Updated July 25, 2013:
The TTC has announced that Pape Station will be shut down from Monday, August 19 to Friday, August 30.
During the closure, subway trains will not stop at Pape Station. Announcements on board trains will advise customers of the changes to bus routings that normally serve the station. The bus diversions are as follows:
- 72 Pape: northbound buses will operate to Broadview Station via Danforth Ave. On its return trip, it will travel north on Broadview Ave., east on Mortimer Ave., then south on Pape Ave. and back to route.
- 81 Thornciffe Park: buses will use Donlands Station, via Pape Ave. and Danforth Ave.
- 25 Don Mills: buses will operate to and from Donlands Station, via Donlands Ave.
[From TTC Press Release]
The strike by the workers who will build the new floors is over, and this allowed the shutdown to be rescheduled.
Updated June 7, 2013:
The TTC has announced that the 12-day shutdown has been deferred because the Terrazzo, Tile and Marble Guild of Ontario has been on strike since May 31. The work planned during the shutdown included a great deal of floor reconstruction for which these trades are essential.
Original May 21 article:
The Pape Station reconstruction has run considerably longer than planned. In a recent poll, the TTC asked users of the station whether they would support a shutdown in order to speed completion of the work. Two options were given: 6 weekend shutdowns, or a 12-day shutdown.
The 12-day option won, and the TTC has now announced that it will close the station from Saturday, June 15 to Wednesday, June 26. Bus diversions will be:
- 72 Pape will be extended to Broadview Station via Pape, Mortimer and Broadview.
- 81 Thorncliffe Park will be extended to Donlands Station via Danforth Avenue from Pape.
- 25 Don Mills will be rerouted to Donlands Station south of the Leaside Bridge and will not serve stops on Pape.
Bloor-Danforth subway service will not stop at Pape during the shutdown.
Steve Munro 
Donlands station will be an absolute nightmare during this shutdown. It is one of the smallest and tightest stations (along with Greenwood) on the Danforth portion. I can’t really make any comparison to any of the Bloor portion stations, being a Birchmount Operator I haven’t been into many west end stations. With the number of buses trying to enter and exit Donlands station (which has 2-1/2 bus platforms!), I expect that traffic chaos will reign supreme in the station vicinity.
I was operating on the Thorncliffe route when it was going to Donlands, as well as the Pape route when it was diverting there during the earlier phases of the Pape project! The station will be overwhelmed to handle the crowds that wait for the Don Mills bus! The bus platforms and roadway will be jammed with Don Mills buses during the rush hours.
Steve: Not that it runs very often, the Greenwood Bus will also be at Donlands starting June 23 while the loop at Greenwood is rebuilt.
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No doubt the TTC will be keeping a close eye on this to see how it plays out. If it is successful I can see the TTC doing this more often to get work done in their stations.
As I said before I would rather see a prolonged closure than be inconvenienced by construction. Nothing says fun fun fun like being rerouted through an emergency exit!
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Other transit organizations bypass (not stopping) stations that are undergoing reconstruction, even just painting. Each Friday evening, I notice the list of shutdowns in New York City for just that (example here). Why not here?
Steve: From comments by Andy Byford and Chris Upfold, I think you can expect to see station and line section shutdowns more frequently to speed the completion of maintenance work.
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It’s going to get awfully crowded over at Donlands. The bus loop there barely fits 3 buses and there are times when there are 3 Don Mills buses sitting in Pape station at the same time. It will be amusing to see what type of operation the TTC will be running for these 12 days.
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I was thinking they would actually run both the 72 and 81 to Donlands and the 25 to Broadview (via O’Connor and Broadview, or at the most via Pape, Cosburn/Mortimer, and Broadview). The 81 would be run via Pape & Danforth to Donlands, same as the 72 as their combined headway would never be more than 4-5 minutes on average during peak times.
Would you be able to muster any idea or have an official statement from the TTC as to why they chose to do things this way?
With a headway of 3ish minutes in the AM peak for the 25 and the inevitable bunching, I can see the TTC having crowd control management a la Yonge & Bloor style by Tuesday June 18th.
On a somewhat unrelated manner, does anyone have any idea why Pape’s platform design is now blue & white and not the original green & beige as it was before? Did they do this to fit “Greektown” in a more appropriate way?
Steve: The TTC’s scheme sends both of the routes that serve Thorncliffe Park to the same station, albeit via different routes. Yes, Donlands will be busy, but Broadview is already a very busy location.
What is more interesting is whether there will be special schedules for the period of the diversion when routes 72 Pape and 81 Thorncliffe Park will have considerable extra mileage and will need more running time.
