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

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Points for effort but:
-It's not Doug Ford's plan, it's Metrolinx and I think it's safe to say he has no clue about these kinds of specifics. It's possible he stuck his fingers in on Ontario Line, perhaps, but this is a different context.
-The cemetery isn't going to want an above-grade train running along its border (they can't complain about the existing CN corridor in the middle). And that's if your portal doesn't require disinterring dead bodies, which it might.
Anyway, it's not about disturbing dead people, it's about the Catholic Archdiocese asserting its property rights.
-Your hard left turn once it reaches the rail corridor is probably impossible for a subway to make.
-Baythorn seems to make some sense, because of the plazas there, but Royal Orchard's fate is tied to the single, large development there, for better or worse. The station is either a go or a no-go but it's not moving.
-I'm not entirely clear just where your Langstaff station is, except that it's south of what's planned for "Bridge.' The rail corridor is narrow there so I don't know there's really room to do what you're suggesting, but maybe.

Anyway, we can all come up with fantasy maps of what it should be but we have the IBC and we're (does the math) 13 years into this process, give or take. Things are getting more locked in now, not less. The stations are the real wild cards; I think the alignment is pretty set. I'm curious as to how much Metrolinx will be able to appease concerned Royal Orchard residents next week (I DO agree they'll be annoyed if they don't get a station but still have a tunnel underneath).

 

[Sagaris88]

Points for effort but:
-It's not Doug Ford's plan, it's Metrolinx and I think it's safe to say he has no clue about these kinds of specifics. It's possible he stuck his fingers in on Ontario Line, perhaps, but this is a different context.
-The cemetery isn't going to want an above-grade train running along its border (they can't complain about the existing CN corridor in the middle). And that's if your portal doesn't require disinterring dead bodies, which it might.
Anyway, it's not about disturbing dead people, it's about the Catholic Archdiocese asserting its property rights.
-Your hard left turn once it reaches the rail corridor is probably impossible for a subway to make.
-Baythorn seems to make some sense, because of the plazas there, but Royal Orchard's fate is tied to the single, large development there, for better or worse. The station is either a go or a no-go but it's not moving.
-I'm not entirely clear just where your Langstaff station is, except that it's south of what's planned for "Bridge.' The rail corridor is narrow there so I don't know there's really room to do what you're suggesting, but maybe.

Anyway, we can all come up with fantasy maps of what it should be but we have the IBC and we're (does the math) 13 years into this process, give or take. Things are getting more locked in now, not less. The stations are the real wild cards; I think the alignment is pretty set. I'm curious as to how much Metrolinx will be able to appease concerned Royal Orchard residents next week (I DO agree they'll be annoyed if they don't get a station but still have a tunnel underneath).

It's Doug Ford's plan still. He is the Premier. He is the one promoting and to build it. I don't see a necessary difference to split the authority of Metrolinx and Doug Ford, especially considering his history of meddling in transit projects.

Very true about property rights about the cemetery but I'm of the lane of that is one of the last things I care about, the rights of the Catholic Church. Cemeteries are wastes of space, especially with the Langstaff development area being bounded by it, and a detriment to the environment, with all the chemicals sprayed. Having to disturb and remove some coffins is negligible to me.

You can make the radius of the left turn bigger if you want. The room is there. Alignment 3 in the Initial Business Case is actually, unbeknownst to me, a similar alignment to my map of having an acute angle turn along the rail tracks. It's not impossible for the train to make, atleast according to Metrolinx, it's pretty possible.

I don't see the 10 Royal Orchard development tied to the subway and vice versa. The distance between the proposed new development at 10 Royal Orchard and Baythorn is pretty small. The area would be developed anyways.

It's industrial land. I don't see why land can't be bought and a station in between Langstaff and the cemetery boundaries can't be built there. It would be right in the middle of the Langstaff Development Area.

Yes and in that 13 years, the plans have changed. It's the Ford government, plans have changed and they will continue to change. Just because Metrolinx announced this new alignment one week ago does not mean eveyrhring is set into stone. It's the Initial Business Case, not the Final Business Case. They have three alignments they are looking at. So things are still not locked in and still in flux. Especially with an upcoming election next year.

 

[aquateam]

Quick map I made of what I think the Richmond Hill Subway extension should be instead.

An in-between the original all-underground alignment and Ford's new less-undergound-as-possible alignment. From Finch, it would go up north and turn east at the border of the Holy Cross Cemetary. It would come up to surface and then turn north when it comes to the train tracks to Richmond Hill Centre.

Obviously build Cummer/Drewry and Clark stations. A recent York Region News article outlined that residents are already unhappy with Ford's alignment of tunnelling under the neighbourhood near Royal Orchard. They would be even more unhappy if Ford tunnelled under their neighbourhood and does not even build Royal Orchard station to serve them. Royal Orchard Station was previously dropped from the original subway plan because it would have lower than Bessarion levels of ridership and growth. I propose putting a station slightly north at Baythorn to add more ridership closer to more existing homes and would allow more developable area, where there are many strip malls ripe for condos. It would be a shame if this neighbourhood gets zero rapid transit and just skips over, or under, them.

