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YRT/Viva Construction Thread (Rapidways, Terminals)

ShonTron said:
The Davis Drive Transitway was a waste of valuable capital funds. York Region is great for building transit infrastructure, but notorious for refusing to pay for the transit to actually serve it. It looks great on them as they get a subway extension opening at the end of this year, and as they lobby for another subway extension.

Brampton adds service every year, and get the best transit ridership increases in the GTA. And without the fancy median busways, too.
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I think it's totally fair to point out YR is adding major infrastructure while cutting local service but I think you also have to put things in the larger context.

I suspect building the lanes on Davis was a necessary political compromise so northern York Region didn't feel left out when all the money went to the "real" project of building lanes on Yonge and Highway 7; not to mention the two subways. Toronto, for one, is hardly to immune to approving unnecessary suburban transit infrastructure for political reasons.

You also have to view the rapidway in the context of what was there before (a lot of crap retail, a lot of traffic) and the fact Yonge/Davis is a designated Urban Growth Centre, so they're trying to stimulate intensification, including employment intensification around the hospital.

I also disagree they are "refusing to pay" for the service, since their subsidy is way way higher than Toronto, and probably even moreso per rider north of the Oak Ridges Moraine. That they're willing to spend $5.50 (to make up a number) per rider on David Drive but not $7.50 doesn't strike me as "refusing to pay" It's a balance and a tricky one and while I fully recognize it's not apples-to-apples with Toronto, their subsidy and rising property taxes are more in line with reality than that great city.

It's great Brampton's ridership is growing, but they don't have to serve a (sub)urban core as well as a rural area twice the size of Toronto. YRT would be a very different beast if it only had to serve Vaughan, Markham and Richmond Hill. I've said before, I don't envy YRT trying to walk the tightrope they do but, for all their legit failings and mistakes, I still see them trying to drive in the right direction. 10, 15 or 20 years will be a more fair time to criticize whether the Davis rapidway was wasteful.

I don't see what any of that has to do with the need for the Yonge subway extension. A waste of capital funds would have been building the rapidway there, tearing up Yonge, and then having a BRT that's operating at or near capacity on opening day.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
I think it's totally fair to point out YR is adding major infrastructure while cutting local service but I think you also have to put things in the larger context.

I suspect building the lanes on Davis was a necessary political compromise so northern York Region didn't feel left out when all the money went to the "real" project of building lanes on Yonge and Highway 7; not to mention the two subways. Toronto, for one, is hardly to immune to approving unnecessary suburban transit infrastructure for political reasons.

You also have to view the rapidway in the context of what was there before (a lot of crap retail, a lot of traffic) and the fact Yonge/Davis is a designated Urban Growth Centre, so they're trying to stimulate intensification, including employment intensification around the hospital.

I also disagree they are "refusing to pay" for the service, since their subsidy is way way higher than Toronto, and probably even moreso per rider north of the Oak Ridges Moraine. That they're willing to spend $5.50 (to make up a number) per rider on David Drive but not $7.50 doesn't strike me as "refusing to pay" It's a balance and a tricky one and while I fully recognize it's not apples-to-apples with Toronto, their subsidy and rising property taxes are more in line with reality than that great city.

It's great Brampton's ridership is growing, but they don't have to serve a (sub)urban core as well as a rural area twice the size of Toronto. YRT would be a very different beast if it only had to serve Vaughan, Markham and Richmond Hill. I've said before, I don't envy YRT trying to walk the tightrope they do but, for all their legit failings and mistakes, I still see them trying to drive in the right direction. 10, 15 or 20 years will be a more fair time to criticize whether the Davis rapidway was wasteful.

I don't see what any of that has to do with the need for the Yonge subway extension. A waste of capital funds would have been building the rapidway there, tearing up Yonge, and then having a BRT that's operating at or near capacity on opening day.
Click to expand...

The region isn't committed to operating the transit necessary to feed and operate on expensive infrastructure projects. That's what it has to do with the Vaughan and Richmond Hill subway extensions.
 
ShonTron said:
The region isn't committed to operating the transit necessary to feed and operate on expensive infrastructure projects. That's what it has to do with the Vaughan and Richmond Hill subway extensions.
Click to expand...

Could be. But it seems like a broad lesson to draw so early on in the game, especially based on Davis Drive which (I would think) is always going to be less transit-oriented than the population south of Highway 7 (ie where the subways will be). I don't even known that the service plan for the Spadina extension backs this up. But time will certainly tell.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
I also disagree they are "refusing to pay" for the service, since their subsidy is way way higher than Toronto, and probably even moreso per rider north of the Oak Ridges Moraine. That they're willing to spend $5.50 (to make up a number) per rider on David Drive but not $7.50 doesn't strike me as "refusing to pay" It's a balance and a tricky one and while I fully recognize it's not apples-to-apples with Toronto, their subsidy and rising property taxes are more in line with reality than that great city.
Click to expand...

