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

Actually, Kipling to Yonge is about half an hour as well. Of course, it would be much faster if one took the Go Train, 15 minutes according to Go. Actually, it would be worth it for pretty much everyone west of Jane to go to Kipling instead. Of course, they won't until everything becomes more reliable and integrated fares are introduced.

Richmond Hill isn't nearly as good as a bypass than Milton, but it's already 35 minutes compared to like 30 minutes to get to Finch, so I guess it could save 10 or 15 minutes to take the Go Train. It could be much faster.
 
According to TTC's Subway Travel Time Calculator, Yonge to Kipling is 26 minutes. Yonge to Finch is 21 minutes. Yonge to Don Mills is 29 minutes. Yonge to Kennedy is 22 minutes. Yonge to McCowan is 36 minutes. St. George to Downsview is 19 minutes.

Given that they are extending the SRT 4 stations from McCowan to Malvern ... 7 minutes? Yonge to Malvern would be 43 minutes. On that basis, it's hard to argue that any of the lines can't be extended!
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
It's funny that when the Yonge extension is discussed, no one ever says "oh, that's way too long for a subway" but when the Bloor extension is discussed "oh that's way too far for the subway to go.
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This amuses/frustrates me as well and arguing the point is futile. For whatever reason, Peel may as well be the other side of the moon when it comes to transit discussion here, but York is simply "uptown".

Maybe it's because people have internalized how the lines look on our vertically-squashed subway maps.
 
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xtremesniper said:
Well, I don't know... I personally have never taken the trip, but isn't the trip from Kipling to Yonge already a good 40 minutes? That would mean adding any extension to that part of the line would amount to an insanely long subway ride, in which case I would agree that not many people would want to put up with being in the tunnels for more than an hour.
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Why not? It just means you get a longer nap. :p

I'd rather ride on the subway a little longer than have to ride on a bus and then transfer to the subway.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
when the Bloor extension is discussed "oh that's way too far for the subway to go. No one will take the subway for 40 minutes"
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That sounds like a straw man -- does anyone genuinely argue that?

How many kilometres west of an extension are you talking, and how dense is the corridor along which you are talking about extending it?
 
Anth said:
This amuses/frustrates me as well and arguing the point is futile. For whatever reason, Peel may as well be the other side of the moon when it comes to transit discussion here, but York is simply "uptown".

Maybe it's because people have internalized how the lines look on our vertically-squashed subway maps.
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I think it's mostly because Finch Station is only 1 main street from the York Region border and even if York Region weren't on the other side of the Steeles that would seem arbitrary.

It's just sooooo close already. This is less true on the Spadina line but it's still only 2 main streets north to hit the border. This has the effect of really ignoring the density patterns and exacerbating the double-fare nonsense which surely annoys all 905ers.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
I think it's mostly because Finch Station is only 1 main street from the York Region border and even if York Region weren't on the other side of the Steeles that would seem arbitrary.

It's just sooooo close already. This is less true on the Spadina line but it's still only 2 main streets north to hit the border. This has the effect of really ignoring the density patterns and exacerbating the double-fare nonsense which surely annoys all 905ers.
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And Kipling station is only 1 major road from Mississauga too. It makes sense for both, but they both need express service first. Some kind of express Go service on the Milton line through Misissauga, and express Go service on Richmond Hill.
 
However, York Region is 1 street for a good chunk of Toronto's boundary making it a destination for far more Torontonians than Peel region...which is probably more heavily frequented by west end residents.

I am not saying that's an excuse for the sad state of transport policy but that's just how the conceptualization of our geography has occurred. For a Scarborough resident, Peel region might as well be another city. Just as Durham region is largely relevant for a west-ender. However, it's likely that York Region is fairly relevant for almost the entire half of the city that lies above the 401.
 
Two more differences between a Yonge and a Bloor extension:

1) The Yonge subway only needs to be extended 4 km past the border before reaching the soon to be densest part of the Region. Furthermore, the entire path to that point is a growth corridor in and of itself. However, the Bloor subway needs to travel at least twice as far within Peel to reach MCC, and the most direct route is off grid, underneath subdivisions. You can be sure that if the focus of York Region's development was located at Leslie and 16th, a subway extension would be out of the question. Or, if MCC was located at Dixie and Dundas, I'm sure that the subway would already terminate there.

2) Travel patterns between York and Toronto are different than between Peel and Toronto. Due to numerous large employment and entertainment areas between Steeles and downtown, many York residents who use the TTC get off in midtown. Highway 7 to downtown might be a 40 minute trip, but it's not as though everyone is going to travel that far. However, I would guess that most Peel commuters take the TTC straight into downtwon because there's less in between. Peel is therefore better served by a GO train that doesn't stop anywhere in Toronto except downtown. York and Peel may generate the same number of TTC trips, however the nature of those trips is quite different.
 
That's always a possibility, but at least to their credit they've been pretty consistent about this.

It's the TTC's inconsistency about subway building that bothers me.
 
