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Sheppard Line 4 Subway Extension (Proposed)

Sheppard Subway is not the only line built in anticipation for future growth, this recently opened in a Chinese suburb:


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lead82 said:
There is no SmartTrack. It's a marketing gimmick. It's GO RER with a few more stops in Toronto. That's all. I agree that the proposed stops on the Stoufville GO RER line at Lawrence and Ellesmere as not needed. The location is not ideal and they had very poor ridership as RT stations. What would be more useful is to cut those stations from GO RER/aka SmartTrack east and add a station at Lawrence on the BD extension. If we are already building a tunnel, for safety reasons and for the hospital there a station would be useful. That would have been a better compromise.

Back to Sheppard, given the lack of support politically for Sheppard, the best they can hope for is a BRT at this point. The LRT is dead and not going to happen. I suspect if the Tories win they may push for a subway extension but unless they provide funds it wont go anywhere. Maybe they could get funds to extend Sheppard east to Agincourt station as there is a large condo development planned just south of there and it would be deemed a subway for Scarborough, plus it offers a network connectivity advantage with the GO RER/SmartTrack. It also would serve the Consumers road business area, which could densify nicely with a station at Vic Park/Sheppard.
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Lots of reasonable points. Although if were going to built the subway to Agincourt you might as well cross the 401 and finish off the subway loop in one shot. No more stubs.
 
lead82 said:
There is no SmartTrack. It's a marketing gimmick. It's GO RER with a few more stops in Toronto.
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It's sad that SmartTrack is needed to even add those stops. GO RER really doesn't do enough for Toronto residents. And that's ridiculous when you think about it. We keep insisting on funnelling core bound commuters through the subway system instead of using suburban rail for most of these commuters. As a result, we have increased demand for subway extensions.

If this city had a proper suburban rail system, nobody would care about subway extensions. And LRT would be far more popular, as they'd be feeding the suburban trains that got riders to the core in ~30 mins.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
When is the last time we heard Mr. Tory mention SmartTrack? The branding seems dead to me.
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The last new Go Transit station announcement. It's not dead, there's just not much news about it lately. My prediction is he'll unroll SmartTrack for the next election though, and just push for some fare integration scheme now that the new stations have been formalized.
 
amnesiajune said:
The last new Go Transit station announcement. It's not dead, there's just not much news about it lately. My prediction is he'll unroll SmartTrack for the next election though, and just push for some fare integration scheme now that the new stations have been formalized.
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Smartrack has to exist in some form until he gets thru next election for his own optical purposes. If he gets re-elected then we'll likely witness it slowly drop off the radar as he will no longer will even care in his last term. He already supported a subway stop at Lawrence. On top of the already neutered scheme from it original proposal that should tell us all we need to know about the future of Smartrack into next term.
 
OneCity said:
Smartrack has to exist in some form until he gets thru next election for his own optical purposes.
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Yeah. My guess is his pitch for the next election will sound something like this: "Eight new stations are being built on Go Train lines in Toronto, and trains are going to be running every 15 minutes. What's left to do is make sure that Torontonians can use those trains like they use the subway." SmartTrack is a brand - Tory doesn't need the brand itself to exist, as long as he can explain how what he's done and what he wants to do is essentially the same.

I know some people want to pretend it's not being built, but that's not true at all. Seven of the thirteen stations he proposed have been announced - what's missing is Queen (which doesn't make much sense in the context of the DRL and it's Gerrard transfer point), Ellesmere (which would be made useless by the SSE), 14th Avenue (which was always a pointless stop) and the Eglinton spur (being built as an LRT, which has funding if I remember correctly). What's left to figure out is fare integration, but both sides have an interest in working something out on that profile.
 
This all assumes Wynne wins in 2018. If Brown wins then all bets are off and transit funding will likely get starved in favour of highway spending.
 
lead82 said:
This all assumes Wynne wins in 2018. If Brown wins then all bets are off and transit funding will likely get starved in favour of highway spending.
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GO RER / SmartTrack is very likely to survive anyway, it brings a lot of votes for a relatively minor spending.

All currently unfunded projects will be in trouble.
 
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