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

[Bureaucromancer]

Is this actually what is happening?

From Reddit.

Yes, but you need to add:
Toronto resident: fine, but can you help us pay for something?
905 resident: I'm not paying for any of that, it belong to Toronto.
Toronto resident: but we can't afford them and you won't let us borrow anything.
Tory government 905ers elected blames Toronto for not having the infrastructure they won't pay for.

Just maybe a lot of these issues ARE regional, we're just terrified of the uploading seeing as the Conservatives have historically mostly screamed f**** Toronto at us while refusing to help and eliminating any ability to take care of ourselves.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

I always thought it was a bit odd that Thornill was adsorbed part into Vaughan and part into Markham in 1971, but Richmond Hill was left alone.
50 year ago, Thornhill would have been well understood. Not sure it is today ...
Perhaps the good people of Toronto should help reduce the much higher property taxes in this part of 905, by pushing to amalgamate Vaughan, Richmond Hill, and Markham into one single-tier community. Even then, it would only have a population of about 825,000. But it would only need 9 councillors and mayor compared to the 31 it currently has! Then with a simple name, we'd have more awareness of where this area is.

1. I am curious as to what thinking went into the borders when they were drawn in the 70s. It's all a bit quirky and I can only assume neither Vaughan nor Markham wanted to relenquish a hold on Yonge Street. As it stands, few in Thornhill describe themselves as citizen of their respective cities.
2. Doug Ford is undertaking a "review of regional governance," and while that could mean almost anything it would not surprise me at all if we saw a round of amalgamations, and V+M+RH would be high on the list, especially if he's scrapping upper tier governments at the same time. This idea doesn't sound particularly fantastic in 2018.

This is two separate issues though. If York Region wants to build a subway to serve locally, fine. If they want to feed passengers to downtown Toronto, then they'll have to add tracks to the Yonge Line. And Torontonians shouldn't have to pay for that.

Except:
1. You'd never build a "York Region Transit Subway" to interface with TTC. Any subway is obviously a TTC extension. B) Obviously GO will still be the mode of choice for people going down to Union. But people going from York Region to North York Centre or Eglinton or Bloor or anywhere else in between is served by the subway. As I said earlier, an extension to 7 would not change the function of the subway as it exists today. It already serves "regional riders" from north of Finch and north of Steeles, and probably north of 7, they just have to travel far to get on the subway.
2. No one - I don't think even the mayor of Markham - has refused to pay a fare share. Certainly I wouldn't, even if the meaning of "fare share" is up for some debate.
As you point out, uploading changes things but that has to be done fairly too.

You're also right that the tolling refusal was pretty terrible. Buuuut it's also true it was an end-around by Tory to generate tax revenue without taxing his own constituents who, as he is happy to say everyday, are already paying enough etc. I'd have strongly supported regional road tolls by Wynne (and she knew it was the right thing to do) and I am strongly against the province overruling the city, but I still have issues with what Tory was really trying to do there. There are better ways to make sure regional infrastructure is properly funded and managed, but no one has the political courage to do them. But that's a debate for another time

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

2. Doug Ford is undertaking a "review of regional governance," and while that could mean almost anything it would not surprise me at all if we saw a round of amalgamations, and V+M+RH would be high on the list, especially if he's scrapping upper tier governments at the same time. This idea doesn't sound particularly fantastic in 2018.

Didn't Mike Harris actually forced York Region to begin an internal review with the intent of optimizing the upper- lower- tier arrangement in the region?

It was only put to the backburner following the public outcry in Toronto and the realization that the route to Queens Park for the PCs were through acquiring seats in York Region, was my understanding.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Should our Dear Leader Doug Ford force the building of the Line 1 Yonge extension upon us BEFORE the Relief Line, and leave the operation to the TTC, I see see this happening:

1. The ATC would have been implemented and in operation for Line 1. This would allow for more frequent headways and quicker crossovers. With ATC, the headways on Line 1 could go from 2.5 minutes to 1 minute and 55 seconds during rush hours.

2. There would be crossovers tracks available at Steeles Station and at Eglinton Station.

3. To make sure that riders would be able to board trains on the southbound trains on the Yonge leg of Line 1, there will be short turns during the rush hours.

a. Steeles Station short turns for every third train.
b. Eglinton Station short turns for every third train.
c. Richmond Hill Centre Station for every third train.
​

4. For non-rush trains, every other train will short turn at Steeles Station. The remainder will continue on to Richmond Hill Centre Station.

5. This arrangement will last until the Relief Line is built and in operation.

a. When the Relief Line gets up to the Science Centre Station (Eglinton East), the short turn at Eglinton can be dropped.

b. When the Relief Line gets up and joins Line 4 Sheppard, the short turn at Steeles can be dropped.
​

Even the New York Subway has headways of 10-20 minutes in the non-rush hours, 2-5 minutes during the rush hours.

 

[salsa]

Ha - indeed. LUNACY!!!
I really think the fatal misunderstanding with all this is that people are ALREADY getting on from York Region at Finch Station and MORE of them will continue to do so.

