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Danforth Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension

As I understand, this design ha not been approved yet. There is a possibility that the designers could hear the complaints and change the design. Really, anything is up for change till they get funding. Even then, who knows what it will be like.
 
I'm curious why we have so little multiple bus platforms sections in Toronto. It would change the bus terminal from a long and skinny rectangle to a fat rectangle/square. I guess an inefficiency and liability is the need to cross the busway in order to go to specific platforms when transferring, which may increase collisions and needing buses to stop for pedestrians. The terminal could be changed to have the concourse right below it with stairs/elevators to each bus platform (like Union Station York Concourse but with buses), which is expensive.
 
micheal_can said:
As I understand, this design ha not been approved yet. There is a possibility that the designers could hear the complaints and change the design. Really, anything is up for change till they get funding. Even then, who knows what it will be like.
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We'll see if there are significant complaints from normal people (aka not transit geeks). If the public didn't object to two stations being removed from the SSE, I doubt they'll care at all about an inconvenient transfer, and thus they'll be no pressure on Council to fix this.

Also this bus terminal isn't cheap. It's budgeted at $184 Million. I don't think Tory wants to have to announce yet another $100 Million+ cost overrun to build a stacked terminal.
 
I'm having a really tough time visualizing this thing. I mean, does it really take 2.7 minutes to walk across nine bus bays? Things seem really spread out at this station, I suppose to avoid conflicting bus movements.

Eglinton's bus terminal looks a lot more compact than what's proposed for SCC, but at rush hour there's a ton of conflicting bus movements delaying everyone.
 
The images I recalled of a bus terminal on top of, or at least alongside, the subway platform were from the Value Engineering study done last fall: http://www.scarboroughsubwayextensi...ay-ext-final-ve-report-combined-v5-nov-23.pdf
Around p.149 you can see some primitive sketches of the new layout, but they suggested recycling the existing bus terminal. Now it seems, in keeping with the spirit of this project, Demolish Everything.

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Leo_Chan said:
I'm curious why we have so little multiple bus platforms sections in Toronto. It would change the bus terminal from a long and skinny rectangle to a fat rectangle/square. I guess an inefficiency and liability is the need to cross the busway in order to go to specific platforms when transferring, which may increase collisions and needing buses to stop for pedestrians. The terminal could be changed to have the concourse right below it with stairs/elevators to each bus platform (like Union Station York Concourse but with buses), which is expensive.
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Seeing how busy Scarborough Centre Station is, I wouldn't want all those people running in front of buses. Especially when you consider how people do dumb things when in a rush.
 
I'm not really getting the backlash against the proposed bus terminal at Scarborough Centre, when the existing combined local and interregional bus terminii at Finch Stn stretch over almost half a kilometre from end-to-end:

Finchmap.jpg


It seems to me with the design they've proposed in the SCC renders like they simply want to recycle/re-purpose some of the pre-exisitng bus terminal land area in order to keep the barrier-free access point to the Civic Centre and the mall in tact.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
A comparison of Scarborough Centre to an existing bus terminal: Wilson Station has the worst subway-to-bus transfer I'm aware of.

According to Google Maps, it's a 115 metre walk from the centre of the subway platform to the centre of the bus platform. Assuming walking speed of 5 km/h, it takes 82.8 seconds (1.38 minutes) to make that walk

Depending on which level of the bus terminal you're going to, you need to climb to or three sets of stars. Assuming each storey is 10 metres that's 5 to 15 metres of vertical elevation that needs to be climbed. Using basic trigonometry and assuming a stair angle of 33 degrees, that's 18.4 to 27.6 metres that need to be climbed. Escalators typically move at 0.5 km/h, so that'll take 36.8 to 73.6 seconds to climb.

So in total, the transfer from bus to subway at Wilson Station takes 119.6 seconds up to 156.4 seconds, or roughly 2 minutes to 2.3 minutes.

