LRT Projects

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Metrolinx vs Toronto: What To Build on Eglinton

Jeff Gray and Matthew Campbell report in today’s Globe on the potential for conflict between Metrolinx and the TTC over the future of Transit City and, in particular, the choice of technology for the Eglinton line.

I have written at length about this before and won’t rehash the arguments here, but a few remarks in the article deserve comment.  Rob MacIsaac parrots subway boosters with this gem:

“If you’re going to travel from one end of that line to the other, we think you’d probably better pack a picnic lunch,” Mr. MacIsaac said.

“We would like to find a way to speed it up for people who are travelling longer distances.”

And why, he asked, build something that could end up overcrowded?

“There’s little point in spending a lot of money on an LRT line that will end up with passengers whose faces are pressed up against the windows.”

Why indeed would someone ride from Scarborough to Pearson Airport or Mississauga when MacIsaac’s own plans call for an express route across the 401 corridor?  The whole point of a network is that it must serve a variety of demands — some long haul, some local.  Just as we now have GO Transit for commuters from the 905 to downtown, we would also have high-speed services for trips across the 416/905 region.

A trip from Scarborough to Pearson is longer than a trip from Pickering to downtown Toronto, and comparable to a trip from Richmond Hill.  Misguided planners and politicians insist on treating it as a local trip that should be stuffed into the TTC network.  Having created this straw man, they claim this justifies a full-blown rapid transit line on Eglinton.

As for demand, the TTC’s projection for Eglinton is 9,000 per hour, and this would be on the busy central part of the route that will be underground.  Outer parts of the route will easily be within the capacity of surface LRT which has the added advantage of lower cost and more attractive station spacing for local demands.

Despite its protests that its work is only “test cases”, not formal plans, Metrolinx is showing its true colours by making technology choices long before they have demonstrated the need for their network schemes.  Public consultation is a sham designed to give people a warm fuzzy feeling about Metrolinx rather than engaging them in a real debate.

MacIsaac’s comments about Eglinton show that the real agenda is to push through a major rapid transit project, likely a western extension of the Scarborough RT.

The Metrolinx Board has not met publicly since June 13, and the regional plans were last on the agenda on April 25.  Their next meeting is scheduled for late September.

It’s time for the Board to tell the chair to stop musing about network options that are not yet even a draft plan.

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Waterfront West LRT and Fort York (Updated)

Updated July 5:  I have added new links to the list at the start of the post, and commentary on them down at the end.

A few posts back, I wrote about the two main options proposed by the TTC for the Waterfront West LRT (WWLRT) route between Bathurst Street and Exhibition Loop.  This post stirred up a good deal of email as the implications of the plans for Fort York became apparent.

Recent events and actions by the TTC regarding the WWLRT and its proposed alignment are rather strange.  This route has suddenly jumped from the bottom of the barrel among future Transit City routes, to a high priority project for which the TTC seeks funding.  Have they finally discovered that there is a large and growing population living just west of downtown which threatens to become a car-oriented “suburb” without substantially improved transit?  Better late than never, I suppose.

However, the process is leapfrogging ahead with a major new “preferred option” that has not been subject to public review.  Indeed, the report itself appeared at the last minute on the Supplementary Agenda for the June TTC meeting.  At least one Commissioner had not read it before the meeting, and there was only perfunctory debate.  There were no deputations or critical voices because nobody expected the report.

Meanwhile, various aspects of the entire WWLRT EA are supposed to be on hold at the request of local Councillors pending integration of the EA with other planning work underway for waterfront districts.

If this is an indication of how the TTC plans to use or abuse the new, streamlined EA process for transit projects, then we are in for some major battles on Transit City and on Metrolinx’ Regional Plan.  The more people distrust an agency’s intentions and expect that it will ignore their concerns, the more combative and obstructionist they will be.  This is not the setting we need for widespread expansion of transit services, and the TTC would do well to be more sensitive to community input. Continue reading →

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A Tale of Two Maps

Two days ago, Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee approved both the Environmental Assessment Report for the Sheppard East LRT and an Official Plan Amendment extending the scope of the transit corridor east on Sheppard to match the LRT line.

