The problem in Canada, with “rail” transit, especially light rail (LRT) is that politcans get involved and when politicians get involved, costs rise dramatically.
Unlike Europe, Canadian University’s do not offer degrees in Urban Transport and the vast majority of Engineers and Planners who work on transit projects have little knowledge of what “light rail” (LRT) is!
In Metro Vancouver, both Engineers and Planners still claim that LRT has less capacity than light metro (SkyTrain), yet LRT today in many cities, carry peak hour ridership numbers far in excess what Vancouver’s light metro can achieve.
In fact the current maximum capacity of the Millennium Line is a mere 4,000 persons per hour per direction!
In simple terms, LRT is a modern tram (streetcar) operating on a dedicated or reserved rights-of-ways, thus obtaining the operating characteristics of a modern metro or subway, at a fraction of the cost.
Not so in Canada!
As Canada lacks Engineers and Planners, who have a credible knowledge of “rail” transit, including LRT and what transit experts we have, been muted from providing honest comment, because telling the truth about transit in Canada is not merely a firing offense, it tends to get one blacklisted from working in Canada altogether!
Why do you think Haveacow wishes to remain anonymous!
TransLink’s two top planners, one being considered the best in Canada, were forced to resign for stating the obvious, that; “Broadway did not have the ridership to warrant a subway“.
$4 billion later, Vancouver will have a subway to nowhere, with a maximum capacity less that what Bombardier stated would be justified to build with a light metro, to carry mainly the current B-99 Rapid Bus customers, which peak hour ridership is around 2,000 to 2,500 pphpd!
And to top it off, transit ridership is declining in Metro Vancouver, down 1.5% in 2025, when compared to 2024’s ridership!
$4 billion would build a lot of light rail, about 100 km’s worth, if built as light rail, on-street/at-grade.
Here lies the problem, politcans want, the Rapture of Mega Projects!
Bent Flyvberg’s Iron Law of Megaprojects specifically addresses why politicians are obsessed with infrastructure at any cost.
…the “political sublime,” which here is understood as the rapture politicians get from building monuments to themselves and their causes. Megaprojects are manifest, garner attention, and lend an air of proactiveness to their promoters. Moreover, they are media magnets, which appeals to politicians who seem to enjoy few things better than the visibility they get from starting megaprojects. Except maybe cutting the ribbon of one in the company of royals or presidents, who are likely to be present lured by the unique monumentality and historical import of many megaprojects. This is the type of public exposure that helps get politicians re-elected. They therefore actively seek it out.
Until transit planning changes and becomes independent of the politcal process (politicians make very bad transit planners) and let real experts plan transit for what is best for the transit customer, Canada’s daft transit planning and massive cost overruns will continue.
Unlike those who say, “don’t listen to the experts“; politcans should “listen to the experts“, because they will give one the best advice on what and how transit is built.
A test train departs Sloane Station during ongoing system testing for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in Toronto, Oct. 9.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
A Toronto comedian just threw a quinceañera for the Eglinton Crosstown.
It has been – can you believe it? – 15 years since the birth of the light-rail transit line that will traverse the centre of the city. Authorities still won’t say for sure when it will open, though there is talk it could happen next month.
Jacob Balshin hired a mariachi band for a mock celebration of the line’s coming of age. It played merrily at a transit station as he and friends toasted the teenage project on video. “Fifteen years! Next year, you’ll be able to drive. You only cost an estimated $12.8-billion. That’s only $8.2-billion more than expected!”
Funny not funny. The Crosstown has been a comprehensive fiasco. When construction began, the completion date was set at 2020. That was pushed back to 2021, then 2022. For a while there, 2024 seemed like a possibility, but that year passed, too. Eventually, the people in charge stopped even saying when it would open, for fear of being forced to acknowledge they had missed another target.
So here we are, all these years later, waiting. The tunnels are bored, the stations are built, the trains are even running, gliding along their tracks on test runs with nobody on board, through stops with nobody in them. It is ridiculous and a little eerie – a phantom transit service.
Doug Ford, Ontario’s Premier since 2018, says he’s as frustrated as anyone, telling reporters this week that it is “driving me crazy” and urging transit officials to “get the damn thing moving.”
While he was at it, he couldn’t resist taking a shot at the party that preceded his Progressive Conservatives in office. “This thing has been a disaster since the Liberals started it,” he said.
