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 
Moaz: The problem with that statement is that it ignores the history of the changes to the line after the election of Rob Ford, where the Eglinton line would have run completely underground and be combined with the Scarborough LRT.
If Rob Ford had been willing to allow the construction of the east portion of the line on the surface then yes, construction could have been started in 2010 and the east end of the line might be close to completion now, perhaps starting operations later this year.
Similarly without the delays and objections, the Sheppard East LRT and Scarborough LRT could be substantially complete by now.
Cheers, Moaz
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Not only do I recall that, I also recall that part of Rob’s plan was to build an extension of the BD line to STC via the SRT corridor starting from Woodbine station.
Steve: I just looked at Ford’s 2010 campaign info, and it quite clearly shows the BD/STC extension starting at Kennedy, not at Woodbine.
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@Reza G
I would put to you that the notion that LRT is perforce more expensive to operate is a ludicrous one. It is in essence the same basic type of equipment as subway in terms of motors, drive systems, regenerative braking etc. Further the electrical installations are much simpler and less expensive.
However, as Steve noted, subway is less expensive to operate at a capacity of 15k. The question would be what in both cases is the service design. It would clearly be cheaper to run trains with a capacity of 1250 12 times per hour or have a train every 5 minutes at peak. However, if that line then is going to maintain a reasonable headway, well. It would require twice the operators and twice the trains to operate trains of 625 24 times per hour or 500 30 times per hour at peak. The question is what service design do we want. Off peak these large trains then should be cut back to once every 10 minutes, whereas the LRT would drop to once every 5.
You previously noted how crowded the Sheppard station was, during the rush, and yet fewer people flow through there than Finch by a long shot. It is not just the number of people per hour, but how they arrive. The Sheppard Subway operates on a 5-minute headway, whereas Yonge operates on a 2.5-minute headway at peak. What that means in effect is that for every other train on Yonge there is a large load at Sheppard. Sheppard subway current service design is actually creating a situation downstream where every other train will be arriving much more loaded.
Service design needs to be such that when there is a major transfer point, there is not an unmanageable pulse, but such that the load is spread to be manageable. Yes it is cheaper to operate larger trains, as you require fewer operators. I would also question in the case of this study, which costs were loaded in, and excluded. Were the station operations treated as standing costs, or were they included in costs of operations, etc. The TTC when these studies were done, were very worried about getting pulled into another debacle like the Scarborough RT. In transit, there is no such thing as there being a long term advantage to being first out the gate with a new technology. LRT is not a new technology, and the current generation is well established (just not here), whereas the RT, when the TTC was the guinea pig/showcase for an Industrial Development project on the part of the Ontario Government. The major transit projects in Toronto are not a place to test bed a technology any more. They should be tested someplace where the load can be easily shifted to other modes, and the spare capacity is readily available.
P.S.
However, one of the things that the TTC also has good reason to be concerned about is the operation of signals along these routes. This is a relatively well understood thing, that the city generally fails to really deal with well, and for all transit.
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Oh please, like all trees that are being cut as a result of the road widening project (that is the Eglinton LRT in Scarborough) are dead. And you showed no sympathy about the said trees even in early 2013 (well before the ice storm) when another reader brought it up. Some of the most severely affected trees as a result of the ice storm were in Riverdale East Park and cutting them down will provide a good DRL right of way on Broadview which could be widened as a result of cutting down the said trees.
Steve: The DRL does not belong on Broadview which has no capacity to handle the level of service needed for its projected demand. Also, Broadview is too far west as the north-south link if the line is going to continue north to Thorncliffe Park and Eglinton. The damaged trees in Riverdale Park were generally not immediately west of the street in any event. Damage was much worse further north through East York.
I would love to know how you plan to widen Broadview at Danforth, not to mention from Gerrard south.
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P.S.S. Steve, Calgary I believe sited 27 cents as a per passenger operating cost for LRT in 2005-6? From a paper on Effective use of capital for Calgary Transit.
How would that compare to the cost of operation for say the Yonge Line? Perhaps more to the point the Sheppard Line?
