LRT Projects

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Cherry Street Track Construction (Update 3)

Updated September 17, 2013 at 4:25pm:

According to earlier plans I had heard through Waterfront Toronto, Cherry Street Loop was not to be completed until after the Pan Am Games because the site is part of a parking lot for buses.  Contrary to this story, the loop is under construction, albeit surrounded by a parking lot.

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The now-inactive Cherry Street tower that once controlled the eastern approach to Union Station sits at the south end of the loop.  In the left background, behind the trees, is the GO Don Yard.

The terrible irony about this, our possibly newest streetcar line, is that it won’t actually see service until Spring 2016, and the proposed extension under the railway to connect with a Queens Quay East line isn’t even in the current list of projects awaiting funding.

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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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Memo to Glen Murray & Karen Stintz: Are You Really Serious About Transit in Scarborough?

With all the upheaval of transit plans for Scarborough, politicians fall over each other to tell Scarborough residents how downtrodden and ignored they have been, how they always get the short end of the transit stick.  How will we fix this?  Build them a subway!

Mind you, that subway won’t open for 10 years, and riders on the Scarborough RT will have to endure more cold winters and overcrowded service, not to mention bus routes that run occasionally and unreliably.

We should remember what Scarborough was originally promised with the Transit City scheme announced years ago by then-Mayor Miller and now-Candidate Adam Giambrone:

  • An LRT line from an underground station at Don Mills & Sheppard with a direct connection to the Sheppard subway running east to Morningside and beyond.
  • An LRT line from Kennedy Station east and north via Eglinton, Kingston Road and Morningside to Sheppard serving the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC).
  • An upgraded and extended Scarborough RT using LRT to reach east and north to Malvern Centre.

The Sheppard LRT is “funded” by Queen’s Park, but actual construction is a moving target with completion now planned for 2021.

The Eglinton/Morningside line (aka “Scarborough-Malvern”) drifts in limbo not even a part of the Metrolinx “Next Wave” implying completion at best by the late 2020s.

The Scarborough LRT has been replaced by the Scarborough Subway.  Although Council attached many conditions to the financing for that line, you can bet that no politician in Toronto is willing to pull the plug, to return to the LRT scheme, with provincial and municipal election fortunes in play.  One way or another, even by the simple expedient of giving Ottawa more time to pony up “their fair share” (whatever that means), the subway scheme will stay alive, and the Scarborough LRT will start to resemble Monty Python’s “dead parrot”.  It will be “sleeping” only in the minds of its most ardent advocates.

Politicians love to tell us how much they support better transit in Scarborough, and they could start by talking about something more than the subway.

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Waterfront Transit Update July 2013

Many projects affect the development of Toronto’s waterfront and transit services.  It is easy to lose track of how everything fits together, and this is an attempt to put updates for the various parts in one place.

For an overall map of the waterfront, go to Waterfront Toronto’s site and click on “View Map”.

Construction progress photos can be found on pages for individual projects, and a good overview is available in the minutes of the Waterfront Toronto Board meetings under the CEO Reports and Construction Updates.   (Scroll down to the bottom of the linked page, click on “View Details” for a meeting, and select the report you wish to view from the pop-up menu.)

Waterfront Toronto will hold a public meeting on Wednesday, July 24 from 6:00 to 9:00pm at the Toronto Fire Academy, 895 Eastern Ave (at Knox) with updates on the Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Protection, and the Lower Don Lands Master Plan.

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Development Charges and Transit Expansion

The City of Toronto Executive Committee will discuss the matter of a new Development Charges Bylaw at its meeting on July 3, 2013.  This is a statutory requirement as the current bylaw expires in April 2014, and it must be replaced in order for the city to continue collecting these charges.

Already press reports show a real estate industry apoplectic at the possibility that these charges will double.  With all the concern over a possible softening of the market for new units, the last thing they want is yet more cost added to the purchase price.  However, what we are seeing is a combined effect of the rising population and the exhaustion of surplus capacity in existing infrastructure, notably transit and water.  Much of the new development is concentrated in the central city in former industrial areas that do not possess the infrastructure needed to support their coming new populations.

(Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat observed at the “Feeling Congested” session earlier this week, about 70,000 people will call places like Liberty Village and the waterfront neighbourhoods their new home over the coming decade.)

There is bound to be lively debate, especially from the “no new taxes” brigade on Council, but the simple fact is that the city cannot have new development without some way to pay for the supporting infrastructure and services.  In this article, I will talk only about the transit component which is the single largest piece of the new DCs rising about 150% from the previous level for residential development.  (DCs overall will go up 86% because other categories have lower increases.)

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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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Metrolinx Announces Design Changes and Public Meetings on Eglinton LRT (Update 8)

Updated June 17, 2013 at 6:15 pm:

In the comment thread for this article, there has been substantial discussion about a “south side option” for the Eglinton LRT between the portal at Brentcliffe and Don Mills Road.  I have after several requests obtained an answer from Metrolinx about whether this had ever been considered.  Here is their reply sent by Jamie Robinson today.

