There are certain amenities considered to be staples for the urban dweller. At the top of the amenity list are essentials like having a great coffee shop steps from your door, being within walking distance of a purveyor of fitness and well-being (or a great park), and having a Metropass.
The penultimate thing that people wish to live near is efficient public transport. When taking into account how quickly real estate prices in Toronto are climbing, rising gas prices, and the surprisingly harmful financial, emotional, and health-related implications of commuting by car, it’s easy to see why homebuyers will fork over extra cash to be close to transit. (We touched on the impact of transit on real estate values in our piece, “The Value of Public Transit In Toronto“.) After all, the difference between two and twenty minutes becomes torturously more apparent during an Ontario winter!
If you live near the downtown core – and its famous subway horseshoe – you have the best of it when it comes to Toronto transit; the core has an average of 34 TTC stops per square kilometre. But your luck in catching a bus, streetcar or subway dwindles as you move outward from Yonge Street, and access becomes more threadbare.
GO Trains & Buses, however, are more far-reaching and run on a more punctual schedule. You can zip all over the GTA and beyond (as far north as Barrie, west to Hamilton, east to Oshawa. Are you Mississauga-bound to shop? No problem – it’s the third stop from Union on the Milton Line. Business to attend to in Markham? You’ll be there soon on the Stouffville Line.
In my humble opinion, the rider experience tends to be much better than the TTC too – more orderly, with brighter interiors, higher quality seats, more polite behaviour, more room, and – of course – a better view!
A division of Metrolinx, GO Transit serves the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, with routes extending to communities across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. They have 7 train lines (and counting), with handy connections to the Union-Pearson Express and the TTC (including a pilot project to allow TTC riders unlimited travel between Exhibition, Union and Danforth GO Stations.) The GO Transit rail fleet consists of 90 MPIMP40 locomotives and 979 Bombardier BiLevel Coaches.
Go Transit celebrated its 55th anniversary in Toronto last year – check out this neat archival footage above!
Click for Interactive Rapid Transit Map (TTC/GO)
With its many upgrades and extensions of late, GO has become a favourite of those who commute from smaller bedroom communities, nearby cities, or simply opt to settle in a neighbourhood that’s a bit quieter than the chaotic core. This is demonstrated by the 25,484,600 passengers that rode in 2022, making access stations – and real estate in close proximity to stations – more and more coveted. Pundits predict major shifts in the value and composition of Toronto neighbourhoods as GO moves into becoming Toronto’s express surface rail transit system.
One GO expansion that has been underway for a while now is the SmartTrack plan – a collaboration between Mayor John Tory and Metrolinx. It is to run frequent commuter trains along new and existing lines to create a subway-like surface rail service that would link Markham and Mississauga with downtown Toronto and points in between. The SmartTrack plan originally accounted for 6 new GO stations created by 2031, however, slashes are already happening. Gerrard St. and Kennedy have both been scrapped; this was not a funding issue but rather the stops will be made redundant by other transit, like the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and the new Ontario Line.
Construction on the first stations is scheduled to begin this year.
The more integrated GO transit becomes with the TTC infrastructure, the more riders it will attract, as the lines become more and more convenient to use. And, as mentioned before, as real estate surrounding GO stations escalates in value, the population and popularity of the surrounding neighbourhoods will surely balloon as well.
There is evidence of this already happening around two of the three downtown GO stations – Danforth & Main and Exhibition & Lakeshore, The third – Union Station – has always been an amenity-laden hub of the city.
An Expanding Surface Rail Network
What possibilities does an expanding GO transit present? Let’s say you live in Mississauga, where you have access to the Cooksville GO Station. The hub was recently overhauled and reimagined, including a new multi-level 1400-spot parking structure, improved pedestrian access, and a connection to the new Hurontario LRT. Construction was completed on November 10, 2020, at a cost of $128.4 million. This line serves cities and suburbs that are home to many large complexes (housing thousands of commuters), ensuring a large and multiplying passenger ridership.
There are currently seven trains that run the Milton line southward during rush hour, and with frequent service like that, even those who could drive often prefer to avoid traffic congestion. After all, did you know it takes just 32 minutes to GO train from Mississauga’s Cooksville Station to Union Station in Toronto and for only about $8? (We’ve spent longer on a King Streetcar simply trying to get from Broadview to Ossington!).
And every rider that chooses to leave the car at home helps unclog the highways a bit more.
