WislaHD

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Two massive development applications in Oakville's Far North, just south of Highway 407, that are seemingly related.

The first one by Infrastructure Ontario:
Two development concepts shown, the denser one shown below proposes 707,000 m2 (494,900 m2 of residential) space resulting in approximately 5,660 residential units across the Site, and approximately 5,580 jobs.

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The second application is by Argo Development Group which owns the lands surrounding the remaining quadrant. It seems like they are working together with Infrastructure Ontario in this conceptual planning stage:
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The two concepts combined:

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Wow! A huge chunk of vacant land to be developed in Oakville's north west boundaries! Is this area going to be like Oakville's downtown Square One thing happening here? Because I can see some form of major rapid transit movement happening. Between this future development core area and Square One's on the 403 - 407 hyway corridors. Building up the Milton's south east section of land as well with Oakville's north west end in the next 20 years etc!
 
This will be 100% car dependent - it won't spark rapid transit usage in Oakville.
They have drawn a Trafalgar LRT like this is a real thing - it's not. The daily ridership of all of Oakville transit is probably not even 10,000 - not sure how the town can support a LRT.
 
It feels like the development north of Dundas in Oakville has been glacial to date. At least by GTA standards where there is so much demand.
 
huh? I feel like it's moved quite quickly. The first occupancies in North Oakville weren't until, what, 2013? That's a lot of growth in only a decade up there.
 
This will be 100% car dependent - it won't spark rapid transit usage in Oakville.
They have drawn a Trafalgar LRT like this is a real thing - it's not. The daily ridership of all of Oakville transit is probably not even 10,000 - not sure how the town can support a LRT.
Build it and they will come though, right? Uptown Oakville will absolutely have the population and density to support an LRT by the time it would be finished, even if they started construction today and moved at record pace.
 
This will be 100% car dependent - it won't spark rapid transit usage in Oakville.
They have drawn a Trafalgar LRT like this is a real thing - it's not. The daily ridership of all of Oakville transit is probably not even 10,000 - not sure how the town can support a LRT.

Oakville really needs to develop a core Transit spine. It shouldn’t be hard: from Downtown Oakville, up Kerr Street to the GO Station, then up Trafalgar Road to Sheridan College and the Uptown Core. A secondary route should then go across Dundas Street from the Walkers Road/407 park-and-ride to the hospital, Uptown, and then into Mississauga.

Just commit to running a Züm-type service on those two corridors to start, along with the existing route structure and go from there.
 
It should be noted that while the Argo map shows an LRT on Trafalgar, that the Infrastructure Ontario documents actually refer to a proposed BRT, which may be more appropriate for this level of density/ridership/available investment dollars.
 
Do remember that we have seen the evolution of various agencies in the region over the last few decades from apathetic (Oakville, YRT, etc) to something much better, like Brampton Transit, slowly DRT, and MiWay.

Being adjacent to future provincial transit corridors also guarantees a certain level of service quality. They are going to be much better than local Oakville routes. Trafalger will be a transit spine someday. This density is appropriate, especially as greenfield “sprawl”.
 
Well the access to the 407 Transitway station is a good sign and something that is not solely dependent on Oakville Transit/Town of Oakville decisions and intra-city transit usage, which gives me hope. It is something with more backing behind it, which, if situated near an employment area would be an asset for daily commuters (to this I am curious how many people who work in Mississauga use the BRT for their daily commutes).

Google was so kind as to provide me with this 10 year old report on ideas to improve public transit usage in Oakville, looking at options in routes, design, and technology/modality. Beginning on the bottom of page 12 and onto page 13, integration with regional transit, including "The Big Move" 25-year plan by Metrolinx is discussed - and page 15 the GO Transit Inter-Regional Transitway is briefly discussed.

I had a question about the document in a wider context. On the bottom of every page there is a symbol that resembles a chilli pepper with the words "Live it! Vision 2057" (which reminds me of people encouraging someone to find their groove - C'MON GUYS! GET IN TO IT! 🕺) I could not find an explanation to this in the document, but found a separate document on the Town of Oakville's website highlighting it as one pillar of the Town's Vision 2057 master plans and key planning initiatives also concerning environmental and historical preservation, culture, and affordability (the kicker here is that the text reads under this point "to keep our community affordable" - I'm sorry, but when was Oakville affordable at any point in the last 20-30 years? Already I am skeptical. My family had moved to Oakville from Mississauga in 2003 and even then it was considered one of the most expensive suburbs of Toronto).

