Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

[sixrings]

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.

I think they should have a free parking garage at bay and bloor so that drivers don’t clog up university, bay and Yonge heading to the maple leaf games.

 

[afransen]

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.

This subway won't be completed for a decade. How much longer do we envision people driving to park and rides vs using rideshare/robotaxi?

 

[ARG1]

That's not an answer anyone can give. The most likely answer would be, for longer than the next 10 years.

Yes we can transition people slowly to ridesharing, but this isn't something that's going to happen in suburbs for a long time.

Also robotaxis, give them a hundred years.

 

[Northern Light]

I think they should have a free parking garage at bay and bloor so that drivers don’t clog up university, bay and Yonge heading to the maple leaf games.

Your propensity for dry sarcasm knows no bounds!

 

[sixrings]

Your propensity for dry sarcasm knows no bounds!

I gave up on rational arguments. So random sarcasm is all I got.

I thought it didn’t matter that there was no density in these areas because Toronto subways are packed based on connecting bus routes.

Today I learned that the only way to get suburban riders onto a train is either a direct subway connection to their basement or a giant parking garage so they can make sure their car stays in good working order.

 

[Rainforest]

I gave up on rational arguments. So random sarcasm is all I got.

I thought it didn’t matter that there was no density in these areas because Toronto subways are packed based on connecting bus routes.

Today I learned that the only way to get suburban riders onto a train is either a direct subway connection to their basement or a giant parking garage so they can make sure their car stays in good working order.

As always, you are brilliant at ignoring all the shades. Otherwise you could have noticed that goals "fill the subway with riders" and "unclog the highways" are not mirror images of each other, simply because they deal with issues of different scale. The subway easily carries 30,000 riders per hour. A highway lane, 1,800 cars per hour, maybe that's 2,000 people if some cars have > 1 occupant.

Without the parking at the terminus, the loss of subway ridership would be failry minimal. Say, a parking lot of 2,000, even if it fills by the end of morning, would add about 2,000 / 3 = 670 riders per hour to the subway. No lot, minus those 670 pph. For the subway that will clock 10-12K riders per hour per direction at peak, that difference is minor. The majority of subway riders will arrive on buses / LRT, anyway.

But if you look at the reduction of highway load, those same 670 cars per hour removed will be more significant, because they are subtracted from a much smaller base amount.

It really puzzles me that despite all the media attention to carbon exhaust reduction, so many people are happy to forfeight an easy opportunity to reduce that exhaust at such a small extra cost.

 

[Rainforest]

This subway won't be completed for a decade. How much longer do we envision people driving to park and rides vs using rideshare/robotaxi?

1. We don't know how fast that change will occur, nor how far it will go.
2. Ridershare or robotaxi are not without their own drawbacks. Less hardware, but likely more km driven overall: say in the morning peak, most of people are going to the subway, but the robotaxis need to go back empty to bring more people.

And if at some point there isn't enough users to keep the parking lot / parking garage open, it will be relatively easy to re-purpose. Both building a parking lot and repurposing the parking lot is very cheap compared to the subway construction cost.

 

[Rainforest]

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's a fair point; I never thought of parking at STC. However, it might be a good idea to close all parking at STC and build new parking at Sheppard instead. The Sheppard / McCowan area is relatively open and can be configured to accommodate both buses accessing the terminal and cars accessing the parking garage. While the roads around STC are more constrained, and removing the cars from there should help the bus movement.

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.

There is no parking planned for the Finch-Kennedy GO Stn. And in that case, it makes a good sense not to include parking. The area for new development is limited, and the location isn't a city gateway for any highway or a major road. The locals have reasonably usable local transit, and many will take a bus to reach the subway, while the residents of Markham don't need to drive so far south to find a parking spot, they can park at Unionville / Centennial / Markham / Mount Joy Stn.

Ditto for Agincourt, if that parking lot can be used for something else, then it can be closed. The policy should be to push the parking lots closer to the subway / GO termini, and away from the inner stations. That would have double benefit. First, the most remote stations are in the areas with worst local transit, and thus not having parking there will result in the greatest loss of transit trips. Conversely, not having parking at the inner station will results in a greater % shift to local transit and lesser loss or transit trips. And secondly, car trips intersepted at the outermost stations will result in the greatest reduction in car-kilometers.

