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 
Steve, just out of curiosity, who would you vote for in the next federal election? I am voting Conservative no matter what, I would vote Conservative [EVEN] if they ran a dog as their candidate (in my riding).
Steve: I live in a long-standing, strong NDP riding (it used to be Jack Layton’s), and will be voting NDP without question. If I lived in a riding where the battle was Liberal vs Tory, I would vote Liberal. The overwhelming need for the coming election is to rid the country of the Conservative government in Ottawa. I would vote for a dog before I voted for a Tory.
I think we have slightly different views of the subject.
(Note to others in this thread, please don’t start a pitched battle about the next election because I will simply delete the comments. I was asked a question, and I answerwed.)
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Very untrue. Although I expected to see this comment. The Subway is the backbone that will help feed the priority areas into the Economic center (Downtown) in the City we all pay taxes too. Just as Etobicoke & North York have.
LRT’s and BRT’s should be used to help feed into the Scarborough City Center. Which can become a secondary Economic hub.
Segregating Scarborough entirely with LRT lines does not solve the problem. Considering most of the line are just going to be stubs without proper funding. And even the funded ones don’t cover the many of the Priority areas. This is a band-aid disaster. Which is only good if you want to save money. And many of you here turn very conservative when it comes to sharing.
A Subway is not the only solution either. It’ s the first major step forward & the benefits will be reaped by hundreds of thousands of Scarborough Citizens who have been isolated into misery trying to commute to the Economic hub for a decade.
We need fairness & we need something useful to us. Not to be trolled be outsiders.
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Darn. I was about to speculate that the Richmond Hill extension might be brought up as part of the Federal election campaign sometime next year (I’m hearing early Spring).
I suppose it will depend on whether the provincial parties will give support to their federal counterparts.
If the current Minister of Innovation manages to stay in Cabinet until 2018 I could see the Richmond Hill extension brought up again for the provincial election, especially if the Liberals want to (re)take Thornhill (which they thought they won but lost by a very narrow margin in October).
Cheers, Moaz
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Steve: 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.
You mean latte-sipping downtown?
Steve: From the point of view of people who live east of Victoria Park, “downtown”, “Riverdale”, “Leslieville” and “The Beach” are a contiguous morass of latte-sippers.
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I am in the camp that sees a DRL for its overall usefulness to the network as a whole, and therefore does not make it a local subway. This makes Voter’s comment irrelevant.
To be justifiable, subway plans should pass an acid test that includes whether or not the plan is Network Enhancing. If not Network Enhancing, there should be some significant practical benefit to the system besides just one more stop for locals. The only subway plan being talked about that is not Network Enhancing but provides significant practical benefits would be extending Yonge to Steeles – but no further north.
No more Radial Expansion of our subway system – it does to the transit network what last year’s ice storm did to many trees.
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Some Random Thoughts:
1. I was born in Etobicoke and used the new subway to Islington from 1968 onward. In 1967 I used the Bloor West Bus and the Bloor Car (from Jane to Keele) to travel on the subway route. However, I had to take the Islington 37 for 20 minutes or so, just to get to that corridor. Anyone who lives where I lived would be puzzled by the suggestion that Etobicoke is well served by subways. As is the case at Victoria Park, Warden and Kennedy, Etobicoke residents can take a bus to the subway.
2. I didn’t like living in Etobicoke. Since 1980 I have always lived in the old City of Toronto because my primary mode of transportation choice was transit. I never considered this to be an entitlement — just a part of the world where demand produced the kind of transit I wanted. (A portion of this time was on Mount Pleasant North of Eglinton. As a transit believer I patiently waited for service on the Nortown on a 20 or 30 minute headway.)
3. I don’t like the subway. I now live at Shaw and King and when I have to take the subway it is my last choice. While the subway may run through portions of downtown, I think it is largely carrying people from the suburbs going to downtown attractions.
4. I do like the streetcars. This is my primary mode of transportation along with the frequent Ossington bus. If you remember the Monty Python Yorkshireman (when one had a cardboard box) I would agree that anyone who had a traffic separated LRT was offered “LUXURY”.
5. Transit should never be offered as an entitlement. It should be set up to meet demand with the appropriate level and kind of service.
