sunnyraytoronto
Senior Member
If a Glencairn/Blythwood station is added on the Yonge line, I don't foresee the kind of development we see at North York City Centre happening there. High rises would not be approved there. Instead, it will be the domain of midrise condo developers.
If constructed, it would probably be the lowest ridership station on the Yonge line, the LCBO at Summerhill would probably generate more ridership than a Blythwood station. All the while increasing commute times for anyone north of Blythwood (ie, most Yonge riders) by a few minutes.
IMHO, Summerhill and Rosedale station should have been built originally as just one station.
Those relatively few people who live near Glencarin/Blythwood and work downtown are better off going north to Lawrence station to catch the southbound subway train. Because if they go south to Eglinton to catch the southbound train during AM peak time, they'll be waiting on the southbound platform as countless packed southbound train go by! And this is the least of the problem right now!
Interestingly, you folks are only talking about current condition on Yonge subway line,... Guess what,... There's a double whammy tsunami on the horizon!
Eglinton Crosstown line should be completed in 2020. A lot of people who currently use the east-west Bloor-Danforth line will be switching to the new Eglinton Crosstown and be using that already packed southbound platform at Eglinton going downtown in AM peak time. Thus instead of navigating through Bloor-Yonge interchange station, these folks will be going through Eglinton-Yonge interchange station,... which is already packed now! They should really be discussing adding side platforms at Eglinton station (a la Bloor-Yonge discussion before with 2 side platform and centre platform so trains could do all door boarding and exit simultaneously). (A previous article showed a cut and cover at Eglinton for the Yonge line extention north, part of it became the open plaza space where RIO-CAN is now building at north-west corner of Yonge&Eglinton,... sadly, nobody had the foresight to relocate Eglinton station slightly north to that point where new stations platforms could have been built with sides and centre platforms and it would have been under Eglinton Avenue so Eglinton Crosstown could have intersected it in the middle instead of a less functional odd T-interchange like Bloor-Yonge)
If you're thinking, don't worry, Yonge Automatic Train Control will be ready by 2017 and allow about 35-40% more capacity,... Come on, when has the TTC ever delivered what's promised on time as promised???? Right now, they're talking Yonge ATC being delayed until 2021. Anyways,... You better pray that Yonge ATC gets here before Eglinton Crosstown is completed.
But what about Yonge line relief from mayor John Tory's SmartTrack plan,... it'll soon be 2015 and SmartTrack will take 7 years (ie 2022) IF it gets complete cooperation from all levels of governments and the city is allowed to use existing track infrastructure that doesn't even belong to them!
The other tsunami is all the high density development like this one at 1 Eglinton East,... 68 storey,.... that's going to be close to 1,000 units! About 2,000 people if all condo, more if office component,... 1,000 units is probably enough to fill both sides of a 5km residential street,... and it's built vertically at one point. Each tower represent a street full of people at one point instead of being spread over a much larger area. Multiply that by all the development that's currently going on in Yonge-Eglinton area and add in those that we'll see in the near future,.... especially along Eglinton Crosstown - hey, city isn't building Eglinton Crosstown to service the existing low density neighbourhoods,... city is building it so they can increase density along Eglinton so they can collect more property tax revenue.
High density development brings in a lot more people,... but city does a lousy job of building any infrastructure to handle all those extra people,... the city can't even handle all the people on the Yonge line now!
Bottomline,... if you work downtown, move to downtown,.... you can't rely on transit or anything from any level of government in this town.
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