To be fair, they're protesting the fact that the Yonge North Subway Extension to Richmond Hill was supposed to run under Yonge St, but will now run under their neighbourhoods. What I'm worried about is that there were supposed to be way more stations along the extension. Langstaff station was removed, and now people have to choose between keeping either Royal Orchard or Cummer/Drewry. It's a big disappointment and will hurt the extension's ridership and ease-of-access. But on the other hand, it'll save money to run some of the alignment along the rail corridor and there is significant planning by the cities of Richmond Hill & Markham to create great communities under this alignment.
Royal Orchard was never seriously put on the table. Maybe in the far-future but Cummer makes a lot more sense being built now.
 
Honestly ridership in York Region is going to be very low except for the commuter rush at Richmond Hill Centre. Most of the ridership would be fed in from buses or driven to the parking lot. I am pretty sure they could have built an express subway between Steeles and Highway 7 and less people would be inconvenienced than the John Tory version of the Express Scarborough subway.
The purpose of this extension is to reduce the amount of bus service on Yonge Street, which includes Viva Blue, the 99, and a few other miscellaneous GO busses. While an express extension would be okay, there are definitely some stations (namely Clark) that are super helpful to the region's overall transit masterplan.

Side note, Richmond Hill Centre is going to grow into a massive urban hub by 2030, with most of the parking spaces there planning to be redeveloped, and even Langstaff-Longbridge, the station that was purely meant for park and rides in the old "Option 1" has no replacement in "Option 3". Also, "Most of the ridership would be fed in from buses or driven to the parking lot" literally applies to basically every TTC Subway Station. The reason why despite its size the TTC has one of the highest ridership of any subway system on the continent, beating out DC and SanFran is because of our frequent bus network and how many people use it to get to the Subway, very little of it comes from density or development. Want proof? Look at Kennedy. One of the busiest stations on the network, very little development around the station, most of the traffic comes from transfer to the platitude of busses and GO.
The subway extension isn't designed to be part of the York Region transit network but instead as an convivence for York Region to get to Toronto. The TYSSE fare structure is designed for exactly that. Since Toronto taxpayers are paying up for the subway in York Region, I don't expect anything to change unless the subsidizer changes. If someone is traveling from Clark Station to Newmarket, they won't be pleased to have to pay for both TTC and YRT fares unlike VIVA today. This isn't making it better unless Queen's Park steps in.
First, don't forget that York Region is by all means a suburb of Toronto. While legally it is its own municipality separate from Toronto, in practice its basically a Toronto dorm, and as such most of the demand is to get to Toronto. As such, yes it is a convenience for York Region to get to Toronto because that's exactly what York Region is and what it exists for.

Second, if someone wants to make a trip like that, in the worst case scenario that Fare Integration isn't implemented by the time this extension opens, the 99 is always going to be an option, which is planned to have 15 minute headways when the extension opens. While the subway would be faster, it won't be that much faster, maybe a 5 minute travel time difference. Furthermore, if someone wanted to make a trip like that, in the long term they wouldn't use Viva Blue. While unfortunately Concord GO is still in its early days of planning and is unlikely to be built, Viva Orange will eventually get a branch that terminates at Clark Station, which will all the user to take the bus directly the GO station and take a GO train up to Newmarket which should be WAY faster.

Finally, the only thing Toronto taxpayers are paying for through their city taxes is the operations of the trains into York Region, not even the maintenance. The capital costs of the section within York Region is primarily being paid for by the Feds, followed by the province and finally York Region. Part of the reason why TYSSE has such lavish stations is because YR offered to pay extra for them. The reason why this subway is pushed so hard by York Region is because this setup is perfectly acceptable for the people living in York Region, and there's nothing here "to change" (well Fare Integration would be really nice, but its not an absolute necessity in this case).
 
