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Sheppard Line 4 Subway Extension (Proposed)

salsa said:
Exactly. People complain that the Sheppard line gets abysmal ridership, but then they want to extend it further to Victoria Park, and after VP ridership suddenly evaporates to BRT levels.
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It's kind of hard to blame the subway technology as being the culprit of an abysmal ridership. I don't know many subway lines around the world that are only 5KM long and a 401 series highway right beside it that actually spans the entire region. Kind of like saying the Allen Expressway has low ridership and that it shouldn't be expanded, probably because it doesn't go anywhere and it's so short, most people probably don't even think it's worth their time to travel along Allen. Likewise for Sheppard. Why would people Take a bus to transfer to another bus, to transfer to sheppard to transfer to Yonge? When they can probably just take one bus to BD line and transfer one more time.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
If we extend Sheppard ridership will not improve. The TTC has studied this already.
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I have yet to see a study that looks at the western portion. Please point me in the direction of these studies if they exist. I haven't been keeping up with this project lately.
 
If it were extended to Pickering then commuters from the East would have a route that takes them to Uptown and not just to downtown, so if it were that long it would get plenty of riders. Even more so if it were also extended to Brampton.
 
BMO said:
I don't know many subway lines around the world that are only 5KM long and a 401 series highway right beside it that actually spans the entire region.
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Because most other places were not dumb enough to build a subway there in the first place.


Kind of like saying the Allen Expressway has low ridership and that it shouldn't be expanded, probably because it doesn't go anywhere and it's so short, most people probably don't even think it's worth their time to travel along Allen. Likewise for Sheppard.
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Except that it's pointed out that expanding Sheppard will not do much to increase ridership. Even if there's a couple of new riders, it won't improve the ratio of riders per km of subway.


Why would people Take a bus to transfer to another bus, to transfer to sheppard to transfer to Yonge? When they can probably just take one bus to BD line and transfer one more time.
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Unfortunately there is no good solution that doesn't involve lots of money. It's too expensive to extend, too expensive to convert to LRT, too expensive to abandon. Sheppard never should have been built.
 
I'd like to see the study that shows extending Sheppard west won't help. For connectivity if for no other reason it should help tremendously. Our northern version of Bloor/Danforth.
 
Uncle Teddy said:
I'd like to see the study that shows extending Sheppard west won't help.
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Admittedly not quite the same thing as forecast subway numbers, but it's well-established that the current bus ridership numbers on Sheppard West are quite mediocre, far below the top tier of routes that are usually in the "rapid transit here someday" conversation like Jane or Don Mills.

Uncle Teddy said:
Our northern version of Bloor/Danforth.
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In order for it to be a northern version of Bloor/Danforth, it would need to have, you know, stuff along it that people want to go to.

(And, no, before someone pipes up with this like they always do, there is not a Biblical torrent of students that travel from the northern half of Scarborough to York University every morning that might justify a subway. There is a decidedly bus-sized torrent.)
 
Platform 27 said:
In order for it to be a northern version of Bloor/Danforth, it would need to have, you know, stuff along it that people want to go to.

(And, no, before someone pipes up with this like they always do, there is not a Biblical torrent of students that travel from the northern half of Scarborough to York University every morning that might justify a subway. There is a decidedly bus-sized torrent.)
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Steve Munro posted a study of Scarbrough's travel patterns on his site a few days go. Only 3% of riders in Scarborough head west along Sheppard to the NYC area. Even fewer would be going to YorkU.

I would post a link, but his website is offline at the moment.
 