Steve: This sort of thing gets very tricky, and even I, frequently accused of biased analysis as I am in some quarters, would not take these numbers at face value. For example, the comparison is between per boarding costs on the LRT network vs the bus network, but there is no real discussion of what it would cost to operate the LRT lines (or at least to carry their demand) with buses. Once upon a time, the TTC reported all of its costs per vehicle mile even though the predominant factor was operator wages which are a function of vehicle hours. Slower modes (e.g. streetcars and trolley coaches that ran on the busy, slow routes) “cost more” on that basis, and this formed part of the argument for getting rid of the streetcar network in the 1960s.
The average speed of the bus network today is over 40% higher than the streetcar network, a factor directly related to the operating conditions of the routes each mode serves. The cost/mile values for “buses” are artificially low as a point of comparison because the network the buses serve is not the same as the one the streetcars serve. It is worth noting how many buses the TTC manages to find every time they have to bus a portion of the streetcar network for track construction. The number of bus hours required is far more than the streetcar service that was replaced, and this cannot all be explained by additional running time for diversions around construction.
Another problem with “per boarding” costs is that one boarding is not necessarily the same as another. How far does the average rider travel? In effect, how much “service” do they consume. On the TTC network, the cost per boarding for very short routes such as the lines that run from the BD subway 2km south to Queen is very small because nobody travels very far, there is a high turnover, and there is good bi-directional demand on most routes. By contrast, the cost per boarding on Lawrence East is high because of the long average trip length. Oddly enough, the service on those short routes tends to be less frequent because they are not long enough to accumulate heavy loads before everyone gets off. It does not matter that the productivity is high (measured in boardings/mile or /hour), only that the buses have empty space, and that means we can run less service while remaining within loading standards.
Finally, if we want to talk about the subway, don’t forget that the majority of its “boardings” used a surface route to access the line, and there’s a good chance that traffic would not exist without the surface network. Calculating a per boarding cost for the subway is meaningless if we ignore the service that brought people to the line in the first place. Looked at another way, if Yonge Street operated with buses, we would not need anywhere near as much service on the east-west feeder routes. Similarly, if a new north-south rapid transit service (whatever the technology) were to intercept riders who must now travel to Yonge, the savings in feeder service costs would be an offset to the new cost of the rapid transit line, not to mention the avoided cost of capacity on the existing network. This is precisely the sort of analysis that should go into things like the RER, SmartTrack and the DRL, not just for capital costs, but service levels, fares and transfer privileges.
There are many, many opportunities to skew cost estimates for transit routes to suit whatever argument one may wish to make, but the important one is “what would it cost to operate service X (or better network X) with mode Y”. Then we can get into meaningful cost comparisons (along with effects such as demand induced by service quality and capacity).
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I would really want to agree, except at Danforth, Gerrard, and other points, the street, building to building (including sidewalks) is only 19-20 metres wide. That would mean there is not actually enough room to add any lanes, or run tracks other than the ones that are already there, and this would make Broadview come down to a single lane at critical points. Broadview may have a broad view (valley to the west at certain points), but not a particularly broad right of way. I believe this would be a single chain road allowance (meaning 66 feet). That would mean 2 solid lanes each way (48-50 feet) 2 sidewalks (about 8 feet) and then a little space total on the order of 3 feet each side. Where you would place extra lanes in that is beyond me, as there are some buildings that appear to be right on the edge of the road allowance. I believe the space along Eglinton where it is not tunneled is considerably wider, with another couple of lanes or road allowance (it might even be a 2 chain road allowance).
Steve: As a generic point about road space and LRT lines, it is also worth noting that where a very frequent bus service would be replaced by an LRT, the existing bus service consumes a large part of the curb lane capacity. This would be reclaimed once the LRT took over.
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@Malcolm N
Some people actually believe that Sheppard Subway is running literary empty. I mentioned the statistics that actually shows that Sheppard subway has more ridership than Scarborough RT (49440>40290) although some may have different interpretation of that statistics. Also TTC reported on the performance of Sheppard subway on its first year:
As you can see 11 out of 15 million is not a horrible wrong mistake and the projection was only 26% bellow target considering that unlike present time in the first year of operation there was no booming along Sheppard East.
In 2003, the TTC brought forward a report suggesting that the top priority for subway expansion should be a eastward extension to Victoria Park, with an intermediate station at Consumers Road.
