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Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

It's another side of a coin, just to say Sheppard shouldn't be brought into that discussion in the first place. It takes more than not being a stub to get those commercial development boom. Will an extended Sheppard be a (not "the") catalyst? Maybe, maybe not. Then again, Sheppard did see a lot of the residential boom.

Not really.

The subway corridor along Sheppard is still very suburban. There's actually been very little relative construction in the area. It's going to take many times the amount of units recently built to start justifying it's existence.
 
Not really.

The subway corridor along Sheppard is still very suburban. There's actually been very little relative construction in the area. It's going to take many times the amount of units recently built to start justifying it's existence.

??? Its been a continuous stream of density since the subway and now accelerating. Nothing happens over night, including the Downtowns planning and development. I just walked along Sheppard this week I must have seen almost 10 building proposals from before Bayview to Yonge. Almost all the land is accounted for now by developers so id say another couple decades there will be zero frontage left along that stretch. Bayview Village is getting a massive re-development and Leslie continues to a steady build towards Bessarion to the South. Its actually been non-stop.
 
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Again, the LRT system itself was flawed. They do not allow for seamless transfers between the existing system, or the bus network, which, in my eyes, makes them extremely flawed. The reason the grade separated option wins is because of the transferability between other routes. Eglinton East works because it serves the corridor it travels on, not to be fed by other bus routes, and it connects directly with the Eglinton Crosstown. The SRT replacement LRT wins on transferability between buses, but not to existing transit, and, capacity is decreased, while dwell times increase. The beast solution for that corridor without a subway is to replace the SRT with ICTS, it's even cheaper than the SRT replacement with LRT. The Subway wins because of a seamless transfer at Kennedy, and the fact that you (should) easily be able to transfer from a bus terminal to the subway. The Sheppard East LRT loses on all accounts because it's just a capacity increase of the 85 bus, which, quite frankly, isn't the best bus to replace with LRT right now. I can think of at least 10 other routes that would be better suited for LRT than the 85.

Also, more stops does not equate to better service. Redundant stops only increase trip time and reduce the willingness of people to take transit. I'd much rather bike to a subway station or take a bus to a seamless transfer at a subway station (even if it ends up taking 5 minutes longer) than taking a bus or walking a long way to the LRT stop. Why? It's far less stressful, and it means there's storage for my bike if that's my choice off transit. Scarborough is, generally, not dense enough for LRT, but it is dense enough for 1 or 2 dedicated transit priority corridors that everywhere else feeds into. With the LRT plan, not much is changed.

Neither do buses.

You're looking at transit from a very suburban perspective. The goal of transit is to move people and provide access. Making things easier for drivers is a product of that, not the goal.

The Eglinton LRT is underground where necessary, and should provide great service in Scarborough. The time estimates for rides to the Yonge Line from Kennedy aren't that far off of subway travel times. Best of all, if stop spacing proves to be problematic, it's relatively easy to adjust.

Mississauga seems quite excited for their LRT. Friends in the area certainly are. Scarborough would be excited for an LRT too if they actually had to take responsibility for it.

McCowan has arguably the worst transfer or one of the worst transfers to rapid transit on the Bloor-Danforth SRT corridor. When you factor in the time it takes to get to Kennedy, 33 minutes increases to 48 to 53 minutes.

That seems to be inaccurate.

I did a time estimate for this morning at 9am. The time to Yonge Station, which seems to be the benchmark everyone uses, is 1 hour and 13 minutes (from Morningside & Neilson)

From Kipling & Finch (the other example provided), it's 1 hour and 5 minutes.

That's a grand total of 8 minutes difference lol.

With a more transit friendly street grid configuration (something mentioned in the report), you could probably shave a decent amount of time from the Scarborough estimate.

How about from Kipling and Eglinton? The ride is 44 minutes. If you're at Kennedy and Eglinton, the trip is only 23 minutes, or close to half the time.

For all the 'woe is me' oppression nonsense coming from Scarborough, the travel times really aren't that much different than they are in the western suburbs of Toronto, and in some cases the travel times are much better.

We're spending $5 billion for an extension that won't make things easier given the ridiculous walking distances, all while there are people still struggling with overcrowding and poor streetcar service downtown.

The more news they release about this extension, the more ridiculous it seems.
 
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Neither do buses.

