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Transit City Plan

Which transit plan do you prefer?

  • Transit City

    Votes: 95 79.2%
  • Ford City

    Votes: 25 20.8%

  • Total voters
    120
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...to-bring-rob-ford-s-transit-plan-into-reality

How to bring Rob Ford’s transit plan into reality

After the post-election euphoria and political posturing of the new administration in the Twin Towers on Queen St., as well as the belated recognition up at the Pink Palace that Mayor Rob Ford does indeed have a significant mandate to move ahead on his promise to take as much public transit off the roads as possible, it seems the discussions taking place between the Ford people and the McGuinty people are starting to bear fruit.

And with Councillor Karen Stintz now ensconced as the new chair of the TTC, she is adroitly managing the issue in a mature manner.

With this latest development and the premier’s commitment to overhaul the social assistance system, there is now a compelling case to move forward as quickly as possible.

If it is truly the objective of the provincial government to ease the plight of the least-advantaged, then Transit City should be revamped and the TTC declared an essential service with appropriate conditions.

Wherever possible, transit should be below ground or elevated above it. However, the Sheppard subway should be extended to its original destination planned as a transit hub more than 20 years ago — the Scarborough Town Centre — so that it can link with the TTC and GO buses that now use it.

Transit-dependent riders from Scarborough are yearning for a convenient, fast, one-seat ride to relieve them of their current, slow, multi-transfer, multi-modal daily ride to and from work. And a subway is the most likely way to attract the discretionary rider out of the car.
Metrolinx says the ridership doesn’t justify an extension of the Sheppard subway, but more than 60 years ago the Yonge subway was started long before there were the requisite ridership levels to technically justify it.

The architects of the Bloor Viaduct also had the foresight to incorporate the infrastructure for a future subway. Where would we be today without those visionaries of the past?

We need visionaries now to imagine a Toronto 50 to 100 years into the future.

We should beg, borrow or steal to finish what was started instead of settling for second best simply because it was on sale.

Financial constraints have been cited ad nauseam by various levels of government. Their pleadings might have more traction if they weren’t constantly dredged up. However, funding then miraculously appears for some other vote-getting initiative.

Worse still, an auditor general reports on the enormous sums that are wasted or mismanaged annually, leaving the mendacious politicians with egg on their collective faces.

We should “steal” from those latent pots of money identified by the auditor general to build the Sheppard subway to the future.

The Finch Ave. West LRT should be scrapped in favour of a bus rapid transit service in the Finch hydro corridor using state-of-the-art highway coaches.

For those who need to go farther west after coming from Scarborough, the minor inconvenience of transferring to the Yonge subway to Finch would be tolerable if they can then zip along the corridor unhindered in a comfortable bus.

The Jane/Finch area would benefit sooner if this were done. This route could also service those coming south from York Region. Sections of the bus service could be extended incrementally as required. The Finch station, like the Scarborough Town Centre, is a hub for GO Transit and the TTC.

The current proposed Eglinton LRT could be a stand-alone project. A request for proposals could be issued for the design, building, financing, maintenance and operation of the line. A more cautious, palatable alternative would be to retain control over its management and operations.

If our politicians can envision a better future for those transit-captive social assistance recipients in Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods, they will find the means to finance it. Otherwise, the disadvantaged in our midst will be left wasting precious time transferring from the bus to the LRT and then to the subway in the wind, rain, snow and sleet.

The latest emerging spirit of compromise from both the Ford administration and Metrolinx (the province) is encouraging because it means we will likely see some improvements for the transit-captives and the discretionary users as well as for the economy of the GTA sooner rather than later.
 
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Was Yonge's ridership actually too low to justify a subway, or is the writer of the piece just assuming that because it opened over 50 years ago?

I was thinking the same thing. My understanding was that the ridership on the Yonge streetcar was near, if not at, its capacity.
 
Forget about trying to convince Rob Ford that Transit City is the way to go. He's too stubborn to listen and understand any facts presented to him. Rob is too transit illiterate, he doesn't seem to know the first subway in North America (Boston) used the streetcars they had at the time (1897). He is like those people who believe that vaccines cause autism, despite the facts to the contrary. You can even have Stephen Hawking make a presentation, but Rob Ford would ignore him for his own stubborn ways.

I hope that the other councilors will be able to read and listen to the facts presented and act accordingly.
 
Was Yonge's ridership actually too low to justify a subway, or is the writer of the piece just assuming that because it opened over 50 years ago?

Yes it was, but within 3 years after the Yonge subway opened, ridership exploded. It went from 4-car to 8-car trains in that same period. Bloor didn't have the ridership either. That came about 10 years later. University, the original DRL, was a white elephant for 20 years after it was built. It didn't start performing its function until the 1980s.
 
Reaper, the York U busway was proposed in 2000 (if not earlier) but construction did not begin until after the subway extension was approved. York U apparently insisted the busway not be okayed until the subway was guaranteed, in case the busway might be considered as adequate for York's (uneven) demand levels -- and the case for heavy metro thereby be diminished. York also insisted, IIRC, that the busway be removed after the subway opens, but Giambrone disputed this saying it could be of further use to the network.

