Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

[Palma]

It's an orphan within the Toronto subway system. That's bad because it increases costs - parts, facilities, maintenance, and so on are a lot more expensive when you can't buy them en masse. Look at the bus system as an example. There are only two buses used - the Orion VII and the NovaBus LFS. There are minor variations within the fleet but the platforms are all one or the other, and each garage only handles a few different buses rather than an assortment of the fleet. Now imagine if the TTC bought 28 VanHool buses from Belgium, and built an entire garage just to service that 1% of the bus fleet. It would be way more expensive on a per-bus basis to service those, since they need unique parts, segregated facilities and unique knowledge from staff. This is also why every TTC subway car has been built by the same company (Hawker Siddeley became UTDC, which became Bombardier Transportation) for more than 50 years.



Only after the Eglinton subway is called the "Miller Express" and one of the stops is named after the shortest political campaign ever.

eglinton crosstown makes and should have been built before sheppard (the Lastman line) ever was

 

[Palma]

I agree. GO RER is all Richmond Hill needs. I don't buy their "subway or nothing approach"

give them nothing then

 

[BurlOak]

Video overview of the cut and cover process. I suppose this process would it be repeated one block at a time until complete.

This is best at stations, where construction will take a while. Along the route construction can occur much faster. In the old days, temporary decking was used while the tunnel structure was cast. In the 1950's, precast concrete, and prestressed concrete where developed. Strength of concrete, and rate of strength gain has also improved over the years. By the 1970's, the industry had developed enough that large scale projects could be done with this. Now, you can excavate, lay precast units, and backfill in one continuous operation with only a minimal, moving closure of the road. One caution is that if the terrain undulates a lot, then the subway depth varies to smooth out the grade - which means the depths can get larger.

 

[WislaHD]

I agree. GO RER is all Richmond Hill needs. I don't buy their "subway or nothing approach"

The issue is that they will never have GO-RER, not without a huge investment and re-alignment of the Richmond Hill GO line. Something we cannot justify because of competing projects, and the low ridership level presently (it barely has enough to support a semi-frequent bus route) and the low-ridership projections even if upgraded to RER. And ultimately, the goal should be to get York Region riders off of the Yonge Line, which GO-RER will not do.

We've discussed this in other threads before, but I think the idea of sending the DRL to Richmond Hill (in place of the RH-GO line) is very attractive instead (it wouldn't even need to be tunnled north of Finch). I wish such a scheme could be sold to North York and York Region.

 

[Hopkins123]

The issue is that they will never have GO-RER, not without a huge investment and re-alignment of the Richmond Hill GO line. Something we cannot justify because of competing projects, and the low ridership level presently (it barely has enough to support a semi-frequent bus route) and the low-ridership projections even if upgraded to RER. And ultimately, the goal should be to get York Region riders off of the Yonge Line, which GO-RER will not do.

We've discussed this in other threads before, but I think the idea of sending the DRL to Richmond Hill (in place of the RH-GO line) is very attractive instead (it wouldn't even need to be tunnled north of Finch). I wish such a scheme could be sold to North York and York Region.

Not ending the DRL at Warden/Highway 7 is very shortsighted.

RHC already has YUS and GO Transit. DRL to that point is redundant when there's so much more to the region that needs to be served by higher-order transit. This is what downtown Markham will look like in 10 years:

Does this not eventually warrant a subway more down the road?

 

[WislaHD]

Does this not eventually warrant a subway more down the road?

It warrants rapid transit, and it is getting it in the form of GO-RER. If you have familiarity with similar S-Bahn or RER systems in Europe, then you would see how GO-RER will be adequate.

What is short-sighted in my opinion is cramming more and more people into the Yonge Line and not taking advantage of existing transit corridors.

 

[BurlOak]

Not ending the DRL at Warden/Highway 7 is very shortsighted.

My guess is you would have to take the Highway 7 BRT (or future LRT) east to Leslie (the top of the DRL), or Yonge (subway) or Yonge (Richmond Hill RER), or west to Markham (Markham RER).
Unless you think there is a way of getting from Don Mills / Steeles to Warden / Hwy. 7 without much problem

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

My advice to you is to not fall for the Toronto Star exaggeration and misleading articles (yes, they can stretch it too sometimes).

By "they" you mean "handful" of residents being affected. DRL would have the same reaction from the affected residents. If anything, the city should stop caving when a mighty group of 5+ people call the Star to stop a project. It's getting out of hand and people have caught up to it, hence studying Carlaw instead of just pursuing Pape Avenue.

