Transit City: Sheppard East Debate

[andomano]

The Harbourfront LRT line seems to do fine in the winter. I'm sure with their close proximity to the Lake and major roads such as the Gardiner, this would be the most affected by dampness and road salt dust. Why should any of the TC lines be any more affected by this phenomenon you describe than the HLRT?

 

[kettal]

All those that you've listed do not use Road Salt. The dust kicked-up from the crushed Road Salt gets into the inner workings of all sorts of things such as Signalling equipment & Electrical Transformers. Road Salt mixed with dampness is a menace.

Calgary uses road salt, Minneapolis uses lots of road salt, Russia uses plenty of road salt, Sweden uses road salt, and has darker, damper, winters than Toronto.

Scarborough RT, all uncovered portions of the Subway how do you explain that ?

Scarborough RT has a propulsion system which uses magnets, and ice is a big problem for the Scarborough RT propulsion. That is one of the reasons it is being replaced with non-magnetic LRT in the near future.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Warden & Highway 7, Warden & Enterprise (Markham Centre) are turning into exactly those renderings right now on the strength of an official plan.

Sheppard + Victoria Park isn't surrounded by empty fields.

My hat-eating challenge stands.
I should also add that I'm only 24, so there's plenty of time for them to pretend it's going to come to fruition.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Everyone here should take a trip to Sheppard West between Dufferin and Bathurst, the city's first real suburb-to-Avenue conversion site. These things always look better in watercolour renderings than in real life.

 

[kettal]

I used to work in that neighbourhood only a couple years ago. I can't claim to have seen the watercolour renderings that preceded it, but I'd say it's a damn good improvement over the status quo, wouldn't you agree?

 

[kEiThZ]

Everyone here should take a trip to Sheppard West between Dufferin and Bathurst, the city's first real suburb-to-Avenue conversion site. These things always look better in watercolour renderings than in real life.

And the hilarious part is that half of Sheppard East doesn't even have avenuization potential. From McCowan till Morningside it's all backyards. From Morninside till Meadowvale it's mostly industrial or housing and retail that's already built and can't be easily rezoned. This stretch of Sheppard East has even less potential than Sheppard West.

 

[Dan416]

Shh don't tell anyone otherwise they'll realize what a farce "Transit City" is when said in the same breath as "Avenuization".

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I used to work in that neighbourhood only a couple years ago. I can't claim to have seen the watercolour renderings that preceded it, but I'd say it's a damn good improvement over the status quo, wouldn't you agree?

People think we're gonna get a Parisian avenue - or, at the very least, something like the Danforth or Queen or Yonge - but this just isn't going to happen...not if Sheppard West is any indication (and it is). But it's 'density' and it's more people living near transit as opposed to living in Caledon and so on. It is progress and it does means the city is moving forward, but it's also incredibly ugly and dreary and the neighbourhood is utterly lifeless, and it will remain like this until the redevelopment is complete, which might take 20 years. It still might be dead and brutal when finished, more like some Ceaucescu/Soviet/North Korea boulevard where a tacky urban veneer on display than Barcelona or Buenos Aires or Bloor.

It needs little things like a landscaped median instead of an endless left-turn lane, or less chaotic sidewalk + tree combos. The buildings are bad enough without such an enduringly suburban street in front of them, but take a hideous building with blank walls at eye level, and put grass, then a sidewalk, then *more* grass in front...well, so much for urban. The scattered redevelopment also ensures that each building comes with a driveway off Sheppard instead of off side-streets or alleys. At least North York Centre has the service roads which have kept Yonge street frontage more or less intact. Hopefully, Sheppard West will be the experiment and the growing pains, not the model.

Sheppard East around Bayview, another Avenues-style region of development, is proceeding the same way and while the overall neighbourhood is "better" than before - on paper, anyway - the street-level experience is disappointing, to say the least. We'll see what happens east of there. Good intentions and watercolour spiffery isn't enough...if we don't get actual functioning urban neighbourhoods out of it, we might as well hand the entire city over to Tridel and let them go nuts with master-planned, self-contained, and twinned condo communities.

 

[waterloowarrior]

Warden & Highway 7, Warden & Enterprise (Markham Centre) are turning into exactly those renderings right now on the strength of an official plan. Condos with ground-level retail, both midrise and highrise, are popping up. The area is unrecognizable from what it was 5 years ago. This is happening around Viva, a St. Clair-style BRT, even before the median is built.

There is no reason why the same cannot happen along Sheppard. Current property owners might object, but as long as there's zoning backing up the official plan, it will happen.

A lot of that is large parcels master planned by one property owner, so it's different and less challenging than redeveloping back yards and lots with much smaller frontages

 

[kettal]

People think we're gonna get a Parisian avenue - or, at the very least, something like the Danforth or Queen or Yonge - but this just isn't going to happen...not if Sheppard West is any indication (and it is). But it's 'density' and it's more people living near transit as opposed to living in Caledon and so on. It is progress and it does means the city is moving forward, but it's also incredibly ugly and dreary and the neighbourhood is utterly lifeless, and it will remain like this until the redevelopment is complete, which might take 20 years. It still might be dead and brutal when finished, more like some Ceaucescu/Soviet/North Korea boulevard where a tacky urban veneer on display than Barcelona or Buenos Aires or Bloor.