 

[KhalilHeron]

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.

again I completely see how some parking could take some cars off the road and could benefit some riders, I just feel like it putting a bandaid on a far larger issue, that I would rather see addressed. Even if it does reduce km driven by cars, parking is still encouraging people to drive. I'd far rather Metrolinx invests the little money they could save from not building a parking structure on feeder bus routes to get those same riders that might otherwise drive to the station. Use that money to improve service on the 129 north of Steeles to get those york region riders. If we build parking here it could very likely get torn up and built over in 20 years when driving takes up less of a share of arrivals at the station like is happening at a few stations now, so why not just skip that step and put that land to better use now?

 

[KhalilHeron]

That's a fair point; I never thought of parking at STC. However, it might be a good idea to close all parking at STC and build new parking at Sheppard instead. The Sheppard / McCowan area is relatively open and can be configured to accommodate both buses accessing the terminal and cars accessing the parking garage. While the roads around STC are more constrained, and removing the cars from there should help the bus movement.

Parking at stc isn't really for the station so moving it all doesn't really make sense. Most of it is getting redeveloped eventually according to the Scarborough city centre master plan or whatever its called, as well as the roads are being realigned to be less messy and hopefully less congested (or empty as is the case for some huge 5 lane roads) but if it's already there they may as well save some for subway riders at least until its no longer useful

 

[ARG1]

That's a fair point; I never thought of parking at STC. However, it might be a good idea to close all parking at STC and build new parking at Sheppard instead. The Sheppard / McCowan area is relatively open and can be configured to accommodate both buses accessing the terminal and cars accessing the parking garage. While the roads around STC are more constrained, and removing the cars from there should help the bus movement.



There is no parking planned for the Finch-Kennedy GO Stn. And in that case, it makes a good sense not to include parking. The area for new development is limited, and the location isn't a city gateway for any highway or a major road. The locals have reasonably usable local transit, and many will take a bus to reach the subway, while the residents of Markham don't need to drive so far south to find a parking spot, they can park at Unionville / Centennial / Markham / Mount Joy Stn.

Ditto for Agincourt, if that parking lot can be used for something else, then it can be closed. The policy should be to push the parking lots closer to the subway / GO termini, and away from the inner stations. That would have double benefit. First, the most remote stations are in the areas with worst local transit, and thus not having parking there will result in the greatest loss of transit trips. Conversely, not having parking at the inner station will results in a greater % shift to local transit and lesser loss or transit trips. And secondly, car trips intersepted at the outermost stations will result in the greatest reduction in car-kilometers.

I fail to see your reasoning as to why more room for bus traffic is needed around STC. Looking at a map of the area, Sheppard isn't any more convenient of a parking spot than STC - as a matter of fact I'd argue the opposite. STC for better or for worse was designed to be accessed from the 401 as easily as possible. This is helped by having an off ramp off of McCowan directly into the parking lot of the mall and designing the onramps onto McCowan to easily funnel people south to the Mall. Now it is true that a lot of bus routes will be stopping by STC, however almost none of them get in the way of car traffic.

https://imgur.com/ten0eza

This green area is where the bus terminal is proposed to be, and while it is admittedly surounded by the exit path cars take to return back to the 401, building separation between that route and the busses should not be too difficult especially since for the most part, bus traffic will be pulled towards Ellesmere meanwhile cars are typically going to head north towards the 401. The two modes are going their own separate ways and can easily be separated.

As for Agincourt vs Sheppard-McCowan, I fail to see the difference, while Agincourt isn't a terminus, its nonetheless close enough that there really isn't a difference between the two sites either way. The next station after Agincourt is Kennedy, so people travelling to Midtown or Danforth have an easy transfer where their trips on the Stouffville Line won't be any slower than on Line 2, and SSE has so few stations that they won't be missing out on much. STC as previously mentioned is a giant parking lot, most of which won't be redevelopped for a long time, so if you need to head to STC you might as well drive, which leaves the only benefit of a parking lot at Sheppard-McCowan being... better access to Lawrence East?

again I completely see how some parking could take some cars off the road and could benefit some riders, I just feel like it putting a bandaid on a far larger issue, that I would rather see addressed. Even if it does reduce km driven by cars, parking is still encouraging people to drive. I'd far rather Metrolinx invests the little money they could save from not building a parking structure on feeder bus routes to get those same riders that might otherwise drive to the station. Use that money to improve service on the 129 north of Steeles to get those york region riders. If we build parking here it could very likely get torn up and built over in 20 years when driving takes up less of a share of arrivals at the station like is happening at a few stations now, so why not just skip that step and put that land to better use now?

