Analyzing Toronto's new Urban Regional Rail Stations: Unionville
Putting rail at the heart of "Downtown" Markham is smart, but Unionville highlights many of the big mistakes being made.
Unionville station is one of the many Toronto area GO transit stations that is being converted, from (the description I like) a curb with some bus shelters, into a station suitable for rapid transit.
The station is actually in York Region, but only about 3 kilometres north of the border with Scarborough, sitting directly north of Highway 407 and a couple hundred metres south of Highway 7. Despite its name, the station is in the far southern part of the part of Markham known as Unionville — which does have a very nice historic main street about a 30 minute walk to the north. A more accurate name for the station might be “Downtown Markham” or something along those lines, referencing the major development going on around the station itself. This development is quite significant and runs east-west from Kennedy to Warden, and north-south from Highway 7 to Highway 407.
The area in question is also served by York Region’s VIVA “BRT” (in quotes because a bus every 20 minutes should not qualify as BRT) system, namely by the VIVA Purple route, which actually splits in two east of Town Centre, with one route running curbside along Highway 7 and another running in a dedicated right-of-way through downtown Markham adjacent to Enterprise boulevard. This segment actually used to get quite a lot of additional service pre-pandemic as the peak hour-VIVA Green to Don Mills station and VIVA Pink to Finch station also used this route, but now it’s just half of the buses on the every 15 minute VIVA Purple.
Beyond serving as a connection point to VIVA service, Unionville’s other claim to fame is that it will be the end point for high frequency service on the Stouffville Line, although this is probably a bad idea as I talked about in a previous post, as there are minimal barriers to minor corridor expansion all the way to Mount Joy at the border of the built up part of Markham with the greenbelt); it has also long been the plan to electrify the whole Stouffville line (though plans for electrification have been a bit unclear and seem to change from time to time), which furthers the case. All of that being said, short of continuing to Mount Joy, as a connection point with VIVA services, being in York region, and being adjacent to so much major development, Unionville does make sense as a turnback point for some trains.
And of course, the station has received a big update, so let’s talk about that!
The Glow Up
When I say Unionville station is being “converted”, this may actually be a case where the word “transformed” is more appropriate.
Not only does the new station have lots of things the old station did not, the new station also just looks nicer from top to bottom. The platforms are concrete rather than asphalt, and feature embedded heating to melt snow; the platform edges feature tactile yellow tiles as opposed to a line of paint, and the sleepers on the tracks are now even made of concrete.
You can also see that, well, I am talking about platforms plural. As part of the upgrade works, Unionville got taken from a single-track, single-platform station to a three-track three-platform station, with one island and a side platform. The two middle tracks served by half of the island and the side platform are through tracks to the north, while the third track on the other side of the island dead ends, at least for now. The idea here is that the additional platform should allow for more frequent services terminating at Unionville to layover for a period without blocking the mainline.
Another notable and much needed upgrade to the station are full-length canopies for all platforms. This is huge, as most legacy GO stations (at least outside of the Lakeshore line) only feature bus shelter-like waiting rooms. The canopies mean you can walk from the bus loop, passenger pick-up drop-off, or the parking area mostly under cover — which should’ve always been an obviously useful feature in a place with Toronto’s sometimes snowy, sometimes hot, and often rainy climate.
Unfortunately, as evidence by the above picture the edges of the canopies do not extend very close to the actual trains (probably over a metre from the platform edge), and so to get on the train or in a particularly torrential downpour, the lack of coverage in addition to the significant height will limit their usefulness for weather protection.
The canopies at least still feature enclosed waiting rooms and still are a big improvement even from modern stations build in the mid 2010s for the Kitchener Line and UP Express that do not have full canopies. You’ll also notice that the canopies feature black paneling, which is a common feature of a bunch of Metrolinx builds from various new GO Stations to the Finch West LRT, I am not sure Toronto needs more monochrome, but I respect the consistent approach.
One last thing I’ll point out is that, intelligently, the station — like basically all stations build in the last 5+ years — has the footings on all the on platform stuff raised up a bit more than a foot. This is to protect for a future raising of the platforms to level boarding height and the foresight, is very good to see. (This also explains the extra tall elevator shaft and the extra glass panels above doors, etc.)
Alongside the nice new canopies, a number of smaller touches are also visible. There are better pedestrian paths through the parking lot (which all GO stations should have — it’s often extremely dangerous to walk out of a parking lot as commuter race to their cars and to get out, lest they get stuck in minor traffic), as well as additional landscaping that makes the station feel like less of an asphalt desert and certainly less monochrome.
There is also much improved wayfinding, including a station sign that is nicely sized and clearly meant for pedestrians more than drivers, and really nice digital screens on the platforms — which, like the UP Express screens from nearly a decade ago, are much nicer than anything being used on the TTC Subway.
The station is also fully accessible of course, with a pedestrian tunnel and elevator connection that is very similar to other recent stations like Bloor-Dundas West.
