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Finch West Line 6 LRT

There are discussions about where to put a casino in the GTA. Here in Toronto, the 2 contenders most mentioned are Ontario Place and Woodbine Race Track.

There is a point in reports for the Etobicoke-Finch West LRT mentioned several times that:

In the future, the Etobicoke-Finch West corridor could be extended farther west to Mississauga, or south to the Woodbine racetrack or Pearson Airport areas to provide important regional connections.
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Currently, the plans call for the west terminal to be at the North Campus of Humber College. If a decision is made to have Woodbine Racetrack with a casino, then another reason to implement the Finch West LRT, but maybe with the west terminal at Woodbine instead of Humber College (with Humber College becoming an inline stop).

The only problem is that Woodbine is in Doug Ford's ward.
 
I am not sure that people who have money and time to spend at the casino, will travel there by LRT. A cab fare is probably a small change compared to the money they are going to spend gambling.
 
Well, for the first few visits. Then, once they're hooked, they'll be digging for tokens under the sofa cushions and saving their toonies for the slots.
 
CDL.TO said:
Employees? Or a cheap ride home after losing all your money?
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Second is a good one :) Perhaps the casino should partner with TTC, and sponsor a daily pass for anyone who has lost $1000 or more gambling :)

Regarding employees: yes they could use the LRT, but I doubt that the casino would have more than a few dozens employees working on any given day. To my understanding, this is not a labor-intensive business; although I've never been inside and hence could be wrong.
 
Rainforest said:
Second is a good one :) Perhaps the casino should partner with TTC, and sponsor a daily pass for anyone who has lost $1000 or more gambling :)

Regarding employees: yes they could use the LRT, but I doubt that the casino would have more than a few dozens employees working on any given day. To my understanding, this is not a labor-intensive business; although I've never been inside and hence could be wrong.
Click to expand...

If it's a decent sized casino, I would say 75-100 at any given point. Whenever I go to the one in Hull, there are employees everywhere.

Just think, 30 or so gaming tables = 30 employees. Not to mention bartenders, drink servers, cooks, cleaners, security (big at casinos), etc etc. At a busy period you can probably hit around 150 employees.
 
nfitz said:
The subway will open in 2015, Finch West wasn't supposed to start construction until 2015, and wouldn't open until 2019. So they'd have to run the buses for at least 4 year. The original terminal design would have dated from the earlier Metrolinx proposal to have the LRT open in 2015, but that wasn't the plan that Metrolinx/Council approved in 2010.
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I do not know how much money is involved, but it seems like a waste to build a bus terminal that will be in use for 5 years. It makes much more sense to build Finch West before Sheppard so the Finch LRT would open at about the same time as the Spadina extension. You may have to build the very eastern portion of Sheppard to provide a connection between the SRT and the Conlins yard. Maybe they were hoping to have Sheppard fully open for when the lengthy shutdown of the SRT occurs. (I wondered if some type of special integrated fair GO/TTC train from Agincourt to Kennedy - could be built to help with this volume).

Another option is to build it all now. If the City would self-fund the Finch West project now (say a cost of $1B), and the Province pays for it 5 years later, would the Province pay the $1B or an inflated amount (i.e. $1.2B). I would expect the latter is more fair. This would almost mean there is next to no additional cost of bringing the project forward, just the City has to take on some temporary debt - which would be repaid by the Province along with interest about 5 years in the future. The only downside of this is that the Province will be viewed as not providing anything for transit in the years 2015 to 2020, since everything will already have been built.
 
BurlOak said:
I do not know how much money is involved, but it seems like a waste to build a bus terminal that will be in use for 5 years.
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The bus terminal will still be needed once the LRT is open. It is just that it won't need to be quite as big.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
smallspy said:
The bus terminal will still be needed once the LRT is open. It is just that it won't need to be quite as big.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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There is still the now unused north bus terminal at Wilson station. It went out of use when the Downsview extension was opened in March 31, 1996. The 2-level south bus terminal at Wilson station is the only one currently used.
 
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Plans for a Bloor-Danforth extension to the Scarborough City Centre and Sheppard have to undergo an environment assessment update, planning, designing, agreement, and only then the actual constructing.

In the meantime, constructing of the Finch West LRT and the Sheppard East LRT can begin now! Especially with the Finch West LRT. It would connect with the Spadina subway extension, opening if not at the same time, maybe soon after the Spadina extension opens in 2016.

Time to look at all the timelines, and adjust them.
 
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The province is trying to delay spending as much as possible until they can get their spending in order.. Majority of funding for the FWLRT will come after 2017, which is coincidentally when the Liberals plan to post a balanced budget.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
In other words, theres a huge chance this thing won't be built. There is at least one election that this will have to survive.
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Exactly... Pathetic... no point in announcements until something gets in the ground.. I feel bad for people who moved along sheppard or finch based on these projects which may likely disappear. Just finish Eglinton to the airport so we can have one good lrt example... thats all i ask.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Plans for a Bloor-Danforth extension to the Scarborough City Centre and Sheppard have to undergo an environment assessment update, planning, designing, agreement, and only then the actual constructing.

In the meantime, constructing of the Finch West LRT and the Sheppard East LRT can begin now! Especially with the Finch West LRT. It would connect with the Spadina subway extension, opening if not at the same time, maybe soon after the Spadina extension opens in 2016.
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You can't go from a completed EA to construction in the blink of an eye. As I understand from my engineer friends, EAs are typically only done with a really preliminary design level completed, commonly only 5%, sometimes up to 25%-30% if they're really feeling adventurous.

While we in the peanut gallery are most interested in the 0%-5% part of a design process (where does the line go? where are the stations? will it fit between these traffic lanes?), the 5%-100% part (how thick is the concrete layer under the tracks at the crest of the hill? how are the transformers arranged in mechanical room 15A?) is a bit boring but still kind of important. For projects of that size, detailed design periods are measured in months and years, not days and weeks.

I don't know if anyone here knows how far along Finch West's design is... I certainly can't recall ever seeing that asked in the media, but it might be buried in a Metrolinx report somewhere, and some people here know people who know things and may be able to enlighten us ;). My uninformed suspicion is that even if the money is there and they go flat out there's absolutely no way it could open in 2016. Sheppard might be different because IIRC it was mid-design when Ford was elected.
 
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My understanding is that it is at the 5% stage, like the sheppard LRT. They are both supposed to enter the more detailed design phase in 2015, like how the SRT replacement LRT was entering the more detailed design phase before it got cancelled. (rezoning applications for the stations were filed literal days before cancellation)
 
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