I feel like you're shooting a bit too far. While removing car dependency is a noble goal, unfortunately getting everyone onto busses and out of cars in the suburbs is optimistic at best. Public transport is unfortunately often seen (for good reason) as a balancing game of how much slow down people are willing to accept compared to just driving when it comes to staying out of traffic and having more freetime, and for many having to use a feeder bus, and "getting people onto busses" will only get you so far. Toronto has admittedly done a great job with its bus services with many vital corridors like Finch and Sheppard having busses as frequently as every 5 minutes, but simultaneously it could be argued that this is as good as can get with the bus service, and for those who don't take the bus are probably the types of people who are willing to accept driving to a station to use public transport, but not getting to the station via public transport, be it busses or LRT, and this is the dilemma we're faced with. We can either have increased bus service with the chance of getting them off the road, or we can build parking which is guaranteed to significantly reduce the amount of journeys spent on the road.

Parking at stc isn't really for the station so moving it all doesn't really make sense. Most of it is getting redeveloped eventually according to the Scarborough city centre master plan or whatever its called, as well as the roads are being realigned to be less messy and hopefully less congested (or empty as is the case for some huge 5 lane roads) but if it's already there they may as well save some for subway riders at least until its no longer useful

Its not meant for the station but its still good for the station. The distance from the eastern lots to present day McCowan is give or take identical to the parking lots at Finch to Finch Station, so if we are to turn them into officially paid parking lots fo the TTC Station like we did with the parking lots at VMC, they could do a good job handling the parking demand for the new extension no problem.

 

[Rainforest]

again I completely see how some parking could take some cars off the road and could benefit some riders, I just feel like it putting a bandaid on a far larger issue, that I would rather see addressed. Even if it does reduce km driven by cars, parking is still encouraging people to drive. I'd far rather Metrolinx invests the little money they could save from not building a parking structure on feeder bus routes to get those same riders that might otherwise drive to the station. Use that money to improve service on the 129 north of Steeles to get those york region riders. If we build parking here it could very likely get torn up and built over in 20 years when driving takes up less of a share of arrivals at the station like is happening at a few stations now, so why not just skip that step and put that land to better use now?

I understand your points, but I think that with so much parking available everywhere: at the offices, plazas, department stores, and even on the streets, not providing parking just at the subway stations won't discourage anyone from driving. It will mostly encourage people to drive longer legs.

The reason to build the parking now and possibly replace it with something else in 20 years, is the desire to get the near-term benefit (slightly less clogged highways, and fewer car-kilometers driven).

Providing a better local service in the areas in question, mostly in Markham and Pickering, is very difficult and costly; otherwise it would be done already. Improving just one bus route will make little difference, if you take into account how big Markham is. A parking lot is very cheap, and a multi-storey parking garage is a rather ordinary building; I don't believe savings achived by not building those will make any difference in funding the local buses.

 

[Rainforest]

I fail to see your reasoning as to why more room for bus traffic is needed around STC. Looking at a map of the area, Sheppard isn't any more convenient of a parking spot than STC - as a matter of fact I'd argue the opposite. STC for better or for worse was designed to be accessed from the 401 as easily as possible. This is helped by having an off ramp off of McCowan directly into the parking lot of the mall and designing the onramps onto McCowan to easily funnel people south to the Mall. Now it is true that a lot of bus routes will be stopping by STC, however almost none of them get in the way of car traffic.

https://imgur.com/ten0eza

This green area is where the bus terminal is proposed to be, and while it is admittedly surounded by the exit path cars take to return back to the 401, building separation between that route and the busses should not be too difficult especially since for the most part, bus traffic will be pulled towards Ellesmere meanwhile cars are typically going to head north towards the 401. The two modes are going their own separate ways and can easily be separated.

