Downtown Relief/Ontario Line

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Inching Ahead on Downtown Relief (Updated)

Updated December 4, 2013 at 7:00 pm:

Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee considered the proposed consultation process from City staff regarding the Downtown Relief Line and approved it with only one minor amendment, that a contest be set up to name the new line.

Those of us who remember the last such contest will know that it produced, as a moniker for the line now serving Scarborough Town Centre, that heartwarming name, “RT”.

Two presentations were made by Metrolinx and by City staff.

The Metrolinx presentation gives an overview of the Yonge Relief Network Study which will consider capacity problems and approaches to relief from a network point of view including the possibility that some of the modeled demand can be shifted from the subway to GO Transit.  Included in this is a map (page 4) showing the projected locations and degrees of capacity shortfall on the 2031 network.

What is quite striking about this map is that while there may be a severe problem south of Bloor Station, the situation north to Sheppard is not exactly rosy with demands ranging up to 100% of capacity.  The need to divert demand north of Bloor is quite evident, although it is rarely mentioned in discussions of “downtown relief”.

The City presentation gives a précis of the report, but shows more clearly (page 10) that at this stage all that is happening is consultation on the Terms of Reference and the Public Consultation that would occur in a future study.  This will come back to Council in the spring of 2014 for approval of the full study.

This is a hybrid version of the Environmental Assessment process.  A Transit Project Assessment is intended to be fairly brief (120 days) based on a predetermined project.  However, the DRL is so far-reaching and expensive a proposal that the City wants to ensure a valid review of all options has taken place before locking in to the formal TPAP review which offers little opportunity for amendment.

An important factor will be the co-ordination and integration of the network-wide study by Metrolinx and the local route and station planning by the City and TTC.  Metrolinx will have a good sense of the network options by mid-2014 just at the point the City process enters its “alternatives” phase and the creation of a “long list” of options.

The greatest challenge in the short term will be to ensure that the Terms of Reference do not preclude options that should be considered.  In this regard, limiting the study area to the initial phase of a DRL from downtown to Danforth may be valid for detailed planning of alignments and stations, but not from the larger view of how a second phase north to Eglinton or other extension options might affect the route selection on the first phase.

The City plans extensive consultation on the ToR including public input from community and advocacy groups.

Another challenge will be the credibility of demand and capacity figures used to model the future network.  For reasons that I will discuss in a separate article, some of the modeling numbers cited by the TTC’s Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study are suspect on two counts:

  • The projected service levels and demands on the northern GO lines (a) do not necessarily match with Metrolinx’ plans as stated in The Big Move, and in particular demand assigned to the Richmond Hill GO line is trivial.
  • The projected increase in total demand flowing into the core from the north with the Richmond Hill subway is only 1,000 per peak hour.  Much of the extra subway demand comes from trips reassigned from the GO rail lines.

If the numbers for the Yonge subway and the GO network are dubious, then what of the potential demand from a DRL, especially the component north of Danforth to which the TTC assigns a low demand and priority?  Earlier at the same P&GM meeting, City staff presented information about the “Feeling Congested” consultations that have been underway.  This included a preliminary evaluation of various additions to the transit network in which the Don Mills corridor, including the proposed LRT to Steeles, ranked highly (see map, page 19).

A future line cannot both be highly ranked and of little value, and this suggests at a minimum that the criteria by which it was evaluated are not the same in each case.  The challenge for the DRL’s Terms of Reference process is to determine which evaluation is correct.

The original text of this article from December 2, 2013, follows the break.

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The Big U and the little u

The Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel has ventured off its supposed path of looking at ways to fund transit growth in the GTHA to at least one proposal for a change to the Metrolinx Big Move plan.  This showed up at recent open houses in a handout that is not yet available online.

InvPanelOfficeEmpAndTransit

[The image above was posted on Twitter by Rishi L (@CdnEnginerd).  Click for full size version.]

The purpose of this map is to show how office employment is not sited along existing or proposed rapid transit lines.  With this as a jumping off point, the Panel suggests there is a need for a “Big U”, a much enhanced GO Transit route from Meadowvale, through Union Station and then north via the Uxbridge Subdivision (Stouffville line) to Markham.

A related factoid (one of those handy bits of information whose presence is supposed to silence critics) is that employment concentrations generate far more transit usage than residential ones.  It is certainly true that it is much easier to serve a place like downtown Toronto with a transit network that acts like a big funnel, but this does not eliminate the need to serve the residential ends of those trips.