I'd tell them it's cut and cover... deal with it. Residents on 1 street can't be the reason that we collectively pay an extra $2B+ for a subway that can be significantly cheaper.

I'd gladly lose 100 votes if delivering the subway on time and at lower cost bags me hundreds of thousands of votes...Seriously, sometimes I wonder how people think at city hall

Exactly. If you want the subway, then stuff it and its get it done quickly. All of them. And can we move on.

 

[rbt]

Do we know how much more expensive boring is? I tried googling for an answer but came up blank, but maybe I wasn't searching for the right thing.

Boring is cheap. The entirety of Eglinton was under $700M for the tunnels (includes TBM purchase and extraction shafts). What isn't cheap are the deep vertical digs that come with a deep bored tunnel; stations and emergency exits (~2.5B for Eglinton; remainder being tracks, signals, trains). A shallow tunnel means much cheaper stations NOT a cheaper tunnel.

The interesting question is how expensive per foot is excavation for stations and how do we make those as shallow as possible. Stations on the surface, even fully protected from elements, are 20% of the cost of a Spadina extension station.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Not ending the DRL at Warden/Highway 7 is very shortsighted.

RHC already has YUS and GO Transit. DRL to that point is redundant when there's so much more to the region that needs to be served by higher-order transit. This is what downtown Markham will look like in 10 years:

Does this not eventually warrant a subway more down the road?

These people are getting all day train service. They'll be fine.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Not ending the DRL at Warden/Highway 7 is very shortsighted.

RHC already has YUS and GO Transit. DRL to that point is redundant when there's so much more to the region that needs to be served by higher-order transit. This is what downtown Markham will look like in 10 years:

Does this not eventually warrant a subway more down the road?

Sure, if Markham want to pay for their portion of it and them signing up translating into getting DRL long done sooner.

AoD

 

[Hopkins123]

My guess is you would have to take the Highway 7 BRT (or future LRT) east to Leslie (the top of the DRL), or Yonge (subway) or Yonge (Richmond Hill RER), or west to Markham (Markham RER).
Unless you think there is a way of getting from Don Mills / Steeles to Warden / Hwy. 7 without much problem

The DRL would follow the same general alignment of Viva Green with intermediate stops at: Van Horne/Don Mills, Finch/Seneca Hill, McNicoll/Gordon Baker, Steeles/Esna Park, Denison/Warden, 14th/Warden, Enterprise/Warden before ending at Town Centre Blvd and Highway 7 or thereabouts.

Much of this alignment (north of Finch) could be elevated through the industrial areas to save on costs.

Two subway lines and GO RER to Richmond Hill is overkill when such an urban growth area will soon exist at Warden.

 

[amnesiajune]

Two subway lines and GO RER to Richmond Hill is overkill when such an urban growth area will soon exist at Warden.

People aren't living in that area to go downtown. They're living there to be close to Highway 407. A subway line to there would be a white elephant.

If we're serious about public transit for that area, what's really needed is the 407 transitway, and not just with one stop every 10 km. Have a stop at every arterial road - 9th line, Markham, McCowan, Kennedy, Birchmount, Warden, Woodbine, Leslie, Bayview, Yonge, and so on - and it would get a lot of usage. There's this misconception that people drive in Toronto because it's convenient. In reality, they drive because public transit is planned at a municipal and often sub-municpal level (sub-municipal as in "most transit trips in Scarborough end in Scarborough, so we shouldn't prioritize connecting Scarborough to the rest of the city"), aside from the Go Train system that's really only good for people travelling from the 905 into the financial district. So if you live in one municipality and work in another, your choice is driving or a very long & very expensive transit trip.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Scarborough Subway Extension - geotechnical and general survey work
January 10, 2017 to December 2017
This week crews will continue preparatory geotechnical drilling and general survey activities, in various locations, for the future Scarborough subway extension of Line 2.

Here

So they're doing work to further the design of the SSE, but they haven't revealed their chosen alignment yet?

 

[Steve X]

Scarborough Subway Extension - geotechnical and general survey work
January 10, 2017 to December 2017
This week crews will continue preparatory geotechnical drilling and general survey activities, in various locations, for the future Scarborough subway extension of Line 2.

Here

So they're doing work to further the design of the SSE, but they haven't revealed their chosen alignment yet?

They want to be sure there isn't something very surprising underground when they start tunnelling. It could be consider prep work before the choosing an alignment. If they find something now, they could change the alignment before completing the EA.

It's not really consider construction work.