In fact, the problem goes back farther than that. It was a PC premier, Mike Harris, who cancelled a subway project on Eglinton Avenue in 1995 as he tried to bring provincial spending back in line. The hole had already been dug. Workers filled it up again. That subway would have long ago started whisking commuters across town.
It was Mr. Ford’s brother, Rob, who further gummed up the works when he was Toronto’s mayor by cancelling a plan, called Transit City, to build a whole network of light-rail lines. The Eglinton Crosstown is a remnant of that plan – a 19-kilometre project with 25 stops, some of them underground.
Driving such a line through a dense urban area like midtown Toronto – digging the tunnels, building the stations, redesigning dozens of above-ground intersections – was always going to be expensive. But $13-billion? For what is in essence a fancy streetcar? Outrageous.
People wait for a bus along Eglinton Avenue in view of a test train.GABRIEL HUTCHINSON/The Globe and Mail
By comparison, building Toronto’s 8.6-kilometre Spadina subway extension cost $3.2-billion. That went overbudget and over time, too, but at least the city got a proper, high-speed, high-capacity subway out of it.
The mismanagement of the Crosstown has reached a whole other level. Globe and Mail reporter Jeff Gray laid it all out in a recent investigation.
Instead of giving the job to the Toronto Transit Commission, the century-old agency that operates the transit system, the provincial government handed it to Metrolinx, a new transit-planning agency with little experience building anything.
Using the public-private partnership, or P3, model, Metrolinx then passed it on to a big engineering consortium. But the public and private sides soon set to quarrelling over costs, timelines and a host of other issues, leaving the project tied up in court and adding many millions to the price tag.
Toronto simply can’t afford this kind of mess.
After decades of stalling, the city is finally building out its transit network to fit its status as a major metropolis. Several huge projects are in the works, including subway extensions into Scarborough to the east and Richmond Hill to the north. A whole new subway will run through downtown: the Ontario Line, with its eye-watering budget of $27-billion.
And yet the quarterbacks of this big play can’t even manage to open a line that has been substantially finished for a couple of years. In October, Metrolinx had to put a pause on testing the Crosstown when two trains actually collided in a storage yard.
First, Arbutus is nowhere. What the CoV did was parachute the subway planning on the old Broadway Lougheed LRT project which terminated at Arbutus to connect with future LRT on the Arbutus Corridor.
Why the the line is slow is a conundrum, but lack of priority signalling could be part of the answer.
The City of Toronto controls the traffic signals, not the TTC. People will yell and complain and Toronto Roads will eventually bend, just like they did with the bus lanes. The head of Toronto’s Roads is profoundly anti-transit and anti-rail. This is a common fight with him!
When you run a tram along the street, even in a dedicated right of way, your train is limited to the posted speed limit. Building a grade separated right of way or removing the at grade right of way from the street altogether allows the trains to go faster than the vehicles on the road. Separating the right of way from the road is more expensive but in addition to higher operating speeds you don’t have to worry about collisions with other vehicles or about pedestrians crossing the tracks. Portland is actually planning on moving some of their MAX LRT lines into tunnels under the downtown core, the street running section significantly slows down the overall end to end speed of the MAX LRT. When you’re dealing with a regional rail system(metro, light metro, LRT) speed is important, a streetcar makes sense when it’s confined to a small/dense area but it doesn’t make sense when it’s a part of a regional rail system.
Zwei replies: Not entirely so. A reserved or dedicated R-o-W means one is not impeded by auto traffic, thus it can operate at higher speeds that being said, what makes grade separated transit faster is that it has far fewer stations. LRT has station/stops every 500 to 600metres apart, compared to light metros with stops every kilometre or more. Fewer stops/stations higher commercial speed and this is true for light rail as well.
This means door to door times tend to be higher for light/heavy-rail metros than light rail as it may take a great deal of time accessing a metro station.
And then there is cost. Currently the cost to build a light rail line is $30 to $50 million/km (no major engineering such as tunnels or viaduct construction), with simple bustop type shelters; the current cost of grade separated light metro is now past $400 million/km (Expo Line extension to Langley).
This where the LRT versus light metro debate ends and it is due to cost. $1 billion can buy you around 20 to 35km of light rail, versus 2.5 km of elevated or 1.2 km of subway light metro. with LRT edging light metro in capacity.
You can talk all you want about light metro etc., etc. but when it comes to real debate it is all about cost. If you want light metro – “Show me the cost and funding”.
