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How come sheppard was chosen instead of Finch east for the subway?

denfromoakvillemilton said:
If finch east was chosen, we could build a upper city crosstown. But Sheppard only goes east and it will take a lot of $$$$ if there was a proposal to connect it to the Finch West Area

What Gives?
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Drive or take the bus on Finch and on Sheppard from Weston Road to McCowan. Iit will give you an idea of the streetscape of those streets in different parts of the city. Finch West from the West Don west to Keele is as barren as Sheppard east of McCowan. Then you'll have to compare those two avenues between Yonge and Victoria Park. Therefore from Keele to Victoria Park, overall, Sheppard would be the better route of the two.

As for costing a lot of money to connect a Sheppard route to the Finch West area, you are probably talking about the Don River crossings, but Finch also crosses two branches of the river.
 
Mega city Mayor Mel Lastman wanted a subway in North York to create a Northern Downtown centred around North York Civic Centre. He petitioned for it and so he got it.
 
Woodbridge_Heights said:
Mega city Mayor Mel Lastman wanted a subway in North York to create a Northern Downtown centred around North York Civic Centre. He petitioned for it and so he got it.
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Finch would have served that purpose just as well.

The truth is that it was studied in detail during the Network 2011 process. Both alternatives were studied, including a Finch hydro corridor option, and Sheppard was found to have better potential for intensification, better ridership potential, better connections to north-south bus routes, easier constructibility, and a much better connection to Scarborough Centre--the major transit hub and trip generator in Scarborough.

The study also indicated that if the Sheppard subway were completed to STC, many people currently riding on the Finch bus would switch to the north-south bus routes to the Sheppard line. That would dramatically reduce the congestion issues on Finch East.
 
denfromoakvillemilton said:
So this was sheppard was closer to the mall then.
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Actually there are two malls :)

But, seriously, there really aren't any nodes on Finch at all, at least until you get to Seneca. Sheppard has Bayview Village and Fairview and the hospital (and the school there, across the street).

When they did that plan I don't know if they saw the redevelopment potential of the Canadian Tire lands but I don't think there's anything remotely that ripe for redevelopment along Finch. AND, though it's a bit north, the Maclean-Hunter lands by the 401 also got a nice kick in the pants from the subway.

Seems to me it was the right call. Now, if only they'd finished it....
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Actually there are two malls :)

But, seriously, there really aren't any nodes on Finch at all, at least until you get to Seneca. Sheppard has Bayview Village and Fairview and the hospital (and the school there, across the street).

When they did that plan I don't know if they saw the redevelopment potential of the Canadian Tire lands but I don't think there's anything remotely that ripe for redevelopment along Finch. AND, though it's a bit north, the Maclean-Hunter lands by the 401 also got a nice kick in the pants from the subway.

Seems to me it was the right call. Now, if only they'd finished it....
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There's 5 malls, actually! Yonge-Sheppard Centre, Bayview Village, Fairview, Agincourt Mall, and STC.

Plus there's the employment in the Consumers Rd business park.
 
I would think a subway on Eglinton or St Clair/O'Connor makes more sense. We should encourage people to live closer to the core by providing convenience transit. North York might someoday becomes its own city again, who knows.
 
Another angle could have been to use it as a transit alternative to the 401. However, such an idea is somewhat naive, since subways (at least the way they tend to be designed here) can only compete with highways during peak periods. But many voters don't realize this, they just see the subway walls flying by an inch away from the train and the roar of the train as it speeds through the tunnels. The result is that people think subways are faster than they actually are.

Really, the fact of the matter is that the whole thing has become an example of poor urban planning. A good planning model could be to run highways around the city, and provide park and rides to connect people into downtown. Along nearby parallel arterial roads the density would be limited, as to help disperse traffic from the highway so that it isn't overly congested where you get on or off.

So for example, the 401, 404, 407, and 400 create a box around downtown North York. Subways or other modes of rapid transit with park and rides could be setup at the Yonge and Finch interchanges respectively, thus allowing commuters and out of towners heading into downtown North York an alternative to driving into the core. Roads which run parallel to these highways (Sheppard, Don Mills, Victoria Park, Highway 7, etc.) would remain at a low density as to ensure to limit congestion. If any of you have ever driven in the US, the low density commercial services and widened roads at Interstate exits illustrate what I am talking about.

However, this is not the case. Instead we have built a fair amount of high density along the highways so that access points are severely overcrowded, and are building a subway line along a roadway it cannot compete with.
 
Sheppard is part of the "Avenues", a lot of potential for redevelopment, more denser and mixed-use, not mention connecting two Centres: Scarborough Centre, and North York Centre. Plus there's Faurview Mall.

Finch East is more static and wouldn't serve any major nodes or any major mixed-use corridor. I guess in the short-term both corridors are about equal, but in the long-term Sheppard was the better choice by far.
 
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