[44 North]

The Star and other publications have also released plenty of articles praising the extension at well. One of them even claiming that TYSSE is ushering in a golden age of transit expansion (I’m paraphrasing). Coverage, from my point of view, has been quite fair and balanced.

As I was touring the TYYSE, I found myself being intently happy, as I finally was able to witness the tens of thousands of people that this project will have a significant life-enhancing effect on. But on the other hand, I don't understand this expectation that media coverage should be more positive. A lot of things went wrong with TYSSE. We shouldn't let a self-congradualtory attitude get any the way of some somber reflection. Toronto still has a lot of lessons to learn with regard to building transit. We can fully criticize the project while celebrating that it will help tens of thousands of people around the city.

Well said. There are benefits, and there are drawbacks. And like you mentioned darker aspects like litigation will be in the news henceforth. Claiming that it should be verboten to critique or discuss negative aspects for no other reason than it's in operation is pretty weird. Line 4's been in operation 15yrs and it's criticized all the time; Line 3 over 30 and that gets even more flak. There are benefits/drawbacks of each, and trying to whitewash or ignore things done before is not a good way to learn. Good example is the comment above yours re: bare concrete at platform level (I don't think anyone likes that). Or that railed rapid transit to Vaughan should've arguably gone to Vaughan Mills, but not as a Line 1 extn.

Why an either/or? Why not both?

Why not either/or and both (i.e bringing Sheppard West northward to Finch and have it transition to become FWLRT). Nah I just wanted to say that for fun, but do think there could be merit.

 

[micheal_can]

Well said. There are benefits, and there are drawbacks. And like you mentioned darker aspects like litigation will be in the news henceforth. Claiming that it should be verboten to critique or discuss negative aspects for no other reason than it's in operation is pretty weird. Line 4's been in operation 15yrs and it's criticized all the time; Line 3 over 30 and that gets even more flak. There are benefits/drawbacks of each, and trying to whitewash or ignore things done before is not a good way to learn. Good example is the comment above yours re: bare concrete at platform level (I don't think anyone likes that). Or that railed rapid transit to Vaughan should've arguably gone to Vaughan Mills, but not as a Line 1 extn.



Why not either/or and both (i.e bringing Sheppard West northward to Finch and have it transition to become FWLRT). Nah I just wanted to say that for fun, but do think there could be merit.

Keep Sheppard going west to YYZ. It would make getting there easy.

 

[speedkar9]

Thinking aloud here: Would it have been better to run TYSSE north along Dufferin with a station at Finch, and then track west to Keele? Would that have served more people along Dufferin, compared to the overblown Downsview Park station?

Finch west is like that as the TTC knows that the LRT will replace most of the buses at the station soon. They underbuilt the bus terminal as the platforms likely would have only been used for 4 or 5 years before being useless. So buses stop on street until the LRT opens.

Haha that's not until the People of Ward 2 start fighting for a Finch West subway...Humber College needs a subway just like Scarborough too right ? They'll call it the College Line, to supplement the University line.

My question is whether or not the centre portion of the Finch LRT will be necessary if the Sheppard West Subway Extension happened:
View attachment 130795
Yes, it would be a nice to have, but it would be a bit "too redundant" if both were to exist.

The reality is none of both will get built. Finch West LRT got shortened to stop at Finch West station, and the westward extension of Sheppard is very low on the priority lists compared to other parts of the city.

 

[Streety McCarface]

The reality is none of both will get built. Finch West LRT got shortened to stop at Finch West station, and the westward extension of Sheppard is very low on the priority lists compared to other parts of the city.

I mean, it isn't that low on the list. It's a project to be delivered before 2041, according to Metrolinx. I support it more than the current scarborough subway proposal, and I think Scarborough should have Heavy Rail Transit to the STC (Even if it's above ground).

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Vaughan's continued growth in a car-dependent sprawl format is unlikely to change with this addition of yet another experiment in bringing costly urban transit to the suburbs. Lets just be real here. If anything, some of council's actions suggest that they aren't actually all that serious about changing the status quo in a meaningful way.

