Could Increasing Capacity of the Canada Line Cost $4 Billion or More?
The following should give one pause to think.
Toronto’s Yonge-Bloor Interchange Station Expansion To Cost $1.5 billion
From Drum, via the LRPPro
Report going to TTC Oct 22 is how the current Yonge-Bloor interchange station can be expanded to deal with overcrowding.This idea been around for a number of years and been placed on the back burner due to the cost of $1.5 Billion. Other options have been looked to the point Yonge line is splice in 2 with north going as it does and a new southbound being built on Yonge with another station for the Bloor station and extension of Bloor current platform.*There been talk that the current Bay Store above the current station could be torn down for a new tower and a good time to do it with the redevelopment of the subway station.*2 major problem for the area and station that it sits over a river and swamp land and on an angle due to the unused Y interchange for the University Line that was kill 6 months after the Bloor/University Line open in the 60’s*If the Tower next to the Bay Tower was torn down as well, then it would allow TTC to totally rebuilt both line station better as redevelop the land above it with taller towers and better access to the stations. There been talked that 2nd tower could be torn down as with a taller tower in it place.
Bloor Street Station at rush hour
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The Canada Line will soon have to be almost completely rebuilt to handle passenger flows above 9,000 pphpd. Short, 40 metre to 50 metre long station platforms, which can only accommodate 41 metre long two car trains, must be lengthened to 80 metres long or more.
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This will be costly, especially for the subway stations.
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Even at third the cost of the Bloor station project, expanding capacity on the Canada line will be very, very expensive. Eight subway stations to be rebuilt and expanded could cost upwards of $4 billion and that is not including the eight aerial stations.
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This makes the previous RFTV post “Should We Convert The Canada Line to Light Rail?” not just viable, but imperative.
In the case of the Canada Line, $1.5 Billion – $2 Billion would most likely be the real cost. To be fair, a significant chunk of that $1.5 Billion to expand Bloor-Yonge Station is because of the difficulty accessing the site, even the largest office building sites are kind of tight. The area around Bloor-Yonge Station is a place where 50 & 60 storey buildings are replacing 20 & 30 storey buildings. Canada Line stations would be dwarfed in comparison to the enormous size of the project. Remember, the platforms for Toronto Subway Stations are 150 metres long, which means a structural station box at the least 165-170 metres long. Yes, both station platforms have to stay open during the construction but it’s having to deal with the 250,000 passengers a day which use both platforms which make it difficult. The majority of the costs are just to deal with the points I mentioned not the actual construction activities taking place. This is the problem whem management of the project is far more expensive than the project itself.
Toronto went through this before in the early 1990’s for a few years when a new office tower construction project allowed the T.T.C. to widen the Bloor station platform on the Yonge Line of the Yonge-Bloor Station Complex. I remember parts of the Bloor Station platform open to the sky for a few weeks. You should have seen how quickly plastic sheeting went over the hole the first day it rained.
This is why transit projects are going up in price so quickly in North America and worldwide, management and or risk mitigation cost control have become the paramount issues. Hence why governments continent wide are more than happy to do P3’s (Public Private Partnerships) projects that, remove most of the risk associated costs in exchange for the construction cost plus a fee to a private consortium (a legally binding group of companies). The consortium is there to finance, design, build and manage the project like your last few Skytrain and Canada Line Projects. In our case here in Ottawa, finance, design, build, manage and operate the project. In each case, the city and or transit agency removes all those construction and politically deadly risk costs forever from the books.
what is wrong with subway builders? Why can’t they think about the future before building a subway? It is stupid buiding subways with short platforms then have to spent more in future when they become over capacity. Canada line should have been built with 3x the platform length. Same with the toronto subway.
Zwei replies: The cost of the Canada line was way over budget and costs had to be reduced to meet a political timetable.
The TTC subway was built with extra .long future proof subway platforms. 150 metre or 500 ft. long station platforms were pioneered by TTC back in 1944-46 when they were first designed and were considered enormous for the time (the first line opened in 1954). They were also the first to use 75 ft long aluminum subway cars in trains of 6 cars in 1959 (each 6 car train was 135 metres or 450 ft. long ) , which became one of the norms for most new subway operations in North America. Only one division of the New York Subway and the B.A.R.T. System in the San Francisco Bay Area (which is hybrid Regional Metro/Commuter Rail system ) use longer station platforms. Only mainline railways use longer platforms on a regular basis. This is one of the reasons why new, full scale, Subway/Metro systems stopped being designed and built in North America and Europe. This led to the huge expansion of smaller and less costly L.R.T. systems, which began popping up in the 1980’s. Vancouver’s Skytrain Light Metro system unfortunately has all the cost expansion problems of a larger Metro Systems but very few of the operational cost savings of L.R.T.
The problem in Toronto is that during the 1980’s and most of the 1990’s they just stopped building new lines as well as under invested in upgrading older stations. When they restarted in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s it was difficult and expensive. It’s taken years for senior levels of government to begin reinvesting and they now have to play catch up and spend billions doing it. Full scale Subways/Metro systems like in Montreal, New York and Toronto are very expensive to build and upgrade. The TTC’s first line section opened 66 years ago and the design size and standards were first thought up over 74 years ago, there’s only so much future proofing you can affordably do. Making the stations any longer is just unaffordable and unrealistic.