Updated October 9, 2013 at 1:20am:
Toronto Council, by a vote of 24-20, has approved proceeding with the Scarborough Subway project including a three-stage property tax increase totalling 1.6% to finance the City of Toronto’s share of the budget.
There is little new to add at this point on the technical issues all of which were covered on this site before.
My personal reaction is disappointment, but more strongly, disgust at the behaviour of some Councillors and a few City Officials. The outright hatred and slander against “downtowners” and their motives in “pushing” LRT does not bode well for cordial relations on Council, not to mention sowing equivalent feelings among the electorate. There are arguments to be made for the subway option (many of them have appeared here in the comment threads), but this should be done in a civil manner relatively free of distortion.
Instead, we got warped versions of the truth about both the subway and LRT options, and not a few outright lies. TTC CEO Andy Byford, one who trotted out the “100 year subway” myth was forced to backtrack on two counts by questions at Council. He admitted that the tunnels last for 100 years, but much of what is in them does not. Meanwhile, he talked about LRT lasting 50 years, not the 30 year figure that has been bandied around of late. The obvious issue is that a tunnel may very well last 100 years, but if you don’t have to build one in the first place, and can save the expense, what does it matter?
We will have to wait a decade to see whether the suddenly much rosier projections of demand for a rapid transit line in Scarborough come from the same well-cooked land-use and population assumptions that brought us the vastly overstated estimates for the Sheppard Subway (and for growth at Scarborough Town Centre).
In any event, the vote is taken, and barring a discovery of a major extra cost for the City appearing during detailed design, the decision is as final as we can expect to see from this Council and the provincial government.
How the rest of the LRT network will fare really depends on the 2014 municipal and provincial elections. Mayor Ford has already declared that subways on Sheppard and Finch are goals for his next term.
The half-hearted advocacy for LRT from Metrolinx and Queen’s Park plays a big part in this situation, but I never thought their hearts were in it going right back to the early days of Metrolinx when I was persona non grata for asking their newly-minted Chair if they would consider this mode as an option in their grand plan.
How many more ridings will the Liberals feel the need to buy off with a subway promise?
The original article from October 4 follows the break.
[In a previous posts, I have been tracking the debate over the proposed Scarborough Subway including the provincial scheme announced by Minister Glen Murray, the City’s plan for a subway via McCowan and, of course, the original LRT line from Kennedy to Sheppard. With the Toronto Council debate coming up on October 8, it’s time to start a new thread (with apologies to those who want to see an even longer comment string on one article).]
Toronto Council will debate, again, the fate of rapid transit for Scarborough at its meeting starting on Tuesday, October 8. Back in July, Council voted to support a subway scheme with various provisos that some thought would act as a “poison pill” because all conditions would not be met. Critical among these were requests for federal funding and for additional money from Queen’s Park. Since then:
- The Ontario government announced (through Minister Glen Murray) that it would support a subway on the existing Scarborough RT alignment, but that the available funding would take it only to Scarborough Town Centre. This alignment and no other would be acceptable for provincial support.
- Metrolinx published a feasibility study supporting the subway-via-SRT option.
- The federal government announced (through Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty) that it would contribute up to $660-million toward the city’s subway proposal.
- The TTC published a report critical of the provincial alignment, but with only superficial comments on the technical aspects of the route pending further detailed study.
- Metrolinx, originally strongly supportive of the government’s subway proposal, retreated to a more generic support for rapid transit with a preference for the LRT plan, but a willingness to support a subway on any alignment, subject to an Environmental Assessment including analysis of competing proposals.
The City Manager has issued a report for Council recapping the issues and updating the cost and tax implications. An appendix to the report includes copies of the correspondence between the parties showing the evolution of their positions.
Going into the debate, we now have more details about the funding for the Scarborough line that has been transferred to the Eglinton-Crosstown project. $320m was originally described as the cost of restructuring Kennedy Station to accommodate the new Scarborough LRT, the Crosstown and provision for the future LRT line east on Eglinton. With the subway option, provision for an SLRT station is eliminated and the cost of rebuilding Kennedy for the McCowan subway alignment plus the Crosstown LRT should be less than the original budget.
However, Metrolinx is also working on improvements to the design of the Crosstown line’s interchange with the Yonge Subway, and wants to keep the full amount in the project budget to help pay for these improvements. Only when the final cost of the Eglinton-Crosstown line is known would money be released from the Crosstown budget for additional funding of the subway scheme.
The budget for the subway extension includes a provision for additional trains and storage at a cost of about $400m although the current fleet is actually large enough to handle the future requirements. However, the TTC’s fleet plan (published as part of the 2013 budget) shows the gradual addition of trains on the BD line over the coming decade to bring the peak period headway down from 141 to just under 120 seconds (roughly an 18% increase in capacity with 51 rather than 43 trains on the line).
If this is implemented (previous plans for subway service improvements such as an extension of the Spadina line’s short turn beyond St. Clair West Station have never materialized), it would soak up all now-surplus equipment and yard space. It is unclear whether the amount of extra service planned is dictated by the available fleet, the minimum headway possible with existing technology, or actual planning for demand growth.
An extension east and north to Sheppard will certainly add to demand and crowding on the BD line over and above regular growth, and it is unclear how much reserve capacity is available even if the line moves to automatic train control and a moving block signal system. Constraints will remain at major interchanges and at terminals. Where a new yard would be placed has not been discussed in public.
The cost estimate presented by the City Manager is roughly the same in the July and October reports, although the presentation is slightly different (both estimates are on p7 of the respective reports). The capital cost of the subway project is now:
Subway construction, equipment, etc $2.300b 2010$ SRT life extension & demolition .170b Total 2.470b Inflation to completion (2023) 1.090b Total cost $3.560b
This is essentially the same as the number used in July.
The provincial budget for the SLRT project was $1.8b 2010$, but from this must be deducted $320m transferred to the Crosstown project leaving $1.48b for the subway project. With inflation, this amount would be $1.99b.
Funding for the project would come from:
Federal government $0.660b Provincial government 1.990b City development charges .165b City debt and tax reserves .745b Total $3.560b
A property tax increase of 1.6% spread over three years would be required to create a capital reserve (short term) and then fund debt that would be floated to pay the City’s share. Future increases in interest rates could have a substantial effect on costs and the taxes needed to cover them. Moreover, the headroom in the City’s overall debt and appetite for new taxes could crowd out many other necessary projects in future years.
