Now that the Liberals are safely ensconced in Scarborough-Guildwood with their “subway champion” the member-elect, let us turn to the question of what that subway will cost the taxpayers of Toronto.
Back in July, Toronto Council adopted a convoluted motion supporting the Scarborough Subway, but with many options designed to act as “poison pills” if things didn’t go exactly as planned. This tactic bought the co-operation of Councillors who might otherwise rebel against an open-ended spending spree designed to prop up the fortunes of Mayor Ford and TTC Chair Karen Stintz.
Although Queen’s Park has signed on to the subway project, they are firm in setting a cap of $1.4-billion (2010$) on their contribution. Karen Stintz flailed around for a few days claiming that the subway was dead, only to come to an agreement with Transportation Minister Glen Murray on air on CP24.
We know from the City Manager’s Report (see Table 1) that the subway cost estimate is $2.3b (2010$) or $3.283b including inflation, a rise of 42.7%. By that token, the provincial share will be just a hair under $2b inflated dollars leaving almost $1.3b to be raised by the City of Toronto and its hoped-for friends in Ottawa. There is a further $250m needed to cover the cost of keeping the SRT in operation until 2023 and then to decommission and remove the old infrastructure.
This brings the as yet unfunded total up to $1.55b, a 50% jump from the City Manager’s estimate. Splitting this half-and-half with Ottawa would leave each government on the hook for, say, $750m.
Then we come to the inevitable scope creep in the project.
Already, there is talk of a station near Brimley and Eglinton. If we take current costs and inflate them to the era of the Scarborough project, an extra station will come in at about $200m.
The TTC says that its cost estimate for the subway has a 30% margin of error, although they don’t expect to use all of that. Even a 15% increase in the subway’s cost would represent about $500m.
On a 50/50 basis, the City and Ottawa shares could reach a cool $1b each.
Working backwards from the estimate of new taxes needed to support such an expense, a 2% increase would finance roughly $1b in new capital spending (see Table 2 in the City Manager’s report).
Potential Capital Cost of Scarborough Subway
(2010$) (Inflated)
Cost estimate from TTC $2.300b $3.283b
Provincial contribution $1.400b $1.998b
Net cost to City $0.900b $1.285b
SRT Extension/Decommissioning $0.250b
Minimum funding required $1.535b
Possible Extras
Brimley Station $0.200b
15% cost increase $0.492b
This is the path Toronto is launched on thanks to a cynical election campaign based on the premise that Scarborough should get “first class” transit.
How generous is Council feeling toward Scarborough? Will Council extend similar largesse to other parts of the city pining for new transit services, or will we spend every last penny we can scrape together on this one project?
If this were an LRT scheme, just for an example, there would be cries for an accurate cost estimate and guaranteed funding, not to mention an alternatives analysis including consideration of how GO Transit improvements might be a better way to serve Scarborough and Markham beyond. But subways lead a charmed life in these parts, and the idea of subjecting them to careful scrutiny is not part of our municipal or provincial ethos.
Steve Munro 
you are awesome. 🙂
Steve: Well she did. It was “The subway is dead! The subway is dead!” if she didn’t get the $1.8b she claimed Queen’s Park had “promised”. Then suddenly all was quiet. This is not an example of good leadership if only because she should have had a “Plan B” ready to go to keep the project alive and downplay the importance of that $400m.
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I am glad you at least acknowledge that a station should be located at Brimley-Eglinton. This could result in a subway interchange between the ECLRT and Bloor-Danforth that’s akin to the St George interchange, one directly atop the other. If a terminal is built it could also take the 21 Brimley and 12 Kingston buses, and possibly one of 86 or 116 away from Kennedy Stn alleviating it somewhat. If they’re going to build this thing, they may as well build it right from scratch.
Steve: “At least acknowledge” is a lot more than we are getting from the TTC.
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Steve wrote:
I wonder if that would continue if a serious suggestion of a special tax assessment on properties in Scarborough to cover the added cost over the funded LRT project were to be considered.
