The Sheppard Subway Must Serve the Downsview Airport Development
Metrolinx is planning on extending the Sheppard Subway, and there is a huge opportunity to extend the line to Toronto's largest development, while the site is empty and before construction starts.
Toronto’s Line 4 Sheppard Subway has long been criticized as a line that goes nowhere and receives little ridership compared to the other subway lines on the network. The initial segment of the line was built in 2002 but was never extended for the line to serve its intended purpose.
However, the line might not stay this way for long. Metrolinx started work to move forward with extending the Sheppard Line in 2024 by developing a number of options to be evaluated in a business case which is set to be released later this year. Most excitingly, two options (2A and 2B) included an eastern extension to McCowan Road/Scarborough Town Centre as well as a western extension to Sheppard West station. These two proposals aim to extend the Sheppard Line as the project it was always envisioned to be. Metrolinx also included two other options with one being just the eastern extension of the line, and the other being and extended eastern option all the way to Morningside Avenue.
MTSO strongly supports Option 2 to extend the line both east and west. However, there is a huge opportunity that is being overlooked for this option, and that is the opportunity to extend the Sheppard Line through the former Downsview airport lands before development goes in. This development is set to be one of the largest in North America, and we have the ability to take advantage of the situation to extend Line 4 cost effectively, and provide high quality transit to tens of thousands before they move into their new neighbourhoods.
Downsview Airport Development Overview
The site of the old Downsview Airport and surrounding lands is set to be the largest brownfield development in Toronto, and one of the largest developments in North America. In total, the site which includes the YZD Downsview Airport Lands (developed by Northcrest Developments) as well as the lands around (primarily developed by the Canada Lands company) are set to house well over 100,000 people and host a large number of commercial, office, and institutional spaces.
Some portions of this site are generally pretty well served by transit. There are three subway stations on Line 1 which are in the vicinity of the development site. Two of these stations include Downsview Park, where you can connect to the Barrie GO Line, and another being Sheppard West station, which would be the connection between Line 1 and Line 4 for Option 2 of the Sheppard Subway Extension. However, even with three subway stations there are big gaps of rapid transit access for large portions of this site. Our focus will primarily be on the YZD Northcrest development, which is the portion of this development directly on the former airport site, and is the furthest away from existing rapid transit.
As seen in the map above, most of the development area of the airport lands are not within 800 metres or a 10 minute walk of the existing subway stations. Luckily, there is a simple solution to ensure that this development and the tens of thousands of people who will live, work and visit will have good transit access to and from the rest of the region, and that is to extend the scope of the Sheppard Subway Extension a few kilometres west into this development.
Why Building Transit First is Better
Building transit before development goes in comes with a number of benefits that reduce cost, construction timelines, and disruptions. The current Downsview Airport site is as empty as a site within a city can possibly get. It consists of grass and a decommissioned runway, and serving this dense development with the Sheppard Subway is the logical next step for an extension from Sheppard West station. This is a project that will end up happening someday, and we have the choice of either building it now or in the future.
If you build the Sheppard Subway now as opposed to later, a cut and cover or elevated alignment can easily be built, which significantly reduces costs compared to a deep bored tunnel alignment and allows stations to be closer to the surface for easier station access. If you wait until after the site is developed, there might not be adequate room to easily construct a cut and cover or elevated alignment, utilities will need to be relocated, and buildings could be in the way of potential station locations and would need to be demolished.
In addition to physical constraints, elevated, cut and cover, and general subway construction can be disruptive. The Eglinton Crosstown LRT is infamous for the disruption it caused in central Toronto, and that was a project that used tunnel boring machines. In Vancouver, cut and cover construction allowed the Canada Line to be built quickly and cost effectively, but it was incredibly disruptive. This disruption is one of the reasons we prefer deep tunnel boring in our region, driving up costs and creating deeper and harder to access stations.
Building transit first as opposed to waiting later also comes with the benefit that those who move into the development will have high quality transit from day 1. In this development, people living in the areas furthest from the subway and GO stations might feel more inclined to purchase a car and/or drive more due to worse transit. Furthermore, transit access to and from the rest of the region will be subpar and many people living in the development, or people who want to visit friends, shop, or work in the area will have less convenient transit trips and may forego making them altogether.
There are two places in Toronto where we can compare major developments taking place before and after rapid transit is developed. Our example of transit being planned in advance is the Woodbine Racetrack development, and our example of transit not being in place for development is the Humber Bay Shores neighbourhood.
Humber Bay Shores is a density node located at Lakeshore Boulevard and Park Lawn road. Over the past two decades, it has seen a substantial amount of towers go up, however adequate transit to serve this area was never built in the form of a GO station on the Lakeshore West Line. This means that people who moved into these towers had a choice between taking Toronto’s infamously slow streetcars one hour for commutes downtown, or buying a car and driving in Gardiner Expressway traffic for 15-30 minutes. This isn’t accounting for the fact that accessing the rest of the region from Humber Bay Shores currently is significantly easier via car than transit.
Park Lawn GO station would decrease travel times to Downtown Toronto to around 10 minutes and open up large portions of the region with fast transit access. Unfortunately, the GO station was recently postponed due to high costs and Metrolinx’s developer partnership model for funding new stations. Residents of Humber Bay Shores will have to wait many more years for a true rapid transit connection.
