Updated May 17 at 11:00 pm: Richard Gilbert has responded to this article. Rather than leave his remarks and my replies in the comment stream, I have placed them at the end of this article.
Urban consultant and former city Councillor Richard Gilbert has an article on the Globe & Mail’s blog titled “How Toronto’s transit plan takes taxpayers for a ride”. The article decries the high cost of the Eglinton LRT and in particular the high effective subsidy per rider of the capital cost of burying much of the line.
The basic premise, the questions behind the article are sound, but the methodology is not. This leads to a substantial overstatement of the per passenger subsidy for the capital construction.
At the outset, I must emphasize that my intent is not to attack Richard Gilbert himself, but rather to comment on the pitfalls involved in making comparisons between different systems, and in the use of generic formulas in planning. In many of the critiques I have written over the years, the hardest part has been to delve into the underlying assumptions and methodologies (themselves often hidden away in background papers). These may “prove” something, if only that an author found the number he wanted to find and looked no further.
Gilbert writes:
According to Metrolinx, the provincial agency charged with implementing the transit improvements, the Eglinton line is to cost $4.9-billion (an amount under review). It is forecast to carry 5,400 passengers per hour in the peak direction in 2031, eleven years after it is scheduled to begin operation.
This peak rate is usually associated with an annual total of some 17 million rides. The annualized capital cost of the line is about $300-million per year ($4.9-billion amortized over 35 years at 5 per cent).
Thus the capital cost per ride will be an extraordinary $17.50 ($300-million divided by 17 million). This will be the effective subsidy per ride if the fares to be paid roughly cover the operating costs.
Central to this calculation is the translation of a peak point/hour demand of 5,400 to an annual ridership of 17-million. The Eglinton route, like many transit lines in Toronto, is not a commuter line feeding unidirectional demand into one point like a GO train. It is a route (actually several bus routes) serving an overlapping set of demands. Many riders on the line do not contribute to the peak point count — a peak measured westbound to Yonge in the AM peak will not include any riders using the west end of the line, nor will it include any counter-peak traffic. Many riders will not contribute to the peak hour counts — the ratio of off-peak riding on the TTC is much higher than on GO Transit even where all-day service is provided.
Any claim that a single peak point’s ridership can be translated to an annual figure will be inaccurate because it ignores the characteristics of the line as a whole.
A good example of a single line with multiple overlapping demand patterns is 504 King. In practice it is made up of at least four major sets of demands:
- Parkdale to Dundas West via Roncesvalles
- Parkdale and Liberty Village to Downtown
- Riverdale and King East to Downtown
- Riverdale to Broadview Station
Some of these have counter-peak flows (notably Liberty Village) contributing to the all-day ridership without affecting the peak point.
To get a sense of the range of values that might be “reasonable” for this sort of back-of-the-envelope analysis, I turned to Metrolinx demand projections and TTC ridership data.
[As a general rule, I am a strong advocate of envelopes as the best place to test hypotheses. If you can’t do a decent estimate, preferably mostly in your head, as a first cut, then you should take up another line of work. The important points are having rules-of-thumb that are accurate most of the time, being able to catch the exceptions, and choosing the right envelopes.]
Metrolinx Demand Data
As a backgrounder to The Big Move, Metrolinx produced a set of demand estimates for their network. Although I do not agree with some of the results from their model (mostly because of assumptions regarding service levels and capacities that would actually be provided), the numbers are useful examples of the anticipated behaviour of major transit routes following substantial expansion of Toronto’s network.
The first set of lines in this table are “Express Rail” routes where frequent two-way all-day service would be operated. The first three columns of figures are taken from the Metrolinx demand backgrounder (see Appendix C starting on page 26):
- Peak hour boardings (number of riders on the line during the height of the rush hour)
- Peak point peak hour ridership (number of riders at the peak point and direction in the peak hour)
- Annual riders (note that this column is in millions)
The next three columns give ratios between:
- Peak riders and peak point riders. If a line is serving only one demand (e.g. commuting in to a terminal point like Union), then the ratio of peak riders and peak point riders will be very low — almost all peak riders pass through the peak point in the peak direction. If a line has a diverse demand (local demand hubs along a route and/or counterpeak flow), then the ratio of peak riders to peak point riders will be higher (many of the peak riders don’t go through the peak point, at least not in the peak direction).
- Annual riders and peak hour riders. If the nature of routes are that most ridership has a common pattern (mainly peak, or a “standard” amount of off-peak demand), then the ratio between annual and peak hour riders will be similar for these lines. If many of these ratios are identical, then the annual figures are simply a projection up from the peak hour numbers, not a modelled value in its own right. If a route has a higher ratio of annual to peak hour riders, then it has good off-peak and/or counter-peak demand.
- Annual riders and peak point riders. This ratio will reflect the relationship between peak hour and peak point ridership. Again, if these numbers have the same value for many routes, then this would show that they were obtained using a standard conversion factor, not from an actual simulation.
For the Express Rail lines, the ratio of peak riders to peak point riders varies from 1.08 (Richmond Hill) to 2.33 (Lakeshore West). This shows that almost all of the projected demand from Richmond Hill is going to the same place and will pass through the peak point, and that there is almost no counterpeak flow. By contrast, Lakeshore West has riders with a more diverse set of origins, destinations and directions of travel, and so its total peak hour riding is over twice the peak point demand.
The ratios of annual riding to peak hour riding are quite consistent in the range of 1625:1. The slight variation will be due to rounding in the ridership numbers. This shows that the annual figures are derived by factoring up the peak hour figures using a standard formula.
For the all-day services to Georgetown and Bradford, the calculations show similar results, but with a lower factor used for conversion between peak and annual riding of about 1370:1.
When we turn to Metrolinx estimates of demand on the TTC subway network (remember that these are numbers presuming a full build-out of The Big Move and are for year 2031), we see very different results.
- The ratio of peak hour to peak point riders varies from a low of 1.53 (Spadina subway) to 4.27 (Bloor-Danforth subway). The two major subways have good diversity of travel patterns and so they have many more peak riders on the line as a whole than at their peak points. Interestingly the Downtown Relief Line comes third in the list at a respectable 3.26 showing a strong modelled demand that is not oriented to one node or time period. The very close values for most lines raise suspicion of whether these are actual annual ridership numbers or values projected from the peak hour.
- The ratios between annual and peak demands are fairly consistent for three lines (BD, Sheppard, DRL, with Spadina close by) while the Yonge-University line is an outlier. This is particularly evident in the high ratio of annual demand to peak point demand of almost 20k:1.
When we turn to Metrolinx projections for the Transit City routes, we see that the annual ridership has been calculated with a factor of about 2045:1, quite similar to what we see on most of the subway lines. Whether this produces reasonable results will depend on:
- Whether each of the lines has the same pattern of demand (overall riding versus peak point and direction, and time of day usage effects).
- Whether each of the lines matches the general behaviour of the subway system for which a similar factor appears to have been used.
Finally, we come to the figure Richard Gilbert used in his article. He claims that 5,400 peak point riders translates to 17-million annual riders. This is a ratio of 3148:1, considerably below the value for urban routes and more indicative of the projections for “Express Rail” regional corridors.
TTC Routes
As a cross-check on the Metrolinx numbers, I turned to TTC data (to the extent this is possible).