As for Agincourt vs Sheppard-McCowan, I fail to see the difference, while Agincourt isn't a terminus, its nonetheless close enough that there really isn't a difference between the two sites either way. The next station after Agincourt is Kennedy, so people travelling to Midtown or Danforth have an easy transfer where their trips on the Stouffville Line won't be any slower than on Line 2, and SSE has so few stations that they won't be missing out on much. STC as previously mentioned is a giant parking lot, most of which won't be redevelopped for a long time, so if you need to head to STC you might as well drive, which leaves the only benefit of a parking lot at Sheppard-McCowan being... better access to Lawrence East?


I feel like you're shooting a bit too far. While removing car dependency is a noble goal, unfortunately getting everyone onto busses and out of cars in the suburbs is optimistic at best. Public transport is unfortunately often seen (for good reason) as a balancing game of how much slow down people are willing to accept compared to just driving when it comes to staying out of traffic and having more freetime, and for many having to use a feeder bus, and "getting people onto busses" will only get you so far. Toronto has admittedly done a great job with its bus services with many vital corridors like Finch and Sheppard having busses as frequently as every 5 minutes, but simultaneously it could be argued that this is as good as can get with the bus service, and for those who don't take the bus are probably the types of people who are willing to accept driving to a station to use public transport, but not getting to the station via public transport, be it busses or LRT, and this is the dilemma we're faced with. We can either have increased bus service with the chance of getting them off the road, or we can build parking which is guaranteed to significantly reduce the amount of journeys spent on the road.


Its not meant for the station but its still good for the station. The distance from the eastern lots to present day McCowan is give or take identical to the parking lots at Finch to Finch Station, so if we are to turn them into officially paid parking lots fo the TTC Station like we did with the parking lots at VMC, they could do a good job handling the parking demand for the new extension no problem.

Maybe I was wrong regarding Sheppard & McCowan vs STC. I am not a frequent visitor to either place. My suggestion was based on the fact that a high-density walkable "presinct" is planned around STC, while Sheppard is going to be more of a transit hub. If so, then it is kind of tempting to push as many cars as possible away from STC, and intersept them earlier. But, maybe the local context doesn't favor that.

As of Sheppard & McCowan vs Agincourt, I think the former is a better place for parking, being a) further east, means shorter car trips from the east and a greater car-km reduction, and b) being on the subway which is more versatile in terms of destinations. On the subway, one can get to any part of downtown, any part of midtown near Bloor - Danforth, west end around Islington / Kipling, Yonge / Eglinton, Yorkdale via St George, etc. Yes, requires an extra transfer, but still viable. From the GO platform at Union, some of those places can be accessed too, but taking a longer detour, a longer walk from GO to subway, in some cases an extra transfer.

 

[sixrings]

I thought people of Scarborough deserved a subway because they were poor and neglected in comparison to the downtown elite. Now the suggestion is if the Scarborough residents don’t get a parking spot next to the subway station they will clog up the DVP and drive straight downtown. So the poor Scarborough resident who felt too good for the SRT also feels too good for the bus? They also own a car which they can afford to put gas in at 1.30 litre to drive downtown and pay downtown parking fees? How poor and neglected is this Scarborough resident again that we are building multi billion dollar infrastructure to help build their self esteem?

 

[KhalilHeron]

I thought people of Scarborough deserved a subway because they were poor and neglected in comparison to the downtown elite. Now the suggestion is if the Scarborough residents don’t get a parking spot next to the subway station they will clog up the DVP and drive straight downtown. So the poor Scarborough resident who felt too good for the SRT also feels too good for the bus? They also own a car which they can afford to put gas in at 1.30 litre to drive downtown and pay downtown parking fees? How poor and neglected is this Scarborough resident again that we are building multi billion dollar infrastructure to help build their self esteem?

You take the SRT every day and then tell me it's just a vanity project to boost Scarborough resident's self-esteem. Most people who take the rt now probably don't have cars, most connections are made from other transit connections, be it the subway or buses. Also, the ability to drive downtown instead of taking transit does not mean they aren't poor or neglected by transit planning. I don't understand what you are trying to say here but the tone (that I'm getting at least) is not appreciated and is unnecessary.