Mississauga seems quite excited for their LRT. Friends in the area certainly are. Scarborough would be excited for an LRT too if they actually had to take responsibility for it.
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I bet Vaughan is even happier with the subway they took responsibility for. Don't be naïve, the subway is coming to Sauga down the road, and they'll have a beautiful seamless North-south LRT running thru the City Centre to compliment it. Id love to see a seamless LRT from Bluffers park thru SCC and connect into Malvern EELRT to compliment the subway connection(s)


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Did you just site a April fools joke as justification for your scarborough subway?
SMH!

https://www.insauga.com/mississauga-is-finally-getting-a-subway-extension

"As a wise man once said, “subways, subways, subways!”"

"It will be ready to go on April Fools! :)"

OneCity did you think we would be too dumb to fact check your "fake news?" Or were you too dumb to realize this was a joke?
 
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April Fools joke or not, it does make me wonder if people in Mississauga would ride the subway the whole length to downtown Toronto or if it would be used for traveling within Mississauga.

It all depends where commuters are headed, comparative cost, and the number of stops in between. Islington Centre will continue to grow over the decades and this line would go thru commercial work areas in between as to which GO can't help.

Lonnngggg way off before its built but far from an April fools joke as Scarborough, North York, Richmond Hill and Vaughan Centres will all be connected by the same infrastructure. All main Centres bordering Toronto will be connected.


Mississauga seems quite excited for their LRT. Friends in the area certainly are. Scarborough would be excited for an LRT too if they actually had to take responsibility for it.
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Its really unfair simplifying the argument to compare the SLRT which runs thru a remote, non-populated part for Scarborough forcing a transfer before the Centre to an full North-south LRT line the the heart of Mississauga. This is something a few the LRT only advocates seem to ignore when disusing all LRT plans as equals. The bulk of the design was pathetic for Scarborough. Both line were the same in technology, otherwise they had little in common.
 
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This April Fools joke of a Mississauga line is just that... a Joke... it isn't any more credible than a line to Pickering. GO, RER, Smarttrack is supposed to be handling our outside areas and instead somehow you guys are fantasizing about hypothetical 10-20 billion dollar subways to Mississauga. OneCity is winning if you let him derail a thread with this ludicrous proposal which I am still not sure he knew was a joke to begin with.
 
April Fools joke or not, it does make me wonder if people in Mississauga would ride the subway the whole length to downtown Toronto or if it would be used for traveling within Mississauga.

Fun fact: New York’s A Train subway route is 31 miles long. Clearly, it’s not being used solely to get to Times Square.

I would be happy if Toronto beat that with a 32 mile line., but would prefer an affordable in-our-lifetime solution.

Tunnelling under Markland Woods? Elevated across the Golf Course at Etobicoke Creek? Not gonna happen. Any straight-lineish route to MCC deprives Mississauga of using the development opportunity along Dundas, and local subway service along Burnhamthorpe is just not needed.

A modest Line 2 terminal station at Cloverdale, with a one-minute transfer to a Dundas LRT, is good for 20-30 years plus. Let Mississauga decide if they want a cutoff to MCC versus a transfer to Hurontario LRT at Dundas/Hurontario. That 1-minute Cloverdale transfer is better than the walk-for-seven-minutes-to-seamless-subway idea that seems to be the plan at STCmahal.

Do a Dundas LRT, put the rest of the money that would be spent on a Mississauga subway into 2WAD GO service on the Milton route, to give that Etobicoke Center and downtown Toronto connectivity. Same end price, better overall transit plan. Mississaugans are too pragmatic to play the grievance based, need to feel special politics.

-Paul
 
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Fun fact: New York’s A Train subway route is 31 miles long. Clearly, it’s not being used solely to get to Times Square.

I would be happy if Toronto beat that with a 32 mile line., but would prefer an affordable in-our-lifetime solution.

Tunnelling under Markland Woods? Elevated across the Golf Course at Etobicoke Creek? Not gonna happen. Any straight-lineish route to MCC deprives Mississauga of using the development opportunity along Dundas, and local subway service along Burnhamthorpe is just not needed.

A modest Line 2 terminal station at Cloverdale, with a one-minute transfer to a Dundas LRT, is good for 20-30 years plus. Let Mississauga decide if they want a cutoff to MCC versus a transfer to Hurontario LRT at Dundas/Hurontario. That 1-minute Cloverdale transfer is better than the walk-for-seven-minutes-to-seamless-subway idea that seems to be the plan at STCmahal.

Do a Dundas LRT, put the rest of the money that would be spent on a Mississauga subway into 2WAD GO service on the Milton route, to give that Etobicoke Center and downtown Toronto connectivity. Same end price, better overall transit plan. Mississaugans are too pragmatic to play the grievance based, need to feel special politics.

