Ansem said:
The Richmond Hill GO train should be massively improved and stations should be build at Eglinton Crosstown and the Bloor line for those who want to go Uptown and Midtown.

Don't believe me?
look at the RER of Paris. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER
That's the model that GO Transit needs to replicate...Express lines out of the city and stops at strategic points in the city like this station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Châtelet_-_Les_Halles_(Paris_RER)
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Paris and Toronto aren't the same though. The Paris Metro is WAY denser than Toronto's subway, and way smaller as a result. Almost all of it's stations are in an area roughly the size of Old Toronto. Toronto's subway almost has more in common with the RER than with the Metro... (not quite, but the gap isn't so big)

Given that, I don't see how RER-ing the Richmond Hill line would be simpler. Maybe on a per km basis it would be cheaper, but then you'd need 5x the amount of work. The Richmond Hill line itself isn't direct (35km from Richmond Hill Station, vs. around 20km along Yonge), doesn't pass through any significant destinations, and has limited opportunities for transfers. All to avoid 7km of subway extension (5km from Steeles)?

I appreciate what RER/Sbahn/REX/ECT are capable of, but in this particular case it doesn't seem practical compared to extending existing lines.
 
diminutive said:
Paris and Toronto aren't the same though. The Paris Metro is WAY denser than Toronto's subway, and way smaller as a result. Almost all of it's stations are in an area roughly the size of Old Toronto. Toronto's subway almost has more in common with the RER than with the Metro... (not quite, but the gap isn't so big)

Given that, I don't see how RER-ing the Richmond Hill line would be simpler. Maybe on a per km basis it would be cheaper, but then you'd need 5x the amount of work. The Richmond Hill line itself isn't direct (35km from Richmond Hill Station, vs. around 20km along Yonge), doesn't pass through any significant destinations, and has limited opportunities for transfers. All to avoid 7km of subway extension (5km from Steeles)?

I appreciate what RER/Sbahn/REX/ECT are capable of, but in this particular case it doesn't seem practical compared to extending existing lines.
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I would agree with this. I think a practical solution for the Richmond Hill line is all-day two-way service, running at least hourly.

It certainly doesn't have the potential of a Lakeshore or Georgetown or Milton or Stouffville line in terms of potential ridership. I think a lot of that stems from the fact that basically from Sheppard all the way down to Union, the current alignment is borderline useless for Toronto residents. A sharp contrast to the lines that I mentioned above, for which added stations inside of Toronto would be a tremendous benefit for a lot of neighbourhoods.
 
gweed123 said:
I would agree with this. I think a practical solution for the Richmond Hill line is all-day two-way service, running at least hourly.
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I'm not even sure that's necessary in a post-Yonge extension world. Wouldn't it almost always be quicker to bus or drive to the (much more frequent) subway terminal than bus or drive to an hourly GO train? And the future expansion stations on RH are all in Greenbelt, so one would hope much of York Region's development will occur either directly on the Yonge extension corridor or its BRT feeder routes.

Looking around the DRTES, it's clear just how marginal RH is. RH inbound demand in 2031 is estimated @ 2,500. The Yonge Extension would only drop that to 2,200 while adding a few thousand to Yonge. Clearly there are different markets being served here.

I'm not opposed to improving GO service, but the RH line is by far the most marginal line with the lowest potential for improvement. The persistant comparison between the RH & Yonge Extension smells more of a sense that the TTC shouldn't serve the '905' because, well, it shouldn't. Beyond being silly, it also fosters the reverse notion that GO shouldn't serve the 416. Especially once you make the concession that an extension to Steeles is logical, going the extra 5km to Hwy 7 hardly seems insane. I'm not sure where it ranks next to other projects on cost/benefit terms, but it's obviously better than beefing up the RH line.
 
Ansem said:
A subway extension to Richmond Hill will do the same. They're predictions are too low and doesn't take under consideration that people will be driving from way farther away which will still get them to the subway in a decent amount of time due to the lack of traffic in the 905.
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No... I think you're wrong.

You're comparing an island with a few select ways in/out to a block of solid land with a grid-based road system and multiple north/south regional transit lines already in place, with a major 4 lane highway nearby and another one not too far away either that goes even further north than that. We're talking about hundreds of possible combinations of getting from point A to point B, with minimal bottlenecks along the way aside from the obvious 404/401 interchange which is way out of the scope of this extension.

People who are coming from the edges of the north already take the GO and would continue to do so (via the Barrie line, mostly). No doubt, the Richmond Hill GO line is in need of an extension and improved service, but I seriously doubt they would encounter the same issue they ended up having in Montreal.

This extension would literally serve the people of Markham, Richmond Hill, and Thornhill. Those who live in Vaughan would end up taking the Spadina extension once it is complete, so most of the incoming traffic would be coming from the north and east of Yonge.

If Transit City had completed as it was intended, Markham would have seen an extension of the Don Mills LRT line up to Highway 7, completing a connection down to Don Mills Station that would have alleviated a lot of stress from the Yonge line. But we know who to thank for screwing that one up.
 
xtremesniper said:
If Transit City had completed as it was intended, Markham would have seen an extension of the Don Mills LRT line up to Highway 7, completing a connection down to Don Mills Station that would have alleviated a lot of stress from the Yonge line. But we know who to thank for screwing that one up.
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No one since that line was never funded. And based on previous grand plans, the chances of Transit City ever being completed were probably pretty remote.
 
xtremesniper said:
This extension would literally serve the people of Markham, Richmond Hill, and Thornhill. Those who live in Vaughan would end up taking the Spadina extension once it is complete, so most of the incoming traffic would be coming from the north and east of Yonge.