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www.metrolinxengage.com/sites/default/files/ol-downtown_oct_voh.pdf Ontario line downtown presentation is up .. and it contains this mock up of Queen Station:

1633643256488.png



That is seemingly a lot of empty space being left at the end of the platforms ... have they mentioned if they are protecting space for platform extensions ? Unfortunately ... they cut off the explanations for the bottom area 🤬
 
www.metrolinxengage.com/sites/default/files/ol-downtown_oct_voh.pdf Ontario line downtown presentation is up .. and it contains this mock up of Queen Station:

View attachment 354270


That is seemingly a lot of empty space being left at the end of the platforms ... have they mentioned if they are protecting space for platform extensions ? Unfortunately ... they cut off the explanations for the bottom area 🤬

Some of that empty space is doubtlessly for ventilation fans (and you can see the dashed outline of two placed vertically at either end of the shaft), but yeah it be nice if some of it is for platform expansion.

AoD
 
Wasn't the new Recreation Centre on the west side of the park previously?

1633645133518.png


Hmm, between the CRC and Mx this park will lose up to 1/2 its tree canopy.

New CRC site:

1633645301849.png


New O/L entrance and open cut:

1633645366019.png
 
Metrolinx seems to forget the existence of the Osgoode station and did not have a presentation about Osgoode during this round of engagement.
 
www.metrolinxengage.com/sites/default/files/ol-downtown_oct_voh.pdf Ontario line downtown presentation is up .. and it contains this mock up of Queen Station:

View attachment 354270


That is seemingly a lot of empty space being left at the end of the platforms ... have they mentioned if they are protecting space for platform extensions ? Unfortunately ... they cut off the explanations for the bottom area 🤬
Their "concept" design requires people to walk from the northbound platform around 60m east, then turn around in order to go down the escalator (same with the other side). A better way will be to put the set of escalators in between the Yonge platform and elevators, and also flip the orientation of the escalators.
 
www.metrolinxengage.com/sites/default/files/ol-downtown_oct_voh.pdf Ontario line downtown presentation is up .. and it contains this mock up of Queen Station:



That is seemingly a lot of empty space being left at the end of the platforms ... have they mentioned if they are protecting space for platform extensions ? Unfortunately ... they cut off the explanations for the bottom area 🤬

Wow that's a big cavern. Night and day vs existing Queen.

Did we know this previously?:

View attachment 354275
Also, is this referring the Pusateri's? Or to a level lower down that is not public?

Curious if there was a sub basement. Love the Bay but hopefully a chance to refresh that cramped level.
 
Something to think about. Of course, on the flip side, plans should continue because by the time the OL and other extensions are completed in 10+ years things might indeed be back to some level of normal and traffic congestion will be an even bigger issue.

 
Something to think about. Of course, on the flip side, plans should continue because by the time the OL and other extensions are completed in 10+ years things might indeed be back to some level of normal and traffic congestion will be an even bigger issue.

In short, no that Article isn't remotely correct about anything. A lot of workplaces haven't brought back in office work, but that is no indication of the future. Speaking for where I work, people are desperately itching to go back to in person as work from home leads to so many issues both technical and related to work culture (this is an office job), and once it is over we shouldn't expect things to be permanently scarred in terms of commuting patterns, even for workplaces that can technically operate from a work from home environment. Best case scenario, we see a decrease of 5-10%, which while it could give a capacity buffer to the system, will be nowhere near enough to offset our population growth and overall demand for the next 10-30 years.
 
Re:
https://www.tvo.org/article/the-case-for-delaying-torontos-subway-plans

That article is very easy to argue against, but they have no comments section :)

First of all, the Covid situation is temporary. It might last another year or two, but not 10+ years that will pass before any of the new subways will start running.

Secondly and just for the argument sake, what if the 2035 transit ridership drops by 30% compared to where it would be if Covid never happened? That would offset part of the expected growth, but the new subways would be far from empty. And certainly they wouldn't look like generational mistakes.

Third, the fiscal environment is extremely favorable for the public infrastructure investments right now. The interest rates are low, the acceptance of debt-based financing is higher than ever, and the inflation is moderate. That will not last for very long. If we don't invest in transit now, the governments will find a way to debt-finance some other projects that will bring no returns whatsoever. With transit built, at least we will have something for long-term use.

And a minor point, but one that casts doubts on the depth of the author's research: while the 3 subway projects are mentioned in the article, one LRT subway project (Eglinton West) is forgotten. Even though the latter is in the same league on per-km cost, and will have the lowest ridership of the four. But since Eglinton West isn't technically a subway, it easily escaped the author's attention.
 

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