Updated December 4, 2013 at 7:00 pm:
Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee considered the proposed consultation process from City staff regarding the Downtown Relief Line and approved it with only one minor amendment, that a contest be set up to name the new line.
Those of us who remember the last such contest will know that it produced, as a moniker for the line now serving Scarborough Town Centre, that heartwarming name, “RT”.
Two presentations were made by Metrolinx and by City staff.
The Metrolinx presentation gives an overview of the Yonge Relief Network Study which will consider capacity problems and approaches to relief from a network point of view including the possibility that some of the modeled demand can be shifted from the subway to GO Transit. Included in this is a map (page 4) showing the projected locations and degrees of capacity shortfall on the 2031 network.
What is quite striking about this map is that while there may be a severe problem south of Bloor Station, the situation north to Sheppard is not exactly rosy with demands ranging up to 100% of capacity. The need to divert demand north of Bloor is quite evident, although it is rarely mentioned in discussions of “downtown relief”.
The City presentation gives a précis of the report, but shows more clearly (page 10) that at this stage all that is happening is consultation on the Terms of Reference and the Public Consultation that would occur in a future study. This will come back to Council in the spring of 2014 for approval of the full study.
This is a hybrid version of the Environmental Assessment process. A Transit Project Assessment is intended to be fairly brief (120 days) based on a predetermined project. However, the DRL is so far-reaching and expensive a proposal that the City wants to ensure a valid review of all options has taken place before locking in to the formal TPAP review which offers little opportunity for amendment.
An important factor will be the co-ordination and integration of the network-wide study by Metrolinx and the local route and station planning by the City and TTC. Metrolinx will have a good sense of the network options by mid-2014 just at the point the City process enters its “alternatives” phase and the creation of a “long list” of options.
The greatest challenge in the short term will be to ensure that the Terms of Reference do not preclude options that should be considered. In this regard, limiting the study area to the initial phase of a DRL from downtown to Danforth may be valid for detailed planning of alignments and stations, but not from the larger view of how a second phase north to Eglinton or other extension options might affect the route selection on the first phase.
The City plans extensive consultation on the ToR including public input from community and advocacy groups.
Another challenge will be the credibility of demand and capacity figures used to model the future network. For reasons that I will discuss in a separate article, some of the modeling numbers cited by the TTC’s Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study are suspect on two counts:
- The projected service levels and demands on the northern GO lines (a) do not necessarily match with Metrolinx’ plans as stated in The Big Move, and in particular demand assigned to the Richmond Hill GO line is trivial.
- The projected increase in total demand flowing into the core from the north with the Richmond Hill subway is only 1,000 per peak hour. Much of the extra subway demand comes from trips reassigned from the GO rail lines.
If the numbers for the Yonge subway and the GO network are dubious, then what of the potential demand from a DRL, especially the component north of Danforth to which the TTC assigns a low demand and priority? Earlier at the same P&GM meeting, City staff presented information about the “Feeling Congested” consultations that have been underway. This included a preliminary evaluation of various additions to the transit network in which the Don Mills corridor, including the proposed LRT to Steeles, ranked highly (see map, page 19).
A future line cannot both be highly ranked and of little value, and this suggests at a minimum that the criteria by which it was evaluated are not the same in each case. The challenge for the DRL’s Terms of Reference process is to determine which evaluation is correct.
The original text of this article from December 2, 2013, follows the break.