-ed

Interesting. I knew there was a lot of bureaucratic BS around getting the York U busway completed, but didn't realize that it was only green lighted because the subway was. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, the busway was badly, badly needed. The old routing was insanely slow and went through a very congested corridor, and made getting to YorkU from Toronto far more of a chore than it should be

On the other hand, without a subway in place the busway could eventually appear like a SRT 2.0: a cheap way to extend the subway from the middle of nowhere to its natural destination. Granted York University is more of a destination rather than another transfer point for most commuters unlike Scarborough Town Center, but that may change with improvements to GO's 407 services.

-----

On another topic, I am looking forward to what Metrolinx and the city are working on. As I've always said, we need to fix Transit City, not kill it or blindly accept it. I predict it will include:

- Eglinton cross-town elevated from Kennedy to Bermondsey, tunneled from Bermondsey to Black Creek
- Sheppard subway from STC to Don Mills
- Finch busway from Finch West to Weston Rd
- BRT/LRT running along the Richmond Hill rail corridor between Eglinton and Union Station.
 
How much extra money do you anticipate the city getting in transit funding, Electrify?

My guess is none. Which brings up kind of an interesting question. Which is the better approach: starting a bunch of lines, and then waiting for more funding to finish them (ex: chopping Eglinton short, building the FWLRT only west of Finch West stn, etc), or completing only a couple of lines and then leaving the rest on the shelf?

If you start a bunch of lines, on the plus side you're giving transit to more corridors, but it's kind of half-assed. And if funding falls through for the rest of it... well you're left with the Sheppard Stubway. On the contrary, if you put all your eggs into a couple of baskets, you complete 1 or 2 projects, but leave the other areas high and dry.

I think the stripped-down version of TC is a case of trying to do too much with too little amount of money. Doing 4 projects made sense when there was the funding to complete the 4 projects. But not 1 of the 4 lines currently on TC's priority list is going to be completed in its entirety. You have to wonder if this is really the best approach. I wonder if Metrolinx is looking at canning the FWLRT and SELRT, and putting all of their funding into a subway to STC and a completed Eglinton line. Yes, it may leave the other areas high and dry for a while, but I think that it may be a better long-term solution to get projects off the books, instead of having parts of projects hanging around on the to-do list.
 
My guess is none. Which brings up kind of an interesting question. Which is the better approach: starting a bunch of lines, and then waiting for more funding to finish them (ex: chopping Eglinton short, building the FWLRT only west of Finch West stn, etc), or completing only a couple of lines and then leaving the rest on the shelf?

If you start a bunch of lines, on the plus side you're giving transit to more corridors, but it's kind of half-assed. And if funding falls through for the rest of it... well you're left with the Sheppard Stubway. On the contrary, if you put all your eggs into a couple of baskets, you complete 1 or 2 projects, but leave the other areas high and dry.

I think the stripped-down version of TC is a case of trying to do too much with too little amount of money. Doing 4 projects made sense when there was the funding to complete the 4 projects. But not 1 of the 4 lines currently on TC's priority list is going to be completed in its entirety. You have to wonder if this is really the best approach. I wonder if Metrolinx is looking at canning the FWLRT and SELRT, and putting all of their funding into a subway to STC and a completed Eglinton line. Yes, it may leave the other areas high and dry for a while, but I think that it may be a better long-term solution to get projects off the books, instead of having parts of projects hanging around on the to-do list.

You make a number of interesting points.

It looks like the Eglinton line has become the TC equivalent of putting all your eggs in a couple of baskets.

I'd also argue that it's easier and cheaper to expand TC LRT lines at a future date than it would be to first cancel/postpone indefinitely and then resume a subway line.
 
We already have a subway system for this purpose.

Disagree.. If all we get in the next 30 years of transit development is incremental Subway expansion then we have wasted a good opertunity to create a NETWORK of lines that go more then a few places. The YUS expansion is going 905 and if bloor expands west we got more 905. Expanding east could hit STC but really this isnt creating a NETWORK.. Even with sheppard complete wed just have a few lines... In a dream world in 30-40 years (MY dream world at least) I will never have to take a Bus on any major Toronto street. LRT SUBWAY OR STREETCAR... Buses NO THANK YOU!
 
Reaper, the York U busway was proposed in 2000 (if not earlier) but construction did not begin until after the subway extension was approved. York U apparently insisted the busway not be okayed until the subway was guaranteed, in case the busway might be considered as adequate for York's (uneven) demand levels -- and the case for heavy metro thereby be diminished. York also insisted, IIRC, that the busway be removed after the subway opens, but Giambrone disputed this saying it could be of further use to the network.

-ed

Interesting. I wasn't aware that it was proposed in 2000, I thought it was 2004. I knew York U was being a pain but I didn't realize how linked it was to the subway.

I know that York U is going to immediately dismantle the campus busway upon the subway opening. It runs through the site of a building they want to build.
 
It appears to be a deliberate attempt to perpetuate the lie that LRT isn't rapid transit.

LRT can be rapid transit (see Calgary's CTrain), but Transit City is not rapid transit. If a few modifications where made, Transit City could easily be rapid transit but the political will does not exist in Toronto to do so.
 

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