This article is the fifth part of a series of articles “Where will things be in a decade? Toronto’s Transit Engoodening”. Check out the previous parts in this series if you haven’t yet!
Of course, I think it’s only natural to start asking and planning for the projects which come next. I do think it’s also important to ensure that while we think to the future that basic service keeps up — there are a number of US cities with bigger rail networks than Toronto but worse service, and we do not want to become like that. Toronto is good because it is building a lot while running pretty good service!
That being said, I do think there are some obvious and fairly low-cost follow up projects — I mention costs, because with the high costs of the projects being built now, I assume that is all there will be appetite for.
For one, I think extending Finch to the future Woodbine GO station is natural. It’s short, simple, and provides a connection into the Kitchener line north in the TTC system. A further extension to Pearson would be longer and more complex, but given how big the airport is getting, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened at some point and the airport pitched in for it.
The Ontario Line should also pretty obviously be extended north, and I think it’s important that this extension goes to Finch, not to Don Mills as seems natural for connectivity. That is because 1) a further extension someday to all of the major offices at Highway 7 (which surely York region would be all over) that could be built all elevated would be easier from Finch (the Fairview Mall area is densifying much more quickly) but, 2) also to provide access to the main Seneca College campus and the loads of apartments along Don Mills north of Sheppard up to Finch. The nice thing about an OL North extension is it isn’t all that long and can basically all be built elevated, it serves tons of fairly dense housing, it upgrades the busy Don Mills bus, it connects some major development areas like Don Mills and Lawrence as well as Don Mills and Eglinton (which, with elevated metro, is going to give off strong Metro Vancouver vibes) and it potentially enables dense redevelopment of industrial areas west of Don Mills north of Lawrence and Eglinton. At the same time, bringing the Ontario line up to Sheppard and beyond suddenly makes Line 4 much more useful (especially with the Yonge north extension), acting as a shuttle between these two (and maybe eventually three) north-south rapid transit lines.
Extending Line 5 to Pearson also seems inevitable, and even more so than Line 6, that’s because it will be closer and will provide more attractive subway connections (Midtown vs. Finch West). I think it’s clear that Pearson would like a “subway” connection and that the UP Express is not going to be able to handle all rapid transit demand to the airport by itself. At the same time, even if fitting Line 5 into the densely packed (with infrastructure) terminal area is challenging, the cost can only go so high because the route is not very long — making this extension feel like a done deal already.
The Hurontario line is also meant to be extended north to downtown Brampton and a critical second connection to the GO network on the Kitchener Line. The extension into downtown Brampton is meant to happen with an expensive tunnel, which I think I would begrudgingly support just because Brampton has managed to run such incredible transit service in the last decade and as a result has seen enormous ridership gains. In Mississauga, the downtown “loop” project is being pushed forward which would, well… loop around the city’s emerging city centre. This project looks good on a map, but there isn’t an obviously good operating pattern for it, so I would hope to see it replaced with a more reasonable east-west corridor that can provide similar intra-city centre connectivity. The province has already said it’s going to move forward with both of these projects, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see east-west corridors in Mississauga and Brampton eventually also happening in the future.
Finally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we did an extension of the Hamilton LRT to West Harbour GO and perhaps beyond to the Harbourfront. This is a short and straightforward extension of roughly 2-4 stops, which shouldn’t cost very much, would connect GO directly to light rail, and would probably see service branching to either the GO station or the city’s east from McMaster.
There are some other projects that I think are natural next steps, but will be expensive and thus may well be deferred. These are the Ontario Line West extension, which would head in the direction of Dundas West via Roncesvalles; the Line 2 West extension to Sherway Gardens, and perhaps even further west; and the extension of the Sheppard Line East, as well as either a western extension of the Sheppard Line or an eastern extension of the Finch LRT. If Finch does get extended east, I think it should travel to Sheppard-Yonge via Yonge street in North York centre, helping to make Yonge — which has loads of restaurants and businesses, much less highway-like, while also enabling a single transfer cross-city journey.
The final topic of this series is how all of this will change the region — make sure to subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox as soon as it’s available!
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