With all the flurry of transit funding and construction announcements lately, Mayor John Tory added his own contribution with a media statement at that busiest of stations, Bloor-Yonge. What prompted such a high-profile event? Rumour has it that Queen’s Park plans to fund the Richmond Hill subway extension in its coming budget, and Tory wants to be sure he defends the existing downtown system against overloading from the north.
(See coverage in The Star and The Globe & Mail)
Specifically, Tory wants to ensure that funding will be available for:
Building new transit lines including the Eglinton East LRT, waterfront transit and the downtown relief line
This is brave stuff, our Mayor rallying his city to the barricades [cue inspirational and very-hummable anthem here] were it not that Tory himself is responsible for much of the confusion and misdirection in transit plans today. His election campaign promoted “SmartTrack”, a single city-wide project that would solve every problem and magically be funded through taxes on new development the line would bring. A “surface subway” would speed riders from Markham to Mississauga via downtown with frequent service at TTC fares. Nothing else (except for a politically unavoidable subway in Scarborough) was needed, certainly not better bus and streetcar service to fill all those spaces in between major routes.
Things didn’t quite work out as planned. SmartTrack has dwindled to a handful of new GO stations to be built on the City’s dime, some of which Metrolinx might have built anyhow, and a few in locations of dubious merit beyond their soothing effect on local politicians. With the demise of a scheme to run GO trains along Eglinton from Mount Dennis to the Airport district, the Eglinton West LRT extension is also on the table, but it stops short of its necessary end, the airport, because Toronto lopped off the outside-416 segment to reduce the cost. Whether Mississauga and/or the airport authority itself will contribute to the LRT remains to be seen.
Tory discovered that surface routes suffered under his predecessor, and vowed more money for buses. Toronto bought the buses, but money to actually operate many of them is harder to come by. The only thing that saved the TTC from widespread service cuts in 2017 was a last minute City budget fiddle to bump the expected revenue from Land Transfer Tax.
Meanwhile in Scarborough, SmartTrack and the Scarborough Subway Extension vie for the same pool of riders, and it is only the comparatively infrequent GO service that preserves any credibility for the subway extension. Planners who once argued that an east-west line through the Town Centre precinct would better serve future development now compliantly endorse the supposed benefit of a single new north-south station between McCowan and the shopping mall.
Mayor Tory might now think of both ST and the SSE as “done deals”, although there’s a lot of ground to cover before the final cost projections and approvals by Council. Those extra GO stations and the express subway might still cost more than the preliminary estimates shown to Council, but there’s no more money coming from Queen’s Park. Indeed, the two governments cannot agree on how to calculate inflation in the provincial “commitment”, and Toronto thinks more money is on the table than is likely to be available. After all, Tory is in no position to tell a funding government how much they will pay out. Even those numbers are subject to change if the Liberals lose control of Queen’s Park to the Tories, as seems very likely in 2018.
Then there’s Ottawa and Trudeau’s huge infrastructure program, just the thing a politician who is desperate to make everything seem affordable could wish for. Except, of course, that the infrastructure pot isn’t bottomless. Once it is divvied up across the country, Toronto’s share is well below the level John Tory hoped to spend with his shiny new Liberal red credit card. Holding press conferences about the need for projects won’t change the amount of money available, and the federal program requires that municipalities, even big irresponsible ones, must set priorities. Tory’s plans also require Queen’s Park to come in with funding equal to the Fed’s contribution at a time when provincial budgets are tapped out, and Toronto’s ongoing game of holding down taxes rather than pay for its own services and infrastructure plays poorly beyond the 416.
What does the Mayor do? John Tory, the man who had a one-line plan to solve everything, now looks to a world beyond SmartTrack.
Eglinton East LRT
The Eglinton East line, an extension of the Crosstown LRT from Kennedy Station east and north to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC), was supposed to be part of a fully-funded bundle of Scarborough projects as approved by Council. Staff sold a vision of the express subway from Kennedy to STC and the LRT out to eastern Scarborough, a grand compromise that brought (some) LRT advocates on board with the subway plan. That didn’t last long once a realistic look at the subway’s cost hit the table, and one cannot help wondering whether the numbers in that bundle were simply plucked from the air to gain approval. Remember that this comes from the same gang who sold the subway alternative to LRT as being only a few hundred million more and well worth it at the price.
After blowing all of the Scarborough funding (a mix of contributions from all three levels of government) on the SSE, Tory wants Queen’s Park to pony up more. Although the Liberals are no saints when it comes to using transit subsidies to buy votes (and a line to Richmond Hill could be a desperate attempt to shore up support north of Steeles), they might be forgiven for wondering how Eglinton East went from fully funded to nothing in about a year. Was the Minister, Steven Del Duca, conned by Toronto into thinking that the Scarborough problems were all solved with the subway/LRT compromise? Did Tory actually think that Queen’s Park would shift on its position that only the original LRT project’s subsidy was available?
The Waterfront
Waterfront transit should be a big issue with the amount of development underway and planned for coming years, but service to this part of Toronto suffers from one big problem: it is “downtown” and therefore less worthy than other projects. Planning for the eastern waterfront and the port lands assumes that the primary mode of transport will not be the automobile either for new residents or to the new employment and academic centres.
At least that was the idea. But as with so many of our older transit plans, the four years of backsliding under Rob Ford plus John Tory’s insistence that SmartTrack would solve every problem combined to keep waterfront transit on the back burner until recently. A “Waterfront Reset” planning process now underway might change this, but the project is in its early days. What started with a need to revisit the eastern waterfront proposals in light of developments planned near the mouth of the Don River has expanded into a city-wide review from Long Branch to The Beach. The project is at the stage of reviewing a long list of proposed implementations over the area, and the political challenge will be to winnow down the list to those options that actually can improve transit. In an age when “planning” consists of politicians and boxes of crayons, saying “no” to everyone’s pet project is not always easy.
The tough nut, as always, will be Union Station where the subway-streetcar interface is woefully undersized. This link should have been expanded while the line was closed for the Queens Quay project, but there were few advocates at Council. The TTC must share blame in this for continuously downplaying the potential role of the Waterfront East line and the infrastructure needed to support it. Current plans talk of a “BRT” using the proposed streetcar rights-of-way even though nobody has determined how such a service would provide a decent link with the subway system.
