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EnviroTO said:
I disagree. If you had said York U station I could agree with you but Steeles is completely arbitrary. All GO routes lead to Union, that makes sense. Most Mississauga bus routes converge on their city centre, that makes sense. Toronto's subways (except the Sheppard mistake) head downtown, that makes sense. Steeles West is nothing, not a designated centre on the GTA "Places to Grow" list, not a hub of activity, nothing. Stopping at Steeles would be replicating everything that is wrong with the Bloor line stopping at Kenendy. Kennedy is a nowhere in the grand scheme of city development plans.

Subways with their capacity should connect downtown to suburban cores along a path that will generate the greatest ridership. Suburban cores should be connected by BRT or LRT until the cores become major employment centres and push demand along the route to levels that require a subway. On the Spadina line the natural stopping points are the University which is a significant trip generator, or Vaughan Centre which is to become a suburban core. On the Yonge line the natural stopping point is where it is (part of North York Centre) or to go to Richmond Hill Centre. On the Bloor line the natural stopping point is where it is (Etobicoke Centre) or Mississauga Centre. On the Danforth line the natural stopping point is Scarborough Centre.

Mass transit should attempt to always stop at a location where there a significant ridership generator, or there is a plan to focus developments on that location which generate significant ridership. Why? Because those are the places you want to have transit converging to assist in making that a place people will be as a result of it being a transportation hub, and will want to be due to the great connections that location provides. In builds the incentive for that location being the designated "Place to Grow" that it is supposed to be. Extending the Spadina line to Steeles means that when an office building is built in Vaughan Centre they will need to take a bus and then transfer to get anywhere southward. That should not be the experience coming out of a suburban hub. Similarly I think the Danforth subway extension should end at Scarborough Centre, the Durham BRT should end at Scarborough Centre, and the Sheppard East LRT from Don Mills should end at Scarborough Centre via McCowan. Sheppard East further east should be served by an LRT or BRT route radiating from Scarborough Centre. The additional one stop extension to Sheppard means that Scarborough Centre developments would need to take a transfer to get to all places north. That is counter productive to the development of Scarborough Centre as a core.
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I totally agree with you. I've always said the natural endpoints of the B-D line are MCC and SCC. RHC and VCC make sense too.
 
gweed123 said:
Out of all the suburban subway extensions (with exception perhaps to the North Yonge extension), the Bloor-Danforth extension in Scarborough is probably the best bet for breaking even and having the ridership to justify it.

And yes, it actually does make the Sheppard East LRT useful. Ironically though, it also makes it even more of an overkill than it already was, because having the subway intercept it roughly mid-route will significantly lower the peak point ridership, because you will have people from east of McCowan getting off at McCowan instead of continuing westward to Don Mills like they would have under the initial Transit City scenario.

Under the original Transit City the SELRT had a pphpd of 3,100. With the Scarborough Subway to Sheppard & McCowan in place, I doubt the peak point ridership will get over 2,500, maybe even 2,000. Heck, you're likely to even see people who live at Kennedy & Sheppard travelling eastward in the AM peak to access the subway, instead of travelling westward to Don Mills. The SELRT may end up carrying more total riders as a result of the subway extension, but there's going to be a lot more counter-flow and the passenger load is going to be much more evenly distributed across the line.
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But there may be more density growth along the Sheppard LRT route due to it having two subway connections. If so, demand will be higher at all points, even approaching Don Mills.
 
EnviroTO said:
Subways with their capacity should connect downtown to suburban cores along a path that will generate the greatest ridership. Suburban cores should be connected by BRT or LRT until the cores become major employment centres and push demand along the route to levels that require a subway. On the Spadina line the natural stopping points are the University which is a significant trip generator, or Vaughan Centre which is to become a suburban core. On the Yonge line the natural stopping point is where it is (part of North York Centre) or to go to Richmond Hill Centre. On the Bloor line the natural stopping point is where it is (Etobicoke Centre) or Mississauga Centre. On the Danforth line the natural stopping point is Scarborough Centre.

Mass transit should attempt to always stop at a location where there a significant ridership generator, or there is a plan to focus developments on that location which generate significant ridership. Why? Because those are the places you want to have transit converging to assist in making that a place people will be as a result of it being a transportation hub, and will want to be due to the great connections that location provides. In builds the incentive for that location being the designated "Place to Grow" that it is supposed to be. Extending the Spadina line to Steeles means that when an office building is built in Vaughan Centre they will need to take a bus and then transfer to get anywhere southward. That should not be the experience coming out of a suburban hub. Similarly I think the Danforth subway extension should end at Scarborough Centre, the Durham BRT should end at Scarborough Centre, and the Sheppard East LRT from Don Mills should end at Scarborough Centre via McCowan. Sheppard East further east should be served by an LRT or BRT route radiating from Scarborough Centre. The additional one stop extension to Sheppard means that Scarborough Centre developments would need to take a transfer to get to all places north. That is counter productive to the development of Scarborough Centre as a core.
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I agree that heavy rail lines should go to the town centres of satellite towns, but do not agree that Scarborough is one of such satellite towns. Scarborough 's transit network is already integrated with the rest of Toronto and a lot of residents travel to locations outside Scarborough. Therefore, it probably makes more sense to optimize the whole network rather than force everybody to go to STC and transfer there.

