Spadina Subway

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Lost in Downsview (Updated)

In case you have nothing else to worry about in this election season, the TTC unleashed one of the less helpful bits of debate a few weeks ago with a proposal to change the names of some of the stations on the Spadina Extension.

The staff proposed that:

  • Finch West, York University, Steeles West, Highway 407 and Vaughan Centre retain their original names
  • Sheppard West be renamed as Downsview Park
  • The existing Downsview Station be renamed Sheppard West

Metrolinx wrote asking that Highway 407 be named something else, but with no suggestions, as this could be too generic a name as other major transit nodes will eventually exist along this highway.

Vaughan Council wrote and appeared by deputation asking that their station be named Vaughan Metropolitan Centre in keeping with the name of their new development district.

Commissioner Perruzza weighed in with a proposal that Finch West be renamed University City Heights.

Update:  This name was actually applied with some objections by residents to the Jane-Finch location, two kilometers to the west, by Councillor Perruzza.  See the Toronto Star from January 2009 for more info.

After a great deal of rather pointless discussion, given the much weightier items on the agenda, the whole matter was referred to the new, post-election Commission.  The approved motion reads:

1. REFER CONSIDERATION OF THE NAME FOR THE VAUGHAN CENTRE TO THE NEXT SCHEDULED COMMISSION MEETING; AND

2. REFER CONSIDERATION OF THE NAMES FOR THE FINCH WEST, STEELES WEST AND DOWNSVIEW STATIONS BACK TO STAFF TO CONSULT WITH THE PUBLIC ON NAMES FOR THOSE STATIONS AND REPORT BACK ONCE COMPLETED.

The motion makes no reference to what we now think of as Sheppard West Station, but I’m sure that will be in the hopper too as it is an essential part of the discussion about which station gets to keep the “Downsview” name.

I am looking forward to the scrolling station name for Vaughan on those undersized destination signs fitted on the TR cars.

As for “University City”, this appears to be a last-ditch move by a soon-to-be-ex Commissioner to impose his idea of what Finch and Keele should be called on the City.  It remains to be seen whether this has general support in the neighbourhood.

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TTC 2011 Budget Preview — Part II: Capital

In my previous article, I reviewed the TTC’s preliminary information regarding its Operating budget for 2011.  Here I turn to the Capital Budget — the one that pays for major repairs, replacement vehicles and system expansion.

Following this budget from year to year can be challenging.  For the better part of a decade it has been clear that there would be a funding crisis as project deferrals accumulated, and now the dam has finally burst and big-ticket schemes are underway.  The early years of such projects tend to have low cash-flows because they are mainly design work and progress payments on smaller preparatory steps (such as the utility relocations and grade separation on the Sheppard East LRT).  Now, as spending builds on Transit City, the Spadina Subway Extension, replacement subway trains and streetcars, the demand for capital will grow.

During the 2010 Budget Cycle, many projects were deferred beyond 2019 so that they would not appear on the City’s or TTC’s books.  This made the depth of the budgetary hole appear more shallow than it really was.  If that were not bad enough, the TTC has created a new group of projects aimed at Yonge Subway capacity problems and, in the process, is partly pre-judging the outcome of a Downtown Relief Line study.  The combined result is that the funding shortfall shown as $1.344-billion in the 2010 budget papers for the years 2010-2019 has grown substantially, and there is now a funding shortfall of $2.8b for 2011-2020.

The staff budget report does not include a detailed breakdown of the projected funding sources.  Much more information was presented in the September 2009 report in the previous budget cycle.  (Note that the 2009 report does not exactly reflect the budget as it was eventually approved by Council.)

For the 2011-2020 budget planning, the TTC is taking the approach that it should show what spending is required, not just which projects fit within the available envelope.  This puts both Council and various funding agencies on notice about the true scope of future needs.  Council may not like the level of spending, but at least a debate is possible on the relative merit of transit programs.

In theory, this is a welcome change as it avoids the “surprise” factor when unplanned spending requests appear out of thin air.  However, there will be some debate about how critical some “required” projects might be, and what additional projects are still hidden out of sight.

