Subways

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The Chong Report (I) (Updated)

Updated February 6, 2012 at 11:45pm:  The Chong report is now available online (linked below) together with a report from KPMG on financing the Sheppard subway.  Large chunks of the KPMG report are reproduced in the Chong report.

Original post from Feb 5 follows:

Gordon Chong’s report

Toronto Transit Back on Track
Sheppard Subway Development and Financing Study

will be released sometime this week, but a copy has already found its way to me.  This report was commissioned by Mayor Ford to explore the viability of his proposal, as stated in the purported Memorandum of Understanding with Queen’s Park, for the City to go it alone on the Sheppard Subway project.  The report is close to 200 pages long including its appendices, and I am not going to review it in a single article.

There is no question Chong’s mandate was to substantiate the need for and viability of the subway line, and to that end his report is coloured with sections intended to denigrate LRT alternatives and the political process that led to the Transit City proposal.  I will turn to this material in due course, but any decision on the subway project must stand on its own.  History is worth reviewing insofar as it provides technical background and shows the evolution of transit planning in Toronto.  Fighting old battles may score political points, but the subway must be justified on its own merits.

The cost and financing model are central to the thesis that the Sheppard line, and by extension a network of subways, is an appropriate goal, indeed the only goal, for Toronto.  The common wisdom is that “everybody wants subways”, but as with many aspects of public spending, what people want is not always what they will get.  Recent events in Toronto’s budget process are littered with lectures by Ford’s followers about fiscal responsibility and the need to make do with less.  We are told that the city and its taxpayers cannot afford to pay more.  We must, therefore, examine claims that major new public works are affordable with suspicion.

What is the estimated cost of any new project?  Are the numbers we are using credible?  Are subways actually cheaper than we have been told, and could a lower cost bring them within financial constraints of potential revenue?  Are public agencies the appropriate developers of such projects?  Are their costs (historical and projected) greater than might be achieved through another delivery mechanism?

While it may be a common Toronto sport to poke holes in TTC budgets, management practices and operations (a not uncommon thread on this blog), such criticism must be backed with a standard of accuracy and care.

How Much Will the Sheppard Subway Cost?

A central premise in this debate is that the TTC, and by implication the public sector generally, is unable to deliver this project at a reasonable cost.  An oft-quoted figure puts the TTC’s estimate of the project at $4.7-billion while an estimate from Metrolinx sits at $3.7-billion.  These numbers first appear in Table 2 in the Executive Summary, and they are routinely repeated as gospel.  One must read all the way down to page 147 and Table 38 to see the details. Here we see component costs that are generally higher for the TTC estimate than the Metrolinx one, but the details reveal that the billion dollar difference is not all that it seems.

Metrolinx estimates the cost of maintenance facilities at $138-million based on a per-car value of $2.66m.  A footnote on the table clearly states that the TTC estimate of $500-million is based on a new facility larger than is needed to hold just the fleet for Sheppard.  Why such a big difference?  Metrolinx assumes an expansion of the yard at Wilson and therefore a marginal increase in system capacity whereas the TTC makes provision for future fleet growth for demand and for system extension.

Wilson Yard has a looming problem with its size because there are limits on how fast trains can be pushed out for service buildup in the AM peak.  Already there is discussion of shortening the hours of subway service to retain an overnight maintenance window between the end of one day’s operations and the start-up of the next.  TTC plans include proposal for an underground storage yard north of Finch Station and, eventually, to a new carhouse somewhere in York Region.  We cannot simply keep stuffing more and more trains into Wilson.

This aspect of the cost difference cannot be counted as a penalty against the TTC because it addresses a completely different model of what would be built (and why), not some inherent flaw or inflation in TTC costing.

“Operating Systems” covers a range of items listed in the comparison.  For this, the TTC’s value is 4.5 times the Metrolinx value ($329m vs $73m).  This amount cannot be explained simply by claiming inefficiency at the TTC, and it is wildly out of scale with the differences in other items.  At the very least, anyone purporting to compare estimates would flag such a difference and explain it in their report rather than simply using the numbers without question.

