Mass Transit - 16

ONTARIO
Ford's biggest change is to
the Relief Line, which is meant
to ease traffic on the already
overloaded North-South Line 1
subway along Yonge Street. Now
renamed the Ontario Line, this
new subway will be extended
beyond the Relief Line's planned
route to the Ontario Science Centre on Eglinton Avenue in the
north, curving southwest to run
through the existing Queen and
Osgoode stations before going
west to end at Ontario Place on
Toronto's waterfront. It will cost
C$10.9 billion (US$8.1 billion).
According to media reports, this
line may use automated trains or
some other form of LRTs, rather
than traditional human-controlled subway trains.
Meanwhile, the six-station
TYSSE will extend Toronto's
Line 1 subway along Yonge Street
from its current termination at
Finch station northwards into
Richmond Hill Centre, above
the City's boundaries into York
Region. Priced at C$5.6 billion
(US$4.16 billion), the TYSSE
would be completed "soon after
TTC MOVES 28,000 people per
hour on Line 1.

Courtesy of TTC

the Ontario Line," said an Ontario government news release.
The three-station Scarborough Line 2 subway extension,
which replaces the single station
extension planned by the TTC to
replace the aging Scarborough RT
LRT line, is priced at C$5.5 billion (US$4.08 billion) and will be
ready by 2030. This is four years
later than the TTC's single station
extension, which was to be in operation by 2026.
Finally, the Metrolinx Eglinton Crosstown LRT Eglinton
West extension will cost C$4.7
billion (US$3.49 billion) and be
"delivered before 2031".

Courtesy of TTC

16 |

Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | JUNE 2019

Leary's Dilemma

The TTC's various expansion plans
have served as political footballs
for decades, with municipal and
provincial politicians spending
time booting them around rather
than providing the TTC with consistent, adequate funding.
The result? A 1950s-vintage
subway system of sufficient capacity that never seemed to
break down during rush hour in
the 1970s (based on this writer's
personal experiences) is now increasingly overloaded and prone
to constant failure. There are
millions of dollars of repairs,
maintenance work and necessary improvements waiting to
be done, and not enough money
to do them.
(Note: 1990s-era provincial
funding cuts by the Mike Harris
PC government put the TTC's
previously healthy finances in a
bind, from which it has never recovered. The TTC is now reliant
on farebox revenues and municipal grants, and this amount of
money is never enough.)
A case in point: A cascading
system failure that began at the
Line 1 Museum station early January 24, 2019 brought Toronto's
morning commute to its knees. "At
the peak of the chaos, trains were
taking two hours and 20 minutes
to travel from Vaughan Metropolitan Centre to Union Station,"
reported CBC News; "a journey
that normally takes 45 minutes."

MORE THAN 213
million people
rode TTC's
subways in 2017.

Courtesy of TTC

"we

have
to balance
investing in new
signal systems,
upgrading our
track and power,
replacing tunnel
linings, making
sure ventilation
and drainage
is appropriate,
and moving
the amount of
people that are
required..."
-RICK LEARY,
TTC CEO
http://www.MassTransitmag.com
Mass Transit

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