Toronto Council’s agenda for today, February 10, 2015, contains a series of “Administrative Inquiries” by Councillor Josh Matlow regarding various aspects of transit plans for Scarborough. The City Manager’s response appeared late yesterday, but it was not exactly packed with revelations.
In theory, the inquiry process provides a way for questions to flow directly from a Councillor to City staff bypassing the usual mechanism of committee reports where administration majorities might strangle debate. In practice, the information released might or might not fully address the question.
Mayor Tory’s position is quite clear: the subway debate is over, and Matlow’s questions are simply attempts to reopen the question on matters that are already known and decided. Would that it were so simple. Subway champions should pause in their dismissal of Matlow’s position because the report shows how much we don’t know, or at least are not being told, about the subway project.
1. “Sunk Costs” for the Scarborough LRT
When Council approved the switch from LRT to subway technology in October 2013, part of the agreement with Metrolinx was that Toronto would absorb the cost of work-to-date on the discarded LRT plan, subject to an audit to validate an estimated $85 million pricetag. Matlow asked two simple questions:
- Has the City Manager executed an agreement with Metrolinx to pay the sunk costs?
- What monies are allocated in the City’s 10-year capital plan for this expense?
Recent discussion through the media on these points has been rather odd. On one hand, the City Manager repeatedly declined to put a specific number to the costs; on the other, Councillor Pasternak (he of the “North York Relief” subway, aka Sheppard West from Yonge to Downsview) mused that Toronto should not have to pay for the LRT work even though Council agreed to this.
In the City Manager’s report, we learn that the audit is complete, and that staff are finalizing an agreement regarding provincial funding of the subway extension which will take into account the amount agreed as an offset for the sunk costs. However, as the Star revealed yesterday, on December 30, 2014, Bruce McCuaig, President and CEO of Metrolinx, wrote to the City Manager formally accepting an offer of settlement in the amount of $74.8 million. The City Manager agreed to this in a reply dated January 9, 2015. Given this exchange of letters, we know that the settlement has been finalized, subject to Council approval, for over a month.
2. Operating and Capital Maintenance Costs
With the change from a provincial LRT project to a municipal subway line, responsibility for operating and maintenance costs falls to the City and TTC budgets. However, Toronto seeks an offsetting credit from Ontario equal to the amount it would have paid were the line a Metrolinx operation. Capital Maintenance (major repairs and replacement of assets such as vehicles) is estimated at $30-40 million annually, although this is a cost that starts low for a new line and builds over its lifetime.
However, there will also be operating costs on the TTC’s budget related to day-to-day service and maintenance, and these have not been provided, net of any new fare revenue, in reports to Council. (In fairness, such an estimate was not provided for the LRT option either.)
Matlow’s questions are:
- What are the estimated operating costs?
- How much of a property tax increase would be needed to cover the capital and operating costs due to the subway?
- What is the status of negotiations with the province over these costs, and when will the results be reported to Council?
On the first two questions, the City Manager replies:
TTC will be undertaking an estimate of annual operating and maintenance costs for the SSE, following Council determination of alignment and service levels noted above.
Council approved the subway option in late 2013 and, at the time, only two alignments (the “City” one via McCowan and the “Glen Murray” version via the SRT corridor) were on the table. Additional possibilities have arisen quite recently thanks to issues with competition from the SmartTrack scheme, but one might hope that the TTC would already have a ballpark estimate of operating costs if only for planning purposes. They know how much it costs to operate subway lines and stations, and they could roughly estimate the amount of bus service the subway would trigger.
If the line does go to Sheppard, some bus routes that now cross south of the 401 to STC might be shortened, but this could be offset by increased demand and the need for greater service to feed the subway. The TTC might not have the detailed network drawn out, but one might reasonably ask whether they had any sense of comparative costs going into the LRT/subway debate in the first place.
Now we are told that such an estimate will not be available until Council chooses an alignment for the new subway. That’s right — Toronto must decide where it wants the subway and only then will we learn how much it will cost. This is a continuation of an ass-backward pattern where “assessment” of transit projects ignores basic questions that could inform decisions. Indeed, “affordability” is supposed to be a criterion, and yet critical information will not be available.
Needless to say, negotiations with the province re cost sharing are still underway, and there is no indication that Queen’s Park even accepts the premise of an offset between Metrolinx LRT and City subway costs. A challenge for any agreement on this account will be a time and/or dollar value limit on provincial contributions, and quite obviously such an agreement would require firm estimates of the comparative costs for both schemes. However, if the process described by the City Manager is to be believed, this information would not be available until after Council has selected a subway option.
3. Extension of the Scarborough Subway Study Area
Matlow asks three questions:
- Why does the study area exclude Agincourt GO Station?
- Will ridership estimates for the subway extension take into account the effect of SmartTrack?
- If the subway is shifted east to McCowan, would riders further west be more likely to use SmartTrack than the subway?
The City Manager replies that the subway study will examine whether a more easterly alignment would better serve a larger part of Scarborough. His reply is interesting because of the equal role it presumes for both subway and GO/SmartTrack services:
The study area has been broadened to the east (i.e. Markham Road) to explore alignments which would complement the SmartTrack proposal and potentially bring rapid transit service to a larger proportion of Scarborough residents.With that approach in mind, given that the Agincourt GO area is planned to be served by both SmartTrack and enhanced GO service, it is considered more appropriate that the subway serve other areas, further to the east on Sheppard Avenue.
This reply, of course, assumes that services on the GO line can be considered as equivalent to the subway, but that is a huge stretch on three counts.
First is the question of fares. We know that GO Transit’s pricing is considerably higher than the TTC’s and there is, as yet, no “co-fare” arrangement for a discounted through trip from a TTC bus feeder onto a GO train. Although SmartTrack has been touted as “integrated” with the TTC, it is not certain whether this means it would operate as a TTC fare service with no premium. Obviously, SmartTrack itself will bring added net costs notwithstanding claims by its proponents that its ridership would cover its cost of operation. That claim is based on demand estimates wildly in excess of the likely capacity of the service to be offered.
