Rainforest said:
It would be strange to aim for densities, and then drop either Cummer of Clark.

Once the subway opens, frequent bus service along that stretch of Yonge will end. From Finch to Steeles, it is almost 2 km. What are the residents of all towers in between supposed to do, if there is no Cummer station? Walk for 1 km? Not a big deal for those in good health and during good weather, but that doesn't cover all people and all situations. Or, should they wait for bus 97, which comes once in 15 min at best?

Steeles to Hwy 7, that's an even longer stretch, although it has much less towers and the density is uneven.

In the LRT discussions, a 800 m stop spacing was considered problematic because of the walking distances, but here, 2+ km seems to be OK ..
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Tbh though, 800m stop spacing spacing for LRT is like perfect, in fact I'd argue it could be more like 1km. The thing with Cummer is that You could still have the cummer bus which could travel frequently to Finch and/or Steeles, its not like this subway extension is killing all of the busses. In fact most of the busses travelling along Yonge already skip all of the stops between Steeles and Finch. Ideally all 3 stations get built, not just one, but I don't think that we should be aiming to remove all busses or something like that. We should still have a frequent Yonge bus running up and down the street.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
The IBC makes the case (I don't have it in front of me) that when you draw the radius around Steeles and around Finch, there aren't very many people around Cummer who won't be able to walk to one of the other stations. In a perfect world, i'd like to see it there but if we're cutting stations, Cummer and Royal Orchard (which, let's not forget, was already cut and then semi-revived) are the obvious targets, IMHO.
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I'm baffled with all the skepticism of Cummer station. North York Centre station has been immensely successful despite being similarly close to other stations, and it's not even connected to any bus routes. In fact it outperfroms a number of popluar stations such as Yorkdale, Lawrence, Osgoode, VMC, and Wellesley (source). To not construct a station here would be a mistake.
 
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Rainforest said:
Speaking of redeveloping the green spaces .. one can maintain that Golf Courses take lots of space and serve relatively few people, and therefore should be moved away from the prime land near major transit lines.

But, wouldn't you want to convert them to public parks, instead of just build condos? All those new residents need green space, too ..
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Certainly the floodplain/valley land should be kept for nature.

In terms of tableland parks as a recreation amenity, I would suppose that depends on how well the neighbourhood is served now. If its in the top quintile of park land provision, I think one could fairly look at developing a lot of the tableland.

If its in the bottom quintile, then clearly a large chunk of any table land should become a park.

In terms of ecological function of the tableland, the golf courses don't provide much, certainly development would impinge on permeability, but mandatory green roofs and careful land-use policies could mitigate that to some degree.

From a wildlife habitat perspective, naturalizing the floodplain would more than offset some losses in the tableland.
 
salsa said:
I'm baffled with all the skepticism of Cummer station. North York Centre station has been immensely successful despite being similarly close to other stations, and it's not even connected to any bus routes. In fact it outperfroms a number of popluar stations such as Yorkdale, Lawrence, Osgoode, VMC, and Wellesley (source). To not construct a station here would be a mistake.
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I don't think the skepticism comes from Cummer failing necesserily, as I outlined in my initial overview above, I think Cummer is a fantastic location for a station, I think its mostly just a case of it can live without it. For context, the concourse of Finch Station reaches all the way beyond Bishop Avenue as seen in this picture:
https://imgur.com/18SkW0d
This means that its only a 500m walk from Cummer to the station and if that's a problem, Cummer has a pretty frequent bus service and it wouldn't take long to divert traffic to Steeles.

All of this is to say that its not that Cummer is a bad location for a station, but that Clark makes more sense and would better serve its surrounding communities. Without Clark or Royal Orchard, the segment between RHC/Bridge Centre is over 5km which would make this entire segment inaccessible to the neighbourhoods its running under, and would require a ton of supplemental bus service to cover them, perhaps YRT would need to keep Viva Blue running south to Steeles instead of just cutting back the entire route to RHC like they were hoping to do. Its not a question of if the station will work, its a question of which area needs the station more.
 
Rainforest said:
Speaking of redeveloping the green spaces .. one can maintain that Golf Courses take lots of space and serve relatively few people, and therefore should be moved away from the prime land near major transit lines.

But, wouldn't you want to convert them to public parks, instead of just build condos? All those new residents need green space, too ..
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I'm sure a lot of people would be very happy if the city stopped subsidizing golf courses and turned that into parkland. Not our Mayor, though.

Specifically I'd like to see Earl Bayes park extended to York Mills station through what is currently the Don Valley Golf Course. Jennifer Keesmat proposed converting this golf course to parkland during her mayoral run.

1616106691970.png


Maybe earmark at least some of that for development? Like where the clubhouse currently is. Something to enlarge the tax base and build ridership for the nearby stations.


With regards to Cummer station, I think it's a little ridiculous that we have stations every ~600 meters on Eglinton where everything is low-rise, but then we are proposing 2000 meters between Finch/Steeles where we have so much density planned/under construction.

I feel like the province is deliberately selling the version with fewer stations so that they can get developers/municipalities/the federal government to cough up the money for the "missing" stations.
 
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aquateam said:
I'm sure a lot of people would be very happy if the city stopped subsidizing golf courses and turned that into parkland. Not our Mayor, though.

