City
The cost of burying the Eglinton LRT
The Toronto Environmental Alliance has released another pair of maps (view as larger PDF) highlighting the differences between Toronto's transit plans of old (a.k.a. Transit City) and what lies on the horizon. The first exercise of this type took some heat for the inclusion of unfunded Transit City routes in a comparison with the proposed Sheppard Subway Extension. In what might be a clever response to that criticism, the maps released today feature only currently funded projects.
Why clever? Given that Mayor Ford is now looking to build the Sheppard Subway Extension via private financing (which has yet to be secured), it thus doesn't make an appearance on these maps. And the result — at least on a visual level — is quite stark. Where, one wonders, is the transit infrastructure for the suburbs?
Well, there isn't any. At least not technically. The proposal to privately fund the Sheppard Extension is just that until financing is actually in place. "Strip away the unfunded Sheppard subway extensions, which won't be funded with provincial tax dollars, and you are left with a pretty bare bones plan that does nothing for the suburbs.... Essentially, people along Finch West and in east Scarborough are being left out of this compromise plan for the sake of needlessly burying 8 km of LRT under Eglinton Avenue [the portion between Laird Avenue and Kennedy Station]," said Jamie Kirkpatrick, a transit campaigner with the TEA in a press release that accompanied the above map.
Should the funding come together for the Sheppard Extention — which it very well might &mdash the current picture painted by the TEA's maps will surely change dramatically. And that, one might be inclined to say, makes them disingenuous. After all, the Ford team is moving forward with their transit plans on the basis that they will be able to get the subway extended on Sheppard East. And yet, the point Kirkpatrick makes doesn't even target the area that subway line would hypothetically serve. For even if it does come together, Finch West and and the eastern reaches of Scarborough will still be stuck taking the bus.
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In the words of Jose Mourinho, "my dentist is fantastic and he's never had toothache."
@mike in parkdale: a rail link to Pearson is a huge priority, and is at least a generation overdue, but I think a downtown relief line is more important at this point. Changing trains at Yonge and Bloor during rush hour, long ago passed from being merely inconvenient and uncomfortable, to outright dangerous.
yeah, I heard you about needing to deal with the overcapacity and crowding during the rush hour.
as a side note: I'm going out to Vancouver in a few weeks and I'll be riding transit from the airport to the downtown core. Not only is it possibly, but it's fast. Vancouver uses a 'fare zone' which is something I think Toronto should have. Sure it's a long term dream, and nowhere near as pressing as dealing with rush hour.
Scarborough has 0.5 accessible subway stations. Last time we got an upgrade was 26 years ago. March 22 2011 will be 26 years with that garbage.
Either you're ignorant, or just bullshitting.
First, all of the LRT lines used in this comparison are either underground or in dedicated lanes. Cars and LRVs along these routes wouldn't share the road. None of the Transit City LRT lines were to share space with cars. None.
This means that traffic would not need to stop for these LRVs when they stop. Think the Spadina or St. Clair streetcars, except with fewer stops and faster vehicles.
Second, your claim that streetcars create more traffic makes no sense. Improved transit takes more cars off the road because it gives people a better alternative to driving. Sure, some will always take their cars, but many others would switch to transit if they felt they had a choice. There may be disagreement over just how many drivers can be expected to switch to transit, but the basic trend is only in one direction.
I get a sense from your comment, as well as many previous ones, that "Ford Nation" has done a phenomenal job at misrepresenting facts and confusing people about just what Transit City had been proposing. This was never about "streetcars or subways".
I just looked at your little website.
Sexiest Toronto City Councillor? Really
Some people never change.
Above ground LRT is fine, but like most, I'm an LRT NIMBYer.
-Will families going on vacation with multiple kids and large suitcases use it? If they did, how would you like them to accompany you on your daily commute?
I'm against a DRL, but this airport thing seems to me all about prestige.
I would strongly encourage TEA to focus on the environmental merits of the project and leave the dollars to somebody else.
For those interested in the numbers for 2009-2010 per station see this: http://www3.ttc.ca/PDF/Transit_Planning/Subway%20ridership%202009-2010.pdf The entire Sheppard Line gets 47,000 riders on an average weekday.
Sure there'd be some more riders, but they'd also have to hire more workers and have to have more than 3 trains running on the line on top of the massive capital costs. Furthermore, the area doesn't even have close to the density or ridership levels needed to sustain the line like the areas around the Yonge and the Bloor-Danforth lines have (ex: Old Toronto pop'n density = 6,961.9 people/km^2, North York pop'n density= 3,439ppl/km2, Scarborough= 3,160.9ppl/km2).
And even in the middle of rush hour, travelling from Scarborough either via Vic Park, Pharmacy, Birchmount, Kingston Road is faster than any commute I've ever taken from Mississauga.
Secondly, burying the Eglinton line is worth the extra cost. It's better for property values, easing traffic congestion, and saves operational costs in the long run.
Finally, I wonder why people work in one end of the city and live in another end. Honestly, why are you bitching and whining about your commute if you choose to live and work so far away from each other.
Eglinton's far denser and requires the more heavy investment of a miniature subway line. If nothing gets done for another 20 years, as some here seem to be prophecizing, we can only thank the likes and TEA 'n' company for not knowing when to shut up and be grateful that the City government's making REAL RAPID transit expansion such a high priority of their's.
