Subways

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Once Upon a Time in Scarborough

Mike Filey passed along to me a clipping from the Toronto Star of June 29, 1977.

A high-speed streetcar line providing service between the Scarborough Town Centre and the Bloor-Danforth subway has been approved by Metro Council.

The $108.7-million line … was approved on a 23-8 vote.

Streetcars on a separate right-of-way should make the trip in about 15 minutes.

The cost of this route was to be shared 75-25 between Queen’s Park and Toronto.

It is no secret that this line was not built, nor was the planned extension to what is now Malvern Centre.  Instead, Queen’s Park, always happy to meddle in Toronto’s transit planning, strong-armed Toronto and the TTC into changing to the technology we now have on the RT at a cost, by the time the line was finished, of about $240m.  The hope for low-cost transit expansion was dashed by a technology that was almost as expensive as a subway.

The network that might have sprung from this to serve Scarborough and other suburbs never materialized.  Instead, we have endured 36 years of arguments about where we can afford to put our next subway lines, one at a time.

Premier Bill Davis may have said that the city is for people, not for cars, but he did bugger all to advance that position by making Toronto a showcase for a failed transit technology rather than a burgeoning network that grew along with and shaped its suburbs.

Scarborough LRT Study, April 1977, Excerpts

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Will Scarborough Get Its Subway? (Updated: Probably)

Updated October 9, 2013 at 1:20am:

Toronto Council, by a vote of 24-20, has approved proceeding with the Scarborough Subway project including a three-stage property tax increase totalling 1.6% to finance the City of Toronto’s share of the budget.

There is little new to add at this point on the technical issues all of which were covered on this site before.

My personal reaction is disappointment, but more strongly, disgust at the behaviour of some Councillors and a few City Officials.  The outright hatred and slander against “downtowners” and their motives in “pushing” LRT does not bode well for cordial relations on Council, not to mention sowing equivalent feelings among the electorate.  There are arguments to be made for the subway option (many of them have appeared here in the comment threads), but this should be done in a civil manner relatively free of distortion.

Instead, we got warped versions of the truth about both the subway and LRT options, and not a few outright lies.  TTC CEO Andy Byford, one who trotted out the “100 year subway” myth was forced to backtrack on two counts by questions at Council.  He admitted that the tunnels last for 100 years, but much of what is in them does not.  Meanwhile, he talked about LRT lasting 50 years, not the 30 year figure that has been bandied around of late.  The obvious issue is that a tunnel may very well last 100 years, but if you don’t have to build one in the first place, and can save the expense, what does it matter?

We will have to wait a decade to see whether the suddenly much rosier projections of demand for a rapid transit line in Scarborough come from the same well-cooked land-use and population assumptions that brought us the vastly overstated estimates for the Sheppard Subway (and for growth at Scarborough Town Centre).

In any event, the vote is taken, and barring a discovery of a major extra cost for the City appearing during detailed design, the decision is as final as we can expect to see from this Council and the provincial government.

How the rest of the LRT network will fare really depends on the 2014 municipal and provincial elections.  Mayor Ford has already declared that subways on Sheppard and Finch are goals for his next term.

The half-hearted advocacy for LRT from Metrolinx and Queen’s Park plays a big part in this situation, but I never thought their hearts were in it going right back to the early days of Metrolinx when I was persona non grata for asking their newly-minted Chair if they would consider this mode as an option in their grand plan.

How many more ridings will the Liberals feel the need to buy off with a subway promise?

The original article from October 4 follows the break.

Continue reading →

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Scarborough Subway (via SRT) Feasibility Study (Update 7)

Updated October 2, 2013 at 12:30 pm:

Metrolinx has released a transcript of a press conference held earlier today regarding their letter to the City Manager about the Scarborough subway.

In related news, Metrolinx advises (through a separate email) that they are “approximately 3 months away from making [a] formal recommendation on Sheppard and Finch” LRT lines, and the possible acceleration of these projects.

Also, regarding Eglinton-Yonge Station, they “hope to have a final concept that Metrolinx, City and TTC agree on in the coming weeks and will present in the public session of the Metrolinx December Board meeting”.

