Hey everyone!
Politicians love flashy projects. If there's an opportunity for a photo op, they will be there. However, this obsession with capital projects instead of operations and maintenance leads to big facilities that are criminally underused (if you're interested in the topic of maintenance of urban systems, I recommend reading A City is not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences by Shannon Mattern). Ontario is ground-zero for this projects: huge infrastructure that is seldom used. I argue that York Region is a particularly bad example of this relationship. As they say, every decision is made in York Region, and this political clout has led to a huge amount of money allocated for physical infrastructures and little for actually making them work.
As construction on the Yonge North Subway Extension to Richmond Hill Centre is set to begin, I argue that York Region is not deserving of this. Using examples of the subway extension to Vaughan, as well as the new Cornell Terminal, I argue that York Region Transit (and the region as an entity) have proven little that a subway increases mobility, and that they instead use it as a vehicle to drive high-rise development. I will also raise a red flag about the next steps of the Scarborough subway extension based on past situations.
Setting the Situation
For many years, York Region has produced future transit maps that show the Yonge subway, which currently ends at Finch, running through to Richmond Hill Centre, replacing a portion of their VIVA Blue route. After years of speculation, Premier Ford announced the Yonge North Subway Extension (YNSE) project. It features two stations at Richmond Hill Centre, one on either side of Highway 407, in order to serve two sets of condo developments: Bridge and High Tech. Intermediate stations at Steeles, Clark, and Royal Orchard will be built, with potential for a Cummer/Drewry station (please make this official!).
From a regional transit perspective, this makes a lot of sense; A connection is made with commuter rail at Langstaff, and Richmond Hill Centre would be the terminus of three of YRT's VIVA BRT lines (Blue, Purple, and Orange), instead of having Blue continue south to Finch. I also think that subway extensions should cross highways to end, and this project does that as well. Overall, it makes a lot of sense, and I will find great use out of it.
However, my concern lays with York Region's inability to provide functional transit service. One of the reasons that the subway is so well-used is because TTC runs a strong network of feeder routes. Stations in undeveloped areas, like York Mills, manage 30,000 passengers a day (Jonathan English loves comparing York Mills to WMATA's Bethesda station, which, despite lots of density, serves only 13,000 people a day). While I agree that not every suburban region must do things the way as Toronto, I also think that rejecting this well-established best practice should be a deal-breaker on whether or not a subway gets built to these regions.
Case #1: TYSSE
The Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension (TYSSE) was completed in 2017, bringing the subway from Sheppard West up to Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, better known as VMC. With the subway finally extending beyond Toronto's borders in York Region, there was a lot of potential for YRT to take advantage of these new connections. Many routes were operated out of Pioneer Village Station, allowing for a shorter connection to the subway. I note though that many of the routes operated to York University prior, and even if the subway ended at Steeles, these routes would still adjusted to match. Highway 407, in Vaughan, is a regional terminal for GO buses, and does little for YRT (fair enough).
YRT's 20 Jane, at VMC Bus Terminal (I refuse to call it by its official name, SmartVMC).
The transit situation at VMC is disheartening. YRT's VIVA Orange runs both ways through here, at a headway of every 25 minutes outside of rush. The 20 Jane route runs north from here, and for YRT standards, it's relatively frequent. The 26 Maple operates during weekday peaks only. When the subway opened, there was also the 10 Woodbridge, but that was cut at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, the bus terminal here is empty. There is little ability to get from the subway to destinations in the sprawling city, and employment areas even a few hundred metres away are basically impossible to access. YRT's lack of commitment to providing good transit connections to mega infrastructure projects, while also building heavy density at the stations, reveals a few key values about urbanism in York Region:
- Sustainability-as-density (Moos & Woodside, 2019) is the only means of being sustainable;
- Subway extensions are used to absolve YRT of actually providing service.
While density near subway stations is a good thing, transit-oriented development often fails. In the case of VMC, while ridership is good, the benefit to developers nearby is far more than that of a transit user. If transit users are not the number one beneficiary of a transit project, throw it out. In fact, since Brampton Transit runs their 501 ZUM Queen here, I think Brampton commuters benefit more from VMC than York Region commuters, which is definitely something considering how far into York the station is.
Lastly, considering that York Region has plans for the subway to eventually reach Teston (this is actually deranged), it is clear they want to relieve themselves from providing transit on Jane, one of their busiest corridors. While future stations northward may have better bus connections, I highly doubt that's what York Region aims to do.
Case #2: Cornell Terminal
Just about a week ago, YRT opened their new Cornell Terminal adjacent to Markham-Stouffville Hospital. This bus terminal has... many issues. Jedwin Mok's Twitter thread below gives a good summary, so if you're interested, give it a read.
