scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Phase One was always intended to head to Victoria Park. It's only due to lack of funds they stopped short and Don Mills did have that "Yorkdale-ish" gene-se-qua a suburban terminus needs.
But then wouldn't the Sheppard East LRT still be needed between Midland and Meadowvale? From Agincourt one's still about 20 mins away from Malvern/ Centennial College. The only on-Sheppard benefactors of the extension are essentially the business park and Agincourt. As for demand, at all hours of operation (even late evenings) BD is always moderate to densely packed between Coxwell-Keele. The contrast to 85/190 is that they operate in the path of a proposed subway line, so if demand is sparse now how promising will it be as a subway?
I think a west-east line along Eglinton would generate higher ridership due to closer proximity to the downtown and could service the STC via SRT@ Kennedy. More people use the Eglinton corridor today than Sheppard+SRT combined and I'm just saying but I am quite skeptical of a subway that's wholeheartedly reliant on condo-dwellers to form the bulk of ridership with proximity to the 401 and abundance of parking spaces to consider.
The only reason it would have stopped at VP in phase 1 is because Mel would have been able to serve more of North York that way, not because it's a better terminus (both Don Mills and VP are silly places to end a line when it should have gone east of there right off the bat).
LRT probably wouldn't be needed east of Midland, where Sheppard ridership drops off somewhere below 20,000, especially if they do extend the stupid RT. The Consumers area, Agincourt, and STC would all benefit the most from the extension, yes, but that's a lot of people. Everyone else would also benefit - even someone taking Sheppard from Malvern - since the trip between Agincourt and Don Mills would be so much faster. With the added subway length, you then start adding in some Finch and York Mills riders.
The subway lines are not densely packed off-peak, but that doesn't matter because they're designed to handle peak crowds.
85/190's combined ridership is almost as high as any other route in the city that's not "split" by a subway station or inflated by funnelling routes. If the parade of full buses leaving Don Mills station is sparse ridership, what's not sparse?
Eglinton would be a good spot for better transit, who's doubting that? But: of course Eglinton has more total riders...it's so much longer than the <8km between Fairview and STC. Eglinton East, however, benefits from so many routes that flow onto Eglinton to get to stations, seriously inflating "corridor" numbers.
Condo dwellers actually make up a minority of Sheppard riders right now. They'll be more important later after tens of thousands of residential units are built next to Sheppard stations, but even then, sketchy apartment towers, houses, bus connections, jobs at Consumers and STC, the two malls, and schools like York, UTSC, Seneca, and Centennial will be what forms the base of Sheppard's ridership, not existing or future condos...those are just the tax-generating bonus.
"A west-east line along Eglinton would generate higher ridership due to closer proximity to the downtown" makes absolutely no sense. Downtown already has a line in close proximity...the Bloor/Danforth line.