Scarborough Councillors popped the Champagne corks, or at least sparkling water, and I got an invitation to talk about the significance of the occasion on Metro Morning.

This should be a big event — approval of the first leg in a suburban LRT network.  Back in 1972, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee fought to save what we now call the “legacy” system as a base for suburban expansion, and I have waited a very, very long time for this day.

Over the decades, a combination of Provincial meddling in transit and local subway megalomania  stymied transit’s ability to keep up with, let alone form suburban growth.  All the planning mantras about leading development with transit from the sixties and seventies are little more than quaint memories.

Finally, early in 2007, the TTC and City announced the Transit City plan for a network of seven new LRT lines.  Work began immediately on detailed studies, and three EAs are already underway with the Sheppard Line’s being the first to come up for approval.  The Don Mills study recently had a round of public meetings, and the Eglinton study will roll out in the fall.  Add to these the non-TC projects in the eastern waterfront and the Kingston Road study, not to mention proposals outside of Toronto, and there’s a lot of LRT on the table. Continue reading →

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Waterfront LRT — Bremner Boulevard Option

At the June 18 TTC meeting, a report on the Supplementary Agenda recommends that the Commission approve the concept for the portion of the Waterfront West LRT between Union Station and Exhibition Place.  The linked document is the full report including illustrations.

The preferred route from Union Station (which itself must be expanded to accommodate increased streetcar traffic from the eastern and western waterfront lines) runs:

  • south in the existing tunnel to the end of the railway viaduct,
  • west through a new tunnel under the Air Canada Centre Galleria, under an office building now under construction at York and Bremner, and under Bremner itself to emerge in a portal near Simcoe Street,
  • via Bremner to Bathurst where the street name changes to Fort York Boulevard,
  • via Fort York Blvd. to its crossing under the Gardiner Expressway,
  • via the land under the Gardiner and a former railway underpass under Strachan Avenue to merge with the existing Exhibition Loop trackage.

An alternative route via Fort York Blvd. all the way to Fleet and the existing Bathurst/Harbourfront route tracks is the less-desired alternative.

The report discusses the capacity problems at Bathurst/Fleet/Lake Shore where the long cycle times limit the number of transit movements per hour.  This has been a long-standing problem at a supposedly transit-priority location.

Changing the route as described above is expected to shave considerable travel time off of the run from southern Etobicoke into Union Station.  At this point, the WWLRT route west of Dufferin is still under study (as part of a south Parkdale overall review), but the TTC is looking at routing some service from 501 Queen and 504 King into Union via Dufferin Street and the new WWLRT.

The TTC will send this proposal to Metrolinx for inclusion in its grab-bag of regional transit schemes.

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Sheppard LRT EA Final Open Houses (Update 2)

Update 2 (June 18):  The EA report on the Sheppard LRT came before the TTC and it was extremely warmly received by all present.  A few updates worth noting:

  • Property owners at Settlers’ Road (roughly at the ramps to the Atria development) asked that a stop be added at their location because the spacing from Consumers to Victoria Park is longer than the target average for the line.  They have been working with TTC staff to come up with a suitable configuration.
  • The Don Mills Station connection option includes examination of running both services on the same platform with the subway using the north track, and the LRT using the south track.  This has operational issues, but the TTC is looking at this as an alternative to extending the platform far enough east so that there would be competely separate loading zones.
  • There is a strong push for the Consumers Road subway extension option as a way to improve service to this business park and spur development of much vacant (read parking) land there.  Also, it is hoped that this would reverse the area’s drop in employment of about 25% over past years.
  • The projected cost has risen from the original $555-million in the Transit City announcement to $865-million largely due to the cost of the subway connection at Don Mills (originally this was costed as a surface station) and an increased estimate for vehicles. 

The original post follows. Continue reading →

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Don Mills LRT Open House (Updated)

The first of the Don Mills LRT Environmental Assessment open houses came to my neighbourhood at Rosedale Heights School, and I dropped by to see where the project is headed.  The crowd was modest compared to the well-attended music and arts fair the school was holding just down the hall.

