sixrings
Senior Member
Does rexdale not need effective transit with reasonable transit times? What about people who live at say Kipling and lakeshore? Why does Scarborough get special treatment?
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Rainforest
Senior Member
Scarborough has the worst transit situation at present; the subway extension will largely fix that.
Rexdale is getting Finch LRT, with direct connection to Line 1, and trips to downtown doable within 1 h or less. Try to reach downtown from Scarborough in under 1 hour, if you have to take a bus to SLRT to Line2 to Line1, with 3 transfers.
Kipling & Lakeshore is within a 15 min bus ride to Kipling Stn.
Rexdale is getting Finch LRT, with direct connection to Line 1, and trips to downtown doable within 1 h or less. Try to reach downtown from Scarborough in under 1 hour, if you have to take a bus to SLRT to Line2 to Line1, with 3 transfers.
Kipling & Lakeshore is within a 15 min bus ride to Kipling Stn.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
No it won’t. The vast majority of trips in Scarborough are totally within Scarborough, and the vast majority of trips will have nothing to do with the extension. At the end of the day it’s still going to take people an hour to get across the former borough. The single biggest thing we can do to “fix” Scarborough’s transit is invest in the bus network. Faster, more frequent, with BRT in select areas.
RER would also do a lot more to fix the transit situation, assuming seamless integration with the rest of the network, as downtown-bound travel is significantly faster than Line 2
So would the DRL North, as it provides much faster travel times than the SSE for essentially anyone living west of McCowan. And then combine that with BRT along Lawrence or Ellesmere, and we’d have a damn near revolutionary improvement in transit service, bringing a large part of Scarborough within 30 mins, and sometimes within 25 mins, of downtown for the first time
Unfortunately politicians have a penchant for fancy megaprojects, while neglecting the surface network.
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syn
Senior Member
Nope - there's a strange belief that the rest of the city is much better off than Scarborough.
The funny thing is the SSE will do relatively little to improve travel times for people who have to take the bus. We'll have more people taking the bus.
Right now a trip to Yonge & Bloor from Rexdale isn't really any better than it is from Scarborough.
This, of course, depends on where you are in Rexdale and Scarborough - but ultimately the reality is that transit is a problem in the western suburbs too.
sixrings
Senior Member
There are plenty of places in Toronto that you can't go downtown inan hour by transit. At least you didn't say it was because Scarborough has a mall. Anyways if Sheppard lrt was built Scarborough people could have taken it to transfer at agincourt go, or to ideally drl long at Don Mills. If eglinton east LRT was built people could have transfered at Kennedy go and guild wood go stations. As a former resident of Scarborough if I still lived there I would much prefer three lrt lines than one subway stop!
dowlingm
Senior Member
Let's start by saying that Scarborough is a massive sub-unit of the city and to say they have the "worst" transit situation is a ridiculous overgeneralization. I would argue that people in the southwestern part of Scarborough from the lake up to Kennedy GO have a variety of reasonable options, especially since LSE service increased.
Now let's take your further assertion that the SSE will "fix" the transit situation. The Sheppard East LRT would have delivered people to Agincourt GO and brought them downtown. With the money spent on SSE, huge sums could have been spent on accelerating the upgrade of the Stouffville line and on fare convergence. The subway to STC keeps people in Malvern as long on a bus as now, and shaves a handful of minutes off their commute by eliminating a transfer. Because there is no stop on Eglinton East to save $, the commute to UTSC gets no shorter. Meanwhile the commutes of people currently served by non-STC RT stations gets potentially less convenient.
