How transit plans go from concept to reality, and how they should
Too often the project is more important than the transit.
Often, a transit project becomes more about the project than the transit, and that is a massive problem that exists almost everywhere in the world. More times than not a transit project sort of grows its own following and its own identity that leads to people not objectively assessing it, alongside its alternatives.
A great example of this — and one that will certainly fire people up — is the situation around Toronto’s Scarborough Subway Extension project. If you’re not familiar let me set the stage for the transit situation here, you can skip ahead if you’re familiar!
Scarborough is a large suburban area of Toronto which is served by a dense and well used grid of bus lines, and in the late 20th century connecting its slowly densifying town center with rapid transit became a priority. The town center was not, and is not, a proper dense walkable area, mostly being largely a number of offices and apartment buildings around a suburban mall, but as you can see in places like Vancouver’s Metrotown and Downtown Bellevue near Seattle, making that shift to a more walkable node is certainly possible with the right policies and of course help from rapid transit. That said, Scarborough Town Centre is a massive bus hub, and that alone could likely drive enough ridership to justify a higher order transit connection.
That being said, when the decision to connect Scarborough Town Centre to the TTC Subway network was being made, the TTC’s initial choice technology was an interurban style light rail line, using vehicles that would be similar — if not identical — to the CLRV vehicles being used on the TTC Streetcar network at the time. I don’t consider this option to be ideal for a number of reasons:
A different technology to connect the suburb means riders have to make a transfer to continue heading in the same direction, sometimes called a linear transfer. This not only feels like a waste of time and energy for riders, but the different technology serving Scarborough’s town centre certainly does not make it feel like a regional priority.
A subway extension to Finch (with a later infill station at North York Centre) had just connected suburban North York directly to the subway network.
The corridor that the TTC planned to use for its streetcar solution could have conceivably also been used for a moderately cost subway extension running above ground next to existing railway tracks.
Now, whatever the TTC’s preferred solutions faults were, it eventually became irrelevant because the provincial government at the time needlessly imposed its own preferred technology for the route — light metro, using identical technology to the Vancouver SkyTrain — known as the Scarborough RT. I would argue this change had almost no negative impacts over TTC’s proposed streetcar service, trains operated frequently and delays during regular service were actually less common than on the traditional subway lines, at the same time, riders got level boarding and bigger trains with full grade separation from private cars.
Jump forward roughly thirty years and we have a strange situation. The TTC has said that the SRT needs to be replaced (it’s closing next year in 2023) because its trains are too old, and it cannot affordably procure new ones (debatable, but I will touch on this later). At the same time, riders and residents were not very happy with the status quo because of the very bothersome linear transfer between the Scarborough RT and the Subway, as well as the perception of a lower quality solution for Scarborough, declining reliability (from what I would say is underinvestment in fixing some obvious issues), and the loud and rough ride caused by the RT using infrastructure built for streetcars and then later modified for use by light metro trains, as well as the lack of accessibility on the line.
This, led to the great Scarborough Subway and LRT debate. Since the TTC had claimed that the existing line could not remain, advocates from two main factions appeared. Some wanted to build a subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre (which I think was probably the project that we should have originally built), while others wanted to convert the existing RT route to light rail, which would be much less costly than a subway extension, but also would provide a lot less benefit and not fix some of the key issues residents had with the RT.
This leads us to today’s Scarborough Subway extension. The project is going ahead as a three-stop deep single bore subway project that will extend Line 2 of the Subway to Scarborough Town Centre, but at great cost. I’m convinced the project is only being built because policymakers are married to the idea of a subway, and more specifically their idea of a subway. What does this mean, and how does it relate to the transit need we are trying to provide for? Let me explain.
The main transit objective in originally creating rapid transit to Scarborough was to provide a high-quality link to Scarborough Town Centre to help aid in its development, and provide connecting service for bus riders from all over Scarborough, acknowledging such a vast area cannot have walk up rail transit for the majority of residents anytime soon. The subsequent objectives in a world where we realize we need to do something about the state of the Scarborough RT also include: removing the linear transfer, providing the perception of high-quality transit to Scarborough, guaranteeing the long-term feasibility of the selected route (not being locked into a technological dead end) and I would add also seeing if we can reuse some existing infrastructure from the project, since abandoning rapid transit infrastructure is really bad. I’d argue the additional objectives we should consider when planning any transit project include operational improvements, cost effectiveness, and ability to meet future transit needs.
The proposed transit projects to meet these objectives bounced around over the years, but were essentially either a fully underground subway extension, or some form of light rail conversion of the Scarborough RT. Let’s assess how these do on the objectives we discussed.
Creates a high-quality link to STC? Subway: Yes. Light Rail: No.
The issue with light rail on this issue is that it still leaves riders with a different technology than other important parts of the city are served with as well as no direct link to central parts of Toronto.
Removes the linear transfer at Kennedy Station? Subway: Yes. Light Rail: Sort Of.
A light rail line might have run through Kennedy, but it would then force riders down a slow on street segment, and would deliver them to midtown, slower and less desirable than Line 2 direct to the north end of downtown.