Just a note. Portland’s MAX has 5 lines plus two dedicated streetcar lines. There is a proposal to build an East/West subway to permit faster speeds for some services but as downtown Portland tends to be the destination for most customers, the need for such a subway is questionable at this point in time. There is absolutely zero funding for a subway and any subway construction will only happen far into the future. Again, funding is something those wanting subways tend to forget about.
As well, Portland’s MAX system operates at speeds of 80kph on many portions of its line, such a Burnside and adjacent to Hwy 84 going into downtown Portland.
It’s a funny thing, I know people want fast as long as you don’t have to pay for it through your direct taxes. My sister’s favorite quote,”the quickest way to become a Torry loving fiscal conservative, buy a house!”
The truth is most people like Light Metros (like Skytrain) and Heavy Rail Metros (The Toronto Subway and the Montreal Metro for example) because they’re comfortable, especially compared to a bus shelter like LRT stop, not to mention the heated stations and relative high frequency of service. They like it right up until they get a their first property tax bill, private car insurance bill (because we live in Ontario), or read in the news that, gas and or vehicle taxes are going up. That’s when they read that the next Subway, Metro or Skytrain extension costs, 2 to 3 times to build as a gold plated LRT line extension, 4 to 5 times as much as a surface LRT line, 4 to 8 times as much as a heavy Busway (Think Ottawa or Mississauga bus Transitways) or 8 to 11 times as a standard Light to Medium capacity busway (like York Region’s Viva Rapidways or Gatineau’s Rapibus lines).
That’s when all of a sudden, certain members of the public want your next rapid transit extension to be dirt cheap and or be the greatest, most urgently needed section of rapid transit line in the history of such projects.
When I graduated planning school so many years ago in Ontario, that’s what the public was like. Over the next 30 years, people wanted governments to build line extensions and they re-elected one’s who did Now, the pendulum is swinging back to the mid to late 80’s and the public will vote for people whon actually cut spending and lower or do their best to cut things.
With the baby boomers, a large group of people whom actually vote, not just that they say they do, retiring everywhere, they realized they can’t afford new spending so, billion dollar plus line extensions that move fewer passengers than certain local bus and streetcar lines did before Covid-19, have to go.
Plus, it’s hard to actually be a transit planner and look people from other local or provincial government spending areas in the face and say that your line extension needs to go forward, when your transit line project budget is bigger than their entire agency’s yearly operating budget. For example, the initial costing range of Ottawa’s Stage 3 LRT program for 20 km – 24:km of line, came in at $3.5 Billion – $7.6 Billion. Which costs more than Ottawa Housing’s entire annual budget.
So when 24 km of LRT costs that much and your Sktrain extensions usually come in a 2 to 3 times that for the same length of line, unless you plan to pull gold out of your butt, your next Skytrain lines may have to wait for a while. Plus, with the Fed’eral government now funding stage 1 of the High Speed Rail Line between Ottawa and Montreal (announced today) officially to start construction in 2029-2030, I don’t think there will be very much in extra funding for Skytrain projects, in the near future.
Zwei replies: I agree, but people also forget the higher speed comes from fewer stations and fewer stations means a longer time accessing them, especially in the cold wet winter. But the key word is cost and those who want subways, tend to be the first to wail that their taxes are too high.
I little birdie just told me that the NDP are planning to shelve all “rail” planning in the province, but they are in such dire straights politically, with the Cowhichan land decision and DIRPA and with the ferry fiasco following them around like an Albatross that the party has told member to stay hush hush on transit. Then add in the Broadway subway bankrupting small businesses along the route, when they were promised “no it won’t” is also a bad smell that is beginning to stick to the NDP.
Translink’s ridership dropped 1.5% from last year and this despite a growing population has yet to gain any politician’s ears.
The E&N folks are getting a head up of steam and the CN abandonment of Squamish to 100 mile house section of BC Rail has sent politcal shivers down their spine. The continued Conservative/Wack-a-doddle party infighting is giving Eby and his crowd breathing room, but the future looks bleak for the NDP.
What is common for this is that the NDP do not have money for any other rail project except for the now $16 billion and climbing Expo and Millennium Line extension, which by all accounts will under-perform once in revenue service.
