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 
Just in case you are wondering, the existence of the ether has long been in doubt (the substance that allegedly fills all of space thought to be necessary for the propagation of electromagnetic waves as well as gravitational forces among other properties). Please see the link and feel free to reply with any questions you may have.
I am curious to see what Robert Wightman and any other physics geeks have to say about the ether.
Steve: Ether, thought to be necessary for the working of various forces, is an earlier incarnation of subway, thought to be necessary to the well being of certain lands to the east.
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In the battle between the “particle theory” and the “wave theory” of light the problem with the wave theory was that in space there was no medium to transfer the wave so the “Luminiferous Aether” was invented as the medium to carry the light waves. It was still in science books into the 50s and was actually in my grade 11 physics text.
Fortunately we discovered electro-magnetic fields as the medium to transmit light waves. Though the ether bears a strong similarity to the funding proposals put out by many proponents of subways and SmartTracks in that they are all imaginary.
Have a happy New Year everyone.
Now I think I shall sip some tea as I cannot stand coffee.
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@Joe M. Yes exactly, I am suggesting that well-off residents of Scarborough, who work in the downtown office towers, take GO if they want to save some time. I worked in one such well-paying downtown job (Queen and Yonge). Two people in my group regularly took the GO train from Mimico station, which is closer to downtown than anything in Scarborough. Note that I consider “well-paying” jobs to be at least $30/hour or $55k /year or up (sometimes way up). These kinds of jobs make $150 or more daily in take-home pay; what’s five or ten dollars to them, if they can get to work an home in less time with minimal hassle? As for me, I usually rode the streetcar or my bicycle. Both were slower than GO, but obviously cheaper (and the bicycle was better exercise). I avoided the subway because of all the crowding. The lesson is, you can have fast, you can have cheap, but if you are cheap, don’t complain that it isn’t fast. There is no way the TTC can provide fast subway service to every corner of the city and retain its flat, low fare. Even GO is restricted to existing rail corridors, and it charges premium fares (as you told us). If GO tried to expand its network within the city, that will have huge capital expenses, and who will pay for that, and how? Same question for subway expansion.
@Jon Johnson Yes difficult travel between distributed housing and employment nodes are a drag on the GTA’s economy in general. However, are you really suggesting that transit improvements will make any significant amelioration to unemployment and underemployment? Certainly transit improvements will help everyone, but especially the struggling, by making their commute ,em>easier,/em>. However, I just can’t see a significant number of people choosing to mop the floors at their local McDonald’s because it would take them an hour and a half to commute to a (better-paying) job that utilizes all their qualifications. Of course they’d pick the commute and live with the loss of time. Or move, or buy a car, or …
@Malcolm N. You neglect to mention that the first subways constructed by the TTC replaced ridiculously overloaded surface routes. Since the late ’60s, and definitely by the time of the opening of the Spadina line to Wilson, this had changed, and the subways became some sort of pseudo-express service into low-demand areas. The subways didn’t replace any overloaded bus or streetcar routes (except on Yonge from Eglinton to Glen Echo); otherwise they were there to promote better system connectivity and/or to promote development clusters in the suburbs. The connectivity helped, especially in the absence of a useful regional express transit system, but the development part fell woefully short. If Markham Road is Yonge Street, then Ellesmere is Bloor Street, and I’m Pinocchio.
Steve: One important point about the relationship between home and work locations is that in many families there are multiple “breadwinners” with multiple jobs (sometimes more than one apiece), not to mention students with their own commuting requirements. It is not practical for their shared housing to be close to all of their jobs/schools. The ability to move well around the region, not just to downtown, increases the market of jobs that are a “reasonable” distance away. A focus on access to only one part of the region ignores the travel demands to many other, albeit diverse, destinations where it may not be practical to have the ideal economic concentration of jobs. The nice-to-have theoretical city does not exist and is unlikely to evolve given that many factors beyond the control of politicians and planners drive the evolution of the urban area.
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@Robert are sure you are allowed out there, I thought tea sipping required a Rosedale address. Even the downtown elite out of Rosedale are only permitted latte.
Steve: I wish to confirm that I re-established, as if there was any doubt, my qualification as a downtowner by having brunch earlier today at Bonjour Brioche where my first order, almost before sitting down and opening my Saturday Globe & Mail was for a latte bowl and an almond croissant. I then returned home on a Dundas car entering service from Russell Carhouse to Broadview Station, a one-seat ride provided for my personal convenience without that ghastly transfer at Broadview & Queen (a location with not just one, but two northbound stops). This is how the pampered elite live.
