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gweed123

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The SOS Coalition is about to complete its updated version of our Move Toronto plan. We want to get your opinion on the plan in general, and in specific the changes that were made from previous versions. I hope the discussion will stay civil, and on-topic.
 
Below are three aspects of the Move Toronto plan. The full plan, the 'Backbone Plan', and the costing. I will also try and post the final draft text version of the plan.
 

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I don't quite get this. Is this in response to the provincial government's delay/cut to transit funding? Is your proposed solution to a lack of transit funding the building of 13 billion dollars worth of transit projects?
 
As always, our plan is cost-neutral alternative to Transit City that actually makes sense and doesn't impose needless transfers at Don Mills or Kennedy and makes the DRL a priority.
 
I don't quite get this. Is this in response to the provincial government's delay/cut to transit funding? Is your proposed solution to a lack of transit funding the building of 13 billion dollars worth of transit projects?

The $4 billion has only been pushed back a couple years in the provincial budget. That gives us time to re-evaluate where we should be going with transit. I think that these 5 projects (4 if you don't count the Spadina extension, because that's already well underway) would form a solid base on which future transit expansion could be built. Some of these projects would need a bit more time, because they haven't been studied in-depth (the extension to STC for example), but other projects like Eglinton, Sheppard would only need minor adjustments from previous plans (the EA for Sheppard East extension was already approved before Transit City was brought in). Eglinton West was already studied to the point of starting to be built, so that would only need minor updates, or they could use the TC version, and make minor changes at stations to have longer platforms.

So I don't really think it's that far of a stretch to get this. And it wouldn't be nearly as difficult of a plan to sell to Toronto as Transit City has been.
 
While there are some interesting things here, clearly moving the Sheppard East LRT off the top of the list isn't going to happen, with the 3-way funding deal. Everyone is quite clear on that.

It also seems odd, that the really cheap BRT projects aren't at the front, rather than the back.

The bigger question is, the Phase 1 projects are bigger than the pot of $ that has been committed (about $8-billion not including the Sheppard East and Spadina subway projects). What do you do with what is available (presumably that is all that is available until 2020).
 
While there are some interesting things here, clearly moving the Sheppard East LRT off the top of the list isn't going to happen, with the 3-way funding deal. Everyone is quite clear on that.

It also seems odd, that the really cheap BRT projects aren't at the front, rather than the back.

The bigger question is, the Phase 1 projects are bigger than the pot of $ that has been committed (about $8-billion not including the Sheppard East and Spadina subway projects). What do you do with what is available (presumably that is all that is available until 2020).

Very good points. I'll address them one at a time:

1) Sheppard East: The Sheppard East subway extension would be $1.62 billion, which is $630 million more than the current SELRT project. So the money that is being used on Sheppard can stay on Sheppard, and it would only need a bit extra from the province to proceed with the subway extension instead of the SELRT.

2) BRT: While the Kipling BRT could potentially be built without the requirement of Eglinton being there (ie to act as a connector between the Mississauga Transitway and the B-D subway), a lot of the BRT lines are dependant upon the subway infrastructure being there. Would they work without a subway? Most likely yes. But they would get their maximum ridership and utility with the subway lines that they are designed to connect to, in place. It could be that these projects are seen as being important and are bumped up the priority list.

3) While not all the money has been committed, it may come to the point where, as with any plan, something has to be built first, as not all of it can be built at the same time. I would say at this point the most urgently needed line is the B-D extension to STC, just because of the finite lifespan of the SRT. Next in line would probably be the DRL, because it will have the most significant impact on the network overall. That brings us up to $5.5 billion. The portion of Eglinton that is most urgently needed is from Yonge St to Pearson, or from Eglinton West Stn to Pearson. If the current Eglinton proposal can't be built (Pearson to Don Mills), 1 of those 2 alternatives would likely be put in place. The Sheppard Extension is the lowest priority of those priority projects, but it is still a priority. Sheppard has been a stubway long enough.
 
Perhaps we should propose some measure of funding mechanisms as part of our plan, since Metrolinx itself has proven either unable or unwilling to do so (they're supposed to make a report about funding in what, 2013 or so?

I propose a 1% Transit Improvement Tax (LOL just realized the acronym) in the GTA (Toronto, Peel, York, Durham, Halton, Hamilton).
Tolls should be implemented equal to a transit ride cash fare on all 400-series highways and other freeways ($3 currently) either during peak periods or all day.
A parking tax would be good too. Maybe a 10% surcharge whenever you park your car downtown or any paid parking lot.
 
I think that the plan is generally sound, but I would prioritize BRT ahead of anything else and probably move Eglinton to second priority. I think that a full DRL should be expedited, along with the SRT replacement, but I think that it would be economically easier to run the DRL along the rail corridor rather than (I presume) King.

Do you think you can get Sheppard to Scarborough Centre before the TC shovels creep in from the east? I think that's a hard sell, but I wish you luck...
 
