Today’s meeting of the transit commission was expected to be a modest affair with approval of the Downtown Relief Line study’s recommendations, and a few other housekeeping items. What happened was a complete upending of the transit expansion policies we thought were put in place by the Karen Stintz coup d’état that bounced Rob Ford’s crew off of the TTC board back in the spring. Stintz herself didn’t even have the nerve to stand up to the runaway proposals from her fellow members preferring to keep peace, for now at least.
To make sense of this debacle, I have to recount some of the earlier events.
The main act was a presentation by TTC staff of the DRL Study, and it contained few surprises relative to coverage we have already seen in the press and on this blog. One comment caused attentive ears to prick up, namely that spending $1-billion expanding Bloor-Yonge station might be less cost-effective than providing additional capacity with a new line. Would that the TTC would look at all components of its subway plans that way (a topic for another article), but it’s a refreshing point of view.
The study and presentation make explicit reference to potential shortfalls in GO Transit capacity as part of the problem. Although these will no doubt annoy Metrolinx (is there a TTC meeting that doesn’t anger Metrolinx?), that agency’s basic problem is that long-term secrecy about what it might actually build forces assumptions to be made. That said, nothing prevented the TTC from modelling improved service on the GO northern corridors just to see what this would do to demand flows on a “what if” basis. After all, the whole DRL study is a “what if” exercise.
Councillor Parker asked about Main Station as an alternative DRL/Danforth subway connection. Staff’s position is that there are advantages to a north-south connection further west that would potentially serve Thorncliffe and Flemingdon Parks, and line up with the Don Mills corridor. (I will address DRL options in a separate article.) There were humourous remarks about how staff were trying to buy Parker off with a subway to his ward.
Parker moved that the Danforth to Eglinton section of the DRL be included in the next phase of the study, but the motion fell short of actually committing to this segment as a top priority.
Councillor Milczyn asked about eliminating parking on King or Queen Streets. Staff replied that this would be important for improved surface transit, and the idea would be part of a separate Downtown Traffic Operations Study now underway by the City, but that this would not avoid the need for a DRL.
Milczyn also asked about a Lakeshore West LRT and seemed to be mixing the proposal that was one option in the DRL study (an LRT or subway line in the rail corridor) with the Waterfront West LRT (that would run on Lakeshore Blvd.).
Councillor Colle asked about capacity on the Bloor-Danforth line east of Yonge, and staff replied that with the DRL, this would not be an issue. However, that remark misses the fact that the Danforth subway regularly passes up riders today east of Pape, the point where capacity would be freed up. More service will be needed on the BD line even with the DRL in place.
Colle went on to ask whether extending the BD line to Scarborough Town Centre would affect the DRL’s alignment by shifting the logical point for “relief” further east. Staff replied that the demand model already has the extra ridership that the replaced and extended SRT will bring to Kennedy Station built into projected Danforth subway demand.
Councillor De Baeremaeker observed than an overall city plan needs to include subways, LRT and buses, that the DRL is a “good subway”, and that the problems of inadequate GO service and fare structure forcing riders onto the TTC need to be addressed. We will hear more from De Baeremaeker later.
The staff recommendations with a few minor amendments were passed, and the meeting turned to other matters including a presentation on Transit Oriented Development. This was something of a Trojan Horse brought in by Build Toronto. An L.A. based consultant who has done a lot of work on redevelopments around station sites talked about the importance of putting good development (including attractive amenities) around transit stations. This is the classic transit model which looks nice, but ignores the degree of neighbourhood upheaval that the level of development implies. When you have a greenfield site, or your client is a totalitarian government, pesky problems with local activists and zoning are rarely encountered.
The moral was that if we are going to build many new stations, we should ensure that development occurs around them. On the Spadina Extension, this is easier said than done at some sites, and development plans are already in place at others. On the Eglinton line, many stations are in existing low density areas, and there would be a challenge on threecounts having them all upzoned for development at the scale shown in the presentation. First, the locals would get a tad upset, and public meetings featuring a liberal assortment of pitchforks, torches and rotten tomatoes would be on order. Second, developers have to believe that these sites are a market for development. Third, the transit line’s role in the network must be strong enough relative to other nearby facilities (notably highways) that the new development would actually feed the transit stations. See Sheppard Avenue for a counterexample.