Besides the fact that service is pitifully bad, I also note that the terminal was not used to resolve some of the circuitous routings in the area. The 1 Highway 7 serves the terminal twice, and crosses the 407 twice, and for what? Why wasn't it resolved to end at Cornell, and the 14 14th Avenue bus extended to cover the remainder. This proves another point about York Region: they build infrastructure without even considering the local transit conditions on the ground and how it can be improved. What is Cornell Terminal doing that the stops along Church on the other side of MS Hospital couldn't do?
VIVA Purple, on Church (other side of MS Hospital).
What does transit at Richmond Hill Centre look like now?
Richmond Hill Centre is already a 'major' transit terminal. Firstly, it is the main hub of the Highway 407 GO bus services, and the subway being built here will provide a second subway access for those ringing around the city. Langstaff GO is adjacent, and will provide an additional connection (because the Richmond Hill GO Line operates during peak only, and serves quite little, this connection is limited).
As previously mentioned, three VIVA routes run from here. The headways are not great, and while they will be the biggest drivers of feeder ridership into the station, the lacking degree of impact is hard to ignore. You wouldn't know that local buses operate from RHC based on how infrequent they come. The 1 Highway 7 and 99 Yonge are the local equivalents of Purple and Blue respectively, and they operate at headways between every 40 and 50 minutes. Yikes! The 83 Trench and 86 Newkirk-Red Maple run to about 10pm, which is somewhat late, but headways don't get better than every 30 minutes. The 86 has hourly service after 6pm. Neither of these routes operate on weekends. The 87 Autumn Hill operates peak only, every 83 minutes in the morning rush and every 97 in the afternoon, working out to about seven departures a day. The 91B Bayview branch runs rush only, every 45 minutes. A few school trippers also call here, and the weekend-only 760. Overall, besides the VIVA-paralleling services, only one route stops here on weekends, and two outside of rush on weekdays. This is not good.
The bad service is damning when you map it out. The 87 Autumn Hill serves the plaza at Highway 7 and Hunters Point, but VIVA Orange passes without stopping. Despite the plaza being less than a kilometre and a half from RHC, there is basically no connection provided. This is not a transit network that precedes a subway connection. While transit can improve, and it should, the historical precedence of TYSSE suggests that this won't happen. Why should TTC's best practices be rejected just to accommodate York Region?
I wanted to show the egregiousness of no proper link between that plaza on Hunters Point (blue) and Richmond Hill Centre (red). The yellow line measures 1.4km.
While TYSSE helps relieve YRT of providing service on Jane, YNSE will do the same for Yonge. Little additional transit benefit actually happens, it just switches mode and agency.
A Warning about the Scarborough Subway Extension
One of Doug Ford's other projects is extending Line 2 up to Sheppard via Scarborough Centre. While I'm obviously angered about the seven-year lag between the RT and this project's completion, this is the project I think is the obvious choice at this point.
My warning is about how close the intersection of Sheppard and McCowan to the York Region boundary: just 5 kilometres. McCowan Road here not dissimilar to the cases we've looked at in this post. Here are important notes about McCowan:
- YRT's 129 McCowan North route is the most frequent north-south route in Markham;
- McCowan and Highway 7 is served by VIVA Purple (and the 1 Highway 7), and has an obvious destination: Markville Mall;
- There is a GO Station, Centennial, just behind the mall;
- There have been years of traffic concerns along McCowan.
I can already see it now: an announcement to extend Line 2 up McCowan to Highway 7, which will serve a new condo development on Markville's expansive parking lots. Every mall has been proposing these, but not yet Markville! Again, while it makes sense from a regional transit perspective, locally it does not: YRT has one local route here, the pitiful 40 Unionville Local. While Langstaff GO has limited service, Centennial has all-day service, and so the case of bridging the connection here makes even more sense.
What I think the inevitable subway extension will look like (lighter green).
This imaginary situation I've concocted fits my two-pronged urbanism values of York Region model: it supports a 'sustainability-as-density' model at Markville, and absolves YRT of running service on not just McCowan, but also lets them cut back their 301 Markham Express route, which runs non-stop from Finch Station to just around the mall. How convenient!
Conclusion
In conclusion, while building transit on a regional level is a good idea, ignoring local transit at the same time is wrong from a service perspective, and especially wrong for breaking the TTC's strong feeder model. While the subway will be extended to Richmond Hill Centre whether we like it or not, YRT must increase local transit services to make it worth it, because these mega transit infrastructure projects without service won't cut it anymore.
References
Moos,
M., & Woodside, J. (2019). The Uneven Outcomes of Sustainable Transport
Infrastructure Planning: The Case of Montreal and Vancouver Commuters. In P.
Filion & N. Pulver (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on Suburban
Infrastructures: Contemporary International Cases. (pp. 340-359). Toronto,
ON: University of Toronto Press.
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