Uncle Teddy said:
I'd like to see the study that shows extending Sheppard west won't help. For connectivity if for no other reason it should help tremendously. Our northern version of Bloor/Danforth.
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Wasn't the complete unviability of this extension put to bed in the 2002 TTC RTES study? - http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/reports/rtes2002.pdf

It looked at 15 expansion options. Three were so poor, they were eliminated from further consideration before they even did passenger estimates. One of these eliminated options was the Sheppard extension from Yonge to Downsview. Another was Don Mills to Consumers Drive (and this was because they also included Don Mills to Victoria Park, as terminating the line and building a bus terminal at Consumers Drive was not practical). The only other expansion eliminated early in the study was the Bloor line from Kipling to Mississauga City Centre (because Peel and Mississauga weren't interested), however Kipling to West Mall and Dixie were carried forward.

The reasons the extension to Downsview was eliminated included the following

• Demand for rapid transit is considerably higher east of Yonge Street in comparison to west of Yonge Street.
• The high capital cost of such an extension is not matched by high ridership or re-development potential.
• Population and employment growth in the corridor is projected to be low.
• Densities in the area are projected to be below the threshold for implementation of rapid transit.
• The opportunities for feeder bus savings and commuter parking potential are considered to be low.​

The remainder of the study was based on old 2021 employment/population predictions, which are now considered overly optimistic for that corridor.

So if even with the overly optimistic predictions back then, they didn't consider the western extension worthwhile, why do we suddenly want to consider it now. Particularly with the proposed Phase 2 Finch LRT from Finch West station to Finch station, which would surely siphon demand even further.
 
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nfitz said:
Wasn't the complete unviability of this extension put to bed in the 2002 TTC RTES study? - http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/reports/rtes2002.pdf

It looked at 15 expansion options. Three were so poor, they were eliminated from further consideration before they even did passenger estimates. One of these eliminated options was the Sheppard extension from Yonge to Downsview. Another was Don Mills to Consumers Drive (and this was because they also included Don Mills to Victoria Park, as terminating the line and building a bus terminal at Consumers Drive was not practical). The only other expansion eliminated early in the study was the Bloor line from Kipling to Mississauga City Centre (because Peel and Mississauga weren't interested), however Kipling to West Mall and Dixie were carried forward.

The reasons the extension to Downsview was eliminated included the following

• Demand for rapid transit is considerably higher east of Yonge Street in comparison to west of Yonge Street.
• The high capital cost of such an extension is not matched by high ridership or re-development potential.
• Population and employment growth in the corridor is projected to be low.
• Densities in the area are projected to be below the threshold for implementation of rapid transit.
• The opportunities for feeder bus savings and commuter parking potential are considered to be low.​

The remainder of the study was based on old 2021 employment/population predictions, which are now considered overly optimistic for that corridor.

So if even with the overly optimistic predictions back then, they didn't consider the western extension worthwhile, why do we suddenly want to consider it now. Particularly with the proposed Phase 2 Finch LRT from Finch West station to Finch station, which would surely siphon demand even further.
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But you don't just build a line because it alone will carry a lot of people, you also have to build a network that has redundancies to accommodate network issues. Is it really acceptable that when the Yonge Line has a passenger assistance alarm it stops the flow of millions? Not to mention, millions of dollars are required to provide shuttle buses for passengers when this occurs. What if people could just take spadina to Sheppard and across? I agree Eglinton and the DRL will help to an extent, but there's a large gap between Highway 7 and Eglinton where Rapid transit won't provide a link the two corridors. Maybe Finch LRT I suppose. I don't see Finch between Keel and Yonge being better than Sheppard.
 
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I don't know much about Sheppard and certainly am not a professional transit planner but it would seem to me (from observation and trying to follow the years of discussion on it) there were 3 available choices at the time of building the existing subway:


1. Don't build it....find another transit option that suited the area
2. Build it, recognize the limited local ridership but look at it as a network tool that provides connectivity and options...that would require, likely, anchoring it on the west end at the Spadina line station at Downsview and on the east end somewhere in Scarobrough (likely the Town Centre area).
3. Compormise and build a part of it.

History tells us they chose #3 with the Yonge to Fairview line we see now. Problem is that seems to be the worst of the 3 options and created a line that is almost totally dependent on local demand to support its operation.
 
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