Posted Jan 8, 2012, 3:03 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Toronto
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Landmark bus depot loses its lustre
Landmark bus depot loses its lustre
Jan 07 2012
By Kate Allen
Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/article/...ts-lustre?bn=1
Quote:
The week before Christmas, the Toronto Coach Terminal celebrated its 80th birthday. The building’s two dozen staff dropped into their conference room for a combined Christmas-and-birthday party, noshing on doughnuts and coffee from Kramden’s Cafe, the snack bar in the travellers’ lounge downstairs. No one sent a birthday card. “The whole thing went by with nothing, just a whimper,” says Gerry Brown, senior terminal manager. It was a predictably modest celebration for the once-dignified, now-dismal Bay-Dundas landmark, the city’s main bus depot for passengers travelling on carriers such as Greyhound and Coach Canada. Like so much transit infrastructure in the GTA, traffic at the terminal, which is owned by the TTC, has far outpaced its Depression-era facilities.
- A Metrolinx spokesperson confirmed to the Star this week that the agency is “contemplating” building a new bus terminal at 45 Bay St., currently a parking lot just east of the Air Canada Centre. Metrolinx is also looking at other sites adjacent to Union Station, the spokesperson added. The current GO bus terminal is south of Front St. between Yonge and Bay. Greyhound and Coach Canada have been offered spots in any new GO terminal that is built, according to TTC documents and both bus companies. “We, as well as Greyhound, have indicated that we want to participate,” says Don Carmichael, president of Coach Canada, adding that talk of a new bus terminal has been swirling for years. “It is a possibility,” says Timothy Stokes, a spokesperson for Greyhound. “Nothing has been finalized, but we are interested in hearing more from Metrolinx and continuing these conversations with them.”
- Greyhound and Coach, which operates Megabus, represent almost all of the passenger traffic in the current Toronto Coach Terminal. According to the terminal’s 2011 budget, platform rental and ticket commissions accounted for $4.9 million of the terminal’s $5.4 million yearly revenue. Any move by the big carriers will render the entire terminal obsolete. But if the bus companies decide to stay — and there are a lot of ifs, with Metrolinx only begrudgingly acknowledging that plans for a new GO terminal even exist — the bargaining chips are back at Bay and Dundas. The Toronto Coach Terminal has pitched Metrolinx for its own new bus facility, a total overhaul of the current site that would combine the original building and a later Elizabeth St. annex. Ideally, the roomy new structure, which could fit more than double the current number of bays, would be complete by the Pan-American Games in 2015.
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