The residents complaining suggested digging under the cemetary instead as that would only disturb dead people. So I would suggest the subway to dig north and come out from the cemetary, thus saving tunnelling costs as per Ford's request. Then a station at Langstaff below Highway 407 as that is a high density urban plan area and would connnect to Langstaff GO Station. A station across the highway at Richmond Hill Centre would serve the high density urban plan area there and connect to Viva. The spacing in my proposal between these two stations would be closer to 700 to 800 metres as opposed to Ford's plan of High Tech and Bridge stations at 400 metres spacing.
View attachment 309296

I know you keep referring to this as "Ford's alignment", "Ford's request," etc. but I doubt he personally has interest in micromanaging subway alignments in the same way that us transit nerds do. This and the Ontario line both show the same kind of institutional thinking at Metrolinx that was present before Ford was premier. The original "Option 3" alignment was originally proposed back in this 2013 report, long before Ford was premier. So I don't think the "Ford's benighted map scribble vs. my enlightened subway solution" is a helpful framing.

Your map was posted a couple pages back and commented on but I'll repeat some messages:

1. Tight curves are a bad thing for subways because it results in more tunneling, slower trains (since longer distance + slow speed for navigating curves), and more maintenance. The TTC has a design standard for curves for new subways that even the old Union station doesn't meet. The extreme curviness of the Option 3 alignment is from the constraint of not tunneling under the cemetery. Your alignment is even curvier, yet manages to be the most disruptive to the cemetery since it involves digging up the surface of cemetery. The original option 3 avoids the residential neighbourhood, but still avoids moving corpses.
   
   For the amount of corpses you are proposing to reinter, you might as well move the cemetery in its entirety across the street to the vacant plot on the west side of Yonge. Then you could run the subway diagonally in a trench and open up all the near-station land for more development in the Langstaff Gateway.
   
   
2. The current "Bridge" location has the advantage of direct connections with the Highway 7 Rapidway, Langstaff GO (which has platforms north of Highway 7), and the future Highway 407 Transitway. Shifting Langstaff station south means that all those buses need to divert off of Highway 7/Highway 407 for a jog up to RHC, and it makes the transfer to Langstaff awkward.
   
   I agree 100% that RHC and Bridge stations are too close, but instead of shifting the Langstaff station south, I think it makes more sense to shift RHC north.
   
   
3. If the main goal is to have a station at Baythorn and the Langstaff station further south, then returning to the alignment options that stay on Yonge is probably a better way to do it since the neighbourhood station (Royal Oak/Baythorn) constrains the curve for meeting the rail corridor.
   
   
4. Personally, I would name the station "Thornhill" instead of "Baythorn" since it is on Thornhill Ave and is the only station in the middle of Thornhill. But Thornhill residents at Centre and Dufferin might disagree with that.

I'm not clear about your comment about cemeteries and sprayed chemicals. Generally cemeteries are treated as usable green space, used by joggers/walkers. I agree that they can be out of place sometimes, since many were built back when that part of the "city" was vacant and/or farmland, but I think we should still treat them with respect. But maybe banish any new cemeteries to the Greenbelt so we don't end up with conflicts like this.

 

[Sagaris88]

I know you keep referring to this as "Ford's alignment", "Ford's request," etc. but I doubt he personally has interest in micromanaging subway alignments in the same way that us transit nerds do. This and the Ontario line both show the same kind of institutional thinking at Metrolinx that was present before Ford was premier. The original "Option 3" alignment was originally proposed back in this 2013 report, long before Ford was premier. So I don't think the "Ford's benighted map scribble vs. my enlightened subway solution" is a helpful framing.

Your map was posted a couple pages back and commented on but I'll repeat some messages:

1. Tight curves are a bad thing for subways because it results in more tunneling, slower trains (since longer distance + slow speed for navigating curves), and more maintenance. The TTC has a design standard for curves for new subways that even the old Union station doesn't meet. The extreme curviness of the Option 3 alignment is from the constraint of not tunneling under the cemetery. Your alignment is even curvier, yet manages to be the most disruptive to the cemetery since it involves digging up the surface of cemetery. The original option 3 avoids the residential neighbourhood, but still avoids moving corpses.
   
   For the amount of corpses you are proposing to reinter, you might as well move the cemetery in its entirety across the street to the vacant plot on the west side of Yonge. Then you could run the subway diagonally in a trench and open up all the near-station land for more development in the Langstaff Gateway.
   
   
2. The current "Bridge" location has the advantage of direct connections with the Highway 7 Rapidway, Langstaff GO (which has platforms north of Highway 7), and the future Highway 407 Transitway. Shifting Langstaff station south means that all those buses need to divert off of Highway 7/Highway 407 for a jog up to RHC, and it makes the transfer to Langstaff awkward.
   
   I agree 100% that RHC and Bridge stations are too close, but instead of shifting the Langstaff station south, I think it makes more sense to shift RHC north.
   
   
3. If the main goal is to have a station at Baythorn and the Langstaff station further south, then returning to the alignment options that stay on Yonge is probably a better way to do it since the neighbourhood station (Royal Oak/Baythorn) constrains the curve for meeting the rail corridor.
   
