YRT/Viva Construction Thread (Rapidways, Terminals)

[cplchanb]

When the Yonge North Subway Extension is built to Richmond Hill Centre, it will create a great link. However, there is a proposal to extend the subway North to 16th Avenue or even Major Mackenzie Drive late. Won't the overlap between Subway and Viva Rapidway be kind of a waste? Even though this is a situation we'll face in 20+ years.

Not really, the ECT is just like this. Besides the extension to RHC is planned...the push to MM is just a pipe dream as of now. Maybe it will happen on Canada's 200th anniversary but certainly well after the initial extension is built

 

[rbt]

Trains will be short turning at Steeles w IIRC so the wait time at VMC station will be closer to 5-6 minues

If every 2nd train turns back at Steeles that gives a rush frequency of 5 to 6 minutes at VMC; or an average wait time of 2.5 to 3 minutes at VMC (sometimes you can walk right onto the train as it closes the door, other times you'll just miss it and wait 6 minutes).

Of course, it's also possible GO will be able to run trains more often than 15 minute frequencies during rush where demand requires.

 

[Megaton327]

Trains will be short turning at Steeles w IIRC so the wait time at VMC station will be closer to 5-6 minues

I said on average. That is, with a 5-6 minute headway, the average wait time will be 2.5-3 minutes. Similarly, you'll notice I quoted an average wait of 7.5 minutes for the 15-minute RER service. This is due to the fact that you could show up and hop on a train right before it closes its doors, show up right as one closes its doors and have to wait the full time for the next one, or anything in between.

 

[smallspy]

When the Yonge North Subway Extension is built to Richmond Hill Centre, it will create a great link. However, there is a proposal to extend the subway North to 16th Avenue or even Major Mackenzie Drive late. Won't the overlap between Subway and Viva Rapidway be kind of a waste? Even though this is a situation we'll face in 20+ years.

Do you think that there was nothing on Yonge before the subway was built? Or Bloor & Danforth?

That's one of the inherent natures of public transit infrastructure. To make it the right size in terms of capacity sometimes you need to undo what you already have.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[Megaton327]

When the Yonge North Subway Extension is built to Richmond Hill Centre, it will create a great link. However, there is a proposal to extend the subway North to 16th Avenue or even Major Mackenzie Drive late. Won't the overlap between Subway and Viva Rapidway be kind of a waste? Even though this is a situation we'll face in 20+ years.

There won't be an overlap, the Viva Rapidway will almost certainly be decommissioned in any space that a subway is built. Also, keep in mind, the Viva Rapidway is capable of significant expansion, in that it's currently BRT but designed for extremely easy upgrading to LRT. The stations would likely need little modification, maybe just some lengthening, and they'd be able to just rip up the 2 lanes neatly in the middle of the road to lay tracks.

I don't think we'll exceed LRT capacity on Yonge from 7 to 16th or Major Mack any time before 2040, maybe even 2050.

 

[Leo_Chan]

There won't be an overlap, the Viva Rapidway will almost certainly be decommissioned in any space that a subway is built. Also, keep in mind, the Viva Rapidway is capable of significant expansion, in that it's currently BRT but designed for extremely easy upgrading to LRT. The stations would likely need little modification, maybe just some lengthening, and they'd be able to just rip up the 2 lanes neatly in the middle of the road to lay tracks.

Actually, the Viva stations already have infrastructure to be converted to a LRT. The stations have 3+ extra canopy supports that are just flag poles at the moment. So little expansion needed to convert the BRT to LRT.

 

[MisterF]

I don't know why we, over and over again, in these threads see people saying "it take the same time to travel by GO to your job downtown, so there's no point building subways further out." Not everyone works at Union Station! If his friend works at Bloor, now he won't have to take GO to Union and double back north on the subway, for example. Or if he works at St. Clair or Eglinton or anywhere else in the central city that's north of Queen Street.

Someone who works "downtown" will take the mode that best serves their needs in terms of their actual Point A and Point B, the cost and the schedule. What'd be nicer than anything else, I'm guessing is having an OPTION. So if (for example) he normally takes the subway and (as if this could ever happen!) service is out from say St. Clair West to Spadina, he can take RER instead, so the whole city isn't paralyzed because we have no redundancy built in to our network when part of the subway goes down.

(And all that's putting aside that a 45-minute subway ride is hardly unprecedented in major centres like New York City and London.)

So, yeah.

Nobody said that everyone works at Union Station. GO basically works as a shuttle to Union Station now but that won't always be the case. Once lines are electrified and proper transfers exist at Bloor, Queen, Danforth, St. Clair, Eglinton, etc., RER will become much more useful to get to other parts of the city. Yes of course people will take the mode that best serves their needs; that's my point. Sure in some cases a subway trip makes more sense but in general, for a trip from the outer suburbs to downtown RER will be the better choice. And again in general, extending an extremely expensive, high capacity railway (ie subway) deep into the suburbs doesn't make a lot of sense when cheaper, more effective options like RER are available.

