Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

Visually speaking, your map does make sense, but just keep in mind that these are for the most part local YRT bus routes that we're talking about. The five or so bus routes on your map have a combined ridership of maybe 10,000 people. If 75% end up transferring to the subway, that's less than 4,000 people per rush hour.

Given that most of the ridership on Route 77 will get off at the new Spadina line, John Station would be fed by maybe 2000 commuters each morning who came by bus. Even if ridership doubles due to the proximity to the subway and hopefully a better fare agreement, you're barely pushing 5,000 people per morning.

Ridership does exist in York Region to support an extension of the Yonge subway, but the key difference is that the subway exension will serve hundreds of square kilometres of York Region. Farther south, subway stations have a catchment area of only a few square kilometres. When your bus ride is already 10 km long, what difference does it make diverting 800 metres south to Clark Station? This would save 100 million dollars.
 
If bus routes need to be rerouted for a station to be used by more than a 1000 or so riders a day, the station should not be built. Even if a few routes are diverted to a Centre station, it'd still be fighting for the crown of least used station in the whole subway system. Bunker station's parking lot - let alone the potentially 30K people living on the other side of the street - will generate more riders than Centre even if routes like the 2 are rerouted.
 
There's nothing wrong with a bit of overbuilding at the Richmond Hill Centre bus terminal. It's on the surface so construction is relatively inexpensive, and with GO 407 Transitway and YRT buses serving it, they might be able to fill it in the future.

The 28 bus bays at Steeles, however are absurd, especially because they're talking about spending tens of millions to put them underground. The TTC justifies it with projections that over 40 buses per hour will come south down Yonge into Steeles. No subway-served route in the city has anywhere near 40 buses per hour, including Yonge south of Sheppard where stops are less frequent than are being proposed on this extension. This sounds like the TTC's Steve Munro-driven obsession with maintaining local bus service when subways are built. These buses will run empty and will soon be abandoned, leaving the new $100 million bus terminal permanently bereft of traffic. There's no reason that Steeles should have any bigger bus terminal than any of the other concession street mid-line stops.
 
Question: What will happen to the large bus terminals at Finch? Are they going to pare it down? There's a lot of development potential for the land being used by YRT/Viva if that one can be moved to Steeles or beyond. And with fewer routes using Finch, perhaps the terminal and parking areas can be redesigned to free up land for development.
 
The GO/YRT terminal is in the hydro corridor...they'd need to bury the wires, which they should do, and eventually replace the parking lots, too. The TTC terminal will still be busy...removing the Steeles buses will permit the Finch routes to spread out a bit in the terminal and not have such comically overcrowded bus bays.
 
I've never understood why Hydro One hasn't buried more high tension lines in the city. In places like North York Centre, selling the freed-up land would surely pay for the project.
 
smuncky said:
i've mentioned earlier that the 77 could easily be the route that drops people off at clark and loops back to promenade via clark instead of continuing south to steeles.
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I would have the routes 1 and 77 both link up at clark. It seems wasteful with the subway in place, but there will probably be the fare issue for the foreseeable future.

Dentrobate54 I'm not saying these new communities don't deserve public transit, but to skip a concession road in favour of a few hundred townhouses on-site of a minor side street makes no sense. It's backwards logic. People from John or Centre Streets should be subjected to 10 minute walks but Bunkerites get a subway at their doorstep?
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Centre is a concession road, but it's not through crosstown arterial like the other concessions are. It's only 2 lanes and doesn't link up with John. It's a smallish local street here.
 
kEiThZ said:
Question: What will happen to the large bus terminals at Finch? Are they going to pare it down? There's a lot of development potential for the land being used by YRT/Viva if that one can be moved to Steeles or beyond. And with fewer routes using Finch, perhaps the terminal and parking areas can be redesigned to free up land for development.
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The implication at the meetings was that the bus bays and parking at Finch were likely to shrink but the TTC has no concrete plans (no pun intended). My fantasyland idea is to move the TTC bus bays to where GO is now for a few years while redeveloping the current bays into a building, along the lines of what's at York Mills.