   
4. Personally, I would name the station "Thornhill" instead of "Baythorn" since it is on Thornhill Ave and is the only station in the middle of Thornhill. But Thornhill residents at Centre and Dufferin might disagree with that.

I'm not clear about your comment about cemeteries and sprayed chemicals. Generally cemeteries are treated as usable green space, used by joggers/walkers. I agree that they can be out of place sometimes, since many were built back when that part of the "city" was vacant and/or farmland, but I think we should still treat them with respect. But maybe banish any new cemeteries to the Greenbelt so we don't end up with conflicts like this.

Again, I'm going to forcefully disagree at removing Ford, the government at the head of the province. It's pretty clear that Metrolinx is at the behest of the provincial government. Metrolinx isn't devolved from it. It isn't independent. To even think that Ford isn't into determining what transit projects look like is bemusing to me. Ever since his time as Toronto Councillor, he was meddling with existing transit proposals. Ford doesn't like micro managing transit??? That's seriously just ignoring his whole political career and the last three years of his premiership. I have no idea how you could think that. If you want me to believe that it's only a coincidence that Metrolinx changed their plans, some of them less than a year old and years into planning, to plans that Ford has campaigned and mused on, then sure.

The Option 3 being from 2012 as you say, which I don't believe, but if you have the documents to show, I'll be happy to see it. Because as a transit nerd, I've not seen Richmond Hill subway Planning documents indicating an above ground section, or the idea of a Bridge or High Tech Station until this new Initial Business Case. Nevertheless, the Initial Business Case came out last week, dated March 17 2021, not 2012. This is a new plan not the underground plan that was presumed for many many years. This is the plan that Metrolinx concluded as one of the alignments they are looking at. Old idea or not, this is now.

Again, my curve is very similar to Option 3. Again, my map could afford a wider radius. There is room for that. I'm looking at my map and the zoomed in map for the Alignment options in the IBC and your suggestion that my curve is much more acute than Option 3 is not believable. They are quite similar in angle and radius. And Option 3 does dig under the cemetary, so there would be disruption to the cemetary anyways. Don't tell me the radius is impossible for the subway to handle, tell Metrolinx, because as you say, they've had an acute angle turn since 2012 and still continue to propose it.

Yes, and to come out of a portal further in the cemetary would save costs. That's the point of this new at grade alignment announced last week. So why not save more money with minimal alterations. No, Option 3 includes digging under homes which is what the neighbourhood has been complaining about. Yes, my alignment would abut the north edge of the houses but, it is my alignment that minimizes digging under homes. Again, I have no care about digging up coffins.

I know your proposal to remove the whole cemetary is to stretch my cemetery logic to it's extent to show the flaws in it but uhm, I've clearly stated that I believe cemeteries are a waste of land, so yes, I have no problems digging up the cemetary to save money on the subway extension and to build more development around the subway station and more park space.

*No, that's false. Bridge Station is only connecting to the Langstaff GO Station. It is proposed to be right in line with Langstaff GO Station. If Bridge was slightly northwards, it would have a connection to the YRT Viva Bus terminal, but that would mean it's further away from the Langstaff development area. I've used Langstaff GO before. It is not connected to the bus terminal at all. It's long long walk there especially with the overhead pedestrian bridge. High Tech Station is the station that would have connections to Viva and the Highway 407 Transit way. The bus terminal is much closer to High Tech than Bridge stations. The Bus terminal would be around 100m from High Tech and possibly 300m from Bridge Station from where the alignment map shows the station. Bridge Station's advantage is for a GO connection, not a 407 or Viva bus connection. High Tech is what will have the more consequential connections.*
EDIT: I did not notice that the bus bay would have moved to a new location. Please ignore. Apologies.

Shifting Langstaff subway station south would mean the station would be in greater proximity to most people in the Langstaff development area. Bridge Station is literally inbetween two highways. A lot less people can access Bridge Station if it was there than let's say Langstaff station right in the middle of the the development area and connecting to the Langstaff GO station as well. A Langstaff subway station could very well be just immediately south of the GO station where the northern edge of the subway system could reach the GO station.

Shifting RHC/High Tech Station even further north as indicated in the alignments, would mean High Tech Station would be north of High Tech road. It'll mean it's much closer to the single family homes and less proximity to the mass of dense development at RHC closer to Highway 7. Making the northernmost station further north is a bad idea.

Good idea on Thornhill station naming.

I've no idea what cemetery you've been to that's as used daily as a park let alone a mass of joggers and walkers. A cemetery is one of the least usable green spaces (and with the chemicals used, it's not really green). Because you know, there are graves everywhere. I mean I guess you can pass around a ball between gravestones. Cemeteries are a waste of space that could be used for more housing or more park space. A cemetery is not a park, let alone many of them are gated. See this is where the generational and cultural divide comes in (I'm assuming). I don't see the need to respect cemeteries for wasting valuable land in a major city and a scourge on the environment with bodies releasing water and chemicals, the coffins releasing the varnish chemicals and the chemicals sprayed on the grass surface to keep the graveyard in keep. There have been many studies devoted to the effect cemeteries have on the environment. A WHO studied claimed that cemeteries are conceptually a type of landfill. Which they are. What if all the past cemeteries in New York City, Tokyo and Paris were still kept today because of respect? There would be much less space I can tell you that.

