Downsview to Yonge subway connection vital: Pasternak.
Rob Ford's campaign platform outlined three new stations for a westward expansion of the Sheppard subway to Downsview: at Faywood Boulevard, Bathurst, and Senlac Road.
He's got the mayor in his corner but not yet the TTC.
York Centre (Ward 10) Councillor James Pasternak is pushing for the construction of a westward extension of the Sheppard subway from the TTC's Yonge to Downsview stations.
"(It) is the most vital subway link to complete in the city," suggested Pasternak, who represents the rapidly developing stretch of Sheppard Avenue from Allen Road/Dufferin Street to just east of Bathurst Street. "It would represent the only link between the two subway lines north of Bloor and it would be a natural completion (of the Sheppard subway)."
However - as city council will soon learn from a report scheduled to go to its 2011 budget committee - it was only one year ago that councillors sitting on the TTC voted to accept staff's recommendation to not build the westward extension of the Sheppard Subway because it was too expensive. A detailed estimate pegged the cost at $1.75 billion for the 4.2-kilometre line.
That recommendation was included in a staff report examining a long-term strategy for the storage and maintenance of the TTC's Yonge-University-Spadina line subway cars. Based on that report, the TTC voted to spend $575 million to expand the Wilson subway yard while maintaining the Davisville yard for limited storage and washing uses.
The report did examine an option of both expanding the Wilson yard and building the Sheppard subway connection between Downsview and Yonge, something that would allow the Yonge subway line to be fed with trains from the Wilson yard via the Sheppard line. However, while this would be faster than running cars from Wilson down to Union Station and back up Yonge, it would only save the TTC $8 to $11 million over the 2010-2030 period, a small savings compared to the big cost of building a new subway extension.
While "the Sheppard subway connection is an important network and strategic connection in the long term," it isn't yet cost effective, the report stated.
Of course, since that report was approved, Rob Ford was elected mayor partially on a platform of building more subways with provincial dollars. Ford has identified the extension of the Sheppard subway to both the west and east as his number one priority - from Downsview to Yonge and from the current terminus at Don Mills station to Scarborough Town Centre.
However, in his campaign, Ford said the line could be completed for $3 billion. The TTC has estimated the cost at a combined $5.85 billion - $1.75 billion for the westward extension and $4.1 billion for the eastward extension into Scarborough including a new maintenance facility.
That $1.75 billion is also based on only one new station between Downsview and Yonge, at Bathurst Street. Ford's campaign platform outlined three new stations, at Faywood Boulevard, Bathurst, and Senlac Road.
"That's the ideal and that's what we should shoot for," Pasternak said of Ford's proposed stations. "(But) I would never cancel the whole project because we only have the funds for the one stop at Bathurst, I would say let's get done what we can and if we have to come back to it over a five-year period and open the other stations as we go, to me that's fine."