Category: General

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Construction General Live-work-play Uncategorized Urban Planning

building up the centres and corridors

The most obvious benefit that vivaNext will provide, and one that is already taking shape on Highway 7, is the convenient rapid transit system that we’re constructing across York Region.  But as I’ve described in many previous posts, vivaNext is much more than a transit project; it’s also a key part of the long-term strategy being used by York Region to help our Region respond to and manage growth.  Central to that strategy is the overall vision of Centres and Corridors, which will help concentrate future growth in higher-density, mixed use developments clustered in four new urban nodes, one each in Markham, Newmarket, Richmond Hill and Vaughan.  Here’s a summary of how this strategy will transform our Region and help it manage growth.

Population increase is happening across the Region, and brings many advantages.  More people means the Region can attract and support new choices in housing, employment, shopping, entertainment, dining and recreation. But as the Region grows, more people also means more traffic, more congestion, and more crowding.  So the strategy that York Region has developed, in collaboration with both the Province and the local municipalities, is to channel much of that growth into newly developed communities clustered in new urban centres along Highway 7 and in Newmarket.  With this strategy, existing neighbourhoods will be protected, along with the way of life that attracted many people to the Region in the first place.

The new communities in the Regional Centres will be mixed use, meaning they will offer residential, employment and recreational options – including a proportion of affordable housing choices. Once these new downtowns are fully established, people will be able to work, live and play without needing to get in a car, enjoying choices for housing, jobs, shopping and dining, all within walking distance.

Linking these emerging downtowns will be major transportation corridors along Highway 7, Yonge Street and Davis Drive, featuring our new vivaNext bus rapid transit rapidways and the Spadina subway extension (and once funding is secured, the Yonge Subway extension).  With convenient access between these new urban neighbourhoods and our expanding rapid transit network, people will be able to travel across the Region and into the rest of the GTA without needing a car, making the Centres an attractive option for people looking for an urban lifestyle.

Obviously, completing York Region’s new downtowns isn’t going to happen overnight, but new developments are already transforming the look and feel along Highway 7, up Yonge Street and across Davis Drive.  And as these new urban areas take shape, we’re working hard to get the transit part of the equation built, one rapidway station at a time – to provide a convenient, fast way for everyone in York Region to get around using transit.

 

Categories
General Rapidways Uncategorized Urban Planning

what’s next for yonge?

 

Did you know that the next phase of rapid transit is coming to Yonge Street? As part of our overall plan to reduce traffic congestion throughout York Region, vivaNext will be building rapidways on one of Canada’s most famous streets, providing fast, reliable, convenient transit and accommodating new intensified development in Richmond Hill and Newmarket.

The Yonge Street rapidway project includes attractive landscaping, wider sidewalks and bike lanes, setting the stage for pedestrian-friendly and mixed-use development and enhancing the area as an attractive destination for residents, businesses and visitors to live, work and visit.

For those of you who joined us at our public meetings in November, you would have seen preliminary project plans and conceptual drawings of the future Yonge Street rapidways.  Here is a brief re-cap of what the plans are:

In Richmond Hill – Yonge Street will be widened to accommodate dedicated rapidway lanes for viva buses in the centre of the road and seven new vivastations. In total the rapidway will extend 6.5 kilometres from Highway 7 to 19th Avenue/Gamble Road. In the heritage area north of Major Mackenzie Drive, viva will continue to drive in mixed traffic as it does today.

In Newmarket – dedicated bus rapid transit lanes will run along 2.4 kilometres of Yonge Street from just south of Mulock Drive to meet up with the vivaNext rapidways already under construction along Davis Drive. The Yonge Street rapidway will be home to three new vivastations at Mulock Drive, Eagle Street and Davis Drive.

While crews are out on site conducting advanced studies and property surveys along this corridor to help prepare for construction, the next step for this project is to award the Design-Build Contract. From there we will be busy working with the contractor to create construction plans, complete preliminary engineering studies, refine the design and establish timelines for various phases of construction for this project. The contract is expected to be awarded soon, so stay tuned for details.

