[salsa]

As always, I can rely on Gord Perks to provide a sensible analysis of the latest developments at city hall. Here's what he said on twitter:

1. A couple of reporters have approached me for comment on Oliver Moore's story that SmartTrack is shrinking.
2. Prior to the election the Province had plans to build Regional Express Rail (RER) – electrifying GO lines for faster commutes in the GTA.
3. The City and Metrolinx were developing plans to extend the Eglinton Crosstown west to the airport.
4. SmartTrack proposed using two of those GO corridors and the Eglinton West Corridor for heavy rail off road with "subway-like service".
5. The SmartTrack Moore describes looks a lot like what was already on the books and not much like the campaign version of ST.
6. ST promised three lines – that's gone.
7. ST promised 22 stations in 7 years. It will be many fewer stations and take much longer.
8. ST promised subway service in terms of frequency and price. No and no.
9. SmartTrack was to pay for itself using Tax Increment Financing. Not so much.
10. BUT - and this is important - RER and the Eglinton W. LRT are great projects. If Moore is right this is very good news.
11. Just as Mayor Tory delivered bus service that Candidate Tory opposed, it's looking like Mayor Tory is much saner on transit projects.
12. This switch tells us a great deal about how toxic transit conversations were in Toronto, and suggest sanity is returning.
13. Mayor Ford made much of hating LRT because it got in the way of cars. Subways!Subways!Subways! was a transit promise drivers could like.
14. Ford said someone else (the private sector) would pay for his subways.
15. ST had a similar emphasis on transit being off-road and "free" to taxpayers.
16. These cake-and-eat-too proposals were not only infeasible (transit costs $ and takes up space), they crowded out good projects.
17. Speaking of which the new Federal infrastructure money comes with a caveat: you must be ready to build now.
18. The only transit projects we have that fit that bill are the Finch LRT and the Sheppard LRT. Are we sane enough to put them forward?
19. We aren't out the woods. ST as described by @moore_oliver still has problems. First, no-one has a clue how to pay to operate the service.
20. And second, the new ST may require double and possibly quadruple tracks – which require time, space and money we don't have.
21. So, the new "plan" isn't ST but will be branded that way. Should we accept that?
22. Only if the sanity extends to honesty about costs and the need to give surface transit priority over cars.


Also check out the new article by Steve Munro.
http://torontoist.com/2016/01/smarttrack-now-you-see-it-now-you-dont/

 

[mdrejhon]

Great news indeed. An enhanced GO RER and ECLRT becomes the official SmartTrack plan.

I like this SmartTrack plan much better.

To the electorate, it appears natural and prudent keep the public who voted Tory onboard, that I will continue to call this a "SmartTrack" vision, in the same vein as "GO Vision 2020" or "Moveontario" or whatnot. Details do not matter and I never really considered it the technical name of a "line" but as a "vision". I liked the vision but didn't like some details (heavy rail on Eglinton).

It is still electric frequent service with expansions above and beyond GO RER plans

I am not going to call it anything other than a SmartTrack "vision". I never really considered SmartTrack a dedicated "line", in technical terms, like Bloor Subway or Scarborough RT, by as municipally funded enhancement to GO RER plans. The vision doesn't seem to have changed much, just a more sensible approach.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Great news indeed. An enhanced GO RER and ECLRT becomes the official SmartTrack plan.

I like this SmartTrack plan much better.

Maybe John Tory is gonna brand it as "Smarter Track". All jokes aside it seems to be a much better plan than what was originally proposed.

 

[mdrejhon]

Semantics aside, and "transit vision" versus "transit line", and whether or not "SmartTrack" is branded at any fare gate or vehicle, or not... Or whether or not it is two crossed lines (RER Brampton-Markham intersecting with ECLRT) or as one route with an end-transfer GO+LRT ala Scarborough RT (Yawn, yawn, yawn)

...full steam ahead, please, on enhanced RER+ECLRT. Yay, yay, yay!

 

[nhui06]

It's hard to see where to put one since there are so many sidings already near there. Maybe Unilever is the closest we'll get.

Yeah, don't know the technicality of this, but I do believe Metrolinx was considering Cherry Street as a potential station back when they revealed the 50-some new potential sites for GO stations, so who knows.

 

[salsa]

Maybe John Tory is gonna brand it as "Smarter Track". All jokes aside it seems to be a much better plan than what was originally proposed.

But calling it "Smarter Track" implies that Smart Track was not that smart after all, something that Tory would be too stubborn to admit.

