Update: 12:20PM
According to the National Post’s Allison Hanes, the money for the Sheppard LRT is not, in fact, part of the federal government’s stimulus program and is instead from the Build
Canada Fund, which has been maligned frequently by municipal politicians for its endless red tape.
Spacing has also learned that the TTC will receive the money it has already spent preparing for the beginning of the Sheppard line construction from the provincial government through Metrolinx. Although Spacing has been given the impression that there is not a significant amount of money allocated to Sheppard in the TTC/City of Toronto capital budgets, we are still trying to confirm whether money had been planned for Sheppard in the 2010-2014 five-year capital plan. This post will be updated if/when that information is available to us.
Update: 11:20AM
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Dalton McGuinty this morning announced that the Sheppard LRT line would be funded through the provincial and federal economic stimulus programs.
The $950 million for the Sheppard line of Transit City will be two-thirds provincial money and one-third federal money. That money includes the funds required to pay for the streetcars expected to run on the new line.
The City of Toronto’s request for provincial and federal money continues to be considered by officials at both levels of government, however, no announcement was made on that front this morning.
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Mayor David Miller announced on his Twitter feed tonight that he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be at the Hillcrest TTC compound at 11AM for a good news announcement. While Mayor Miller didn’t say which project would be funded, Spacing has learned that the project is likely Transit City‘s Sheppard line.
Although streetcar funding is a key priority for the TTC and was presented to both the provincial and federal governments in the hope of receiving stimulus funding, it is most likely that the TTC will receive Transit City funding for the Sheppard Line. It has been expected that the Sheppard LRT would have its contracts tendered during summer 2009, however, the April 1 announcement of provincial funding for Transit City excluded the Sheppard Line. This would explain why.
While the smart money is on a Sheppard LRT announcement, it is possible that a streetcar announcement will also be made given that the TTC’s deadline to order streetcars is fast approaching.
17 comments
Hmmm….Liberal attack ads against Torontonian Michael Ignatieff and public transit capital funds for TTC in one week. Woo-hoo! I’m gonna vote me conservative in the next election. Far too little, too late stevie-kins!
the transparent attempts of this government to woo Toronto & Ontario (over the last 3 months) are not exactly turning tides for this largely ignored east-end Toronto voter. don’t get me wrong, i’d be damn grateful. but akin to a starved dog offered crumbs off the table. lol
How disappointing that our nodes for intensification will probably not be linked by rapid transit. Growth will suffer.
On the other hand, it’s great to hear of the possibility of finalizing the streetcar deal with funding.
I am grateful for all the funding announcements for public transit here in the GTA lately. Our subway extension to York U and Vaughn already had its funding in place, the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch LRT lines were announced last month and now probably the much needed Sheppard LRT. I don’t expect any project to be perfect but all these funding announcements and investments will help the GTA remain competitive when fuel price rise even further. Public transit will help Toronto stay economically competitive long into the future.
If your speculation about streetcars isn’t true, it’ll highlight an embarrassing mis-step by Miller. After Smitherman’s comments on the streetcar issue, it’s clear the city has to be very careful that funding announcements match its own priorities; just assuming more funding is on the way is apparently not allowed. The streetcar issue is a ticking time-bomb, while any deadline on starting Sheppard is artificial. So it’d be irresponsible to pose for a Sheppard funding photo-op unless the streetcar funding is already in the can (and a public announcement is the best way to guarantee that).
Here’s the specific tweet by the mayor.
I would expect Hillcrest to be a more appropriate locale for an announcement on streetcars. If you are announcing the Sheppard LRT, why not announce it at a major point along the LRT route? Don Mills station seems like the obvious choice, being the premature cut-off of the stubway, but failing that, even STC.
To Matt’s point: I wouldn’t say that Miller has failed on streetcars if that money isn’t announced today.
Since Smitherman is only beginning to soften his stance to streetcars in the media and the deadline for stimulus project applications hasn’t passed, it would almost be a surprise to find out streetcars have been funded. However, I was told that Sheppard and the streetcars are the two projects on the table and that the PM only comes to town when there’s enough good news to warrant it.
“The $905 million for the Sheppard line of Transit City will be two-thirds provincial money and one-third federal money”
Wait: does that mean the city is absolved of its usual 1/3rd funding? Didn’t they budget for that in the 2009 capital budget? Does that mean a few hundred mil have been freed up?