6. I think the Buffoon inspired “subways, subways, subways” mantra has little to do with public transit anyway and more to do with the false belief that if all those inconvenient transit vehicles were not on the street, the SUVs would have clear sailing.
7. When the transit debate is distorted to include arguments about “historical wrongs” or “entitlement” it is really about point 6 above.
For the most part my philosophy is “If the streetcar doesn’t go there, neither do I.”
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Actually, over the last 4 years, it’s taken on a more dangerous form than just getting transit out of the way of private vehicles. Simply put, it’s now shifting towards only the government can create economic prosperity.
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I moved from Etobicoke before the one kilometer Islington to Kipling extension was built.
In 1967, when Islington Station was opened, wasn’t the TTC seen as an innovator for the way it integrated surface routes with subway stations? Wasn’t Islington seen as a big success, with its six large covered surface bays, each capable of handling two routes?
But, within a decade or so, the arrival of Mississauga Transit buses put it past capacity. Within a decade the TTC had changed its model for handling buses, to one where riders could see all the arriving buses, and choose an alternate bus, when their normal bus hadn’t arrived, but a bus from an alternate route, that also passed near their destination, arrived?
Extending the Bloor-Danforth line to Kipling enabled the TTC to allow Mississauga Transit buses to use the older bus bays at Islington, rather than stop and unload their passengers on Islington, while giving TTC buses more bus bays at Kipling.
I don’t know how expensive extending the line was, as opposed to building the station, but the wasn’t the extension rail built, at grade, using an existing rail line’s right of way?
So, what expense were you complaining about? Could Scarborough writers please bear in mind that when the TTC extended the Bloor-Danforth line west to Kipling, they also extended the line east from Warden to Kennedy. If I am not mistaken Warden station had been built as a mirror image to Islington, was initially seen as a successful integration of surface routes to the subway, but the TTC required more bus bays by the time the extension was planned.
Extending the Bloor Danforth line up McCowan, to Sheppard, is a completely different situation. If I am not mistaken, there are no studies, showing increased capacity is needed. Riding a surface LRT, that uses a separate right of way, would be a much more pleasant ride.
Steve: There is a backlog of demand in the RT corridor that is unmet because the fleet is too small. The issue is whether this should be provided by a subway extension or an LRT line, and only a subway is “good enough” for some in Scarborough.
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Some commenters above have written about the general advantage of building lower capacity rapid transit, like a BRT or an LRT, and then later upgrading those lines to heavy rail, when the ridership approaches heavy rail demands.
I see only one way in which building a heavy rail extension up McCowan through the Scarborough Town Centre to Sheppard has to using the SRT right of way for an eastern leg to the Crosstown — that the SRT can continue running while its replacement is built.
Tory said he thought it made sense to pay a premium to pay the contractors repairing the Gardiner more, so they could complete their work more quickly. He offered this because he took into account the inconvenience to commuters of the disruption contractors caused.
If we paid a premium, could the SRT right of way be converted to handle Flexity Freedom vehicles? Were the SRT stations long enough for a trainset of four Flexity Freedom vehicles? Would the SRT passenger platforms need to be torn out, and replaced? Or could the track be raised so the vehicles could use the existing platforms?
Steve: The short answer is “no”. The tunnel at Ellesmere is too small for anything other than Mark I RT cars (that downsizing was forced on the TTC to prevent them from changing back to LRT after the ICTS system was inflicted on them by Queen’s Park as a condition of funding the line). As for the stations, it’s not just a matter of raising the tracks, but of tearing off the roof at every station too. McCowan Carhouse would require major changes as an LRT facility and indeed a bigger carhouse is needed anyhow. That would have to be built somewhere east of McCowan before the RT shuts down to get a “head start”. Indeed, the extension east from McCowan could be prebuilt (that was the plan for the original LRT conversion scheme).
I’ve read that, in China, with its command economy, rapid transit lines can be ordered, designed, and built within a single year.
Steve: And you think this should be a model for Toronto? Many other things in that “command economy” are complete failures because the very sort of reasonableness checks on projects we have don’t exist there. Imagine if Rob and Doug Ford had the ability to call subway lines into existence on a whim.
