LRT Projects

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Sheppard East LRT Funding Announced (Updated)

Updated May 19:

The question of turnback points and storage tracks on the Sheppard East LRT has come up in the comment thread on this post, and I have now received some details from the TTC.

There will be a crossover at “regular intervals” along the line for turnbacks.  As for storage tracks, there are two potential locations that were shown in the preliminary designs at public meetings.  Neither of these is confirmed yet, and their inclusion will be subject to detailed design and costing.

  • Don Mills Station (third track)
  • Malvern Garage (spur)

No three-track section on Sheppard itself is planned.

Details of the Don Mills Station configuration will be included in a report on the TTC agenda for May 28. Continue reading →

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Analysis of 501 Queen Service Winter 2008/2009: Part II Long Branch to Parkside

In the previous installment, I reviewed the headway patterns for the 501 Queen route outbound to terminals at Neville, Humber and Long Branch.  Now I will turn to the operation of the west end of the route between Long Branch and Parkside Drive.  I used Parkside (the east side of High Park, and the continuation of Keele Street south of Bloor) as the eastern end of the measurement because it is at the end of the private right-of-way and because this avoids problems with variations caused by operations at Roncesvalles.

The charts presented here show headways (the frequency and regularity of service) as well as link times (the time needed to traverse part of the route).  Headways are important to riders because they show how predictable service will be, and they also bear on riding comfort because crowding is directly affected by regularity of service.  Link times are important for service planning because they show where and when congestion occurs, and how predictable (or not) the running time between locations will be. Continue reading →

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WWLRT Public Meetings: Park Lawn to Long Branch

There will be two public meetings to discuss the design for this section of the WWLRT, essentially an upgrade of the Long Branch streetcar.

Monday, May 11, 2009
2:00pm-4:00pm 6:30pm to 9:00pm
Mimico Adult Learning Centre
255 Royal York Road

Tuesday, May 12, 2009
2:00pm to 4:00pm 6:30pm to 9:00pm
The Assembly Hall
1 Colonel Samuel Smith Park Drive

For further information, including the display panels from the previous open houses, please see the project’s website.

After the first round in December 2008 where many felt that the available information and proposal left much to be desired, this is described as a “re-start” of a “new consultation process”.

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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 →