Further deductions include $85m for SLRT sunk costs and the unknown penalty that will be imposed for reduction in the size of the LRV order to Bombardier. These amounts are not included in the City Manager’s estimate of total project costs, although they represent over 10% of the amount the city plans to finance through new taxes.
(Note: As a matter of City policy, the tax increase on non-residential property would be 1/3 of whatever is levied on residential. This would continue a multi-year practice of lowering the ratio of non-residential to residential tax rates that was in place well before the Ford era.)
The City would be entirely responsible for any cost overruns on the subway project. At this time we have only an order of magnitude cost estimate, and as the details are worked out, this number could rise. Obvious questions include the location and cost of the new Scarborough Town Centre station and whether a station should be provided somewhere on Eglinton before the line heads north up McCowan.
Capital improvements to the existing BD line (notably resignalling and a larger fleet) could also be triggered by this project. To be fair, the LRT plan would also have increased BD subway demand and the cost of handling this must be included in budgets for all proposals in any comparative evaluation.
There are many unknowns as Toronto faces the Scarborough subway debate, but we most definitely do know that subways are not “free” as was promised during the Ford campaign. Having created the expectation that subways would come at no cost and that they are the birthright of every Torontonian, subway advocates now must face the implications of a long-lasting city-wide tax hike to pay for one subway extension.
For too long, the true cost of expanding our transit system in capital and operating funding has been buried under rhetoric about cost efficiencies and the magic of private sector partnerships. Coming in to the budget debates, we now have TTC Chair Karen Stintz advocating increased support for TTC operations through municipal subsidies rather than the flat-lining she herself championed for the past two years.
Budget debates have always attempted to sequester capital financing from operating subsidies, but at last we are seeing how spending in capital and the inevitable demand for greater debt service will affect the headroom for spending on operations. Is subway building a replacement for providing better transit service that will rise to meet the growing travel demands of Torontonians? This is not an either-or choice, but a need to balance spending and to spend wisely where the money is needed.
Writing that, I cannot help recognizing a “conservative” voice, but one that recognizes public spending as a necessary part of city building, not as something to be avoided except when buying votes.
Steve Munro 
Once again, thanks for the contexts – and it seems evermore clearer that the project creep denounced on St. Clair is alive and kicking, including kicking future needed projects throughout the City in the teeth.
It’s sad that Scheme A4 has elasticitities of who knows how many hundreds of millions and unanticipated costs that we are on the hook for, but Plan B, the funded and actually planned with numbers and thought LRT is dissed so badly, and the systemic implications of all eggs-in-one-basket approach is only coming to some light, details to follow. It may not be a way to run a transit system but it may be a way to ruin a system – and is that the “plan”??
One aspect that might help persuade some councillors to revert to more modest but OK plans is hard figures on how much operating subsidies are required for both the Sheppard and Spadina subways, the latter being buried in the overloaded YUS name in the TTC data it seems. To not have the hard cost data on other relevant/alike pieces of work is another shortfall.
We are soo behind on overall transit, that we need to play catch-up everywhere, and not just Scarborough; and the majority of Councillors need to understand broader impacts including opportunity costs. One instance: by not attending to the leaking gutter on the Viaduct, only mentioned in a few deputations over maybe a year, the Viaduct will rot out faster with freeze-thaw cycles, and it will cost far more to fix, tho it’s in the pinko core, and there’s a pinko subway under it.
If the Council were to still persist in thinking subway is the way to go, using a tool we have called a Vehicle Registration Tax for all vehicles within 2kms of the proposed new line – and graduated for weight/efficiency – and clearly earmarked for the “local” transit improvement, that would be far fairer than only property tax hikes.
When the City Manager’s report suggests that the systemic “impact is not clearly understood at this time” – would the councillors buy a pig in a poke? Some would, and will, and will call themselves fiscal conservatives too. But let’s hope a sensible crowd instead has the majority and we go with Plan B.
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Steve, in addition to the $85 million the city will be in the hole for with scrapping the LRT, has a ballpark figure been thrown around for how much the city will be penalized for shrinking their Bombardier LRT order?
Steve: No.
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Already, there are cost overruns on the SRT replacement subway.
Somehow, I think it would make more sense to (a) build the Sheppard subway and (b) rebuild the SRT as ICTS without an extension, which is the cheapest way of rebuilding it. Looking at the cost estimates, it looks like the Sheppard subway would only be slightly more expensive than the McCowan subway, which is not surprising because it is only slightly longer.
At least this way, if we actually succeeding in “life extending” the SRT until 2019, then we can schedule the Sheppard subway to be complete around then so that when the SRT is shut down, all the SRT traffic is not put on either buses, or the Sheppard light rail, neither of which can carry as many people as the SRT. I can’t imagine how crowded both of those would be with the SRT shut down. (I assume that Stouffville GO expansion is severely limited without Union Station expansion).
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Andrew makes an interesting point. If we’re going to spend that much money, why don’t we just extend Sheppard to STC and abandon the RT? Why does the Danforth line need to go to STC? Looks like we could kill two birds with one stone here.
Diverting the flow to Sheppard won’t overload BD, and there is excess capacity on Sheppard. Also, transfer traffic would be spread out between Sheppard-Yonge and Bloor-Yonge, vs. concentrating it all at Bloor-Yonge. The idea deserves further study.
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I will leave my unintelligent two cents with reasonable logic.
Eglinton has and will have a hybrid of underground/at-grade LRT with a provision for extensions on both sides to the Airport and up Kingston/Morningside at some eventual point in the future.
Sheppard (for now) will have LRT for almost it’s entire length east of the 404!
Finch will have LRT at any point west of Yonge? (correct me if I am wrong, I don’t remember seeing anything about terminating it at the new Finch West subway station)
Steve: Eventually to Yonge, but initially only to Finch West.
Therefore, the Bloor-Danforth extension MUST be a SUBWAY and nothing else. We have enough LRT expansion already underway in some capacity and it makes NO sense to covert the SRT now to LRT or MkIII or whatever non-T1/TR vehicular form.