It is wonderful, having ridden it in the city area during the Olympics. It got built by the construction company promising bored tunnel and instead digging up Cambie Street once the cost got too high (leading to successful lawsuits by St Claired businesses). Good luck doing that in Trinity-Spadina or the financial district. It also does not use any existing infrastructure, whereas the Union Pearson link has to coexist with GO, VIA and CN, at least at Union even if it does get its own tracks through Parkdale and Weston.
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-court-overturns-canada-line-compensation-award/article1913713/?service=mobile
All Rob Ford has done is propose a subway that Toronto doesn't need with money Toronto doesn't have. Hooray?
There were many things wrong with the existing Transit City plan that needed to be modified. Many things that I and other concerned citizens have expressed to our local councillors and to the Mayor himself. So please cut the sanctimony when acting as if Ford's persuing this route against the people's will. It's what a large percentage of the constituency wants, not surface road-median light-rail. We will incur the associated risks of grade-separation because we sincerely know its of higher value to us in the long run.
The "Torontonians Served" doesn't really give an accurate picture as to how many people are expected to use it. I would assume people living closer to the downtown core are more likely to use public transit on a regular basis.
let's be honest here - The family of 2.3 kids going to Disneyland is NOT going to be taking transit to the airport in great numbers. Maybe there will be some of them, but the solo business travelers will probably outnumber them 30 to 1. the families will still be doing Park'N'Fly or having a relative drop them off. It's really not a concern.
I'm taking a trip in two weeks, and right now it looks like I have 3 options:
a $45 cab ride to the airport
the $22 airport bus from Union to Pearson
2 hours (or more if the Subway isn't running) on the TTC.
This gives us 14 km of tunnel between Jane and Pharmacy, 2 km of tunnel between Jane and Royal York, 4 km of separated right-of-way, between Royal York and the Airport and 3 km of separated ROW between Pharmacy and Kennedy. IT WILL WORK!!!
Having a 7am and taking the blue line, now that does take 2 hours.
Your comment about TEA being unqualified makes absolutely no sense
Only in Toronto do people fight so hard to saboteur their own best interests.
The main reason Montreal is building more subways is that they are committed to transit expansion and we are not. This is big, considering the fact that every millimetre of their system must be underground or covered, even the yards. Plus, they have been talking about building an LRT line down Ave. du Parc for years now.
I'm not against building subways, but let's build them where they make sense. The metrolinx plan identified 3 subway expansions:
-Spadina extension to Vaughn (underway)
-Yonge extension to Richmond Hill
-downtown relief line between Pape and Dundas West stations, along with Queen or King St.
These are the subways that should get built over the next 20 years. These, plus Transit City, and the TTC will deliver fantastic service.
This plan was devised by people who actually know what they are doing, by experts. Not by a buffoon Mayor, nor by know-it-alls on a message board. Just let them build the plan, jeez. Rob Ford is throwing a wrench into the whole thing.
TTC is building a subway right now? A subway extension to nowhere that's overbudget, you mean. TYSSE and the Richmond Hill extension benefit York Region far more than they'll ever benefit Torontonians. Running it past York U makes it a mulitbillion dollar boondoogle. Also let's note the population densities (or lack thereof) along these routes. At least Sheppard subway would be proximal to the dense population clusters of Bridletown, McCowan/Finch, Jane-Finch, Malvern, Branson-Westminister, Dorset Park, Agincourt and Scarborough City Ctr. Collectively up to 200,000 daily would use such a line if the proper feeder bus connections are put in place. Central Eglinton is about as densely populated as the downtown core, with in excess of 250 persons per square km. I really do not think it's fair nor practical to have folk starting a commute from Victoria Park/Steeles, for instance, have to travel all the way south to the Bloor-Danforth line to access REAL rapid transit. Both Sheppard and Eglinton are at great locations to intercept inbound commuter traffic and act as alleviators to the congested bottleneck at Bloor-Yonge.
And hey, don't get me wrong, I fully support the DRL, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking the Transit City money is enough to complete even a quarter of its needed length (we'd only see Danforth/Pape to Spadina/Front if we're lucky). Much less the years of required planning it'll take before any shovels pierce the soil. It's better to get Eglinton and Sheppard out of the way now so that the next transit budgetary windfall Toronto recieves can be dedicated entirely to a DRL stretching from Seneca College (Don Mills/Finch to Weston GO via Don Mills-Overlea-Pape-Queen-Parkside-Keele-Weston Sub).
So sorry if talking from a position of applying common sense and thorough analysis of the City/region's planning archives somehow makes me a know-it-all.
Vaughn and Richmond Hill aren't dense, no, but the Spadina and Yonge lines are heavily used as commuter lines. Building a suburb-downtown subway is very different than a suburb-suburb subway. They don't pull these subway plans out of their behind, they look at ridership, where congestion can be relieved, etc. And these are people with PhD's doing this. I venture to say that they know what they are talking about a lot more than you do. There are no politicians on Metrolinx any more, it's entirely a qualification-based organization.
They also kept resources in mind when making these plans... what you have proposed for the DRL would be the longest subway line in the city! It's fun to put a crayon on a map, but it's different to pay for it. The metrolinx plan is doable, but even it will require some serious funding commitments. We should push for this instead of pixie dust fantasies about subways every which way, which both you and I know are not going to happen.
Everybody just wants to play SimCity with the TTC. "I want this and that over here and there!" "Yeah! And also this!"
It doesn't work that way.
We need the metrolinx plan to happen. It's holistic (transit, vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians), it is coordinated with the GTA's population growth and densification plan, it's regionally coordinated (throughout the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area) with lots of connections between them all.
Plus, it's underway. Let it happen. Write your councillor and the mayor.