Scarborough-Malvern LRT EA Open House
Two open houses for the EA on the Scarborough-Malvern LRT will be held on Monday June 29 at Scarborough Village Rec Centre, Intermission Room, 3600 Kingston Road.
The official notice of this meeting can be seen here.
March 19th, 2012 at 3:08 am
before, subways are the only tarosportatinn mode the TTC knows how to operate EFFICIENTLY. 150, 000 customers use the Eglinton corridor on a daily basis. That’s roughly 9400 pphpd, higher than what was requisite for building the original Bloor-Danforth subway in the 60s. What the heck has happened to this city’s priorities? Eglinton is very proximal to the Square One/MCC and Erin Mills high-density zones in Mississauga AND its Transitway AND its int’l airport, so a subway up here would alleviate the number of 905 users feeding into Islington/Kipling.
Cal’s comment: The number of 905 users feeding into Islington/Kipling is not as critical as other points. Eglinton’s peak usage is not 9400 pphpd, but more like 6000 and an LRT line can easily handle 2.5 times this need. If we were to build one line now and NEVER again build any new transit infrastructure, I might be more inclined to say that Eglinton should be a full subway. An LRT line in this corridor will handle our needs now and in the future added growth will not be right on the corridor, but fed in from other corridors which by that time we should be building other enhancements to the network.
And the possibility to route the subway at- or above-grade through Etobicoke and Scarborough would substantially reduce building costs (the TTC’s tendency to overbuild modern stations is a primarly reason for the bloated subway cost projections; running the line visibly will force them to build minimalist, space-conserving station boxes).
There is not a whole lot of above-grade availability along Eglinton in either Etobicoke or Scarborough, and what little there is will likely face local opposition. Even so, a full subway line requires total isolation, meaning that it must be fenced in and requires additional buffer space. It also substantially limits the possibility of any expansion of the line in the future by making it much harder to justify. An LRT line along Eglinton can handle the load and has the advantage of being able to move from an isolated section with higher traffic density to a section where no fencing is required and service of a lower frequency can be provided. Justifying extending such an system is far easier in the future.
The DRL is also of superior worth to Toronto as development is becoming concentrated in the downtown core east-to-west which presently has to contend with subpar, unreliable streetcar service to get around. Why is it taking a half-hour just to get from Yonge to Roncesvalles? So, I’m not against Transit City (the concept) but I am certainly against the absurd insinuation that it is better for the city on the basis of cost when the politicans deliberately low-balled and obscured the original final costs in order to win an election, then after victory revealed multibillion dollar streetcar lines that lack ROW exclusivity. What is it now, $13 billion and counting?
Initial estimates in 2007 for Transit City lines were naturally low as they pre-dated any public input which were a main factor in adding to the cost. The initial estimates also did not include vehicles and maintenance facilities, and the extent of underground portions has grown by almost 5 km. At no time from 2007 and 2009 was there an election to be won on low cost estimates, so suggesting so is just plain rediculous. Where on earth do you get $13 billion from?!? You must be including the cost of the Sheppard subway line with the other projects to come up with that.
There comes a time when one realizes that a subway(s) that the masses are already accustomed to commuting to is a better end to thrive for than a streetcar to nowhere that few may find to be of any actual improvement for the bus service, and at 5 minutes headways all-day, perhaps not. Making the local network connections to those trunk new subways that much better doesn’t cost billions to implement. I give Save Our Subways credit at least for their grassroots effort to acheive for our city a better standard.