I guess this where I fundamentally disagree. I believe that with the right policies and the right investments we can retrofit suburbs and we can do better. If you want to be more cynical and say places like Vaughan can never meaningfully change, you're obviously entitled to that opinion.

Some municipalities have been better than others in responding to the shift of the past decade and change; I think Markham is obviously more amenable to a real shift than Vaughan is, for example. (And of course, they can't have the subway to serve their extremely ambitious plans because there's no capacity. But that's a whole other issue.)

And I am well aware of Vaughan's flaws and under no illusions the city has overnight given up on auto-centric development. But I also believe that the city and the landowners are sincerely invested in trying to make VMC work. They typically wait years to do things like a library in a new subdivision but they're already moving forward with that and a YMCA in VMC, trying to make it a real destination. The alternative, which is the terrible forms of development Vaughan built almost exclusively for 30 years, is no alternative at all.

If you're uninspired, that's your right too. I see Smart Centres passing over Walmart for KPMG as a fundamental change. The company that is perhaps more responsible for shitty big box retail than anyone else in Canada deciding to go all-in on transit-oriented mixed-use development strike me as "inspriational," even if they are still building crap elsewhere at the same time.

You think the first office tower there is "massively undersized" and I don't know by what standard you measure that but I know that, even in this condo boom, there are very few places people are willing to try 50-storey condo towers in the GTA, and this is one of them. On lands that would otherwise be a Walmart parking lot. (And given that fact, a compact 6-storey lot adjacent to a bus terminal is an improvement all on its own.) I know that the existing employment uses in that area are old school, low-rise industrial parks and aesthetically and economically, that KPMG tower is clearly superior.

It ain't perfect and neither of us will know for years whether this experiment worked but this is very embodiment of the Growth Plan - to build suburban nodes around rapid transit after decades of sprawl - and I believe in that vision, so I'm hoping they can pull it off rather than taking shots at it while it's still in the crib. I guess those are my thoughts

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Thinking aloud here: Would it have been better to run TYSSE north along Dufferin with a station at Finch, and then track west to Keele? Would that have served more people along Dufferin, compared to the overblown Downsview Park station?

Putting the Spadina Line on Allen road in the first place was a terrible decision. It should be on Dufferin.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Putting the Spadina Line on Allen road in the first place was a terrible decision. It should be on Dufferin.

I would say Allen Road was a mistake period.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

You think the first office tower there is "massively undersized" and I don't know by what standard you measure that. Even in this condo boom, there are very few places people are willing to try 50-storey condo towers in the GTA, and this is one of them

First of all, I'll say it's early days, so I'm going to reserve judgement on VMC's long term success. However, the development I've seen so far do not impress me.

The two office towers are 15-storeys and 9-stoyes. If these were in Toronto, they'd be completely insignificant, representing less than 1% of the office space in the city. With the amount of money invested in the TYSSE, we oughta be getting a more significant return than that - it's not as if these buildings couldn't have been trivially absorbed anywhere in the GTHA with virtually $0 in public investment.

 

[drum118]

First of all, I'll say it's early days, so I'm going to reserve judgement on VMC's long term success. However, the development I've seen so far do not impress me.

The two office towers are 15-storeys and 9-stoyes. If these were in Toronto, they'd be completely insignificant, representing less than 1% of the office space in the city. With the amount of money invested in the TYSSE, we oughta be getting a more significant return than that - it's not as if these buildings couldn't have been trivially absorbed anywhere in the GTHA with virtually $0 in public investment.

There is supposed to be a 50s condo tower next to the bus terminal at the north end under construction.

Check back in 20 years to see what the area looks like then, but not much for the next 10 years.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

I would say Allen Road was a mistake period.

In fairness, that's like saying the Sheppard subway is a mistake; both are truncated projects.
(That said, the SPADINA EXPRESSWAY was a mistake. But the Allen Road is what's left-over, the result of an abortion, rather than a project consciously designed to be what it is.)

