Toronto Spadina Subway Extension Emergency Exits | ?m | 1s | TTC | IBI Group

TheTigerMaster said:
To put this in further perspective, our current least used station (Bessarion) carries 3,000 people per day. Highway 407 would be lucky to have a sixth the ridership. There are probably hudreds of bus and streetcar stops in the city that have greater ridership than Highway 407. The lack of ridership at this station is going to be unprecedented.
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It has a 700+ space parking lot. That alone will provide 1,400 trips a day at full capacity. Plus any PPUDO trips, which will likely be significant given its easy access from the 407. I don't think it is exactly going to be a high use station, but its not going to be 500 people a day either.
 
strookie said:
Can't, because there are no crossover tracks at York University.
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There's a crossover at Finch West Station, that could be used to terminate service between there and VMC during late nights, if we choose to do so. It might even be possible to provide single track service between Finch West and York U during these times, to allow for easier transfers for Steeles West bus users, and because I suspect the bulk of late night demand north of Finch will be at York.

innsertnamehere said:
It has a 700+ space parking lot. That alone will provide 1,400 trips a day at full capacity. Plus any PPUDO trips, which will likely be significant given its easy access from the 407. I don't think it is exactly going to be a high use station, but its not going to be 500 people a day either.
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1,400 trips a day, plus whoever transfers from the Jane bus is still below Bessarion, which is my personal benchmark for terminating the service. But we'll see how many PPUDO trips are generated. Kipling's PPUDO has about 750 daily users. Considering the proximity of 407, the PPUDO might put 407 at the same ridership as Bessarion, our least used subway station.
 
There's also the factor of journey time being reduced by skipping stations with limited ridership. It would only be by minutes, but there's psychology at work there as well as actual time saving. *Some* trains could still stop, but not every one, maybe every third. That would also build in an extra buffer for keeping to a schedule. so if time is lost by an event at another station, it would be made-up by skipping stations with low ridership demand.

This is done with buses and streetcars, why not this line?
 
TheTigerMaster said:
They should. I don't know why they would, but they can if they want it open.
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IIRC it was in the operating agreement where York Region does not pay much if anything towards the operating costs. There would be one hell of a fight if they were told to pay for the stations to remain open.

If the TTC were to monitor the ridership and show York Region proper documented evidence of insufficient ridership I think it would force their hand.
 
Richard White said:
IIRC it was in the operating agreement where York Region does not pay much if anything towards the operating costs. There would be one hell of a fight if they were told to pay for the stations to remain open.

If the TTC were to monitor the ridership and show York Region proper documented evidence of insufficient ridership I think it would force their hand.
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I was just accessing that agreement, and the 407 station was curious by omission, until reaching this page:

upload_2017-10-29_17-33-57.png

http://www.york.ca/wps/wcm/connect/...-122c1e1d8250/may+11+TYSSE+ex.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

Whoa...I have to come up for air, will comment further when I've digested this more...

"Kirby East" indeed...

Edit to Add: Before Googling further to find what else is documented on this, I see some analysis from other independent orgs, so I gave the rest of the York document a quick peruse. The 407 station is curious by omission in the entire report.

There's two references doing a document search for "407"...both of them in what I quoted above.

York Region appears to not want anything to do with it. Very curious indeed, there's a story in this somewhere...

Late Edit to Add:

Although two years dated, Munro has a very revealing in-depth examination, far too much to quote here, but this reader response and Munro's answer is very telling:
[...]
Justin Bernard | March 16, 2015 at 8:24 pm

“As for tunneling through empty fields … I’m going to hazard a guess that tunneling was easier than negotiating a surface crossing with 407 ETR and Hydro One.”

Let’s not forget about that railway berm north of Steeles. Sounds crazy, but it seemed tunneling was the easier option. Of course the SMART option would’ve been LRT to York, but York deserves subways, right?

Steve: Not just York. When the whole question of northward extension of both the Yonge and Spadina lines was at the map drawing stage, TTC management, and especially its subway engineering fraternity, were petrified that subway construction would be halted, and they worked very hard to downplay the credibility of any LRT options. When I complained about this on the Spadina extension, they actually wrote to me saying there had already been a comparative study of LRT vs subway that had concluded for subway. In fact, it was a study of looping the Yonge and Spadina lines together probably along Sheppard or Finch, a project for which LRT is obviously inappropriate.