 

[tsm1072]

No, that's false. Bridge Station is only connecting to the Langstaff GO Station. It is proposed to be right in line with Langstaff GO Station. If Bridge was slightly northwards, it would have a connection to the YRT Viva Bus terminal, but that would mean it's further away from the Langstaff development area. I've used Langstaff GO before. It is not connected to the bus terminal at all. It's long long walk there especially with the overhead pedestrian bridge. High Tech Station is the station that would have connections to Viva and the Highway 407 Transit way. The bus terminal is much closer to High Tech than Bridge stations. The Bus terminal would be around 100m from High Tech and possibly 300m from Bridge Station from where the alignment map shows the station. Bridge Station's advantage is for a GO connection, not a 407 or Viva bus connection. High Tech is what will have the more consequential connections.

Please read the business case before making statements like this. Below is copy and pasted from page 37 of the business case here.

Bridge Station is the name given to this concept in the IBC. It would be an integrated transit facility located under the Highway 7 and 407 corridors. This location allows it to be accessed from both the Richmond Hill Centre and Langstaff Gateway development area. While the design has not been finalized the station has an opportunity to serve as link between adjacent urbanizing communities.

Perhaps most importantly, the Bridge Station has the potential to optimize and centralize subway access for the Langstaff Community. While previous concepts have included a subway entrance south of Highway 407 at Yonge St., this access has been challenged by being located on the western periphery of the Langstaff Gateway development area. The Bridge concept in Option 2 pulls the station entrance further east, while in Option 3 the station is in an even more central location adjacent to the rail corridor. As will be demonstrated in this IBC, in either of the options the western half the Langstaff site is more effectively served, while bringing far more of the developable area to the east within walking distance of the subway.

The station will feature significant bus facilities to serve Regional GO Bus Routes, and local York Region Transit routes. An advantage of the Bridge station location is the opportunity to integrate the frequent VIVA BRT routes into the terminal design, optimizing the connection between higher order transit modes. The Bridge concept puts not only the subway at the connection point of the two development areas, but it puts the full transit hub at the same location. Residents on both sides of the highway corridor have access to local and regional buses serving York Region and the wider Greater Toronto Area.

The Bridge station is also well positioned to provide a seamless connection with the Langstaff GO Station. This connection is valuable for not only transit users transferring between the Subway and Richmond Hill GO Corridor but will also allow GO rail customer to access the station with a common conveniently located bus facility.

The other strength of the Bridge station is that it seeks to take advantage of lands that are constrained for other uses. The Bridge Station and its associated transportation infrastructure are appropriately contained within the existing Highway 7 and 407 corridors, leaving as much of the adjacent development areas as possible free for placemaking development.

 

[Sagaris88]

Please read the business case before making statements like this. Below is copy and pasted from page 37 of the business case here.

View attachment 309375

Oh thank you for pointing that out, I must have missed that part in the IBC, my apologies. Disregard my points about that. Then my criticisms of althe YRT bus bay like that is that it's not necessarily close to the population, it's abutted in-between Highway 7 and Highway 407. But I suppose that's a usable space for it. But if the bus bay was moved further north, yes, there would be possibly more turns, but much more people would be in proximity to it. Which just comes back to the point that the placement of Bridge and thus the bus bay is sandwiched between two impermeable highway infrastructures that reduces the possibility that more people will live around Bridge and the bus bay.

And the criticism of the placement of Bridge Station still stands in that it is much further north and away in proximity to most of the Langstaff development area. Seems like Bridge Station is there for the first thought of connecting to the bus bay as proposed rather than having more people live in close proximity to it.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

All due respect, some of this stuff is wrong and some of it just doesn't matter.

Again, I'm going to forcefully disagree at removing Ford, the government at the head of the province. It's pretty clear that Metrolinx is at the behest of the provincial government. Metrolinx isn't devolved from it. It isn't independent. To even think that Ford isn't into determining what transit projects look like is bemusing to me. Ever since his time as Toronto Councillor, he was meddling with existing transit proposals. Ford doesn't like micro managing transit??? That's seriously just ignoring his whole political career and the last three years of his premiership. I have no idea how you could think that. If you want me to believe that it's only a coincidence that Metrolinx changed their plans, some of them less than a year old and years into planning, to plans that Ford has campaigned and mused on, then sure.

No one can stop you if you want to call it the Ford Subway but, though I'm no fan of the man, I don't see it that way at all. It's only "his" in that he prioritized it alongside the 3 other packaged projects and clearly there was a directive to modify the project to fit within a funding envelope. I don't think that makes it a coincidence. It's been a long time since the initial TPAP and IBC were done and now we're getting down to the nitty gritty. If you want to call SCARBOROUGH his subway, I wouldn't necessarily disagree there...

Again, my curve is very similar to Option 3.

Yes. And they rejected that alignment, for the reasons spelled out in the IBC, even if the radius works from an engineering perspective. As you yourself note, it goes under the cemetery; that's probably partly why it was rejected. (Per the IBC, it's cheaper but also longer, attracts fewer riders and is underwhelming in several other areas of the analysis).

