The network also doesn't just serve one area of the city. If you get rid of all the one stops, you're left with nothing. It all matters, the government just doesn't like spending money on the expensive things that would do the most good for the city.

Seems to me that York Region has the opposite problem. The governments are more than willing to spend billions on the most expensive capital investments, such as BRT and subway infrastructure. But absent are the relatively small investments in transit operations that will enable a good return on our capital investments. If people believe this single subway stop alone is going to make Vaughan into a transit-oriented suburb, they've seriously deluded themselves. We should expect so much more from our government than this.

Just south of Steeles, the whole reason the TTC subway network is successful is because it is closely integrated with a network of dense and very frequent surface routes. Without that, the TTC subway would be an under-utilized white elephant. This is what the politicians don't seem to understand. Vaughan has its subway... where is the bus service?
 
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^The 501 Zum Queen is a busy route. And now there's the GO buses serving 407 station.
We're talking about York Region in specific. YRT does a horrid job at providing service within the region, even though it is an auto dependent region.

Mississauga is very auto-centric as well, but it does a much better job at providing transit by comparison,
 
In case this has been lost amongst the pages:

Hwy 407 Bus Terminal
Bus Platforms:
Platform 1 EB: (25F, 40) York University/Richmond Hill Centre
Platform 2 EB: (46, 47-F, 48-B, F ) York University
Platform 8 WB: (46) Square One/Erin Mills Transitway/Oakville GO
Platform 9 WB: (47-F) Bramalea GO/McMaster University
Platform 10 WB: (48-B,F)Bramalea GO/Meadowvale GO/ University of Guelph
Platform 17 WB: (25F) Bramalea GO/Wilfred Laurier University/University of Waterloo
Platform 18 WB: (40) Pearson Airport/Renforth Transitway/Square One/Hamilton GO


http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/travelling/stations.aspx?station=407T
 
No I am not....but I have zero confidence that 12 car trains will magically appear on the Kitchener line in the next 2 weeks.



See above, Minister of Transportation stood on the platform at Bramalea in one of his frequent press conferences in May of 2015 and promised there would be relief of peak crowding because 12 car trains would be here by 2017.....he did not specify a date, so I gave him to the end of the year.

So, for people who use that line, 2017 will be remembered as a year of significant promises broken.
Promise officially broken......and not surprisingly no one representing Brampton (municipally or provincially) bothered to remind the Minister he ever made the promise!
 
Seems to me that York Region has the opposite problem. The governments are more than willing to spend billions on the most expensive capital investments, such as BRT and subway infrastructure. But absent are the relatively small investments in transit operations that will enable a good return on our capital investments. If people believe this single subway stop alone is going to make Vaughan into a transit-oriented suburb, they've seriously deluded themselves. We should expect so much more from our government than this.

Just south of Steeles, the whole reason the TTC subway network is successful is because it is closely integrated with a network of dense and very frequent surface routes. Without that, the TTC subway would be an under-utilized white elephant. This is what the politicians don't seem to understand. Vaughan has its subway... where is the bus service?

My comment was specifically in reference to Queens Park, but yes. York region really has their heads up their asses, however, it might have to do with the fact that the system is contracted out and there are specific service levels that are set in stone, or something. (I'm thinking of London England's Privatization fiasco).

The rapidways for York region make a lot of sense; the region is huge and needs a way to get from one area to another quickly and efficiently. However, statistically, since they are just bus lines, if feeder bus routes do not feed into the rapidways, transferability will make no difference because transfers are cumbersome and difficult. (they will have some effect, but the effect is not significant).

The subways are a completely different story altogether. Considering the fact that VMC is currently in the "Rural" categorization of stations (none of the new tall buildings are that close to the station or they haven't been built), the only factor that will drive ridership up is, yes, feeder bus routes. This is the one thing that keeps the Bloor Danforth line alive to this day. For some reason, York region is only really considering density as the best factor for increasing subway ridership. After looking at the statistics, particularly for housing density, it has barely any effect on ridership (Job density is different, it's why downtown, finch, eglinton, and Sheppard thrive, but areas like Leslie, Bessarion, Bayview (to an extent), McCowan, etc fail). You have stations like Jane, Dufferin, St Clair West, Pape, etc that thrive despite there being no high-rise developments nearby but have ridership (and excellent ridership). York region seems to believe that the presence of a subway station will magically increase density which will magically increase ridership, it won't. No station achieves this; Kennedy, Scarborough Centre, Sheppard West, Wilson, Kipling, Islington, and Warden all thrive because of their bus terminals. Finch, Eglinton, Don Mills, and Sheppard all thrive because of their bus terminals and presence of nearby jobs, not nearby housing. Sheppard proved that this model of "build it without surface connections and they will come" would fail for a significant amount of time; subways need to connect to surface routes when initially built, then consideration can be made for densifying the station's surroundings. The Sheppard subway was built along a corridor with no surface connections with the exception of Don Mills (unsurprisingly, Don Mills has fairly decent ridership; over 30,000 PPD), and relied on densifying the areas around it. That is why it, and the VMC stations will fail for a significant amount of time.
 