The main discussion turned on the issue of taxation and the L.A. experience with Measure “R” passed in 2008, and Measure “J” expected to pass in the upcoming elections. “R” levied a 30-year, 0.5% sales tax on Los Angeles County to generate dedicated funds for transit. “J” extends this for a further 30 years. This funding will be used to underwrite debt that will be undertaken during the early period (the next 10 years or so) to build out many new transit facilities.
Unlike Metrolinx, whose Investment Strategy seems to be discussed on a pay-as-you-play basis, L.A. appears ready to take on long term debt with matching long-term funding. This is not unlike buying a house — you buy and live in the entire house at one go rather than adding a room at a time for 30 years.
By this time, the Commission clearly had a taste for spending money. The DRL was not enough, and the suburban councillors needed to jump in with their projects.
The opportunity came unexpectedly by way of a public presentation by Alan Yule who often deputes at TTC meetings. He proposed that the Scarborough RT/LRT conversion could be shortened as follows:
- Since most of the traffic is between STC and Kennedy, all other stations would be closed, and SRT service would run express between the two points.
- The intermediate stations would be boarded off (much like what is now happening at the Union Station 2nd platform project) while their reconstruction for LRT proceeded behind the walls.
- Eventually, the work would have to turn to the right-of-way itself, and the line would close, but presumably for a shorter period.
I won’t go into details, but believe that the really time-consuming parts of the project would not be affected by this scheme, notably the underground work north of Ellesmere and the changes at Kennedy Station. Alan does good, entertaining presentations. The Commission thanked him for his work, and then the wheels came off the debate.
Councillor De Baeremaeker (he of the we need all modes in the network comment above) moved that staff report on the merits of a subway extension from Kennedy to Sheppard & McCowan. De Baeremaeker’s position, following on from the One City Plan that briefly surfaced in June 2012, is that the difference in construction cost for a subway is only $500m greater than the cost of the LRT project, and this makes the subway option a great deal. What he misses is that the comparator subway estimate is only for a line to STC, not to Sheppard.
That extra 3.6 km will cost roughly $1b and push the delta for the subway/LRT comparison much further apart.
Correction: The extra 1.7km will cost $700-million more than the LRT project according to a 2010 estimate. Moreover, the LRT runs further going east to Sheppard and Progress where extension to Malvern is possible.
(The question of comparative costs was discussed back in December 2010 in this article.)
De Baeremaeker should know this already, but it suits his role as the Superman of Scarborough transit to continue the charade that we can have a subway replacement for LRT at only a modest additional cost. He also does not address the much higher operating cost of a subway line, especially given that it would be on a new, underground alignment, not at grade as the RT/LRT would be.
TTC CEO Andy Byford stayed clear of this debate, but recently in an interview on CBC he expressed guarded support for extending the Danforth subway. This sends a mixed signal to the politicians and suggests that staff are not firm in their support of the LRT network.
Oddly enough, the staff position on the DRL continues to paint this as something for the medium to long term, at least 15 years away, with the option of adding capacity elsewhere in the interim. This provides a window into which other subway construction projects might try to slip, an idea clearly on de Baeremaeker’s mind.
Not to be outdone, Councillor Milczyn asked that staff also report on looping this extended subway west from Sheppard & McCowan to Don Mills Station. This is the Sheppard East subway, but reborn at least entirely on Sheppard itself rather than going through an industrial district to STC. Such a line would obviously replace the Sheppard LRT.
Need I remind Commissioners of a phrase we heard a lot back during the subway/LRT debates: Council’s will is supreme. Council has voted, with not a little blood on the floor, for an LRT network which the province is supporting (to the degree that is possible in the current political climate). Indeed, the Commission voted today to give CEO Andy Byford the authority to sign the operating agreement form the four-line LRT network.
Metrolinx’ hands are not completely clean in this on a few counts. Most importantly, as recently as two days ago (Oct. 22), a representative presented an LRT project overview at a public meeting that includes a five-year shutdown for the SRT rebuilding. However, Metrolinx own VP of Rapid Transit Implementation, Jack Collins, has said that during the contracting stage, Metrolinx hopes to get proposals from bidders that will be under 3 years, maybe only 2.5. However, such a change has not been blessed by a Ministerial statement, and so we still hear “5” which scares the hell out of Scarborough transit users. Toronto is ill-served by Metrolinx’ lack of accurate details in its public statements, of which this is only one example.
As if all this isn’t bad enough, the Commission has asked for these analyses to be available for its January 2013 meeting even though staff will be pre-occupied with major work on the 2013 budget for the next few months. The date may slip, but what is clearly going on is that somebody wants information for use in a coming provincial election campaign.