Chuck said:
Two more differences between a Yonge and a Bloor extension:

1) The Yonge subway only needs to be extended 4 km past the border before reaching the soon to be densest part of the Region. Furthermore, the entire path to that point is a growth corridor in and of itself. However, the Bloor subway needs to travel at least twice as far within Peel to reach MCC, and the most direct route is off grid, underneath subdivisions. You can be sure that if the focus of York Region's development was located at Leslie and 16th, a subway extension would be out of the question. Or, if MCC was located at Dixie and Dundas, I'm sure that the subway would already terminate there.
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Yonge & Bloor is 24 km to MCC versus 20 km to Yonge & Highway 7. Hardly a significant difference, considering there's a lot more people who'd be served by a MCC subway.

I agree with Anth, people have this kind of mental block when it comes to Mississauga. This may be partially due to Mississauga trying to be distinct from Toronto (whereas Markham, Thornhill, Richmond Hill, they don't really have any identity). The Toronto subway map probably also has something to do with it. The distances are a great deal more compressed on the N-S lines due to the way we write (left to right) and because MCC is on an E-W axis, the stops have to take up more width for the names of the stations (plus on the actual subway trains, they have more width than height to deal with where the ads and maps go).

And whoever mentioned Kipling only being 15 minutes away from Union by GO? Yes, this is true, if you take one of the six (soon to be seven) morning trains during rush hour. GO buses don't serve Kipling. They don't even serve Dixie on weekends. I wish Milton had more service, but if and when that does happen, that has no bearing on whether a subway should go to MCC or not. They're completely different issues, and serve completely different markets.

Just as an example, my sister's friend lives near Dufferin station. She could take the GO bus to Union, and then backtrack on subway back to Dufferin. But that's just going in a big-ass circle. So she has to take at least two buses to get to Kipling/Islington (38 and 1 was my recommendation to her) followed by a 20-ish minute subway ride. Not too bad, but still a PITA. I should know, my ex lived near Dufferin as well. So GO really doesn't help in that situation. For all the talk about a Hurontario LRT, I rarely used that corridor. For me it was always east-west traveling, not north-south. If you added up all the people headed toward the subway, whether they be on Bloor, Dundas, Burnhamthorpe or Rathburn, you'd see there's more demand to get to the subway than there is to get to Brampton. The only people going to Brampton are Bramptonians returning from Square One.
 
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Chuck said:
Two more differences between a Yonge and a Bloor extension:

1) The Yonge subway only needs to be extended 4 km past the border before reaching the soon to be densest part of the Region. Furthermore, the entire path to that point is a growth corridor in and of itself. However, the Bloor subway needs to travel at least twice as far within Peel to reach MCC, and the most direct route is off grid, underneath subdivisions. You can be sure that if the focus of York Region's development was located at Leslie and 16th, a subway extension would be out of the question. Or, if MCC was located at Dixie and Dundas, I'm sure that the subway would already terminate there.

2) Travel patterns between York and Toronto are different than between Peel and Toronto. Due to numerous large employment and entertainment areas between Steeles and downtown, many York residents who use the TTC get off in midtown. Highway 7 to downtown might be a 40 minute trip, but it's not as though everyone is going to travel that far. However, I would guess that most Peel commuters take the TTC straight into downtwon because there's less in between. Peel is therefore better served by a GO train that doesn't stop anywhere in Toronto except downtown. York and Peel may generate the same number of TTC trips, however the nature of those trips is quite different.
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I think you're on to something here. If I may add:

3) North York, to me at least, seems more visible than Etobicoke in the Toronto mindset. The Yonge corridor through North York contains probably the most successful suburban centre development in Toronto, if not the GTA. Etobicoke's city centre plan is still mostly just a plan as far as I know. If The Spadina extension, for most people I would wager, only makes sense because it serves York University. If there was a large university on the way to MCC, I'm sure there would be more urgency to extend the subway there. Yonge through North York is the urban drag that has been the centre of development for a rather long time. In Etobicoke, the main urban road would probably be Lake Shore. Bloor (and Dundas for that matter) are pretty suburban, the dreaded Six Points interchange posing a huge problem.

4) Geographically, there are few if any obstacles between downtown and central York Region. Between downtown and Peel there is both the Humber River Valley and the Etobicoke Creek Valley. These are not obstacles to construction necessarily, but they do impact how we see the city-region. Both valleys limit the street grid connectivity across the west side of the city. Which leads to...

5) The boundary between York and Toronto is pretty arbitrary. Even small side streets cross the border. There are many options for motorists, pedestrians, transit agencies, etc. so they feel more connected to each other. There are relatively few connections between Toronto and Peel (not to mention across the Humber). The boundary is more logical and more tangible. Mississauga feels further away, even if it's not.

6) The added transfer to get downtown from the Bloor-Danforth line makes travelling feel longer. Additionally, inevitibly an extension to MCC would get a lot of people asking "why the hell doesn't the subway go all the way to STC?" A very valid question that the TCC and the City probably want to avoid answering ("there's no real reason").

If Mississauga ever wants to pursue a subway extension to MCC, they should contemplate planning a new urban centre along its route - Dixie Town Centre or something like that. Hinging the success of an urban centre on a subway extension has worked out very well for York Region - the problem for MCC being that it has been fairly successful without a subway stop.
 
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