A related planning problem is the debate over how density affects transit demand. The waterfront combines three different demand patterns over its length, and this forces any “solution” to address multiple types of travel. These include:
- Home to work/school trips originating along the corridor primarily from new high density clusters, but not necessarily destined to the corridor itself
- Work/school trips to the corridor from other parts of the city including longer-haul travel via GO Transit
- Recreational and special event trips concentrated on multiple possible sites such as the Exhibition grounds
Trips to a destination such as a major employment or academic centre concentrate flow, and this is seen most strongly in the core business district. Trips from a residential area tend to have a more dispersed pattern and do not necessarily translate into strong transit demand, especially if transit does not serve many of the destinations well. This is the classic suburban transit problem where work and school destinations are dispersed and no single line can possibly link all of the origin and destination clusters.
This “Reset” study plans to have its next round of public consultation in June 2017 with final recommendations by late summer. The larger challenge will be to find political support to actually pursue transit improvements when so many other expensive projects vie for attention. In the medium term, the focus will most likely be on the area between the Humber Bay and the Don where most of the population and jobs are located, but even this will require money that the City and other governments have not yet budgeted.
The Richmond Hill Subway Extension
Any discussion of a Yonge (Line 1) extension north to Richmond Hill must recognize the historical background at the political and planning levels. The scheme has been around for a very long time, and dates from an era when various factors combined to make the project appear viable:
- The mid 1990s recession and associated ridership losses on the TTC network changed a jam-packed subway of the late 1980s into a route where, superficially, there was excess capacity.
- TTC management overstated the potential for adding capacity through the combination of new signalling and trains, plus the diversion of demand to the Vaughan (TYSSE) subway extension.
- GO Transit service from Richmond Hill to Union Station was infrequent and showed little sign of improving for a variety of technical and organizational reasons (winding track, lack of GO control over the entire corridor).
- GO fares to downtown were (and remain) substantially higher than a TTC fare which is presumed to be (as on the TYSSE) what riders would pay to make the trip by subway.
For its part, TTC planning consistently downplayed the worth of a “relief” line asking why one would spend billions to divert riding rather than simply providing more capacity on the existing tracks. Moreover, the TTC looked only at the short version from Pape/Danforth to downtown, a line that would have had little off-peak demand in the planning context predating the rise of near-downtown redevelopment. TTC management’s consistent advice was that the Relief Line was not needed. This deeply flawed position allowed planning for a Richmond Hill extension to continue unchallenged.
Times have changed. Ridership rebounded over the decades and the Yonge line is now stuffed full well north of the core area. The TTC reduced its projections of the number of trains per hour it will be able to operate with the new signalling system, and they now acknowledge that other factors including terminal track geometry and passenger capacity at major stations pose constraints. The extra capacity of the Toronto Rocket cars on Yonge has already been used up, and the ridership diversion likely when the TYSSE opens in late 2017 will quickly be offset by the backlog of demand on Yonge. Now it is the City Council’s position that no extension should be built until there is a Relief Line to divert traffic away from the Yonge corridor.
Yonge will see some medium term benefits, mainly from new signalling and automatic train control in 2019-20, but any new capacity will easily be exhausted by the 2031 timeline of current planning studies. That is “tomorrow” in the context of a decade-plus lead time to design, finance and build a new line.
The Relief Line
The fundamental question behind a “Relief Line” is this: what is it supposed to achieve? That may seem simple, but the answer depends on how one sees today’s network and the priorities for future growth and change.
For many years, debate hung on the Bloor-Yonge interchange and just how many people might be diverted from it. That was the crunch point, and planning, such as it was, focused on fixing that problem. Solutions included heroic schemes to increase platform space and separate passenger flows to decrease dwell times. However, a billion dollars worth of station changes would do almost nothing to address demand elsewhere on the route.
It is no secret that riders north of Bloor, and often well north of Eglinton, cannot always board a southbound train in the AM peak. Multi-train waits are needed at downtown stations for northbound service in the PM peak. The slightest disruption brings havoc. Meanwhile on Bloor-Danforth, it is common for east end riders to wait for multiple trains westbound in the AM peak.
(Although schedules call for a train every 140 seconds, or 25.7 trains/hour, the TTC never achieves this on average. For all of 2016, the average values ranged between 22 and 24 trains on Line 1 YUS. Meanwhile on Line 2 BD, the situation was somewhat better with values around 24 for several months except during the summer (the compound effect of reduced schedules and train failures thanks to no air conditioning), and a big dip in December. [See CEO’s report for March 2017 at pp 30 and 32.] The TTC’s inability to hit this target comes from many factors including the usual collection of delays from passengers or equipment, but also from their own operating practices. Even with a new signal system, it is far from guaranteed that the TTC will actually operate the level of service to which they aspire.)
“Relief” is not a question of providing more capacity at one strategic point (Bloor-Yonge) but of diverting a substantial number of current and future passengers to an entirely new route.
Probably the biggest obstacle a “Downtown Relief Line” faced lies in its name, from which “Downtown” was removed comparatively recently. This viewpoint led many to see the line primarily for its downtown segment rather than for areas further out that it could serve. By contrast, the Richmond Hill, Vaughan and Scarborough extensions are all seen from their outer ends looking in.
Thanks to the TTC presenting the “DRL” as a short Danforth to Downtown bypass rather than as a route with a wider reach, its political constituency has been limited, even within the City of Toronto. Only when Metrolinx looked at the line in a much larger context, all the way north to Sheppard (Don Mills Station), did the outlook shift both for what the line could achieve and who it would serve.
The question of a name for this line has been discussed on this site before, but I will make the point again: if we were talking about the “Don Mills Subway”, the line would have been built years ago. A route south from Sheppard and Don Mills, through the about-to-redevelop node at Eglinton (and a connection to the Crosstown LRT), serving Flemingdon and Thorncliffe Parks, and then (finally) connecting with the Danforth subway and onward into downtown is a very different animal from a Danforth/Downtown link. It would provide a completely new path east of Yonge and divert considerable traffic away from the existing congested lines. This would not be an “only” solution in the manner that SmartTrack was sold, but a major contribution to overall improvement of the network.
Yes, it would be expensive, but one can see the skew in past comparisons where credit for the avoided cost and complexity of expanding capacity on existing lines and stations was not considered an offsetting saving against the “DRL” cost.
The Need for Leadership
The Relief Line’s next date at Council will see a recommended alignment between Gerrard Station and Eastern Avenue go to Executive Committee on May 16, and then on to the full Council on May 24. The formal Transit Project Assessment and Environmental Project Report processes will work their way through public meetings and eventually to Queen’s Park through the summer and fall of 2017. Provincial money is already in hand for detailed design work.
How to pay for this project and how quickly it should advance to serve a wider area than the Danforth/Downtown link are two key, interlocked problems. Simply waiting for money to appear is not enough because the Richmond Hill extension will force the issue.