Provides a perception of high-quality transit to Scarborough? Subway: Yes. Light Rail: Sort Of.
A light rail line would mean new nicer vehicles and likely rebuilt stations, but it would be noticeably less substantial than a subway, and vehicles would closely resemble streetcars, which would not create the perception of high-quality transit.
Guarantees long-term feasibility of route? Subway: Yes. Light Rail: Yes.
Both solutions would mean more standard transit technology linking Scarborough to the rest of the city.
Reuses existing infrastructure? Subway: No. Light Rail: Sort Of.
A tunneled subway option is abandoning the SRT alignment and infrastructure completely, a light rail option would reuse it with heavy modification.
Operational Improvements? Subway: No. Light Rail: Sort Of.
Enabling some through running of light rail trains at Kennedy could be useful in some contexts. Having Kennedy as a terminus for the subway is fine.
Cost effective? Subway: No. Light Rail: Yes.
A massive amount of ridership is needed to justify a deep bored tunnel for a subway, as you might see under the city center of a major city, for example. Converting the SRT to run light rail trains would be relatively low cost.
Ability to Meet Future Transit Needs? Subway: Yes. Light Rail: No.
Light Rail’s low capacity would likely leave it capacity constrained.
I hope what this assessment of how the favourite transit projects perform on the key objectives set out for Scarborough make you question whether these are really the best solutions for serving the suburb.
Unfortunately, whether these solutions are good or bad, the discourse in Toronto came to become completely dominated by two camps of people who seemed more obsessed with their respective preferred projects than actually solving the main problems that needed to be addressed. People on either side of the debate were happy to criticize the other option — subway for its price, or light rail for its lower quality — without actually acknowledging and trying to mitigate the flaws in their own plan.
In my eyes, this failure to consider solutions on the edge of ones that were being considered, but that may have compromised the purity of the original plans meant many very compelling options that perform better than both of the proposed (and now the under-construction) options. For example, a subway extension’s main weaknesses are clearly cost and the waste of a perfectly good rapid transit corridor. A solution that used subway trains on a similar alignment to the SRT would be as good or better than the subway option on all metrics, but was unpopular with both camps. Light rail supporters probably didn’t like it because it was subway, and subway supporters probably didn’t like it because… It wasn’t subway — since in their eye’s subways must be underground.
A good option which could have been born out of the LRT plan (and that I actually quite like) would upgrade the entire Eglinton LRT to use technology similar to but more refined than the Scarborough RT (perhaps using conventional rather than linear motors) akin to the Vancouver SkyTrain, this would involve spending a moderate sum on the few specific locations which the TTC claims bar the use of this technology as well as on the Eglinton Line itself. The benefit of this option is that very little existing rapid transit infrastructure used by the SRT would need to be ripped out (which I really think we should avoid) though the infrastructure could be upgraded substantially to provide a higher quality look and feel from the status quo. The funds would thus mainly go to renos, minor rebuilds, and elevation of the eastern portion of Line 5 Eglinton. Of course, this option was unpopular because it would require accepting that the SRT was not fundamentally bad despite its role in setting back Toronto’s earlier “light rail” plans, and because it would once again mean moving away from a light rail system which runs at street level and interacts with cars and pedestrians — “animating” the streetscape.
As you can see, a tendency to want a radical change — be it either by completely reconstructing the SRT or by abandoning it all together — appears to be widely preferred, but also seems to provide by far the worst cost benefit. I think this is because there is a tendency for advocates and politicians to be attracted to major change, even when minor improvements are often much more valuable. I find this very interesting: while fixing the SRT is deemed expensive at a few hundred million dollars, multibillion dollar plans that actually remove infrastructure or reduce service are not seen in nearly as negative a light.
I think this has really influenced how I look at projects, and the potential to become overly attached to one particular solution to a problem. When a transit project goes from concept to reality, being conceived to solve a problem, it should be constantly reevaluated to assess whether it actually is effective at solving that problem, and whether similar modified options might be superior.
I see similar issues to the Scarborough Subway in HS2, the UK’s major and very expensive scheme to connect London, Birmingham, and Manchester with high-speed rail. Now, this won’t be a long post on HS2 a project I’m fairly neutral on, but I do think it’s interesting to note that I see the same patterns with the project. Advocates tend to talk about capacity as the main benefit of the project, which is reasonable and actually a good reason to build high speed rail, but at the same time some of the more exuberant and criticized elements of the project that have driven its cost up do not appear necessary for capacity. I am sure there is a better version of HS2 that provides most of the benefit with substantially lower costs, but it seems there is not a huge willingness to compromise various project elements. I understand that to some extent I think advocates fear (in both the Toronto and UK cases) that compromising the project is just starting a slow slide to a complete watering down or even cancellation, but I think it’s actually part of important rationalization in project plans that we should be much more open to doing.
What all of this discussion can be tied back to is the constant tension in transit, and transit projects between infrastructure for infrastructures sake, against a larger service and optimization focus. When developing or advocating for a transit project or solution we need to do our best to keep the problem at the center, reevaluating solutions constantly and considering what compromises might provide better value as well as which ones are not worth making.