What we see here is a Commission that claims to understand the limits of spending, that claims it should focus on subways where they are really needed, but which insists on revisiting LRT proposals over and over in the hope that they can be upgraded. Saying “no” is very hard for a politician to do, especially when constituents have been convinced that LRT is a distant second class option.
The Star reports Councillor Parker’s reaction to the vote:
TTC commissioner John Parker, who was out of the room praising the decision on a downtown relief line, confronted his commission colleagues afterwards, telling them that voting in favour of subway studies was “a stupid, stupid, irresponsible thing.”
“Irresponsible” does not begin to describe my feeling about this vote, one which proved that the current Commission, given half a chance, will be just as irresponsible about the subway/LRT debate as the Ford-friendly crew they replaced. It is not enough to say that we are getting more information for a better debate. We have had this debate, and only people with a distaste for the hard truths about subway costs can pretend that this option is viable.
Steve Munro 
City council needs to fix the commission … get some of these wacko’s off of it … wasting money on studies that will come to nothing.
Steve: And this is the “new” commission!
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I dare remark that Councillor Colle’s motion and the commission’s decision of May 30th, 2012 was just as foolish.
Steve: The motion in question (minutes here at item 12) replaced staff’s concerns about Metrolinx ability to take over the LRT projects with a much friendlier proposal.
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Idiots all around, left wing, right wing and mushy middle. Steve, my man, you might be the only transit pundit with even a slight hint of pull in this city that understands what’s really going on here. These political power plays must stop if we’re ever going to get the proper transit we need, be it LRT or subway.
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Hey Steve,
It was with much dismay that I learned of the recent maneuvers today by the transit commission. I find it shocking that Stintz would sully her reputation, much like she did with the one city plan, by backtracking on commitments, namely advocating for an srt to lrt upgrade/conversion, from just a few months ago. Perhaps she herself is oblivious to the moral cynicism and intellectual dishonesty inherent in such a flip.
I’ve read in articles that the so-called master agreement between the TTC and Metrolinx will be coming to council next week. Is it as you suggested above, that Andy Byford will have complete signing authority on formalizing the lrt contract, or, god forbid, does this agreement need to be voted on by council, as suggested by several articles that I’ve read today.
Thanks.
Steve: I believe it is going to Council for information, not ratification. The document should become public in a day or so, and I will comment on it here when it’s available.
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Come on Steve,
You knew the Merry-Go-Round would continue. The crack in the foundation happened when a) Sheppard East was pushed back almost indefinitely by Metrolinx ans b) One City made an appearance that tinkered with the Eglinton line.
Toss in the impending doom of the Ontario Liberals and a municipal election on the horizon and the posturing for votes has begun. They are pandering to the Subway crowd because they are by far a majority.
My own prediction: Eglinton goes ahead as LRT to STC BUT Sheppard gets converted to a subway as it finally gives Scarborough a subway which ends their exclusion.
Steve: I would put “exclusion” in quotation marks. The subway from Victoria Park to Kennedy is about 5km, which is roughly the same as Jane to Kipling. That “exclusion” is at least partly a political invention.
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Given the recent events at Queens Park, this is the time when the commission needed to be firm and stand behind the decisions made earlier in the year by Council with regard to LRT. What we have now is the perfect wedge, as you alluded to, for Hudak to force his way in and cancel all of the LRT lines if he wins next year’s election. Eglinton may survive, at least through midtown, but I now honestly doubt anything else will proceed. I have a bad feeling we will be riding an even more dilapidated SRT in 2020, while we’re still arguing about what should be built. Maybe the TTC should plan a rebuild program for those cars…
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Poor leadership everywhere. left, right, province, city. As a Toronto resident, I almost hope the money dissapears and goes to a municipality that has its act together.
LRTs for Waterloo Region, Mississauga/Brampton and York. BRT for Durham and Halton. $8.4 billion can go a long way out there.
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Metrolinx has delayed the Sheppard LRT to 2017, and has yet to finalize the station locations of the Eglinton LRT above ground section, focusing all its attention on building the underground section (which could be used by either low floor or high floor rolling stock with either overhead wire or third rail). The province knows that LRT is controversial and is generally unpopular with a large fraction of the public (most of the general public either supports subways, or supports LRT only because “Toronto can’t afford subways”), and McGuinty is unpopular for other reasons and is afraid of losing the next provincial election. In spite of the agreement that will be signed between TTC and Metrolinx, Metrolinx doesn’t really seem committed to LRT and clearly wants to wait until the next provincial/municipal election before finalizing anything (e.g. issuing tenders for above ground portions of Eglinton).
