My personal opinion is the traffic is caused moreso by office workers and commuters coming from north of finch/steeles down to or up from the 401, not condo's. However, that's just my opinion...
HDLtd, you are certainly entitled to your own personal opinion.
Drivers from Finch,... ok, I can see that,... but I think drivers from Steeles would be smart enough to avoid Yonge-401 interchange,.... I mean why drive into gridlock,... if you're at Steeles already,.. you should be smart enough to go around the area and use another 401 interchange.
Let's look at some facts,.... since amalgamation (15 years ago where North York city was forced to join the city of Toronto), in downtown North York core (just the area along Yonge Street between Doris and Beecroft from Finch to Highway 401) there has been over 50 condos built or under various stage of developments but just ONE office building (Transamerica Tower at 5000 Yonge Street). During that time, traffic has gone from heavy but bearable to total gridlock,.... and I guess, we can blame that on that one office tower!
Now, lets look at a typical office tower,.... where each floor is basically full of cubicles,... where each cubicle is about the size of a car or parking spot (if you're lucky!),... And since these 100 metres (former height limit for the area) office towers are about 20-25 storeys high,.... each of these office towers would need about 20-25 levels of underground parking for all the employees! Clearly, this is NOT the case,... in reality each office tower has about 3 levels of underground parking. So where does the vast majority of these office workers (at least 85%)park their cars??? Hint,... at home,... and they take public transit or cycling or walk to work.
Can the same be said of those living in any of the over condos built within the last 15 years,.... are at 85% of these condo dwellers taking public transit, cylcing or walking to work? And then there's still that 50:1 ratio of new condos to new office building built within the last 15 years,.... so I think it's pretty safe to say the added density from the condos are what causes the vehicular traffic gridlock problems in downtown North York.
Note: While each floor of office would have higher density than a typical floor for condo,.... a 100m office building and 100m condo tower would typically both have similar number of parking spaces. Consider, a parking space is about the size of a condo's bathroom,... and each condo floor has about 12-20 units where each unit has about one parking space,.... a 100m condo would have about 30 floors and about 3 levels of underground parking.
Certainly, it's not the condo dwellers whos at fault,... it's our various level of governments,.... namely the Ontario government and the city of Toronto for making downtown North York a high density mobility hub,... allowing condos to pop up like weeds,.... a new condo is completed and opens up in downtown North York every 3-4 months! They thought since the area is served by the Yonge Subway line and the Sheppard stubway line,... let the new condo dweller use public transit,.... but the Yonge subway line is already operating at 100% full capacity and the Sheppard Stubway doesn't go anywhere! These level of governments allow these high density development because it allows them to collect more tax dollars per square feet of land and collect development fees (Tridel-Hullmark Centre paid about $100 million in such fees,.... and how much of that will actually end up for any infrastructure improvements in the Yonge-Sheppard-401 area???),.... but yet, they don't put any money back into the area in terms of improving infrastructures,... like better highway interchanges or more roadways, bike lanes, schools, etc,... Instead, the Ontario government extends subway lines into their Liberal friendly riding at Vaughan Centre (low density area with a bunch of big box stores at Hwy 7 & Jane),... while Toronto get shafted with streetcars,... err, LRT lines,...
