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

The development on Yonge is not being overstated and, more generally, when people are talking about something like the Don Mills alignment, which is cool, they are forgetting about the relative dearth of development potential along that corridor. It might end at Yonge but there's a big blank spot along the way. Indeed, it wouldn't even entirely serve Langstaff/RHC, at least as currently conceived, with the terminus at High Tech and a south station at Langstaff/Yonge. The idea isn't just to find the cheapest route for getting people from A to B but to link that route to development so people are close by. No doubt, transfers will continue to drive the system (that's the entire premise of the TTC's design, after all) but we're simultaneously trying to create denser communities so people aren't driving from Richmond Hill to Finch Station every day.

I know, that as with most of the arguments and facts here, this has been said before but the RHC/Langstaff plan alone is for nearly 50,000 new residents in the next 18 years. Maybe it's ambitious and maybe it's impossible but the auto modal share target for that area is around 40 %. So, a few transit users there. (That number is also predicated on having GO AND the subway, which is all the more reason to not trade one for the other).
The new secondary plans for Mkm and vaughan are, IIRC, for another 15-20K residents. The first major project (about 3,000 units) is already coming along nicely. That's not including something like 40,000 jobs. So I'm not sure where that's being "overstated." If anything, it's being UNDERSTATED by posters who imagine that everything north of Finch is "the hinterland." There's certainly more development potential on Yonge than has occurred along the Danforth/Bloor line in the decades since it was built.

As for the Yonge Express idea, it probably does become useless with all-day, two-way GO but, if there was infinite money, it's not the worst idea I can imagine. If you had a train that stopped at, say, Finch, Eglinton, Bloor, Union etc., it would take a load off a lot of the other stations. But it's never going to happen, even if was totally practical. If they'd built twin tunnels at the time, we'd be thankful today, however.

Finally, it's nice to imagine that more GO stations can be added with more service but a lot of the lines just don't allow it. I'm sure there's some room for improvement but I'm not sure what you could add to the RH line, for example. After Oriole it pretty much dives into the valley, doesn't it? This comes back to my first point about the idea of trying to build communities along transit lines...
 
There is also a lot development going on along Sheppard East. Unfortunately most of the people are driving because the subway doesn't go very far and there are too few other subways in the city (Sheppard around Bayview is congested on weekends sometimes now, because there are so many condos there). So why aren't we building a subway on Sheppard - for petty political reasons of course. Whereas we expect a huge amount of development on Yonge North to justify extremely high (probably unrealistic) ridership projections on that line, if there is that much development on Yonge North there will be just as much development on Sheppard East as well. Or maybe neither will see much growth and there is little point of building subways on either of them - depends on how the economy and the housing market does.
 
andrewpmk said:
TSo why aren't we building a subway on Sheppard - for petty political reasons of course.
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No. That's why we built the original subway on Sheppard. We are building, and proposing to build subways where the forecast demand is much higher than Sheppard. Heck, even the current demand is much higher than Sheppard.

Surely it's pretty easy to see that subways should first be built where the demand is highest.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
Yes. Like Vaughan.
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TTC estimated that daily ridership of that extension would be more than 85,000 on opening day. The existing Sheppard subway was only 50,410 last year. Sure, they went a couple of stops too far, but they aren't costing Toronto anything, and they will both be major connecting nodes. But yes, it is political. Still the ridership is higher than that projected for Sheppard extensions. And the ridership of the other 2 projects Metrolinx is proposing (DRL and Yonge Extension) are even higher.

That said, I'm not opposed to extending the Sheppard subway a couple of stops to Victoria Park with the LRT construction. Ridership would be similar to Victoria Park - it's only as it goes further east, that it becomes really pathetically low. With such a pro-subway Mayor in charge, I'm sure he'd be willing to debt-finance $0.5 billion or so to achieve one of his election promises, given the $8.5 billion or so that the higher levels of government are contributing to transit in Toronto without any contribution from Toronto.
 