The data available for TTC routes is not the same as in the Metrolinx projections, and so a different tactic for analysis was required. The first three numeric columns of this table contain:
- Peak vehicles per hour calculated by dividing the headway (in seconds) into 3600.
- Peak capacity calculated as the number of vehicles (with some rounding) times 74 (CLRVs), 104 (ALRVs) and 54 (buses). On the assumption that the design capacity of the service matches the peak hour demand, I have used this as a surrogate for an actual peak count. On routes where the peak is very short, this will overstate the demand, but on busy routes, the peak tends to be smeared out and the design capacity is probably a good indicator of peak demand on the vehicles (as opposed to latent demand on the street). (The King corridor is a special case because of service design including many trippers. The capacity is built up from the component services.)
- Daily riders. These numbers are taken from the TTC’s report on route performance and they are a few years out of date, but for the sake of this discussion, they will do. In all cases, these are real numbers, not estimates factored up from peak values.
The ratio between daily ridership and peak capacity varies from 17.5 on St. Clair to 39.2 on Dundas. It is hard to assign a meaning to any specific value, but in general the range of numbers will reflect various factors:
- A low ratio indicates that more riding, proportionately, occurs in the peak for such routes and/or that peak service is comparatively generous relative to demand. It should be noted that the high capacity for King is not provided over the entire route, and so this ratio is not really stated on the same basis as with other lines.
- Routes with multiple overlapping demands will show a higher ratio of overall riding to peak point capacity. St. Clair is at a disadvantage here because its service does not extend east of Yonge Street and it has fewer opportunities for distinct local demand centres.
The Spadina route has been omitted because the TTC only reports combined ridership for Spadina and Harbourfront and, therefore, I cannot calculate ratios just for the busier Spadina segment.
The daily ridership is factored up to an annual value by multiplying by 300. This effectively presumes that each weekday counts for “1” while weekend days and holidays count for about “0.5”. In turn, this gives ratios of annual ridership to peak point capacity (and imputed peak demand).
For the routes I included, these values range from a low of 5,254 (St. Clair) to a high of 11,757 (Dundas). None of these numbers “means” anything in an absolute sense. They are useful only to show the difference between the patterns of ridership and service levels on various routes. All of these values are much higher than the factor used by Gilbert in his estimate of annual ridership on the Eglinton LRT route.
Indeed, the factors for the Eglinton buses are about 6800:1 (west) and 11200:1 (east). Splitting the difference, a ratio of 9000:1 would not be out of order, and this would triple the projected annual ridership. In turn, the capital subsidy per rider would be cut in one-third. If the Eglinton LRT attracts even more riding that does not pass through the peak point and hour, then the ratio would go up, and the cost per rider will drop even more.
It is worth noting that the ridership on the two Eglinton bus routes combined is about 18m per year, higher than the number Gilbert uses in his article. This implies that ridership years in the future would actually fall, something that is difficult to believe.
All of this yields a rather full “back of the envelope”, and there are several assumptions/estimates along the way. However, my envelopes tend to be quite reliable after years of practice. If someone wants to challenge the methodology or come up with a better estimate, please do so, but be sure to include all of the steps including any claims about demand that may have been derived through “fudge factors” rather than real planning.
How Expensive is Too Expensive?
Gilbert’s other major argument is that the Eglinton line is overpriced with a cost of about $250m per kilometre. This is considerably higher than the cost for other projects with some degree of tunnelling such as the Canada Line in Vancouver ($110m/km), Seattle (also $110m/km with tunnelling) and generic surface LRT systems ($35m/km).
The Canada Line comes up often as a point of comparison, but a few things are worth noting about its design and construction:
- The tunnelled portion was built cut-and-cover, not with deep-bored tunnel, at a considerable saving. This also placed the stations closer to the surface and reduced their construction cost.
- The Canada Line tunnels are smaller than the Eglinton LRT tunnels, as are the stations themself.
- Soil conditions in Vancouver were considerably simpler than what Metrolinx/TTC will face in Toronto with a tunnel that crosses an undulating terrain including underground streams.
Also, the amount of underground work on Eglinton is somewhat larger than the commonly cited figure (11 of 19km) because the stations at Don Mills and Kennedy (including their approaches) will be underground. $250m/km is comparable to the cost for the Spadina extension from Downsview to Vaughan Centre which is all to be in bored tunnels.
I agree that we must avoid high-cost underground construction wherever possible, and that was, of course, the reason for my long-time advocacy for surface LRT where it makes more sense than a full-blown subway. Even if some parts of an LRT line must go underground, the technology can run on the surface and should do so wherever possible.
Wasting money on transit is not the exclusive preserve of LRT advocates.
Updated May 17 at 11:00 pm: Richard Gilbert replies, and I respond to his comments.
Dear Steve,
Thanks for going to so much trouble to question my annual ridership estimate. I must admit to simplifying the matter, and I should have at least acknowledged current ridership on the four bus routes that serve the portion of Eglinton where the LRT is to run. I also simplified my account in ways that work in the other direction (many rides on the Eglinton LRT will be partial, congestion at Yonge-Eglinton will be a deterrent to expansion, ridership of LRT routes is usually, but not always, lower than predicted, etc.). Nevertheless, all in all, I’d be happy to accept a convincing higher estimate of ridership. However, if you are truly suggesting 51 million riders by 2031 without substantial at- and near-station development we’re going to have to continue to disagree.
Steve: I’m not sure where the ridership number will settle, and part of the problem is that even the starting point, 5,400 per hour at peak, obviously presumes a considerable increase over current riding and with it some change in land use. I agree that this will have to occur to reach those numbers.
Metrolinx projections are extremely frustrating because it is impossible to determine which factors drive the change from today’s demand in various corridors to the 2031 values. A related issue is that they model a fully-built network when we all know we’ll be lucky to see half of “The Big Move”, and not necessarily the parts we really need. There is no sensitivity analysis to the removal of selected parts of the network to see how the remainder would behave and, by extension, just how critical some segments might be. For example, which of many routes that could drain loading away from the Yonge line are actually the most attractive to riders (current and future) and therefore have the best effect on that criterion?
Unlike your criticism of my ridership estimate, I don’t find your defense of the high cost of the Eglinton LRT the slightest bit convincing, and I’m not sure you do either. If you could apply your remarkable analytical skills to a more in-depth analysis of this matter we would likely all benefit.
Steve: I was trying less to defend the cost of Eglinton (which would get into a discussion of construction prices in Toronto generally) than to point out that claims for some other cities, notably Vancouver, do not take into account differences in circumstances from one project to another.
Another fault of my piece, which I readily admit to, was pointed out by a correspondent from the CD Howe Institute: I did not admit that $17.50 could be worth much less as years pass. This, or course, depends on whether we have inflation or deflation. I’m inclined to think we will have more inflation, to relieve government debts, but sustained economic depression could well bring us deflation. Thus, this was another simplification.
The headline the Globe gave to my piece, which I did not object to at the time, I see in retrospect as changing the article’s messages. My primary intention was to blow a horn yet again that I have been blowing for several years: that we need more development at higher-order transit nodes, and thus new ones should be planned with this in mind. My secondary intention — also frequently advocated — was to draw attention to the absurdly high unit cost of the Transit City proposals, particularly the Eglinton line. My headline for the piece focused on how to reduce the capital subsidy.
