Highway 7 Rapidway

The Highway 7 Rapidway currently only runs from Richmond Hill Centre to Warden Avenue with further plans to extend it west to Highway 50 and east to Cornell Terminal. It is only served by Viva Purple, Viva Pink, and Viva Green.

As the Highway 7 transit corridor, the Viva Purple line will have a dedicated right of way dubbed "rapidway" for most of the route. This will enable Viva buses to quickly pass through traffic.

The first phase of VivaNext brings a rapidway along the portion of Viva Purple from Bayview to Birchmount. The rapidway will consist of bus lanes in the median of Highway 7 between Bayview Avenue and Town Centre Boulevard, and a new bus-only road parallel to Enterprise Drive, between Warden and Birchmount, extending to Kennedy in 2018. Stations along the rapidway will be longer than existing stations, and include heated shelters protected from the elements. On March 6, 2011, the first piece of the rapidway from Warden to Birchmount including the Warden rapidway station opened. On August 18, 2013, the rapidway along Highway 7 opened from Richmond Hill Centre to East Beaver Creek and the next year to Town Centre Blvd (and to Cedarland on December 28, 2014). Later phases will extend the rapidway west to Highway 50 and east to Cornell Terminal, potentially to the Durham Region border at the York-Durham Line.

2014-2017 changes

Viva Purple will undergo many changes between 2014 and 2017. Also, with the opening of the Spadina Subway extension, Viva Purple will terminate at Richmond Hill Centre, where passengers can connect to Viva Orange for service to Vaughan Corporate Centre. Eventually, this corridor could be upgraded to light rail transit.

Stations

Leslie Street Rapidway station under construction in May 2012

Rapidway stations feature heated shelters

There are currently 12 operating rapidway stations plus 28 more stations to be added. All stations are built at-grade.

Italics indicate future rapidway station.

Note that Viva Green will be reroute away from McCowan and Highway 7 as the route will terminate at Bathurst and Major Mackenzie and Viva Orange will be extended west to Highway 50 and east to Richmond Hill Centre.

References

External links