andrewpmk
Senior Member
Not to mention that BRT saves money which allows it to be implemented on more routes like the overcrowded Finch East bus. LRT on several parallel routes is prohibitively expensive.
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- Thread starter LAz
- Start date
Not to mention that BRT saves money which allows it to be implemented on more routes like the overcrowded Finch East bus. LRT on several parallel routes is prohibitively expensive.
Electrify
Senior Member
Would have been nice if they looked "outside the box" and compared a number of creative alternatives. Specifically, continuing the line as an el.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
BRT has higher operational costs. When the province has X dollars for infrastructure but no money for operations for the city then LRT makes more sense. You save on the costs the province isn't ponying up for day 2 support and you spread the infrastructure to more routes to achieve those lower operational costs and benefits in more places. The "cheap" bus routes that cost nothing in infrastructure are always what gets targeted with service reductions and cuts because there is no operational budget to pay for those routes. There is no increased investment in the corridor because everyone knows the bus is the easiest to cut in the yearly budget process. With the province giving $8B the problem to be solved is not where the money comes from to build something, the problem is how to pay for it when it is built. BRT gives you increased operational efficiency (reduced operational costs) over a bus in mixed traffic and is cheaper than LRT, but it doesn't give you land value increases, doesn't spawn as much ridership growth, and doesn't significantly impact the passenger to driver ratio.
nfitz
Superstar
Surely it's pretty clear to everyone what the mindset was.
The mindset was to compare the currently approved LRT plan, to Rob Ford's subway plan.
We don't need any further explanation of why they didn't look at BRT ... or EHB (elevated horse and buggies).
Justin10000
Banned
The panel was formed to compare Transit City vs. Ford's Subway plan. Why waste time and money revisiting BRT? It was already ruled out.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
Operational costs are higher for regular buses as they have to run more frequently but the rest of the planet gets around that by using articulated or even double articulated buses.
Also if Toronto was concerned about operational costs then the Eglinton battle wouldn't even exist. For the sake of just 3 or 4 stations between DM and Kennedy, Toronto is going to turn a low operational cost automated system to one that requires a driver for every train.
Seems to me that if long term operational costs are a real concern than there should be no discussion about making Eglinton totally grade separated as opposed to running down the middle of the road.
Electrify
Senior Member
I thought it was to figure out what would be best for that corridor, not just to limit it to the few options currently on the table?
Justin10000
Banned
No. The mindset was to compare determine what was more beneficial: the SELRT, a subway extension to Vic Park, and a hybrid.
rbt
Senior Member
Not sure what a hybrid would be. Subway to YorkLand and LRT (with transfer in the mezanine) from there?
To take the subway to Consumer and LRT from that point would require the city to kick in a few hundred million. Ford hasn't shown he is interested in putting in any money at all. If he was willing to kick in $300M to match the Fed investment then he could have started construction nearly a year ago.
That $300M was available to him too (Miller left it as a surplus). It was spent on a property tax freeze and eliminating the vehicle registration tax.
DTGeek
Active Member
It may not seem far off, but a lot can change in 50 years. "Light rail" hasn't even been around that long. It's been barely 100 years since cars started to be mass-produced. The demand for mass transit per capita will likely be far lower in 50 years than it is today because of technology like self-driving cars.
And if it does turn out that the LRT is insufficient in a few decades, it's not the end of the world to build the subway then. Since it costs something like 3x the cost of the LRT, you end up paying a 4/3x as much in total. It's more expensive, but not a total disaster (like a subway running at 1/3 of capacity would be), especially if you offset the operational savings in the meantime. You can also look at the premium as the cost of hedging your bets, which definitely isn't imprudent.
Further, if Sheppard were to get so dense as to overflow the LRT, that would be such a radical transformation from the current situation that you have to think money for a subway would become a lot more readily available. There would likely be other alternatives to consider at that point as well, e.g. building the subway on Finch instead, building a few branches out from the DRL that would almost certainly exist already, or even keeping both and spacing the subway stops pretty far apart so it's more of an express system, with the LRT being oriented towards shorter trips.
I like subways, but government spending should to be justified on sound facts, not speculation that something MIGHT be a worthwhile investment in 50 years.
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Paleo
Active Member
Have fun in the snow.
Exactly. When you look at most of the Transit City rationale reports (specifically the one for Jane), the rationale for discounting BRT is complete BS. The chart of the capacities of different modes even had the projected ridership of Jane right in the middle of the BRT line, but it was rejected for some very vague and half-baked reason.
Let's just call it like it is: the choice for LRT on Sheppard is political, nothing more. There is no doubt that BRT can handle the projected load on Sheppard for at least the next 20-30 years.
Seems to work just fine in Ottawa...
a0th
New Member
half of Ottawa's fleet is articulated, they have some double deckers now as well. they rarely get stuck and Ottawa gets a lot more snow than here.
a0th
New Member
and it's probably even more obvious to anyone with a clue, but some of the other GTA agencies use artics as well
Rainforest
Senior Member
BRT was previously ruled out based on the projected demand. With no subway extension, the highest demand on this route is at the approach to Don Mills.
But if the subway is extended to Vic Park, then only the demand east of Vic Park is an issue; it might fit the BRT capacity. A truly impartial study would revisit this (rather obvious) option, and approve or reject it based on the numbers, rather than “we are not doing it because we are not doing it”.
The Sheppard LRT operational costs were not estimated in this study, or any previous study.
It is indeed logical to assume that LRT will have lower operational cost per capacity, because of the higher passenger to driver ratio. But that matters on high demand routes only: for example if you can run an LRT train every 5 min instead of a bus every 2 min, then LRT should be cheaper.
But if the bus is only needed once in 4 or 5 min to handle the demand, and you replace it with LRT that still runs every 5 min to maintain attractive service, then LRT might actually cost more to operate (the operating cost per one LRT train is probably somewhat higher than for one bus, as more things can break in a larger vehicle). Note that the off-peak situation will certainly fit the latter pattern (off-peak service is more expensive with LRT than with buses). Whether the peak advantage of LRT will be enough to offset that, remains to be seen; note that the Sheppard East bus is far from being the busiest bus route on the system today.
Land value increases and growth along an LRT route have been observed in medium-size cities, once they built an LRT line through the city center. In that case, the LRT line becomes the backbone of transit system and the focal point of development.
Sheppard East, on the other hand, is a fairly peripheral location within Toronto, and will remain peripheral even with LRT. Light rail can provide very good local service, but it is really appealing only for riders whose origin and destination are somewhere near Sheppard East. For people who travel to other parts of the city (and that’s how many people in a big city tend to travel), it will be a long ride on LRT followed by a long ride on connecting routes. Hence, I doubt that Sheppard East will see land value increases beyond the average trend; or that LRT will facilitate such increases more successfully that BRT.
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