At the risk of re-igniting the Scarborough subway debate, I am moving some comments that are becoming a thread in their own right out of the “Stop Spacing” article over here to keep the two conversations separated.
In response to the most recent entry in the thread, I wrote:
Steve: Probably the most annoying feature of “pro Scarborough subway” (as opposed to “pro Scarborough”) pitches is the disconnect with the travel demands within Scarborough. These are known from the every five year detailed survey of travel in the GTHA, and a point that sticks out is that many people, a sizeable minority if not a majority, of those who live in Scarborough are not commuting to downtown. Instead they are travelling within Scarborough, to York Region or to locations along the 401. Many of these trips, even internal to Scarborough, are badly served by transit. One might argue that the lower proportion of downtown trips is a chicken-and-egg situation — it is the absence of a fast route to downtown combined with the impracticality of driving that discourages travel there. That’s a fair point, but one I have often argued would be better served with the express services possible on the rail corridors were it not for the GO fare structure that penalizes inside-416 travel.
We now have three subways — one to Vaughan, one to Richmond Hill and one to Scarborough — in various stages of planning and construction in part because GO (and by extension Queen’s Park) did not recognize the benefit of providing much better service to the core from the outer 416 and near 905 at a fare that riders would consider “reasonable” relative to what they pay today. I would love to see service on the CPR line that runs diagonally through Scarborough, out through Malvern into North Pickering. This route has been fouled up in debates for years about restitution of service to Peterborough, a much grander, more expensive and less likely proposition with added layers of rivalry between federal Tory and provincial Liberal interests. Fitting something like that into the CPR is tricky enough without politicians scoring points off of each other.
The most common rejoinder I hear to proposals that GO could be a form of “subway relief” is that the service is too infrequent and too expensive. What is the capital cost of subway construction into the 905 plus the ongoing operating cost once lines open versus the cost of better service and lower fares on a much improved GO network? Nobody has ever worked this out because GO and subway advocates within the planning community work in silos, and the two options are never presented as one package.
With the RER studies, this may finally change, and thanks to the issues with the Yonge corridor, we may finally see numbers comparing the effects of improved service in all available corridors and modes serving traffic from York Region to the core. I would love to see a comparable study for Scarborough.
Meanwhile, we need to know more about “inside Scarborough” demand including to major centres such as academic sites that are not touched by the subway plan.
I will promote comments here that contribute to the conversation in a civil manner. As for the trolls (and you know who you are), don’t bother. Your “contributions” only make the Scarborough position much less palatable, and I won’t subject my readers to your drivel.
Steve Munro 
The problem is that the system also needs to support many other trips. Building subway to LRT loads, means perforce that other trips are not going to be supported, and only those who are professional earning enough money to live in the downtown area will have their trips supported. This perforce will mean that the dynamic need you highlight above, and the social equity issues that seem to be so important will only be addressed for those who otherwise would have the choice of living downtown, not for those who are starting out in a career, or those starting a business where the cost of space is a material concern.
To achieve real social advancement you need to build a transit system that actually serves the trips, not the trips that you wish to serve. There are businesses for reasons that you may not appreciate or that your model does not allow for (econometric models have their distinct limits) that explain the myriad reasons why businesses chose to locate where they are. Picking winners in the way you suggest, means making society as a whole a loser.
Transit network needs to be built around reasonable allocation. A perfect grid for instance would mean you could be anywhere with a couple of transfers. Steve has been clear however, that for Toronto this does not make sense based on load and route lengths. A network that brought all riders to a single point as you describe would mean that I could not use it to travel between say Eglinton and Warden to Lawrence and Victoria Park, without travelling through say the STC. So it should work for the professional downtown, but not the worker at the mall?
Make it soft at the edges, some grid, some distortion to collection points, and it can be made to work for all. LRT and BRT on more of the grid, and well it can work much better for many more.
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Measured by how many Whole Foods or Loblaws, Scarborough fares very badly. The same result would happen if we measured how many how paying corporate jobs. However, Scarborough has a few Chinese restaurants that can rub shoulder with Michelin ranked establishments in Hong Kong. Is it really that bad? It really depends on metrics used.
That aside, a metro to McCowan and Sheppard does not mean downtown is any closer. It will still be a commute over 80 minutes (door to door). If the jobs are located in downtown, then Scarborough is forever doomed as a bedroom community. Sure, people might get to work 10 to 30 minutes faster. However, there is a time and cost consideration. If the TTC moves to a per distance fare, that $15 per hour job is not so attractive when it cost say $5 each way to get to it.
What Scarborough needs is density. If there is a main street with vibrant retail and food services along with office tower, the node is suddenly more attractive. People might grab a beer on their way back from home. If people want to have a beer on a patio on a Sunday afternoon, a 20 minute bus ride to the node is much more attractive than taking the metro to downtown. Density will make Scarborough move livable.