TTC adds:
A funny thing in Metrolinx plan for Sheppard East LRT is that it must be built underground between Don Mills and Consumers which is very close to Victoria park. Also riders must walk a quite distance between Don Mills subway station and Don Mills LRT station. We all know that tunneling is the part that makes subway construction expensive so why not simply extend subway to consumers/Victoria park? This way a better terminal station can be designed that passengers transfer from subway mode to LRT mode easier.
Steve: That is a flat out lie. The connection at Don Mills is an across the platform transfer from the LRT line to the subway. I use the word “lie” because I am getting tired of convenient “facts” that are not true in claims about how the LRT proposals would work. I may be generous and suggest that you are badly misinformed, but if that’s the case, you should do better research before posting comments like that here.
The TTC proposal (albeit with a poor illustration) dates from 2009. Queen’s Park had a crazy scheme to through-route the Finch and Sheppard LRT lines via a Don Mills connection. This was forced into the design by then Premier McGuinty, and it fell off of the map rather quickly. It is no longer being considered. A classic case of drawing a line on a map because it looked good, not because it made sense. Politicians are very good at that sort of thing.
Regarding LRT technology is has been brought to my attention that in last couple of days, streetcars on Queen street have been shut down and replaced with buses for cold weather! You may blame the old technology but my point is that we need to test and monitor this new technology for a few years in Toronto (Let say in Finch West ) before spending big capital costs to run it everywhere.
Steve: This has been dragged out by other comments here. First off, the new streetcars are working just fine thank you, a point that has been reported by the TTC. The shortcomings of the old cars were avoided in the new design. Second, although 25 streetcars were not able to enter service, the remainder of the fleet is out on the street. These cars are over 30 years old, and their condition does not represent what would be used on new lines. As for new technology, I hope that you have a similarly jaundiced view of whatever equipment might be proposed for RER or SmartTrack. You are aware, I assume, that there were serious teething problems with the last batch of subway cars including delivery delays due to quality control problems.
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Don’t make things up. Just ask Steve to confirm that they would never have built the Scarborough portion first even though it is on-surface and could be done in a very small fraction of the time as the underground portion in richer areas to the west. Steve mentioned above, “There is no point in building the surface part first and have it sit there unused.”
Thanks!
Steve: Oh here we go again about the “rich vs the poor”. For what it’s worth, the question of the eastern leg came up earlier today on Twitter:
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Firstly, Metrolinx is only replacing less than 10% of all trees cut and many of these trees being cut are hundred to two hundred years massive trees being replaced by street trees that will be dead in two years if not less (in terms of biomass cutting massive old trees and replacing them with baby trees, we would only have replaced 1/100,000 of the tree mass cut out. Trees don’t thrive in LRT environment may be people and developers do. Secondly, you can’t just replace hundred, two hundred years old trees with baby trees and say you are done and all damage has been reversed. These new trees which are unlikely to survive long will never live to be that grand, that massive as the trees we are cutting and definitely not in our life times. People who cut trees should be charged with murder and those who support it or otherwise turn a bind eye to it should be charged as accessories.
There are plenty of precedents for building subways where they are not needed (Sheppard, Vaughan) and so (using Steve’s reasoning) let’s build the Scarborough subway.
Steve: Oh the BS is getting deeper and deeper here (although it would make good fertilizer). Please tell me, by location, where the 100-200 year old trees are to be cut down. and more generally what your source is for the claims you make here. The level of fabrication surrounding anti-LRT claims is getting truly astounding, and deeply wounds your credibility (and those of others in this thread).
As for unneeded subways, if you can find somewhere that I advocated building either the Sheppard or Vaughan lines, good luck. In both cases, I was advocating for LRT.
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Steve said: I just looked at Ford’s 2010 campaign info, and it quite clearly shows the BD/STC extension starting at Kennedy, not at Woodbine.
Actually, I was referring to the map he used in his video which indicated that the section from west of Victoria Park (my mistake) to Kennedy would be “completed by 2015”.
Steve: Yup. They fixed they in the promotional literature, but it gives an idea of the competence of the campaign. I could hardly stomach the lies about LRT and streetcars in the first few minutes of that piece, but noticed that the “live in northeast Scarborough and work downtown” myth we hear a lot lately was one of his major arguments.
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@ Steve I assume that you had nothing to say about 1.2km LRT underground tunneling between Don Mills and Consumers which will be filled by LRT tracks instead of subway extension and you tried to divert the attentions to Don Mills station connection layout.
