LRT Projects

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Liberty Village Planning Studies

The City of Toronto has three planning studies underway that will affect Liberty Village, and they will hold a combined open house on March 1 for the next stage of the public consultation.

Dufferin Street Bridges

The south end of Dufferin Street has two bridges — one over the rail corridor, and one over the Gardiner Expressway.  Both are in need of replacement, and future plans require a new design.  This project had its first meeting last year, and now the City is back to discuss alternative schemes.

Projects related to this include expansion of the GO Lake Shore corridor, provision of clearance for electrification and connection of the streetcar system from Exhibition (East) Loop west to Dufferin.  The streetcar extension is part of the proposed Waterfront West LRT line, although it is far from clear whether any of the alignments shown on the drawings for the bridge project would actually be built.  The WWLRT is not exactly at the top of anyone’s list of transit projects, but whatever is decided for the new Dufferin bridges may preclude some of the WWLRT options.

New King-Liberty Pedestrian/Cyclist Link

The Georgetown rail corridor creates a long barrier between Strachan Avenue and the west end of the King Street underpass at Atlantic Avenue.  With the redevelopment of lands to the north, current and future plans for lands to the south, this barrier isolates the two neighbourhoods from each other.  Some crossings are now made illegally, but plans to increase the number of active tracks and the frequency of GO service will make this much more dangerous.

At the first open house last year, various alternatives were presented, and two of these were carried forward for detailed study.  The results will presented at the March 1 open house.

Liberty Village New Street

A new street is proposed along the south edge of Liberty Village from just west of Strachan Avenue to Dufferin Street.  This road would occupy what was originally planned to be the Front Street Extension, but as a purely local street.

The March 1 meeting will launch this project for comment.

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Metrolinx Contemplates Ford’s Subway Plan

The Metrolinx Board, not the most talkative bunch at their infrequent public meetings, took the unusual step yesterday of discussing possible major changes in their regional transportation plan.  Rob Ford’s subway plan can hardly be ignored, and Metrolinx directors need to engage in this debate lest they become irrelevant through inaction.

Both Chair Rob Prichard and President/CEO Bruce McCuaig went out of their way to speak positively about Ford’s scheme, while other directors were less inclined to accept the proposal.  In this article, I will recap the discussion and then conclude with thoughts of my own.

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TTC 2011 Capital Budget

TTC management unveiled its Capital Budget and 10-year forecast on January 12 with a presentation to the Commission, and followed up with a presentation at the City’s Budget Committee on January 14.

Online information about the budget is incomplete.  More troubling, however, the “Blue Books” which contain the details of all capital projects have not yet even been issued to members of the Commission, let alone Councillors or, it would appear, the City’s Budget Analyst who is supposed to digest all of this on Council’s behalf.  Full consideration of the TTC budgets was held over to January 20 by the Budget Committee to await the Analyst’s Notes.

TTC Capital Budget Report

Appendix A: Ten Year Summary

Appendix B: Sources of Funding

Appendix C: Project “Packages” For New Funding Requests

Presentation to City Budget Committee (See Pages 49-70)

Meanwhile, the TTC presented a budget with previously unknown major capital projects and additions to existing ones, but with little explanation of why they are here.

Oddly enough, the City’s Executive Committee only yesterday was in turmoil over unexpected increases in the cost of hosting the Pan Am Games due to unplanned costs for soil remediation and the fact that the project estimate was in 2008 dollars.

The TTC would do well to understand that surprises in budgeting will not be warmly greeted by the City, and moreover that they can have a compounding effect of squeezing available funding for other projects.

In this article, I will give an overview of major points in the budget along with specific comments on a few major issues.  When the “Blue Books” become available (expected later this week) and I get a chance to review the full budget, I will write on major topics such as subway fleet planning and system expansion in detail.

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A Grand Plan: 2011 Edition

Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote a long paper about the role of transit and what a truly regional plan would look like.  To avoid extensively quoting myself, I suggest that any newcomers to this site read that as a starting point as it contains not just a list of routes, but a philosophy of how one should look at transit.

Since 2006, we have seen Transit City, MoveOntario2020 and The Big Move.  The GTA appeared well on its way to real progress in transit although problems, notably the question of local service funding, remained.

Now we have a new Mayor in Toronto, and plans that came from years of work and debate lie in pieces on the floor.  Metrolinx and Queen’s Park seem content to “plan” by carving up funding that’s already committed and redrawing their map to suit the whims of a new regime at City Hall.

The fundamental problem in this exercise is the phrase “funding that’s already committed”.  When you draw a map with a half empty pen, you make compromises, and you run out of ink leaving huge areas bereft of service.