The Don Mills study is an odd duck having evolved out of the Don Valley Corridor study that, in turn, was triggered by a hare-brained scheme to widen the Don Valley Parkway for BRT.  Some of the alignment options are leftovers from the earlier study.

Update:  The presentation materials are now available on the project website. Continue reading →

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Upcoming Transit City Open Houses

The following open houses have been announced for June 2008:

Sheppard LRT

Tuesday, June 3 at Agincourt Collegiate (Midland north of Sheppard)

Wednesday, June 4 at Malvern Community Centre (Sewell’s Road east of Neilson)

Scarborough RT Extension

Wednesday, June 4 at Malvern Community Centre (Sewell’s Road east of Neilson)

Thursday, June 5 at Scarborough Town Centre Station

Don Mills LRT

Tuesday, June 10 at Rosedale Heights School for the Arts (near Castle Frank Station)

Tuesday, June 17 at East York Town Centre

Wednesday, June 18 at Don Mills Station

Details are available on the project websites (linked above).

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Thoughts on Taking Down The Gardiner East

On Friday, Waterfront Toronto announced a plan to relocate the Gardiner Expressway from Jarvis to the DVP into a surface road parallel to the rail corridor.  For reasons that are unclear, the Environmental Assessment for this project will take four years — even longer that the infinitely tedious transit EAs for simple lines like Cherry Street through which many of us have suffered.

(The issues about how long or short an EA should be are complex in their own right and I won’t dwell on them here.)

In brief, the scheme replaces the elevated road with an at-grade eight-lane divided street, with  University Avenue cited as the prototype.  The new road would be north of the existing expressway structure allowing all of the land south of the rail corridor to be reconfigured and redeveloped.

Traffic projections indicate a slight rise in travel times for trips through this area.  Not unexpectedly, the motoring lobby already predicts at least doom and gloom, if not fire and brimstone for good measure.  I have no sympathy for them at all. 

The eastern part of the Gardiner is lightly used.  Even during the AM peak, the traffic flowing south on the DVP past my apartment (just north of Bloor) is rarely bumper-to-bumper because so many cars leave the road further north.  Jammed traffic means there has been an accident, not that there is no capacity.  Northbound backlogs on the DVP are inevitably caused by accidents much further north, by early closings downtown on long weekends, and by the end of major sporting events.  The queue rarely reaches to Dundas Street.  Lowering the capacity west of the Don will have little effect on overall travel times because the main areas of congestion lie elsewhere.

The new configuration will simplify the work on rearranging roads at the Don Mouth where a knot formed by Lake Shore, Cherry, Parliament, and Queen’s Quay (not to mention the Gardiner) is a very pedestrian-hostile environment.  Moreover, with the new “Waterfront Boulevard” being a street, not an expressway, connections with local roads will not require ramp structures, only traffic lights.

Why we have to wait eight years for this wonderful new arrangement is a mystery, but I am sure that many consultants will retire, or at least buy a nice house in the country, on this project.

Mixed in with Friday’s announcement are two other items of more than passing interest.

The York Street Ramp

Although we don’t have any details, there is a plan to realign the York Street off ramp, the corkscrew that occupies much of the northeast corner of Queen’s Quay and York.  When I can find out what exactly is involved, I will publish details here.

The neighbourhood groups along Queen’s Quay have been pushing for this for some time, but until we know the details, we won’t see whether all we get is a larger parkette but also a new off-ramp fouling up some other intersection.

The Front Street Extension

This road is now about as dead as it can be without  the requisite wooden stake through its heart.  Even Councillor Joe Pantalone, long an advocate for this road, says it is something for another generation, according to media reports.  Meanwhile, former Councillor Dominelli, a landowner in the Liberty Village area long reputed to be pushing for the FSE, has actually stated he just wants a local road, thank you, so that he can get on with his redevelopment.

Considering how long many people have tried to get just that proposal on the table and been rebuffed at every turn, this is a very strange development.  Finally, we can get on with properly designing and building roads to serve the community from Bathurst to Dufferin, rather than an off-ramp to the expressway serving commuters from Burlington.

In deference to his long battles on this front [you can groan here], I propose that the new road be called Hamish Boulevard.

