rbt
Senior Member
the cheap out to build the SRT in the first place is now coming back to haunt... to make the mistake again is absurd. it will only last another 30 years. For the cost of these 2 SRT's it's more than would have cost to originally make the SRT a subway to begin with that would still be good for another 75 years at least.
75 years? No part of the subway system will survive that long; not even the tunnels (see early shutdowns for the last 18 months to replace and realign the tunnel walls north of Eglinton). Various weekend shutdowns to replace large chunks of ceiling, etc.
That's like my grandfathers 200 year old axe which were passed down through the years. Both the handle and the head had been replaced several times; no part was older than 20 years but he still called it a 200 year old axe.
In that same vein, our downtown LRT system is about 121 years old today.
We spend about $600M/year today on subway maintenance ($6B per decade fixing the subway), a number which is expected to increase significantly as the more difficult to replace pieces begin breaking. That means we're fully rebuilding about 8km of subway per decade within the existing lines and are still falling behind on repairs. I say 8km because it costs a lot more to repair a running system than to build a new one, so $800M/km seemed appropriate (double).
Subway to SCC and Vaughan are both very poor first investments from an economic (job creation, new tax revenue collection, etc.) perspective. The condo boom will continue because there is no other choice for increasing density in the place where workers want to be.
The dirty secret about Madrid is despite having 3 to 4 times the subway system Toronto does, it only gets double the ridership. They're struggling to maintain brand new lines today and are in for a world of hurt in 30 years when the real maintenance bills appear.
I'm in favour of subways, but you need economic growth to maintain them as they do need to be fully rebuilt every 50 years much like other things (bridges, roadways, streetcar track, ...).
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