[TJ O'Pootertoot]

I've probably said this before but the subway just ain't a Toronto priority and that is precisely why we should all be thankful there is a REGIONAL transit authority who are looking at the big picture.

I don't think anyone disputes the need for improving Bloor, or that they'll have to build a new rail yard but those are not part of the cost of building this extension. The former, in particular, is needed anyway.

Reading about the meeting it sounds like they knew they had to approve it but they weren't going to do so without a lot of bitching first. Hopefully we can look forward to even more subway-bashing when this comes to council in a couple of weeks.

 

[isittimetomoveyet]

What are some other estimates for the DRL?

 

[GTS]

Yes you are right I didn't get the info. about the Drewry/Cummer St. from Steve Munro's site. I was at the last TTC meeting at City Hall on Wed. Dec. 17/08 and I picked up all the papers they hand out every month-( I go to all the TTC, GO, YRT meetings that are open to the public that my schedule will allow). The report is titled "Reprot No. 21-subject: Yonge subway extension-Final Report on Transit Project Assessment Process and Future Actions."

This report has 23 pages and it had some pictures and artist's renderings accompanying it. The report includes a few pages detailing each planned station and on pages 14 and 15 they describe the planned Drewry/Cummer Station. The report states this:

"An additional branch of service on the east side of Yonge St. along Cummer Ave. This branch of the route will drop off passengers at the entrance on the north east quadrant, proceed through Yonge St. intersection, turn around in a bus loop on the north side of Drewry Ave. west of Yonge St., pick up passengers at the south west entrance and then proceed through the Yonge St. intersection east on Cummer Ave. this branch of service is required due to higher passenger demand for bus service east of Yonge St."

This is all in the report on the pages I mentioned abouve but it doesn't persuade my thought of having this a walk in station only and keep the buses using the Finch Station. I think a transfer at Finch would be easier then this idea of having the buses loop around on Drewry and having us transit users waiting on the street basically.

 

[p5connex]

According to Adam Giambrone, building subways is a waste of money and essentially frivolous, especially when so much of the system needs money for upkeep, repairs etc., oh and the replacement streetcars. I heard his interview with Matt Galoway or the guy sitting in for him on the CBC yesterday afternoon and if anything we can expect no subways beyond Finch in the near future - that is if you read between the lines. He went on to say how expensive subways are and how the new LRT's or the new Transit City plan which Miller and the TTC seem so fond of is, if anything a better alternative to subway building. A skeptical Giambrone then went on to say that if anything we will see movement on the plans at the earliest 2011, realistically 2012..All aboard...All aboard.

How is it that in Toronto, a city not known for its density or ancient historical ruins below the streets, that we are told that 1 km. of subway will cost upwards of $200 million? Why is that cities like London or Madrid can get away with per km. rates of close to $100 million- yet these cities actually have the aforementioned issues of ruins and density..

p5

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Yes you are right I didn't get the info. about the Drewry/Cummer St. from Steve Munro's site. I was at the last TTC meeting at City Hall on Wed. Dec. 17/08 and I picked up all the papers they hand out every month-( I go to all the TTC, GO, YRT meetings that are open to the public that my schedule will allow). The report is titled "Reprot No. 21-subject: Yonge subway extension-Final Report on Transit Project Assessment Process and Future Actions."

This report has 23 pages and it had some pictures and artist's renderings accompanying it. The report includes a few pages detailing each planned station and on pages 14 and 15 they describe the planned Drewry/Cummer Station. The report states this:

"An additional branch of service on the east side of Yonge St. along Cummer Ave. This branch of the route will drop off passengers at the entrance on the north east quadrant, proceed through Yonge St. intersection, turn around in a bus loop on the north side of Drewry Ave. west of Yonge St., pick up passengers at the south west entrance and then proceed through the Yonge St. intersection east on Cummer Ave. this branch of service is required due to higher passenger demand for bus service east of Yonge St."

This is all in the report on the pages I mentioned abouve but it doesn't persuade my thought of having this a walk in station only and keep the buses using the Finch Station. I think a transfer at Finch would be easier then this idea of having the buses loop around on Drewry and having us transit users waiting on the street basically.

Err...uh...you do realize that you are not describing a bus station, right? There will be no bus station at Drewry/Cummer, so stop referring to one.

What you are trying to describe seems to be a combined and continuous Drewry/Cummer bus route that runs through the intersection, with a supplemental branch along Cummer (since it has much higher ridership than Drewry) that will turn around at a small loop at Beecroft & Drewry. Perhaps there will be cut outs at the curb at the NE and SW corners, but that and the loop would be the only bus infrastructure at the station.

Having Drewry/Cummer buses continue on to Finch is a bad idea.

