Toronto Eglinton Line 5 Crosstown West Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

[fanoftoronto]

Where are your sources that my numbers are wrong? At least I have numbers to back up my claims.

Its about not building lines that are incredibly silly in design right off the get go. Most people unfamiliar with the line look at it and start banging their heads on the desk.

North American Agencies CONSISTENTLY underpredict ridership numbers. The King Streetcar Pilot brought in more new riders than predicted. The various new GO services that were launched in the early to mid 2010s such as the Niagara Excursion train overperformed. The Canada Line brought in more riders than their numbers predicted. iON flew past their ridership projections, and so did the Confederation Line in Ottawa. Not trusting the agency's ridership numbers should be the status quo at this point.

Only one thing I'm going to respond back. You're bringing the numbers, you need to bring the sources for the numbers. I don't have to prove your numbers are wrong when it's literally pulled out of thin air.

Marco Chitti recently posted an image to twitter that compared all the costs of guideways and tunnels. Unfortunately its in euros and likely assumes European construction costs which are much lower than here, but we can use it as a general guide:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1496177737228337159

.

Now originally I wanted to go in depth into every cost and try to figure out how much an elevated station would cost with left over money, but that's a virtually impossible task since we have to make assumptions about different construction costs, inflation, currency conversion, small details in projects like underpinning, bridges, utility relocations, which would require so many assumptions that the numbers become meaningless. However I will give the following conjectures to chew on. At 14-35M Euro per km for a twin bore, assuming the highest number that's 47.25M/km that it costs to tunnel. At station costs of 200M per station, that means that 1 station costs the same as 4km of tunnels. As such, when you are building a subway at 1 station per km, 4/5ths of the cost is dedicated to just the station. Immediately, any decrease in cost of the station means a lot of savings in the long term. If we assume that a 50m long station costs 5/9th as much as a 90m station (probably doesn't, but its the safest guess I have), that leaves us with 160M/km instead of 250M/km. The Eglinton Line's tunnel segment is 11km long, so over 11km you save $990M on shorter stations, which is enough to pay for 50km worth of guideway, if we look at the 14M euro/km option. Now I also suggested building 6 elevated stations (I am excluding Leslie since that could be built at grade on the south side of Eglinton), and at 5.4km of elevated guideway, we have it cost 105.1M. That leaves us with around $885M left over for the stations. With 6 elevated stations, that leaves us with 147M per station in our budget - which is certainly doable. While I cannot comment on how much cheaper elevated stations are, this calculation gives us with an estimation that allows room for elevated stations that are almost as expensive as 20m deep stations.

If you want to argue some of the assumptions I made, go ahead. However keep in mind that these smaller station calculations completely ignores Kennedy and Science Center. With the exception of how much reduction we can have in the cost of stations, I have made mostly "worst case scenerio" guesses - since we're moving to Light Metro technology, we could for instance run a 3rd rail light metro train like the Canada Line which will permit us to use smaller tunnels which will save money. Realistically though, not only do you have to show that the savings do not permit an elevated section being built, but that its SIGNIFICANTLY MORE EXPENSIVE to go the light metro route. I'd be willing to argue that an elevated eastern section of Eglinton could be 1.5x as valuable as the LRT and would accept a project costing as much.

Here are your incorrect assumptions and incorrect sources.

• Elevated viaduct cost of 14 million Euro per km when at-grade LRT costs $100 million per km? More like $150-200 million per km for elevated viaduct. A random Twitter page with a fancy picture and European numbers is not an actual source for transit construction cost in Toronto.
• Twin bore tunnel costs 14-35 million Euro - Taken from the same incorrect source that said the elevated guideway is 14 million Euros. Just boring the tunnels themselves probably takes $100 million per km.
• You assumed a 50m long station would cost 5/9th the cost of a 90m long station. Where is your source?
• Ignoring the fact that the above issues makes the $990 million total savings and $885 million remaining for stations just plain false. You stated $147 million per elevated station is certainly doable. Where is your source for that?

As with @DirectionNorth I'm not gonna argue this any further. Let's just agree to disagree and call it a day.

 

[ARG1]

As with @DirectionNorth I'm not gonna argue this any further. Let's just agree to disagree and call it a day.

Sure since you're intent on every point I keep bringing up, such as how the 100 million for the Finch West LRT doesn't just include the cost of the tracks and the stations. Its convenient to ignore points brought up by who you're arguing against because its convenient

 

[fanoftoronto]

I'll leave it at this. The planning behind TC was thin, and in the space of transit the word "prove" should not be used. This isn't maths, things cannot be proved - we need to rely on heuristics and the like. Estimates are only as good as the estimator and there is plenty of reason to be sceptical here given the projections as we've seen allow a rail route which (is supposed to be) way better to only pull in a few times more riders than a mixed traffic bus before having cap issues - that should raise alarm bells based on other transit line openings we've seen.

There is always assumptions and maths when it comes to transit planning. Estimates are indeed only as good as the estimator. And it also is only good as the information available to the estimator. Let's look at the information available.

• Authors of the Environmental Assessment and ridership calculations for the Crosstown:
  • Have access to exact ridership data directly from TTC/Presto for every bus route and every bus stop
  • Have access to City development applications to foresee density increases happening around the area
  • Have direct feedback from community members by way of Open Houses or surveys etc.
  • Probably has prior experience performing such estimations for other city projects
• Folks on this forum:
  • No access to ridership data.
  • Limited access to development data
  • No idea if prior knowledge of performing such estimations.

I think there's a winner above.

Sure since you're intent on every point I keep bringing up, such as how the 100 million for the Finch West LRT doesn't just include the cost of the tracks and the stations. Its convenient to ignore points brought up by who you're arguing against because its convenient

I see you also conveniently ignored my post that highlighted your bad sources and incorrect assumptions, and chose not to provide any answers for that.