This brings us to the second question, the level of services on GO/SmartTrack and on the subway extension. We know already that the TTC only plans to operate half of the peak service beyond Kennedy Station (a headway of 4’40” on current schedules). GO’s RER will at best provide a train every 15 minutes, and SmartTrack will be something under 15 minutes, but at a level yet to be determined. Both services in the rail corridor are constrained by capacity of that corridor, of the Lake Shore East corridor and of Union Station.
Finally, it will be difficult to design a feeder bus network to serve both the subway and SmartTrack unless Scarborough’s routes are gerrymandered even more than today (with the focus on STC Station) to force-feed one or both routes. Should the TTC’s grid arrangement of routes be torn apart to funnel riders into a subway station at Sheppard (whose exact east-west location remains unknown) or into, say, a Finch SmartTrack station?
All of these factors affect all of the network options. As for the effect of SmartTrack on a Markham Road subway alignment, the question is premature because nobody has studied this configuration. That work will be done as part of the SmartTrack assessment which is a separate, but parallel, undertaking by Metrolinx, TTC and City staff.
4. Does the Proposed Subway Budget Include Enough Trains?
Matlow notes that the subway budget includes $125 million for 7 subway trains including one spare. The City Manager confirms that the budget assumed a service design of sending alternate trains beyond Kennedy Station to Sheppard much as service now turns back at St. Clair West in the am peak on the 1 Yonge-University line. The actual equipment requirement for the extension will be determined once the alignment (and hence both demand and running time) is settled.
As I have already noted in discussing TTC fleet plans, there is currently a surplus of T-1 subway trains, and the TTC’s plans show six of these being assigned to the 2 Bloor-Danforth line when the extension opens. No new train purchases for BD are included in the fleet plan until 2026. This is an example of a cost (replacement of the T-1 trains earmarked for Scarborough) that could be pushed beyond the initial extension project’s budget into a future capital maintenance expense early in the life of the extension. The TTC owes Council a fleet plan that clearly shows provision for additional trains for the Scarborough extension and which budget line (subway extension or fleet replacement) they will be charged to.
Is this a budgetary dodge to free up money that would have been spent on trains to pay for additional project costs elsewhere?
5. Ridership Estimates
Matlow poses five questions about ridership on the subway extension:
- Will more detailed estimates be presented to Council before it moves further with the extension project?
- What modelling system produced the increased demand estimate for the subway option of 9,500-14,000 peak passengers in comparison with the LRT option?
- Was this model consistent with that used for previous (i.e. LRT) projections?
- Will SmartTrack effects be factored into projections for the subway extension?
- Have the erroneous projections for the Sheppard Subway (and by implication the validity of the demand model) been taken into account?
With respect to the next Council approval, the City Manager states:
Detailed ridership forecasts will be reported through the required approvals process for the SSE’s Transit Project Assessment Process (TPAP).
Once again, the idea that Council might make an informed choice regarding the subway option and its alignment is missing. Instead, they will be expected to choose a subway route without knowing how it might perform or how the larger network might behave.
The original 9,500 riders per hour estimate for the “LRT” option presumed that the STC was its terminus when the model was run in 2006 by the TTC. In fact, at that point Transit City did not exist, and the project under study was a replacement of the SRT with upgraded RT trains, but no extension. The model used provided a 2021 estimate and this was extrapolated to 2031.
The 14,000 riders per hour estimate for the subway option presumed that it would run north to Sheppard, and it was based on the City’s 2031 modelling for the Official Plan Review.
Timing constraints did not allow for the results to be refined using the TTC’s transit assignment model. The study terminus was assumed to be Sheppard Avenue rather than Scarborough City Centre. Other modelling assumptions that differ include frequency of service on the subway extension and other lines assumed in the future transit network.
Yes, most certainly there were differences in the City model notably that the projected demand would require better service than the SSE plan actually includes. At 14k/hour, the demand would completely fill an alternate train service running north from Kennedy to Sheppard.
As for the “future transit network” it is unclear just what this might entail, but almost certainly this would not include frequent GO/RER service nor SmartTrack, neither of which had been proposed when the subway modelling and Council’s decision occurred. This is a common problem in “regional” modelling for TTC projects — the absence of the commuter rail network as an option for long-haul trips from the 905 and outer 416 into downtown. If frequent service, especially at a TTC fare, will be available in the GO corridor, what will happen to that extra subway demand? Indeed where in the modelled universe does that demand originate? Are we building a subway to serve Scarborough, or to serve commuters from Markham?
Finally, on the question of the mismatch between Sheppard Subway forecasts and actual ridership, the City Manager reports:
The current ridership on the Sheppard subway is not directly comparable to the estimates in the environmental assessment. The extent of the subway as built is much shorter than that considered in the environmental assessment. The ridership forecast in the environmental assessment considered an alignment linking the North York and Scarborough City Centres. The first phase of the line was initially planned to extend from Yonge Street to the Consumers Business Park, but was subsequently truncated at Don Mills Road due to funding contraints.
The land use as projected at the time of the environmental assessment, particularly employment, has not materialized, though residential development has occurred in a manner that is consistent with the subway investment. Employment uses, particularly office development, generates significantly more transit ridership than residential development.
The difficulty, of course, is that the employment node in Scarborough was supposed to be STC, but this has been slow to mature and more recent development has been residential, not for employment, a form that moved elsewhere, notably to the 905. A major problem with any suburban non-residential development is that employees will come from all over the GTHA and most will not originate in the catchment area of a transit system, especially if the development is expected at an outer terminus. By contrast, downtown is fed by many lines connecting with a wide range of residential neighbourhoods. This directly affects how a development might be structured — around transit or around a large parking lot with easy access to an expressway.
There has always been much talk of making the area around STC into a major node, and recent planning efforts now focus on the McCowan Precinct, an area immediately east of STC. How this area will relate to or be served by the transit network, including services reaching beyond the 416 boundary, is something of a mystery. The precinct is large enough that a single rapid transit station, especially one at the western edge, cannot serve the entire area.
Any ridership projections for the Scarborough Subway must explain how workers destined for jobs it might serve will actually make their “last mile” connections between rapid transit stations and job locations.
Conclusion
The City Manager’s report is not outright evasive, but it demonstrates the amount of information Toronto Council does not yet have about rapid transit options for Scarborough. If Council chooses to commit to multi-billion dollar projects without fully understanding the implications, that’s a political decision.
