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 
Joe M says:
When did I say Downtown doesn’t have needs to be addressed or hasn’t been neglected? All of Toronto has needs but some like to think they should be a priority to receiving the minimal funds available because they have “growth”. Yes the growth which is stemmed in large part by the fact they have Subways & Fancy streetcars.
All of Scarborough notices the quality developments in North York, Etobicoke (privileged) & Downtown around their Subways. For such a massive part of Toronto what does Scarborough have to attract development?? We have jack and therefore minimal progress or incentive for quality development.
But surely the Toronto Star will tell you how lucky we are. Keep beating Scarborough by slanting the truth over and over until the little money available hopefully flows back to the core.
Unfortunately someone will likely get shot somewhere both in Scarborough & in Metro Toronto this week. How will the media report it? By neighborhood? Only for the Metro shooting. They’ll mention Scarborough only as though its a small dot on the map and falsely scare off people into thinking its a terrible place. Sneaky media.
Yes Steve I’m aware Scarborough Politicians of the past are to partly blamed as well. But they are not the source of lack of funding an opposition to growth.
Scarborough has to fight tooth and nail to be a priority for any funding. Everything we get in Toronto is 2nd class at best as the money flows from the inside out. We are tired of the lack of transit, recreation centers, community housing projects being thrown on major streets for “curb appeal” to beautify our neglected area. Our residents fight, fight & fight to no avail. As you mentioned waterfront downtown, Union station, St Clair, Leslie Barns, street car tracks/cars, Soon to be Nathan Phillips nightmare. Yes we enjoy helping to beauty the core. What did you say we received? New buses? Amazing. Thanks. Many major cities in th world have attractions & sports fields in their Boroughs connected by Subways & they do quite well.
Steve: Union Station is over budget because the building project was more complex than foreseen. The subway to Vaughan would be over budget but for the fact it had a big contingency in its budget, and some of the fancier stuff in the stations has been cut. St. Clair did not go over budget on the transit piece. It was add-ons from local councillors and screwing around with the project schedule, not to mention a decision by Toronto Water to piggyback work (that had to be done anyhow) on the project. Leslie Barns is a mess from a budgetary point of view, but I wouldn’t put that down to people like me trying to waste money, rather to TTC management’s pig-headed insistence on the choice of the site. They could just as easily screw up with a new bus garage. Nathan Phillips Square went over budget because the parking garage underneath it is falling apart like many underground garages all over the city. All of these “overruns” added together don’t come near the cost of the Scarborough Subway, but they are handy targets to use whenever someone wants to slag off “downtown”.
The subway is not only needed to help transit in Scarborough, it’s a big FU to the opposition, Provincial & Federal Politicians that have been screwing us for years. The problem with the LRT plan was not the technology. It was the choppy plan on a separate technology. Classic Political Scarborough planning.
Steve: Well since I am helping to pay for your precious subway, I should take my part of that money to erect a big FU sign facing east at Victoria Park. You really have to get past this ridiculously parochial attitude.
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If we were to compare the tax dollars wasted on projects downtown with the money (past, present and future) wasted on overbuilt transit projects … well the numbers do not even compare.
Smart Track will cost Toronto taxpayers a projected $2.8 billion while the combination of the GO RER line + Eglinton Crosstown extension would have been funded by the province (even after the post recession climb down that McGuinty made). The only thing Toronto gets is “a say” in planning the lines … something Toronto already had.
Toronto taxpayers are already paying the Scarborough subway levy for a project that was promised to only cost $500 million over the cost of the LRT.
So we are talking about millions versus billions. Those differences are in the hundreds of millions … and happening because (when you distill the details out) what has taken place is essentially councilors transferring their ego and insecurities onto the public for 4 decades.
So please don’t compare apples to Apple Jacks and tell us they are the same thing.
Cheers, Moaz
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Joe M says:
Actually you’ll be able to take your sign all the way into Central Scarborough in 10 years & now the bulk of Scarborough citizens could see how wonderful it is to finally be connected to such good neighbors. We’ll even have Rob Ford autograph a copy of the Metro daily news paper for you to read on way & keep as a souvenir. I can see the headline “Although the subway is built there might still be time to stop it” or “Why Etobicoke should refurbish Scarborough old RT remains to connect Sherway Gardens”
TBH you’re one of the few people from your neck of the woods who I’d imagine would actually know where to find the areas east of Victoria Park without getting lost or being scared.
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Can we?
Remember that by law any used streetcar (or bus) purchased or leased now must meet all the accessibility criteria that a new one does – including grab bars, priority seating, stop notification, floors/carpets and ramps/lifts.
Only vehicles that formed part of the fleet in 2011 are exempt from this requirement.
Are you certain there are that many used streetcars that will both meet legal requirements and handle our weather extremes?
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Joe I think that you will find that a lot of the areas around subways have not grown. This is true in near Bloor in Etobicoke, off the northern portion of the Spadina subway, and even near large portions of the Danforth. What is attracting all those people downtown right now is lifestyle. They can walk to all the local services, and enjoy a night out, or live a large part of their life, without using their car all the time. The areas that are attracting the lion’s share of development were originally grown around streetcars, before the subway existed, and before the car was dominant. This means that for instance in the area east of Parkside, that people can walk over to Roncesvalles, and enjoy the shops, bars, and restaurants without using their car. The houses in this neighborhood predate subway, have tight streets and a few alleys, and the yards are for the most part tiny (porch in front is half the front yard, and porch in back plus a little garden and not much more).