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General Rapidways

join the discussions in vaughan?

Congestion in the GTHA is at an all-time high, with an additional 2.5 million people and one million more cars expected in the next 20 years, the problems will only get worse. We can no longer postpone building the kind of transit network that offers residents and commuters better transportation choices, eases congestion, connects them with jobs and travelling efficiently in all directions.

New transit lines connect most neighbourhoods and business districts, putting commuters within a short walk of rapid transit.  The vivaNext project is a part of this overreaching transit network that will connect not only local but regional service once completed.

York Region Transit [YRT] conventional routes cater to local communities in all York Region municipalities and also include GO Shuttles and Express services.  These routes stop frequently at the curbside of the road. Viva connects Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Aurora and Newmarket and also links York Region with Toronto and its subway system, GO Transit and the Region of Peel. It operates along major corridors much like an above-ground subway, for faster service.  Once Viva service is running in its own rapidway, service will be even faster.

Transit planning takes time and includes: consultation with the users, route planning, bus scheduling and stop identification.

This year, YRT is holding stakeholder engagement meetings to discuss transit routes and overall service to prepare for the opening of the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension [TYSSE] in the City of Vaughan. The Subway is scheduled to open in 2016 and we want to be ready.

YRT\Viva is looking for your input at their public information meetings.   We encourage you to come out to these events and learn how transit development will affect you in your daily commute and provide your input in what service and routes you want.

The vivaNext team will be there also, so join us for an in-depth look at different elements of vivaNext projects, plans, designs and ongoing activities or visit vivanext.com.

Categories
Construction General Rapidways Uncategorized

winter work to make our spring schedule

With its cold temperatures, snow and ice, winter is not the ideal construction season for roadwork in general, which is why most vivaNext construction is focused on other tasks for the next few months.  But to make sure we’re ready to get going on roadwork as soon as it’s warm enough next Spring, our crews and those of various utility companies are keeping busy this winter doing a range of activities.  Here’s what you can expect to see going on out there this winter.

A key task for all the vivaNext corridors is widening the roads so we can keep the existing number of travel lanes, plus make room for the rapidways and stations in the median.  But before we can get going on construction to make the roadways wider, we need to remove and relocate all the utilities that previously ran beside the curb of the existing roadways.  This step, which involves relocating a wide range of services including gas, hydro, telecommunications, water, and sanitary and storm sewer systems, requires painstaking coordination between contractors for our project as well as the utility companies and their crews.  With contractors needing to be spaced from one another by both time and distance, and there being a logical sequence in which the services get relocated, this is a hugely time-consuming process that will be ongoing throughout the winter in various locations.

The specific activities vary from corridor to corridor, involving different utilities and work at different stages of completion. Where hydro service is above ground, hydro relocations involve crews restringing the wires on the new poles once they’ve been installed in their new locations, and then removing the old poles.  Once the service is relocated on the new poles, crews then create the connections from the new service to individual addresses.

There’s also gas work underway in several areas along the vivaNext corridors, which involves relocating gas mains underground, and then attaching individual addresses to the new service.

And working in close coordination with the underground gas work are crews from the telecommunications companies, who are relocating their services into underground joint-use duct banks that the telecoms use. Constructing the duct banks involves much more work than simply stringing wires on poles, but the benefit is that with fewer poles along the side of the road there’s more potential to beautify the streetscape, which is an important objective for our project.

Finally, the last part of this complicated dance of roadside work involves our own crews who are busy relocating sanitary sewers and storm sewer systems and watermains.

All of this work is carefully planned out one step at a time and coordinated between our builder and the utility companies, then carried out in conditions that involve extra challenges due to the need to keep the ground warm enough to work in.  But it will be worth it, since the heavy road widening and construction is best done in the warmer weather.  And once it comes, we’ll be ready to go, widening the roads so that the rapidway stations can be installed.

