Quote:
Originally Posted by boulevardofdef
Americans of a progressive bent are often quick to praise places like Canada for getting urban planning right where the U.S. gets it wrong, so it's interesting to see criticism of a major Canadian city for the same kinds of mistakes that happen down south.
Strangely enough, those new subway stations remind me a lot of the E-train stations all the way at the eastern end of the New York City subway in Jamaica, Queens. Those stations opened about 30 years ago, so that's not very high praise for Toronto. Unlike the new Toronto stations, though, the Queens ones are extremely busy.
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Good planning doesn't mean that a society is isolated and unaffected by its setting and context; it means that it does its best to address the challenges its setting and context pose. In this case, it doesn't mean that a metro area experiencing rapid population growth in an affluent, low density, new world country won't have any sprawl, it means that it tries to reduce the percentage of growth on the periphery relative to infill, make the sprawl more dense, set aside a greenbelt, and ensure new developments have transit access and encourage TODs. The idea that simply having good planning would prevent a NA metro area with high post war population growth from having any sprawl isn't very realistic.
In terms of the subway stations, they're in suburban areas not comparable to Queens with one intended to act as a major transit hub where express buses provide large suburban populations with with previously limited transit access with a new rapid transit connection as well as to shape future suburban development in a denser more transit oriented pattern. Perhaps that's where some of the planning discussions originated. And if they bear a similarity to stations that have successfully served parts of one of the world's busiest and most success transit systems for a third of a century, that's not something I would consider negative.
However, the subway extension has definitely received a lot criticism since the system's most pressing problem is over crowding in certain stretches, and the money spent on this extension could have gone a long way toward enhancing services in central areas. Whether or not this was the best use of funds is certainly a valid debate. However, the idea that it won't be well used seems a bit far fetched. It's extremely new now with travel and development patterns not yet adapted, but if we look at even the system's shortest and least used line, "Sheppard line 4," which has long been criticised for low ridership, despite being in an entirely suburban area still has a higher average riderhsip per km than any line in the Chicago L system for example. Including the busiest Red line.