“Contingency” is a catch-all allowance in any project budget to allow for unexpected events and costs during construction.  Both the TTC and Metrolinx estimates allow about 26% over and above the component costs, and with the TTC’s costs being higher, so is the contingency in their estimate.

Sales tax is included in the TTC estimates, but it is not in the Metrolinx version.  This shows up by virtue of an HST Rebate in the TTC section of the table which has no equivalent on the Metrolinx side.  The HST is included in the component costs including the contingency factor, and the TTC unit costs are not presented on an equal, untaxed footing with the Metrolinx costs.  Again, this sort of adjustment is a basic requirement of financial analysis, but it is absent from Table 38.

There are likely other areas where differences between Metrolinx and TTC figures would bear scrutiny, but as the TTC numbers are not detailed here, nor are the assumptions on which they are based, it is impossible to dig further.

Taking what we can see into account covers about three quarters of the difference between the Metrolinx and TTC estimates.  Before we can believe the Metrolinx $3.7b estimate, the inconsistencies with the TTC numbers must be explained.  Both values may be legitimate given the underlying assumptions used in each case, but these are demonstrably different.  Saying that there is a $1-billion spread between the two is an apples-to-oranges argument.

Here, it suits Gordon Chong’s thesis that the TTC is an inherently poor steward of public funds and that the project could be delivered at lower cost through another agency or mechanism.

A January 2008 Metrolinx report on a study tour to the United Kingdom and Spain is included as an appendix to the Chong report.  Even a cursory reading of this document shows that there are significant differences in the environment in which large-scale projects were undertaken in these jurisdictions compared with Toronto.  A major source of savings lies in the scale and continuity of construction projects, a general agreement that the projects should go forward (possibly with less up-front review such as our Environmental Assessments), and a regulatory environment that reduces contention between proponent agencies and the companies actually building their projects.  (Buried in the report, by the way, are references to “Tram” (LRT) components of the Madrid system which are considerably cheaper per kilometre than their subways.)

The degree to which each difference between the European cities and Toronto contributes to differences in costs is not explored, and yet this is essential to any comparison.  The scale of their projects and longevity of their construction plans are not directly transferable to a single Toronto subway extension.  It is not enough to say “look at how cheaply Madrid builds subways” without also understanding why they can do it.

In my next article I will turn to the question of how we will pay for this project.

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First Steps for a Transit Compromise (Update 3)

[Updates with links to media coverage are at the end of this article.]

Elizabeth Church reports in the Globe about a proposed compromise that would redistribute the funding for the proposed all-underground Eglinton LRT line.

Tess Kalinowski and David Rider in the Star cover the same story and include a map.

  • Eglinton would stay on the surface east of Leaside with a dip underground at Don Mills to surface east of the DVP.  This is similar but not identical to the original Transit City scheme.
  • Part of the money released from the Eglinton project would be used to extend the Sheppard Subway east to Victoria Park and include a stop at Consumers Road.
  • A bus transit corridor would be provided on Finch West and East.

The article implies that there may be good support from various parts of Council for this scheme, and a clear endorsement by a motion would send Metrolinx the signal it claims to be waiting for of just what Toronto wants to build.

Updated January 25, 2012 at 10:45am:

Natalie Alcoba reports in the National Post that although there may be support growing on Council for this plan, the Mayor’s office appears unmoved.

But an official from the Mayor’s office suggested he is not interested in relinquishing ground on his LRT stance. “We’re happy with the Metrolinx plan that they’re working on now,” said Mark Towhey, the Mayor’s policy director. “Residents don’t want trains running down the middle of the street.”

…

On the radio on Tuesday, Mr. Ford seemed to distance himself from the Eglinton line, saying he doesn’t want to stick his nose in a provincial project.

“I’m concentrating on the Sheppard line, and building a subway up there. If Metrolinx or the province wants to do this… I’m not a fan of streetcars, I’m not a fan of LRTs. If they’re underground I am, that’s been my position all along.”