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salsa
Senior Member
No it's not. First of all, not matter what ends up happening to SmartTrack, the design choices of the Scarborough subway and relief line have been permanently affected by it. And as long as SmartTrack continues to show up in city reports, waste staff time and suck up available funding from more worthy projects, this is anything but a "non-issue".
dowlingm
Senior Member
There has to be some balance in determining a reasonable commute time. A person at Victoria Park and Danforth as just as much in Scarborough as someone at Morningside and Sheppard. Is there nowhere in Scarborough so remote that it can be admitted that promising residents of that area a trip downtown in an hour is either technically infeasible short of using helicopters or technically feasible but economically ridiculous?
sixrings
Senior Member
heres some solutions... find a job closer where you live... find a job where you can work remotely... move closer to a more transit oriented community... build a teleporter.
syn
Senior Member
Being an hour away from downtown is definitely not something unique to Scarborough. Getting from Woodbine Centre to Union (1 hour, 4 mins) is actually longer than the trip from Morningside & Sheppard to Union (57 minutes), with the same number of transfers in between (based on a quick lookup on Google Maps, leaving right now, at 11:39am). You make a good point - at certain distances one had to ask if getting downtown in less than an hour is reasonable. If it is, how can we make this a standard across Toronto?
This is why blowing $4 billion on one stop for Scarborough is incredibly foolish. There are major transit needs all over the city. It's even more foolish when the extension really won't help people get downtown much faster and will make inter-Scarborough transit much worse.
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OneCity
Senior Member
Actually Sheppard might very well be in this update.
"..unique transit artery spanning the City...."
I wouldn't rule out a run along Sheppard with a final destination of the future Pickering airport as being part of the new relief proposal.
Well find out soon but there are many reasons as to why this may not be just a north-south feeder. Ford has dropped numerous hints regarding a subway to Pickering as well as a Sheppard subway. He explains that his team sold him on this line, so its likely it meets his Sheppard subway goal and also describes it as "outside the box" so its clearly far different then just the just north south long and short RL concept. As well the late Jim Flaherty was heavily pursuing the Pickering airport as Federal finiance minister and his wife is an integral part of Fords cabinet. I had originally thought the Pickering subway was merely a verbally symbolic political gesture to the voters, but I think there may be more related as to where it came from.
Hopefully this post is not removed for "trolling" and an open discussion based on whats been stated can be had from all viewpoints. Thank you
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Aplus23
Active Member
Someone at Vic park and Danforth could easily get to downtown within an hour. The real issue for scarborough residents is anyone east 10-15 minuets of kennedy station. If kennedy is the 1st option for a subway/lrt service in scarborough then thats the problem. I live east of morningside in scarborough and the bus ride to get to kennedy station is longer or just as long as it is to get to from kennedy to yonge, that is unacceptable. The problem isn't getting from scarborough to downtown in under an hr, the problem is the multiple transfers and travel points that need to be taken to get into the downtown core. My GF works at yonge and shepherd/finch area, to get there from east of morning side n lawrence is hectic. Either a 25-45minute bus ride to kennedy station, then another 25-30mins from kennedy to yonge/bloor then another 10minute train ride from yonge/bloor to sheppard. In a city like Toronto, that is definitely unacceptable. Now the Eglinton Crosstown would go from kennedy to young n eglinton and then she could transfer from yonge/eglinton to yonge/sheppard. That would help a lot. What would help even more on this commute, Is the eglanton east lrt from kennedy to UTSC which has already had environmental assessments and was proposed already. My closest stop to an lrt/subway would be at morningside & kingston - a 5 minute bus ride or a 15minute walk from where I live. A shepperd lrt from don mills east to morningside would help too. It's not real difficult for what Scarborough residents want in terms of transit in scarborough. Extend the crosstown east to UTSC and build a Sheppard east lrt. A connection from Scarborough town centre to kennedy station is welcomed, but it doesn't have to be a subway, a lrt would do just fine as well. That let could go north beyond STC and connect to a shepherd east lrt. Transit problems solved in Scarborough
sixrings
Senior Member
I wish more Scarborough riders were as vocal for their support of lrt. Instead because they waver it becomes a political football.
denfromoakvillemilton
Senior Member
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Thank you. I think pickering is too far down the road, but it's nice to hear about the Scarborough Loop.
sixrings
Senior Member
I wish more Scarborough riders were as vocal for their support of lrt. Instead because they waver it becomes a political football.