If political dynamics, the short term need to win provincial seats in York Region, advance one project over the other, there is a real danger than only one will be built. Within Toronto, the divisive tone of “Scarborough deserves a subway” must be replaced with a view of the whole transit network, and of its role in sustaining the city’s life and economy. There may be money from Ottawa and Queen’s Park, but both have their limits and Toronto must be prepared to invest in its own future.
Can Mayor Tory rise to this challenge, or will he remain a prisoner of his own flawed SmartTrack plan and of his tax-fighting political philosophy?
Steve Munro 
Regarding Eglinton East, I thought I saw a drawing by Metrolinx where the Crosstown and Eglinton East were different lines as they did not want to tunnel under the train tracks at Kennedy. This would mean it would not be an extension but a separate line. It made no sense to me, but that’s what I remember seeing.
Steve: That does not surprise me, but it would leave Eglinton East as an isolated route. Penny wise and pound foolish, like so much transit budgeting these days. We’re not talking about a long tunnel to make that connection.
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There is no question that there is far more vile [?] for any type of subway to Scarborough compared to Vaughan and Richmond Hill? Scarborough is much more “deserving” than these areas. This seems to be an ongoing lobbying attempt to grab a few extra dollars for the relief line at the expense of Scarborough Centre’s future.
Division goes both ways. If more time was spent critiquing the details of the subway and not the fact it a “subway” it might have been done a bit cheaper. I’d love to see Smarttrack canceled but If Tory is able to lobby and get all project above funded to the extent of the current known costs (as you say the SSE cost could go up but didn’t mention that for any other projects) it’s time to stop delaying.
Steve: Please note that at no point did I suggest cutting the Scarborough Subway to pay for the Relief Line. I take issue with a political approach pitting one part of the city against another and misrepresenting the benefits that any project might have.
As for cost estimates, of course they can change, but Council will face updated pricing for the SSE and ST before the end of 2018. Meanwhile, the Eglinton East LRT which Scarborough thought it was getting as part of the package is now sitting out in the cold. Downtowners didn’t do that, the SSE’s huge cost growth did.
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Hi Steve,
I’ve been wondering about having the Relief Line as LRT technology rather than subway. The idea being that you plan for 5-6 car LRT trains, which gives you the capacity for the projected demand but with the flexibility of running at-grade once you are over the Don Valley along Don Mills, but also allows you to dive into a tunnel through East York, Riverdale, Leslieville, Riverside, and into downtown.
I understand the LRT vehicles are typically larger, meaning a wider tunnel, but the at/above-grade segment from Eglinton to Sheppard is 6.2 km and would cut huge sums out of the costing.
Your thoughts?
Steve: I think trying to make LRT “work” for the Relief Line is too much of a stretch. Long trains of independent cars drives up the cost compared to trains, and there would remain the operational problem of cutting trains down to a manageable size northbound, and making up trains southbound at, say Science Centre Station.
There is a further problem with a carhouse. Current plans are for a substantial portion of BD operations to shift from Greenwood to a new yard near Kipling. This will allow Greenwood to be reconfigured both for the new style “unit” subway trains, and to take on the role of carhouse for the Relief Line.
If the segment north of Eglinton is to be LRT, this should be as a separate route, although that poses its own problems.
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I would like to know the western end of any proposed “Relief Line”. To decide that the solution is subway means that the western end of the “Relief Line” will have to be subway. Does it suddenly stop at Yonge? Can you subway to Liberty Village? A subway has two ends, Sheppard is fine but what about the other end? Think it through.
Steve: The City has already decided that the western terminus will be near Osgoode Station. Options for a future extension westward have not yet been studied in detail, but putting the line on Queen does rule out some of the earlier schemes including service to Liberty Village or the Exhibition grounds.
It seemed to me that Metrolinx’s problem with the Richmond Hill line was who was going to pay for flood control in the Don Valley. Metrolinx proposed that flood control would cost $60 million (money that Merolinx would put up, even though it isn’t in the water management business). Those in the water management business estimated the cost at $200-300 million, a figure Metrolinx backed away from.
Metrolinx had always planned that the Crosstown LRT would pass through Kennedy station east along Eglinton. Their plans date before 2013. That means they had no plans to curve the Crosstown up the SRT route as was discussed in the subway/LRT debate. Supporters of the LRT route were never told that Metrolinx had no plans to curve it north. Metrolinx was very relieved that the 2013 vote was for Subway and held it’s first public meeting in Scarborough, 3 weeks after the vote, to show Scarborough their plans for the Crosstown in Scarborough. In those meetings, the plans show the LRT line goes though east of Kennedy. The LRT is two levels below grade under the service road. This now conflicts with the SSE which has to cross under it to continue under Eglinton while the LRT surfaces.
Steve: Actually, the original Metrolinx plans were for an integrated Eglinton and Scarborough LRT line, but the TTC didn’t want that arrangement. They claimed that with the higher demand on the SLRT north of Kennedy compared to on Eglinton west from there, that integrating the services would be too difficult. The service design was changed because of the TTC, not because of Metrolinx who at one point talked about a through service from STC to Pearson Airport.
It may suit your narrative to blame Metrolinx, but they were not the original culprit on this.
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@Max
The Crosstown station at Kennedy is already being designed to go under the GO tracks. The whole station is underground, and the tail tracks will extend under GO already. Also, part of the original RFP was to design the east portal (for an extension) to a 10% design level. How MX/TTC decide to operate trains is not known, but the two lines will absolutely be connected.
The station itself is nearing construction within the year. Demolition already began, I believe on the old Canada Post building.
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Subway construction never really seems to be started until the TBMs are ordered…the question for all these lines is, when are the TBMs going to be ordered…and can’t we just order 6 at the same time, 2 for each line…and at least get the digging started…
Eglinton seemed to do it right – get the tunnels going – and then bring in the design guys for the stations…
Steve: Six TBMs for three lines? Which three lines?
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It is good that John Tory is saying “no” to Yonge Line extension until the Relief Line is underway.
However, I do have one concern about the project scope. To extend the Relief Line from Eglinton to Sheppard almost doubles its length. Subway is expensive and should be targeted to where such high-volume transit is needed.
In my opinion, the Relief Line should end with a connection to the Eglinton Crosstown. For passengers from farther north, the GO Richmond Hill line should move its Oriole station to co-locate it with the Leslie subway station on the Sheppard subway line. Metrolinx is currently talking about 5-10 minute GO service on the Richmond Hill line. See page 24 at this link.