The TTC estimates that restoring previously omitted items as well as new additions will raise the capital requirement by $3-billion over the next ten years.  That is a gross number, but the degree to which it will attract subsidies depends on the generosity and enlightenment of other governments. Continue reading →

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Furious George Has A Plan (Update 2)

Updated June 8, 2010 at 11:00 pm:

The Smitherman campaign has posted a backgrounder to his transportation plan which has been updated to reflect the funding of inflation by Queen’s Park.

In a previous update, I noted that there was a bit over $1-billion still unaccounted for.  This is explained in the backgrounder as follows:

Once the provincial government formally approves their contribution escalation the Smitherman construction cost increment is reduced to $3.87­billion, or $5-billion once financed to 2021. [Page 3]

Although this issue has been addressed, the method of paying for transit investments has not been changed.  Smitherman still depends on revenue from gas tax and dividends from City agencies, money that is already spoken for by existing budgets at the TTC and the City.  He also depends on new tax revenue from developments along the routes to be built.  However, those taxes traditionally have been at least partly spent to serve new residents and businesses these developments would bring.

While I applaud Smitherman for at least producing a detailed plan, I still do not agree with elements of it such as the Bloor-Danforth subway extensions or with his financing scheme.  (For the record, at Council today TTC staff responded to a question from Councillor Thompson about a subway extension and explained that any subway extension could not be built along the existing SRT corridor.)

The original content of this post follows the break.

Continue reading →

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A Response to “Save Our Subways”

For some time, I have stayed away from the “Save Our Subways” dialogue over on UrbanToronto in part because Transit City and related issues are presented as being “Steve Munro’s” plan (there’s even a poll that just went up on that subject), and because there are many comments in the SOS thread that are personal insults, not fair comment, well-informed or otherwise.

Such are the joys of an unmoderated forum.

Some have proposed a public debate, possibly televised, which I flatly reject.  First off, the issues are more complex than can be properly handled in that forum, and it certainly should not turn into a mayoral candidates’ debate on transit.  I do not know any candidate who could debate the details of either commentary.

Second, the lynch mob mentality of some writers on UrbanToronto is utterly inappropriate to “debate”, and this poisons many of the discussions on that site.

Recently I was asked by the authors of the Move Toronto proposal to respond, and this article is an attempt to start that dialogue in a forum where civility occasionally breaks through the diatribes.

To begin with, there are areas where SOS and I agree strongly, notably on the need for the Downtown Relief Line (at least the eastern side of it).  I’ve been advocating this for years at the very least as a high-end LRT line, more recently as a full subway as that technology fits its location in the network better and is well suited to the likely demand.

Where we part company is the premise that we have to give up big chunks of Transit City to pay for the DRL.  This sets up a false dialogue where TC lines are portrayed as overpriced and underperforming, denigrated at least in part to justify redirecting funding to the DRL.  That is an extremely short-sighted tactic and harms the cause of overall transit improvements.  It takes us back to the days of debating which kilometre of subway we will build this year.

I don’t intend to repeat my three long posts about Transit City here, but anyone who has read them knows that I do not slavishly support everything in that plan.  If anything, the lack of movement on some valid criticisms people have raised regarding TC sets up a confrontational dynamic.  Instead, the City/TTC could have been seen as responding to concerns.

Now, with the mayoralty campaign, attacking TC has become a surrogate for attacking the Miller program and the candidacy of Adam Giambrone.  These need to be disentangled if we are to have any sort of sensible debate.

My greatest concern is that whoever is the new mayor, the issues will be so clouded by electoral excess, by positions taken as debating points, as sound bites to attack an opponent, that we won’t be able to sort fact from fiction afterwards.  If, for example, George Smitherman winds up as Mayor, he will need a reasoned program, likely a mixture of some old, some new, not a “throw it all out and start over” policy.  People will have different ideas about what that new program might be, and that’s a valid debate.

Whether Steve Munro is an arch villain (SFX: maniacal laughter) plotting the end of civilized transportation is quite another matter.  To some, I have a vast reach through the political machinery of the GTA, while to others I am irrelevant.  I am not the issue.  Transit is.

These comments are organized roughly in the sequence of the Move Toronto paper (6mb download).  Although variations and alternatives have appeared in other locations, notably threads on the UrbanToronto website, I have not attempted to address these as they are (a) a moving target and (b) not necessarily the formal position of the Save Our Subways group.

