Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

If we can get through this first generation of Metrolinx projects without cancellations, higher government spending on transit will become normalized and the construction industry will become strengthened and more influential. There will probably be a lot more big transit projects in the future, including the DRL.
 
The rest of Ontario will not tolerate yet more money going into the endless pit of Toronto transit.

This maybe a hard one for anyone who thinks you get a nose bleed when you go north of Eglinton but.............Toronto only has one-sixth of the provinces population and even the GTA is still less than half. Ontarians aren't going to accept Toronto getting blank cheques for it's infrastructure when Queen's Park only funds one-third the costs of transit infrastructure outside of the GTA.

Torontonians have made it quite clear that paying for their own transit is an outrage and when it's mentioned the citizens and local politicians bring up cancelled gas plants or E-Health as wastes of money that should have been spent on transit, as if somehow that didn't effect everyone else in the province as well. You can pretty much right off the feds as they can rightfully say we offered you $300 million for Sheppard and you still haven't used it so why are you bugging us for more.

Also when the feds, regardless of who is in power, give money for infrastructure they want to see the political dividends and photo ops to use in the next campaign and that isn't possible in Toronto due to poor transit planning, political inertia, bureaucracy, and a complete lack of leadership.
 
ssiguy2 said:
The rest of Ontario will not tolerate yet more money going into the endless pit of Toronto transit.

This maybe a hard one for anyone who thinks you get a nose bleed when you go north of Eglinton but.............Toronto only has one-sixth of the provinces population and even the GTA is still less than half. Ontarians aren't going to accept Toronto getting blank cheques for it's infrastructure when Queen's Park only funds one-third the costs of transit infrastructure outside of the GTA. \
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And Toronto will no longer tolerate being Ontario's money tree.

Toronto is drained of $11 Billion in taxes annually that are never reinvested in the city. So perhaps Toronto should abandon Ontario and take our $ Billions with us. With the savings we'd be able to save enough money to build a DRL and whatever else we want in no time. :rolleyes:. Good luck fixing that massive hole in your budget, Ontario. It's gonna suck losing that massive annual subsidy nobody ever shows appreciation for.


Toronto extends far beyond north of Eglinton by the way. I only suffer from chronic nosebleeds north of Steeles :eek:
 
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k10ery said:
Yes, but that was back in the days when people understood a subway could run in the open air, and still be a "subway". Nowadays, we tunnel under suburban waste grounds, hydro corridors, rail corridors, you name it. To do otherwise would be second class transit!

No benefit to routing through Greenwood Yard.
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What do you mean? As far as I recall, that alignment was all underground south of O'Connor except perhaps for a brief daylighting as it passed the edge of the yard - and even then I'm not sure it popped above ground.
 
diminutive said:
It's hard to be specific without concrete numbers but as a general rule we should always try to minimize costs as much as possible without compromising the central goal of the project.

Just because the DRL is seen to be very important doesn't mean it's a good idea to spend ~400m/km if we could get away with ~300m/km.

There's obviously a sentiment out there which thinks 'if we're spending 400m/km to build subways into nowheresville/York Region, the far busier downtown ought to deserve as much.' It's understandable but not necessarily very constructive.
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Minimizing cost within the same performance envelop is one thing; minimizing cost and reducing performance envelop is another.

I'd also add that, quite directly, opting for more expensive construction methods will directly reduce potential ridership since what you can afford will be proportionately shorter. Longer routs obviously attract more riders. If the DRL never goes past the Dundas West- Eglinton route, which is even itself unlikely, there's no way it'll ever significantly exceed Canada Line-esque capacities.
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Except that if you take this view, you can easily justify building the original Yonge line as a Canada line-esque project and you would never have gotten to the point where you have the option of extend it past Eglinton and being able to handle the load we have today. Building the DRL to HRT specs should be a given.

Yes, it is a choice. I'm as in favour of a DRL as anyone else here, but it's flat out wrong to think that it's somehow 'neccesary' or that, someday, a political leader will come to his or her senses and see that the DRL is the keystone to Toronto transit. It's not.

I could list a half a dozen transit lines in half a dozen cities which have FAR more severe overcrowding than anything Yonge could ever have, and for far longer portions of the day. When I lived in London I'd routinely have to wait 4-5 trains to go from Mile End to St. Pauls. Even in Toronto we can all think of streets which are constantly overcapacity.

Yonge will not get to a point where politicians somehow have no choice but to build the DRL. Peak-hour congestion is just an inevitable fact of life. We should do what we can to ameliorate it but it's simply not cost efficient to build our entire transit system around AM peak. All that will do is make sure everything's under-utilized ~95% of the week!
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That's like the perfect justification for never doing anything because nothing is ever utilized above 95% everyday. And interesting that you mentioned London (not forgetting that we routinely have to wait the same for the YUS already) - what's the performance of alternate lines in that system, vis-a-vis the transit options in Toronto?

AoD
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
And Toronto will no longer tolerate being Ontario's money tree.

Toronto is drained of $11 Billion in taxes annually that are never reinvested in the city. So perhaps Toronto should abandon Ontario and take our $ Billions with us. With the savings we'd be able to save enough money to build a DRL and whatever else we want in no time. :rolleyes:. Good luck fixing that massive hole in your budget, Ontario. It's gonna suck losing that massive annual subsidy nobody ever shows appreciation for.


Toronto extends far beyond north of Eglinton by the way. I only suffer from chronic nosebleeds north of Steeles :eek:
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The same Toronto that voted for Rob Ford is going to succeed from the province? The same apathetic, check-if-there's-a-pulse city I know and love? Next you'll be threatening that the city will take to the streets to demand transit and just funding! Yeah, not likely to happen either.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
And Toronto will no longer tolerate being Ontario's money tree.

Toronto is drained of $11 Billion in taxes annually that are never reinvested in the city. So perhaps Toronto should abandon Ontario and take our $ Billions with us. With the savings we'd be able to save enough money to build a DRL and whatever else we want in no time. :rolleyes:. Good luck fixing that massive hole in your budget, Ontario. It's gonna suck losing that massive annual subsidy nobody ever shows appreciation for.


Toronto extends far beyond north of Eglinton by the way. I only suffer from chronic nosebleeds north of Steeles :eek:
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How would Toronto becoming a province change the cities overall finances? You know most of the collection and redistribution occurs at the federal level right? And that Toronto would be a very strong "Have" while much of the old Ontario would be a strong "Have Not".

Also, Toronto doesn't get to call itself a province. It requires the support of existing provinces to do that. You're not going to win votes from Quebec and the East Coast unless you promise to maintain if not increase transfer payments in their direction.

At best we break-even financially and 15 years with the politicians/ontario staff performing the split (See NWT split). At worst, we lost 15 years performing the split and significantly increase the amount of outgoing payments.


For this to work, Toronto needs to become a country independent of Canada. Of course, that immediately loses all treaties and negotiated memberships. TSX and the banks, for example, would need to relocate back to Canada to continue to operate. The only winner in this scenario is Calgary and Montreal.
 
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Tewder said:
The same Toronto that voted for Rob Ford is going to succeed from the province? The same apathetic, check-if-there's-a-pulse city I know and love? Next you'll be threatening that the city will take to the streets to demand transit and just funding! Yeah, not likely to happen either.
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Haha.



It's hurts so bad.
 
Tewder said:
The same Toronto that voted for Rob Ford is going to succeed from the province? The same apathetic, check-if-there's-a-pulse city I know and love? Next you'll be threatening that the city will take to the streets to demand transit and just funding! Yeah, not likely to happen either.
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Ain't it funny?
 
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