Steve: That does not follow. Just because there is a lot of LRT on the plans (although little of it under construction), does not mean that it is “time” for a subway in Scarborough.
This should have been an easy project and an easy sell. Politics aside, it makes most sense for today, tomorrow, and 15 years from now. The route you choose (SRT ROW or up McCowan) can be discussed but this should be a subway. The benefit of the SRT ROW is that you can have it at or above-grade at a cheaper cost to STC (at the very least) than underground via McCowan. I personally liked the Metrolinx design which is to build the new Kennedy Station (sorry for the inconvenience of shuttle buses to Warden for a period of time) with the tracks coming up on the east side of the GO tracks to allow for an easier turn up at Midland/Ellesmere.
Think of it this way, you have this list of needs vs. what can get done in the fastest amount of time.
Subway:
B-D extension to STC (minimum, Sheppard at some unspecified location preferred)
DRL
Yonge North Extension
LRT:
EC LRT
Sheppard East & Finch West (these can be built at the same time I assume?)
Waterfront LRT
EC LRT extensions
Personally I do not believe that Don Mills should have an LRT in the future. No need to take a lane away from traffic just so that transit runs faster for a few hours a day. If anything the DRL will take you to Eglinton and then you can just use express buses north of there in the diamond lanes OR just wait until you have the need (and ridership demand) in 2040 (and financing by then) to keep digging and just make a subway to Fairview. At that point in time for a surface route you can run an every-15-minute 25 Don Mills service 7-days per week service from Pape up to Beaver Creek with NO double-fare and tell the YRT to extend their new 80 down Leslie to Beaver Creek because you would have a subway up to Sheppard anyway. With politics involved, you won’t see anything open north of Eglinton that is underground until 2050 anwyay.
Steve: I too would be very surprised to see anything other than a subway extension north from Eglinton on Don Mills. Unless we were going to build an LRT line well to the north, at least Steeles or beyond, it would not make sense to have a short line in the middle.
Finally, if it wasn’t for the crazy rush-hour gridlock downtown and complications involving the PATH, we might have been able to have a cut-and-cover built Queen underground LRT at least 15 years ago. You could’ve just piled on more service on King, restricted traffic from being in the streetcar lane with absolute and crazy-levels of enforcement and also done the same on Dundas while construction occurred on Queen between at the very least Parliament to Bathurst or Dufferin.
Unfortunately, due to politics, we forget what real “planning” is and that everything will come with a cost at some point in time (actual cost, opportunity cost, etc.). Although everything must be taken in a regional context (so more than just the pinko 416ers and the Tory-loving 905ers), I kept this at a Toronto-level post just to simplify it a little bit, even though I have made reference to York Region for example.
What I would love to see some day is the terminus for each line be Square One to the west (B-D – major new hub), VCC (YUS Spadina – upcoming major hub), Elgin Mills transit terminal using the rail corridor north of Hwy 7 (YUS Yonge – can become major hub), Fairview (DRL East), Downsview (Sheppard), Fairview (Sheppard), and Markville (B-D – if you go up to Sheppard, why not later on to 7 where VIVA exists). Unfortunately that requires more money than Canada probably has at our current labour-rates and materials/equipment costs lol.
Steve: There is also the small matter that we have other portfolios beyond transit that require attention. Your complete omission of GO Transit and the services the rail corridors could provide says a lot.
As for materials and labour rates, I am sure you would be happy if we just imported everything dirt cheap from, say, China, including the labour. The general idea when spending large sums of public money is not to push it off-shore if we can avoid it. And, of course, the famous private sector faces the same costs for its construction projects. The larger issue here is that we can only afford so much, and don’t build subways just because they look nice on a map.
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I forgot to add to my final statement:
This includes expansion on GO service where feasibly possible. There is a speed limitation on the Richmond Hill line when alongside the Don Valley due to softer soil/bedding conditions and nothing will ever improve that, therefore you will not get an improvement in time spent travelling to and from downtown.
Steve: Aha! You did remember GO. Well, as for Richmond Hill, Metrolinx is talking about a major rebuild in the corridor to deal with, among other things, the condition of the roadbed and the effect of flooding.
As for running times, it is about 45 minutes one-way from Richmond Hill to Union today via GO. The subway from Finch takes about 30 if there are no impediments to the trip (unlikely in the congested peak period). Extending to Richmond Hill will add about 12 minutes giving a subway trip of roughly the same length as GO. The big problem today for GO is waiting time, not travel time. If service is improved, the two lines will be competitive with each other for trips that they serve directly. The subway will continue to have an advantage for people who are not going close to Union, but will have the disadvantage of being packed full of riders. A Richmond Hillian will always get a seat in the AM peak, but in the PM will have to battle it out (if they can get on at all) with everyone else.
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Considering that Metrolinx already exercised the option to purchase 14 (and later another 14) LRVs for Waterloo Region’s ION LRT I’d like to think that Metrolinx will see the light here and shift the LRT orders over to Hamilton and/or Mississauga. With Brampton’s trial balloon about building a Queen Street LRT instead of RT … there is certainly enough demand for LRVs from Bombardier.
As for the actual approval and capital funding for construction, apparently all that is needed is a champion to claim (and convince others) that the area is downtrodden and has been ignored for 30 years.
Considering that parts of Hamilton, Mississauga and Brampton still look as they did in the 1970s … it’s not a problem to make that claim.
Cheers, Moaz
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Why? You could have once every 15 minute service if you expand the number of sidings along the line and have half the trains only go as far south as Scarborough station since the Eastbound and Westbound Lakeshore trains depart Scarborough station only a few minutes apart every thirty minutes.
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This is something that most people ignore. Unless someone says that the subway is immensely more popular than the LRT, both the subway and LRT encourage the exact same travel pattern (and have the same, or similar, demand) – which is to bring riders down the B-D subway to transfer at Yonge-Bloor. If you want to reduce the demand on B-D and Y-B, then a different pattern must be encouraged. This could be done by through routing the SRT with the Eglinton line so that the travel can be split – the northeast residents would continue to Yonge-Eglinton, while the southeast residents would continue to take the B-D to Y-B.
Steve: Or they could be routed to Don Mills & Eglinton and the Relief Line.
