| Don Mills TTC Subway Station |
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| Station statistics | |||||||||||
| Address | 1700 Sheppard Avenue East | ||||||||||
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| Structure | underground | ||||||||||
| Platforms | centre | ||||||||||
| Parking | 366 | ||||||||||
| Other information | |||||||||||
| Opened | 24 November 2002 | ||||||||||
| Accessible | |||||||||||
| Presto card | Winter 2011 | ||||||||||
| Traffic | |||||||||||
| Passengers (2009-10) | 31,500 | ||||||||||
| Services | |||||||||||
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Don Mills is the eastern terminus station of the Sheppard line of the subway system in Toronto, Canada. It is also a "Vivastation" on the Viva Green line of York Region's Viva bus rapid transit system. Its address is at 1700 Sheppard Avenue East at Don Mills Road.
The station is adjacent to an exit from Highway 404 and features 366 spaces of commuter parking.
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The TTC station was opened in 2002, as part of the initial phase of the Sheppard subway line. On April 18, 2001, a worker named John Marinzel died of injuries sustained in accident during the construction of the station.[1] A plaque located at platform level commemorates the worker.
The Vivastation was opened on October 25, 2005.
The station was designed by Stevens Group Architects,[2] who also built Downsview and Bayview stations.
There are two pieces of public art in the station.
The piece before / after: 1997 / 2002 spans the concourse and platform levels in the station. Created by Toronto artist Stephen Cruise, it consists of tile work on walls and inlays on floors:
Outside the station (on the north side of Don Mills Road, south of the bus entrance) is a tribute to Northern Dancer, a famous racehorse foaled at E. P. Taylor's Windfields Farm, which was then located on “nearby” Bayview Avenue.
Nearby landmarks include Fairview Mall, Georges Vanier Secondary School, and the Fairview district branch of the Toronto Public Library.
In addition to being a subway station, Don Mills station also serves as a bus terminal for both the Toronto Transit Commission and York Region Transit. Like most large TTC subway station bus terminals, it is inside a fare-paid area, so bus passengers will need to enter Don Mills station to board most buses.
The bus terminal is underground, one level above the concourse level; it consists of a large outdoor waiting area serving as its bus platforms, with a relatively modest indoor waiting area. Because some of the bus platforms are far away from the indoor waiting area, it is practical to wait outdoors for some routes due to the way TTC bus terminals work; unfortunately, because it is underground, the air quality on the bus platforms can be poor during busy hours. Stairs connect the indoor waiting area to a usually-unmanned pedestrian entrance/exit on the ground level just outside Fairview Mall.
This terminal is the southern terminus of the Viva Green bus rapid transit line. Two Viva ticket vending machines are located in the indoor waiting area and one machine is located outdoors, on the bus platform. During the first two weeks of Viva’s stage 2 launch, the indoor machines were staffed by one to two Viva personnel in the morning.
The Viva buses stop three times at Don Mills. First, they stop in front of the station entrance on Sheppard Avenue to offload all of their passengers, then, they enter the bus terminal to pick up passengers. This is to ensure that Viva riders do not access the TTC without paying a TTC fare, as the bus terminal is inside the station's fare paid zone. After this, they stop a third time, on northbound Don Mills Road, to pick up passengers who did not transfer from the subway or a TTC bus.
Above the bus terminal, on the street level, is a multi-storey public parking lot, providing 366 parking spaces for commuters. Parking costs $5 from 5:00am to 9:30am and is free after 9:30am and all day on weekends and holidays.
Outside the parking lot, next to a manned pedestrian entrance to the station, is a passenger pick-up area. It is not as elaborate as the “Kiss-n-Ride” passenger pick-up/drop-off area in Finch Station, but it still provides 18 temporary parking spaces (about the same as the Finch “Kiss-n-Ride”) for passenger pick-up and drop-off purposes.
As part of the Transit City plan, the TTC has proposed the construction of a light rail transit (LRT) line to connect Don Mills station to Sheppard East station on the proposed extension of the Scarborough RT line. This replaces previous plans to extend the Sheppard subway line to Scarborough centre station on the RT line.
The Transit City plan includes an LRT along Don Mills Road from Steeles Avenue through Don Mills station to Pape station on the Bloor-Danforth subway line. However, the transit line, along with other Transit City lines, was cancelled by Rob Ford when he became mayor on December 2010.