Appreciate that!
I absolutely agree this is the perfect chance to direct people away from the main station, and these bridges help with that, but (at least from what we’ve been able to gather so far) don’t take perfect advantage of that opportunity.
The diagrams of the bridges in the USEP documents show where each platform entrance is going to be. The Yonge Street bridge appears to be missing one of the shorter eastern platforms (second from the top):
View attachment 637694
And the York Street Bridge appears to be missing multiple western platforms, including the southernmost (bottom) platform. Not extending the bridge a little bit further to cover the southernmost platform is a huge missed opportunity to me:
View attachment 637693
I strongly believe a Simcoe Teamway or full concourse between York and Simcoe would be justified with a platform layout like this.
Using the most extreme example possible, each red arrow is a crush loaded coach carrying 300 people. Under the potential arrangement with just the York Bridge, this is going to result in extremely overcrowded bridge and Teamway entrances:
View attachment 637717
With a Simcoe Teamway and just one additional entrance on the far ends of the west platforms, these numbers can get cut in half. This Teamway would also be within only a few hundred metres of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre & Roger’s Centre, allowing convention and event crowds to directly avoid entering the station:
View attachment 637718
(The entrance directly in the middle of the image should say 750,
not 900)
I didn’t make an example with a fully built out Simcoe Concourse, but you can imagine how these crowds could be further divided with 1-2 more entrances per platform.
The old (assumed cancelled or rolled into GO Expansion) USEP package 3 had plans for concourses between Simcoe & York, as well as one between Bay and Yonge. I’m assuming these plans were cancelled and superseded by the bridges:
View attachment 637719