Steve: “Divert”? The claim was that there would be a long connection for LRT passengers transferring to the subway, and that’s what I was addressing. FYI the intent was that the LRT tunnel would be built to permit a future subway extension and so it would not be a throwaway expenditure.
Stop misrepresenting what I write. You are getting extremely tiring.
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Steve just curious, how much of the areas in question would have been farm land, say 90 years ago?
Steve: Farmland or wild valleys. All of it. Don’t forget that a good chunk of Eglinton Avenue East did not even exist 90 years ago. It shows up on maps [here and here], but it was not in the form we know it today with bridges and fills across valleys. When I was born in 1948, Eglinton and Bayview was a swamp. I remember brand new houses in Leaside with no trees around them. [Maps linked from Nathan Ng’s website.]
Also, while I appreciated your very to the point response with regards to comparing costs, I would suggest to all, that on a reasonable basis, LRTs do not cost more to operate per passenger mile, or boarded passenger, for the portion of the trip so served, as long as they are of an appropriate size. However, I fully appreciate your point, the other costs of creating much larger funnels to justify heavier services must also be taken into account. LRT is not perforce cheaper the a bus, where there are only passengers to fill a bus route. Again, build the mode that will offer the appropriate capacity most effectively.
@Reza G
I am not suggesting that the Sheppard Subway is empty, as the TTC has opted to offer capacity that is closer to the demand. However, I believe that the corridor would be better served by a more frequent service of smaller capacity.
Unlike some of the more truculent commenters here, I will not suggest it should be eliminated, although if LRT could be easily run through the tunnel I would suggest that. Smaller capacity increments, suit LRT better, and I believe that Sheppard would be better served by trains about 1/2 the size nearly twice as often. I suspect it would also attract additional ridership that way, which might be an issue, although the pulse issue would be greatly reduced. The issue now is that service needs to be extended a very great distance, well beyond the STC, but will not have the ridership to actually justify reasonable subway service. Personally given a choice between a BRT with a bus every 2 minutes, and an LRT with one every 10 I would take a BRT, and given a choice between an LRT with a good right of way, that would be my preferred vehicle, however, if it was facing 25,000 passengers an hour, well I would prefer a subway. I am very much of the mind frequent, fast, comfortable and affordable are what I want my transit to be. Subway to a ridership of 6-8k means it is easier unaffordable, or way too long a wait. LRT with a ridership of 25k per hour, means it is either ridiculously crowded, or is somehow being offered with 150+ metre long trains at under 2 minute intervals (not really practical for in median operations).
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I am just wondering do you have the same logic for the underground tunnel between Donmills and Consumers?!
Steve: That section is underground because of the DVP interchange and crossing, and because in order to provide an across-the-platform transfer at Don Mills Station, it must drop underground east of the DVP to hit the vertical level of the existing subway. The analogy to the DRL would only make sense if the entire Sheppard line from Yonge to, say, STC had to be underground. Again you are twisting an argument to suit your thesis.
By the way, it’s “Don Mills”, not “Donmills”. I am tired of making corrections to your text. I would hope if you were so concerned about this corridor, you would actually know the correct names of the streets and stations.
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Don Mills or Donmills you didn’t answer my question at all. Do you agree that based on your previous logic, Sheppard subway must end at Consumers instead of Don Mills?
And some typos are because of my cell phones auto corrections. Sorry for that.
Steve: No, I do not agree at all. Building an underground subway station at Consumers Road is considerably more expensive than extending the LRT through a tunnel (that will be built for either option) to the east end of the existing structure at Don Mills. The LRT Consumers Road Station would be on the surface. Only its ramp down into the new tunnel would be LRT-only infrastructure. There is also a good chance that if the subway is extended, there will be no station at Consumers Road at all as a cost saving measure because it will be considered as “too close” to Victoria Park.
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Yes but what you fail to mention is that it could also be reclaimed by underground LRT.
Steve: At $300m or more per km, that is a very expensive road widening project.
