Toronto Park Lawn GO Station | 12.83m | 2s | First Capital | Hatch

[reaperexpress]

Overall I'm quite happy with the design of the station. It's a modest but attractive design and the station will provide some much-needed transit options and capacity to Humber Bay. And no of course the station doesn't need parking. Park-and-ride makes sense where land value is low such as near Clarkson, Bronte, Appleby, Aldershot, Stoney Creek and Grimsby. There is no form of parking which makes economic sense at Humber Bay.

What's the name of this GO Line? (note the signage)

If the Liberals are in power: RER line A?
If the Conservatives are in power: Mattamy Homes line?

The IBC for this station did mention that the station would be served with full local service.

About the 2041 Regional Transportation Plan

2041 Regional Transportation Plan

www.metrolinx.com

This, combined with the platform layout, indicates that Metrolinx is confident that the line will maintain its current Local-Express-Express-Local track assignments. This is in contrast to the Kitchener line where the new local stations have not committed to a particular track assignment for local services, presumably to keep options open for the USRC redesign part of the OnCorr package. The text also indicates that eastbound express trains need to arrive in the USRC immediately ahead of local trains, which may support the theory that the Lakeshore East corridor will be grouped as 2 tracks for Stouffville and 2 tracks for LSE, which precludes any overtaking between Union and Scarborough Junction on LSE, or any overtaking anywhere on the Stouffville line.

The L-E-E-L arrangement does seem to be the most logical in this context, since it makes it easy for trains to switch between the local and express tracks without crossing oncoming traffic. It also allows express trains to terminate at Union without interacting with the local services continuing to Lakeshore East. The main downside is that it makes it difficult for local trains to turn back - they need to cross both of the express tracks. I assume/hope that the local trains won't be the ones going all the way to Hamilton or Niagara. I wonder if in the longer term we will need a flyover east of Burlington to bring westbound local trains over to the south side where they can turn back on the southern island platform and access the yard planned on the south side near Burlington Station.

It won't be much of a problem when we have EMUs eventually to serve this line. Eventually Lakeshore West is going to get subway like service.

The current proposal from ONXpress does not include any EMUs.

 

[crs1026]

^It will be interesting to see whether that L-E-E-R template becomes a standard or a curse.

At present, the four tracks are not used in L-E-E-R format because of the number of equipment moves coming to/from Willowbrook and the TMC. Crossing over every equipment move to fit that pattern could be quite disruptive. The track configuration at the Bathurst St flyover isn’t used that way, either.

Having said that, it’s the most logical and efficient layout given the limitations of the space.

So good to see this station finally getting added.

- Paul

 

[Willybru21]

What's the name of this GO Line? (note the signage

All GO lines since 2019 have letter wayfinding made, Metrolinx just hasn’t rolled it out yet:

 

[grammin]

All GO lines since 2019 have letter wayfinding made, Metrolinx just hasn’t rolled it out yet: View attachment 438426

That's interesting but why not use abbreviations like UP. For example LE, M, K, B, RH etc. That seems more intuitive to me. kind of like the periodic table but hey, don't shoot me!! Now I see F and I think, crap I have to remember another look up table.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

I never thought this day would ever come, after this station has been mused about since ~2008.

Who remembers the good old days when Metrolinx and their Chief Planning Officer at the time (Leslie Woo) essentially stated there was no need for this station and tried to get it dropped off the Business Case list, while meanwhile Kirby GO was somehow skewed to be ranked higher.

Leslie Woo didn’t exactly know how to plan transit….

 

[Undead]

If the Conservatives are in power: Mattamy Homes line?

Not partisan. VMC and Kirby GO say hi.

 

[afransen]

The current proposal from ONXpress does not include any EMUs.

Eventually might be quite some time away! I imagine at some point as new rolling stock is required to support expanding service/ridership EMUs will become part of the picture, especially for local service.

 

[reaperexpress]

Already posted in another thread, but since it's relevant, here's my chart comparing the station spacing of all existing and planned GO stations. I called the station Humber Bay because I find that a much nicer and more descriptive name.

Not partisan. VMC and Kirby GO say hi.

The joke is referring specifically to the practice of selling of naming rights. Just because this particular joke doesn't specifically criticize the Liberal party doesn't mean I support their actions.