I believe that Move Toronto contains many flaws arising from an underlying desire to justify a subway network just as critics of Transit City argue against its focus on LRT.  Among my major concerns are:

  • Subway lines are consistently underpriced.
  • LRT is dismissed as an inferior quality of service with statements more akin to streetcar lines than a true LRT implementation.
  • Having used every penny to build the subway network, Move Toronto proposes a network of BRT lines for the leftover routes. However, this “network” is in fact little more than the addition of traffic signal priority and queue jump lanes (“BRT Light”) on almost all of the BRT “network”.
  • Parts of the BRT network suggest that the authors lack familiarity with the affected neighbourhoods and travel patterns.
  • There is no financial analysis of the life-cycle cost of building and operating routes with subway technology even though demand is unlikely to reach subway levels within the lifetime of some of the infrastructure.

That’s the introductory section.  The full commentary is available as a pdf.

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Transit City Revisited (Part III, Updated)

(Updated at 3:00 pm, February 1.  I omitted a section on the proposed Sheppard subway extensions to Downsview and to Scarborough Town Centre.  This has been added.)

In this, the final installment of my review of Transit City, I will look at the unfunded (or underfunded) TTC transit projects.  Some of these spur passionate debates and the occasional pitched battle between advocates of various alternatives.  There are two vital points to remember through all of this:

  • Having alternatives on the table for discussion is better than having nothing at all.  It’s very easy to spend nothing and pass the day on comparatively cheap debates.  The current environment sees many competing visions, but most of them are transit visions.  The greatest barrier lies in funding.  Governments love endless debate because they don’t have to spend anything on actual construction or operations.  Meanwhile, auto users point to the lack of transit progress and demand more and wider roads.
  • Transit networks contain a range of options.  They are not all subways or all buses or all LRT.  Some are regional express routes while others address local trips.  Most riders will have to transfer somewhere, even if it is from their car in a parking lot to a GO train.  The challenge is not to eliminate transfers, but to make them as simple and speedy as possible.

I will start with the unfunded Transit City lines, and then turn to a range of other schemes and related capital projects. Continue reading →

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Yonge Subway Yard Study (Revised)

At its meeting on November 17, the TTC will consider a report on the yard needs for the Yonge-University-Spadina subway. 

Updated November 15 at 6:10 pm:

A reference to the replacement dates for the BD signal system and the T1 fleet has been corrected.  This triggers a discussion of whether the TTC will concoct an excuse to retire the T1’s early on the grounds that it is not worth installing ATO on them.

Updated November 15 at 4:30 pm:

The Subway Rail Yard Needs Study (aka SRYNS) proposes that future operations of the Yonge-University-Spadina line through 2030 be provided through a combination of various facilities:

  • Expansion of Wilson Yard
  • Storage of 6-8 trains at Davisville Yard
  • Consolidation of all non-revenue equipment (work trains) at Davisville Yard
  • Provision of online storage for additional trains at Richmond Hill
  • Sheppard Subway equipment (four 4-car T1 sets plus a spare) would be serviced at Greenwood

However, looking beyond 2030, staff foresee a need for additional storage and are asking the Commission for perimission to protect for a new yard on the Yonge line with purchase of property, should it become available.  This is a rather oddly worded request to which I will return.

The SRYNS was funded by York Region in recognition of the storage and servicing issues that a Richmond Hill subway extension would create for the YUS line.  The study explicitly does not look at requirements for the Bloor-Danforth line, but the report recognizes that this too must be examined.  The restructuring of the fleet and storage requirements for YUS trigger a move of all T1 subway cars to Greenwood, but that yard is not large enough to hold all of them.  In the short term, the TTC owns more T1s than would be required to operate both the BD and Sheppard subways, but this fleet will reach 30 years in 2026 and replacement with newer cars will occur within the timeframe of any projected yard requirements. Continue reading →

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How Big a Hole Do We Need?

At its meeting on July 9, the TTC approved purchase of four tunnel boring machines from LOVAT Inc. for construction of the Spadina Subway extension at a cost of about $58-million.  There was considerable discussion about this expense from the point of view of whether any could be recouped after construction, or what commonality there might be with Transit City requirements.

Various tidbits came out during the questions to staff from Commissioners.

