innsertnamehere
Superstar
except smart track is not a subway, its a form of commuter rail, an extension to Square One is roughly 50% longer than the scarborough extension, and nobody but Mdrejhon is discussing such an extension in the first place.
except smart track is not a subway, its a form of commuter rail
Square One is about as far away from the downtown core as Scarborough Town Centre. A commute people are already willing to make and a place we are planning on building a slower subway to.
Anyway, I'd like to reference these posts from the transit fantasy thread which I felt are relevant to present discussion:
So now everyone is thinking it, what do we think?
(btw mdrejhon, FFS it is Eglinton not Eglington![]()
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Why did he campaign on an extension into the depth of Markham?why would Tory campaign on an extension into the depths of Mississauga?
Why did he campaign on an extension into the depth of Markham?
It's almost like he has some vested interest in having quick service from downtown Toronto to Unionville. It's not like Rogers has a potential interest in a hockey team that would play in a hockey arena near Unionville station ... because that idea died (or did it ...).
Major employment near Unionville GO? The one time I changed there, I felt I was standing at a station surrounded by fields. There was precious little nearby. Wouldn't taking it one more station to Centennial serve a bigger employment area? Or stopping it one station earlier in 14th. I suppose it connects to VIVA - but surely that should be the province's $ not Toronto's - same why Toronto didn't advocate extending the Spadina subway north of Steeles nor paid anything of the capital cost.It's an attempt to serve major employment areas. Lots of people live in Toronto (often downtown) and commute to Mississauga and Markham.
Major employment near Unionville GO? The one time I changed there, I felt I was standing at a station surrounded by fields. There was precious little nearby. Wouldn't taking it one more station to Centennial serve a bigger employment area? Or stopping it one station earlier in 14th. I suppose it connects to VIVA - but surely that should be the province's $ not Toronto's - same why Toronto didn't advocate extending the Spadina subway north of Steeles nor paid anything of the capital cost.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ady-exists-markham-councillor/article4108236/Markham councillor Jim Jones thinks he’s found a magic-bullet solution for Scarborough’s rapid transit deficit, the rush-hour snarls at the Yonge/Bloor station, and even the diesel exhaust expected to waft over west-end neighbourhoods when Metrolinx launches its air-rail-link trains in 2015.
In recent weeks, the veteran politician, a former IBM network executive who spent six years as a Canadian Alliance MP, has been energetically shopping around his “I-METRO-E” scheme that proposes using GO’s Stouffville rail corridor – which snakes through Markham and runs parallel to Kennedy Road before angling towards Union Station – to deliver local service to the GTA’s eastern flank.
One other comment that I didn't want to get lost in my Eglinton rant: any new scheme should address transportation in the Park Lawn/Mimico area. At one time there was a proposal to move the Mimico GO station to Park Lawn AVenue, where the very intensive condo development around Humber Bay is centered. Mimico was always kind of a wasted stop, except being important to GO operationally, it's in the wrong position to be a transit hub.
Now, the developers are starting to build around Mimico. So there is probably even less potential to move the stop. This leaves Park Lawn with very poor transportation options, and Humber Bay is definitely unnecessarily automobile-centric. Riders in that area have two choices - a very long streetcar ride to the center of the city, or a less than swift bus ride to Old Mill Station on the Bloor line. An RER stop at Park Lawn is needed, or the streetcar corridor to whatever DRL/RER/Smarttrack solution emerges needs to be improved. (It's already grade separated, but it sure ain't fast). It would shift auto commutes to transit, it would solve the growing problem of traffic going north to Bloor, and as the Queensway is developed things will only get worse.
- Paul
My conspiracy theory of why Tory put Smarttrack along Eglinton is this: that part of Etobicoke was the Bastion of Ford support before the last election (both Fords hail from Wards within spitting distance of Eglinton). I suspect Tory was trying to give those hard-core voters a bauble that was better than what the Fords were offering. Now that the election is over, we ought to rewrite history and just pretend that that promise was never offered. Let Smarttrack/RER follow the rail line and let Crosstown connect to the Airport and Mississauga.
Re Eglinton West:
As an Etobicoker I can't bring myself to see a good reason for SmartTrack to turn west along Eglinton. A surface extension of the Crosstown, with perhaps some 'dips' for underground stations under major intersections such as Royal York, Islington, Kipling and Martin Grove would achieve the same routing at much lower cost. At present, the painful transportation flows in Etobicoke are the long commuting times for people in the very north end - long bus rides down Kipling and Islington, Albion and Dixon. The RER on the Weston line offer much more promise to give people a quick ride to the center of the city. A nice subway on Eglinton is no gain for these folks as they still have a long ride to get to it.
Re Eglinton West:
My conspiracy theory of why Tory put Smarttrack along Eglinton is this: that part of Etobicoke was the Bastion of Ford support before the last election (both Fords hail from Wards within spitting distance of Eglinton). I suspect Tory was trying to give those hard-core voters a bauble that was better than what the Fords were offering. Now that the election is over, we ought to rewrite history and just pretend that that promise was never offered. Let Smarttrack/RER follow the rail line and let Crosstown connect to the Airport and Mississauga.
Re Eglinton West:
PS While I'm on a conspiracy theory vane, I suspect there is an unwritten story about the Eglinton Corridor that needs to be outed. That corridor was preserved as a wide-open (and not that attractive) street for about four decades, on the premise that there would one day be a need for a transit line along it. Only in the last four years, that corridor was given up, and development was approved that significantly narrows Eglinton Avenue through Etobicoke, to the point where now we are debating if there is enough room for an on-surface LRT. Coincidence? My money says that this was a conscious strategy by the Fords to force an underground transit solution on Eglinton. I doubt there is a legally-sustainable case for expropriating development where the ink on the approvals is not yet dry, so we are stuck with this.
- Paul