So this takes us to perhaps that last chance at finding a compromise.
1. Build the combined SRT/ECLRT. Use the $660M of federal money to elevate the Eglinton line from Don Mills to Kennedy and to extend the SRT from the planned Sheppard/Markham Rd. to Malvern Town Centre.
2. Postpone (or cancel) the SELRT and the FWLRT and use the planned $900M from City taxes to build the first phase of the DRL (roughly Osgoode to Pape).
The ECLRT/SRT route is along the already approved route, and some minor EA revisions are required to switch to elevation – a similar switch, albeit shorter, was done to add an elevated portion to the West end. The Eglinton money is being provided on a slow schedule, which will allow for this elevated portion to be designed and built without much, if any, delay. The LRT vehicles will continue to be required, so there will be no unknown and potentially significant costs for cancelling the vehicle order.
Similarly, the SELRT and FWLRT money is only beginning to flow in 2017 or 2018. If we act quickly, the DRL could almost be started in the same timeframe – again, leading to no loss in time due to this switch in transit priorities.
Scarborough gets their subway to STC – the Eglinton one. Many others get their choice for the “highest transit priority” in Toronto – the DRL (or at least the first phase). Win-win.
Steve: Now all you have to do is to convince folks along Eglinton that they want an elevated guideway plus the physical intrusion of stations. Don’t forget to tell the motorists about the road space lost to support pylons.
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If the city runs a surplus again, the math will change. According to Mr. Ford, he can easily find efficiencies in the city government so that transit do not cost anything to the tax payers. In reality, this does not happen. Taxes will have to go up one way or another. Either everyone pays in with a property tax increase or new home buyers will pay more for development charges.
Instead of a property tax increase, there should be a transit improvement fee listed as a separate line item on the property tax bill. This way people know how much a tram system will cost. For example, a $50 levy every year for 100km of new tram line over x period of time. If metro technology is chosen, it will be $50+z levy per year over y period of time. y would be greater than x. Do you think the American people will support war in Iraq if it costs every American family $10000 a year? This is how to make big numbers meaningful to Joe Public.
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At what point do we get to start calling this the Scarborough Subway Disaster?
Honestly though, we are now comparing a 3.5 billion dollar subway with a 1.5 billion dollar lrt of comparable lengths … could someone please make some infographics of just how much LRT 3.5 billion could buy … now that the feds have committed 660$ million to Scarborough transit, it seems like we should be asking for that in the form of LRT!
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Steve what are the merits of continuing the subway extension up McCowan Road to Alton Towers (a high-rise, high density condominium cluster just south of Steeles) with intermediate stops at Huntingwood/Middlefield, Finch and McNicoll? Wouldn’t this seriously compete with the Yonge Line for attracting ridership from Markham and northern Scarborough?
Steve: The problem is that these riders still get delivered to the Yonge line eventually. Until there is more north-south capacity by way of a Relief Line and/or GO Transit on the Richmond Hill and Stouffville corridors, building more subway as a diversionary tactic does not make sense (aside from the lower ridership and high capital/operating costs).
I still think a Brimley/Eglinton station has a lot of potential (the site of the No Frills would make for a nice bus terminal) and could provide a St George like interchange between the subway and Crosstown Line, which is not possible at Kennedy.
Steve: I suspect there will be pressure for a station near Brimley, although this will increase the cost of the subway by at least $100m on top of its already astronomical cost.
Also, has anyone thought of diverting the Sheppard East LRT south of Sheppard east of Kenndy to directly serve the Scarborough Centre via the exisiting SRT east-west elevated guideway? This could preserve the Midland RT Station and the existing Town Centre bus terminal, but more importantly provide a east-west rapid transit to Centennial College and Malvern/Morningside Heights following the same proposed alignment of the SLRT. If the 85 Sheppard East is scaled back to just routing from Agincourt GO to Rouge Hill GO, surely the projected ridership levels falls out of the range of warranting LRT and a mixed local/express bus service could suffice.
Steve: A major issue in Scarborough is the focus of all transit routes on STC whether people want to go there or not. I am always amused to hear people talk about east-west travel and the inconveniences of transfers, routes, etc., and then this sort of thing shows up. Don’t forget that if there is a subway (or an LRT) running through STC to Sheppard, much of the bus service now feeding into STC will vanish and its role as the centre of Scarborough’s transit universe will dwindle.
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Just thought I’d highlight this little snippet of Fordian reasoning from the Toronto Sun of all places.
Ladies and Gentlemen there you have it. He isn’t uncontrollably ignorant. He isn’t disillusioned. He isn’t good at simple math. He is arrogant, ideological, willfully blind, and dismissive of his most respected top bureaucrat.
It’s no wonder people can’t seem to convey general ideas of any sort to this man. Austin beware, Rob Ford is coming to get rid of your LRT and replace it with subways.
I genuinely hope he at least gets a look at the size of the vehicles and how fast they run.
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Not to play Harper’s advocate (or Wynne, or Ford) at this point I can’t determine which one has sinned in the most egregious way with regard to subway overspending.
The Scarborough Centre is a Metrolinx hub, so there will always be GO buses there, no matter how far away subway service is — that’s what a mobility hub is: a great looking spot on a map.
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The usual comment when “elevated” transit is mentioned is that people would not support it. This has not been a problem in Vancouver where development is being seen along the elevated portions of the Canada Line. When you look at the current SRT, the only area of significant growth is adjacent to the elevated portion. Finally, when you look at the West end of Eglinton, it was the community that wanted the LRT changed from being in-median to being elevated – it was widely accepted.
Steve: I expected you would bring up Vancouver, but it is not appropriate to equate the elevated structures there with the alignment here.
At the west end of Eglinton, the “el” is a bridge over Black Creek that takes the line into the side of the hill south of the Kodak plant. It dives underground again to enter Mount Dennis Station.
As for the Eglinton East line, I imagined it as a (south) side-of-road alignment, elevated in the boulevard, although some property would be needed at stations. This would be less disruptive (and less expensive) to Eglinton traffic during construction. Stations would be at Leslie (at-grade, south side), Don Mills (underground), Wynford, Bermondsey, Vic Park, Warden, Birchmount, Ionview and Kennedy (underground). I would guess that locals would actually be in favour of this and would want a station close to their residence/business so that they could be integrated.