[End of update]

There are longer range issues here, but retention of a subway-surface alignment on Eglinton will permit future extensions to the west and northeast that would likely be unaffordable if an all-underground structure had been repurposed as a full subway line.  The difficult problems of an alignment from Black Creek to Jane have yet to be addressed.

Finch will see BRT at least initially, and it will be important that no design elements preclude future conversion to LRT when demand justifies this.  This would also avoid the cost of a carhouse on Finch West in the short term that was part of the Transit City scheme.

The unknown would be Sheppard and the terminal at Victoria Park.  Will this be a “temporary” end of the line, or will the design allow further extension by either subway or by LRT with a convenient transfer connection?  An argument now about the technology east of Victoria Park will only muddle the debate, but the option of either form of extension should be left open for a future decision.  Will a BRT on Finch stand in for the Sheppard East LRT?

Portions of the Ford subway scheme appear to have fallen off of the table.  We still need those debates about the role of subways, LRT and BRT (not to mention such lowly creatures as simple buses running in mixed traffic) in a suburban network.  Part of this will fall to Metrolinx’ “Big Move 2.0” about which we know very little today and to the degree that solid transit funding actually shows up through new revenue sources such as tolls, sales taxes or maybe even a casino.

Meanwhile, we debate the disposition of billions in capital spending while proposing a few millions in savings by widespread service cuts.  Such is the madness of Toronto’s transit politics.

I can quibble about some aspects of this proposed compromise, but it is a good start.  Here is a sign that finally Council takes seriously the need to plan and make responsible decisions about our transit future.  For a year, by its inaction, Council gave de facto endorsement to a half-baked campaign promise that Metrolinx adopted as its working plan.  Now we can have a real debate.

Updated January 26, 2012 at 12:40am:

Robyn Doolittle in the Star reports that momentum is building for the compromise plan.

Elizabeth Church and Patrick White report in the Globe with more details about response from Queen’s Park and Metrolinx.

Natalie Alcoba in the Post suggests that Mayor Ford is still wedded to a subway plan, but that support for surface LRT is building.

One troubling point in all of this is a comment by Metrolinx chair Rob Prichard who wants to see Council, the Mayor and the TTC all onside.  Whether Rob Ford will actually endorse a new plan, or wind up as one of a few voting against it remains to be seen, but at some point Queen’s Park has to listen to the majority of the citizens’ representatives.

Updated January 26, 2012 at 12:50:

Royson James in the Star gives Metrolinx a well-deserved thrashing.  By its own admission, this agency proceeded with the all-underground Eglinton plan even without Council approval, a clear requirement of the Memorandum of Understanding between Queen’s Park and Mayor Ford.

Christopher Hume weighs in with a video commentary including a call for an all-surface Eglinton LRT.

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Sheppard Subway Inches Along (Updated)

Updated November 9 at 11:20pm:  The Toronto Star reports that Queen’s Park has told Mayor Ford that it will not advance any provincial funds from a possible “surplus” on the Eglinton project to jump start the Sheppard line.  This leaves Ford’s camp having to find money on its own if work on a first phase to Victoria Park were attempted.

The original article from November 8 follows:

The Toronto Star reports that Rob Ford’s Sheppard Subway proposal might creep eastward from Don Mills Station rather than bounding in one leap to Scarborough Town Centre.  An initial push east to Victoria Park might be a target for 2014, in time for the next municipal election, although the opening date would come later.

Considering that Ford was going to finance and build the entire Sheppard line in that time, this is a tad slower than promised during his election campaign.

The big problem, of course, is money.  Ford doesn’t have much and, as the Star points out, the engineering difficulties for an all-underground Eglinton line won’t leave much unspent of the provincial fund earmarked for that route.  For a route that was going to be financed by the private sector, Sheppard, or what we may see of it, is turning into a traditionally funded public sector project.

The specifics are no surprise.  Don Mills was always an odd place to end the Sheppard line, and this choice was dictated by available funding, not by network planning.  The proposed LRT connection into Don Mills is less than ideal, and a tunnel under the DVP would be required regardless of the technology.  The extra cost lies in continuing east to Victoria Park.

