Instead of spending $7.4 billion to build a downtown relief line, Metrolinx should use the GO system to relieve congestion on the subway downtown, a new independent analysis says.
The relief line is part of Metrolinx’s Big Move transit plan and is broken into two phases. According to the report, an “initial phase†line from Pape-Danforth to St. Andrew stations will cost $3.2 billion. The full line will travel from Don Mills-Eglinton to Dundas West.
But the transit authority has not released any quantitative data about the likely benefits or incremental ridership, says the report’s author, Michael Schabas.
“They tell us what it will cost, but they don’t tell us what the benefits will be,†said Schabas, a partner at First Class Partnerships Limited, an international transit and rail consulting firm.
However, Metrolinx vice president of policy, planning and innovation Leslie Woo told the Star that the benefits case analysis (BCA) to which Schabas refers is merely preliminary, and it has just begun a new relief line study.
Schabas conducted his own analysis of the benefits compared to the cost, using TTC figures, for a report commissioned by Toronto-based nonpartisan research group the Neptis Foundation.
He found that the Pape-St. Andrew line would attract about 53,600 new riders, or an increase of 4 per cent. Overall, the line will not provide enough benefits to offset even half of its $7.4 billion cost, he says.
Instead, he suggests building a new pedestrian walkway between TTC’s Main Street station and GO’s Danforth station — which are just 250 metres apart — and offer integrated fares and shuttle trains to Union Station.
The scheme would cost $100 million, a fraction of the cost of a new line, and would take thousands of passengers out of the Bloor-Yonge station at rush hour, the report states.
Similar opportunities to transfer passengers to GO routes exist at Dundas West, Kipling and Kennedy stations, but Schabas says they may not relieve congestion as much.
After dropping passengers at Union Station in the morning, GO trains (other than the Lakeshore line) typically retire to the yard until the afternoon rush. Instead, these trains could go to Danforth to pick up passengers from the subway and make a final trip downtown, the report suggests.
Schabas estimates as many as 10 to 15 trains could do that trip to Union every morning. A train would stop at Danforth every five to 10 minutes, with a journey time of 10 minutes to Union, he says