Toronto’s Bloor-Danforth subway and GO’s commuter lines, for example, spend much of their time running through comparatively low-density neighbourhoods, collecting passengers as walk-ins, park-and-rides, and transfers from the surface transit network.  Every time a new transit route is proposed, we hear how it will only be viable if stations are surrounded by huge condo developments.  This is utter nonsense because any transit route has a catchment area.  The problem is to ensure that transit, sidewalks and bike lanes serve that area and deliver riders to a network that will take them where they want to go.

What is missing from the chart above is any indication of where the people who work in those centres actually live.  Looking at the Meadowvale end of the line, how many people come from the area that would be served by the GO corridor and a feeder network to it?  There is a lot of territory north, west and south of Meadowvale for which a rapid transit line to the east will do absolutely nothing.  Similarly, many who work in Markham live west, north and east of the employment centres.  Indeed, most of the red dots on that map are well west of the rail corridor.

Much as I sympathize with the Panel’s desire to get people talking about how parts of any network proposal might actually serve the region, I fear that we are seeing a classic example of someone who got out their crayons and drew a map.  The job will quickly change from discussing the philosophy of transit planning (and, don’t forget, funding) to defending the specifics of a proposal.

That is precisely why I have been so restrained about getting out my own crayons except in special circumstances.  The recent Don Mills Subway discussion needed a line on a map to illustrate how the “downtown” focus needed to change.  Well over half of the debate this triggered became a matter of dueling proposals between “my” line and “your” line that added little to the real issue — the need to see what such a line could connect and serve beyond simply diverting trips away from Bloor-Yonge Station.

People would even argue that there wasn’t “enough” development in some locations to justify such a route ignoring what is there today, what is in the pipeline for tomorrow and what could occur with planning and political encouragement.  Meanwhile, we build a subway to land that was recently the middle of nowhere, and propose one through miles of low density residential development as a vote-buyer claiming that only with a subway will Scarborough reap the development it “deserves”.

There is one big problem with the “Big U” — it diverts attention from the “little u” otherwise known as the “Downtown Relief Line”.  It doesn’t help one bit that the version of the “little u” shown on the map is the Pape-Queen-Roncesvalles alignment, one that is guaranteed to be very expensive and fails to recognize shifting development patterns (ironically, one of the goals of the “Big U”).  It ignores the southerly shift of population and jobs, avoids the available Weston rail corridor where we are spending a fortune to intensify transit infrastructure for a Toonerville Trolley to the airport, and it stops at the Bloor-Danforth subway missing the opportunity to reach further north to be more than a “downtown” line.

“Alternatives analysis” is a fine art in many projects, but the real art for many agencies is to ensure that what you always wanted to build is the “preferred” choice.  This is often guaranteed by setting up straw man comparisons so that the one you want shines out as the best of breed.  Such may be the situation with the DRL where, on darker days, I suspect that the whole idea is to paint as grim a picture as possible so that it will never be built.  Remember that the TTC for decades claimed we didn’t need a DRL, that they could stuff everyone into an upgraded Yonge-University line.  Expanding YUS capacity on a heroic scale was their “preferred alternative”.

With the Big and little U’s, we risk being trapped into specifics of route designs that looked good on a napkin in a bar, but which need much more thorough discussion as to purpose and specifics.  They are good as starting points for discussion, but are most definitely not the final answer in their respective fields.  Moreover, they are not alternatives to each other, a point that is often lost as the political imperative says “build in the suburbs, not downtown”.

The Big Move and the Investment Strategy that supports it have one gaping hole.  Very little attention is paid to the role of or funding for the feeder network to a regional system.  Moreover, the plethora of lines on the map hides the fact that many of them will not have the most frequent service on the planet.  Not all “rapid transit” lines are created equal.  As a recent Metrolinx report noted, the growth in “rapid transit” recently has mainly been in “BRT Light” for which the infrastructure requirements are minimal along with the service levels.  Crowing about progress in bringing transit to the millions ignores the question of how attractive that transit will be and how people will connect from the trunk routes, such as they may be, to their homes, work and other destinations.

This will be an important issue for network design on both the Big and little U’s.  One would serve rail corridors and be totally dependent on local service to deliver riders from homes and to employment locations.  The other would serve established and growing neighbourhoods and would enjoy an existing, well-developed set of local transit services as feeders.  These are not trivial differences, but they show the problems that will arise if the study does not look beyond the edges of station platforms.

