You're right - context doesn't matter. A tunnel is a tunnel, length is length, stations are stations. That's why it's just as easy to walk 500km north from Miami as it is to walk 500km east.
Say what? Forget about my words. Understand the plans. Langstaff is not like the 407 station on the Spadina line.
sigh. Again - this has nothing to do the EA.
This rather has to do with how the land use planning for the UGC was determined. Go read the Secondary Plan if you like.
And again, context matters. I'll just assume you're neither involved in transportation planning nor real estate if you think Yonge/7 is the same as Bessarion, of all places. (And it's not like there isn't massive development at every other single station on the Sheppard line.)
Jeeze, dude. I can't believe you're telling me about Downtown Markham which has NOTHING to do with this. I was explaining - because you misconstrued a reference I made - that this subway serves a growth centre in the municipality of Markham. Read about Langstaff Gateway and get back to me.
The fact that someone in that growth centre is better served by GO is not under dispute. Neither is that the Giants baseball team plays in San Francisco. They're just not germane to the discussions.
If anything, you're proving my point because Markham totally agrees with you that Markham Centre is planned around GO and Viva. But they also seem to think that the LG Centre is planned around the subway (and GO and Viva and RER and the Transitway). So, you can't cherrypick the Markham plan that proves your point while ignoring the other, which disproves it.
Don't concede Markham kinda sorta might profit if the Yonge line was built. It's absolutely central to their plans for meeting the growth targets set out in provincial policy. If you don't understand the larger policy context in which the growth centres and associated transit are operating, you don't have have valid criticisms to offer, with all due respect.
What if ISIS attacks us? What if the Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup Why have plans at all? What's the point of Places to Grow or Metrolinx or municipal official plans or zoning laws or airplane reservations or lottery tickets?
Why even have a planning profession or a Planning Act? I mean....Like I said, either you understand the macro goals here or you don't. You're telling me you don't.
I do understand because, and I'm really trying to be nice and civil and even educational, I know way way more about it than you do. The subway is not a TOOL TO CREATE demand. The subway is a spine with which to facilitate intensification. So is an LRT, obviously. but it's not as strong a tool; just like you can eat a chunky soup with a fork but a spoon works better.
I can't spend days - certainly not typing stuff out, perhaps in a verbal dialogue - explaining the history of planning in the GTA, the purposes of the PPS, the Places to Grow Act, the Greenbelt Act, The Big Move and so forth. Suffice it to say, the subway and the urban growth centres we're talking about present a convergence of policy and historical trends. you make it sound like we're proposing a subway for Orangeville and hoping some people move in. that's not what this is.
With each successive post you're helping me realize how little you know.
You're damn straight it's about identity: it's about historic suburbs urbanizing. I thought that was a good thing? Would we rather have 1980s-era Vaughan forever?
Again, there's lots of scholarly work about this and I'm not getting into it. Make whatever irrelevant case you want about Mississauga. For that matter, fail to understand why Vaughan changed the name of VCC to VMC or why Coke produces both Coke Zero and Diet Coke.
It all makes perfect sense to me and I'm happy to explain it all, but it only works if you know the things you don't know for starters.
why are you doing exactly what I just told you to do?
First you say, "OH, so it's about a transfer, eh?"
And I say, "No the point is to facilitate intensification along an entire corridor, create transit-oriented nodes and a seamless transit network."
Then you say, "OH, we should spend $6B to make a downtown in RH?"
And I repeat myself, more clearly.
And five seconds later, you're back to, "OH, so we should spend $6B to eliminate a transfer that's inconvenient?"
I've tried to politely and sincerely answer what I thought were sincere questions. I'm done explaining things you choose not to understand. And stop framing it as "my opinion." the reasons I'm laying out for you, over and over again, are enunciated clearly in various provincial documents, from The Big Move through the Growth Plan. The subway is part of larger project of meeting those goals.
I don't care if you don't care.
All I care about is that if you're going to offer your opinion, at length, you know what you're talking about. You are and you don't.
are you talking to a third person who isn't here? Who said it's a competition? Are you referring to John Tory, who said that this week? I already said, multiple times, that we need the DRL. I happen to hold the opinion that Yonge can go first and have presented it as such. Your assertion that Yonge "can wait" is your opinion, which you convey as fact. It isn't.
I try - in my finer moments - to both entertain and educate.
The question for you, I guess, is what IS my day job? Hmmm.
It changed, my friend. Couldn't you google before offering a misguided retort?
(In fairness to you, this is as of the next election. I did make a mistake, implying that the Liberal Markham-TH riding is provincially Liberal. That's not the case though the polling in the last provincial election was strongly PC on the west side of Yonge and strongly Liberal on the east. I assume that pattern will roughly hold.)
View attachment 104470