Toronto Union Station Revitalization | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto | NORR

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Willybru21 said:
I hope that dentist office fails and relocates somewhere else, it does not need to be in the busiest and most prominent hallway in the station. Everything there should be geared to the average commuter, traveller, or tourist, which pretty much everything else but the dentist and nail place does.
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If they get customers the dentist & the nail salon will stay, if not they won't. I assume the rents vary by location (and area) and at the end of the day 'the customer' will decide who goes and who stays.
 
Union Station Bus Terminal: 14 bays and no direct highway access.

Port Authority Bus Terminal: 233 bays, direct highway access, and it's at capacity.

Obviously the New York area is on a order of magnitude larger, but you think we could have built something a little bigger for future proofing?

 
LemonCondo said:
Union Station Bus Terminal: 14 bays and no direct highway access.

Port Authority Bus Terminal: 233 bays, direct highway access, and it's at capacity.

Obviously the New York area is on a order of magnitude larger, but you think we could have built something a little bigger for future proofing?

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Port Authority does a lot of commuter traffic, with very very poor higher-order transit, from the west, to NYC. GO isn't planning on much service at all into Union once most of the lines are on RER-like service. They certainly won't need 14 bays four years from now.

Direct highway access isn't great - but the Union terminal is literally right next to the Gardiner. To the west it's extraordinarily easy, you come out of the garage, onto Bay, turn right onto the Lake Shore and the on-ramp is right there. Congestion could be solved with a reserved bus lane.

Eastbound is a bit more finicky, having to loop around Lakeshore (westbound), York, Harbour, Bay. But why not find a way to enable a bus-only left-hand turn from Bay to the eastbound on-ramp? With the rebuild coming in that area, it's not a major change.
 
nfitz said:
Port Authority does a lot of commuter traffic, with very very poor higher-order transit, from the west, to NYC. GO isn't planning on much service at all into Union once most of the lines are on RER-like service. They certainly won't need 14 bays four years from now.

Direct highway access isn't great - but the Union terminal is literally right next to the Gardiner. To the west it's extraordinarily easy, you come out of the garage, onto Bay, turn right onto the Lake Shore and the on-ramp is right there. Congestion could be solved with a reserved bus lane.

Eastbound is a bit more finicky, having to loop around Lakeshore (westbound), York, Harbour, Bay. But why not find a way to enable a bus-only left-hand turn from Bay to the eastbound on-ramp? With the rebuild coming in that area, it's not a major change.
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Living near that area the traffic on lake shore going into the Gardiner is crazy during rush hour. Whether it’s merited or not, there won’t be a reserved bus lane there. I do see some busses stuck once in a while but as the poster above mentioned, it’s mostly rail traffic during rush hour.
 
nfitz said:
Port Authority does a lot of commuter traffic, with very very poor higher-order transit, from the west, to NYC. GO isn't planning on much service at all into Union once most of the lines are on RER-like service. They certainly won't need 14 bays four years from now.

Direct highway access isn't great - but the Union terminal is literally right next to the Gardiner. To the west it's extraordinarily easy, you come out of the garage, onto Bay, turn right onto the Lake Shore and the on-ramp is right there. Congestion could be solved with a reserved bus lane.

Eastbound is a bit more finicky, having to loop around Lakeshore (westbound), York, Harbour, Bay. But why not find a way to enable a bus-only left-hand turn from Bay to the eastbound on-ramp? With the rebuild coming in that area, it's not a major change.
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We should put a bus lane in each direction on the Gardiner!
 
DSC said:
Clearly you have never been on the Gardiner.
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Clearly you are a car-apologist.

Edit: And on a different note: Why the hell doesn't Porter's shuttle bus to Billy Bishop use the new terminal. At the airport you can just wait inside and look out the window until your bus comes. At Union you have to wait on Front Street. It's nonsense. Someone work this out...
 
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LemonCondo said:
Clearly you are a car-apologist.

Edit: And on a different note: Why the hell doesn't Porter's shuttle bus to Billy Bishop use the new terminal. At the airport you can just wait inside and look out the window until your bus comes. At Union you have to wait on Front Street. It's nonsense. Someone work this out...
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I have not owned a car for several decades but, like it or not, there are cars.

I bet the Billy Bishop shuttle bus can park free on the street at the Royal York, if they used the GO Bus terminal I suspect they would have to pay - it might well be a better location for their customers but ...
 
DSC said:
I have not owned a car for several decades but, like it or not, there are cars.

