Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

[Rainforest]

If one project was cancelled, the funds would not be moved over to another, such as the DRL. That's not how it works.

Probably not; but it means that, say, the already committed Finch W LRT funding cannot be just transferred to DRL.

Either DRL should get its own funding. Or, the city can cancel Finch W LRT and return the funds to the province, and hope that it is eligible to get a similar amount for another project ... and might get nothing at all.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Probably not; but it means that, say, the already committed Finch W LRT funding cannot be just transferred to DRL.

Either DRL should get its own funding. Or, the city can cancel Finch W LRT and return the funds to the province, and hope that it is eligible to get a similar amount for another project ... and might get nothing at all.

The government can choose to fund the DRL, or not fund it. The choice has nothing to do with Finch West. You bring up the cost of 'trading' projects over and over and over and over and over but that's not how it works. There is no set amount of money available to spend on transit, no X dollars that gets divided up amongst Y projects.

What people on the forum are doing is saying that they'd rather take the money going to one project and spend it on another...'what we could have gotten' scenarios.

 

[Second_in_pie]

The government can choose to fund the DRL, or not fund it. The choice has nothing to do with Finch West. You bring up the cost of 'trading' projects over and over and over and over and over but that's not how it works. There is no set amount of money available to spend on transit, no X dollars that gets divided up amongst Y projects.

What people on the forum are doing is saying that they'd rather take the money going to one project and spend it on another...'what we could have gotten' scenarios.

It's true that like canceling an already-funded LRT line would not be like refunding your money to buy something else. However, there's no reason the City and the Province could not come to an internal agreement to cancel one line and then fund another one on the basis that they're trading funding in one line to the other. I believe you two are arguing semantics here.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

It's true that like canceling an already-funded LRT line would not be like refunding your money to buy something else. However, there's no reason the City and the Province could not come to an internal agreement to cancel one line and then fund another one on the basis that they're trading funding in one line to the other. I believe you two are arguing semantics here.

The myth that we need to forego this transit line to pay for that one is ridiculous and needs to be put to rest. That's not how it works. The DRL can be funded at any time should the government desire to do so. It could have been under construction right now if the city had asked for it a few years ago.

 

[nfitz]

Good point, but some more money would be needed. Sheppard LRT and the Finch East LRT is about 1.4 B, while Sheppard Subway to STC would be at least 2 B.

Or more ... the Sheppard LRT cost includes vehicles and a car house. The $2B would only be tunnel and stations; no vehicles and storage.

Actually, the Waterfront West LRT is simply to connect the end of the 509 with the Long Branch line. If I'm not mistaken, plans are for there to be no stops along the 2 1/2 kilometer portion that will be built.

Well it's a bit more than that. Also includes a rebuild on Lakeshore to bring that track up to TC standards, and a new connection from the Ex, along the abandoned railway track, just south of Fort York, onto Fort York Blvd, across Bathurst, Spadina, onto Bremner, and a new portal at the end of Bremner, to Bay, and the rebuild of the Union loop.

However, it's a lot of stand-alone projects that can be done incrementally. I wouldn't be surprised if the City just funds this themselves slowly over the next decade.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Or more ... the Sheppard LRT cost includes vehicles and a car house. The $2B would only be tunnel and stations; no vehicles and storage.

This needs to be corrected again? Subtract the contingency and Spadina costs about $247M/km including vehicles and storage, and after inflation.

 

[SimonP]

Downtown is not subway-rich, it's in subway poverty. Most cities Toronto's size have 5-10 subway lines converging downtown, sometimes more.

As much as we all support more transit, we shouldn't exaggerate things. If we look to Wikipedia's tables Toronto has the 34th longest subway system in the world. Toronto is the 48th largest city in the world. Toronto thus has slightly more kilometres of subway per person than average.

 

[drum118]

Actually, the Waterfront West LRT is simply to connect the end of the 509 with the Long Branch line. If I'm not mistaken, plans are for there to be no stops along the 2 1/2 kilometer portion that will be built.

