Metrolinx’s new white papers are progressing towards the release of the draft Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), which is now expected in late July. This is a delay from the previous schedule, apparently to provide more time for consultation in the pre-RTP period. This is a good move, since once we get to the point of having a draft plan, the tone and tenor of discussion will change to the discussion of specific corridors rather than the larger picture.
I want to provide some commentary on the specific ideas mentioned within the white papers. However, these are currently “concepts” rather than proposals, intended to provide grist for analysis in the white papers. It’s reasonable to assume that the lines in these concepts are informing the RTP phase, but we still must keep in mind that some of these ideas may not go forward to the RTP, or may go forward in altered form. My comments are therefore going to address the idea of whether these concepts are good ideas in general, and not get into detailed discussion over exactly which corridors they should be built in. There will be time enough for that sort of analysis once the draft RTP is released.
Originally, I had intended to keep this discussion focused squarely on Durham Region as has usually been my approach on this blog, but I’m now going to modify that a bit and focus on the larger picture. My reasoning is twofold. One, we will only get Durham residents out of cars when the available routes are capable of taking them to their destinations, whether those destinations are in Durham, Toronto, or elsewhere, and so what is happening elsewhere is of importance to Durham residents. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I simply want to cover the larger picture that Metrolinx is engaged in.
This posting will be an introduction to the specific routes covered in the test cases, and their appropriateness going forward. In future posts, I’ll cover the various policy “directions” included in the white papers, as much of the value of the RTP will be in policy change. I’ll likely also revisit some of the specific lines being considered in more detail.
MoveOntario 2020
First, let’s recognize that Metrolinx assumes MoveOntario 2020 as a base. This means that items such as extension of the GO Lakeshore line east into Clarington, electrification of the Lakeshore line, the addition of service from midtown Toronto to Pickering (Seaton), and the Highway 2 BRT are all assumed as starting points, as is Toronto’s Transit City LRT network. The only place where the white paper concepts diverge from MoveOntario is where they upscale a line to a higher capacity implementation (e.g. replacing the Sheppard East LRT with a Sheppard subway extension).
I’m not going to analyze the MoveOntario items in detail at this point, since I’ve already done so when it was announced last year. Still, it’s worth pointing out while these are all very significant additions in their own right and all well worth doing.
Regional Express
Regional Express is a new (to Toronto) concept of frequent (roughly, five minutes between trains) all day service on most current GO corridors, including on the Lakeshore line from Hamilton to Oshawa, as well as a new 401 corridor connecting to the Lakeshore corridor and running east/west to Pearson. This service would not run using current GO equipment, which is not well suited to this style of operation. Instead, service would run using self-propelled diesel or electric cars. Specific technologies have not been selected at this point, and it is likely that (at least on current lines) existing “large train” equipment may continue to do service during rush hour when demand is highest.
This proposal is in many ways a logical extension of work that is currently in progress at GO. In particular, GO is gradually working towards being able to add all day service to all lines, not just the Lakeshore line, and to increasing frequency of service, particularly in the off peak period. Much of this involves building additional track to avoid scheduling conflicts with freight trains. As a result, we can expect to see off-peak frequencies on the Lakeshore line increased in the next few years, with 30 or even 20 minute headways likely, regardless of what happens with Metrolinx’s planning process.
The Regional Express proposal would take this much further, obviously, and effectively gives us near-subway frequencies, but with an implementation that is better suited to long distance travel than subways are. Stops would be every 5 km or so, rather than the one or two km spacing used on much of Toronto’s subway system, and travel speed on the trains would be faster.
This is perhaps the most important idea specific transit concept discussed in the white papers, in that it would change GO from being a commuter-oriented system aimed at getting people downtown at rush hour into a true regional transit system that serves other types of journeys. Regional Express would finally make it realistic to take transit from Durham to Scarborough, North York, the airport, Mississauga, and other parts of the GTA (utilizing connections at various locations).
Obviously, a lot will depend on details such as exact station locations, spacing, and service frequency, but the concept has such a tremendous potential to be transformative for the Greater Toronto Area that I feel it must be given the highest priority in the RTP.
Subway/RT
Several subway/RT improvements are of interest to Durham residents:
- Extension of the Sheppard subway to Downsview in the west and to Scarborough Town Centre in the east.
- An extension of the Scarborough Rapid Transit (SRT) to Malvern Town Centre (which is now in the planning process)
- An Eglinton subway running from Kennedy station to the airport.
- A Queen street subway serving as a “downtown relief line”, providing alternate routes to downtown from the Bloor-Danforth subway.
Neither of these directly serves Durham, but they provide a stronger network in Scarborough for DRT to connect to, as well as the Highway 401 Regional Express corridor which would connect at Scarborough Town Centre.