 

[Voltz]

According to Adam Giambrone, building subways is a waste of money and essentially frivolous, especially when so much of the system needs money for upkeep, repairs etc., oh and the replacement streetcars. I heard his interview with Matt Galoway or the guy sitting in for him on the CBC yesterday afternoon and if anything we can expect no subways beyond Finch in the near future - that is if you read between the lines. He went on to say how expensive subways are and how the new LRT's or the new Transit City plan which Miller and the TTC seem so fond of is, if anything a better alternative to subway building. A skeptical Giambrone then went on to say that if anything we will see movement on the plans at the earliest 2011, realistically 2012..All aboard...All aboard.

How is it that in Toronto, a city not known for its density or ancient historical ruins below the streets, that we are told that 1 km. of subway will cost upwards of $200 million? Why is that cities like London or Madrid can get away with per km. rates of close to $100 million- yet these cities actually have the aforementioned issues of ruins and density..

p5

They were not planning, nor would they even be able, to start construction until 2012 anyway. And subways are expensive, what's your point?

Comparing subway lines in europe to lines in toronto is like comparing apples to oranges, the cost of materials and labour is different, soil conditions are different, trains are different shapes, Madrid uses one tunnel (because of smaller cars) instead of two, the jubilee line in london was built 20 years ahead of the planned timeline for the Yonge extension....

 

[nfitz]

How is it that in Toronto, a city not known for its density or ancient historical ruins below the streets, that we are told that 1 km. of subway will cost upwards of $200 million? Why is that cities like London or Madrid can get away with per km. rates of close to $100 million- yet these cities actually have the aforementioned issues of ruins and density...

London at $100-million per kilometre?? Your kidding right? The 15.9 km Jubilee extension was designed/constructed from 1990 to 1999. The cost at the time was £3.9 billion (that's CAN$6.3 at today's coversion rate). So the cost was £220 million per kilometre ($397 million). Not only is that 4 times higher than what you estimate, it doesn't account for 19 years of inflation, to compare to any projects that start now (or perhaps 16 years for the Spadina extension); just 2% inflation for 16 years would bring that to CAN$545 million per kilometre ... and probably a lot more, if the cost of steel and concrete has increased there as much as it has here.

And of course, the tunnels are much smaller than used in Toronto, because the trains are so narrow. A better comparison would be Crossrail, on which construction just started, and is budgeted at £15.9 billion ($28.7 billion) for 22 km of tunnel - though this does also include almost 100 km of existing surface track that will need some upgrading - and I don't have a breakdown of just the underground cost.

 

[Ansem]

what were they doing all the years. That is the real question.

Imagined how the network would have been if they kept building all those years when the cost was much lower.

 

[unimaginative2]

There are no official estimates for the DRL, since it hasn't been formally studied since the 80s. Basically, the rule of thumb that I used to calculate the present cost was to determine inflation by comparing the final cost of the Sheppard Subway to the mid-80s projected cost. When they were estimated, Sheppard to Vic Park and the DRL were expected to have similar costs, about $500 million. Since then, the cost of subway construction in Toronto has undergone significant inflation, both legitimate and, in my opinion, wildly illegitimate. Since Sheppard to Don Mills cost about a billion in the 90s, and going to Vic Park would be about an additional 20%, an estimate of $2 billion for Pape to Spadina seems very reasonable. These estimates also include the cost of a new yard, which might be avoidable.

The great advantage of the DRL compared with a Queen Street subway line is that it is far less complex to construct. Much of the alignment is along the surface, in the rail corridor east of Union Station, and to the west of Spadina (depending on the final route chosen). In the rail corridor, it's as simple as laying down tracks. The right-of-way has an abundance of unused space that could comfortably accommodate two subway tracks. Stations could be simple surface structures. There's no reason why it shouldn't be possible to build them for under $5 million. Furthermore, the route wouldn't require the same amount of bus terminal space as is required at suburban locations.

The most complex part, of course, would be the segment on Front from Spadina to Bay, particularly the station at Union. The TTC's study in the 80s showed a plan for comfortably fitting the additional tracks into the existing station, so it's certainly feasible. Convention Centre and Spadina should be pretty standard urban underground stations. It might even be possible to build the Spadina station above ground on the GO Bathurst North Yard site. The TTC has gone out of its way to make the engineering as complex as possible on all of its new subway lines (i.e. gigantic underground bus terminals, tunnelling under empty fields, etc.) so there shouldn't be a significant difference in the downtown core.

The DRL is a route that is magnificently suited to low-cost engineering, but it will take a None of the publicly-available reports on the new TTC subway lines pay even lip service to keeping engineering costs down. While I'm no right-winger, I'd love to see private companies compete to be responsible for designing and building the route.

 

[GTS]

Unimaginative 2- I agree with you- our stations are what drive up the costs whenever TO decides to expand it's subway system. I think the DRL will have an expensive station near Queen and Pape because that is where the TTC will need to make a comfortable transfer from the eastern leg of the 501 to the subway- maybe something above ground like St. Clair Sta. or below ground like Spadina Sta.- both stations are well designed for tranferring from streetcar to subway and vice versa.

I think the 501 streetcar should be divided into two routes 501 east from Neville to Pape/Queen and a 501 west from Long Branch to about Dundas. It would be kind of redundant to have a streetcar line on top of a subway line.