If a DRL choses a route that would take it to King and Queen then up Roncesvales, an additional route connecting the Ex with Long Branch would be useless. Even if it is to follow a more eastern route, all it would take is a small section of tunnel or ROW for the Waterfront West LRT plan to be useless.

There will be stop along the Western line and one reason for been push to the Lake Shore. Having it on the Lake Shore helps to open up the public domain land along the waterfront as well service the new condo's at Humber.

It will provide a faster route to the City core.

With TTC planning the Park Lawn Loop, people in the Humber Bay area will then have a choice how to travel to various parts of the city and this applies to the Long Branch folks also. If it means the Waterfront or 501 to x route, travel time will a big point for them.

The City does no support TTC plan for connection to Roncesvale and this extension is far down the list to worry about it at this time since there is no money for it now. I don't support TTC plan as well.

The DRL is in the top 25 RTP and was been consider to be bump up to top 15 by replacing the Yonge extension. This was before the changeover. It was schedule to be in the top 15 list to be presented to the old board this month as well the ranking of those 15 lines.

Now we have the top 5 coming out of $10B and what left over then will flow down to the next few. Once the final decisions is made about the SRT, we will know if it will connect to the Eglinton line or not and that will tell us what to expect equipment wise with the big $$.

Now where would this tunnel be since there is none at this time???

As for the DRL going up Roncesvale, this is a mistake as it should connect with Jane Station since this is a higher interchange point than Dundas W.

 

[nfitz]

This needs to be corrected again? Subtract the contingency and Spadina costs about $247M/km including vehicles and storage, and after inflation.

ROTFLMAO ... how do subtract contingency? Contingency is there to deal with what you couldn't budget for. For example the thing was priced before geotechnical boreholes were drilled along the alignment or at the station. If they find unexpected soil conditions - or significant contamination, then money will have to be spent that wasn't budgeted. This is contingency. As would many other things - including unexpected construction inflation (say that all your bidders are higher than you planned for - pretty common for the last 5 years or so ... but perhaps they'll get lucky with the unexpected recession).

Now as the project progresses, contingency should be reduced - assuming it isn't necessary.

But only an incompetent engineer would eliminate contingency before you've even started to dig!

 

[Voltz]

ROTFLMAO ... how do subtract contingency? Contingency is there to deal with what you couldn't budget for. For example the thing was priced before geotechnical boreholes were drilled along the alignment or at the station. If they find unexpected soil conditions - or significant contamination, then money will have to be spent that wasn't budgeted. This is contingency. As would many other things - including unexpected construction inflation (say that all your bidders are higher than you planned for - pretty common for the last 5 years or so ... but perhaps they'll get lucky with the unexpected recession).

Now as the project progresses, contingency should be reduced - assuming it isn't necessary.

But only an incompetent engineer would eliminate contingency before you've even started to dig!

You mean they are leaving room in the budget for costs that are not yet known, nonsense, everyone knows the contingency is only there to make the line look more expensive,

 

[scarberiankhatru]

ROTFLMAO ... how do subtract contingency? Contingency is there to deal with what you couldn't budget for. For example the thing was priced before geotechnical boreholes were drilled along the alignment or at the station. If they find unexpected soil conditions - or significant contamination, then money will have to be spent that wasn't budgeted. This is contingency. As would many other things - including unexpected construction inflation (say that all your bidders are higher than you planned for - pretty common for the last 5 years or so ... but perhaps they'll get lucky with the unexpected recession).

Now as the project progresses, contingency should be reduced - assuming it isn't necessary.

But only an incompetent engineer would eliminate contingency before you've even started to dig!

If you budget for contingency, it ends up being spent - this is Toronto, after all, which lately has had no policies of saving costs in any way and for any reason. Don't budget for as much and hundreds of millions of dollars can be saved. Simple.

