Steve: There were a number of issues in TC that should have been fixed. Early in the process, I (and others) was told “we will fix this later, the important thing is to get general acceptance of the plan”. I distrusted this (and have written about the difficulty of changing plans once they are committed to paper). Several shortcomings such as the hare-brained scheme to build surface LRT all the way to the Bloor-Danforth subway on two corridors (Jane and Don Mills) haunted the credibility of the plan overall. The traffic engineers cooked up a scheme for left turns that was guaranteed to arouse the wrath of all car drivers. Bit by bit, TC accumulated critics and enemies. What might have been saved with sensitive modifications was mortally wounded thanks to the pig-headedness of planners and engineers at both the TTC and the City. They were supported by politicians who fear to criticize staff.
Brendan H says:
“The LRT trains were literally going to arrive ON the Subway platform. We’re talking about what would have been the least arduous transfer in the entire city. Can people seriously not handle that?”
Should they? Yes. But the reality is there is a subway already there, and suburbanites have been promised an extension for most of the last decade.
nfitz says:
“Steve, can you just not post stuff from those who are either a) mentally ill, b) conspiracy theorists, or c) so totally partisan that they can’t be differentiated from a) or b)? It doesn’t help the debate. ”
I apologize if the use of the word “spit” offended anyone, but as for helping debate, accusing someone of being mentally ill is totally uncalled for.
Steve: I have already replied to nfitz earlier in the thread.
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Everyone seems to have assumed that the only development along a Sheppard extension will be condos. When the Sheppard line had originally been proposed, two key business areas were identified for significant development: (1) Consumers Road, i.e. area bounded by Sheppard, Hwy. 404, Hwy. 401 and Victoria Park Ave. and (2) along Progress Avenue from Kennedy Road to even past STC. Look at at a land use map and you will see large areas of low density industrial/commerical districts, especially around STC. I see far more potential than just condos being built, but only if a Sheppard extension goes through.
I don’t have any problem with tax increment financing as I don’t see it as a taxation in the conventional sense; this is tax revenue that would otherwise not exist without (re-) development resulting from the building of a Sheppard subway extension.
Steve: I believe that the greatest potential tax revenue is actually from residential construction, not the likely form that any business development would take. If anyone has alternate info, I would be pleased to hear it. Meanwhile, the fact that the City’s proposal call for consulting assistance clearly states that incremental revenues from the Eglinton corridor would be used to fund Sheppard. This implies that the City does not expect to make enough redeveloping on Sheppard itsef and must raid the benefits of other projects. This isn’t “tax increment financing”, it’s cooking the books, a Ponzi scheme for transit stealing money from one project’s benefits to pay for another.
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