So watch out for all the crews who are out there working this winter, and know that their work is an important part of the vivaNext schedule.

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Construction General Rapidways Uncategorized

watching the transformation unfold

As you travelled on and around the busy corridor of Davis Drive last year, you undoubtedly noticed the significant construction activities underway. You may also be wondering what has been completed so far.

A lot of progress was made on the project this year and a number of milestones were achieved, all of which clears the way for the 2014 construction season. Nearly all retaining walls have been constructed, the eastern creek culvert has been replaced and extended, and the majority of hydro poles have been relocated. Road widening and base-layer paving has started, while reconstruction of Keith Bridge and the extension of the western creek bridge on the north side continue.

In addition, Parkside Drive was re-aligned with Longford Drive as a full four-way intersection. The re-alignment eliminated one set of traffic lights and improves overall traffic flow in the area.

We captured a number of these accomplishments on video and condensed them into a short clip for your viewing pleasure. The investment in modernizing our roads and revitalizing Newmarket’s infrastructure will go a long way to making sure Davis Drive is built on a solid foundation that will serve the growing needs of Newmarket for many decades to come. We look forward to building on the progress made and advancing the  bus rapid transit project bringing Viva service to Davis Drive. Thank you for your patience as we complete the transformation.

 

Categories
Construction General Rapidways

looking back at a busy year in vaughan

The transformation along the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre [VMC] corridor has begun. And 2013 was a busy year with vivaNext rapidway construction underway along Highway 7 West. Crews worked to remove signs, test soil and begin utility relocation to prepare for construction. Check out this video to see all the hard work that took place.

Although colder temperatures are here to stay, it doesn’t mean our work is done for the season. Throughout the winter, hydro, gas and telecommunications installations and relocations will continue, and we’ll also be busy with CN Bridge work on Highway 7.

Preliminary construction activity will also continue this winter in the second phase of vivaNext rapidway construction along Highway 7 West. This phase includes approximately 12 kilometres of rapidways on Highway 7 West from Helen Street to Edgeley Boulevard, and from east of Bowes Road to Yonge Street, including parts of Bathurst Street and Centre Street. During the winter months, you can expect to see contractors and surveyors walking along the corridor, reviewing designs, taking photos and gathering data.

The Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension [TYSSE] project also celebrated a major milestone at the end of last year. In November, tunnel boring machines [TBMs] “Yorkie” and “Torkie” finished their tunneling journey north to VMC station. Together, these TBMs tunnelled over 6.4 km of twin tunnels for this project. Way to go! Take an inside look at TBM tunnelling for the project, including new footage of the inside operation of the TBMs and four separate TBM breakthroughs for the tunnelling in York Region.

When complete, this subway line will include six stops, 8.6 kilometres of track. Residents and visitors alike will enjoy the mixed-use, transit-oriented development offered in the VMC area, including convenient passenger pick-up and drop-off, a York Region Transit bus terminal, and connection to the viva rapidway running in dedicated lanes east and west along Highway 7. It will be a great place to work, shop or relax, and getting there will be easy whether you walk or ride transit.

Stay in touch with us over the winter! Coping with construction is a lot easier when you know what to expect, where, and for how long.  For an in-depth look at different elements of vivaNext projects, plans, designs and ongoing activities, visit vivanext.com and subscribe to receive construction notices for work happening in your area.

 

Categories
General Rapidways Studies Uncategorized Urban Planning

time is money: why gridlock hurts us all

How to reduce the gridlock in the Greater Toronto Area is a topic that is getting a lot of air-time from commentators of all descriptions.  And for good reason – gridlock has been described by the Toronto Board of Trade as costing the GTA’s economy more than $6 Billion a year.

How those numbers are calculated, and what lies behind them, isn’t always so clear.  One of the best breakdowns that I have read is the paper developed by the Toronto Board of Trade last year urging governments to invest more in transit. The paper, called Let’s Break the Gridlock provides this description of how gridlock costs us all time – and how that time costs money.