It is naive to think that a few metro or tram lines will make an area better. The TTC is in the business of transporting people. City planning and rezoning around the station area will make an area relatively more attractive to others.
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To those saying that there simply isn’t enough demand to justify the Bloor Danforth subway extension into Scarborough, have you ever ridden the Scarborough RT in the last year or so? It is packed and there is no room to even move about and in rush hours, people sometimes have to wait for two or three trains as there is just no room left for all the people still on the platform.
To those opposing the principle of “build now and demand will follow” by opposing the burial of the Eglinton LRT in Scarborough and by opposing the extension of the Sheppard subway into Scarborough; then I guess that the Bloor Street Viaduct should never have been built. I mean R.C. Harris dreamed of running trains east of the Don at a time when there was nothing but cows grazing east of the Don. And why did these people not oppose the subway extension to Vaughan? Why did these people not oppose the subway extension via low density area to Kipling? And why do these people not oppose the subway extension to Richmond Hill? All of the latter have far less density and ridership than Scarborough.
Steve, if you could open the Eglinton LRT in phases, what would be your timeline like? Which phases would you open first, second, and so on and by when? This is just a hypothetical question.
Steve: There are a few matters here that depend on the timing of events. When the viaduct was built with a lower level, Toronto was anticipating a suburban boom, and it actually arrived after the Great War. At the same time, Toronto had also been considering a network of streetcar tunnels very much in the model of Boston (whose first tunnel opened in 1897). That plan never materialized as it was considered too rich for the city. Speaking of cows, the Playter estates were subdivided before the bridge opened, and so development of the Danforth was already underway. My parents were born almost a century ago, and I did not yet exist to lobby one way or the other on the question.
The subway extension to Kipling and Kennedy opened in 1969, and they had been planned some years earlier. This predates my politically active era. There were great hopes for new development, but two things happened. At Kennedy, Scarborough decided that development would compete with the Towne Centre, and so they limited development around the subway that might otherwise have grown there. In Etobicoke, there were ideas of a civic centre at the Six Points, but the city (and the board of education) stayed resolutely at West Mall and Burnhamthorpe (where the Civic Centre remains to this day), and the developers seemed to prefer Islington. Only today is the Six Points being reconfigured to get rid of the multi-level ramps and turn the area back into a developable, pedestrian-scale neighbourhood.
In both cases, the suburban councils dropped the ball. They got their subways, but made no attempt to support them. Note that this predates the great Spadina Expressway battle, and Toronto’s planning was resolutely car-oriented. I should also mention that if it were not for bus feeder services, Kennedy and Kipling would have been ghost stations, just as the Scarborough subway will depend on ride-in, not walk-in trade.
Now we come to Scarborough’s LRT line which could have run all the way out to Malvern, but which was hijacked by Queen’s Park as a showcase for the supposedly cheaper RT technology. In fact the line to McCowan cost about 2.5 times the price of the LRT proposal, and the Malvern extension fell off of the table because it would have been far too expensive. If you look at the aerial maps in the LRT design drawings, there are a lot of empty fields. I can personally attest to walking along Finch East west of the Rouge Valley in the late 60s and seeing sheep grazing in a field. Toronto had a plan to build a rapid transit line out through Scarborough, but the utter stupidity of Queen’s Park and the lure of “new technology” killed it. Meanwhile, Boston had been running streetcars on the “Highland Branch”, an abandoned rail corridor, since the mid-50s. This was the model for the LRT we never saw in Toronto.
Vaughan? Many people including me opposed the Vaughan extension, but that’s been a done deal for ages. It had the weight of well-connected folks at York U plus York Region plus the then provincial finance minister behind it. Also, in those days, nobody was talking about anything other than subways.
Richmond Hill? Where have you been? Of course there has been opposition to the Richmond Hill line as part of the larger question of a DRL and/or supplementary capacity via GO corridors. Toronto Council is on record saying “no Richmond Hill extension without better capacity into the core”, although there are times I suspect that if Queen’s Park said “build it”, we would have no choice.
When the VIVA network was still little more than a map, there was talk of it evolving into LRT some day, and this begs the obvious question of where the LRT/subway transitions should occur. It would also bring up the difficult question of what to do in those narrow parts of the VIVA network where a BRT corridor is difficult if not impossible. However, what is actually happening is that the pressure is for the subway to continue north, and LRT has more or less fallen off of the table.
So, please, don’t come out with this crap implying that those who criticize the Scarborough Subway are either asleep at the switch or applying a double standard.
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If you want to exclude everyone who does not live in Scarborough from having a say in what is built in Scarborough then you also have to exclude their taxes from paying for any transit in Scarborough. This would be a step backwards but it might be fairer if every area had to pay for the transit improvements that were built that aided them without help from other areas.