If redraw we must, then let us do so with a view to a transit network and to a view beyond the end of next year.  What does Toronto and the GTA need?  How much will that cost?  How do we pay for it?  If we start with the premise that we cannot afford anything, we should stop wasting our time on planners, engineers and the myth that transit can actually transform travel for the next generation.

The discussion below is Toronto centric because this is a Toronto blog, and that’s where most of the GTA’s transit riders are.  All the same, the philosophy of what transit should be affects everyone, especially in those areas where so much transit growth is needed just to catch up with the population.

Some of the info here will be familiar to those who read my commentaries regularly, but I wanted to pull it all together as a starting point.  My comments are not intended as the one, definitive “solution”, but to show the need for debate on a large scale, integrating considerations from many parts of various schemes.

[While I was writing this article, the Pembina Institute published its own critique of the Ford transit plan.  I do not intend to comment on that document here because it addresses only one part of a much larger collection of transit issues.]

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Waiting at Sheppard & McCowan

On Monday, December 6, CBC’s Metro Morning included a piece by Mary Wiens about the problems of commuting through the suburbs, and the hopes of folks on Sheppard (and by implication many other places) for a subway network some day.

In reply to this, I sent a note to Mary talking about some of the issues and misunderstandings, and my sadness at the degree to which people who think they voted for subways have been misled.  Metro Morning liked the piece enough they asked me to record it, and it aired on December 7.  As I write this, the podcast version is not on the CBC’s website, and so I have placed a copy on my own site.  When the podcast goes up, I will switch the link to use the CBC’s version.

What About Transit, by Mary Wiens

Steve’s Letter, by Steve Munro

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LRT vs Subway — A TTC View

Before Mayor Ford took office, the TTC briefed his transition team on the comparison between LRT and Subway options for the Sheppard and SRT projects, as well as on the status of Transit City.

This article presents a condensed version of the information.

TTC Briefing Summary

The Briefing Summary contains three tables consolidating information scattered through many pages of the briefing documents.

The first page shows the committed and spent funding for the four projects:  Sheppard East, Eglinton, Crosstown and Scarborough.  An important note here is that the lion’s share of the money is in the period from 2015 to 2020.  Queen’s Park expects to raise this via whatever “Investment Strategy” Metrolinx comes up with, but the funding machinery is not yet in place.  Only the $3.1-billion for 2010 to 2015 is “money in the bank” for Toronto.

This is the first of several potential drags on any plan to revise or accelerate transit construction.  Queen’s Park has not planned to spend most of the money until after not just one, but two coming Provincial elections.  Moreover, they have not yet engaged voters and taxpayers with a debate over the exact source of funds be they tolls, taxes or the Tooth Fairy.

To the end of September 2010, just over $129-million has been spent, although there are commitments for considerably more.  At this point, we have no idea of the “break fees” involved in closing down these contracts.

The second table consolidates the status information on the four projects.  An important point here is that the extended construction period is determined by Provincial spending priorities and the desire to shift as much as possible into the “Investment Strategy”.  The original plans for both the Finch and Scarborough lines would have seen them completed years earlier.  The constraint is financial and political, not technical.

The third table shows the cost estimates for two variants on the Scarborough line as a subway (one ending at Scarborough Town Centre, the other at Sheppard), and for a Sheppard East line running to STC.  Schematic maps for each line are linked below.

TTC Scarborough Subway

TTC Sheppard Subway

It’s worth remembering how little of Sheppard Avenue in Scarborough would actually be served by the extended Sheppard Subway.

A critical point for the SRT is that in the subway scenario, it would have to remain in operation until 2022.  The TTC was concerned about making it last to the Pan Am Games in 2015, and a 2022 date is not credible given past TTC comments on the declining reliability of that line.

The presentation materials end on a summary page that concludes that the segment from Kennedy Station to STC is the “best candidate for a subway”.  This reiterates the TTC’s long-standing anti-LRT position for the Scarborough RT by comparing only the portion of the line from STC south.  The whole purpose of an LRT conversion was to reduce the cost of reaching Malvern, but with a subway plan that will never happen.

TTC staff is expected to produce some sort of subway plan in about six weeks, probably in time for the January 2011 Commission meeting.  We will see how much is a fair presentation of options, and how much is creative writing.

The big issue for me is that if we are going to have a subway-oriented plan, then it should be a plan that serves the emerging needs of the whole city.  Just building as much as you can with the money now earmarked for Transit City will give the impression of movement, but most of this will be to the benefit of the construction industry, not transit riders.  We need to know where demands are growing to the point where some form of rapid transit is needed, what form that would take, and how much it will cost.  Otherwise, voters will have a big surprise when they see how little they get for a substantial outlay.

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Service Changes for November/December 2010 & January 2011

There are few changes in service planned for the remainder of 2010, but many improvements for January 2011.