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I think Scarborough transit needs a subway desperately. I live in Malvern and yesterday was Boxing Day and why do I need to go Downtown just to shop at Holt Renfrew? Why do I have to travel to Downtown just so I can buy a decent suit from Harry Rosen? And why can’t I buy authentic Nike shoes anywhere near here? Why do we have no Rolex stores around here? Do people in Scarborough not need to know time or what and if yes, then how is it possible without a decent store with decent watches? Why everything has to be Downtown? Forget about all that, I can’t even sip coffee at a Starbucks around here as there isn’t any. Even a walk to the welfare office is as much as ten minutes away (I receive Direct Deposit but that’s still twenty minutes wasted every time I have issue with underpayment).
Why we need a subway is not so much to make transportation easier but to kickstart development so that I don’t need to go Downtown just because I need to shop at Louis Vuitton, Gucci, or Prada. Also an Apple store around here would be nice. Ideally everything should be close together: welfare office, Starbucks, American Apparel, Michael Kors, etc.
As the breadwinner (I get more welfare than my common-law partner, he doesn’t want to work either as he doesn’t want to travel several hours back and forth everyday just to get to a decent job Downtown as there are no decent jobs around here) of the family with 5 kids, it is not fair that I have to travel so much just because I exercise my human right to do some shopping. Plus my ex-wife who sits on various corporate boards doing a whole bunch of nothing all day is behind on her child support payments and keeps harassing me and Peter (my partner) – I think that I didn’t want to be with her because she is a conservative and I will vote for a dog (or cat) before I vote for a conservative. Beware folks – NEVER vote for a conservative as the conservatives will cut your welfare.
The apartment here is okay but the location is so bad that I wouldn’t pay one cent in rent if the government wasn’t paying for it (I am trying to relocate to a new TCHC building Downtown but those apartments are smaller and my kids need some running room and I some breathing room as I don’t like 5 naughty spoiled brats screaming in my ears all day and I am trying to get a nanny but welfare says that they won’t pay for her and so I can’t wait for the Conservatives to be defeated next year – I will take a New Democrat, a Liberal, a Green, or hell even a dog to a Conservative any day). I am not sure if I support the DRL yet as I don’t know if my new apartment will be on the proposed line.
Happy New Year and make sure to vote Conservatives out of office as next year as the Conservatives will cut welfare for poverty stricken families like us. My ex-wife will vote for Conservatives as she is a very rich woman who doesn’t like to pay taxes and just bought a brand new condo in the new Aura building. Our kids told me how nice it is but she won’t let me in for even 5 minutes unless I forgive some of her child support debt but that ain’t gonna happen. Our kids tell me that the apartment is so nice that I am willing to get back with her if she would stop voting Conservative.
Steve: On a more serious note, I have but one message for the Liberals and the NDP: you have only one job in 2015, and that is defeating the Tories. If they get back in because the “opposition” would rather fight each other, then no election promise is worth listening to. You can’t deliver from the opposition benches let alone way down at the other end of the House from the Speaker where, for a time, the three remaining Tories sat, and where they so richly deserve to be again.
In the comparative comfort of Broadview & Danforth, I too am Starbucksless, although one has been under construction with a claimed “Fall” opening date for months.
And Happy New Year to you too!
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I used to live on Davisville half way between Yonge and Mt. Pleasant until my parents sold their home to an apartment developer and moved me to Scarborough, a sin for which I have never forgiven them. I can assure you that the residents of this area used to sip tea all the time, a fact to which Steve can attest. My mother was English and only served coffee twice a year, Christmas and New Year’s.
This location, I believe, is responsible for my fascination with transit. I had bus line in front of my house which started at 5:30 a.m. and finished around 2:30 a.m. The Yonge Subway with Davisville yard was a block and a half west and the St. Clair or Earlscourt car, it kept changing, was a block and a half east. Two blocks to the south was the CN belt line spur which was switched by a steam engine every weekday until late 1959 when diesels took over. The city work’s yard across from my school even had steam powered steam rollers and the the milk and bread wagons were horse drawn. So I am entitled to sip tea when ever I feel like it.
Steve: I believe this is what is called “heritage” in some circles.