One thing I don’t like mentioning especially here is this, the more stations you have the more passengers can use the line. Yes, before everyone jumps on me, the more stations you have the slower the trip. There is a reason that both the TTC and STM (Montreal’s transit agency) want subway and metro stations as close as 800 metres in certain areas of their cities, especially in core higher density areas and that is, people who aren’t commuting can actually use the line for regular every day tasks like food shopping, going to the dentist or doctors office, lawyers meeting, parent teacher meetings and many, many others. If station walking access radi are generally around 400m for most people the pedestrian numbers increase and the area gets livelier.
If a station is located in an area that is more or less linearly accessible like a group of stations all being located on a single street or a busy but geographically close couplet of parallel streets, locals can walk the neighborhood’s main street or series of main streets with stations within walking distance people can go everywhere in those communities relatively comfortably. This greatly improves accesses locally and generates enormous amounts of off peak ridership, especially on weekends. This improves street life and business success in those areas.
Considering the loss of transit ridership is most pronounced in peak hours due to people working at home, its very advantageous to do this as much as possible.
However, in Toronto (Line#1) and Montreal (Orange Line) Peak Hour demand is still maxed out regardless of the number of riders working at home,for many sections of these lines, the best option then is to increase non peak usage as much as possible. Stations that are close together in certain areas do this very well.
1.The Yonge Subway (Line#1) between Union Station and Eglinton Station is about 7 km, with 12 stations, that’s an average of about 1 station every 636 m. Yes, it can be slow having to stop often but during the off peak that section is still busy any time day (even outside the downtown core) and helps to encourage street life.
2. The section of Line #1 between Eglinton to Sheppard station is 6 km long with only 4 stations and off peak usage is much much lower, especially with an average distance of 2 km between stops. It sure is faster but that section of Yonge is very quiet off peak in comparison.
3. When North York Centre Station was added in 1987 between Sheppard and Finch stations, an a distance of 810 m and 1,185 m accordingly between all 3 stations, both street life and off peak subway use both exploded in the “downtown North York area” so did condo development.
These results prompted several studies about station spacing in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Given the right area and a good series of stations this really works well, even if longer distance commuter trips suffer a time penalty. In the long run, these closer stations actually increase overall line ridership, sometimes quite dramatically.
Finally there was a reason the TTC was so irritated with Metrolix over the Yonge North Subway extension, they cut an infill station the TTC was planning between North York Centre and Finch as well as a 2nd station between Finch Station and the future Steeles Station, which is a 2km distance between each. This station would have been about 920 m north of Finch Ave and would have greatly enhanced the neighborhood.
I use the station spacing from the Hass-Klau Study, bus or Light Rail, Making the Right Choice. The international sty found that the optimum passenger draw for LRT (not light or heavy rail metro) was 300 metres radius around each station/stop. A simple compass would show that stations 500m to 600m metres apart would allow the maximum draw for each station/stop along the line, in urban areas.
I believe each transit authority has different numbers for the distance between stations as Translink tends to use the 800m to 1000m radius for customer draw with stations about 1.5 to 2 km apart.
The lrt is slow according to the CBC. Almost 1 hour to go 10KM.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/finch-west-lrt-first-monday-9.7006698
Can they speed it up?
The Canada line to Richmond takes less than 30 mins and is about 15KM.
Driving my own car to Richmond from downtown only takes about 30 minutes too.
It looks like the new LRT in Toronto has its own right of way, so it should be faster.
The Broadway subway is not a subway to nowhere.
Translink should have kept the Olympic line in false creek area.
According to my spies, the Crosstown will open by January 18, 2026. I take this with a great deal of salt though.
First, Arbutus is nowhere. What the CoV did was parachute the subway planning on the old Broadway Lougheed LRT project which terminated at Arbutus to connect with future LRT on the Arbutus Corridor.
Why the the line is slow is a conundrum, but lack of priority signalling could be part of the answer.
The City of Toronto controls the traffic signals, not the TTC. People will yell and complain and Toronto Roads will eventually bend, just like they did with the bus lanes. The head of Toronto’s Roads is profoundly anti-transit and anti-rail. This is a common fight with him!
