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Sheppard Subway - Development Impacts

MisterF said:
You seriously think downtown is full, or close to it? If cities like London and Chicago can fit so many offices into their central cores, why can't Toronto? Even when all the surface parking lots are gone there will be lots of room. Downtown Toronto is so full of small 2 storey buildings that could be redeveloped that office employment could meet demand for a long time.
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The downtown core is close to being full.

London is a stupid example as the city is built completely different to Toronto, as well as its office components at Canary Wharf and all of the midrise victorian buildings that have been converted throughout the city.
 
I think downtown core is at about 30% capacity as it stand. Google satellite shows vast untapped empty lots, ugly one story plazas, laneways, etc that shall one day be redeveloped. The city is organic: Toronto in 2307 will be many times denser than it is today and it will come I'm looking forward to it....
 
There's no such thing as a full downtown, but there are also not vast swaths of parking lots or endless 1-2 storey buildings available to tear down, especially since the downtown core is ringed by hundreds of heritage buildings. Either everything in the YUS loop will be redeveloped into bigger towers (30 storeys becomes 60 and so on) or - this is the crazy part - we build a subway line across downtown that will make downtown bigger.
 
Capacity can be added via building over the rail yards. Maybe in 100 years, there will be a section of the GO which will be like NYC's Metro North which runs 'underground' for a vast section.
 
There's no such thing as a full downtown, but there are also not vast swaths of parking lots or endless 1-2 storey buildings available to tear down, especially since the downtown core is ringed by hundreds of heritage buildings. Either everything in the YUS loop will be redeveloped into bigger towers (30 storeys becomes 60 and so on) or - this is the crazy part - we build a subway line across downtown that will make downtown bigger.
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The core could be many times denser than it is today with little effect on transit use. After all, many downtown condo dwellers walk to work, walk to the store, walk to restaurants...Although I support the construction of a DRL or Queen subway to establish faster transportation links within the core, I don't think that we need to enlarge the downtown's physical area or open any pressure valves for future growth because our current downtown could absorb 100, maybe 200,000 more residents fairly easily.

There isn’t a single part of downtown Toronto where I feel that the density has maxed out. 30% capacity is an underestimation of how much land we have used to maximum effect. There is a lot of ancillary land use in this city, even in the core: parking lots, parking pads, lawns, service bays, one storey commercial buildings, underutilized public spaces like corporate plazas, garage and alley entranceways, etc. This kind of sloppy land use is symptomatic of a city where land is not at a premium.
 
Hipster Duck said:
The core could be many times denser than it is today with little effect on transit use. After all, many downtown condo dwellers walk to work, walk to the store, walk to restaurants....
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Obviously I meant the financial core - where there are very few condo dwellers. Locating a tall office block further outside the core has a diminishing value to its developers. Putting up a 40 storey office block at spadina and college doesn't have the same benefits (ie. rents, attract tenants) as being able to put up the same building in the core.

You also can't 'walk' around the rest of downtown and determine what the underused capacity is. Not only will their be resistence at putting up highrises anywhere, it doesn't make sense is some instances (and I ain't a nimby).
 
This is where a map of downtown showing effectively undevelopable sites such as parks and heritage buildings would be interesting.
 
Sorry if I missed this upthread, but is it true that a lot of the development on Sheppard was exempted from dev charges by Lastman? I think I saw something about that on Steve Munro's blog.
 
I don't recall the exact situation but I'm sure all development on the Sheppard Line pays development charges - the issue duing the Lastman era was whether or not to levy an additional area specific development charge along the Sheppard Corridor. The final decision was to not levy the additional area specific charge.

FYI - The Budget Measures Act (Bill 187) passed this spring includes specific amendments to the Development Charges Act for the Spadina-Vaughan Subway extension to allow for additional development charges to be levied to assist with the cost of the subway extension.
 
I don't think extra development charges are worth it along subway lines...the success of Spadina north of York U hinges largely on how 'downtown' Vaughan develops - and excessive charges won't help that.
 
Steve Munro's has described the possible closure of the Sheppard subway as a "silver lining" so I wouldn't trust anything he says about it.
 
I follow Steve Munro's blog fairly regularly, and he is anything but a "one trick pony". He has been active in advocating for transit since the 1970s, and I think it would be hard to find anyone in Toronto more knowledgeable about transit than him. He writes very authoritatively about subways, streetcars, buses, transit in other cities, etc. etc.

Not to speak for him, but I think he has made it clear that he sees transit as a system, not as one line here and one line there. He feels that we should build few subways, mainly because of their huge cost. The same cost can cover a much larger network of streetcars or light rail transit, serving a wider area and greater number of people. I tend to agree, although there may be a limited role for some new subways in Toronto's future.
 
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