Placing the LRT on the south side of Eglinton Avenue East in the vicinity of the West Don River/Leslie Street was included in three of five options compared to the at-that-time base case (which was underground throughout the corridor) in the Don Mills River Crossing Study prepared in February 2012 by HMM. However, the LRT would have been in a completely separate right-of-way on a new bridge across the West Don River in order to maintain current vehicle capacity of Eglinton Avenue East (i.e., no conversion of travel lanes to LRT tracks).

That report recommended one of the options that included a continuation of the bored tunnel from the west to pass under the West Don River and portal east of the Don Valley Parkway. That option was selected because the cost differential with the at-grade options was minimal, provided that a station at Leslie Street was not required. If a Leslie Station would be required, then one of the at-grade south side options was the preferred option. MX decided to proceed with the first option, and further refined that option with a launch at Don Mills Road and continuing eastward with the EA alignment, which led to the preparation of the Eastern EPR Addendum.

The at-grade south side option was not compared to the EA Option.

Generally, however, It is very difficult (if not impossible) to relocate the portal from the centre of Eglinton (as proposed in the current design) and shift it to the south side of the right-of-way and continue to use the existing bridge. The “viaduct” option that HMM reviewed, was suggested by the public and was presented during the recent consultations for the changes in the East, was more expensive and required an EA amendment. Due to project implementation timelines the project is proceeding with the EA option.

In brief, yes they looked at it, although not in the context of the original EA.  Shifting to the south presents problems for the river crossing and the tunnel launch shaft, but might have survived as an option if Metrolinx had not decided to go all-underground to Don Mills.  Now that they’re back on the surface, they are sticking with the original plan.

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Waterfront West Update (Revised June 15, 2013)

Updated June 15, 2013 at 4:20 pm:

The shortest streetcar line in the world exists, albeit without service, as the first piece of new surface track appeared on the 509 Harbourfront route at the Peter Street slip.

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On June 11, the eight expansion joints for the future bridge crossing were set more or less in place on the new bridge deck.

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By June 13, the tangent rails had been added, although the expansion joints at the west end of the bridge (below) …

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… had not yet been attached.

Note that, like subway track, the rails are mounted directly on the bridge deck, not on ties.  This approach is needed because the bridge design does not include the depth needed for the layer of ties normally found in TTC streetcar track.

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The view below shows a close up of a test section of track built just west of the corner of Bay and Queens Quay.  The use of the rubber sleeve to mechanically isolate the track  is quite clear.  Under the plastic covers (with duct tape on them) are Pandrol clips holding the track to steel plates in the slab below.  The slab containing the track is separate from the base slab so that only excavation of the top layer is needed for track replacement.

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The original Harbourfront track did not have the rubber layer and was quite noisy because the whole trackbed vibrated as cars passed.  This is one of the last pieces of mainline “thunder track” to be replaced on the TTC network, a process begun 20 years ago.

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TTC Meeting May 24, 2013 (Update 3)

The agenda for the TTC meeting on May 24 contains a few items of interest, but also a troubling sign that matters of public interest are being debated behind closed doors.

Items included in this preview:

Updated May 23 at 12:10 am:

Links to the TTC construction pages for the York Street, Ossington Avenue and Kingston Road reconstruction projects have been added.

A reference to a statement about the New Streetcar Implementation Plan attributed to Andy Byford at the April Commission meeting has been corrected to reflect that it was made by Chris Upfold, Chief Customer Officer, who was standing in for Byford at that meeting.  TTC’s Brad Ross has confirmed that this plan will be presented in the public session of the June Commission meeting.

Updated May 23 at 9:15 pm:

The Kingston Road construction project info has been updated to reflect the early replacement of streetcars by buses effective June 3.

Updated May 25 at 1:30 pm:

This article has been updated to reflect events at the Commission meeting.

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A Chat With Minister Murray

Glen Murray has only been sitting in his new office as Minister of Transportation and Minister of Infrastructure for Ontario for about 2½ weeks, but already his comments in the mainstream media (Globe Star) and on Twitter (@Glen4ONT) show that business as usual will not be the style of his office.  We chatted for about 45 minutes earlier today.

I began by asking about the change of his Twitter handle from the suffix “TC” (for his riding’s name, Toronto Centre) to “ONT” and his recent comments about transportation in northern Ontario.  Murray’s focus there is on economic development, and the need for transportation facilities to support investment, especially in mining.  On the question of passenger services, it was a bit harder to nail down the Minister’s position.

Murray is a big fan of High Speed Rail, and feels that the Windsor-Quebec corridor needs that sort of investment as an important first step, followed by improved rail and bus feeder services.  Yes, but what does this do for the north?  Murray sees the need for a spine rail service linking Toronto to the north with bus routes feeding into that spine, but neither details nor any sense of timing emerged.

Two important dollar figures, however, came out.  First, in southern Ontario, current spending on the 400-series highways is about $2.4-billion annually, and there is an argument to be made for upping spending on transit.  Second, mining now brings in about $1-billion annually, and the industry’s primary complaint is the lack of infrastructure, not their tax burden, according to Murray.

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