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New Carhouses for New Cars (Updated)

The TTC Supplementary Agenda for May 21 includes a report on the Master Plan for new carhouses.  These will be needed both to house the replacement fleet for the existing downtown network and for the far-flung Transit City system.

In brief, the proposed scheme involves the building of five new carhouses:

  • One in either the Portlands or in New Toronto to house the downtown network’s fleet.  The New Toronto option is mentioned only once in the text  (with “new” in lower case), and the map shows only the Portlands location.  This would be the primary carhouse for the core area routes, but Roncesvalles and Russell would continue to have a role as regional yards for new cars once the CLRV fleet starts to retire.
  • A Sheppard East carhouse would initially operate the Sheppard line, but later take on the Scarborough/Malvern and part of Eglinton once the Malvern link was in place.
  • A Finch West carhouse would serve that line and, eventually, part of the Jane line as well.
  • An Eglinton West carhouse would serve the Eglinton line initially, and later the Jane and, possibly, the St. Clair line.
  • A Don Mills carhouse would serve the Don Mills line and possibly part of Sheppard.  By the time we get this far into the plan, there will no doubt be more Transit City proposals on the table and it’s anyone’s guess what the real carhouse needs will be.

The four Transit City carhouses are estimated at about $770-million (reference year not stated), while the new downtown carhouse is estimated at $330-million due to the larger fleet it must house.    It’s clear that the long-term status of the existing Russell and Roncesvalles buildings is dubious both because they are not suited to house and maintain the new cars, and because of building code issues if they were to undergo major changes.  However, these properties provide a few advantages over a consolidated operation in the Portlands.

  • If they are used as yards with basic servicing facilities, the dead-head time for cars entering and leaving service will be shorter than if everything funnels back to a Portlands carhouse.
  • As riding grows on the existing system, the TTC needs somewhere to store more than the initial 204 low flow cars they plan to order this year.  The existing yards will provide an overflow.  Whether both of them are needed once all of the existing CLRVs and ALRVs are retired is another question, but that’s almost a decade away.

Note that the map used in this report is the original Transit City map and does not reflect any of the optional changes that have cropped up in discussions about some routes.  It also doesn’t show the new Waterfront East lines, nor the Kingston Road project.  With luck, one of these days, the TTC will start using a new base map for all of its surface rail project reports.

Updated May 21:

The dates for new carhouse availability are driven both by the expected arrival of the new fleet for the downtown system and for the opening dates of the Transit City lines.

The demonstration prototype cars are to arrive at the end of 2010, and it is likely they will be temporary stored and serviced at Hillcrest.  The first 20 production cars will arrive by the end of 2012, and they will need a carhouse and shops.  This sets the date for the Portlands carhouse to be available.  The complete replacement fleet arrives by the end of 2017.

There are seven Transit City lines (not to mention other plans such as Waterfront East and Kingston Road).  The startup dates and estimated fleets for each of these lines are:

  • Sheppard East:  2012 / 35
  • Finch West:  2013 /37
  • Eglinton:  2015 /129
  • Waterfront West:  2015 / 23
  • Don Mills:  2016 / 46
  • Jane:  2017: /41
  • Scarborough Malvern:  2018 / 53

At least 90% of this fleet, possibly with the addition of cars for the St. Clair line, will be housed in the four new carhouses all of which should have room to accommodate growth in requirements.

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Sheppard East LRT / Scarborough RT EA Meetings in June

The next round of meetings for the Sheppard East LRT and Scarborough RT Extension Environmental Assessments have been announced.

The Sheppard East LRT meetings are on June 3 (Agincourt Collegiate) and June 4 (Malvern Community Centre).  They will include presentation of:

the recommended design for the Sheppard Avenue East LRT, including stop locations, the proposed grade separation of Sheppard Avenue at the Agincourt Go Line and the preferred option for making the LRT/subway connection.

The Scarborough RT Extension meetings are on June 4 (Malvern Community Centre, jointly with the Sheppard EA) and June 5 (Scarborough RT Station).  They will include:

The rationale for selecting the preferred network: an SRT extension to Malvern Town Centre, and SRT alignments to be considered for detailed evaluation.