Allandale25
Senior Member
Tonight at 630pm
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KhalilHeron
Active Member
the best news from this (not a lot of news) is that they confirmed there will be no passenger parking at any of the station whatsoever (though there will be passenger pick of and drop off at Sheppard)
ARG1
Senior Member
Where did they say there will be a kiss and ride at Sheppard? If that's true that's absolutely great.
KhalilHeron
Active Member
1:25:10
kamira51
Active Member
It would be interesting if this becomes the new standard for station planning(except for terminal stations like 407 and Vaughan)
KhalilHeron
Active Member
I sure hope so. I wouldn't expect parking from the Ontario line but this is making me hope that there's also no parking on the Yonge north or Eglinton west subways (except maybe at Langstaff or something)
generalcanada
Senior Member
thats not entirely accurate. the huge parking lot at exhibition exists
east harbour might have some and eglinton station has the huge bus bay as well
Rainforest
Senior Member
Not having passenger parking at the SSE's Sheppard terminus is a shortsighted move. Such parking can shorten lots of trips by car, originating north of Sheppard or east of McCowan. People could take a 5-10 km long car trip and then a 15-20 km long transit trip. With no such parking, many of them will drive all the way to their final destination, clogging the 401 and the DVP.
Some might hope that in the absence of parking, drivers will fully turn into transit riders and will not use their cars at all. But in case of a terminal station close to the edge of 416, most of those people either live in the area of infrequent TTC service, or outside 416 in the YRT or DT area where the service is even less frequent. Very few of them will rely on the local buses.
I hope that the plan will be revisited as the construction progresses, and the passenger parking added at Sheppard.
IMO, same applies to Eglinton West. The Renforth Gateway is a good place to have passenger parking, for the same reason: removing the 401 / Black Creek / Allen car trips originating north of 401 and west of 427.
Ontario Line will operate in a different context. The currently planned Phase 1 will start and end in areas with pretty decent local transit. Therefore, parking at any of the OL stations isn't critical, and if ML and the city don't want to have any, that's fine.
Some might hope that in the absence of parking, drivers will fully turn into transit riders and will not use their cars at all. But in case of a terminal station close to the edge of 416, most of those people either live in the area of infrequent TTC service, or outside 416 in the YRT or DT area where the service is even less frequent. Very few of them will rely on the local buses.
I hope that the plan will be revisited as the construction progresses, and the passenger parking added at Sheppard.
IMO, same applies to Eglinton West. The Renforth Gateway is a good place to have passenger parking, for the same reason: removing the 401 / Black Creek / Allen car trips originating north of 401 and west of 427.
Ontario Line will operate in a different context. The currently planned Phase 1 will start and end in areas with pretty decent local transit. Therefore, parking at any of the OL stations isn't critical, and if ML and the city don't want to have any, that's fine.
Aplus23
Active Member
So the bloor danforth line will go from kipling to Mccowan and Sheppard as one continuous line, or will ppl still have to transfer from kennedy like they do now with the RT but just now a subway??
And last time, but there really wasn't anyway we could use the existing RT infrastructure for a subway? or was the station at Lawrence and Mccowan the big ticket item for this decision?? Seems like a waste of money to me
And last time, but there really wasn't anyway we could use the existing RT infrastructure for a subway? or was the station at Lawrence and Mccowan the big ticket item for this decision?? Seems like a waste of money to me
Rainforest
Senior Member
It will be a one continuous line, but some trains might short-turn at Kennedy. So, the southbound / westbound riders will not need to transfer. But the eastbound / northbound riders may have to transfer sometimes (same platform), or wait for the next train that goes past Kennedy.
Probably could, but the city dropped the ball, and John Tory didn't exactly shine in this case.
The original estimates, around 2013-2014, suggested that the difference in cost between the surface route using SRT corridor and the fully tunneled McCowan route is about 0.5 billion. With that in mind, it was reasonably decided that the McCowan route is preferable because it serves the hospital and reaches Sheppard.
But later as the design progressed, the cost escalated dramatically, and much of the escalation was specifically tied to the tunnels and underground stations. That would be a very good time to revisit the alignment, but nobody bothered to do so. And doing so was entirely within the city's / John Tory's powers until middle 2018, when Doug Ford won the elections and inserted himself into the process.