If I were still in Smitherman’s riding, he’d be getting an earful from me.
“After Smitherman’s comments on the streetcar issue, it’s clear the city has to be very careful that funding announcements match its own priorities; just assuming more funding is on the way is apparently not allowed.”
Does anyone seriously think that the old streetcars will run forever? They have to be replaced (not least because Ontario law is that all public transit must be accessible in a few years from now). McGuinty and Smitherman better align their priorities with the city on this one, or risk looking particularly clueless.
I’m cautiously euphoric — after so many years of reading “[Insert American City] Build New Light Rail Line” I’m still worried that this will all be a dream and I’ll wake up hearing about Dallas’ new DART expansions (inside joke there for you 80s TV-watchers)…
I am a little confused through about how exactly this big east-west route across the top of the city will work. A six-year-old would look at the map and assume that the Finch West LRT would do a little jog at Yonge, dive into the Sheppard subway tunnel, and then emerge as the Sheppard East LRT. Except it seems that we are keeping the stubway and yet also bypassing it at the same time as the Finch LRT continues to Don Mills and then meets the Sheppard LRT. Presumably, a single route will run on Finch-Don Mills-Sheppard, so who exactly is going to get off and bother using the Sheppard subway? The few minutes saved in subway over LRT speeds will be wiped out by the time to transfer/wait for the connection (plus lose your seat).
The only logical routing I can think of would be to convert the stubway to a BRANCH of the Yonge line, so that every other train terminates at Don Mills instead of Finch. This would then make some sense in collecting the feeder LRT traffic from the east and west sides of the city and, frankly, be a more typical arrangement similar to the 2/3 in New York, the Red Line in Boston, the 7 line in Paris, etc etc. Unfortunately, I think the Sheppard line was built with a connection only between Northbound/Eastbound and not Southbound/Westbound – if true, this will rank as one of the Dumbest Moves of All Time. Fixing it will be messy, but I can’t see any other way of ending up with a logical, efficient, people-moving system.
As neat as that branch sounds, it’s rather unlikely, and not simply because of track layouts. With the northward expansion of the Yonge line into Richmond Hill, the peak demand would quickly overwhelm the system at the halved headway.
The best way would be to convert the stubway, and this was apparently actually considered for a while, but it sounds like too many egos would be bruised…
The connections at Yonge are from northbound and eastbound and from eastbound to southbound.
The extra indirect travel time north-south will probably cancel out the disbenefit of the extra transfer, at least in terms of absolute travel time (as opposed to perceived time). 3 minutes more on the Yonge subway, and say 4-5 minutes on Don Mills. Then add in the extra travel time on Finch, maybe an additional 5 to 7 minutes (will depend on LRT configuration on Finch… at grade vs underground, on-street vs hydro corridor). So the question is whether the one-seat ride is worth the extra time.
Leaving Sheppard alone with incremental expansion would have been the right choice, not downgrade a superior mode of transportation. Toll the DVP if necessary, and let the city build it with its own funds.
Andrew, that inequality is actually by design. Like the 2/3 in NYC, the Don Mills trains would pull into stations like York Mills and Eglinton half-full, allowing riders who live in the city to board trains that they would never get into, never mind find a seat on, if all trains came only from Richmond Hill. Think of it as a solution to two problems at once — how to get proper use out of the Sheppard Line and provide capacity to 416ers at the same time. I tend to advocate for options that work elsewhere, and while the world is full of branched subways, stubways are not exactly common.
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A.R, that’s how New York generally works. The MTA collects tolls on many of the bridges and tunnels and then applies some of those funds to mass transit. But what’s done is done. Let’s built the LRT as a proper outer-ring collector/transport system, and adjust the subway system to work with it to optimally feed traffic downtown. (Paris, anyone?)
Sheppard subway has high ridership considering its very short length. Busier than the Blue Line in Boston but only half as long. Busier than the Purple, Pink, and Yellow lines in Chicago.In terms of ridership per KM, busier than every LRT line in North America. Extend it to Downsview and STC and see ridership grow even more.
uSkyscraper, the plan is to run half of the trains from Richmond Hill, and the other half will start at Finch (which will have lower boarding with York Region passengers boarding at the new stations to the north) — this will have the same effect.
Those bridge tolls in NYC have a downside too.
The MTA has been forced to make major service cuts thanks to falling revenue.