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Transit City: Sheppard East Debate

Toronto gets nearly $1B for new LRT line

Construction will begin this fall on the long-awaited Sheppard East light rail transit line to be completed by 2013, the federal and Ontario governments announced today.

Ottawa and Queen's Park are paying $950 million, with the province accounting for two-thirds of the total.

Construction on the Sheppard East LRT project is expected to start later this year, and will generate about 9,500 construction jobs before it's completed.

The new LRT, about 14 kilometres in length, will run from the Don Mills subway station on the Sheppard line to the Metro Zoo area on Meadowvale Rd., and will connect with the Finch West LRT.

It will carry about 45,000 people daily when fully operational.

9500 jobs seems pretty high.... surely there wouldn't be 9500 working on a surface LRT at one time.
 
So how will the LRT connect into Don Mills station - will the light rail vehicles travel into a tunnel and connect at platform level with the subway trains?
 
It'll be awesome having a rail line WITHOUT LRT CARS TO RUN ON IT!~!~!

If you're referring to the TTC streetcar order, that's completely separate from this. The streetcar order applies to the "old" network. The exception is Waterfront West, which will use a lot of downtown trackage.

Transit City routes will use fairly standard LRT vehicles that, I believe, are included as part of each line's total construction cost. These vehicles will be longer, double-ended, designed to be coupled together, meant for double-bladed switches and equipped with pantographs. Because the Transit City LRVs won't require the custom design done for the downtown network, they should be significantly cheaper per unit than the streetcars.
 
Harper had announced in the news conference for the Sheppard East LRT that the vehicles for the LRT's will be from Bombardier. The TTC had earlier last month said that the LRV’s for Transit City is an option if Bombardier gets the streetcar order.

Chicken or egg? Why announce that the federal government will help buy the option order first before the initial order?
 
Harper had announced in the news conference for the Sheppard East LRT that the vehicles for the LRT's will be from Bombardier. The TTC had earlier last month said that the LRV’s for Transit City is an option if Bombardier gets the streetcar order.

Chicken or egg? Why announce that the federal government will help buy the option order first before the initial order?

That's a good point. Perhaps we can expect another announcement soon. After all, it wasn't long ago that McGuinty announced funding for Eglinton and Finch West and everyone was wondering what was up with Sheppard.
 
9500 jobs seems pretty high.... surely there wouldn't be 9500 working on a surface LRT at one time.

When the government talks jobs they mean the number of individuals who will work on it. The rail laying crew, the transit shelter crew, the tunnel crew, the electrical crew, the cement crew, the welding crew, the engineering crew, the various crews that will work on Don Mills station changes, the equipment drivers, possibly second shifts, etc, etc... with most trades people being specialized most of the jobs will only last a portion of the total project. There would never be 9,500 people at once.
 
So how will the LRT connect into Don Mills station - will the light rail vehicles travel into a tunnel and connect at platform level with the subway trains?

The recommended solution was posted on May 14th on the project web page:
Recommended LRT Connection between Consumers Rd. and Don Mills Station

The Sheppard East LRT is recommended to enter a tunnel just west of Consumers Road, travel under Highway 404 and ‘butt up’ against the east end of the subway platform. This would allow transferring customers to walk from the subway to the LRT along a single continuous platform without having to change levels.

You can find the report here:
http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/sheppard_east_lrt/pdf/2009-05-14_notice.pdf
 
maybe they mean 9500 person years of work?

i've heard this term before.


does it mean that if 1 person was doing the job, it would take him/her 9500 years to complete (or if you wanna look at it from another perspective) 9500 people 1 year to complete?
 
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It depends if they said "jobs" or "person years of work". You are right, person years of work would be how long it takes one person to do the whole thing themselves. It is a much better measure than "jobs".
 
It depends if they said "jobs" or "person years of work". You are right, person years of work would be how long it takes one person to do the whole thing themselves. It is a much better measure than "jobs".

but does person years factor in holidays, weekends, sleep time, breaks, etc. or does it mean continuous work without stop until project completion?
 
but does person years factor in holidays, weekends, sleep time, breaks, etc. or does it mean continuous work without stop until project completion?

It should be continuous for it to be valuable. It makes it easier to estimate the affects of throwing more or less human resources at a project and the impacts of holidays, vacations, overtime, etc.
 
I guess some organizations are using "person years" to indicate one full time equivalent. Of course with some people having more holidays than others that becomes an even less valuable unit.
 

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