I wrote a letter to the Star questioning their enthusiasm for the Neptis review of the Big Move, specifically regarding the DRL but also Eglinton-Crosstown station spacing and the enthusiasm for ICTS.
They published it on December 30, 2013.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2013/12/30/transit_review_deeply_flawed.html
While your article is write to correct some of Neptis' mistakes, I don't think these corrections really challenge the fundamental premises and conclusions of the Neptis Report.
This proposed alternative has several other problems, such as relying on an at-capacity Union Station to take on this new “relief†service, the rather undesirable transfer through a long tunnel at Main Street, and the complete disregard for intermediate origins and destinations that a subway can serve, and the uselessness of such an alternative for much of east-end Toronto and East York. Schabas is dreaming when he claims that such an alternative would provide the necessary relief.
Your ultimate conclusion (Schabas is dreaming when he claims that [an enhanced GO shuttle] would provide the necessary relief) is wrong however. Projected capacity shortfalls on Yonge are not, in fact, very large; assuming a YSE, bout 1,000-2,000 peak hour riders. A GO shuttle service is capable of addressing that gap.
Granted, as you say, such a service wouldn't do much for the shoulder areas downtown. This gets into the larger question of what the DRL is for. Thusfar, it's mostly been sold as a relief (even see the name...) valve for the Yonge Subway. As the TTC report showed, the DRL isn't expected to do much for East York or Toronto either; most of its ridership is assumed to transfer from Bloor-Danforth. Without commenting on how the transit to these shoulder areas should be improved, Schabas is reasonably arguing that the DRL isn't very cost efficient at its intended goal (Yonge diversion).
There are other flaws to the Neptis review: Schabas advocates removing several stations on the Eglinton-Crosstown light rail line currently under construction, ignoring local needs along the corridor. He also advocates for the use of Bombardier’s ICTS technology; the very same technology that now needs to be replaced on the Scarborough RT corridor.
To your first point, a central argument made by Steve Munro and others in the context of the Scarborough subway is that no area "needs" or "deserves" any particular technology outside of what ridership justifies. Avenue and Eglinton doesn't "need" a station, and local ridership certainly doesn't justify one. These stations cost tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars and, in many cases, provide very little marginal benefit for transit users. Running a parallel bus on Eglinton would cost, at most, 3-5 million dollars per year, a fraction of the cost of constructing underused stations like Avenue Road. The bulk of ridership wouldn't even notice since their feeder buses could be diverted to nearby stations.
The issue of ICTS is neither here nor there. I agree it's a bit odd that the author specified ICTS (as opposed to a generic "medium capacity system," of which there are many qualified vendors), but the main point he was making isn't really impacted by it.