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Do you suggest the Liberals and NDP merge? In the UK, the Liberal Party and the (New) Democratic Party have merged to form the (New) Liberal Democrats and that is how they got in office and are part of the government. Do you suggest the same here? If they do merge before the elections, then Thomas Mulcair should be the leader of the (New) Liberal Democratic Party of Canada as the NDP being the much larger party in parliament should be the senior partner (Justin Trudeau could be Deputy Prime Minister or the Minister responsible for the Status of Women or the Speaker or some other post of his choosing but as the leader of the junior party in the coalition, Justin Trudeau should NOT be the Prime Minister and if not, then there should be NO coalition).
Steve: Let’s not get carried away. Nothing prevents an agreement not to run against each other and split the vote where there is a danger of the Tories winning a seat with well under 50%. Nothing, that is, beyond the sort of arrogance we saw in the Ontario NDP campaign earlier this year.
Which three?
Steve: Brush up on your history. After the country tired of Brian Mulroney, the Tories were reduced to
three, oops, two seats in 1993, and the members practically sat out in the hall. The party was replaced by the Reform Party with 52 seats.Steve, if Bloc Québécois win all Quebec seats and the rest of the seats are divided evenly between the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, and the Greens – could the Bloc Québécois then being the largest party, theoretically form Government of Canada? Woudl you rather have a Bloc Québécois government (say it were allowed and possible) than a Conservative one? As far as I am concerned, the Bloc is only there block everything no matter who is in power and so even a Conservative minority government will be better than Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe.
Steve: This is pure fantasy. The Greens, for starters will never have as many seats as the mainstream parties. The Bloc will not win all of Quebec by a long shot. You are proposing a situation that is not going to happen. Rather like those who think there will be subways (and nothing else) everywhere.
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What I have advocated for is a more comprehensive approach to developing the region’s competitive strategy, of which transit is an important element. If the proper policies and investments are put in place, then my answer to you would be, yes it is possible to significantly ameliorate unemployment and underemployment. I would add that doing so would also significantly improve the region’s economic performance and also reduce political polarization.
Steve: And it would only take two decades for the effect to be visible — one to get anything of substance in service, and one for its presence to affect future travel patterns and development. The political calendar is a tad shorter than this.
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“The Greens, for starters will never have as many seats as the mainstream parties. The Bloc will not win all of Quebec by a long shot.”
Interesting question—does the Bloc qualify as a mainstream party? If so, there is a real chance the Greens will get more seats than a mainstream party. The latest projection from threehundredeight.com gives the Greens two seats and the Bloc one. I don’t know where anybody would get the idea the Bloc are likely to be a significant force after the next election.
Wait, I just noticed the original poster referred to “Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe”. Has this comment been stuck in the moderation queue for a few years? In any case, no, I’m pretty confident some of the other parties would form a coalition under the extremely improbable circumstance described.
Steve: No, the writer is stuck in a time warp. The post is current.
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Steve I would put to you that the 2 Tories under Kim Campbell, were of Joe Clarke’s conservative, who would not merge with this party. They were of a party that would not even cut provincial transfers as deeply as Chretien’s Liberals finally did.
They were much more socially liberal than this new primarily Reform based party. They would not have supported many of Harper’s “Law and Order” agenda.
Jean Charest was in no way like Harper.
Steve: Yes, I know that the old “Conservative” party was nothing like what we have now, but the “red Tories” are long gone. It is the Harper Tories who deserve to lose almost all their seats, something I know is electorally impossible, but is a wonderful pipedream.
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@Steve, I am hoping that the “red Tories” who are really Tories in the proper sense (as opposed to conservatives) will slowly hijack this new party. There are many like me who believe in smaller government arrived at gently, providing social support and real service, where taxes are low enough to encourage industry and enterprise, high enough to support real services. These do not generally support pushing down taxes mercilessly, or mandatory minimum sentences, or ignoring evidence in other areas either.
Steve: I have been around long enough to remember the days before the Reform Party took over the Tories and purged any semblance of what Margaret Thatcher described as “the wets”.
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Just to clarify to Mike, Steve traced the fake post to the user who had been posting under the name “Voter” up until that point in the thread. (There is other user data he can see logged by the server that isn’t visible to us.) Given his history it was a clear attempt to pass off a comment as one of mine. Anyone coming into the thread with a duplicate name and trying to post legitimately would usually add something to their name to differentiate it or not use their legal name at all. Would you know the difference between two people using exactly the same user names? Would you want people confusing you with another “Mike” if you didn’t share the same viewpoints?