The fact that some of the suburban downtowns are built in difficult to serve locations doesn't help. The ones on existing rail lines are typically easier to serve by mass transit than ones that aren't. It's easier and cheaper to build RER on the GO line through downtown Markham than to extend the subway to downtown Vaughan, for example.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Once lines are electrified and proper transfers exist at Bloor, Queen, Danforth, St. Clair, Eglinton, etc., RER will become much more useful to get to other parts of the city....
The fact that some of the suburban downtowns are built in difficult to serve locations doesn't help. The ones on existing rail lines are typically easier to serve by mass transit than ones that aren't. It's easier and cheaper to build RER on the GO line through downtown Markham than to extend the subway to downtown Vaughan, for example.

Yeah, all these things cut more than one way. There are some GO stations with big development potential and lots of others that were purposely stuck in hydro corridors etc. For Markham and Vaughan, the rapidways and subways aren't just about moving people, but about citybuilding. As you note, Markham Centre is based around GO + Viva and Langstaff Gateway is based around all 3 modes. The GO stations in Vaughan have pretty limited intensification potential, so the subway was a necessary condition for VMC. I'm not really sure where else you could have built a viable, transit-oriented urban growth centre in the city.

I'd agree about not driving subways deep into the suburbs if we were talking about, I dunno, a new line going up McCowan to Markham Centre. But the subway to York U has been in the air for probably over 20 years and so it was a pretty short trip to go "deep" into the suburbs and promote intensification in a pretty blech area. Once you imagine the network with a parallel line on Yonge up to 7, with Viva (and maybe even the Transitway!) connecting the centres, the singularity of the "subway to Vaughan" seems less random.

And, per above yeah, it'll be a long time before the Yonge line goes north of 7; we still don't have a real timetable to get up to 7. And if they do go there, it doesn't matter the Rapidway is there too; it basically will be like express and local service with different audiences. Just like there's still buses that run on Yonge and just like there are plans to have BRT on both 7 and 407.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Does anyone know how the Yonge Rapidway and the Highway 7 Rapidways will connect to Richmond Hill Centre when they are fully built? This is probably when the Yonge Subway Extension is built and the Bus Terminal is modified. Will the busses have their own ROW from Yonge and from Hwy 7, or will they run in mix traffic on the quarter circle segment that connects Highway 7 with Yonge St like they do now?

 

[Megaton327]

Does anyone know how the Yonge Rapidway and the Highway 7 Rapidways will connect to Richmond Hill Centre when they are fully built? This is probably when the Yonge Subway Extension is built and the Bus Terminal is modified. Will the busses have their own ROW from Yonge and from Hwy 7, or will they run in mix traffic on the quarter circle segment that connects Highway 7 with Yonge St like they do now?

The Highway 7 rapidway, from Bathurst to Yonge and into RHC, is labelled on Viva plans as "partial rapidway". That stretch of 7 is pretty low-traffic, generally--the trip from Bathurst to RHC is quite quick. I think the most we can expect to see on this stretch in the foreseeable future is bus-only lanes, which I think is very reasonable given the nature of the roadway and having no stops between the two.

As for the Yonge rapidway, I haven't seen plans on the RHC connection. At risk of committing the sin of transit planning by google maps, I will say that it looks like there's room for a bus ROW alongside the current quarter-circle roadway to get from Yonge into RHC. That said, with a rapidway on Yonge and transit priority/dedicated turn signals, I'm not sure that a separate ROW is needed for the ~260 metres between the centre of Yonge street and the intersection to enter RHC.

Once the subway is built it's anyone's guess. That's so far off that there's really no way to say. Are they even 100% sure exactly where the station will be, let alone the bus terminal, let alone the rapidways?

 

[Leo_Chan]

The Highway 7 rapidway, from Bathurst to Yonge and into RHC, is labelled on Viva plans as "partial rapidway". That stretch of 7 is pretty low-traffic, generally--the trip from Bathurst to RHC is quite quick. I think the most we can expect to see on this stretch in the foreseeable future is bus-only lanes, which I think is very reasonable given the nature of the roadway and having no stops between the two.

As for the Yonge rapidway, I haven't seen plans on the RHC connection. At risk of committing the sin of transit planning by google maps, I will say that it looks like there's room for a bus ROW alongside the current quarter-circle roadway to get from Yonge into RHC. That said, with a rapidway on Yonge and transit priority/dedicated turn signals, I'm not sure that a separate ROW is needed for the ~260 metres between the centre of Yonge street and the intersection to enter RHC.

Once the subway is built it's anyone's guess. That's so far off that there's really no way to say. Are they even 100% sure exactly where the station will be, let alone the bus terminal, let alone the rapidways?

Possibility for an underground bus station with bus roads leading down from Yonge St to the terminal? I'm just asking because the traffic at RHC from the road that comes off Hwy7-Yonge ramp is usually congested with buses. A dedicated lane probably won't reduce travel times by much, but it would be more convenient for cars.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Once the subway is built it's anyone's guess. That's so far off that there's really no way to say. Are they even 100% sure exactly where the station will be, let alone the bus terminal, let alone the rapidways?

