The 407 is not a PPP. It was the sale of a public asset to a private firm. There is no partnership between the public sector and the private sector.
 
GTS said:
I picked up a supplementary agenda at the TTC meeting on Wed. Dec. 17/08 about the Yonge extension to RHC and it gave some good arguements about how this overcrowding will be handled when(or if) the Yonge line is extended. One main item that will alleviate some of the ridership is the University/Spadina extension to VCC. This branch will be completed first and the report stated that a lot of the riders will be diverted to this line instead of going to Yonge. Another item that will alleviate overcrowding is the installation of Automatic Train Control. ATC will be put in different part of the line in stages but it will greatly reduce headways of the trains. The improvements to the Bloor/Yonge exchange will reduce dwell times at that station signifacantly. And yet another feature to help alleviate overcrowding is adding a 7th car to the trains! I imagine that some of the older stations will need upgrading to handle a 7th car but I guess the extended stations such as Steeles and all will be built to accomodate 7 car trains.
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What the TTC has not mentioned about ATC is that by itself it will not be able to significantly reduce headways for two reasons,

1. They have not ordered enough trains. (unless they want to retrofit some T1's)

2. The current station dwell times are too long, particularly at bloor yonge

But all the stations are long enough for a 7th shorter car.
 
nfitz said:
TTC awards contracts to the lowest bidder. TTC contracts also do no allow the consultants to charge anything they want - they require the consultant to provide salary information, and the charge-out rate is fixed based on the salary of those performing the work. No one is getting rich here - it's good work, but the profit margins are not excessive.
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You described it to a T, this is exactly the case. However, the problem is that the TTC is a very high maintenance client, and thus consultants and contractors alike tend to increase the number of hours allotted to each task relative to the same work being done for the private sector.

The problem with the TTC and in fact most public sector entities is that for any one aspect of a project to be approved, 20 people from 20 departments must first provide their input. Since most of the concerns are usually invalid to begin with, it is usually the least practical and most expensive solution that satisfies everyone's concerns.

Based on my own experience, private sector projects can easily go from the design stage to project completion in a shorter amount of time than it takes a similar sized public sector job just to get through the design stage. All the while, consultants have every right to invoice their time to the TTC, City of Toronto, or whomever the client might be.

As for the Great Hall of Buses to be built at Yonge and Steeles, I can tell you exactly happened. The TTC's planning department claimed that there might be increased bus ridership in the future. The safety department determined that this higher number of passengers must be spread out over a lager area to reduce crowding. The operations department claimed that in order to meet this demand, the number of bus bays must be increased. The properties department determined that land north of Steeles falls beyond the scope of the City of Toronto, therefore the station must be built in Toronto. The maintenance department is still on the fence as to whether it is preferable to build the station above ground or below. The architectural department believes that only the largest and gaudiest of stations is capable of making a bold enough statement. The engineering department is still waiting to hear what the consultants have to say. The consultants already know that the TTC's mind is made up, so they take the path of least resistance and recommend a 28 platform bus terminal be built underneath the Centrepoint parking lot. However, because they still have to prove to the TTC why this is the "best" solution, they must still spend hours upon hours completing the traffic studies, trip generation forecasts, and population estimates, and end up submitting 15 draft versions to the TTC before even their study is approved, let alone the actual recommendation.

Now do you understand why the consultant fees are $700M? Of that $700M, only about $100M goes toward true front of the line engineering. The rest is essentially overhead.
 
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^What the consulting engineer said.

What astounds me about the Steeles bus terminal is that they think bus ridership will go up. Obviously it will go down, and way down. Why would anybody ride a bus paralleling a subway line? Everbody going south on Yonge from York Region is going to be on the subway. The only route that will have any kind of significant traffic will be Steeles East and Steeles West, and surely 3 bus bays each would be more than sufficient. 28 bus bays would make it by far the biggest bus terminal in the network, and it isn't even a terminal station. And to top it all off, they're making the cost of those bus bays really count since they'll all be underground in the middle of the street. Has anybody considered how long Steeles will have to be dug up to build a two block long underground bus terminal?

The bit about not building the bus terminal on the surface because it would be outside the City of Toronto boundaries is appalling.
 
I have to agree, the Steeles bus estimate seems a little wonky.

Also isn't Steeles one of the Metrolinx LRT routes? Surely there's be separate LRT platforms carring most of the Steeles and Jane traffic.
 
nfitz said:
I have to agree, the Steeles bus estimate seems a little wonky.

Also isn't Steeles one of the Metrolinx LRT routes? Surely there's be separate LRT platforms carring most of the Steeles and Jane traffic.
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Steeles is listed as Other Rapid transit, which could mean anything from Viva's current operations to a Full ICTS line. But I doubt anything beyond express buses will be built or even needed on steeles.