It seems to me that if a city the size of Toronto builds an intermediate capacity rapid transit route, like an LRT or a Bus Rapid Transit, and it becomes so successful that planners expect it ridership to grow beyond its maximum capacity, it would be wiser to plan to build another route, one near enough that the new line’s potential ridership overlapped that of the line approaching maximum capacity. I think one lesson of the Scarborough fiasco is that upgrading an LRT line to heavy rail is more expensive than building a brand new LRT line.
I think two LRT lines serve a city the size of Toronto better than one heavy rail line.
If the Crosstown’s ridership grows, so it looks like reducing the headway, and running full length train-sets won’t be enough, I would prefer politicians to OK a plan to build yet another LRT between Sheppard and Eglinton, possibly parallel to Lawrence.
Steve: Crosstown’s peak point ridership also depends on the structure of the rest of the network, in particular the presence or absence of a north-south service at Don Mills.
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@Geo Swan, I was suggesting upgrading a BRT to LRT, as if you built the road bed properly you could do much of the work while leaving the BRT operating, by diverting the buses to the far side (thinking in terms of a bus per minute or so). LRT however not so. However, I was thinking, that you could upgrade to subway in many cases while leaving the LRT operating, as you are going below ground and leaving the ROW untouched.
However, I agree with your premise, if say Eglinton and Sheppard were getting really good signal priority and were at capacity, it is likely that it would make more sense to have another LRT on Lawrence, or Finch or whichever suitable roadway was best placed for the load.
My point however, was the option for further upgrade remained as ridership grew, even if it required at that location.
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Some commenters seem to get their blood boiling because their well-off neighbours who work downtown can’t easily get downtown via TTC, and therefore through some obscure mechanism will make Scarborough turn into a have-not borough. Apparently these well-off neighbours who work downtown haven’t heard of the GO train, which is the quick (if more expensive) way to quickly get to those jobs in the office towers downtown. These commentators don’t seem to consider that extending the subway to STC will not materially improve travel time for any of these well-off downtown-working folks. The few minutes gained by not having to transfer at Kennedy (a transfer that would be eased by the LRT) are offset by the fact that only every other train will be through to wherever in deeper Scarborough beyond Kennedy, so where’s the time saving?
At the same time, other commenters seem to think that a subway downtown are exactly what the less well-off priority neighbourhood folks need to get a good job. I got news for them: what’s keeping priority neighbourhood folks from getting those jobs as an AVP in a big bank is not the lack of a subway line to said priority neighbourhood. In fact, the priority neighbourhood folks are likely to be working in the food courts of those bank towers, or in retail in the Eaton Centre. In which case, a decent network of LRT will get them to closer, equally well-paying jobs in Scaroborough and North York, avoiding the considerably longer trip to downtown.
Also, it’s not 1925 any more, and one does not go from working in the Subway in the food court to being the CEO of a major bank. One goes from working in the Subway in the food court to working in the KFC in the food court (or possibly the other way around). Upward social mobility is going to be served at least as well by a good network of LRT than a subway which will basically not come any closer to the priority neighbourhood, because subways are too expensive to run to every priority neighbourhood.
Steve: There is an inherent contradiction in some of the posts that beat the drum about “good jobs downtown”, those that portray Scarborough as a half-not borough, and those that complain when we talk about improving transit to a wider number of less-well-off people. Scarborough is “poor” when it suits some who argue here, but not always. I think this actually hurts their argument. We know that almost all of Scarborough is “City 3” in David Hulchanski’s work, and it’s important to maximize transportation options where the cost of car ownership, especially multiple cars per family, is an economic penalty. Transit City tried to do this, but was shouted down by the pro-subway crowd, and whittled away by Queen’s Park.
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Steve I would also ask whether the “poor” parts of Scarborough will get real service from the subway, or will the route and stops systematically skip around or past those neighborhoods. Is the subway being designed to serve those who are most likely to have an education, money, vote and to complain or those who need access to transit?
Steve: I don’t think “design” had anything to do with it. If anything, some of the better off parts of Scarborough will not be anywhere near the subway line.
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Ed says: Some commenters seem to get their blood boiling because their well-off neighbours who work downtown can’t easily get downtown via TTC, and therefore through some obscure mechanism will make Scarborough turn into a have-not borough. Apparently these well-off neighbours who work downtown haven’t heard of the GO train,
Joe M Says: So you are saying Scarborough residents have to pay for TTC and GO to get to work in where good jobs are? We are to the 905 we pay for TTC. You wonder why your unfair comments strike a nerve.
