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TTC: Sheppard Subway Expansion (Speculative)

A Sheppard Subway will become the “gravy train” because of Rob Ford and his followers. If it is built, the operating subsidizes will be high. Unless the TTC gets increased operating subsidizes from the city, province, AND federal governments, which other jurisdictions in the world get to operate their underground electric railways (if there is no other revenue coming in like from real estate holdings like in some Asian cities) from, we can expect big losses in operating the line. Unless the city is able to ignore the NIMBY’s and history that the TTC has experienced with its current suburban stations to build it and ignore the operating costs.

Ford wants the TTC to be financially efficient. How can it be if it has to operate Rob's "gravy train", while ignoring a more financially efficient transport option of light rail?
 
W. K. Lis said:
A Sheppard Subway will become the “gravy train” because of Rob Ford and his followers. If it is built, the operating subsidizes will be high. Unless the TTC gets increased operating subsidizes from the city, province, AND federal governments, which other jurisdictions in the world get to operate their underground electric railways (if there is no other revenue coming in like from real estate holdings like in some Asian cities) from, we can expect big losses in operating the line. Unless the city is able to ignore the NIMBY’s and history that the TTC has experienced with its current suburban stations to build it and ignore the operating costs.

Ford wants the TTC to be financially efficient. How can it be if it has to operate Rob's "gravy train", while ignoring a more financially efficient transport option of light rail?
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I wonder what the increased operating costs would be from extending Sheppard to STC. Of course the operating costs will be bigger, but by how much?

The line would be nearly twice as long, so they might need to add another train or two, and of course there's maintenance, lights, station staff, cleaning.

Personally I think the increased operating costs are more than worth it in comparison to the ridership it would bring in.

If anything, the increased ridership would probably REDUCE the subsidy needed on Sheppard.
 
Paleo said:
Commercial strips east of the Don River are on Queen and in East York are centered on Pape. There is nothing on Bloor at Parliament except for a high school.

Putting it at Castle Frank might be too far west to make for a well distributed network, it is one station away from the inbound peak point after all.
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The transfer point is a gateway, not a destination. Kennedy is successful, and there's nothing around it at all.

And I don't think it's too far west. As long as it's east of Yonge, that's all that matters.

sixrings said:
Besides the drl needs to go up to eglinton to have a good impact on the yonge line. How can it do that if it went up parliament.
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Run it in the Don Valley until Thorncliffe Park. Right beside the GO line that's currently there.
 
W. K. Lis said:
If it is built, the operating subsidizes will be high.
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A fair comparison is [operating subsidies for the subway] vs [additional operating subsidies for buses if the subway did not exist]. Note that the majority of bus routes are subsidized as well.

By that measure, I am sure that YUS and BD subways are very profitable. Even Sheppard subway is probably not such a big loser.
 
Rainforest said:
A fair comparison is [operating subsidies for the subway] vs [additional operating subsidies for buses if the subway did not exist]. Note that the majority of bus routes are subsidized as well.

By that measure, I am sure that YUS and BD subways are very profitable. Even Sheppard subway is probably not such a big loser.
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I believe the number thrown around for Sheppard ($10M/year) is a net loss vs bus service.
 
Paleo said:
I believe the number thrown around for Sheppard ($10M/year) is a net loss vs bus service.
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I am pretty sure that it is the absolute loss, not vs bus service.

TTC "attributes" the fare revenues to each route, and subtracts the attributed revenue from the operating expenses to calculate the subsidy per route. But the attribution involves only routes that actually exist. So, for a trip "Sheppard bus 85 from Kennedy to Don Mills; Sheppard subway to Yonge; Yonge subway to downtown", they divide the average fare between bus 85 in its present configuration, the Sheppard subway, and the Yonge subway.

If they were to calculate how Sheppard subway fares financially against a hypothetical substitute bus service (all buses 85 running to Yonge instead of Don Mills), then their model would become more complex, as they would have to make assumptions about frequencies and vehicles counts for such hypothetical service. It is doable, but I doubt that they will do it routinely (unless there is a specific reason).

Actually, during one of the funding disputes with the City around 2008, TTC briefly threatened to close Sheppard subway to cut costs, if more funding is not provided. However, they quickly backed out of that idea (well before the general resolution was achieved). I suspect that they did some number crunching, and realized that replacing the subway with buses saves very little, if anything at all.
 
^ Also, we cannot presume that all LRT lines will have good cost recovery ratios just because they are LRT; much depends on the context. The eastern section of Sheppard LRT will be losing money for sure, because the ridership counts east of McCowan will always be low, but large (compared to buses) LRT trains still will have to run there at a high frequency.

