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I realize that the price is higher than many of us would like to see. However, any viable alternative is not exactly cheap; probably 70% of the subway price or so.

The difference doesn't buy a lot of transit in other parts of the city, while the loss of good will due to another change in plans can impede transit investments in general.
 
I'm fine with SSE being the quid-pro-quo to protect DRL.

It's dissapointingly huge of a price, but if it is preventing another occurence of the transit expansion dark ages.... the one that happened from 90s thru early this decade.

Agreed, it's past the time to shut up and build. Any further delays would surely see an ugly domino effect that will drag all subway projects out much further.

The opportunities for more cost effective connected solutions were all shot down and those Councillors that who were/are the most stubborn earned every last penny of this corridor for their constituents playing hardball against 99% inner Scarborough political support and 100% leadership support. If Ford happens to win it will be a blessing for Scarboroughs future. Extra cost aside this would be the best corridor with stops added, otherwise it is what it is given the state of the City. The overall City plan under Tory is very good, hopefully the City can find enough internal respect to keep moving forward
 
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Is it still to late to review exactly how the Subway is getting built? I mean the alignment and all that, because to me it is absurd that were going to end up paying upwards of $5 Billion for this. Even if its a subway we still need to find ways to reduce the price tag. If there is a way to construct the subway in a cheaper manner than I think it is imperative we do it. Also I believe the City shouldn't pay a single penny for the new stations. We have a plan and a way to pay for it, if Doug wants 2 more stops than the province should foot the bill for those stops.
 
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I'm fine with SSE being the quid-pro-quo to protect DRL.

It's dissapointingly huge of a price, but if it is preventing another occurence of the transit expansion dark ages.... the one that happened from 90s thru early this decade.
I think mid 1980's is more accurate.
I think 1 infill station was done from the end of 85 to the end of 90.
Nothing from 90 to 00.
00 to 05 had the 5.5 km, 5 stop Sheppard line built.
05 to 10 was nothing again.
 
Someone of reddit made a fair point. If the current projections suggest the subway does not need to be built, but the subway *is* going to be built for political reasons, then.... just change the projections. Design an urban plan that will - medium to longterm - justify the subway. Do whatever you can to encourage growth along the corridor. aPartner with a developer, cut taxes, whatever. Yes the subway will still be expensive but t least then it will be used.

The ridership estimations are not gospel; they're estimations, based largely on how the planners thought the area would grow over time. If we don't like those estimations, we have the power to make reality be different.

I suppose thats a bit naive in the sense that developers still might shun the area, but to date I don't think the city has ever put forth a comprehensive master plan for the STC, in particular one that emphasizes aggressive growth?
 
Is it still to late to review exactly how the Subway is getting built? I mean the alignment and all that, because to me it is absurd that were going to end up paying upwards of $5 Billion for this. Even if its a subway we still need to find ways to reduce the price tag. If there is a way to construct the subway in a cheaper manner than I think it is imperative we do it.

I'd like to see either more stops added to the McCowan route (Lawrence East, and maybe Brimley as well), or the whole thing shifted into the Uxbridge sub corridor. My gut feeling is that the latter could save a nontrivial amount of money, even though there are some technical challenges.

Not sure who dropped the ball on that option. Although John Tory's mayoral term is successful in general, we all know that he is not very technical and therefore averse to any technical solutions that look risky. He just can't know, based on his background, how to evaluate such risks. So, it is partly his fault, or his team's.

Also I believe the City shouldn't pay a single penny for the new stations. We have a plan and a way to pay for it, if Doug wants 2 more stops than the province should foot the bill for those stops.

I don't particularly like the mindset of "let's not pay a penny for a station that's within the city limits". However in this particular case, we might see Doug taking over the whole SSE project, adding one or two inline stops, and declaring himself a big winner. Then the city indeed doesn't not need to pay for the new stations, and the city's intended contribution gets transferred to another project (hopefully to the Relief Line, although there is an element of wishful thinking in that).

Generally I don't expect much advancements on the transit file if Doug wins, and I certainly don't expect him building the Sheppard subway anytime soon. But for the SSE project, he might be OK.
 
