Then again, instert has a point. A Sydney or Melbourne style rail system (which is what GO electrification would do) does much more to relieve the system then a Don Mills Subway. Plus no ridership requirements for it.
 
TOareaFan said:
At least in the case of Brampton, this does not seem to be the factor. Brampton's growth has continued at a vigorous pace.....just in the traditional greenfield suburban housing type of growth. What has not happened is any significant intensification through development of high/mid rises. So, people seem to be saying "I don't mind living there, but in a semi or detached or maybe even town home.....but not an apartment." There have been several projects launched and with the exception of a very few they have all failed/stalled when they went to the sales process.
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I think there has been significant infill growth in Downtown Brampton and the potential for a lot more when the LRT is built. There is the brand new 15-storey Chapelview Resident on John Street; The 27-storey Park Place condo at Queen and James; and the 27-storey Alterra Condo on George Street for example.


http://www.brampton.ca/en/Business/...Documents/Development Presentation Update.pdf

Once the LRT is on the ground the flood gates will open and all those borderline project will suddenly become money-makers.
 
howl said:
I think there has been significant infill growth in Downtown Brampton and the potential for a lot more when the LRT is built. There is the brand new 15-storey Chapelview Resident on John Street; The 27-storey Park Place condo at Queen and James; and the 27-storey Alterra Condo on George Street for example.


http://www.brampton.ca/en/Business/...Documents/Development Presentation Update.pdf

Once the LRT is on the ground the flood gates will open and all those borderline project will suddenly become money-makers.
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I would not count the John Street building as indication of market demand/acceptance for apartment/condo living in DT Brampton. It is a Peel Living, social/affordable, housing project and with the size of their waiting list they could build anywhere and place their constituents there. Quite the opposite, the fact that such a prominent high rise site is/was available for Peel Living to shorten their waiting list probably indicates how week the market demand for market driven high rise projects is.

That said, I would substitute the Medallion Landmarq project in its place. So the area the city defines as the the DT has seen 3 projects totalling 783 units in what, 10 years...that is "significant infill"? During the Toronto area (and many nodes within the GTA) seeing the biggest condo boom that any city in Canada (perhaps even North America) has ever seen. This year in the GTA somewhere between 17 and 20k condos will be delivered to buyers....how many of those are in Brampton? Is there any other municipality in the GTA delivering 0 condos this year?

It also ignores the several projects that have been launched and gone no where in the same time. The Blade listed in that report you link has been launched and re-launched at least twice.....no sales...no construction. The site at the NE corner of Nelson and Main has had a development proposal sign on it for at least 10 years....no progress.

As I have said many times before there are likely many factors in this (the floodplain issue, the poor road and transit connections to the rest of GTA and the still available affordable single family homes seem to be the big three) but it is not at all clear to me that the introduction of an LRT to Nelson street in Brampton does anything to spur a level of development that should be considered "significant".
 
TOareaFan said:
I would not count the John Street building as indication of market demand/acceptance for apartment/condo living in DT Brampton. It is a Peel Living, social/affordable, housing project and with the size of their waiting list they could build anywhere and place their constituents there. Quite the opposite, the fact that such a prominent high rise site is/was available for Peel Living to shorten their waiting list probably indicates how week the market demand for market driven high rise projects is.

That said, I would substitute the Medallion Landmarq project in its place. So the area the city defines as the the DT has seen 3 projects totalling 783 units in what, 10 years...that is "significant infill"? During the Toronto area (and many nodes within the GTA) seeing the biggest condo boom that any city in Canada (perhaps even North America) has ever seen. This year in the GTA somewhere between 17 and 20k condos will be delivered to buyers....how many of those are in Brampton? Is there any other municipality in the GTA delivering 0 condos this year?

It also ignores the several projects that have been launched and gone no where in the same time. The Blade listed in that report you link has been launched and re-launched at least twice.....no sales...no construction. The site at the NE corner of Nelson and Main has had a development proposal sign on it for at least 10 years....no progress.

As I have said many times before there are likely many factors in this (the floodplain issue, the poor road and transit connections to the rest of GTA and the still available affordable single family homes seem to be the big three) but it is not at all clear to me that the introduction of an LRT to Nelson street in Brampton does anything to spur a level of development that should be considered "significant".
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I agree with most of your comments and add this.

