Eglinton RT part of $12B Toronto transit plan

[kuquito]

ECLRT=?
SELRT=?
ATO=?
ART=?
EA=?
TBM's=?

Originally Posted by JustinB

The Skytrain Lobbyist who wrote this doesn't know much about what is going on here.

The ORIGINAL scope of the ECLRT was for surface rapid transit in York, and Scarborough, and a tunneled central section to address the hills, and narrow street width. Ford comes into power and unilaterally declares "Transit City dead", because he does not like surface transit, and think all lines should be underground. The province, in the midst of an election agrees to a memorandum of understanding to cancel the SELRT, and Finch West LRT, and to completely bury the ECLRT, and the city will find private money to build the Sheppard Subway extension to Scarborough Centre. Hence why we have a totally underground LRT line. The tunneled section of the original ECLRT was always going to be ATO, it's not that difficult, the SF Muni Metro has been doing it for years.

Now that you know why we are building a totally underground LRT line, let's move on to why we cannot just build a subway, or god forbid switch to that awful ART technology. Any changes will require a new EA. Work has started on the original tunneled section, and the TBM's have been ordered and will start tunneling in 2012. Why would work be stopped just to study the possibility of building a subway, or an awful ART line? Not only that, there is the little problem of the Don Valley, and Metrolinx is finding out,to their dismay, tunneling under the Valley is much tougher then they thought, and even building a bridge might prove to be too expensive.

So yeah...We're stuck with this $8.2 Billion line because of a Conservative pro-auto mayor who "absolutely loves subways"! The original cost of the line was $4.2 Billion. Now the province is going to bury the line under a wide suburban street at the expense of other transit lines, because he "loves subways!".

Somehow I would not be surprised if the province finds a way to push ART on this line, leaving Toronto with a line that can never be extended past it's terminus in the future. There is a reason why Toronto never expanded the Scarborough RT, the technology is too expensive, and fails in the winter!