Since much of the capacity of the Vaughan York extension is to carry and help residents on Vaughan perhaps they should pay for most of the cost of the extension beyond Downsview Station. A downtown relief line would be mainly a benefit to people in Scarborough and York who would now have more capacity to ride the Bloor Danforth and Yonge Subways into the Downtown perhaps they should pay for most of it. After all most of the subway was built before we got down to Toronto and five boroughs and much of the cost was carried by people from the original city of Toronto.
Before anyone starts yelling at me or calling for my evisceration realize that I am only carrying the argument to its absurd conclusion. There is only so much money to build transit and if we build more than is required, Sheppard Subway and extension to Vaughan, then there will not be enough money to build that which is required.
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An interesting premise that we should extend to subsidies too.
People in North York alone will be responsible for the maintenance and operating losses on the Sheppard line. People in Scarborough can do the same for any line in Scarborough. No taxes from the rest of the city to build any Sheppard or Scarborough extension.
Then we’d truly see how much will there is to pay billions to build things that will run empty most of the time.
Let’s put in fare by distance too to be even more fair. If you consume more service, you should pay more.
Steve: Some years ago, I wrote about fare by distance. A trip from Scarborough to downtown would, on an “equitable” basis, cost about three times the current fare because it is three times the length of the average TTC journey. The zone system was eliminated four decades ago. Will the good folks in Scarborough demand that it return?
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I wish buddy as I am a male but I think that you/they used the female life expectancy numbers/data for males by mistake – females of course live considerably longer than males on average.
I hope so he will but I don’t think that the DRL will be operational for at least 25 years because SmartTrack will delay the need to build it. The DRL Phase 1 will take longer to build than the Spadina extension (due to longer route and more stations) and that project alone is taking 8 yrs (not counting all the studies and environmental assessments and design work and etc that tooks years to do before that).
Malcolm, I don’t know why you are debating whether or not Steve would have a life expectancy long enough to ride the DRL as Steve has always advocated better transit without self interest. Having said that even if we go by 18.7 yrs more from the age of 65 and Steve being around 70, I don’t think that the DRL will be ready in the next 13.7 yrs.
Steve: For the record, I am 66, and hope to live at least two more decades.
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Obviously the easiest way to level the playing field here is to shut down all subway access to downtown – and all streetcar lines in the downtown as well. Have buses run on an infrequent schedule all over the amalgamated city of Toronto, in the name of transit fairness. This is about the only instant fix that will put all transit riders – and all those who drive cars – on an equal basis. Any other attempt to change the unequal experience of commuters will take far too long.
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Actually that is the male data. Remember when you are born you would only be expected to live 79 years, but once you have survived all the hazards from then to 65, you are now expected to live to 84. A 65 year old woman is expected to last even longer. The table in the link, is actually statscan link, and this would be expected. If you get to 84 you should not then expect to die right away either, but should have a couple more years still (having survived the hazards from 65 to 84). Every year you survive you have also changed your final life expectancy.
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The problem with this is that the RT capacity is essentially the same as a single new LFRV Streetcar every 2 minutes (around 4k). If you assume that this ridership doubled, you would still be only justifying a 2 car LRT not a subway. I fully expect this to double and then some, but do not see it justifying subway. That has been one of the issues with the RT is it was not built with serious capacity, nor were there ever enough cars purchased (28 in use, should really be in the 40 range), if there were a more reasonable number the service would be much more reasonable.
Steve: When the fleet was purchased it was so expensive that the project budget was split, and 6 of the cars were put into another capital account for, wait for it, $12 million. This and other accounting fictions allowed the RT project to officially come in at just under $200m (compared with a budget of $96m for the LRT line), but various add-ons and fixes pushed the grand total above $230m.
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It does not take a full metro to fix that. The problem really is tiny vehicles and not enough of them.
1) Overbuilding now costs a lot of money. They didn’t build the Yonge subway in 1834.
2) You can bury more of the Eglinton line as demand warrants.
3) Building a full $3 billion metro line is quite an increase in scope from building a lower deck on one bridge.
4) Some people would argue running trains along that lower deck of the viaduct ended up being a mistake that is pushing the southern Yonge line to the breaking point today.
5) The Vaughan line is a waste of money. The EA suggested slightly higher than Sheppard patronage during the peak hour, in 2031 mind you.
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Hi Steve:-
Ummmm, your quote here:-
I agree that they had been planned earlier, but, the extensions to Warden and Islington came first in 1968, two years after the BD opened Keele to Warden. The Kennedy/Kipling extensions came close to ten years later, in the late 70s. I forget the exact year but I do remember that I was still unmarried and living in Scarborough while I was a Foreman on the track construction of those extensions.
Steve: My apologies. Yes, in was in November 1980, not 1969. That said, the context for these extensions was planned centres of development that never materialized in part due to inaction by the local councils. That so-called Etobicoke Centre triggered the TTC’s letting go of lands at the Six Points that were to be a west end subway yard, a move they now regret, but which was forced on them so that Etobicoke could pursue its manifest destiny.
