Streety McCarface
Senior Member
Why does everyone believe all commuters want to only go downtown?
Because there is a premise that jobs and places of play are in locations where there are large numbers of people confined to small, dense areas. This statement isn't, however, it overshadows the true spread of jobs in Toronto. It's much easier to build one subway line that takes 30% of the population to Downtown than build 4-5 LRT lines that take people only throughout Scarborough. The 3 stop subway made sense because it had a fair number of stations for a suburban area, with all of those stations serving as mobility hubs. With this, you could connect to downtown VIA the Bloor Danforth Line, Midtown via the Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Subway, and Uptown via the Sheppard LRT/Subway (Unknown). It would also serve local travel because it would facilitate ease of transfers at these subway stations, similar to the rest of the subway system. This is why this plan was the best option at the time; it didn't just serve downtown commuters or limited Scarborough commuters (as well as the fact that the existing RT corridor is useless to almost everyone).
For instance, if I lived along Middlefield took a hypothetical version of the 130 to a future Sheppard East station, I would be able to wait in a sheltered station for the 169 if I needed to go down hunting wood, or another bus if I needed to go to another location within the north of Scarborough. If I needed to go to the south end of Scarborough, I'd take the subway south and potentially use local buses at Lawrence West or Kennedy. If I needed to travel out of Scarborough, I could take the Sheppard RT to uptown Toronto if necessary, head south on the subway to Kennedy & Easily transfer to The Crosstown if I needed to go to Midtown, or stay on the subway if I needed to go Downtown. Also, notice how there is a huge grid system within the Scarborough bus network. If there was a rapid transit backbone with station mobility hubs along the middle of Scarborough, then the possibilities for many more local, station-feeder routes would become possible. It would be like a second Yonge subway, but in Scarborough, and could potentially build ridership for a future Sheppard line (which would make connections to grid routes extremely easy, kind of like the current Bloor Danforth Line through downtown Toronto). As I proved before, station ridership will only increase if there are connecting bus routes. The LRT on the existing RT corridor is doomed to fail because there are terrible connections to other forms of transit. The Eglinton East LRT is a great idea because the corridor is high capacity and in areas worthy of redevelopment. McCowan Road is good for a future subway because the blocks surrounding previously proposed subway stops are excellent candidates for densification, while still being able to support station ridership through feeder transit.
In summary, the Yonge Line wasn't full the day it opened. No subway route in all of Toronto was ever like this, even the Bloor line. It took decades for ridership to achieve a level in which the system was at capacity. Heck, you stand on a Bloor train heading to BY station like a sardine only to find that the line is not near capacity. I by no means am trying to argue that we should ignore the greatest transit needs in the city right now; The DRL needs to be built as a subway from Dundas West to Don Mills and Sheppard, no exceptions. However, we shouldn't be holding back transit expansion in other areas of the city either, because they will either inhibit development or will lead to overcapacity routes within a few decades, and we don't want the future generations to be in the same crisis we are in currently. I'd rather see and pay for a transit system that isn't completely utilized knowing space is future proofed than have this same argument in 20-30 years from now, where completely new infrastructure must be laid to fix the mistakes of the past.