Sounds like the most privileged complaining about getting high quality transit to their neighbourhood, but not completely on their terms. Would most neighbourhoods complain about getting a subway, period?
 
afransen said:
Sounds like the most privileged complaining about getting high quality transit to their neighbourhood, but not completely on their terms. Would most neighbourhoods complain about getting a subway, period?
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This argument holds true for Leslieville and for Etobicoke Centre, in my opinion. We shouldn't be asking why elevated is necessary, we should be asking why deep boring tunnels is necessary.
 
afransen said:
Sounds like the most privileged complaining about getting high quality transit to their neighbourhood, but not completely on their terms. Would most neighbourhoods complain about getting a subway, period?
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The complaint is not about getting a subway, but it's implementation.

I think it's quite clear that many if not most communities have their "privilege". Residents in Leslieville gladly accept two streetcar lines that are apparently unacceptable for Scarborough. The Fords heavily promoted the idea that downtown elites wanted to 'tear up the roads for streetcars'.

Why would they not complain? There was a plan already in place that was devised in cooperation with them.

Ford tore it up and is imposing his own plan, and his government passed a reducing citizen rights when it comes to expropration. What did people expect, especially when he tells other areas of the city they "deserve" underground transit?

There was bound to be opposition. I'd probably be a little concerned if there wasn't.
 
rbt said:
Overbuilding in Toronto prevents additional useful projects from being funded within Toronto due to local and provincial governments running into their debt limits.

Consider we're using about 20% of Sheppard's built capacity during rush-hour (pre-covid); also consider many of those components are approaching or already past mid-life and replacing them isn't cheaper than the original. A surface-mostly Sheppard route would have been 90% as effective and would have allowed a surface Eglinton West to also be built in the 90's. 30 years of buses on Eglinton happened, in part, because we insisted on over-building Sheppard (and intended to overbuild Eglinton too).

That said, I'm in favour of a significant tax bump to enable transit over-building and operations subsidies; but without a tax bump it just means other useful things get ignored and much of what we do over-build will be replaced at least once before ridership grows into it. G-Line in NY is 87 years old with ridership still well under capacity.
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If we are *honest* Sheppard doesn't get used as much as it could because its super short . . . if it was longer it would probably carry significantly more people . . .

duffo said:
Very disingenuous post. REM is essentially a commuter/regional system. The Eglinton line has stops at every major intersection, so the travel time savings are much lower since its making the stops anyway (and reaches a much lower top speed in between stops). No one at Metrolinx is proposing we run GO trains in the street ROW (yet..)
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Ah yes - Toronto should build "slow", "inflexible", "low capacity" transit because thats what we need when we are already behind the 8 ball on transit

W. K. Lis said:
The Eglinton Crosstown LRT (including west and east) would be a "local" line.

ECWE_updated_map.jpg

From link.
CTS_EglintonCrosstown_AlignmentMap.jpg

From link.
eelrt-transit-network-updated.jpg

From link.

For an "express" line, we'll need the GO Midtown Train. (As is the Union Pearson Express, an "express" line.)
go-midtown-map.png

From link.
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We have high quality local transit called the "bus", what we lack is fast point to point service across more of the city - the "Subway"
 
north-of-anything said:
This argument holds true for Leslieville and for Etobicoke Centre, in my opinion. We shouldn't be asking why elevated is necessary, we should be asking why deep boring tunnels is necessary.
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Actually, deep bore tunnels can be relatively affordable if they're able to cut them through solid rock and go deep beneath buildings, requiring less expropriation. Cutting tunnels through solid rock is cheaper than tunnelling through watery, sandy soils closer to the surface. The engineering is simpler.

It depends on geology, though. It's feasible in Montreal, and it allowed the Metro to be built more affordably than Toronto's subway. I think we need to be building as affordably as possible while minimizing the impact on local communities. The Yonge line was built in an open trench quite affordably through some of the city's most desirable neighbourhoods, and it works quite well 70 years later.
 
superelevation said:
If we are *honest* Sheppard doesn't get used as much as it could because its super short . . . if it was longer it would probably carry significantly more people . .
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Complaining about Sheppard under-performing due to it being too short 20 years after opening is an excellent example of opportunity cost, which was my intended point. Particularly true since the line was truncated due to lack of funds to complete the original vision.

So long as we have a fixed expansion budget, something useful isn't going to be constructed when something else gets overbuilt.

King Street is at the opposite end of the spectrum; most likely losing ridership due to under-investment.
 
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Amare said:
The amount of NIMBYism present in the Leslieville neighborhood is just incredible.
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Anywhere in the yellow belt in Toronto there is huge NIMBYISM.

As soon as someone owns a house and has a property something happens to their mind, they think they were given ownership of the city, not a little plot of land.
 
This is just two or three 'Oakville gas plants' worth of waste. That this isn't more scandalous is disappointing. Shows how much taxpayers care about the public purse.
 
jelbana said:
I'd say it's moreso that it requires informed and accurate media reporting. I don't think our media is good at explaining how and why things are wasteful regarding transit. It's too focused on LRT vs Subway rather than the trade off between construction cost and capacity resulting from different forms of grade separation.
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This has a lot to do with it.

I (and many others here) are very well read on these types of issues; in addition, in many cases to having some level of technical or professional expertise.

That allows a level of discussion (though as we prove here from time to time, does not guarantee same) in which most people cannot or will not engage.

The media is one critical element in synthesizing, summarizing and prioritizing information, ideally w/references and/or links for people to obtain greater detail.

Not everyone can or will be an expert in everything; so the above matters; but it should be said, we do need to foster greater interest, and greater critical thinking skills, particularly with a reference to 'civic's or public administration, to raise
the quality of public discourse.
 
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afransen said:
This is just two or three 'Oakville gas plants' worth of waste. That this isn't more scandalous is disappointing. Shows how much taxpayers care about the public purse.
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Money spent on Oakville gas plant was a total waste because it got cancelled and nothing came out of it. This line is getting built and will be used by people. Economic benefits of transit projects are many times higher than the costs. Let's say if an elevated line would have had a benefit-cost ratio of 5:1, then underground line too will have a benefit-cost ratio of 3:1. We will still get more benefits than the money we are spending, even if it is an underground line.

Comparing it with projects with sunk costs is not right.

Could it have been better? Yes.

Is it a total waste of money? No.
 
Deadpool X said:
... Economic benefits of transit projects are many times higher than the costs. ...
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They can be, if sized well and built in an area economically repressed due to transportation capacity or performance. That is not always going to be true though; you might imagine a fictitious High Speed Rail line from Moosonee ON to Churchill MB may not have a positive return on investment cost as there is no economic choke-point caused by poor transportation options between those locations.

In this specific case Metrolinx says we can expect to receive ~10 cents of benefit (economic, environmental, etc.) per dollar spent.
 
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