Sheppard Line 4 Subway Extension (Proposed)

[sixrings]

Its the only way. We are seeing far too many "Us vs. Them" political opportunities fueled from the neglect and lack of a sustainable funding plan. This is why I give Tory alot of credit for acknowledging all modes, technologies and atleast attempting to work with residents concerns from all walks of life in the City. Its atleast a step in the right direction, but theres a long way to go at all levels to prevent further paralysis.

Spoken from the person who stirs the Us Vs them rhetoric the most.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Spoken from the person who stirs the Us Vs them rhetoric the most.

Why can't "Us" be defined as all of the GTA/GGHA? That's the complete realistic network that is trying to be achieved, so the definition of "us" needs to include everyone, not just in a small specific area.

 

[sixrings]

Why can't "Us" be defined as all of the GTA/GGHA? That's the complete realistic network that is trying to be achieved, so the definition of "us" needs to include everyone, not just in a small specific area.

There is no us vs them. What exists generally speaking is appropriate transit for each area based on density. Subways and street cars for the busiest areas and busses and LRTs for less busy areas. The Us vs Them arguments come out from the people who want the Subways yet live in areas predominately occupied by low density housing. Then they start to pretend that they are shortchanged in comparison to the rest of the city.

 

[Streety McCarface]

There is no us vs them. What exists generally speaking is appropriate transit for each area based on density. Subways and street cars for the busiest areas and busses and LRTs for less busy areas. The Us vs Them arguments come out from the people who want the Subways yet live in areas predominately occupied by low density housing. Then they start to pretend that they are shortchanged in comparison to the rest of the city.

But what qualifies as "busy"? Sure, the combined Spadina and harbourfront lines are "Busy", but has stop spacing of about every 250 meters. Compare this to the Sheppard Subway and you get relatively equal ridership over equal distances, with the subway having far fewer stations.

What about buses? We can argue that the Spadina line to York University isn't "Busy", but as I recall, 35 buses an hour were traveling to York University prior to the subway service.

My point is that you need all of them. You need a strong subway network that both funnels people downtown and allows for efficient crosstown travel due to the nature of our city (Yonge, University/Spadina, Dufferin, and Don Mills/Victoria Park to bring people downtown, and Eglinton and Sheppard for crosstown travel). You need buses to feed into those subway lines from neighbourhoods and side streets. You need streetcar lines to do the job of buses in dense areas like Old Toronto, and you need LRT on busy, long-distance surface lines like Finch, Lawrence, Jane, Ossington, Bathurst, York Mills/Wilson, Steeles. You can have them all, but the city needs to build for the future (beyond 30 years). 20 buses an hour for ANY route is simply unacceptable. Imagine Sheppard Avenue with 60K eastbound passengers using the buses, you'd need frequencies greater than on Finch to compensate.

 

[Streety McCarface]

You could also say its the myopic view that Subways need to be built into the suburbs that is bringing things to a head. The fact is we have been having problems with moving people downtown since the 1980's yet what has been done about it? The last Subway station to open downtown was in 1966. What part of Toronto has seen the greatest growth since then? What part of Toronto will continue to see massive growth in the future? Growth may come to other areas of Toronto but it is still decades away yet the growth downtown already exists and has for a decade now, yet we are nowhere near fixing it, while still talking about expanding out to other areas. I would like to believe nowhere else in the world takes such an ass backwards approach to transit planning.

No one here is denying the need for a DRL, but if you don't have any subway service in the suburbs, there's no easy way for people to get downtown, and, therefore, no adequate subway service. Some of the busiest stations in the system (Kipling, Kennedy, Sheppard West, Finch, Sheppard-Yonge, Don Mills, Wilson, Wardon, Victoria Park, Islington) are all in the suburbs. If all those people choose to drive or take GO instead, you lose almost half the system's ridership, meaning there wouldn't even be crowding issues that we are seeing today. Also, subways were built in Old Toronto (Look at the Bloor-Danforth line or the subway north of Bloor), and at the time they were considered "suburbs", now, St Clair, Eglinton, Dupont, etc are thriving stations with lots of ridership. Things take time to develop and you need to plan for the future.

Notice how this is a thread about a Sheppard subway extension. This is just general talk about the extension itself (including debate about alignments, priorities of where to build the line, construction methods, benefits/cons of the line), not about the DRL (except for interlines/connections) or downtown transit. Most of us here just support subway construction and are all dying for a DRL to be built, however, you can have more than one discussion at one time.

