TTC and York Region officials are applying pressure to Ottawa, according to the Toronto Star, after the Conservatives said they are not ready to commit to funding the subway extension to York U and the Vaughan City Centre.
“The subway coming to Vaughan is not just for Toronto and Vaughan, it is important for the whole region,” said Vaughan Mayor Michael Di Biase. “We are building a huge transit hub for the entire Greater Toronto Area. People can come from north and east and west and just zoom downtown.”
Di Biase was optimistic the Tories would fund the subway and bus-only lanes and light-rail transit in York.”It will happen. Jim Flaherty himself told me: `I’m not going to earmark $670 million for a subway. It will be an infrastructure package we will give to Ontario, then Ontario will give part of that money to the subway.'”
In other news, an outside consultant has given the thumbs-up to purchasing new subway cars from Bombardier, the Globe and Mail is reporting.
Outside experts have given the thumbs-up to the Toronto Transit Commission’s controversial proposal for a sole-source contract with Bombardier to build 234 subway cars, The Globe and Mail has learned.
The experts’ positive evaluation of Bombardier’s bid price on the subway cars — $499.3-million, several sources said yesterday — provides key ammunition for transit commissioners convinced that an exclusive deal is good for the city. In any case, TTC staff recommend finalizing a deal with Bombardier, a decision that would be debated by city council in September….
“The prices proposed by Bombardier are reasonable based on our industry analysis of external data,” concludes one consultant, Booz Allen Hamilton. “Pursuing a competitive procurement at this stage would add significant delay and increase internal TTC costs without any certainty of reducing the final proposal costs.”
5 comments
Zoom downtown on a subway? Shouldn’t he mean an express service like, uh, the GO train?
You’re bang-on Mark. Too often our politicians think we need to start from scratch when there are cheaper, smarter ways to accomplish the same goals.
It’s certainly interesting to compare the official municipal response in this article (Di Biase, Sorbara etc.) WRT the York U extension, with the response of the Scarborough councillors WRT the SRT and LRT.
You know, a delay in funding could be the best thing that happens. The TTC, York U, etc. haven’t even seen how well (or how poorly) the York U busway will operate. Maybe by the time funding has been arranged, we’ll have had a chance to see whether the “temporary” measure’s capable of doing the job, and maybe northwest-enders will come to the same conclusion as the east-enders.
Mark is right but, seriously, what the heck is up with GO trains? I live not too far from Langstaff station. I work near Union station. In theory, that route would make sense for me. But in practice, for me, and for everyone I know around here, the VIVA+subway combo works better, for two reasons: because GO has like four trains running each way per day, because very few people around can figure out much about GO.
So, first, what’s with running so few trains? Is that a response to perceived demand, or is there something more to it? I have heard that it is awkward for GO to get trains on the tracks because they don’t own them. Is that why so many buses?
And, second, why is GO totally integrated into the interconnections and information systems surrounding transit? VIVA doesn’t seem to link up to it. The transit maps don’t seem to show it. I know there’s a GO train that runs straight from Union to York U, but almost noone seems to have heard of it, nor does it stop — which you’d think was a natural — on the Bloor line to pick up passengers. So York continues to complain about not being served by subway, and meanwhile there’s this GO train right to York, that noone seems to talk about, much less reconfigure to make useable. What the hell?
(Erm, I mean: why is GO totally *un*integrated. Oops!)