TTC would finish McNicoll bus garage if it has extra $100M in funding
Posted June 23, 2014 3:51 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
People who ride the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) fleets of vehicles may dream of roomy seating with WiFi and air conditioning, but if the TTC secured an extra $100 million of funding it would focus on where it parks its buses, not where you park your posterior.
TTC staff was asked last March to prioritize which unfunded projects it could complete with extra money.
The answer: The McNicoll bus garage.
The TTC claims that the garage is needed within the next five years and will be built at Kennedy Road and McNicoll Avenue to store some new articulated buses and some of its current fleet.
“Currently, existing bus garages are running over capacity,” a TTC staff report stated. “There is … a need to increase bus garage capacity by over 200 buses within the next five years.”
The total cost for the McNicoll bus garage is pegged at $181 million, but the $80 million needed for phase one of the project has already been approved.
The TTC would use the extra money to complete phase two.
“This is one project that can be brought to completion should those funds become available,” the report said.
The TTC doesn’t currently have the $100 million, but a task force has been set up to try and secure capital funding.
If it had the money, the McNicoll project would be finished by 2019.
Other projects that need funding include fire ventilation upgrades, a train door monitoring system, and bus rebuilds, to name a few.
The TTC Board will meet on Tuesday to discuss how it prioritizes the projects.
Mayoral candidates weighed in on where the TTC should focus its spending, with John Tory saying: “They should be fixing the system as it exists. There are lots of problems with people not being able to get on streetcars…”
Olivia Chow said money should be prioritized for “new subway cars,” and Karen Stintz said it needs to go “into accessible stations.”
The TTC recently said it wouldn’t be able to meet provincial requirments to make all stations accessible because of a $240 million capital shortfall.
Under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, the TTC is required to make its transit system fully accessible by 2025. The commission has fulfilled the provincial requirement for its buses and streetcars but can’t meet the 2025 timeline for every subway station.
Of the TTC’s 69 subway stations, 37 are currently not fully accessible, including 17 that haven’t yet received funding for the retrofit.
“We want to do this but we do not have the dollars to do this,” TTC chair Maria Augimeri said. “We need a quarter of a billion dollars that’s not forthcoming from the province.”
The TTC board recently voted to use an operating surplus of $47 million for a fare freeze next year, but council could still decide to spend up to three-quarters of that toward capital projects.
With files from Showwei Chu
