Sheppard Avenue

Sheppard Avenue
Lansing Road (North York Township)
Route information
Maintained by City of Toronto
Length: 32.1 km (19.9 mi)
Location
Major cities: Toronto
Highway system

Roads in Ontario

Nearby arterial roads
← Wilson Avenue
York Mills Road
Ellesmere Road		 Sheppard Avenue Finch Avenue →

Sheppard Avenue
Route information
Maintained by Pickering
Length: 2.5 km (1.6 mi)
Location
Major cities: Pickering
Highway system

Roads in Ontario

Nearby arterial roads
← Kingston Road Sheppard Avenue Finch Avenue →
A Sheppard Avenue East street sign which retains North York markings.

Sheppard Avenue is an east-west principal arterial road in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A small portion (2.5 km) of a continuation of the road in Pickering, Ontario is also called Sheppard Avenue from Altona Road and Fairport Avenue.

History

Sheppard Avenue facing west. Leslie Street is visible in the foreground, and Allen Road in the background. The horizontal strip of buildings near the centre mask Yonge Street

Sheppard is named for Joseph Sheppard I, who acquired 400 acres (160 ha) of land at the northwest corner of Sheppard and Yonge Street. His son opened a general store there. The site was occupied in 1860 by the Dempsey Hardware Store, which was later moved and restored as a museum. Since the mid-2010s, the former site is developed as a commercial building.

In the former Scarborough municipality, Sheppard was once called the Lansing Sideroad.

Routing

Sheppard Avenue East

Sheppard Avenue is carried across the lanes of Highway 404.
A sign used along Fairview Mall Drive and the 404 off-ramp

East of Yonge Street, Sheppard travels east through North York to Highway 404. Historically, it continued straight to Victoria Park Avenue at the Scarborough border, where travellers then turned south to meet up with the Sheppard section through Scarborough. However, a new section called the Lansing Cutoff was constructed joining the two disconnected pieces. The orphaned section of Sheppard between the 404 and Victoria Park was renamed Old Sheppard Avenue. 43°46′34″N 79°20′13″W / 43.77611°N 79.33694°W / 43.77611; -79.33694

Sheppard continues straight east through Scarborough until just east of Meadowvale Road, where the Rouge River valley presents steep grades 43°48′33″N 79°09′58″W / 43.80917°N 79.16611°W / 43.80917; -79.16611, and so Sheppard curves southwards to meet Kingston Road just north of Highway 401. At that junction, it also meets Port Union Road, which heads south into the Port Union neighbourhood. However, Twyn Rivers Drive continues east into the Rouge valley as a collector road, and becomes Sheppard again at Altona Road just east of the border of Pickering, Durham Region. It continues farther east until it ends at Fairport Road just north of Highway 2 / Kingston Road. 43°49′28″N 79°06′26″W / 43.82444°N 79.10722°W / 43.82444; -79.10722

This routing parallels the alignment for Highway 401 and serves as an alternative if the highway is closed or congested.

Sheppard Avenue West

West of Yonge Street, Sheppard travels west across the Sheppard Avenue Bridge over the Don and past Bathurst Street and Wilson Heights Boulevard. Further west, the road allowance became blocked in 1939 by the appropriation of land for a De Havilland aircraft plant and, after World War II, Canadian Forces Base Downsview. A crescent-shaped section of road was finally constructed along the northern edge of the now former base in the 1970s, connecting Sheppard at Wilson Heights to Keele Street. 43°45′17″N 79°28′42″W / 43.75472°N 79.47833°W / 43.75472; -79.47833 Today, Sheppard also intersects Allen Road on this section, but the intersecting portion of Allen Road was not constructed until 1982. Sheppard Avenue continues still further west to Weston Road, but cannot be extended because the Humber Sheppard Community Centre (the former site of St. Basil's Catholic High School) is on the west side of the intersection.43°44′01″N 79°32′18″W / 43.73361°N 79.53833°W / 43.73361; -79.53833

Public transportation

The Line 4 Sheppard subway runs under Sheppard Avenue East from Yonge Street to Don Mills Road, with proposals to continue the line farther eastwards to the Scarborough Town Centre and westwards to Downsview Station at Allen Road. There are five stations on the line providing access to Sheppard Avenue, including Bayview, Bessarion, and Leslie, as well as the Sheppard–Yonge (at the junction with the Yonge section of Line 1 Yonge–University) Don Mills termini. Downsview station is located at the corner of Sheppard and Allen Road at the northern terminus of the Spadina section of the Yonge-University-Spadina line.

Three bus routes runs along Sheppard Avenue in Toronto from Sheppard Subway station:

This bus route runs along Sheppard Avenue East between Scarborough Centre and Don Mills Stations:

GO Transit has stations at Agincourt on the Stouffville line, on Sheppard between Kennedy Road and Midland Avenue, and at Oriole on the Richmond Hill line, south-west of the intersection of Leslie Street and Sheppard.

Communities

Attractions and Landmarks

Sign in Sheppard Avenue.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sheppard Avenue, Toronto.

Coordinates: 43°45′42″N 79°24′36″W / 43.76167°N 79.41000°W / 43.76167; -79.41000

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 6/12/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.