299 bloor call control.
Senior Member
I don't know if anyone posted this yet, but from the project website:
Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group
- Thread starter 299 bloor call control.
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Edward
Senior Member
On one hand they are threatening to shut the Sheppard line. On the other hand they are expanding Spadina north. Just nuts.
Lone Primate
Active Member
Mirabile dictu, don't you agree? 
junctionist
Senior Member
Busway naysayers will notice that it will serve for a full seven years.
Degnaw
New Member
As a similar example, how long did the No. 3 Rd Busway in Richmond BC serve before it was torn up again? Are people there protesting the supposed waste of resources? Can these two examples be compared?
unimaginative2
Senior Member
First of all, shutting down Sheppard was never a serious proposal. It was simply a scare tactic that has the added bonus (to the streetcar-fixated TTC commissioners and Mayor's office) of discrediting subway expansion. They're trying right now to use the budget crisis to "postpone" the start of construction on the York extension, even though the province has now said the city won't have to contribute any of the cost.
I don't think this busway is a bad idea, even if it will (hopefully!) be somewhat short-lived. Anyone who has ever tried to take transit to get to York will know that the current setup is just awful. For the tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff, it's worth it to save them some time every day for almost a decade.
I don't think this busway is a bad idea, even if it will (hopefully!) be somewhat short-lived. Anyone who has ever tried to take transit to get to York will know that the current setup is just awful. For the tens of thousands of students, faculty, and staff, it's worth it to save them some time every day for almost a decade.
smuncky
Senior Member
so will they have to finish this one first before they start on the next subway (yonge north extension)?
unimaginative2
Senior Member
I don't really see why they can't be built simultaneously. They could even stagger staging so that they can share equipment and workers. Bore tunnel for one while you build the stations on the other, and then switch.
Dan416
Senior Member
I find it baffling that there could be TWO subways into York Region and not one into Peel Region, which has a much higher population.
Lone Primate
Active Member
Well, it simply confirmed my suspicions that David Miller considers himself the mayor only of people between the Humber and the Don, south of Eglinton. Everyone else is just 416-Occupied 905 to him and his kind.
I was there on a business course a few years ago, and I honestly couldn't get over how many buses were pulling in and out of that place. I would have been dead impressed if it had been the New York Port Authority... but this was York University up at Steeles! No one will ever convince me that place doesn't need a subway line, and probably did decades ago... I've seen it with my own eyes; I rode those buses. Just incredible. And an unpardonable dereliction on the part of the city. If it weren't for the fact that the provincial archives is moving there and the province is bringing its force majeure, I wonder if they'd be getting a subway line there even now.
Lone Primate
Active Member
True. The Bloor line ought to have been extended to Square One by 1975, and beyond by now (like a connector to Pearson that would serve both 416ers and 905ers -- a reality usually overlooked by the one-eyed "build a line to downtown" crowd). A real lack of initiative and imagination on the part of the province. Not to let Metro off the hook -- it had planning authority in south Peel till 1974.
299 bloor call control.
Senior Member
i find it baffling we're building subways at ALL into the suburban wastelands. While the Yonge Street extension can be justified to an extent, since the ridership is already present and the densities along that corridor are high enough, extending the Spadina Subway any further north than Steeles is just plain stupidity. I'm sure this opinion has already been expressed at length by others on the board...
A Bloor subway extension into Mississauga makes no sense either -- there is no corridor of density between Kipling and Square One to make it work, instead, it would be running along the rail corridor that cuts through predominantly industrial lands that have very little redevelopment potential to begin with. The planned upgrades to Kipling Station as well as the BRT (and eventual LRT) along Dundas into Mississauga is more than sufficient to shuttle suburbanites into the subway.
LRT is the answer for the burbs, not subways. If Eglinton Ave is only good enough to justify LRT construction through the heart of Toronto, no way in hell should we be building more subways to nowhere.
Furthermore, as the subway moves further and further out, the need for stations diminish as it moves more into a commuter role than a local service... this is FAR FAR FAR more appropriate for commuter rail, such as GO -- increasing frequencies on shorter trains on the Milton GO line from Kipling into Mississauga IMO is a much better investment (notwithstanding the obvious hurdle of freight/passenger rail sharing).
A Bloor subway extension into Mississauga makes no sense either -- there is no corridor of density between Kipling and Square One to make it work, instead, it would be running along the rail corridor that cuts through predominantly industrial lands that have very little redevelopment potential to begin with. The planned upgrades to Kipling Station as well as the BRT (and eventual LRT) along Dundas into Mississauga is more than sufficient to shuttle suburbanites into the subway.
LRT is the answer for the burbs, not subways. If Eglinton Ave is only good enough to justify LRT construction through the heart of Toronto, no way in hell should we be building more subways to nowhere.