Let me copy paste it from my post again for your convenience.

• Elevated viaduct cost of 14 million Euro per km when at-grade LRT costs $100 million per km? More like $150-200 million per km for elevated viaduct. A random Twitter page with a fancy picture and European numbers is not an actual source for transit construction cost in Toronto.
• Twin bore tunnel costs 14-35 million Euro - Taken from the same incorrect source that said the elevated guideway is 14 million Euros. Just boring the tunnels themselves probably takes $100 million per km.
• You assumed a 50m long station would cost 5/9th the cost of a 90m long station. Where is your source?
• Ignoring the fact that the above issues makes the $990 million total savings and $885 million remaining for stations just plain false. You stated $147 million per elevated station is certainly doable. Where is your source for that?

Also, for the at-grade LRT cost, I provided my math which again you conveniently ignored yesterday when you replied back to me. I stated the per km was $109 million, and removing the cost of the stops from this it comes out to $95 million per km.

But, for argument sake, I will take your savings of $990 million as the cost saved. The 14 million Euro per km of elevated is simply non-sensical. Cost of building an on-road LRT system is itself $80 to 120 million per km in Toronto. Why go to Europe to get prices, when we can use the Finch West LRT, which is 95% at-grade is slated to cost $1.2 billion giving it a per km cost of $109 million, and removing the station costs we get $95 million per km. Elevating the eastern portion is going to be far higher than this $95 million per km price tag, potentially $200 million per km. Let's assume it costs the same $95 million amount to upgrade the line from at-grade to grade separated. This gives us a 5.4 km elevated guideway portion cost of $513 million. You've already used up more than half of your saved money with only $480 million to build 6 elevated stations and all required extra land acquisition to house these 50m long elevated stations in prime Toronto real estate. $80 million per station wouldn't even account for the land acquisition let alone building the stations and all required station entrances.

Again, I'm gonna state that we're going nowhere in this conversation, so let's agree to disagree.

 

[fanoftoronto]

Here are a few snips from the presentation last evening:

Martin Grove Station:

Kipling Station:

Islington Station:

Royal York Station:

Perfect spaces to put some Transit Oriented Communities above the station entrance buildings, but we all know it's not going to happen.

Launch shaft with Rexy and Renny installed and ready to tunnel!

 

[Towered]

I would have rather seen the awful townhomes on the east side of Kipling expropriated and demolished...

I do like that there's no surface parking at these stations though.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Looks reasonable. You can really see efforts to keep the scale of the stations down to control costs.

I do think a tunnel under the intersections to permit direct transfers to n-s bus routes is probably appropriate and worth the additional cost through. The added travel times and safety risks of forcing passengers to make two pedestrian crossings to enter the station is too great.

 

[Rainforest]

I would have rather seen the awful townhomes on the east side of Kipling expropriated and demolished...

Uhm, let's kick the residents out of their houses, just because those houses do not look pretty for you.

 

[fanoftoronto]

I do find it weird that the Kipling Station slides has notes stating that they are going to preserve the old growth trees in the north-west side of the station by diverting Eglinton South in that area and building the station where the current westbound lanes are. But the actual pictorial for Kipling Station looks like it fully is built in the woodlot with very minimal movement of Eglinton to the south to accomodate.

The hybrid model that was proposed and selected for Kipling Station:

The actual station design itself:

Here is a Google Maps look at the location now with an approximation of where the station entrance boxes are going. Was the promise to not touch the woodlot, and the captioning even supports this, but Eglinton is only being moved south by 3 metres, definitely not enough to accomodate the station box:

Seems a little disingenuous to promise and state that you're not going to touch the woodlot, but then put the station and emergency exit locations right in the woodlot. For reference, here a streetview image of the location showing how close to the road some of these trees are located:

 

[Towered]

Uhm, let's kick the residents out of their houses, just because those houses do not look pretty for you.

It goes far beyond them just being an eyesore (which they are). They're a totally inappropriate built-form for the location.

 

[W. K. Lis]

There is a natural gas pipeline under the south side of Eglinton Avenue West in Etobicoke. That is why they do not want to use the south side of Eglinton for station entrances.

 

[Undead]

I think you're missing the point Rainforest was making about property rights and due process.

 

[W. K. Lis]

I think you're missing the point Rainforest was making about property rights and due process.

That's why Mayor Rob Ford sold off many plots of land along Eglinton Avenue West during his tenure. One reason is that no surface light rail for Doug Ford's fiefdom.

 

[DirectionNorth]

That's why Mayor Rob Ford sold off many plots of land along Eglinton Avenue West during his tenure. One reason is that no surface light rail for Doug Ford's fiefdom.

This response makes no sense whatsoever.

It goes far beyond them just being an eyesore (which they are). They're a totally inappropriate built-form for the location.

You can't just expropriate property because it's "inappropriate built-form". You can support a developer's redevelopment, or you can support a proposal that will use the housing for public purposes, but expropriating property to (most likely) give to a developer to build condos, kicking out low-income residents in the process, is (should be) totally unacceptable.

 

[dullturtle06]

Does anyone know why there are no bus terminals at these stations. Seems like it would be a heavy transfer point and would be more beneficial to have a designated space for bus to lrt movement.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Does anyone know why there are no bus terminals at these stations. Seems like it would be a heavy transfer point and would be more beneficial to have a designated space for bus to lrt movement.

Most of the stations along Eglinton (including the section opening in October) will have no bus terminals. Just surface bus stops to transfer since the bus routes do not terminate at the stations. Also cheaper not building Taj Mahal stations. Though, I'm sure the suburban councillors would want to have such monuments in their wards.