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Those politicians….
- Thread starter mimico_polak
- Start date
Another $100M for two new electric ferries. Anybody else expect them to be turds that get scrapped and never live up to the hype? Ignore the island residents, they don't own the land. Build the bridge. The bridge would be way less than 100M and it would work year round for little money. Or even better, use the existing tunnel to YTO and build a secure path out of the airport. I haven't been in it but as I understand it, the tunnel is before security, you would just need to give people a path to get to the uncontrolled parts of the island.
toronto.citynews.ca
Toronto city council approves $92M spend for two new ferries
Toronto Island goers could see ferry wait times reduce significantly as council votes to move ahead with the order of 2 new electric ferries to replace the aging ferries. Jazan Grewal reports.
toronto.citynews.ca
Olivia good for the city they say, Umm not so muchAnother $100M for two new electric ferries. Anybody else expect them to be turds that get scrapped and never live up to the hype? Ignore the island residents, they don't own the land. Build the bridge. The bridge would be way less than 100M and it would work year round for little money. Or even better, use the existing tunnel to YTO and build a secure path out of the airport. I haven't been in it but as I understand it, the tunnel is before security, you would just need to give people a path to get to the uncontrolled parts of the island.
Toronto city council approves $92M spend for two new ferries
Toronto Island goers could see ferry wait times reduce significantly as council votes to move ahead with the order of 2 new electric ferries to replace the aging ferries. Jazan Grewal reports.
Priller
Well-known member
Three problems with your ideas/complaints.
First, it'll be close to or more than $100M to build a bridge at the eastern gap, as it'll either have to be a lift bridge or massively tall to accommodate the larger boats that enter the bay. The western gap is too small and narrow for the freighters that do come in to the bay, and now that the tunnel is there, that can't be changed. The bridge itself wouldn't look like those dinky pedestrian bridges you see spanning highways, too. To accommodate the thousands and thousands of people that would otherwise use the ferries, it would functionally be the same as a vehicle bridge. On top of that, the city side of the eastern gap is located in an unpleasant and difficult to access part of the city that is really only accessible by car and is earmarked to have ongoing construction for the foreseeable. Considering a huge percentage of Island park users are either downtown residents living without a car or tourists from out of town (not to mention the nightmare of providing enough parking or running mass quantities of buses), this plan makes less and less sense the more you look at it.
Second, 'making a path' through an active airport is a heck of a lot easier said than done. You can't have people near active runways, and what are you going to do, have crossing guards letting people know when it's safe? Not to mention the airport is huge, so it would be a long slog on foot to dash through between planes. As long as the airport is active, this would never fly (har har). If you advocate getting rid of the airport, on the other hand, both the island and waterfront residents would be very happy with that plan (unless Dougie were to parcel out the land to his developer buddies for poorly planned condos, or something really insane, like a luxury spa...)
Third, the island ferries are kind of perfect for electric. They run for about 10 minutes, and then sit for 5 minutes minimum, sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes 35 minutes. Lots of charge time between runs.
If there is a complaint about the city, it's that they've messed around for years deciding on a plan to replace the ferries, meanwhile the island continues consolidate it's position as the top attraction in the city (and taking a ferry across is part of the charm of a visit). But one thing I've learned working with (mostly smart, hardworking and well intentioned) municipal managers over the past few years, is they are punished hard for moving quickly on any problem, even if the solution is obvious. There's always someone out there with a strongly held opinion willing to complain loudly that they didn't consider all options, etc. That and the broken open low bid process are the two biggest drivers of public cost escalation from my experience.
If you have any complaints about the waterfront, it should be that the huge crowds on the island proves there's massive demand for waterfront parks, and Ontario Place would have been perfect for that. But parks aren't profitable, and Ontario is Open for Business (tm). (Neither are luxury spas, but casinos can be...)
Re-opening High Park might take some of the pressure off the park situation. Right now it's an exclusive training ground for cyclists and the very nearby residents.
Sale of envoy's NYC condo 'expected to exceed' $9M: government.
Sale of envoy's NYC condo 'expected to exceed' $9M: government
The current official residence for Canada's representative in New York City is 'being readied for sale,' according to a spokesperson from Global Affairs Canada.
Priller
Well-known member
Couldn't agree more, though there are few louder groups than cyclists. Currently working on the planning stages for a project that requires temporary closure of part of a multi-lane roadway in an unnamed southern Ontario municipality. The options are closing a bike lane, closing a traffic lane, or closing a sidewalk for about 2 km down a busy semi-urban road. The obvious choice was to close the bike lane, but both the region and the city involved were terrified of having to tell their respective councillors about this plan and upsetting cyclists, and thus made us spend months looking at other options and budgeting to determine the costs of fully burying everything over the whole length (surprise, it isn't cheap!).