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Rob & Steve, I would like to further note, that I do not understand the obsession with being underground. Why do you want to be stuck in a tube, when you can go through neighborhoods. Further, as you pass by the businesses along the way, you will be aware of what is available, which is part of making a city liveable. One of the things that makes me prefer LRT or train, is that there is a view of some sorts. I am not looking at the blank walls of a subway tunnel, or into the darkness, or worse making sure I do not look too long at anyone in the car.
Can we please just get the city to actually commit to really making transit priority work on the LRT lines, and on Spadina and Queens Quay, perhaps even King and a couple of really busy bus routes instead of digging multi-billion dollar tunnels.
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Which is exactly why the Eglinton LRT should be abandoned and built as a subway. It’s still not too late and it will cost about the same.
Steve: Your logic is bizarre. Of course if the whole thing is underground, it’s a subway in all but name. The whole point is to be able to run on the surface, something that the originally proposed LRT network did almost all of the time.
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Oddly enough I am kind of preferring the idea that it make the link with the airport area, and the Mississauga BRT, as it had been conceived, which would seem ridiculous with subway.
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There’s often so much talk about connecting with the airport area that we assume that it is an absolute must that we go there. Yes I would like an airport connection but is it going to benefit enough people to make the cost of the connection worthwhile?
Is it better to spend less money in one area and build more service to areas surrounding the airport (where the majority of jobs are) or concentrate all our resources in one area and expect everyone else to be patient or adapt.
That is essentially the Scarborough question in a nutshell.
Oh and I suppose it is worth mentioning (again) that the planned and unbuilt Eglinton West subway from Allen to Black Creek was originally the Eglinton West bus way that would have connected sensibly with that busway being planned for Mississauga around the same time (though slightly later).
Cheers, Moaz
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@Moaz, I would suggest to you that the area surrounding the airport is what we are referring to when we say the airport area. Connecting only to the airport itself, would seem a waste. Further, an LRT to me makes sense. While there is a lot of talk about connecting the airport, there has been precious little action. Finch West as currently proposed does not make it far enough to support the largest employment areas, and right now neither does the Crosstown. That would mean, that there is a need for both a connection to the area, and then service within it. It should also be connected at Renforth, to allow best use of said resources. I agree that the original bus-way would have made sense, and would have dramatically improved things, and I also believe as I have noted previously, that it would make sense to connect if we had to wait for the LRT, a bus-way now would make a great deal of sense.
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No, not in its entirety. With an underground line, stations would be significantly further apart. This would require a parallel bus service that would need use of the curb lane. Not as much as with all buses, but it would not be freed up as it would with a median LRT.
Steve: If you look at what the TTC considers to be supplementary bus service on Sheppard east of Don Mills or on Yonge north of Eglinton, I don’t think there is much danger of the buses getting in the way of other traffic.
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Wow, Calvin is smart. That was a brilliant point. Not many people would have thought of that. While Calvin is right, we in Scarborough still prefer underground transit or where that is not possible, then elevated or otherwise 100% grade separated. As to the middle of the street on surface-LRT, I would want the next mayor to demolish it no matter how much it costs.
Steve: By the way, an elevated structure would require a minimum of one lane for its support columns, and this would interfere severely with left turns into properties along Eglinton. Stations would require an even larger footprint including space for access elements — stairs, escalators, elevators. Just wanted to point out that unless you go underground, you don’t get the road space free and clear, and that’s an expensive lane.
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The obsession with underground is because it provides fast high quality transit and largely unaffected by the extreme cold, snow, and ice however FAST is the keyword. With the on-surface Scarborough portion of the Eglinton LRT, it will have to wait for red lights. And not just that, where there already exists a grade separation (such as Wynford bridge), the Metrolinx plan calls for demolishing the bridge to take away the grade separation (spending money just to make both transit and traffic slower when not demolishing the bridge would be a cheaper option that could also be built faster and would not create the pollution created by demolition and would make both traffic and transit faster). Similarly, both transit and traffic could have been made faster by using the south side alignment at Leslie which would NOT have cost a penny more but Metrolinx cares little about folks east of Laird and west of Humber. Similarly, Eglinton LRT is being slowed down by completely unnecessary stops such as that on Ferrand Drive which is only a 2 min walk from Don Mills stop (if people of Ferrand Drive are so selfish that they have to have their own stop, then I would say that cancel the Don Mills stop and just build the one on Ferrand Drive (it’s dumb but I don’t mind walking 2 min to Don Mills and if anything, I would live longer due to more walking)).
