(12-07-2020, 04:09 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(12-07-2020, 01:51 PM)ac3r Wrote: These are good ideas. A little place to eat would be great. Charles Street Terminal had the Transfers bar/restaurant - while it wasn't great, it was still a very popular place for a lot of people. Having a café for really quick items or a small restaurant for people would be really useful. Forgot breakfast? No worries, grab a bagel before you sit on the GO Train. Something other than a major corporate chain would be nice, but even a Subway, McDonalds etc would be useful for people.
There are a lot of small cafes in DTK already, and we won't have more than 10 trains/day, which is not likely enough to keep another one in business. A McD, though, could draw in additional customers from outside the transit hub.
There are only 2 cafés I can think of that are within comfortable walking distance to the station. There is one at 1 Victoria and Monigram has a location next to the old McDonalds, though I don't know if that's still open or not. Another café may not be the smartest business idea because as you say there are a lot of them, but there are other things that could open up in this train station and easily work. To find anything else - whether it's for a quick meal, piece of fruit, cigarettes, newsmagazine, phone charger etc - people have to waste about 20 minutes walking further downtown to find the most basic items. It just makes sense to me to have at least one store in the central train station servicing a city of about to 620'000.
Anyway, taylortbb mentioned this was asked about a few days ago and it's because the region doesn't want to be a landlord (except they have already successfully done so before). Can't really rely on disconnected bureaucrats in suits and offices to really make rational decisions for the communities they serve, unfortunately. "People want to eat before they go to work? No! Think of the extra work we'd need to do to achieve that!"