Ansem
Banned
Really...How much of the income taxes goes to the TTC beside Transit expansion that the city gets ONCE every decade, "on average"?
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Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx
- Thread starter 299 bloor call control.
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Really...How much of the income taxes goes to the TTC beside Transit expansion that the city gets ONCE every decade, "on average"?
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EnviroTO
Senior Member
On average... $8 billion divided by an 8 year implementation (by 2020)... maybe about $1 billion per year on average?
The infrastructure is paid for by the provincial government largely, and the operating costs are covered 70% or more by the farebox. You are responding to a comment "Generally, I don't find discussions that revolve around who pays what tax to be worthwhile." So if it is the city it is property tax, if it is the province it is some other tax... who cares. Either it is a worthwhile investment or it isn't.
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
I'll take the bait.
So what happens when, responding to citizens demands of not splitting their neighbourhoods in two with a VIVA Bllue LRT, Vaughan/York Region begin petitioning for further extensions to Aurora, and Newmarket. The densities are fairly similar to Richmond Hill/Markham, what then?
As I've stated there are going to be approx 12000 peak hour passengers arriving at RHC station, most from the Yonge area. What do we do? Continue to run the extension North? What rationale could we possibly use to help explain why we choose not to build this extension? I'm sure a quickly thrown together growth plan for the Upper Canada Mall area could do for Newmarket what the RHC growth plan did for Richmond Hill, thus creating similar circumstances and pushing that 12 000 passenger number up towards the 15 - 20 000 passenger number that "demands a subway"
Meanwhile we are telling people along Sheppard and Eglinton which have similar density figures that "an LRT is just ok for your. There there"
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Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
Oh if only we had fare integration. A rider arriving at Union would be able to use the spare capacity on the Yonge line to access areas further North, like Dundas and College Sts.
I only we had an organization that could bring the TTC and Go transit together under one roof. That could help work out discounted fares and fare splitting for the two organizations. Rather than the two ignoring each other. If only we had a universal way of paying our fares. That would make this integration easier and eliminate redundant fare media for different agencies....
What's that??? Metrolinx and Presto??? Never heard of them, are they a new comedy act?
You know that I'm a big proponent of full integration of everything into Metrolinx, but I don't think that even that will make the Richmond Hill line useful as anything more than a commuter line running hourly off-peak service.
A far more useful proposal would be to build the DRL and have it use the Richmond Hill line's ROW north of Don Mills (neighbourhood). That way Richmond Hill would still be getting subway service, and it would still be actually be useful to anyone south of Sheppard. It would also doubly solve the Yonge capacity problem, as it would relieve the line further down, and stop the riders from Richmond Hill from even getting on the Yonge line.
It's 13km from the intersection of the Richmond Hill line and Don Mills Rd on the north end of the Don Mills neighbourhood. The Yonge Subway extension is 6km for $3.4 billion, or $566 million/km. In order for the DRL to Richmond Hill proposal to be equal in cost, the per km cost of 'subwayifying' the above-mentioned stretch of the Richmond Hill line would need to be $261 million/km, which is a pretty high price for an at-grade subway.
Even if you were to factor in the tunnelling cost to get from Eglinton to that point (2.5km @ $566 million/km = $1.415 billion), that still leaves the rest of the project at $1.985 billion for 13km of surface subway, or $153 million/km, which is pretty reasonable.
So basically, you could do the DRL from Eglinton to Richmond Hill via Don Mills and the Richmond Hill GO corridor for roughly the same cost as extending the Yonge line from Finch to Richmond Hill. I would argue that while the latter may look better on a map, the former would probably have a greater network effect.
EDIT: Source on those figures: http://www.bigmove.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/YongeNorthSubway_sheet-1204.pdf
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historydude2012
New Member
I see only one new subway in Scarborough. Where are the subways? Subways, subways, subways. Scarborough deserves subways. Naah Scarborough needs subways.
This
Woops. No wait. I meant this.
(But on a serious note your map looks good).
Attachments
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Rainforest
Senior Member
This is an interesting suggestion, assuming that:
1) The Bala sub ROW north of the Don Mills intersection is wide enough for 2 tracks.
2) The residents are OK with the high frequency trains.
3) "The Canadian" no longer needs the Bala sub to get to Union.
4) The cargo connection between the northern part of Bala sub and the CN York sub can be retained; this might require 2 subway tracks + 1 mainline track between the Doncaster diamond and the RHC.
From the ridership distribution standpoint, your scheme would work quite nicely. Both the Yonge line and the extended DRL would have healthy loads, not too low and not too high.
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Rainforest
Senior Member
This is not a "punishment", but a necessary precaution.
Imagine that a new hospital is build, and the electrical contractors installed wiring that can support 5 operating rooms. However, it became clear that 10 operating rooms are needed to match the actual amount of patients.