Do the Math $6 a day TTC & $12 a day go train. $18 a day while these who have access spend $6 max?
We obviously disagree on how to better priority neighborhoods. I’m all for LRT’s & BRT’s running a loop around Scarborough in general.
LRT’s are fine around the perimeter and although only stub lines were ever on the table that money hasn’t been affected & could still be built. The issue is the those that live within access to the subway now have decided it a bad investment for others to be able to use.
Steve: As you may have noticed in another thread, I have already been writing about how GO fares are biased against short trips. There is no way I expect people to double or more to ride into Toronto on GO Transit (although a previous commenter suggests that fare by distance is just fine, thank you.
Re a loop around Scarborough, once upon a time there would have been a loop formed by the Eglinton-Kingston-Morningside LRT on the south and east, the Sheppard LRT on the north, and the SRT replacement on the south. But the holy grail became a line up McCowan to Sheppard possibly as a prelude to a hookup with an extended Sheppard subway line.
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I wanted to warn everyone there was a recent post in this thread with my name on it but it was actually a fake post made by another user. This has been confirmed by Steve and he has made the necessary edits to credit the trouble maker with the name he went by in his other recent posts. Any regular readers would probably be aware that the fake comment was inconsistent with my usual writings and beliefs. Keep an eye out for anything else that seems out of place.
To the individual who made the fake post, you’re free to speak your mind here but I won’t tolerate my identity and reputation being tampered with. You’ve been warned.
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The best solution is some kind of middle-of-the road compromise that involves lower GO fares for shorter trips along with a TTC co-fare. That off loads some of the demand for longer trips inside the 416 from the TTC and makes public transit an option over the car. A lowered short-trip fare in the 905 (or for short distance 416905 trips) is also an advantage because it provides an option besides the car.
To wit … If I want to travel from Clarkson to Mimico my option is a long 2-fare trip on MiWay and TTC, a quick expensive fare on the GO train, or the car. The majority of people making that trip would choose the car.
Now imagine a more complicated trip and how much more likely people are going to drive if they have the option.
Cheers, Moaz
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Just in case you don’t realise, EVERYONE has a vote. Good try to divide Scarborough but Scarborough is united and the vast majority of Scarborontonians support the subway to Sheppard underneath McCowan which is the Yonge St of our Scarborough.
Good response Steve (for the first time ever for a change).
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@Bob, the question with regards to voting was not whether they have a vote or not, but rather whether they are likely to exercise that right. There are differences in voter turn out by age, sex, economic and other social background differences. It is not clear to me that the alignment of the proposed subway serves either employment concentrations or priority neighborhoods as well as it could.
This is one of the issues that needs to be watched with any transit, and the more political it gets the more it needs to be watched. If/when pols are buying votes there is no point in buying the votes of those who do not turn out.
Whether or not the subway extension is a good idea, it is important to be aware politics not planners forced the change, and for politicians votes to the ballot box are the metric in that business.
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If anyone actually believes that, then Scarborough needs DART more than it needs a subway.
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You are ignoring the fact that the region has a major problem with underutilization of labor. It is not uncommon to find an immigrant that is overqualified working menial jobs simply because the structures in our society don’t allow them to optimally utilize their skills. This situation is a loss for both the individual, and society. How can we expect to have a competitive economy when we systematically build structures that engender the underutilization of human capital.
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Although on the surface this seems fine, consider the following. It is a known fact that business clusters in Ontario that supply foreign markets earn significantly more than their peers that serve only the local economy. It is also known that the most effective and efficient way to support higher earning business clusters is through centralization of activity in a given geographic area, where as the lower earning cluster are fine with decentralization. So by choosing to centralize economic activity society is able to better allocate its financial and human capital in a way that is able to generate significantly more prosperity.
Regarding your comment on food service, I would say that the earning potential of an individual is higher in a facility that has high foot traffic opposed to one that does not. Even with this very basic scenario we can see how centralization improves the earnings potential of the entire spectrum of employment opportunities.
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That is a bit of a generalization, but if the correct mode is applied to the correct corridor, that is true for a large part of the city.
Increased use of a subway line depends significantly from a larger catchment area. This means that a great number of those people needing the capacity that a subway line can provide are coming from further afield, usually by surface transit.