This tight walkability was developed around streetcars, as they were dominant at the time of the development of this area to the Don. The land use planning that created all of the area beyond makes this type of walkability extremely hard. Etobicoke around Prince Edward, or Royal York does not have it nor does Guildwood. I would argue that in Guildwood the area of Livingston Rd and Catalina Dr is a marvelous little neighborhood, that has a certain amount of walkability, but not the dense land use hence service of the area say between Parkside and Roncesvalles. The Roncesvalles surrounding type neighborhood, is what people are moving downtown for. It has not experienced as much growth because of the serial construction on Roncesvalles, however, now that it has stabilized I expect to hear from people again about those damned Condo developers trying to put up huge towers again. St Clair and Yonge, is another example, if you live on say Rosehill, you can walk over to Yonge, and all those marvelous shops etc. It is not just subway, but the fact that the area is dense where the subway was built because the streetcar was overloaded. Building subways with huge stop spacing will not achieve this – think how far apart are St Clair and Bloor, and how many stops St Clair, Summerhill, Rosedale, and Bloor. Subway itself did not develop these neighborhoods, and certainly not Liberty Village (there is no subway within reasonable distance), streetcar did, you know the thing that people like Ford say LRT is, but we all know that would be bad.
Planning was driven by streetcar, and I believe that was the idea behind the Avenues plan, start again to develop these walkable high service neighborhoods, that were well connected, and where transit was useable for local trips as well, and you could see services. Where people on the street could live with transit (a street car every 2 minutes is easier to live with than a bus every 45 seconds). Those precious streetcars and tight land use are what makes the downtown growth possible not subway. To move this type of growth to Scarborough would mean creating an area not car oriented, that had walkable space without huge lawns or parking lots etc. I cannot see this being easily accepted, although Livingston Rd with the apartments at the foot and along the east side, comes close, however, even here, look at all the green space, and how that works against walking (a local little strip mall still has good sized well used parking lot doesn’t it, the Church across lots of green).
That Guildwood area is marvelous (I love the Park), as is the Etobicoke area around say Prince Edward and Glenellen, however, you need a bike to use the local services, whereas at Indian Rd near High Park your feet will do.
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In 10 years, some people in Scarborough will rejoice because they have three additional subway stations. And if those people have their way, Scarborough will be spared the injustice of having a new subway line with stations downtown. Never mind that there will be little actual improvement to the commute for people who won’t live close to the saintly stations. Never mind that commuters from Scarborough will have to deal with overcrowded subway platforms and trains the moment they into that area that shall not be named.
Never mind because this is not about about better transit. If it were, there would be attempts at demonstrating that three subways stations are a better choice than a comprehensive network of light rail transit and BRT lines would be. When improvements to commuter trains are proposed, however flawed some may be (Smart Track anyone), we would see arguments as to why both are needed, instead of moving the goal posts (and the route) for no other reasons than having additional subway stops.
I believe that a comprehensive transit network is better than three subway stops. I believe that the whole of Toronto (yes, including Scarborough) needs a new subway line to – among other things – relieve the pressure on existing lines. I haven’t seen arguments to convince me otherwise.
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Malcolm, you got it right about walkable neighbourhoods in relation to subway.
People are not moving to downtown because of the subway. Why would someone living in the entertainment District take the subway to go to let’s say King and Yonge? The same is also true of commercial and business development. Subway is certainly a factor, but downtown was … well … downtown, the main focal point for employment and business well before the Yonge line was built.
Could a three-stop subway extension bring high-density development to the parts of Scarborough that would border it? Possible. It is happening in the northern parts of the Yonge line, and on the Sheppard stubway. Would it make the extension worth it, compared to other forms of rapid transit? Possible, but that would benefit only those areas, and still leave other parts of Scarborough with slow, long bus rides. And as you pointed out, there are plenty of areas where the subway has not been synonymous with high-density development.
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Joe M Says:
I agree with you. It’s a 2 step process. 1. Connect a central hub to the City’s main infrastructure 2. Provide efficient rapid local transit to all corners
The Subway is just the starting point in Scarborough. The local rapid lines will come in the future. The divide, segregation & inequality in Toronto will only ramp up another level in the next generation. We’ll see even greater polarizing politics & those that think “Ford” style politics were just a matter of circumstance & not going to happen again are in for a surprise.
Whether 10 years from now or 100 years local rapid transit is coming on top of the subway. Integrating the greater part of Scarborough firmly on the subway map is a major step towards improving the inequality as far as transit is concerned. There’s much more work to be done elsewhere. To those that say “people in Scarborough moved to an area with no transit so it’s their fault” Well I’d respond that it’s also your fault you moved to a City with such a growing divide in how communities are built to grow in a healthy manner. And this is what you get. Pay for equality or you can leave & until then get used to the noise.
The subway may provide Scarborough that ability to build a demand “walkable & well connected area” just as North York is & Etobicoke Bloor has. And yes Malcolm Etobicoke Bloor is seeing solid development. May not be as rapid as downtown but these developments are high quality & are certainly going up around the subway. Go figure.
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Joe, do me a huge favor go to the NHL directors, get a team for Scarborough, let us get an arena near the STC (I wonder if you could sell Scarborough as a separate market). If Scarborough had a team, the Leafs might actually have to perform. I suspect that a decent team in Scarborough would draw people who wanted to watch hockey, and not pay through the nose for year after year of disappointment. (Montreal last won a Stanley cup the last year there was a team in Quebec City). I think too much of what has been added in the core has not considered the services required to support it, or of the need for future transit. The railway lands should have held an allowance for transit to pass through, even if it was not to be used for 20 years.