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Someone of reddit made a fair point. If the current projections suggest the subway does not need to be built, but the subway *is* going to be built for political reasons, then.... just change the projections. Design an urban plan that will - medium to longterm - justify the subway. Do whatever you can to encourage growth along the corridor. aPartner with a developer, cut taxes, whatever. Yes the subway will still be expensive but t least then it will be used.

The ridership estimations are not gospel; they're estimations, based largely on how the planners thought the area would grow over time. If we don't like those estimations, we have the power to make reality be different.

I suppose thats a bit naive in the sense that developers still might shun the area, but to date I don't think the city has ever put forth a comprehensive master plan for the STC, in particular one that emphasizes aggressive growth?

That's an interesting line of thought. I would think that we need to add more stations if we want higher ridership and / or more growth near the subway.

For growth, the Brimley station might be of interest. The Lawrence East station area is actually constrained (ravine and the hydro corridor); that station would be great for serving the hospital and connecting to the Lawrence bus, but not so much for local growth. Brimley, to my knowledge, has no such restrictions.
 
While I think Uxbridge is a great candidate, I think at the moment there would be a lot of resistance to it from the Mayor's office and possible Metrolinx. Nor to mention it would shut down the SRT. I personally believe Brimley was the correct choice that we seemed to have ignored. The station at Lawrence wouldn't need to be as deep since the ravine is further north than at McCowan. As well Brimley imo has a far better approach to STC in regards to the proposed bus terminal as well that station can actually be built with a centre platform instead of side platforms like was is planned with McCowan.
 
While I think Uxbridge is a great candidate, I think at the moment there would be a lot of resistance to it from the Mayor's office and possible Metrolinx. Nor to mention it would shut down the SRT. I personally believe Brimley was the correct choice that we seemed to have ignored. The station at Lawrence wouldn't need to be as deep since the ravine is further north than at McCowan. As well Brimley imo has a far better approach to STC in regards to the proposed bus terminal as well that station can actually be built with a centre platform instead of side platforms like was is planned with McCowan.

I used to like the Brimley option, too. I still think it was a good idea at the time, but now it seems that ship has sailed. Any saving from taking the Brimley route instead of McCowan would be modest in size (still fully underground, just not as deep and a bit shorter), and likely more than offset by the cost escalation due to the delayed construction.
 
At the end of the day the only part of this plan that matters is STC so the only thing that matters is how we get there. I mean why bother even following the road network? Just straight shot it right to STC like they do in Europe and Asia. Once you get east of the RT corridor Lawrence has no development potential until Markham Road so to me it doesn't really matter where the subway intersects Lawrence since it will do so no matter how we get to STC.
 
At the end of the day the only part of this plan that matters is STC so the only thing that matters is how we get there. I mean why bother even following the road network? Just straight shot it right to STC like they do in Europe and Asia. Once you get east of the RT corridor Lawrence has no development potential until Markham Road so to me it doesn't really matter where the subway intersects Lawrence since it will do so no matter how we get to STC.

At one point in time, not following the street grid was precisely how the City planners intended to get mass transit from Kennedy Stn to Scarborough Town Centre:

SRT.jpg


We're paying a hefty price now for whomever planning team that came after's shortsightedness and the NIMBY screams of adjacent property-owners.
 
That railway corridor used to go all the way to the CP tracks just east of the yard. Suburban planning rears its ugly head yet again.
 
Someone of reddit made a fair point. If the current projections suggest the subway does not need to be built, but the subway *is* going to be built for political reasons, then.... just change the projections. Design an urban plan that will - medium to longterm - justify the subway. Do whatever you can to encourage growth along the corridor. aPartner with a developer, cut taxes, whatever. Yes the subway will still be expensive but t least then it will be used.

The ridership estimations are not gospel; they're estimations, based largely on how the planners thought the area would grow over time. If we don't like those estimations, we have the power to make reality be different.

I suppose thats a bit naive in the sense that developers still might shun the area, but to date I don't think the city has ever put forth a comprehensive master plan for the STC, in particular one that emphasizes aggressive growth?

