I’ve been mulling on replying to the bombardment a couple days ago. Felt I didn’t need to rush it, but here are a few points to get out of the way:
Oh, good. Really, you don't deserve more than crickets at this point but I enjoy the back-and-forth in a kind of masochistic way.
On a given weekday, all of Viva seems to carry the equivalent of the 512 streetcar on St Clair. That’s pretty low. And the 30km Viva Blue (the busiest route) carries, what, ~18,000? As well it seems that Viva and Blue appear to have lost some ridership between 2012 and 2013. And yet we’re to somehow believe that in 15 years a subway b/n Finch and 7 will supposedly carry 10x all of Viva Blue’s current ridership, and have ~19,000 s/b peak at Steeles?
Gotcha: single bus route shows short-term ridership drop after the overall system sees 300% growth in just over a decade = why build a subway?
-It’s difficult to replicate the features of a busy corridor such as downtown and midtown sections of Yonge in a suburban context.
So true! I think of it every time I walk past Yonge and Empress, in all its SUBURBAN glory.
-Creating dense, mixed, “complete” communities – and the impact on transportation behaviour – is likely to be incremental rather than transformative.
I don't think those terms are mutually exclusive but at best you're describing a chicken-egg scenario. As I said, not building the subway is a sure way to realize an INCREMENTAL vision rather than a transformative one. Dropping gas prices aside, everything has been aligned and ready to implement transit-oriented development in the GTA and, in particular, to harness the potential of a unique hub/corridor, like Yonge north of Steeles. You have legislation and plans (at the provincial and municipal levels) in place, calling for transformative change. You can go all in, introduce revenue tools, build what you know you need etc., or you can nickle-and-dime and then bitch about how little you accomplished.
-The width of Yonge Street and high traffic levels are detrimental to the pedestrian environment of North York Centre.
That strikes me as a red herring. Not everywhere has to be Yonge and Dundas. That doesn't mean you can't build a compact, walkable, transit-oriented centre outside the core. North York Centre ain't Yonge and Dundas but it's pretty well traveled by pedestrians, certainly in that Empress area. Compared to 1986, its urbanity is remarkable.
-Variations in the availability of free parking also account for differences in modal shares. The effect of parking costs is particularly noticeable, where it adds to the impact of public transit levels.
This is what I mean when I say you have no vision of the future. Paid parking in the suburbs, like fare integration, is coming sooner rather than later. All these things are in motion, is what you fail to grasp.
-Two tendencies account for the difficulties nodes face in their attempts to lure office space. The first is a notable deceleration since 1990 in the rate of office development in the Greater Toronto Area. The second is the predilection of office developers and tenants for dispersed suburban locales, especially business parks, which offer easy access to expressways and abundant surface parking.
There's probably more than just those two but there is no question that getting employment uses in these nodes is the real key. You make like 5 points about this and they're all obvious. But I'll tell you this - do you know one thing employers look for? Access to transit. Oh, sure, they don't look ONLY for subways but I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying "walk to the Yonge subway" improves your marketability.
Markham Centre is off to a decent start, Vaughan less so, so far. What THIS subway has over those is its centrality; Yonge Street. I'm not naive enough to think the renderings will be magically achieved precisely as envisioned like some kind of shake and bake. But that doesn't mean we don't know the ingredients that will go into making them successful. To deal with your beloved example, asking someone to transfer from the 407 Transitway to the LRT to the subway in the space of 10 minutes is not one of those ingredients.
-The Growth Plan includes neither incentives for municipalities to go beyond the minimum targets, nor penalties for those that fall short.
True - but here's the joke, sir. But even though they don't have to meet them and even though the province can't make them, Markham BLEW those targets out of the water. They said, "Give us a subway and we'll give you a transit-oriented hub unlike anything else in North America. You want 200 people/jobs per hectare? We'll quadruple that!"
And what do you say? You say, "Meh, howsabout I save a few bucks, give you an LRT and you do whatever you can."
If you support the ideals of the growth plan (as you seem to, at least broadly) it seems awful hypocritical to actively undermine the single plan in the entire GTHA that is most aggressive about realizing those ideals. Really, this baffles me.
(Credit where due: Richmond Hill's plan also substantially exceeds the minimum targets. And I hope it goes without saying Markham is beating them not only in this node but by 50% citywide.)
-The danger is that the longer a site earmarked for nodal development fails to attract growth, the greater the chance that it will revert to conventional suburban land use patterns. [<-e.g like if a subway ext is delayed by a generation because of current capacity issues, lack of funding tools, lack of alternative financing methods, other regional priorities/promises that need addressing; and ends up costing so much it's cancelled outright]
If you knew the geographical context of Langstaff you would understand that this is impossible, actually. It's so small and constrained developers could not possibly make money with a traditional suburban development. The same goes for the rest of this corridor. There are already mature neighbourhoods a block or two in. No developer on the planet would spend the money to redevelop a block of Yonge Street on this stretch with "conventional suburban land use patterns." It is an economic impossibility.
But again, there's a hypocrisy here. Are you going to invest in a subway, spend a little more trying to get the big payoff, or are you going to go the cheap route, and try do your best with what you got (like, say, the Sheppard line)? This node is not going anywhere. Yonge is not going anywhere. Even without the subway there will be more projects like World on Yonge and you know what? The people who live there will walk to Steeles or pay the super-annoying double fare or get in their cars and drive to Finch and take the subway, overwhelming your stupid, outdated, underinvested, chickens**t system anyway. So put your money on the table and try to do better, or don't complain when it all collapses under its own weight.
