The transit needs of Toronto are not their priority.
I'll have to keep making this point: If the City can raise the capital to do this, then go right ahead! There is NO money to fund any of this, save for dribs already tendered for investigative prep and preliminary design. And QP is
committed to one thing in reality: Cut Spending. Which leaves only one possibility: Private Capital, in whole or in part. Metrolinx, even before the latest QP announcement, warned of the RL South of having a business case of 'one', and warned how precarious that was. That was a huge change of position by ML, a story in itself, suspicion being that they were fudging all along under political duress. Are they still under duress? Perhaps...but when Private Capital enters the picture, whether I, you or anyone else likes it or not, it HAS to be based on a business case. Good luck with that with what you're proffering.
If the Relief Line was built 50 years ago, would we be debating about an Express Relief Line vs second local subway line through downtown now?
Probably not in the way we are now, but if it were just the South built, definitely. Anyone who thinks that a toy train from Pape to Osgoode is going to magically relieve the entire system thinks that arterial roads can be built instead of highways. This is a REGIONAL issue, and since the Region(s) is/are funding this (or overseeing regulation if Private), then they collectively must reap the benefit. The subway as is with tweaks would work fine if left to do what it was initially intended to do. The major problem comes from being swamped with passengers it was never intended to cater to in the first place, the vast majority of that 'excess' being from outside Toronto.
First, stations are the most costly item in these transit mega-projects, especially when they are underground.
I beg to differ. It's the tunnelling itself, especially deep rock tunnelling. Not that station boxes aren't cheap, but local stops can be much more modest in scope. This is already very well established and documented practice in a number of world class cities. Crossrail has become so studied on the issue that they have a publishing arm now to share their extensive reports and investigations to others, warts and all of late. They're not perfect, but still one of the best models to copy. This isn't rocket science. This is established practice in quite a number of nations, Canada included, Montreal being a prime example of rock tunnelling.
I believe that those local stations would be cut for efficiencies, especially once Ford takes a look at the ridership numbers for a stop like Sherbourne and questions what's the point?
Then the City should fund it themselves! If the City had the funding and where-with-all to provide local stops prior, then they can do it come the final design. I have to return to the "Pape Entitlement" on this. They can do what the rest of us must do: Take a bus or streetcar, or bike/walk to the closest station. Or locate close to one. If the ridership isn't there, how can you possibly espouse building a station for the sake of it?
But first, we need to build the necessary capacity on the Yonge Line
WHAT? How can you tout the need for local stops, relief, funding from wherever other than QP, and then proffer jacking more people into the straw running on Yonge Street as it is?
I don't even have to make the case for not extending the Yonge line north, the City, TTC, independent professionals and riders have all made it so well. Line 1 and 2 need
relief, not further loading.
Addendum: I was Googling for the Crossrail engineering paper on the subject of extending platforms yesterday to link to a claim I've been making on extending platforms in deep tunnel. I've yet to find that particular report with pages on the subject, but here's the info I've tripped across looking for reference to the costs of deep tunnelling: (And this also buttresses points made by others,
@BurlOak especially, who rightly raises the prospect of using newer cut and cover methods as well as flying guideways where low density permits)
[...]
FUTURE PROOFING
The population figures for London post-2030 have been revised significantly upwards since the last census, from 8.5 million to 10 million. Its transport systems will need to expand again to cope. In the tradition of the best Victorian engineering, Crossrail has built capacity for the service to be increased into the designs for tunnelling and railway work.
The team appreciated that it would be hugely costly, disruptive and very difficult to retrofit any extra capacity. For the initial service, trains will be 10 carriages long, but platforms have been constructed to take 12. The signalling system through the central section will be able to manage 32 trains and hour, eight more than the 24 the Crossrail service will open with.
Throughout all the cost management and value engineering carried out to keep the project within its £14.8 billion construction budget, that extra capability has survived and will be part of Crossrail’s legacy for London for the next half century and more.
[...]
https://www.ingenia.org.uk/Ingenia/Articles/084273a1-c237-43f1-9c96-cdd94f1cff85
Bear in mind those 'carriages' are mainline carriages, not subway train ones...
www.standard.co.uk