Joe my problem is that I believe that all of Scarborough does deserve better transit and development. Scarborough likely needs 40km of LRT & BRT and decent, frequent and accessible GO, not a lousy 7km or so of subway. If we want the GTA to work, we need to start jointly backing transit that makes sense and stop supporting a very odd combination of mega projects, and service cuts. Good transit service is about frequency, comfort, travel time, reliability and appropriate capacity, not subway.
The province and certain city politicians, have played, to great effect, the games of ego and divide and conquer. We need to stop and look at best planning, and push as a region to see it implemented. That means for Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York, the old city and even beyond. The Province needs to provide/secure $2 billion for the GTA each year, and start to build continuously. We cannot afford not to spend $2 billion every year in the region on transit infrastructure expansion/extension. The funding should be there and we should be able to plan the projects that will provide the biggest bang. The idea of blaming downtown is a political invention, the same politics that led to a Sheppard subway and Vaughan extension. Transit and planning should be done hand in hand, and not as election and by-election cannon fodder.
The GTHA, could using best planning, actually begin to catch its growth using transit, if it actually was careful about building capacity appropriate transit, and build the projects in the most logical order. This however, would mean keeping ego and politics, and hard feelings out. It also means needing to start to some degree with the outer 416, while making sure that capacity is available to get to the core.
We cannot however, confuse replacing streetcars, and buses, and subway trains with infrastructure extension/expansion.
Oh and I think Scarborough, Markham, Pickering, Ajax and Whitby represent more than enough people to support an NHL team. Sports franchises are a much better place to invest ego and breed rivalry and bad feelings than transit is.
Steve: Sports franchises and the like are yet another mechanism by which the nefarious extract hundreds of millions of dollars from gullible rubes who think that their burg will be so important if only it has a stadium, arena, etc. Markham almost went down that route. Can you say “let’s bid for the World’s Fair”?
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@ Malcolm.
I meant the possibility of locating a Toronto stadium one day. Not a Scarborough as a separate market. lol. Cmon man.
A cricket stadium would be a huge attraction in the future & one day when the ACC is sold for condos any suburb on the Subway line is accessible. Boston is a prime example.
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Yes, but as a source for rivalry, and ego, they are less damaging than allowing transit to be that. Also I have a high level of confidence that the MLSE would never let this happen. Note Team first, stadium second.
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There are two main camps when it comes to transit in Scarborough;
1). Those who support the most recent transit expert analysis and,
2). Those who do not.
The second group is divided almost equally by those support the subway plan and those who support the Transit City LRT plan. In both cases, there were old reports that claimed they were the best option, but both have since been discredited.
The first group are those that want to connect the SRT to a grade-separated line. The most recent report, which considers cost-benefit analysis, passenger forecasts and the most current Information on rider behaviour has found that this connected option is best.
Unfortunately, those in the second group, who base transit on gut feeling and outdated thinking, are getting all the attention. It would have been nice if the first group would have received more attention, for now it looks like it might be too late.
Steve: The report to which you refer is the updated Metrolinx BCA for the Crosstown line dated June 2012. It contained four options for review:
1. Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT : unlike the line now under construction, would have been underground all of the way from Weston to Kennedy Station, then follow the existing RT alignment, but dropping Ellesmere Station.
2. Future Proofing Option 1 : identical to Option 1 except that the platforms would be longer to handle larger future demand with longer trains.
3. Transit City Concept : the Crosstown line as it is now being built with surface operation from Leaside to Kennedy, and the SRT continuing to operate as a separate line.
4. Eglinton-Scarborough Subway : a subway in the Eglinton corridor that would continue east on Eglinton then turn north to Scarborough Town Centre via Danforth Road and McCowan. It is unclear whether the line actually goes to STC or simply ends at Ellesmere because of errors in the maps.
The “base case” was to retain the SRT and improve it to a state of good repair with 2′ headways.
Option 1 wins out, but it is intriguing that it maintains the through operation of the “RT” portion of the line with the Eglinton route, a configuration originally proposed for the LRT line but ditched by the TTC.
Bizarrely, Option 2 is identical to Option 1, but has a lower modelled ridership because, according to the report, riders would be discouraged by the wider headway of longer trains. We are talking a difference of at most 1’15”, and it is astounding that the model drops about 10% of the projected demand from this effect.
Because the model is so sensitive to travel time, it positively loves transfer-free rides (presuming that most riders would make them) and the avoidance of on street operation. The result is that the projected ridership for Option 3 is about 80% of that for Option 1.
Option 4 (the subway) does not fare as well because:
Does this argument sound familiar?
The problem I have with this modelling is that it places far more riders on Eglinton when they have a through trip from the portion east of Kennedy Station than with a split operation where the riders, forced to transfer, opt for the Bloor-Danforth subway. This suggests that destinations served by the BD line are where riders really want to go and the model has mis-assigned them to Eglinton. The “travel time savings” are then awarded to all of those “Eglinton” trips that might prefer to take a different route downtown. Finally, none of the modelling takes into account possible diversion of trips to GO.
My opinion of the Metrolinx BCAs is that they are slightly better, but not by much, than snake oil because of the options they choose to study, the weighting assigned to various factors, and demand modelling that is suspect.
Yes, there is a “most recent report” that says that a through, grade separated line is the “best option”, but it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. That’s not to say I would endorse what we are building now either, but there has never been a study that has credible demand modelling and integrates the effect of better (and integrated) service on the GO corridor. With luck, we will see something better in the joint study now underway by the City and Metrolinx.