But it was mentioned in the recent report on the extension that the underground terminal could be used by a BRT/LRT line.
 
unimaginative2 said:
The only route that will have any kind of significant traffic will be Steeles East and Steeles West, and surely 3 bus bays each would be more than sufficient. 28 bus bays would make it by far the biggest bus terminal in the network, and it isn't even a terminal station. And to top it all off, they're making the cost of those bus bays really count since they'll all be underground in the middle of the street. Has anybody considered how long Steeles will have to be dug up to build a two block long underground bus terminal?
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There might still be a TTC 97 Yonge, and YRT 91 Bayview, 99 Yonge and a local Thornhill route (perhaps the 88 Bathurst) but 8 bus bays and a 2 bus layover pad ought to be enough for anybody. That's what York Mills has, even though there's 2 busy routes (95/95E and 96/165) and 4 secondary routes out of there (78, 97 via Yonge Blvd, 115 and 122), and it is rarely crowded. A small 8 bay terminal would even fit underground in a mixed use (condo/retail, for example) development.
 
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Um, has anyone mentioned to the TTC how ridiculously oversized this Steeles bus terminal is? If actually gets built to have 28 bus bays it'll be a bigger white elephant than anything on the Sheppard line.
 
An interesting post by Chuck (#318). Anyone who has dealt with government bureaucracies, at any level, will smile and nod.

28 bus bays at the proposed Steeles station??!! I'm not a transit geek, or anywhere as knowledgeable as some others here, but I really wonder how even half of that could be justified. Someone is engaged in one heck of an over-engineering exercise. These guys need to be pulled back into the real world.
 
They are in the real world! Real people relied on a real computer to crunch some numbers which they then multipled by an arbitrary figure of 'anticipated growth' and then divided by a quantity roughly equal to the volume of a pork barrel. If the computer print-out said "28" bus bays are needed, well, then that's what's needed...who are we to argue with such rigorous methods?
 
unimaginative2 said:
^What the consulting engineer said.

The bit about not building the bus terminal on the surface because it would be outside the City of Toronto boundaries is appalling.
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Don't take everything that I said in that paragraph word for word. I'm not involved in the project so I can only guess based on my own experience how they decided upon 28 bus bays. What you can take from it though is that for any public sector job, no decisions are made without first getting the approval of at least 10 mostly unrelated departments. It's this approval stage that causes the most delays, wasted fees, and worst design.
 
Looking back at the Sheppard Subway, we'll probably end up with the bus terminal being built with 28 bays, but them running out of money for lighting, signs, and any sort of wall coverings.
 
How does 28 bays compare to the other largest bus facilities connected to subway stations? Anyone have stats on say the top 5 or top 10?
 
Mike in TO said:
How does 28 bays compare to the other largest bus facilities connected to subway stations? Anyone have stats on say the top 5 or top 10?
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The CPTDB Wiki says Finch station - both TTC and YRT combined - currently has 27 bus bays, yet Steeles is projected to need more, even though everyone knows whole slew of TTC/GO/YRT routes currently using Finch will not need bus bays at Steeles. I've bolded the bays that won't be necessary:

TTC Unloading
125 Drewry
42,A,B Cummer
39,B,F Finch East (to Seneca College, Birchmount and Seneca College Express, rush hours only)
39A,D Finch East (Local to McCowan and Neilson)
39C,E Finch East (Express to McCowan and Neilson, rush hours only)
97,B,C Yonge (northbound only)
60,B,C,E,F Steeles West
53E,F Steeles East (Express to Markham Rd. and Staines, rush hours only)
53,A,B Steeles East (Local to Pharmacy, Middlefield and Markham Rd.)
36C,D Finch West (To Jane and Weston, rush hours only)
36A,B Finch West (to Kipling and Humberwood)
VIVA unloading, VIVA Pink during rush hours
VIVA Blue
GO Unloading
62 Newmarket 'B'
19 Oakville Highway 403
27 Milton Highway 401
95 Oshawa Highway 2 Express/96 Oshawa-Finch GO
2 Milliken
Markham/Unionville Express routes (300, 301, 302, 303, rush hours only)
91,A Bayview South
99 Yonge South
77 Highway 7-Centre
5 Clark, YRT unloading
88 Bathurst
23 Thornhill Woods

edit - So, these 12 remaining bus bays somehow morph into 28 bus bays needed at Steeles. Of course, future fare/system integration would mean the two Yonge bus bays become one, bays could be shared by infrequent routes, and routes like Bathurst/Bayview could become extensions of TTC routes, reducing that 12 to 10 or lower. Add in another bus bay each for the two Steeles routes and a couple bays for future routes and anything above 15-16 bus bays becomes absolutely ridiculous and an obscene waste of money.
 
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