There is an easy detour route that would add about 4 minutes to a cyclists journey (2 minutes down and 2 minutes back), and divert them onto a local path that's much more pleasant to ride on than a 1.4m wide path while trucks rip past you at 80 km/h plus. The irony is that the vast majority of cyclists already take this path, as they're also not stupid. We spent a day counting bikes on the main road, and averaged about 0.75 per hour.
But still, everyone was so fearful of pissing off cyclists that we're still in the approval phase, meanwhile the costs escalate further...
I would not want a moving bridge. Western gap is also much more accessible from the mainland but the airport causes issues on the island side.
I wouldn't make a path "through" the airport. A fenced in path following the shore around the west end to Hanlans Point beach is about a kilometer and doesn't cross any airside operations. Include a top on the cage so morons didn't climb over and run around airside. For safety reasons, when passing the runway threshold, ideally the path would change slightly to provide protection (depressed with short walls?, dropped down by breakwater? I don't know what the land looks like over there). There would need to be a path connection from the north end of the beach to the existing paths. Less than tens of millions for the whole project (but definite complications with YTO and their lease). Going around the east side would be shorter and easier tie-in to paths but seems to conflict more with airside operations (unless Toronto added to the island to make the path outside of the existing footprint but I have no idea on cost of that). Alternatively, you could tunnel from terminal to hanlans point dock and that is far shorter (~650m) but at far higher cost. The tunnel adds construction complication but separates the pedestrians and planes by many feet of earth and concrete. I have no idea on cost. I know the subway tunnels are something like 1B/km but they are far far larger.
I like the duty cycle of the ferries for electric. Government ability to purchase functional electric ferries approaches zero. Any time they have tried, they were basically dead in the water with millions and millions lit on fire.
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Priller
Well-known member
There is no 'around' the airport. The ends of runways are just as dangerous as the middle, and they've pushed them out absolutely as far as they can currently go. They're currently lobbying to push their clearance markers further into the bay for 'safety', though once shifted, then they can justify extending the runway ('just the tip') and allowing larger planes. And you'd have people walking immediately adjacent to taxiways on either side. You'd then have to reclaim land AND build a crashproof bunker for people to pass through that would also not impede aircraft operations. Not feasible. And putting a tunnel around the airport either buried or on reclaimed land would a) be extremely unpleasant to traverse, and b) make $100M look like pocket change. Not to mention it would be over 2.5 km on the west side and almost 1.5 km on the east just to get anywhere that could have a washroom or other services. Not to mention that there's very little free space outside and around the airport terminal area to accommodate any significant flow of people. Not to mention the airport would fight it tooth and nail as yet another threat to its existence, and Ports Toronto would also fight like hell as the airport is the only reason for their continued existence. In other words, as long as the airport continues to operate, it's an absolute non-starter.
As for government ability to purchase electric ferries, there are many public ones operating across Europe. A quick Google suggests Norway alone has over 80, and they have similarly cheap hydro and cold climates. BC Ferries is operating hybrid ferries on much longer routes, and they've broadly been a success, I think (unlike fast ferries). The only negative info that comes up about them is that they have had to cut expansion plans back because their funding has been cut. I would argue that the ability for a contractor to milk extras is infinitely greater for any of the bridge or tunnel alternatives, as building around water is insanely difficult and unpredictable.
Obviously some governments are competent. Not the ones we have though.
Kingston has a pair of electric ferries ($100M) sitting idle for years.
Maybe Toronto can buy those ferries and put them in service, i know
but one can hope.
Hell, rent them to fulfill the current gap in capacity. Everyone is being tight-lipped as to why they have moved a couple thousand people in a time period where they should have moved close to 1M.Maybe Toronto can buy those ferries and put them in service, i know
Would boil down to maintaining them, wonder why they got docked?
They never got going. Everybody involved is very tightlipped. Right now we assume incompetence. If anyone talks, it will be confirmed.
We are electrifying our fleet at work, lots of issues with regards to reliability. Biggest issue is people running them out of power
Shaman
Well-known member
Oh, it gets better, too. Those ferries require so much power infrastructure that they'd have to literally rip up multiple streets and retrofit the power station on Queen street with a whole new level of power capacity to make those ferries work where the current dock is. And they just rebuilt that dock and staging area a few years ago, which would need to be modified or possibly even rebuilt.
Chances are they won't even be able make those ferries work, from what I have gathered. Since heads will roll over that, I expect them to find some way to shoehorn the needed power system in at huge expense, but we'll see.
DownUnder
Well-known member
Wait till you hit winter and all the vehicles lose 30% of their range, hope you have a good contract set up with a tow truck company or CAA.
What size vehicles? My neighbour is a fleet manager and they are looking at EV trucks. The picture isn't pretty for the bean counters.
If your neighbor had two new vehicles sitting idle because they didn’t work would you go and buy a couple for yourself?
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