YONGE WORKS PROGRAM. What do you think??

[miketoronto]

Its no secret that decentralized working patterns are hurting Toronto. Loss of tax revenue, transit not being able to service new jobs in the suburbs well, increased traffic, pollution, and problems with people being able to access jobs.

So heres Miketoronto's newest idea. What do you guys think?

---

YONGE WORKS
A partnership between the City of Toronto and the Regional Municipality of York.

YONGE WORKS, would be a metropolitan wide plan to focus non-industrial jobs into the Yonge Street corridor, from downtown Toronto all the way up to Yonge and Highway 7 in Richmond Hill.

The plan would see new employment focused into downtown Toronto, as well as into major clusters of employment at

Yonge-St Clair
Yonge-Eglinton
North York City Centre
Yonge and Highway 7

The plan would call for up to 60% of metropolitan wide non industrial jobs be located in this special downtown-Richmond Hill, YONGE corridor.

The Yonge corridor is the most central area for the entire metro area, and it makes sense to focus jobs in this area.

To see the plan work, major bans on office development would have to be inacted in all Greater Toronto suburbs. Some development would be allowed in area suburbs, as not all growth can be kept in the Yonge corridor. But a target of 60% of jobs in the central Yonge corridor would be kept as the ballpark.

To accomodate the added growth in jobs, many transit improvments would be needed.

Some of the improvments would involve

-Bus only lanes along Yonge from Yonge and Highway 7 to York Mills.

-Extension of VIVA buses to York Mills Station via North York Centre.

-Bus only lanes on highway 401, to allow for more express GO BUS service to North York Centre.

-A new NORTH TORONTO transit hub station would be built at Yonge and Sheppard.

-Rapid bus service on major east west Toronto streets in the northern end of the city.

NEW OFFICE DEVELOPMENT

The city would push for signature buildings in North York City Centre, with the tallest one being a 70 story office tower.

In Downtown the city would start a partnership to see a 100 story TORONTO INTERNATIONAL TRADE CENTRE office building built. This building would act as a becon to attract business to Toronto.

YONGE WORKS, would be a boom for the city.
The city would see

-Increased employment
-More jobs for city residents
-A more vibrant downtown
-A more virant central Yonge corridor
-A more pedestrian friendly Yonge corridor in Richmond Hill
-Ease of access for jobs for all metropolitan residents.

YONGE WORKS

 

[cassiusa]

Up to 60% of all metropolitan-wide non industrial jobs would go along Yonge street - are you crazy???

 

[afransen TO]

Ignore mike's numbers and the idea has merit.

 

[rbtaylor]

Isn't this policy already in place? 3 of 5 major employment nodes in Toronto are along Yonge Street and the other two are on high-order transit and well distanced from Yonge.

 

[billonlogan]

Sounds great in theory but a high number of workers will drive no matter what transit improvements. Unless improvements are made to the roadways and increase parking spots, I don't think many employers will go for it. Why are so many employers moving out of the city to the suburbs... FREE PARKING!!!

 

[miketoronto]

Not really. If you offer good transit, people will use it. Thats why 75% of downtown Toronto workers take transit. Because it can get them down there easy.

If we improved service to the entire Yonge corridor it would work.

Anyway yeah 60%. Before the age of suburbs downtown Toronto accounted for almost the entire metro regions workforce, and even into the late 80% was a major employment area, with well close to 50% of the office space of the metro region.

Its only since the 1990's and the 905 boom we have lost out.
Where downtown only accounts for something like 25% of the regional workforce(that includes industrial workers to)

So asking for 60% in the entire Yonge corridor is totally within our reach.
Hell downtown should be able to fit it. But we could for sure fit it along Yonge.

 

[Chuck100]

Right idea, narrow focus. I think that a more attainable goal would be to encourage office developmennt on main transit corridors in general. Of course Yonge, but also Hurontario, Highway 7, as well as subway lines.

Also, just because someone has an office job doesn't mean that they could necessarily work in a downtown environment. If you look at what's actually in an office park in Markham or Brampton, the dominant trend is to have offices attached to a small distribution centre or light manufacturing area. Unless we can offer incentives for medium sized businesses to separate their office jobs from their delivery/production side, office parks are going to stick around for a while.

