Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

Haydenpoon said:
We are getting something similar to a subway, but with a higher speed. It's the Stouffville GO line. Metrolinx plans to run 11 trains per hour in the peak and 8 trains per hour offpeak.

The travel time from Union to Unionville GO may even be faster than to Richmond Hill Centre.
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Sure, but the Stouffville Line is a good 10km from where the subway will be in Markham. I agree that GO will serve as an "almost metro" service, but Line 1 and Stouffville serve almost completely different riders.
 
Leo_Chan said:
Do you mean travelling from Union to Richmond Hill Centre or Markham Centre to Richmond Hill Centre?
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Union to Unionville vs Union to Richmond Hill Centre

Currently, the fastest Stouffville line train takes 39 mins.
The fastest Richmond Hill Line train currently takes 36 mins.
But the Stouffville Line will be electrified to reduce travel time.
 
canarob said:
Sure, but the Stouffville Line is a good 10km from where the subway will be in Markham. I agree that GO will serve as an "almost metro" service, but Line 1 and Stouffville serve almost completely different riders.
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I was referring to a comment above that said there should be another subway to Downtown Markham.
 
rbt said:
I'm pretty sure the $19B earmarked for parallel corridors (Ontario Line + Yonge North) could significantly improve all 4 of those issues if directed at Richmond Hill GO service instead, including multiple non-union stops through downtown.

Ontario Line + Yonge North probably result in better ROI but we've not done even a napkin study of what Richmond Hill line might look like with an equal amount of capital poured into it.
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But why should we spend billions of dollars on a route that serves less people than the 11 Bayview bus?

This is the trap that everyone who considers upgrading this line falls for. Richmond Hill corridor barely justifies it's own existence given its cost of operations, and the costly multi-billion upgrade to turn it into a viable line (with still poor ridership and connections) could only be considered a white elephant.

The only scheme that works for Richmond Hill corridor that I have seen are those that present Richmond Hill as a routing for a northern extension of the Relief Line.
 
WislaHD said:
But why should we spend billions of dollars on a route that serves less people than the 11 Bayview bus?
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We don't even bother running a bus that runs from Exhibition grounds to Eglinton & Don Mills, though we have $14B targeting that route. For DRL proposals before that, the Pape bus doesn't go downtown. Clearly existing services on the exact corridor isn't the only variable to be considered.

We should consider it because it's a readily available underutilized above ground corridor heading nearly straight downtown from the north end of the city. Surface construction is significantly cheaper for both initial construction and ongoing maintenance, where it can be made to work. That's often good for debt, low fares, low taxes, and highest ROI.

Scrap the current Richmond Hill train entirely. What might an affordable re-imagined best use of the corridor look like and what are the network impacts?
 
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Leo_Chan said:
Even though it wouldn't make much of a difference, I think Langstaff GO should be moved north a bit to right next to the Richmond Hill Centre Bus Terminal, especially since the TTC Richmond Hill Centre Station will be a bit north of the terminal. They can do what is similar to what is planned for Oriole GO and Leslie Station. However, it was mentioned here before that the City of Markham may be against the station move because it will move out of the Langstaff redevelopment area.


A frequent 2WAD Stouffville GO Line is much better than a Line 2 or Ontario Line extension to Markham.
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Haydenpoon said:
We are getting something similar to a subway, but with a higher speed. It's the Stouffville GO line. Metrolinx plans to run 11 trains per hour in the peak and 8 trains per hour offpeak.

The travel time from Union to Unionville GO may even be faster than to Richmond Hill Centre.
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Downtown Markham deserves TTC fares!
 
hw621 said:
Downtown Markham deserves TTC fares!
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It might get them in the next decade or so. The current massive TTC fare hole is a strong opportunity for Metrolinx to pay TTC for operations and take over fare collection themselves. Ontario Line automation issues, Yonge North extension discussions, etc. become much simpler that way.

Of course, I also don't expect Markham to have lower fares than they do today; just the same as the TTC fare.
 
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rbt said:
We don't even bother running a bus that runs from Exhibition grounds to Eglinton & Don Mills, though we have $14B targeting that route. For DRL proposals before that, the Pape bus doesn't go downtown. Clearly existing services on the exact corridor isn't the only variable to be considered.

We should consider it because it's a readily available underutilized above ground corridor heading nearly straight downtown from the north end of the city. Surface construction is significantly cheaper for both initial construction and ongoing maintenance, where it can be made to work. That's often good for debt, low fares, low taxes, and highest ROI.