I just wonder if plans like these, which project 40+ years into the future (keep in mind, the transit report issued as part of Vision 2057 was published in 2013) might to some extend be seen as a response to the "flavour of the month" and may or may not hold much water: it is a way of deferring current concrete political decision-making to a fictitious future town council which will faithfully carry out these plans whilst simultaneously maintaining the "feel" of established low-density neighbourhoods. It resembles responsibility and transformative action for the present whilst maintaining the status quo. In the 10 years since this report has been issued, there have been numerous extremely car-dependent new developments in Oakville, acquiesce to NIMBY demands concerning density (building height, reduction of parking requirements, etc.). Has density in more-established neighbourhoods been encouraged or allowed? I am sure homes with large backyards could support garden suites or someone could theoretically* demolish a McMansion and built a semi-detached or triplex on that property.
(*I struggled here and wanted to write "easily" or "comfortably fit" but then thought of the potential backlash and bureaucratic barriers and figured that this endeavour would be anything but "easy" and "comfortable").

Whilst there have been improvements, there are still many new McMansions (just with smaller plots of land) and what I think of as half-done attempts at proper urban density consisting of condos and traditional and stacked townhouses, these neighbourhoods are still very much car-dependent because retail and other essential services still take place in big box store developments with large carparks. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that none of the condos growing up along Dundas have any retail component at their bases (only some low-rise buildings along neighbourhood corridors do which, for some reason are mostly hair and nail salons). It isn't ambitious enough to curb auto-dependency. Walking along or crossing Dundas or Trafalgar as a pedestrian is extremely uncomfortable. Here in Germany it is rare to find restaurants, retail and often office space without apartments on top unless you are in city outskirts where you will find the factories, large office complexes, and/or those forms of retail which often require more space (such as a car dealership or a large hardware store). And this is also true for smaller cities with under 100,000 residents also. It is not that Germany is a terribly progressive or ambitious country, we're not. In the way of efficient politics, digitisation, or creative architecture there is still so much to be desired, however there is a pragmatic approach to land use and environmentally-sustainable development. The predominate forms of NIMBYism are usually "that building will block views of the old church" and "we need more park space".
(A number of years ago when I lived in Münster there was a referendum if we should allow shoppes to be opened on Sundays 4-times a year and most people were passionately against this form of "capitalism run amok": four Sundays a year? What will become of our city?!)
 
Build it and they will come though, right? Uptown Oakville will absolutely have the population and density to support an LRT by the time it would be finished, even if they started construction today and moved at record pace.
Are you joking? At best they should provide enhanced bus services. There is no financial justification for a LRT here. The Trafalgar road rebuild without providing infrastructure for a BRT-like service was a dumb decision.

"Uptown" has been under construction for ten years and it is nowhere close to being a transit friendly area. Transit usage for all the neighborhoods along Dundas is miniscule.
 
What's the point of the new William Halton Parkway bypassing Burnhamthorpe?
Much of Burnhamthorpe is to be rerouted further south. You can find a map of the North Oakville Secondary Plan here.

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Building off of this point, the idea is that William Halton Parkway will be a higher speed, wider lane right-of-way, and therefore the ideal route for through traffic and trucks.

Burnhamthorpe's new path of lest resistance will take you South through the subdivision at lower speed, with more stops and tighter curves to deter through traffic, and promote a better neighbourhood environment.

Finally, Burnhamthorpe's original route will be broken in multiple locations, requiring annoying stops and turns to continue on that route. It will essentially be turned into just a residential street.

By doing this they're able to sort traffic and make everyone a little bit happier, but also having 3 available east-west routes to help with inevitable congestion. I screenshotted a sliver of the map so you can see what I mean:

Screenshot 2023-03-17 115329.png
 
Seem like a rather silly thing to do IMO. Why not just build the new roads to be the quieter streets; or name the new through road as the "new" Burnhamthorpe?
 

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