It needs little things like a landscaped median instead of an endless left-turn lane, or less chaotic sidewalk + tree combos. The buildings are bad enough without such an enduringly suburban street in front of them, but take a hideous building with blank walls at eye level, and put grass, then a sidewalk, then *more* grass in front...well, so much for urban. The scattered redevelopment also ensures that each building comes with a driveway off Sheppard instead of off side-streets or alleys. At least North York Centre has the service roads which have kept Yonge street frontage more or less intact. Hopefully, Sheppard West will be the experiment and the growing pains, not the model.

Sheppard East around Bayview, another Avenues-style region of development, is proceeding the same way and while the overall neighbourhood is "better" than before - on paper, anyway - the street-level experience is disappointing, to say the least. We'll see what happens east of there. Good intentions and watercolour spiffery isn't enough...if we don't get actual functioning urban neighbourhoods out of it, we might as well hand the entire city over to Tridel and let them go nuts with master-planned, self-contained, and twinned condo communities.

Any new neighbourhood development has teething years. If a strip mall goes up in a suburb, it can be expected that half of the businesses will fail in the first year, and half the storefronts will be empty or underused for about 5. It doesn't really matter if it's a giant parking lot, or ground floor of a mid-rise apartment.

The TC avenues will come with improved streetscapes, and obviously not a constant left-turn lane. It will probably have the feel of two small one-way streets, compared to Sheppard Avenue in the sections you are discussing.

Of course everybody wish we could wave a magic wand and make it into St. Clair Avenue overnight, but we know it doesn't work like that.

 

[kEiThZ]

But again, how do you even develop places where there's no strip malls. There's a whole 5 km stretch from McCowan to Morningside that has only a strip mall or two, but consists mostly of backyards. From Morningside to Meadowvale is questionable too but there's a bit more potential there than the preceeding stretch. That's about 7.4 km of questionable investment out of 13.6 km in total. If somebody told you that you'd get a poor return on 54% of your investment plan, would you still think said plan to be wise?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Any new neighbourhood development has teething years. If a strip mall goes up in a suburb, it can be expected that half of the businesses will fail in the first year, and half the storefronts will be empty or underused for about 5. It doesn't really matter if it's a giant parking lot, or ground floor of a mid-rise apartment.

The TC avenues will come with improved streetscapes, and obviously not a constant left-turn lane. It will probably have the feel of two small one-way streets, compared to Sheppard Avenue in the sections you are discussing.

Of course everybody wish we could wave a magic wand and make it into St. Clair Avenue overnight, but we know it doesn't work like that.

No, blank precast walls or shuttered up condo amenities at eye level and a streetwall continuously broken up by driveways aren't teething problems, they're permanent flaws that should not be repeated. Many of the new projects along Sheppard - and the same is true of Finch, too - don't even have street retail. There are few empty storefronts, actually...but nail salons and chiropractors don't do much for the street.

It'll be vastly easier to manufacture decent new Avenues - like Downtown Markham - than to retrofit old ones lot by lot. Hopefully, there's enough urban bones left in old Agincourt to make the end result something worth building...other blocks will have to fend for themselves. One problem that won't go away (even if 8 bike lanes are built to eat up all the grass) is the extreme setbacks, where new buildings get pushed back to accommodate existing buildings (that are slated for eventual replacement) rather than pushed forward to support a new and better streetwall.

 

[kettal]

But again, how do you even develop places where there's no strip malls. There's a whole 5 km stretch from McCowan to Morningside that has only a strip mall or two, but consists mostly of backyards. From Morningside to Meadowvale is questionable too but there's a bit more potential there than the preceeding stretch. That's about 7.4 km of questionable investment out of 13.6 km in total. If somebody told you that you'd get a poor return on 54% of your investment plan, would you still think said plan to be wise?

I'm under no illusion that these backyards will go anywhere in the near future, and to my knowledge it's not even zoned for mixed use in the official plan.

If you only measure transit improvements on their ability to magically transform every square inch of the street, yes, you will be disappointed with the east end of Sheppard. Finch West and most of Eglinton certainly have more potential.

 

[kettal]

No, blank precast walls or shuttered up condo amenities at eye level and a streetwall continuously broken up by driveways aren't teething problems, they're permanent flaws that should not be repeated. Many of the new projects along Sheppard - and the same is true of Finch, too - don't even have street retail. There are few empty storefronts, actually...but nail salons and chiropractors don't do much for the street.

It'll be vastly easier to manufacture decent new Avenues - like Downtown Markham - than to retrofit old ones lot by lot. Hopefully, there's enough urban bones left in old Agincourt to make the end result something worth building...other blocks will have to fend for themselves. One problem that won't go away (even if 8 bike lanes are built to eat up all the grass) is the extreme setbacks, where new buildings get pushed back to accommodate existing buildings (that are slated for eventual replacement) rather than pushed forward to support a new and better streetwall.

All very good points. I believe most of the ground levels have been provisioned for a future conversion to retail, for when the time is right, but in the meanwhile are serving some other purposes.

 

[kEiThZ]

I'm under no illusion that these backyards will go anywhere in the near future, and to my knowledge it's not even zoned for mixed use in the official plan.

If you only measure transit improvements on their ability to magically transform every square inch of the street, yes, you will be disappointed with the east end of Sheppard. Finch West and most of Eglinton certainly have more potential.

And that's why those routes are vastly more deserving of higher order transit. And so is the portion of Sheppard west of McCowan. But if not redevelopment, than what are we measuring that makes Sheppard East so important? Even when it comes to ridership, Finch East is a better candidate.