City
Ford getting desperate on Sheppard subway extension
With every indication that the expert panel assembled to evaluate transit options on Sheppard East will endorse LRT, Rob Ford might be looking to make a compromise — one that could look a lot like what Karen Stintz proposed just over a month ago before being shot down by the TTC board she chairs. Although it's not yet known exactly what Ford would be after in a scaled back Sheppard subway plan, based on comments made by Councillor John Parker to the Globe and Mail, it sounds like he's hoping to build as many stations as council will let him.
"The sense I get is the mayor is prepared to take a compromise," Parker told the paper. "What the mayor is talking about is taking the subway as far as he can take it with a view that when the money is available he'll take it further."
But is that really a compromise? Gordon Chong, the individual tasked with studying the economic feasibility of a Sheppard subway extension, was already talking about building one station at a time back in November. In other words, despite news that Ford has opened the lines of communication with fellow councillors in advance of a special council meeting to consider rapid transit options on Sheppard Avenue, what's yet to become clear is precisely what he might be willing to give up to get a few stations built.
We know from his opinion piece in the Globe last week that a parking tax is something he's warmed to, and now it sounds like road tolls might even be on the table. But those are alternate funding strategies for a line that the mayor seems only now to have realized won't be paid for exclusively by the private sector. What hasn't been mentioned in relation to what the Sun has termed Ford's "charm offensive" is a willingness to back down on burying the eastern end of the Eglinton Crosstown in an effort to raise subway funds.
Now that would actually be a compromise, but don't hold your breath on it happening. Appealing to other councillors is a good thing, but at this point in the game it seems like too little, too late.
Photo by Adrian Badaraco in the blogTO Flickr pool
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There is a reason why out of New York's 21 full subway lines, only ONE does not enter the core. And it remains as underused and nearly useless as Sheppard.
If Ford wants to play ball while sticking to his subways mantra, he should quickly switch to "Subways. People want subways. I go to Tim Hortons and people tell me they want subways. But it turns out subways are expensive. So let's build the Downtown Relief Line instead of Sheppard, which will benefit the whole city (since the core is the economic heart) and allow me to start a parking tax, er, charge city-wide to fund it."
James Pasternak @JamesPasternak Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
$1 billion has already been invested in the Sheppard Avenue Subway. It would be folly to change course now.
@StrashinCBC Always supported Sheppard Subway. Thought Stintz package was to have Sheppard subway. I was surprised it was carved off.
There's a reason why Don Mill route 25 busses cannot cope with the over capacity of busses that are much more populated than streetcars in queen west. It's the highest used route on all of ttc surface vehicles.
Good luck to him ever working out another deal with any other level of government after all this flip flopping.
So the solution is to push everyone onto the Sheppard subway and dump them onto the Yonge line?! Have you SEEN the Yonge line in rush hour? You can barely fit on a train at Sheppard, let alone anywhere south of that! The line is at 105% capacity.
But oh, wait, Don Mills WAS supposed to get an LRT line all the way to the Bloor-Danforth line to help alleviate crowding.
So let me see if I have this right. The Sheppard line carries less than 50,000 riders per day (according to Wikipeida). The Queen and King streetcars collectively carry over 100,000 riders per day. Running the DRL under Queen would largely gather in all those riders (you'd probably have at least stub streetcars on the eastern most and westernmost portions to bring riders into the stations before the DRL angles upwards to hook in to Bloor at east and west connections) plus additional ones that use DRL to go from Bloor line downtown or to developing business areas like the brick-and-beam businesses rapidly grown east and west of downtown. And you're hooking into the Spadina streetcar, which looks to be one of the busiest lines.
Ford's right, seems like Sheppard extension is where we ought to put our money.
Josh Matlow @JoshMatlow Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
Mayor reportedly meeting w/ developers, considering tolls, new taxes, including reviving Vehicle Registration Tax to finance Sheppard subway
Fiscal conservative John Parker tells me he told Ford he would not support raising taxes or fees to pay for subways. That's not a good sign