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There was I hoping this meeting was going to slap Pasternak around, and they out Pasternak him!
If Ford had had one of his proposals rejected by Council and then contrived to reintroduce it at TTC Commission level, there would be plenty said and I would be one of those saying it. Accordingly, in the name of consistency I must say this is a deeply cynical move by de Baeremaeker. Perhaps his plan has something to it but as pointed out it’s not a free lunch and if he hadn’t botched the OneCity plan it might even be still up for discussion. I do hope this madness was not conceived out of some sort of city-wide profile raising with a view to a mayoral run or something.
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Hazel says that the Hurontario-Main LRT should be funded too! It is important to her because this is her last ‘project’ as mayor since she will not be running in the next election. She may as well ask for a Subway, the way things are going.
Speaking of legacy projects … I don’t know why but it seems to me that Coun. de Bearemaeker is really focused on that Scarborough subway. I agree that it seems like he wants to ‘sneak in’ a subway while the plans for the DRL are being made. He probably thinks that this would be a simple matter of moving the TBMs from the Spadina extension over when they are done.
I suppose the talk about an extension to Sheppard is more of a sop to the Sheppard supporting councillors to get them to think about the possibility of a Sheppard subway instead of an LRT. And, it seems that Coun. Milczyn either took the bait (with his loop proposal) or he really believes that de Baeremaekar wants a Sheppard subway.
The funny thing about all this is that it really proves Sue Anne Levy’s comments about “Silly Hall”.
If these were proposals for the long term (as in, 50-100 years from now we might need a Bloor – Danforth – McCowan line that runs up to McCowan and Steeles, along with a DRL to Don Mills & Sheppard and possibly, a Sheppard subway from Don Mills to McCowan so why not study it now). But these people actually believe that these subways will be built in the next 10 years.
What a joke.
Steve, you must have been fuming today.
Cheers, Moaz
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There have been at least 2 comments suggesting that Torontonians prefer subways over LRT.
Well we also prefer free cake.
That doesn’t mean leaders should spend billions to give us each a tiny sliver of icing.
Steve: I have two coupons for free cake at Dufflets, but they’re mine, and those suburban councillors can just get their own. Harruumpphhhhhh!
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A DRL that reaches Eglinton can conceivably provide alleviation east of Pape, albeit more modest than west of Pape. Bus reconfigurations could be designed to divert ridership away from Danforth on the Vic Park north route (24) and to a lesser extent on some branches of the Woodbine north route (91) as well. Further to that, some ridership that comes from the broader Eastdale area on the 64 Main may be inclined to switch to the Mortimer route (62) as it will be one less transfer if they’re downtown-bound. I agree though that this angle needs more attention than it’s getting.
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From The Star:
Mississauga to province: put your transit money where the growth is
and
Q & A with hazel McCallion
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Even a simple request to Metrolinx/Queens Park to reconsider the project timelines, no matter how unlikely it is to be accepted, would have been a much more worthwhile conversation than the bickering between subway nuts we’re having now. This is the second time that the commissioners have proven that they just don’t care.
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Transit City has been agreed by council and Queens Park. The case is closed. We expect judges to stand by the Latin maxim of Stare decisis et non quieta movere, yet politicians are overturning things on populous whims.
There should be outrage. Government decision should be binding to the future, otherwise government is no better than a deadbeat. Who will build a CANDU AFR reactor, if the political environment can change so suddenly? Why is it that after Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) was decided, every judge follow on that precedent? Would we accept it if a judge 2 months later overturn that decision? The answer is a clear no. Let’s not forget that it was not a popular ruling.
There is a place for metro construction. Let’s do it with non Transit City money. Torontonians are so generous with other people’s money just like the gang of 535 at Washington. I have a proposal, for every family lusting for metro construction here in Toronto can mail City Hall a check for $10000. If they want a plaque with their name, they can chip in $100000 each. This is inspired by the principles of Ron Paul. He would pay out of his own pocket for his share for every Congressional Medal of Honor handed out. No other Congressman or Senator would even do that.
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Well, Ford Nation is apparantly still alive and kicking. However, until a final decision is made, who knows what will happen.
