And that's almost exactly what I have supported in the past with the minor modification running Morningside further north to Malvern allows for a loop to completed...thereby connecting UTSC with STC and Kennedy. I have no problem with Sheppard ending at STC. Where Scarberian and I differ is that he thinks none of the lines should go to Malvern. I think the RT at minimum should be extended to Malvern. The other lines I am not so picky about. All I was attempting to do was explain the TTC's logic on the placement of those lines. For example, if approaching UTSC from Kennedy via Kingston, Eglinton and Morningside, it does not make sense that you would not go 2km north to connect to Sheppard. Ther termination at Malvern of the Morningside line is merely making use of the Sheppard corridor so it does not incur extra construction costs.
Instead of inaccurately paraphrasing someone, why not use the quote function? I said the RT should not be extended (and until it's officially killed, there's no use pretending it won't be kept/extended), and I've also said that one or two of the lines should be killed to prop up the third. You know perfectly well that I've said Malvern can get its precious light rail in the form of a Transfer City line from STC...that plus the proposed GO line is all the transit lines that Malvern is physically capable of supporting, and anything else beyond Rocket buses (which can be just as fast as Transfer City, only with a fraction the capital investment - and it's capital investments that the city was bitching about when it decided to not extend the Danforth line to STC - of billion dollar streetcar ROWs) is undeniably a fantastic waste of money. Seriously, who's going to be riding all of these lines?
Extending the RT to Malvern means punishing the rest of Scarborough by not extending the subway to STC. It's one or the other. Replacing the RT with a Transfer City LRT line and extending this to Malvern still does nothing for most RT riders and most of Scarborough, but at least less money will be outright wasted. Such a line won't be particularly crowded, though, no more so than a line branching out from STC along McCowan or Ellesmere, anyway. For a plan called "Transit City," remarkably large swaths of the city will be *entirely* unaffected by the expenditure of all these billions of dollars.
Scarberian thinks they might. I think they might not. My rationale was given above. When TO asks for 6-8 billion that does not sound bad. If they asked for 20 billion minimum, someone else in the GTA would lose out or the province's bill for MO2020 would have ballooned by about 10-15 billion. I am a little skeptical the province would willingly swallow that medicine. There are other demands across the province and MO2020 only meets the requirements of the GTHA. Ottawa's got light rail plans that call for at least 2 billion from the province. And I would not be surprised if Kingston or London was not too far behind.
Yes, they would have. Everyone got what they asked for with MoveOntario. The city did not ask for $6B, they asked for vaguely defined projects to be funded - of course, the price tag quickly went up a few billion. York Region asked for two subway extensions, not for $X. That's not how it works...you don't ask for $X and then see how many coloured lines you can draw on your city's transit map with that.
I can also see the potential benefits of the SM LRT, most other people can't get over the fact that it serves Malvern, even though it needs to go that far to access a yard, and to allow passengers to switch between lines, and it will make use of tracks that will be built anyways.
Malvern will generate a paltry smattering of rides for the line, but few from UTSC (which isn't anywhere near as big a school as it seems) will use it either. Virtually no one is going to be transferring between the two lines. Perhaps the local raccoons will. There's lots of places yards could go. Anyway, the Eglinton line should just be extended over a bit, amputating the diseased part of the line north of Kingston.
