Don Mills station

Don Mills
Location 1700 Sheppard Avenue East
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
Coordinates 43°46′32″N 79°20′47″W / 43.77556°N 79.34639°W / 43.77556; -79.34639Coordinates: 43°46′32″N 79°20′47″W / 43.77556°N 79.34639°W / 43.77556; -79.34639
Platforms centre platform
Tracks 2
Connections

Viva Green

Construction
Structure type underground
Parking 366 spaces[1]
Disabled access Yes
History
Opened 24 November 2002
Traffic
Passengers (2015[2]) 33,760
Services
Preceding station   TTC   Following station
SheppardTerminus

Don Mills is a subway station, which is the eastern terminus of the Sheppard line in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The station is located at the northeast corner of Sheppard Avenue East and Don Mills Road, within the residential communities of Don Valley Village and Henry Farm, adjacent to Fairview Mall shopping centre.

History

The TTC station opened in 2002, as part of the initial phase of the Sheppard subway line.

A plaque located at the platform level commemorates John Marinzel, a worker who died on 18 April 2001, of injuries sustained in accident during the construction of the station.[3]

A Vivastation for the Viva Green line of York Region's Viva Rapid Transit system opened on October 16, 2005. [4]

Station description

Like all stations on the Sheppard line, Don Mills is fully accessible. The station is equipped with three elevators connecting the concourse level with the bus platforms and two street entrances, and a single elevator between the island train platform and the concourse. Stairs and escalators provide regular pedestrian access between all levels.[5]

There are three accessible entrances around the Don Mills Road and Sheppard Avenue intersection. Two of the entrances are on the northeast and southeast sides of Sheppard Avenue, respectively, and one automatic entrance in the parking garage at Fairview Mall near the Sears entrance.[6]

The station is conveniently close to an exit from Highway 404 on to Sheppard Avenue.

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. TTC commuter spaces are restricted to levels 4 and 5 as the lower floors are for mall patrons only.[1]

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.

Architecture and art

The station was designed by Stevens Group Architects,[7] who also built Sheppard West and Bayview stations.

There are two pieces of public art in the station.

Tiles on the concourse level
Inlay of a fossil fish embedded in the terrazzo floor

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 the terrazzo 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

Nearby landmarks include Fairview Mall, Georges Vanier Secondary School, and the Fairview district branch of the Toronto Public Library.

Surface connections

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.

Toronto Transit Commission routes

York Region Transit routes

The Vivastation

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 YRT/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 (or eastbound Sheppard Avenue for route 24) to pick up passengers who did not transfer from the subway or a TTC bus.

Transit City LRT plan

As part of the Transit City plan, the TTC had proposed the construction of the Sheppard LRT (light rail transit) 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 Pape station on the Bloor-Danforth subway line through Don Mills station to Steeles Avenue. However, the transit line, along with other Transit City lines, was cancelled by Rob Ford when he became mayor on December 2010.

References

  1. 1 2 "TTC Don Mills Station Parking". Toronto Transit Commission. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  2. ↑ "Subway ridership, 2015" (PDF). Toronto Transit Commission. Retrieved April 10, 2017. This table shows the typical number of customer-trips made on each subway on an average weekday and the typical number of customers travelling to and from each station platform on an average weekday.
  3. ↑ Certificate of Amendments
  4. ↑ YRT Viva Route Map
  5. ↑ Plan for Don Mills Station
  6. ↑ "TTC Don Mills Station". Toronto Transit Commission. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  7. ↑ Board Meetings

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