If I recall correctly, you are one with one of the loudest voices on this site demanding a DRL. And so you are contradicting yourself. Why don’t you pick a position and then stick with it?
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I believe you meant west of Don Mills.
Steve: Yes. We city dwellers get confused about directions when we are much north of Mortimer.
I agree that the TTC’s track record does not bode well for supplementary bus service, though it could be that the neighbourhoods between existing subway stations that need such service may not be the “squeaky wheels” that could exist in other parts of the city.
On the topic of subway versus LRT on Sheppard to Victoria Park, I passed by there today and couldn’t help but notice the new condo development on the south side of Sheppard just east of Consumers Road. Rather, I couldn’t help but notice the large promotional signage touting how the proposed Sheppard LRT would have the Consumers Road stop at their front door.
Steve: The billboard has been there long enough that it’s on Google Street View.
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I like the LRT too but until it is built why not look at interim solutions to get people to the Airport Corporate Centre. Perhaps make the 112B a daytime route, extend the 112E to the Skymark transit hub.
Surely if we want to build effective transit we first determine if there is a way to build a “quick & dirty” connection (like the 192 to the Airport), let it run a few years, and then build on that base if the route is a success.
Cheers, Moaz
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Let’s decommission all the other subway lines in the City’s outskirts then maybe we can have this conversation. Otherwise..
You are basically wishing that the largest & most neglected land mass in Toronto will adapt to a new technology than the rest of the City which already enjoys decent to great transit infrastructure money? Are you serious? After the RT debacle & numerous broken promises? Just give us the subway & if the City and Province ever get the act together (which is doubtful) & we can build additional routes with alternative technologies effectively & not continue inefficient routes with inefficient transfers all because its more cost effective to those who already have.
We can build all the LRT’s & BRT’s around the outskirts of Scarborough once the Subway to the core is built using the same transit technology which arrives at Etobicoke, Metro & North Yorks epicenters. Anything less is insulting to anyone who live in the East side of Toronto.
Steve: I am not sure “epicenter” is the word you have in mind. And please stop with this “insult” business. Yes, the Scarborough RT was a travesty and a debacle, but it is NOT “LRT” in anything beyond the name that was applied to it for pyrely marketing purposes. We could have had the sort of LRT used in Calgary, for example, in the “SRT” corridor, but Queen’s Park, ever meddlesome, knew better.
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Or those are the only voices you choose listen to which support your narrative. Scarborough is not so black and white. It has different needs in many different areas. It’s not a Subway or LRT fits all solution. If you choose to listen to only Guildwood residents than you are right. Although I believe Guildwood is jaded without a Malvern LRT which has nothing to do with the Subway being built.
The Scarborough LRT vs Subway issue is a separate issue from any other lines which was proposed by the province. Although it seems many here like to think the Subway replaces all other routes around Scarborough’s perimeter. That funding is untouched and the Province can step up to the plate any time and show they are serious about a full network in Scarborough. But they never were & they most likely wont be anytime soon.
So let’s just get on with the Subway at least.
Steve: As you say, it’s not black and white — I would argue that subway advocates choose which voices to heed just as much as you accuse me of listening only to LRT boosters. But LRT has advocates in places other than Guildwood. Indeed, you seem to be implying that LRT support lies only in a comparatively well-off part of Scarborough which doesn’t have the right to speak for everyone else. Would you balkanize Scarborough just as the Fords and some Councillors pitted “poor Scarborough” against the rest of the city?
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Rob, if I could find a route to run the DRL as an LRT, I would support that in a heartbeat. However, the reason I find Don Mills and Eglinton such an important point, is that if you care to cross the valley to the south, or move very far to the west (really anything after you come out of the valley to the west of Leslie) you will discover, there are basically no roads that are wide enough to do anything in. Bayview, disappears into the valley, after that there is nowhere that goes anywhere, and frankly no place where you could run more than a tiny portion of the LRT on surface to even get to the BDL, let alone the core. So I have made up my mind, build based on capacity required, and when in doubt for my taste I prefer LRT as a mode. If you can find a viable LRT route from Don Mills to the core let me know — roadway would need to have an allowance for at least 6 lanes and a sidewalk, and actually cross the BDL in a way that you can connect them.