I’ve lived in Toronto for 44 years and have not owned a car for the last 41 of them. I may not use the TTC as much as you because I live more centrally and bicycle a lot. But I do use it several times a week and I’m becoming truly offended and alarmed about the deterioration in everyday service. In this context, extravagant capital spending is especially repugnant and I would like to do what I can to prevent it.
Best wishes,
Richard
If we are going to attack the $250m/km cost on Eglinton, we must also attack the 8.6km, $2.4b Spadina project ($279m/km). The North Yonge project is for a 6.8km extension at a cost of $2.4b (2008). That’s $353m/km before escalation. Projects like this eat up huge amounts of capital (not to mention the political effort to raise the money one way or another) when there are many competing uses in transit and elsewhere.
I wish that Metrolinx would break down the components of the Eglinton cost so that we knew how much is due to tunnels (and stations), how much to surface construction, how much to fleet and maintenance facilities. With a single combined figure, it’s not easy to say whether we are getting hosed for individual components. I suspect at this point that they don’t want to get into detailed estimates for fear of giving bidders on each component a sense of the budget they are aiming for.
I agree with you that we need to find less extravagant ways of building transit, and we also need to turn attention to the day-to-day service which is the “store window” for transit, the thing that attracts or drives away business.
Steve Munro 
The Canada Line tunnel is a bored tunnel from the south side of False Creek — under False Creek (a seawater inlet) and under downtown Vancouver. The cut and cover section is the section under Cambie Street itself south of False Creek to the Fraser River bridge. The Canada Line also includes two bridges over the Fraser River.
Steve: Yes, but only about 1/4 of the underground section is deep bore. According to a report on the CBC’s website, the bridge over the north arm of the Fraser is 1km long and cost only $10m — it is a transit and cycling bridge, not a wide roadway bridge that would cost far more. Therefore, bridge costs on this line appear, if anything, to contribute to a low average cost per km.
The question that arises is – why can’t the Eglinton tunnel be cut and cover and shallow (like the Bloor-Danforth Line) in areas where the right of way is wide enough to maintain traffic flow (at a reduced volume, i.e. one lane each way) and bored in the central built-up area closer to Yonge Street? Wasn’t the University line cut and cover in some areas and them bored near the hospital district to reduce disruption? Why the one-size-fits-all approach now?
Steve: Your question belies a lack of familiarity with Eglinton Avenue. The section from Black Creek to Brentcliffe is, generally speaking, five lanes wide with no room for expansion because it passes through older districts where commercial buildings come out to the sidewalk, and residential buildings tend to have small front yards. This is the section where the line will be tunnelled. Otherwise, it will already be on the surface in the wider sections of the roadway. One tricky and narrow section at Weston Road is still under review and this may add to the amount of undergrounding. That section is also an “old” part of Eglinton where the right-of-way is not as wide as elsewhere.
Why do all stations need secondary entrances? What’s wrong with just having a single entrance to stations with emergency exits and provision for future entrances (paid for by developers)?
Steve: This is a question of Fire Code. There is a maximum distance to an exit in the code and this is calculated as a time required for someone to get out to open air. That time includes a combination of the linear distance along the station platform and the time needed to climb the stairways out of deep stations. The platforms will be long enough for 90m trains, as compared to the Canada Line’s 40-50m platforms. Some of our stations are fairly deep because the surface topology is hilly (the route cuts across old glacial valleys) while the tunnel keeps to a fairly straight course. Don’t even think about suggesting that we change the Code or don’t build to it. This is a North American standard that has gradually tightened after a number of subway fires exposed problems with earlier standards.
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This obsession with finding the right ridership levels/density to justify the cost of buildng real rapid transit lines (which frankly can only be done via grade separation) is disappointing to say the least. There is no reason long-distance commuters should have to endure hour-long + commutes just to get across Toronto, especially not where many trip generators/high density residential areas line up coneveniently as is the case along Eglinton, and Sheppard/Finch. There comes a point where QUALITY of service ought to take precedence over trying to beancount every last cent of public investment. There are far worse things the government blows money on every day that doesn’t receive nearly as much scrutiny as trying to construct subways/underground transit lines in the country’s largest and most densely populated urban centre.
It’s thoroughly disappointing that both Vancouver and Montreal with smaller rapid transit networks by comparison not only have a better sense of coverage to major non-core/downtown destinations, but also do not witness the same nightmarish media sensationalism Toronto does whenever talk of expanding their rapid transit networks is raised.
Steve: I might be more sympathetic to this argument if the subway advocates were looking at routes we actually could use, and on a scale that would benefit the city as a whole. Here, we saw a bait-and-switch game played in Scarborough with a relatively short subway extension that didn’t even stay on the street for which it was named compared against a long LRT line to the edge of the city. The Eglinton line was not even part of Ford’s original plan as announced in his election campaign. It only returned to the map as part of the horse trading with Queen’s Park for whom Eglinton is the centrepiece of their Toronto plans.
To this I must add the “you can get something for nothing” approach to subway financing. If subway advocates were honest and said “this will cost billions, but it’s worth it”, they would at least be honest and we could have a debate about how to raise the money and whether, in fact, we wanted to spend that much on transit. But, no, subway advocates want it both ways — lots of subways with a funding scheme owing more to the Tooth Fairy than to responsible public finance. Let’s have a debate about how much we should spend on transit and what we should build, but let’s keep both sides of the argument on the same footing, not lies and distortions.
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The TTC and Metrolinx could have saved a ton of money on the Eglinton LRT if they had gone with modern trolley buses.
Steve: Which could not carry the demand projected for the route let alone achieve the much-desired goal of a fast trip across the city (unless you want to build a trolleybus subway thereby defeating your cost-saving purpose).
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Another issue with the Canada Line is the station spacing which – outside of downtown Vancouver but still in the city – is frankly ridiculous and considerably higher than the Eglinton LRT. The first three stations outside downtown are at least 1.5 km apart, and you can be well assured that the presence of stations at King Edward, 41st, and 49th has not led to any kind of “massive development”. It’s also worth pointing out the cut-and-cover construction method caused considerable disruption and criticism on Cambie St, all to build no-more-than moderate capacity underground transit with exceptionally poor station spacing and little to no integration with surface routes.
Will you be submitting a letter to the Globe about this article?
Steve: The article appears to have run only in their online blog. I have linked mine via Facebook, and many of my readers have Tweeted through their networks. I included a Tweet to the Globe’s account. There is no point in mentioning this in their comment thread which is already well over 100 entries long. If this shows up in the print edition, then I will ask for a rebuttal, not that I expect them to provide the space.
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A greater mind than mine says otherwise.
Steve: Richard Gilbert’s article, which you link, argues a similar point to the Globe piece today: at current and likely ridership levels without intensification of development, the ridership used to justify rail modes on various Transit City corridors won’t materialize, and the routes could well be served by a network of trolleybus lines. However, if the intensification does occur (and there are indications from proposed developments in the Eglinton corridor that it will), then the riding will exceed the capability of buses. Also, Gilbert does not address the question of speed on the central part of Eglinton where reserved lanes for the trolleybuses are impossible.
A related matter will be the change in transit/auto usage as cars become more expensive to own and operate relative to average incomes. Although I don’t expect that some of the apocalyptic projections will arrive as quickly as some think, we have already seen a shift in modal split where transit provides a credible alternative. This coupled with land use changes will drive an increase in transit demand and invalidate the claim that trolleybuses would provide an adequate alternative.
