SRT Open House
The City of Toronto and the Toronto Transit Commission are conducting preliminary planning for the extension of the Scarborough Rapid Transit line to significantly improve the transit service to the north and east of the Scarborough City Centre.
An open house will be held:
- on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm at Sts. Peter and Paul Banquet Hall, 231 Milner Avenue
This open house is presenting the the preferred alignment of the extension and station locations. Nothing appears in the announcement about technology choice, but the open house would be a good place to submit comments on the conversion to LRT.
The official announcement can be seen here. The page on this project has not yet been updated since February.
May 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I would surmise that if the SRT ICTS/ALRT/ALM/ART SkyTrain system were to be extended it would have to be completely rebuilt. The guide-way just could not accommodate the newer longer and heavier Mk.2 cars and Bombardier Inc. have retired the Mk.1.
When the Millennium Line opened in Vancouver TransLink had to spend over $125 million to upgrade the ICTS/ALRT Expo Line to accommodate the ART Millennium Line Mk.2 cars.
Now we are going to spend over $1 billion to again retro fit the Expo Line.
I think the TTC would be remiss in the fiduciary duties in trying to extend the SRT with SkyTrain ART technology.
Cal’s comment: Since the line was originally supposed to be LRT using CLRVs, various limitations existed, most notably in the platform and loop at Kennedy station which was built well before the switch to ICTS was even a sparkle in anyone’s eye.
The $125 million that TransLink had to spend is pocket change compared to what would have to be spent on converting the SRT because the SkyTrain system was meant to be that from the start of design. That said, it will be somewhat costly for the SRT to be converted to LRT because it may involve new track and overhead power, but mostly because lower level platforms (or higher level track in the stations) will be needed. A third possibility would be to pay the price to have Mark-I cars built to do nothing (because the fleet will not have too much life left, so it will have to be replaced somehow, though this option is extremely unlikely). As it turns out, all three of these options have a cost that are pretty close to each other as far as the SRT line from Kennedy to McCowan currently exists.
When you decide to extend the line, the cost differences come into play. The cost per kilometre for new construction will be about the same for either of the ICTS/ART options, and both of these are significantly higher than the cost per kilometre for new construction of LRT. Added to this, for an ICTS/ART extension there will be a need to build a new car house and storage facility. With LRT, the car house to be built for the Sheppard East line will be used.
I predicted a while back that an ICTS/ART option would only see an extension as far as Sheppard, while an LRT conversion will take all the way to Malvern. Given that the study is being amended to take it to Malvern, and that the Scarborough-Malvern LRT line now has it only going to Morningside and Sheppard, it is looking somewhat likely an LRT conversion may be in the cards for this line. One other issue that may effect this is what will happen on Eglinton. Metrolinx was leaning towards and ICTS/ART option for Eglinton that would likely be interlined or through-operated with the SRT. Given that the funding announced for the Eglinton line is not sufficient to provide this technology, this also makes an LRT conversion of the SRT one notch more likely.