I have even suggested throwing an LRT in a tunnel, in order to break a log jam, despite the fact that forecasts show this would be a design that would be being pushed almost from the get go. It would however, mean that you could continue up Don Mills, but it would not have the capacity to handle that load and all the load transferring from the BDL core bound. I would keep doing so, but when Steve points out what a great waste of money it would be to build an LRT to have to convert shortly thereafter, I find the rebuke (especially when I know he is right before he says anything) stinging.
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I agree in principle, however, here we should also be connecting the Mississauga BRT, and I think, given that the original plan was to have a connection, this should be looked at as a priority. However, yes an express bus route (Rocket) would be a good start. This would be doubly so if there is an RER in the UPX running at a good frequency.
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I always find it fascinating that when the weather argument comes up, it’s always transit that must be buried and never the roads carrying personal vehicles which are more prone to accidents in poor weather conditions.
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Actually I never implied close to anything about “well off “or “poor”. All of Scarborough citizens benifit from the Subway instead of the current RT or proposed Scarborough LRT.
Priority Neighbourhoods will benefit even greater from the Province making good on the LRT/BRT proposals it’s been floating around on the end of its political fishing rod.
If you leave Etobicoke, Downtown & North York out and have Scarborough vote on Scarborough LRT vs. Subway it won’t even be close. If you want to discuss other LRT lines, keep them separate from this debate.
Clearly from the Scarborough 4th station poll shown in all the newspapers today indicates that those Torontonians which currently “have” decent access to the subway refuse to share. Major inequality disconnect in this City & very sad to see.
Steve: That’s your interpretation of the poll. Implying that they “refuse to share” as their motive goes considerably beyond the question asked, and shows how you are skewing the debate to suit your sense of injured pride.
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I have no problem with this if the good burghers of Scarborough are willing to pay for all the extensions themselves. Perhaps that should be the new norm. If an area wants subways instead of a more suitable for of transit from a demand point of view then they have to pay the extra capital and operating costs. To make it fair this would apply to all existing subways also. If people had to pay the true cost for their wishes then we might see some more rational expansion plans.
For those who don’t think that “World Class Cities” are building LRT, check out what is going on in London, Paris and Berlin.
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@Joe. I would have to say, that we are better off actually following the planners best advice, and what the travel time, and ridership projections suggest.
Edward Keenan in the Toronto Star
I tire of hearing all pay the same taxes, as I would be willing to bet that Scarborough TTC riders especially those to the core consume more resources per rider than those in the downtown, and the drivers more roads. How about we look at the numbers of residents, taxes raised, and how far the riders actually ride on subway etc. “Downtown” subways are heavily used by Scarborough riders, especially those who are core bound, I dare say more so than those that come from Liberty Village. How is it that this is not sharing? I think you have a basic misunderstanding where Etobicoke City Centre is, as it is not on the subway. The core of Etobicoke, is not clear, but the bulk of the land mass is also far from the subway. Where is the subway at say Dixon and Scarlett Rd, or Sheppard and how is this different than Markham and Ellesmere except the RT is close there, so call it Morningside and Sheppard. Remember Mimico, well there is is not exactly great subway service either.
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Joe M says:
It’s not surprising this is now an issue now that Scarborough is being integrated. When Scarborough has recently shared in footing the bill for O&M plus capital costs for the rest of the City. Not to mentioned the overruns on countless other Capital projects in the core.
LRT is great when implemented effectively & would be great around the perimeter but not to the heart of Scarborough when both other main Borough’s CORES & Dowtown connect on one type of infrastructure.
Joe M:
Good one. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have voted against extra stop and subways in Etobicoke if the tables were turned.
Or maybe I’m wrong and the are just much more transit savvy … It really has nothing to do with the fact they already have the infrastructure. What a crazy idea I had.
Steve: Look at a map. Huge parts of Etobicoke do not have a subway.
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Can we also remind ourselves that Scarborough Council also thought they knew better and were firmly on side with the provincial government?
Cheers, Moaz
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Moaz: the Skymark hub is the place where MiWay’s MiLocal and MiExpress buses (including those that use the open portion of the transitway) connect with TTC buses. In future the connection will be at the Renforth Gateway and I’m not sure if Skymark will be retained as a secondary local hub or not. Since the plan for the Crosstown was to extend west of Renforth then turn north and cross the 401 then dippy doodle along Silver Dart and Jetliner … I’m not really sure what the role of Skymark will be.