This is the real debate the Transit Panel should engage — does The Big Move really serve the market it claims to address?  How useful will it be in attracting trips out of cars and onto transit?  Can developers and owners of residential and employment properties expect a real improvement in travel to and from their developments, or will their value be strangled by poor access?  Underlying all this is the basic question of whether we are spending all of those billions in the “right” place and what benefit each component of the proposed network will achieve.  That speaks directly to the concept of spending wisely, not just for the sake of generating construction jobs and photo ops for the next generation of politicians.

Returning to the “little u”, there will be a motion before Council from Councillor Josh Matlow, seconded by Cllr. John Parker (also a member of the TTC Board), to accelerate work on the EA for a “Relief Subway Line”.  Moreover, it asks that Council confirm such a route as “Toronto’s next subway expansion priority”.  It will be intriguing to see how this motion fares amid the current circus at City Hall, the recent battle over the Scarborough Subway and a faction claiming that downtown “has enough subways” already.

If this proceeds, it will be vital that it not be hamstrung with narrow terms of reference that filter out options before they are even discussed.  A major shortcoming of the new “Transit Project Assessment” protocol is that there is no consideration of alternatives because the decision that something is a “good project” is already assumed.  Debating alternatives just gums up the works in what is supposed to be an expedited process, but actually winds up as an exercise in selling an already-determined choice.  This is precisely the criticism many had of Transit City that compounded the process with less than stellar detailed planning and “sales”.  (Moreover, once a project is approved, it can be amended beyond all recognition, even though the original design was the one that “justified” the project in the first place.)

There is no point in doing a study if the underlying desire at the political and staff level is to sell a “Big U” as a replacement for the “Relief” line, whatever we call it.  The terms of reference must ensure that all options are reviewed, including cross-jurisdictional issues such as repurposing the Weston corridor’s UPX trackage for rapid transit.  We must not prejudge the outcome by requiring one continuous line to serve both legs of the U/u, especially considering that in some variants both western legs run in the same corridor.

Will Toronto Council, Metrolinx and Queen’s Park embrace the need for a full study of these routes without prejudice toward any preconceived doodlings on maps?

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A Don Mills Subway For Toronto

This is a companion article to one of the same name on the Torontoist website in which I argue that Toronto should have a subway line from Front & Spadina to Eglinton & Don Mills.  Formerly known as the “Downtown Relief Line”, this should be called the “Don Mills Subway” and there should be no pretensions about it stopping at Danforth.

Drawing subway lines on maps, especially for the DRL, has been a cottage industry among transit advocates and city watchers for several years, and everyone has their preferences.  I have stayed away from that territory most of the time because the torrent of comments (including a long thread on this side) is more than I care to moderate.

However, the Don Mills line needs advocacy and a good indication of what it might look like to counter the “downtown has enough subways” drivel dished out by Mayor Ford.

My proposed alignment is not intended to be definitive although parts of it are locked down to make specific connections and to take into account physical constraints on the route’s placement.  Other alignments are possible in places, but I don’t want to revisit that discussion in excruciating detail when the basic purpose is to show what a new line could achieve.
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Moving People Downtown: The Gardiner East Is Only The Beginning

On October 16, 2013, the second public meeting in the Gardiner East Environmental Assessment presented additional information and refinement of the options for dealing with the expressway’s segment between the Don River and Jarvis Street.

The purpose of the meeting was to report on the options that would receive further analysis in the next step of the EA and to provide comparative information about costs and benefits of the various schemes.  Broadly, there are four families of options:

  • Maintain the existing expressway with necessary repairs to make it sound for several decades’ more service.
  • Replace the expressway on a new structure either above or below ground.
  • Improve the existing expressway by selective reconstruction to open up space under the road deck.
  • Remove the expressway and create an at-grade boulevard.

Some options have been dropped from further study:

  • An underground alignment 1km long transitioning to/from existing elevated structured at the Don and at Jarvis.
  • An elevated alignment over the rail corridor.
  • A surface alignment on a berm abutting the south side of the rail corridor.