 

[OneCity]

Why can't "Us" be defined as all of the GTA/GGHA? That's the complete realistic network that is trying to be achieved, so the definition of "us" needs to include everyone, not just in a small specific area.

Certainly. It has to include the needs and goals of all areas of the Province and mesh all modes of travel. If we create a plan the people don't support based on narrow corner cutting ideologies, and don't have a serious funding model in place we are only creating possibilities for many differing "us" vs "them" scenarios as we have seen within Toronto in the past decade.

"Downtown vs suburbs", or "LRT vs Subway" as a technology was never the real issue. The lack of consensus when creating an overall plan and lack of a funding plan for decades has created Political opportunities for infighting in the largest municipality. The details within a plan matter far greater than any technology and a constant funding stream in a growing Southern Ontario needs to be set in place to prevent this from happening again. Not building is the costliest mistake we have made.

 

[syn]

Speaking of Bessarion Subway Station

Work Begins on Namesake Park in Concord Park Place

I think DRL Long being built will be a HUGE incentive for condo dwellers with cars to leave them at home and use the Don Mills Subway to downtown. As of now, the Sheppard Line is convenient, but the nightmare that has become the Yonge Line is not a secret for anyone. At least if it went to Sheppard West, but even then...

I'm for building everything else and then do something on Sheppard later. It's just as idiotic to here people wanting to use today's limited funds to build an LRT that not many wants in that area. And for what??? Dumped more people on the Yonge Line while Relief Long still doesn't exist???

Just use those funds on Relief Long... Once the bus routes ridership increases due to Relief Long making the trips to downtown faster and more comfortable then revisiting Sheppard might make sense. By then, Sheppard Avenue from Allen Road to at least Kennedy will be a much denser corridor and the ridership might make sense to finish the line. Sorry, but it's a fact that LRT just doesn't draw as many potential riders as subway. Might as well leave Sheppard for when it's time.

Toronto has to stop half assing transit, it's getting really old.

So am I. If 'doing something later' means a subway, then it may be many decades before that makes sense.

 

[syn]

No one here is denying the need for a DRL, but if you don't have any subway service in the suburbs, there's no easy way for people to get downtown, and, therefore, no adequate subway service. Some of the busiest stations in the system (Kipling, Kennedy, Sheppard West, Finch, Sheppard-Yonge, Don Mills, Wilson, Wardon, Victoria Park, Islington) are all in the suburbs. If all those people choose to drive or take GO instead, you lose almost half the system's ridership, meaning there wouldn't even be crowding issues that we are seeing today. Also, subways were built in Old Toronto (Look at the Bloor-Danforth line or the subway north of Bloor), and at the time they were considered "suburbs", now, St Clair, Eglinton, Dupont, etc are thriving stations with lots of ridership. Things take time to develop and you need to plan for the future.

Notice how this is a thread about a Sheppard subway extension. This is just general talk about the extension itself (including debate about alignments, priorities of where to build the line, construction methods, benefits/cons of the line), not about the DRL (except for interlines/connections) or downtown transit. Most of us here just support subway construction and are all dying for a DRL to be built, however, you can have more than one discussion at one time.

Strange, in all the years with 'no easy way to get downtown' subway ridership grew dramatically.

The RER will make it very easy to get downtown. Subways were not designed to be suburban express routes. The economics make no sense.

 

[Cobra]

Subways were not designed to be suburban express routes.

I'm guessing Montreal have lost their mind then

Anjou
A mall with a some buildings

St-Michel

Jean-Talon
Orange meets Blue

Metro Acadie & Outremont

Snowdon
Queen Mary Rd & Decarie

Those Montrealers... Their planning staff are insane...

 

[sixrings]

just because one place makes a bad decision doesn't justify all other bad decisions.

 

[Cobra]

just because one place makes a bad decision doesn't justify all other bad decisions.

That's my whole point.

Who the hell are we to judge what's a good or bad decisions? The SRT was a horrendous decision, building Bloor ahead of Queen was another one, building Sheppard ahead of Eglinton was too. I don't think we can lecture other cities here.

Montreal are over the moon for the blue line extension, the line period. No one calls it "a mistake" and it doesn't matter who runs for mayor, everyone agrees on it. The blue line works in Montreal because they completed in!

If it was a stub from Jean-Talon to St-Michel, it would have been a disaster. Also, they closed the line at 11:30pm and ran only 3 wagons train-sets. They adjusted as ridership increased. Why on earth the TTC run trains everyday until 2am every 5 minutes (way off-peak) on the Sheppard line is a mystery to me.