In the case of York Region, the only area that could potentially have located along Yonge or downtown is Beaver Creek where it's all consulting and high tech. But that represents maybe 5% of all the jobs north of Steeles. And it's along viva anyway.

 

[mark simpson]

Its no secret that decentralized working patterns are hurting Toronto. Loss of tax revenue, transit not being able to service new jobs in the suburbs well, increased traffic, pollution, and problems with people being able to access jobs

LOL - What a job you've done at convincing us decentraliztion is BAD

transit not being able to service new jobs in the suburbs well

but aren't you extending commute times for the majority of surburbanites by relocating the majority of office space along a central axis whose transit system has already reached capacity?

increased traffic

see above

pollution

see above

problems with people being able to access jobs

see above


I'd worry more about the GTA keeping its competitve edge than some delusional internal struggles between city and suburb

 

[wyliepoon]

I don't see how a lot of people in Toronto will get happy over something like this. People living in Scarborough and Etobicoke would be pretty frustrated if going to work meant taking a terribly long and crowded ride on the Sheppard, Finch, or Steeles bus to get to Yonge Street. The character of some neighbourhoods that see Yonge as a main street would be destroyed, like Yonge-Lawrence and Thornhill. Yonge Street would need a massive widening to accomodate more traffic such as commercial vehicles, which is not possible at places like Yonge and Lawrence. Orienting the CBD along Yonge Street won't do well for Toronto's image- it adds little to the skyline (there's no way that I can see a 100-storey tower getting built downtown). I'd rather see a big waterfront employment corridor than a Yonge corridor going up to Hwy 7.

Lastly, I can't see a major commercial centre going up at Yonge and Hwy 7. It lack more urbanity than an average suburban intersection, and the place is just a mess.

 

[doady]

The Ontario government has already designated a greenbelt to contain sprawl and produced the "Places to Grow" plan, which sees new residences and jobs concentrated in several high-density mixed-use nodes throughout the GTA, including the 3 of the nodes that Miketoronto mentions. These issues are already being taken care of.

 

[miketoronto]

The decentralized node thing does not work.
Because jobs are still spread throughout a large metropolitan area, and it still makes it hard to access the jobs with transit.

Vancouver shows us that. They have tried the node idea, and they have the lowest transit ridership out of all the big cities. It does not work.

Transit works when you focus on a centre.

 

[DarnDirtyApe]

Last time I checked, we already had a centre with quite a bit of development potential. It's called DOWNTOWN!

 

[EnviroTO]

Transit works when you focus on a centre.

Transit works best when there is density along corridors. It would actually work best if every stop on a line was a node of density with jobs and residences. Transit doesn't work when buildings are put up randomly across the city without building a dense nodes and corridors between them. Having only a single job centre means that subway cars going one way are full and going the other way are empty which is completely inefficient. The current city plan with dense nodes downtown, at Islington/Kipling, at SCC, and at North York makes perfect sense because it creates flows in the subway in both directions. If Vaughan planners ever wake up and create a dense VCC it would be a great addition to have at the end of the Spadina line as well.

 

[doady]

The decentralized node thing does not work.
Because jobs are still spread throughout a large metropolitan area, and it still makes it hard to access the jobs with transit.

Vancouver shows us that. They have tried the node idea, and they have the lowest transit ridership out of all the big cities. It does not work.

Transit works when you focus on a centre.

Vancouver's nodes do not have significant concentrations of jobs and Vancouver is so much smaller than Toronto anyways. Considering how much Toronto is expected to grow, it is unreasonable to expect that most of the jobs be located in a centre.

The Yonge subway is already crowded enough and that shows that centralization starts to have disadvantages after a city reaches a certain size. An extreme example would be Tokyo, which is actively promoting decentralization. If centralization was the only requirement for good transit, either Dundas or Burnhamthorpe would be Mississauga's busiest transit corridor, not Hurontario.

 

[miketoronto]

doady, Toronto is not no where to large that we can't focus jobs in a central corridor. No matter if it is in mini downtowns, spreading the jobs out does not work well for access.

If NYC is able to keep something like 63% of its office space in a central corridor(i.e. Manhattan and Jersey City), then I think Toronto a much smaller metro area can handle it.