It depends which way is going, doesn't it. Why do we think there are all of these people south of the 401 at Scarborough Centre that want to head to downtown North York anyway? With the Eglinton line going completely underground, the travel time to Yonge/Eglinton from Scarborough Centre wiill be about the same as to Yonge/Sheppard.
More people want to get from STC to NYCC than want to get from STC to Morningside & Sheppard, that's for sure. That's pretty much the only scenario in which a trip from STC to a point on Sheppard WOULDN'T be a back-track.
Yet the poor folks in Malvern are still completely screwed ... being forced to take painfully slow buses over the 401 to get to Scarborough Centre ... to catch either the Sheppard or Eglinton lines. Or west on Sheppard to Kennedy/Agincourt to catch the subway there.
I'm going to be writing a proposal to Ford to show that the federal funds for the SELRT can be spent on upgrading bus service along Sheppard and McCowan to have dedicated curbside lanes, for under $330 million. I'm going to specifically market it as a "temporary solution" until the subway gets built. How long temporary is, well we'll see, haha.
However ssiguys point was that Transit City contained "No connection from Sheppard directly to STC". Clearly this is 100% wrong.
I think he was implying a transferless ride. That's what I think of when I think "direct connection". People on the Bloor line do not have a direct connection to downtown, but people on YUS do.
Given the 1-lane state of Jarvis street south of Queen these days (which BTW still doesn't have bike lanes) ... and that the eastbound Gardiner in AM rush from York to Richmond runs at full speed ... may actually be the fastest way!
Fastest, but hardly the most direct