Extending the subway to Sheppard will help bus riders from the north to bypass the 401 crossing bottleneck, and cut their travel time to subway. I believe that this advantage overweights the slight inconvenience of some riders who will have to transfer to subway to reach STC.

Also, it should be noted that keeping Sheppard LRT on the street proper is cheaper than diverting or branching to STC, and will result in simpler operation (100% of LRT trains will connect to both McCowan and Don Mills subway stations).
 
gweed123 said:
I think it would reduce the peak flow entering Don Mills, because under the original Transit City a lot of those riders will be coming from east of McCowan, and certainly east of Kennedy. Under the current scenario, those riders will be getting off at Sheppard & McCowan instead of riding to Don Mills. That would see a noticeable decline in the peak period ridership entering Don Mills.
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If someone is coming from east of McCowan, and would be travelling to Don Mills, then why would the Danforth subway attract very many of them? It's not taking them where they'd need to go. It would be faster for most to just go down McCowan and get on the RT now, and to the LRT if both the SELRT and SRT conversion had been built.
 
Rainforest said:
I agree that heavy rail lines should go to the town centres of satellite towns, but do not agree that Scarborough is one of such satellite towns. Scarborough 's transit network is already integrated with the rest of Toronto and a lot of residents travel to locations outside Scarborough. Therefore, it probably makes more sense to optimize the whole network rather than force everybody to go to STC and transfer there.
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I don't get that Scarborough Centre isn't one of those town centres of satellite towns. How is Scarborough's transit network more integrated than Richmond Hill for example? Once Richmond Hill Centre has the Yonge extension people will be able to take the subway transfer free to North York Centre, take the GO transfer free to Union or Barrie, take VIVA transfer free to Vaughan Centre or Markham Centre. With the Danforth subway running to Sheppard someone at Scarborough Centre will be able to go transfer free to Downtown or one block north to Sheppard which is nowhere and that is it. That isn't a good network.
 
EnviroTO said:
I don't get that Scarborough Centre isn't one of those town centres of satellite towns. How is Scarborough's transit network more integrated than Richmond Hill for example? Once Richmond Hill Centre has the Yonge extension people will be able to take the subway transfer free to North York Centre, take the GO transfer free to Union or Barrie, take VIVA transfer free to Vaughan Centre or Markham Centre.
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For the Scarborough east-west bus routes, the former municipal border does not exist at all. Steeles, Cummer, Finch, Sheppard, York Mills, Lawrence, Eglinton; they all continue across the former border.

Not so for YRT north-south routes. On many arterials, YRT either runs their own routes (Yonge, Bayview, Leslie, Kennedy) or subcontracts TTC routes at reduced frequency. Sometimes, they have both an YRT route that goes a long distance north of Steeles, and a short contracted TTC route extension (Bathurst, Jane).

Even within York Region, not every trip is via "centres". People who want to use VIVA, take a local bus down to the closest VIVA stop and transfer there; not necessarily at RHC.

EnviroTO said:
With the Danforth subway running to Sheppard someone at Scarborough Centre will be able to go transfer free to Downtown or one block north to Sheppard which is nowhere and that is it. That isn't a good network.
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But riders from the north who need to travel downtown and are not interested in Scarborough Centre will benefit from the subway extension across 401. Their trip to subway will be shorter, and they will avoid crossing 401 in mixed traffic. It is known that traffic jams often occur around 401 interchanges.
 
Rainforest said:
But there may be more density growth along the Sheppard LRT route due to it having two subway connections. If so, demand will be higher at all points, even approaching Don Mills.
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Yes, but that's predicated on a boatload of development assumptions. It's those same kind of assumptions that made the Sheppard subway 'viable' in the 80s when the growth models were being created. The reality is that only a fraction of that predicted growth was ever realized, so the ridership on the Sheppard subway was a fraction of what was projected. The end result is a piece of infrastructure that is underused. There's an inherent danger in overbuilding infrastructure based on growth projections.

The reality is that peak point demand on the SELRT will be reduced if the Scarborough Subway is built, because it will alter travel patterns along the LRT route to create a much more multi-directional passenger flow with a far greater turnover rate along the route.

nfitz said:
If someone is coming from east of McCowan, and would be travelling to Don Mills, then why would the Danforth subway attract very many of them? It's not taking them where they'd need to go. It would be faster for most to just go down McCowan and get on the RT now, and to the LRT if both the SELRT and SRT conversion had been built.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Don Mills was the final destination. What I meant was reaching Don Mills for the purpose of transferring to the subway. The SELRT as designed in Transit City is a feeder route for the Sheppard Subway, which would then ferry people to the Yonge line. If the destination is Bloor-Yonge (just picking that because it's where the two most common travel patterns would meet), if the trip starts pretty much anywhere along the SELRT, the fastest route to B-Y would be SELRT to Sheppard Subway, Sheppard to Yonge Subway, Yonge Subway SB.

