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TTC Beefs Up Design Chops for New Sheppard West and York University Stations
A verdant aerial view of the plans for Sheppard West Station.
This Thursday, the Toronto Transit Commission will sit down to approve conceptual layouts for York University and Sheppard West, two of the new stations on the future Spadina subway extension. The details are outlined in the meeting’s agenda, and some of the more significant points in the plans are after the jump.
Located just northwest of Downsview Airport, the Sheppard West buildings [PDF] can’t be very tall. The current designs rather resemble two flattened orange peels from above. The station is bisected by the GO railroad from Barrie South, and will have a new GO stop integrated in the middle—which should be open by the time they cut the tape on the subway. The concourse is sandwiched on the ground floor between the street-level entrances.
Along with apparently abundant bicycle racks, there looks to be some serious tree planting around the station. Otherwise, the site is relatively undeveloped, but as the proposal puts it, “the station is designed to allow TOD [transit oriented development] to build up to a more urban nature in the future.”
The York University subway station will be on the far edge of the common.
Meanwhile, York University’s new station [PDF] may also have a swooping green roof or cool roof, with two entrances at either end.
One entrance will be on the common across from the Archives of Ontario and the student mall, and the other will open over the road from the business school. The subway lines will skim around the university by a few hundred metres, but the concourse will have a view of Vari Hall, one of the university’s main entrances.
The station is a big change to the bus-clogged common at York, which serves as the transport hub for the third-largest university in Canada. The plans state that the subway stop will allow the TTC to “remove the bus service currently circulating.” They don’t specify which bus service(s), but if you fancy being confused in a way that not even powerful drugs can achieve, have a go at parsing the route description for the York University Rocket.
The “design philosophy” [PDF] for both stations seems to concentrate on daylight, lack of clutter, and as few columns as possible.
There’s also new information here about current estimated costs. For building the new York University stop, the price tag is currently hovering at $115 million. For Sheppard West the figure is $102 million, although the TTC is still negotiating how to share costs with GO Transit on that.
Colour schemes and materials haven’t been decided yet, although it’s already been announced that Panya Clark Espinal will design art for Sheppard West and Jason Bruges for York University.
After the Commission approves the conceptual designs, they will go to their first public open house in November.
Thanks to Jason Tsang for the tip. Renderings courtesy of the TTC.