OneCity Plan

[rbt]

Relying on the province and Feds to pay for 2/3 of it is unrealistic

Accomplishing 1/3rd of the plan would still be quite useful.

That said, if the city came to the table with 1/3rd of the funds for Yonge to Steeles + DRL package; the feds, province, and probably York Region would be on board after some negoatiations delay similar to Spadina.

 

[datamouse]

Meanwhile The Star's article manages to peddle a lie against Sheppard.

The SRT already attracts more riders than were projected for the Sheppard East subway extension Ford failed to sell to council earlier this year.

 

[nfitz]

Meanwhile The Star's article manages to peddle a lie against Sheppard.

Sounds accurate to me. The SRT ridership is almost as high as the Sheppard subway. And the extension of the Sheppard subway east of Victoria Park is estimated to carry less users than the Sheppard Subway current carries.

 

[gweed123]

Accomplishing 1/3rd of the plan would still be quite useful.

That said, if the city came to the table with 1/3rd of the funds for Yonge to Steeles + DRL package, both the feds, province, probably York Region would be on board (after some delay similar to Spadina).

Heck, even if all we got "confirmed" right now was the B-D extension to Sheppard, the DRL, and the North Yonge extension, I'd be a happy camper.

Metrolinx is still going forward with electrification regardless of what the TTC does or doesn't do, which is definitely a plus.

Most of the other projects there are supplementary network lines serving specific areas (with the exception of Eglinton West). Next to none of the remaining projects have much of a regional implication.

 

[datamouse]

At least according to the EA for the SRT the current peak is only 3800 which is lower than projections for Sheppard. Future ridership projections does put the SRT numbers ahead of that for Sheppard though.

 

[gweed123]

Sounds accurate to me. The SRT ridership is almost as high as the Sheppard subway. And the extension of the Sheppard subway east of Victoria Park is estimated to carry less users than the Sheppard Subway current carries.

To be fair, it's pretty hard for any extension to carry MORE passengers than the initial part of the line, unless there's a heck of a lot of people only getting on just to get off again at Don Mills.

The ridership on the B-D extension to Sheppard is going to be lower than what sections further down the line carry, but that doesn't mean it isn't still worthwhile. Sheppard to Victoria Park makes sense, depending on the price. It's still pretty decent ridership numbers. It's only east of Vic Park that it drops off a cliff.

Although I can see a B-D extension to Sheppard definitely creating a bigger push to extend the Sheppard line to McCowan eventually. That B-D extension is also going to have some interesting effects on the ridership patterns of the SELRT. Without the B-D extension, it's largely a one-way flow to Don Mills, but with it, areas west of McCowan are going to be flowing both ways, dropping the pphpd, but possibly increasing the total ridership. I would even venture to say that at some locations it may be hard to even identify what direction "counter-flow" actually is, because I'd imagine it would be pretty even.

 

[nfitz]

At least according to the EA for the SRT the current peak is only 3800 which is lower than projections for Sheppard.

It's only marginally lower than the west end of the Sheppard extension, which was only 4,200 westbound at Consumers in the AM peak in 2031. I haven't got the numbers at SRT itself, but it's not hard to imagine that it's lower than 3,800 there! It seems perfectly true to me that they are forecasting less riders on parts of the the subway extension Ford proposed, than currently exists on parts of the SRT.

 

[rbt]

It's only marginally lower than the west end of the Sheppard extension, which was only 4,200 westbound at Consumers in the AM peak in 2031. I haven't got the numbers at SRT itself, but it's not hard to imagine that it's lower than 3,800 there! It seems perfectly true to me that they are forecasting less riders on parts of the the subway extension Ford proposed, than currently exists on parts of the SRT.

SRT is overloaded. There is more demand on that route than exists capacity.

You can add 20% to the SRT numbers in pent up demand that would materialize within a couple of weeks of capacity being added to the SRT.

IMO, GO Milton has the same problem.

 

[nfitz]

SRT is overloaded. There is more demand on that route than exists capacity.