Both Alterra and Park Place are still not 100% sold after they were built a few years ago. I believe the one by Kennedy is in the same boat, but not by it enough to say more on it like the other 2.

There is a lot of development land on Queen St still not developed before and after it was widen.

The Downtown Development group has try everything they can do to help the development of it with no luck. They hit a brick wall sometime ago and hoping the LRT will help to kick starts projects and ideas that been around a decade or more.

Mississauga core has seen more units in a shorter time than Brampton DT, but they are hitting a wall at this time for more development. Some of the issues falls at the feet of councils for that wall.

The LRT Loop will do nothing for the so call DT for at least 40 years in Mississauga if at all.
 
Bramptons condo market is non existant as their housing prices are still so low.

In a few years when the greenfield sites start to dry up the condo market will increase.
 
denfromoakvillemilton said:
Nfitz, you want relive Bloor Yonge? Make the DRL go up the the Science Centre. That will push the pressure point east.
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A DRL subway will provide relief to Bloor-Yonge whether it extends just to Danforth, or to Eglinton (I'd go for the latter, given the connectivity issues to a Don Mills LRT south of Overlea). It's these other surface GO-based DRL schemes along existing rail corridors, that only connect to the Danforth Line at Kennedy - or using a funicular at Castle Frank, that I'm referring to.

Still not sure what this has to do with Mississauga.
 
drum118 said:
I agree with most of your comments and add this.

Both Alterra and Park Place are still not 100% sold after they were built a few years ago. I believe the one by Kennedy is in the same boat, but not by it enough to say more on it like the other 2.
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I know all three have significant levels of unsold inventory in their ground floor commercial space (I believe Alterra is 100% vacant in this area, Park Place looks about 50% and the Rhythm looks about 2/3 occupied)...have no idea what level of residential sales they have achieved ....at least we know they all achieved the pre-sale level required by their lenders to get the things built....even if the absorption was achingly slow for all 3 (particularly Alterra's project which is particularly relevant here because it is the most "downtown' of the 3 by far)....a lot of other proposed projects in the DT have not had anywhere close to that "success'.
 
TOareaFan said:
Is there any other municipality in the GTA delivering 0 condos this year?
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I don't know about 0 condos, but Durham Region as a whole has a pretty slow highrise market. They sold just 313 new highrise units in the last 3 years according to BILD. That compares to 2,628 for Halton, 2,778 for Peel, 5,828 for York and 31,536 for Toronto. So relative to population size, Toronto is doing best, then York and Halton, then Peel, then Durham.

Also while Toronto, Halton and York's numbers have gone up compared to the first 3 years BILD has data for (2003-2005), they've gone down for Peel (5418-->2778) and for Durham (920-->313). Besides Durham and Brampton, there doesn't seem as much urban infill apartments going on in Milton. It seems to be mostly 4-6 storey buildings built with the new greenfield developments.
 
Last I seen, the plan was to have the LRT line go down Duke of York Blvd as opposed to Living Arts Drive. Can anyone tell me why this was chosen? There is much more development on and around Living Arts Drive than there is on Duke of York. Not to mention our famous round about would be removed and the art piece relocated. Is it a space issue?
 
toronto3 said:
Last I seen, the plan was to have the LRT line go down Duke of York Blvd as opposed to Living Arts Drive. Can anyone tell me why this was chosen? There is much more development on and around Living Arts Drive than there is on Duke of York. Not to mention our famous round about would be removed and the art piece relocated. Is it a space issue?
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Due to trucks entering and exiting both the City hall and the Living Arts Centre. More for the LAC than City hall with all the events taking place there.

The whole loop is dumb and going to waste people time north or south of Sq One since you will have to transfer between the 2 lines and waste 15 minutes more in travel time like the 19 does today for riders.

What good having all day service on the Milton Line if you can't get to it if you live north of Sq One and could miss your train because of the loop. Since 103 has drop its headway to every 10 minutes, ridership has spike going the the CooKsville GO Station with people leaving their cars at home.

Everything is supposed to be done on a business-case base, yet neither the city or the project has every responded to my request for data or answers my opposition data that has been supplied to them showing both the loop is DOA and some of the stop spacing needs to be less as while in different locations than plan.
 
drum118 said:
Due to trucks entering and exiting both the City hall and the Living Arts Centre. More for the LAC than City hall with all the events taking place there.