You're also assuming no padding has been built into the other components of the budget, which is naive. In reality, we're probably paying for more than double padding, perhaps even triple. Lowering this would be a challenge, but we are talking about a hypothetical subway line. There's also absolutely no reason to believe Transit City lines won't end up horribly over the projected budget, which is critical to keep in mind considering how preoccupied some people are with the ratio of the cost of one to the cost of another.

 

[drum118]

If you budget for contingency, it ends up being spent - this is Toronto, after all, which lately has had no policies of saving costs in any way and for any reason. Don't budget for as much and hundreds of millions of dollars can be saved. Simple.

You're also assuming no padding has been built into the other components of the budget, which is naive. In reality, we're probably paying for more than double padding, perhaps even triple. Lowering this would be a challenge, but we are talking about a hypothetical subway line. There's also absolutely no reason to believe Transit City lines won't end up horribly over the projected budget, which is critical to keep in mind considering how preoccupied some people are with the ratio of the cost of one to the cost of another.

How do you explain to upper level of Government why they need to cover your overrun when you fail to do your homework first to arrive at a cost in the first place for funding??

By doing so, you are now taking money away from another project to the point it could be cancel if the government holds the line that is in place now. Then you maybe told that all you are going to get and therefore you have to scale back on that project. Sheppard subway is a good example of this problem.

See Hazel asking for an extra $57m for her BRT even after it was scale back considering I said it was going to cost an extra $125m in the first place from my cost projection. The Province and Metrolinx had no plans to cover it.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

How do you explain to upper level of Government why they need to cover your overrun when you fail to do your homework first to arrive at a cost in the first place for funding??

By doing so, you are now taking money away from another project to the point it could be cancel if the government holds the line that is in place now. Then you maybe told that all you are going to get and therefore you have to scale back on that project. Sheppard subway is a good example of this problem.

See Hazel asking for an extra $57m for her BRT even after it was scale back considering I said it was going to cost an extra $125m in the first place from my cost projection. The Province and Metrolinx had no plans to cover it.

This discussion is pointless without knowing how much padding is already built into budgets above and beyond a separate contingency component or in projects that don't have a separate contingency component - and this doesn't even include the pre-padding done by those bidding to the TTC, which may trigger pre-pre-padding on the TTC's part. We don't have much to work with since so much of the budgets are tied up in details like "miscellaneous, other costs, etc." and so on. I remember asking some of the Yonge extension project managers how much padding was added and they weren't exactly sure, but they were sure hoping for a minor Madrid Miracle as it's just about the only thing that could prevent every cent of the Yonge extension budget from getting spent. Comparing the two extensions going forward will be interesting.

For Spadina, all they did for "homework" was double the costs added by inflation - they added 26% and then another 26%. Every cent of that contingency is going to be spent.

More could have been slashed from Sheppard, like some of the bus bays - the same mistake is being made with the Yonge extension. There's always ways to save money and some pressure to actually do so is not a bad thing, particularly when people love bitching that subways aren't cheap (as if the alternatives are).

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Your paranoid and delusional ramblings about conspiracies really should be taken elsewhere.

Come now, your responses are usually much more hysterical. Try harder, please.

Or, you can find out exactly how much contingency has been added to projects like the Yonge extension or Transit City, or how much padding is built in to the non-contingency components of Spadina's budget, and get back to us. Until then, the padding speaks for itself and waits to be spent (all but 8 cents of it, so the extension can end up 'under budget'). Hell, even Steve Munro is a bit suspicious of what he calls a half billion dollar slush fund.

Of course, you're an engineer, so you have no problem with governments budgeting for and willing to spend an extra half billion dollars in the event the tunnel boring machines run into Mayan ruins or Jimma Hoffa's grave or an oil patch or some ninja turtles.

 

[nfitz]

Mayan ruins in Toronto? Your geography is as poor as your engineering. Any contingency on a project in the last 5 years would have been used simply because of the unusually high 10% inflation rate that has occured in the construction sector.

I have absolutely no comprehension why you want to create havoc by underfunding a project. Rather than keep on making the same ignorant statements, that only serve to devalue anything sensible you might say, perhaps you should educate yourself on how these projects are done.