I get so tired of people who apparently can't think beyond the distance they blade to work dumping on the Sheppard Subway. I've listened to this crap for years now as I watch the line get busier and busier as the post-war single family homes on Sheppard get boarded up and fall under the tower cranes that build the 40-story condos that every good flower-sniffing, Birkenstock-addled, Spadina-slayer's grandchild tells us time and time again we're all supposed to shoot for. I'm fed to the teeth with all the whining about how it should have been Queen Street, it should have been Eglinton Avenue. No, it shouldn't have been, because downtown is already served by an east-west line (not to mention the Queen and King streetcars), and because Sheppard was designed first and foremost to get people heading into the core off the 404 and out of their cars before they hit the bottleneck of the 401 as they transit to the DVP. Stripped down to the barest possible essentials, that's exactly what it manages: it travels the distance from that highway to the Yonge Subway line, and no further (to the great chagrin of many). Sheppard Avenue is the last possible place southbound to achieve this. Eglinton is too late; a quarter of an hour (or more) of smoggy creeping down the DVP too late.
I take the Sheppard Subway daily. Heading home, nearly every day, I have to let the first train I come to leave without me if I want a seat so I can read, and I'm travelling at slightly off-peak hours. I've seen the line during peak hours on occasion, with people packed to the doors, and I'm here to tell you folks, it's no white elephant. And it's getting less white with every passing month. The line isn't the only reason there's so much development now on Sheppard from Yonge to Victoria Park, but it's unquestionably a major impetus for it.
In truth, the line should have been built from Downsview to Scarborough Town Centre, but at least we got what we got. I'd be happier if we had plans to expand it rather than build the LRT, which, once it's built, will needlessly compete with traffic, force users to run crossing risks, and expose them to the elements – none of which the subway does – and which will bugger up traffic on Sheppard for years during its construction (not least of which bridging the level crossing in Agincourt, something else the subway wouldn't necessitate). But I'll say this much; barring the fervently-to-be-wished-for extension of the subway, at least the LRT is something, and to that extent at least I welcome it. It's better than nothing. Way better.
So enough of the bilge about the Sheppard Subway already. It gets at least some people off the expressways every day, it provides a node for condo development that combats urban sprawl, and it's a long-overdue nod to the fact that most people in the city, not to mention the GTA, don't live in the navel-gazing confines between Bloor and the lake, and Dufferin and the Beaches.