What we don’t know yet is whether this extension would include a Consumer’s Road Station, or just go straight through to the new terminal.

During the debates over possible adjustments to the Transit City network, a subway extension was one option proposed by some.  The typical reaction to this (and to any other schemes that would add to the cost of Transit City) was to reject the idea out of hand because the overall budget was already very tight.  However, now that Queen’s Park has decided that no price is too high to keep Mayor Ford happy, it’s much harder to argue against rethinking some Transit City options.

Victoria Park could be a good terminal for a Sheppard LRT, but there’s a problem of timing.  The “interim” subway terminal should be designed with provision for an LRT rather than subway continuation.  I suspect that no one at the TTC will be allowed to even discuss, let alone design such an option.  This will be a challenge for Councillors thinking ahead to a post-Ford era when LRT plans can be resurrected.

According to the Star, Gordon Chong should be reporting on a scheme to get the Sheppard line underway “before Christmas”.  Will Santa have a nice shiny subway train for little Rob’s stocking, or just a lump of coal?

Meanwhile for comic relief, Matt Elliot’s Ford for Toronto site reports how that pesky Don River just won’t get out of Ford’s way.

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TTC Commission Meeting Wrapup for October 2011

The Toronto Transit Commission met on October 19, 2011.  With the exception of one item, it was an uneventful agenda.  This article deals only with matters where significant new information came to light beyond that reported in my initial review of the agenda.

28 Billionth Rider

In case you were wondering, the “official” 28-billionth rider chosen to mark the TTC’s 90th anniversary on September 1, 2011, was not chosen with a countdown clock, but from the pool of the TTC’s Metropass Discount Plan subscribers.  The lucky rider gets a free Metropass subscription for one year.

I did not win, although I have been using the Metropass since its inception in 1980, and became a subscriber as soon as this was possible.  By the 100th anniversary (if the TTC still exists by then), we will all be using Presto.  Sigh.

Budget and Efficiency Reviews

The Operating Budget was mentioned only in passing in the context of planned public consultation on “Customer Service”, and the service cuts for January were treated as a done deal that is not subject to discussion.  This is rather odd considering that Council has yet to finalize its budget, and “what if” questions about various funding scenarios will be an obvious part of the debate.

For example, the current TTC budget requires a 10-cent fare increase to balance the books.  What further cuts will be needed if this is not implemented?  We don’t know.  Indeed, we didn’t even know what cuts the present budget would bring until the detailed list found its way to me earlier this week.  Officially, the TTC was still working on the cuts (probably true in the strictest interpretation), but a detailed proposal had already been posted for staff information.

If a higher fare increase were implemented, what could be done with the added revenue?  This type of question, of planning, was at the heart of the Ridership Growth Strategy which, thanks to Mayor Ford, was jettisoned as an unwanted leftover of the Miller era.  With the fundamental assumption that any improvements cannot be afforded, or worse, might be “gravy” undeserved by the beneficiaries, Toronto finds itself cut off from the basic debate of the worth and quality of its services.  The present crew of TTC Commissioners colludes in this by avoiding discussion on alternative budget strategies.  “What if” is a question nobody wants to hear answered.

Meanwhile, Chair Karen Stintz focuses on “good news” stories about things the TTC did, or appeared to do, well.  She is dancing on the deck of the Titanic.

Several issues raised in the KPMG “Efficiency Reviews” are now under study by TTC management.  While many of the areas addressed here are worth studying, they represent comparatively small efficiencies and, moreover, they are one-time savings.  Improvements in the affected cost areas may be found, although some may not bear fruit until 2013.  However, an “efficiency” cannot be repeatedly applied to yield new savings year after year, and the TTC will have do deal with ridership and inflationary pressures in 2013 and beyond without the one-time reductions applied in 2012.

One large “saving” comes from the designation of the TTC’s Pension Fund Society as a “jointly sponsored” plan which does not require full solvency of future liabilities.  If the TTC had been required to fully fund the plan, this would have added $40 to $45-million annually to the Operating Budget through about 2022.  This is really only an avoided cost, not a saving against current spending.

