BurlOak
Senior Member
So what you are saying is that Sheppard ridership went up 14%, Yonge up 13% and B-D up 6%.
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So what you are saying is that Sheppard ridership went up 14%, Yonge up 13% and B-D up 6%.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
yes, but Yonge added twice the ridership of the entire sheppard line in 2007.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
I don't understand the point of persistent Sheppard-bashing. We all know it has low ridership. We also all know that what was intended (both in terms of the line itself and the larger network) is not what was built. There's a huge amount of development along Sheppard and ridership will keep growing, especially once the LRT connects it to where it should have gone (if not seamlessly) and, dare to dream, even more if they ever extend it over to Sheppard West.
But it's never going to be quite what was hoped for. Time to move on.
doady
Senior Member
So the Sheppard Line added 1/5 of the riders that a line that is 5 times longer did. Wow, that's terrible.
11th
Senior Member
Didn't someone say a majority of Yonge's ridership comes from connecting bus routes? Sheppard only benefits from the Don Mills bus, that's all. It was meant to change the travel pattern in north Scarborough by encouraging people to take the N-S buses to Sheppard rather than Finch East bus to Yonge. A lot of current existing developments on Finch are nodal anyways; no reason why they HAVE to take the Finch route.
BMO
Senior Member
This...capacity is also affected by the length of a line. I don't understand why so many people fail to understand this. Even if Sheppard was going every 3 minutes like the YUS line it still wouldn't carry as many passengers on the line because it simply doesn't have the capacity. Sure it uses the same trains, but when you're hitting more stops over a larger distance you get riders that jump on and off at points in between. And while yes the Sheppard line has fewer passengers per hour per direction it seems that very few people take into account the capacity of the line. /rant
still, I think it comes down to people not wanting to pay $$ to maintain a line who's operating cost/ revenue is much higher than other lines. Even though basically very few public transit lines cover operating through revenues, one bad line, especially a subway line that is a large sunken cost, unlike a bus route which can still use the buses in a different route.
ehlow
Senior Member
We can learn lessons from Sheppard, is probably the primary motivation to keep bashing it. Some say that you can build subways anywhere in Toronto and "if you build it they will come", and therefore we should build subways on Finch etc.
Clearly, Sheppard is a primary example against that.
To me, the lesson of Sheppard combined with an extremely overcrowded downtown system is that we should build where there is demand first, not spend 20 years trying to manufacture demand.
Clearly, Sheppard is a primary example against that.
To me, the lesson of Sheppard combined with an extremely overcrowded downtown system is that we should build where there is demand first, not spend 20 years trying to manufacture demand.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
Well, it uses the same trains with fewer cars
But I agree with all this. the cause and effect of what's wrong with Sheppard seem to get lost in a lot of the discussion about its failure. I mean, I look at the BD line and see very, very little density (at least high-rise, and not much mid-rise) along it, especially compared to Yonge. Spadina has an excuse, because that whole north section was moronically put in a trench, but there are more towers going up along Sheppard BECAUSE OF THE SUBWAY, than have gone up along the entire length of BD in its entire history. So, in that sense, "build it and they will come" has been borne out.This is true, but it's also isolating one issue from money. The province stopped investing in all transit at that time and they managed to scrounge the money for a half-assed Sheppard line. It's not like Harris (or the governments before him that also gradually withdrew from investment in TTC) said, "Here's $1b, spend it wherever you think it's needed..." Instead the government acted to not invest in the overcrowded system while killing attempts to expand it. So we barely expanded and didn't invest; a lose/lose.
So, it's great we managed to build a new line and it's great it's stimulated development. It's just not a complete line and it wasn't the most important line to build and it was supposed to be accompanied by another line that was at least as important to the larger network etc. etc. etc. If we'd built one of those transit plans in its entirety (which was the one that had Shep and Eg and looping Yonge up at Steeles?)the failures of Sheppard would be both fewer and less noteworthy. But we built a stub and then keep complaining about what a failure that stub is. Even Hudak (RIP) called it a "stub" in his campaign literature, even though he voted for the amputation!
I think sometimes it's a bit like criticizing some small indie movie for not pulling in blockbuster box office numbers. Obviously it's not doing Yonge numbers, because it's not Yonge. There are legit criticisms of Sheppard and fun jokes to be made about Bessarion but I still think the context has to be taken into account at all times.
xtremesniper
Active Member
Agreed with the above. The comparisons to other lines doesn't make any sense. If there has ever been any real world example of "don't compare apples to oranges", we've found it.