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We're talking about York Region in specific. YRT does a horrid job at providing service within the region, even though it is an auto dependent region.

Mississauga is very auto-centric as well, but it does a much better job at providing transit by comparison,

Miway also has more captive ridership.
 
In case this has been lost amongst the pages:

Hwy 407 Bus Terminal
Bus Platforms:
Platform 1 EB: (25F, 40) York University/Richmond Hill Centre
Platform 2 EB: (46, 47-F, 48-B, F ) York University
Platform 8 WB: (46) Square One/Erin Mills Transitway/Oakville GO
Platform 9 WB: (47-F) Bramalea GO/McMaster University
Platform 10 WB: (48-B,F)Bramalea GO/Meadowvale GO/ University of Guelph
Platform 17 WB: (25F) Bramalea GO/Wilfred Laurier University/University of Waterloo
Platform 18 WB: (40) Pearson Airport/Renforth Transitway/Square One/Hamilton GO

http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/travelling/stations.aspx?station=407T

Is this in place now?
 
We're talking about York Region in specific. YRT does a horrid job at providing service within the region, even though it is an auto dependent region.

Mississauga is very auto-centric as well, but it does a much better job at providing transit by comparison,

Mississauga (and Brampton) is a built-up, relatively square grid. They can also focus on conventional transit since paratransit is handled by a separate agency. In contrast, YRT has to service some very rural and far-flung areas. Even the built-up area is shaped like a upside-down T, making it hard to run north-south routes in Vaughan and Markham or east-west routes north of Major Mack.
 
Mississauga (and Brampton) is a built-up, relatively square grid. They can also focus on conventional transit since paratransit is handled by a separate agency. In contrast, YRT has to service some very rural and far-flung areas. Even the built-up area is shaped like a upside-down T, making it hard to run north-south routes in Vaughan and Markham or east-west routes north of Major Mack.

These are excuses. Especially in the more suburban and urban areas, YRT should be able to provide better services. I don’t think anyone here expects 10 min bus service in farm land.
 
These are excuses. Especially in the more suburban and urban areas, YRT should be able to provide better services. I don’t think anyone here expects 10 min bus service in farm land.

Another issue is that a lot of YRT routes are legacy routes from when each municipality had their own transit agency. YRT should really look into significantly changing or even eliminating some of those. Also I think the more urban areas of York Region are subsidizing the rural areas (not just in transit, but in general) so it definitely is a factor.
 
While I understand the notion of comparing Sheppard to the Vaughn extension, the analogy is not a fair one.

Sheppard is an east/west route thru the suburbs and often people travelling from suburb to suburb have both a car and the luxury of free parking. The Spadina extension on the other hand will hold two primary riders............those going downtown and those going to York U. neither of these destinations offer free or even affordable parking and even if you have the money, parking is often hard to come by. Also the traffic to get downtown is horrid and Vaughn, unlike people at Don Mills/Markham do not have a fast or direct way of getting downtown.

As for York U, most students don't have or cannot afford to drive their cars to school so there is a captive audience. When development happens at VCC, it will be there due to the subway which will be the areas main selling point so many moving to VCC will do so precisely because they don't need a car to get to school, downtown or shopping ie Yorkdale. Also being along a subway route makes bus transfers easier to other destinations as most main routes begin/end at a subway station.

Burnaby's Metrotown was just another mall with a few low rises surrounding it but it is with the introduction of SkyTrain that lead to the soaring local population and ridership. This is also the case with the newer Millenium Line which is seeing massive condo tower development and soaring populations at Brentwood and Lougheed Malls.
 
Burnaby's Metrotown was just another mall with a few low rises surrounding it but it is with the introduction of SkyTrain that lead to the soaring local population and ridership. This is also the case with the newer Millenium Line which is seeing massive condo tower development and soaring populations at Brentwood and Lougheed Malls.

Condo developments born out of a billion dollar investment do not impress me. It's not as if Toronto is starved for condominium development - it's not as if we needed to spend a billion dollars to get a handful of condo buildings. There are countless places those condos could've gone at a cost to taxpayers of $0. Why this attitude that we have to artificially induce transit demand through development, when there are countless places in the GTHA that are transit starved despite already having the demand?
 
Another issue is that a lot of YRT routes are legacy routes from when each municipality had their own transit agency. YRT should really look into significantly changing or even eliminating some of those. Also I think the more urban areas of York Region are subsidizing the rural areas (not just in transit, but in general) so it definitely is a factor.
Combine 1 with 77, 16 with 85, and 4 with 25 as starters since they are the main 3 east/west routes (Highway 7, 16th Ave/Rutherford, and Major Mackenzie Dr). At least the north/south routes are all pretty much connected in the southern portion.
 

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