It doesn't matter how much you or I care about the coffins (which is to say, the remains of actual human beings). The Catholic Church certainly does care and they own the land and that's all that matters. Their one institution has a lot more pull than 60 suburbanites, fair or not.

You're not wrong about the compromises made with Bridge Station - it's not ideal (especially in relation to High Tech) but it's better than what they had and seems like an overall decent idea in most respects.

I've no idea what cemetery you've been to that's as used daily as a park let alone a mass of joggers and walkers. A cemetery is one of the least usable green spaces (and with the chemicals used, it's not really green).

Um, this is one of the primary functions of Mt. Pleasant cemetery, off the top of my head. It's connected to the Beltline trail. The Toronto Necropolis is another one people stroll through.
Yeah, they have graves but if you've been to a cemetery you know there are also paths, right? There are also historic graves people visit in Mt. Pleasant, but that's beside the point.
You seem to be confusing golf courses and cemeteries, or something.

Anyway, we can all make our fantasy maps and suggestions but it won't change the reality of the IBC. It will no doubt be tweaked (picking the final station being a biggie) but there's going to have to be a heck of an outcry to get them to reconsider the alignment, especially if it involves going through the cemetery lands.

 

[tsm1072]

• Oh thank you for pointing that out, I must have missed that part in the IBC, my apologies. Disregard my points about that. Then my criticisms of althe YRT bus bay like that is that it's not necessarily close to the population, it's abutted in-between Highway 7 and Highway 407. But I suppose that's a usable space for it. But if the bus bay was moved further north, yes, there would be possibly more turns, but much more people would be in proximity to it. Which just comes back to the point that the placement of Bridge and thus the bus bay is sandwiched between two impermeable highway infrastructures that reduces the possibility that more people will live around Bridge and the bus bay.

And the criticism of the placement of Bridge Station still stands in that it is much further north and away in proximity to most of the Langstaff development area. Seems like Bridge Station is there for the first thought of connecting to the bus bay as proposed rather than having more people live in close proximity to it.

I think bridge station is a great example of good transit planning when you have a long-term vision. At the cost of a 100-200m longer walk for local residents, you get a station that provides easy and convenient transfer for:

• A subway that leads downtown with many destinations and transfers along its length
• A regional rail line that can provide express service to downtown, and stops and different destinations than the subway.
• A bus rapidway network that provides fast and frequent service to most of the high-density areas in York region. This network acts as a series of LRT lines with lower capacity and more interlining capabilities. It will also act as a major transfer point for this system due to its central location. The new terminal also allows a shorter detour from Highway 7.
• A future regional bus transitway, with strong East-West connections across the GTA. This transitway will act like a lower-capacity regional rail network.

If designed well, the station can also provide more appealing pedestrian links between Langstaff and Richmond Hill Centre, providing a more interconnected community.

 

[Sagaris88]

All due respect, some of this stuff is wrong and some of it just doesn't matter.


No one can stop you if you want to call it the Ford Subway but, though I'm no fan of the man, I don't see it that way at all. It's only "his" in that he prioritized it alongside the 3 other packaged projects and clearly there was a directive to modify the project to fit within a funding envelope. I don't think that makes it a coincidence. It's been a long time since the initial TPAP and IBC were done and now we're getting down to the nitty gritty. If you want to call SCARBOROUGH his subway, I wouldn't necessarily disagree there...



Yes. And they rejected that alignment, for the reasons spelled out in the IBC, even if the radius works from an engineering perspective. As you yourself note, it goes under the cemetery; that's probably partly why it was rejected. (Per the IBC, it's cheaper but also longer, attracts fewer riders and is underwhelming in several other areas of the analysis).

It doesn't matter how much you or I care about the coffins (which is to say, the remains of actual human beings). The Catholic Church certainly does care and they own the land and that's all that matters. Their one institution has a lot more pull than 60 suburbanites, fair or not.

You're not wrong about the compromises made with Bridge Station - it's not ideal (especially in relation to High Tech) but it's better than what they had and seems like an overall decent idea in most respects.



Um, this is one of the primary functions of Mt. Pleasant cemetery, off the top of my head. It's connected to the Beltline trail. The Toronto Necropolis is another one people stroll through.
Yeah, they have graves but if you've been to a cemetery you know there are also paths, right? There are also historic graves people visit in Mt. Pleasant, but that's beside the point.
You seem to be confusing golf courses and cemeteries, or something.

Anyway, we can all make our fantasy maps and suggestions but it won't change the reality of the IBC. It will no doubt be tweaked (picking the final station being a biggie) but there's going to have to be a heck of an outcry to get them to reconsider the alignment, especially if it involves going through the cemetery lands.

Ford has been messing with almost every transit plan that was thought to be set-in-stone, to believe that there wasn't a change of planning theory when Ford came in is unbelievable given his track record. To simply say only the Scarborough Subway has his fingerprints on is fanciful.

Just an honest question, which part of the document says Option 3 has already been rejected? Because I cannot find it, some of the text says that all three of them are people considered. There isn't a specific alignment that has been specifically called out as recommended. But if there is, please correct me.