The two office towers are 15-storeys and 9-stoyes. If these were in Toronto, they'd be completely insignificant, representing less than 1% of the office space in the city. With the amount of money invested in the TYSSE, we oughta be getting a more significant return than that - it's not as if these buildings couldn't have been trivially absorbed anywhere in the GTHA with virtually $0 in public investment.

The first couple of towers in Markham Centre are around the same height and they're just that; the first couple of towers.
Sure, it'd be nice if Vaughan had blown everyone away announcing the first employment development in VMC was Amazon HQ2, but let's be practical. The KPMG tower's primary value is symbolic. The symbol is ultimately meaningless if it doesn't lead to anything but it's still a vote of confidence in the enterprise. (North York Centre, if I'm remembering timelines, saw a few big commercial developments at the start and then almost nothing but residential since. If Vaughan can do a slow-and-steady, gradual buildout, that's fine.)

But ironically you kind of make my point for me - you're right that those buildings could have been built anywhere in the GTA (I'm assuming you're counting the existing RBC tower as the other one?), but they weren't. It's also worth noting that the land immediately around the subway station - the densest-zoned sites - couldn't be developed while the station was under construction. Suffice it to say, the Home Outfitters building won't be there in 5 years. (And the news above that Smart Centres is already looking to kick out Walmart - read that sentence twice! - also indicates the market there is not proceeding with trepidation. Getting the right mix of uses will be the key to success more than whether they can build a forest of condos.)

 

[amnesiajune]

It probably would be necessary.

An important lesson we learned with the opening of Line 2 is that new subway lines do a poor job of attracting ridership from parallel surface routes

When Line 2 opened, the TTC originally planned to drastically cut service on parallel service routes, such as Queen. To their surprise, the new subway hardly had any impact on the ridership of parallel routes, and service had to be restored.

Finch is a whole two kilometres from Sheppard, and Finch’s bus ridership is predominantly local in nature. That won’t change if the Sheppard Line was extended to Dowsview. Finch would probably still be the most used bus route in the city, and the LRT would still be said.

I don't think there's much demand for trips along Finch, especially west of Keele. Practically everyone is trying to go between somewhere on Finch and somewhere not on Finch, which is very different from streets like St. Clair, College, Dundas, Queen and King.

In any case, Sheppard could be well-served by a beefed-up 84E bus. It's rarely more than two or three minutes slower than a subway extension would be. The problem is the long and winding connection at Sheppard-Yonge. People have to go down to the Yonge platform and back up to the north mezzanine, or up through the west mezzanine, down to the unused westbound platform, and around to the bus terminal.



I'm not sure if it can be improved though, or what the cost of improving the connection would be.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The KPMG building from what I remember is 400k sf, a little smaller than the Globe and Mail building in the east end of downtown. Not exactly massive, but not small either.

Where the real density is coming for VMC is in it's condo projects. There are 17 towers over 30 stories proposed, under construction, or built right now, with 5 of them over 50 stories. This number is growing quickly too, I suspect Smartcentres / Centrecourt are going to be releasing their fourth tower in the spring.

 

[salsa]

An important lesson we learned with the opening of Line 2 is that new subway lines do a poor job of attracting ridership from parallel surface routes

When Line 2 opened, the TTC originally planned to drastically cut service on parallel service routes, such as Queen. To their surprise, the new subway hardly had any impact on the ridership of parallel routes, and service had to be restored.

To me one of the best examples of this is the Dufferin bus, which is among the top 5 busiest TTC routes despite the parallel Spadina line.

 

[BMO]

To me one of the best examples of this is the Dufferin bus, which is among the top 5 busiest TTC routes despite the parallel Spadina line.

I live on Dufferin and I'm a 15 minute walk from Eglinton West subway station. After you factor in the walk time and the need to transfer anyway from the subway it only ends up saving ~5 minutes. That's a comparison even with the Dufferin bus stopping at every.single.stop all the way to King. Hardly worth the inconvenience, not to mention I can surf the web and get work done while on the bus, can't say the same for the 15 minute walk and subway portions. The bus also directly hits a bunch of schools and various employment centres that would require a long walk from the Spadina line.