For any tunnel option, an important consideration is that most of the traffic arriving from the DVP and Lake Shore East is bound for the core area rather than as through trips to the western side of Toronto and beyond.  Therefore, access ramps are essential to any option that is not at grade so that traffic can actually get to downtown.  (By contrast, the “Big Dig” in Boston provided a link between the north and south sides of the core area on a route where 80% of the travel is through traffic and does not create demand for local ramp structures.)

The study claims that 80% of inbound trips have downtown destinations and this argues against a tunnel from which access would be difficult.  However, consider the origin-destination charts on page 15 of the presentation:

GE2P15

Of the traffic arriving from the DVP:

  • 40% leaves at Richmond Street
  • 7% exits to Lake Shore
  • 53% continues onto the Gardiner East, subdivided as
    • 10% exits at Jarvis/Sherbourne
    • 25% exits at Spadina/York/Bay
    • 18% travels beyond downtown.

If we were contemplating a tunnel across all of downtown, the argument about ramps and O-D patterns would be valid, but in this case, from the point of view of such a tunnel, most traffic is “through” traffic.  Only 10% of traffic that would enter a tunnel westbound at the Don leaves at Jarvis, and even this would be served if an off-ramp were incorporated in the transition from tunnel to elevated.  Similar arguments apply to the other O-D maps above.

The real problems with a tunnel are its cost and the barrier effect created by ramps linking the tunnel to the elevated structures at the Don and at Jarvis Street.

The schemes involving the rail corridor have both been dropped because they cannot be fitted into the space available.  In the case of an elevated, there is no room for the support structures needed (not to mention access ramps), and in the case of the berm, the area is reserved for future expansion of rail operations.

A far more important issue hinted at by the presentation but not explored in detail is the wider context of transportation into the core area.

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Another DRL Proposal or Just Another Gerrymander? (Update 2)

Updated August 2, 2013 at 6:00am:

André Sorensen has written a commentary in today’s Star expanding on his proposed use of the rail corridor for express airport service and a quasi Downtown Relief line.  I’m with him on a more intelligent use of the rail corridor, especially to the northwest of downtown, but not with the premise that this could replace the proposed subway from Don Mills & Eglinton to the core.

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Metrolinx Board Meeting of June 27, 2013

The Metrolinx Board met on June 27 with a full agenda.

There is a great deal of duplication between various reports, and I have consolidated information to keep like items together.  Some reports are omitted entirely from this article either because the important info is included elsewhere, or because they simply rehash status updates with no real news.  Metrolinx has a love for “good news” to the point that each manager stuffs their presentations with information that is already well known, or which parallels other presentations.

Among the more important items in these reports are the following:

  • Metrolinx is now conducting various studies all of which bear on the problem of north-south capacity into downtown Toronto.  This involves the (Downtown) Relief Line, the north-south GO corridors and the Richmond Hill subway expansion.  A related study involves fare and service integration across the GTHA.  It is refreshing to see Metrolinx taking a network approach to planning, rather than looking at projects in isolation, and recognizing that some of their own, existing routes can be part of an overall approach to solving this capacity problem.
  • The Metrolinx Five-Year Strategy includes dates for the beginning of service on various projects including the LRT replacement for the Scarborough RT.  Previous versions of these dates cited “by 2020”, and Metrolinx has indicated a desire for as short a construction/shutdown period of under three years.  However, the new strategy paper talks of an “in service date” of 2020.  Metrolinx is aiming for a three year shutdown at most, but the SRT might continue operating beyond the originally planned September 2015 date, possibly for one additional year.  This could lead to an earlier reopening than 2020.  (Correspondence from Metrolinx on this issue is included later in the article.)

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Feeling Congested Part 2: Setting Priorities

The City of Toronto’s Planning Department is consulting with the public for the development of an updated Official Plan.  The plan’s transportation component falls under the rubric of “Feeling Congested” with a website devoted mainly to transit issues.  In the first round of meetings, the focus was on “what is important”, what goals should the new plan try to achieve.  In the second round, the topic is the prioritization of goals and how these might drive out different choices in a future network.

This parallels work that Metrolinx is doing on their Big Move plan, but it includes additional options for study that are city initiatives such as transit to serve the waterfront.

A survey now in progress (until June 30) seeks feedback on the evaluation criteria for transit projects, and also for the goals of the cycling plans.  Some of this makes more sense if one first reads the toolkit, but even then the presentation will leave skeptics unhappy because there is no link to the detailed study explaining how the proposed criteria have been measured for each of proposals.  (A summary chart on page 14 does not include the subcategories within each of the eight criteria that generated the total scores .)