At the same time, the extension of the Sheppard subway will be an expensive project when compared to the Sheppard East LRT plan that is currently undergoing Environmental Assessment. It’s not clear to me that the ridership will be there to warrant the costs, particularly with the 401 Regional Express line also running east/west just a short kilometre or so south of Sheppard. Unfortunately, white papers do not provide individual line ridership estimates for the test concepts, so it is impossible to determine what ridership levels the white paper authors envision existing.
The Eglinton subway is a stronger case, and indeed Transit City will build much of it as an underground LRT anyway. It may be worth spending the extra money to build it as a subway, but this is something that I’ll return to in a later positing.
The Queen subway is an interesting and worthwhile idea and given the dense nature of the area it would serve, building it as a subway is warranted.
The Scarborough RT should be converted to LRT and built using the same technology as the rest of Transit City, particularly given that (as will be seen next) other LRT lines are likely to be built outside of the City of Toronto. There is no sense in maintaining a unique line operating at technology used nowhere else in the area.
These are specific proposals that I’ll be looking for more details on in the RTP, as it seems to me that both should be implemented as LRT.
Other Rapid Transit
This category contains smaller-scale rapid transit lines which might be built as LRT or as Bus Rapid Transit
- A link from Markham Centre to downtown Oshawa via Highway 407 East.
- A Steeles-Taunton link from York University to downtown Oshawa.
- A north/south line along Brock Road from north Pickering to downtown
Pickering. - A north/south line in Whitby in the Brock Street corridor.
- And of course, many other lines in other areas.
These really serve as general connectivity throughout the Region. The Steeles/Taunton link serves as a nice complement to the Highway 2 BRT, and provides a connection to York University, although I suspect that most long distance travels would take the 401 Express line to the Spadina Subway, and then take that north to York. The 407 East line is obviously a higher-speed connection with fewer stops given the nature of the route, but would serve as a useful connection to jobs in Markham, which are currently very difficult to reach using public transit from Durham. The two north-south lines serve Brooklin and the future Seaton development, and again complement the BRT route Highway 2 and the future Taunton link.
Together, these concepts form a nice network of services that provides useful transit on a more local scale than the various GO services do. The exact location of these lines can be argued about a bit, but building this density of LRT and BRT routes across suburban areas of the GTA is key to scaling a transit system effectively. GO and Regional Express lines cover the long distance travel, subway covers mid distance in the urban core, and LRT and BRT cover somewhat shorter distances, particularly in suburban areas. These modes all need to be present for a system to be truly useful, unless we want to continue to work on the model of suburban riders driving to GO stations. Also, the addition of additional destinations (Markham, York University) is key to avoiding a downtown-centric view that does not reflect the current needs of the GTA.
Highways
The 407 East Extension through Durham is included in the primary test concepts. This item is not a MoveOntario 2020 but was announced for completion by 2013 as part of the federal government’s FLOW initiative. This is an aggressive timeline considering that the EA will not be complete and submitted until spring 2009, and there has been some public discussion among MPPs that 2015 may be a more realistic date.
In general, Metrolinx is not proposing significant road expansion, and indeed, a scenario - requested by the Metrolinx board and included in the final version of the white papers – in which significant highway construction occurs results in higher costs to the taxpayer than building transit. As follow blogger Andrae Griffith of GTTA Visions wrote, we can’t widen our way out of this mess.
The 407 East extension may still be necessary given the dearth of highway capacity in Durham relative to the rest of the GTA, and the geographic difficulties in widening the 401 corridor. It is the one obvious missing gap in the GTA’s highway network.
Costs
Of course, all of the above would be very expensive to build, on the order of $90 billion dollars over several decades. One of the big tasks facing Metrolinx is to come up with a funding and investment model capable of paying these kinds of bills. Obviously, given past experience with grudging support of transit by senior levels of government, this may be problematic.
On the other hand, given what has happened to the price of gas, perhaps we have reached the point where governments will recognize that we no longer have a viable alternative but to build extensive transit.
Conclusion
This post was primarily intended to be a summary of the white paper line suggestions. I’ll be posting more and providing more detailed thoughts on these possibilities over the next month or so, so I will hold off on providing a detailed conclusion just yet.
However, it’s clear that Metrolinx is thinking in very ambitious terms, and that the concepts contained within the white papers would have a very significant impact. Our challenge as a society is to decide whether we want to address this problem, or continue our slide into gridlock and congestion, all the while paying increasingly expensive fuel prices to do so.
In future postings, I hope to break out the concepts into individual, more detailed, posts and also to spend some time discussion the policy directions being considered by Metrolinx, which in some ways may be even more important than the specific line choices.
Filed under: Metrolinx