-Paul
To add to your point, New York has an extensive inner city subway system that serves practically every corner of the central part of the city. Toronto, well, doesn't. New York has no subway to Yonkers or White Plains or Hempstead or Paterson. The system doesn't go east of Queens or north of the Bronx. New Jersey has its own system but even that is very limited. New York's subway is very Manhattan-centric, while the suburbs are almost exclusively served by commuter and light rail. This is a much better model that what Toronto has been doing for the last several decades.

Why anyone would want Toronto to have subway lines longer than a city that's more than 3x the size is beyond me.
 
This April Fools joke of a Mississauga line is just that... a Joke... it isn't any more credible than a line to Pickering. GO, RER, Smarttrack is supposed to be handling our outside areas and instead somehow you guys are fantasizing about hypothetical 10-20 billion dollar subways to Mississauga. OneCity is winning if you let him derail a thread with this ludicrous proposal which I am still not sure he knew was a joke to begin with.
Yes, the only suggestion of a subway to SQ1 has been on April 1.

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/subway-to-mississauga-routing.8962/
 
To add to your point, New York has an extensive inner city subway system that serves practically every corner of the central part of the city. Toronto, well, doesn't. New York has no subway to Yonkers or White Plains or Hempstead or Paterson. The system doesn't go east of Queens or north of the Bronx. New Jersey has its own system but even that is very limited. New York's subway is very Manhattan-centric, while the suburbs are almost exclusively served by commuter and light rail. This is a much better model that what Toronto has been doing for the last several decades.

Why anyone would want Toronto to have subway lines longer than a city that's more than 3x the size is beyond me.

Because they're not devising transit plans, they're coming up with ideas to make things easier for drivers with the assumption that underground transit is some sort of right.

You make a great point too - as downtown rapidly increases in density and expands, there is more than a legitimate argument for more stations within the core.
 
Wow, about 400 metres of tunnels and walkways east-west. But then it stops right on the west side of McCowan. Would a walkway under or over McCowan have killed them?

Gosh, this might get rid of the time for transfer at Kennedy, but for many, it might add an even longer transfer at Scarborough Town Centre!
 
Wow, about 400 metres of tunnels and walkways east-west. But then it stops right on the west side of McCowan. Would a walkway under or over McCowan have killed them?

Gosh, this might get rid of the time for transfer at Kennedy, but for many, it might add an even longer transfer at Scarborough Town Centre!

The McCowan station entrance/exit makes far more sense on the east side closer to the precinct if not both have an opening on both sides. Its great to see the aesthetics enhanced but it almost seems from the article the design team may have taken the TTC for a ride in terms of access details.
 
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To add to your point, New York has an extensive inner city subway system that serves practically every corner of the central part of the city. Toronto, well, doesn't. New York has no subway to Yonkers or White Plains or Hempstead or Paterson. The system doesn't go east of Queens or north of the Bronx. New Jersey has its own system but even that is very limited. New York's subway is very Manhattan-centric, while the suburbs are almost exclusively served by commuter and light rail. This is a much better model that what Toronto has been doing for the last several decades.

Why anyone would want Toronto to have subway lines longer than a city that's more than 3x the size is beyond me.

While it's true that a 31 mile (50km) subway line is a little absurd for Toronto, the fact still remains that New York has a subway system that is 170% the size of Toronto's when compared with population (in other words, per unit of population, the NYC subway is 70% larger than Toronto's, and of course, about 1/3 of their system is aboveground, which is something Toronto should really look at). It should also be noted that Toronto is still growing. While the existing enhancements (Crosstown (underground), SSE, DRL) will close that gap significantly, you would have to also build the Yonge North subway extension, RLN, and RLW in order to be fully on par with New York in terms of subway length/population. It should also be noted that New York's subway trains are significantly larger than ours, so total capacity is actually much larger in New York than it is here. Finally, when you consider the fact that "route miles" does not include the presence of express lines, the length of the New York city subway increases by about 50%. If we are ever to catch up in terms of capacity here, we would need to build a full Sheppard line, subways further into Mississauga, another relief line on Dundas, Relief Line Northwest, and Quad track the Yonge line.

Also, almost no one in the suburbs of New York City (Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens) uses the LIRR or MNRR to get to and from work -- everyone takes the subway. Having the subway extend to the middle of Scarborough and Etobicoke (in the long term anyways) is not far fetched, especially for a growing city of our size.

A better city to compare transit to is Chicago, which 2.25* the size of our system in population/km metrics. While the vast majority of their system is aboveground, it shows what rapid transit can look like in a city relative to our size.
 

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