Two parallel LRT lines that are about 4-6 km apart can serve the same crowd of people with more room to spare, and do so with a larger number of them having to make shorter surface transit trips to get to the nearest LRT line. There is also the advantage that when (not IF, but WHEN) a problem occurs on one line, the other line can help move people far better than shuttle buses.
The one other, and I believe most important, benefit of two LRT lines over a subway line is that they both do not have to be built all at once. One could be built now, with the money available now, and when the capacity requirements approach that dreaded “need for more than it can provide”, instead of replacing the line with a higher capacity line, a new parallel line can built.
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@Jon Johnson: What is clearly shown is that system that maximize choice maximizes earnings. So it is critical that both sets of rides are well supported. Centralization is a current trend, however many factors could reverse that. Build a network that supports choice not one forces only one. The trend you favor is already reflected in current ride preference. People need the ability to select, and service needs to reflect those reasonable choices (you cannot choose to live in Kingston and expect a 1hour $5 commute to the core).
Ignoring the choice of destination by the rider makes for an expensive empty system. The capacity built needs to reflect the extent of demand.
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So about R.C. Harris and subways.
Steve: Dare I point out that “Radial Railways” that would use his subway are what we call “LRT” today.
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I’d go one step further and point out the similarities between what R.C. Harris, the person subway supporters claim that he believed in a future of heavy rail subways, wanted and the Crosstown LRT.
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You are right in saying that choice is very important; however as an economist you should know that the ability of an individual to exercise choice is dependent on the costs associated with exercising it. Within a centralized model the internal costs associated with exercising choice can be mitigated more efficiently and effectively than in the alternatives, in this way the greatest choice can be given to the greatest number of people. Also centralization provides an environment that generates the highest quality of options to choose from.
As for technology selection, which is what I think you were referring to, buses provide flexible fine grained service options that provide individuals with greater choice than the intermediate fixed rail alternatives. Also choosing buses gives the transit authority greater budgetary flexibility to provide higher quality service.
Steve: Carrying that argument to its logical conclusion would indicate that subways, even less flexible in placement and in coverage than LRT, are the least desirable option. This whole debate is getting rather wooly what with the mixture of economic theory, the matter of whether centralized or decentralized job locations, and the relative affluence (or not) of Scarborough residents are all muddled together. I am not convinced that economic theory, alone, carries the day.
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joe M said:
False fact. Show me where a funded loop around Scarborough was ever tabled?
What was replaced was the inefficient LRT transfer hub going through 2 stations which server little purpose & replaced it with a 3-4 stop stop subway with no transfer and a much quicker route for those headed westbound on the TTC.
If you are saying the Scarborough Malvern LRT was on the table & not just phase 2 pixie dust than it can still be built since there will be minimal effect on Provincial funding.
Steve: A lot of the subway proposals are pixie dust too, and only come into being with new property taxes or mythical “free” money from Tax Increment Financing (TIF). If subway advocates can merrily draw lines on maps without bothering to talk about how they will be paid for (or assume that the rest of TO has nothing better to do with its money than build subways in Scarboro), then I can certainly talk about Transit City as it was originally proposed.
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@Steve with regards to transit and economics. Steve, I would agree that economic theory would say it is expressed in demand. While Jon Johnson has a point in terms of time, but that should not be material if it was a difference of a couple of minutes.
Basically, I am strongly of the mind that you build a flexible system, and support actual rides. If they are best supported by a system that is relatively centralized so be it, however, I am reasonably certain that current forecast cover the extent of center focused ridership.
However, support the trips that are there, and reasonably expected, and let people make up their own minds. Yes the system needs to reasonably support the choice to the center, without a large time penalty, and support the reasonably forecast trips, but I am fairly certain that this is reflected in the neutral land use models and ridership forecasts. I would worry more about being able to understand the very dispersed trips.
Anyway what is and current development is a decent guide. When routes are heavily used despite long trips, or overloaded it is a situation where the system transit is failing. However making very physically long trips quick requires people select the best mode. RER at reasonable frequency and cost. You cannot viably provide subway to all trips, or transit to address all social or policy issues.
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Joe M: This discussion on financing has been made & currently supported by 3 levels of government. The only ones complaining are those Torontonian’s who are currently blessed with Subway & Subway feeder transit infrastructure that Scarborough has been paying to support.