In a separate study, the City is reviewing the consolidation of various pension plans, including the TTC’s.  The possibility of such a move and its financial implications have not yet been reported out to Council.

Wheel-Trans Operating Budget

Commissioner Cesar Palacio tabled a request that staff consider moving from the current 60/40 ratio of contracted versus TTC-provided service to a new target of 80/20.  The question of using private operators to carry more of the WT customers has come before the Commission many times before, although in this case it crept into the agenda unexpectedly with Palacio’s motion.

The fundamental problems with previous attempts at private operation of WT vans/buses has been with the quality of staff, vehicle maintenance and passenger treatment.  How this will be address in the 2013 budget cycle remains to be seen.

One point TTC management has not yet addressed is the degree to which high in-house costs are a function of poor dispatching that affects vehicle utilization and trip lengths.  A new booking system is supposed to reduce these problems, but we have yet to hear any reports on actual operational or financial benefits.

Fitness for Duty

By far the biggest issue for debate was the question of mandatory testing for drug and alcohol use by TTC staff.  The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 strongly opposes this scheme, and the matter is already in grievance proceedings and likely to wind up in the courts.  The ATU’s position is that random testing is an invasion of privacy, and that it does not fully address the problem of a driver’s ability to perform their job.

The ATU supports the implementation of non-invasive technologies to assess driver alertness that check for response times using video displays, a system already deployed in parts of the USA.  The ATU’s position is that this would monitor for all forms of fatigue including those due to tiredness or illness, not just test for the presence of drugs or alcohol.

This is not as straightforward a situation as it may appear.  For one thing, privacy and especially health privacy laws in Ontario are much more strict than south of the border.  The TTC also claims that it is interested in whether someone is impaired at the time a test is taken, not whether there is evidence of past use.

TTC Management and the Commission appear to be exploiting a recent collision between a bus and truck which caused a passenger’s death to push through the new policy.  The driver was charged with “criminal negligence causing death” and it is unclear whether a separate charge for marijuana possession has any bearing on this case.  I will not comment further on this matter, and will edit out any comments that speculate on this subject because it is before the courts.

What is clear is that until various legal and labour proceedings work themselves out, the new policy will be in limbo.

Subway Station and Vehicle Cleanliness

The TTC received a presentation on the cleanliness of its stations and vehicles.  In case you have been wondering why TTC vehicles might be a tad grubby, we now know that the only daily cleaning they get is a “dust and sweep” except for the bus fleet which gets an exterior wash as part of the daily fuelling cycle.  Streetcars don’t need to be fuelled, and they go straight to the yard.

Now that the wash tracks at Wilson and Greenwood are back in operation, subway trains do look a lot better, although some cars remain grungy, notably on the BD line, possibly because the long period without cleaning has left dirt and grease more or less permanently part of the cars.

Audit results for the condition of stations and vehicles show that there has been some improvement, but the TTC is still not at its hoped-for targets.  The streetcar fleet, in particular, is well below the hoped-for level of litter although this is probably due to the relatively large number of vehicles staying in service all day and evening without a mid-day break where basic housekeeping might be possible.

The TTC plans to transfer some subway cleaners from carhouse duties to subway terminals where they can clean out trains at the end of each trip.  It is unclear whether there are enough cleaners for this during all service hours.

Some tile and grout work now underway at a half-dozen locations should be finished by year-end.  However, there was no comment on the many locations where portions of station walls were removed for inspection, and the due date for replacement recedes into the future.  Similarly, there was no comment on locations like St. George where the trackside walls remain filthy even while work continues on the platforms and stairwells.

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Creeping Toward Earlier Subway Closing?

The TTC is increasingly fond of shutting down parts of its subway system for maintenance late at night.  The practice began with the project to repair the tunnel liners on the North Yonge subway (Eglinton to Sheppard) that, through a design flaw, were causing the tunnel to gradually go out of round.  Rather than work for only a few hours each night, the repair window was opened by ending subway service on the affected part of the line at 12:30 am.  This will continue until sometime late in 2012.

