The TTC's last shut down had no shuttle buses and just redirected passengers to the other portion of the U instead, which might as well just be the norm since it's not that far of a walk. Night buses and shuttles for larger subway closures can always just use Bay street. It would take some time for passengers to adjust to this reality, but I don't see this is a valid enough reason to not just pedestrianize Yonge entirely.
Last weekend, the TTC had a scheduled shutdown from Bloor-Yonge to Osgoode.
Shuttle buses replaced the subway, with lower weekend volumes the buses were near constant, and dispatched in pairs, with about six lined up at each end.
Diverting that over to Bay if you're starting from where subway service ends is not an immaterial issue. At King, in this case there was no service on either side of the U.
For unscheduled shutdowns, not having Yonge as an option ....
I'd be open to seeing it modeled but I have real concerns.
For N-S night buses, that extends the E-W gap, there's already no night service from Yonge to Parliament, that's a big gap, now moving that to Bay to Parliament?
Also for night service, the bus on Bay will need to end up on Yonge at some point......turn restrictions and pedestrian volumes would generally preclude using Bloor
I think we could discuss the idea of timed retractable barriers to deliver daytime pedestrian only ....
***
At any rate, its in detailed design now.............unless the directive was changed, we're not getting full pedestrianization. Maybe pedestrian priority in 2 blocks