LRT Projects

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How Much Should the Eglinton Line Cost? (Update 1)

Update 1, April 15, 2009:  Although the original Transit City report gave Pearson Airport as the western terminus of the Eglinton line, the cost estimate only covered the portion to Renforth.  Approximately 3 km of additional construction are required to bring the line right into the airport, and the cost of this was not included in the 2007 estimate.

The underground section of the line was originally planned to lie between Keele and Laird Drive, but this may be expanded west to Jane and east to Don Mills (except for the river crossing).  This additional tunnelling is included in the recently announced cost estimate.

Original article:

Today’s Globe & Mail contains an article by Jeff Gray about the constantly escalating estimates for the Eglinton “LRT” line.  Gray cites the original estimate of $2.2-billion in 2007 compared with $4.6-billion figure included in the recent McGuinty funding announcement.  Nobody quite seems to know why the cost has doubled in two years. Continue reading →

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Sheppard LRT Will Go To Don Mills Station

Today’s TTC Commission Meeting was rather short, but it included a discussion of the current state of the Sheppard LRT project.

TTC staff reported that the EA document is now being considered by the Ministry of the Environment who had sought clarification on whether the Sheppard Subway was to be extended.  Staff will formally recommend later in April that the LRT line come into Don Mills Station rather than ending at Consumers Road.

This arrangement simplifies connections with the Finch to Don Mills LRT announced earlier this week.

No details on funding for the project are available, but the TTC is continuing with design, and the City of Toronto is carrying the cost on its own books.

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Ontario Funds Three Transit City Routes

Today, Queen’s Park announced that it would fund three of the Transit City projects — Eglinton, Finch and the Scarborough RT rehab/extension — as well as upgrading of York VIVA BRT corridors with dedicated lanes.

The announcement is fascinating in places for what it does not say, or leaves for future decisions.  Despite much of the build-it-yesterday rhetoric accompanying the GO/Metrolinx merger, the design and EA processes now under way will run their course.  Indeed, the Transit City projects have been proceeding apace thanks to funding at the municipal level to complete this work without waiting for agencies like Metrolinx to get on board.

The estimated cost for the York VIVA project is $1.4-billion with completion in stages from 2011 to 2013.  Lines that will connect with VIVA include the Spadina and Yonge subway extensions although full funding for the latter is not yet in place.

The Scarborough RT will undergo vehicle replacement, infrastructure upgrades and extension to Malvern Town Centre or to Markham Road.  This project will cost $1.4-billion “depending on the technology choice”, and construction will run from 2010 to 2015.  Connecting lines include “the proposed Sheppard East LRT”.

The Eglinton Crosstown line will run from Pearson Airport to Kennedy with a future extension to Malvern (this is the Scarborough-Malvern TC line).  The line will be tunneled between Keele and Leslie, and the total pricetag is $4.6-billion.  Constuction will run from 2010 to 2016.

The Finch LRT will run from Humber College to Don Mills, and then south to Don Mills Station where it will connect with the “proposed Sheppard Avenue East LRT”.  The project will cost $1.2-billion with construction running from 2010 to 2013.

An obvious question in response to this impressive list is “where’s Sheppard East”?  First off, as I noted above, some lines mentioned in the announcement don’t have funding yet, and the Sheppard LRT is mentioned twice.  Finch is explicitly listed as an LRT project, and the technology choice for the RT is still up in the air (no pun intended).  That choice depends on Metrolinx’ own Benefits Case Analysis (BCA) for Eglinton expected to be available, at least in private session, to the Metrolinx Board this month.  We know that the Scarborough RT BCA looked favourably on the LRT option.

There isn’t much point in building one lonely LRT line up on Finch if it wouldn’t be connecting with a larger network, and I think this suggests a larger LRT network is in our future.

Although the source of funding for Sheppard isn’t announced yet, Mayor Miller speaks of construction starting this year on Transit City.  The only place that is possible is on Sheppard.  Also coming up will be the new streetcar order for the “city” network, yet another opportunity for substantial provincial funding.  I suspect there are more rabbits waiting to pop out of one or more hats.

Finally, lest our friends to the west think I have ignored them in my haste to talk about Transit City, Queen’s Park will also fund rapid transit studies in Hamilton.  No technology is mentioned.  There is strong political support for LRT in Hamilton, but will Queen’s Park and Metrolinx let them build anything more than BRT.  A lot depends on what the studies will reveal about demand and development impacts.