Between the Scarborough Subway and SmartTrack, we see two projects that have an air of inevitability, that brook no questions about their validity or even the degree to which they duplicate each other’s function.
The great irony here is that absent SmartTrack, Toronto would be discussing regional transit improvements on GO and a local improvement with the subway. SmartTrack is a hybrid, welcome in the sense that it accepts the possibilities of the commuter rail network for travel within Toronto, but oversold as a near-subway service when that is not physically possible.
If anything, the network studies for GO, SmartTrack and TTC subway options are more important than the Scarborough Subway option alone. The network study includes multiple agencies with overlapping, but certainly not identical, preferences and priorities, and there is a chance that it will give a clear understanding of how the many parts might fit together. Some proposals may change, some may fall off of the map completely, but at least there will be a framework for the decision.
Steve Munro 
Sorry Steve, but on a board, you are only supposed to be making decisions in principle without this type of information. Decision in principle certainly does not close a debate, when the potential cost variance is sufficient to make the item material.
In principle my wife and I agree that we should take an Italian vacation. However in practice she reminds me – there are provisos: somebody will take care of the kids, the dog, and the budget is in place so that we are going to do it in great comfort. If I am prepared to arrange the care aspects and make it a 20+k trip and take a month and she is all for it. If it is going to be a be a week and a 6k trip well that would be a no. So we are really debating care for kids, 3 weeks and a lousy 14+k. Somehow, I think these are material items, and would not presume to commit myself to booking the hotel or airline.
It is artificial in the extreme to call a debate closed before a budget has been proposed.
Steve: I think I know what you’re driving at, but for certainty using your analogy, you will already been sitting on a piazza trying to ignore the emails from your dog about what your kids are up to.
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Well I would not, however, that does appear to be how the city is proceeding.
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Can anyone say “Scarborough Relief Network”?
Come on Metrolinx, TTC and City Planning. You’re doing this for the Yonge Relief Corridor. Scarborough deserves a relief network study.
Cheers, Moaz
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Thanks for this Steve; detailed, pointed, and helpful. This will also include most comments.
Are there any more experienced transit people (“experts”) out of the milieu that actually give support to this? Or is it like the denialists vs. climate realists? Do facts matter? I endured the sustained bull at the 24-20 approval meeting, and it spawned the terms “Clowncillor” and “Clowncil” – and I think it salient that most of the core politicians (except Bailao) are against this folly, (core transit tends to make money vs. lose it in stubways etc.) The women of last term also voted against this folly in a higher ratio than male.
We do need to squeeze the billions for a host of other reasons: smarter transit projects alone could be happily funded, let alone helping keep tax expenditures for school properties for the broader public good ie. buying in to the school properties (again).
The funded LRT seems like a good enough project to deliver something fairly soon; I’ve also been thinking of a broad new start-with-busways usage of the Gatineau hydro corridor that slices through Scarborough on the shortcut diagonal, and linking it to Thorncliffe and then to St. Clair Ave. E. as a backup and true relief to the Danforth (though of course this all would be a complex consult in some areas). While it may be “new” – it also may be thought of in past eras and perhaps Steve might know of when/who suggested this leveraging of public land for a transitway that actually could pick up on a lot of densities and destinations. Having the EA processes pick up on real options is now impossible – more provincial inadequacies, but the green voters aren’t enough for influencing buy-elections it seems…
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For clarity Steve, the provisos are: someone to care for the kids, someone (else) to care for the dog, and enough money allocated to make it a luxurious trip. The vision of the dog sending e-mails is very amusing. I will have to suggest the dog as a sitter to my wife, see if that seals the deal.
Steve: Considering how many dogs and cats have their own web sites, you should be all set!
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I have thought for a long time that a busway in Gatineau would be great. Steve, has (repeatedly to me) made the point that this is easier said than done (Hydro and all). Assuming that you can get Hydro to go along, to make this work, a DRL to Eglinton is required. This is one more reason to like a Don Mills alignment. The focus on subway in Scarborough, when ridership projections make it pretty clear that there will be an issue with a transfer to Yonge before the line is complete deeply disturbing (and that is assuming re-signalling buys reasonable capacity). Subway in Scarborough would make more sense in the context of a one stop extension of Yonge to permit additional turn capacity, at the very least. It should really be discussed in the context of there being an alternate link BDL to core.
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I do not see 14k passengers being a high number. When looking at the connected SRT/Eglinton LRT, Metrolinx came up with 12.5k passengers – and that brings people to a slightly less desireable Y-E (compared to Y-B).
I wonder how much of that sunk cost would not be wasted (would float?) if we went with this concept of a connected SRT and Eglinton from the June 2012 Metrolinx report, but then chose to elevate part and extend the other part to Malvern. Pundits seem to be trying to save the $1.5B from being “wasted” on the Scarborough subway (by returning to the Transit City LRT), when there would likely have been great support to save $1B using a compromise that eliminate the transfer and has the reliability of full grade-separation, but still extends to Malvern with its 7 stations.
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Don’t get your hopes up just yet. Toronto Star and other pro-Downtown media are criticising that Scarborough subway will run half empty but if it was to run completely full, then no one between Victoria Park and Yonge could ever hope to get on on westbound trains. And trains at Downsview are less than 20% full and trains at Don Mills are less than 10% full but nobody is complaining about those and yet everyone says 50% full is too empty for the Scarborough subway extension.
Steve: The question is how the network will operate. It is not practical to keep extending the subway forever without providing additional parallel capacity. That could be via the commuter rail network, or by the DRL. However, if we always build the most expensive transit mode, it limits how much the network as a whole can grow.
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Well that went as expected in council today.
Disclaimer: I have never voted for a Ford & agree there are many questions not yet answered.
But the reality is we can ask all the right questions we desire but at the end of the day it’s politics steering this ship & sound information will never truly matter.
If Tory cant keep transit on the right tracks including the Scarborough subway, I would almost lay a pretty strong bet you’ll see a Ford type back in office next term. Whether Matlow is being genuine or just playing opportunity to rally his soldiers doesn’t matter. If progress does stall he may actually end up doing more harm to his own goals by fuel to an already burning divide.