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Mr Gould,
The wide spacings between stations on Canada Line between Broadway & Marine stations are functional because Translink chose to continue operating the surface bus route #15, which provides very frequent stops (also frequent trolley routes on the surface of Granville transitway downtown serve the same purpose there). Canada Line, therefore, functions as an express service.
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I don’t find these numbers all that surprising. The cost of the Bloor subway (in 1960s dollars) was around $200M-ish. The annual BD ridership back then was 35M per year. Considering the fare was 10c in those days, the ratio of fare to subsidy, per rider, was the same then as it is now. And, remember, BD was built on the cheap — the number of escalators was minimized, it was cut-and-cover most of the way (with shallow stations), and the ceramic wall tiles were specifically chosen because they were cheaper than vitrolite and porcelain.
Steve: For the benefit of readers, the original BD subway ran only from Keele to Woodbine in 1966 in case you are calculating a cost/km. If we were building the line today, much more, if not all, would be bored tunnel to avoid neighbourhood disruption. The tunnels would be larger (fire and safety code), the stations deeper (a structural requirement of bored tunnels), each station would have two exits (fire code), and there would be many more escalators, not to mention elevators. I suspect Metrolinx will come under attack for the lack of elevators at some particularly deep secondary entrances such as the proposed west end of Caledonia Station where a substantial stair climb is needed to get out of the station. Many people will be physically unable to use this exit.
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You don’t have to do a detailed analysis to see how absurd the 17 million per year ridership is. A good rule of thumb to translate to daily ridership is to divide by 300. This gives a number of less than 57,000 riders per day. For 2031. The Eglinton LRT EA documented the bus ridership in the corridor was over 130,000 back in 2010.
I think you’re being too kind to Richard Gilbert. Surely he knows all this. To suggest the 2031 ridership would be only 17 million per year, and then using that as the basis to calculate an absurdly high “subsidy” is shocking and dishonest.
Steve: I prefer to think that Richard didn’t do a good job of checking the reasonableness of his numbers. See also his reply to my article.
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With all due respect I must say I am rather surprised that Mr. Gilbert didn’t do his usual thing and advocate trolley buses which would be cleaner than the present buses but which would move us no further ahead in terms of providing a better and faster service.
Steve: See my reply to a previous comment on this matter, as well as Richard’s explanation of the general context for his criticism of project costs.
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This line is simply wrong… the correct version is “the capital cost per annual ride is $17.50″. If this thing lasts 50 years, that makes the capital subsidy 35c/ride. There is a big difference between “rides” and “rides per year”, and frankly I’m appalled that such a mistake was made.
Steve: No, there is an annual cost of $300m to pay down a capital debt of $4.9b presuming that it is financed as Gilbert suggests for his example. That cost distributed over a supposed ridership of 17m gives a cost per ride of roughly $17.50, and that’s for each and every ride. No mistake in the math, just in the assumed level of ridership.
A related point is that if more of the capital cost is paid from current revenues rather than from borrowing (from, say, a regional sales tax), then the interest component of the capital cost will be lower along with the imputed subsidy per rider.
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Steve,
What indications are there that intensification will occur? The recent info from the reports that you made public show that intensification is not a predictor of ridership potential. Yonge/Sheppard had intensified yet ridership did not materialize. Recent history (past twenty years) suggest that the same will occur on Eglinton, i.e. not real increase.
Steve: There is already a development proposal for the Golden Mile area, and Councillors along Eglinton West have been approached with proposals for their neighbourhoods. I agree that this alone will not generate riding for the line and have often argued that the link between near-station development and ridership is tenuous as the only predictor of demand. However, if there is a general increase in the population density of the city, this will translate to more riding on its major routes.
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J Johnson says:
Every time I read a comment like the above, I half agree and half cringe.
GO, with its focus on Union Station, is extremely lacking in east-west routes through the GTA and there’s simply no good way to get from Scarborough to Etobicoke (or Pickering to Scarborough, or Brampton to Vaughan, etc. etc. etc.) on transit. The Eglinton buses aren’t the right tool for such a trip, the Eglinton LRT isn’t either, and an Eglinton subway wouldn’t be any better.
These sort of trips demand true limited-stop commuter services. We need to make use of the existing transportation corridors to provide these kind of services, so people stop trying to twist the rest of the network towards trips for which it is simply unsuited. A limited-stop route along the CP Crosstown line, another along the 401 from STC to the Etobicoke North GO Station, and a final line along the CN York subdivision or 407 wouldn’t hit any real destinations, but combined with local feeder services could make cross-GTA commuting viable. And it might put an end to complaints by anti-transit politicians that projects like the Sheppard LRT/Finch LRT/Eglinton LRT are useless if they don’t provide a 15 minute ride from the Zoo to Humber College.
Steve, I know you strongly believe that services and stations should be where the people are, rather than where it’s convenient to stick them, and that transit trips need different infrastructure than automobile trips, and it’s something I strongly agree with you on. There’s not much walk-in traffic for a station located in the middle of a highway interchange, railyard or hydro corridor, and tossing an office or condo tower on top doesn’t make it transit-oriented development. But the GTA’s been built in a way that it needs more high-speed east-west routes and simply doesn’t have anywhere else to feasibly build them.
Steve: I agree with your argument. Where I (and I suspect you too) am always frustrated is with people who try to make a one size fits all transit route serving both local and cross-region demands. Metrolinx itself is guilty of this in attempting to make Eglinton more attractive to long haul trips even though, thanks to budget constraints, the line does not actually run all the way across the city. Indeed, the segment to the airport might encounter opposition from Air Rail Link advocates within Metrolinx who would see a “local” service with its better connections and lower fares as competition.
The biggest challenge for any east-west regional line would be the bus feeder network necessary to get people “the last mile” from the rapid transit line to their destination. This is exactly the problem faced by improving GO’s Lakeshore corridor to frequent all day service. I am thrilled that I could take a train every 15 minutes, say, to Burlington. What do I do when I get there? Hope for a Bixi stand or an Auto Share? Imagine the Bloor-Danforth subway without the TTC bus network, or one that existed only to feed peak direction, peak period commuters onto the line.
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In your comments about Mr. Gilbert’s reply you mentioned a lack of breakdown of capital costs. Suppose there was no LRT constructed on Eglinton. You would still need transit vehicles, maintenance facilities, etc. to serve the existing passengers.
Steve: Yes, although if only buses were operating, it would be the existing fleet and garages for the most part. If it were a subway, it would need a new maintenance yard and fleet as there is (a) no space on the current system for more trains and (b) little surplus capacity for the network as a whole in the existing fleet.
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Where does the 5,400 per hour number come from? I think this is far, far too low and the actual ridership will end up much higher than this. Has there been any consideration to how much additional ridership the proposed extension to Pearson Airport will generate? The airport area in Mississauga is, by a large margin, the largest trip generator along the Eglinton LRT (as originally proposed to Pearson Airport) and is the source of severe congestion problems on westbound Highway 401 and Gardiner Expressway in AM rush hour and eastbound in PM. Many people who reverse commute from Toronto to Mississauga will want to use the Eglinton LRT combined with a bus to avoid this traffic congestion problem. I would not be surprised if the light rail portions of Eglinton become overcrowded as a result, once the airport extension is built. The section between Yonge St and the airport will be heavily used in both directions.
