Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group

Amphibius said:
SOURCE: http://lrt.daxack.ca/YorkRegion.html
Click to expand...

It's already been discussed here how that site's numbers are outdated... Sheppard will be over $60 million per KM, Eglinton will be $140 per KM (with only a third of the line tunneled, the rest stopping at red lights). Transit City was originally estimated at $30 mil a KM, and that was supposed to be a high estimate... as one transit advocate put it when the plan was announced (when asked why the estimated costs for TC weren't lower):

"LRT advocates have been waiting a very long time for something like this to come out. If the proposal looked wonderful and cheap (say $1-billion rather than $2.4-billion over ten years) and we then discovered we had seriously underestimated, that would be the last chance for credibility any LRT plan would have. I would far rather be surprised to discover that the network actually came in at a lower cost, and we had money left over to build more lines."
Click to expand...

The more the costs of the tram network go up, the worse the claims about LRT vs subway get.... Eglinton was a good example where once they figured out LRT was going to cost a lot more than they estimated, they raised the estimate of a subway to $10 billion
 
Last edited:
It's a shame we can't get reliable costing from the TTC. The way they overestimate subway costs is simply not believable. And I don't even understand how their current LRT plan is costing so much. I thought it was supposed to be affordable? Why spend this much money and get stuck with LRTs that just stop at red lights?
 
They don't *have* to stop at red lights, little things like signal priority could enable them to continue on through intersections... the passenger pick up/drop off platforms on these lines are always after the lights.

Here's to hoping they are still part of the plan.

And for F's sake, to hoping they get them on the current downtown routes.
 
waterloowarrior said:
It's already been discussed here how that site's numbers are outdated... Sheppard will be over $60 million per KM, Eglinton will be $140 per KM (with only a third of the line tunneled, the rest stopping at red lights). Transit City was originally estimated at $30 mil a KM, and that was supposed to be a high estimate... as one transit advocate put it when the plan was announced (when asked why the estimated costs for TC weren't lower):
Click to expand...

The numbers aren't outdated though, the standard for LRT building in virtually every other city in North America is typically between $30-50 million per kilometre at-grade (shared ROW, semiexclusive or exclusive), $50-70 million underground, with elevated/above-grade right-of-ways falling somewhere in the middle. The exasperated totals for those lines you mention are only due to significant underground sections, not regular surface alignments. And even so, if Vancouver can build 19 kms of ICTS for $1.9 billion in a mixture of exclusive ROW cut-and-cover, bored tunnel and elevated configurations; what is so damn special about a shared ROW LRT line along Sheppard East with questionable transit signal priority that it must cost the taxpayer $1.060 billion? What's so critically flawed with Ontario's bureaucracy that BC, Alberta and Quebec can afford to build twice the amount of track for half the amount of costs?

The more the costs of the tram network go up, the worse the claims about LRT vs subway get.... Eglinton was a good example where once they figured out LRT was going to cost a lot more than they estimated, they raised the estimate of a subway to $10 billion
Click to expand...

Which too is utter codswallop. It's like they're trying to sabotage their own credibility releasing concocted figures like that, aiming to dupe the public into beleiving their lies. Many people would've preferred an abridged subway line that connects to reliable express bus/LRT feeders on either end. What we're getting instead is a local bus service on rails outside of the central tunnel which translates into a very slow and ineffectual commute crosstown.
 
I'm interested now as to the cost of what Eglinton would actually be as a subway. Either fully tunneled, or tunneled around the middle and raised/trenched at either end. Does anyone have any figures?
 
Second_in_pie said:
I'm interested now as to the cost of what Eglinton would actually be as a subway. Either fully tunneled, or tunneled around the middle and raised/trenched at either end. Does anyone have any figures?
Click to expand...

Would be or could be? The two figures diverge by anywhere up to $5B, or more. This city has made conscious choices to maximize the cost of most transit projects.
 
waterloowarrior said:
It's already been discussed here how that site's numbers are outdated... Sheppard will be over $60 million per KM
Click to expand...
Those numbers don't look unreasonable. They estimate LRT at grade is LRT at grade: $30-50 million per kilometre including vehicles. In the announcement for the $950 million, they had about $40-million per kilometre for the line, and $14-million per kilometre for vehicles ... for about $54-million. So Sheppard, above ground, will be under $60-million per km in year of occurrence.
 
nfitz said:
Those numbers don't look unreasonable. They estimate LRT at grade is LRT at grade: $30-50 million per kilometre including vehicles. In the announcement for the $950 million, they had about $40-million per kilometre for the line, and $14-million per kilometre for vehicles ... for about $54-million. So Sheppard, above ground, will be under $60-million per km in year of occurrence.
Click to expand...

950/15 KM = 63 million per KM.

but the latest news is that Sheppard will cost $1.18 billion, or around $80 million per KM.
 
nfitz said:
That includes a new streetcar barn as well. Nothing that number is compared to includes storage facilities. And normally when we are discussing cost per kilometre of subway we don't even include vehicles!
Click to expand...

Or yards,

The LRT yard for the sheppard line will be shared by other lines as well, and the $950 million announced probably only includes funding for the sheppard line's share of that yard, while the total 1.18 billion cost figure includes the total cost of that yard.
 
nfitz said:
That includes a new streetcar barn as well. Nothing that number is compared to includes storage facilities. And normally when we are discussing cost per kilometre of subway we don't even include vehicles!
Click to expand...

Voltz said:
Or yards,
Click to expand...

Actually, such costs are normally included, as they are for Spadina and Yonge. Spadina also includes 26% of contingency padding (half a billion dollars!) that may or may not have been added [yet?] to, say, the Sheppard LRT (which would bring it up to $1.5B).
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
It's a shame we can't get reliable costing from the TTC. The way they overestimate subway costs is simply not believable. And I don't even understand how their current LRT plan is costing so much. I thought it was supposed to be affordable? Why spend this much money and get stuck with LRTs that just stop at red lights?
Click to expand...

And to think back in 1959, $200 million dollars ($1,465,567,010 in 2009 dollars, 632.8% inflation) was all that was needed to yield Toronto over 4 kms of the 6-stop University Line (Union-St George) plus another whopping 12 kms long, 20-station Bloor-Danforth subway from Keele to Woodbine. :mad:
 
So in 1959, 16km of subway were built at 91 million/km in today's dollars, including a complicated subway interchange and downtown construction. Today, the Sheppard LRT will cost 80 million/km in the middle of the suburbs, most of which will be above grade. As always, the TTC could learn a thing or two by looking into the past.
 
There's now a thread where you can debate the merits of Spadina. Let's free up there to actually talk about the real life extension.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top