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

kEiThZ said:
Hope you don't count me in that crowd. I think 'sauga could have its own network! Hurontario and Dundas subways!
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Right on. I don't think there is anything wrong with disagreement among transit advocates over where transit should be (i.e. subways into the outer suburbs vs Go), but the disconnect comes when one argues for the Spadina/RHC subways essentially because it's approved, funded and being built yet is against subways to 'sauga because it's "way out there". The only significant difference between the two regions is that York wanted and asked for the subway while 'sauga has virtually refused to plan for one. As transit advocates we are free from the politicizing of transit projects and should be evaluating them on merit alone (not potential votes gained, since we have no votes to gain for supporting something) and therefore if a subway to York Region is positive in one's eyes than a subway to MCC should, by logical extension, also be positive.

For the record I disagree with you and believe that an expanded Go network would serve both regions better than a subway would.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
Interesting how when it comes to Vaughan people leap to the defense of Transit-Oriented Development, as if suddenly that makes it okay. Yet the same people say there's no ridership in Mississauga and GO is suddenly good enough. Interesting.
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Who has been saying that? I however have been hearing a lot about Regional Electrified Express Rail which is supposed to run at least 10 minutes faster than the existing average speeds of the Milton GO train service. And at frequencies by every five to ten minutes. Do you think that a Bloor-Danforth extension to SQ1 would be at steady headways, or more likely, won't every second train not have to turnback at Kipling to keep headways through the central segment frequent? The last two stops of TYSSE are unnecessary but at least with them in place, perhaps a better solution for the Yonge corridor may emerge instead of this ridiculous $5-6 billion dollar subway extension now being proposed to 16th Ave! Like in the case of Mississauga, there's a readily available commuter-rail corridor sitting adjacent to Richmond Hill's urban core, heading towards the same place as the subway would. This suburban false sense of entitlement has really got to stop when it is still hell to get around the downtown core, to the airport, to interurban growth centres (SCC, Agincourt, Sherway), etc. You of the 905 area potentially have it way too good to be going on like this.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
Interesting how when it comes to Vaughan people leap to the defense of Transit-Oriented Development, as if suddenly that makes it okay. Yet the same people say there's no ridership in Mississauga and GO is suddenly good enough. Interesting.
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If everyone were to push municipal boundaries (and area code boundaries) out of their heads, I think most people would agree that a subway as far as Steeles West has a potential ridership level of x, and then the next 2 km has a potential ridership level somewhere less than x.

I would say the majority opinion in most Toronto-ish transit advocacy circles--which is not to say it's the "correct" opinion, just the most common---is that x was big enough to justify subway service, while the next 2 km falls below that threshold. Others hold that both segments justify it, but provided they're not mentally ill, they concede that the northern 2km has a lower potential ridership than the southern portion of TYSSE.

That this potential ridership dropoff point happens to falls exactly on the 18th-century survey line that separated two townships is mostly a coincidence. The real cause is that immediately south of that line is York U., which has a higher-than-par-for-suburbia ridership generating capacity, and that immediately north of that line is the "parkway belt" of reserved lands along the 407, which creates an artifical 1 km-wide "moat" around Toronto's contiguous built-up area.

(Aside: In contrast, when it comes to the Yonge subway extension, there's still a bizarre---to my eyes, anyway---constituency out there claiming that the extension should run only as far as Steeles, and then there should be a TTC terminal and some sort of modal shift to LRT or what have you further north. If it makes our York contingent feel any better, I hereby label those people overly insular 416ers. As has been bashed over in the other thread, the logical place for a modal shift station is at Langstaff Gateway, and travel patterns in that neck of the woods mostly ignore the invisible line running along Steeles.)

Anyway, the 2 km beyond Steeles West looks like it's coming anyway, and so most of us who don't think it's the best use of public transit money aren't about to chain ourselves to bulldozers to stop it. We'll stomach it and hope that it spurs the best possible TOD at the end.

But where do you get if you extend 2 km beyond Kipling? Certainly not MCC. You wind up barely across Etobicoke Creek. An extension to MCC is ~10 km past Kipling. So you're talking about spending roughly five times as much as going from Steeles W. to Vaughan Imperial Centre. Understandably, this is where some people ok with the Vaughan extension get off the bandwagon. And I wouldn't call them hypocrites.
 
Platform 27 said:
But where do you get if you extend 2 km beyond Kipling? Certainly not MCC. You wind up barely across Etobicoke Creek. An extension to MCC is ~10 km past Kipling. So you're talking about spending roughly five times as much as going from Steeles W. to Vaughan Imperial Centre. Understandably, this is where some people ok with the Vaughan extension get off the bandwagon. And I wouldn't call them hypocrites.
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Not to belabour the point, but we are not talking about an extension from a pre-existing Steeles West station, we are talking about an extension from Downsview to VCC. Granted that's still ~5 km vs 10 km. Still what the Mississauga plan lacks is a large political well in the form of York University. Lets face it it is York that has drawn the subway here, if it weren't for York we'd likely be having the same discussion about the TYSSE as we are about the MCC extension.

If there were something on the Toronto/Mississauga border (Sherway ain't it) that would pull the line towards (practically onto) the border I think then that the discussion would be vastly different.
 
Rainforest said:
Not a bad category. However, I'll replace term "stolen from somewhere else" with "not available for use elsewhere".