Steve: The 5,400 number is westbound to Yonge Street in the AM peak. The projected demand on the west side of the line is lower even with the Pearson extension. Note that this demand will not overlap the demand on the busier east side of the route. Yes, there will be good demand to the airport area, but 5k/hour is a bit of a stretch considering the density of jobs in the area and the fact that people working there originate all over the western part of the GTA.
The large difference in construction costs between Eglinton LRT and the Canada Line seems worrying to me. A lot of this is explained by using cut and cover on the Canada Line (which is unacceptable on Eglinton due to traffic congestion impacts, as there is basically no continuous alternative to driving on Eglinton other than Bloor-Danforth, York Mills/Wilson, Sheppard and 401, all of which will still see significant increases in congestion during the construction period as is) and shorter stations. Also Eglinton will have three complicated interchange stations (Allen, Yonge, and Kennedy) and there may be a need for complex construction to avoid the need to close Allen Road during construction. However, the construction cost of Eglinton will be double that of the Canada Line even though the above ground sections use elevated construction, which is more expensive than light rail but higher capacity.
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Here’s a fact that everybody seems to have missed.
The Seattle project only involved a small amount of new tunnel. The downtown section used a pre-existing bus tunnel which was built in the 80s, so naturally it was significantly cheaper than starting from scratch.
Steve: Good point. I remember when the Seattle tunnel went in and was ridiculed for looking ahead to an LRT line complete with track. This is another example of the need to know the details of comparator projects.
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This is a reply to nfitz (whoever this may be – why do people hide behind pseudonyms?). This person wrote:
You don’t have to do a detailed analysis to see how absurd the 17 million per year ridership is. A good rule of thumb to translate to daily ridership is to divide by 300. This gives a number of less than 57,000 riders per day. For 2031. The Eglinton LRT EA documented the bus ridership in the corridor was over 130,000 back in 2010.
I think you’re being too kind to Richard Gilbert. Surely he knows all this. To suggest the 2031 ridership would be only 17 million per year, and then using that as the basis to calculate an absurdly high “subsidy” is shocking and dishonest.
Steve added: I prefer to think that Richard didn’t do a good job of checking the reasonableness of his numbers. See also his reply to my article.
I set out the basis for my calculation in my Globe piece. The specific words – which Steve quoted – were “This peak rate is usually associated with an annual total of some 17 million rides.” The peak rate being referred to was the one in the April 25, 2012, Metrolinx report, which also happens to be the one in the Eglinton LRT EA: 5,400 rides per hour. To go from peak rate to daily rate one usually multiplies by about 10. This kind of ratio applies, for example, to the Sheppard line, which may be the closest thing we have to the Eglinton line.
Where Steve challenged me, and I don’t disagree, is that the Eglinton line will not be “a commuter line feeding unidirectional demand into one point like a GO train.” There will be three or possibly four main flows: in the morning, east to Eglinton W station, and east and west to Eglinton station (and possibly east to Kennedy), all reversed in the afternoon. (The version of the line addressed by the EA included another set of flows, potentially even more complex: to and from the airport.) The most important of the flows will involve Eglinton station, making it a candidate for congestion if ridership increases, thereby potentially limiting ridership.
Another factor to consider is the spacing of the stations and stops, compared with present bus-stop spacing. More widely spaced stops, which seem likely, will deter riders. I believe declines in ridership along corridors on this account have been documented elsewhere, and perhaps even for the Sheppard subway. (I have not looked into this.)
Yet another factor is what will constitute a ride on the LRT. Is it any use of the LRT or is a trip on the LRT involving a transfer less than one ride on the LRT? I didn’t want to go there.
Indeed, I had neither the space nor the inclination to address any of these complicating matters, and several others I can think of. I resolved to keep it as simple as possible, making use of the most recent ridership estimate, making use of the most-encountered kind of relationship, and spelling out clearly what I did (which was why Steve was able to analyze it so well).
I can understand that the result can seem shocking, but to say that it was arrived at dishonestly is a bit of a stretch.
As to what might be the best 2031 ridership estimate to use – absent an implementable plan to massively increase development at stops/stations – I’d be comfortable with considering a well-argued case for 34 million a year, i.e., halfway between my 17 million and Steve’s suggested 51 million. This would reduce the estimated per-ride capital subsidy to $8.75 in current dollars, assuming present cost estimates, a subsidy that may still be considered excessive whatever the definition of a ride. Of more interest to me is the possibility that consideration of what might be the capital cost per ride on the Eglinton LRT has provoked further discussion about the projected high cost of the line, and even a little discussion as to how to enhance ridership further.
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Why does everyone keep saying that ridership on the eastern portion of Eglinton is higher than the west? Is it because there are multiple routes between Don Mills and Yonge? According to the stats on the TTC website the Eglinton West route alone has about 15,000 customers more per day than the Eglinton East route. Are there really more than 15,000 extra riders daily between Don Mills and Yonge using the other routes currently?
Steve: It’s not the number of customers, it is the concentration in time and space that defines the peak point. Eglinton West has good bi-directional demand, probably better than Eglinton East in the “old” sections of Eglinton. This can give more customers in total, but spread out differently.
Eglinton East of Yonge is also served by the 54 Lawrence East whose frequency is comparable to 34 Eglinton East. Other routes on Eglinton don’t run very often in the peak period and contribute fewer riders.
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My point about the secondary entrances is that they not be ENTRANCES – they can be emergency EXIT only. (i.e. exit only in emergency to meet the fire code – no way to enter) (i.e. a staircase to the surface with minimal structure – no need for faregates, ticket machines, concourse, escalators, etc.)
Steve: A good chunk of the cost is the structure, and in the case of Caledonia (the example I used), the surface level facilities are minimal. Don’t be too quick to dismiss second entrances because they can provide an alternate access point around which redevelopment can occur.
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WRT Seattle, the track in the existing bus tunnel had to be removed and relaid (not sure if the bed was also lowered) – because the original rails that were installed were not insulated for stray current, so the use of the existing tunnel did have some cost associated with it.
Steve: Thanks for this clarification. In any event, the tunnel already existed and its cost would not have been part of the later project to add LRT.
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With the new maintenance facilities and yards, comes the question of what to do with the old bus garages, unless they’ll be used for service expansion for the remaining bus lines.
I would like to know what is to become of the old Lansdowne carhouse/garage, the old Eglinton carhouse/garage, and the old Danforth carhouse/garage.
(I guess the old Dundas carhouse has finally disappeared or to be replaced by condos.)
Steve: Dundas Carhouse has not been owned by the TTC for decades and, yes, the site is to be redeveloped. The existing garages are needed to handle fleet expansion even after Transit City. Indeed, the delay in completion of the first set of lines has fouled things up because routes that were to convert to LRT come later in the plans now.
Lansdowne Garage/Carhouse property was transferred to Build Toronto. There have been attempts to attract a new development (one option was a new police station), but nothing has come of this yet. The area is not exactly prime territory for a major building.
Eglinton Garage/Carhouse and the old bus bays were to be redeveloped with a new Eglinton Station, but that was put on hold once the LRT line was announced as part of Transit City. There will be far fewer buses needing space at Yonge/Eglinton after the LRT line opens than today, and hence a smaller bus loop (likely under a new building rising on the old bus loop site). Meanwhile, the site will be used as a staging area for the LRT construction.