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Union Loop: Trading One Bad Design For Another? (Update 1)

 

I have received a drawing of Union Station Loop that shows its end-state configuration including provision for all services.  This drawing is different from the version in the Queen’s Quay Revitalization document in (a) showing the full length of the west platform and (b) clarifying the staging of implementation for different routes.

The orange section is the first phase to expand capacity onto two platforms.  The pink section would be added to serve the Port Lands development, and the blue section for Bremner.  In its final configuration, according to the TTC:

The currently-proposed layout would ultimately have all of the service to and from the east on the platform under the east teamway allowing us to run two routes/branches from the east, one of which could be a 60m train. Service to and from the west would load under the west teamway with a Queens Quay route (509 or 510, not both) loading on the northern-most platform and the Bremner service loading on the southern-most platform. All of the platforms would operate independently from each other allowing flexibility for service management.

Original Post from March 29:

In my enthusiasm for the new Queen’s Quay designs, I neglected to look carefully at the current scheme for Union Station Loop, especially in the context of plans to build the expanded loop in stages.

Back in the days when the existing loop was designed, Philip Webb and I had a rather testy meeting with TTC Engineering about the capacity of this loop.  Outrageous claims were made for its ability to handle riders even though the TTC (a) completely missed the loss of platform space to carbody swingout and (b) assumed the full capacity of the corridor would be available for passenger flow rather than being used for stacking space as it is today.  The loop is and has been for some time grossly inadequate, and it is a monument to the TTC’s pig-headedness. Continue reading →

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Queen’s Quay Revitalization Plan

This week, Waterfront Toronto released detailed plans (18MB download) for the redesign of Queen’s Quay between Bathurst and Parliament Streets.

Updated May 7, 2009:  The presentation has moved to a new URL, and related information can be found on the project’s web page.

This plan is the culmination of several studies, some of which seemed to go on forever, but in the end we have a design that has widespread community acceptance.  By “we”, I mean Toronto, my city, a city that too often settles for half-baked functional plans that do little to stir real pride in what we have and what will be built.

Some elements of this plan have appeared on this site before, notably the design work for the East Bayfront LRT and the long debates on a portal to the Bay Street LRT tunnel.  I will try not to duplicate those details.

This post is intended as an overview of the long presentation, a walking tour, if you will, along the waterfront-to-be.  Page numbers refer to the PDF itself regardless of any numbers that may appear on individual panels. Continue reading →

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All Over The Waterfront (Update 4)

Update 1, March 17, 5:50 pm:  More details have been added about the various alignment options for the Waterfront West line through Parkdale.

Update 2, March 24, 7:55 pm:  Feedback from the TTC about Parkdale alignment details.  Details of Queen’s Quay public meetings added.

Update 3, March 25, 6:00 am:  The preferred option for the Kingston Road line is BRT.

Update 4, March 28, 11:10 pm:  The presentation from the March 25 public meeting on the Queen’s Quay redesign is now available online.  Note that this file is almost 18MB for those of you with slow network links.  The document is quite extensive, and I will review it in a separate post.

Transit planning on Toronto’s waterfront leaves much to be desired thanks to the patchwork of overlapping studies and projects for two decades.  Options for the portion between Parkdale and Bathurst Street have changed with the recent cancellation of the Front Street Extension, but no planning based on ths possibility has ever been conducted.

Throughout its history, planning for the waterfront has been fragmented and compromised to fit around whatever other projects had real political clout.  To help focus discussion of the waterfront as a whole, this post gives an overview of all of the projects and schemes from Long Branch to West Hill. Continue reading →

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Waterfront East Surfaces At Last (Update 1)

Update 1, March 5:

The presentation materials from the CLC meeting on March 2 (discussed below) are now available online.  (Warning: 7.5MB file)

On March 2, I attended what is likely the final meeting of the Community Liaison Committee (CLC) for the Waterfront East LRT project.  Further discussion of this subject will now be consolidated with the Queen’s Quay redesign project.

The primary outstanding issue from our discussions going back a few years was the location and number of portals from the Bay Street tunnel to the eastern branch of the Harbourfront route.  Options involving a swing west into Harbour Street, down York Street or down Yonge Street were rejected in an earlier round as being impractical for various reasons involving available space and gradients needed to reach the surface within available city blocks.

