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York Region Transit: Viva service thread

Again, I'm not sure why Oakville is in this discussion. Their transit is a lot worse than York Region, for the same reason - people who live there have no interest in taking transit, other than when they're commuting. YRT actually has significantly higher ridership than Oakville Transit - around 20 annual trips per capita in York Region vs. 15 annual trips in Oakville.

I don't think York Region is trying to foster a "transit culture". They're trying to create a few corridors with frequent all-day service, and a few corridors with frequent peak hour service. The former is to support high density (which is why they're planned around the TYSSE, YNSE and Unionville RER/SmartTrack/whatever projects), and the latter is to support denser ground-level housing, like townhomes, where many families will only have one car. Then there are places like Aurora, Gormley and King City, where transit is about as important as it is in Orangeville, Keswick or Cobourg.

LNahid2000 said:
Maybe homes cost more in York Region because they're much bigger? I think cost per square foot would be a better metric than just average home price.
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In Old Toronto and North York, yes, but even with size factored in it's cheaper to buy a home in most of Scarborough or Etobicoke than in York Region. Property taxes are a lot higher in York Region too.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Omg, people. This is easy research.I'm gonna be that guy.
Average home price last month, according to TREB :

Toronto - $944k
York Region - $1.2m

End of story. Megaton is wrong.
Last month, Georgina was the only YR municipality with cheaper real estate than Toronto.

You can have opinions about where you think it's more expensive, but objective data exists nonetheless.

Other munis:
RH - $1.4m
Vaughan - $1.25m
Oakville - $1.24m

So, partly wrong there too. Yeah, there's median housing prices too and variations in stock and higher property tax rates on 905 etc. We can quibble but clearly the assertion nowhere is "even close" to Toronto is absurd.

Let's just agree it's expensive everywhere now and even more so closer to transit and highways.

Some people want to live in suburbs and some don't. Some choose where to live and some people go out until they can afford to. And so on. Blanket statements about "most people" don't accomplish much.
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No, you're wrong, because average home price is irrelevant. York region is, per same house size, much cheaper than toronto.

How much is a ~2500sqft detached 4 bedroom house in Newmarket, and how much is it, say, in The Beaches?

Doing some casual searching on realtor.ca, square footage is rarely clearly listed these days, but a typical detached 4 bedroom in Newmarket is going for about $850K-$1M, and one in The Beaches is going for $1.7-1.8M. If you go somewhere less affluent and farther out, it's about $1.5-1.6M in North York, and $1.3-1.6M in Etobicoke.

So, I was correct. If you have present statistics on 3/4 bedroom detached home prices per square foot, that would be a more apt figure. Average home price is completely meaningless--I certainly wasn't, and I don't think anyone was, arguing that a huge 3000sqft detached house in York Region is cheaper than a tiny 2 bedroom semi or townhouse in Toronto, my point was specifically that people move to York Region because a comparably sized house is much cheaper than in Toronto, which is indisputably the case.

TOareaFan said:
This thread is about to go down a hole of uneven comparisons. Someone will produce stats that shows the average home price in York region is near/over the average in Toronto to justify that statement then others will introduce the concept of housing stock age and size and type.....and it's all meaningless (the only new knoweldge seems to be the presentation of Oakville as an affordable place to live ;) ).
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You had that right... :)
 
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Let's not get derailed. I'm just making a simple point. York Region - unlike Brampton, unlike Mississauga, unlike Pickering/Ajax/Whitby/Oshawa - is not a place where people go because they're priced out of Toronto. It's a place where people go because they want to live in a suburb or exurb instead of Toronto.

This forum is full of city-dwellers who drink endless amounts of urbanism kool-aid. Urbanism is for urban areas, not suburban and rural areas. York Region, with the exception of a few corridors that I won't list for a fifth time, is not an urban area. Does transit suck there? Yes it does. Can you improve transit? Sure, but those improvements won't translate into more ridership because people do not want to take public transit. Want to live in a place with great transit? Don't buy/rent your home in most parts of York Region, and definitely don't go live in any of York Region's micro-communities.
 
amnesiajune said:
Again, I'm not sure why Oakville is in this discussion. Their transit is a lot worse than York Region, for the same reason - people who live there have no interest in taking transit, other than when they're commuting. YRT actually has significantly higher ridership than Oakville Transit - around 20 annual trips per capita in York Region vs. 15 annual trips in Oakville.