Even with this background, an exercise asking whether the methodology is sound seems to be an odd way to survey public attitudes without a stronger discussion of the implications for a preferred network.  This is rather like discussing the colour of a magician’s hat rather than the effect this might have on the rabbit he pulls out of it (or if there’s even a rabbit at all).

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TTC Madness: A Subway for Everyone

Today’s meeting of the transit commission was expected to be a modest affair with approval of the Downtown Relief Line study’s recommendations, and a few other housekeeping items.  What happened was a complete upending of the transit expansion policies we thought were put in place by the Karen Stintz coup d’état that bounced Rob Ford’s crew off of the TTC board back in the spring.  Stintz herself didn’t even have the nerve to stand up to the runaway proposals from her fellow members preferring to keep peace, for now at least.

To make sense of this debacle, I have to recount some of the earlier events.

The main act was a presentation by TTC staff of the DRL Study, and it contained few surprises relative to coverage we have already seen in the press and on this blog.  One comment caused attentive ears to prick up, namely that spending $1-billion expanding Bloor-Yonge station might be less cost-effective than providing additional capacity with a new line.  Would that the TTC would look at all components of its subway plans that way (a topic for another article), but it’s a refreshing point of view.

The study and presentation make explicit reference to potential shortfalls in GO Transit capacity as part of the problem.  Although these will no doubt annoy Metrolinx (is there a TTC meeting that doesn’t anger Metrolinx?), that agency’s basic problem is that long-term secrecy about what it might actually build forces assumptions to be made.  That said, nothing prevented the TTC from modelling improved service on the GO northern corridors just to see what this would do to demand flows on a “what if” basis.  After all, the whole DRL study is a “what if” exercise.

Councillor Parker asked about Main Station as an alternative DRL/Danforth subway connection.  Staff’s position is that there are advantages to a north-south connection further west that would potentially serve Thorncliffe and Flemingdon Parks, and line up with the Don Mills corridor.  (I will address DRL options in a separate article.)  There were humourous remarks about how staff were trying to buy Parker off with a subway to his ward.

Parker moved that the Danforth to Eglinton section of the DRL be included in the next phase of the study, but the motion fell short of actually committing to this segment as a top priority.

Councillor Milczyn asked about eliminating parking on King or Queen Streets.  Staff replied that this would be important for improved surface transit, and the idea would be part of a separate Downtown Traffic Operations Study now underway by the City, but that this would not avoid the need for a DRL.

Milczyn also asked about a Lakeshore West LRT and seemed to be mixing the proposal that was one option in the DRL study (an LRT or subway line in the rail corridor) with the Waterfront West LRT (that would run on Lakeshore Blvd.).

Councillor Colle asked about capacity on the Bloor-Danforth line east of Yonge, and staff replied that with the DRL, this would not be an issue.  However, that remark misses the fact that the Danforth subway regularly passes up riders today east of Pape, the point where capacity would be freed up.  More service will be needed on the BD line even with the DRL in place.

Colle went on to ask whether extending the BD line to Scarborough Town Centre would affect the DRL’s alignment by shifting the logical point for “relief” further east.  Staff replied that the demand model already has the extra ridership that the replaced and extended SRT will bring to Kennedy Station built into projected Danforth subway demand.

Councillor De Baeremaeker observed than an overall city plan needs to include subways, LRT and buses, that the DRL is a “good subway”, and that the problems of inadequate GO service and fare structure forcing riders onto the TTC need to be addressed.  We will hear more from De Baeremaeker later.

The staff recommendations with a few minor amendments were passed, and the meeting turned to other matters including a presentation on Transit Oriented Development.  This was something of a Trojan Horse brought in by Build Toronto.  An L.A. based consultant who has done a lot of work on redevelopments around station sites talked about the importance of putting good development (including attractive amenities) around transit stations.  This is the classic transit model which looks nice, but ignores the degree of neighbourhood upheaval that the level of development implies.  When you have a greenfield site, or your client is a totalitarian government, pesky problems with local activists and zoning are rarely encountered.

