Toronto LRT Information Blog

Over this weekend, the west-end TBMs for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line were lifted out of their extraction shaft on the west side of the Spadina Subway Line at Eglinton West Station, and moved a short distance above ground to a launch shaft east of the subway line.

Early Saturday morning, the first of the two TBMs heading east, named Dennis, made this journey. On Saturday, the second TBM, named Lea, was hoisted out of the extraction shaft and began its move to the east side of the subway line.

Here are three photos of Dennis taken around 2 am Saturday morning where it is in place east of the subway line being prepared for lowering:

Here are four photos of Lea taken around 2 am Sunday morning where it is in place east of the subway line and being lowered:

It required over another half day of debate, but at about 2:40 pm, the main motion on going with the LRT plan for Sheppard East came to a vote and was passed 24-19. Here is a photo of the results of the vote (click on it to see a larger version):

The day started with some comments about the attempts to filibuster on Wednesday before continuing with the questions on Councillor Thompson’s motion to defer everything. There was a motion to amend his motion by adding a deadline to the deferral that required a report back to council for the May 8 and 9 meeting. At 11 am, the deferral and its amendment went to a vote. The amendment passed, but the main motion itself failed and discussion returned to the main motion.

There were a few “no strings” motions put forward to essentially create a committee or mechanism that would be on-going to study ways to create on-going funding for transit development and even look into studying the priority of future projects. These are “no strings” because they were not tied to whether Sheppard East would be LRT or subway. Personally, I believe this is a good idea as it could create a way of doing things that keeps looking to the future for transit needs instead of just coming up with a new line on a map when it either makes a good election promise or another level of government is waiving some cash at the city.

I suspect that the lack of any 3P way to fund Ford’s plan whatsoever may because the city has lacked this sort of initiative until now. After all, if you had a load of cash to invest and the city came to you looking for it and you asked what sort of planning structure they had in place, what should your reaction be when they respond with, “Uh, our plan was to just ask you”?

These motions were intentionally left open-ended to allow what ever body exists to explore all possible sources of funding. Anything goes - be that going to the province or feds to beg, make use of existing or asking for new revenue tools, going to the private sector, or even holding a bake sale. Still, Councillor Ford had to ask if it would include looking at 3P sources. When told ‘yes’, he continued to ask, until he became frustrated and made a comment about “working with a bunch of monkeys.” He had to apologize for this comment, but his lack of understanding what the word ‘yes’ means shows that Councillor Cho was correct on Wednesday when he asked Doug Ford if he understood the language.

Today was the special meeting of Council on the transit choice for Sheppard East.

The morning, and part of the afternoon, was spent on questions for staff. The chair of the special panel on Sheppard, Professor Eric Miller, was not present as he is at a conference that was arranged long before this meeting was set for today (it was originally set for March 15). In order for him to be asked questions, a teleconference connection was to be used, but as this has never been used by Council and there are no official rules regarding it, Council needed to approve it. Councillor Minnan-Wong rose on a point of order questioning what the long term effects of this vote would mean. The City Clerk indicated that the vote would only apply to this one situation and would not be precedent setting. The vote to allow the teleconference questioning passed.

Councillor Kelly had a motion to allow another speaker to answer questions. Since this was an agenda change, it required a 2/3 majority vote and did not pass.

A little after 3 pm, the main motion was finally presented by Councillor De Baeremaeker, followed by questions on the motion. After this, other councillors either spoke on the motion or presented other motions.

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Today, Toronto City Council voted 25-18 in favour of the one part of a motion brought to a special meeitng by TTC Chair Karen Stintz. This part of the motion dealt with returning to more or less the previous design for Eglinton, subject to engineering recommendations, returning to an SRT conversion to LRT that included an extension to Sheppard with looking into the further extension to Malvern Town Centre, and a return of the Finch West LRT route from Keele and Finch to Humber College.

The second part of her motion asked for a panel to be created to investigate what is best for Sheppard East, and this was also passed.

My “Sort Of” in the title comes from making the point that ‘Transit City’ involves a plan for eight LRT corridors. Four of those corridors were identified by Metrolinx in their “5 in 10 Plan” (the fifth is the YRT/VIVA rapidways). Three of the corridors have been restored and Sheppard East will be under review that must report back to council by March 12, 2012.

One comment of note was something that Councillor Raymond Cho said (ward 42 - Scarborough-Rouge River) when speaking in favour of the motion. He said that originally, he was in favour of Rob Ford’s plan of a Sheppard subway as he thought that meant the subway would go all the way along Sheppard to Morningside (or Meadowvale). Now, if a city councillor thought this, just how many people in Scarborough thought this? Worse yet, how many STILL think this?

