Well, it looks like Team Ford basically copped to there not being any private money/interest in the Sheppard subway.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/the-sheppard-subway-lines-troubled-history/article2133084/
From caption #9 " . . . His policy director, Mark Towhey, says the city needs the money soon to persuade Ottawa to recommit its $333-million. He says public money will pay upfront expenses. The city will use a combination of tax-increment financing, development charges and proceeds from selling parts of an $18-billion real estate portfolio to pay for the remainder. He expects the total bill to be far below the $4.2-billion estimate. “I would love for it to be 100 per cent from the private sector,” Mr. Towhey said. “I think it’s more efficient for us to put in public-sector money if we know we have it because then we can actually shape the beginning of it better.”"
*sigh*
At times like these it is worth recalling that the absolute minimum floor for subway supportive population is about the equivalent density of 115 persons/hectare, if not more, around a station stop. With LRT this minimum floor is about 70 persons/hectare, and works all the way up to 140 persons/hectare (Metrolinx, Pembina, TTC, Viva, etc, etc.)
For the sake of argument, let's take neighbourhood #118 (Tam O Shanter/Sullivan) on the City of Toronto neighbourhood profile page. It's a neighbourhood that straddles Sheppard. It had about 27,420 people in the 2006 census. Let's be generous and say they grew at about 3% to 28,000 people, give or take. This is not an unreasonable assumption based on the growth rate between 2001 and 2006. Unless I'm using my GIS incorrectly, the geographic area for that neighbourhood is about 5.7 million square metres, or about 570 hectares. That's about 49 people per hectare. This suggests that the subway will be cost-
inefficient.
We need to get about 65,550 people into that neighbourhood to get to 115 people per hectare and make one subway stop cost-effective. There's perhaps 28,000 there right now. We need to move an additional 37,550 people into the community. The census average household size for that neighbourhood was 3 persons per household. Therefore, we need to add an additional 12,516 households into that community. Assuming 1 household is 1 residential dwelling unit, anyone willing to bet how receptive the resident's associations and ratepayer groups will be to adding 12,516 additional units of new housing housing onto their leafy streets? For context there's only about 700 additional new units in the pipeline for that neighbourhood. Only 11,816 units to go to support one solitary subway stop!
Go Team Ford!