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So low density development has downsides? Who would have thought? Is it up to the people paying property taxes on their $1 million+ homes to ensure those living in $500K homes on sprawling lots outside of the core have the exact same density of services? I would say no, it isn’t.
If you want anyone to blame, blame Scarborough politicians who built the mess that exists there now. At the same time I hope you’re out there at community meetings yelling at the NIMBY activists railing against new development too.
As far as Union Station “overruns” are concerned, was that not a case of scope creep with extra project add ons?
Steve: Some of the Union Station cost is due to unforeseen conditions, and some due to add ons. A lot depends on how a critic does the accounting. For example, the North West PATH connection is a separate project, but it is essential to distributing riders from the expanded station. Depending on how someone adds up the figures, it might appear as an “overrun”. The Union Subway Station portion of the project has had its own complications, some brought on by contractors, and some by changes in the design of how the subway and railway stations will connect with each other. We missed the chance to expand the streetcar loop while it was closed, and so whenever that project finally is back on the table, it will cost more and produce more upheaval than if it had been an “add on” to the current project.
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The one thing that i think we can agree on is that this is not going to be a rationale debate. I lived in Scarborough from January 1966 to July 1975 and back then it had better transit service than Etobicoke or North York. One has to remember that the suburbs were built to satisfy a car centric society rather than a transit centric one. Most of the problems in Scarborough were created by the council of Scarborough Township and then the Borough of Scarborough before Harris forced amalgamation in the late 90s.
The Metro form of government allowed the then 12 suburban municipalities to thrive and grow off the infrastructure base of the City of Toronto in 1954. For nearly 50 years the old City of Toronto supported the suburbs as they grew. Scarborough Council made decisions that created the problems of today by blocking development around Kennedy and Eglinton that would have occurred if market forces, and FREE ENTERPRISE, had been allowed to happen naturally instead of trying to force development at “Scarborough Town Centre”, an artificial area created by real estate developers.
Scarborough, and the other outer boroughs, saved money by not building infrastructure and services that the old city did. For half a century the old City of Toronto supported the outer borough by providing a system of water, sewage and transit that cost them much more than it did the boroughs. Let your Scarborough Subway go ahead without the DRL, which really does not benefit the majority of downtowners. You may get to Yonge and Bloor but what are you going to do when you can’t get on the Yonge line because it is overcrowded? The bicycle riding left leaning pinko downtown latte sipping downtowners will be able to get around on their antiquated archaic streetcars while you wait to get on a line 1 train.
The idea that Scarborough will get
is laughable. Unless you are willing to have a 10 to 15% increase in property taxes this will never happen. Joe your attitude is so insular that I really wish that Scarborough would be amalgamated with Durham region instead of Toronto. Then maybe you would be happy with Durham Transit.
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@ Malcolm N
I understand where you are coming from and you always make sound points about how things should work in a perfect world. In the reality of the current political landscape if the Province/City don’t QUICKLY step up to the plate with a serious fully funded LRT/BRT Scarborough transit plan a subway is getting built.
SmartTrack may prolong the subway debate by complicating matters. But if anyone tries to pull the subway off the table because of SmartTrack without ahead turning full scale FUNDED LRT plan to fall back on we’re going to see the end of John Tory & a Ford will run away in the next election as Scarborough will be livid.
In less than three years the campaigning will be in full force again. Without clarity & a firm plan look out. With the current studies and timelines my best guess is we’re going to see another round of raucous debates & opposition leading into the next election. If Tory wants back in, he’ll take the safe road of moving the subway forward as he currently claims, Ford will be pro subway. Within the next 2 years if no one in the opposition plants a seed which contains something above the Transit City stub argument there is next to zero chance of the subway being scrapped.
Too much dismay to some here the LRT to STC & a stub on Sheppard is not coming back without some major revisions, extensions, complete loop and a heavy sales pitch. In my opinion time is ticking this time around.
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Actually, Joe M. We do not agree. Not one bit. Instead of an argument as to why a subway is the best transit solution for the eastern part of Toronto (yes, that’s Scarborough), we get the non-sense about inequality and injustice. Either a three stop subway extension is a good idea – and the best idea, or its not. Period, end of story. Those who you resort to division politics (“we’re treated like second-class citizens”, “it’s unjust”) instead of coming with a solid, debatable argument are the ones who cause divisions in the city.
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@ SoWhat
Actually we do agree that the subway is not the best solution & the fact politics is the root of the problem. Where we don’t agree is the efficiency of the current LRT proposal when weighted against the subway.
– The subway although much more expensive is more beneficial to the majority than the Scarborough LRT.
– SmartTrack will adjust the subway route & the Scarborough LRT would have to be adjusted if ever brought back.
– The Sheppard LRT as a short stub for connecting to another short stub of a different technology heading in the same direction on the same road is nonsense.
As a Scarborough citizen who commutes across the City to work to different place throughout the year I understand the challenges everywhere in the City. But I also understand how isolated & cut off the greater part of Scarborough is from the rest of the City.
Scarborough needs 2 items addressed.
1. Efficient transit to Toronto’s core. No this doesn’t have to be subway but when item number #2 below is not being addressed why would we ever want the extra inconvenience of a short transfer & inefficient path
2. Efficient local transit to the all corners of Scarborough connecting, Priority area, possibly employment areas, schools & attractions.
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Joe M:
Are you taking your ball and going home too?