The moral was that if we are going to build many new stations, we should ensure that development occurs around them.  On the Spadina Extension, this is easier said than done at some sites, and development plans are already in place at others.  On the Eglinton line, many stations are in existing low density areas, and there would be a challenge on threecounts having them all upzoned for development at the scale shown in the presentation.  First, the locals would get a tad upset, and public meetings featuring a liberal assortment of pitchforks, torches and rotten tomatoes would be on order.  Second, developers have to believe that these sites are a market for development.  Third, the transit line’s role in the network must be strong enough relative to other nearby facilities (notably highways) that the new development would actually feed the transit stations.  See Sheppard Avenue for a counterexample.

The main discussion turned on the issue of taxation and the L.A. experience with Measure “R” passed in 2008, and Measure “J” expected to pass in the upcoming elections.  “R” levied a 30-year, 0.5% sales tax on Los Angeles County to generate dedicated funds for transit.  “J” extends this for a further 30 years.  This funding will be used to underwrite debt that will be undertaken during the early period (the next 10 years or so) to build out many new transit facilities.

Unlike Metrolinx, whose Investment Strategy seems to be discussed on a pay-as-you-play basis, L.A. appears ready to take on long term debt with matching long-term funding.  This is not unlike buying a house — you buy and live in the entire house at one go rather than adding a room at a time for 30 years.

By this time, the Commission clearly had a taste for spending money.  The DRL was not enough, and the suburban councillors needed to jump in with their projects.

The opportunity came unexpectedly by way of a public presentation by Alan Yule who often deputes at TTC meetings.  He proposed that the Scarborough RT/LRT conversion could be shortened as follows:

  • Since most of the traffic is between STC and Kennedy, all other stations would be closed, and SRT service would run express between the two points.
  • The intermediate stations would be boarded off (much like what is now happening at the Union Station 2nd platform project) while their reconstruction for LRT proceeded behind the walls.
  • Eventually, the work would have to turn to the right-of-way itself, and the line would close, but presumably for a shorter period.

I won’t go into details, but believe that the really time-consuming parts of the project would not be affected by this scheme, notably the underground work north of Ellesmere and the changes at Kennedy Station.  Alan does good, entertaining presentations.  The Commission thanked him for his work, and then the wheels came off the debate.

Councillor De Baeremaeker (he of the we need all modes in the network comment above) moved that staff report on the merits of a subway extension from Kennedy to Sheppard & McCowan.  De Baeremaeker’s position, following on from the One City Plan that briefly surfaced in June 2012, is that the difference in construction cost for a subway is only $500m greater than the cost of the LRT project, and this makes the subway option a great deal.  What he misses is that the comparator subway estimate is only for a line to STC, not to Sheppard.

That extra 3.6 km will cost roughly $1b and push the delta for the subway/LRT comparison much further apart.

Correction: The extra 1.7km will cost $700-million more than the LRT project according to a 2010 estimate. Moreover, the LRT runs further going east to Sheppard and Progress where extension to Malvern is possible.

(The question of comparative costs was discussed back in December 2010 in this article.)

De Baeremaeker should know this already, but it suits his role as the Superman of Scarborough transit to continue the charade that we can have a subway replacement for LRT at only a modest additional cost.  He also does not address the much higher operating cost of a subway line, especially given that it would be on a new, underground alignment, not at grade as the RT/LRT would be.

TTC CEO Andy Byford stayed clear of this debate, but recently in an interview on CBC he expressed guarded support for extending the Danforth subway.  This sends a mixed signal to the politicians and suggests that staff are not firm in their support of the LRT network.

Oddly enough, the staff position on the DRL continues to paint this as something for the medium to long term, at least 15 years away, with the option of adding capacity elsewhere in the interim.  This provides a window into which other subway construction projects might try to slip, an idea clearly on de Baeremaeker’s mind.

Not to be outdone, Councillor Milczyn asked that staff also report on looping this extended subway west from Sheppard & McCowan to Don Mills Station.  This is the Sheppard East subway, but reborn at least entirely on Sheppard itself rather than going through an industrial district to STC.  Such a line would obviously replace the Sheppard LRT.

Need I remind Commissioners of a phrase we heard a lot back during the subway/LRT debates:  Council’s will is supreme.  Council has voted, with not a little blood on the floor, for an LRT network which the province is supporting (to the degree that is possible in the current political climate).  Indeed, the Commission voted today to give CEO Andy Byford the authority to sign the operating agreement form the four-line LRT network.