I was responsible for the laying, lining and leveling of the concrete track slabs from the portal east of Warden to the ends of the tail tracks at Kennedy. I too was the Foreman who built the crossover, in the rain, at Kennedy. For some unrecalled reason, I missed those ceremonial openings. I was probably on nights at the time.
Looking back, I missed the cake serving at Warden by minutes but I rode it on its first day. Ahh, no more transferring to the Danforth Shuttle car and then the subsequent hop across the platform at Luttrell to and from the Kennedy bus on my trips to Georges Trains on Mt. Pleasant. Nostalgia!!
And to Deb. Yeah, that’ll show ’em, those greedy city elites. Who do they think they are anyways eh!!!! Oh boy, Detroit here we come!!!!
Dennis Rankin
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P.S. a 65 year woman can expect to live another 21.7 years.
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To “Lets build better Transit everywhere”
Malcolm is correct for the reasons he stated. 79 years is the life expectancy at birth for a male but if you are presently 65 years old that means you did not die as an infant or indeed any other time before before age 65. The average life expectancy for a 65 year old Canadian male is 18.8 years.
Steve: Thanks to you all for granting me the hope of long(er) life.
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What we have here are the elements of the classic argument, “it exists therefore it is right.” What we must ask is why do these travel patterns exist in the first place? The existing transit network in the inner suburbs was largely constructed to meet the needs of a pre-NAFTA economy and society. The demographics of these inner suburbs at the time showed a predominantly middle class society. When NAFTA was ratified it fundamentally undermined the business model that was the source of the region’s prosperity. The problem was that even though the business model was gone the transit network that was built to meet the transit needs of the old model continued on without modification.
What we must understand is that the old network defines the range of what is possible for a given trip. Instead of use a transit system for a travel pattern that it was not designed for, most people would prefer to move their place of residence to a more competitive community. The remaining trips within the inner suburbs are today more a function of distress then the optimal allocation of traveler’s time. So what we are left with is systematic socio-economic polarization of society that neither optimizes the utilization of human capital nor does it provide social justice. We therefore cannot rely on the existing trip patterns to guide the planning process.
Steve: Oh please give it a rest. Many of the jobs held by people living all over Toronto, including the suburbs, have nothing to do at all with NAFTA, certainly not in the medium term. There may be long term effects, but meanwhile we have a huge backlog of unmet demand, and a future in which existing (and not soon to change) transportation demands will overwhelm the network. This is not a perfect system in which everything is already working optimally and we need only look to the effects of one new factor. There’s a lot to fix. Yes, “it exists”, and it does so because we have built a transportation network founded on principles about cars vs transit, and about the ability of people to afford transportation, that were dubious decades ago, and are proving unsustainable today. Someone waiting for a bus in the rain cares little about NAFTA.
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Assuming that subways eventually will be built, Toronto could consider ways to achieve reasonable service levels that have been used in other cities, such as London and New York. I am thinking here of branch lines on the outer ends of main lines. The extension of YUS to Vaughan has been raised many times as an example of a line that will be underutilised. So how about in a next phase of expansion creating a branch line that diverts from York U SW (or Downsview NW) to Finch and out to the airport (imagining that the Finch West LRT wasn’t built). With two branches at York U the number of trains continuing along the branches to the terminals at Vaughan and the Airport could be flexibly adjusted to meet demand. I know this would make only minor differences to the capital costs , but it could match operations a little closer to ridership.
Taking that kind of scenario to Scarborough, if the decision was made to extend the BD subway from Kennedy to STC and on to Sheppard and McCowan, a second branch could be extended east along Eglinton past Danforth Rd on toward Guildwood (just as an example).
I know this is an exercise in drawing lines on a map but in all the passionate discussion no one has raised the idea.
Steve: You would perpetuate the folly of subway construction by building even more subway mileage. That’s the whole purpose of LRT networks as the next tier of service down from subways as one gets further from the centre of the network. We had a perfectly good LRT proposal that would have seen two lines radiate from Kennedy — one to the north and one to the east — going further than any subway construction will ever reach. In effect, you make the same argument in your next paragraph.
All that said, subway expansion is a solution that only serves intermediate distance travel in and out of the core. At a local level, an LRT network within Scarborough (or Etobicoke, etc) servicing the high traffic routes and destinations makes more sense as an expansion from the current bus service.
As someone who doesn’t live in Toronto, I have no direct interest in the development of the TTC, but if the higher levels of government pay part of the cost then I would like to know that what gets built is sensible. And it is interesting to read people’s passionate ideas.
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Steve per system, the effects at a single city level are essentially unknowable. Business locates on the known today and figures out the rest later. I have been an economist and started a business 20 years ago. We operate on both sides of the border, and our situation changes regularly based on many variables, and I am not looking at new trade deals radically changing the structure until they are a reality on the ground, and I assure you the impacts will be sufficiently different from the predicted to suggest flexible and current travel intentions likely make a better guide. You need to start somewhere.