The Bloor-Danforth line is now shutting down at midnight for rail grinding with a rolling schedule working across the entire route:

  • September 19 to 23:  Kipling to Islington
  • September 25 to 30:  Kipling to Jane
  • October 2 to 7:  Ossington to Broadview
  • October 9 to 14:  St. George to Broadview
  • October 16 to 19:  St. George to Woodbine
  • October 20 & 21, 23 to 28, 30 to November 2:  Woodbine to Kennedy
  • November 3 & 4, 6 to 11:  Warden to Kennedy

Replacement bus service will operate overlapping the section of the route that is shut down.

This project begs the question of why there is a need to do rail grinding on a scale and with a level of service disruption we have not seen since the subway opened.  Once upon a time, there was a two-car train of PCCs used for grinding, but these are long-retired.  A problem arose many years ago on the high-speed section of the subway north of Eglinton where lateral sway of trains (a particular problem with the H1 series of cars) generated long-period horizontal equivalents of “corrugations” that reinforced the unwanted car movements.

I have asked the TTC for an explanation for this project, and also about any plans they might have for similar work on the Yonge-University-Spadina line.

It will be intriguing to see how the replacement bus service fares especially in the heavily-travelled central section of the line, and whether the crowd control and passenger information provided by the TTC at closed stations will amount to more than a few hand-written signs.

With late night services under attack in some quarters, I can’t help wondering when some bright spark on City Council will conclude that we really don’t need the subway open so late, and with it the many bus services operating to 2:00am and beyond.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, the Nuit Blanche celebrations will see limited overnight subway service on October 1-2 finishing at 7:00am Sunday.  There will be a brief interval where the subway is closed before the start of regular Sunday service at 9:00am (trains are actually out on the line building up service somewhat earlier).

  • BD line: Keele to Woodbine every 12-15 minutes
  • YUS line: St. Clair West to Eglinton every 10-12 minutes

The 300 BD Night Bus will only operate on the outer parts of the route not covered by the subway.  The 320 Yonge Night bus will have frequent service north of Eglinton, and a Spadina shuttle bus will operate north of St. Clair West.

Whether the TTC will put signs on the night bus stops advising that travellers should use the subway remains to be seen.  Even more challenging will be whether people will read them.

A 15-minute headway will operate on the following surface routes overnight transitioning to the start of Sunday daytime service:

  • 301 Queen
  • 305 Eglinton East
  • 306 Carlton
  • 307 Eglinton West
  • 504 King

The question of an earlier closing time for the subway is related to service expansion plans.  As the YUS gets longer and longer, and as the headways are shortened with automatic train control, the number of trains on the line rises considerably.  Most of these trains will originate at Wilson Yard, and there is a physical limit to the number of trains/hour that can enter service for the morning peak.  This will require the loading of service, if not revenue operations, to start earlier than it does now and will limit the time when the line is available for maintenance work.

Available alternatives include earlier shutdowns, extended weekend outages on affected sections of a route or the construction of additional storage capacity elsewhere on the line, preferably on the Yonge side to balance out service loading requirements.

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Will Nobody Stop Fords’ Folly?

The Toronto Star and Globe & Mail report that TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster’s days may be numbered thanks to his failure to support the Sheppard Subway proposal.  Not only might we lose Webster, but we might gain a Ford cohort, a politician with no real transit experience, as his replacement.

I will leave readers to peruse the full articles, but here is a key section in the Star:

The plan to get rid of Webster “is in play now,” said former TTC vice-chair Joe Mihevc.

“(The Fords) are so committed to Sheppard they are actively contemplating getting rid of the entire streetcar system in Toronto,” he said, adding that the cost of the new streetcars could be applied to the subway.

“If Doug Ford bullies his way through on this, it truly will be the victory of extreme authoritarian ideology over good public transit policy and good business management,” Mihevc said.

