[GenerationW]

Councillors can bring forward their own motions; they don't need to go though the mayor. Whether or not Tory proposes the motion is irrelevant.

It's very relevant since it's decidedly more difficult to introduce something to council and win that doesn't come through Tory and his executive committee.

 

[GenerationW]

And if the province bails (they have money problems, remember) what happens then?

A bunch of Liberal MPPs revolt?

 

[BurlOak]

I've given it some thought, yes. The pinch point with this proposal is the Lakeshore East corridor and the Stouffville corridor south of Kennedy. You can widen the Stouffville corridor, but the Lakeshore East corridor will need to be very tightly scheduled in order to work.

For the purposes of this, I'm going to break it down between Red Line (SmartTrack) and Green Line (GO RER) services. In reality though, SmartTrack is just the 416 sub-service of GO RER. The way I see it breaking down is this:

During Peak:
-10 min Green Line service from Mt. Joy
-10 min Red Line service from Unionville
-10 min Green Line service from Malvern or Seaton (depending on if the Province wants to chip in to extend it further)
-10 min Red Line service from STC to downtown via the Central Tunnel
-10 min Special Shuttle service from Malvern to Kennedy

Outside of Peak:
-20 min Green Line service from Mt. Joy
-15 min Red Line service from Unionville
-15 min Green Line service from Malvern or Seaton
-15 min Red Line service from STC

The Special Shuttle during peak is key, because it allows Scarborough riders who are either doing intra-Scarborough trips or are connecting to B-D or the ECLRT to have their own train, to avoid crowding downtown-bound trains. It also means fewer trains are required to use the southern Stouffville and the Lakeshore East corridors.

I've tweeted some stuff about it, and I'd be happy to write something up for it if someone wants to post it somewhere. I've been a big supporter of that option for a while now, and I want it to get as much exposure as possible, so that average people (not just transit geeks) actually consider it a valid option.

It would be great if you could elaborate on this - I am not 100% sure how your green and red lines would work. It looks like you are having 30 trains per hour on the poriton from Ellesmere to Kennedy. I presume that would be on 2 electrified tracks. Would there also be two tracks for conventional GO trains as well?

There would be 24 trains per hour spilling on to the LSE line at St. Clair.

On the E-W portion, would the entire structure need to be removed. If Wiki is right, the current 4 train cars are about 51m long and weigh 62t = or 1.2 t /m. I think the piers are about 40m apart.

What would a typcial RER or SmartTrack vehicle weigh = maybe closer to 2.0t / m. At first glance, this would probably mean that the girders cannot simply be strengthened.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

It's very relevant since it's decidedly more difficult to introduce something to council and win that doesn't come through Tory and his executive committee.

Yet it's happend before. I have no idea why you're trying to side track this.

A bunch of Liberal MPPs revolt?

For what? And face down the rest of Ontario. Don't be ridiculous. You think Pat Brown will become premier in 2018?

 

[wopchop]

And if the province bails (they have money problems, remember) what happens then?

Isn't the pledged money for Scarborough, from both Provincial and Federal governments, from previous years budgets?

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Isn't the pledged money for Scarborough, from both Provincial and Federal governments, from previous years budgets?

Previous. Maybe this year too, but I lean towards no. I still think this gets canceled if it comes close to 5 billion (and it looks like it will too.)

 

[wopchop]

Previous. Maybe this year too, but I lean towards no. I still think this gets canceled if it comes close to 5 billion (and it looks like it will too.)

Right, but if you actually look at the 2015 Budget , the Scarborough Subway Extension is not part of the new funding (Moving Ontario Forward Fund of $31.5b). So ... in theory it should be safer.

 

[Cooper]

He can not bring the idea of killing the subway to council for a vote. And he won't.

If I'm reading this right, he won't have to. It looks like council is going to a face a vote on more expensive version of SSE. There's a good chance the added costs will peel off enough support to have council kill it for him and clear the path for Smart Track. I'd love to know what Tory's people are saying to the province right now about "above-ground" subways. Could they get enough Scarborough MPPs on board to sell the idea?

 

[gweed123]

It would be great if you could elaborate on this - I am not 100% sure how your green and red lines would work. It looks like you are having 30 trains per hour on the poriton from Ellesmere to Kennedy. I presume that would be on 2 electrified tracks. Would there also be two tracks for conventional GO trains as well?

Well presumably you could take the SRT ROW space and add 1 or 2 extra tracks along that section to 3 or 4 track it. As for the Red and Green lines, the Green lines are the full length GO RER routes that would be bound for Union, while the Red Lines are the SmartTrack/GO RER Toronto routes that would use the Central Tunnel through downtown (under Wellington through the CBD, King in the west, and Front in the east).

There would be 24 trains per hour spilling on to the LSE line at St. Clair.

Yup. Could be tight, but could work if it was scheduled right.

On the E-W portion, would the entire structure need to be removed. If Wiki is right, the current 4 train cars are about 51m long and weigh 62t = or 1.2 t /m. I think the piers are about 40m apart.

What would a typcial RER or SmartTrack vehicle weigh = maybe closer to 2.0t / m. At first glance, this would probably mean that the girders cannot simply be strengthened.

Most likely. Still much less expensive than building the subway option though. The UPX Spur was something like $50 million/km. It's the STC Station that would add to the cost substantially, since it would basically need to be rebuilt from scratch.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Good news, the staff presentation is now available online

 

[TheTigerMaster]

the staff presentation from TTC is now available online. I don't see the updates ridership estimates in this document

http://ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Commiss...borough_Subway_Extension_Project_Overview.pdf

 

[CapitalSeven]

Sooner or later someone is going to have to come out with ridership projections that take into account an extended subway and RER/ScamTrack invarious configurations. Then someone is going to have to explain why about 6 billion dollars should be spent in one corner of the city to build about 36,000 per hour of transit capacity for at most 15,000 riders.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

The upcoming SmartTrack report will do that.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

So Council will kill this after the PanAm games then. That's not good for John year one.

 

[Rainforest]

It looks like council is going to a face a vote on more expensive version of SSE. There's a good chance the added costs will peel off enough support to have council kill it for him and clear the path for Smart Track.

Tory will not introduce a longer / more expensive version of SSE for the council's vote if he knows the council is going to kill the whole project. He will introduce a baseline version, that has a better chance to pass.

Of course, there is a possibility that someone on the council puts forward a motion to cancel SSE, regardless to any modifications. This is more difficult procedurally, but not out of question. Or, the council may not take any initiative until the project is up to the final approval, and then vote it down instead of approving it. I doubt that either of these scenarios will happen, but they cannot be ruled out.

However, dreams of SSE-haters that the project will implode after the project team puts forward an untenable modification of the route, will not materialize. Such dreams are plain silly.