The biggest concern about gridlock in Toronto from an economic perspective is that the increasingly clogged roads slow down business, and therefore undermine profits.  These so-called “congestion costs” affect different industries in different ways, each with their own price tag.  For example, in an economy that is increasingly based on “just in time” strategies, businesses order extra stock or supplies or equipment as it is needed instead of warehousing it. But if the delivery is unreliable, businesses will need to order earlier, tying up money in extra goods and paying for warehousing.  That costs extra money, and those increased prices will be passed on to the customer.

Another huge price tag associated with gridlock is how long it takes businesses to actually move their goods around.  The congestion costs hurt businesses in many ways such as increased shipping and fuel costs, higher labour costs per shipment due to less productive drivers, and reduced travel speeds.  Big shippers who need to deliver their products to small businesses throughout the GTA, for example soft-drink bottlers who need to make deliveries to many small convenience stores and restaurants across the region, face significantly higher costs due to congestion, and the snarled roads their drivers travel.  They can make fewer deliveries per day, and each delivery costs more.

And for employers, employee recruitment is negatively impacted by the difficult commutes faced by so many in the GTA.  As the Board of Trade paper notes, the lack of transit is a serious barrier for employers in hiring skilled young professionals.  And nowhere is this problem more severe than in the 905 areas, where employers have realized that the lack of rapid transit actually adds to the cost of doing business in the suburbs.  In fact, employers are increasingly seeing the benefits of having nearby transit, so that they can attract the best employees.

With this last reason in mind, we’re fortunate that York Region is planning for the future with vivaNext.  We’re going to have great rapid transit when the construction is complete, so that people can move around our region and make convenient connections across the GTA.  And with every full viva vehicle, we can get 70 cars off the road, which will reduce congestion for everyone.

Defeating gridlock is going to take time, and vision, and money.  But given the huge price congestion is already costing, there’s really no alternative.

 

Categories
General Uncategorized

keeping you warm out there

This has been a really cold winter so far, and there’s still a lot more winter to come.  Fortunately for our viva riders on the newly opened Highway 7 rapidway, keeping you warm was one of our priorities when we designed the new median stations.  Like everything else with vivaNext, a lot of engineering analysis and planning was done to ensure the enclosures provide the right level of comfort in the winter.  Here’s the background.

When we opened the prototype vivaNext station at Enterprise and Warden, we used a well-regarded heater that our original analysis showed would keep things adequately warm.  But at 1000 watts, the heater wasn’t quite powerful enough to provide the level of comfort we wanted to achieve.  So when it came time to design the shelters for the larger rapidway program, we went back to the drawing board.

First, we determined how warm we wanted to make the shelters. Given that most people are only waiting for a few minutes, we didn’t want to make the shelters so warm that people would need to take off their coats.  Bearing this in mind, we decided that the right target would be to heat the shelters to 10 degrees Celsius.

Next, we needed to find a technology that would be energy efficient: with the enclosures’ semi-outdoor design, using traditional space heaters would, in addition to requiring exhaust systems and airflow, be very inefficient. We decided to use radiant heaters, which work by projecting heat energy directly onto the people in the shelter (if you’ve watched your kids play hockey at a rink, you’ll know how effective this kind of heater can be).  Another benefit is that radiant heaters quickly ramp up to full power but can be shut off quickly as well, conserving energy.

Last, we needed to determine how many heaters we’d need to install to achieve our target temperature.  We did a computer simulation of the bus shelter, programming in local weather data to assess the thermal conditions in the shelter for every hour throughout a typical year.  The model took into consideration the concrete and glass design of the shelter, as well as replicating wind speeds and temperatures.

Using all this information, we decided that four heaters, each providing 3000 watts of power, would be sufficient to achieve the 10 degrees target: that’s 12,000 watts per enclosure (a typical electric fireplace is between 750 and 1500 watts). Sensors on the units detect when someone walks into the enclosure, starting the heater; if the sensors don’t detect any other movement, the heaters will shut off after 30 minutes.   And to help keep the warmth in the enclosures, we’ve installed push buttons on the doors so they close automatically, as well as installing winter covers over the ventilation louvers on the doors.