I don’t agree with this type of planning but politics is what it is. I think it’s going to get real heated in the next couple years as everyone digs their heels in.
Steve: I think Matlow is trying to take the Mayor at his word that planning decisions should be based on careful study, not on electioneering. If staff were more forthcoming with information, the sense that they are trying to paper over holes in a bad proposal would not be so strong. As for the Mayor’s advisors, I think the quality of some of the background papers to SmartTrack (which I have reviewed at length elsewhere) shows how vapid some of the “thinking” behind the scheme is. Parts of SmartTrack make sense, but the proposal is badly oversold including claims for service levels, capacity and ridership. It would be really nice if we could debate the alternatives with credible information on the table. By “credible” I don’t mean “facts I like”, but information that does not contain self-evident operational, financial and mathematical impossibilities.
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A Scarberian comments via Torontoist.
Steve: My understanding is that a website is in preparation.
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OK
There are some four or five routes for a Scarborough subway.
The operating cost will not be calculated until the final route is approved, by TO Council.
This looks like a repeat of the Sheppard Subway.
Everyone knows that most train that head east on the BD Line will be short turned at Kennedy. Short turning has been built into the YUS extension to Vaughan.
How many and what is the cost (capital and operating per rider) for the Scarborough extension (ie: beyond Kennedy). And when in the future will that change.
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@Steve
I completely understand where you are coming from & understand your concern to get the facts on the table.
But this type of political decision making is nothing new. No matter which side of an argument you are on, we tend to see politicians as genuine when the narrative fits our belief & Matlow is only demanding these answers because the subway is not for his own personal gain.
Scarborough residents have seen enough political project shams & overruns elsewhere in the City & Province that we cringe when we hear a downtown Councillor receiving the politically biased media’s transit megaphone. Sure there are facts in those media articles but they are also contain a boatload of false narratives & slant. These slants are easily not even noticed or realized by people who are not on the receiving end of the attack.
Crazy politics & crazy behavior aside. The Fords cleverly tapped into the fact that many areas of Toronto don’t have a fair voice in Toronto’s highly politicized media. Whether it’s a Ford or another candidate this political opportunity will continued to be tapped into until the City becomes less exclusive. Even Tory piggy-backed a bit of this narrative to narrowly grab the Mayor’s seat.
All these new approved studies will soon create further chaos as each one is released and the “facts” are provided. Tory will need to perform magic and keep all projects moving forward in this difficult political climate otherwise we are sure to see another polarizing Mayor in the near future.
Steve: I really must take issue with your claim that Matlow is only asking questions about the Scarborough Subway because he has no personal interest (nor do his constituents, beyond the fact that they will help to pay for it through taxes) in the line. As long as the narrative is that only subway is good enough for Scarborough, and we can just stretch the line as much as needed to create a credible scenario separate from SmartTrack, then the price tag will continue to rise just like a runaway gas pump or taxi meter.
Remember that all of the service cuts suffered under the Ford era saved us a relatively small amount of money, but someone has to come up with the funds to pay for any of the new lines including the DRL and any of the LRT proposals, not to mention SmartTrack. It is irresponsible of Council or any politicians to avoid discussion of future transit costs as part of the city’s fiscal planning. Just look at the upheaval the recently “discovered” $86m hole in provincial subsidies created.
It’s a double standard for people to demand detailed costing and attack the underlying premise of projects they don’t like (there were plenty of comments here to that effect re Transit City), but just skim over the same issues for the projects the pols claim are popular.
This isn’t a remark about Joe M’s comments specifically, but rather a general observation about the inconsistency with which options are compared.
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I completely agree with Steve about the increasing dominance of dog and cat websites and how helpful they’ll be to Malcolm and his wife as they thrash out the details of their glorious vacation in Sunny Italy! The main problem so far has been overcoming the tendency of cats to eat their computer mice!
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Not a big deal, but this statement is backwards. It’s 15 minutes at worst. The 15 minute figure is generally interpreted as the base frequency, (i.e. twice as frequent as current off-peak services). Besides, 15 minute peak headways would not be any accomplishment at all – the Milton, Barrie, Lakeshore West and Lakeshore East lines already operate at or above 4 tph during the peak period.
Steve: Yes, I don’t think that many people (including those in government) are aware how close some services already are to “RER” frequencies and how little, if any, headroom remains for improvement on some GO lines if 15 minutes is regarded as the target.
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Torontoist Slant.
Giving light to the small group in Scarborough that is against Subway. Fits right into their pro downtown narrative. You certainly won’t see the other side of the argument fairly covered from this biased paper.
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Fundamentally that is the issue. There are far too many decisions being made effectively on polls not planning. The average voter is not really given the opportunity to answer the question intelligently. This is one of the reasons for the strange results when we get polls comparing options – subway vs this particular LRT, well subway, full blown LRT network vs subway, well LRT. If we are going to ask the public, we need to get better questions out there. The public consultation process should now be based on spending 3.2-3.8 billion in Scarborough, not merely what subway route should be selected. Offer up the best subway routes that can be built in that budget, and a couple of LRT options, that make the most sense in the same budget range, and then have an intelligent discussion.
Really we should be following what the process is supposed to be, let the planners really do the planning and offer real fully costed alternatives, and then decide. If we have 3.8 billion available, make the best plan on that basis, it should not be about mode but service and cost. What are the service outcomes, including trip times? What are the operating cost impacts? What are the real trade offs facing the riders, voters and taxpayers of the city? Council should not even be considering a proposal in a vacuum. It should not be about subway vs LRT, but about service design, ongoing operating costs, and service levels. How do we invest the money to improve service? How does this help us improve service while containing costs going forward? So we can continue to improve service, not make radical cuts.
Scarborough transit should not be discussed in a vacuum either, if the riders are headed to North York that needs to be looked at, staying within Scarborough, how does whatever choice support that? If it increases service and ridership to the core, can that be supported? if not what other investments need to be made? Unless the subway serves Scarborough destinations well, there is no point in building a subway extension, if the Scarborough riders don’t want to head to the core, and no point if they do want to head to core and cannot get there.
Jos – exactly. I was finding huge issues last night when I was trying to prove to my wife that the dog would be capable of taking care of things. She (the dog) simply could not get a handle on using the key board to hit single letters.