Furthermore, as the subway moves further and further out, the need for stations diminish as it moves more into a commuter role than a local service... this is FAR FAR FAR more appropriate for commuter rail, such as GO -- increasing frequencies on shorter trains on the Milton GO line from Kipling into Mississauga IMO is a much better investment (notwithstanding the obvious hurdle of freight/passenger rail sharing).
Hypnotoad
Senior Member
^^ Couldn't agree more.
LRT and GO should serve the commuting needs of the suburbs fine enough. Subway investment needs to be made into places where there is a significant volume of residents and employees. That is why the Spadina subway should go no further north than York (or Steeles) and Sheppard should be completed to at least Consumers but, ideally, all the way to Scarborough Town Centre to link three "centres".
As for Eglinton, it has sufficient density or trip-generating desintations to support a subway from the Science Centre to the Airport. But the area that is in most need of subway investment is downtown. An ideal candidate would be a harbourfront-Queen-beaches line that extends from Palace Pier, Queen West, The Ex & Fort York, City Place, Union, St. Lawrence Market, Distillary, Don Lands, Leslie, Ashbridges and the Queen East. The people and jobs are there or planned. It also links several important destinations that would nearly complete our "transit city" so that people could easily access points like the Ex, St. Lawrence and the Beaches via reliable, higher-order transit instead of driving. It would alievate the stress of the King and Queen streetcar lines. The line could be extended to incorporate the DTR idea and be stretched to meet Bloor-Danforth at either end.
I guess downtown and harbourfront voters are so predictable in their voting patterns that we don't have to be courted with election promises or pork-barrel thrifts.
LRT and GO should serve the commuting needs of the suburbs fine enough. Subway investment needs to be made into places where there is a significant volume of residents and employees. That is why the Spadina subway should go no further north than York (or Steeles) and Sheppard should be completed to at least Consumers but, ideally, all the way to Scarborough Town Centre to link three "centres".
As for Eglinton, it has sufficient density or trip-generating desintations to support a subway from the Science Centre to the Airport. But the area that is in most need of subway investment is downtown. An ideal candidate would be a harbourfront-Queen-beaches line that extends from Palace Pier, Queen West, The Ex & Fort York, City Place, Union, St. Lawrence Market, Distillary, Don Lands, Leslie, Ashbridges and the Queen East. The people and jobs are there or planned. It also links several important destinations that would nearly complete our "transit city" so that people could easily access points like the Ex, St. Lawrence and the Beaches via reliable, higher-order transit instead of driving. It would alievate the stress of the King and Queen streetcar lines. The line could be extended to incorporate the DTR idea and be stretched to meet Bloor-Danforth at either end.
I guess downtown and harbourfront voters are so predictable in their voting patterns that we don't have to be courted with election promises or pork-barrel thrifts.
Lone Primate
Active Member
Another way of saying “suburban wastelands†is “roughly two dozen cities and towns, several with populations well into six figures, wherein something like three million Ontarians and half a million jobs resideâ€. It’s that kind of arrogant ignorance I’m counting on organizations like the OMB to save us from in the long run.
In the 1940s, when planning began in earnest for the current subway system, Metro didn’t even exist yet. But what was about to become Metro had a population not quite twice that of what Mississauga alone has today. I imagine there were people back then, too, who were wondering why anyone would want to build a subway along the edge of civilization at Bloor Street, particularly when there wasn’t much beyond the river at either end. Where North York City Centre and Scarborough Town Centre are today were farmers’ fields easily within living memory. Never mind being a node on the Bloor line; commerce and transit connections at Mississauga City Centre itself could support a modest subway line today.
Toronto is not a city of 2.5 million people, except in legislation. It’s really a city of six million, and growing. If it weren’t for those damned arbitrary lines, that would be utterly beyond denial. Other cities, not hugely bigger than ours anymore, have subway systems far more extensive; numerous lines crisscrossing and enabling the dream of many in this forum – the elimination of the automobile as a prerequisite of urban life – to come true. Subways are expensive to build, true, but they do not disrupt life on the surface; there’s little reason for anyone to object to their passage through long-established neighbourhoods, and they pay for themselves over time in reduced traffic (and pollution) and enhanced business and residential opportunities. Yonge Street is simply one busy street in “real†Toronto where it makes sense to have such a line; there are, by now, many others... and there will be far more in the future.
This is another aspect of the kind of narrow thinking that has hampered transit in this city: that Union Station is the bellybutton of the universe. Fifty years ago, perhaps; but not now. Today, millions of people in the GTA need to get around without ever coming within miles of the downtown core. Seeing transit merely as a function of getting to and from Yonge and Front is a serious impediment to really serving the needs of this city. It’s time to stop imagining the transit grid as a wagon wheel and see it as a net. It’s far more complex and has been for thirty years or more.
Prometheus The Supremo
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how many people coming from sheppard east go to york U? maybe it would be a good idea to extend the sheppard line to the spadina line if the numbers are there or will be there if it were built.