Steve: Parts of the east end are residential on the south side and I doubt they would be happy with an el running past their windows. Where the land use is shopping malls and car lots is less of a problem, but also an area where widening the street to make a decent LRT right-of-way is also an easy option.
And yes, I agree with you that when the DRL is built to Eglinton, this connected SRT/ECLRT plan would actually provide better network connectivity and help spread the Y-B transfer load between even more stations.
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As a Scarborough resident, I support your plan. I support any plan that grade separates the Eglinton Line for it’s complete route.
Road space lost to support pylons? The road space lost to support the pylons would be may be 1% of the road space lost to middle of the road LRT that is currently planned for the Eglinton Ave East. Don’t make a false argument to fit your agenda when you know that there would be massively less road space lost with an elevated option compared to the cheap middle of the road LRT that you have always supported for Scarborough. And the folks along Eglinton might not want an elevated guideway by itself but when given a choice between a middle of the road LRT vs an elevated one, a lot of them might choose the elevated one. Don’t assume what people along Eglinton want or don’t want without actually asking them. I suggest that some sort of a scientific poll or survey or referendum be done to find out what people along Eglinton want or do not want.
Steve: Pylons for an elevated structure take one lane. That’s not my invention, but the basic requirement you will be told by any engineer designing a system. More is required at stations because of the extra width for platforms and vertical access.
I have no problem with people being asked what they want provided that the options are clearly and fairly presented, not the crap spewed by the Mayor and his followers that paint LRT as an inevitable “disaster”.
By the way, I hope that folks on Eglinton are also prepared to foot the extra cost of building an elevated line on their own taxes, not those of everyone else in Toronto.
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Steve,
The focus of transit on STC is not an issue, and is in fact one of the reasons for the outstanding ridership in the east end.
STC is the main hub of Scarborough for shopping, business, and other activities.
It is functioning just like the old Metro Plan envisioned, as a hub for the east end, where transit could serve a large number of people traveling to a common destination.
The combined load of people going to STC, coupled with people going downtown, and elsewhere, creates a hub that functions very well.
Steve, I gotta say. For someone who is supposedly so well versed in Toronto transit history, you are totally discrediting all the good planning that made Toronto’s transit such a success.
Subways to the suburbs, feeder buses, transit hubs at major destinations like STC. You are discrediting all of that, and it is sad to see that.
I guess Mississauga should not be running buses into Square One? Brampton should take all those buses out of the Bramalea City Centre bus station?
Steve: All I know is that I hear from Scarborough folks for whom the focus of all transit on STC is a major pain in the butt. A hub and spoke system works well when service is comparatively infrequent and the hub makes it easier to change between many routes. However as service builds up, the out of the way trips, versus what would be possible with direct routes, start to eat more into the time of people whose travel does not fit the hub orientation. Mississauga is wrestling with the question of whether the Hurontario LRT should dodge through the Square One thereby delaying a considerable number of through riders. Even Bramalea partly restructured into a grid system although BCC is still a major node partly because it is also a regional terminal.
Good planning that made Toronto a success? Well, the thing the TTC is most justly proud of is the grid system with its transfer connections, a complete break away from the hub-and-spoke arrangement so common in smaller transit where the focus is almost entirely on delivering riders to a major point (either a destination in its own right, or a transfer point to a line haul service).
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Also, combining the SRT with the Eglinton Crosstown will do almost nothing to divert people off the BD line.
What Scarborough resident is going to ride an Eglinton Crosstown LRT which is going to be crawling along the surface of Eglinton Ave and stopping at stop lights, all the way to Don Mills? In the time it take to get to Don Mills, one can be at Yonge-Bloor via the BD subway.
People just seem to love ignoring the fact that the LRT we are being sold in Toronto is not “rapid transit”.
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Nick L. said: You could have once every 15 minute service if you expand the number of sidings along the line and have half the trains only go as far south as Scarborough station since the Eastbound and Westbound Lakeshore trains depart Scarborough station only a few minutes apart every thirty minutes.
Horror of horrors! You’re talking about making GO riders (including those from from Scarborough) to make a transfer! Actually 2-3 transfers because they have to take 1-2 buses to get to Milliken, Agincourt and/or Kennedy stations.
An interesting idea nonetheless.
Cheers, Moaz
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Amusing enough, subways in Toronto don’t qualify as “rapid transit” either. If people wanted actual “rapid transit”, they would be pushing for improved GO train service.
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Kevin’s comment:
That’s how we built the Trans-Continental Railway. More recently, in the year 2013, that is how a large part of Ontario’s farm harvest was brought in. By foreign workers flown in, mostly from poor countries in South America and the Caribbean.
If we are into the Rob Ford mindset, all we see is “taxpayers” and never citizens. Unemployed people don’t pay much taxes, so to hell with them.
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Kevin’s answer:
I don’t do infographics, but according to Metrolinx, surface LRT costs $35-40 million per km, excluding vehicles. So $3.5 billion would buy up to 100 km of LRT.
Wow, that’s a lot of transportation for a cheap cost!
Source: Page 10 of this backgrounder.
Hold on, I’ve got an idea. LRT is so cheap, we can afford to build an entire network throughout Toronto. That would completely revolutionize transportation in Toronto and transform the face of our city to make it a much better place to live for all of its people.
It might look something like this.
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People should not assume that diverting transfer traffic from Bloor-Yonge to Eginton-Yonge will help the system. As someone who has seen the peak hour link load figures, the subway clocks 26,000 south of St Clair, and 28,000 south of Bloor. People forget that a large volume of people coming southbound on Yonge in the morning get off at Bloor to transfer to the subway, with most heading westbound. If trips are diverted to Eglinton-Yonge instead of Bloor-Yonge, a situation could result where the link load between St Clair (or maybe even Eglinton) and Bloor is higher than that south of Bloor, which means such a scheme may conceivably make peak point pressures worse, not better (because some of the pressure that gets on at Bloor after another portion of pressure has left at Bloor is now getting on at Eglinton before some pressure has left at Bloor). To many, this would be a very unexpected phenomenon, but the numbers would suggest this could be a possible outcome.
Be careful what you wish for.