The per-rider subsidy in York Region isn't actually that high on the vast majority of routes. A handful of routes are way above the 39% average cost recovery because, in many rural areas, it's cheaper to operate dial-a-ride (literally just an on-demand taxi service) than a fixed-schedule bus route.

https://www.york.ca/wps/wcm/connect...0f2d44bee4/nov+3+yrt+fares+ex.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

In reality there just isn't demand to support more frequent service on most of YRT. Service frequency is just one part of public transit ridership, and without the other parts in place - i.e. transit service being fast and actually getting to where you want to go - higher frequency doesn't result in a net benefit.
 
did you scroll down and check the links under project documents? presentation board and EA reports are all threre
 
cplchanb said:
did you scroll down and check the links under project documents? presentation board and EA reports are all threre
Click to expand...
Those are just compliance environmental reports. I'm looking for Environmental Assessments, aka detailed plans with diagrams and explanations.
 
http://www.vivanext.com/files/PastMeetings/Yonge_RichmondHill/Y2_PPC_Board_26-36.pdf

http://www.vivanext.com/projectdocument/doctype/past-meetings/project/richmond-hill/

Wow! The Major Mackenzie stop is awful! It's a full intersection away. There's going to be tons of jaywalkers. No one wants to get off a bus, walk to the previous intersection and then walk back to Major Mackenzie.

-----

The Davis / Yonge stops located in the south side of the intersection also don't make sense. The stops should have been placed in the east/west directions on the West side of the intersection so that it could facilitate blue and yellow transfers.

O well! :/
 
Last edited:
wilson_wu said:
http://www.vivanext.com/files/PastMeetings/Yonge_RichmondHill/Y2_PPC_Board_26-36.pdf

http://www.vivanext.com/projectdocument/doctype/past-meetings/project/richmond-hill/

Wow! The Major Mackenzie stop is awful! It's a full intersection away. There's going to be tons of jaywalkers. No one wants to get off a bus, walk to the previous intersection and then walk back to Major Mackenzie.

-----

The Davis / Yonge stops located in the south side of the intersection also don't make sense. The stops should have been placed in the east/west directions on the West side of the intersection so that it could facilitate blue and yellow transfers.

O well! :/
Click to expand...
The reason the Major Mackenzie stop is so far away, is because they need to "preserve" the heritage area.
 
anyone know what is happening to the highway 7 rapidway to Helen from the subway extension? most mentions of it on the website seem to be missing..

edit: never mind. They have updated the website with more mention of it since I looked at it a few months ago.
 
innsertnamehere said:
anyone know what is happening to the highway 7 rapidway to Helen from the subway extension? most mentions of it on the website seem to be missing..

edit: never mind. They have updated the website with more mention of it since I looked at it a few months ago.
Click to expand...
Isn't that like phase 2 OF phase 2, basically phase 3, of Highway 7 West?

Otherwise, phase 1 doesn't seem to going to open until the end of 2017, even though most of the Rapidway is complete, except for VMC Station.
 
VMC station isn't even going to be complete until spring 2018, apparently. Wouldn't surprise me if VIVA service waits until then for its upgrades.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
I also disagree they are "refusing to pay" for the service, since their subsidy is way way higher than Toronto, and probably even moreso per rider north of the Oak Ridges Moraine. That they're willing to spend $5.50 (to make up a number) per rider on David Drive but not $7.50 doesn't strike me as "refusing to pay" It's a balance and a tricky one and while I fully recognize it's not apples-to-apples with Toronto, their subsidy and rising property taxes are more in line with reality than that great city.
Click to expand...

amnesiajune said:
The per-rider subsidy in York Region isn't actually that high on the vast majority of routes. A handful of routes are way above the 39% average cost recovery because, in many rural areas, it's cheaper to operate dial-a-ride (literally just an on-demand taxi service) than a fixed-schedule bus route.

https://www.york.ca/wps/wcm/connect...0f2d44bee4/nov+3+yrt+fares+ex.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

In reality there just isn't demand to support more frequent service on most of YRT. Service frequency is just one part of public transit ridership, and without the other parts in place - i.e. transit service being fast and actually getting to where you want to go - higher frequency doesn't result in a net benefit.
Click to expand...

I think it's a bit misleading to look at subsidy / rider as a metric of support from the city. If the entire city paid only to operate a single bus, the subsidy would be (say) $300 000 for (say) 100 people who ride it, which is $1000/ rider, but that doesn't mean that the city is paying much. A better metric would be subsidy/rate payer, or what percentage of the budget it is. The TTC is Toronto's second largest line item, I doubt that it's the same for York.

Subsidy/rider is a metric of route productivity, not municipal support.
 
aquateam said:
I think it's a bit misleading to look at subsidy / rider as a metric of support from the city. If the entire city paid only to operate a single bus, the subsidy would be (say) $300 000 for (say) 100 people who ride it, which is $1000/ rider, but that doesn't mean that the city is paying much. A better metric would be subsidy/rate payer, or what percentage of the budget it is.
Click to expand...

A better metric would just be the fare and the entire budget relative to the city's size. By either of those two metrics, the London Underground is a garbage system since it gets no subsidy, and the big Asian cities are getting negative support, since their transit systems are usually profitable and the profits are sent back to the government to be spent on other things.

By that metric, Toronto isn't great but it's not terrible. The TTC's 2015 budget was $1.7 billion or around $650 per resident. The STM's budget that year was $1.5 billion, working out to around $720 per resident. The CTA (Chicago), despite having a much higher per-rider subsidy and per-resident subsidy, only spends around $530 per resident on public transit. New York City spends around $880 per resident on subways, buses and the Staten Island Railway. And York Region, despite a seemingly huge subsidy, only spends about $180 per resident.

https://www.ttc.ca/News/2015/February/020215_Board_Approves_Budget.jsp
http://www.stm.info/sites/default/files/pdf/fr/budget2015.pdf
http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/finance_budget/2015_Budget_Book_plain_text_version.pdf
http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA 2015 Adopted Budget February Financial Plan 2015-2018.pdf
https://www.york.ca/wps/wcm/connect...bf7dfb46b2fd/dec+3+2016+TS+ex.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
 
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