I never called anyone names. You however just called me fatso, unprovoked, implying that I am obese. Very telling of the type of mindsets that I'm dealing with here.
Sigh. Off your high horse, please. Although I am liking the switch from Catholic dogma to playground antics, I will drop the sarcasm and state it even more clearly to help us get there. You keep telling me I'm greedy. You don't see that as calling anyone names, which is a mindset you're free to carry around with you. But if you'd like to persist in attaching unflattering adjectives to others, I'd think that at some point you ought to say why. Do you understand?
Okay. What if I told you that high-speed ALRT could run north from Finch Stn in a underground ROW to as far as the York Sub with a station at Yonge to serve the Clark intersection, proceeded by a piggyback across and up the York and Bala Subdivisions straight into downtown Richmond Hill, with a station stop along the way at the already developed, high-density, with condos no less, Thornhill Square area?
You have done more than tell us all. You have drawn a picture. You have argued that the best idea is to go the expense of tunnelling from Finch, up to Clark, and then play twisty turny, and that this should certainly involve a transfer at Finch to a whole other mode of transport, notwithstanding the tunnel. All of which would avoid the Places to Grow hub at Langstaff, which in turn would be served by between 1.5 and 2 reserved bus lanes in either direction, which would replace the one reserved bus lane in either direction that is there now.
To be frank, I'm not sure I have the energy to debate it. I see no merit in that idea on those routes. Leave it at that. (True BRT as opposed to VIVA's current configuration, of course, is an excellent idea in lots of places. Is it needed on Yonge north of RHC? In the future, it may be.)
Activity occurs at the street-level. Ergo mass-transit must interface directly with that density to enhance the urban quality of the streets. It would lessen auto traffic down Yonge, freeing up space for wider sidewalks, reduce the noise and air pollution, and actually bring a lot more business to the street-level (...)
Even Old Thornhill immediately bordering Yonge could become a happening place, then a block inwards sleepy suburbia. A subway however would bypass all that, never triggering the intensification needed because business potential clientele will never see reason to visit local shoppes and eateries within a tunnel.
Shorter version: "Transit City". Yes, we are all familiar with these arguments. I look forward to Paris-on-Scarborough. With shoppes!
So if you really wanted your city to develop, thrive and be integrated with many parts of the greater region, you'd realize this.
"You'd realize this"? Do you allow for a world in which others come to different conclusions than you? Is this where your whole greed/avarice thing comes from? It's mildly unsettling, and does not strengthen your arguments. I'd suggest you drop this line. Assuming, of course, that you, too, wish our city to develop.
Serious talk of extending it to Carville/16th is already floating around. There is no satisfying York's subway-lust. Next YUS will be proposed to Bloomington.
Reread the above. Did you really intend to write that? I will only say this: policy ought to be driven by reasonable discussion, not animal spirits. RHC is a logical terminus. Not Finch, or Carrville, or Bloomington Sideroad.
If they ever build a giant honking highway across Bloomington Sideroad, extend the Spadina line up to the same giant honking highway, stick a bunch of GO and VIVA BRT lines across said honker, designate Yonge-Bloomington a Places to Grow regional hub and, well, do a bunch of other things, then that might change the discussion.
In that vain, the logical northern terminus already exists, it is called Finch. Smack on a hydro corridor that potentially could be transformed into a highway for buses, no less. The modal switch must occur somewhere and people from all over the GTA are mighty accustomed to using this hub. We just now need to make getting there faster, more simplified.
I see. In fairness, I guess we could do with more honkers. There are certainly ways to turn Finch into a useful terminus by spending very large amounts of money on new east-west infrastructure that intersects with it, if that it what you mean. The thing is... oh, never mind.
It has to do with Mississauga by comparison because some people are of the belief that the Bloor-Danforth should be extended to its city centre.
Some people are also of the belief that there was no moon landing. However, stating "I want better for York and Mississauga than a near hour-long odyssey aboard an endless multi-stopping subway line" has everything to do with Mississauga, and nothing to do with the Finch-to-Langstaff Yonge corridor or the moon landing. A near-hour-long odyssey is not what happens on Yonge. Actually, it works quite well.
No it doesn't. It targets the densest part of Thornhill where three bus routes happen to layover. It runs through the heart of the planned downtown, it runs 2 clicks away from the bustling Yonge/16th intersection and Hillcrest Mall, it runs through German Mills.
It sounds like you are saying that Yonge-16th and Hillcrest Mall and German Mills are denser, and in the future are to remain denser, than the Finch-to-Langstaff Yonge corridor for which the Yonge Extension has been proposed. With the obvious and important exception of the 2 km stretch of Old Thornhill, those seem like strange things to say.
I agree that the use case for going from Clark to RHC is almost entirely about getting to RHC, if that is where you are headed.
Downtown it does, across the Bloor-Danforth from Jane to Main the vast majority of local residents walk it in. If I happened to live at Centre/Yonge, what precisely would my options be?
It sounds like you are saying two things.
First, that a subway stop ought not to be built unless we can expect the majority of its traffic to arrive there, not by bus or private vehicle, but by people who walk there from their origin or destination points.
Second, that that is exactly how most traffic at existing TTC subway stops is generated. (Or maybe you are saying that that is how most traffic is generated on the B-D line from Jane to Main and, furthermore, that the rest of the subway ought therefore not to have been built. Or maybe you are only talking about downtown, and stuck in "Jane to Main" for rhyming effect. I can't really tell.)
Those ring a little bit strangely to me.
You may think that a significant number of commuters aren't destined for places outside of the Yonge corridor but seeing as higher passenger yields are originating from east-of-Yonge 905/416, that would tell me otherwise. It would also interface with the Eglinton premetro and potentially the DRL. Giving people direct access to many parts of Toronto rather than forcing the majority of people to transfer off the Yonge Line at some point to backtrack elsewhere is the entire point of creating alternate options.
Hey, lots of people go lots of places. For sure. Lots get there by coming from the east on packed buses with extremely high frequency. As I keep saying, we really need to revamp the RHC line to serve those people better. That's why the RHC line is so important. The east end. Not York Region.
However, if you are saying that the Yonge Extension in conjunction with an improved/fare-integrated/interconnected (yet again: at Finch LRT, Sheppard subway, Eglinton LRT, and somewhere between there and Union) RHC line will not result in significant alternate options, then I would certainly disagree.