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The cost of renegotiating the LRT vehicles order can be avoided if the city continues to expand the LRT network, at least on the routes already slated for LRT. Extending Eglinton to the airport alone will probably consume 50% of the SLRT vehicle allocation. Extending Finch West LRT to Yonge will consume 15-20%.
Waterfront East LRT will need legacy streetcars rather than new LRTs, but since both are being made by Bombardier, they will probably allow trading 8 – 10 LRT cars for streetcar cars with no penalty.
Those options cannot be explicitly included in the present funding plan as those LRT extensions and Waterfront East LRT are not currently funded. The order change costs will have to be taken by the city at present, but there is a good chance to recover them in future.
Steve: Provided, of course, that the Mayor (whoever that is at the time) doesn’t go on an anti-streetcar rant and try to block any expansion of the fleet.
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Sheppard LRT came at about $75 million per km (in 2010 dollars), when the vehicle, yard costs, and a short tunnel section are included.
Subway is $2.5B in 2010 dollars, LRT would be $1.4B in 2010 dollars. The difference is $1.1B and it would build about 15 km of LRT, assuming the the federal government would contribute to LRT. Certainly, not 100 km.
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Steve, “I hope that folks on Eglinton are also prepared to foot the extra cost of building an elevated line on their own taxes, not those of everyone else in Toronto.”
I will accept that as long as the residents of East York and Downtown are also prepared to foot the extra cost of building an underground Downtown Relief Line on their own taxes, not those of everyone else in Toronto. If the residents of East York and Downtown are not willing to accept the extra taxes for underground DRL, then build the DRL as a surface LRT in the middle of their roads. People outside of East York and Downtown should NOT have to foot the bill for burying the DRL.
Steve: And here you make the fundamental mistake of assuming that the DRL is for “downtowners” when its real purpose is to shift riding off of the Yonge line to make room for people from North York, York Region, and probably some folks from Scarborough.
The projected demand on the DRL exceeds what could be handled by a surface LRT operating in a street median, unlike the demands expected for the Sheppard and Finch LRT lines.
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It’s not nice to insult the Chinese or any other group. As Kevin Love pointed out that is how Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway were built and pretty much everything you use including the electronics you used to make that comment is made in China or Taiwan (the Taiwanese people are ethnically and linguistically Chinese). Even if you might buy a made in Canada something, chances are almost all of the components thereof are Chinese. Without the CPR, there would have been no Canada. The Chinese literally helped build this country. The Chinese who built the first Canadian railways were paid very poorly and their safety was not given any consideration and thousands died building the railroads for Canada. So, let us not forget the sacrifices of those Great Chinese men, sacrifices they made for all of us. And China has the best subway systems, the best bridges, the best railways, and so much more. The vast majority of high speed railway in the world is Chinese and close to 60% of their vast rail network (freight included) is electric. And if we ask the Chinese to build our transportation system, then they would build a world class one and very very fast and for much much cheaper but of course it is not politically feasible as Canadian companies and people will protest about their jobs and profits being given to the Chinese. The Chinese have built and opened over a thousand subway stations in the last 10 years and how many has Canada opened during the same time? The Chinese are electrifying thousands of kilometres of tracks every year and we would be lucky if we can electrify a few kilometres of GO Tracks or UPX in the next decade. And even if you forget about all these amazing Chinese contributions and achievements, let us respect them as well as everyone else for we are all human beings.
Steve: You know perfectly well that I am not trying to insult the Chinese, their history or their accomplishments. The fact is that at one point Bombardier was looking at sourcing subway trains for Toronto in China, and this hardly lines up with playing “we’re a Canadian company with hard working folks in Thunder Bay” as a reason to give them a leg up on the work. There have been other cases where as part of construction contracts, companies have contemplated importing labour from overseas, including China, to avoid local labour prices. Yes, this sort of thing is done in other sectors, notably agriculture, as another commenter here mentioned.
My original point was that some people want their precious transit lines built at the lowest possible cost, even if this means shipping all the work overseas rather than using Canadian employees.
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I have to wonder whether those advocating for an elevated Eglinton LRT have actually used and/or seen the Canada Line. It’s great for getting to and from the airport and downtown, but fairly useless for getting around elsewhere in Vancouver because the station spacing is far, far too wide. When I did an away rotation at Vancouver General, I simply took the bus up Oak St everyday and back. The Canada Line over on Cambie was a 20 minute walk away (at least) because it was at least a 10 minute walk to the east, and neither stations at King Edward or 41st were close by either.
As for the elevated portion, I remember No 3 road well before the line was put in. It was pretty well developed then with various malls, big box stores, and eventually a semblance of “downtown” Richmond with condo development. Of course such development is somewhat limited in Richmond because the city is built on a sandbar in the Fraser delta. Tunneling would not work. Of course, since the advent of the Canada Line the streetscape has only gotten uglier, now with concrete pylons looming on the east side of the street. It’s terrible, though not having been terribly pedestrian-oriented to start with I’m not sure it matters. But also keep in mind that this is almost purely a commercial area.
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Michael and other subway advocates can’t get over the fact that subways travel at the same average speed as surface LRT at ~500 metre station spacing, no matter how many times we tell them.
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Few people in Scarborough want Transfer City. The minority that do live within walking distance to a proposed stop. For the majority we need to take the bus to the shortest route to the core of the City. Which right now is 2-3 buses for many then RT, then subway. Get us on a direct artery to the core or don’t waste the money because it wont attract many new riders.
We don’t have a problem with LRT’s themselves but when Scarborough’s core doesn’t properly connect with the City’s network money is not being properly spent.
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Is anybody but people in discussion forums seriously looking at elevated anything right now?
The usual rebuttal I have to that idea is operational cost – I’ve yet to see somebody explain to me why we should be spending millions per year more operationally for what is in essence no gain in road space.
Not to forget that 70-80 years from now, we’ll have to tear it down and rebuild.
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Steve,
You are really making the STC route pattern sound much more hub and spoke than it is.
The fact of the matter is that Scarborough’s TTC routes are on a grid.
Where it makes sense, some routes feed into STC.
If someone wants to bypass STC, it is very easy to do on the existing route network.
It really is only Malvern where most routes feed into STC. And even there, Malvern has plenty of crosstown services which bypass STC entirely.
