UTTRI associated faculty Professor Shoshanna Saxe comments on Eglinton West LRT plans in the Toronto Star article “Burying the Eglinton West LRT will cost an extra $1.8 billion and may serve fewer local riders. So why do it?,” September 20, 2020.
According to a Province of Ontario news release, “The Eglinton Crosstown West Extension (ECWE) will extend the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit project, currently under construction, by 9.2 km from the future Mount Dennis Station to Renforth Drive.” Much of it is planned to be underground.
Shoshanna Saxe, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s department of civil and mineral engineering, agreed the extension is needed in order to fill a gap in the transit network. But she described putting the line below ground as an expensive mistake.
“Certainly the project does not need to be underground. There’s space at surface, there’s lots of good reason to build surface rail,” she said.
The article brings up several points in favour of an above-ground Eglinton West LRT, including:
- lower cost
- more stops
- would attract more riders
- minimal impact on surface traffic
Points in favour of an underground Eglinton West LRT include faster trip times and no impact on traffic.
Saxe, the U of T professor, said spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to avoid possibly slowing drivers isn’t a wise use of public resources given the urgent environmental need to get more people out of their cars.
Saxe notes that the surrounding neighbourhoods may not provide opportunities for intensification around underground stops, saying
[there is a] lack of provision in the province’s plan for the kind of intense development Metrolinx itself says should be built around underground transit stops to boost ridership and generate revenue. According to the business case, the predominance of single-family homes along Eglinton West “significantly reduces” the potential for redevelopment on much of the route.
She argues that “expensive underground transit needs hundreds of thousands of [people] nearby to support it.”
“It’s nonsensical to build billions of dollars of infrastructure and then just hope and pray that it will all work out.”