Now, you might wonder why I care so much about this station.
For one, despite the fact that I think the frequent service should extend further, I do think it’s a good location for a terminal as I’ve already discussed. In fact, in many ways it’s similar to Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, the northern terminus of the York subway extension: Unionville will also likely have similar transportation capacity soon, and with the capacity for 12 car mainline trains, even more than the subway in the long term.
Right now, a trip from Unionville to Union Station takes about 40 minutes on GO, versus about 44 minutes on the subway from Vaughan. That is bad given the subway will provide a lot more stops along the way (though the Stouffville line will also connect with Lines 2 and 5 at Kennedy). The addition of new stations at East Harbor, Finch East, and the hopeful sensible servicing of Scarborough station for transfers east into Durham will quite possibly make the travel time the same as the subway. However, there is significant potential to speed up the Stouffville line’s running speed, particularly on the north-south segment parallel to Kennedy Road. This could make the line faster than the York subway in the long term and over a longer route.
The Big Problems
Unfortunately though, Unionville station is not all sunshine and rainbows — far from it in fact.
For one, as I discussed in the article linked earlier, the station is not close to the development that currently exists. That’s mostly on the land use planners (the railway was not realistically going to be diverted), but this hurts the prospect of any walk-up ridership to the station.
Of course, there is a lot in theory one could also walk to from the station, including the main node of development around Enterprise and Birchmount. However because of the way the street grid is designed, getting to that intersection is a nearly 2km walk — very very bad. What’s even more frustrating is that during the reconstruction of the station, a new connection was not added to the west, meaning those walking need to take a long route and backtrack, or try and cut across undeveloped land (and potentially the railway!).
Now, there is apparently a knock out panel included in the pedestrian tunnel shown above so a connection can be made when development happens adjacent to the station, but that’s no use for anyone using the station today, and probably for years to come. While the optimal option is clearly some kind of small entrance building on the west side of the station connected to a basic multi-use path that heads straight to the development, I can imagine how planners might argue that landowners wouldn’t play ball with this concept (it is serving their development though). But, at the very least, a ramp from the northern ends of the platforms to the sidewalk on enterprise (akin to but cheaper than similar links seen at Milliken or Bloor-Dundas West stations) would cut nearly 700m (roughly 10 minutes!) of needless walking for people heading to and from the developments to the west.
Now, fortunately there is the Markham Pan Am centre to the east, and it is much closer, but the almost 10 minute walk to a destination that is seemingly “right next door” highlights the issues of development around suburban GO stations. Crossing wide roads and big parking lots is monotonous, dangerous and slow, and there are no cafes or other businesses on the way that you can pop into in a pinch to warm up or escape horrible weather. What this means is that despite the small attempts at more pedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented design in what is all new development, the best way to get around is clearly still in a car.
To be fair, this will get better in the future. York University’s new Markham campus is in between the GO Station and the Pan Am centre, and surely a pedestrian path to the west will happen when development moves east. But still, the whole situation is needlessly wasting improved transit access, and making mode shift much less likely — despite a lot of the “ingredients” being there.
And then there’s VIVA.
In what feels like a comedy of bad planning, VIVA only serves the GO station every 30 minutes on its Purple route, as another branch of it remains on Highway 7 to serve the quite intense development 1 kilometre (as the crow flies, and ONLY as the crow flies) northwest of the station. Not only is the frequency bad, but the headway is also not a consistent 30 minutes because of the weird scheduling of the two branches to attempt to combine to form a 15 minute service further west, and worst of all — the VIVA buses do not directly serve the GO station. As it turns out, the road network in the area is just as dysfunctional as the pedestrian network, and thus transferring to VIVA and only VIVA, requires a 300m walk to the east of the station.
All of these problems are annoying, but they are fixable. However, one planning problem this station faces is much less fixable. Despite Unionville being Markham’s only real rapid transit station being planned, the density of “downtown” Markham and the surrounding developments is rather weak. This might be a case where leaving the plots closest to the station open may save us, if wiser heads prevail and density is significantly upped. But by comparison, the density around Vaughan Metropolitan centre — which has significantly less transit capacity — is set to be much higher. This further highlights the disconnect between land use and transportation planning.
Ultimately, Unionville station manages to, in a single site, encapsulate the whole experience of transit in the GTHA: Moving forward in big noticeable ways, but struggling to gain a foothold against an unrelenting and massive torrent of bad policy and planning.
Another issue with Viva; the bus schedule isn't timed very well with train departure and arrivals. One bus in the morning gives you only 4 minutes to reach the train before departs, in the afternoon a bus comes roughly 2 minutes after the train arrives. This means you can miss your train leaving in the morning and miss your bus when coming back that evening.
Not related to the article much at all, but GO's big concrete pedestrian tunnels could really use the hand of some local artists. It would be some relatively cheap placemaking that enhances the experience ever-so-slightly too.