As I said, dissenting views are welcomed by me and most of us on this blog but no one should be pretending to be someone else. I especially don’t appreciate the user trying to put words in my own mouth. I’m not registered on any social media sites because I’m not interested in crazy people screwing up my reputation.
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“Scarborough subway” has become rather a political issue at this time and neither City Hall nor Queen’s Park can back off at this point. The question is that which Scarborough subway makes more sense. Is extension of Danforth subway toward STC in parallel and close to RER or SmartTrack with that cost a wise idea? Most experts agree that this is utterly ridiculous. How about Sheppard subway extension? In my opinion this makes more sense for the following reasons:
1- Sheppard line is a stub line at the moment. Although a huge population lives around this line and tens of new condos have been built, not many people use this line because of lack of “networking”. Had this line been extended toward STC, the demand of this line would have been much higher.
2- Sheppard street is very congested between Consumers and Kennedy. This section needs under ground service for the same reason that Eglinton Crosstown is built under ground in the center part.
3- Connecting an under ground subway to an underground LRT doesn’t seem wise since both share the most expensive part which is tunnelling.
4- Extension of Sheppard subway is on Scarborough territory and still considered “Scarborough subway” which makes politicians and people happy!
The question now is where to end Sheppard subway. In my opinion, Agincourt is the best place. It would be the connection point of Sheppard subway, SmartTrack and possibly Sheppard east LRT going to UTSC.
With this configuration, Sheppard subway is integrated to the network and a loop is created by Sheppard line, SmartTrack and Danforth line.
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@Reza G, I would be deeply concerned that this would
1- Be very expensive to operate (as well as build),
2- Possibly further increase loading issues on the Yonge line.
If the only criteria was being in Scarborough, it might perhaps make as much sense to run it down Vic Park, and then turn to the core somewhere south of Danforth. This would provide the single seat ride to the core. However I dare say, it would be a poorer location, serving fewer people who need service than one anchored at Don Mills & Eglinton.
If there must be a subway in Scarborough, it should likely be short extension of BDL, to provide additional turning capacity, and a better location for future LRT, BRT & bus connections, that will best complement Kennedy.
Toronto needs to get a handle on the notion that subways need to be built for very high ridership applications. Toronto has overly long subway, where as mentioned above the development has not really followed. If it were the length of the lines, and the lack of parallel capacity to the core, would be an even larger issue. This will soon be the biggest subway issue for Scarborough, if ridership has not shifted to RER.
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@Malcolm N Thank you for your comment. To address your concerns I need to mention a few points:
1- Regarding the cost, assuming that we have saved 3B on BDL extension and also saved 0.5B on Sheppard east LRT (By making it shorter than original plan) we would have 3.5B in the system. Sheppard subway extension to Agincourt roughly needs 2.2B. Additional 1.3B may be used to pursue SLRT plan from Kennedy at least up to STC
2- Regarding the overloading of Yonge line, I don’t believe that anyone from Scarborough travels all the way to Yonge line and then into downtown by ignoring RER or SmartTrack. Those people of Scarborough who wish to travel toward North York core and possibly York University will use Sheppard Subway for sure.
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This issue has been kicked around this blog a few times. The general consensus is yes those few people who make the trip would use it but the total numbers are probably very low.
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Steve, how long will the Scarborough subway design work take to complete? As indicated by this article, work has already begun. Mayor Tory seems to be moving pretty fast on his campaign promises and while I voted for Ford in the last election, Tory will have my vote if he chooses to run again.
Steve: There are two stages to the design work. First is the background material needed for the Environmental Assessment. Because Queen’s Park and City Hall have already committed to studying at least two routes (the City’s McCowan version, and the former Minister’s route via the SRT alignment), at least these have to be looked at, plus, I expect variations on treatments of both Kennedy Station and of the link with or through STC.
The EA itself will decide on which alignment would proceed, and that’s not going to be out of the way until likely early 2016. Then detailed design has to be done on the selected scheme, a process that can be two years long. There is a lot of preliminary work such as soils testing to verify conditions for tunnelling, and then the actual construction process. I would be surprised to see serious work begin before late 2017, but with both a provincial and municipal election due in 2018, I suspect there will be a lot of pressure to have something underway.
