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3 Comments

politics

Duly Quoted: Gord Perks

By Hamutal Dotan

“This could be the issue that forces Transit City in front of this council for the first time.”

—Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) to the Globe and Mail, commenting on the problems posed by trying to bury the proposed Eglinton LRT, and specifically on the fact that if the line is completely buried or otherwise kept off of the street itself—as Mayor Ford insists it must be—nobody knows how to get it over the Don River. Any plan to tunnel under the Don or build a new bridge over it will require a new environmental assessment, which could delay the project, and is almost certain to drive the cost of the Eglinton line up further. (The estimated cost for the Eglinton LRT under the original Transit City plan was $4.6-billion; the cost of a buried version of the line is estimated to be $8.2-billion.)

Comments

  • Anonymous

    As someone who lives in the inner suburbs and often has to travel to other parts of the inner suburbs I can only hope that this does bring Transit City back to life and ends the foolishness of burying the entire Eglinton LRT for no good reason at all. I know a lot of money has already been spent but maybe if they go back to TC they can at least build the Finch LRT. Eglinton and Finch are both plenty wide enough to allow for a LRT in its own ROW. Burying the entire Eglinton LRT, except for the section where Eglinton is too narrow and it has to be buried, will just help bankrupt the TTC and our city with its massively increased and ongoing operating costs to maintain all those un-needed kms of tunnels, all those un-needed underground stations with all of their un-needed escalators and elevators. The inner suburbs don’t need subways, well maybe in 100 years or so, who knows, but in the meantime LRT lines are more than enough and a great improvement to out transit system that will help reduce congestion simply by separating transit and car vehicles not to mention the increase in people willing to take transit if it was a comfortable, smooth, faster ride.

    Right now on these busy routes hundreds of buses, or at least dozens per route, are required to move all those people, those buses have to stop quite frequently to let on/off passengers blocking traffic and creating slowdowns and congestion. Simply by keeping transit and cars separated both will move more faster and more easily. Congestion is already choking Toronto, something has to be done and Rob Ford is only making congestion on our roads ever worse with his backwards policies such as unilaterally ending TC and spending over $400,000 to remove bike lanes. Bike lanes are one of the best and cheapest ways of easing congestion on our roads.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-Jay/729768637 Chris Jay

    my hatred of rob ford aside, are people seriously interpreting his demand that the line be underground this literally? I would have assumed that like most underground lines it would pop out and cross a valley via a bridge. To force this line under the don would be insanity.

    • Anonymous

      It’ll just have to be buried anyway when he decides to pave the valley and turn it into a 40-lane highway.