I think YOUR fatal misunderstanding with this talking point is that you ignore the influx of new riders that will immediately be attracted to the TTC with the subway extension. It’s not just gonna serve existing riders. For one, we see that King streetcar ridership has gone way up, and all it took was a small reduction in travel time. While all that is absolutely a good thing, there still needs to be sufficient capacity. [/Lunacy].

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

I get it. I just think it's finger-in-a-dike. If there are 5,000 people going from Richmond Hill to Yonge/Eg and right now X% take the subway (after bus/car, whatever), the others are probably mostly going by car. So you're saying that if the subway came to Steeles, that X% will go up a certain amount, reducing first the number of people who were getting to Finch by less efficient means but also taking cars off the road.

BUT also exacerbating downstream capacity issues.
So, you're right about King Street but if X# of people were trying to get from Liberty Villlage to downtown before, presumably it's the same number now. But more of them are taking the streetcar and they're getting there faster.

It's a Catch 22 we've put ourselves and I agree ridership would go up, in but in terms of lesser of evils, looking at the overall transportation network (because it doesn't get talked about much, but roads have capacity too), I still think it's the smarter move.

I think most of us can agree that getting people off cars and onto rapid transit with a minimum number of transfers (and further, intensifying around that transit) is an entirely laudable set of policy goals. But we're too infrastructurally immature to pull it off. So what to do? Delay the subway 10 years? Will that solve the problem? I dunno. Would be nice to have the money and resources to get shovels in the ground on both simultaneously. Practically, it's awfully unlikely but I just think you end up confronting increased ridership at the north end of the line no matter what you do.

 

[44 North]

Why people acting like this is some academic argument. It was stated almost ten years ago Yonge isn't being extended without relief line in place. It was one of the smartest things TO council did telling the Prov to take a hike. It wasn't political or out of spite, or some theory. It was based on data from planners and engineers.

 

[micheal_can]

Why people acting like this is some academic argument. It was stated almost ten years ago Yonge isn't being extended without relief line in place. It was one of the smartest things TO council did telling the Prov to take a hike. It wasn't political or out of spite, or some theory. It was based on data from planners and engineers.

...And now the most intelligent, forward thinking, .... premier got elected.....

Damn, that was a lot of bs.

If Dougie wants votes in the YNSE area, it will get built....

 

[44 North]

...And now the most intelligent, forward thinking, .... premier got elected.....

Damn, that was a lot of bs.

If Dougie wants votes in the YNSE area, it will get built....

He's already got the votes, as Scarpiti's memo states. It's backed by all the mayors and many councillors in the tri-city north of Steeles. Cats out of the bag, they want the subway uploaded purely to push ynse without RL.

 

[micheal_can]

He's already got the votes, as Scarpiti's memo states. It's backed by all the mayors and many councillors in the tri-city north of Steeles. Cats out of the bag, they want the subway uploaded purely to push ynse without RL.

So, YNSE will happen, and that will only make the rest of the line south worse....

Yup, sounds like another Dougie promise.

Still waiting for my "buck a beer"

 

[Leo_Chan]

Does York Region deserve a(nother) subway?

 

[Kitsune]

So, YNSE will happen, and that will only make the rest of the line south worse....

Yup, sounds like another Dougie promise.

Still waiting for my "buck a beer"

"My dear friends - the Liberals have left us in a terrible financial state and we can only afford one subway line. To my friends in York Region we have opted to extend the Yonge Subway because Toronto City Council (insert something horrible here)." Yeah... can totally see Dougie doing that.

 

[nfitz]

"My dear friends - the Liberals have left us in a terrible financial state and we can only afford one subway line. To my friends in York Region we have opted to extend the Yonge Subway because Toronto City Council (insert something horrible here)." Yeah... can totally see Dougie doing that.

Perhaps they could close most of the stations between Eglinton and Bloor and Wellesley, etc., to speed things up too! That would eliminate a lot of people who can't get on already full trains.

 

[micheal_can]

Does York Region deserve a(nother) subway?

It deserves 2 more, the YNSE and the DRL long.

Mississauga deserves 1, if not 2.

Durham deserves 1 as well.

 

[JSF-1]

Didn't Mike Harris actually forced York Region to begin an internal review with the intent of optimizing the upper- lower- tier arrangement in the region?

It was only put to the backburner following the public outcry in Toronto and the realization that the route to Queens Park for the PCs were through acquiring seats in York Region, was my understanding.

That and the fact amalgamations of this scale don't work (see Toronto for the past 20 years). If the regions get "megacitied" I can gurantee you with absolute certainty that they will be inefficient, expensive messes no different than Toronto in a couple of decades. Amalgamating small towns is one thing, but amalgamating entire cities is never advisable. Its fine if we want to redefine some boarders but the Cities should always remain autonomous from each other at the local level. It seems Canada and the USA are the only places in the western world that believe large urban areas can be effectively served by a single organization (and even the US has few "Single-tier cities). Over in Europe and Asia they understand that these places need to be broken into smaller more manageable chunks (i.e. the system that is already in place in the 905 and used to be in Toronto).