Read the front page of Metro News today. Heartwarming caring story about Poverty children in Toronto & the rising inequality. The rich neighborhoods discussed have great access to & feeders to the Toronto subway system. Of course there are more variables of neglect. But the importance on quality public transit is too large to ignore.
It’s so nice of these people care once a year to right [sic] a story about the poor. But to actually do anything meaningful to bridge the gap would be a waste of money.
Steve: I really tire of the claims that Scarborough is a hard-done-by borough, filled with poor peasantry kept in penury by the evil lords of central Toronto, who will not allow their vassals even to travel from their muddy hovels to locations of great prospect by the absence of a subway line. If Toronto be so rich and Scarborough so poor, it follows also that Toronto pays the lion’s share of the cost of the transit system.
I reiterate, though you care not to attend, that my comparison lies between Transit City as it once was and still could be, and full-blown coverage of Scarborough by subways which most assuredly do not enjoy full funding and favour.
There are more ways to help the poor than to promise them a subway eight years or more in the future. Much improved bus service, treating transit everywhere as a worthwhile benefit and investment, not as a drain on the taxpayers, would certainly be a start.
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I don’t think Scarborough should be singled out as having the majority of its population not commuting regularly to the downtown core. The same holds true for all the former municipalities. We should be talking about capacity pipes to connect the municipalities to the core, current and projected supply and demand. Downtown is home to major event venues, specialty hospital services and many government services at all levels, 2 post-secondary school major campuses and 1/3 of all jobs. The downtown core is only home to 10% of Toronto’s population, this means there needs to be people from other parts of this city or from neighbouring ones to deliver and consume those services, the person driving the streetcar or testing the fire alarms in a downtown office tower most likely does not live there. Comments such as we’ll pay our way and your pay yours or you want to use are roads to come here then you pay a toll are not going contributing to productive conversations and generally come people who are unaware of Toronto’s systemic discrimination.
Steve: This sort of argument arises because so much invective from Scarborough pols (and comment writers here) says “we are not getting our fair share”, and equates “fairness” to “subways”. The issue about internal travel within the former cities is not meant to say “you don’t need a subway”, but rather that “there are trips that one subway focused on downtown will not serve”. No one “solution” can address all problems, and the question is whether mobility can be improved on a wider geographic scale without building subways everywhere. The history of transit funding in Toronto shows that a subway-only approach will leave a lot of places unserved.
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So I was reading the Toronto Star this morning only to see that now Glenn De Baermaeker wants to add a new stop to the Scarborough subway at Eglinton and Danforth citing the distance between stops in the existing Scarborough subway extension plan, saying that he’s listened to the criticisms made of the subway plan made by light rail supporters – and noting that downtown has very tightly spaced subway stations. Adding the new station would knock the inter station spacing from 4 KM down to about 2, and he seems to think that 2 KM is too far based on the south of Bloor stop spacing downtown.
I wrote here a while ago about what it was like living downtown in the Yonge/Eglinton/Yonge/Lawrence area where the subway went by without any stop, and it sounds like De Baermaeker realizes that huge distances between stops comes with its inherent disadvantages, but the idea that Scarborough is hard done by unless it gets a fully underground subway with south of Bloor stop spacing takes the Poor Scarborough victim mentality to a new extreme. There was a fully funded plan with frequent stop spacing ready to go. That he and a lot of other people decided to chuck it is their own fault.
Of course, you could blanket all of Toronto with subway stations closely spaced. They could put a subway station on every street corner if they wanted. All it takes is money, and a commitment to raising the funds necessary to build as much or as little subway as they want. Wanting something for free and complaining when it doesn’t happen isn’t exactly a sign of maturity, and there are going to be a lot of very disappointed people tomorrow morning when they wake up and go downstairs and discover that no subway system of their dreams has been left in Scarborough by a big guy riding in a sleigh.
Steve: I don’t think GDB wants the Scarborough line to have downtown spacings (even the proposed Scarborough LRT to Malvern didn’t have that), and so far he is only talking about one extra stop at Danforth/Brimley/Eglinton. The places in between really would be lightly used stops both because of the surrounding land use and because there are no mid-concession arterials at the 1km spacing where an east-west bus could collect traffic for the subway.