Specifically I'd like to see Earl Bayes park extended to York Mills station through what is currently the Don Valley Golf Course. Jennifer Keesmat proposed converting this golf course to parkland during her mayoral run.

View attachment 306605

Maybe earmark at least some of that for development? Like where the clubhouse currently is. Something to enlarge the tax base and build ridership for the nearby stations.


With regards to Cummer station, I think it's a little ridiculous that we have stations every ~600 meters on Eglinton where everything is low-rise, but then we are proposing 2000 meters between Finch/Steeles where we have so much density planned/under construction.

I feel like the province is deliberately selling the version with fewer stations so that they can get developers/municipalities/the federal government to cough up the money for the "missing" stations.
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You do know that the two or three story buildings along Eglinton Avenue are higher than the 905's single-story buildings with their parking lots out front? Eglinton also has SEVERAL high-rise developments going along right now (see map at link). Expect to see the existing parking lots to be redeveloped near any of the suburban stations.
 
W. K. Lis said:
You do know that the two or three story buildings along Eglinton Avenue are higher than the 905's single-story buildings with their parking lots out front? Eglinton also has SEVERAL high-rise developments going along right now (see map at link). Expect to see the existing parking lots to be redeveloped near any of the suburban stations.
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I'm not clear what point you're making. Yonge/Cummer is still in Toronto, south of Steeles and the "905." I was just arguing that a station at Yonge/Cummer has much more walk-in ridership potential than many (if not most) Eglinton LRT stations, so it would be a mistake to leave it out as an infill station as a cost-cutting exercise.

Thanks for the map. It kind of proves my point though. There is more development planned around Yonge/Cummer (which doesn't have any transit station even funded yet) than around many of the Eglinton LRT stations (where the line has been under construction for many years now and is due to open next year.)

E.g. in the ~450m catchment area of Yonge/Cummer I see:
  • 44, 37, 37, 34 stories - 5800 Yonge
  • 32 stories - 5840 Yonge
  • 36 stories - 5915 Yonge
  • 46 stories - 5959 Yonge
  • 40 stories - 5995 Yonge
  • 20 stories - 6080 Yonge
This is an area that already has a fair number of apartment buildings.

Compare this to:
  • Cedarvale - no development planned
  • Chaplin - one 7 story building
  • Oakwood - one 6 story building and one 16 story building
  • Keelesdale - one 14 story building
  • Black Creek - one community centre
None of those underground stations were left out despite lower ridership potential, being built at a comparable cost.
 
I don't think anyone is questioning whether Cummer makes sense for a station. The question is whether it makes MORE sense than Clark or Royal Orchard, if only one is being built.

IMHO, it's #2, ahead of Royal Orchard but behind Clark and that's basically what the numbers in the business case say. So, it's proximity to Finch isn't an automatic strike BUT if we're comparing, the fact that Clark is breaking up a huge gap and Cummer is between 2 major stations has to factor in.
 
jelbana said:
I'm not convinced we'll end up with 2/3 cut. More likely to be 1/3 (Royal Orchard) and this is an exercise to push either York or the Feds to meet any funding gap some time down the road (definitely unlikely any of this is resolved prior to the 2022 election).
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As I said earlier this is likely a ploy to get some additional federal funds, and since this area is a major swing area both provincially and federally, the liberals have a keen interest in playing the hero for this project, so I do think the liberals will play ball and offer additional funding for 2/3 and if we're lucky 3/3. For now though we're only for sure getting 1/3 and even though both Cummer and Clark are good candidates, I think Clark needs it a bit more.
 
Who wants Royal Orchard? Wasn't Royal Orchard cut from the plan quite early due to heritage status? if it was still in the plan, then it's definitely needs to get the boot immediately. But I honestly don't see Clark getting cut. It's just a huge huge gap between Steeles and Langstaff, and York needs at least one infill station to facilitate bus connections. And I really do want to see Cummer stay. Bus connections, local access and pretty good dense location.

The stations could be built super bare bones to just have the bare minimum allowed for a subway station. No fancy chandalier crap the TYSSE was on. Just simple station entrances with development on top and platforms. Hey, maybe private developers can help!
 
A quick look at a map makes me think that the only stations needed would be Steeles, Centre and RH Centre. They are all placed at the concession lines of ole and are about 2km apart. Leave spots for the other future stations, but with those stations, it gets built and it will start serving the area better.
 
micheal_can said:
A quick look at a map makes me think that the only stations needed would be Steeles, Centre and RH Centre. They are all placed at the concession lines of ole and are about 2km apart. Leave spots for the other future stations, but with those stations, it gets built and it will start serving the area better.
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The problem with that is even though Centre is technically part of 14th Avenue Concession Line or whatever, its a small residential street without much of anything around it either existing or planned. This means that the only thing going for a Centre Street station, is the fact that Centre Street is technically a major gridline concession road. Nothing more.

Edit:

Clark Avenue:
https://imgur.com/wSEeCyi
Centre Street:
https://imgur.com/o8R6HMp

What do you think looks better for a subway station?
 
Ignoring how close Cummer Station is to Finch Station,.... with the Yonge Subway Extension - focus on Steeles Station since that’ll be the area mega subway station with that 36 bay bus terminal and possible future BRT along Steeles. Now, from Steeles Station - Cummer Station is 1.2km away,... whereas Clark Station is closer at 1.0m away - from that perspective it would favour Cummer Station over Clark Station.
 
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