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Finch West Station (TTC, 1s, Richard Stevens/Alsop)

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Torontoist just posted this:

20100930xxfinchwest.jpg


This will be Finch West Station on the Spadina subway extension.

At the Commission meeting of October 23, 2008, Contract A85-75B for the design of Finch
West Station was awarded to the design team lead by The Spadina Group Associates
(TSGA). The architectural firms for this team are Richard Stevens Architects and Alsop
Architects

Link to PDF.
 
It's good to see more subway station architecture that acknowledges the importance of the station as a public space that tens of thousands of people pass through daily. Subway stations are important hubs for neighbourhoods and the subway is vital to transportation and livability of the city, so it's good to see the design spirit of the original Spadina line living on in these attractive new stations.
 
Beautiful station. I'm worried the TTC will cheap out in the end though. Keeping the basic design, but using cheap materials, and dropping some stuff.
 
I guess the barcode design is a criticism of the consumerism of the suburbs and the fact that the subway expansion is located in outer 416 and 905 instead of the inner city. Ontario government forces suburban subway expansion upon Toronto, and so inner city Toronto retaliates by using the subway to bash outer Toronto and the suburbs. It is brilliant.
 
In the site map, the York University Busway remains, but it seems to terminate into the parking lot, which suggests that they plan to open it up to cars.

I wonder what the purpose of keeping the busway is now that the subway will be there. Perhaps they are just using it as dedicated bus lanes to funnel all the routes in the area into the station? If the infrastructure is already there, might as well use it to make for a more reliable trip, right?
 
I wonder what the purpose of keeping the busway is now that the subway will be there. Perhaps they are just using it as dedicated bus lanes to funnel all the routes in the area into the station? If the infrastructure is already there, might as well use it to make for a more reliable trip, right?

I can't see how the busway would be at all useful once the subway opens. The 196 York University Rocket will be discontinued, the 36 Finch West will eventually be replaced with an LRT running along Finch, and the 105 Dufferin North will presumably continue to use Downsview. It would surely make sense to either open it up to car traffic once the subway opens, or abandon it.
 
The best use I could see for it is if it became part of a longer Finch Hydro Corridor Busway or LRT. But that definitely won't happen anytime soon, so in the meantime, I'd like to see it opened up as a walking path + bikeway, because there are very few good east-west biking routes in the area. Plus it could connect (via a trail or lanes on Dufferin) to the G. Ross Lord park path.

But no one in the area would have much support for that, so it will definitely become a road.
 
The best use I could see for it is if it became part of a longer Finch Hydro Corridor Busway or LRT. But that definitely won't happen anytime soon, so in the meantime, I'd like to see it opened up as a walking path + bikeway, because there are very few good east-west biking routes in the area. Plus it could connect (via a trail or lanes on Dufferin) to the G. Ross Lord park path.

But no one in the area would have much support for that, so it will definitely become a road.

I agree. It's just a shame that a good piece of transit infrastructure like that will be converted into yet another roadway. It just seems counter-productive, when we're trying to get so much transit infrastructure built, that we would let an existing piece slip away.
 
The best use I could see for it is if it became part of a longer Finch Hydro Corridor Busway or LRT. But that definitely won't happen anytime soon, so in the meantime, I'd like to see it opened up as a walking path + bikeway, because there are very few good east-west biking routes in the area. Plus it could connect (via a trail or lanes on Dufferin) to the G. Ross Lord park path.

But no one in the area would have much support for that, so it will definitely become a road.

George Smitherman has talked about suburban cycling infrastructure through hydro corridors. If he wins the election, it could be sold to him as the lowest hanging fruit in terms of making that happen.
 

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