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@Reza G
From what I can recall the actual number of trips indicated in the travel intentions survey from east of Vic Park to North York is quite small. Thus would not fill a subway. The Sheppard and other buses that do go to the current line do carry a large portion of traffic to the Yonge line to go south. However with Smarttrack in place perhaps the flow would head there starting further west and might represent a small diversion. However based on what I recall from the transportation survey, there would not likely be enough ridership to justify such a route as subway. I believe this route would attract a lower ridership than the BDL extension, although it would be interesting to see this modeled with Smarttrack in place. I would hope a real modeling would be done and used in selecting new routes. I think rapid transit through the area is required just that the ridership does not yet indicate subway.
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@Malcolm N
The model should consider travellers from Markham to North York core using SmartTrack and Sheppard subway and also travellers from North York that would feel more convenient to travel to Scarborough with a subway extension. One other important factor which must be considered in the model is possible electrification of Richmond Hill Go train (RER). This would have an intersection with Sheppard subway at Leslie and may be a Yonge relief line in the future which also provides a path from Richmond Hill to Scarborough.
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To all those screaming there isn’t enough ridership to justify a Scarborough subway, consider this: Kennedy is the 4th busiest subway station in Toronto.
To all those screaming there isn’t enough density to justify a Scarborough subway, consider this: the Scarborough town Centre area is several times more dense than the vast majority of the Bloor Danforth line.
To all those screaming that there isn’t enough feeder bus services to justify a Scarborough subway, the Scarborough Centre station is the second busiest of all subway and RT stations in terms of bus traffic (behind only Finch) with buses coming from Durham Region, Scarborough itself, North York, and York Region.
Steve: You are arguing the strength and capacity of feeder services in Scarborough, a valid approach. But you then talk about low density around the BD stations which get their loading from a combination of walk-in trade and surface feeders (just like STC or Kennedy). Density immediately at stations is more important for job/academic nodes because they are destinations where demand is focussed. Residential density originates trips that go off in many directions, and at less concentrated times.
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@steve
Do you have any cost comparison between LRT and BRT? What are pros and cons of each? Has any BRT route ever been proposed for Scarborough?
Thanks
Steve: There was some early talk of BRT in Scarborough, but the projected demand (even before it was inflated to justify the subway by adding rides originating in Markham) was in the range of 8k/hour at peak. To put that in context, this is more than 100 buses/hour past the peak point, something that would be very difficult and expensive to operate and require quite large stations. There are claims of very high capacities provided by BRT, notably in South America, but these include substantially more infrastructure (lanes, size of stations) than would be contemplated here.
In a setting where multiple routes can feed into a BRT line-haul corridor, one can eliminate the need to transfer riders at the point of consolidation, but this also depends on the lion’s share of trips being through trips. This was the design for Ottawa’s busways that worked, for a time, a suburb-to-core express operations, but eventually ran out of capacity on the bus mall downtown. Ottawa is now building an LRT line including a central tunnel.
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Using the SRT alignment for subway/LRT/RT is a complete waste simply because of station locations in the middle of nowhere, underneath tall bridges, away from any major streets, and often not even accessible by bus let alone by pedestrians. 95% of the pedestrians on the SRT use only Kennedy and STC and if the stations were located in better places, then the ridership would be at least twice as high. I think that most people in Scarborough would have been happy with a 100% grade separated LRT as long as the stations were not in the middle of nowhere like the RT stations are (i.e. a new elevated right of way for the LRT from Kennedy to at least Malvern).
Steve: I agree that studying the SRT alignment is a complete waste, but for different reasons — there are severe challenges to fitting a subway onto that route, and it requires a completely new station at Kennedy because the existing one points east, not north. This is a leftover of Glen Murray’s meddling, and I hope that the study can look more at the effect of improved service in the GO corridor (regardless of what we call it) on long-haul trips attempting to use the extended subway. As for station locations, I would remind you that according to Glenn (subway champion) De Baeremaeker, it does not matter if the stations are close to anyone because they will all arrive by bus feeders. Now he wants a station at Eglinton/Brimley, but his tune was different when defending a subway line with a handful of stops versus the LRT plans.
It would be easier to engage with some subway supporters if they didn’t seem to be making up justifications for their project as they went along, and this is compounded by the outrageously condescending attitude GDB has to folks downtown, the authors of every ill in Scarborough by his reckoning.
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These helpful images were posted over at UT several years ago but things have probably not changed too much over the past 7-8 years, other than the central area growing faster than the rest of the city.