My problem with the Scarborough discussion at council, is it seems as relevant to reality as deciding to go to Italy when you have not looked at how long you can be gone, how much you can afford to or justify spending, or how the kids (and dog) will be taken care of. Merely calling the debate closed seems ludicrous. If I can just take off for a month, find sitters willing to take care of it all for a month, and find 20+k to blow (plus sitters)- well Italy here we come (Yet somehow these seem like issues that need to be resolved first). That is to me where the decision on Scarborough subway is now, happening in a huge vacuum… Which is really day dreaming!
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According to the Star Wed., Councillor Bailao DID support Matlow’s askings for more details, so she seems to have changed her mind and joined much of the rest of the core where subways tend to make sense. This is good.
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I also suspect that there is a lack of appreciation as to how little service can really be offered beyond that without radical changes in terms of how things are being handled across the entire network. I would like to see double tracking on Stouffville, and Richmond Hill, and an additional set of tracks run in Lakeshore East, and then start to run service on a more frequent basis, and build service incrementally. Convert UPX for SmartTrack type service as well and see just how fast we run out of room, not just in theory.
If we are actually looking for GO corridors to provide inside 416 service, we need an earnest and honest discussion of the limits at Union, with all these services combined. The study has been done, so let us talk about all services together, and what the limits are. I suspect that once you are running 4-6 trains per hour in Stouffville (4 would likely be full just from Markham), and 4-6 in Richmond Hill (4 will likely fill in Richmond Hill once BRT is in full swing) and 8 in Lakeshore east and west and 4 in Kitchener + 4 in UPX for outer 416 and inner Brampton you will start to see issues. However, to actually see service inside 416 using GO is this not what is required?
You need 2 additional trains per hour in Lakeshore East to get 4 per hour in that corridor inside Toronto (4 currently do not stop inside 416), same in Lakeshore West. We seem to like to talk about one or two corridors or services in isolation, but the network needs to be discussed as a whole. Richmond Hill frequent GO service is required to keep central York riders off the Yonge subway, and if it is frequent (and cheap enough) and TTC tie is good enough, it might actually draw some riders from the outer 416 as well. This all however, is working on the theory that all this service really fits, and then there is room to grow afterwards. Is there really? What about for 4 in Milton and Barrie as well (44 trains per hour and ~1500 riders per minute-is awful lot).
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Hi Steve
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t recall anything from Metrolinx, or any other source, saying that a subway would be the only option along this corridor. I would feel that I could accept the subway decision if there was a report that stated that the ridership would max out the capacity of an LRT line.
Steve: Metrolinx has always said that an LRT is all that’s needed. However, the ridership estimates include people coming south into the north end of the subway from areas that should be served by GO/RER/SmartTrack.
However, what Metrolinx says really doesn’t matter because the whole process is politically driven from Scarborough Councillors and MPPs.
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Joe M says:
Well said.
Polticians have given voters a simple divide. You either choose LRT or Subway. Unfortunately it’s one bad plan vs. another. Now the latest Mayoral campaign has brought us a new pet project which has a major impact on both the inefficient LRT & inefficient Subway proposals. And yet still the nonsense debate over these crazy LRT vs. subway plans continues on.
With close to $4-billion now available there is no reason not to review conceptual costs for multiple hybrid technology networks of BRT, LRT and Subway? And proceed to fully fund & build a complete and effective network with effective routes, stop locations, & without incomplete stublines to nowhere
But who are we kidding? Compromise, common sense, & truth is not likely in any politician’s game plan.
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I fully agree with you Steve. Commuter rail network OR a DRL (that’s an OR and not an AND). Let’s extend the subway to Scarborough and then let commuter rail provide the DRL function.
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Am I missing something? I do not see how a Scarborough subway extension will suddenly increase the passenger volume arriving at Bloor-Yonge. Maybe a few who switch to transit from cars, but ….
However, if Smart Track hits that magic spot of price vs convenience, that would certainly move passenger volume from Bloor-Yonge to Union Station. Though, really the absolutely best option would be the eastern DRL, from Eglinton down, which would bypass both Bloor-Yonge and Union, and service the east end to boot.
Steve: When the SSE was proposed, there was no GO/RER alternative. The modelled subway demand included riders from Markham coming in to Sheppard/McCowan Station just as they do today at Finch and Yonge. Under this scenario, they would add to the load at Bloor-Yonge.
With RER in the mix, those passengers will “GO” to Union, but they will also not be on the SSE thereby undermining its projected demand. Added BD demand to Bloor-Yonge from a subway or LRT into northeastern Scarborough would come in part from newly attracted demand, but mainly from growth I believe.
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@ Ian Folkard
Per Star article quoting Deputy Mayor Glenn De Baeremaeker
This of course asserts that Victoria Park, Warden and Kennedy are not part of Scarborough (which appears to be defined as the eastern part of Toronto that does not have subway). The debate as Steve says is politically driven. These politics are not about good design but about “fair”. Of course if we build more subway in Scarborough I would suspect that “Scarborough” will merely shrink. I have noted in these debates that Etobicoke is well served, which clearly means Rexdale and Mimico are not actually part of Etobicoke, as Etobicoke is defined as a borough with subway to its core (can someone please tell me where that is).
Star:
Of course this part of his ward is also not part of the North York of debates, because we all know how well served it is. What he is ignoring of course is subway with 2 km stop spacing would be next to useless for the vast majority of residents in that area, and they would be much better served by LRT (or even BRT although LRT would be better) as long as it was extended at least as far west as the airport employment area, and well connected to bus routes to serve that area. It would appear that the likely 2900 peak hour /direction riders are clearly worthy of subway, it does not matter it will not serve their ride.
Clearly for the purposes of Toronto politics ego (and subway) are far more important than the actual delivery of appropriate service.
Steve: It was also amusing yesterday at Council (Feb. 10) listening to talk of how the rail line (the Newmarket sub, aka GO Barrie service) could be used to connect to SmartTrack. Well, no it won’t. The lines split at Dundas Street with SmartTrack going northwest via Weston and the Barrie line paralleling Caledonia Road. What is really sad is how badly Councillors understand the geography of their own city.
