Toronto LRT Information Blog

Part of the Don Mills LRT line should be built as full subway. No, you haven’t entered a parallel universe where everything is backwards. I still believe that the entire Spadina Subway Extension and a proposed Yonge Extension north of Steeles would better serve our transit needs if built as LRT, but this is not the case for the portion of the proposed Don Mils LRT line that will be south of Eglinton. Eglinton and Don Mills should be the north-eastern end of a Downtown Relief Line (DRL), built as a full Subway.

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I am going to go out on a limb and say that yesterday’s provincial budget has nothing in it for the Yonge North subway extension. To be accurate, the budget had nothing specific about any particular project. The budget had $32.5 billion (with $5 billion coming through the province from the federal government) for infrastructure. There were no specifics on where this would be going in order to keep the focus on the harmonization of the Retail Sales Tax with the federal GST, which will not come into effect until July 2010.

It is expect that a significant piece of the $32.5 billion, possibly more than $10 billion, will go into transit projects, but it is expected that projects that apply for this funding will have to be completed by March 31, 2011. Of course, it is possible that the subway extension project could be broken up into smaller sub-projects, some of which could be completed by this deadline, but the race to do this could be a wasted effort as there are numerous other transit projects ready to go once funding is in place that will be in line as soon as the application process opens up in the next few weeks. The Sheppard East Transit City line has completed its EA process and is in a shovel ready state just waiting for cash to flow, and I understand that LRT plans in Hamilton are close to a similar state.

Let’s see what happens over the next few weeks as municipalities start jumping through the province’s bureaucratic hoops.

April 1 update: That limb is looking stronger every day! Today, the big announcement was for $9 billion in spending for transit that included such TTC projects as the Finch West LRT (going east to Don Mills and down to Sheppard), an Eglinton-Crosstown line (not sure if this will be LRT or something else at this time) going all the way to the airport, and an “upgrade” of the Scarborough RT with an extension to either Sheppard and Markham (likely if the “upgrade” involves ART MARK-II technology) or the Malvern Town Centre (likely if the “upgrade” involves conversion to LRT). The announcement also included funding for VIVA BRT lane construction and an LRT study in Hamilton.

Still to be announced is the funding for the Sheppard LRT line and the contract for the replacement of the legacy streetcar fleet, both of which should be very soon and will use up more of the available infrastructure funds.

Last week, a reader by the name of Jordan posted a comment on this blog announcing the new blog on the VivaNext site. In his comment, he did not identify himself as an employee of York Region Rapid Transit Corporation, but he did so in a similar comment he posted on Metronauts.

March 25 update: It took several days, but comments posted since March 20 finally appeared on the VivaNext blog. My comment even appeared without editing, so it appears to me that this is being run as an open forum for the sharing of ideas. I will continue to follow what is posted and will continue to add my own comments. I encourage others to do the same.

The Environmental Project Report for the Yonge Subway Extension has been completed and has been available for public review since February 2. The public has until March 4, 2009 to submit comments.

The document can be reviewed at the VIVA website and more information can be seen in this Notice of Completion.

Just yesterday (January 5), I updated the York Region Options page to reflect more recent information that has come out of the planning process for the Yonge Subway extension. In the update, I mentioned that a number of other conditions would be necessary in order for the extension to work, and that the cost of these, when added to the construction of the extension, would total to about $4.3 billion dollars.

Today news stories (such as this one in the National Post) report this true cost of the subway extension. On the York Region Options page, I made the claim that the public will only be told of the $2.4 billion cost. However, I must commend Mayor David Miller for proving me wrong. In the article he says:

“The province needs to know that costs are not just the $2.4-billion cost of the line, there are all these ancillary costs that are part of the project…. The work that needs to be done for this project is somewhere in the range of $4-to $5-billion.”

It is nice to see that perhaps the public will see the true cost of this extension.