1. Best transportation grid proposed so far.
2. Funding in first phase is higher than the first phase of Transit City which is a non-starter.
3. Sheppard East LRT construction is contracted out east of Birchmount so Sheppard East LRT MUST be in the priority network. Something needs to go down in priority to have Sheppard East subway extension to Birchmount and Sheppard East LRT to Neilsen with the SCC to Malvern route done.
4. I cannot believe the financial estimates without knowing they came from a respected engineering firm.
 
I think the financial estimates may be a little low, though that is fairly common in infrastructure estimates and may make the DRL more appealing.

For my masters project I'm working on a massive amount of research on the DRL... a website should be up in around June with everything I've done to this point. Currently I'm working on getting density estimates for each station (people + jobs/ha), and I just completed a cost analysis.

My analysis has Spadina to Eglinton for the DRL being ~$6 billion. Admittedly, this is pessimistic and using the higher end of estimates for construction and engineering costs, but given what I've found I can't possibly imagine it being less than $5 billion. That said, my cost includes trains, a new yard, etc... still, I'd like to know how you got the $3.7 billion figure.
 
For the estimates, we used industry standards. No, we didn't get a reputable engineering firm to do it, but we ballparked it. $70 million/km for LRT, $300 million/km subway in less urban areas (Spadina is $307 million/km, so that estimate is pretty close), $320 million/km in more urban areas for the DRL, $180 million/km for the Richview corridor.

While these estimates are not bang on, they're not nearly as deflated as the initial Transit City cost projections, which nearly doubled before a single shovel even hit the ground.

Jupiter: I'd be interested in seeing your work on the DRL, I would hope it would bolster our case for having it near the top of the priority list. Unfortunately, due to the mistake that is taking place on Sheppard right now, that project has pushed the DRL down the list. And with the SRT due for replacement, that has pushed the need for the B-D extension to STC up the list.
 
I tihnk the proposed subway network is still to West-centric. The Eglinton East subway should be removed from Phase I/II in favour of full extension of Sheppard to SCC (Phase II?) and of Bloor to East Mall (definitely Phase I). Eastern DRL should go to Sheppard.

Your map should probably show the 407 Transitway as it does have some relevance to the Mississauga Transitway and you need to include the transitway connecting the two. I'm not really sure if 905 transit should be shown at all though so the Dundas and Hurontario LRTs can probably be removed. But otherwise the map looks great, good job.
 
I tihnk the proposed subway network is still to West-centric. The Eglinton East subway should be removed from Phase I/II in favour of full extension of Sheppard to SCC (Phase II?) and of Bloor to East Mall (definitely Phase I). Eastern DRL should go to Sheppard.

Your map should probably show the 407 Transitway as it does have some relevance to the Mississauga Transitway and you need to include the transitway connecting the two. I'm not really sure if 905 transit should be shown at all though so the Dundas and Hurontario LRTs can probably be removed. But otherwise the map looks great, good job.

Odd, most of the critisms we've had is that we're too east-centric. I anticipated this kind of thing though, so I did some measurements with the Backbone Plan. We are propsing 28.3 km of subway west of Yonge in Phase I, compared to 26.6 km east of Yonge. With all due respect, that's about as even as you can get. If the extra Sheppard extension to STC is added into that, it's nearly dead even.

The reason why we included Mississauga's transit options into this is because of the strong link between Mississauga and Toronto transit. We also wanted to emphasize options to Square One. Also, the Dundas LRT is one of the big reasons for the B-D extension to Sherway. But you're right, if we included that, we should have included the 407 Transitway, as well as VIVA for that matter. We chose to include Mississauaga because it's that transit system that impacts Toronto the greatest. Also, the airport is in Mississauga, so we needed to address that as well.
 
You don't need to take the Danforth extension along Eglinton and up McCowan, especially if an Eglinton subway is also going over that way. Assuming you want to combine the lines at STC, which requires approaching STC from the SE, creating one giant Bloor-Danforth-Sheppard subway isn't a good idea.

With the Jane Transit City line weighed down into possible oblivion by its own silliness, you don't need to feel compelled to include it here. By starting it north of Eglinton and once the Spadina extension, the Eglinton subway, and the Finch LRT are factored in, Jane's peak volumes will be totally obliterated. There is no significant number of jobs or stores or schools on Jane, remember, and the plan should be focused on what is necessary, not on what would might be nice if we had a trillion dollars to waste. You'd get more out of, say, a Wilson-Albion line, if you're looking to spread lines across the city for the sake of parity and for the sake of making a map that looks symmetrical.

Don Mills should not be split up into a subway, an LRT, and a bus. Like Sheppard, that just kills a corridor's potential and kills ridership.

There's no point stopping the Sheppard subway at the GO line in the short term. I know you're trying to keep it "cost neutral" but it's not like the money is all guaranteed and waiting to be spent, and by using ballpark figures you're going to be off by millions, if not billions, definitely more than enough to make excluding such a short segment very counter-productive as far as supporting a 'we've got a better plan' argument goes. What if a newspaper just included the second map and made no mention of future plans and phases?
 

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