Subway, local employment key to solving Richmond Hill's traffic congestion

More than 70 per cent of residents travel 30 minutes or more to work daily

Yorkregion.com
September 20, 2018
Sheila Wang

As the Town of Richmond Hill gears up for next month’s election, town staff and experts shed light on one of the town’s pressing issues -- the long-standing traffic woes.

It is not easy for people to get around in Richmond Hill, with the construction work on the main roads, increased use of residential roads and traffic congestion during rush hours.

“Richmond Hill, like other suburban municipalities, has considerable traffic challenges,” said Patrick Lee, Richmond Hill's director of policy planning. “There are only so many arterial roads, there are plenty of cars and lots of commuters heading to multiple directions.”

The main problem lies in people’s reliance on cars, Lee said. More than 70 per cent of Richmond Hill residents travel out of town to work every day, and a majority of them spent at least 30 minutes on the road, according to the 2016 census profile.

What muncipal election candidates are saying about traffic issues in Richmond Hill
While the town has been working to widen roads to address congestion, Lee said the room for capacity improvement in Richmond Hill is “fairly limited” due to the lack of roads.

“But in some way that may be a good thing, potentially to get people to utilize transit or active form of transit such as walking and cycling. The lack of roads might be a blessing in disguise in the long term.”

The key is to get people out of their cars to start using public transit, Lee added.

“They’ve already done a lot more than other cities I think,” said Charles Chung, traffic analyst with Trans-Plan, a Toronto-based traffic planning and transportation consulting service provider.

Richmond Hill’s push for public transit use has had a notable impact. While private vehicles have remained the major means of transportation for Richmond Hill’s commuters, statistics show that public transit usage has steadily increased among Richmond Hill residents, from 13.2 per cent in 2006 to 15.2 per cent in 2016. The proportion of car drivers has also dropped slightly.

But the traffic problem is not going away overnight.

“There isn’t enough public transit for people to have a real choice to not use their cars,” said Ana Bassios, who is Richmond Hill’s former commissioner of planning and regulatory services.

“Even with the rapidway services, it serves certain catchment area. But there are large parts of any municipalities of the GTA that don’t have access to the frequent public transit -- frequent enough and good enough service that they choose not to use their vehicles,” Bassios said.

Bassios, Lee and Chung all believe that the much-awaited Yonge Subway Extension project could be a good way to address the problem.

“Subway for sure is definitely the best solution,” Chung said, singling out the long-standing traffic congestion at the intersection of Yonge Street and Major MacKenzie Drive.

The Yonge Subway Extension is planned to extend 7.4 kilometres north from Finch Station in Toronto to the Richmond Hill/Langstaff Gateway Urban Growth Centre at Hwy. 7.

Chung said given the scale of residents travelling to downtown Toronto every day, the subway extension could greatly reduce the traffic volume in Richmond Hill.

Despite the cost, the subway is a good investment because of its unparalleled capacity, Bassios said. The subway extension is expected to move two passengers per second with a potential daily ridership of 165,000, which is able to replace 2,500 bus trips every day from Hwy. 7 to Finch Subway station, according to a media release.

However, there are two issues to be considered -- funding and the relief line -- before moving forward with the subway extension project, Lee said.

A relief line has to be in place along with the subway line in order to accommodate the additional passengers, he added.

At the moment, it is unclear how soon Richmond Hill residents can expect it.

“I don’t believe in the subway. I believe in the monorail,” said Stanley Daneman, a longtime resident.

He suggested a monorail could be a good alternative to relieve the traffic pressure in Richmond Hill at a lower cost than the subway. A monorail is railway system in which the track consists of a single rail, typically elevated and with the trains suspended from it.

Bassios pointed out that local employment is another important way to effectively address the traffic issue in Richmond Hill.

“If you had a land-use planning scenario where work places and places where people live were close together, you might reduce the pressure on both the loads and transit infrastructure.”

Lee agreed, noting that the town has been working to create local employment opportunities.

Richmond Hill approved a community development plan earlier this year which provides incentives for new office development through various grant programs.

“The goal is to have as many people live in and work in Richmond Hill as possible,” Lee said.

It may take a long time for these efforts -- overall transportation improvement as well as local employment creation -- to make a significant difference in Richmond Hill.

Short-term problems, at the same time, have emerged as a result of the ongoing projects. Many people have opted to use the residential roads to avoid the congestion and construction along Yonge Street, which some say have turned their once quiet neighbourhoods into thoroughfares.

In fact, there hasn’t been much impact on residential roads, according to a study in October 2015 by Trans-Plan.

The traffic planning consulting company conducted the Richmond Hill Downtown Transportation and Parking Study to measure the traffic infiltration on Arnold Crescent from the regional roads including Yonge Street and Major MacKenzie Drive during the rapidway construction along Yonge Street.

The survey found some 8 to 10 per cent of vehicles in the weekday peak hours travelled on Arnold Crescent to avoid the Yonge Street and Major MacKenzie Drive intersection.

“That’s a short-term problem. Things will go back to normal,” Lee said.

The rapidway project along Yonge Street has been 34 per cent complete, and it’s expected to be complete by December 2020.

“Things are lining up from a planning and development situation quite well. It’s just how quickly people will abandon the use of their cars to utilize the public transit,” Lee said.

Bassios said Richmond Hill is doing the best within its influences but unfortunately the traffic problems go far beyond the municipal boundaries.

“It’s like trying to influence one little part of a much bigger system,” Bassios said. “The challenge is not a simple one. What we know is that traffic is never going to get better with all the investment that we made in infrastructure, all they’re going to do is prevent it from getting worse quicker.”

Click here to see what candidates have to say about the traffic issue in Richmond Hill.