TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
The development on Yonge is not being overstated and, more generally, when people are talking about something like the Don Mills alignment, which is cool, they are forgetting about the relative dearth of development potential along that corridor. It might end at Yonge but there's a big blank spot along the way. Indeed, it wouldn't even entirely serve Langstaff/RHC, at least as currently conceived, with the terminus at High Tech and a south station at Langstaff/Yonge. The idea isn't just to find the cheapest route for getting people from A to B but to link that route to development so people are close by. No doubt, transfers will continue to drive the system (that's the entire premise of the TTC's design, after all) but we're simultaneously trying to create denser communities so people aren't driving from Richmond Hill to Finch Station every day.
I know, that as with most of the arguments and facts here, this has been said before but the RHC/Langstaff plan alone is for nearly 50,000 new residents in the next 18 years. Maybe it's ambitious and maybe it's impossible but the auto modal share target for that area is around 40 %. So, a few transit users there. (That number is also predicated on having GO AND the subway, which is all the more reason to not trade one for the other).
The new secondary plans for Mkm and vaughan are, IIRC, for another 15-20K residents. The first major project (about 3,000 units) is already coming along nicely. That's not including something like 40,000 jobs. So I'm not sure where that's being "overstated." If anything, it's being UNDERSTATED by posters who imagine that everything north of Finch is "the hinterland." There's certainly more development potential on Yonge than has occurred along the Danforth/Bloor line in the decades since it was built.
As for the Yonge Express idea, it probably does become useless with all-day, two-way GO but, if there was infinite money, it's not the worst idea I can imagine. If you had a train that stopped at, say, Finch, Eglinton, Bloor, Union etc., it would take a load off a lot of the other stations. But it's never going to happen, even if was totally practical. If they'd built twin tunnels at the time, we'd be thankful today, however.
Finally, it's nice to imagine that more GO stations can be added with more service but a lot of the lines just don't allow it. I'm sure there's some room for improvement but I'm not sure what you could add to the RH line, for example. After Oriole it pretty much dives into the valley, doesn't it? This comes back to my first point about the idea of trying to build communities along transit lines...
I know, that as with most of the arguments and facts here, this has been said before but the RHC/Langstaff plan alone is for nearly 50,000 new residents in the next 18 years. Maybe it's ambitious and maybe it's impossible but the auto modal share target for that area is around 40 %. So, a few transit users there. (That number is also predicated on having GO AND the subway, which is all the more reason to not trade one for the other).
The new secondary plans for Mkm and vaughan are, IIRC, for another 15-20K residents. The first major project (about 3,000 units) is already coming along nicely. That's not including something like 40,000 jobs. So I'm not sure where that's being "overstated." If anything, it's being UNDERSTATED by posters who imagine that everything north of Finch is "the hinterland." There's certainly more development potential on Yonge than has occurred along the Danforth/Bloor line in the decades since it was built.
As for the Yonge Express idea, it probably does become useless with all-day, two-way GO but, if there was infinite money, it's not the worst idea I can imagine. If you had a train that stopped at, say, Finch, Eglinton, Bloor, Union etc., it would take a load off a lot of the other stations. But it's never going to happen, even if was totally practical. If they'd built twin tunnels at the time, we'd be thankful today, however.
Finally, it's nice to imagine that more GO stations can be added with more service but a lot of the lines just don't allow it. I'm sure there's some room for improvement but I'm not sure what you could add to the RH line, for example. After Oriole it pretty much dives into the valley, doesn't it? This comes back to my first point about the idea of trying to build communities along transit lines...