The TTC basically lied about the nature of the study, but the line “we have done a study” was trotted out whenever anyone asked about LRT. Even the Transit City plan was an uphill battle to get around bad advice and design work by the TTC, and LRT advocates, including the Mayor’s office, didn’t win all of those either. Politicians never like to take on the “experts” because the standard rejoinder is “we will do it, but you will be responsible when it fails”

York University had a more-or-less constant presence at TTC meetings and lobbied very hard for their subway.
[...]
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https://stevemunro.ca/2015/03/14/how-much-will-the-spadina-subway-extension-cost/
 

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TheTigerMaster said:
1,400 trips a day, plus whoever transfers from the Jane bus is still below Bessarion, which is my personal benchmark for terminating the service. But we'll see how many PPUDO trips are generated. Kipling's PPUDO has about 750 daily users.
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So now we have drive and park users....PPUDO trips and one York Transit route.....add in BT and it might surprise on the “upside”.....given an over under bet of 500 and I am taking the over every time.

And the notion of eliminating weekend and late service? This becomes the go to route for residents of York Region and North Peel to get to sporting and entertainment events in the city....this is a station that might actually have higher “off peak” use than peak.
 
steveintoronto said:
There's also the factor of journey time being reduced by skipping stations with limited ridership. It would only be by minutes, but there's psychology at work there as well as actual time saving. *Some* trains could still stop, but not every one, maybe every third. That would also build in an extra buffer for keeping to a schedule. so if time is lost by an event at another station, it would be made-up by skipping stations with low ridership demand.

This is done with buses and streetcars, why not this line?
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Ehh, there's really only one or two stations (407 and Downsview Park) that are candidates for this treatment, which maybe adds up to a 45 sec to 90 sec improvement in trip times. If we're providing limited service to only 407 Station, then I'd rather just shut it down completely and divert the few riders that would use 407 to VMC.

The primary benefits of shutting the station would be

1) cost savings
2) One less station to stop at, means the trains can complete their trip around Line 1 a minute or two faster, which means more capacity downstream, where there's actual crowding. Even if it adds just one train worth of downstream capacity, thats another 1,100 passengers that can ride a line moving 30,000 at peak hour (+3.6% capacity). Note that the TTC does not own enough trains to provide full rush hour service to Line 1, so this would be much welcome extra capacity.
 
TOareaFan said:
So now we have drive and park users....PPUDO trips and one York Transit route.....add in BT and it might surprise on the “upside”.....given an over under bet of 500 and I am taking the over every time.
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Definitely. 2,500 to 3,500 per day seems more reasonable for VMC

TOareaFan said:
And the notion of eliminating weekend and late service? This becomes the go to route for residents of York Region and North Peel to get to sporting and entertainment events in the city....this is a station that might actually have higher “off peak” use than peak.
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That would surprise me, since suburban trips tend to be very peak oriented. We'll see soon.

In any case, University Line in the 70s probably generated more usage than the northern parts of the TYSSE, so I still would not be opposed to potentially eliminating late night service.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Highway 407 Station has no other trip generators, and it will be the least used station on the TTC network. It might not even break 500 riders per day. If we don't see significant usage within a year, I believe the station should be mouthballed, lest we waste even more money on this station.
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Better yet, stop construction on the VMC bus terminal and the park and ride lot and move all the buses to 407 as was the original plan and put the station to good use.
 
Isn’t it a little early for all this existential angst? There’s probably a good football game on if anyone needs a distraction.

All the pieces have not likely fallen into place yet. At this stage, I’d hope for the grandest of grand openings and give it some time. I would not write off all the work (a decade) just yet.

If all projects had to be held to the standard that is being discussed here, the same people having this discussion would be calling for the closure of Hamilton West Harbour where two and a half years after opening, the traffic is hardly overwhelming and only this year did two more trains get extended there and recently as reported here the rest of the Station finally opened.

Better to go watch a football game. Afterall, it’s Sunday night.
 
Something I can't help notice is that there are very few building connections on the extension. The main connections are at VMC (I explain in the post), while all the other stations don't have any. I've read somewhere before that York University Station was suppose to connect to the Archives of Ontario building, is that still a thing (not likely)? And yes, I do understand that most station have panels that can be removed to create new connections, but there are very little on opening day.
 
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