I have say, I have never heard of anyone in Scarborough complain about buses feeding into STC. In fact most people I know in Scarborough often think more buses should feed into there, like the 95 York Mills.
Steve: Er .. ah .. I believe that the original claim in this thread was that STC should be made into a “Mobility Hub” with everything feeding into it. Now you are telling me that lots of Scarborough routes are on the grid and would presumably stay that way, or maybe not (as with the 95 you mention here). You can’t have it both ways. Either you want STC to be a hub, in which case even more routes are force fed into it, or you want to support the continuation of existing grid services.
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Steve,
It would appear based on your comments that you agree that the connected SRT/ECLRT would provide better network connectivity. The only problem is that a few residents in the Ionview area MIGHT object to an elevated line. Is this reason enough to not even explore a better solution – we are afraid to ask? This is also why I propose to add an elevated station at Ionview – otherwise they would have an elevated line passing by their homes even though the nearest station is 700m away. (Maybe the politics of the EA process would be to not have a station here, and then after complaints are heard, the station can be added). There are a couple of tight locations along Eglinton (the future portal across from Gervais Drive, just west of Wynford Drive, and near Ionview), where the road would have to be shifted north by about one lanes worth (4m), but I still think that the south side is the least disruptive alignment compared to the median or switching between south side and median – this is the kind of thing the EA should look at because, as I just stated, we do not want to completely ignore an optimum solution by making assumptions of what people want.
I was surprised by your comment that Scarborough should pay for any improved transit. If all travel is downtown bound then this line would only serve Scarborough, and I would agree. However, I thought it was you who always stated that the purpose of a network is because people from parts of Toronto want to go to other parts of Toronto. This means that this line would equally help those from the other former boroughs travelling to Scarborough.
I always thought that transit planning should involve getting the best value for the money. Many would agree that it is not worth spending an extra $1.7B to extend the subway to STC and Sheppard. But it would be worth spending about 3 or 4 hundred million to elevate Eglinton so that the SRT can be connected to the ECLRT – this is only about 5% extra.
Steve: My remark about Scarborough paying for improved transit was ironic. What we have been seeing is a continual attempt to “up the ante” by elaborating on an already expensive rapid transit network. Combined with the “poor Scarborough” image, there are times I hear a petulant child who always wants more. At some point, the extras stop being part of a network requirement. Some might even argue that the subway itself is an “extra”. When this is read in the same context as remarks about how the DRL would only serve people downtown, then it shows a narrow-minded and very blinkered understanding of what the transit network is about, not to mention the importance of spending what money we have to best effect.
How many projects will come before Council and be turned down because we “cannot afford more taxes” having taken on a 30-year commitment to the Scarborough subway? We are about to see the 2014 budget debates including a call for improved transit subsidies even though the Mayor and City Manager have asked for a flat line on all budgets. Either we can afford transit or we can’t, but we cannot change the rules to suit which votes we are collectively buying for Rob Ford’s re-election campaign.
The issue with through-routing the SRT/ECLRT has to do with demand and service levels, not with Eglinton being at grade. The TTC feels that the demand north of Kennedy will be considerably higher than the peak demand anywhere along Eglinton and would prefer to keep this service separate.
There are design issues with the line from Laird east such as the question of a south side alignment at Leslie, but if we’re going to talk about elevated structures, then we have to be honest about what these entail in terms of road space requirements for support and access, not to mention the extra complexity of stations.
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If a Downtown Relief Line really is successful in attracting riders away from Yonge south of Bloor, it won’t just benefit downtown, North York and Scarborough. It will also mean Etobicoke residents have a fighting chance of getting on a northbound train in the evening. I remember commuting downtown from Mississauga in the mid-90s when I had a summer job in high school, and wondering how people did that permanently.
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Scarborough already has a subway… (I know you know this, Steve, but the way some commentators go on, you’d think the whole of Scarborough was served by one bus per hour…)
Steve: No, they have at least two. 😉
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No one said STC had to have more routes fed into it. The current routes that feed into it make sense. A subway or LRT extension is not going to mean more routes have to feed into STC.
Most Malvern routes I would assume would still run to STC, because they travel down roads like Nugget, Ellesmere and Progress, where it would be natural to still go all the way to STC.
STC is a hub now even without every single bus feeding into it. It will be a mobility hub, because of all the connections between rapid transit, existing local buses, GO Transit buses, etc.
More local buses are not required to make it a mobility hub. Critical regional connections are, which STC already has, and may have more of in the future.
It is not different than Finch Station, which also is a major hub.
Steve: Finch Station acts as an “attractor” of routes only for lines that come into Yonge north of Finch such as Steeles East/West and Cummer. It does not distort the grid around it. I don’t agree with your statement about “no one said STC had to have more routes fed into it” when I look at the position taken by some subway advocates about feeding riders into the subway system with the underlying assumption that the subway network will serve all travel.
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In response to the idea that an Eglinton-Crosstown LRT fully grade separated might draw SRT users to choose it over BD subway, Steve said:
This really rankled me, and it also seemed uncharacteristic and uncharitable of Steve. When another poster pointed out how foolish this position was using the DRL as an example, Steve replied:
… and Steve missed the lesson that was available, even if it wasn’t that 2nd poster’s point. If you want locals to pay the marginal cost of a faster RT configuration, then you can’t turn around and talk about benefits drawing from network effects. It’s one or the other. (The fact that the higher-demand DRL was the example used as irrelevant, even if Transit City didn’t identify Don Mills – a northern section of what will hopefully someday be the DRL – to be LRT).
Steve is an excellent proponent for looking at transit and effects on a whole-network basis. I agree with that approach. However that means abandoning the pettiness of trying to assign particular capital costs to particular taxpayers within the same municipality. Since we can’t and shouldn’t do this, it’s all the more important that we don’t build unnecessarily expensive transit to ‘respect’ residents of particular wards (e.g. BD subway extension).
Steve: As I said in a previous reply, I was being ironic. As you imply in your final paragraph, a network view should not be distorted to suit the desires (real or imagined) of specific groups of residents/wards. Eglinton and the proposed elevated structure is one of many situations where, bit by bit, we could see the entire “LRT” network turned into full-blown, grade separated rapid transit, a subway system with all its attendant costs, simply to keep each section of the city that didn’t want to lose road space on “its streets” happy.