In comparison, the Scarborough Centre transfer looks to be at most 3.5 minutes for TTC customers at and most 4.5 minutes for DRT/GO customers (estimated in my previous post).

So Scarborough Centre look like it'll have the longest transfer in the system for TTC customers, by a very wide margin (assuming I'm right about Wilson having the longest bus-to-subway transfer).
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Finch transfers to interregional (YRT / GO) is a bit of a hike, probably around 250m to the furthest platforms.

Also, the majority of the platforms are far closer than the 500m length. Plus the ones at the end are much more likely to be the GO / possible DRT routes.
 
It's a shame that the older, three-stop subway extension wasn't kept -- one could make a good argument that the three-stop subway was superior to the seven-stop LRT replacement. (Not to get into that debate again...) But the one-stop extension requires all the existing bus routes to service Scarborough Centre - a few routes would have otherwise gone to the Sheppard/McCowan station instead. Plus GO and DRT probably want more platforms than they are currently allotted.

Though having a single island platform arrangement is the best for barrier-free access between buses.

The other option is the Wilson Station design - a double-deck bus terminal. But that terminal has its own issues. Every ten years or so the TTC has to make major repairs to the upper terminal; without an elevator and a poor transfer to the subway, it is an unnecessarily difficult transfer between subway and westbound buses.
 
Hopkins123 said:
I'm not really getting the backlash against the proposed bus terminal at Scarborough Centre, when the existing combined local and interregional bus terminii at Finch Stn stretch over almost half a kilometre from end-to-end:

Finchmap.jpg
Click to expand...

The TTC fare paid zone at Finch Station bust terminal is only 150 metres long, that bus terminal is immediately adjacent to the station box, and the stairs down to Line 1 are in the centre of the terminal, rather than at the end, meaning that passengers don't have to walk more than 75 metres in the terminal. Passengers have to walk three times longer at the Scarborough Centre bus terminal to reach the end of the TTC fare paid zone.

The Finch interregional terminal is at the north side of Bishop Avenue and less than 50 metres north of the Finch station box. The passenger areas of that terminal are also less than 150 metres long.

It seems to me with the design they've proposed in the SCC renders like they simply want to recycle/re-purpose some of the pre-exisitng bus terminal land area in order to keep the barrier-free access point to the Civic Centre and the mall in tact.
Click to expand...

Their goal was to maximize developable space. If they wanted to enhance passenger flow, they would've moved the bus terminal east, so that the centre lies over the station box).
 
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TheTigerMaster said:
The TTC fare paid zone at Finch Station bust terminal is only 150 metres long, that bus terminal is immediately adjacent to the station box, and the stairs down to Line 1 are in the centre of the terminal, rather than at the end, meaning that passengers don't have to walk more than 75 metres in the terminal. Passengers have to walk three times longer at the Scarborough Centre bus terminal to reach the end of the TTC fare paid zone.

The Finch inter-regional terminal is at the north side of Bishop Avenue and less than 50 metres north of the Finch station box. The passenger areas of that terminal are also less than 150 metres long.

Their goal was to maximize developable space. If they wanted to enhance passenger flow, they would've moved the bus terminal east, so that the centre lies over the station box).
Click to expand...

All I'm saying is that people have had to tolerate the lengthy walking transfers at Finch Stn for decades and we don't hear many people complaining about it. For instance, the distance from say the 99 Bayview bus bay in the YRT/GO terminus to the 36 Finch West bus bay right at Finch Avenue is quite a walk. Finch also involves navigating lengthy corridors and many flights of stairs/escalators to connect with the subway platform.

This reaction over the proposed bus terminal walking times at Scarborough Centre just sounds to me like more veiled pleas not to build the subway extension. We can do better than this. Plus we all know the major, busiest routes will have bus bays proximal to the subway station box, it's only infrequent, lesser used routes like 132 Milner where the walking times may be more extensive.
 
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