Steve: That was a hypothetical statement. Metrolinx has no intention of upgrading the Richmond Hill corridor to support very frequent service. They are planning peak only service, on a headway of 15-30 minutes.
It is part of the mild insanity of feuding levels of government that the GO Oriole station was not incorporated into the Leslie subway station in the first place. However, making this fix and providing 10 minute or better peak service on the GO train would provide a vast improvement in transportation to people living in north-east Toronto.
Five years ago, I used to live to live at Bayview and Sheppard. Rest assured I would much, much rather have boarded the Sheppard subway to transfer to a GO train that would be a fast, zero-stop downtown express. Oriole is the last stop before Union on the GO line. Instead, I had to transfer to a Yonge subway train that had another 13 station stops before my destination and that had a quality of ride that looked like this.
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Steve,
Good summary and analysis, as always.
It would be a shame to plan a relief line linking Danforth and downtown that did not also include a plan that would eventually have a line along the Don Mills Road corridor connecting with the Sheppard subway.
The virtue of including a relief link at Eglinton/Don Mills, at least, will be clear once the Crosstown starts delivering passengers to the Eglinton station at Yonge.
And the waterfront gives us a once-in-a-century chance to design a city from scratch the right way.
Alas, as long as logical transit expansion thinking takes a back seat to salving political egos and addressing immediate political pressures, however, all such talk amounts to a modern day equivalent of contemplating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
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Hi Steve,
I just wanted to ask if you agreed with the preferred alignment underneath Carlaw. If not, could you explain why.
Steve: Yes, I agree with it. In the overall plan, what I have a problem with is the SmartTrack station at Gerrard which I do not think is needed and which, by the way, is very expensive.
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If Queen’s Park does announce funding for a Richmond Hill expansion, what, if anything, could the TTC/City of Toronto do to stop it?
Since the city owns the TTC could they just refuse to build a tunnel between Finch and Steeles?
I get there would probably be some “bribes”/promises if the TTC agrees to the Richmond Hill expansion, but I can’t imagine whatever the province promises to be enough or that the would actually come through on their promises.
I really hope the people of Wynne’s riding, who likely use subway stops from Eglinton north to York Mills, recognize that she is screwing over her own riding to benefit the 905, and boot her out.
Steve: If the Liberals are stupid enough to condemn Toronto to a perpetually overloaded subway, the problem is that the Tories won’t reverse the decision, let alone provide funding to make the network work properly.
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If you are going to run an LRT line north of Eglinton on Don Mills, the better idea would be to make it a branch of, or partly interline it with, the Crosstown rather than make the entire DRL an LRT line.
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Unless I’m missing something, with the plans currently on the books, there is no choice but to connect the Eglinton East to the Crosstown: there is no carhouse on the EELRT.
I can only speculate as to why a recent drawing from Metrolinx would present two different lines. The situation was of course different prior to November 2010, when there were plans for the Conlins Road MSF and two-to-three different lines serving Scarborough to reach it.
Steve: The drawing shown in the Metrolinx presentation of Kennedy Station clearly shows the structure extending under the rail corridor. See presentation at p. 19.
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Bring the Transit City plans back to life, both the lines that had provincial funding, and the other “future” lines. Eglinton East is the Scarborough Malvern LRT. The MSF is the one at Sheppard & Conlins Road, that was shared with the Sheppard LRT line. Get that line built now as well. It was planned and under construction prior to Mayor Ford’s unauthorized cancellation.
The point is that the Transit City plan was intelligently developed over a number of years, and was an integrated plan to add a network of rail lines to give us a sustainable transit network, at the lowest cost.
Political meddling only creates delays and added “sunk costs” for the time and money that is wasted. TTC has a desperate need to add capacity to the rail network. The overcrowding on the Yonge-University line is at the high-risk level already, and if taken out of service for any length of time, Toronto would fall apart. Stop debating and get the new lines built now.
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Re TBMs:
The three lines are Scarborough, DRL and Richmond Hill…number of TBMs could be higher or lower depending on what their plan is with tunnel size, soil conditions, speed they want to get the lines dug and other factors…my point was mostly that they need to start the tunnels..and if the three sets of tunnels are all getting dug at the same time then this sequencing stuff is no longer an issue. The reality is that the tunnel digging is what takes time for any project of significant length. Let’s at least get to the point where we know how many we need and can order them. Once the digging is started a lot of the politics goes out the window and it just becomes a race to get the contracts in place for the stations – as we saw on Eglinton.
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Long and short of it, Toronto is not going to see a solution to serious traffic and transit problems any time soon, or in any of our lifetimes….
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If the TTC refused to build the tunnel (or operate trains north of Finch) the province would likely just turn the TTC over to Metrolinx and be done with it. In all honesty, I see the RH subway being built first (politics over sound planning), which as Steve says will hopelessly overload the line. I can just imagine the TTC having to start regularly turning back trains at Finch or Eglinton just to make the situation somewhat more manageable. I think only when we get to that level of absurdity in terms of crowding and capacity would the Relief Line finally get built, and it would likely be a stub line to Danforth with one or two stops (if we’re lucky). Yes, this is a pessimistic view, but based on what I’ve seen over the past several decades, it’s probably what’ll happen.
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If the RH and RL lines were initially constructed as express shuttles, saving the cost of the mid-point stations and associated infrastructure, might the savings be sufficient to build both lines for the “price of one”?
To be clear, I’m not advocating this solution as it would undermine the local utility of both services. I’m wondering, however, given the alternative of RH-only, if this might be a compromise worth unpacking.
Steve: A station is worth about $150-200 million, and that’s being generous, unless conditions are particularly difficult as at Lawrence East on the SSE. Also, the retrofit work to come back and add it can be more expensive in the future. Holding the space for future entrances could also have property development implications.
For both lines, there are not many stations we might omit to “save money”, and in any event, the two-for-one pricing just does not work out. Stations do not account for half of the total cost.
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After reading some of the posts regarding the Richmond Hill extension, (tongue in cheek) the TTC might have to re-build the Yonge Street streetcar line.
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Brian J. Bentley has a thought. The TTC has been in the downtown congestion problem before Yonge subway opened and addressed it as a series of streetcar routes centered on the downtown area. Consider a set of U shaped lines on Mt Pleasant-Jarvis, and Avenue rd.-University running between Eglington and Richmond -Adelaide in the downtown. Also Yonge, LRT to the north, with street running through the city and continuing as LRT through the east bay area.
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Actually, any engineer worth a dime would tell you it’s planning. That’s why the SSE has become such a disaster because the only planning that had been done on it at the time of its approval was vote buying.
