The 905
February 20th, 2010
Brougham, a small village at the corner of Highway 7 and Brock Road in Pickering, doesn’t quite make the usual criteria for a “lost village” - urban sprawl is still far from overtaking the historic buildings, and the village looks much like it did 20 or 50 years ago.
But it is a lost village - or even a bona fide ghost town - in the making, and has been since March 2, 1972. On that date, the Government of Canada selected northern Pickering Township - along with sections of Uxbridge, Markham and Whitchurch Townships - as the site of a new Mirabel-sized international airport that would eventually replace Malton Airport (now Pearson) as Toronto’s primary airport. Brougham - in its entirety - was now the southeast corner of this 18,000 acre (72 square kilometre) land mass that then had to be expropriated. I have touched on the subject of the Pickering Lands before here on Spacing Toronto.
Before the federal announcement, Brougham was a small, yet growing, community, with a school, several churches, businesses and a community hall. Commercial House, pictured above, is one of only a few roadside taverns left in the GTA. Today, Brougham is largely by-passed by the extension of Highway 407, which skirts the southern boundary of the airport lands.
When the brakes went on in 1975, Brougham and the huge parcel of Class I farmland to its north and west was frozen in time, owned by the Government of Canada and rented out to farmers and residents (many of which were the former land owners). As only minimal repairs were taken on by the landlord in anticipation of future construction, many houses - of which quite a number appear to be exurban ranch houses built in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s - were simply vacated and boarded up. Approximately one-quarter to one-third of all houses in Brougham are now vacant.
February 16th, 2010
GO Transit has launched a new website interface and an online trip planner. The changes create a much more friendly interface and include a variety of new features which will make the site more useful to both regular commuters and occasional users. Interestingly, the GO logo now prominently includes the phrase “A Division of Metrolinx.”
Perhaps the most exciting feature of the new site is the Google Maps trip planner positioned in the bottom right corner of the new homepage. GO is clearly very excited about this new feature and has been quick to promote it as a significant improvement in their customer service experience. The planner certainly is a nice new feature and definitely seems like a welcome alternative to selecting from schedules based on their sometimes-confusing route names. Now, visitors to the region no longer need to make the mental connection between a trip to Brampton and a route called the Georgetown Line.
GO’s place among the first transit agencies in the area to release its schedule information to Google (only YRT and the Hamilton Street Railway have also added the service) has, however, created some oddities in the results the service provides. Because GO is the only data Google has for Toronto, trips that would make much more sense on the TTC are instead routed along suburban GO routes. Some quick experimenting showed us two examples of ridiculous directions now available.
January 31st, 2010
The latest installment in this series brings us to Meadowvale Village, a well-preserved rural settlement that is now all but lost in Mississauga’s sprawl. Indeed, without a map, Meadowvale is difficult to find, as road diversions and detours has removed all through traffic, with a complex detour necessary to follow long-established routes.
Meadowvale was established in the 1830s as a mill town on the Credit River and as a service centre for northern Toronto Township, featuring schools, churches, stores and a tavern. The Gooderham and Worts distillery empire had a significance here, even constructing a mansion built as a summer house for the Gooderham family. Later businesses included a auto service station and additional shops, but until the 1990s, Meadowvale remained a separate, distinct community.
Unlike Thistletown, Meadowvale had direct railway access. In the 1870s, Meadowvale became a stop on the Credit Valley Railway, which went from Toronto to Orangeville via Brampton (with a “branch” to St. Thomas via Milton and Galt from Streetsville), but quickly acquired by the Canadian Pacific. In 1917, the Canadian Pacific was joined by the Toronto Suburban Railway’s short-lived Guelph route, serving mostly small towns and villages between the line’s Keele and St. Clair terminus and Guelph. (The TSR Meadowvale Station survives, but is now on the grounds of the Halton County Radial Railway museum near Rockwood, itself on the old TSR route.) However, Meadowvale never became very prominent; losing out to larger nearby communities like Streetsville, an incorporated town and a major railway junction; and Brampton to the north, which was larger still and the county seat for Peel.
