Newsstand: February 9, 2010
Duly Quoted: Adam Giambrone
Bob Kinnear isn't Greg Kinnear
Adam Giambrone and Our Need for Political Wives
Scale Model City, Actual-Size Grime
Highway 407 station, er, design, as approved by the TTC this week.
Amidst the brouhaha about fare increases at this month's TTC meeting, one thing that was overlooked was the approval of the design for a Highway 407 station [PDF] on the new Spadina subway extension. Except—they haven't really decided on the finer points of the design. Did we say "finer points"? We meant "all of it."
“Due to ongoing negotiations with stakeholders,” says the design approval document, “surface facilities are not at the same level of development as the below ground structures.” All we know is that there will be a parking lot and an entrance, which is sort of obvious, and a GO Transit and York Regional Transit bus terminal somewhere in that big L-shaped gap.
No reason's been given for the failure of imagination: just a note that “the concept is still under development with input from GO and YRT,” along with a promise that the final site will be presented at a public open house in a few months' time. The designer for the station on the toll highway will be Aedas, who did the pleasingly aerodynamic design for Sheppard West, so we might expect something similar, but who knows.
Still, this could be the perfect opportunity to sling some ideas the TTC's way. Torontoist thinks the aerial projection of the site plan (above) looks a bit like a huge moth; at a push it could be made into some kind of Batman symbol, perhaps to be projected into the sky to call for help should somebody carelessly dig into a tunnel. Not that this would ever happen, of course.
If the private consortium that runs the highway could be persuaded to part with some of the eight-million-dollar profit they made last quarter, cost would be no object. So, what would you put inside the dotted line?
Renderings courtesy of the TTC.
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Someone seems to have been thinking, "Hey, it's just an empty field right now, so let's pave a lot of it for parking." Weak. That's how suburbs happen.
The Bloor Viaduct gets praised often for the prescience of the designers in putting in a lower deck for subway track decades before it was actually used. The forward-thinking action here is to bury the parking in a multi-level (automated?) garage now, instead of in 50 years. Bicycle parking should be indoors and plentiful. The surface footprint doesn't need to be larger than the bus terminal and "PPUDO".
A big pointlessly sprawling boomerang.
Heh... Vaughan really does go in for the creative parking lot designs--the Colossus cinema just north of this is all strange too. It's a shame they tend to be more about how they'll look from the sky than how they'll interact with the street-level public domain.
Honestly, from the rendering it looks like Aedas had a design drawn and ready to go. But then, on the way to the print shop, someone high up decided they hated the design and a big yellow post-it note was stuck over top.
from the PDF: "The subway platform level is served by an elevator from the concourse level and by four escalators and a stair." (emphasis added)
FAIL.
The platform should be served by two escalators and two elevators, because riders such as those in wheelchairs will arrive at the station only to find the sole elevator out of service.
The TTC needs more green (not roofs), fair hikes are happening while new development is wasting potential profits;
My dream fill for the moth would be a mixed use building with shops on first few floors above the bus terminal, office space above, and a condo tower atop it all. The TTC could partner with privet developer to offset capital construction cost for ownership of the building, or sell the units, and generate revenue through the office and commercial rental spaces.
Transit oriented development would start at the station, and encourage development around it.
Amen! Usually I'm the one who has to say this.
Agreed, absolutely great opportunity to do it right, but urban sprawl rears its ugly head even while fighting sprawl with public transit. As is the expression of the day: FAIL.
And looking at the site plan, is the whole station not in a terrible location. How do you even friggin' walk to the station? It is on an island where there is currently not even one residence, nor one workplace. I suppose the island as fenced in by major barriers (407 to the north, 400 to the west, rail corridor to the south, and Jane to the east) will be developed, but what is the plan? Crappy one-story office plazas?
Correction, there are 2 or 3 residences there, which may be the original farm houses.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Toronto,+Toronto+Division,+Ontario,+Canada&ll=43.781196,-79.52651&spn=0.011495,0.019248&t=h&z=16
We aren't Hong Kong, why should we build stations like Hong Kong's?
Wow...is this ever classic overkill. Highway 7??? Subways and highways don't mix due to the impossibility of density anywhere near the station which is prime real estate...we should have learned that from the Allen Ex
You know that NONE of those houses in that illustration will;
a) ever be more then 2 storeys tall
b) have families with NO car ownership
c) have anyone who uses the TTC more then just 2 times a day, 5 days a week
d) have subway riders who use the line for anything less then going all the way downtown; ie using a local subway line in leu of regional rail
e) have anyone who cares to look up from their morning slumber to offer their seat to anyone in midtown..yeah keep listening to your IPOD or reading your Metro or "Corriere Canadese" while grandpa at St. Clair West cant board a train. (Having lived south of Downsview for 4 years, I saw this exact scenario first hand and I gave my seat twice to same elderly man at S.C.W.)
f) have anyone who has contributed to the operational expenditure of the TTC via his municipal taxes in the past
But sure....lets built airport terminal sized subway stations all the way in Vaughan. Whichever architect is designing these must have the SMALLEST penis ever, seeing how this grandeur is just compensation