Seems to me that York Region has the opposite problem. The governments are more than willing to spend billions on the most expensive capital investments, such as BRT and subway infrastructure. But absent are the relatively small investments in transit operations that will enable a good return on our capital investments. If people believe this single subway stop alone is going to make Vaughan into a transit-oriented suburb, they've seriously deluded themselves. We should expect so much more from our government than this.
Just south of Steeles, the whole reason the TTC subway network is successful is because it is closely integrated with a network of dense and very frequent surface routes. Without that, the TTC subway would be an under-utilized white elephant. This is what the politicians don't seem to understand. Vaughan has its subway... where is the bus service?
My comment was specifically in reference to Queens Park, but yes. York region really has their heads up their asses, however, it might have to do with the fact that the system is contracted out and there are specific service levels that are set in stone, or something. (I'm thinking of London England's Privatization fiasco).
The rapidways for York region make a lot of sense; the region is huge and needs a way to get from one area to another quickly and efficiently. However, statistically, since they are just bus lines, if feeder bus routes do not feed into the rapidways, transferability will make no difference because transfers are cumbersome and difficult. (they will have some effect, but the effect is not significant).
The subways are a completely different story altogether. Considering the fact that VMC is currently in the "Rural" categorization of stations (none of the new tall buildings are that close to the station or they haven't been built), the only factor that will drive ridership up is, yes, feeder bus routes. This is the one thing that keeps the Bloor Danforth line alive to this day. For some reason, York region is only really considering density as the best factor for increasing subway ridership. After looking at the statistics, particularly for housing density, it has barely any effect on ridership (Job density is different, it's why downtown, finch, eglinton, and Sheppard thrive, but areas like Leslie, Bessarion, Bayview (to an extent), McCowan, etc fail). You have stations like Jane, Dufferin, St Clair West, Pape, etc that thrive despite there being no high-rise developments nearby but have ridership (and excellent ridership). York region seems to believe that the presence of a subway station will magically increase density which will magically increase ridership, it won't. No station achieves this; Kennedy, Scarborough Centre, Sheppard West, Wilson, Kipling, Islington, and Warden all thrive because of their bus terminals. Finch, Eglinton, Don Mills, and Sheppard all thrive because of their bus terminals and presence of nearby jobs, not nearby housing. Sheppard proved that this model of "build it without surface connections and they will come" would fail for a significant amount of time; subways need to connect to surface routes when initially built, then consideration can be made for densifying the station's surroundings. The Sheppard subway was built along a corridor with no surface connections with the exception of Don Mills (unsurprisingly, Don Mills has fairly decent ridership; over 30,000 PPD), and relied on densifying the areas around it. That is why it, and the VMC stations will fail for a significant amount of time.