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Now that Holyday is in Provincial Parliament I await calls to extend the Bloor-Danforth line to Sherway Gardens as well. I expect Holyday to helpfully point out that no (important) roads will be harmed in the making of the “Etobicoke-Lakeshore Subway” line.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: Now that Holyday is at Queen’s Park he will discover that as a backbencher he has a lot less freedom to talk about what might be construed as party policy than he did at City Hall. Unless, of course, the Tories simply lie about their future support for transit to pry votes loose in Etobicoke.
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That certainly would be interesting but you are you talking about continuing the ECLRT (or running a future Scarborough-Malvern LRT) fully underground from Kennedy to Brimley, or running at street level with an underground interchange a la St. Clair West.
Either way that would another great example of scope and cost creep for the subway extension project…
And would the subway extension require an amendment to the EA for the Crosstown because of the change of plans at Kennedy Station?
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: No amendment on Crosstown would be needed as they will simply revise an already proposed interchange (it wouldn’t be the first time). The subway will have its own EA.
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Well it is obvious that all transit spending in Etobicoke should stop because they voted for a Tory. My next question is who can control Rob Ford with Holyday gone?
Why don’t we just run the Scarborough extension up the Uxbridge Sub to Uxbridge. That way North York could get another subway and so could Durham. Who cares if it would carry no one? GTHA transit is becoming a joke.
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Scarborough is finally joining the big City. It is sad that its going to cost more than it would have 20-40 years ago and all other plans to build upon it have been stalled. And also sad that Major areas of Scarborough continue to be neglected. But doing something right is worth the wait.
Scarborough will someday have a core hub in the Center of the City where the LRT network can branch out to and grow further east and north.
Long live the East
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Life Span:
During the subway vs. LRT debate, a lot was made of the suggestion, backed by TTC testimony, that subways last twice as long (75-100 years) as LRT (40 yrs). This information is particularly damaging considering the confusion between LRT and ART, whose track & Mark 1 vehicles came to a premature end. Many used TTC stats to suggest building LRT means we’d soon be back ripping out the new LRT in 30-40 years.
See Matt Elliott in Metro
Unlike ART, both LRT & subway use tracks compatible with vehicles produced by multiple manufacturers and so are not susceptible to the whims of a single monopoly. The ‘life span’ argument is very misleading. What’s important are upkeep costs over time, which are significantly more expensive with underground operation.
Anyone comparing city expenditure by mode must factor in that Metrolinx would cover LRT construction & upkeep, while the subway’s maintenance would be paid by the TTC, costing an estimated $32 – $64 million yearly (lower at first, higher over time).
Vehicles:
While new vehicles are included in LRT plan, they’re not part of the subway price tag. Approximately $450 million for automatic train control is needed before adding new vehicles & storage.
Question: Any estimates on how many trains would be required from the busy Bloor/ Danforth line to ply the route northeast from Eglinton to Sheppard (minus those turned back at Kennedy)? Any possibility for minimizing service frequency declines in the interim by extending life of existing subway cars assuming storage capacity exists?
Steve: Actually, the TTC estimate did include a provision for subway cars. The expansion now in progress to hold all of the T1 fleet (except the cars used for Sheppard) on the BD line will likely be all that is needed to operate that line at the current headway. The “surplus” T1 trains will be used for the extension. However, by the time the line actually opens, those cars will be at end of life, and the fleet we would have to buy to replace them will be bigger than otherwise.
Then there is the question of the headway reduction needed to handle all of the 905 commuters the line will attract who should actually be on GO but want the cheaper fares and more frequent service a subway offers. That will require more trains, a new yard, and ATC conversion at a future cost easily of $1b all considered.
Queen’s Park’s ongoing refusal to properly fund both GO expansion and fare integration (preferring instead to crow about GO’s high cost recovery rate) forces us to build subways to carry riders who should be on the regional system, and the savings on the GO ledger are transferred to the municipal transit system’s books as costs for a much more capital and operating cost intensive mode.