Five options were studied in detail, of which one will be the recommended option going forward.  These options were:

  • Bay Street between Lake Shore and Harbour.  Under this option, the existing west portal and Queen’s Quay Station would be abandoned, and a new common surface stop would be created on Bay north of Queen’s Quay.  This option is physically constructible, but poses serious operational problems due to congestion of pedestrians, road and LRT traffic at the Bay & Queen’s Quay intersection.
  • Bay Street between Queen’s Quay and Harbour.  This option will not fit, physically, in the space available.  There is not enough room for tracks to rise to the surface to a “landing” before the special work for a surface intersection with Queen’s Quay.
  • Queen’s Quay between Bay and Yonge Streets.  In this option the portal would lie east of Bay and the stop would be just east of Yonge.  This scheme poses many problems because the road is constrained on both sides by existing buildings.  Access to these buildings, as well as the continuity of pedestrian and cycling areas planned for the street would be difficult or impossible.  This scheme is not viable.
  • Queen’s Quay between Yonge and Freeland Streets.  In this option, the line runs in tunnel to Yonge and then rises to street level just west of Freeland.  The station would be just east of Freeland.  This area has enough room to allow the Queen’s Quay design to be continued through the portal area, and has no adverse traffic impacts.  The Toronto Star building north of the proposed portal has no ground level retail that would be injured by the portal’s presence, and any new building on the south side can be designed for its environment.  This is the recommended option.
  • Queen’s Quay between Freeland and Cooper Streets.  In this option, the line would run in tunnel including an underground station at Yonge, and would rise in a portal in front of the Queen’s Quay LCBO.  The first surface stop would be near Jarvis Street.  This option was rejected primarily because of cost.

Initially, the line will be ended in a temporary loop near Parliament Street at a location to be determined.  A separate study is reviewing the redesign of the Don Mouth area including connection of the Cherry Street LRT through to hook up with the Queen’s Quay East line.

Construction of the new tunnel east from Bay will include modification of the existing structure under the intersection at Queen’s Quay so that a full “T” junction including a through east-west track can be installed.  This would allow a direct service linking the western and eastern waterfronts and on through to the Distillery District or the Port Lands.

The TTC also discussed the expansion of Union Station Loop, but their design has not changed noticeably for over a year.  Some fine tuning is required to bring their scheme into alignment with the proposed Union Station redevelopment plan and its new retail and GO concourses.

The first meeting of the consolidated LRT and Queen’s Quay Design CLCs will occur on March 11, and I expect to have more details on the overall scheme for the line in the larger context of the Queen’s Quay redesign project.

There will be a public drop in centre for these projects on Saturday March 28.  The final version of the Environmental Assessment for the Queen’s Quay East line will go to the TTC in May and to Council in July.  Assuming funding, the line would likely begin operating roughly in 2013.

I will post links to relevant documents as they appear online, as well as details of the drop in centre on March 28.

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Coming Soon

The past few weeks have been rather quiet for news, and I, along with half of Toronto, have been getting over a bad cold that dampened my enthusiasm for writing.

Very little of substance happened at the February TTC and Metrolinx meetings, and that’s why there was virtually nothing here about them.

Recently, I received the vehicle monitoring data for Queen and related routes for the months of December 2008 and January 2009, and I have just started to work on formatting it for analysis and comment.  This period includes some truly appalling weather, as well as different approaches to line management.  It also brings GPS location to the route (most of the time, most of the vehicles), and this has required some programming changes in the analysis software.  (The data are still quirky, but in a different way.)

I hope to start publishing articles based on these new data in a week or two.

Meanwhile, work by Waterfront Toronto and TTC on the Queen’s Quay east line has surfaced after a long hiatus, and I hope to report on updated plans for this project soon.

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Transit City Status Update

This month’s TTC agenda includes a long update on the status of the Transit City plans.  I will not attempt to précis this report, but will touch on points of particular interest.

Funding is in place to allow continued work on Environmental Assessments [sic] and other engineering work, but the real challenge comes later this year when construction is slated to begin on Sheppard.  The fog may clear a bit once the provincial budget is announced and we know just how much money will flow to Metrolinx and to transit in general.

A related problem, of course, is the question of new LRVs for the existing and future streetcar/LRT networks.  By the time the budget is out, the TTC should know what the bids for new cars look like, and Queen’s Park will have to decide whether they are serious about paying for them. Continue reading →