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My Comment
I agree with your all of your points, however, what is usually not discussed in transit debates is the actual “City Plan”. Before any of your questions can be answered, we first need see the City Planner’s vision. For example, what are the plans for employment and for housing in the area being studied? The City Planner also takes into account societal goals, like poverty reduction, availability of recreation, and quality of life issues like crime prevention. All of these factors are taken into account to come up with the final City Plan.
Subsequently, the City Plan will define the future urban form. The future urban form will then define the transit priorities and future demand.
Therefore, transit solutions must satisfy the goals of the City Plan. The transit mode and route must support and enhance the future urban form. The Scarborough SRT replacement project can’t be viewed simply as a transit replacement project, similar to when you replace the worn out exhaust system on your car. There’s more to it than that.
Since the average Torontonian doesn’t know the City Plan for Scarborough, and the politicians don’t do a good job explaining it, then they may have difficulty accepting the subway infrastructure investment.
Having said the above, I am strongly in favour of the Scarborough subway it will stimulate and support the McCowan Precinct plan. The McCowan precinct will be a major employment centre for the GTA, and will redraw the street grid into walkable blocks that will attract major development, and transform the heart of Scarborough into an exciting, economically sustainable destination.
Steve: Presuming, of course, that the subway actually serves the McCowan Precinct.
My Comment
We should be careful about making general statements about the travel patterns of Scarborough residents. A statistical survey may show that downtown trips aren’t as high in Scarborough as compared to other areas of the city.
However, what does this information tell us? Does it mean that this is an established pattern going forward? Common sense tells us that people make rational decisions about where they live based on their own self-interest. Three major factors influence their decision:
Affordability – Housing
Commute Time
Quality of Life – Recreation, Community Centre, Schools, Crime
Therefore, since the commute times to downtown take longer in Scarborough than other areas of the city, you would expect to see less people living in Scarborough that work downtown. Over time, downtown workers would choose to live in other parts of the city.
In conclusion, Scarborough’s historical “travel pattern evidence” is a result of the current conditions, and does not forecast future demand and transit patterns under different conditions. A new transit pattern will surely develop in response to a new rapid transit line Scarborough.
Steve: This is a difficult chicken and egg argument that says we should build subways on spec and hope that travel plans will evolve into subway-supportive forms. However, this also presumes that commuting convenience is the primary determinant of a choice of housing location. There is more to “downtown living” than being able to walk to work. Conversely, many people who through economic necessity must live in lower cost housing also have families (or even they as singles) with multiple jobs in multiple locations. The model of downtown as the destination actually runs contrary to hopes (pipedreams though they might be) of new job development in places like McCowan Precinct. It’s ironic that among the primary functions of SmartTrack is to make land in the 905 (Markham and Airport Commercial Centre) more attractive for development.
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The thing is that people will not completely overturn their lives at the appearance of a subway. It may change travel patterns over time, however this would be understood in a normal un-adjusted land use based model of demand. If we do a reasonable network forecast, and make use of such a model (which should include desired changes in land use), it should reflect to a great degree where people will choose to locate. That is it would already be in the forecasts, which will only be undermined by competing transit to the core.
I would agree that more people who choose to work in the core may choose to live in Scarborough if there is better transit linking the two, however, that means more capacity as well as simply extending the subway. However, if we serve other destinations this will also be true of people wanting to work elsewhere. While the core may be the single largest concentration of jobs, it is not the only destination that transit should serve. Also there is going to be highly frequent express service to the core, the transit system also needs to be designed to get riders to those stops.
To Steve’s point: if we want to support the development of other centres, then transit needs to be able to support them as a destination, especially from points beyond that can act as bedroom areas for those potential workers. Can we please allow the planners to look at what we should be doing to plan the city, including transit, and stop looking to have the politicians express their egos, and ours in the form of misguided transit plans. It would appear that subway is filling the role of a muscle car for middle aged men. Knowing you finally bought your teenage dream car makes you feel good, but does it really serve your transportation needs (considering you now have 3 kids and a dog).
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All of this arguing that each councillor’s ward is being unfairly treated unless they have subways, and all the angst about hitting as many destinations as possible with the SSE, has me thinking of the PEI Railway, which could be held up as a solution, but properly could be seen as a cautionary tale.
You can pander to every politician’s hope to have a subway stop (or several) within their ward, and build the most twisted, illogical subway system ever imagined, but in the process you might saddle yourselves with an unmanageable debt that forces you to go to the province or the feds for a bailout. Or, you end up with more of the same inaction that has crippled transit development in Toronto for the last 20+ years.
Steve: The true irony would be for redistribution to move carefully planned subway stops out of a councillor’s ward by shifting the boundaries.
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Joe M says:
Scarborough would be better served if it was divided in half & not looked upon by outsiders as a small mass of land. Ask a commuter at Morningside and Sheppard how useful Kennedy station is?
Glenn De Baeremaeker is just making strong political statements to try to keep the downtown opposition from taking control of the Scarborough transit debate. It’s the unfortunate way politics are played and have to be played in this City.
Steve: And if GDB would not make insulting, ill-informed comments about downtowners, I would be less inclined to make such comments about his policies. It cuts both ways.
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Joe M says:
No quite chicken & the egg whatsoever. If you put a mouse in a shoe box & study its travel pattern. Would you conclude that it prefers to stay within it box & not travel outside?
What we build today crafts the future for any area. If we build inconvenient transit that doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the City’s infrastructure and/or provides insufficient local rapid transit. it’s safe to say most of Scarborough will not be an attractive part of the City to live going forward.
We have only 2 options to choose from. Each option serves a different purpose & the LRT is not even very good at the purpose it’s intended for.
The LRT proposal doesn’t mesh very well with the existing infrastructure (especially on Sheppard) & also won’t provide an efficient route map with its short stub & the Scarborough LRT portion continues to carry on through a poorly planned RT route.
Steve: I have to say this: Robert Wightman and I are partly responsible for the dogleg route taken by the RT. The original plan was to go northeast via the old Canadian Northern corridor (the same diagonal the subway uses from Warden to Kennedy), but this was quite vocally opposed by people whose houses backed onto the right-of-way which, by the way, is somewhat narrower than the corridor the SRT uses. That “poorly planned” route was a direct result of local opposition to the more direct route to STC from Kennedy. It was we who suggested the alternative via the Hydro corridor and the lands parallel to Highland Creek and Progress.