Danforth Garage is still active as a TTC office and also for some small support groups. Whether it will be redeveloped is anyone’s guess (those functions will have to transfer somewhere else). The site was partly redeveloped years ago.
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I wonder what the capital and operating subsidy for car drivers is in Toronto. Has anyone got those numbers?
Let’s make sure that we include things like the $2.2 billion per year in health-care costs due to the harm caused by the lethal poisons in car pollution.
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Another layer of complexity not yet mentioned, that can be quite difficult to peg reasonable values to, is that there will be a difference in the operating cost per ride between the bus operation as it exists today and the LRT when it opens. It’s no secret that I agree the stops on Eglinton are easily too far apart and that this will in turn hurt not only the ridership, but the operational cost per ride as well, as it will be higher because some bus service has to be kept on the surface in addition to the LRT underground.
On a related angle, but at a network level instead of a corridor level, is how much new ridership growth can be generated by the redirection of bus resources to other underserved or overcapacity areas when the buses currently crawling central Eglinton are freed up by the LRT. That offsets the subsidy per ride on the LRT, but hard to say by how much.
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Ron said:
Steve replied:
I think Ron’s question has more to do with the that if the stations are to be built using cut-and-cover technique, why not the entire tunnel as well? Where cut-and-cover is confirmed to take place, the existing 5 lanes would be reduced anyhow, even when the right-of-way is already very narrow. And could there be potential savings in making the entire tunnel cut-and-cover?
I suppose the answer is to limit this reduction in lanes to as few locations as possible (i.e., lane reductions only around stations and launch shafts).
I was also thinking that the vertical alignment of cut-and-cover tunnels may depend on the grade of the surface, making for a more hilly ride for the underground LRT. But I’m sure there’s technology that allows for varying depth between the track and the road surface to mitigate hilly tracks, no?
Otherwise, besides less disruption during construction, I also cannot see any other advantages of bored tunnels.
Steve: The difference with stations is that one must build not just space for two tracks but also the platform between them and the vertical circulation elements. At these locations, digging a deep hole is pretty much the only option. However, between stations a bored tunnel avoids problems with utilities (there is a lot of stuff under Eglinton that would need relocating if it were all cut-and-cover) and allows for a more level path along the route. This gets into your point about vertical alignment because there’s a limit to how deep a cut-and-cover structure can be and still be a reasonable way to build the line.
By analogy, think of the excavations for many new condos downtown and the work needed to tie back the walls of the excavation so that they won’t collapse (along with neighbouring buildings) into the hole.
As for the grades, there are places where the surface grade is steeper than the design maximum for our new LRT lines (and the fleet we are buying to run on them) of 5%.
Finally, think about construction photos of the Yonge subway south of College Street where the road was effectively closed while the tunnel was built. This is not a viable option for Eglinton Avenue for commercial and political reasons.
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I’d also add that I’m utterly disgusted by some subway-advocates’ insistence on ignoring any info and data that may destroy the basis of their arguments. Denying the existence of or outright dismissing certain findings without justification is no way to have a debate, let alone convince anyone.
Regarding Eglinton, Metrolinx did produce ridership forecasts based on the assumption of SRT through-routing and some upgrades to the GO network. Given these network assumptions, has the TTC agreed with these numbers yet?
Steve: The through-routed option had a higher projected peak demand in the 7k+ range. The lower number now used reflects the separate operation of the line. I am not entirely sure this would be valid especially if a DRL were included in the mix. One big problem with all of these numbers (and the chaos forecast by those who want a full subway on Eglinton) is that we don’t know which projections include a DRL and which don’t. Such a line will almost certainly reduce the peak demand westbound to Yonge. This is the whole point about building a network — it both adds variety to the possible routes a rider might take and allows travel to redistribute itself overall. The contrast is the TTC’s dogged insistence on stuffing the Yonge line full of passengers rather than looking at alternate parallel services.
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Two interesting concepts were addressed in the comments to this article and it it to these that I reply. These comments are not related to the supposed subject at hand.
Intensification: I am in favour of intensification and see it as an important component in the future success of Toronto. I have noticed that many people are in favour of intensification, except when it is on their street. That battle will be fought many times. In any case the point was made about the lack of intensification over the years on the outer parts of the BD Subway. It is probably true that simply building transit does not magically translate unto intensification. However, it is also important to look at existing land use in the areas to receive higher order transit. Royal York, or Greenwood (and others) do not have large tracts of underused (by today’s standards) land. It is unlikely that significant intensification will happen if land assembly requires buying up a large number of individual small businesses and residences. As Steve has pointed out so many times the BD relies on the high quality feeder bus service to be a success. Eglinton East on the other hand does have large tracts of land currently used by the likes of car dealers and less than state of the art retail. Steve has already pointed out that there is redevelopment at Golden Mile, but there are many other semi obsolete large tract land use examples on Eglinton East. (Car dealers are particularly vulnerable because they take a lot of land which can be obtained cheaper in the outer suburbs and because they are overbuilt in Toronto by the Big Three. As the Big Three cut back on their lines they do not need as many dealers. i.e. separate dealers for Ford/Mercury or Chev/Pontiac.)
Tooth Fairy: As you point out Steve, some subway advocates seem to think that the Tooth Fairy is going to pay for “subways, subways, subways”. People may “want” subways, but they do not seem to want to pay for them. This malaise extends to all of society and the parameters which our politicians have accepted as the limits on alternatives. As Ontario faces a budget shortfall, our Provincial Government has taken any and all tax increases off the table. Why? Because they have let The Sun and its ilk set the agenda. Our Federal Government senselessly reduced the GST by 2% and other than political gain, there was no benefit to society. The Province could raise the HST by 2% – raise billions – and almost no one would notice (howls of outrage from the right notwithstanding). Instead we see the government looking at the Casino Fairy to magically create a mere billion or so of extra short term gain – at a huge intangible cost to society.
What has all this to do with transit? Transit is infrastructure and currently our government has created an environment where they structurally cannot afford the necessary infrastructure. Instead they perpetuate a system where the “tax savings” associated with not building infrastructure is dwarfed by the expensive but difficult to measure byproducts of this delay in action. (Congestion, Pollution, Gambling Addiction, etc.)
Steve: It is ironic that with all the work being done on alternative revenue sources and the Metrolinx “Investment Strategy”, Queen’s Park seems to focus on casinos hoping that nobody will notice the limited benefits in local revenue and the negative side effects both for development and for social problems. The con artists are out in full force.
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>Steve: The 5,400 number is westbound to Yonge Street in the AM peak. The projected demand on the west side of the line is lower even with the Pearson extension. Note that this demand will not overlap the demand on the busier east side of the route. Yes, there will be good demand to the airport area, but 5k/hour is a bit of a stretch considering the density of jobs in the area and the fact that people working there originate all over the western part of the GTA.
My idea is that people working in Mississauga (maybe Brampton as well) who live in Toronto would take the Eglinton LRT to Renforth, then a bus from Renforth to their workplace. The workplaces in Mississauga are very spread out but almost every major employment area in Mississauga has a bus that will stop at Renforth once the Mississauga Transitway is open. Highway 401 is notorious for congestion (just east of the 409 interchange it is the busiest highway in the world) so people will avoid it if they can. Similarly, people who live in Mississauga/Brampton who work in the northern parts of Toronto could do the reverse.