It will be interesting to see whether the pending study of alternative services in the northern corridors will do a proper all-in cost comparison of various scenarios to address increasing demand.
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This reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask. Doesn’t an EA typically involve at least some consideration of options, including routing and technology choice? I remember the Waterloo LRT EA considered several technologies and several routes. The technologies were then narrowed down to BRT vs. LRT and the route pretty well set. Later LRT was chosen by Regional Council and some minor tweaks to the route were made.
An EA in Scarborough run on the same general principles would have to at a minimum consider BRT, LRT, and Subway, as well as several routes. It would then have to look at the projected ridership and could hardly fail to conclude that Subway is not justified. I mean it’s not like it’s even close.
Is this where the streamlined TPA process comes in and allows consideration of just a single version of the project, without considering status quo and variations on the project? If so it’s unfortunate that process was created on this timing. When I heard it was created, I anticipated it being used to get faster approval for economical projects — LRT, BRT and the like — not to slide through uneconomical and poorly thought out projects like the Scarborough Subway.
Steve: You may remember criticism of the Transit City plan and the fact that it dismissed anything but LRT out of hand. Mind you, this was fairly easy given projected demand levels on most lines.
If the premise is to extend the subway, then the terms of reference will dictate the technology choice, and the alternatives will only be things like alignment and stations.
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Kevin’s comment:
If so, that testimony was particularly ignorant. In 16 years is the original part of the Yonge line from Union to Eglinton going to start to collapse?
The reality is that both LRT and subways will last forever if properly maintained. The original part of the London Underground that opened in 1863 is still in use.
The real question to ask is “how much will it cost to maintain as it ages.”
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I think part of the problem with the debate is that $1bn is such a huge and incomprehensible amount of money that the concept becomes abstract to normal people, whereas lines on a map are pretty cool. The debate would have been more substantial if it were lines on a map vs. lines on a map.
“The people of Scarborough want to spend a $1bn converting a planned above-ground subway into a faster below-ground subway
OR we could extend the Eglinton LRT to the airport where you could then transfer to the Mississauga busway and go to Square One
OR we could electrify the future Union-Pearson Express train
OR we might have enough to build a GO train tunnel that would allow for all-day 15 minute GO train service
OR we could build a tunnel allowing all-day GO train service to Hamilton
OR we could tunnel the King street car through downtown
OR we could extend the Finch LRT east to Yonge St
OR we could hold a G20 summit
OR we could make incremental improvements to the Yonge subway that might fix its overcrowding problems”
You can even pit Scarborough residents against Scarborough residents: “we can extend the Bloor subway to Sheppard OR we can extend the Sheppard subway to Scarborough Town Centre.”
Politicians have to make the opportunity cost concrete in order to have meaningful discussions about $1bn subway plans.
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OR we could build the Scarborough Malvern LRT running East from Kennedy station.
The only Scarborough people who should be against doing that are those who need to get to Lawrence and McCowan (and can’t think beyond their own needs). Substantially everybody else in the city would be better served by the original Transit City plan for Scarborough.
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Thanks, Steve. So there is no basis to challenge the terms of reference? What would BRT proponents, for example, have been able to do if the Waterloo LRT study had simply started as “LRT from Conestoga Mall to Fairview Mall” instead of starting with technology selection? For the terms of reference to rule out such a major choice seems to circumvent the whole point of an EA process. What about terms of reference that are “this exact project that I like because I likes it”? Actually, that’s not even hypothetical — it’s just what this subway really is.
Steve: A TPA (Transit Project Assessment) does not require the detailed terms of reference and alternatives analysis of an EA. When it starts. a TPA is assumed to be based on a pre-existing choice of technology and, broadly speaking, alignment, and deals only with mitigation of the effects of the chosen option. It is NOT an alternatives assessment.
Any debate about LRT vs BRT would occur in the process leading up to a TPA, but there are no formal rules about how that process should work.