Spadina extension shouldn't have gone past York U, but otherwise its fine. I can't help but wonder what connections the owner of smart centres has if he managed to get a subway to a property he bought dirt cheap.
 
nfitz said:
TTC estimated that daily ridership of that extension would be more than 85,000 on opening day. The existing Sheppard subway was only 50,410 last year. Sure, they went a couple of stops too far, but they aren't costing Toronto anything, and they will both be major connecting nodes. But yes, it is political. Still the ridership is higher than that projected for Sheppard extensions. And the ridership of the other 2 projects Metrolinx is proposing (DRL and Yonge Extension) are even higher.
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According to the Minister of Transportation's Office, the TYSSE will require a subsidy of about $14 million/year, which will be covered entirely by the TTC (http://stevemunro.ca/?p=7654#more-7654). So yes, it IS costing Toronto something.

It's a shame that the TTC couldn't have negotiated that YR pay the operating subsidies for that extension.
 
nfitz said:
Sure, they went a couple of stops too far, but they aren't costing Toronto anything.
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My understanding is the TTC will be responsible for maintenance of the subway. In about 30 years, this will be around $7M/year/km based on SOGR expenses related to existing lines.

Those couple of stops aren't insignificant to the budget. The TTCs entire advertising revenue will be roughly equal to the capital and operations subsidy for those few Vaughan stops.

TTC kinda got a raw deal unless VMC station turns out Finch station kind of ridership.

It's good for the region and Toronto gets back a ton of value from Transit City investments but if Transit City somehow gets cancelled I'm hoping the mayor at that time will revisit the Spadina extension agreement.
 
rbt said:
My understanding is the TTC will be responsible for maintenance of the subway. In about 30 years, this will be around $7M/year/km based on SOGR expenses related to existing lines.
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That's a good point. I was considering the initial capital cost.

This will become more of an issue for the Yonge extension, as it will be mostly in York. There's a plenty of opportunity to clean up the funding for long-term maintenance of the subway in York at that time. Hopefully passenger revenue will at least pay for the day-to-day transit operations within York. If they can find a way that York pays for the maintenance within York, in the long-term, that should resolve it.
 
nfitz said:
That's a good point. I was considering the initial capital cost.

This will become more of an issue for the Yonge extension, as it will be mostly in York. There's a plenty of opportunity to clean up the funding for long-term maintenance of the subway in York at that time. Hopefully passenger revenue will at least pay for the day-to-day transit operations within York. If they can find a way that York pays for the maintenance within York, in the long-term, that should resolve it.
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The still ongoing debate over Steeles maintenance seems like a good indicator of what will happen.
 
The station at VMC will most likely be a very busy station as it will have a lot of Vaughan residents using it (its right along their main street Highway 7). But also, it will have a large amount of Brampton residents using the line because of the Zum service that runs along Highway 7 as well. The cost to get to downtown will be much cheaper when using this route for Brampton residents ie. instead of paying Brampton bus fare plus go fair, Brampton residents will pay the Brampton bus fare and the TTC fare, which is a possible savings of $6-10 for a two way trip.
 
b13 said:
The station at VMC will most likely be a very busy station as it will have a lot of Vaughan residents using it (its right along their main street Highway 7). But also, it will have a large amount of Brampton residents using the line because of the Zum service that runs along Highway 7 as well. The cost to get to downtown will be much cheaper when using this route for Brampton residents ie. instead of paying Brampton bus fare plus go fair, Brampton residents will pay the Brampton bus fare and the TTC fare, which is a possible savings of $6-10 for a two way trip.
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For Bramptonians (or is it Bramptonites?) that will be a poor substitute for GO REX along the Georgetown corridor, but certainly better than the local transit options that they have now. If marketed and serviced properly, Züm could see a pretty big spike in ridership when the Vaughan extension opens. Full service through Brampton, express to VCC as soon as it hits the YR border.
 
b13 said:
The station at VMC will most likely be a very busy station as it will have a lot of Vaughan residents using it (its right along their main street Highway 7).
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I will be pleasantly surprised if VMC is in the top 50% of subway stations in 2018 (3 years to build ridership). TTC terminal stations are amongst the busier stations so it's possible but not with feeder buses running with 30 minute frequencies.
 
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