Scrap the current Richmond Hill train entirely. What might a re-imagined best use of the corridor look like and what are the network impacts?
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You want to reroute the entire RHGO corridor, electrify it, and build expensive interchange stations with Eglinton and Sheppard (no all-important Bloor-Danforth interchange though because it's just simply impractical and nonviable for RHGO), and purchase the extra train-sets so we can increase the frequency of the route, just so that the route can grow from it's present daily ridership of 5,700 to maybe 15,000-18,000?

People turn a blind-eye to the obvious money-sink that is the RH-GO corridor just because it is a GO line.

Haydenpoon said:
What's the ridership on the 11 Bayview bus? It's not even on the 10 mins frequent bus network.
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I was wrong with the 11 Bayview Bus comparison. As it presently stands, the 11 Bayview route at 11,900 has double the daily ridership of the RHGO Line at 5,700.

The 11 Bayview Bus is a strange route that terminates at Davisville Station, lingers for 10 minutes at Sunnybrook Hospital, and is not even on the 10 min frequent bus network, FYI.

It wouldn't shock me if we would serve more people per day by converting the present GO-rail service to a cycling super-highway through the city.
 
WislaHD said:
You want to reroute the entire RHGO corridor, electrify it, and build expensive interchange stations with Eglinton and Sheppard (no all-important Bloor-Danforth interchange though because it's just simply impractical and nonviable for RHGO), and purchase the extra train-sets so we can increase the frequency of the route, just so that the route can grow from it's present daily ridership of 5,700 to maybe 15,000-18,000?
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That might be, but I still want to know why.

Why is Ontario Line and Yonge extension expected to have like 600k passengers per day but a straightened Richmond Hill line at the same frequencies with interchanges at Highway 7, Sheppard, Eglinton, Bloor, and Yonge (downtown) and connectivity only gets 1/30th of that?

What's the actual piece of magic that's missing; and why is it either impossible or prohibitively expensive to build that magic? The business case to answer these questions is about $400k.
 
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rbt said:
That might be, but I still want to know why.

Why is Ontario Line and Yonge extension expected to have like 600,000 passengers per day but a straightened Richmond Hill line at the same frequencies and connectivity only gets 1/30th of that?

What's the actual piece of magic that's missing; and why is it either impossible or prohibitively expensive to build that magic? The business case to answer these questions is about $400k.
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Where is the 600,000 daily riders figure coming from?

The Relief Line had these projections (thankfully I had it saved on my laptop):

Relief Line Boardings with ST.png


If I were to guess what the missing piece, it would be usefulness. RHGO is useless unless you live in Richmond Hill and are heading to Union Station. Most people do not work or shop at Union Station but somewhere between King Station and NYC Station.

You could invest a lot of money into making interchanges with Eglinton and Sheppard, but if you work at St. Clair or North York Centre that still doesn't help you much.

An interchange with Bloor-Danforth line is impractical due to topology, and that is a whole lot of missed out trip destinations (along with Wellesley-->Dundas corridor).

There are not many destinations along the Richmond Hill GO corridor itself.

On top of all that, the route is less frequent, not necessarily faster than alternatives thanks to its winding route, and has higher fare.
 
rbt said:
That might be, but I still want to know why.

Why is Ontario Line and Yonge extension expected to have like 700k passengers per day but a straightened Richmond Hill line at the same frequencies with interchanges at Highway 7, Sheppard, Eglinton, Bloor, and Yonge (downtown) and connectivity only gets 1/30th of that?

What's the actual piece of magic that's missing; and why is it either impossible or prohibitively expensive to build that magic? The business case to answer these questions is about $400k.
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That's because people are going to places along the Yonge Line.
 
WislaHD said:
But why should we spend billions of dollars on a route that serves less people than the 11 Bayview bus?

This is the trap that everyone who considers upgrading this line falls for. Richmond Hill corridor barely justifies it's own existence given its cost of operations, and the costly multi-billion upgrade to turn it into a viable line (with still poor ridership and connections) could only be considered a white elephant.

The only scheme that works for Richmond Hill corridor that I have seen are those that present Richmond Hill as a routing for a northern extension of the Relief Line.
Click to expand...

Why are you always hung up on RH GO ridership? And what's the metric to claim it barely justifies its own existence? In terms of ridership per km (a solid metric), compounded with number of trains/level of service, it would actually be one of the most successful GO lines. And Metrolinx modeled the line with beefed up service and it presented extremely well.
 
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