Metrolinx’ hands are not completely clean in this on a few counts.  Most importantly, as recently as two days ago (Oct. 22), a representative presented an LRT project overview at a public meeting that includes a five-year shutdown for the SRT rebuilding.  However, Metrolinx own VP of Rapid Transit Implementation, Jack Collins, has said that during the contracting stage, Metrolinx hopes to get proposals from bidders that will be under 3 years, maybe only 2.5.  However, such a change has not been blessed by a Ministerial statement, and so we still hear “5” which scares the hell out of Scarborough transit users.  Toronto is ill-served by Metrolinx’ lack of accurate details in its public statements, of which this is only one example.

As if all this isn’t bad enough, the Commission has asked for these analyses to be available for its January 2013 meeting even though staff will be pre-occupied with major work on the 2013 budget for the next few months.  The date may slip, but what is clearly going on is that somebody wants information for use in a coming provincial election campaign.

What we see here is a Commission that claims to understand the limits of spending, that claims it should focus on subways where they are really needed, but which insists on revisiting LRT proposals over and over in the hope that they can be upgraded.  Saying “no” is very hard for a politician to do, especially when constituents have been convinced that LRT is a distant second class option.

The Star reports Councillor Parker’s reaction to the vote:

TTC commissioner John Parker, who was out of the room praising the decision on a downtown relief line, confronted his commission colleagues afterwards, telling them that voting in favour of subway studies was “a stupid, stupid, irresponsible thing.”

“Irresponsible” does not begin to describe my feeling about this vote, one which proved that the current Commission, given half a chance, will be just as irresponsible about the subway/LRT debate as the Ford-friendly crew they replaced.  It is not enough to say that we are getting more information for a better debate.  We have had this debate, and only people with a distaste for the hard truths about subway costs can pretend that this option is viable.

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TTC Rediscovers the Downtown Relief Line (Update 4)

Update 4 October 21, 2012 at 8:30 pm:

It’s intriguing to look back at coverage of the DRL the last time this was a major issue.  Mike Filey passed along a clipping from the Star from December 2, 1982 that makes interesting reading.  My comments are at the end in Postscript 2.

Update 3 October 20, 2012 at 3:20 pm:

A postscript has been added discussing the various demand simulations as a group rather than individually.  Charts of total demand southbound from Bloor Station as well as pedestrian activity at Bloor-Yonge are provided to consolidate information from several exhibits in the background paper.

Update 2 October 19, 2012 at 11:00 am:

This article has been reformatted to merge additional information from the background study as well as illustrations into the text.

At its meeting on October 24, 2012, the TTC will consider a report on the Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study.  The full background paper is also available on the TTC’s website.

A study by the City of Toronto and TTC, including consultations with Metrolinx, concludes that transit demand to the core by 2031 will grow at a rate that exceeds the capacity of all of the current and planned transit facilities.  Ridership will be 51% higher than today.  The residential population south of College from Bathurst to Parliament will grow by 83%, and employment by 28%.

Capacity is an issue today as Table A-1 in the background paper shows.  Several corridors into downtown are already operating over their design capacity.  This is particularly the case on GO where the target is to have few standees, and there is more room for additional passengers in the design capacity than on the TTC subway services.

Table A-2 shows the projections for 2031.  All of the shortfalls are on GO, but the TTC lines are close to saturation.  This presumes a considerable increase in the capacity of various lines.  For example, the YUS goes from a design capacity of 26,000 to 38,000 passengers per hour (pphpd), an increase of 46% which may not actually be achievable.  Similarly, the BD line goes to 33,000 pphpd, an increase of 27%.

Exhibit 1-10 shows the components of projected capacity increase including 36% from running trains closer together.  As discussed at some length on this site previously, the constraints on headways arise at terminal stations.  A 36% increase in trains/hour implies a headway of about 100 seconds as compared with 140 today.  This cannot be achieved with existing terminal track geometry, not to mention the leisurely crew practices at terminals.

On the GO lines, the projected capacity on Lakeshore West doubles, and smaller increases are seen on other routes.  It is worth noting that the projected capacity of the north-south corridors to Stouffville, Richmond Hill and Barrie are nowhere near the level of service implied by The Big Move, probably because these lines are not targets for early electrification.  This contributes to the capacity shortfall in the northern sector.  Recommendation 1 of the study includes encouragement that Metrolinx review the possibility of increased capacity in those three corridors.

The full list of lines included in the modelled network can be found in the background study at section 1.2.1.

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