I highly do not think that we are still in the era where the Catholic Church, a cemetary, has and should have enough pull to force their way in a planning project. To simply just put hierarchy on cemetary lands as untouchable is not the way of the future.

Uhm no, to even think that a cemetary is as useful as a park, that so many people use, is also fanciful. Which is why there are so many cemetaries downtown and so many cemetaries being planned, right? Great, they can walk and jog. Is that it? A park and open green space has much more use than walking and jogging. And if you want to use the claim that cemetaries are useful for walking, which is your only example, they are exactly walking on the graves are they? How much of the area of the graveyard is actually being used by pedestrians? A whole lot less than if it was a park. That's great that you like to walk around the Necropolis, because that is fun, but a park or development is wholly much more useful than a cemetary. Let alone the environmental aspects a cemetery contributes to. There is no confusion. It is a landfill of chemical seepage that wastes space.

 

[ear2ear]

Please read the business case before making statements like this. Below is copy and pasted from page 37 of the business case here.

View attachment 309375

While I still can't believe there's a case being made for a station at High Tech Road, I am somewhat amused that it's location mirrors the "desire path" of the early 2000's when I worked at that Home Depot and regularly cut through the fences there to get across to the bus terminal. This was before the pedestrian bridge was built, and the crossings were so frequent that it was common to see rail enforcement parked nearby to ticket people for trespassing (the worst I got was a warning).

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Ford has been messing with almost every transit plan that was thought to be set-in-stone, to believe that there wasn't a change of planning theory when Ford came in is unbelievable given his track record. To simply say only the Scarborough Subway has his fingerprints on is fanciful.

He knows Scarborough (or thinks he does). He doesn't know Yonge/Steeles from a hole in the wall but anyway, like I said, you can call it what you want.

Just an honest question, which part of the document says Option 3 has already been rejected? Because I cannot find it, some of the text says that all three of them are people considered. There isn't a specific alignment that has been specifically called out as recommended. But if there is, please correct me.

No, you're right - I over-stated. The document does not draw explicit conclusions but if you read between the lines, you can see where they're headed by looking at the analysis. The same goes for the stations - they don't say which of the remaining 3 they prefer, and politically they could decide to do anything, but the numbers in the analysis all point in one direction.

I highly do not think that we are still in the era where the Catholic Church, a cemetary, has and should have enough pull to force their way in a planning project. To simply just put hierarchy on cemetary lands as untouchable is not the way of the future.

They're a wealthy, powerful landowner. The religious aspect is really kind of beside the point. Cemeteries do get moved and bodies re-interred but this is a big cemetery and it would be pretty exceptional, especially since the IBC clearly shows them trying to interfere with it as little as possible.

Uhm no, to even think that a cemetary is as useful as a park, that so many people use, is also fanciful.

I didn't say it's "as useful as a park." I said people do use it as a greenspace, jogging and biking through it.
We can say all kinds of public land uses are preferable but the cemeteries we're talking about are private landholdings that the public is generally free to use. So, that's a type of greenspace, neither as useful as a proper public park, nor as useless as a private golf course, which is publicly inaccessible green space. So, it won't help the developers in getting out of how much land they need to give for parks but it will definitely be an amenity for residents - a quiet, green space (that will never have developments to block their view), right next door.

As for the environmental impacts... if you say they're bad, maybe they are. Still, we bury dead people. And that's where we bury them.

 

[Sagaris88]

I think bridge station is a great example of good transit planning when you have a long-term vision. At the cost of a 100-200m longer walk for local residents, you get a station that provides easy and convenient transfer for:

• A subway that leads downtown with many destinations and transfers along its length
• A regional rail line that can provide express service to downtown, and stops and different destinations than the subway.
• A bus rapidway network that provides fast and frequent service to most of the high-density areas in York region. This network acts as a series of LRT lines with lower capacity and more interlining capabilities. It will also act as a major transfer point for this system due to its central location. The new terminal also allows a shorter detour from Highway 7.
• A future regional bus transitway, with strong East-West connections across the GTA. This transitway will act like a lower-capacity regional rail network.

If designed well, the station can also provide more appealing pedestrian links between Langstaff and Richmond Hill Centre, providing a more interconnected community.

I think bridge station is a great example of good transit planning when you have a long-term vision. At the cost of a 100-200m longer walk for local residents, you get a station that provides easy and convenient transfer for:

• A subway that leads downtown with many destinations and transfers along its length
• A regional rail line that can provide express service to downtown, and stops and different destinations than the subway.
• A bus rapidway network that provides fast and frequent service to most of the high-density areas in York region. This network acts as a series of LRT lines with lower capacity and more interlining capabilities. It will also act as a major transfer point for this system due to its central location. The new terminal also allows a shorter detour from Highway 7.
• A future regional bus transitway, with strong East-West connections across the GTA. This transitway will act like a lower-capacity regional rail network.

If designed well, the station can also provide more appealing pedestrian links between Langstaff and Richmond Hill Centre, providing a more interconnected community.

I agree, mitigations to provide better ease of accessibility for transit riders will make the plan better. It's a trade off, for example, the bus bay and Bridge Station as it is, will allow some people on both sides to use rapid transit there but less say a Langstaff South station, away from the bus bays but will allow more people to access the subway in proximity but a worse interchange to the bus bays from the subway. In short, I see this a choice between connections or riders in proximity. And in this plan, the connections is more important.

