Amare
Senior Member
^And they'll keep dreaming about it for the next 50 years. That's ok though, it's always nice to have a dream every now and again.
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Sheppard Line 4 Subway Extension (Proposed)
- Thread starter denfromoakvillemilton
- Start date
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
What's wrong with the proposal? The city has a housing shortage, and downtown doesn't have the capacity to sustain much more growth. This can only be good for the city, Lines 4 and 5. It may not be the next yonge street but I wouldn't be surprised if a few thousand units were built.
Amare
Senior Member
I'm talking about the subway, not the proposal.
Leo_Chan
Senior Member
Can you please explain what you mean by this? Isn’t building subways downtown in a walkable environment along and around the corridor more efficient than building a subway in the suburbs where intensification only appears near the stations rather then along the whole corridor?
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
I mean that the current downtown transportation network is constrained by the lack of subway/streetcar expansion. We can't, for some reason, actually build the downtown relief line, build the waterfront streetcars, give streetcars true priority, expand subway platforms, buy more subway vehicles (we won't have enough to fully utilize ATC on Line 1), upgrade Line 2's signalling system, buy new streetcars, fix the switches downtown, and we may not even electrify RER, etc etc. The politics of actually doing any of these things have interfered with downtown transit expansion for almost 50 years. Is there any genuine belief that the Governmnet of Ontario, City Council, and the people living in this city can get their act together and actually build something within the next 10 years? At least if we have employment centres and housing shift to the suburbs (in a dense manner, like those proposed on Sheppard and Eglinton), riders can shift to counter-peak service, thereby mitigating any future stress on the system.
Leo_Chan
Senior Member
So it’s not a property of downtown that makes it unable to support growth, it’s just that the political climate does not allow for it to happen and may only allows for suburban subway expansions?
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
That and a lack of current capacity downtown. We should not be continuously trying to develop all of downtown when there simply is not enough transportation capacity to do so. Once we get some of these projects actually under construction, then we can talk about expanding. It's not even like there can't be money to fund these projects. If developers want to build downtown, or if more people want to live downtown, there should be some higher taxes associated with that. Property taxes throughout the rest of the city should also be included. It's just a question of who has the political will to do it.
syn
Senior Member
Downtown is being developed because that's where people and businesses want to be.
We should be building transit that addresses this reality.
OneCity
Senior Member
There is a lot of places people want to be. We should (have been) build transit that addresses the reality and not focusing only on one narrow ideology. Your logic of Downtown vs. inner suburbs is basically a small scale way of saying because there is more money flowing into Vancouver we don't need to grow Toronto as Vancouver is were people really want to be.
Anyhow both subways are needed to connect, develop, relieve (in the case of downtown ), grow (in the case of Sheppard) and provide effective central rapid transit to various areas and classes thru-out an evolving Toronto. Nothing to be upset about, were now moving forward with transit plans people will strongly support, use and invest around.
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11th
Senior Member
The only way the inner suburbs can compete is for there be efficient transportation linking them to Peel, Halton, and York.
Look at how many people come into Union through LSW, and line 1 passenger volumes north of Bloor Those people definitely do not live in the core.
Look at how many people come into Union through LSW, and line 1 passenger volumes north of Bloor Those people definitely do not live in the core.
lead82
Senior Member
I understand what you are saying and I agree that we need to make other parts of our city more attractive to development. However, this has already been tried and failed. Building subways in suburbs is what gave us our current transportation problems now. Money was wasted on building huge capacity transit where it is not necessary. Look at Shepard now and Line 1 north extension. It’s empty and under developed. The transit is there but developers are not lining up to build along the route. Yes there is some development near VMC but its going to be much like NYCC - a dense residential cluster where some take subway downtown but most will drive around.
Building subway on Sheppard won’t solve anything. To make the suburbs more attractive requires a re-think of land use. It’s not enough to just have a few dense clusters of condos to justify massive infrastructure spending. There needs to be a full thought of how to make that area more attractive all along a transit corridor by adding density all along corridor, making the street more like a Main Street - denser, more shops and services. This requires a much much higher concentration of people and jobs. It also needs some catalyst to act as a cool node to attract some jobs. Let’s take Sheppard as an example. Perhaps having a start up zone or a high-tech office zone near Sheppard and Victoria Park / Consumers to attract start ups to move there. Build more live/work spaces that are cheap to attract artists and make the money place interesting to hang out in. The problem is that this area has not much interesting history or buildings to act like an anchor like old industrial buildings do in Liberty Village or Distillery or the Main Street feel of all the main downtown arterial with the at grade retail and pleasant walking experience. Build that to make the area more attractive and the people will come. Right now all the new condos are essentially built as vertical sprawl. Very self contained buildings with very little to nothing added to the public realm. Functional buildings but nothing more.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
Ironically enough, the lack of Downtown transit is likely playing a role in the increasing development we see downtown. The appeal of living downtown is that you’re close enough to work to walk or bike and avoid public transit. Indeed, if you look at the stats you’ll see that downtown-to-downtown commuters have a surprisingly low transit modal share.
Some of these people choosing to live Downtown would likely live in the suburbs, if they had a reliable way to get downtown. But they don’t, hence their decision to live downtown. Building the DRL only makes it easier for suburban residents to get downtown, increasing the development appeal of the suburbs.
If the DRL were built up to Sheppard, i‘d bet a good dollar that we‘d see a substantial boost in residential development around Sheppard and Don Mills. Why wouldn’t we? Those people would be roughly 20 mins from the downtown core, while enjoying the relative comfort and lower property costs of the inner suburbs. It would certainly be an appealing location for me
Office development capacity downtown clearly isn’t capped by transit capacity. If that were the case, we would not be seeing record low office vacancies. If people can’t get downtown on the subways or GO, they’ll just move downtown or areas adjacent to downtown. From a transport POV, downtown should continue to grow as we implement RER, increase streetcar capacity, increase bike lane coverage and increase sidewalk capacity on critical pedestrian routes, such as Yonge. All of those but RER are critical to ensure people can continue to commute within Downtown
Some of these people choosing to live Downtown would likely live in the suburbs, if they had a reliable way to get downtown. But they don’t, hence their decision to live downtown. Building the DRL only makes it easier for suburban residents to get downtown, increasing the development appeal of the suburbs.
If the DRL were built up to Sheppard, i‘d bet a good dollar that we‘d see a substantial boost in residential development around Sheppard and Don Mills. Why wouldn’t we? Those people would be roughly 20 mins from the downtown core, while enjoying the relative comfort and lower property costs of the inner suburbs. It would certainly be an appealing location for me
Office development capacity downtown clearly isn’t capped by transit capacity. If that were the case, we would not be seeing record low office vacancies. If people can’t get downtown on the subways or GO, they’ll just move downtown or areas adjacent to downtown. From a transport POV, downtown should continue to grow as we implement RER, increase streetcar capacity, increase bike lane coverage and increase sidewalk capacity on critical pedestrian routes, such as Yonge. All of those but RER are critical to ensure people can continue to commute within Downtown
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Leo_Chan
Senior Member
Now what if for example a line was built in downtown that DID NOT connect with Line 2, such as a line on King from Liberty Village GO to East Harbour GO with much smaller stop spacing than currently proposed? Would anyone living in downtown use the line and would it spur a lot of development?
raptor
Senior Member
What's the point of it, when the 504 streetcar is pretty good now?
Leo_Chan
Senior Member
I don’t know, I just wanted to see what the implications of this scenario would be.