You'll find psychological boundaries no matter where you go, and Toronto is no exception. It's a common stereotype that for the "downtown elites" hizzoner da mayor and his ideological allies are so fond of taking potshots at, everything north of Bloor is a wasteland and Eglinton Avenue is the Arctic Circle. Personally, I live north of Danforth and it's pretty green--but if Eglinton is the Arctic Circle, then Steeles Avenue borders another planet entirely. I was up there in Markham last month for the Ad Astra convention, held in a Holiday Inn just north of Steeles at Woodbine.
Compared to urban design like this, Scarborough is a transit utopia. The sign on Woodbine Avenue welcoming people--well, let's be honest here, drivers--to York Region calls it "Ontario's rising star." At least we can be sure they're not talking about the height of their buildings.
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Steeles Avenue is where Toronto ends and the suburbs of York Region begin, and it's here that public transit shifts from the Toronto Transit Commission to York Region Transit and, to a lesser extent, Brampton Transit. YRT also operates Viva, a bus rapid-transit system that I've never had call to ride, but which does appear very swank from the photos I've seen.Going north along Yonge, the Vivastation on the north side of Steeles is the first you'd encounter. Not only does it have a ticket-vending machine, it also has LED readouts telling you when the next bus will be showing up. If the TTC implemented Vivastation-like equipment at major stops, it would be a coup. Until, of course, they were vandalized into submission.Maybe.
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