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No. I am in favour of increased taxes to build a decent efficient transit system that BEST serves ALL the residents of the GTA and not one that gets rid of the imagined slights that were a result of bad planning and choices made by that area. Just imagine if Scarborough did not join Metro Toronto in 1954 but stayed separate.
I grew up at Davisville and Mt. Pleasant until the end of high school. When the apartments south of Davisville went up my parents moved to Lawrence and Warden where I lived for 10 years. I moved to Brampton because my and my wife’s work was out here. I am in favour of a regional tax to improve transit in the GTA and if some of that improves transit in Scarborough that is O.K. as long as it is the best use of those monies. That does not include an ego subway to Scarborough Town Centre or Vaughan Centre.
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Well Joe, this is exactly the issue with mixing politics and transit planning.
The province promised a high tech fairy tale with the RT, and look how that ended. To me, build what makes the most sense with the money, and something that can start now as in before summer’s end, not starting 10 years from now (tomorrow is always a day away in this game of politics).
You talk of extensive needs, which the subway money could meet in a single pass. The province will also know that as soon as the subway starts operation, it will be clear that this doesn’t really meet the needs. So well, how do I buy time, and avoid the issue. There would have been no excuses with LRT, and by the way, getting 100-200 million a year for Scarborough for construction after Wave 1 would have been a lot easier than getting subway now. You would have been able to secure wave 2 easily with less political BS than jumping to subway (with fewer waves, and less future resistance from other areas of the city).
You should be fighting the politics of exclusion and division, and selling to you as a victim. They are easy cheap politics, that cost the tax payers and service users dearly, as they replace real planning.
Steve: Imagine if there were battles between various deprived parts of Toronto for “my subway is more important than your subway”. That’s the mess we have unleashed with Scarborough’s so-called second class status. There are already rumblings of discontent from Downsview and northern Etobicoke, albeit from Councillors who are just as good (in a negative sense) at exploiting the poor for electoral benefit as the ones in Scarborough.
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Steve, why don’t you post at your old site anymore? Did your anti-Scarborough rants and foul language in your replies to many Scarborough (or Scarberia as you like name-calling) posters get you banned with the hosting company?
Steve: My old “hosting company” is a friend who operates a web service out of his apartment. I’m moving to Word Press because his system has run out of steam to support the level of activity on this site. As for rants and language, the comments from readers far outnumber my comparatively restrained replies. I have better things to do than to tell the knuckle draggers to get stuffed, and I also happen to believe that there are many in Scarborough who have considerably more intelligence and courtesy, even if we disagree about transit options.
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Why don’t you worry about Brampton instead? Here in Scarborough, we too would be much happier with Durham or York or even by ourselves than to constantly be subsidizing Downtown transit whether it is new subway trains, new streetcars, new Downtown Relief Lines (and nothing less than a subway would do for Downtown while LRTs keep getting shoved up Scarborough’s rear end time and time again), and the list of demand only gets longer and longer and longer. But whether to join York, Durham, stay in Toronto, or go by ourselves is NOT something for people from Brampton to worry about and quite frankly none of their business.
Steve: Any time taxes are spent on boondoggles, it is everybody’s business, just as you rail on about the money wasted downtown.
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A long, long time in the future. If the city spends 3-4 billion on a subway to Scarborough now, how long do you think it will be before there’s an appetite to go back and spend billions more on LRT lines? They’ll be at the back of the line for every infrastructure project for a long time. There may be nothing of consequence built in Scarborough for the next 30 years or more!
The reason why I and (I think) many others oppose this subway is not because we oppose spending money on transit in Scarborough. It’s because we oppose spending it foolishly. Spending billions extra to build a subway that will only serve a small fraction of the region and which will be underused when you could use that same money to fund significant improvements all over the region is an extremely poor choice. It’s bad for Toronto, and it’s especially bad for Scarborough.
Have you been to Etobicoke along Bloor? The area is definitely not walkable and well-connected, outside of maybe the Royal York and Bloor area. There are a litany of similar examples along the North York subway stations. But perhaps the best example is the existing subway in Scarborough. Scarborough has had a subway for more than 40 years, but how walkable and well-connected are the neighbourhoods around Victoria Park, Warden, and Kennedy stations. Why would building new stations at Lawrence and McCowan, STC, and Sheppard and McCowan develop any differently?
The answer is that they won’t, because it’s not the subway that brings walkable neighbourhoods. The neighbourhoods in Old Toronto were walkable long before the subway ran there. They were walkable because they were built before cars. Scarborough is not walkable because it was built for cars. There are things that we can do to help make Scarborough more walkable, but they don’t include overbuilding underground infrastructure.
Steve: It’s worth noting that the walkable part of Bloor in Etobicoke pre-dates the subway by decades and has a character more like the “city” portion of Bloor Street east of Jane. The closest similar example in Scarborough is the Kingston Road, but that area has been run down for years thanks to it’s not sitting beside an affluent part of the city. There have been schemes for an uplift of that whole stretch, but they don’t seem to be moving very fast.
The proposed Sheppard LRT is 13 km, more than twice the length as the Sheppard subway and approximately the same length as a theoretical single line from McCowan to Yonge. That is decidedly not a “stub”, it’s a pretty substantial line in it’s own right.
Steve: Not to mention an extension south to serve UTSC.
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Something has to be done to get the Leafs to perform. If they had a little competition for the local ticket sales, perhaps they would need to get a team that would get into, and then go some place in the play-offs. Besides, I would rather see a fight over hockey teams than transit, it is one heck of a lot cheaper (fighting about maybe 1 or 2 hundred million not billions).
Steve: Now if only we could put Councillors in a penalty box. Mind you, it might be tricky to maintain quorum.