The ‘City Centre Loop’ is a proposed branch off the Milton Line to circle Mississauga’s City Centre neighbourhood offering convenient service to the many large condominium complexes in the area – was scrapped from the Hurontario Line to reduce costs. However, “reinstating the Downtown Loop is one of the City of Mississauga’s top priorities. There is significant growth taking place in our downtown and bringing improved transit to this area is key to unlocking this potential,” said Transit & Public Works Commissioner Geoff Wright in November of last year. – Insauga. Moreover, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie said last month that she would get the cancelled light rail transit loop back on the table if she becomes premier. (Time will tell!)
The necessity of rebuilding stations like Cooksville to have a larger capacity – plus projects on the horizon like the City Centre Loop – underline the incredible demand for housing in the Golden Horseshoe, and a transit infrastructure that can connect all of the growing outlying communities – as available land to build on in Toronto approaches zero. Also, it highlights the potential opportunities of living outside the core, and how quickly you can be whisked from one place to the next – for work, family, hobbies, recreation, etc. – without significant interruption to your day! Once, we would have balked at the thought of commuting every day to the Financial District from somewhere like, say, Richmond Hill, but now it’s a convenient reality, which consumes little effort and only 35 minutes of your day!
Speaking of Richmond Hill, check out this article from June 2023: “UTPro Instant Reports: Yonge Subway Extension Driving Residential Spike in Richmond Hill”
The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area will continue to transform over the next decade. Metrolinx will transform the GO rail network into an RER system that will bring 15-minute, two-way, all-day, electrified GO service to communities across the region. System-wide RER infrastructure upgrades will include: adding 371 miles of new track, expanding stations, electrification of the rail network, new locomotives and train control systems to enable more frequent service.
After all, the push to be close to transit doesn’t apply to residential real estate alone. Commercial real estate company Avison Young looked at buildings sold in Toronto’s downtown core from 2012 to 2015 and compared their sale price, slotting them into two categories: commercial buildings less than 500 metres from a subway station and commercial buildings outside that range. The result? Avison Young found that the towers closer to the subway station sold, on average, for $475 per square foot – a full 30 per cent – more than buildings further away. And that was in 2015. (We continue to search for newer data which will be no doubt impressive!)
The demand to be close to transit routes starts with workers, specifically young professionals, who want to be near transit because they often don’t have cars. Then companies responding to that demand, seek office space near transit, which drives higher rents and ultimately a higher valuation for the properties. So while taking the GO train or TTC is already convenient because you avoid grid-locked streets, it’s that much more convenient, if your workplace is near a transit station.
In the early days of the Old City of Toronto, neighbourhoods were centred around a commercial street that served all of the community’s needs. Today, the city’s urban fabric still contains remnants of these village life streetscapes, each having its own particular amenities or services. Many are gentrifying with cafes, coffee stops and cool urban shops. Locating your property within a five-minute walk of modern-day amenities – especially transit – is a sure way to increase value.
For these reasons and more, expect real estate near GO train hubs, and TTC stations to take another major hike in the coming years as more track is constructed. If you’ve been toying with the idea of living in the already amenity-rich ‘hood with great transit opportunities, the smart move would be to buy now and then watch your investment quickly gain building equity!
How lucky will the folks be who now get to call this sun-soaked sanctuary ‘Home’? Very lucky, indeed! It’s just a 15-minute bus or bike, and a 6-minute drive from the front door of 3939 Duke of York Boulevard to the Cooksville GO Station, as well as a 12-minute walk to the Mississauga Transit Hub (connecting to all areas of the city!)
We called it: A Sensational Sky-Vista Suite In Mississauga’s City Centre!
This split two-bed plus open plan den, two-bath suite is a smartly designed delight! From the moment you cross the threshold, it’s apparent how refreshingly unique this volume of light-filled space is. This tranquil respite features intelligent attention to detail, custom features, and delineated zones to maximize your indoor living space! Includes one parking space and locker, and is… NOW SOLD!
**What’s more, if the City Centre Loop gets approved to move forward, soon there will be a GO train pulling up practically outside the building on Duke of York Boulevard! How fabulous would that be?!**
Want to have someone on your side?
Since 1989, I’ve steered my career through a real estate market crash and burn; survived a slow painful cross-country recession; completed an M.E.S. graduate degree from York University called ‘Planning Housing Environments’; executed the concept, sales & marketing of multiple new condo and vintage loft conversions; and guided hundreds of clients through the purchase and sale of hundreds of freehold and condominium dwellings across the original City of Toronto. From a gritty port industrial city into a glittering post-industrial global centre, I’ve navigated the ebbs and flows of a property market as a consistent Top Producer. And I remain as passionate about it today as when I started.
Consider contacting me at 416-845-9905 or email me at Steve@urbaneer.com. It would be my pleasure to assist you, and yours.
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-The Urbaneer Team
Steven Fudge, Sales Representative
& The Innovative Urbaneer Team
Bosley Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage – (416) 322-800
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