It may be a good compromise, I'm not in hatred of it, if it happens as so, I can see why they did it many modes of transport in one station which is fantastic, but I feel like instead of making mitigations to get users to the transit, I'll rather have the transit be by the users in the first place. Bridge being in the middle of two highway infrastructures thus limiting development around the station will always irk me as lost opportunity.

 

[Sagaris88]

While I still can't believe there's a case being made for a station at High Tech Road, I am somewhat amused that it's location mirrors the "desire path" of the early 2000's when I worked at that Home Depot and regularly cut through the fences there to get across to the bus terminal. This was before the pedestrian bridge was built, and the crossings were so frequent that it was common to see rail enforcement parked nearby to ticket people for trespassing (the worst I got was a warning).

That's really crazy that it's just recently that pedestrian safety for railway crossings has come to attention.

 

[Sagaris88]

He knows Scarborough (or thinks he does). He doesn't know Yonge/Steeles from a hole in the wall but anyway, like I said, you can call it what you want.



No, you're right - I over-stated. The document does not draw explicit conclusions but if you read between the lines, you can see where they're headed by looking at the analysis. The same goes for the stations - they don't say which of the remaining 3 they prefer, and politically they could decide to do anything, but the numbers in the analysis all point in one direction.



They're a wealthy, powerful landowner. The religious aspect is really kind of beside the point. Cemeteries do get moved and bodies re-interred but this is a big cemetery and it would be pretty exceptional, especially since the IBC clearly shows them trying to interfere with it as little as possible.



I didn't say it's "as useful as a park." I said people do use it as a greenspace, jogging and biking through it.
We can say all kinds of public land uses are preferable but the cemeteries we're talking about are private landholdings that the public is generally free to use. So, that's a type of greenspace, neither as useful as a proper public park, nor as useless as a private golf course, which is publicly inaccessible green space. So, it won't help the developers in getting out of how much land they need to give for parks but it will definitely be an amenity for residents - a quiet, green space (that will never have developments to block their view), right next door.

As for the environmental impacts... if you say they're bad, maybe they are. Still, we bury dead people. And that's where we bury them.

Yes, and cemeteries as less useful than a park or thousands of units of housing. So why put so much emphasis on them? A quiet green space is so such a minimal requirement for usage. The area of Holy Cross is even bigger than the Langstaff development area. All that's space for some people to have a quiet stroll is a waste of space. Condo developers do not advertise being next to a cemetery as an amenity. People would rather a lively park with families playing various sports, having picnics, with local flora and fauna etc than dead people. More and more people are cremating so the devote so much space that could be used for so much more is past thinking and wasteful. And no, they aren't "maybe" environmentally bad. They are environmentally bad. Which is why there have been many ideas as to remedy the environmental impact of burial like the "green burial". The mass of chemicals that come from the corpse, coffin and landscaping seeps into the groundwater. According to the Berkeley Planning Journal, 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde are pumped into the ground every year in the US because of burial and the embalming that comes with it. 30 million board feet of hardwoods, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 104,272 tons of steel, and 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete are used every year. The upkeep of the landscaping include pesticides that seep into the water system and harmful to wildlife like bees. Speaking of wildlife, cemeteries aren't usually known for his diverse fauna and flora but a more monoculture that is not natural, like maybe just a handful of tree species and practically no flowers. Don't get me wrong, the chemicals of a cremation are still harmful but atleast it doesn't take the space of a downtown centre. Whereby all the cemeteries in the US combine to over 1 million acres, while both the US and Canada have a lot of land, land in the city is valuable and they aren't going to make more of it (unless they do land reclamation but that's only a handful of cities can do that). Which makes Holy Cross Cemetery such an inhibitor to progress in providing more homes, more park space and a more ecological environment. It's a tradition for millenia but it's a harmful one.

 

[aquateam]

Again, I'm going to forcefully disagree at removing Ford, the government at the head of the province. It's pretty clear that Metrolinx is at the behest of the provincial government. Metrolinx isn't devolved from it. It isn't independent. To even think that Ford isn't into determining what transit projects look like is bemusing to me. Ever since his time as Toronto Councillor, he was meddling with existing transit proposals. Ford doesn't like micro managing transit??? That's seriously just ignoring his whole political career and the last three years of his premiership. I have no idea how you could think that. If you want me to believe that it's only a coincidence that Metrolinx changed their plans, some of them less than a year old and years into planning, to plans that Ford has campaigned and mused on, then sure.

The Option 3 being from 2012 as you say, which I don't believe, but if you have the documents to show, I'll be happy to see it. Because as a transit nerd, I've not seen Richmond Hill subway Planning documents indicating an above ground section, or the idea of a Bridge or High Tech Station until this new Initial Business Case. Nevertheless, the Initial Business Case came out last week, dated March 17 2021, not 2012. This is a new plan not the underground plan that was presumed for many many years. This is the plan that Metrolinx concluded as one of the alignments they are looking at. Old idea or not, this is now.