I would not put much faith in ridership estimates, they have a tendency to be wildly inaccurate and depend on things like future redevelopment (which is impossible to predict). 5,400 per hour on Eglinton at the peak point seems extremely low to me, given that this is a tiny fraction of east west car travel demand on east west roads north of downtown like 401 and Eglinton. Given that 100,000 people are moving to the GTA every year and most of those people will be living in condos, there will be big increases in transit ridership and traffic congestion in the next few decades. If the only transit that is built in the next ten years is 3 LRT lines, then these LRT lines could easily become overcrowded (3 LRT lines cannot possibly accommodate 1 million new residents in the GTA in the next 10 years), traffic congestion will continue to get even worse and overcrowding on the existing bus, streetcar and subway system will get worse.
Steve: I hate to say this, but you in effect argue that we can’t believe ridership projections and therefore should just make them up out of thin air. Your premise that only 3 LRT lines will be built to handle 1 million new residents is faulty on two counts. First, many of that million won’t even live in areas or generate travel demand that lies along the LRT corridors (any more than they would if these were subways). Second, we know that big expansion in other corridors both for regional (GO) and local services is required. Nobody ever said that these three LRT lines will do it all, but equally nobody ever claimed that the million new people would all live on Eglinton, Finch and Sheppard.
Having said this, I will agree that there are big problems that the travel patterns in the GTA and the expressway network supporting them do not lie along corridors that can easily be served with an expanded transit system. This is the single biggest challenge we face in planning a new network.
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Richard, if you want access to my name and e-mail, I provided it to the editor of the Globe and Mail, when I made a complaint to them about how grossly inaccurate the piece was. I’m sure it’s been provided to you.
You claim to provide answers to what I said, but you have failed to do so. Your absurd estimate of 17 million translates to about 57,000 or so a day. You fail to address my point that the EA demonstrates there are already about 130,000 using this corridor. Almost 40 million a year in 2010.
And you conceded that perhaps 34 million a year in 2031 might be a better estimate?
Richard, you’re being intellectually dishonest. You’re cherry-picking the data, using the lowest estimate for peak-point ridership you can find, using “rules of thumb” that don’t apply to lines with two-directional and high off-peak traffic like Eglinton, to come up with a ridiculously high $ estimate per ride, and using this as the basis for your criticism. And when challenged, still come up with a projection of traffic 20 years in the future, that appears to be lower than the current bus usage in the same corridor.
Perhaps you should simply admit that you were fundamentally wrong and move on.
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My understanding was that when determining if a line is cost effective, it was to look at how well fares cover the operating costs rather than the infrastructure costs. A myth the pro-subway folk like to spread is that subway operational costs are lower because you don’t have as many drivers per vehicle. As we all know, this ignores the fact that you need fare collectors and/or security, cleaning and maintenance of the stations and vehicles, and engineers to ensure that the tunnels are safe. If the ridership is high enough, it can cover these costs without extra subsidizing.
An example of this includes the Second Ave. subway line under construction in New York. According to Wikipedia, the line is expected to cost $17 BILLION for 13.5km of track ($1.26 BILLION per kilometer). Ridership is expected to be at 1.3 million riders daily, so assuming each rider pays $2.50, the most expensive fare to ride the subway I can find, it will take nearly 12 and a half years to pay off.
Steve: Typically, one has to look at both capital and operating costs. The whole subway vs LRT debate turns on the question of lower LRT capital costs versus subways which are offset, in theory, by faster travel, better convenience, etc. claimed for subway options. You are correct that subway advocates look only at the crew driving the train and forget that there is a small army needed to put that train on the tracks and maintain the infrastructure allowing it to operate.
I would be astounded to see any rapid transit line in North America that covers its operating costs from the farebox let alone produces a profit that could pay down the capital debt required to build a line. So much rapid transit infrastructure dates from a different era when construction was comparatively cheaper and the market for transit guaranteed by the absence of competition. That’s a legacy cities with older systems (like New York) could not possibly afford to duplicate today. On a much smaller scale, Toronto has a network of rail lines that it could exploit for GO Transit. If they had not existed, building a commuter network would have been very expensive and would have gone through countless battles for corridor acquisition and “good neighbour” policies for operations. This much higher capital cost would not have been recoverable through commuter fares (just look at the financial mess the airport link is in).
Finally there is the cost of expansion. Subway proponents argue that by building heavy infrastructure up front we provide for future capacity and associated economic growth. This statement is valid to the extent that such growth can reasonably be expected to materialize. However, one cannot simply build at maximum capacity in every corridor as a matter of faith especially when the same crew of gravy-hunting bean counters is slashing day-to-day transit services that are the foundation of ridership now and in the future.
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Steve said that the bridge over the Fraser is 1km long and cost $10M. Do you have a breakdown for the other components of the Canada Line (i.e. bored tunnel, cut-and-cover tunnel, elevated portion, cars, etc.). The $10M figure seems very low to me – but maybe it is difficult to get an accurate component price with P3’s. If the bridge is 1000m long and 12m wide, that work out to well under $1000 per square metre of deck area. For a complex bridge like that in Ontario, you would be lucky to have it built for $5000 per square metre. The bridge is cable stayed and also has shipping and seismic hazards that further make this anything but a garden variety bridge.
Steve: Sorry about that. I seem to have omitted a hotlink to the article. Here is another one where the $10m figure is included in an official TransLink publication, The Buzzer Blog. Scrolling down in the comments, it appears that this is the cost of only the pedestrian component of the bridge, not of the entire structure, and therefore my observation about the low per/km cost of bridge construction may not be valid. (This is supported in other references including Transport Canada on cycling infrastructure.) However, your Ontario figure would indicate a total value at least five times higher, say $50-60m, and this is still much lower per kilometre than underground construction and even some surface lines.
As you note, the component costs are hard to get at given that a P3 was delivering the main project and the $10m was an extra cost to add the cycling component to a bridge that was already part of the project at a cost that is buried in the multi-billion dollar total.
For the technically minded, there is a detailed paper on the bridge design. I wouldn’t want to trivialize it as “simple”, but a lot of thought appears to have gone into this design to simplify fabrication and installation.
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If I’m reading these passenger volume link maps correctly (page 5 of the EA’s demand forecast), the 5,400 pphpd occurs eastbound near Dufferin/Allen Road, not west at Yonge Street. Can someone please confirm if this is correct?
This also means that Metrolinx’s Eglinton Subway has a totally different peak hour volume in the opposite direction at a different location. Different design, different purpose, etc.
Steve: Now we get into the problem of warring demand forecasts. My statement about the peak being westbound to Yonge is based on the presentation at the June 2011 Metrolinx meeting which included a ridership projection for an integrated Scarborough-Eglinton line with complete grade separation. In this presentation, the modelled demand at the peak point is 12,000/hr and the annual projected ridership is about 80m on the Eglinton portion of the line (see pages 2 and 3).