Of course, I do have one thing to say in favour of Andy Byford staying clear of the issue – seeing that his predecessor was fired for not doing what the Mayor wanted – is that he probably realizes that it is in his best interest at this point to stay clear and simply obey any orders he is given from City Council.
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Round and round in circles we go, where we end up….nobody knows!
So it pretty much sounds like the majority of this meeting was a waste, and we somehow always end up with a random proposal getting passed. This is how city council has been as of late, and it looks like it is slowly getting transferred over to the TTC. Everyone of us here knows (or should know) that these motions for the Sheppard and SRT subway lines are foolish.
“Councillor” Milczyn deserves a couple of blunt hits to the head, to allow for some common sense to seep in. But then again that’s probably too much to ask for. And to think, he was so close to being out of the door as city councilor … is it too late for a recount in Etobicoke-Lakeshore?
Steve: Milczyn’s challenger was a Ford ally. No net change.
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Glenn de Baeremaeker’s musings about extending the Bloor-Danforth line to McCowan via STC are nothing new. The fact is there is a strong political need to deliver a subway – any subway – to Scarborough, regardless of whether we’re talking about left-wing, right-wing or mushy middle ideologies. When the One City Plan was unceremoniously dismissed both by the Province and the Mayor’s office back in the summer, I remember Joe Mihevc (and nobody can ever suspect him of being one of Ford’s boys or particularly fond of the “subways, subways, subways” mantra) declaring that the Province would be wise not to spend too much into work related to the SRT conversion to LRT, because the debate regarding a Bloor-Danforth extension to Scarborough will re-surface sooner or later. Go figure.
Steve: Considering that Mihevc was in on the creation of OneCity of which de Baeremaeker (or at least his staff) was a co-author, he would have been well aware of the Scarborough councillor’s dreams of a BD extension.
And you’re right – Metrolinx’s hands are not clear in this. I don’t blame them. With a provincial election likely around the corner and the most anti-transit, automobile-friendly municipal government in Toronto’s recent history, combined with a largely uninformed electorate, whose only experiences of urban “LRT” in this city are the Spadina or St. Clair car, I understand why they would be rather coy about their longer-term intentions.
And Steve, at the time of the One City Plan, I remember you expressed guarded support for a Bloor-Danforth extension yourself. After all, by all estimates, an extension to Sheppard & McCowan would generate more ridership than the Spadina extension currently under construction and the SRT will presumably remain operational until the subway line is completed. And if this is the price we need to pay to get LRT expansion in Toronto – ANY LRT expansion – and get Scarborough on side, politically speaking, then so be it. It would be interesting to at least consider the relative merits of this proposal, if reasonable financial and ridership estimates are available for the two competing proposals.
Steve: My guarded support was only for a subway to STC, and then on the basis that if we must have a subway, it wasn’t the worst of choices. However, the attempt to sell the scheme for a line all the way to Sheppard and McCowan on the grounds that it’s only $500m more than the LRT option is simply dishonest. LRT advocates were pilloried for the TTC’s low-balling of Transit City cost estimates, but then subway advocates turn around and pull the same stunts with their own preferred options.
Milczyn’s motion on the other hand, is nothing but political posturing. He knows damn well no Sheppard Subway will ever get that far, even if Hudak becomes premier next year. And this is where the real danger for all transit advocates really is. If the Tories come to power before Ford is ousted, be afraid. Be very afraid. Because the debate will then be “nothing now” vs. “subway in the distance future, maybe”. As opposed to the current “LRT in 10 years for some” vs. “subway (DRL) in maybe 15 years for others”.
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I wish people would stop saying that the Sheppard Subway is under used and not worthy of extension. Ever. The truth is it is not. Almost 50,000 riders for 5.4 km of rail is actually very good, and is similar to ridership on other stretches of rapid transit of similar length. Sheppard does not have a lack of riders. For a line that goes only one-third of the way it was originally intended to travel, we should be proud with the ridership it has. St. Louis’ 70km light rail network only carries slightly more people than the Sheppard Subway. Even 504 King with the same daily ridership as the Sheppard Line is a several times longer route.
In a world where dependable, stable ongoing funding (transit bonds, tax incremental financing, road tolls, sales tax, federal/provincial commitments, etc.) is achievable, I don’t know why the door must be shut of building subways outside of the core of the City. People may travel to/from downtown but a majority leaves in the suburbs, and it is in the suburbs where commute times are longest. The mentality that a Sheppard subway extension or Danforth extension to Sheppard would lose money doesn’t take into account all the savings from fewer buses on the roads. Industry doesn’t want to invest in a DRL as there is little reasonable prospect of increased density. Much of the route will, by necessity, go under established neighbourhoods or existing historical districts. Very hard to get sufficient additional density to make those investments pay off.