Continuing riding increases on the TTC network will pose an early problem for the new Commission in that these service improvements are driven by loading standards.  If the Commission wishes to save money by reducing (worsening) the standard, then it will have to answer to riders for the effect this will have.  Service is the only thing that the TTC has to sell, and cutbacks, as we have seen before, are counterproductive.

Service on the 28A Davisville to Brick Works which operates only on Saturdays was planned to be dropped in October, but will continue operation through the winter to serve ongoing weekend activities at the Don Valley Brick Works.

Effective Sunday, November 21:

501 Queen: Weekend bus replacement from Dundas West Station to Long Branch will end, and streetcar service will resume 7 days/week west of Roncesvalles.

504 King Shuttle: The weekend shuttle service on Roncesvalles will revert to the weekday routing as through operation with the 501 shuttle will not be required.

49 Bloor West: Early morning service on Saturday will change from every 20 to every 24 minutes to improve reliability.  The average load will rise from 27 to 32 which remains below the service standard of 38.

145 Humber Bay Express: The Park Lawn short turn service will be extended to Mimico Avenue and Royal York to reach customers on Lake Shore west of Park Lawn.  There are no additional trips, but schedules will be adjusted to reflect the extra mileage and actual operating conditions on the route.

39 Finch East and 199 Finch Rocket: Early evening running times on weekdays will be increased to reflect actual operating conditions.

Standby buses scheduled at various divisions will be revised to reflect the additional need for service on weekends before Christmas.  Offsetting reductions will occur on weekday peak standbys.

165 Weston Road North: Seasonal service to Canada’s Wonderland ends.

Effective December 19, 2010:

504 King: Service will return to Roncesvalles Avenue.  The schedules to be operated are identical to those in effect in May 2009, and these will stay in effect until the January 2, 2011 schedule period when weekend service improvements that were made in September 2009 will also be included.

2010.12.19 King Service Comparison

Effective January 2, 2011:

Riding increases on many routes trigger additional service as shown in the table linked below.

2011.01.02 Service Changes

The Steeles East route will be extended into Morningside Heights.

2011.01.02 Steeles East Map

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Still Waiting for Transit Priority

Back on June 22, 2005, the matter of transit priority signalling was discussed at the TTC meeting.  Arising from that discussion, then Vice-Chair Olivia Chow moved the following motion:

1. That staff be requested to take the necessary action to implement transit priority signalling on Spadina by September 2005 at all locations where it is not already active, with a report back in the Fall of 2006 on the impact.

2. That recommendations 2 to 6 embodied in Mr. Munro’s submission be forwarded to TTC staff and City Transportation staff, with a joint report back to the fall meetings of the TTC and Planning and Transportation Committee.

This item has sat on the list of outstanding Commission requests ever since, but on the recent agenda, it was closed with the notation:

Memorandum dated September 2, 2010 forwarded to Commissioners.

It took a motion of the Commission and a bit of harassment on my part to get this memorandum.  It was not exactly worth the wait.

Transit Priority — Signal priority on St. Clair is complete.  Signal priority on Spadina will be completed by the City in December, 2010.  Signal priority on Harbourfront will be upgraded when the Queen’s Quay Revitalization Project is undertaken by Waterfront Toronto (date unknown).  Recommended comments and action:  Mark complete, and remove from list.

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Revisiting The Waterfront

Toronto’s election is now in full swing.  Testy candidates fling mud and announce what passes for platforms.

On the transit front, the three big debates seem to be how many subways can fit within a single announcement, and how much transit service will remain after a review of the so-called fiscal irresponsibility at the TTC.  And, o yes, what to do about our streetcars.

One big topic everyone has missed in all of the debates and counter-claims is transit to the waterfront.  Consider the land from east of the Don to the west end of Exhibition Place, not to mention the long-term potential of southern Etobicoke and Scarborough.  The room for development dwarfs what is now “downtown” Toronto.  What will we build there?  How will people move around?  Will we have downtown densities with suburban transit?  Will we invest in the waterfront and show that “Transit First” is more than a slogan?

Toronto is a “city of neighbourhoods”, a fine motto, and with luck the new waterfront communities will extend the fine-grained street life we see in the “old” city including its already redeveloped areas like the “two Kings” and the St. Lawrence.  Waterfront Toronto’s plans for the water’s edge and for a totally redesigned, transit, cyclist and pedestrian focussed Queen’s Quay will be wonderful if we pull it off, if the money doesn’t run out, if the will to build streets for people, not for cars, survives the coming election.

So far, there are few stirring speeches, visions for our future lakefront, commitments to see beyond individual developments to an overall design.  A review of the waterfront lands is a worthwhile topic for a new article and, no doubt, a robust discussion.

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