If Transit City had completed as it was intended, Markham would have seen an extension of the Don Mills LRT line up to Highway 7, completing a connection down to Don Mills Station that would have alleviated a lot of stress from the Yonge line. But we know who to thank for screwing that one up.
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You'd be surprised how many people from all the way up in Newmarket take Viva Blue to Finch. GO is a better option to go to Union, but if someone works in the north end of Toronto, it's not much help.

An LRT to Don Mills from Highway 7 and Leslie would have helped a bit, but there is certainly more traffic to Finch from the north. The farther east in Markham you go, the more access people have to better GO service (the Stouffville line having off-peak buses whereas the Richmond Hill line doesn't, etc.).

It will be interesting to see how much pressure the YUS line extension takes off Finch, given it may be faster for those at say Highway 7 and Bathurst, to just head west and then south.
 
Read an article in the Citizen yesterday about the Yonge extension and how they are running into funding problems (could be something that is out of their hands, like a non co-operative provincial/federal government) for the extension. I found it interesting though that a future extension to Elgin Mills is very much in the planning horizon. So much so that there are discussions on whether or not to just build all the way to Elgin Mills now, given the delay, rather than wait for the RHC extension AND then begin planning on extending to Elgin Mills.

LINK
 
Woodbridge_Heights said:
Read an article in the Citizen yesterday about the Yonge extension and how they are running into funding problems (could be something that is out of their hands, like a non co-operative provincial/federal government) for the extension. I found it interesting though that a future extension to Elgin Mills is very much in the planning horizon. So much so that there are discussions on whether or not to just build all the way to Elgin Mills now, given the delay, rather than wait for the RHC extension AND then begin planning on extending to Elgin Mills.

LINK
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That's really odd because I distinctly remember going to some of the public consultations about this a few years ago and instead of Elgin Mills, they were talking about a potential future extension to 16th Ave (or, similarly, to build to there from the get-go).

I guess they realized that by the time this thing gets built, the areas up north will densify even more than they anticipated. Who knows. All I do know is that 16th Ave has way too much traffic as it exists at the moment. It's like the official run-off from Highway 7... So maybe an extension makes sense, so long as they improve the abysmal service on the 85.

canarob said:
You'd be surprised how many people from all the way up in Newmarket take Viva Blue to Finch. GO is a better option to go to Union, but if someone works in the north end of Toronto, it's not much help.

An LRT to Don Mills from Highway 7 and Leslie would have helped a bit, but there is certainly more traffic to Finch from the north. The farther east in Markham you go, the more access people have to better GO service (the Stouffville line having off-peak buses whereas the Richmond Hill line doesn't, etc.).

It will be interesting to see how much pressure the YUS line extension takes off Finch, given it may be faster for those at say Highway 7 and Bathurst, to just head west and then south.
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I suppose those who take the Blue from Newmarket down to Finch either do it because...
A. They have too much time on their hands
B. They don't mind spending more time if they can pay less vs GO
C. The GO schedules don't follow their needs
D. GO doesn't stop where they want to go

And this is why all of our transit services should be operated by the same entity (though please keep the unions separated, kthx) so that they can work together better.
 
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xtremesniper said:
I suppose those who take the Blue from Newmarket down to Finch either do it because...
A. They have too much time on their hands
B. They don't mind spending more time if they can pay less vs GO
C. The GO schedules don't follow their needs
D. GO doesn't stop where they want to go

And this is why all of our transit services should be operated by the same entity (though please keep the unions separated, kthx) so that they can work together better.
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Not that I'm a fan of Metrolinx/TTC's separate status but none of those factors would change at all if they were the same entity. Separate ownership isn't the reason why the Yonge line is seen as vastly preferable to the Richmond Hill corridor by commuters. Massive investments in the Richmond Hill corridor would be able to fix C, but then why not just extend the stupid Yonge line.

And regarding a Yonge extension to 16th, while this is obviously premature, it's notionally preferable to beefed up GO service. Assuming the subway got to Yonge/7, the Richmond Hill Corridor is essentially right there, so it's plausible that the Yonge line could just follow that all the way to Elgin Mills with stations @ 16th n Major Mack. The marginal cost over upgrading the GO line to handle 15m headways shouldn't be extraordinary, and then the route would feed into the the YUS line instead of the dead end Don Valley.

There's a more abstract question of where should GO take over from the YUS line. Assuming an upper limit of an hour commute (RH GO-Union is ~50m, fwiw) and the subway averages about 30kph, the watershed for a downtown bound commuter would be about Stouffville Road. Given that area is supposed to be Greenbelt though I wouldn't see much point in going that far.
 
I assume this has been on the Internet for a year now, and perhaps someone linked it previously, but all I've ever seen before is the executive summary.

The entire March 2012 Yonge Subway Extension Conceptual Design Report is at http://www.vivanext.com/276 with 11 appendices, broken into 31 PDF files totalling about 94 MB.

The scheduling is interesting, a hypothetical March 1, 2012 start date gives major construction starting February 2015 and allows for a November 1, 2020 opening. So about 8.5 years start to finish.
 
Yeah, I've never seen that before. The schedule itself is very interesting. I'll have to have a look at all those other PDFs too. Thanks for sharing, nfitz!
 
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