Remember also that at the time, much of northeastern Scarborough was farmland, and so it wasn’t as if there was an established travel pattern.
The subway at least meshes well and provides easier access for the majority of Scarborough to reach the rest of the City on TTC. More importantly they have easier access to areas which provide greater employment. Unfortunately this option neglects the local rapid transit.
It’s not that hard to understand why there is a great divide. We clearly haven’t been provided an effective plan. If we build it right the first time we never half to start over again.
If we are forced to chose between the two plans. My choice would easily be the subway. If the $3.5 billion can be allocated to Scarborough to be used for a more effective plan that would be ideal but not sure well see that in the political climate.
My suggestion to resolve this dilemma would be to shorten the proposed subway extension to STC & construct a BRT network around the perimeter to provide efficient local transit all needs would be sufficiently addressed. This model could be duplicated throughout the City in other areas of neglect.
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Yes, agreed that Smart Track/GO/RER will drain ridership away from SSE. It will be readily obvious looking at the excellent maps on Sean Marshall’s site.
The catchment area that includes Markham, Stouffville, Unionville and Uxbridge is where the population growth currently is, notwithstanding infill growth throughout Scarborough and all of Toronto. If I lived somewhere there, would I be excited by the prospect of the SSE shortening my commute? Not likely.
However, if I lived in Scarborough north of the 401, then yes, the SSE would be very good. Especially if it connected to the proposed Sheppard East LRT. Note, I said Sheppard LRT, not Sheppard subway, because the SSE is draining any hopes for financing a Sheppard subway extension.
The SSE will change some commuting habits, particularly if the main area transit hub moves from STC to Sheppard-McCowan. It WILL increase commuting convenience in that area, regardless of destination.
Another main raison d’etre for SSE is symbolic.
Regarding the financing, consider that the Scarborough commuter does not see a $3.8 billion cost of SSE, does not see that there are on-going operating costs, does not see under-utilization. That Smart Track will be just a few blocks to the west is irrelevant. Just as the SRT-replacing LRT is being offered for free, the SSE is essentially free, also. How? The federal portion of $660 million is being paid by taxpayers all across Canada, the provincial portion by taxpayers all across Ontario, and the local portion by taxpayers all across Toronto. The SSE user is told that his/her tax increase is on average less than the recent hike in Metropasses.
So, if both cost the same to the Scarborough commuter, the choice is obvious: subway yes, LRT no.
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That’s what we call backwards thinking but that’s par for the course when we’re talking about Scarborough transit. Speaking kindly, nowhere else in the world would they do anything as mind-bogglingly stupid as you have suggested. (Nor would they build an underground subway line from one suburban mall to another suburban mall but that’s another discussion)
Subways (or metros if you prefer) are services for urban cores with dense stop spacing where they can distribute large numbers of passengers to many densely packed destinations. Putting them out at the edge of the city with sparse stations every few kilometres (because you can’t justify any more out there) is a huge waste of resources.
On the bright side, discussions like these make it really easy to pick out the people who aren’t really concerned about spending taxpayer money wisely.
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Joe M says:
It’s not a blame game anyhow…
Many things went wrong in the planning of Scarborough. That doesn’t mean we should never optimize & evolve when the opportunity presents itself. And here we are.
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If you look at a satellite image of Danforth Rd. and McCowan, you’ll see they are lined for most of their length by tidy suburban homes. Do all those homeowners know they will forever have to live with the rumble of passing subway trains shaking them out of their seats as they watch TV in their finished basements? Or anyone else who lives along any of the routes that are on the table? Perhaps good old fashioned NIMBYism might kill this thing, where appeals to rational planning principles couldn’t.
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There was a proposal by the CNR a long long time ago to run a branch parallel to to CP’s Galt sub through Lambton Mills and Islington then continue northeast into a gentle cresent up to Alliance Avenue then back down to the Newmarket sub. The junction would have been at the site of the old Davenport station. That branch would have intersected the Weston subdivision near Weston and Rogers Road and trains from Weston could have made the shuffle off the Weston sub to meet with Newmarket trains at Davenport. The awesome foresight of the railways of old in anticipating SmartTrack is second only to whoever put the lower deck on to the Bloor Street viaduct. Sadly, the spur was never built, possibly killed by opponents in Scarborough (who knows?). What’s even more sad is that council hasn’t looked at a railway map since 1910.
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I might go on a bit of a tangent but hopefully it’s related enough to be worthwhile!
In response to some earlier comments about demands at central transit hubs, union and Y/B + Y/E, as well as the mention in some later comments about planning for the future vs. addressing current needs, etc.
Full disclosure, I do not know much about Scarborough, other than that is *big* – nearly twice the size of (pre amalgamation) Toronto. Only North York comes close, but it’s still a little smaller. Both Scarborogh and North York Have weird little stub lines that were arguably poorly planned, very similar populations and densities, but North York gets much better subway coverage courtesy of the YUS, than Scarborough does from the BD (and of course the Sheppard line is a new, shiny, expensive, Subway!). But I’m not sure Scarborough needs a subway as much as the DRL is needed, for instance, because the ridership and density are just so much greater for the DRL. I think LRT would be a better plan for Scarborough because they could cover a lot more ground with similar speed and headway, for the same cost, and the density isn’t necessarily there to justify more. And replacing an existing line with higher capacity that isn’t warranted won’t serve the needs as well as better local transit, and access to the higher levels if needed.
The main problem is that Toronto’s commuter rail (GO) is incredibly hub and spoke in design, instead of a grid or mesh network. As was earlier pointed out, this doesn’t necessarily serve the needs of commuting traffic as well as it could, and Union is already close to capacity if not over it soon. For a long time development in Toronto hasn’t done very well, but if we don’t want to be permanently playing catch-up, I think we need to somewhat cut our losses and plan more for the future than the needs of right now. Is a Scarborough subway something that will be really useful in many years? The McCowan precinct plan suggests that it might, but ultimately if there is not good local surface routing to support it’s use within Scarborough, it will just be another spoke towards the hub that is not necessarily needed or desired. I think we need a more hierarchical system, where buses/streetcars feed subways/lrt feed the GO.