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I am not in the blame game business.
I was at the first meeting Metrolinx held in Scarborough, in 2013, presenting their plans for the Crosstown. It was very confrontational and the majority of residents really disapproved of it. Metrolinx never held another forum in Scarborough, they only held information sessions, with no forums or question and answer periods.
Metrolinx is not accountable to the residents it’s suppose to serve. Residents of Scarborough were not involved with the design of the Crosstown in Scarborough. I didn’t even know it would be surface. Steve has mentioned that it would be a better idea to make 6 lanes for cars. Even the consultants Metrolinx had hired stood up and said that Civic Road should be considered as a relief line for cars. There was only one forum with Scarborough residents and they overwhelming disapproved.
Metrolinx does not have to explain to the public why Georgetown gets a grade separated junction but not Stouffville.
Steve: Because the Stouffville grade separation is complex, and up until now, the number of trains involved is not sufficient for the cost. The “Georgetown” grade separation serves a much busier corridor crossing.
Metolinx does not explain why they refuse to face the station dwell time issue with wider platforms in Union Station, raised platforms or equipment with more doors.
Steve: It is physically impossible to widen platforms at Union, and changing the platform height is not a trivial undertaking either.
Metrolinx does not explain when it will implement a signalization system which will make a big difference to service.
Steve: Because they don’t want to pay for complete replacement of the signalling on all of their corridors and trains, not to mention providing compatibility for other railways operating over their tracks. Remember that Metrolinx spending is constrained by what they get from Queen’s Park, and Metrolinx cannot simply launch into a project. Electrification had political support, but it would not surprise me one bit to see this killed off if the Tories come to power.
The GO Richmond Hill line is the obvious answer to help out the Yonge subway. The GO line can serve Richmond Hill and speed through Toronto because it skips any Toronto stop. Metolinx shouldn’t be the only party to pay for the Don Valley flood control, Toronto Roads and Metro Conservation was well as the Provincial Government should pitch in.
Metrolinx is not accountable to the public and I don’t perceive that it deals with public needs. It only help one question and answer session with the residents of Scarborough regarding the Crosstown and the feedback was basically negative. They should’ve expanded Eglinton to 6 lanes or put it underground which they tried when they offered $2 Billion in August 2016.
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The risk of the province taking over part or all of TTC operations might not be very large. I can see reasons for both major political parties not to wish such an arrangement.
PCs can score a few points with the voters in 905 by making TTC subways more accessible to those voters. But, that would come at a price of the provincial government becoming fully responsible for the capital costs of subway maintenance, as well as any expansions. I can imagine that Patrick Brown, or whoever becomes a PC leader in the future, will have a hard time explaining the party members outside GTA why the government voluntarily accepted that burden.
Liberals are less allergic to a big government, but they would become vulnerable to the quality-of-ride complains. They would get attacked by both the NDP and the PCs for not making the subway commutes pleasant. Making those commutes pleasant would be very expensive, if possible at all. Thus, they would get stuck with an asset that erodes their reputation and doesn’t give them any bonuses.
Taking that into account, I believe that the City Hall can afford to take a hard stance and refuse to proceed with the RH extension until the Relief line is under construction, or at least firmly funded.
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This is buying the Metrolinx limitations for frequency of service based on antiquated signalization and lumbering equipment. Since they are already installing the fourth line, do it properly at the same time.
Steve: No it’s based on how much money Queen’s Park is prepared to pay to upgrade the rail infrastructure.
“physically impossible” is quite a standard. Please explain.
Steve: This has been explained on this site many times before. The track spacing determines the platform width, and that spacing in turn depends on the physical structure of the station. Unless you are prepared to start from scratch, the tracks and platforms will stay with their existing geometry. The one alternative is to close off some tracks to make larger platforms serving what is left over, but this implies considerably higher volumes of passengers per platform and faster turnover of trains. It is not physically possible to widen the platforms unless existing tracks are closed.
I have never heard Metrolinx define the problems and the solutions. I have always maintained that I have no expertise. The questions I raise are issues raised in public sessions. Metolinx has never stated what Steve said.
Steve: Maybe not to you, but none of this is a secret.
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Thanks to Steve and readers for all of this. It all tends to confirm my opinion that the area is a sad mess with considerable potential for even more squandering of time and resources on a set of less-wise to wrong things, with buy-election scheming often as a root cause. This may go back through the decades to the subway extensions, and it sure includes the filling-in of the Eglinton subway line by the Harris government that then brought us the Sheppard stubway.
While it’s great that there’s an apparent commitment to spend big money, it’s investment that’s needed, not Big Spending. Smart investments matter more, and they may not be as huge a cost as all that, if we think more appropriately, and include political will and cooperation. First point is: we need new corridors, and they should be on-surface as much as possible, and in ways to complement existing corridors and relieve them, and consider sub-regional/express routes as a real need, especially in the eastern half of the City, where the Don River/Valley is a defining and at times limiting feature.
Surface routes include parts of the RER/Smart Track, for sure, as it may be a way to help the NE parts of the City get to the core. A further help would be insist that the Main/Danforth links be boosted, and why hasn’t this happened already? We could maybe work towards having an on-surface/RER/Relief Line from Main/Danforth, through Union Station, to Dundas/Bloor tho we have to guard against the overload at Union, and provide different options.
Steve: Main/Danforth is not a workable link. Even ignoring the cost of building it, the distance is considerable, and it is unlikely someone would give up their space on the Danforth Subway (which they probably got when trains were comparatively uncrowded further east) to walk down to the GO line and board a packed train from Oshawa.
I keep failing to see how a ‘Relief’ stubway on the Danforth to core will provide anything real to the north/south overload on Yonge St. Surely, the fixes are to provide far more north-south options and tweaks, favouring surface first. And this leads to the “why not?” of more GO on the Richmond Hill corridor, and some good info from bill r about relative costs of flood ‘protection’ as one of the major issues. The History of the Don book suggests about 70% of the flood surge is from asphalt, so if the City was at all smart, we’d start charging for storm drain service and to not do so, is a large ongoing subsidy to private cars. Adjusting the drainage in the well-off areas would be uphill for some people, but we could raise money AND ease a problem to provide some better transit.
Steve: If you wait for all of the upstream drainage to be fixed, there will never be more GO service to Richmond Hill. The question is what’s needed to make the line workable given the water problems. At one point, GO was talking about raising the level of the right-of-way, but this idea seems to be on the back burner.