Updated October 2, 2013 at 10:30 am:

Metrolinx has sent a letter to Toronto’s City Manager regarding the proposed Scarborough subway.  Unlike some pronouncements from Queen’s Park, this takes a more conciliatory tone for discussions between Ontario and the City of Toronto.  Notable points include:

  • Metrolinx continues to believe that LRT “would provide an effective rapid transit solution to the transportation challenges in this area” within the available funding, but bows to the desire by all three levels of government to build a subway.
  • Metrolinx is not dictating that a specific route be chosen, but wants a proper alternatives analysis as part of the Environmental Assessment.  This contradicts earlier statements by the government implying that only one route was to be funded.  It also implies that the shorter “Transit Project Assessment” process (which does not include the potentially embarrassing need to review alternatives) will not be used.
  • The Province is sticking with a figure of $1.48-billion in available funding, from which must be deducted the $85m in sunk costs for the Scarborough LRT project and unspecified costs of scaling down the LRT car order from Bombardier.
  • Although the $320m reserved for the Kennedy Station reconstruction with both the Eglinton and Scarborough LRT lines may not all be required, additional costs are expected at the Yonge-Eglinton interchange beyond the current project budget.  Savings from Kennedy may be redirected to Yonge-Eglinton.  If there is anything left of the $320m between the two projects, then it could be directed to the Scarborough subway.
  • The Scarborough subway will be entirely a City/TTC project contrary to previous schemes for the LRT that would have seen provincial ownership and a PPP arrangement similar to that proposed for the Eglinton line.  This begs a question regarding the accounting for the provincial funding contribution: if you don’t own the line, you can’t book the asset as an offset to the money spent on it.  Does this mark a shift away from the creative accounting used to justify taking Toronto’s transit projects away from the TTC in the first place?
  • Provincial funding will begin to flow in the 2018/19 fiscal year implying that no serious construction will be underway until then.  The City and/or Federal government will have to front end the project with funding for the EA and preliminary engineering.  All risk for project cost overruns will be to the City’s account.
  • Infrastructure Ontario remains available to participate in this project, but this is no longer a requirement of the Province for funding.  The decision on whether to use IO or to proceed with a conventional procurement (as on the Spadina extension) is up to the City of Toronto.

Not included in the letter, but reported through Twitter by John Michael McGrath, is a comment from Metrolinx that they are reviewing the timing of the Sheppard and Finch LRT projects.

This letter provides a more balanced response to Scarborough subway issue than some recent statements by Ontario Transportation Minister Glen Murray, and it is good to see Metrolinx acting as a reasonable broker rather than simply as a rubber stamp for ministerial musings.  The next major step will be Council’s discussion of the matter at the October 8-9 meeting.

Continue reading →

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Metrolinx Benefits Case Analysis for the Richmond Hill Subway

Metrolinx has published a study of the proposed subway extension to Richmond Hill updating a Benefits Case Analysis done in 2009.  The new report is dated May 2013, but it has only recently been publicly released.

Background information in the study gives an indication of the demand challenges facing the transit network in coming decades.  The study itself shows many of the shortcomings of Metrolinx analyses in the selective use of information and limited scope of alternatives comparison.

The study looks at four options for the Richmond Hill line:

  • A Base Case assuming substantial additions to existing subway capacity, leaving things as they are with buses serving the existing terminal at Finch Station.
  • Option 1: Full subway extension to Richmond Hill Centre close to the existing GO station.
  • Option 2: A two-stop subway extension to Steeles with buses serving the area beyond.
  • Option 2A: A Steeles subway extension accompanied by improved GO service on the Richmond Hill corridor.

Notable by its absence is an option of both a full subway line to Richmond Hill and improved GO service or any analysis of how demand would divide between the two routes.

The study notes that the Metrolinx Board, in response to earlier analyses, requested additional information:

  • Possible adjustments in project scope, timing or phasing;
  • Consideration of the extent to which improved service levels on the parallel GO Richmond Hill rail corridor off-loads some of the demand on the Yonge Street subway; and
  • The cost impacts of the various options on the subway yards strategy, Yonge-Bloor subway station improvements, and a future Downtown Relief Line to bypass the Yonge-Bloor congestion pinch point.  [Par. 1.12, page 3]

The 2013 report does not address these requests because it does not include any option where both the subway and improved GO service operate to Richmond Hill.  Although parallel studies (such as the TTC’s own subway yards needs analysis) do look at some aspects of the third point above, this information is not integrated into the analysis, nor is there any review of configurations that could avoid some of the cost of increased subway capacity.  This should follow in the Metrolinx study now underway of the Relief Line and associated alternatives, but that sort of network-based review is years overdue.

Continue reading →

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Cycling as a Transit Alternative

A conversation has broken out in the thread originally dedicated to the Scarborough Subway regarding the ability of cycling to reduce demand on the subway if a bike lane were implemented on Bloor-Danforth.