Whoops my bad, I took another look and the document from 2013 that I linked to compared options 1, 2, and 2a instead of 1, 2, and 3. So yes, it's new but I doubt it was any more involvement from him personally than a directive to "innovate" to stay within a project budget and avoid unnecessary blowback.

Again, my curve is very similar to Option 3. Again, my map could afford a wider radius. There is room for that. I'm looking at my map and the zoomed in map for the Alignment options in the IBC and your suggestion that my curve is much more acute than Option 3 is not believable. They are quite similar in angle and radius. And Option 3 does dig under the cemetary, so there would be disruption to the cemetary anyways. Don't tell me the radius is impossible for the subway to handle, tell Metrolinx, because as you say, they've had an acute angle turn since 2012 and still continue to propose it.

This is Metrolinx's curve

Eyeballing it looks like a ~430 meter curve, which is already not great.

This is your alignment, the curve seems to be a little over ~150 meters. The cemetery is only ~300 meters wide and you are turning more than ~110 degrees, so for you to do the turn entirely within the cemetery means that <300 meters is the maximum minimum turn radius. But at that point you would just be cutting across it, not staying to the one end.

So yes, the curve is tighter with your alignment, which is natural when you only have a strip of land to work with vs. an entire neighbourhood to tunnel under.

The the bigger question is: You've avoided the disruption of tunnelling 25 meters below some people's homes to instead:

1. Create an at-grade corridor running through those same people's backyards
2. Eliminate the potential "rumbling" of deep underground trains and replace it with the screech of trains navigating a tight curve above ground (curves are responsible for almost all the noise and wear-and-tear on tracks)
3. Carve up a good chunk of the cemetery for the TBM extraction point, portal, curve and at-grade corridor

Yes, and to come out of a portal further in the cemetary would save costs. That's the point of this new at grade alignment announced last week. So why not save more money with minimal alterations. No, Option 3 includes digging under homes which is what the neighbourhood has been complaining about. Yes, my alignment would abut the north edge of the houses but, it is my alignment that minimizes digging under homes. Again, I have no care about digging up coffins.

I know your proposal to remove the whole cemetary is to stretch my cemetery logic to it's extent to show the flaws in it but uhm, I've clearly stated that I believe cemeteries are a waste of land, so yes, I have no problems digging up the cemetary to save money on the subway extension and to build more development around the subway station and more park space.

I wasn't trying to do a reductio ad absurdum on your post, I was suggesting what I thought was a better option if the cemetery can be moved. The difference between option 3 and your alignment is that option 3 (the original, unrefined option 3 from the IBC) went under the cemetery and came at-grade in the CN corridor, so it doesn't involve moving bodies. It might be worth calculating what the cost savings are of having a trench through the cemetery vs. tunneling around it. If we save $400 million in construction costs and the Archdiocese is willing to accept $100 million in compensation for moving the cemetery across the street, it would be worth negotiating a settlement.

Shifting Langstaff subway station south would mean the station would be in greater proximity to most people in the Langstaff development area. Bridge Station is literally inbetween two highways. A lot less people can access Bridge Station if it was there than let's say Langstaff station right in the middle of the the development area and connecting to the Langstaff GO station as well. A Langstaff subway station could very well be just immediately south of the GO station where the northern edge of the subway system could reach the GO station.

Shifting RHC/High Tech Station even further north as indicated in the alignments, would mean High Tech Station would be north of High Tech road. It'll mean it's much closer to the single family homes and less proximity to the mass of dense development at RHC closer to Highway 7. Making the northernmost station further north is a bad idea.

I'm suggesting moving it to Bantry, so it would be spaced evenly between Highway 7 and 16th Avenue. The two stations could have overlapping walksheds in the RHC area and "bookend" the development there. It would put it next to a bunch of highrises, not single family housing. But it would lose the direct link with High Tech road. High Tech road and Highway 7 are ~400 meters apart, so it's not really possible to have subway stops serve both without being close together.

I've no idea what cemetery you've been to that's as used daily as a park let alone a mass of joggers and walkers. A cemetery is one of the least usable green spaces (and with the chemicals used, it's not really green). Because you know, there are graves everywhere. I mean I guess you can pass around a ball between gravestones. Cemeteries are a waste of space that could be used for more housing or more park space. A cemetery is not a park, let alone many of them are gated. See this is where the generational and cultural divide comes in (I'm assuming). I don't see the need to respect cemeteries for wasting valuable land in a major city and a scourge on the environment with bodies releasing water and chemicals, the coffins releasing the varnish chemicals and the chemicals sprayed on the grass surface to keep the graveyard in keep. There have been many studies devoted to the effect cemeteries have on the environment. A WHO studied claimed that cemeteries are conceptually a type of landfill. Which they are. What if all the past cemeteries in New York City, Tokyo and Paris were still kept today because of respect? There would be much less space I can tell you that.

I live near to this cemetery, and sometimes jog through it.

I'll admit that I would prefer if it had more water and mature trees as a park. And it has operating hours, which is a limitation that Toronto parks don't have. But I wouldn't consider it a landfill leaking toxic chemicals.

San Francisco, in its history, hastily relocated most of its cemeteries. A lot of the gravestones ended up as landfill and you can find tombstones wash up on the beach.