 

[robmausser]

Great news indeed. An enhanced GO RER and ECLRT becomes the official SmartTrack plan.

I like this SmartTrack plan much better.

So do I, but I thought I would mention some things that aren't being talked about here.

1. I think its sad that the reason that the Scarborough portion of Smarttrack is getting axed (oh sorry, "Phase 2") is because of the Scarborough Subway, something in itself that should not exist. It really should be the other way around: kill the Scarborough subway, do the original LRT plan, and have Smarttrack go to Unionville. This really would be the better solution.

2. I hope Toronto and Tory push for the 5 stations downtown versus 4, we need as many as we can get.

3. Not much talk about fare integration, this is where Tory really needs to push back. Enhanced GO and ECLRT is great, but if it costs more than $1 extra ontop of the TTC fare to ride on the GO RER system (and stay in Toronto) ... you can forget about the whole thing.

 

[gweed123]

So do I, but I thought I would mention some things that aren't being talked about here.

1. I think its sad that the reason that the Scarborough portion of Smarttrack is getting axed (oh sorry, "Phase 2") is because of the Scarborough Subway, something in itself that should not exist. It really should be the other way around: kill the Scarborough subway, do the original LRT plan, and have Smarttrack go to Unionville. This really would be the better solution.

I mentioned this a few pages ago but I think it got lost in the rapid fire posts, but I honestly think that ending Phase I at Kennedy is to allow Phase II of SmartTrack to extend to Malvern via the SRT ROW. Obviously that's a completely different hill to have a battle on, so by nailing down Phase I now and then having that as a separate discussion, I think it makes a lot of sense.

It's not unlike what Ottawa did with the Confederation Line. The City knew both the downtown tunnel and the western leg through/around Westboro were going to be sticking points, so they dropped the western leg to Phase II, and had that battle separately without holding up the central portion.

 

[ehlow]

Glad to see Spadina & LV stops, but for those in Distillery or Pan Am Village they'd have to cross the river east to get to a stop? Seems like it would make more sense to have the stop west of the Don river to serve the new neighbourhoods there

 

[GenerationW]

Meanwhile, back in reality where David Miller was an explicit pro-subway voter on council his whole career, and campaigned "subways first" in his first election win, and then explicitly compromised with Transit City, which stands now as Toronto's only compromise transit plan for 75 years; John Tory to this day continues to state his original - and physically impossible - Dumb Track plan is flawless, and "fully funded", both of which are transparently, and well documented, as complete fiction.

John Tory is demonstrating what Ontario voters discovered on his many failed runs for office: he is leader in taking his farcical gaffes to his political grave.

When did Tory ever say ST was fully funded? He explicitly went to the feds and province looking for funding.

Can't recall Miller campaigning on "subways first" in 2003, or stressing transit anywhere near as much as we saw in the last two elections. Sure, he was pro-subway as a councilor but so was everyone else back then. We just had no money to build any. Miller was also hardly an avid supporter of the Spadina extension, but he shrewdly leveraged that into provincial support for what became Transit City.

I think its sad that the reason that the Scarborough portion of Smarttrack is getting axed (oh sorry, "Phase 2") is because of the Scarborough Subway, something in itself that should not exist. It really should be the other way around: kill the Scarborough subway, do the original LRT plan, and have Smarttrack go to Unionville. This really would be the better solution.

Only the province can kill the subway extension. Not happening.

 

[pstogios]

But calling it "Smarter Track" implies that Smart Track was not that smart after all, something that Tory would be too stubborn to admit.

I find your incessant and blatant targeting of nearly all of your messages to John Tory disturbing. You're a one track mind on attacking him at every opportunity. Did John Tory run over your dog or something? Not to say I'm defending him or SmartTrack.

Should the Oliver Moore reported plan be supported by Tory and Council, here we have a compromise that nearly every other poster and transit enthusiast here have themselves put forward in the past and now are vocally supporting.

Don't we WANT our politicians to compromise? Don't we WANT them to back away from campaign rhetoric? Rhetoric, I should say, that all parties of all stripes resort to during election campaigns. Don't we WANT them to solicit expert advise, listen to that advice, and then change their plans accordingly? Isn't that exactly what we are seeing now? (Again, the caveat is that Tory hasn't publicly vocalize support this compromise but all indications are that he will.)