We hope you are pleased with the comfort we’ve been able to design into the shelters, and are happy to make winter a little warmer for our viva riders.

 

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General Uncategorized

harsh winters can be a challenge

It takes a special kind of person to work in construction. Not only do they have to keep up with the physical demands of the job, they also have to deal with the elements including our hot humid summers and very cold winters.

Canadian winters can be very ruthless with high wind chills, heavy snowfalls, freezing rain and extremely cold temperatures. We’ve already witnessed all of the above this winter and Jack Frost has shown no signs of letting up as 2013 went out like a lion and 2014 came in much the same. If you ventured outside during the recent deep freeze, you know just how unbearably cold it can get.

Despite the inconvenience of the freezing temperatures, our vivaNext projects continue to move along. Our contractors brave the elements all year long in order to keep construction progressing to achieve the end result, a faster more convenient rapid transit system that will serve the public for generations to come.

For those of us already counting down the days until spring [70 to be exact], remember that in a few short months, the leaves will be unfurling and the tulips will be poking up through the ground. Nothing lasts forever, not even winters in Canada, although some days it feels like spring is an eternity away.

We look forward to warmer weather and sunny skies not only so we can get out and enjoy our short lived Canadian summers but also so the vivaNext construction projects can continue full speed ahead in ideal weather conditions.

 

Categories
General Live-work-play Rapidways

agglomeration – the value transit brings to a city

It’s pretty much accepted wisdom these days that transit is something we need more of as a key requirement to healthy cities. We need it to reduce gridlock, get cars off the road, and save on polluting emissions.  But according to an article I read recently in The Atlantic magazine, as important as those benefits are, there is also solid evidence that transit is great for a city’s economy and productivity beyond transportation-related considerations.

The Atlantic article cites a recently published study done by Daniel Chatman – a scholar who specializes in planning at the University of California.  His paper focuses on “agglomeration” and how transit achieves this important planning objective.  Agglomeration is a fancy term for what happens when people are brought together in any significant number, for example in a city.  And according to the article and the research it quotes, agglomeration benefits can be worth a lot of money – enough money to encourage us to think very seriously about why we should be expanding transit, especially rapid transit.

So what are “agglomeration” benefits?  Think of what happens when a new community is built out on vacant lots, similar to the development that is increasingly taking place along the corridors in York Region.  Where there used to be undeveloped property, there are now increasing numbers of new high-rise condominiums and businesses.  Those buildings all have resulted in more people living in one area, which in turn will lead to new businesses and business opportunities.  Those new businesses, whether they’re corner stores or restaurants or bigger operations like grocery stores, home improvement centres and offices, all provide new employment opportunities.  Having more employment clustered in one area means more people are coming together every day, sharing ideas and expertise, developing new ideas and innovations, and creating yet more business opportunities.  Soon, larger businesses will move in to take advantage of the numbers of potential workers wanting to live in the area. Before you know it, those vacant lands have become thriving hubs of people living, spending money, and investing in future growth.  That’s how agglomeration benefits a community.

So what’s the link between transit and agglomeration?  It’s actually a very direct one.  Plenty of research – including the findings of the paper described in The Atlantic, shows that new transit leads to agglomeration.  Simply put, if a transit line is built, especially rapid transit, agglomeration – more population, more employment, and growth in other economic measures – will quite naturally follow along the line and at key nodes.  The paper then goes on to demonstrate how transit-led agglomeration benefits the local economy as well as individuals and households, including leading to higher per capita income levels.

This paper provides a fascinating analysis of the benefits that will come from all the development, including both residential and employment, and we can see this taking place along York Region’s corridors.  What is so exciting is the knowledge that vivaNext benefits York Region in ways that go well beyond providing great rapid transit.