Elsewhere, we learn that TTC Chair Karen Stintz who, as recently as yesterday morning praised Mayor Ford’s support for TTC customer service initiatives, is actually frustrated with the speed of implementation of changes.  The fact that there isn’t a penny for this program in the budget, and that the TTC faces a 10% cut in city funding for 2012, shows what the real level of commitment is in Toronto.

Meanwhile, the only project of any importance to the Brothers Ford is the Sheppard Subway whose “private sector” financing is a bubble of their imagination that burst months ago.  Every penny that can be scrounged from other projects, plus tax revenue from developments miles away on Eglinton, would be used to finance Sheppard and minimize the level of private sector participation needed to top up the budget.  This is financial trickery of the worst kind.

According to the Globe’s story, Stintz appears to be splitting from Ford’s all-or-nothing approach to the Sheppard line preferring instead to build to Victoria Park as a first step using money originally earmarked for the Sheppard LRT.

Queen’s Park struck a deal with the devil to preserve the Eglinton LRT as a subway while leaving Ford free to work his financial magic on Sheppard.  The streetcar system appeared safe if only because replacing it would be a long-term, difficult proposal.  However, the Liberals’ hold on power is tenuous, and a Ford-favouring Tory government would no doubt be happy to cancel the streetcar order (and probably the LRVs for Eglinton as well) with Bombardier, and the voters of Thunder Bay be damned.

In ten years, we would have a much reduced quality of transit service in the central city, we would choke streets with clouds of buses and limit the growth of major areas served by the present and proposed streetcar system.  In return, Sheppard Avenue would have its subway, and what started as Lastman’s folly and a Liberal campaign promise by former Premier David Peterson would become a full-blown monument to the stupidity of transit planning and politics in Toronto.

Has any of Rob Ford’s transit scheme gone to Council for review?  No.  Council, especially its “mushy middle”, is too busy currying favour with the Mayor to rein in his actions, leaving the Fords to dictate policy on the transit file and so many others.

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Spadina Subway Extension Update

The presentation from the Spadina update given at the TTC meeting on July 6 is now available online.

There’s nothing very surprising, but a few points are worth noting:

Station Names (p 3): There are still discussions in progress about station names.  The ones in the presentation are the working names that have been used for the project, but the final selection will occur probably in October.  Among the proposals in various stages of consideration are:

  • Sheppard West:  There are some who would rename this Downsview, or Downsview Park, although this would create a conflict with the existing Downsview Station which, just to spice things up, is actually at Sheppard.
  • Finch West:  There was a proposal to call this University Heights, although that is a neighbourhood name that doesn’t appear to have much currency among the local residents.
  • Steeles West:  This might become “Black Creek — Pioneer Village” to mark the nearby historical site.
  • Vaughan Corporate Centre:  Aside from being a name that would only inspire an accountant, it’s a rather long name that will be hard to fit on signage, literature, etc.  However, Vaughan wants it “Vaughan Metropolitan Centre” which is still rather long.  York Region is paying the municipal share for this part of the line, and I suspect that a long name will prevail, even if it’s rather pretentious.

Whatever names stations do eventually get, I hope that the major street names survive with a local neighbourhood name as a subtitle rather like “Bay Yorkville”.  Of course if we sell the station names to the highest bidder, neighbourhood and street names might vanish completely.

Budget (pp 4-5): The project is “fully funded”, but this has to be taken with a grain or two of salt.  First off, all of the project contingency has already been consumed in the design phase, and we still have four years of construction to get through.  The TTC hopes to make up any deficiencies through a combination of cost controls and the interest earned on the trust fund holding the provincial contribution to the project.

The project has repeatedly been described as “on time and on budget”, but whether this condition will hold through the remaining 4.5 years to opening remains to be seen.

Construction Schedule (pp 10-13): The schedule shows that the line will open at the end of 2015 taking us beyond one municipal election and two provincial elections.  Who knows which politicians will actually get to cut the ribbon.  Although the physical construction will finish in early 2015, commissioning of the line will take several months.  There has been no discussion of an early opening to York U or to Steeles West to serve the Pan Am Games.

Just as with the budget contingency, all of the “float” time in the project has already been consumed.