Toronto Density Map 2006
Toronto Density Map 2006 (2)
Those pesky facts and reality rear their ugly heads again.
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@Steve, in terms of BRT in Scarborough I think it is a much more interesting discussion in terms of as an addition to LRT. I would be interested to see a proposal on Lawrence east via Don Mills to a junction with the Crosstown & a Don Mills subway. On Finch East with the existence of RER in Richmond Hill and Stouffville, and LRT on Don Mills. It would also be interesting to see a business case for a Markham Rd BRT in a post RER and LRT in SRT (or even subway) Scarborough. I think the issue of building subway needs to be seen through the lense of making such other projects impossible, and the need for widespread radical service improvement as the city grows. I mourn the lost opportunities that have already resulted from the Vaughan extension, and the large associated operating costs and massive capital that could have been better deployed (including in Scarborough).
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I recall a plan for BRT on Ellesmere but nothing else.
The best way to understand what routes have the best potential for rapid transit is probably to look at a combination of things like:
*Existing demand along the corridor
*Presence of express buses on the corridor
*Presence of articulated buses or very high frequency services
*How much of the current service is trunk and how much is branches
*Location of anchors
Or you could just look at an old Transit City map before it was separated into LRT and Bus plans.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: It’s important to distinguish “corridors” from “demand”. Ellesmere in and of itself is only a convenient way to get buses to STC. Don’t confuse this with there being inherent demand that would warrant a BRT.
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As can be seen, North York and Scarborough have about the same density (as can also be seen in Wikipedia): why then does North York have a gazillion subway stops and building more with Spadina subway extension and building underground LRT stops in Scarborough while Scarborough has only 3 subway stops and 2 of them are weather exposed and the Scarborough portion of Eglinton LRT will be in the middle of the road 100% exposed to the weather?
Steve: Dare I say two things. First, North York is over-served and benefits in part from demand that originates in York Region, not in North York per se. Second, the argument that “they have it so I should too” completely avoids the implied distaste for the excessive building in North York. If it is any consolation, of the Eglinton LRT stops that are in North York, only one will be underground (Don Mills) as this will be a major interchange, just like the underground LRT stop at Kennedy Station in Scarborough.
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You mean as an addition to subway? Get over it fella, subway is coming to Scarborough whether anyone likes it or not. After the subway is built, the LRT should be build to Centennial College but the keyword is after to minimize disruption. As to the proposed Scarborough Centre subway station being located somewhat farther from the mall, the mall can be expanded towards to the subway station (perhaps something like PATH system in Downtown).
Can we get a source for that please? Unless he told you so in person, there must be a source you can point us to.
Steve: I am not going to look up chapter and verse, but he repeated that line many times during the debates at Council (some of which I attended in person, or watched in real time online) to “justify” the subway stops being so far apart. It’s not a question of him telling me personally, he told the world, repeatedly, and used this position as a counter-argument to the “LRT has more stops” position. Oddly enough, he has explicitly acknowledged this in his defense of the Eglinton/Brimley stop now proposed and is saying that he learned from the LRT advocates that more stops are better.
If you are accusing me of making this stuff up, I suggest you do some research first to prove me wrong.
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@Lockwood, the point of BRT in a post LRT Scarborough, is that LRT leaves much more in the way of resources both in terms of capital and operating. The Vaughan extension will already require a large pool of additional operating dollars. Subway in Scarborough will be much the same. LRT would have allowed improved services there and resources to do much more.
I still have hope for LRT as it would provide better service than subway in that corridor and then we could still build much more. Discussing things that are no longer affordable is much less interesting. Also LRT could be built much faster and further.
Politically getting more for Scarborough will be much easier also if they are not perceived to have gotten much, and Etobicoke will want its share, as it is no better served than Scarborough, as subway is only in the south. This will likely mean decades before Scarborough will be on the agenda again. Subway in my mind is being pushed by politics of fear and division, not what serves best. The original RT was pushed by politics of grand ambition, which would not permit flexibility. I merely hope that in negotiating a deal to implement subway the idea of serving the residents somehow sneaks in while an election campaign is not being waged.