By contrast, the south-of-Bloor stretch has substantial job, and more recently, population density all along the line. If we were building it today, would every station be included? Probably not, but it’s hard to see any disappearing other than Wellesley and Museum, and even that’s a stretch. Moreover the density around these lines is not just at the stations, but spread out on neighbouring streets, notably along Bay. It is inconceivable that Scarborough would approve a wholesale replacement of low density residential neighbourhoods just to build up potential subway demand, and even then, the development industry would have to regard these areas as marketable against a huge amount of available and more centrally located real estate.
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Joe M:
Wishing you a wonderful holiday Steve.
Hope to see some form of compromise in 2015 of subway, LRT/BRT, and improved bus service to effectively build Scarborough.
As well I hope to see improvements moving forward for the rest of the City which obviously is in need as well.
Thanks again for letting alternate viewpoints in the discussion on your blog.
Steve: You’re very welcome, and best of the holidays to you too.
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Not to mention that developers would demand a significant amount of government expropriation when replacing those low density residential neighbourhoods which would be political suicide for politicians if the city approves it.
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Further, expropriation, in this case would not be seen to be in the support of a clear public need to support the general good, but in support of a single developer’s profit. I suspect that such power used would be seen as an abuse of the power, and would result in very painful legal and political battles, that the city would quickly hesitate to engage in.
Collecting parcels of land for general intensification is not always all that easy, and are quite frequently opposed by large blocks of neighbours as well.
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First Steve I too would like to wish you a Merry Christmas, and a happy, prosperous, and healthy New Year.
To Joe’s comment: Joe’s general point that he realistically expected only a whittled down version of Transit City to ever arrive in Scarborough, is the real centre of the issue. Somehow we can find billions to build a relatively small amount of subway service, that will serve fewer people, and cost more to operate. Yet he is right to be suspicious of whether the LRT would ever be really be built out. The city and province need to find a way to not just allay the reasonable fears of the Joe Ms but actually come up with and execute real plans.
We can find billions for mega projects, but not 10s of millions to support on-going extension and improvement. This is makes the fear of piecemeal construction a reasonable one. The problem being of course, that transit is best built and conceived as a series of smaller projects. Scarborough needs better bus, a complete LRT (full loop), and likely a couple of BRTs in order to bring real high quality reliable (including travel time) transit close to enough of its residents.
Scarborough should not get (nor want) service like the portion of the BRT that crossed downtown Ottawa but should want and get that like the portion Hurdman to downtown or like the LRT in Calgary. Where these need to cross streets, they get the green period. Scarborough needs the kinds of service that moves quickly, no BS waiting on signals for LRT or BRT, but services that work, and get consistent reliable waves of green, and are part of a complete network. Also the points of connection need to be cross platform walk off-walk-on, where the vehicle that is being boarded, is either there, or about to be. Scarborough also needs RER (GO) well served by TTC, that actually stops in Scarborough more than every 30 minutes, and has a reasonable fare integrated with the TTC one.
The problem is, so does Rexdale. Contrary to popular belief downtown also needs service. Subway does not count, if it does not serve you or your trips, frequent streetcars, matter not at all, if they are so crowded that you cannot push your way on.
Rexdale needs at least one LRT and the extension to the Crosstown, to connect it to transit in the city in a meaningful way. Downtown needs the streetcars to not only have space, but actually move at a reasonable speed (the speed of a bike or better would be nice).
Essentially, Toronto, should not be competing to get service, but actually have a plan that will deliver the appropriate capacity and fast reliable service at a TTC fare. I would think if someone could get Joe M. to believe that LRT or RER could get him downtown very nearly as fast as subway, as fast as subway or faster, in a way that was reliable (i.e. the range of time was 5 not 45 minutes), & @ a TTC fare, it would be a much easier sell. I suspect this would also require a plan that was somehow locked, not one that could get changed, manipulated, subject to the politics of the next 3 election cycles, or easily divisible. This would be easier if Toronto, actually worked on things like real transit priority, and did not have such a history of being blown so easily off course.
My problem with Joe M.s position, is that while I fervently believe that RER, LRT & BRT and increased subway network capacity-not length (although short extensions may be required to increase capacity), are a better solution, I also really appreciate the fact that he is right in saying unless the plan can be locked down, funded in such a way that it will all be built (not portions of a couple of lines) he is at too much risk of getting a half baked sop.