You can add 20% to the SRT numbers in pent up demand that would materialize within a couple of weeks of capacity being added to the SRT.

I totally agree. The discussion though is whether Ford's cancelled Sheppard East extension would carry more passengers than the SRT currently does. Not why the SRT peak ridership is artificially constrained.

There's other routes in the city that suffer from similar pent-up demand. The Yonge subway for one (which is why there will never be enough capacity for a Richmond Hill extension, no matter how many more people they squeeze on a train). I think the Spadina streetcar as well (I'm quite interested to see what the new double-length streetcars do to the ridership numbers). And likely King and Queen as well, which I think would carry more people if they had more capacity and were more frequent. Of course it doesn't just apply to transit routes - the DVP has a huge pent-up demand, and would probably be just as congested at peak with 6 lanes instead of 3 - though at least it would function the rest of the day.

 

[k10ery]

Why did this plan die so fast and so completely? It was the msot intelligent plan this town has seen in a long while, I thought.

A couple of problems:

1. Proposing a subway for the SRT. Because Stintz herself was pushing the SLRT plan back in the spring, she looked foolish to be changing it now.
2. CVA uplift financing. What the heck is that?

There's probably a lot of other reasons too. What can transit planners learn from this failure for next time?

 

[gweed123]

IMO, GO Milton has the same problem.

I think GO in general suffers that problem. They have the constraints of both the number of trains that they can run, and the number of parking stalls available. Increase either of those, and you almost immediately see ridership jump to fill the gap. Just look at the new lot they added at Appleby. You went from having 2 lots that were 99% full to 3 lots that were 95% full. I can almost guarantee that you'll see the same thing once the Oakville parkade is finished.

There's other routes in the city that suffer from similar pent-up demand. The Yonge subway for one (which is why there will never be enough capacity for a Richmond Hill extension, no matter how many more people they squeeze on a train).

Which is why the argument that the DRL won't attract "new riders" I think is complete bogus. Yes, it may not attract very many along the DRL route itself, but the number of routes that it will open up capacity on will see a huge influx of riders.

Just with the Yonge line itself, it'll take almost 17,000 people off of rush hour Yonge trains every hour. I can almost guarantee that within a month most of those spots will be filled again with new riders, once word spreads that the Yonge line is no longer a sardine can.

And then there's the streetcar routes you mentioned. There will be a similar effect, where people from beyond the DRL route will transfer at the DRL, opening up capacity for people further downstream.

 

[W. K. Lis]

I hope they're doing passenger counts on the University leg before, during, and after the construction on the Spadina right-of-way. Wonder how many people are transferring at St. George to get downtown now, than the number who used to transfer at Spadina to get down.

 

[BurlOak]

Why did this plan die so fast and so completely? It was the msot intelligent plan this town has seen in a long while, I thought.

A couple of problems:

1. Proposing a subway for the SRT. Because Stintz herself was pushing the SLRT plan back in the spring, she looked foolish to be changing it now.
2. CVA uplift financing. What the heck is that?

There's probably a lot of other reasons too. What can transit planners learn from this failure for next time?

1. To me it is more understandable that Ford wanted to kill Transit City. Stinz supporting SRT and changing here mind in mere months is the biggest flip-flop around.
2. Everyone realized it was a tax - just call it that.

 

[rbt]

1. To me it is more understandable that Ford wanted to kill Transit City. Stinz supporting SRT and changing here mind in mere months is the biggest flip-flop around.
2. Everyone realized it was a tax - just call it that.

Not sure it is a flip-flop. Ford's Sheppard debacle wasn't about the SRT in anyway.

That said, the big reason for not supporting Sheppard subway (extension to Vic Park is all Ford was offering) was money.

Stintz said "we can build all this" for 2% more money. It looks like council is generally saying NO to the 2%.

If anything, it proves that we as a city aren't willing to spend money on subways.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Our current anti-transit mayor would not be supporter nor a cheerleader for OneCity. We may have to wait until we get a pro-transit mayor to be a public transit cheerleader and only after the regime of our current anti-transit mayor has ended.