The Sheppard subway extension and the Eglinton line are very attractive from a development perspective as they are under very busy streets that should be reasonably easy to add large amounts of density. You can’t build large condos in these areas under present conditions (or even with LRT geared towards low to midrise development) but a subway line would drastically improve their attractiveness as well as making it a shoe in at the OMB. Scarborough’s population was 602,575 in 2006, with a density of 3,161 people per square kilometer (1,220 per sq. mi). 54.7 residents per hectare live in Scarborough Centre alone. The average in the GTA is only 20 residents per hectare. Toronto/East York has a declining population of 0.7% on a 5 year basis whereas Scarborough’s population is rising at a rate of 2.4%. How any of translates into trains running half-empty most of the time baffles the mind.
So in sum, the ongoing dismissal of even considering the possibility of more subway extensions through Scarborough is illogical and I for one am glad that council has renewed hope in the public that a subway might one day extend east of Don Mills after all.
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Hi Steve,
I live in Scarborough-Agincourt, and I just received Councillor Norm Kelly’s community bulletin in which he makes the following announcement:
Norm Kelly, Rob Ford and all of the NIMBYs in our community are thrilled about this delay. As a very frustrated Scarborough TTC rider, I follow the TTC news pretty closely, but I completely missed this. When I do a Google search, I can’t find any mention of this detail in any of the major newspapers. The best source I could find was this August Scarborough Mirror article.
Anyway, can you give me your perspective on this? I was hopeful that the LRT would finally give TTC riders like me some much-needed relief and also attract new investment to our less-than-vibrant community, but now it looks like we’ll be lucky to have any kind of TTC improvements here for at least another decade. I certainly am not holding my breath for a major Sheppard subway extension in my lifetime.
Thanks!
Steve: The delay to this and other LRT lines is thanks to Dalton McGuinty and the province’s desire to stretch out the payments on their $8.4-billion out so that much is paid in the latter part of the next eight years. The Finch West line was similarly delayed, and the opening date for the rebuilt and extended SRT pushed back to 2020. The SRT is a special case because Metrolinx claims they will close the line in 2015 after the Pan Am Games and hope to take no more than three years to complete the work. This doesn’t line up with a 2020 completion, but nobody at Metrolinx is correcting this inconsistency. The likely problem is that the Minister of Transportation announced it, and of course, the Minister never, ever makes a mistake.
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Um am I missing something on google maps? I make STC to McCowan-Sheppard intersection as 1.5 km.
Steve: Ooops! Sorry, I was citing the distance to the proposed SRT connection at Sheppard east of Progress. However, the subway cost estimate stands because that’s what the TTC was costing in its report two years ago. See this map of the two lines used in the costing.
I have updated the article.
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Politicians shouldn’t be transit planners. There, it’s that simple.
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Even if they extend the crappy Sheppard Stubway to a line that is more useful, the projected ridership isn’t high enough to justify the construction costs.
As a 905 motorist who doesn’t want to be inconvenienced on the road to make way for LRT, I hate to say it but the case for LRT is stronger than subways. I’d rather have subways but the density isn’t there to justify it on Sheppard, Scarborough, much of Eglinton (though the council seems to think that tunneling is justified for the more central component. Even that is controversial), Finch East, etc. Besides even if you have a “if you build it, they will come” perspective, having a subway station is going to increase pedestrian traffic to an extent that is going to annoy motorists anyway. Increased density along corridors increases pedestrian traffic, which makes right and especially left turns more annoying.
At the end of the day you have to decide whether you are going to prioritize automotive transport or public transport. You can’t prioritize both unfortunately. If you want decent public transportation in these corridors, LRT is the only realistic bet it seems. And driving is going to suffer as a result of its implementation. If you instead choose to favor the car, the traffic congestion is going to be bad during rush hours anyway.
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So it’s futile to hope that De Baeremaeker’s motion is a deep, cunning double-cross against subway promoters? Staff does a report on the feasibility, oops it’s not $500m extra but $2.5b extra (or whatever number they come up with that includes all the extras OneCity left out), and ding dong the witch is dead again?
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@Micheal Hobble:
I don’t know if Steve appreciates your cross-posting of comments here and on the Globe website.