For the whole Sheppard LRT to turn low-subsidy or profitable, it needs a very substantial local density growth between Don Mills and McCowan. This is what the official plan calls for, but in reality it may or may not happen (those locations are OK, but not exceptional, compared to many places elsewhere in the city).
 
Rainforest said:
I am pretty sure that it is the absolute loss, not vs bus service.
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Nope. Not initially at least. IIRC it was the 2003 operating budget which indicated that a large chunk of that years fare increase was dedicated toward additional costs that Sheppard Subway added.

Ridership is up since then. I imagine it is break-even with the bus system today (total dollars, obviously less per rider); but when we come up on the 30 year mark it will have tens of millions of per year of extra maintenance that doesn't exist today.
 
Its time to go out and buy a few boxes of crying towels.

Way things are going behind the scenes, the report will becoming out in favour of LRT, but unknown where it will start at this time.

Depending on where the LRT starts, this LRT line should be up and running no later than 2017, if not 2016.

Once the official word is known, crying towels to be handed to the Ford's, the car drivers, various BIA's and the subway supports/pushers.

I prefer to see the tunnel section go to VP with LRT starting on the surface there, if the existing line is not converted to LRT so it can go west of Yonge.

By going to VP, you then can take the subway line east in 50 years and still have LRT running well construction is underway for it.

Once the report is approved by council, then it will be up to Metrolinx to approved the plan and make the recommendation to Queen Park.

Once Queen Park approves the plan or change it, which will be done is short order, then Metrolinx has to get the city signature on the agreement/contract and see where the line will fit in its funding plan.

Since this was the first line to see funding, some quick shuffling of funding will take to get the shovels in the ground this year as plan.

As for bus break-even point, there is no bus route in TTC system that has a break-even point. The last numbers I saw from TTC for the highest cost ratio was just over 70% and can't tell you which route. These are weekdays numbers only and have never seen any weekend numbers for any route to date.

The current Sheppard line is a money looser to a tune of over $5-$10m yearly, depending who you are talking to in TTC. If buses were to replace the subway which TTC doesn't have at this time, TTC would be loosing $2-$3m a year in running this service. TTC would have an extra $3-$7m to invest in the system as a whole yearly, than a part.

2 numbers that need to be looked at and that is: turn over of seat per trip and cost per km per rider. They tell a lot about a route out side cost ratio.
 
Pushing the subway to VP and having LRT east of that seems reasonable enough. The area around Consumers is starting to get built up (with potential for quite a bit more), and Ford could save face about bringing the subway to Scarborough. If, twenty years from now, Sheppard through Scarborough actually gets urbanized (Agincourt Mall, I'm looking at you) we can start to talk about extending the tunnel as warranted
 
whatever said:
Pushing the subway to VP and having LRT east of that seems reasonable enough. The area around Consumers is starting to get built up (with potential for quite a bit more), and Ford could save face about bringing the subway to Scarborough. If, twenty years from now, Sheppard through Scarborough actually gets urbanized (Agincourt Mall, I'm looking at you) we can start to talk about extending the tunnel as warranted
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Building LRT at all on Sheppard is a total waste of money. Toronto is growing very rapidly and building a light rail line which will be over capacity on opening day, and debating 10-20 years from now whether we should rip it up and replace it with subways is a waste of money. Even with the existing population I figure that the Sheppard LRT might have the capacity to carry 1% of the GTA's population and 2% of Toronto's in each of morning and afternoon rush hour, so Transit City light rail will have an absolutely trivial effect on congestion. If we cannot afford subways, then build less expensive bus rapid transit and build it on Eglinton, Lawrence, York Mills, Sheppard, Finch and Steeles. It is much easier to later rip up cheap bus rapid transit than expensive light rail to replace it with subway.
 
Don Mills to VP is an awful short distance to fire up a TBM. Consider the DVP crossing: http://maps.google.com/?ll=43.775827,-79.338348&spn=0.005756,0.010761&t=h&z=17
An option would be to build a 3rd road bridge N of the current 2 and shift Sheppard W to that Bridge. Shepperd E would move to the middle bridge and the south bridge would be for an at-grade LRT. Going east the LRT would be:
- South side platform at subway station
- Underground, cut&cover to portal W of DVP on the south side of road
- Over DVP on south bridge
- Stay on south side of the road till W of VP
- Enter cut&cover portal emerging in-median E of VP

Thoughts?
 
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