My critique of the
paper by Sorensen and Hess, recently reviewed on Spacing:
This paper makes three major mistakes, and those mistakes largely invalidate its conclusions.
1) The authors propose a new version of the trunk LRT line in Scarborough (they call it “Malvern LRT”), that would run from the Ellesmere SmartTrack station to STC and then to Malvern. Thus, STC will no longer have a direct connection to Bloor-Danforth subway, and a lot of riders will be brought to SmartTrack instead.
However, the authors offer no proof that SmartTrack will be capable of handling so many passengers from STC, in addition to those coming from Markham and the north of Scarborough. Note that the frequency and train size for SmartTrack is not known at this point.
If SmartTrack cannot handle that load, then the majority of this paper’s conclusions do not hold.
2) The paper excludes 75% of Scarborough residents from its benefit analysis. The largest number of residents within the “accessible area” in any of their options is 143,500; while the total population of Scarborough is more than 600,000.
Many of residents not living in the “accessible area” will benefit more from SmartTrack and Scarborough Subway than from LRTs. Those people will have to take a bus in any case, but after that, they will prefer to transfer to a faster high-order transit.
Some weight in the modeling should be given to those residents and their interests. However, this factor is totally ignored in the paper.
3) The paper repeatedly compares the full LRT network to the options where the addition of subway results in 2 or all 3 LRT lines being excluded. It assumes that the subway, if built, will replace 2 or all 3 LRT lines.
Such assumption is plain wrong for Sheppard LRT (which is already funded, and its funding is independent on Scarborough Subway), and is debatable for “Eglinton-Morningside LRT”. The latter is not funded at present, and in theory the funding allocated for subway could be re-purposed to build that LRT. But in practice, the funds are more likely to be lost for transit altogether if the subway is cancelled.
As a result, the paper fails to make the most relevant comparison: (SmartTrack + 3 LRT lines; this is their Option 3) versus (SmartTrack + subway + 2 LRT lines; they do not consider this option at all).