January 8th, 2010
GO Transit is in the throes of major expansion. Examining how the system’s stations influence their surroundings, and how this, in turn, affects the suburbs, can provide a glimpse into the future of the GTA.
As an example of the potential for what GO transit could do for the suburbs, Oakville Midtown is fertile fodder for the imagination. Oakville’s midtown provides several unique and highly desirable characteristics, including a large wooded ravine, natural heritage, and large-scale public land ownership. The exciting redevelopment plan for Oakville’s midtown is an example of how enhancing the areas around GO Transit stations (an initiative central to the Ontario government’s Places to Grow Act) could help fix the suburbs while at the same time solidifying the feasibility of the region’s existing transit infrastructure.
Oakville’s Midtown Core development is centred on the Oakville GO station, in the area bound by the Sixteen Mile Creek, the QEW and the Oakville rail yards. The Midtown plan calls for a redrawn street grid, new civic facilities, an educational campus, and conversion of surface parking into two large garages. The area could host upwards of 5,500 new residences and around two million new square feet of office and commercial space by 2030. Designed to create a focus for the neighbourhood, the civic centre proposal includes a new town hall, marquee arena, and public square.
October 21st, 2009
Yesterday, Tuesday, October 20 2009, the last Coach Canada bus departed the Guelph bus terminal for its run down Highway 6 to Waterdown, McMaster University, and Downtown Hamilton. The service, which Coach Canada claimed was a money loser, was reduced in August from four or five trips a day to one round trip a week.
On October 31, GO Transit will begin a new daily bus service between Square One in Mississauga and the University of Waterloo, making stops at Wilfred Laurier University, Downtown Kitchener, Highway 24 in Cambridge, and Milton (with two weekday round trips connecting to GO trains there).
These two pieces of news are more related than one may think.
This is the third time this year GO Transit has expanded its bus service well outside its traditional territory of Greater Toronto and Hamilton. In September, GO launched two new bus services connecting to the Lakeshore GO train; a route from Oshawa GO to Downtown Peterborough and Trent University, and from Burlington GO Station to Grimsby, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls. In addition, it has grand plans to extend GO train service to the VIA Station in Kitchener. One might be inclined to see these moves as empire-building.
July 21st, 2009
Yesterday, I wrote about a poorly designed pedestrian connection between the YRT/Viva bus terminal and the Langstaff GO Station.
But there are examples of how a very suburban GO station can be designed to coexist with big-boxes and connections with local transit. Milton demonstrates a very pragmatic (though still far from an urban TOD ideal) way to do this.
The GO Station in Milton, once located at the far end of town (where I am sure, land for parking was essential), now finds itself in the centre of what in 2006 was Canada’s fastest growing municipality (53,000, up 71.4% from 2001). Milton held that distinction because in the decade before that, the town had zero growth. The construction of water mains from Lake Ontario has allowed the quick growth.
There are three big-box complexes in Milton, two next to the 401 near Steeles and James Snow Parkway, and one next to the station, whose primary tenants are a LCBO and a Loblaws Superstore. The new commercial complex was built in a field next to the GO station, with a new circular road providing local access to both. Two sets of traffic lights provide safe pedestrian crossings between the two (with very short waits for a walk signal). A new bus loop connects the recently improved local transit system and the GO Transit 401 and “Train-Bus” routes, with a minimal walk between train and bus. Here, there’s a potential to minimize unnecessary trips. One actually could walk over, grab some groceries or booze, and go back to the parked car (having waited out the mad rush out of the lot) or ride Milton Transit (whose hub is the GO station) home.
Train platform right next to bus platforms and bike shelter.
Here’s what GO Transit could do with its huge, suburban parking lots: as it builds parking garages, replace surface parking with complementary retail, like grocery stores, a Tim Horton’s, a dry cleaners (the kiosk in Brampton’s station is an example) even provide space for a daycare that busy commuters could drop their children off and pick them up without an extra car trip. It would make transit more convenient and reduce extra car trips, a practical and pragmatic solution. There’s some lots, like Guildwood, that would also be suited to high density housing, perhaps even affordable homes.
