Rainforest
Senior Member
It seems strange that there would be the ridership to justify replacing the SRT with a subway, yet not enough ridership to justify elevating the Eglinton LRT east of Don Mills or building an eastern extension of the Sheppard subway. The route between Kennedy and Scarborough Centre has very little development on it, so the high ridership levels on the SRT are caused by the development at Scarborough Centre and feeder bus traffic to NE Scarborough. Meanwhile Sheppard East between Don Mills and STC is considerably denser (the Consumers Road office park and numerous new condominiums and older apartment buildings are along this stretch). Eglinton East between Don Mills and Kennedy is low density, but might become heavily used if the SRT and the Eglinton LRT were interlined. Furthermore I would expect that if a downtown relief line were built along Don Mills Road at least as far north as Sheppard (a high priority line in my view), demand on Eglinton East and Sheppard East would increase substantially.
The main factor that defines ridership of trunk routes is not the local density, but how many riders want to transfer and where they want to go. Currently, SRT and/or Danforth subway is the shortest path to downtown, therefore it has highest ridership projections.
DRL / Don Mills subway can change it if it goes far enough in the north; but we cannot assume that funding will be easily provided to take DRL up to Eglinton, let alone Sheppard.