Exactly. And yes, it seems like us 3 are the resident EEE (Elevate Eglinton East) crowd, hahaha.
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Exactly. And yes, it seems like us 3 are the resident EEE (Elevate Eglinton East) crowd, hahaha.
datamouse
Active Member
A possible great way to market the LRT is to market it as phase 1 and remind people of the Malvern extension. The con to this is that if extended and more riders are attracted it can make subway numbers look even better.
ehlow
Senior Member
Let's invent more obscure transit phrases! E3 or triple E means Elevate Eglinton East.
Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
Sounds good. Can it all be done with just the property tax increase alone?
denfromoakvillemilton
Senior Member
Most likely. It would cost 2 billion at the highest estimates. Maybe less.
ehlow
Senior Member
BurlOak
Senior Member
Here I am - I got your Bat signal.
I have lost almost all hope. I think the contracts have been signed for the portal to be located at Scenic (hillside west of Leslie) and that will pretty much doom the line to be in the median. After all, does it make sense to have the LRT in the median through Leslie and then switch to elevated from Don Mills to Kennedy? Probably the only hope is if the provincial government changes - because I do not think the Liberals can be seen to flip flop again.
When I first started thinking about transit, I thought Sheppard Subway was the #1 priority and that the B-D extension should be built to STC. Thanks to the knowledge learned from this and other sources, I realized that Sheppard was not the #1 priority and that is it best to cancel both the Sheppard subway and the LRT - it is too hard to force an unpopular LRT so close (calender wise) to the equally low priority Spadina extension to Vaughan. I would never have thought about elevating the line above Eglinton, but when I realized how much less cost was involved, it dawned on me that the SRT connected to the elevated Elginton line was the best solution.
Because of this, I can not get mad at Malvernites or any other area of Toronto for not supporting the elevated line because I am certain that they have never thought about it and have no idea if it is more or less expensive than an underground subway. The primary blame rests with those leaders at TTC, Metrolinx, TTC Board, and MTO who have not presented all viable solutions as is supposed to happen in an Environmental Assessment.
- It is 11km from Jane to Pearson - so I think about $1.7B is needed to built that line as elevated.
- It is about 5 or 6km from Don Mills to Kennedy - so this would cost about $400M more than the in-median option.
- It is about 2km from Sheppard to Malvern - so this would cost about $300M more.
So maybe a touch more than $2B (maybe $2.4B) and I think the Federal portion and the City property tax hike is in the $1.7B range. If they had planned it this way from the start, they probably could have saved a healthy chunk of change.
Provincially, I think this is a good strategy because it would appeal to both Toronto and Mississauga. To me, It makes more sense to spend $700M bribing Mississaugans for their votes to build a transit line, rather than spending over $1B to get nothing.
datamouse
Active Member
How long does it take to craft a legal agreement? It would have been useful to report if staff was actively working on it or not.
ehlow
Senior Member
Yeah the thing is, besides the one news article about Elevated transit, and that one report, no one is talking about elevated transit, on Eglinton or elsewhere.
I've never heard any politician talking about it.
I've never heard any politician talking about it.
smallspy
Senior Member
How quickly you all seem to forget that the north-eastern extension of the LRT-converted-SRT was to be elevated....
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
MrsNesbitt
Active Member
This doesn't change that an elevated Eglinton East portion of the LRT would still give a great benefit in terms of speed and reliability for a fairly reasonable additional cost. Not to mention that the streetscape of Eglinton Ave. E in the Golden Mile is more than ready to accept an elevated structure down the middle.
Elevated Eglinton East would still have been the best option for the route, especially considering the consequences of a lack of grade separation if a through-routing with the LRT-SRT was to be built.
BurlOak
Senior Member
Good point.
It seems that every time an elevated track was proposed, the public was strongly supportive.
smallspy
Senior Member
A billion dollars is a reasonable cost???
Nevermind the fact that (a) ridership on the line east of Don Mills is and was always projected to be substantially lower than that west of Don Mills and a surface line would more than handle the loads and (b) a paralleling bus service would be necessary to make up for the loss of local service, and that there are additional ongoing operational costs involved in that.
And as for through-routing - that's always been a terrible idea.
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
ehlow
Senior Member
Right, from what I read they studied whether they needed to fully grade separate the line or not, and based on the ridership and PPPHD projections, decided that it doesn't need to be grade separated. That's what the EA says.
BurlOak
Senior Member
I thought they wanted to run the SRT through with Eglinton, but then the EA found that the PPPHD projections were way too high - since people dislike transfers, many would continue along Eglinton. The two choices were:
- Elevate the line above Eglinton to allow it to have adequate capacity.
- Force a transfer to the subway at Kennedy to drop the demand on Eglonton.
Considering that the only reason the continuous SRT/Eglinton could not be done was because people want the transfer free (or reduced) ride, it is no wonder that the Transit City plan they chose was defeated - because of the transfer. To recap; people hate transfers - have a plan to force a transfer, -people complain about transfer - very expensive solution proposed to eliminate transfer.