These two posts are wildly different. The DRL needs to start now. I was saying what should happen not what will happen. Tiger the province and city are not on the same page so sadly 2020 is not an option?

Yeah. I doubt 2020 is going to happen, unless Metrolinx dumps serious dollars into expediting construction. If I had to bet, I'd say we're looking at an opening in 2022, 2023.
 
I've heard nothing about Metrolinx borrowing funds (their request for funding tools did not include it) which means we're looking at a pay as you go type thing. If Spring 2014 has revenue tools like sales tax in the budget, Metrolinx won't get actual money to spend until summer 2015.

Small shovel ready projects will get funding first, such as the Mississauga LRT and a start of GO electrification.

Yonge will get TBMs first. They'll have the objective to tender the line before the 2015 election with annual payments of $500M (1/4th Metrolinx's budget, another 1/4th goes to municipalities). Doing Yonge first makes cancelling the revenue tools much harder. Yonge may just be an underground train yard until the DRL opens but it will almost certainly get built first.

Hudak will have no issues cancelling the DRL. He would take a bit political hit cancelling Yonge so Yonge must go first or the entire Big Move will be at risk.

You're timeline seems like the most reasonable.

I just wish there were a way to tie the opening of the Yonge extension to the DRL.
 
Yeah. I doubt 2020 is going to happen, unless Metrolinx dumps serious dollars into expediting construction. If I had to bet, I'd say we're looking at an opening in 2022, 2023.

They could free up $2B by post poning the Sheppard and Finch LRT. This could build 4 or 5 km of DRL - maybe 6 if they go cut and cover.
 
simple. get york region to help with the promotion of the drl or no yonge extension.

I'm more concerned that Timmy and his PCs will cancel the DRL. Perhaps the agreement between Toronto and Metrolinx would say that the Yonge North extension will only be opened once the DRL is complete? But I'm not sure how good of a solution that is, since Toronto is just a mere "creature of the province".
 
simple. get york region to help with the promotion of the drl or no yonge extension.
That's Toronto's job, and Toronto has to be as gung-ho about the DRL as York Region is about Yonge. We're not there yet.

Blame Ford and his illegal cancellation of the projects for that. I'm still so upset about that. The Sheppard LRT would have opened just weeks ago.
How was it illegal?

I don't see how Sheppard being delayed is any great loss. It never should have been given the same (or higher) priority as Eglinton, Finch and SRT replacement. Or any priority at all really.
 
How was it illegal?

From The Star:

The Mayor of Toronto only exercises powers if the authority is delegated to him by Council. No delegation with respect to Transit City has occurred. The Mayor was not given any specific legislative or management responsibility with respect to the implementation or rescission of Transit City. Accordingly, he did not have the authority to rescind any of the Transit City directives or enter into the Mayor’s MOU.
 
You have to lay blame on the province too. They knew Ford had no power to unilaterally stop Transit City. They could have ignored him, and continued construction.
 
You have to lay blame on the province too. They knew Ford had no power to unilaterally stop Transit City. They could have ignored him, and continued construction.

The province was dealing with a fiscal crunch and was actively looking to push back borrowing; they did it because it was good for their budget.

Second, there was no reason for them to believe that council would have voted it down. Early in Ford's term, when this was negotiated, he had full control over council. All he had to do was take it to vote and it would have been ratified with little debate.

Ford won the lottery then tore up the ticket and started shopping on credit while being told he had no money in his bank account. The move was so unexpectedly incompetent that it wasn't considered a possibility.


If Ford was a competent mayor, the province would have looked really bad for continuing to spend money on the LRT options knowing their removal was a core election promise of the newly elected mayor who had full council support (at that time).
 
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If there's local stops on the Lakeshore Line downtown with frequent service then it would make sense to put it under Queen. If not then King St for most of it. If they don't like DRL then perhaps they could call it the Leaside & City Line or something.
Don-City, then Don-City-Humber and eventually Don-City-Pearson could work.

The streetcar should be providing local service while the subway should be providing express, regardless of what the stop spacing is on the B-D or Yonge lines. The streetcar is not going anywhere.
That's my thinking. Unless the DRL really becomes a Queen subway or a King subway for most of its routing. Unlikely though.


BTW, the DRL Facebook group (check my link below) had had a surge of new members this week. If you aren't part of it already, please consider joining! We should hit 2,000 relatively soon.
 
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Hopefully they can at least go with a Front St. alignment and not a doubled up waterfront GO line route. That should be in addition to a DRL.
 
Why is everyone still calling it the DRL? The working name is The Relief Line. The official name will be the U2 line.
 

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