Here we have a reasonable and sound plan that not only allows Tory to save face and claim credit for driving forward (he deserves this because he is taking the mantle as as, but actually builds upon what the Province was planning for GO RER, ditches the worst and stupidest parts of SmartTrack, and will actually provide a very useful transit service... that even your bromance Gord Perk supports. We should all get behind this plan, fix the parts that are still problematic, and support a politician that knows how to change his mind..and then get on to pushing forward the next and essential project: the DRL.

 

[Adjei]

Why is there a need for Smart Track branding? I guess it's for Tory to save face. Just integrate it with GO RER and stop all this Smart Track nonsense. Is the Eglinton extension also going to be called Smart Track?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

"With ridership modelling showing that the initial proposal to run trains every 15 minutes would not attract a sufficient number of passengers, officials are looking at running trains at least every 10 minutes, and as often as nearly every five minutes in some areas, during peak periods."

$3.5B over the GO RER cost for 5 minute peak frequencies through the central section? Deal! Lets get this thing tendered by the end of 2017.



Looks like ECLRT extension, and RER with much higher frequencies than the province promised between Mount Dennis station (ECLRT) and Kennedy station (Danforth), via Union. The section north of Kennedy to Markham is being called a future phase.

It's a good plan if they can hit 5 minute peak frequencies and move Kennedy station to make transfers easier

I went to bed last night thinking the same thing; impressed by all the new stations and the incredible 5 min frequencies. But I went looking through some City Planning documents, and it turns out the SmartTrack scheme described in Moore's article proposes absolutely nothing new over Metrolinx's GO RER plan.

SmartTrack, as described in the article, had two major new service components;
1. 10 minute or better services frequencies all day; this improved to near 5 min frequencies at peak hours. These frequencies would only be seen on part of SmartTrack phase 1.
2. A few new stations

Let's start with the first point: As we all know, GO RER proposed 15 min frequencies, so running SmartTrack at near 5 min frequencies is a major improvement, right? Nope. This is exactly the same as proposed in GO RER.

GO RER proposed two way, all day 15 min or better frequencies on the Lakeshore West, Lakeshore East, Kitchener and Stouffville lines. Recall that Lakeshore West and Kitchener services overlap approximately north of St. Clair West and Stouffville and Lakeshore East overlap approximately east of Main Street. That means that between St. Clair West and Main stations, RER frequencies would be 7.5 min or better, two way and all day. This is exactly as described in Moore's article (frequencies between 10 and 5 min).

Furthermore, Moore explicitly said that these enhanced frequencies would be available only on part of the SmartTrack route. Based on the way these GO routes are routed, that means that the enhanced frequencies would be available only between Main Street and a hypothetical St. Clair West Station; everywhere else (aka, Mt. Dennis Station and Kennedy Station) only get 15 min frequencies.

The second major addition to SmartTrack was 3 or 4 new stations. As we all should know, Metrolinx is evaluating adding several new stations to the GO RER network. The chances are that Metrolinx would have added these new stations along the ST route, even without there being a ST proposal.

So assuming what Moore described is what will be built, SmartTrack, as proposed in Tory's campaign, has completely vanished. It's mainline portion is now exactly the same as the Metrolinx's RER proposal: there is no difference in infrastructure of service plan. The western spur has been replaced by the ECLRT extension.

 

[WislaHD]

Those all seem justified except Unilever, but I'm assuming those who own that property want a stop

Then those property owners can pay for it.

I got to say I am happy to see these developments, especially regarding Eglinton West. I don't have much to add that hasn't been already said, SmartTrack now is essentially being sold as what was already on the books anyway. But, SmartTrack's purpose can still serve to promote an emphasis on Toronto commutes by pushing for additional stations between Mt. Dennis and Kennedy, and hopefully, by adopting some form of fare integration with the TTC that does not exist with GO-RER.

 

[rbt]

Let's start with the first point: As we all know, GO RER proposed 15 min frequencies, so running SmartTrack at near 5 min frequencies is a major improvement, right? Nope. This is exactly the same as proposed in GO RER.

Last documents from Metrolinx that I had seen showed a peak target for RER as 4 trains per hour for inner-local service, and 2 trains per hour for outer-long-distance for most corridors.

Is there something more up to date than this?
https://swanboatsteve.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/rer-rollout-by-line.pdf
https://swanboatsteve.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/rer-rollout-details.pdf

The pre-election Liberal promise of 15 minutes or better rapidly turned into a post-election Metrolinx commitment to 15 minutes at best; engineers have a tendency of bringing up problems that hack away at speculative promises.

For the Smart Track section, we seem to have the engineers on-board with 5 minute frequencies for one chunk of the system, which is an improvement from their 15 minute commitment.