I bet the Billy Bishop shuttle bus can park free on the street at the Royal York, if they used the GO Bus terminal I suspect they would have to pay - it might well be a better location for their customers but ...
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I did not mean to come off super-rude. But like, if there are arguments for tearing down the thing in the first place, but now we are renovating it, why not use it for better purposes? Use it as a viaduct, not an expressway. Bus lanes and..... maybe High Speed Rail? 😶‍🌫️
 
LemonCondo said:
I did not mean to come off super-rude.
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In general, I would encourage every member to stick to arguing the facts, and not discussing the 'motives' of other posters; that said; some posters can be a wee bit exasperating........but @DSC is not one of those.

Very thoughtful fellow.

LemonCondo said:
But like, if there are arguments for tearing down the thing in the first place, but now we are renovating it, why not use it for better purposes? Use it as a viaduct, not an expressway. Bus lanes and..... maybe High Speed Rail? 😶‍🌫️
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I get the idea, and while I'll let @DSC speak for himself; I feel confident he does too.

The issue is not one of opposing the spirit of your idea; it's acknowledging the politics of it and whether such a move could be made in light of that.

I can say with some confidence, we're not there today.

In order to cut the Gardiner's car-carrying capacity by 1/3, you would absolutely have to impose tolls; and you have to pair that with vast transit improvements, mainly on GO.

The latter is coming, albeit more slowly that many of us would like; but once we get 15M service to Bramalea in place; and 30M 2WAY to Mt.Pleasant, and 15M service on Lakeshore at all times; including
30M service to West Harbour, and we get 2WAD service on the Milton Corridor, then, perhaps, we can deliver tolls; and once we do that, bus lanes may well be realistic; though perhaps, no longer necessary. Which may give way
to other opportunities to beautify and reduce the visual impact of the Gardiner.

Time will tell.

But bus lanes on the Gardiner will not pass Council in the next 2 years and likely not for awhile thereafter.

On the other hand, some type of reserved bus lane on Lake Shore, and perhaps on portions of Harbour may be feasible to provide enhanced access to/from the Gardiner for GO buses; and that should be considered sooner rather than later.
 
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Northern Light said:
In general, I would encourage every member to stick to arguing the facts, and not discussing the 'motives' of other posters; that said; some posters can be a wee bit exasperating........but @DSC is not one of those.

Very thoughtful fellow.



I get the idea, and while I'll let @DSC speak for himself; I feel confident he does too.

The issue is not one of opposing the spirit of your idea; it's acknowledging the politics of it and whether such a move could be made in light of that.

I can say with some confidence, we're not there today.

In order to cut the Gardiner's car-carrying capacity by 1/3, you would absolutely have to impose tolls; and you have to pair that with vast transit improvements, mainly on GO.

The latter is coming, albeit more slowly that many of us would like; but once we get 15M service to Bramalea in place; and 30M 2WAY to Mt.Pleasant, and 15M service on Lakeshore at all times; including
30M service to West Harbour, and we get 2WAD service on the Milton Corridor, then, perhaps, we can deliver tolls; and once we do that, but lanes may well be realistic; though perhaps, no longer necessary. Which may give way
to other opportunities to beautify and reduce the visual impact of the Gardiner.

Time will tell.

But bus lanes on the Gardiner will not pass Council in the next 2 years and likely not for awhile thereafter.

On the other hand, some type of reserved bus lane on Lake Shore, and perhaps on portions of Harbour may be feasible to provide enhanced access to/from the Gardiner for GO buses; and that should be considered sooner rather than later.
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Being a transit and urbanist junkie, but then also having low patience is probably not a great combination of attributes. Hopefully as you say, vast improvements to GO will mean less demand on the expressway.... and then we can do something more radical...
 
LemonCondo said:
I did not mean to come off super-rude. But like, if there are arguments for tearing down the thing in the first place, but now we are renovating it, why not use it for better purposes? Use it as a viaduct, not an expressway. Bus lanes and..... maybe High Speed Rail? 😶‍🌫️
Click to expand...
You did not come off as rude (certainly not super-rude) but one does need to think about the (political) feasiblity of ideas!
 
LemonCondo said:
Union Station Bus Terminal: 14 bays and no direct highway access.

Port Authority Bus Terminal: 233 bays, direct highway access, and it's at capacity.

Obviously the New York area is on a order of magnitude larger, but you think we could of built something a little bigger for future proofing?

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Envying the PABT seems... odd.

New York has embarassingly poor transit connections to New Jersey and a completely laughable regional rail network, as well as hopelessly incompetent governance that will either not even realize the problem exists or if they do, attempt to fix the problem by spending twice as long and 10x the budget building the wrong project. Any sensible and competent city would have built regional rail and subways decades ago to replace all those buses.

With regional rail, the Union bus terminal should probably be smaller, not larger. Almost no commuter buses would sensibly go to Union, leaving only a handful of intercity buses.
 
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