The Sheppard tunnels are 5200mm inside diameter, whereas the Spadina tunnels will be 5400mm.  The larger bore is required both to meet current fire code, and to allow trains to travel through curves with sufficient clearance.  (The Sheppard line is, pardon the pun, rather boringly straight.)  The larger tunnel size adds about $35-million to the cost of the 6km of bored tunnel on the Spadina line.

Transit City tunnel size will be determined by the dynamic envelope required for its cars and for the overhead power supply.  These tunnels may not be the same diameter as those on the Spadina subway, but more to the point, the construction period for both Spadina and Eglinton overlap and using the Spadina machines for Eglinton will delay that project.  It is conceivable that the Richmond Hill subway, if funded, might inherit the machines.  Otherwise, the TTC expects to be able to sell them for about 30% of their original value.

This question will also affect the Sheppard tunnel at Don Mills, a short but necessary piece of work to get under Highway 404.

The TTC has canvassed the world market for second hand tunnelling machinery, but none which has the required bore diameter and soil condition design is available.

In a conversation after the meeting, I learned that although the single large bore tunnel (13m) proposed for Eglinton might be feasible, this large tunnel greatly increases the cost of removing spoil (earth and rock) because the tunnel structure is much larger than would be the case for two single tunnels.  In turn, this begs the question of how much of the Eglinton line will be built cut-and-cover so that it is not dependent on the availability of tunnel boring equipment.  We shall see in the fall when the next set of community meetings come around for the Eglinton corridor study.

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A Slightly Less Grand Plan

Ontario’s Finance Minister, Dwight Duncan, yesterday announced that the province will run a half-billion dollar deficit thanks to the international financial upheavals and declining economic outlook.  In this context, I spent the day at a Metrolinx “stakeholders’ meeting” where we discussed details of the Draft Regional Transportation Plan and Investment Strategy.  The whole discussion has a surreal air because nobody is quite sure where the billions to pay for this plan will come from.

There is reasonable agreement about the need for better transit, but much suspicion of whether this plan will join its predecessors on library shelves.

In the informal post-meeting chats, I was asked what I would do if the promissed $11.6-billion MoveOntario money didn’t materialize, if we had to cut back the scope of the “top priority” projects to fit a tighter budget.  This is too big an issue for a short chat, and it deserves a post of its own.

Any budgetary cutback discussion must first consider whether to make the “death of 1000 cuts” or to look hard at big ticket items.  If you need to defer or cut spending, there is more money to be found in large projects than small ones, but we may skip reviews of smaller items that really don’t belong at the top of the pile.

A major problem lies in the dearth of information Metrolinx has published about the detailed performance projections and roles of each component in the plan.  We have demand forecasts only for year 2031 where the combined effect of future job and population growth interact with a completed network.  The published data show only peak point counts, not the demands for each network link.  There is no way to understand which links are cost-effective, and there is no data for intermediate states (such as after the “first 15” are built) to show whether they are an appropriate use of whatever resources might be available.

Metrolinx must publish this information as soon as possible.  Meaningful discussions of cutbacks are impossible without it.

This brings me to the “Business Case Analyses” that are in progress already for some of these lines.  These analyses are proceeding in the old, worn-out style of looking at each project individually rather than collections of projects for their combined effect on the network.  From the 2031 projections, we can see that the regional express rail lines and other new major elements have a big impact on demand on the existing network.  Notably, the forecast overload of the subway system doesn’t materialize because there are other high-capacity lines where the demand can flow.

Meanwhile, the TTC’s report on the north Yonge extension to Richmond Hill raises an old, hare-brained scheme to add a third platform at Bloor-Yonge station for increased capacity.  I won’t go into a detailed discussion here beyond saying that this is horrendously complex and expensive, but at least the TTC finally recognizes that subway capacity involves more than new signalling and more trains. 

The real question, however, is whether the money would be better spent on alternate services to divert riding with new options for travel to the core area.  Should some projects — the Richmond Hill regional express and/or the east leg of the Downtown Relief subway — be moved up as alternatives or as key pre-requisites?  That’s the kind of comparative analysis Metrolinx and the TTC are not doing, but should.

Next we come to project phasing.  Do we really need a line all the way to Richmond Hill?  Is there a shorter “phase I” that will have significant benefits without the cost of the full line?  Analysis on an all-or-nothing basis doesn’t give us staging options.