Yes, we know where the station will be (because they had to do the EA and pick an alignment). The station will be basically exactly where Silver City is now, close to High Tech. IIRC, the plan was to have the buses dive underground into the terminal along Yonge. There was a tug-of-war between Markham and RH about where to put the terminal, particularly with the 407 Transitway in the plans and concerns that it would be less-express if it had to leave the ROW to go up to the terminal and back, but that's still what they settled on. Two helpful things: Starting on Page 115 here are the technical drawings and all the info about options for the bus terminal RH Centre.

And this map is a plan from the 407 Transitway EA that gives you some idea.

As for Highway 7, you're right that the stretch there is low-traffic and basically highway engineering so there was no need for a full rapidway; signal priority at Yonge should get the buses into the terminal quickly.

 

[MisterF]

The GO stations in Vaughan have pretty limited intensification potential, so the subway was a necessary condition for VMC. I'm not really sure where else you could have built a viable, transit-oriented urban growth centre in the city.

A city centre could have been developed really anywhere along the Barrie GO line. Just like Scarborough Centre could have been planned along the Stouffville line and Mississauga could have been planned along the CP line that carries Milton trains. Of course nobody was thinking about an RER type system when these locations were determined and let's face it, highway access was probably more important to the Vaughan Centre plans than rapid transit access. That ship sailed a long time ago on all three locations. But the fact remains that RER on an existing rail line is easier to build than a subway extension to a growth centre.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

A city centre could have been developed really anywhere along the Barrie GO line. Just like Scarborough Centre could have been planned along the Stouffville line and Mississauga could have been planned along the CP line that carries Milton trains. Of course nobody was thinking about an RER type system when these locations were determined and let's face it, highway access was probably more important to the Vaughan Centre plans than rapid transit access. That ship sailed a long time ago on all three locations. But the fact remains that RER on an existing rail line is easier to build than a subway extension to a growth centre.

That the ship sailed long ago is the point. Perhaps I should have stated "circa 2000, there was no other viable site in Vaughan for developing a growth centre." Obviously that's different, if RER is conceived in 1985, but we're talking about planning over the past 15 years.

(And the UGCs were designated in 2006; the Big Move came out in 2008, so I don't know that it's true "no one was thinking about an RER type system" when the UGCs were selected." Whether the ministries co-ordinated properly at that time, I dunno, but RER was under development.)

As it stands today:
-the planned Concord station has relatively little development potential, shoe-horned in between 7 and 407, with a mature neighbourhood to the south;
-the Rutherford has a mature neighbourhood (relatively) on one side and industrial lands on the other. The latter could have been something a growth centre, perhaps, but still an island.
-the Maple GO is in sprawly-sprawlville and adjacent to a heritage district (and the former Keele Valley site/golf course)

None of the 3 compares to 400 acres between 2 400-series highways, centred around a subway and a BRT. 2 of the 3 are nowhere near the Viva system. By the time the Growth Plan was under development (to reiterate my statement) nowhere in Vaughan presented the same opportunity for an urban growth centre. (If Rutherford was closer to Vaughan Mills, I might make an argument for there but it's the only other thing that's close. The area around the Promenade could have been a good intensification centre too, if it had more going for it than a small branch of the BRT).

 

[MisterF]

That the ship sailed long ago is the point. Perhaps I should have stated "circa 2000, there was no other viable site in Vaughan for developing a growth centre." Obviously that's different, if RER is conceived in 1985, but we're talking about planning over the past 15 years.

(And the UGCs were designated in 2006; the Big Move came out in 2008, so I don't know that it's true "no one was thinking about an RER type system" when the UGCs were selected." Whether the ministries co-ordinated properly at that time, I dunno, but RER was under development.)

As it stands today:
-the planned Concord station has relatively little development potential, shoe-horned in between 7 and 407, with a mature neighbourhood to the south;
-the Rutherford has a mature neighbourhood (relatively) on one side and industrial lands on the other. The latter could have been something a growth centre, perhaps, but still an island.
-the Maple GO is in sprawly-sprawlville and adjacent to a heritage district (and the former Keele Valley site/golf course)

None of the 3 compares to 400 acres between 2 400-series highways, centred around a subway and a BRT. 2 of the 3 are nowhere near the Viva system. By the time the Growth Plan was under development (to reiterate my statement) nowhere in Vaughan presented the same opportunity for an urban growth centre. (If Rutherford was closer to Vaughan Mills, I might make an argument for there but it's the only other thing that's close. The area around the Promenade could have been a good intensification centre too, if it had more going for it than a small branch of the BRT).

Yes of course that ship has sailed, that's just what I said. And I'm not just talking about the last 15 years. Most of the suburban downtowns were existing or planned long before Places to Grow. Several urban growth centres are existing downtowns that have been there for 200 years. Vaughan as an urban municipality is much older than the Growth Plan as well. As for Vaughan's downtown location, I'm not talking about the locations of existing GO stations. The city was a blank slate at one point so the new downtown could have been literally anywhere. They ended up choosing the current location after much of the city was already built out, and your point about access to two highways proves my point that they were thinking more about cars than transit.

Of course, none of this changes that RER will typically be better than the subway for outer suburban residents to get downtown. And that transit in these areas should be planned around RER where possible rather than subway extensions farther and farther into the suburbs.