Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

They don't necessarily drive development, and that is more because of zoning around stations. they mainly cited the Bloor Danforth Line which has seen little intensification along its length, but that has more to do with restrictive zoning by-laws. if you put in the zoning for the development, the development generally happens. NYCC is a perfect example of this, along with the likes of the highrises around Islington and VMC which is starting to have large amounts of projects go up now. Davisville, the High Park area, Victoria Park station, etc are all TOD development.
 
JayBeeGooner said:
It's quite common for riders to transfer to another mode at the end of the subway line. Paris has number of tramlines linking to the subway. The Norristown High Speed Line connects to the Market Frankford line. Croydon Tramlink connects to the District line at Wimbledon station. Stockholm has a light rail line that connects to a 3 station spur!
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It is quite rare for people to have to transfer from a subway to a light rail line where the subway runs in roughly the same direction as the light rail line.

The obvious examples of this I can think of are:
  • Lidingöbanan, Stockholm
  • Ashmont–Mattapan High Speed Line, Boston
  • Trolley routes 100, 101, 102 at the end of Market-Frankford Line, Philadelphia
  • Tram T7 and Metro 7, Paris - Tram T7 is very new. However, Metro Line 14 is also supposed to be extended to Orly Airport in the future parallel to Tram T7.

Transferring from a subway to a light rail line where the light rail line runs perpendicular to the subway is a lot more common. For example, the Croydon Tramlink or Paris Tram T2.

But Sheppard is especially bad because you have a very short subway line which was left incomplete because of cutbacks by Mike Harris and then to save money you get this proposal to build a light rail line. Most people using this line would have to transfer twice, most of the other examples on this list only one transfer is required. To make matters worse I think that the large increase in commercial taxes in the 1990s which caused North York Centre employment growth to stop was caused by Mike Harris downloading and amalgamation. Employment there is starting to come back - there is one new office building under construction at Yonge & Sheppard (the bottom part of one building of Hullmark Centre) and one proposed building at 4050 Yonge Street near York Mills.
 
I wouldn't call it an official office building, office condos are a different ballgame than regular office space. Most businesses in those are medical offices, small law firms, etc.
 
andrewpmk said:
I think that the large increase in commercial taxes in the 1990s which caused North York Centre employment growth to stop was caused by Mike Harris downloading and amalgamation. Employment there is starting to come back - there is one new office building under construction at Yonge & Sheppard (the bottom part of one building of Hullmark Centre) and one proposed building at 4050 Yonge Street near York Mills.
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Yeah there's a whopping 2 office projects going on right now, one of which is not in North York Centre, hasn't started yet, and might actually be dead. Scarborough on the other hand is a failed state.
 
what relation does it have to Bloor-Yonge? I don't think anyone is deluding themselves that Bloor Yonge is a major destination. Its Downtown that is (thus need for a DRL) which is going to see its office space increase by 10% over the next couple of years, quite the feat considering that it is the largest office market in the country. That 10% number includes Bloor-Yonge BTW, which is considered to be in the same office market as downtown.
 
There are many luxury condos at Bloor-Yonge but I don't think there has been a single office building built there since the early 1990s. Almost all the new office space downtown is near Union Station.
 
What the heck is your point? I don't think you're understanding how transit works at all

You can't just pick at a random spot on the subway map, point out that it has no office development and then use that to justify whatever project you want. To ignore the other contributing factors to the ridership patterns is insanity.

Or course you know this already and are just trying to split hairs.
 
There are no new buildings, but the employment density is way better than Sheppard. There are 2 large office towers at Yonge & Bloor, and many more along Bloor. Theres no denying that the BD line is extremely successful and well used, unlike the stubway up north.

Now why does this matter exactly?
 
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Woodbridge_Heights said:
I thought we just had a transit panel where one of the items raised was that transit routes do not drive development and intensification
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That's not what they said:
2) Transit does not automatically drive development. To be successful and affordable, transit routes must connect with current and anticipated employment.


Those are rather important modifiers. I'd argue it may well apply to the new Scarborough plan and probably does for at least part of Sheppard (at least in its current form) but I don't think it applies to the Yonge extension.

They're not making an argument about the impossibility of transit-oriented development, they're saying it has to be planned; transit and land use planning have to be linked, which is what I've said all along. On Yonge, they are.
 
I think the point is that development will only happen if it is in a desirable neigbourhood and if you don't scare it away with high taxes. So you don't see new condos along the Spadina extension because it goes through poor neighbourhoods. And the reason we don't see another North American Centre sized office tower at Yonge & Sheppard is primarily because of excessive commercial tax rates. I don't think that downtown is affected as much because it would be very expensive even with lower tax rates, whereas Yonge & Sheppard is competing with Mississauga and Markham office developments.
 
That's exactly right. For that reason, there are not going to be any large offices built in the Toronto suburbs anymore, therefore the Sheppard subway does not make sense.
 
andrewpmk said:
I think the point is that development will only happen if it is in a desirable neigbourhood and if you don't scare it away with high taxes. So you don't see new condos along the Spadina extension because it goes through poor neighbourhoods. And the reason we don't see another North American Centre sized office tower at Yonge & Sheppard is primarily because of excessive commercial tax rates. I don't think that downtown is affected as much because it would be very expensive even with lower tax rates, whereas Yonge & Sheppard is competing with Mississauga and Markham office developments.
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The Spadina extension doesn't run through poor neighbours, it runs below them in a trench, which is the larger problem.

And Mississauga and Markham are trying to build rapid transit, and intensify while Toronto cruises on its condo boom and spends months debating and re-debating the same transit projects. So, it's all good!
 
If we lower the commercial taxes I think they will come back. Why were there so many office buildings built along Sheppard Avenue in the 1980s and so few now? I think the reason is that commercial taxes in North York and Scarborough were low in those days.
 
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