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@ Malcolm N
Your point of view regarding LRT in Scarborough completely makes sense and is endorsed by most transportation experts (Not politicians). I am surprised that Scarborough subway advocates do not talk about the effect of SmartTrack in that region at all. This electrified line runs in parallel with proposed subway almost one mile away. Why should 3B be wasted for building something redundant? RER will provide every 15 min. Service which means that each traveller in average has to wait only 7.5 min at the station. Bus routes in Scarborough may be re designed to get to RER at Lawrence east and Ellesmere. Of course these stations must be re designed with much less cost. Can anyone claim that Scarborough would make SmartTrack overloaded? I doubt. Even if that’s the case, other more affordable means such as BRT can be considered in parallel or even RER may have more frequent services between Agincourt and Kennedy.
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@Reza G
Thank you, I would also hope at peak this RER service would push to 10 minutes at least at peak. There is also the distinct possibility of improved service in Lakeshore East that should be campaigned for that could mean a train there every 10 minutes instead of the current 30 minute headway for the Scarborough portion of the line.
Steve: Far too much attention has been placed on a north-south service given the whole RT/LRT/Subway debate, but little has been said about the benefit of the Lakeshore East corridor especially if there is some sort of unified GO/TTC fare at a reasonable level. It’s quite ridiculous that we would have a TTC fare service from, say, Agincourt to Union, but not from Rouge Hill or other Scarborough stations. The same applies to the rest of the inside-416 GO network and potentially creates a real headache for the SmartTrack proposal of TTC fares on GO services.
The whole idea that SmartTrack would solve every problem one could imagine within Toronto is appallingly short-sighted, and dare I say it, might make some parts of the city feel excluded from its benefits.
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Far too much attention has been placed on a Downtown Relief Line but little has been said about the benefits for Downtowners of the already in place all day 2 way service on both the Lakeshore East and Lakeshore West lines.
Steve: The last time I looked, “downtowners” do not use the Lakeshore line. People from the suburbs who work downtown do, but that’s another group. Meanwhile, the DRL is intended to provide another route and more capacity into the core area for riders who are closer to downtown than GO Transit territory. Also, of course, at TTC, not GO, fares.
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@Nick, I hate to say it but the DRL does not help those living in High Park, Parkdale, the Annex, Chinatown, Little Italy, little Portugal or Kensington market or Chinatown areas. It will make little difference to Rosedale, or Moore Park, or the Yonge & St Clair or Eglinton neighborhoods, perhaps a little in Riverdale if the route goes there, but a real fix to the King car would likely be better for these riders.
However for riders from the BDL or Crosstown this will be essential, as volume through Yonge and Bloor continues to grow. Thorncliffe or Flemingdon Park (not downtown) will also be greatly assisted with real service. However the DRL is essentially a network enhancement required for capacity. Anyone who rides the subway to the core during peak should be very aware of why. Most of these riders do not originate downtown.
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Why is it every time I read a similar comment, I think of various things ranging from the denial of the existence of a vacuum by the church in the 13th century to the use of physicians for cigarette commercials in the early 1950s?
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During the last holidays I was visiting Montreal and I was really impressed with their subway system. Why is Toronto’s subway system so unsophisticated? Why is building subways so expensive today compare to 40-50 years ago? Why does it take forever to build only a few km line? (7 years for 3 stations!). I know in some other parts of the world it is much faster. Regarding Scarborough, if this non sense subway sucks 3.5B$, there should not be any more spending for Scarborough for more LRT or BRT lines. Other parts of the city must be the focus of the next plans. Sheppard west subway, Don Mills LRT, DRL need to be built.
Steve: Montreal’s subway system was built to impress, at least the early segments, as a matter of civic and provincial pride. Like Toronto, the Montreal system’s large-scale expansion is in the past with selected extensions discussed more than they are funded. The density of routes is impressive compared to Toronto, but this is aided in part by Montreal’s relatively compact geography. I am not sure I would use the term “unsophisticated” unless you are talking about station design. Every time someone tries to get more attractive stations in Toronto, this is inevitably criticized as “waste”. Operationally, Montreal has saddled itself with a technology that requires smaller cars and underground alignments because it chose to emulate rubber-tired operation from Paris. Fare cards came into use in Montreal some time ago although the implementation was roughly one of duplicating through technology the existing fare structure of multiple overlapping transit operators. In some ways this is not unlike the Presto implementation in Toronto where the cost of true fare integration is a drag on political support for revising the fare structure region-wide.
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It will help Steve near Broadview Station where he has been a long time resident.
Steve: This is an attitude so typical of the small-minded “the DRL is all about downtowners” approach we hear from its detractors. For me personally, the benefit of a DRL would be that I could actually get on a westbound train at Broadview in the AM peak and that, possibly, Bloor-Yonge will not become any more crowded than it is already. However, I have alternate routes into the core (the King and Dundas cars), and if my destination is further south and I absolutely have no choice but to travel during the peak, that’s my choice.