A complete Sheppard Line (post 2030s) after all the development is advance will wield similar results

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I don't have any ideological opposition to the Sheppard Line extension. I just don't believe it's the right time. The projected ridership is very low, RER will be seeping more ridership from Sheppard, and the Yonge Line is overloaded as is. This project cannot move forward until the Relief Line North is completed, which means mid 2030s at least.

The catch-22 here is that the presence of the Relief Line North and RER fare integration will reduce Sheppard Line ridership, which makes the Sheppard Line even more difficult to justify. Once RER and DRL North are implemented, peak ridership on the Sheppard Line may very well drop to 3,000 pphpd, and I would not expect it to exceed 5,000 pphpd (for reference, in 2011, Sheppard Line's extension was anticipated to carry 7,000 pphpd westbound into Yonge in 2031). It's impossible to justify a multi-billion subway extension that will have peak ridership that low. The only justifiable long-term solution on Sheppard might be a BRT or LRT system from Scarborough Centre and the Toronto Zoo, feeding into the Don Mills Line / Relief Line.

Also worth noting that the Don Mills Line + Sheppard BRT/LRT combination will offer faster downtown-bounds travel times than the proposed Sheppard East extension alone.

Basically, DRL North and RER will largely achieve the goals of the proposed Sheppard East extension. I don't see Sheppard East Extension serving any meaningful purpose in our network once those two projects are completed.

 

[sixrings]

I don't understand how on one hand we can say we are 30 years behind on transit and then on the other say we can wait a decade or two to build on sheppard.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I don't understand how on one hand we can say we are 30 years behind on transit and then on the other say we can wait a decade or two to build on sheppard.

Because money is limited and we need to prioritize. Of all the issues on our network, including Yonge Line overcrowding, a multibillion subway extension that is anticipated to add 3,000 peak hour riders is not a very high priority. Especially when there is another project on the table that will have 6x the ridership, while simultaneously relieving the Yonge Line, dramatically reducing commute times from eastern Toronto, and fixing the problems that the Sheppard Line originally set out to fix.

And of course, building the Sheppard East extension when we're about to build two major infrastructure projects that will dramatically reduce its ridership would be foolish.

In isolation, Sheppard would make sense. But it has no function in the network we're planning to build out.

 

[Streety McCarface]

I don't have any ideological opposition to the Sheppard Line extension. I just don't believe it's the right time. The projected ridership is very low, RER will be seeping more ridership from Sheppard, and the Yonge Line is overloaded as is. This project cannot move forward until the Relief Line North is completed, which means mid 2030s at least.

The catch-22 here is that the presence of the Relief Line North and RER fare integration will reduce Sheppard Line ridership, which makes the Sheppard Line even more difficult to justify. Once RER and DRL North are implemented, peak ridership on the Sheppard Line may very well drop to 3,000 pphpd, and I would not expect it to exceed 5,000 pphpd (for reference, in 2011, Sheppard Line's extension was anticipated to carry 7,000 pphpd westbound into Yonge in 2031). It's impossible to justify a multi-billion subway extension that will have peak ridership that low. The only justifiable long-term solution on Sheppard might be a BRT or LRT system from Scarborough Centre and the Toronto Zoo, feeding into the Don Mills Line / Relief Line.

Also worth noting that the Don Mills Line + Sheppard BRT/LRT combination will offer faster downtown-bounds travel times than the proposed Sheppard East extension alone.

Basically, DRL North and RER will largely achieve the goals of the proposed Sheppard East extension. I don't see Sheppard East Extension serving any meaningful purpose in our network once those two projects are completed.

I doubt Sheppard will actually lose riders in its current form to RER, it will lose riders to Relief Line North. After relief line north (or even simultaneously with relief line north), they should really build the westward extension to improve connectivity and allow relief line trains to be stored at Wilson.

Subway lines have really been built in waves and should continue to do so:
2010-2020: TYSSE and Eglinton Crosstown
2021-2031: DRL and YNE
2031-2041: RLN and Sheppard West
2041-2051: RLW and Sheppard East

We can plan for the future.

I don't understand how on one hand we can say we are 30 years behind on transit and then on the other say we can wait a decade or two to build on sheppard.

We are 30 years behind on transit, that's a fact. However, the reality is that transit itself takes time and manpower to build. We don't have enough workers in the area to easily build 5 subway lines at once, we have to prioritize the lines that serve the most people.