Unfortunately things aren't that simple. If they were, we could simply build anything anywhere, and everything would work out.

Designing an urban plan is great, but the plan itself has to be built on some sort of rational model. Will developers actually want to build? Will the market allow for construction within the plan's timeline?

The Sheppard Line was constructed with the idea that a rash of development would take place, and it simply hasn't happened - certainly not anywhere near the degree which would justify a subway in that location.

Unfortunately the nature of the extension (1 stop, over 6km from the nearest subway station) does not offer the same kind of incentive a series of stops would.



I don’t understand how the argument “let’s stop talking and just build it” trumps “hey maybe this is a stupid use of extremely limited precious infrastructure funds. so let’s not build it at all”.

??????

Since when did expediency beat out rationality in our democracy?

All parties now believe that?

So we just build whatever, and limit rationality, just because some political actor deems it so?

None of us should ever criticize the ridiculous political atmosphere in the USA or anywhere else. We are JUST AS BAD if we allow our politicians to do this to us. Throw ALL the bums out.

I would rather talk about this line for another ten years rather than waste public dollars in building it.

There was a plan in place nearly a decade ago, fully funded and supported. It would be done by now if there was no interference and identity politics. Subway supporters seem to have had no problem with that plan going off the rails. I don't recall any "hey let's just get this done" comments.

Scarborough has been plagued by poor planning decisions for decades. Like Mississauga, it was content to develop as an auto oriented suburb, and built it's mall (oops, I mean "City Centre") exactly where one would expect.

The difference between Mississauga and Scarborough is that Mississauga has to embrace sensible solutions because it's an independent city. They have to build an LRT up Hurontario because there isn't the demand for a subway, nor can they afford to build one when it doesn't make sense. The same goes for a subway extension from Kipling to Square One - sure it would be nice, but financially it wouldn't make sense for the city.

Scarborough doesn't have to worry about that since the rest of Toronto has to pick up the tab for whatever poor decisions are made. Ford realized this and was smart enough to use identity politics to buy votes with the Toronto credit card. Tory is doing the same. What will happen if it's built? People will face the reality that nothing has really improved, inter-Scarborough transit has gotten worse, and then they'll be demanding more transit, wondering why billions were spent on a foolish 6km+ extension. Scarborough supported Ford, an international embarrassment, and has no problem following it up with a project that's already receiving international attention for it's idiocy. People haven't seemed to learn there's always a price to pay for bad planning decisions.

I wouldn't make much of Howarth stating she'll leave the Scarborough Subway as is. No one will touch it at this point, as it's not worth challenging given Ford's presence. We all seem to be forgetting the elephant in the room (or the most recent elephant to enter the room) - the updated cost, which Tory refuses to reveal before the election. If there's another massive price increase after the election, I don't think there's any doubt it will re-evaluated by an NDP or Liberal government. Hopefully Maltow continues his efforts to ensure democracy is carried out properly.
 
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The Sheppard Line was constructed with the idea that a rash of development would take place, and it simply hasn't happened - certainly not anywhere near the degree which would justify a subway in that location.
I wasn't around for the 1st 10 or 15 years of the B-D subway extensions (i.e. Woodbine, Old Mills, etc.), but I would guess that Sheppard is developing faster than Bloor/Danforth.

I wouldn't make much of Howarth stating she'll leave the Scarborough Subway as is. No one will touch it at this point, as it's not worth challenging given Ford's presence. We all seem to be forgetting the elephant in the room (or the most recent elephant to enter the room) - the updated cost, which Tory refuses to reveal before the election. If there's another massive price increase after the election, I don't think there's any doubt it will re-evaluated by an NDP or Liberal government. Hopefully Maltow continues his efforts to ensure democracy is carried out properly.
I agree it might get looked at if Horwath wins (and gets no seats in Scarborough.)
If Ford wins, they might find ways to lower the cost.
If Liberals win, it will continue as is, but perhaps dragging it (and thus all other projects) out to some time in the future.
 

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