Update: the interview mentioned here is available on Newstalk 1010’s website by downloading the February 2 Jerry Agar show. To save you going through the whole show, I have a copy of just the interview by clicking here (this is 5.2 MB).

This morning, Councillor Norm Kelly was on the Jerry Agar show on Newstalk 1010 speaking on why the Eglinton-Crosstown line should be underground for the entire route. He outlined five factors that are looked at to decide whether something should be underground or at grade. For a councillor who is in his second term on the TTC commission, he quite clearly doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, but what do you expect from the city’s number one flip-flopper?

Allow me to go through he points he made:

1. Speed. He claimed that the underground option is 70% faster.I don’t know where he gets this figure from, none of our other subway lines have an average speed that is 70% faster than the expected average speed of the original plan for the LRT on Eglinton. Perhaps he is comparing the average speed of the original plan with the top speed the vehicles are capable of doing. Top speed means nothing if you have to stop to pick up passengers, something that is rather important for a mass transit system.More importantly, speed of the line itself means nothing without the bigger picture of what the typical commuter’s average travel time will be. The underground option will eliminate a number of stops on the line, which helps increase the average speed of the line, but dramatically increases the average amount of time the typical commuter takes to get to where they are going as they now need extra time to get to a stop that is farther away from where they are coming from or where they are going.
    
2. Capacity. Underground can carry more people than a road median surface alignment. Yes and no. Underground, we could easily run five-car trains, but the practical upper limit to train length for a road median alignment is only three cars. The trouble is, the underground stations are being designed for only a three-car length. There is a “utility” section at each end that will likely still have level track, so it is conceivable that the stations could be expanded for four-car trains, but that is it.The underground section can move faster with the use of ATO, but one must consider just how much capacity is needed where. The central core that was to be mostly underground in the Transit City plan needs higher capacity capabilities for future needs, but does that mean the expense of that capacity should be spent for the entire line. One of the big advantages of LRT is the ability to move from an area of high capacity in a dedicated right of way, to a reserved median or side-of-the-road right of way, to even a mixed with traffic operation. This latter example is not part of any of the Transit City plans, but is a viable way of extending a line further out in the suburbs at a lower cost where the need warrants.
3. Building for Today or for Tomorrow. This is always a biggie, particularly with arguments for full subway. The claim that need for the line will outgrow capacity at some point. This often ignores that there is a significant amount of overlap in capacity between different modes. Just because we need to justify 10,000 ppdph to say that a full subway is needed today does not mean that LRT falls apart the day the needs reach that figure.Furthermore, the lower cost of building at-grade LRT allows us to meet the needs of today and for a significant time in the future economically while allowing the construction of parallel LRT services on other corridors to cover future growing capacity. Instead of spending X dollars on a single line that has a huge capacity that will not be needed for some time (or maybe not ever), spend X/3 dollars to build a line that meets today’s needs and the needs for the next couple of decades. During that time, another X/3 dollars can be spent to build a parallel line 4 km away on another main corridor to double the capacity AND be more convenient to people closer to the other corridor. The bonus is that WHEN a problem shuts down a line, there is a back-up available for commuters.
4. Impact. A median right-of-way has a significant impact on the street.Sure it does, but this is sometimes a good thing. Certainly at Yonge and Eglinton, it would be a bad thing, but Transit City recognized that and placed the line underground there. Out in Scarborough, Eglinton was designed as a major artery with a minimum 7-lane road allowance. Median right of way has a very positive impact in this environment, and it is often overlooked that the elimination of buses taking up road space improves this impact even more. An underground line with longer station spacings will still require buses to clog up traffic.
5. Cost. Underground costs more, but Kelly claims that operational savings will outweigh this in the long run.What operational savings? There may be some when it comes to station maintenance, since there will be fewer stations to maintain. Longer trains does reduce operational cost, since more people can be carried with a single operator, but don’t forget the underground stations will only be three cars long.Does Kelly expect the east end of the line to grow in capacity to the point that the masses will cry to have it put underground? The money to put this part of the line underground should be used to provide rapid service to other parts of the city that need it now.

The Transit City plan for Eglinton-Crosstown was not perfect. The TTC was very pig-headed about some issues, such as ballasted tie construction at the side of the road where practical. It is true that there are very few places in Toronto where this is practical, but parts of the Eglinton-Crosstown route are ideal for it. From the east portal of the underground section to Don Mills, the line should be built along the south side of Eglinton and not down the middle. Don Mills station was to be underground, and the line may remain underground to just east of the Don Valley Parkway. Between there and Victoria Park, it is possible to place it on the north side of the road and have it move to the middle of the road on an elevated structure at VP.