Meanwhile, the thousands of people who pour into Broadview and Pape Stations on buses serving areas further north would directly benefit from a DRL. There would also be benefits to all users of the core system downtown by diverting riders away from the lower “U” and the BD/YUS junctions.
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@Reza G
While I agree with the sentiment regarding the Scarborough subway, I do not think Sheppard West justifies subway. Don Mills LRT does make sense, but the only subway proposed that actually has justifying ridership is the eastern side of the DRL. It addresses a fundamental capacity issue in the current network.
It is too bad that Sheppard was not initially built as LRT, as it would now be easy and natural to extend it in both directions.
I can see a short tunnel to bring Finch west LRT all the way from the airport to Yonge eventually, and perhaps ridership on Finch east may even justify making it cross Yonge. However, it is important to remember an LRT can reasonably absorb the same number or more as the 401 corridor. There are few areas that exceed this now in Toronto, and we need to spread higher quality service to more areas.
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Give the people what the people want which is subway in Scarborough. LRT is popular in Downtown and so we can build DRL as an LRT line (tunnelling where road widening and elevating not possible).
Steve: But the demand on the DRL will exceed LRT capabilities, unlike the subway in Scarborough. You don’t always get what you want.
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Is there any study about the effect of SmartTrack on BDL? If that absorbs the load from Scarborough to DT, we may not need DRL as a priority. An underground LRT from Pape to Queen station aligned with Donmills LRT might be more suitable.
Steve: Presuming that Metrolinx conducts a full study of the network effects of ST and other options, we should see what effect ST will have on the BD line. My gut feeling is that the effect will be mainly to drain previously modelled demand away from the BD extension, and to a lesser extent from the Yonge line.
There are three fundamental problems here. First, if ST does not operate with TTC fares and free transfer between this and other TTC routes, then it has little hope of attracting much riding away from the TTC system. Second, ST is claimed to be capable of drawing 250k riders/day but this was based on extremely frequent service in the background studies. What is proposed is one train every 15 minutes, and the claimed demand is not credible at that level. Third, the demand that would be handled by the DRL is in a separate corridor further west. Its purpose is to offload the Yonge line to make room for more passengers coming in from a Richmond Hill subway extension.
In that last sense, and most importantly, the “Downtown” relief line is really the “Richmond Hill” relief line because the existing network cannot handle the demand that would result from the extension. A related question is the matter of frequent service at a reasonable fare from Richmond Hill to downtown on GO. The intent would not be to capture all of the traffic (people bound for midtown could well opt to stay with the subway rather than doubling back from Union, especially if that were a separate fare), but to lop the peak off of the demand to keep the subway from collapsing under the load.
Another important point about LRT vs subway for the DRL is that even if the demand were within LRT capabilities, the actual alignment a DRL would take would be almost entirely underground because of constraints at many points along the way. The physical infrastructure would be equivalent to a full subway and running it as “LRT” would not make sense.
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So, if George (along with all other suburban subway backers) were to redesign the human body, they would put major veins and arteries in the fingers and toes, while using capillaries to connect them to the heart in the chest. Except, that the cost of doing this would mean that only one finger or toe would have the bloodflow it needs and the other nineteen would have to do without.
There is a reason it isn’t that way.
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Hi Steve and Reza:-
Well if unsophisticated means that we had adopted proven reliable technology over magic carpets, we are and we should continue to be unsophisticated. Unfortunately, government intervention into fleet designs have not improved on the basics, which we now appear to be losing, but muddies up the good stuff inappropriately.
And if unsophisticated means stations that are easily cleaned and bland, well, wahtcha there for? Go to the AGO if you want works of art. I just wanna get from A to B, thank you very much.
The Montreal system’s ‘Metro sur pnue’, is a technology that took something that worked well and f—-d it up. Why? Yup, civic pride, a one up on Ole TO and boy if that great French city can do it, although they shouldn’t have, then the Paris of the west should do it too, by gar!
Which brings to mind that the Montreal Tramways was one of the most innovative streetcar systems in North America and certainly had the TTC beat hands down in a number of areas, until politics and of course Paris France destroyed the system. If Paris doesn’t have streetcars, neither should Montreal. Too bad, so sad.
Dennis
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