I have moved all of the comments related to this topic here to separate them from discussions of the subway extension.

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Transit Technology Choices: A Quote Worth Repeating

Updated September 6, 2013 at 11:10 am:  There is an excellent article by Stephen Wickens on his blog recounting the sorry history of Queen’s Park’s imposition of the ICTS technology on the Scarborough route.

It is worth noting that the ICTS cars cost over $2-million each 30 years ago, an outrageous sum.  The price to Vancouver was much lower, well below $1m each, and the TTC order was used to funnel money from Queen’s Park to offset the development costs of the new technology.  This is what passed for a “transit strategy” in the Davis government.

Updated September 5, 2013 at 11:00 am: My comments about Transportation Minister Glen Murray’s Scarborough subway announcement yesterday are now online at the Torontoist.

The original post follows below.

Continue reading →

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Where Will the Scarborough Subway Go?

The Toronto Star reports that Queen’s Park is contemplating an alternative route to Toronto’s proposed Scarborough subway extension via Eglinton and McCowan to Sheppard East.

The key paragraphs in the article are:

“In the next couple of weeks we should have an announcement on what the routing will be, what the design will be and what the cost will be,” he told reporters on the way into a cabinet meeting Wednesday.

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Queen’s Park wants to have the subway run on a similar route to the light rail transit plan to “maximize the impact of this line and get it connected to as many people (as possible),” said [Transportation Minister] Murray.

Murray seeks to find out how much could be built with the $1.4b already committed to a subway project.  Using an existing corridor could reduce the cost compared to the McCowan alignment.

This raises questions debated in other threads here of how the subway would be extended via the existing SRT alignment including the configuration of Kennedy Station and whether a route from Ellesmere Station eastward would be elevated or underground.

Recycling some or all of the existing corridor will require a period of shutdown for the RT with parallel bus service, an issue that weighed heavily against the LRT scheme in recent debates.  Will the promise of a subway quell objections to this shutdown?

Murray will meet with Lisa Raitt, the federal Minister of Transport, to discuss funding, but he is already throwing cold water on hopes for assistance from Ottawa for a  “416” project.  Even if the feds bring money to the table, the next questions will be whether the original McCowan scheme or an SRT alignment for the subway are the best use of available cash, and how either subway would fit into a larger network.

The debate comes back to Toronto Council in October preceded by Murray’s announcement likely in mid-September.  Backers of the subway like TTC Chair Karen Stintz and recently-elected MPP “Subway Champion” Mitzie Hunter have stressed that their support for a Sheppard LRT was for a different line in different circumstances.  A Scarborough subway, wherever it goes, will leave large parts of eastern Toronto far from rapid transit.

The LRT debate is not over.  Will Stintz and Hunter become “LRT champions” for other parts of the network?

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Motorists vs Transit — 50 Years On

Mike Filey recently sent me a copy of an editorial written in the Toronto Star of February 12, 1963 by the late Ron Haggart.  For copyright reasons, I cannot reproduce the entire article here, only selectively quote from it, but it could have been written yesterday.

Haggart begins with a 1957 report from the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board that argued Toronto could improve its streetcar service, possibly avoiding the need for so much subway construction, simply by using tools already at the City’s disposal to manage the streets:

  • Enforce laws that prohibit obstruction of streetcar tracks.
  • Let streetcars control the traffic signals.
  • Enforce “no stopping” laws in curb lanes to keep them open for traffic flow.
  • Limit or ban left turns from streetcar lanes.

The context for these recommendations was a report on subway priorities (Bloor was recommended over Queen), but planners argued that even if subway would come to Bloor eventually, changes should be made to improve streetcar service.  Streetcars could get up to 12-13 miles/hour (19.2-20.8 km/hr)  compared to the expected 15.75 mph (25.2 km/h) for the subway.  (In those days, the line was projected to cost $200-million for the 12km stretch from Woodbine to Keele).

Streetcar priority would “necessarily involve some inconvenience to a number of ratepayers”, but would save the transit system (and those ratepayers) money.  As Haggart observed:

Every politician knows that it is far easier, politically, to build a $200 million subway than it is to keep cars off the streetcar tracks.

He continued:

Present-day leaders in Toronto have continued to play with the expensive but politically popular solutions (subways) or the airy-fairy solutions (monorail) and have shied away from the solutions that are simpler (in the engineering sense) but which are more difficult (in the political sense).