KhalilHeron
Active Member
Having some parking at Sheppard may shorten a few trips, but I don't think it's worth it in the end. The area is bound to see a lot of redevelopment in the near future, and taking up that precious land with parking (even below ground) seems like a complete waster to me. Most of the commuters driving to the station would probably be going downtown (or closer to downtown), and given the proximity of agincourt GO, they are probably better off using that station. For the people going a little bit less far, well they are already driving, I doubt they would hop on the subway just for a couple of stops. The see is really meant to serve feeder bus routes, which are really busy and well used in Scarborough so I think the very few riders the extension might lose are not worth building a parking-filled urban environment. I definitely agree there could be some use in proving parking on projects around the city, but we can't fix our car culture if we keep feeding it.
ShonTron
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Most commuters that would park at McCowan and Sheppard are already parking at Pickering, Markham, Centennial, Unionville, or Miliken Stations, where GO has "free" parking and a quick ride to Union Station. So I really don't see the need.
Rainforest
Senior Member
Well, I don't have the origin - destination data, which would be nice to have. But my somewhat simplified reasoning is this: the highways leading into the city are full of cars. If those drivers don't park at the existing GO stations, then there must be reasons for that. The GO stations may be located too far for them, or the GO trains don't go where they want to go, or they don't run during the time of their trip. If so, then the new subway parking might divert/shorten some of the trips not diverted by GO.
Rainforest
Senior Member
1. If you agree that providing parking is appropriate in some places, then it is hard to see how the Sheppard / McCowan terminus isn't one of the primary candidates. It will be located very close to the spot where the major highway enters the city, and thus is in a very good position to intercept many trips otherwise made entirely by car.
2. "Parking-filled urban environment" is a hyperbole, it doesn't apply to any of the old subway stations built with parking. If you look at the numbers: the walk-in catchment area of a subway station is, let's say, a circle of 800 m radius. The area of tha cirlce will be 800 x 800 x 3.14 = approx 2 million sq. metres. A parking lot needs ~ 15 sq. metres per car, so if you decide to host 2,000 cars, that will take about 30 thousand sq. metres, or 1.5% of the catchment area. If you go with just 1,000 cars, or build a multi-storey structure, then it will take even less land.
So, a very small land loss, or maybe no loss at all, because there may be no demand to fill 100% of the catchment area with highrises. Even with a very good transit, the spot is still very far from much of the city. And we still have multiple parcels of unused / lightly used land next to the subway stations much closer to the core.
Meanwhile, removing 2,000 cars from the core-bound highways is an equivalent of emptying one highway lane for the whole hour. The legal driving interval is 2 seconds, thus one lane can legally handle 3,600 / 2 = 1,800 cars per hour.
3. Feeder bus routes are indeed used well in Scarborough, and we can reasonably expect that a few major corridors will have bus or LRT service frequient enough to avoid the need to drive to the subway. Those corridors are Sheppard, Finch, McCowan, and maybe a couple of arterials in Malvern. But for much of Markham, much of Pickering, or even parts of Malvern, not a chance. They will have buses running once in 30 min or worse, and nearly everyone will drive.
4. For commuters going to midtown, say destinations near Bloor / Danforth, or Yonge & Eglinton, GO trains are of little use. But the subway can be quite useful.
5. A policy that omits an easily achievable option to reduce the total number of car-kilometers driven, hardly can be seen as fixing the car culture.
ARG1
Senior Member
I mostly agree with you here, although I would like to point out that the comparison to a lane of traffic is a bit misleading. Sure it does store the amount of cars using a lane within an hour, but that's all it does. Those cars are likely to be parked there all day so within a period of 8 hours, you have successfully eliminated 1 lane worth of traffic, for 2 hours, maybe slightly more in some circumstance. Furthermore I feel like with the highway, we already have a ton of parking spaces at STC, we don't really need more at McCowan, in terms of highway traffic.
That being said however, I do think there might be some value to add some parking lots to Sheppard, there are definitely a lot of weekend trips those cars might serve (If Finch Station is anything to go by, there is absolutely a ton of demand to park and ride at the terminus of a subway station, especially when its so close to the York Region Border). However by the time this extension opens, Stouffville RER will be open, and most of these people would be better served by Unionville, Miliken, Agincourt, and Finch-Kennedy GO (assuming that gets built). I'm fine if they do build a parking lot, I just don't think it needs to be that big. Something smaller scale should be fine.