However, if the Scarborough Subway is being built to McCowan and Sheppard, that may not be the fastest route for all trips originating on the SELRT. Certainly for anyone east of McCowan, it's faster to take the SELRT to the Scarborough Subway, and take that to Bloor-Yonge. West of McCowan, there would be some dividing line (probably somewhere between Kennedy and Warden), where it would take an equal amount of time to reach B-Y regardless of if you went the Sheppard Subway route, or the Scarborough Subway route.

The very existence of that 'dividing line' is what will alter the peak point ridership on the SELRT. Under the Transit City scenario, that dividing line either doesn't exist, or is placed so far east (interchange with the SLRT), that it's useless to most riders. Travel on the SELRT as depicted in Transit City is very uni-directional. Travel on the SELRT with the Scarborough Subway in place is anything but.
 
Rainforest said:
But riders from the north who need to travel downtown and are not interested in Scarborough Centre will benefit from the subway extension across 401. Their trip to subway will be shorter, and they will avoid crossing 401 in mixed traffic. It is known that traffic jams often occur around 401 interchanges.
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Throw BRT on McCowan from Scarborough Centre to the 407 BRT, problem solved. If they want to go downtown fast it shouldn't be at the expense of all the people who live in Scarborough and won't be able to get to Scarborough Centre without a transfer. We should put some level of priority on making Scarborough a success in its own right.

If the major transit hub is going to be Sheppard and McCowan instead of Scarborough Centre they should zone the area bound by the CP tracks and 401 north to south and Brimley and Shorting east to west as high density (SCC North). The SCC as it exists today will be a failed experiment with the mall once connected directly to rapid transit now a 300 to 400m walk from the subway relocated to McCowan (FreshCo Station as it might be called).
 
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gweed123 said:
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Don Mills was the final destination. What I meant was reaching Don Mills for the purpose of transferring to the subway. The SELRT as designed in Transit City is a feeder route for the Sheppard Subway, which would then ferry people to the Yonge line. If the destination is Bloor-Yonge ...
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That's what I thought you meant. But why would someone at McCowan/Sheppard either take an LRT to Don Mills, a subway to Sheppard-Yonge and then a subway to Yonge-Bloor ... when they could take the shorter route of a bus to McCowan station, and LRT to Kennedy, and a subway to Yonge-Bloor.

I suppose if they extend the Danforth line to Sheppard, there might who live in the Kennedy area who might currently or in the future travel to Don Mills and then Sheppard-Yonge to get to Yonge-Bloor ... who might then travel instead east to McCowan and on the Danforth line. But at the same time, there might well be someone in the Main Street area who works at Don Mills/Sheppard who will now take the shorter trip from Main to Sheppard/McCowan and then on the LRT to Don Mills. I really don't think that the Danforth subway extension will reduce the AM peak westbound approaching Don Mills on the LRT much ... but will increase overall ridership on that line.
 
Anyone know if the Finch and Sheppard LRTs will be fast tracked? What's the latest on that?
 
EnviroTO said:
Throw BRT on McCowan from Scarborough Centre to the 407 BRT, problem solved. If they want to go downtown fast it shouldn't be at the expense of all the people who live in Scarborough and won't be able to get to Scarborough Centre without a transfer. We should put some level of priority on making Scarborough a success in its own right.
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It depends on the numbers of people who want to get to Scarborough Centre versus those who want to travel downtown. And if the numbers are similar, I would give some priority to those who travel downtown, because their trip is inherently more difficult and time-consuming. For those who travel to STC, it is not so difficult to transfer to the subway and travel one more stop.

Plus, the surface route structure will be simpler with subway terminus at Sheppard rather than STC, as fewer branches will be needed.

EnviroTO said:
If the major transit hub is going to be Sheppard and McCowan instead of Scarborough Centre they should zone the area bound by the CP tracks and 401 north to south and Brimley and Shorting east to west as high density (SCC North). The SCC as it exists today will be a failed experiment with the mall once connected directly to rapid transit now a 300 to 400m walk from the subway relocated to McCowan (FreshCo Station as it might be called).
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Yes, they should designate the area around subway terminus for high density.

For the existing SCC, they should try to shift the McCowan & Progress station 200 m to the west and reduce the walking distance. But even if that is impossible or too expensive, a 300 to 400m walk is not necessarily a cause for failure. Yonge between Sheppard and Finch is all lined with highrises, despite the fact that North York station is about 800 km from Sheppard and more than 1 km from Finch. Obviously, the walking distance from areas halfway between the stations exceeds 300 m, and that does not discourage development.
 
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