July 20th, 2009
I’m not sure what it is about GO Transit. I want to think that it is an essential part of our public transit system. In many respects, it is: by providing a well-used commuter service, it has certainly reduced the need for highway expansion, which was its original intent (to address the need to widen the QEW). Yet despite some promising signs, GO has remained a auto-centric transit service. Instead of building new and larger highways, GO instead builds new and larger parking lots.
This car-centric approach is understandable to a degree. Some of its stations are in places where local public transit is limited tor non-existent, like Georgetown. Some stations, like Bramalea, Meadowvale, or Pickering aren’t going to easily transform into vibrant, transit-oriented communities. The only way to get some people from driving downtown is to build commuter stations with convenient parking in which to leave the car instead.
But GO’s auto-centric focus makes one wonder if the consultants, designers and engineers are oblivious to the needs of pedestrians. Maple, for example, is a station in a residential area. Yet it is completely fenced off from the subdivisions across the tracks. Perhaps there is the worry about pedestrians crossing the tracks illegally and dangerously, but at least a proper path down to Major Mackenzie would make some sense.
But the best example of this that I have seen is at Langstaff GO Station. Last year, a pedestrian bridge was finally built, connecting the GO trains (and the 407 corridor buses) with the York Region Transit/Viva and GO airport express buses on the other side of the busy CN Bala Subdivisions. The bridge is impressive, with elevators and stairwells on both sides, and provides an useful and important link.
But what I don’t understand is all the necessary fences. One fence divides the walkway from the railway. Fine, as the Bala Subdivision is not only a GO route, but also CN’s busy freight corridor to the north and Western Canada. But there’s also a fence blocking the path to the bridge to the adjacent big box plaza, specifically a Home Depot and a Tim Horton’s.
Do not pass GO.
July 5th, 2009
Spacing is working hard on the summer-fall 2009 issue but we need a little help from our readers (again). Our editors are trying to locate semi-finished and/or recently finished suburban developments in …
June 5th, 2009
In my hometown of Brampton, suburban development has continued to erode the old country landscape that even up to about 20 years ago, made up most of the city’s land mass. The ever-creeping urban frontier of the GTA has finally hit a road with an ironic name, Countryside Drive.
Countryside Drive used to be known as part of 15th Sideroad, Chinguacousy Township, and 15th Sideroad, Toronto Gore Township. Chinguacousy Township, now a historical name that remains in some local landmarks, was eliminated in 1974 with the municipal restructuring that turned the County of Peel into the Peel Regional Municipality. Chinguacousy was split between Brampton and the new Town of Caledon, and Toronto Gore was joined with the Town of Brampton to create the City of Brampton.
Brampton, like most other towns and cities in Ontario that resulted in amalgamations of townships and villages, named all the remaining numbered lines and concessions in the 1980s. Second Line West of Hurontario Street became Chinguacousy Road. The name given to Countryside Drive at the time was probably appropriate - the nearest subdivisions were at least four kilometres away, and the road was a two-lane, only recently paved, country lane. But the urban frontier advanced, and Countryside Drive became a misnomer.
By 2005, the subdivisions of Springdale caught up. The transitional landscape created by the advancing bulldozers and work crews is rather strange and eerie - farmhouses and outbuildings are often still standing, but abandoned and left to fall apart, or boarded up. Ubiquitous white zoning proposal signs and survey markers are common. And not too far behind are bulldozers clearing land, excavators digging basements (leaving temporary hills of fill), and then road crews, carrying out the latest widening to convert the now over-burdened country lanes into four and six lane arterials.
Probably the most unintentionally ironic sign I found.
February 13th, 2009
Don’t be alarmed but Mississauga has developed a skyline! (I took this photo from my west-facing balcony this morning). What’s great is that it’s not just any skyline, but a distinctive skyline.
I don’t have much else …
