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Subway Extension to East Mall Proposed

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Crossposted to Transit Toronto.

This past Wednesday, Etobicoke community council voted to ask city staff to investigate the possibility of extending the Bloor-Danforth subway one stop westward from Kipling to the Dundas/East Mall intersection. The details were reported in Inside Toronto.

Councillor Peter Milczyn (Ward 5 – Etobicoke-Lakeshore) made the motion, to update an older Environmental Assessment and assess the costs required to acquire property for the extension.

The proposal differs from the other westward extension that has been proposed: from Kipling to Sherway Gardens and possibly Dixie GO Station, with provisions made for a future station stop at East Mall, well south of Dundas Street. Milczyn notes that Honeydale Mall is offering up land for the East Mall station stop free of charge, which would shift the alignment of the proposed westward extension north.

Milczyn’s reasoning is that the TTC is set to spend $50 million to move the regional bus terminal from Islington station to Kipling. For just $100 million more, the subway could be extended via the Canadian Pacific right-of-way to East Mall, and possibly the regional terminal could be built there. Such a location would provide a connection between the subway and Mississauga Transit buses closer to Mississauga, and closer to Highway 427.

Honeydale Mall is pushing the proposal to support its application for a major redevelopment of its property, with 2,400 residential units as well as retail, commercial and office space. Milczyn opposes this application, calling the densities “totally excessive”.

Milczyn hopes that the report could be completed in time for consideration for the 2007 capital budget.

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11 comments

  2. Does Milczyn imagine the terminal at East Mall would be free? How then does he call it a saving to simply not build the Kipling bus terminal when there will have to be one at East Mall?

    Hopefully this proposal will incite the Sherway people to pony up some dough too and there will be two stops and a Mississauga-TTC interface that’s actually somewhere near the border between each!

  4. “Just $100 million more” is a lot of money to spend on a questionable subway extension just to make a regional bus terminal slightly more convenient for buses to get to.

    That kind of money could buy a heck of a lot of buses.

  5. Interesting.

    I guess he want to leave some kind of legacy. “I am the guy who got a subway built!”

  6. My guess is that this is pre-election manouvering. Mississauga buses go down Burnhamthorpe, Bloor, Dundas streets in Etobicoke with residents on Burnhamthorpe being quite vocal about their displeasure with this. His proposal limit the distance Mississauga buses would travel on Etobicoke streets. Being able to show that you are working on the issue is helpful – even if its only requesting staff to estimate out how much it would cost to update a environmental assessment.
    As for opposing the higher density, putting 2400 units (8+ buildings) on the Honeydale site is going to cause a major uproar in the neighbourhood. There is a proposal for 5000 units on a site just to the west of the Honeydale mall and another proposal for more housing on a site between the Kipling station and the Honeydale mall that is currently occupied by a Canadian Tire store. That’s a lot of density for Dundas street between the Kipling subway station and the 427. If you take into account these three proposals, he really has no choice but to oppose the high density on the Honeydale site.

  7. B. Smith. Agreed entirely on the number of buildings between Kipling & the 427. Dundas is a really busy road to begin with at rushhour, and to add all the extra traffic from the residences would make it all the more stressful.

  8. I say extend the subway along dundas all the way to hurontario and up to mississauga city centre. This is the the best route and would ensure the intensification of dundas as a retail and residential zone. If people can buy things where they live it will reduce traffic.

  9. Saw this this morning at

    http://www.greenetobicoke.ca/

    Lakeshore Local Train Service Unveiled

    September 28th, 2006

    by: Matthew DAY

    Lakeshore Local by Matthew DAY This morning I unveiled plans for the Lakeshore Local train service on existing train lines in Etobicoke. What’s the Lakeshore Local you ask? Simple. The Lakeshore Local is a Train Service, to be Owned by the City of Toronto, and operated in conjunction with, but not part of the TTC. The Lakeshore Local will operate continuously between Long Branch Station, and Union Station. There will be frequent, and continuous service all day, tapering off to 20 or 30 minute late night service.

    New train stations will be constructed at Kipling, (New Toronto Station), and at the Humber Loop, next door to Palace Pier.

    Read the rest of this entry at

    http://www.greenetobicoke.ca/?p=48#more-48

  10. Very interesting motives and reasoning have been ascribed to the reason for my motion at Community Council and my thinking on this matter.
    For the record this is not election posturing, it is simply a matter of timing. The preliminary Staff Report on the Honeydale application was at Community Council and that was the appropriate time to move my request for staff to report on doing an update to Subway extensin Environmental Assessment. One of the reasons for this is that the previous EA only showed a conceptual location for an East Mall station, we need to flesh this out further.
    I oppose the two applications which combined propose 5000 units for a number of reasons. First one of the applications is for lands designated as Employment Lands in the City’s Official Plan. There can be employment “intensification” on those lands which now contain warehousing with few jobs on site.
    The other application shows heights and densities that are unmanageable on the site and could not be supported by the current services in the area.
    The City of Toronto approved a new Etobicoke City Centre Secondary Plan just four and a half years ago that promotes intenisfication within planned a framework, the owners of these lands never objected just a few years ago to the very deliberate exclusion of their area from the growth district.

    I agree that the subway should go much further west but an incremental approach to subway construction has worked brilliantly in places like Madrid and Tokyo and could be sustainable even in our financial climate.

    There is also a firm commitment to build a new inter-regional bus terminal at Kipling. The further west that can be pushed then tens of thousands of additional travelled kilometres per year can be eliminated for buses feeding the subway. That’s good for the environment and can make commuting by public transit more attractive to more drivers.

  11. There is also a firm commitment to build a new inter-regional bus terminal at Kipling. The further west that can be pushed then tens of thousands of additional travelled kilometres per year can be eliminated for buses feeding the subway. That’s good for the environment and can make commuting by public transit more attractive to more drivers.

    That money can be better spent on improving surface transit across the city. Doing that would make the system more attractive to many more people than one poorly-used extension would. And regardless of how far west the subway would be pushed (East Mall, West Mall, Sherway, or even Hurontario), it would not service enough people to make more of a difference than improved bus service across the city would.

    Stop thinking about glamorous subway projects. The cost for even incremental subway expansion, if spent on busways and light rail networks instead, could give us a public transit system crossing the city up and down. THAT would be something attractive to drivers.