This would of course require infrastructure development for GO which I dare say is impossible in today’s political and economic landscape, as GO would have to have at least one sort of “crosstown” line so that transfers could be made at locations other than union. Fare integration also plays a massive part and it seems to be off the table. But if we could adopt a distance based fare system and integrate all routes, with profits being distribute based on origin/destination (and therefore which transit systems were used in the journey), a hierarchical system becomes fantastic for the average user – the entire GTA becomes accessible with the same convenience of “highways” (GO), “arterials” (subways), and local roads (surface level feeder routs).
Instead we have a system where the infrastructure is based on and planned for, at least at the heavy rail, almost exclusively travel to and from downtown Toronto. Is that really what we want or need? Will a Scarborough subway help someone in Morningside with their daily travel, or only their commute to downtown Toronto … and is that where they’re going? What about all of the other transit corridors in Scarborough – If one looks at the TTC system map it’s not hard to notice travel corridors along Ellesmere and Eglinton/Kingston all the way to Morningside, with U of T Scarborough Campus there as well. Even with the SSE, these will still be served by the same bus service they currently are – how is that an improvement? Given ridership on the RT is below that of many streetcar routes, would a subway really serve the needs of Scarborough better than a good LRT network, that interfaces well with the BD, Yonge, and GO lines?
Just my awkwardly phrased $0.02 😛
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Joe M says:
The subway will certainly fix one major problem from the residents at Mornignside & Sheppard and areas alike. Since I moved to Scarborough one of the first thing I learned from my neighbours was about the nightmare of trying to commute downtown & the neglect of TTC throughout Scarborough. The subway will also make it easier to arrive at UofT as only 1 bus would be required from STC. Instead of a subway to LRT to Bus. Not perfect but much better as sooner or later the Province will build the Ellesmere BRT to Durham to garner votes out East.
You are correct in saying the subway doesn’t solve the local transit issue. But it solves one of the 2 major transit issues Scarborough face & does i quite well. Unlike the band-aid LRT plan.
If we don’t have a fully funded plan that solves both issues you’ll likely to see the subway garner more support from the majority. My fear is without a plan tabled that resolves both issues this discussion will never go away as this large mass of land next to downtown is not going anywhere.
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The Canadian Northern corridor is only about 20 m wide if that. Minimum width for a single track line is about 14 m. The line was bought years ago by Ontario Hydro as a possible transmission line route. If you walk along it you can look into people’s houses from the little hills.
People were afraid of noise, vibrations and the loss of privacy. Seeing how much noise the linear induction motors create through vibrating laminations, it was well founded. The right of way that was chosen was very wide between Kennedy and Midland up to Ellesmere and through an industrial area north of Ellesmere. Because of increased costs after the switch to ICTS and TTC protests, no extra stops were put in between Lawrence and Eglinton which might have made the line more useful.
The original proposal was to run LRT and to extend it in a couple of years to Malvern. If this had been done we would have had a true LRT line that would have provided fast efficient service and easily expandable because there were many suppliers of suitable vehicles. Every time the Province tries to invent a new improved technology or service it ends up getting a bastardized thing which turns out to be an expensive disaster, Urban transportation Development Company, the ICON educational computer, the selling of of parts of Ontario Hydro, ORNG air ambulance, e-Health, MaRS, Gas Fired Generators, Presto, Welfare Computers and the list goes on.
If I remember correctly the decision about the RT route was taken on April 1, 1974 at a Scarborough council meeting. I guess that it turned out to being a big April Fool’s Joke that is still disrupting Scarborough 40 years later.
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Hi Steve, what are your thoughts on running SmartTrack on the current SRT route to serve STC? Metrolinx plans to serve Unionville with RER anyway…
Yes, the sharp right turn between Ellesmere and Midland station would be an issue- but this could be fixed for a fraction of he cost of building the SSE.
This would also provide a direct – and fast- connection between STC and Union.
I’m really not sure why council isn’t including this as a study option. Can you please advise?
Steve: Yes that turn would be a big problem, but more so the limited capacity of SmartTrack services to the north and east as well as GO’s RER sitting on top of it all. A new guideway from Ellesmere eastward would be required because the SmartTrack trains will be wider than the RT trains, and the stations are probably too short. This would be a more extensive reconstruction than was proposed for the RT to LRT conversion.
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They will be able to sell them to condo developers for outrageous sums of money when the development boom that hit Danforth Avenue after the BD was built continues out into Scarborough. There was a condo boom along the Danforth wasn’t there?
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In response to “wtspman” (and correct me if I’m wrong)…
With the case of SmartTrack, the only way there will be even remotely enough “TIF funding” to pay for the line is if zoning is upgraded along the entire length.
I imagine with things like the avenue policy (among other things), that this will also apply along any higher order transportation corridor, i.e. the Scarborough Subway extension. I look forward to seeing the outrage when the streets are torn up to build the thing, and when developers come a knocking to build in the area.
While density (a.k.a. walk-in catchment) is not the only contributing factor to good ridership numbers, it certainly helps. We are one of the best anywhere at surface ridership connecting to RT (I believe only 4 of the bus routes don’t hit the subway), but I firmly believe that subway corridors should have higher density zoning.. (and this is coming from someone who could throw a baseball over the Lakeshore East line outside my front door).
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I have a huge issue personally with even approaching the idea of TIF funding. It requires making some massive assumptions with regards to land valuations, and the line’s impact, and where the impact boundaries will be etc. It is not clear that backing onto a heavy rail line is all a positive, so running trains more frequently may actually reduce the desirability of the first block in either direction (substantial increase in frequency of noise), while still being a positive for the city as a whole.
Call a spade a spade, and just pay for it out of regular taxes. Complex financial engineering introduces additional layers of uncertainty (hence risk), and merely forces the allocation of a portion of tax revenue in a disingenuous way. I am personally of the mind that these corridors should be preserved for the use of RER, unless we can in fact add additional sets of tracks. Stops for highly local use increase trip length for the outer end users, and reduce its usefulness as a regional network. Connect the existing stops with better service.
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