"Some" people? Quite a few UT members have expressed that view, including at least half of those who advocate subways in general.
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Money for one transit project is never available for use elsewhere. That would require a complete and fundamental overhaul of how all levels of government collect and spend tax dollars. People on the forum often wonder what could be done instead with X dollars, but that's not how the real world works.

And there's a whole city full of people beyond this forum - and many of the people here are here due to various types of transit fandom, so they're hardly a true sample of public opinion.

If we stopped the extension at Steeles, they might as well build another Meadowvale office park at Jane & 7. It's not like we'd get 2km of subway somewhere else.
 
I think the one thing that killed westward expansion of the Bloor line was amalgamation. Etobicoke is a very small part of the new City of Toronto, and it's not paid much mind. Add to that the misfortunes of northern Etobicoke which are epitomized by Woodbine Centre and you end up with a sadly neglected part of the 416.

Etobicoke will have to experience a rebirth otherwise the area in-between ECC and MCC will stagnate. Personally I think that has already begun with condo development at ECC at both Islington and Kipling stations. I wish the talk of an East Mall station had gone further before this economic downturn. I would support an East Mall extension, at least it'd be a step in the right direction. And I would certainly support a further extension to Sherway. Build the subway along the GO line between Sherway and Dixie and it'd be pretty affordable. Even a Dixie subway station would be beneficial to all of Mississauga and would support the avenueification of Dundas Street beyond the 427.
 
Small update:

  • The design concept for the Highway 407 subway station—will have a
    18-bay York Region Transit and GO Transit bus terminal;
  • The terminal would be owned by YRT and GO;
  • Despite a $95 million construction budget, the estimated final cost for the Highway 407 station is $134 million;
  • An increased number of bus platforms, an extra 5m of depth for the tunnels passing Black Creek and a high water table contributed to a rise in expected construction costs;
  • A final design is expected to be done by spring 2010, with construction anticipated to wrap up in late spring 2014;

The TTC has previously estimated increases in construction costs for Sheppard West station, initially estimated to cost $59.2m, is now expected to cost $102m, while York University station’s costs rose from $86m to $115m...

These cost over-runs this early in the construction and design phase of the TYSSE are going to make it very difficult politically for the DRL or Yonge Extension to receive any serious consideration in the coming years - especially given that the DRL station locations in brownfield/greyfield urban environments would have much more severe construction complications than these suburban stations... not the mention the $25b provincial and $55b federal deficits.
 
^ If the water table was such an issue why on earth don't they just bridge the subway over the 407? I fail to see how an elevated station is any worse for wear than a below-grade one. After all, it's not like dead people in graveyards can be NIMBYs, right.
 
Mike in TO said:
These cost over-runs this early in the construction and design phase of the TYSSE are going to make it very difficult politically for the DRL or Yonge Extension to receive any serious consideration in the coming years - especially given that the DRL station locations in brownfield/greyfield urban environments would have much more severe construction complications than these suburban stations... not the mention the $25b provincial and $55b federal deficits.
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Doesn't Spadina's secured funding include $500M of contingency? While it is a bad sign if much of that $500M is eaten up before construction really even gets started, it's not like that contingency was never intended to be spent.
 
Mike in TO said:
The TTC has previously estimated increases in construction costs for Sheppard West station, initially estimated to cost $59.2m, is now expected to cost $102m, while York University station’s costs rose from $86m to $115m...
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Here's an idea: don't build Sheppard West station. Rough it in. Nobody's going to use it for at least 10 years.
 
Fresh Start said:
Who has been saying that? I however have been hearing a lot about Regional Electrified Express Rail which is supposed to run at least 10 minutes faster than the existing average speeds of the Milton GO train service. And at frequencies by every five to ten minutes. Do you think that a Bloor-Danforth extension to SQ1 would be at steady headways, or more likely, won't every second train not have to turnback at Kipling to keep headways through the central segment frequent? The last two stops of TYSSE are unnecessary but at least with them in place, perhaps a better solution for the Yonge corridor may emerge instead of this ridiculous $5-6 billion dollar subway extension now being proposed to 16th Ave! Like in the case of Mississauga, there's a readily available commuter-rail corridor sitting adjacent to Richmond Hill's urban core, heading towards the same place as the subway would. This suburban false sense of entitlement has really got to stop when it is still hell to get around the downtown core, to the airport, to interurban growth centres (SCC, Agincourt, Sherway), etc. You of the 905 area potentially have it way too good to be going on like this.
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CC doesn't want Mississauga to have a subway connection because it would be useful -- in the shadow to Milton line improvements, a subway is simply redundant -- he wants it because he thinks a subway is some sort of rite of passage for Mississauga.
 
EnviroTO said:
Everything exposed to the elements is worse for wear.
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The cost of keeping water out of an underground box, plus all the issues that come with it more than make up this difference. Plus you have to take into account the huge difference in capital cost.
 
Darwinkgo said:
Plus you have to take into account the huge difference in capital cost.
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This depends on perspective.

For the city, spending $1B extra on a station is free but spending an extra $5M per year to maintain it is $5M per year.

Capital is an externalized cost but operations is entirely on the cities hands. If the province kicked in for 10% of the gross operations costs and only had the municipality kick in 1/3rd for capital then this comes into play.
 
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