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It would be pretty difficult to put a station at Eglinton/Brimley right where the subway is making the curve to the North – TTC does not want stations in curves. The station would either have to be well West of Brimley or it would require a curve – tangent section – curve to make the turn (obviously requiring more property).
If a station here is wanted, it appears to make more sense for the subway to continue along Eglinton until Kingston (road not city). This plus the SRT-LRT may still be less expensive than the subway to Sheppard.
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Not to mention that it would actually bring the subway to Scarborough-Guildwood so the newly-elected “Subway Champion” MPP could actually claim to be serving her constituents. I have no love for Holyday but at least his pandering for votes was more accurate in that he wanted to extend the subway into Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: There is a perfectly good rapid transit proposal for eastern Scarborough called the Scarborough-Malvern LRT. Don’t forget: if the subway goes all the way out to Kingston Road, it will almost certainly never get to Scarborough Town Centre.
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The simple fact that Mitzie Hunter was apparently hailed as a “subway advocate” for Scarborough goes to show how out of touch some voters are when it comes to transit proposals. Has any official actually pointed out that her ward (Scarborough Guildwood) will not get any improved transit regardless of the outcome of the Scarborough subway vs (L)RT debate?
Steve: Shhhh! You’re not supposed to notice. Yes, some have mentioned it, but the received wisdom from the three major parties was that only subways would do. Where they actually went, as long as it was somewhere within Scarborough, didn’t matter.
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@Walter: The distance between the Eglinton / Brimley and Eglinton / Danforth Rd intersections is about 150 m.
If the subway is to turn from Eglinton to Danforth Rd, the required turn is about 45 degrees, not 90. It means that the desired curve with a 300-m radius can start just east of Brimley and comfortably fit under Danforth Rd.
If the station platform ends just west of Brimley, it will not interfere with the curve.
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I assume that most of the Scarborough Guildwood voters realize that neither SLRT nor the subway extension will serve their locale.
That suggests that many voters feel affinity to Scarborough versus the rest of Toronto. Such affinity may be seen as irrational, and it certainly poses a challenge for effective transit planning. But the planners should be aware that such sentiments exist, and try to find compromises rather than dismiss them out of hand.
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I think the debate over the cost of the Scarborough subway is a moot point. The Federal government won’t show up in the city with a sack full of cash to help pay for the project, which means the deal will fall apart. Instead of a subway or an LRT, Scarborough residents will have to ride buses when the SRT closes down.
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I believe that the minimum curvature for main line subway is now a lot more than 300 m. The curves into Union were made in the “Old Days” and such tight curves are frowned upon except in yards. Aren’t there buildings on the north side of Eglinton and Danforth where the curve would be? It is 38 years since I lived in Scarborough.
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This is irrelevant, because the subway push is mainly about the needs of influential drivers, who drive around Scarborough and elsewhere. In order to get this influential majority to agree to contribute to transit expansion both right & left have misleadingly claimed that more transit will speed up their commute.
How would you spend 32?
Ford’s ‘honk for subways’ campaign (like many others) is more blunt, telling drivers that putting bus & streetcar passengers underground will free up space for them. This theory doesn’t hold up in urban areas where the huge latent demand for ‘free’ roadspace happily fills up any slack capacity.
Since both Scarborough options are actually grade separated, RF decided to conjure up an on-street Scarborough LRT bogeyman to stir up driver support. According to a recent poll, drivers are more likely to be willing to pay higher property taxes for subways, 44% vs. 37% for transit riders.
Steve: The “32” campaign verges on dishonesty, and I called out Civic Action on this when it first appeared. Their then-head, the newly elected MPP for Scarborough-Guildwood, took a while to accept what I was saying, and even then the campaign continued to let people think that they would save time relative to current experience rather than through avoided congestion in the future. It will be interesting to see what new figurehead Civic Action gets and what position they take on various transit proposals.