I don't think York Region is trying to foster a "transit culture". They're trying to create a few corridors with frequent all-day service, and a few corridors with frequent peak hour service. The former is to support high density (which is why they're planned around the TYSSE, YNSE and Unionville RER/SmartTrack/whatever projects), and the latter is to support denser ground-level housing, like townhomes, where many families will only have one car. Then there are places like Aurora, Gormley and King City, where transit is about as important as it is in Orangeville, Keswick or Cobourg.



In Old Toronto and North York, yes, but even with size factored in it's cheaper to buy a home in most of Scarborough or Etobicoke than in York Region. Property taxes are a lot higher in York Region too.
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You keep saying this and it's not accurate. Burlington and Oakville have much better transit systems. You don't need a care to live in some parts of those places. During the midday you're aren't stranded at home unlike Markham if you aren't close to 7 or one of the major roads. It's not YR vs Toronto, it's why YR is lagging behind other suburbs.
~~~~~

Another issue, with the increase in go coming, a lot of people won't be coming by care, especially to Newmarket, Markham, Unionville, Maple, etc. How will YRT handle this?
 
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denfromoakvillemilton said:
Burlington and Oakville have much better transit systems. During the midday you're aren't stranded at home unlike Markham if you aren't close to 7 or one of the major roads.
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On what basis? The second part of what you said is completely false, at least in Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan. Oakville's transit system has shorter operating hours, less frequent service, and lower ridership per capita. The only thing Oakville does better than York Region (unless you compare Oakville to small far-flung towns with 10-20 thousand residents) is charging 25 cents less for a cash fare and 55 cents less for Presto.

denfromoakvillemilton said:
Another issue, with the increase in go coming, a lot of people won't be coming by care, especially to Newmarket, Markham, Unionville, Maple, etc. How will YRT handle this?
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Viva already connects to Aurora, Newmarket and Unionville - with much more frequent service than any of Oakville's transit routes, by the way. Maple and Rutherford aren't going to get much mid-day ridership, but both routes are already connected by a YRT bus which, like Viva, is more frequent than any of Oakville's transit routes (a bus every 12 minutes during rush hour, every 20-30 minutes at all other times).
 
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amnesiajune said:
On what basis? The second part of what you said is completely false, at least in Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan. Oakville's transit system has shorter operating hours, less frequent service, and lower ridership per capita. The only thing Oakville does better than York Region (unless you compare Oakville to small far-flung towns with 10-20 thousand residents) is charging 25 cents less for a cash fare and 55 cents less for Presto.



Viva already connects to Aurora, Newmarket and Unionville - with much more frequent service than any of Oakville's transit routes, by the way. Maple and Rutherford aren't going to get much mid-day ridership, but both routes are already connected by a YRT bus which, like Viva, is more frequent than any of Oakville's transit routes (a bus every 12 minutes during rush hour, every 20-30 minutes at all other times).
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YRT stops at 7:00 pm on half its routes. And more frequent service is alternating between the main route and the "A" branch. Half of Markham's routes don't run on Sunday. Viva is not enough, essentially a great BRT, but that's not local service. That's regional.
 
Things do get derailed because people make unfair apples/oranges comparisons.

Obviously the SAME house would be more expensive if you put it in Toronto and then put the same house in York Region! But the 2 communities have different built forms and different housing stock. When someone goes on MLS to buy a house and they have, say, $1M to spend and need 3 bedrooms, they have to make a choice: do I want the small one in an "up and coming" part of Toronto or a medium-sized one with a decent yard in Newmarket? Either way, it's the same money and the same market. Does the person work in Aurora? Because that makes a difference. Do they have a car, because that does too? If they're going purely on square footage, yeah, that house will be cheaper as you go further out but we all know that you get more space and more yard in a suburban community because that's exactly what being in a suburb means.