In that situation, you can rightfully blame the electrical contractors for the lack of foresight; but you still have to install new wires before the additional operating rooms can open. You can't go ahead and open them before the wires are in place, "because the patients shouldn't be punished for the contractors' incompetence"; such an action would cause frequent power failures in all 10 rooms.
That will likely create an unmanageable load on the system downstream, while the DRL is still under construction. We should start with the project that is ready to operate, not with the one that is ready for construction (or we can start both in parallel, but that requires both to be funded simultaneously).
Solid Snake
Active Member
I'm pretty sure Torontonians pays income taxes and sales taxes. Toronto is barely getting back the money it pays to the provincial government.
Solid Snake
Active Member
Amen...
Eglinton's number clearly reaches 12000 passengers if it was 100% grade separated. The line should be elevated east of Don Mills. As for Sheppard, the LRT money could be used to upgrade Eglinton. Finch as an LRT is fine.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
All due respect, this is not a logical argument. The development and density from Finch up to Highway 7 is CONTINUOUS. There is a substantial break (i.e. the Oak Ridges Moraine and then Aurora) between RH and Newmarket. Even if I had infinite money I couldn't possibly see justifying the subway north of Major Mack at most. Going too far north with a subway obviously becomes a point of diminishing returns anyway but I certainly don't think Highway 7 is that point.
Also, there is no designated growth centre in Aurora and the one in Newmarket won't have densities remotely in the same galaxy as the Langstaff/RH centre. Have you even seen the World on Yonge condos, which are now at their full height? That's going to become the new normal at Yonge/Steeles and nothing like that will hit Newmarket for decades, if ever. So, your question is built upon a series of false premises and straw men. You might as well have asked why not extend it all the way to Thunder Bay if we're so fixated on this Yonge Street thing.
Have you even heard of Places to Grow? Why do some of us have to keep citing the direct relationship between the planning legislation and this particular transit project over and over?
And this argument about taxes is rather broad and pointless. Metro used money from Old Toronto to fund transit expansion in "the burbs" that are now part of the amalgamated city. In a way, we are now talking about replicating a pattern that was, by and large, very successful in that Toronto's' suburbs are relatively dense, particularly along TTC corridors.
It seems clear to me that the governance model - arguably of municipalities but certainly of transit -does not match the population and hasn't for some time. That's why any Metrolinx revenue tool will have to be regional and fairly implemented and also why it increasingly seems that assuming control of RT across the region might be the most efficient plan for them. (Hudak's plan, it seems to me, is sort of the opposite. Integrate them all so you can starve them all more easily...). I understand why TTC has become a conservative organization but they're becoming positively obstructive. I heard people here talking about the DRL years before TTC decided to actually move on it and now it's suddenly the one project they just HAVE to have it or the world well explode. Well, where was it in 2010?
The hospital analogy given above about why the DRL is needed first doesn't quite work, mostly because those patients are already in the hospital. Most of the people getting on at Finch are already coming from up north and so the first question is whether it isn't smart to bring the transit to them, realizing that you also need to do other things to deal with the new riders. If the funding comes through, they can likely be built within a couple of years of each other but I still don't see why the Yonge project should have to wait. In those few years, it won't make things any worse downstream than they already are. There will just be fewer cars and buses going to Finch which, it seems to me, is good for all concerned.
The Don Mills subway proposed here is kind of interesting (and it serves Beaver Creek, which is nice) but it seems to me that all you have to do is look at a map of Toronto to see that Yonge Street is Yonge Street. Leaving the subway at Finch (or even Steeles) to go effectively go around them doesn't make much sense, especially given the Growth Plan and the planning work already done by Markham and Vaughan and anyone who thinks that GO service negates the need for a Yonge extension can even more easily make that argument about the DRL. Even on that map you can see how it goes AROUND where all the development is instead of through the middle of it. But it's thought provoking anyway.
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nfitz
Superstar
What are you talking about? Look at the fiscal imbalance in this province. The north and rural areas receive a lot more in services, etc., than they take. The cities subsidize the north and rural areas, which generally aren't economically sustainable under our current model.
Rainforest
Senior Member
However, would the cities be physically sustainable without the adjacent rural areas?
Rainforest
Senior Member
If it would be only the matter of moving existing riders from cars/buses to subway between Hwy 7 and Finch, then yes, Yonge extension could go ahead before DRL. However, my understanding is that the extension will bring in thousands of new riders per every peak hour. Although this is very good from the ridership growth perspective, that amount is enough to choke the downstream system (south of Bloor, and possibly even south of Eglinton).
Obviously, it is impossible to separate the two effects (serve the existing Yonge subway riders better with the subway extension, but avoid bringing in new riders until DRL opens).
My concern is that even a small gap, 1 or 2 years from the Yonge North opening till the DRL opening, would create an unmanageable situation on the southern section of Yonge subway.
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