I will admit, if the Eglinton bus wasn't so slow between Dufferin and Eglinton West station (due to construction) I would be using the Subway daily. I think that really only applies to people around Eglinton though, and this will likely be the travel pattern once Eglinton Crosstown is complete. South of Eglinton, the Spadina line is quite far from Dufferin, basically a 10 minute ride on St. Clair to St.Clair West Station. At that point it likely doesn't make much sense when you can just take avoid the transfer and go directly to Dufferin Station.

 

[yrt+viva=1system]

I had the day off yesterday and had a few errands to run, so decided it was a good opportunity to try out the new extension. Here are my thoughts and observations:

Trip
3:30pm Downtown Bound - I started my trip towards downtown from Thornhill at the Promenade Terminal and headed towards VMC. Usually my go to routes are YRT 23, 77, 88 Finch bound, it takes about 45mins on a good day to just 60mins to reach Yonge & Bloor. The bus trip usually is about 20-25mins to Finch. Taking Viva Orange towards VMC was about 10-12mins. From VMC to Sheppard West it is exactly 15mins (I actually did a few trips back and forth to see what the times were like). By going down the Spadina Line it was approximately 60mins in total for me to reach St. George. Trains are definitely travelling much faster on the extension and the crossovers seems to be much more elongated to allow for faster travel/crossing over.

9:30pm Thornhill Bound - Total trip time from Queens Park to Thornhill (Promenade Terminal) was about 75mins. The reason for the additional time was from the slow down at Wilson Yard. They were taking rush trains off the line and this created a backlog of trains. This is not the first time this has occurred, it's more of a daily problem. During this delay I did take it as an opportunity to scope out the bus times for YRT 3 at Pioneer Village and York University and the 77 and Viva Orange at VMC; in the end I decided to go VMC as the Viva shelter is enclosed and heated!

Observations
Most of the stations seem to be heated as it was quite warm with the exception of the station platforms. Perhaps they didn't have the heating system running during the first day of operations? Even the Hwy 407 was quite cozy in the bus terminal area. For those who are critical about the lack of usage of this station, from my observation this is definitely a park-and-ride stop; the parking lot was quite filled with cars.

The exit signage at all the stations are the old style; red with the wording "exit" in red. I thought the TTC would be using the new ISO- running man (green) on the whole system?

During the day it seems most passengers are destined for York University or Pioneer Village but there was definitely a handful of passengers waiting at all the stations. In the late evening the northbound trains (9:15-9:30pm) are definitely not empty. From a very rough estimate, about 3/4 of a train is full of seated passengers who are destined for VMC which I was quite surprised about. These passengers seemed to be getting picked up at VMC, walking to somewhere from the station, connecting with YRT 20 and just a few are making the connection with westbound YRT 77, ZUM and Viva Orange. VMC is far more busy than say Bayview, Leslie and Bessarion from a rough observation. A whole lot more pedestrian activity than prior to the opening of the subway.

I wished that YRT routed the 77 through the Viva stop to take advantage of the seamless connection and the heated shelters; rather than having passengers (me) wait on the street in an unheated shelter without ample lighting. Perhaps in the near future with enough complaints?

Yes the number of intercom speakers at Pioneer Village is necessary. I thought it was absurd that there would be so many judging from the photos others have taken but in person it is quite needed! My guess is the echos but also the vibrations of the subway. The floating track design utilized is a big culprit in the creation of high vibrations noise from a uneducated guess.

Faregate operation needs to be sped up. Noticed a few broken gates already.

I'm not sure if this is true but I heard that the art installation at Pioneer Village was purposely left in-operable by the TTC for fear of foul language and discriminatory vocabulary that could be displayed; fear of getting sued.

I really like the new platform next-train screens specifically the ones at VMC and Highway 407. Very clear and legible and gives actual times of the following trains. I didn't remember to check if the displays at the mezzanine level (faregates) displayed the next train times.


~These are my very rough observations and my first day of using the extension.~