 

[turbanplanner]

Parking is a bad thing for several reasons.

1) It disincentives the use of transit to get to a train station. This creates all the normal negatives of driving from pollution, to gridlock to safety issues.

2) It results in less and poorer bus service to said train station if people are driving. You don't get more frequent service when the buses run 1/2 full.

3) GO traditionally subsidizes parking offering it mostly for free with some reserved spaces for cheap, at a very considerable cost, which means there is less money for train service and a need for higher fares to offset the cost of the parking.

4) Parking itself creates a negative physical condition around the station. Who wants to walk 500M across a large parking lot, or along the blank wall of a parking garage to get to the nearest traffic light or bus stop?

****

Can some parking, at some stations, sometimes be a good thing? Sure!

By and large this would be at suburban and ex-urban stations where driving is more common and where transit service is simply not going to be able to capture the majority of GO riders in the foreseeable future.

However, it still needs to be paid parking, so that, at the very least, it isn't subsidized by the train fares or eating into service-provision budgets; preferably, it would be a luxury, priced accordingly which helps subsidize the train service.

Beyond that, when charged for; there will be less parking, and it will be provided at lower cost; which again, favours transit.

There's also the matter of making sure people are easy walking distance to the station, and ideally to retail; with the ideal spot, most often, being right next to the station, where parking tends to go.

Again, this can be mitigated by building residential buildings with little to no resident parking, but commuter parking (paid) underground. Most people here wouldn't oppose that, where there was demand, and it made economic sense.

What they oppose is large parking garages that induce people to drive to a GO station, rather than walk, bike or take the bus; and the associated subsidy.

I'm cool with paid parking not sure why most riders are so against it. Look at Mimico there are a whole two buses that service the station and one really just brings people from the park lawn condos. Go is purpose built to get suburban people from driving into the core so to me parking makes total sense.

you can't really get good bus service for something like this in the suburbs. People won't take two buses to get to a go station to just take a train.

And the "transit oriented communities" they build around go stations are a joke! This one in Burlington is terrible! You've basically built the worst of both worlds.
Unless you have some sort of giant greenfield master planned community. You're basically going to get places that are the worst of both worlds.

I'm fine to skip parking at park lawn because it is a somewhat functional community but aside from adding a parking charge I don't think go should change much for their sites out of Toronto.

 

[afransen]

The cost to build parking garages is pretty substantial, on the order of $30k per parking spot. That's $12 a day to amortize that over 10 years of weekday parking. That doesn't include any maintenance or operating cost. So providing parking for less than say $15-20/day is effectively subsidized parking. On that scale, we should be subsidizing bus connections with free transfers and high quality bike parking over drivers.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Would like to take Park Lawn to Spadina South to see a game at the Rogers Centre. Though Spadina South should be named "SkyDome".

 

[nfitz]

Would like to take Park Lawn to Spadina South to see a game at the Rogers Centre. Though Spadina South should be named "SkyDome".

I thought the proposed GO station at Spadina (closer to Bathurst I thought) was only going to be for Barrie trains, because of it being on the north side of all the tracks - perhaps Kitchener.

I also thought they shelved it.

 

[MisterF]

That's interesting but why not use abbreviations like UP. For example LE, M, K, B, RH etc. That seems more intuitive to me. kind of like the periodic table but hey, don't shoot me!! Now I see F and I think, crap I have to remember another look up table.

The problem with that is that the names change as lines get extended. The Kitchener Line used to be the Georgetown Line for example. The alphabetical letter based system solves that problem. It's the same way that the Paris RER lines are named.

 

[nfitz]

It's the same way that the Paris RER lines are named.

Yes and no. They are going to do one half of the Lakeshore line as A, and the other half as G. If this was Paris it would all be A. (or A1 and A2 for West Harbour versus Hamilton Centre trains)

 

[reaperexpress]

The cost to build parking garages is pretty substantial, on the order of $30k per parking spot. That's $12 a day to amortize that over 10 years of weekday parking. That doesn't include any maintenance or operating cost. So providing parking for less than say $15-20/day is effectively subsidized parking. On that scale, we should be subsidizing bus connections with free transfers and high quality bike parking over drivers.

That also doesn't consider the opportunity cost: the profit which could have been made by selling the land for development if it weren't occupied by parking.