When you run a tram along the street, even in a dedicated right of way, your train is limited to the posted speed limit. Building a grade separated right of way or removing the at grade right of way from the street altogether allows the trains to go faster than the vehicles on the road. Separating the right of way from the road is more expensive but in addition to higher operating speeds you don’t have to worry about collisions with other vehicles or about pedestrians crossing the tracks. Portland is actually planning on moving some of their MAX LRT lines into tunnels under the downtown core, the street running section significantly slows down the overall end to end speed of the MAX LRT. When you’re dealing with a regional rail system(metro, light metro, LRT) speed is important, a streetcar makes sense when it’s confined to a small/dense area but it doesn’t make sense when it’s a part of a regional rail system.
Zwei replies: Not entirely so. A reserved or dedicated R-o-W means one is not impeded by auto traffic, thus it can operate at higher speeds that being said, what makes grade separated transit faster is that it has far fewer stations. LRT has station/stops every 500 to 600metres apart, compared to light metros with stops every kilometre or more. Fewer stops/stations higher commercial speed and this is true for light rail as well.
This means door to door times tend to be higher for light/heavy-rail metros than light rail as it may take a great deal of time accessing a metro station.
And then there is cost. Currently the cost to build a light rail line is $30 to $50 million/km (no major engineering such as tunnels or viaduct construction), with simple bustop type shelters; the current cost of grade separated light metro is now past $400 million/km (Expo Line extension to Langley).
This where the LRT versus light metro debate ends and it is due to cost. $1 billion can buy you around 20 to 35km of light rail, versus 2.5 km of elevated or 1.2 km of subway light metro. with LRT edging light metro in capacity.
You can talk all you want about light metro etc., etc. but when it comes to real debate it is all about cost. If you want light metro – “Show me the cost and funding”.
Just a note. Portland’s MAX has 5 lines plus two dedicated streetcar lines. There is a proposal to build an East/West subway to permit faster speeds for some services but as downtown Portland tends to be the destination for most customers, the need for such a subway is questionable at this point in time. There is absolutely zero funding for a subway and any subway construction will only happen far into the future. Again, funding is something those wanting subways tend to forget about.
As well, Portland’s MAX system operates at speeds of 80kph on many portions of its line, such a Burnside and adjacent to Hwy 84 going into downtown Portland.
It’s a funny thing, I know people want fast as long as you don’t have to pay for it through your direct taxes. My sister’s favorite quote,”the quickest way to become a Torry loving fiscal conservative, buy a house!”
The truth is most people like Light Metros (like Skytrain) and Heavy Rail Metros (The Toronto Subway and the Montreal Metro for example) because they’re comfortable, especially compared to a bus shelter like LRT stop, not to mention the heated stations and relative high frequency of service. They like it right up until they get a their first property tax bill, private car insurance bill (because we live in Ontario), or read in the news that, gas and or vehicle taxes are going up. That’s when they read that the next Subway, Metro or Skytrain extension costs, 2 to 3 times to build as a gold plated LRT line extension, 4 to 5 times as much as a surface LRT line, 4 to 8 times as much as a heavy Busway (Think Ottawa or Mississauga bus Transitways) or 8 to 11 times as a standard Light to Medium capacity busway (like York Region’s Viva Rapidways or Gatineau’s Rapibus lines).
That’s when all of a sudden, certain members of the public want your next rapid transit extension to be dirt cheap and or be the greatest, most urgently needed section of rapid transit line in the history of such projects.
When I graduated planning school so many years ago in Ontario, that’s what the public was like. Over the next 30 years, people wanted governments to build line extensions and they re-elected one’s who did Now, the pendulum is swinging back to the mid to late 80’s and the public will vote for people whon actually cut spending and lower or do their best to cut things.
With the baby boomers, a large group of people whom actually vote, not just that they say they do, retiring everywhere, they realized they can’t afford new spending so, billion dollar plus line extensions that move fewer passengers than certain local bus and streetcar lines did before Covid-19, have to go.
Plus, it’s hard to actually be a transit planner and look people from other local or provincial government spending areas in the face and say that your line extension needs to go forward, when your transit line project budget is bigger than their entire agency’s yearly operating budget. For example, the initial costing range of Ottawa’s Stage 3 LRT program for 20 km – 24:km of line, came in at $3.5 Billion – $7.6 Billion. Which costs more than Ottawa Housing’s entire annual budget.
So when 24 km of LRT costs that much and your Sktrain extensions usually come in a 2 to 3 times that for the same length of line, unless you plan to pull gold out of your butt, your next Skytrain lines may have to wait for a while. Plus, with the Fed’eral government now funding stage 1 of the High Speed Rail Line between Ottawa and Montreal (announced today) officially to start construction in 2029-2030, I don’t think there will be very much in extra funding for Skytrain projects, in the near future.