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Which is why it’s funny when we hear about all the development that the subway will cause when the best candidate for intensification, the Kennedy-Ellesmere-Midland-Lawrence East area, is completely avoided by the subway.
Steve: I find myself laughing uproariously when people refer to McCowan as Scarborough’s Yonge Street.
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@Steve, however I am sure you can remember when large portions of Yonge did not seem all that dense, even south of Bloor. Even this development had been slow, it will take many decades for this type of dense transit oriented development to work its way around the existing subway (think Lawrence and the Allen).
Somehow people imagine that all the people will just abandon their homes and businesses and magically 30 story high rise condos, and dense commercial and office space will appear, that is pedestrian oriented and has a full and rich neighborhood life and night scene. This is the magic of subway.
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There is not a single route in Scarborough which is not crowded during rush hour and yet we have empty buses running in high heeled areas around Rosedale, Moore Park, and the like. There was recently an article in Metro about how most of the subway stations are in wealthy areas while poorer areas are neglected. The few stations that do exist in poorer areas are NOT underground and the platform is frequently covered dangerously in ice and snow and also exposed to the wind and the cold. It is time to have every route in Scarborough convert to articulated buses, have heated bus stops at all major intersections in Scarborough, as well as build extend the Bloor Danforth subway to McCowan and Sheppard (with an additional stop at Eglinton and McCowan with underground heated walkway to Eglinton GO station).
Steve: Considering that the Rosedale bus has only one vehicle assigned to it most of the time (sometimes only half a bus because it interlines with Sherbourne), it’s really not feasible to run less service in Rosedale, and the available resources to redeploy in Scarborough are trivial compared to the demand. In Moore Park, the South Leaside bus is more frequent, but this serves not just Moore Park, but also links through to Thorncliffe Park.
The South Leaside bus carries 4,100 daily riders as of 2012, and there are a few routes in Scarborough that don’t achieve this level. Should we abandon them too?
I am really tired of this entire argument that says the rih downtown is hogging resources from poor Scarborough.
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Wait, you mean like Davisville? Or Rosedale? Both are a lot more exposed to the elements than, say, Yorkdale, which has mainly existed to serve what is becoming the swankiest mall in the city if not the country. Of course, I’d say that Yorkdale is also one of the coldest stations in the winter, even if the platform has never, ever had any kind of ice and snow on it. Slush and sludgy water? Yes. Ice and snow? Hardly.
I’m also not sure that the areas east of, say, Dundas and Queen stations amount to “wealthy” areas.
But these are extremely tiresome debates. Bus service is inadequate almost everywhere in the city; this is not, however, an insurmountable problem, and several months ago the TTC made a series of proposals (yes, that would cost money) to improve service system wide.
Unfortunately they were rejected by Tory as “unfunded” — which of course is Council’s not the TTC’s job to figure out. The plans are there — the politicians simply lack the spine to tell people that they can’t have their property tax increase kept to the “rate of inflation” or “less” and enjoy better service too.
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Why only in Scarborough?
And if we did, it’s probably not the tea-sipping elite owners of the properties who would be seriously inconvenienced, but their possibly-Scarborough-living domestic helpers.
(reference to “tea-sipping” is ironic, in case that’s not clear)
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I have seen a lot of rants on all kinds of blogs, news sites, youtube, twitter, etc denouncing downtown elites and promoting transit in Scarborough. Might there a Kristian in Scarborough or your identity have been stolen? Please change all your passwords.
Steve: There is one individual who posts here quite regularly under a variety of user names and from various locations. On very rare occasions, his comments get through because he stays on topic, but most of the time he spouts complete BS. Most recently, he made all sort of ridiculous claims suggesting my imminent demise from a variety of ailments from which I do not suffer. The words “full of crap” do not begin to describe my feelings about this person — coupling their arguments to the Scarborough Subway and a love for the Ford family don’t help his credibility one iota. This is the same person who claims that I should be fired from my own blog.
There are assholes in this world as readers of blogs that are not moderated know all too well. I have the little joy a few times a day of clicking “delete”, and these rants vanish into the ether.
BTW, the fake “Kristian” did not highjack an existing userid because all comments here are posted as guests. Anyone can post under any name they choose.
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