Except the ones who aren't there yet because the all that PTG related development the extension is supposed to enable?
I didn't say ALL the riders.
That's kind of the point - the immediate effect of the extension would be to distribute the load currently at Finch, take cars and buses north of there off the road etc. It's not like Richmond Hill Centre/Langstaff Gateway will be full-up on opening day.
So, short term it's recognizing how much existing ridership is already coming from the north and improving efficiency.
Long term, it's creating intensification.
Interesting - you want a subway extension there is predicated upon a connection to an existing line experiencing capacity issues and you call not getting your way being "held hostage"? York Region/Richmond Hill is free to develop, as one always had, without a subway.
So your counter is "instead of providing a tool to help the auto-oriented suburbs we hate develop more sustainably and sensibly, they can keep developing the way they always have."
It's rather the opposite of what the entire provincial policy regime says (ie they CAN NOT develop the way they always have) and the tension comes from telling them to change without providing adequate infrastructure.
Encouraging Vaughan to sprawl onto more greenfields instead of allowing 50-storey condos at Yonge/Steeles isn't going to make things better for anyone. Not even the guy who lives at Yonge and St. Clair.
There is no need to stop residents driving to Finch - the system is self-limiting in terms of capacity that way, such that at some point the gains will be compensated by the losses incurred from that process.
I honestly don't even know what that means. The simple point is that if X people are riding the subway south either way, there are gains (environmental, efficiency, travel time etc.) from bringing the subway to them rather than having them get in the car to drive down to it, clogging up the roads, spewing GHG's and so forth.
It's not a question of "stopping" people from driving to Finch, it's a question of why that's something to encourage or not actively discourage if you can.
I hope/think we all agree that if not for:
a) downstream capacity issues
b) limited funding
...this extension would be arguably the biggest no-brainer in the Big Move. There's already substantial ridership and already far more development potential than many other corridors and centres, including STC.
Oh, and C) a line someone drew on a map in the 70s which dictates where taxes happen to go.
It already did, it's called GO RER. Perhaps we can expect the province to get its' act together and fund the DRL fully eh - because we all know the province just funds whatever is on the city's priority list right (e.g. now)?
One thing I don't gamble on is what Toronto council will do on transit and/or how the province will react to whatever they've done.
Anyway, how did Toronto get its "act in gear" with RER? It's entirely a provincial plan and one John Tory has made a mess of, to the extent Toronto is involved. We're as overdue on RER as we are with the DRL; no argument there. It's a real perfect storm of stupid, short-sighted decisions at both the prov and muni level.
That's about as cynical a response as one can get - because crowding on Yonge as a result of capacity loss to riders from York will not push people at St. Clair (or heck, Eglinton) to driving - and it is probably a lower-barrier switch given the distance of the drive).
Here's cynical: better someone driving the 5km or less from St. Clair to downtown (which is bikeable, but whatever), than the 15km from the 905 down to the same place.
Don't get me wrong, there's a fundamental problem when people want to take transit and can't because your system is so messed-up. But if we're choosing lesser-of-evils....
I think we're at a point where the jurisdictional issues are having major effects. They were already, what with this 20-year gap of building almost no major transit. But now we're actually building stuff and doing nearly all of it wrong. It's not hard to look at other regions and derive some best practices and come up with something sensible. But it requires political courage that's sorely lacking almost everywhere.