In any case:
What? Why would there be fewer buses? Are you suggesting that the subway would provide local service? Are there no buses on Yonge or Bloor? If anything, the city needs far more buses with far better headways. Do you ever actually ride the bus in the city?
Steve: Actually it will be much, much more expensive to operate the subway than the buses it replaces. First off, you don’t net all of the existing buses because the subway attracts riding on feeder routes and pushed up service needs on them. Second, the cost of maintaining subway infrastructure is very high as I detailed in a reply to another comment comparing capital maintenance budgets for the streetcar and subway networks. Running maintenance costs more too because a lot of infrastructure has to be staffed, cleaned and repaired.
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Passing on this message from my great, great, great, great, great, grandchildren, through a time portal. They request that the TTC do a study into using site to site transporters as a means to teleport from the end of the city of Toronto near Kingston to the other end of the city near Fort Erie.
By the way, the swan boats provide great local service here among the high-rise buildings around the Keating Channel.
Live long and prosper.
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Steve says:
On this topic it is interesting to look at a motion by Pam McConnell that was on the Toronto and East York Community Council’s agenda for the last meeting but was postponed until the next meeting, in early November.
This Report, clearly with grave staff reservations, proposes removing the no parking during rush hours on King Street between Sherbourne and Parliament.
King now has the “track lane” reserved for streetcars and taxis during rush hours — it would be FAR better to properly enforce this throughout downtown (or, actually, enforce it at all!) and to retain the current no parking so that cars can use the ‘parking lane”. As traffic is now so heavy downtown it is quite hard to tell which is the “peak direction” so changing things for ‘only’ the non-peak direction is really not going to help transit punctuality.
Steve: Thanks for flagging this. I will work this into an update on the DRL story as yet another example of the lack of political will to use roads for transportation, not for storage of cars.
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@DavidC: That King St arrangement has proven in past trials to be astronomically expensive to enforce, unless a seismic shift takes place by granting TTC ticketing powers through vehicle-mounted cameras.
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Steve, what is this nonsense all about with these councillors?
So what if they are leery and want more control.
Can’t the province have the LRT do a loop dee loop and have a branch go to MacDonalds if they want? They are paying ALL the money. He who pays gets the final say..don’t they???? Why would they threaten not to sign an agreement until they (and the TTC) get more of a say?
Steve: We made a deal with the devil when we accepted 100% provincial funding. Having said that, it’s the stations in the underground section that are more at risk because they are more expensive.
The point about a parallel surface bus has been an issue since the Eglinton line was first proposed, and the TTC has been dragging its feet on maintaining a surface bus. The Star’s article claims that the only parallel surface bus is on north Yonge, but it ignores the bus on Sheppard and the rush hour service on Yonge downtown, among others. There are accessibility issues with underground stations, and a surface bus should be provided. It does not, however, have to run every two minutes.
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Hm, now here’s something you don’t see often: Steve and The Sun are on very similar wavelengths.
Steve: It is a rare alignment of heavenly bodies.
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I agree with Mr. Parker. Revisiting suburban subways is profoundly irresponsible. And for politicians to talk about building anything without talking about how to raise the funds to pay for it is the height of irresponsible disrespect to their constituents.
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I guess my question now is whether it’s possible if City Council request that they take over funding for the Sheppard LRT line, or is there a legal obstacle that prevents the funding arrangement to be changed at the last minute?
Steve: The presumption that Ottawa and Queen’s Park would transfer their “committed” funding from the Sheppard LRT to a Sheppard subway probably turns on who is in power at Queen’s Park. The Ford faction probably hopes that the Tories would shove whatever they wanted down Toronto’s throat regardless of what Council may have to say.
Conversely if you are asking about the City taking over funding responsibility for an LRT line, I’m sure Queen’s Park would be happy to have any reduction in their cost on these projects. But again it depends on who is in power.
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Steve said:
I would think that it depends on the ridership volume. A subway has huge fixed costs that are independent on ridership, but a relatively small marginal costs of adding more riders as long as the volume does not push the capacity limit. The cost of a bus service, on the other hand, rises almost linearly with the ridership volume.
I am pretty sure that a bus service that replaces Yonge subway, even if enough street lanes existed to run it, would cost more than the subway it replaced.