I should get back to Richmond Hill Centre topic and save that rant for another thread I am on.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

According to Adam Giambrone, building subways is a waste of money and essentially frivolous... he went on to say how expensive subways are and how the new LRT's or the new Transit City plan which Miller and the TTC seem so fond of is, if anything a better alternative to subway building. A skeptical Giambrone then went on to say that if anything we will see movement on the plans at the earliest 2011, realistically 2012..All aboard...All aboard.

Giambrone might be totally right, if Toronto was an island. No one disputes the TTC needs money for state of good repair etc. I just don't think he cares or knows much about what Transit City does for anyone outside Toronto who uses TTC every day. He can't keep planning as if Toronto exists in a vacuum.

I mean, everyone here thinks the DRL is crucial but it ain't in TC. Nope, it took Metrolinx, the REGIONAL authority, to tell TTC they need it, albeit slower than people at UT would like.

As everyone on this forum knows, it's not like TC was developed after years of consultation with engineers, planners and experts (to say nothing of the public). It's at least as "political" a plan as the Yonge extension and the only objective advantage is that LRT is cheaper than subway. Practicalities - about how many York Region residents now commute to Finch Station, or how people will transfer from a Sheppard subway to a Sheppard LRT - are beyond the scope of TTC's imagination.

And while it's true the Bloor-Yonge improvements, among other things are pre-requisites for a decent subway, it's somewhat disingenuous to include them in the "subway budget" as if they weren't being looked at anyway. I really don't understand the TTC mentality at all. I think years of being chronically underfunded have permanently stunted their ability to see the "Big Picture."

 

[Whoaccio]

If we ever do get around to building a new subway line, we should probably start to use narrower trainsets so that we can build single tunnel underground segments. Chances are any subway would have capacity to spare, and any loss in capacity from narrower trains could easily be made up by ATC and faster trains.

(As an aside, every cross section diagram of the underground portion ot TC's Eglinton line has the LRT trains running in twin tunnels. This is ludicrous, the entire bloody point of LRT is that it is cheaper to tunnel.)

There really is no reason the Richmond Hill & York Extension should be more expensive per km than the Sheppard line ($180m/km). Adjusted for inflation (from 2000), that brings us to $212.5m/km. The current price tag has the Yonge extension at a portly $350m/km (not including the TTC's list of necessary upgrades). I don't see how you can justify the 60% jump in costs. The new extension has no interchange station, no underground crossing of a river and even lower local densities. The original section of the Yonge line was built for an inflation adjusted (from 1954) for 434m in 2008 dollars. Over the original 7km route, that gives us a per-km cost of about $62m in 2008 terms.

 

[nfitz]

What inflation rate and how many years are you using to escalate the Sheppard line? If you compare to the Yonge (Richmond Hill) Line, then you'd need about 15 years of inflation to account for the 2002 versus 2017 opening dates if you were using year of construction $ like the Spadina line is using.

However TTC reports it as 2008 dollars. Even then if you assume the average $ was spent in 2000, your inflaction rate seems low. I'm not sure the best index to use, but if this one is typical - http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/econ144a-eng.htm your looking at about 6% inflation most years.

 

[Whoaccio]

What inflation rate and how many years are you using to escalate the Sheppard line? If you compare to the Yonge (Richmond Hill) Line, then you'd need about 15 years of inflation to account for the 2002 versus 2017 opening dates if you were using year of construction $ like the Spadina line is using.

Well, for obvious reasons I can't inflation adjust it for 2018. But using the Bank Of Canada inflation calculator(which itself uses the CPI), those are the results I get. If we start at 1995, you still get a cost per km of about 235m (in $2008).

 

[Mike in TO]

Well, for obvious reasons I can't inflation adjust it for 2018. But using the Bank Of Canada inflation calculator(which itself uses the CPI), those are the results I get. If we start at 1995, you still get a cost per km of about 235m (in $2008).

The Bank of Canada CPI adjustment is fairly useless for construction. Most municipal development charges by-laws utilize the Stats Canada Quarter Construction Price Indexto refer to infrastructure funding which typically runs much higher than inflation. The Stats Can figure is integrated into by-laws for annual DC increases (rather than CPI which isn't a good measure for infrastructure - the Stats Can figure has run double or nearly triple of CPI the last few years).

The regulatory framework is different in Toronto and Ontario than it was a decade or two decades ago, let alone the framework in other countries. Comparisons to London or Madrid are fairly useless when you get into issues such as soil remediation standards, records of site condition, modified risk assessment processes, WSIB premiums in various different rate groups (which can inflate costs by 8%-10% for labour alone), building code requirements, TSSA, inspections, fire code etc... let alone all the performance standards of the TTC. We live in one of the most heavily regulated jurisdictions in the planet when it comes to construction/buildings/infrastructure - that would be your basic rational for escalating costs.... Regulatory regimes aren't well reflected in the CPI or by comparing the $/km of subway in locations on the other side of the planet.