Automatic Train Control (p 14): When this project started, the TTC had not yet launched into an ATC conversion project, and the extra cost of ATC over a conventional signal system was not included in the approved, shared budget.  Strictly speaking, this is not required to open the line provided that a headway shorter than a conventional system can handle is not operated into non-ATC territory.

Earlier in the design stage, the TTC dropped Platform Edge Doors from the extension to save money.  At one station, this triggered a redesign because the wall containing the doors was planned as a structural element holding up the roof.

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Bloor-Danforth Late Sunday Openings for Viaduct Beam Work (Updated)

Updated July 1, 2011 at 8:45 am: The slow order on the viaduct has been lifted both ways, and trains are running at normal speed between Broadview and Castle Frank for the first time since December 2010.

Original post from June 23:

This coming Sunday, June 26, and three additional Sundays through to late September, the Bloor-Danforth subway will not operate between Pape and St. George Stations until after noon.  A replacement shuttle service will be provided.

This will allow work on the bridge beams and track that has proceeded at a snail’s pace since the slow order, both ways, was imposed last December.

The full announcement is on the TTC’s site.

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Brother, Can You Spare $500-million?

The board of Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited (a TTC subsidiary) met today to consider various matters, among them the need for more money.

A report by TTIL President and CEO, Gordon Chong ends with the statement

“the existing budget is woefully inadequate to complete the tasks of the Working Group.”

Paul Maloney of the Star covered the meeting (I was unable to attend due to a conflict elsewhere).  Although it’s early days, we now know that the projected cost of the subway has gone up from $4.2 to $4.7-billion.  Just to pay for that increase would take over 10 years’ worth of development charges levied in Toronto.

Chong lists six possible revenue sources to finance the Sheppard line:

  • Tax increment financing in the Sheppard and Eglinton-Crosstown corridors
  • A special city-wide transit development charge
  • Development rights on city-owned land in the Sheppard corridor
  • Federal funding original destined for the Sheppard LRT project
  • New federal funding from PPP Canada
  • Left-over Metrolinx funds from the Eglinton project

It is amusing to note that a subway touted as a “private sector” undertaking would be funded largely by new taxes and public sector money.

The Sheppard subway fantasy will, no doubt, become even more bizarre as details unfold.  Chong plans a report to Council in fall 2011.  Meanwhile, he estimates that the preliminary work needed to determine the cost and feasibility will set TTIL back up to $300-million.

Maybe they can start pre-selling sponsorships for the stations.  After all, condo developers understand the concept of selling vacant land.  Buy early!  Get ’em cheap!

[Elizabeth Church in The Globe also reported on this meeting.]

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Subway Financing Falling Apart? (Update 3)

Updated June 4 at 10:20 am: The Star has published an article discussing road tolls and other ways to squeeze money out of drivers to pay for transit improvements.  David Gunn weighs in on the folly of a Sheppard subway, and Toronto’s transit woes in general.

Updated June 2 at 2:00 pm: Inside Toronto has published an article discussing the zoning increases needed to make the Sheppard Subway a reality.  This includes an illustration of the intersection at Victoria Park developed at the density likely to exist.  The drawing is from Tridel, a well-known developer, not from some wild-eyed lefty trying to frighten the locals.

Although Mayor Ford has disowned the concept of road tolls as a revenue source for subway funding, Gordon Chong continues to press the issue saying:

“I was hired to put all the options on the table and that’s what I’m doing. Road tolls are off the table for the Ford administration. But they’re still part of the toolbox. If you choose not to use that tool, that’s your choice.”

Honesty about the real cost of Ford’s obsession with subways is rare, but refreshing.

Missing from the discussion is the whole question of what development at this density will mean for suburbs through which subways are built, and by extension along Eglinton Avenue which may encounter the same fate.  Just because you have a subway (or underground LRT) doesn’t mean that the neighbourhood or the roads can accept the resulting traffic and population.  Many people who live in the new buildings along Sheppard do not travel by TTC, and they will simply add to congestion on the road system.

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