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rfmcdonaldThink of these three links as offering connections to riffs on a theme.
The Globe and Mail's Anna Mehler Paperny reports ("Toronto needs strong mayor with veto power, Doug Ford says") that, in a continuation of previous trends under left-leaning mayor David Miller, Mayor Rob Ford's brother and fellow councillor Doug and presumably the mayor himself want to establish a strongly centralized system of municipal governance.
Steve Munro, meanwhile, really doesn't like the Fords' support for a privately-built extension of the existing subway system into relatively low-density areas of northeastern Toronto.
Back at The Globe and Mail, Marcus Gee is quite skeptical ("Sheppard subway extension: A quarter the stops for three times the cost") about the good sense of the Fords' plan.
Go, read all three.
“I believe in a strong mayor system, like they have in the States. The mayor should have veto power ... so he has enough power to stop council,” Mr. Ford said. “The mayor should be the mayor. At the end of the day ... the mayor’s responsible for everything.”
It’s been a tough transition for the Ford camp to shift from a highly partisan, highly successful mayoral campaign to the enforced diplomacy of governing, attempting to woo councillors and win votes on a 45-person council with no party system, in which the mayor has only one ballot to cast.
“You’ve always got that council. You’ve got to have your 23 votes to get it passed,” Mr. Ford said.
He’d like the mayor to be able to override council “100 per cent. … So the mayor has veto power.”
It’s a model that closely mirrors an American system, which favours strong mayors who wield more clout than what former mayor David Crombie called the “bully pulpit” and single vote on council. In some U.S. cities, a two-thirds majority of council is required to overrule the mayor’s desire.
“Mayor Daly, in Chicago” – Doug Ford noted, citing a role model of the Ford brothers, whose label business has close ties to the U.S. city. “He got things done.”
The elder Mr. Ford is also a fan of Mississauga’s Hazel McCallion, who has wielded significant political clout on her council despite being officially one vote of many.
“She runs a tight ship over there. … She’s got such massive support, they just don’t go against her.”
The expansion would be privately financed, but owned by the City with the cost to be repaid out of development charges and tax increment financing.
What is unclear at this point is the amount of development that would be needed along the extended line to actually pay for its construction without adding to the City’s debt, nor is it clear how much of the proposed Provincial and Federal contributions to the Sheppard LRT would be available for a Sheppard Subway project.
This scheme leaves a number of other projects up in the air including:
* the remainder of the Sheppard LRT’s scope from Kennedy (where the subway would veer south to STC) to eastern Scarborough and, possibly, to the UofT Scarborough Campus
* the replacement of the SRT as either an LRT line (part of any remaining LRT-based Transit City network) or as a BD subway extension
* the status of the proposed Eglinton and Finch LRT lines, although the former as an LRT subway hybrid seems fairly certain to be built
A long term plan to finance a subway using future revenues presumes that the money to pay for its construction, debt financing and developer’s profit will actually materialize. This begs the question of station location and spacing because there would be little development on land far from stations spaced widely as on the most recent extensions to the subway. Enough land and development potential must exist to pay for the subway over time, and the locations must be sufficiently attractive to would-be builders that they will pay a premium to locate their buildings on subway sites.
The idea of a full-length Scarborough subway line goes back a long way. As early as the 1960s, transit planners were talking about the need for a crosstown east-west rapid transit line at what was then the northern edge of the city. In 1985, an ambitious transit-expansion plan, Network 2011, called for a subway line along Sheppard, initially from Yonge to Victoria Park and later into Scarborough. The line would link two growing suburban downtowns, in North York and Scarborough, and ease pressure on the existing crosstown line on Bloor-Danforth.
After several stops, starts and changes of mind – the typical pattern for Toronto transit – tunnelling got under way and the line finally opened in 2002, the first new subway since Bloor-Danforth in 1966. It took eight years to build and cost around $1-billion, but that money was only enough for five stops over 5.5 kilometres, ending at Don Mills station. Mr. Ford would add another seven stops over eight kilometres.
[. . .[
The Toronto Transit Commission says that subways cost about $300-million a kilometre to build, compared with $75-million to $100-million for the light-rail transit (LRT) envisioned under the Transit City plan that Mr. Ford has unilaterally declared dead. The total cost for the Sheppard subway extension would be $3.6-billion, not including $500-million for a possible new train yard.
That’s a big jump from the $1.1-billion cost of the planned Sheppard LRT, which at 12 kilometres and 26 stops would go further and serve more intersections than a Sheppard subway. Doing the math, swapping LRT for subway would mean about one quarter of the stops for three times the cost.
By the time it was finished around 2020, a Sheppard subway would gobble up about half of the $8.15-billion that the provincial government has promised for rapid transit, putting a big question mark over other important projects like the Scarborough RT replacement and an Eglinton crosstown line.
It is a lot of eggs to put in one basket, especially when it is not clear that there is enough demand to justify a subway along Sheppard. Estimates say about 3,000 riders an hour would take the Sheppard LRT at peak times, if it were ever built. Transit planners argue you only really need a high-capacity system like a subway when demand reaches 15,000 an hour.
The existing Sheppard “stubway” that stops at Don Mills carried 4,950 riders an hour at peak as of 2009, up from 3,700 an hour in 2003 but still a far cry from the up to 30,000 carried by the Yonge-University line today. The stubway carries fewer riders overall than the Spadina-Harbourfront streetcar.
Go, read all three.