Because of hydro you can't do much with the parking and GO/YRT area anyway.

As for the condos-on-Sheppard thing....even the Metrolinx plan concedes most people will still take cars. What they're talking about is altering modal splits and I guess that's really a chicken-egg argument.

IF you build what they are talking about building in Langstaff without real rapid transit...it'll be a mess. I know the Yonge/401 area is seeing some of that but that's because the far reaches of that development are a long walk from Sheppard - you need an easy way for those people to get to the TTC and they'll need that at Langstaff too.

The time to properly evaluate Sheppard will will be:
a) When the Canadian Tire development is complete
b) When it has been extended to STC and/or Downsview.
 
From NRU - October 22, 2008

Subway stop: Richmond Hill
Out of three options presented at
Richmond Hill’s October committee
of the whole meeting, council members
supported the alignment of the
Yonge Street subway extension into
Richmond Hill Centre. Staff presented
pros and cons and council recognized
that Richmond Hill Centre could be an
“anchor hub†for a number of transportation
modes in the GTA including
GO Transit train, Viva bus, subway
and transit along Highway 407.
Extending to Richmond Hill Centre
could also lead to the future extension
of the subway to 16th Avenue in the
future.
 
The Toronto transit presentation is online and it answers some questions and has some interesting info.

http://www.vivayork.com/downloads/october_16/Presentation.pdf

Among the stuff that struck me...
-The extension will cut the busses on Yonge, south of Steeles from 350/hr to 10 or fewer.

-They seem confident the signal improvements, new train cars and opening the Spadina extension will be enough to address capacity issues on the Yonge line - as long as they're all there first.

-The yards will be overwhelmed and they probably need a new one. They outline a few options the most logical solution they propose (IMHO) is completing the Shep subway to Wilson, so trains can cut across to Yonge.

-As has been rumoured, 1/2 of trains will short-turn at Finch when the subway opens.

-The number of operational bus bays at Finch will drop from 30 to 10.

-There is a planned bus loop at Cummer, assuaging those concerned they will come up with a plan that leaves the 42 still going to Finch.

-Drewry/Cummer is so close to Finch that they won't tunnel - the whole construction there will be cut and cover.
 
It makes no sense for the short-turn to occur at Finch when they're planning on shifting all the Steeles/YRT services to Steeles Station. *scratches head*

The second thing I don't really get is the ATO signals. If they are only doing the Yonge Subway, wouldn't that lead to a bottle neck past Union, since the University/Spadina subway isn't going to have new signals yet?
 
W. K. Lis said:
If only the GO stations have a more direct connection with the local transit, inside of long walks through parking lots.
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I completely agree, W.K. Lis. There's no reason why the bus stop shouldn't be right next to the train station. I'd also add that the TTC, in particular, needs to work on co-ordinating its bus schedules with those of the GO trains. Often they leave just as the train is pulling in.
 
Y-U-S capacity

First, the new ATO/ATC signaling is proposed for the whole Yonge-University-Spadina line, not just one part.

*********

A second note on capacity though, a quick read of the TTC report on tomorrow's agenda shows the that...

The TTC believes Yonge/Bloor will NOT have sufficient capacity to deal with projected growth from the 2 extensions and other investments creating ridership growth.

Once again, the TTC is to study a massive expansion of Yonge/Bloor with a possible centre platform for the Bloor (Yonge line) level and new side platforms for Yonge station on the Bloor line.

Assuming this is in fact feasible, and I have my doubts, I think this might cost as much as the extension of the line (well that might be exaggerating, but this is far more complex that the Union Second Platform which is into the 100's of millions in cost).

Makes you wonder again about the timing of the DRL, or DCL as Metrolinx has named it.
 
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