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Steve you said in a comment:
The subway extension to Kipling and Kennedy opened in 1969, and they had been planned some years earlier.
I presume you mean 1980?
Steve: Yes. Corrected in reply to a previous comment.
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If you want to exclude everyone who lives in Scarborough from having a say in Downtown transit, then you should also exclude Scarborough taxes from paying for Downtown transit. To that end, let’s have a refund to the Scarborough taxpayers for the extremely expensive new streetcars that has costed close to two billion dollars and Downtown still wants 60 more even when after years upon years only 2 of the 204 streetcars originally ordered have entered service.
ABSOLUTELY NOT unless Toronto wants to pay for most of the cost of the VIVA network and running GO Transit since these are designed to get people to Toronto and not for people to travel locally.
Robert, you make it look like a Downtown Relief Line is a dream for Scarborough people and would provide zero benefit to the Downtown people and if that is the case then I agree that us people from Scarborough should pay 100% of it’s cost but since according to you it benefits mainly only Scarborough and also that Scarborough should pay for most of it’s costs, let us have a referendum in Scarborough AND ONLY SCARBOROUGH about whether or not to build the Downtown Relief Line to settle the question of whether or not to build the DRL once and for all. If a DRL mainly helps Scarborough, then why are Downtowners to desperate to build it? If a DRL is build against Scarborough’s overwhelming wish, then let us exclude Scarborough taxes from the cost of building it.
Steve: It is conversations like this that make we want to get a saw and just start at the bottom end of Victoria Park and work north. People from (fill in name of area) need to get to and from (fill in name of area). Unless we are going to set up toll booths at every boundary, and make each area responsible for its own roads, transit, water, etc, etc, we have to get used to the idea that “my” taxes are going to pay for “your” service on a pooled basis.
There will always be things “I” don’t want to pay for, but that does not automatically make them a waste. On the other hand, everything “I” want may be beyond our collective fiscal grasp and “I” can’t just stamp my foot and complain that “you” are getting more that “your” fair share.
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Steve, are you talking in terms of 1980s dollars or 2014 dollars? There exists perpetual inflation you know so that $230 million then is no longer just $230 million today. What was the approximate total cost (after including all capital accounts and removing all accounting fictions) in terms of 2014 dollars?
Steve: Those are as spent dollars, and so you need to add inflation for 30 years to get present day values.
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But you are assuming that everyone everywhere is travelling to Downtown when most people in Scarborough are commuting within Scarborough and so as someone from Scarborough I say bring on the the distance based fares and also that only people who live within walking distance of an underground LRT or subway station should have to pay for it (if we adopt this policy, then the cries for a DRL would virtually stop overnight).
Steve: I mentioned this because one of the major reasons cited for the need for subways in Scarborough is so that people there can get downtown to well-paid jobs easily. You can’t have it both ways. Either most travel in Scarborough is local and would attract an “average” fare, or there is a lot of long haul travel. I am thinking in particular of York U students who commute from eastern Scarborough, and some workers who go even farther including travel into the 905.
From my own personal travel pattern, distance based fares would be great because my trips tend to be only three of four kilometres most of the time. However, the havoc distance pricing would bring to the TTC and to people in the outer suburbs does not bear thinking about.
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The beauty of the Detroit solution of course is that at least the outcomes are clear and predictable.
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Well Steve I believe we are all looking to the Board of Education and TTC and others periodically rewarding you for your good works to ensure that you are granted the other half of that classic wonderful Vulcan greeting.
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Dear Steve, your articles about Scarborough transit always generate heated debates and so you should have these once in a while just to maintain the popularity of your blog. The Scarborough RT should be replaced by a subway since that way we don’t have to shut the RT down during construction and also the RT elevated parts are not structurally sound enough to handle construction and continued service long-term. Scarborough Lives Matter too you know and we can’t risk them by putting them on an old unsafe elevated right of way (mind you the RT was not built as strongly as the Bloor Street Viaduct for example as Scarborough always gets cheap poor quality stuff while our Scarborough tax dollars are used to subsidise high quality construction in other parts of Toronto and the extremely expensive Bloor Street Viaduct is just one of many examples).
I would take a Scarborough LRT only if the part from Victoria Park Station to Kennedy is also converted to LRT as part of a single line to Malvern – that way we can have seamless travel within Scarborough (unlike the myth that is perpetuated by those who think that the Downtown is the centre of the universe, most people in Scarborough are NOT travelling to Downtown but are travelling within Scarborough).
Steve: The extra expense of the Scarborough RT was covered by Queen’s Park, not by local tax dollars. As for the Viaduct, when it was built, there were farms not far east of where I live at Broadview, and a handful of small towns in what is now Scarborough. You cannot point at the Viaduct and say look, there’s a potload of money spent on “downtown”.