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Steve, to answer your question about additional running time. This closure/resultant diversion covers the last 8 days if the current board period and the first 4 days of the next board period. Knowing the TTC as I know the TTC (as an Operator and therefore “insider”), there will be NO additional running time added!! These schedules are made up and “cast in stone” months in advance!
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All I can say is service increase… The 25/81 need service increase 7 days a week. Especially on weekends..
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I’m wondering if TTC is going to coordinate with TPS to get some help so buses can run on Danforth easily. Hopefully won’t be anymore construction on Danforth between Donlands, Pape & Broadview so this scheme can work. It would be nice to see parking restrictions tightened during this 12 day shutdown so bus & car traffic can flow outside main rush hour.
Pape & Danforth gets congested enough at the best of times, going to be a crazy 2 weeks.
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So those people at Pape and Cosburn get completely screwed if they want to go North using the 25. What an insane idiotic thing to do. Thousands of people live in the area.
Steve: They will have to walk to Donlands, or take the 81 Thorncliffe north and transfer to 25 Don Mills on the common portion of the route.
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The distance between Pape and Cosburn, and Donlands and Cosburn is 600m. The distance between Eglinton and Lawrence is approximately 2.1 Km, half of which is 1.05 Km. If it is reasonable to expect that a person can walk from halfway between Lawrence and Eglinton subway stations to whichever one they chose (All of the time), I hardly think that a 600m detour to get to a bus for a period of 12 days is something to get excited about.
Steve: It’s a shame that North York gets a mid point station at North York Centre, but where one should have been in North Toronto, at Glengrove, and possibly another before going down the hill into Hogg’s Hollow, there is nothing but an emergency exit. This will certainly help to preserve the low rise character of the neighbourhood, but it’s a pain in the butt for anyone who lives far from the stations as the 97 bus is infrequent and less than reliable. At least Eglinton is getting stations more frequently.
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Since the good residents of Hogg’s Hollow forced the subway to go under the Don instead of over it on a covered bridge wouldn’t a stop between Lawrence and York Mills be extremely deep, especially if they had to put in a 500′ long flat section? It would make the grades even steeper. I don’t think that stop will ever be possible but Glencairn has a nice ring to it.
Steve: The deep station could be a “boarding only” station with barber poles linking the surface building to the platform. A climbing wall could be erected for those hardy souls who insisted on getting off at that location.
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Steve said: “The deep station could be a “boarding only” station with barber poles linking the surface building to the platform. A climbing wall could be erected for those hardy souls who insisted on getting off at that location.”
Don’t worry – a perfectly functional pole elevator was designed years ago.
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As Steve says, the Greenwood bus doesn’t run that much, but for what it’s worth wouldn’t it work better to move it to Coxwell instead of Donlands?
Steve: Donlands Station is actually closer than Coxwell, and considering the buses are not getting any extra running time, it’s the better location, except for the period when service is rerouted from Pape for construction. The Greenwood diversion is going to continue well into the fall.
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Looks like I was right. Andy Byford mentioned to me at the TTC Riders townhall at the STC that he was concerned the tile workers and related trades would walk. Turns out they have and the Pape station work is delayed pending a labour resumption.
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Greenwood bus was in fact going to be diverted to DSTN (sic – that’s what the waybill calls it) and indeed it was given three minutes of extra running time. Then they added a second bus on weekends and another one on weekday mornings, bringing us back to pre-cutback service levels in the latter case. Then someone realized it is possible but impractical to run two frequent buses and one infrequent bus out of Donlands and it was simply decided to drive the Greenwood bus around the block and park it outside the station.
But not a single other thing was changed, including the waybills and numbers of buses. And in fact the midnight-bus departure times were and are still screwed up. On the plus side, we get more buses. On the minus, the whole thing was a last-minute correction.
Fun fact: Greenwood station no longer exists as a stop on the NextBus system or in the API. And the entire 31 route has been impossible to predict via the API using the least-computationally-intensive method for some years. Even Unofficial TTC Traffic Report cannot show a single bus operating on the route.
Steve: That site only supports a subset of routes not including Greenwood.
And all this is only part of the lore of the Greenwood bus.
Steve: More generally, I get the sense that a lot of things are falling through the cracks in putting together diversion services and notices. The TTC is cleaning up after the fact, but they should get it right from the outset.
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What happened to the tiles on the subway platform at York Mills Station?
Will they be reinserted?
Steve: I don’t know, but can check this out and ask.
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I promise you they couldn’t show 31 if they wanted to if they were using the least-computationally-expensive method. My friend Steve van Egmond, who wrote Pocket Rocket, confirmed the limitation with NextBus.
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