The whole loop is dumb and going to waste people time north or south of Sq One since you will have to transfer between the 2 lines and waste 15 minutes more in travel time like the 19 does today for riders.

What good having all day service on the Milton Line if you can't get to it if you live north of Sq One and could miss your train because of the loop. Since 103 has drop its headway to every 10 minutes, ridership has spike going the the CooKsville GO Station with people leaving their cars at home.

Everything is supposed to be done on a business-case base, yet neither the city or the project has every responded to my request for data or answers my opposition data that has been supplied to them showing both the loop is DOA and some of the stop spacing needs to be less as while in different locations than plan.
Click to expand...

Not having the loop would likely increase the land value closer to Hurontario Street (assuming people will pay more to live closer to an LRT stop). That would probably hasten the replacement of the parking lots on the north, east and south sides of Square One with a real urban fabric.
 
howl said:
Not having the loop would likely increase the land value closer to Hurontario Street (assuming people will pay more to live closer to an LRT stop). That would probably hasten the replacement of the parking lots on the north, east and south sides of Square One with a real urban fabric.
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The elephant in the city core that stopping the city to built a so call downtown is OMER'S, owners of Sq One Mall since they own most of the land around the mall in the first place.

As long as the city continue to allow the mall to expand like it is now as a single story waste of space, along with pads, land value will rise slow.

OMER'S has some sort of plan for higher density development, but fall short of what could really go in for this area. Everyone dreams of having 40% of the area being used as office space and not going to happen.

There has been a few proposals by other landowners along Hurontario for mix development, but gone no where.

One thing the city needs badly now is a new transit hub that will support up to 125-150,000 daily riders. The current one was built for 25,000 and out dated before they started to build it and currently sees 50,000 plus 5,000 for GO.

The best place for the terminal is in that plaza area beside Hurontario with mix development above it. I know I have the full support of city staff on that land for a hub going back to 2004. Even the owner of the Sherwood business complexes across the street from it love the idea as it would help workers to get there fast and easy compare today method.

Was by the terminal yesterday and they have the shelter area close off for the Transitway. The shelter is too small to hold all the riders for any of the routes it service, let alone all of them. CHEAP CHEAP is the standard way for Mississauga when it come to transit.

Cheap to build surface parking lots and take away from good urban design land use.
 
A secondary terminal at City Centre/Rathburn is all that's needed. The current terminal was meant for BRT, and that's all it can handle. To have all MT local, express, GO and LRT routes in City Centre serve that terminal, or any terminal for that matter, is just not possible. Almost all the bus routes currently serving the terminal intersect with Hurontario already. To divert the LRT there is unnecessary to begin with. All that's needed is a BRT station near Hurontario and secondary terminal for the routes that don't already cross Hurontario: 6, 9, 61.
 
I cant find the link but I recall the promise being "Transit solutions for Dufferin County".

Orangeville however is set up well for GO Trains, with the current GO bus station being located at the Orangeville rail station. The rails on the Owen Sound Sub (Brampton-Orangeville, rails were ripped north of Orangeville in the late 90's) need upgrading as (I am pretty sure) there is a 35mph speed limit on the line.

I agree that DMU's would be the best. The line could serve north Brampton, Snelgrove, and south Caledon, which is seeing a few new housing developments go in, as well as Orangeville.
 
Again, I have to chime in about the viability of running GO Trains on the OBRY line to Orangeville. It simply makes little sense. Getting a few peak-direction trains to Bolton (stopping at Woodbridge) makes far more sense in the short to medium term. I've been on the Credit Valley Explorer twice. It's a beautiful trip, especially in October. But it's slow, and Orangeville isn't that big of a place, with its out-of-town commuters headed to jobs in Brampton, Mississauga, Newmarket, Woodbridge and Toronto. The GO Train will be near empty all the way to Mayfield Road, where a stop there could intercept some commuters who might have boarded trains at Brampton or Mount Pleasant.

Even with upgrades, the grade from Cheltenham, up the Escarpment through Inglewood and Forks of Credit is slow and winding, much more than any other GO route apart from the underused Richmond Hill line south of York Mills Road. Highway 10 is usually free flowing into the 410 except in bad weather. Buses are fine, let's start running more of those, then perhaps look at a spur off the Kitchener Line to serve new stops at Bovaird Mayfield and King Street (by Brampton Airport) to intercept some commuters otherwise headed to Brampton or Mount Pleasant Stations.
 
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