Either way, if you want to buy "an average house in the GTA," it's going to cost you $1M. You can choose to get a crappy semi in Toronto or a stereotypical detached in Oshawa, but that's still the average price.

Equally obviously, some people live in suburbs because they want to be as close to the city as they can, and that's where they can afford to live. But some people - MANY MANY people - choose to live in a suburb because they like that lifestyle. They want more space and a bigger yard and yada yada yada. There's a chicken/egg thing given that it's most of what we've been building since roughly 1950 but it's insulting to treat suburbs - where most people in North America live, by the way, as nothing more than communities for people who can't afford to live close to the centre. (Indeed, in many USA communities, people moved to the suburbs to get as far away from it as possible.)

Same deal with transit: You can't compare Oakville transit to York Region because the area of York Region is more than TEN TIMES that of Oakville. You might say, "Well I can compare service in Markham to Oakville," and that would be relatively fair, but it still misses the systemic problem which is that part of the reason YRT can't provide "full service" in Markham is because it has to provide a modicum of service everywhere, which is not something Oakville needs to do.

None of which is to excuse where YRT is missing the boat. but let's keep all these things -real estate prices, transit service and whatnot - in their proper context.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Argh! Look, I know what I'm talking about and I've explained it as best I can to him and to you. If you don't get it or disagree with my "analysis," I don't know what to tell you. I've told you that you can personally phone up Markham planning and ask someone "does removing a subway mean lower densities/population in LG?" and post their quote here to discredit me. I'd have to offer the quite the mea culpa to you after your prolonged assertions I'm wrong, wouldn't I? Wouldn't you enjoy such a grovelling?

Until then, I stand by my description of how the planning was done and how the subway is intrinsic to the development and, in answer to the original question, why THIS growth centre needs it while other growth centres don't. I say again:
PROVE
ME
WRONG

You know you want to!

And it's 2 stations serving the UGC (getting people in the east half to RHC is why Calthorpe suggested the PODS you so love mentioning - PODS! PODS! PODS! ); Richmond Hill Centre and Langstaff/Longbridge.

And Highway 7, the very very south end of Richmond Hill, is not remotely an "outer suburb," in 2017. Not in terms of density, not in terms of land use, not in terms of the designations in Places to Grow, nor the relevant Official Plans and Secondary Plans, nor in terms of the Inner/Outer definitions in the Growth Plan.

So, those are two factual errors. I've offered my honest answer and readers may take that into account in judging whether my answer/analysis is accurate.

EDIT: TO ADD "EVIDENCE"

*Toronto Star interview with Peter Calthorpe that talks about density in UGC being 5x higher than provincial minimums and why this UGC needs infrastructure others don't.
*Metrolinx report that talks about the "back-casting" approach I described.
*One of many reports that talk about how "Critical" the subway is and why. Here's another.

And here is one I apparently have to post every few months. See if you can see the difference between what 44North says...
"a system with the capacity would not lead to "a lowering of the densities and population/job targets"

And what York Region says on p.99 of this report on the Secondary Plan:
  • Proposed phasing plan protects for the longer term buildout of the plan at densities appropriate for a unique centre serviced by a subway, provincial transitway, Viva, GO and Highway 407
  • If any of these key infrastructure components are removed, the plan will need to be comprehensively reviewed and the necessary adjustments made by amendment
You tell me what the plain English interpretation of this is.

44North may try to engage in pointless semantics about other hypothetical modes that could match subway capacity. A big enough chain of Unicorns would do it too. You plan based on assumptions, not hypotheticals and there is no document anywhere that suggests an alternative and if there was, it would be a different "key infrastructure component" requiring a comprehensive review, like I said.

(Hypothetically, if there was a "new" mode that had higher capacity than a subway, there would still be a comprehensive review and it could lead to an INCREASE in density but what's key is understanding that changing the mode from a subway will lead to the review and adjustments.)

people are probably bored of this "debate." I hope this clarifies there actually isn't one.