I’m also quite happy to suggest surface changes on large roads like the Don Valley Parkway for a reversible transitway of some description. Of course it mightn’t be all that simple some times, such as how to send vehicles back up, but even if we have from the transit-using area of Thorncliffe Park to the core, that’d be something major.
We also must/should think of ways to connect up Thorncliffe Park a bit more solidly too. I’ll stick my neck out and suggest one option is to extend via tunnel the St. Clair streetcar services via Moore Park and the valleys to Thorncliffe area. I’d also be fine with going through Thorncliffe area to the Gatineau Hydro corridor, and having some service on this very wide corridor that goes all the way through Scarborough to the Zoo, nearing major destinations in Scarborough.
Steve: Connecting St. Clair to Thorncliffe??? A stealth way to get a connection to your pet Gatineau project? That’s about 4km of infrastructure through difficult terrain and no hope of any significant intermediate points of demand. The SSE is a bargain by comparison.
This corridor really is valuable for transit and should be staked out not sold out. I know the City isn’t interested in Places to Grow observance: what about the Province? The Gatineau could also be 401 relief, sometimes really needed, and yes, there’s a lot of air pollution from 401.
Steve: Getting buses onto the Gatineau will make no difference to traffic and pollution levels on the 401 because it will always backfill to use any capacity that is released. Moreover, the bid problem in the 401 corridor is all of the cross-city travel that is not served by the transit system and has no option but to drive.
With the Waterfront Transit Reset, it was/is deliberately short-sighted by motion of Cnclr Pasternak to not spend too much, so it only looks back 25 years to conveniently overlook most of the robust transit proposals that begin to solve the major east-west travel demand from the pinch point at the base of High Park in to the core. Why don’t we want to set up some real and robust transit to relieve King/Queen, back-up GO, serve Mimico and Liberty Village? Oh, this would compete with the Gardiner/Lakeshore? Maybe many would like this option. And so we are poised to build a road right on the very same land that the DRL west was to go through and are permitting massive condos to be built up day by day right in the easiest and thus cheapest way to cross the Weston railtracks just east of Strachan. The very costly lowering of the railtracks for grade separation also could have made it sooooo easy to get transit across this corridor, but nope, we don’t think of actual transit beyond terribly stale-dated plans that are milk runs, maybe, and then ask GO/Metrolinx to degrade a regional service to a milk run as our fix for the isolated Liberty Village. Yes, that area needs more access, but why not do transit??
Not only was “Fordwards was backwards” but it sure feels like “Torywards is backwards’ too, and that Suspect Subway Extension is sure not smelling sweet as it isn’t so much the transit riders that are benefitting, nor the taxpayers of Toronto. Sure, spend $$$$ in Scarborough, but only 10 years ago was a refit of the SRT proposed, but with an 8-month shutdown, which is apparently impossible to consider nowadays, though it might squeeze maybe $2/2.5 billions
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Again, some thanks.
I don’t have any clue as to how much connecting St. Clair through to Thorncliffe, and yes, beyond, as LRT may make more sense on the very wide/long Gatineau corridor than bus, but I can’t think that it’d be so costly as the SSE. And I think we need new corridors, and the chance for getting something faster/sub-regional is once in this greenhouse century odds, including on the faster diagonal. This diagonal comes very close to major destinations too, or close enough. And it can be mostly on surface, inherently cheaper.
Steve: This is the last of your posts on the Gatineau I am going to let through. You have been beating this drum for a long time, but routinely ignore basic issues with the difficulty of actually building what you propose. Planning by Google Maps is the specialty of Mayor Tory and his merry band of advisors, and more generally, having to deal with transit fantasy maps gets very tiring.
Yes, it might undercut the usage at STC, but maybe that’s good.
As for Main/Danforth distance, if it becomes entirely underground, it’s not so long a walk, or maybe we can provide walking assists, or is there a way to have a loop set up for buses to drop right at Danforth? I think there is, although the return to the Main Stn is less easy. I don’t let myself be so constrained about what is possible/impossible as we are a very rich society really, and the SSE is a few excess billions, and besides, as so so much of the transit work is to provide the jobs for men and machines and use resources, we need this sort of project right?
Steve: Billions in Scarborough do not justify millions for an inconvenient link that is unlikely to be well used in East Toronto.
Like if we really wanted to provide some quick subway relief, we’d have painted that Bloor and Danforth bikeway by now, but we can’t seem to manage the concept of expanding or relieving the subway with mere paint, tho it’s cheap and could be done nearly overnight, assuming that the repairs were made first, as we want bike lanes, not bike lakes eg. Bloor westbound just west of Parliament where blocked drains have been festering for almost 2 years maybe, and they’ve only dug it up once.
Steve: Bike lanes will not solve the problem of subway capacity.
Further ‘roadical’ ideas involve reversible busway lanes on Yonge St. for express buses, in the centre of the road, and no on-street parking. Say Eglinton or St. Clair south to where?? Or do this on Mount Pleasant too, but with single fare and have the Jarvis centre lane repainted for this busway and OUT with the cars in the centre lane. Or, repaint the Danforth for this central lane reversible express busway from Victoria Park to Parliament say, and yes, bike-friendly roads like a bi-directional lane on the north side from Sherbourne to Victoria Park. But the TTC doesn’t really want the competition, as it makes money from central sardines to support the suburban services, or so it feels.
And we are sooooo slow: the bit of Bloor St. E. between Sherbourne and Church is the one remnant of the 1992 first stage to make it in to the 2001 Bike Plan, and although it would cost a whopping $25,000 to repaint lane lines, nope, nothing yet. Local residents are also in support of this, as apparently is the Councillor, so What the FORD???
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Naturally, based on the fact that you don’t even acknowledge its existence, those that live in Flemingdon Park can go to a hot place where the sun doesn’t shine when it comes to your proposal.
Steve: Hamish has a thing for the Gatineau corridor. It’s sort of his version of Tory’s SmartTrack, the one line that will fix all problems. Don’t be too hard on him.
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Steve: Thanks for your note. The offending post has been deleted, as have posts from another pseudonym with a similar problem.
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Sorry about sounding harsher than I intended since the posting software ate the sarcasm tag.
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Is it possible to have some (e.g. off peak) trains to Richmond Hill routed on the Newmarket Sub up to the junction Halton, then across Thornhill back to Bala? A lot less curves, so I imagine the trains might make decent time, even with the detour. I can see freight congestion in Vaughan being a problem. If it’s too busy, we might weigh the cost of building a spur alongside or in the median of the 407 (can we squeeze a single track in there?) to get trains across Thornhill versus upgrading all of Bala.