Zwei replies: I agree, but people also forget the higher speed comes from fewer stations and fewer stations means a longer time accessing them, especially in the cold wet winter. But the key word is cost and those who want subways, tend to be the first to wail that their taxes are too high.
I little birdie just told me that the NDP are planning to shelve all “rail” planning in the province, but they are in such dire straights politically, with the Cowhichan land decision and DIRPA and with the ferry fiasco following them around like an Albatross that the party has told member to stay hush hush on transit. Then add in the Broadway subway bankrupting small businesses along the route, when they were promised “no it won’t” is also a bad smell that is beginning to stick to the NDP.
Translink’s ridership dropped 1.5% from last year and this despite a growing population has yet to gain any politician’s ears.
The E&N folks are getting a head up of steam and the CN abandonment of Squamish to 100 mile house section of BC Rail has sent politcal shivers down their spine. The continued Conservative/Wack-a-doddle party infighting is giving Eby and his crowd breathing room, but the future looks bleak for the NDP.
What is common for this is that the NDP do not have money for any other rail project except for the now $16 billion and climbing Expo and Millennium Line extension, which by all accounts will under-perform once in revenue service.
One thing I don’t like mentioning especially here is this, the more stations you have the more passengers can use the line. Yes, before everyone jumps on me, the more stations you have the slower the trip. There is a reason that both the TTC and STM (Montreal’s transit agency) want subway and metro stations as close as 800 metres in certain areas of their cities, especially in core higher density areas and that is, people who aren’t commuting can actually use the line for regular every day tasks like food shopping, going to the dentist or doctors office, lawyers meeting, parent teacher meetings and many, many others. If station walking access radi are generally around 400m for most people the pedestrian numbers increase and the area gets livelier.
If a station is located in an area that is more or less linearly accessible like a group of stations all being located on a single street or a busy but geographically close couplet of parallel streets, locals can walk the neighborhood’s main street or series of main streets with stations within walking distance people can go everywhere in those communities relatively comfortably. This greatly improves accesses locally and generates enormous amounts of off peak ridership, especially on weekends. This improves street life and business success in those areas.
Considering the loss of transit ridership is most pronounced in peak hours due to people working at home, its very advantageous to do this as much as possible.
However, in Toronto (Line#1) and Montreal (Orange Line) Peak Hour demand is still maxed out regardless of the number of riders working at home,for many sections of these lines, the best option then is to increase non peak usage as much as possible. Stations that are close together in certain areas do this very well.
1.The Yonge Subway (Line#1) between Union Station and Eglinton Station is about 7 km, with 12 stations, that’s an average of about 1 station every 636 m. Yes, it can be slow having to stop often but during the off peak that section is still busy any time day (even outside the downtown core) and helps to encourage street life.
2. The section of Line #1 between Eglinton to Sheppard station is 6 km long with only 4 stations and off peak usage is much much lower, especially with an average distance of 2 km between stops. It sure is faster but that section of Yonge is very quiet off peak in comparison.
3. When North York Centre Station was added in 1987 between Sheppard and Finch stations, an a distance of 810 m and 1,185 m accordingly between all 3 stations, both street life and off peak subway use both exploded in the “downtown North York area” so did condo development.
These results prompted several studies about station spacing in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Given the right area and a good series of stations this really works well, even if longer distance commuter trips suffer a time penalty. In the long run, these closer stations actually increase overall line ridership, sometimes quite dramatically.
Finally there was a reason the TTC was so irritated with Metrolix over the Yonge North Subway extension, they cut an infill station the TTC was planning between North York Centre and Finch as well as a 2nd station between Finch Station and the future Steeles Station, which is a 2km distance between each. This station would have been about 920 m north of Finch Ave and would have greatly enhanced the neighborhood.
I use the station spacing from the Hass-Klau Study, bus or Light Rail, Making the Right Choice. The international sty found that the optimum passenger draw for LRT (not light or heavy rail metro) was 300 metres radius around each station/stop. A simple compass would show that stations 500m to 600m metres apart would allow the maximum draw for each station/stop along the line, in urban areas.
I believe each transit authority has different numbers for the distance between stations as Translink tends to use the 800m to 1000m radius for customer draw with stations about 1.5 to 2 km apart.