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Joe M:
Until we provide fully funded concrete solutions to change the unfair development mistakes of the past you are going to get the over the top politics you mention. Quite frankly these Politicians have to ask for the heavens just to squeeze a raindrop. So I don’t blame them
Also I’m not sure any of the Scarborough priority areas are getting a subway. The subway is going to the core areas so ALL citizens have adequate access the main artery of the City within reasonable a distance.
Like I said it’s a 2 step process for transit that need to be met Otherwise we are likely going to continue the same discussions for decades to come …
1. Ensuring everyone has adequate access to the main transit artery
2. Ensuring all areas including the deprived ones have adequate local rapid transit close by to all areas of Toronto
If we only address the local rapid transit in “phases” & patches we are continuing to build a City of inequality. Toronto & Ontario has identified many problems in these deprived areas & they have sat on their hands with only band-aid solutions provided to this point. And this is not just transit. They continue to stuff “affordable” housing into these same deprived areas instead of investing to re-develop them.
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Joe M said:
It a substantial 13 KM waste. Even they try to save some face by connecting UTSC we are still neglecting important areas of Scarborough and installing a line that is inferior to what our neighbours in the West (North York) enjoy. We are not ALL asking for it to be an underground subway, but at least build the line efficiently & connect Scarborough properly so that we are not only serving a select few to begin with.
This City & Province continue to pick winner and losers.
Joe M:
Now that 3-4 billion is available, an expansive Scarborough plan could now be in play. But without a plan with significant improvements above the current scheme I’d rather see a subway built.
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I do worry about Brampton, and all of the GTHA. If you think that you are subsidizing Downtown then you are sadly mistaken. Aside from the Eglinton Crosstown line, which for most of its run is a subway, not an LRT, what LRT lines have been shoved up Scarborough’s rear end time and time again? If the new streetcars downtown were to be replaced by buses the subsidy costs, and probably the capital costs, would be much higher. I am reminded about what someone once said that people seem to know a lot about their “rights” but nothing about their “responsibilities.”
Since some of my taxes are going to build the Eglinton Crosstown line, and the Scarborough Subway Extension through Provincial and Federal subsidies, it is MY business. I have no problem supporting wise and needed transit choices but what you and some of your ilk want is not supported by any sane analysis of the current situation. The DRL, for the billionth time, is not to benefit downtowners but to allow suburbanites to get downtown more easily. You and your fellow whiners, are doing a disservice to the majority of Scarborough residents who are sane and rational. I can only wish that your part of Scarborough joins Durham.
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Joe M:
Downtown land/homeowner or developers benefit the greatest from the DRL. Aside from that…
To say the bulk of Scarborough residents who would have to commute 1-2 hours just to reach the DRL from buses and other poorly integrated transit platforms will be the main beneficiary is a crock.
I can almost stomach the part about downtowners not being the main beneficiaries of the Subway to a some extent. But I’d argue they now have quick access to another node when required & are the still main beneficiary.
I’m pro DRL. But unlike your US vs. THEM mentality reverse Rob Ford narrative, I see the transit starved areas of Scarborough, Etobicoke & North York as high if not higher priority as their needs are not because of demand that comes from already having decent infrastructure. They have lack of any form of adequate rapid transit, lack of fair access to the main jobs areas (downtown) and lack of investment & renewal close to home. It’s more than one issue & it’s caused by inequality.
You seem to have a great understanding of Toronto’s political history & the mistakes of the past but it also seems that you are stuck back in that old generation & don’t care to understand the current issues all of Toronto is facing. You can blame old municipal Scarborough council making mistakes all you want. It doesn’t change today’s reality & future needs of this growing City. Too many areas have been left out of not only local transit but also a fair proximity to Toronto’s main artery which supports development and connects the City on a larger scale.
Also…
If Scarborough was part of Durham. They would likely have greater support to lobby the Province into building a Subway just as Vaughan has with minimal internal opposition. Unlike Pickering Scarborough is Metro Toronto’s neighbor & not going anywhere much to your dismay. These areas which are completely isolated from rapid transit also pay for TTC operating costs & maintenance. The high paying jobs are downtown & some areas require 3-4 transfers & 2-3 hours to get there & you want to add more transfers?
I’ve hear they should just use the GO train. Really? They should pay triple? When they are already subsidizing others TTC?
I’ve heard maybe they should just move closer? But how can you afford to without a saving in a good paying job.
And for those that use these deprived areas current travel patterns to determine future growth needs. Shame on you & give your head a shake.
Steve: Oh dear, now we are saying that “downtown developers” are beneficiaries of the DRL. This really is getting out of hand. ANY economic activity in the GTHA is likely to benefit some business interest “downtown”, and if that’s your basis of measurement, even building a Scarborough Subway will help “downtowners”. Indeed, SmartTrack’s primary beneficiaries if we look at the background studies are landowners in the 905 whose property becomes more valuable given better access to a potential workforce based in the 416, many of whom would live “downtown”.
You have reached a point where your arguments warp any policy into an anti Scarborough or anti suburb scheme, and this is really tiresome.
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@ Steve:
Warp policy? It’s my reality. I took the GO train last week to Union as I couldn’t afford to be late. I already pay for a Monthly Metro Pass & paid an additional $13 for the day on top to get to a meeting on a downtown project. How is that even remotely fair?
I think reality might set in a bit more after next election. Way too many of us are fed up & way too many are clueless or just don’t care.
Developers & land owners benefit greatly from new transit. How could you even argue that?