W.E.P. Duncan, then General Manager of the TTC, had observed that the political decision makers come to their jobs in cars.  Haggart goes on to cite the same sort of streetcar-vs-auto capacity numbers we hear today from the TTC.  But politicians of the day thought that replacing streetcars with buses would fix everything.  Not so, said Norman D. Wilson, a consultant to the TTC and father of the “wye” junction, who observed that three times the transit vehicles would be required, and the speed and convenience of transit would not be “one whit improved”.

Haggart concluded that the streetcars should be saved, but that:

Unfortunately, politicians prefer to be known as the father of the Gardiner Expressway … no one wants to be remembered as the Protector of the Streetcar.

Fifty years later, nothing has changed.  Even a fully grade-separated LRT, the most advanced form a “streetcar” can take without simply morphing into a subway line, fails to gain support and advocacy from the very politicians who should defend it.  It is simpler to plump for subways and ignore the expense.

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Metrolinx Puts Scarborough LRT on Hold

Metrolinx has advised Toronto’s City Manager that it is putting the Scarborough LRT project on hold pending resolution of various issues related to funding the proposed Scarborough subway.

In a letter from President & CEO Bruce McCuaig, Metrolinx states:

The Scarborough LRT remains an approved part of the Master Agreement among Metrolinx, City Council and the TTC, consistent with The Big Move and sound transit planning for the region. We will not expend any more funds on the project because it no longer enjoys the essential support of our partner, City Council. It would be imprudent for us to spend more on a project Council has by majority vote repudiated, as further expenditures would increase the sunk costs already incurred for which the City is responsible. As you know, Metrolinx estimates that sunk costs amount to $85 million at this time. Putting the Scarborough LRT on hold is not due to any shortcomings inherent in the project. The project would serve Toronto and its communities well. In the event the City suspends pursuit of the subway extension, Metrolinx is prepared to return to implementing the current project.

Metrolinx will remove the SLRT from the procurement process for the Eglinton Crosstown line so that this project can proceed on its own.  Planned improvements at Kennedy Station will be redesigned to avoid delay of the Eglinton project, but obviously the changes cannot preclude future inclusion of the SLRT should that project be revived or unless it is truly cancelled.

Provincial funding available for the subway project remains at $1.48b (2010$).  However, this does not include the offset for sunk costs which will be charged to the City reducing the amount available for the subway project to about $1.4b.

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The 100-Year Lie

How about a bottle mister?
Only costs a penny, guaranteed.
Does Pirelli’s stimulate the growth, sir?
You can have my oath sir,
‘Tis unique.
Rub a minute,
Stimulatin’ i’n’ it?
Soon you’ll have to thin it once a week.

From Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, by Stephen Sondheim

A commonly repeated myth in the LRT vs subway debate is that subways “last 100 years” while LRTs last “barely 30”.

If we were standing in a less-than-reputable circus, in a town that had only a passing familiarity with modern technology, and we still had an innocent, childlike faith that everything we are told is true, then I might put down the frequency with which this line is repeated to a bunch of rubes who can’t be expected to know better.

Toronto is not such a town at such a time and place.  It has pretensions to greatness.  Soon there will even be a train to the airport, although the Ferris Wheel won’t be ready to meet it for the Pan Am Games.  We think we are a “world class city”, a phrase that any con artist will recognize as the sign of a mark ripe for the picking.  We even have a flock of daily newspapers and local media to shine the light of truth in dark places.

Alas, no.  We’re ready to plunk down our money for the miracle of subways that will cure all our ills.  If Rob Ford were were a rather large man with a tail coat, a top hat, tights and a short whip, we would expect a certain amount of hyperbole.  It’s part of the greatest show on earth, after all.  If we faced a sly man, twirling his moustache, with his shop wares displayed in a back alley well out of sight of the constabulary, we might reasonably expect that our money would vanish into thin air for goods of dubious value.  But at City Hall, we trust everyone.

Let me tell you something, gentle readers: subways do not last for 100 years.  There is more than ample evidence of this right under our noses.  Anyone who says otherwise is not merely misinformed, or “poorly advised” to use parliamentary language, they are outright liars.  They care only to convince you that spending an extra billion or so is obviously worthwhile because the alternative is simply not worth the money.

Before the subway foamers start scrolling down to the comment box, let me make one very important point:  if you want to pay for a subway rather than an LRT (or a BRT, or a horse-and-wagon, or a Swan Boat), and you accept the tradeoff of higher capital cost for the supposed benefit of that technology, then an argument can be made for a subway in some places.

But don’t try to con me with lies about how long it will last for that huge investment. Continue reading →