Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
Buses and trams are great, but they are ill suited to form the core mode of transit for high-density areas; the exception being pedestrian orientated areas. It is why countless cities across the globe have developed high-capacity and/or frequent railway systems to facilitate movement to/from such areas.
What happens if the developer doesn’t build the station? I was curious and couldn’t find an opening date, and it does beg the question why the station wasn’t built first noting the existing and recently completed residential developments. I just find it fascinating from an urban planning perspective.
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Ultimately, what this comes down to is that Toronto is a rapidly growing metropolitan area that's playing catch up on transit infrastructure. So it's still better to build high density where there is
some frequent transit infrastructure and potential for further expansion, than it is to have the housing get built in some outer suburb or even in the form of condos in a more auto-oriented area where the prospects for rapid transit expansion are more distant (ex Erin Mills, Promenade Mall, Vaughan Mills or even Yonge & Steeles or Uptown Oakville).
The transit capacity of the streetcar routes serving the area is actually pretty high. The commuter rail line passing through currently has a weekday ridership of 33,500. Meanwhile, the King Street transit corridor (streetcars/buses) was serving about 85,000 people prior to the pandemic.
During the earlier stages of the community's development, the plan was to upgrade the streetcar to higher capacity Waterfront West LRT with a dedicated ROW (2007 Transit City plan). That got put on the backburner when Rob Ford took office in 2010, since he was opposed to LRTs, and the Waterfront West LRT wasn't even among the highest priority LRT lines.
On the other hand, Metrolinx has been pushing forward with upgrading its commuter rail corridor (Lakeshore West) through there, buying up control of the corridor from the freight rail company that previously owned it, adding a third track and upgrading frequencies. So it's only been relatively recently that adding a station here has been seen as a realistic alternative to the LRT proposal.
While building a station is still much cheaper than building a new rapid transit line, it looks like they're still expecting a price tag of $60m, probably because it would begin under the Gardiner Expressway, then continue over Park Lawn Road and Mimico Creek, so building over those obstacles while minimizing disruptions to traffic and rail service is probably somewhat complicated. So that explains why Metrolinx has been kind of kicking that can down the road and why it would've been too much to ask of the developers of the 3-4 tower projects to pay for it. But for the developer of this 7500 unit + 1.2m sf commercial space development, I suppose that's a more realistic concession, especially since I think they required more significant re-zonings that the other developments.
Also I believe the train station was required as a pre-condition for the development to go ahead. The project hasn't been approved yet, so it might take another 6-7 years for the first residents to move in. The train station is still in the environmental assessment stage.
Until then, the city of Toronto converted the downtown portion of King Street into a transit mall, which lead to a significant improvement in travel times and capacity for those streetcars (this is the same route that serves Humber Bay Shores) and Toronto has also been buying higher capacity light rail vehicles for their streetcar network.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
I’d agree with you on these areas as demonstrating the same problem.
This does not look like a pleasant place! Bordered by railways on two sides yet the nearest station is a 20-minute walk, and a 12-lane highway on another side. The local bus appears to be every half-hour and pedestrian access to neighbouring areas for amenities and employment is restricted to the same solitary road in and out. Graveyards look like they have more activity going on!
Cars have their place as a mode of transport, but they are ill suited to facilitating large volumes of people in high density environments. Even with the sheer volume of lanes, it is the unwelcoming pedestrian experience, the noise, the pollution.
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My point was that even with an relatively auto-oriented community of 7 condo towers, 1 large office building, 1 large hotel, and a few blocks of rowhouses, that's not enough to create a traffic jam on the one exit point (even though it's just a small 2 lane street). That street probably wouldn't be able to handle too much more development though, Liberty Village would be an example of a bigger community that also has limited exit points and it gets pretty congested during peak periods. The Kennedy bus comes every 5-10 minutes though, maybe you were looking at the 3am schedule because you're in a distant time zone?
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