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Like the last time you posted them, those quotes don't disprove anything. Wasn't talking about nothing in lieu of an extension, rather a line that has the capacity to meet the projected demand. Like the rt projects seen elsewhere in the region. Again, if it has the capacity, any density targets in the centre wouldn't have to be changed. Should be pretty clear the entire capacity of Line 1 isn't required to serve a fringe area outside the city. The extension is only 'needed' insofar as it's the only thing above a lowly bus that's been looked at.
 
So we agree, in a weird way:
A hypothetical mode, which no one has yet considered, would not necessarily require adjustments to the density/population figures so long as it has equal capacity to the subway. (Though, presumably, it would still require a review before arriving at that conclusion, being an alteration to a key infrastructure component.)
That seems reasonable, if vague.

So, they don't NEED a subway (or any specific not-yet-built component) but they do need a combination of modes that achieve the same capacity figures. Right now it seems, on pretty much every level, the subway is closest to reality and on many levels it certainly seems to most practical ... but that doesn't mean there is literally no other mode could that could serve the same function.
 
markhamdevelopments said:
True. South Halton region has better transit system than York region. Although they aren't as frequent as here, their transit system is in better shape.
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Yup. And they run longer too on weekdays.

44 North said:
Like the last time you posted them, those quotes don't disprove anything. Wasn't talking about nothing in lieu of an extension, rather a line that has the capacity to meet the projected demand. Like the rt projects seen elsewhere in the region. Again, if it has the capacity, any density targets in the centre wouldn't have to be changed. Should be pretty clear the entire capacity of Line 1 isn't required to serve a fringe area outside the city. The extension is only 'needed' insofar as it's the only thing above a lowly bus that's been looked at.
Click to expand...

TJ O'Pootertoot said:
So we agree, in a weird way:
A hypothetical mode, which no one has yet considered, would not necessarily require adjustments to the density/population figures so long as it has equal capacity to the subway. (Though, presumably, it would still require a review before arriving at that conclusion, being an alteration to a key infrastructure component.)
That seems reasonable, if vague.

So, they don't NEED a subway (or any specific not-yet-built component) but they do need a combination of modes that achieve the same capacity figures. Right now it seems, on pretty much every level, the subway is closest to reality and on many levels it certainly seems to most practical ... but that doesn't mean there is literally no other mode could that could serve the same function.
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It's not even about the subways. It's what happens after the extension opens. I don't want Langstaff flooded by Lexus' and Benz'. There should be a better effort to have a bigger grid, and run later.
 
I think there's agreement that tefe) there is no point of YR building a tremendous spine of subway and BRT if they're not properly supplying local service.

I'm not worried about the immediate corridors but it would certainly be great to keep those fancy cars out of the new Langstaff lot by making sure it's efficient and easy to reach all this rapid transit.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
I think there's agreement that tefe) there is no point of YR building a tremendous spine of subway and BRT if they're not properly supplying local service.

I'm not worried about the immediate corridors but it would certainly be great to keep those fancy cars out of the new Langstaff lot by making sure it's efficient and easy to reach all this rapid transit.
Click to expand...

I think that's the key, here--how many people live within comfortable walking distance of the Highway 7 or Yonge rapidways? Many, to be sure, that's largely why they built them, but there are so many people a short local bus ride away, if only the local buses were to provide good service.

Along the same lines, my much bigger concern is for 15-minute RER in Markham, Vaughan, and Aurora. The lots at Rutherford and Maple even with the new garages, and in Aurora already, are full by about the second last morning rush hour southbound train, there's simply no room for midday riders. We need local bus service, if not every 15 minutes then every half hour, to provide people an option to use RER without having to park at the station. My biggest complaint about YRT is the fact that my local route is a poor quality GO connection due to an infrequent/non-weekend/non-evening schedule and unreliability, that needs to change.
 
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