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A 1% property tax generates only about $23 million / year (In 2012, a 2.5 per cent property tax hike yielded $57-million.) This would not be enough to cover half of the city’s share of the cost for a subway extension. Or would the property tax increase extend beyond 3 years? It seems the city is proposing to use development charges to the plug the difference. Are developers a captive tax base that the city can use as a cash cow?
Steve: Please refer to the City Manager’s report for details of the cost breakdown, calculation of the shares, and the tax implications. The intention is to phase in whatever new tax will be required over a four-year period, but once this is done, it would remain in place for close to 30 years to pay off the debt with which the subway would be built. Development charges are limited by provincial legislation to that proportion of a new facility that is the direct result of growth. In other words, just giving someone in Scarborough a faster ride does not entitle the City to fob the cost off onto the DC tax base. Only a portion of the benefit of the subway (20%) is chargeable to growth, and the rest must be borne by other sources.
There are two amusing sidelights here. If the Feds come in for part of the cost thereby reducing the City’s share, then the DCs go down because they are based on 20% of the City expenses. Also, the development industry is already apoplectic about the proposed doubling of DCs to pay for many other parts of the City’s development. Only landowners who stand to benefit from a Scarborough subway (probably a small group within the larger development community) will love the subway, and they might be less than thrilled to helping pay for its construction.
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Shhhhh…don’t tell anyone. Otherwise they might cone to the conclusion that 3 LRT lines serving most of Scarborough are better than a 3 stop subway extension and whatever can be done with Sheppard once the subway extension is paid for.
Cheers, Moaz
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@Robert Wightman. I found the following in an article written by Karl Junkin:
So, 300m radius is not ideal, but acceptable. Curves between King and Union, or Union and St Andrew, are certainly tighter than 300m. The Spadina Extension curve north of Downsview station is no smoother than that.
If the buildings on the north side of Eglinton and Danforth pose a problem for the subway, then they will pose a problem even in the absence of Brimley station. The subway would still have to veer north-east somehow.
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@Moaz Yusuf Ahmad: The Kingston Road LRT is currently unfunded, although some preliminary design has been done. Whether SLRT or subway is ultimately selected for the Kennedy – STC corridor, that decision will not directly impact the chance of Kingston Road LRT to be built.
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The King curve has a crazy radius that is, I think, less than 130m for the southbound (King->Union) track.
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No, but if there “no more money” (as many seem to point out) then the extra $1 billion spent on the extension will indirectly affect the possibility of getting sufficient funds for a Kingston Road LRT … which could mean that the line would be deferred for a longer period of time or less km would be built.
The East Bayfront Line is also unfunded … but the gap is only $300 million. TTC will be running buses there for the near future … but that $1billion extra could secure the construction of new transit on the Waterfront and down into the Portlands.
Cheers, Moaz
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It will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out, given that the exact costs of the subway proposal are still up in the air. What I find curious is one of the chief justifications for a subway is that it would avoid an extended shutdown of the SRT. However even under the best-case scenarios, the earliest a subway to STC would be in service is 2023, so that Scarborough residents would see no improvements in transit for at least 10 years (assuming it gets built). Alas, with the decision to postpone the conversion of the SRT to LRT until after the Pan Am games also delays improvements for many years – I’ve seen 2020 as the soonest an SLRT line would be operating. It’s a pity work was not begun sooner on this line – we might have actually had better transit out our way by now.
Looks like we may a fleet of swan boats for those of us in Scarborough!
Phil
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You are right, based on arithmetical considerations.
But the current public sentiments are such that nobody is willing to promote the use of city taxes to get the East Bayfront or Kingston Road line sooner. That $1billion extra is something that would not be spent on transit at all, if not for Scarborough subway.
More so, I hope that Scarborough subway can shift the public view of transit taxes. If people see that they are getting something they wish in exchange for paying higher taxes, they may be more willing to support Metrolinx taxes. Currently, the Yes side makes a sizeable minority. If 10% of voters can be shifted from the No side to Yes side, then a majority can be reached. And in that case, we will have money to built both the remaining LRT projects, and the DRL.
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