Steve: Adding off peak trains via a roundabout route will not make service on the Bala Sub more attractive as a peak period subway alternative. Note that the rail corridor is only just north of Steeles, and falls quite a bit short of serving Richmond Hill.
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I was told by TTC officials that land was secured 1 mile from Kipling Station for a new subway yard. This subway yard will be built by 2026 to accommodate the Toronto Rocket fleet for line 2 and a downtown relief line.
Steve: The TTC has had its eye on the old Obico CP yard property for some time, and the purchase was approved earlier this year. This will be part of an overall Line 2 upgrade project that will be unveiled in a few months.
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Based on similar writing styles, I have noticed that he posts serious/legitimate posts in his real name but trolls around using fake names including some very disturbing/offensive comments but it just speaks to the popularity of your site and therefore, you should look at the bright side and not let it put you down and even take it as a complement to your site’s popularity.
Steve: The issue is that some of the “pseudonyms” used are actually obscene in a language most readers here don’t understand. Even though some of the issues raised in the posts were worth reply, I will not put up with that sort of “stealth” insults.
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Malcolm N had the same thing for the Gatineau corridor, John Tory for the Scarborough subway.
Steve: The difference is that John Tory is spending our money on his folly.
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This turd of a design is based on the fact of needing a “subway” that costs under $4B. It’s a political reality that the SSE will be built, but it hasn’t even been designed yet. Details have to be developed for them to be critiqued. Scarborough was promised champagne on a beer budget (Finch West and Sheppard East Extension to McCowan for $1.8B; Eglinton-Crosstown buried for $1.4B; 3-stop SSE for $3.2B, and Relief Line for $3.2B), then sparkling wine (3-stop SSE and Sheppard East LRT), then cider (1-stop SSE and ECLRT East), and now apple juice (1 stop SSE extension). I’m sure if they didn’t need at least one stop, they’d have cut the STC station as well.
Oriole station opened in 1978. Leslie opened in 2002. There are provisions in Leslie’s design for a future connection, and Metrolinx is studying a relocation. It’s still 23 minutes from Oriole to Union and 38 minutes from Leslie to Union. If you add in the transfer time from subway to train plus your average wait time around 10 minutes, there isn’t much time savings, but you do get a double fare. In the AM peak, you’re still going to be packed like a sardine.
In theory, yes. In practice, no. The first level of resistance would be funding. From withholding Gas Tax funding to altering the City of Toronto Act to eliminate the Municipal Land Transfer Tax, Queen’s Park holds the purse strings. Beyond that, Queen’s Park could legislate that the City does what it wants or even to de-amalgamate the City. North York is probably in favour of the Richmond Hill Extension, as two of the five stations are in that part of Toronto.
Actually, a Yonge North LRT line is/was a serious alternative to the RH Extension. It’s the better choice, but some people get obsessed with “single seat” and “subway” rather than seeing the overall benefits and opportunity costs. This is another political subway that runs on the justification that LRTs are degrading.
You attended the 2013 meeting, but didn’t realise it would be at-grade? Did you miss Rob Ford’s Subways, Subways, Subways Plan that proposed to bury it from Laird to Kennedy? Or Karen Stintz’s OneToronto Plan.
Here is the community update from 2011. The EA was completed in 2010 and City Council approved the project in 2009.
It’s 47 minutes on GO from Richmond Hill to Union on the train. It’s 53 minute bus ride on the GO 61 bus-train; and it’s 70 minutes with a combination 91A and Line 1 (30 minutes bus, 5 minute transfer). While the GO line does have more direct service, it’s not really faster.
Even this has been examined as a pre-feasibility exercise. Ignoring all the downsides (historical structure, construction impact, huge cost), the worst part is that it only provides limited relief and the added capacity isn’t fully utilized due to the subsequent bottle necks (USRC tracks between Bathurst and the CN Tower and pedestrian flow capacity in the concourse level and PATH system).
Try starting here: Union Station 2031: Demands and Opportunities Study, USRC Track Capacity Study, TTC Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study.
I realise Pat Brown supports the politically convenient, but I don’t understand the idea that the Progressive Conservatives are going to be bigger spenders than the Liberals. It’d mean either more debt or more taxes (probably the former). It would mean in 2022, the Liberals could run as the financially conservative party.
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The Thorncliffe Park area has both high density and high transit usage. It needs better service and anything that I’d schemed up was intended to be stopping in this area to help serve it. And sure, there are issues with looking at something from merely a map, but I’ve also scouted out the areas a little bit, and there’s a very rare wide linear corridor that spans all of Scarborough, which could act as a diagonal spine with offshoots to major destinations etc. Do we not need more corridors? Aren’t off-road better for acceptance by car drivers/votorists?
Yes, bikes aren’t going to be taking away an entire subway trains’ worth of people, but in an overload situation, a small percentage is worth doing as it means more.
Thanks
Steve: You’ve made this point several times, and it founders on the problem of providing road links and capacity that will make a meaningful dent in subway demand for the downtown leg. Enough already.
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Well said. You forgot the lemon on top of the glass or now just a lemon drop now with all that remains of Smarttrack.
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Instead of using Obico Yard west of Kipling, would you not expect that extending the SSE to Sheppard will be proposed, along with a subway yard in the Agincourt CPR Yard?
I somehow sense that someone will double down on the 1-stop SSE and add to it.
Steve: Considering that the City has already approved purchase of the Obico property, and the fact that the yard in Agincourt is still a going concern, I doubt this. Of course, we could wind up with a one stop subway that does not stop at STC!
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With the Liberals projected to even lose official party status in the next election, 2022 would be too early for them to make a successful comeback. Actually, if Kathleen Wynne steps down, then there is a chance that the Liberals would at least become official opposition but she does not want to step down as she feels that since she won the last election, she should serve the full term as Premier but the same Kathleen Wynne was quick to take over from Dalton McGuinty rather than insisting that he serve the full term that he had rightfully won (albeit with fake promises and political favours – gas plant scandal, etc). I am actually a Liberal and so, I am concerned that the Liberals under Kathleen Wynne would not only finish third but also lose official party status. Perhaps if Kathleen Wynne steps down, then we might be able to deprive the Progressive Conservatives of a majority but she is thinking of what is best for her rather than what is best for the province or even what is best for her party by refusing to step down (her refusal to step down is neither good for the province nor good for her party which also happens to be mine).
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The problem is there are a lot of people up north who want to come south. All bus route times will degrade as vehicle traffic increases. The subway does not have capacity. Of all choices the “people” have, GO train has the best potential for increased capacity and currently offers the best performance, which it can improve on (track station dwell time).