Compare Humber Bay Shores to what is currently planned at Woodbine Racetrack. Woodbine Entertainment Group, the owner of the land, is planning a massive development on under-utilized land next to the Kitchener Line rail corridor and Highway 27 which will feature over 20,000 housing units and 10,000 jobs. Unlike Humber Bay Shores, the transit is being built first. Woodbine GO station, which is a partnership between the city, province, and Woodbine Entertainment Group is currently under construction while the transit oriented development is currently in the planning phase. This means that new residents who move into this development will have fast and frequent access to the regional rapid transit network and destinations such as Pearson Airport, Downtown Brampton, and Downtown Toronto from day one. Likewise, the rest of the region will have easier access to the area. In addition, construction is easier and there is no disruption to residents which would not be the case if this station was built after the development was went in.
Woodbine GO station and the development are not perfect, as we have pointed out in a previous article. The development and under construction GO station seem to be overlooking a future extension of the Finch West LRT. You can read more about this issue in our article linked below:
What Could a Sheppard Extension Look Like?
Our hypothetical proposal is to extend the scope of Option 2 of the Sheppard Subway extension through the Downsview Airport development with two additional stations built with 2.5 km of cheap elevated rail or shallow cut and cover tunnels.
These two additional stations will allow Line 4 to serve a majority of the development not currently within the 800 metre walkshed of the existing subway stations. Runway station would be located at the runway linear park, this part of the development is set to be one of the denser nodes and feature a major park. This station will bring the dense development to the south towards Wilson station access to the subway network within walking distance, as well as access for the midrise developments planned west of the runway.
Hangar station would serve the Hangar district of the Downsview development, it would also provide access to the local neighbourhood, connect to the Wilson bus (one of the busiest routes in the City), as well as the Barrie GO train. The connection between Line 4 and the Barrie Line will allow for so many more potential trips to and from Scarborough, North York, Vaughan, Barrie, Midtown Toronto, Bloor-Dundas West transit hub, Cityplace, and Downtown Toronto.
Some will argue that there shouldn’t be another stop on the Barrie Line in the area, since the Barrie Line is not currently planned to have express trains as part of GO expansion. This means new stations will slow down trips from Barrie, Newmarket, and Vaughan. But we argue that a station to connect with the Sheppard Line makes sense. It’s crucial to connect two high capacity rail lines when they meet, and the stop spacing between Downsview Park GO and Caledonia GO is 7 km, which is a long distance for regional trains within City of Toronto limits. A station near Wilson road will be nearly 3 km away from Downsview Park GO and more than 4 km away from Caledonia GO. Which is a more reasonable distance, especially with electric trains or electrical multiple units.
This proposal would turn the western portion of the Option 2 subway extension from a 4 km, 2 stop extension to a 6 km, 4 station extension. This will bring the western portion of the extension to a similar scope of the eastern extension, which is roughly 7-8 km with 6 stations. Future extensions from Hangar station west along Wilson to Humber River Hospital, Rexdale, or Pearson airport can be planned as part of future phases of the Sheppard Subway project.
Conclusion
Our proposal isn’t a definitive proposal to serve this development, as there are many possible ways to extend the Sheppard Line west of Sheppard West station. What is important to us is that an extension of the Sheppard Line west of Sheppard West station is a project that will end up happening someday, and we have the choice of either building it now or in the future.
if we choose to not take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, we would provide subway access to tens of thousands of people and jobs years after they move in, extend Line 4 in deep, expensive tunnels to avoid utilities and all the buildings that have been built, cause disruption to the community while the Line is being built,
Or we can choose to provide subway access to tens of thousands of people and jobs before they move in, extend Line 4 for cheap before utilities and buildings go in, with stations that are easy to access with only a staircase or two from street level. We need to be more forward thinking and efficient with transit in our region, and this project is a perfect place to start.
This article was written by Haadhi Faizal
This is a fantastic proposal. I live at Wilson station and would love to see more transit in my area. The 100,000+ people planned to move into this area will be well serviced by this project. We have multiple 40+ story buildings coming in the area that will put pressure on line 1 without other transit options. The downsview park redevelopment will (hopefully) be a great destination to go to, with a beautiful central park “spine” that runs throughout, new shops, and restaurants, that will be a great space to visit. We have a great filipino community at wilson and Mexican community at downsview. Leaning into these historic communities will make the neighborhood unique and really a destination. The downsview/wilson area can become another city “core” outside of the downtown like sheppard-yonge + yonge-Eglinton. This is a transit project that needs to happen to give the neighbourhood the infrastructure needed to become a thriving transit oriented community.
Yeah I love this. I've imagined the exact same extension in my head with a new interchange station at Wilson/Ancaster. Although... the cost of extending the TTC subway is going to be... exorbitant. I think the best chance they have to build extensions east and west would be if they convert the existing Line 4 to light metro (integrated with the Ontario Line if extended north) and do as much of this line elevated as possible. It will make extensions in the east and west more economical and a better fit for the ridership and density in Uptown. Elevating the section through the future development also makes a lot of sense as development could then respond to it as needed. Moreover, Sheppard (east and west) is a 36m ROW and that is more than enough space for elevated rail (light metro - elevating the subway would be expensive and extra noisy).