But for the moment, if transit to the Airport Corporate Centre from Toronto is so important that it warrants an LRT/Smart Track rapid transit option along Eglinton West, then there must surely be demand for a direct connection via the Bloor-Danforth subway and a 112E West Mall or 192A Airport Corporate Rocket. And likely demand for a 32E Eglinton West express bus once the majority of construction works for the Crosstown subside.
Of course, Toronto transit users could take MiWay bases from Islington Station but for many people who have the option of a car, if they are going to pay 2 transit fares they may as well drive.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: “So important” is an interesting characterization. In the context of the original study, the airport centre is constrained for future development by the capacity and reach of the transportation network. Like so much of SmartTrack, the underlying purpose is really to make land in the 905 more valuable, not to give people better access to downtown.
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However, having said that, making commercial land more valuable, usually means creating more jobs, and tying residents of the 416 to those jobs using transit, is better than having the area only served from the west, and then having those job seekers from 416 either cut off (especially a shame if they live in west Etobicoke) or driving.
I do agree, however, we do not need to start with a heavy rail project to Renforth Gateway. A good start would be a bus of very high reliability, but better would be a BRT, so that the bus would move with consistency. Light Rail was the plan, but if there is service linking to the core and the Crosstown at Mt Dennis, a connector makes sense, and if a Rocket Bus is heavily loaded we have a strong argument for BRT, if that is is very busy, then we have a strong argument to extend LRT (although I think that argument is already there).
Steve: If we are going to make land more valuable and create more jobs, could we focus on Toronto rather than the 905? The waterfront is crying out for more transit investment, but Tory’s only contribution so far is to appoint a known critic/gadfly to the board of Waterfront Toronto.
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The GTA weekly pass, needs to become a common easy monthly pass, so that people will not be paying 2 fares. Frankly the province and area municipalities need to work out a deal, so that a GTA pass costs only slightly more than a Metropass, and there is also a way to pay a slightly higher or even same fare and cross jurisdictions. We do not want to create any more of an artificial barrier as we cross the creek between Mississauga and Etobicoke than absolutely required. Otherwise as Moaz notes, we create a lot of extra auto trips.
Steve: It’s amusing how much Queen’s Park is willing to spend on the UPX in order to eliminate a handful of auto trips from downtown to the airport, but integrate fares across the 416/905 boundary and improve transit service?
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P.S. that the said GTA pass, needs to have an option to include GO, and a marginal increase in cost.
If we want people to use transit (and we need them to), then making it easy and affordable for people to cover the vast majority of their trips is important. If transit does not easily cover the vast majority of your trips, you start to think auto. Why make it any harder than required for people to use transit?
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Steve, I would make the argument, that Tory should be focused on the business of what will end up as Toronto projects, and that which can be fixed without massive capital. Scarborough whatever, and Crosstown to and past the edge, seemed to have become largely provincial areas.
However, fixing things, like actually having working signal priority on Queens Quay, securing a right of way for East Bayfront and Waterfront West at least as far as Exhibition, are things that he is closer to, and can and should take a stronger leadership role in. Part of the issue in the here in now, is making the investment already made work much better. I was in at the Queens Quay terminal a couple of weeks ago, and was not sure whether to be sad, or mad, or just amused, as I watched almost every streetcar going through get the red when they were in a ready state.
A couple stopped, but had no passengers to load or unload, and had to wait nearly a full signal cycle to go again. A couple I saw finished loading, and as I saw the operator allow the car to start to move, the transit signal changed, and he had to wait. I went through about 4 times (back and forth to the Terminal) and out of the 8 or cars go through I think I saw one get a reasonably favorable signal.
The signals seemed as though they were timed to slow the transit vehicle to the maximum possible. I was actually glad I was walking at the time, as I would have saved almost no time going from the Terminal back through Union Station. This is the sort of thing that Tory can focus the city’s attention on almost immediately, and really have an impact on transit.
Steve: What is even more frustrating here is that I have been repeatedly told that this will all be fixed when the permanent arrangement of traffic comes into play in the spring. Very bluntly, I do not believe a word I am told on this issue.
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