Your comment about internal travel in Scarborough echoes some info I posted here earlier this year from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey that shows a large amount of internal traffic (as well as traffic to other non-downtown sectors). When I cite this, I get yelled at by people who claim that I am trying to prevent hard-working and ambitious Scarborough citizens from getting to the good jobs downtown.
Scarborough advocates need to acknowledge that both demands exist, and that a transportation “solution” that addresses only part of the demand pattern will leave some riders out in the cold.
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Steve I really enjoyed your commentary with regards to Swansea, (and had heard the name and wondered where it was, so thanks for the tick mark on that one). Personally I would like to see data collected, looked at and published on a postal code basis. I strongly believe that transit should support riders and not boroughs.
I am personally terribly fond of the idea of a basic network being a grid (thereby relatively origin-destination neutral), and then having high capacity services, where the grid itself is overloaded, or to support a large numbers of known rides.
Beyond Transit City LRT and BRT lines, I am inclined to think some idea vaguely like the following: a BRT in Finch East (for the portion it can be done), Markham road, Steeles West (although perhaps not to Yonge) Steeles East and say Keele? The list and notion in detail above is less than half baked (and not an actual proposal).
Riders across the city need better rides, and transit needs to run better, but does it not make sense to maximize the impact? Would it not be better to build a much broader lighter system than a handful of subways? These lines would then attract more (or less) volume, and might require upgrade to LRT or even beyond, but it would present a start. Let the planners fill in the real details, with actual best routes, and directions and details of requirements. But build subway where the load is present, and not otherwise. Changes to demand will present themselves to a grid, and be visible in loading on the grid, and can be addressed accordingly.
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The main difference is that those extensions were built a long time ago when costs, even talking relatively, were a lot less expensive. Also a lot of those outer branches are on the surface not in deep tunnels. If the extension in Toronto to Vaughan built in open cut were possible instead of bored tunnel, the costs would have been less and the cut could eventually be covered as happened on most of the original open cut on Yonge Street. But transit must be out of sight and out of mind.
“All that said, subway expansion is a solution that only serves intermediate distance travel in and out of the core. At a local level, an LRT network within Scarborough (or Etobicoke, etc) servicing the high traffic routes and destinations makes more sense as an expansion from the current bus service.”
One thing that most people in the Toronto area do not realize is that LRT encompasses a lot of different service types, speeds and capacities. The lines in Toronto, Spadina, Queens Quay and St. Clair, are high volume closely spaced spaced urban lines. The ones proposed for the suburbs have more widely spaced stops, faster speeds and higher capacity. There are still other lines like the one in St. Louis MO that runs more like a low volume GO line than a typical LRT line.
It has 27 stations on a 46 mile route with two branches on the west end. It runs in two states and carries around 53,000 passengers per day, similar to the King line. If the Province hadn’t invented ICTS, the Scarborough abomination, there would have been a line in Scarborough at least as far as Malvern and one in Etobicoke from Kipling Station to the airport. Both would have been in private right of way, not the centre reservation of a road and would have been high speed high capacity services. If these had been built we would not be having these debates between proponents of what LRT is versus what Subway Fans think it is.
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He had dreams of streetcars, which were running east of the Don before the Viaduct was built, using the “subway deck”. That’s why the Rosedale Valley subway deck remains unused because the Viaduct curve at Parliament was designed and built with streetcars in mind.
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You obviously did not read my last paragraph or are to stupid to comprehend it. I said:
I believe that transit service in Toronto should be paid for by the residents or Toronto, and also by the Federal and Provincial Governments as when Toronto succeeds it is good for the tax base of both senior governments.
There is a lot more tax base downtown than there is in Scarborough. I did not say I wanted to isolate all the costs and associate them with each old borough. If this were to happen then there would be more money to improve transit service downtown than there is in the old boroughs, including Scarborough. Let’s make sure that all the money to build the Scarborough subway is paid by Scarborough and Only Scarborough. Do you think you would come out ahead?
Do you really think that the Downtown Relief Line would benefit many people who live downtown? The City of Toronto, the original city, paid for the original subway out of its own revenues, that is a fact. People in the original city have trouble getting on the original subway because it is full before it gets to Lawrence Station. Those who come across the Bloor Danforth from Scarborough or Etobicoke to Yonge have trouble getting on at Bloor Yonge Station but at least those from Etobicoke can use St. George.
How does this help the citizens of Toronto? If people wish to live in Vaughan, or any other 905 suburb, and work in Toronto it is not up to those who live in Toronto to subsidize them. If you want the corporations who employ them to bear some of the cost, fine with me. I live in Brampton used to work in Toronto at Bathurst and Harbord. I never asked for any subsidy from Toronto nor expected any. I paid a GO fare and a TTC fare and though it was fair.