However, the network that was modelled does not include a Don Mills or DRL line to intercept flow ultimately destined for the core area and indeed does not look at the broader question of north-south demand relief. The Metrolinx model is sensitive to speed as a determinant in trip assignment, and what the model has done is to divert trips that would go to downtown today via the BD subway onto the Eglinton line to Eglinton Station. Unfortunately the demand chart does not have a scale on it, nor does it have numeric values assigned to the various segments. I tried to get this info but was unsuccessful. However, it appears that the eastbound peak BD demand is larger than westbound demand reflecting this diversion of trips. The important point is that this demand is an artifact of the model and the choices of elements to include or exclude from the network.
The document you link is the demand forecast from the Transit City study of Eglinton. This uses the city’s planning model, but more importantly reflects the full LRT network including Don Mills and the airport segment of the Eglinton line. The combination of network segments included, different operating speeds, different results in trip assignments at Kennedy Station westbound, etc., produce completely different numbers.
In retrospect, I believe that the updated Metrolinx demand for Eglinton westbound is 5,700 for the subway-surface route as against a number in the 7,500 range for the all-underground option. Again we have the problem of not knowing the network configuration that produced these results. We have to assume that a consistent land use and trip demand (work, school, etc) values have been used in each simulation. There were almost certainly different assumptions underlying the Transit City model and the various Metrolinx estimates.
The peak link volume for trips arriving eastbound at Jane is 2,300 (see map on page 8). This is quite respectable for this part of the network, but we are unlikely to see that number with only buses in the corridor unless there is an intense effort to feed traffic into Jane/Eglinton station. If the Mississauga busway traffic continues to run south to Kipling, then Jane/Eglinton will be rather quiet compared to this model, and the demand eastbound at Eglinton West Station comparatively lower. At that point, the modelled demand of 4,600 westbound to Yonge would become the peak demand for the line as a whole.
The Transit City EA includes an annual demand forecast of 52 million trips (a multiplier of about 9.6k). This is three times the level used in Gilbert’s article even though he starts with the same 5,400 peak number before factoring up to an annual value of 17m. He appears to be happy with the peak demand number, but then derives an annual value lower than actual current-day ridership. This does not align with his premise that the higher ridership will only come with massive redevelopment. Either the ridership stays at 2012 levels forever with a comparatively lower peak point demand, or both the peak and annual numbers must be higher. He can’t have it both ways.
Metrolinx gets to 80m (on Eglinton only) with a peak demand of 12k (a multiplier of 6.7k). If you include the Scarborough segment as part of the Crosstown line, this adds 20m annual users to the modelled ridership, but the peak remains at 12k. Indeed Metrolinx observes that the peak on the SRT section is in the same range (12k), but these are not all the same 12k riders as at the Eglinton peak.
The fundamental lesson here is that you cannot simply scale up a peak point demand estimate to an annual one unless you are very sure that the multiplier is appropriate to the demand pattern of the line you are modelling. If we see projections for annual ridership in a network model with almost identical annual:peak ratios on several lines, we should be very suspicious. Claims that a given peak demand would be “expected” to produce a certain annual demand are equally dubious.
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Also, in Richard Gilbert’s defence, I think that he’s not trying to be ignorant of the TTC’s official 2031 annual ridership estimate (52 million), but he’s simply disagreeing with the TTC’s estimates while being well aware of them. If this is the case, then it is not well explained in his Globe and Mail article. What he should have done is explain why he believes the TTC estimate is wrong.
Steve: See my reply to your first comment above. Gilbert is happy to use the TTC’s peak point demand estimate, but not their annual figure. If he disagrees with the annual number, then he cannot use the peak hour value as the starting point for his argument.
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“Steve: Good point. I remember when the Seattle tunnel went in and was ridiculed for looking ahead to an LRT line complete with track. This is another example of the need to know the details of comparator projects.”
The tracks in the Seattle Tunnel had to be ripped out because the tracks were poorly insulated to save on costs. I think the tunnel was closed for 2 years from 2005 to 2007 to install new tracks.
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John Duncan says:
These are quite realistic suggestions, but given the very slow pace of upgrading to all day service of the five radial lines (Georgetown is now put off until at least 2018), these east west lines are decades, even a generation away. What will the landscape look like then? Will it still be possible, then, to thread a new line through, or will a condo here and a shopping center there preclude them permanently?
Is Metrolinx taking note of such routes? Are plans being made to ‘protect’ such routes from developments that would otherwise render them useless? Call it a pipe dream if you will, but for Metrolinx to develop a portfolio of reserved slivers of land for possible future use might be one of the most important things it can do, and one without a significant budget. Such reservations could be made by agreements, easements or purchases.
We all know of possible routes that should be protected – how about:- a north to east curve between Newmarket sub and CP Crosstown, so one day some Barrie trains might call at North Toronto (and relieve Union a little); the CP line running up the Don Valley to reach Peterborough and Seaton; and to join the CP valley line to the CN Spur (grade separated) to improve Richmond Hill service and relieve Yonge subway. It would be interesting to know whether such long term planning is on their agenda?
Steve: For an example of the amount of land needed to hold a 90 degree curve between two rail corridors, look at the crossing of the Newmarket and York subdivisions on Google Maps. Then go to the point where the Newmarket sub crosses the CPR north of Dupont. Aside from buildings, there is a problem that the curve would not fit between the CPR and Dupont (north-south) or between the Newmarket sub and Lansdowne (east-west). Such a curve would could require a vertical realignment of Dupont and Lansdowne. Not impossible, but not just a question of laying track.
GO already owns the Don Sub between the Union Station corridor and CPR Leaside. As for the CN Spur, that was converted to a bicycle path years ago and you are unlikely to see it go back to rail use, especially for frequent service through a residential area.
There is nothing wrong with long term planning — Metrolinx is sadly lacking in that regard with a 15 and 25 year plan, but no ideas or funding for the next 5 to 10. However, there are limits to what we can do with the existing rail infrastructure.
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I was interested to hear that the CrossTown would get a lot of business from Brampton. I rather suspect that the the most popular routes will be Queen Zoom to the 407 station on the subway extension or Steeles Zoom to connect to the Finch LRT.
The current Queen Zoom route to York University is already carrying a considerable through load.
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The demand forecasts are useless because they rely on preposterous employment assumptions.
Re: table 3.1 of appendix N of the Eglinton Crosstown EA. This shows the employment population ratio in Toronto going from .59 in 2001 to .65 in 2031. As of 2012 it hasn’t increased so all the heavy lifting needs to be done in the remaining 20 years. This requires the creation of 60000 jobs a year in Toronto, or 4% job growth a year. Over the last 26 years growth has averaged less than 10000 jobs per year with the peak employment occurring in 1989.
It seems more likely that the employment population ratio would be going the other way due to the aging of the population.
Steve: A related question is “where” would those new jobs be created presuming that they actually came to be. A recent city report notes a resurgence in downtown office space construction and a desire by some types of firms to locate centrally as an attraction to their potential workforce. If that workforce grows in the core, and it lives in the waterfront or Liberty Village, this will do wonders for demand on the streetcar system, but nothing for the LRT network. Thanks for pointing this out.
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Thanks Steve,
The suggestion of a Newmarket/CP connection, although I failed to say so, was appropriate given the demolition of old factory buildings there, a good time to reserve the route before the land it is built upon. I realise it would be difficult to construct, even more so if the grade separation is ever to be built. From the maps it looks to me like a radius of just over 500ft is possible, about the same as at the foot of Bayview.
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