Steve: You are using a worst case example with Yonge. A Sheppard line will never have the kind of demand Yonge carries unless we raze Scarborough and start over with huge density, or if we build the equivalent of a major downtown node at, say, Yonge and Sheppard. We know perfectly well that buses cannot replace the subway considering that before it even opened, there were wall to wall streetcars on Yonge, not to mention parallel services on Church, Sherbourne and Bay among others.
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Karl says:
I am sure you are right but it is all too typical of Toronto to have rules or laws that ‘look good’ but are never enforced. (The yellow box junctions are another example!).
In many cities the parking officers (traffic wardens) can ticket “moving offences” – here, though they are a sub-branch of the police service – they cannot. Another example of the silo mentality or the guarding of historic ‘privileges” one can no longer exercise.
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Looks like Metrolinx took the first steps to a full ART line on Eglinton, and Perks is fighting back.
Steve: Metrolinx has always had the ability to propose an alternative technology, but they can’t afford it as it would force grade separated operation on the entire line. Dropping a few stations won’t pay the delta for that.
Having said that, it will be intriguing to see what sort of “alternative designs” might be permitted when the tender call for the DBFM partnership goes out. Metrolinx says it won’t know the station locations until 2014, probably when they have a better sense of the actual cost for the project and what optional bits might be fitted in. I still don’t trust them, but Toronto gave up the right to dictate details when it bought into 100% provincial financing.
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I’m so confused that Oakwood Station is still up in the air. The very first station entrance and property acquisition example that was ever made pubic was a fully detailed and thought-out Oakwood. It didn’t actually say Oakwood but I immediately recognized the location. How much money and time was spent planning this one from the beginning only to have it likely cut out now? You would also think that they wouldn’t want to mess with that community because there is a brewing economic/ethnicity storm there that could be like grabbing a lighting rod. There’s already a similar storm rolling through Jane/Finch because of the planned Maintenance & Storage facility there.
Steve: The difference at Jane/Finch is that the “storm” is entirely a creation of the local Councillor who will do anything to get the Finch LRT cancelled. His puppet “Emery Village BIA” agreed with the plan in the Miller years (when he was on Miller’s side) but has now been manipulated to oppose the plan because he has joined Ford’s team.
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Michael wrote:
I have talked to people who live/work in the area who have told about how high rise buildings keep popping up along Sheppard since the subway went in. Plus if it had been built to STC, this would increase development along the whole route – the last I heard the Province still has a rule on the books that developments within a certain range of a GO or subway station (500m) can be high density regardless of what the city wants.
Plus, the feeder lines would bring more people in as the subway draws the demand into it – although I do believe that an LRT could potentially do the same thing.
Steve: It’s not a question of what the city wants, but what the development industry feels will be worth building. There is a reason why all the proposals for very high towers are downtown, not at Bessarion Station. The original Sheppard subway extension proposal didn’t even run on Sheppard east of Kennedy and would have required redevelopment of industrial lands as residential. A nice windfall for property owners, but not necessarily an ideal location for a condo developer.
As for the riding counts, one must be careful to distinguish between a line that accumulates riders over distance, or even at outlying stations, and then ferries them to a common destination (like GO), and a line that has strong bi-directional all-day traffic (Yonge and Bloor subways). Sheppard is a tiny GO line in that the primary demand is for trips from Don Mills to Yonge, regardless of whatever high rises have gone up in between. Feeder buses trump residential density pretty much across the board in Toronto as a source of riding.
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I realise the Jane/Finch story is a fabrication to opposite ends but based on the same ‘foundation’. It is humorous and sad at the same time that both similar communities are being toyed with so disgracefully.
Steve: There is also more than a hint of classism and reverse racism in the arguments because of claims that the elite downtowners (for which read well off white intellectuals) are forcing LRT down suburban (read lower class, immigrant) folks’ throats. Disgusting.
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Those industrial areas could be turned into new communities within Toronto Steve. But there again, the city needs the forsight to come up with a plan to develop those areas with a mix of residential and commercial properties. So if the TTC had built the subway through there, there would have been the possibility of using that subway as the backbone – even now an LRT could do the same and probably better at this point. They do this in Europe – the transit goes in first, and then the development comes along. I wish Canada would start doing this!
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More disgusting is that many of those suburban councillors (many of whom are well-off, some are “white” and a few are presumably – though the jury is still out – intellectual) are selling the lower-class immigrant folks on a bill of goods that will leave the people with nothing, just so the councillors can stroke their own political egos.
An LRT under construction is far better than a councillor’s subway dream.
Cheers, Moaz
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