reaperexpress
Senior Member
The project includes a new pedestrian & bicycle bridge across Rutherford on the east side of the tracks.
It will connect to the existing multi-use path you can see in the aerial view along the east side of the railway. The plans don't show a shortcut being built along the west side of the stormwater management pond, bringing the path straight down to the station along the east side of the tracks, but it's possible that the City of Vaughan will do that separately from the Metrolinx project.
There is a townhouse development being planned in the field northeast of the station, and the conceptual site plan does include two easments connecting the neighbourhood to the existing multi-use path.
Existing path in green, new easements in blue:
However, being a conceptual site plan, there's still plenty of opportunity for these connections to be deleted. The City of Vaughan has approved plenty of developments recently which omit critical pedestrian links, and even some which eliminate existing well-used pedestrian routes.
The Metrolinx project also includes a multi-use path along the south side of Rutherford from the south terminus of the bridge (i.e. the station's bike parking) into the neighbourhood immediately east of the station. I'm not sure if there's any planned connection to the neighbourhood to the southeast.
The main problem I have is here that the paths being built at part of the project are multi-use paths rather than separate bike paths and sidewalks. Even today (well, pre-pandemic) whenever a train pulls in there is a considerable flow of pedestrians into the neighbourhood to the east - enough to fully occupy a multi-use trail and create serious conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists.
A bigger pedestrian/bicycle connectivity problem is that this same path is not being connected to Maple station via a similar bridge over Major Mackenzie Drive.
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