Steve: I agree that developers and land owners benefit from transit; however, translating that to “downtowners” and by extension the transit needs of downtown (both within it and to access it from the suburbs) is not a valid link. The real issue is whether the developers pay the true cost of providing services to their land and buildings.
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The issue for the DRL is exactly that Joe. It has no natural constituency, because those who will need it most, cannot see they need it yet, and will not until it is a full blown active crisis.
Yonge suffers from an overload condition, which the signals project will not correct. Better crewing methods for turns and gap trains help to address this. An added turn at the north end of Yonge, might also help (although this is not now in the works), but coming to Bloor on Yonge soon, are a wall of full trains, with little or no capacity to accept added load from Danforth. The long transfers now suffered will explode.
If you think in terms of queue times. If only the equivalent of 90% of each train from Danforth can board passing Yonge trains, after 10 trains and you have a full train, 20 and you are waiting 2 full trains etc. What happens when you bump this down to 80% or 70%. At 70% (which will happen soon) work the same numbers – 10 trains and you are waiting 3, work that for the 30 trains of peak hour and you are waiting 20 minutes to make a transfer at Bloor, which is obviously unsafe because the station does not have that capacity. Some will make the obvious transfer to St George, and then Spadina, but well, there will not be not enough capacity there either.
To make a long story short, the DRL is not primarily about additional service, but about accommodating growth. Yonge is already operating above its TTC indicated capacity, and there are issues at Bloor. Based on the way queues work, when this hits a certain point the problem will not appear gradually, but explode. The issue with critical overloads like this, is that 5% below crush capacity you never notice, 5% over and all hell breaks loose. We are already at or very close to crush capacity on Yonge. The gap trains are being used, then will come the ability of some riders to ride around using St Georges. When they start moving to Spadina, it will be too late.
By the way, yes, it will help downtown developers, those building additional office space. It will help those seeking to be in Toronto as business as well. The problem is that it is not clear that elsewhere in Toronto or even Ontario is actually the next best alternative for some these businesses. This is how alternate centers are created. Some people along the line just beyond the traditional downtown line may also benefit, but this is small potatoes. This is like a pipe, when its full its full, and the it overflows, and this will be as bad for Toronto as a backed up sewer pipe is for your basement. All other solutions to 20-25% per decade ridership growth are really band-aids. I would say after we gain additional capacity from the signals project, we are maybe a couple of years from needing an additional turn (ie one stop extension of Yonge) then maybe 5 more and well then what?.
Steve: It is worth mentioning here that the TTC is removing the gap trains from the schedule, and simply adding them into the regular service. When there is a backlog of demand southbound at Bloor, there will be no ampty train sitting at Davisville to pop into the gap, and the backlog on the Bloor platfork will take much longer to clear. I think this is a very foolish move.
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PS Joe, the problem remains, unless someone does a real network analysis, to show how other projects will act to draw traffic away from Yonge, we are basically making the SSE for many of the riders who believe they need it. To the extent that these riders are core bound and are forced to ride something in a GO ROW, how will the subway have served them? DRL is hot now, because if we move now, it would not be available for at least another decade likely 15 years. I hope that this is fast enough.
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Every possible permutation of subway or LRT lines will still neglect many important areas of Scarborough. Does that mean we should build none of them? It would be great if we could spend billions and billions to build multiple lines at once. I’m in favour of raising taxes, both municipal and provincial, to fund transit infrastructure and operations all over the city. But that isn’t going to happen any time soon, it seems, so we have to build and plan incrementally.
The Sheppard subway was a mistake. It was a mistake before it was built, and has been a mistake ever since it opened. Compounding that mistake by extending it based exclusively on some twisted sense of “fairness” (based entirely on an arbitrary line drawn on a map) would be complete insanity.
We’re stuck with the Sheppard subway. The best we can do is make the transfer as easy as possible (same platform as the LRT) and live with it.
Scarborough has a subway. If it was a part of Durham, it probably wouldn’t have Kennedy station. The province might have built the SRT very differently, and you’d be advocating for an LRT replacement for that, to match what Mississauga is (might be?) getting.
Well that depends on your living needs, doesn’t it? If your main need is a subway connection, there are plenty of low cost housing options near Kennedy and Victoria Park stations, as well as in North York.
If you need to have a backyard, and space for two cars, and space for multiple kids and a dog, and good schools, and nice parks, and you want to do that all on a middle class income, then yes, you might have to move to the outer 416. But in that case, you’ve prioritized other things over transit. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you have to accept that you can’t have it all. You can, and should, advocate for transit improvements, but realistic ones that are appropriate to the area you chose to live in.
Personally, I rent a very small apartment in Old Toronto (non-downtown) for about the same cost as a two-bedroom in many parts of Scarborough. I do that because I prioritized my neighbourhood and access to good transit over spacious living. And if I one day choose to move further away from the core, I’ll have to accept the trade-off I’ll be making at the time.
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I am not convinced Steve that this is a foolish move. If you take the approach that politicians will not act on anything other than what the voter sees directly and the voter is simply starring at his feet, this might in fact be a great idea. It will start to introduce today, what must be in a handful of years. When people realize that their ride hangs entirely on a gap train being inserted, they may also realize that these trains will not be enough to allow for added load on their line (BDL) or the other, and actually start to wake up to the real need. The TTC could by managing this (yes I know never happen) or at least bringing this need to the fore, and the limits to the ability to run gap trains, force at the very least additional turn capacity on Yonge to the fore as a political issue. Yes they will be forced to re-introduce the gap train, but well… it will be a front page issue by that point, and that may be what is required.