As for my comment about the DRL, the remark to which I replied follows the line that is appearing more and more from politicians who seek to avoid the cost of this route. They portray its purpose as being downtown centric when it is in fact regional. If only the TTC would stop talking about a DRL that ends at Pape and Danforth, we could be debating the route in a wider context.
The “DRL” should be called the “Don Mills Subway” and it should be planned to run at least to Eglinton Avenue as Phase I, not as some vague future extension. Yes, it would be expensive, but it would also make a huge difference in the capacity of the network where it is actually needed.
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I don’t know if I accept that few people in Scarborough want an LRT, especially if they are told of the benefits. However, you make a valid point about transit. When looking at improving service (i.e. going from a bus to an LRT or subway, or from the SRT to a subway) is not just ‘how many more people will it attract’ but also (and perhaps more importantly) ‘how will this improvement help existing passengers get to their destination faster and/or easier?’
If you are only [looking] at ‘new’ riders, you really do not respect existing riders. I think an extension of the Bloor-Danforth line (sorry, ‘Line #2) to the Scarborough Town Centre with LRT lines and a Downtown Relief Line will help provide a huge improvement to the transit needs of Scarborough residents.
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The should call the DRL the Queen-Pape subway, or the Wellington-Pape subway, consistent with the way YUS and BD were named. But, seeing as how Byford wants to rename YUS to “line 1”, BD to “line 2”, the RT to “line 3”, and the Sheppard subway to “line 4”, it may end up being called “line 5”.
Now they’re playing psychological games with us because the Finch W. and Sheppard E. LRTs will be numbered 6 and 7, or whatever, even though they’re not subways. When the RT goes, they’ll have a gap in the numbering sequence.
This type of scheme is used in cities with many many lines that branch and wye, which we simply don’t have. It also reminds me when Harbourfront opened — it was called the “604” and was shown as an orange subway line on the ride guides at the time. This didn’t last long, so even the TTC acknowledges that the map was misleading and that LRT is not rapid transit along the same lines as grade separated transit.
This also reminds me of that very special signage system that was installed at St. George — Arthur Erickson I think. So, they’re finally going to resurrect it now?
Steve: The signs at St. George were by Paul Arthur. All that will survive is line numbers, not the pictograms.
As for line 3, it will be one of those transit mysteries for trivia contests in years to come, such as what common ancestry did routes 74, 59 and 93 once share? I still want to know what to call a route that starts at Kipling Station and goes to Richmond Hill by way of Scarborough, Sheppard/Downsview and Union Station. Meanwhile, we can look forward to new route numbers for 5 Avenue Road, 6 Bay and 7 Bathurst. Hard done-by downtowners will require counselling for the loss of single-digit route numbers. We will have to build them a subway or two to soothe their fevered brains.
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Sorry for misunderstanding your comments.
It’s interesting that you mention about losing Canadian jobs to China but the Chinese are building the infrastructure to attract those jobs. Infrastructure such as thousands of kilometres of high speed electric rail lines, electrifying thousands of kilometres of their passenger and freight tracks every year with the goal of 100% electrification in the near future, thousands of kilometres of subways, monorails, and so much more. I don’t hear one part of any Chinese city demanding subways while forcing other parts to build middle of the street streetcars like Downtown and East York demand a Downtown Relief Line while Scarborough’s LRTs run in the middle of the street like on Eglinton Ave East.
Steve: I have to jump in here. Toronto and East York are not “demanding” a subway rather than on street operation. It has been known for decades (the DRL was being planned as a “next subway” back in the 1960s) that the demand on this line would exceed the carrying capacity of LRT. It is a fundamentally different line from Eglinton or Sheppard or Finch where surface LRT is capable of handling the demand. If you can show me a surface alignment where you could fit a route with an opening day demand likely in the 15k/hour range with room for growth, then we can talk about something other than a subway. The demand is so high because a considerable chunk of the existing demand on Yonge would shift over to a “DRL” or “Don Mills” line.
The real design debate is not subway or LRT, but whether the line should continue north of Eglinton as a subway, or if that’s a point where a transition to LRT might occur for the northern part of the Don Mills route. A subway line cannot go north forever up Don Mills just as it cannot (or should not) go forever northeast into Scarborough. The debate will always be about the appropriate point for a mode change.
And, I also have to say that activists “demanding” anything that ran contrary to government planning policy in China and many other countries might not have a website on which to debate the matter.
It’s not just developing countries like China and India that are electrifying rail and building vast amounts of subways and monorails but also look at rich places like Japan, London, New York City, etc.
If you want to keep the jobs as well as attract new ones, then we have to stop fighting and build great infrastructure for all of us. There is so much division and differences between the people of Scarborough and Downtown that we will all keep on fighting and continue to loose jobs and we will all be poorer. If poor countries (China, India, etc) and rich countries (UK, Japan, etc) can build vast amounts of subways alike, then why can’t Canada? You can build middle of the street streetcars in Scarborough all you like but when companies decide to invest or not invest in Toronto, they don’t just look at whether or not there is great infrastructure in Downtown (like the DRL) but the whole region (Scarborough included).
I don’t think that we will build much more subways in Canada in the next 50 years and I think that we will all be faced with higher unemployment, lower wages, much lower pensions, health care cuts, higher crime, and so much more while other regions who were smart enough to invest in their infrastructure prosper. And people in Downtown should not think: let us take all the subways and dump middle of the street streetcars on Scarborough because you know what? People move, jobs move, etc etc etc. And so someone who lives and works in Downtown or near Downtown may have their job relocated to Scarborough or whatever and then they will regret about not having supported subway in Scarborough.
We should support subways everywhere in Toronto and electric GO trains and electric UPX . I personally think that the DRL is a great idea but so is Eglinton Crosstown Subway and so is Sheppard subway extension and Scarborough subway extension of the Bloor Danforth Line. And doing all these projects in parallel might mean higher taxes but they will mean higher incomes to tax in the first place and if not, then I see even more jobs being shipped overseas. But I don’t see any of this happening as we will all keep fighting and the future is bleak for Canada.
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