I assume you mean SO desperate to build it and “If a DRL is BUILT against Scarborough’s overwhelming wish,…” I don’t know what you count as a “DOWNTOWNER” but to me it is someone south of Bloor Street. I have no problem with NOT having Scarborough taxes helping to build it, or those from North York or what ever other former borough you care to represent. BUT, if you want that then pay an extra fare for using the subway in the old City of Toronto. Zone fares only help the downtown LATTE sipping long haired pinko bike riding commie creeps. [For those of you who do not understand sarcasm please understand that I am one of them, except for the downtown part.]
I am in favour of a sane transit policy that is fair to everyone and is affordable by the existing tax base. If you want an unfair advantage for residents of Scarborough then you better be prepared to pay for it. And please UNDERSTAND my postings before coming up with ridiculous postings about my unfairness.
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I would like to respond to a couple of queries that Scarborough Man asked regarding opinions on various other transit projects held by people who oppose the Scarborough extension. Let me first frame this by saying that 33 of my 50 years were spent living in Scarborough, 22 on the west side in Agincourt and 11 on the east side between Malvern and Guildwood. Also, for the past 14 years, I have been living in Richmond Hill.
I did right up until the first shovel went into the ground. On my website, I had advocated this on the page of York Region Options, and continue to have the original version of that page available to look at.
That opened when I was 16 years old, and back then I was still drinking the Kool-Aid that made me believe that we needed subways along every Metro road (i.e.: roads that have access to the 401 or DVP). Metro no longer exists, but sadly far too many people think that way.
I do continue to oppose this extension, as the current York Region Options page on my site advocates. An LRT down to Steeles and subway from there would be more beneficial to the majority of York Region commuters over a subway extension to Highway 7. Only those who live within a couple of hundred metres of a proposed subway station would find the subway option a slightly better option.
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One thing I’ve never understood is why some of the RT platforms were long-enough for six cars while the other intermediate ones were only good for four. (Kennedy used to be long-enough for six but lost this capability when it was converted to a single track.) I get that the platform lengths were based off of multiple unit LRVs before the technology switch but it still doesn’t explain what sort of operation was being planned for. Perhaps the longer ones were expected to be busier stops where two 3-car trains of LRVs could occupy the platform at the same time for efficiency’s sake?
Steve: Certainly that is the situation at Kennedy. I suspect for other stations, it was a question of where they were in design/construction when the change from LRT to ICTS happened. Kennedy predates the SRT opening by many years, and had directional signage with streetcar graphics when the station opened (quickly replaced by RT graphics when someone finally noticed).
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There was a great example of this during the LRT debate here in Waterloo Region. The Mayor of Cambridge was adamant that Cambridge should not pay for the LRT because Phase 1 is not going to Cambridge. Chair Seiling made a speech that was truly a thing of beauty. It wasn’t flashy or emotive, because that is not his style, but essentially it was a recounting of an incredibly long list of Regional services and the per capita benefit derived from them in Cambridge as compared to the rest of the Region. Suffice it to say that overall Cambridge is not doing badly from its inclusion in the Region.
Toronto is like this too, of course, and indeed so are our Provincial and Federal governments. This doesn’t mean that there is no unfairness to complain about, but an unequal distribution of one particular area of spending doesn’t imply any such thing on its own. I wonder what the equivalent of Chair Seiling’s speech would be like for various parts of Toronto?
Steve: First you need a chair that isn’t playing selectively to one part of the crowd for votes. Whether Mayor Tory will ever make that transition remains to be seen.
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Which “Detroit solution” are they talking about? Detroit is right now constructing their own 3.3 mile (5.3 kilometre) streetcar line that will use six new streetcars. Wonder if they’ll get all six streetcars before we get our first six?
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Yes, this is true, and the one on Woodward, looks like it will be interesting. However, Detroit itself has hopes of revitalising its core. However, I believe that the Detroit we were referring to was the all car, solution of the previous decades. The dead centre, bankrupt city, that has meant that recently a couple of thousands properties went in a single bundle in a package. That urban farming, has enough space to become a substantial opportunity.
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OK
There are 112 comments to date.
What is the answer?
Tweaking street lights will not work. It helps, but.
Cars will be around for a long time so get over it.
Sixty more buses will not work and is a joke.
How do you distribute these 60 buses through the system and ‘measure’ the benefit?
Please.
Streetcars, LRV’s, will not work over long distances.
Street bound LRT’s will not work.
I know what you will say.
The U-Turn routine will work.
The Transit City Plan is flawed in all directions.
Then there is Go Transit.
Underutilized.
The rework of the streetcar system has cost $2 billion and another 60 trains still have to be purchased.
The streetcar tracks were replaced to comply with the specs of the new LRV’s.
The street car system will be dead in 30 years.
The street network in Toronto was established in about 1900, or thereabouts.
Radical changes in thinking are needed.
The answers are elsewhere.
Steve: You seem to have made up your mind using a string of distorted arguments. Some of these apply to mixed traffic operation downtown. You don’t say which LRT lines your comments might apply to. Your claims about the cost of the “rework” of the streetcar system are just plain wrong, and the attitude about the future of the network ignores the growing population density downtown that is already beyond bus capability on some routes and will grow into that range on others. Yes, the streetcar system was established a long time ago (in the 1860s actually if you count horse cars), but so was subway technology around the world. Age and obsolescence are not synonymous.