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Thanks Steve. This is very helpful.
I don’t suppose there is any rough estimate as to what interim bus shuttle service would cost?
Steve: For the Provincial alignment option taking the subway via the RT corridor, the TTC costed out the bus replacement at $21m presuming it would start in 2019 when construction conflicting with the existing operation would begin. That’s $4-5 million/year depending on whether 2019-2023 counts from mid-years (4 elapsed years) or from Jan 1 to Dec 31 (5 elapsed years). For the LRT option, Metrolinx hoped for a 3 year or less construction period where the existing RT would be affected. (They can build the section beyond McCowan Station before or in parallel with the work to convert the existing RT to LRT.)
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Here is a core issue for me. I really do think that if we are going to fix a lot of what is wrong with Toronto transit properly, requires fixing both the way GO serves within outer 416 stations, and how the fare is set up. There needs to be a proper, integrated Metro/GO pass, that actually reflects how people will use it. GO from within 416 should not involve a full additional fare. However, fixing some of this really requires having real service (at least every 15 minutes) on the GO within 416 and a reasonable fare. If you are going from Guildwood or beyond for instance to the core, it should be a better ride using GO. This just requires real service. The idea that 2 trains in peak hour provide service on Lakeshore east in 416 is a huge issue (as is a $6+ dollar fare from there).
Fixing transit properly means doing a bunch of smaller instead of one massive project. My problem here Joe, is sure it is not fair, but subway is not the right answer to this particular issue. RER, with real service inside 416 on both Lakeshore and Stouffville is for Scarborough, with trains no less frequent than 15 minutes at Scarborough stops. These stops should have real support to them that makes sense, in the case of Kennedy GO for instance, that should be LRT from Crosstown that supports at least Kingston Road, LRT from STC and beyond, and ideally a BRT (I know I am dreaming Steve) in Gatineau as well as regular surface bus. Agincourt GO should have an LRT stop coordinated with the Sheppard LRT. This would mean that you could ride to either on LRT from the foot of Morningside, or transfer to BRT in Gatineau for a fairly direct ride to either GO or subway at Kennedy, and I agree Joe, it should be a single pass for the entire journey. However, I still do not think simply extending the subway is the best answer, especially if we are not about to build parallel capacity into the core for Yonge.
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Joe M:
The issue here is Toronto politicians have no concrete plan or tools in place to spread growth & investment out by encouraging growth. Encouraging business growth signs have been seen in the 905 recently but Toronto is a one trick pony that is just happy to keep feeding the beast offering no incentives or plan to distribute growth throughout the City. A few wishy washy attempts have been made but were done with questionable thought & public funding. With minimal resistance to growth in the core & minimal incentives for developers to build anywhere else in the City they just skip over to the 905 where taxes are lower & municipal planning is more focused to drive growth.
Because this is “how it is” in Toronto, I believe all Toronto residents have the right to receive adequate & affordable transit to the core areas of employment.
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For the record Joe, I am not sure other than better bus, about improving service from the foot of Morningside to the most logical stop — Guildwood — but the distance is short enough more frequent bus on a reasonably direct route should do (yes I know it isn’t really all that direct).
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I think we can agree that the possibility of have a sane discussion about Scarborough Transit based on fact rather than passion has disappeared. My last comment, I hope, will be to be careful what you wish for because you might get it and if it does not do the job you want tough because you will be stuck with it.
I am now waiting for “North Etobicoke Deserves a Subway” crowd to start.
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While I would agree that some parts of these business can grow, there is a basic need for a good chunk of the high end of the consulting and financial sectors to be in close proximity. The businesses that serve that part of those operations also needs to be very close by. Frustrating the location of these businesses will mean they simply go completely elsewhere. There is likely however, something that could be done in terms of ensuring ease of commuting and tax policy that would draw business that need to be more loosely attached from the 905 to places like Scarborough. The problem is that providing truly attractive space, in an area developed for cars by using transit is hard. The STC has a parking area that amounts to a barrier for pedestrian traffic.
The same is true for Square One. Making either the outer end of a subway line will not change that. I would note the dominant area of growth for business for the last 25 years in Calgary has been the core. There has been an active effort on the part of the city of Calgary to reduce driving, and create a transit based centre. This has altered the land use from the river to at least 7th Ave, created an environment of dense office space and a lot of above ground walkways and shopping space “plus 15” that mirrors the core of Toronto’s underground. If we want to create dense well serviced areas, we need to create superior access to the bedroom areas beyond, and not just put them on the end of a subway that is connected to the core. Businesses need to be able to attract employees by creating access to housing with an easy commute. To me that would make an argument for LRT and BRT running away from the STC to the east and north, as well as a connection to downtown. However the connection to the bedroom areas beyond is what would be as important. North York City Centre has suffered to some degree from not having a great enough transit reach to beyond, as has the STC, much more than not having adequate connection to the core.
LRT as a network serving eastern and northern Scarborough, especially if it focused back on the STC would do much more for it as a business centre than a subway connection ever could. Ideally, from a purely development perspective, run an LRT North into Markham, east along say Ellesmere as well as a short distance west, and then connect all that from STC to the subway with LRT. Would be less than ideal from an overall transit planning to serve riders, but would provide better development for the STC if that were actually your goal.
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Joe M says:
It’ll be much much better than what we have now. Being stuck with a subway extension to replace the RT is wonderful. And we were never offered the Grand Royal LRT network some posters believe.
I agree there will be no sane discussion on Scarborough transit.
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