We need to be open about “the untouchables”, the projects with political clout that soak up billions of dollars because someone wants to see them built.  There is no point in talking about fiscal restraint if billions in proposed spending can’t be reviewed.  A related question is how that “top 15” list came into existence in the first place. 

Some time ago, the Metrolinx Board approved this grab-bag as likely top candidates that should be analyzed in more detail.  However, that analysis isn’t even started for many of them, and there is every possibility that the analyses may show that some projects don’t pull their weight, at least in the short term.  I may be splitting hairs, but that “top 15” has gone from candidates for early study to the definitive list of first projects without benefit of formal approval.  If we are to have a spending review, we must stop assuming that this list has the force of detailed review and blessing.

Oddly, it’s almost an afterthought in the Draft RTP — Metrolinx doesn’t even include a map showing the network with only these lines completed.

The subway to Vaughan is a special case.  There is supposed to be a trust fund holding the funding from Queen’s Park, Ottawa, York Region and Toronto.  Is this money really sitting in a bank somewhere?  Does the provincial share come out of the $11.6-billion MoveOntario pot?  Can we step back and ask questions about why this line is so important?  For starters, someone has to reconcile demand projections in York Region’s own EA that would make the Sheppard subway look busy with the impetus to build this line.  Metrolinx does not break out the section north of Steeles as a separate project, and the published demand for the line gives only the peak point value (likely just north of Downsview Station).

The TTC is already studying alternatives to the SRT including LRT conversion of the existing line.  The original recommendation to keep Skytrain technology only made sense for a line that remained at its existing length or had a short extension.  The further north it goes (Markham is a mooted destination), the less practical and more expensive Skytrain is relative to LRT.  Keeping the RT was a bad recommendation skewed by a desire to preserve Bombardier’s showcase technology, and we cannot afford to avoid this debate.

On the Sheppard/Finch corridor, current thinking is headed toward an eastward extension of the Finch LRT to Don Mills (where it would connect to the Don Mills line) and a westward extension of the subway to Downsview.  These may be viable projects in the long term, but we have to consider them separately from the original Transit City proposals.  Indeed, the Don Mills LRT isn’t even in the “top 15”, and there isn’t much point building the Finch line east of Yonge until it has something to connect with.

At Finch Station, there are big problems with the bus terminal and with the design of a future LRT interchange.  What happens if the subway extension gets underway and much of the bus operation shifts north?

On Eglinton, a line whose projected peak ridership is similar to both of the subway extensions, but whose extent provides rapid transit service to a far larger area, we are faced with an expensive central tunneled section that cannot be avoided.  Indeed, the size of this project requires that it be started sooner rather than later so that its benefits as a key part of the overall network can be available.

In the Don Mills corridor, should the DRL end at Danforth or continue north to Eglinton with a major transit hub linking the Eglinton and Don Mills LRT lines to the DRL subway?  This won’t be part of the “top 15” list, but the Don Mills Transit City study would make a lot more sense if the TTC stopped trying to shoehorn an LRT right-of-way into Pape or Broadview.  That scheme (and related alignments) are holdovers from the days when this was a BRT study, and this nonsense has to stop.

On the Weston/Brampton rail corridor, why do we persist with the fantasy of the Toronto Air Rail Link (TARL, formerly called “Blue 22”) that will chew up track space for a premium fare service on the same route as a proposed regional express service to Brampton?  How much does the private sector-proponent of the line hope to make from this service?  Can they be bought off?  Is it cheaper to not build Blue 22 and devote the resources to upgrading GO in the same corridor?

What are the possibilities for the CPR North Toronto Subdivision?  What options do we have for cross-region service via this corridor especially as an alternative way for riders from the north-east to get into the city without using the RT/subway network?  Negotiating with CPR won’t be easy, but doing nothing may condemn us to building rapid transit capacity elsewhere we might not actually require.

If there is a common thread in all of this, it’s a simple message:  Metrolinx started off designing a network, and they must not lose sight of the network view of any solutions.  Look at revisions to the plan as a whole, look at where the benefits are greatest in the short term so that we spend what money is available on projects that will show real improvements for transit.

Toronto has decades of making wrong, expensive choices, and transit suffers a well-deserved reputation as an “also ran” thanks to those decisions.  Provincial belt-tightening is just the opportunity we need to focus on what really works, on what we really need.