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Scarborough subway should go ahead for the simple reason that it sets right a historical wrong. Mayor Tory has got it right as did Mayor Ford.
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Steve, I’m now 60, but years ago when I was in my early 20s, there was a push for Toronto to bid on the Olympics. I was at a debate around ’74, ’75 or ’76 at the St. Lawrence Centre at Front and Scott. Representing the pro side was as usual, Paul Godfrey (Metro chair at the time). The anti side was surprisingly represented by Bruce Kidd (I think he was a UofT prof at that time). Surprisingly because as you and I are old enough to remember him as a top flight runner for Canada in international competitions.
As the debate went on, it was obvious Mr. Godfrey was basing most of his arguments on emotion( the rah-rah factor!) and numbers that generally were low balled estimates. Mr. Kidd was going on facts and basing a lot on personal experience.
Now, I had showed up in my early 20s feeling this was perfect for Metro Toronto, being very emotional about it myself. I was initially in favour! After listening for a while, I was thinking, “If an Olympic competitor like Bruce Kidd puts forward a good argument against it and he has been involved in the Olympic movement for years, then maybe there is something wrong.”
Steve, I look back on this years ago and see a similarity to the Scarborough, Sheppard East and Finch West subway talk. Emotion cannot enter the fray (especially the politicians that prey on the masses with just that kind of rhetoric … see this past election!!)!! Proper dialogue also means you must listen without emotion. Now, I didn’t say here how I felt because there are many that need to be heard and a lot more who need to listen (AND THAT’S FOR BOTH SIDES)! BTW, Toronto never did bid for the Olympics back then (although it did happen several years later).
Good job, Steve.
Steve: And there’s yet another World’s Fair bid in the works supported by, of all people, Kristen Wong-Tam.
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Kristian said:
The simple answer is cost-cutting, similar to the four-car length of the usable platforms on the Sheppard subway line.
As Steve noted, Kennedy was designed and built with LRVs in mind well before ICTS was a twinkle in some politicians’ eyes. When the change to ICTS came along, that length was just right for a six-car train and that was to be the station length for all the stations.
Cost overruns grew faster than expected, so cuts were made that could still allow the system to be up an running. We all know of the cut that kept the original tunnel design between Ellesmere and Midland that basically locked us into Mark I vehicles (the cost of fixing this and a few other things to allow Mark II vehicles makes that option as expensive as converting the line to LRT, but LRT costs are less for any extension of the line).
A significant cutback was to only complete other stations to allow for four-car trains, but be able to extend them when the need existed. I suspect it was decided that Scarborough Centre should be built to the full six-car lengh to avoid the mess of having to extend it later, possibly because it would be a rather busy station in a confined area.
Lawrence and Ellesmere are built at grade, so no rough-in for the extended length was needed, saving even more. Midland and McCowan are elevated stations, so the platform had to be roughed-in for the full six-car length. Both of these stations have the roughed-in portion at their east ends.
Steve: STC station’s size is also determined by the number of bus bays it needed, and I suspect that the marginal cost of a six-car platform was relatively small.
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A local subway at the cost of other people creates another historical wrong.
I would support as a right of all citizens of Toronto access to accessible transit to get them to somewhere else in the city.
Given we don’t want to pay more in taxes at all 3 levels of government, in order to fulfill that obligation to transit, some people are going to have to go up some escalators, take a bus, a streetcar or take LRT.
That is the decision we all took when we decided to make keeping taxes low a political priority.
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Joe M says:
And we have found the main issue. Those areas that have been blessed with solid transit infrastructure in the City refuse to share fairly.
Transit infrastructure, maintenance, and operating costs have been so poorly planned over the last 50 plus years that we are forced to fight divide and fight each other over the scraps provided.
In my opinion PRIORITY AREA’s should be just that when it comes to any funding available & not be at the mercy of outside politicians I don’t live in these areas but reside very close to a few. It saddens me to read the comments & realize this is the state we are in. It shouldn’t be a Scarborough transit referendum. It should be a Priority area referendum & start leveling the playing field.
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And that is precisely why we should NOT build the Downtown Relief Line.
Steve: The problem, of course, is whether one considers the DRL a “local” line. A major issue here is that the TTC has been fixated for so long on (a) not building anything beyond expanded capacity on the YUS, and (b) grudgingly planning only the short section from Pape/Danforth to Union that there is no wider constituency for the line. This is starting to change, but we have TTC management to blame for the perception that the DRL is of no use to anyone outside of the latte-sipping east end.
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Very much agreed. For example, the priority areas in Scarborough that are away from the proposed subway route should not be at the mercy of Etobicoker Rob Ford’s subway fixation and lose their proposed LRT routes as a result of his meddling.
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