Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

JasonParis said:
Did Toronto just win the transit lottery? Has Tory really out-played Ford? Call me a bit impressed, especially with Singh, Sheer and now Trudeau behind it too.

"Under the new cost-sharing arrangement, city staff say, city hall won't be expected to provide any portion of the capital costs of those capital projects. Instead, city transit dollars will be spent on other projects or state of good repair costs."

So we get a commitment to fund Eglinton West to YYZ, the Line 2 extension to STC and the full Ontario Line (Don Mills to Ontario Place) with *no* money from City Hall. AND... our existing subway system doesn’t get uploaded to Metrolinx.
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We're not quite there.

The reports suggest there is insufficient detail on Eglinton West to comment much; lots of details to be worked out; the City clearly believes the costs for the Ontario Line are wrong, and specifically low/under.

Nothing is done unless the province/feds fund the final tab.

I'm not sure Ford had a sophisticated 'play' here; I lean towards this whole exercise simply pushing off the budgetary problem to a subsequent term.

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I didn't notice this in the various reports; but if TTC gets to keep the existing operation; and be lead planner and operator of any new lines........what happens to Metrolinx's brand new subways department?
 
gweed123 said:
I think the Fed Liberals pitching to fund this is a good idea. With Federal dollars in the pot, they have greater push back with respect to design decisions. If the Feds and the City are in agreement, then it will be much harder for the Province to unilaterally push something through. A commitment to funding just gets them a seat at the design table.
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Have the feds ever been at the design table for transit? It was under my assumption that they only provide funding.
 
p_xavier said:
Have the feds ever been at the design table for transit? It was under my assumption that they only provide funding.
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They have normally taken a hands-off approach, but that's usually because they trust the groups doing the design. It's quite clear that this line has been politically manipulated by the Ford government, so they may be willing to take a more active role in the design to ensure what gets built is actually what Toronto needs and not just what Ford & Co want, even if it's just echoing what the City Planning dept is saying it wants.
 
JasonParis said:
Did Toronto just win the transit lottery? Has Tory really out-played Ford? Call me a bit impressed, especially with Singh, Sheer and now Trudeau behind it too.

"Under the new cost-sharing arrangement, city staff say, city hall won't be expected to provide any portion of the capital costs of those capital projects. Instead, city transit dollars will be spent on other projects or state of good repair costs."

So we get a commitment to fund Eglinton West to YYZ, the Line 2 extension to STC and the full Ontario Line (Don Mills to Ontario Place) with *no* money from City Hall. AND... our existing subway system doesn’t get uploaded to Metrolinx.
Click to expand...

If it is too good to be true...anyways, the timing of this is a little suspect, and we should know not to trust announcements, only shovels - and even then...

AoD
 
Northern Light said:
I didn't notice this in the various reports; but if TTC gets to keep the existing operation; and be lead planner and operator of any new lines........what happens to Metrolinx's brand new subways department?
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Smart thing to me would be to fold it into the GO RER project and go full S-Bahn with RER. What's probably going to happen is the department will likely be shut down.
 
sixrings said:
I wont get too excited until the cheques are written and cleared. Too often money gets deferred right after its promised.
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Just to be clear, all this is non-binding right?

The general gist I'm getting from this announcement is that the City will support the Ontario Line... in principle... if QP can sufficiently answer the dozens of unanswered questions about the fesiability of the line. And that the City's support is particularly predicated on the line having enough capacity (35k pphpd), which is likely totally incompatible with QP's vision of using tiny trains to lower cost and enable a meandering alignment through the core.

If my impression is right, this is hardly a roaring endorsement. In fact, it's not even an endorsement. It's a non-endorsement endorsement.

Also, we won't be getting any credible information about the capacity of the Ontario Line and the other feasibility concerns until the RFP closes after the next provincial election. Which means that the City certainly will not be singing any cheques until then. Which makes me think that none of this is ever going to happen.

Am I on the right page here?

This feels like political show-and-tell masquerading as genuine progress. Doug Ford gets to save face, John Tory gets to celebrate a win, the subway upload is canceled, and plans will likely be reverted back to the DRL after the next provincial election. So functionally nothing looks to be changing from the Wynne era with regards to OL/DRL and subway ownership, other than the DRL being delayed a few years.
 
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W. K. Lis said:
With the Ontario fiscal update coming November 6, 2019, AFTER the federal election, expect more cuts.
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Possible. However, I'm under the impression revenues are up substantially this year, well ahead of budget. So I'm not sure there's much pressure to deliver further cuts at this point. But we shall see.
 
Concerns regarding the spagetti-shaped route through downtown are still in place. Detailed design is needed, and until a substantial portion of that design is done, we won't even know if the proposed line can be built as announced.

That said; if 850-passenger trains can fit, and the 34k per hour per direction capacity can be achieved, that's not too bad. Perhaps not ideal, as the wide-body TTC subway lines can probably be upgraded to 45k capacity once ATO is implemented; but, 34k is a pretty significant addition to the downtown-bound transit capacity.

If we expect those 34k of new capacity to be consumed soon, then even the 45k wouldn't remain sufficient for very long, and we have to start planning Relief Line 2 in either case.

34k with 850-passenger trains means exactly 40 trains per hour, or 1'30'' bewteen the trains. Those rounded numbers hint that the 850 and the 34k are preliminary estimates, not outcomes of any detailed design work. Hence, the route feasibility still needs to be proven.
 
From the City's Ontario Line report: http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2019.EX9.1

For context, over the next twenty years, the City's population is projected to grow by about 960,000 people. By 2041, the City's population will be more than 3,900,000, exceeding the Provincial Growth Plan forecasts by more than 500,000[1]
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And of course the biggest part of that growth will be concentrated in the core of the city. Again, cannot emphasize enough that the DRL is not the line to be skimping on capacity.

I wager that the City is going to have to make some really uncomfortable decisions in the next decade or two. Downtown congestion charges and complete automobile bans on some city streets will certainly be on the table.
 
Kyle Campbell said:
At this point, despite my general misgivings, shouldn't the government plow ahead with the Ontario line? Besides sticking it to Ford, trying to go back to the TTC DRL plan just makes it a sure thing nothing will get built. I'd be pushing Dougie to get shovels in the ground before the next provincial election so that you at least get a new transit line downtown. No line is worse than the Ontario line.
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Definitely. Also it looks better to support a half-assed project that may not happen than support a project that 'might' happen.
 
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