I have tried. I do not understand these kinds of reports. We rely on Steve to translate them to plain talk. For the report “Union Station 2031: Demands and Opportunities Study”, there is no executive summary and you tell me what was concluded (p116).
Steves’, Maplesons’, Robert Wightmans’ and some others’ comments are serious. I speak from incompetency but try my best to be reasoned. I am but a frustrated citizen who feels that there is something wrong with transit in Toronto compared to any city in the world.
Is it wrong for me to perceive that the GO Richmond Hill train has the best potential for increased capacity and currently offers the best performance and to believe extending the Yonge subway is absurd?
Steve: Just because you don’t understand a set of reports does not entitle you to say that Metrolinx is not considering issues.
I perceived that Metrolinx ignored the residents objections at the first presentation of the Crosstown to Scarborough and just closed up. There was still time to modify designs to enlarge Eglinton to 6 lanes. Why did Metrolinx wait until after the vote for subway? Metrolinx held planning sessions for other portions of the Crosstown line, why not with Scarborough?
Steve: Metrolinx can speak for themselves, but I suspect the real reason for the timing is that work on the eastern part started well after the western part, and will take less time to complete. I agree that Eglinton should have been widened as part of this plan, and even Metrolinx staff will acknowledge privately that this should have been done. Getting that acknowledged and changed publicly, however, is another matter.
Regarding Union Station
I’m afraid, in your attempt to be brief in your answers, you made it hard for me to understand. If I were to suggest that to salvage SmartTrack, we use EMU’s with many doors at high platform. So we “close off some tracks to make larger platforms” and put SmartTrack on this platform, this implies “considerably higher volumes of passengers per platform and faster turnover of trains.” “it only provides limited relief ”
This is what I would want SmartTrack to do.
Steve: There is a point after replying many times that any attempt at more detail isn’t worth the effort. There is a basic problem: there are X passengers who want to move between trains and the rest of the city. Those movements are constrained by access points to platforms. Consolidation of platforms will not change the number of access points or their capacity. Operationally, because there are fewer platforms but the same number of trains, those trains must move into and out of the station faster. In turn, this places demands on the approach tracks to the station. These factors combine to limit the amount of extra capacity available at the station.
Satellite stations west or east of Union could split up the demand so that collectively the GO/ST network could handle more passengers, but the challenge then is to move passengers between these new stations and the core. That’s where a DRL might have come in, but it now appears unlikely that this line, as planned, will make good connections with the two likely satellite locations at Don Yard and Spadina (Bathurst North Yard).
As a frustrated citizen, I perceive politicians as a source of the problem. Transit requires the proper use of our limited pool of tax money in the right direction. I think politicians should make sure that the Planning Department and Metrolinx are doing a good job, not tell them what to do. I think Tory is wrong to believe the SSE is a good idea and believe the planners are failing in not telling him so.
The politicians told Metrolinx there will be 15 minute service. What was the point of that? Who said 15 minute service is what the people need?
Steve: No, the politicians know from Metrolinx that going below 15 minutes would require an investment well beyond what they wish to make to get “results” within a decade.
Metrolinx could have told the politicians that GO Richmond Hill is good for Toronto and good for the GTA, we need money for flood mitigation.
Metolinx could tell politicians to what it would take to make SmartTrack work. I don’t know about the west end routing, but I understand UPX is a money loser, so have SmartTrack go up the UPX line in the west end.
If we took Toronto’s $3.4 Billion SSE money and gave it to Metrolinx to improve the GO Richmond Hill flood problem and SmartTrack deficiencies, we would be better off.
Metrolinx is a fortress. There is no one willing to address my frustrations. I present what I consider reasoned discussion points, the same way I do to the TTC. The TTC handles things well. There is always an explanation. Can Metrolinx understand that their tight lipped attitude and inability to handle public frustration contributes to public disappointment with them?
I have the greatest respect towards Mapleson and Robert Wightman. They have been very tolerant towards my ignorance. I suspect they are tied to Metrolinx and hope they understand that my frustration is not personal.
Steve: FYI Robert Wightman is a retired high school teacher with a background in electrical engineering, and he has been a personal friend of mine for about 50 years. His opinion of Metrolinx can be rather scathing.
“Mapleson” has never formally identified himself, but reading between the lines, he is connected to one of the railways, not Metrolinx.
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I will say, the reason to question the Scarborough Subway is not to fund the relief line, although there is a concern with regards order of construction here. The reason to question the construction of a Scarborough subway is that the best analysis say it is not the best way to spend what will amount in the end to $4 billion in Scarborough. The city would be well served by balancing its general growth east and west, and offsetting the massive growth in Mississauga, with closer to core growth in Scarborough. However, a project that does not reach well north of the 401, does not provide rapid transit to local trips, does not provide rapid transit to near the eastern edge of the city, all seem like a poor solution. While I understand the fear associated with the fact that projects that can be reduced seem to get reduced, and this is a real reason to fear, in terms of transit service, supporting development, and improving the largest number of trips times the subway seems, subway here seems at best like the 2nd best solution. There is a huge need to improve transit planning and more to the point delivery, to create trust, because that seems a large part of the reason the subway was settled on.
As to Richmond Hill subway extension – without a relief line in place it would seem to threaten access to core for all on the east side of the city. It pushes projected demand to the point where boarding at Bloor on Yonge would be impossible even after the signal project. It is a ridiculously expensive project that adds very little to the real service north of Steeles, that could not be better accommodated with a combination of improved service on Richmond Hill GO and an LRT. If extra trains cannot be added north of the CN main, short of more slots on the line for GO trains a BRT with frequent service to a station immediately south of the CN main, providing a dense service to core would fill the requirement.
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The problem is that SmartTrack and RER are not compatible because there is limited track capacity, especially in Union Station Rail Corridor. GO and RER are designed to be an inter regional, not an intra 416 transit service. Running high platform EMUs with lots of doors would mean that most of the passengers would stand. This is not compatible with GO’s service of running trains for longer distances.
Tory’s Dumb SmartTrack plan does not recognize this lack of compatibility. He was advised, badly, by people who only looked at lines on a map and said “we could run rapid transit lines here!” If they had done this in the 60s, they might have been able to do it but the Province and GO got there first and it is not possible now to run frequent high platform multi-doored EMUs and GO’s RER stock on the same track and through Union.
Rebuilding Union to high platforms is not something that can be done easily or cheaply and would make for unsafe conditions. Also if you got all seven lines up to rapid transit headways and loads, do you think that you could run passengers through Union Station at the rate of 200,000 per hour?
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