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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
lol, the article is quoting the study by Forum Research - the question they asked being:
"Do you think that the Scarborough section of the Eglinton light rail transit line should be built above ground in its own right of way in the middle of the road like the St. Clair streetcar, or should it be built below ground like a subway? If it was built above-ground, Eglinton Avenue would be reduced to four lanes in order to accommodate the transit line right of way.'"
Pretty blatant example of "push-polling".
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With the exception of the St. Clair part, everything in that is true. I will admit that the Eglinton line would be better than the St. Clair disaster since it would have fewer stops, but has anyone ever bothered to see how close together the Scarberian concessions are? They're all about 850-1000 metres apart. That's a lot of major intersections to deal with, guaranteed that is going to slow it down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
Transit City serves a whole lot more people than the Ford plan, even if a few thousand of them along the outer stretches of Eglinton are going to have to suffer through marginally longer commutes.
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This is the problem with government. All you have to do is add 15 minutes to a person's commute each way every day, and by the end of the week they've lost 2.5 hours in productivity. Assuming a 50-week year, that's 125 lost hours... or about 5 days of your life wasted on the commute. If you do this to enough people the economic losses will add up to a very substantial amount. Why do you think people pay good money to take the 407 vs. spending an extra half-hour to take Highway 7?
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Architect
No, they really won't. What they'd regret is letting the lunatic buffoon and his brother put the city back a decade.
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I remember seeing a very amusing cartoon from around 1911, with an anthropomorphized streetcar looking into a tube, and a politician telling him that there wasn't "any need" for such a high-cost system. Strangely applicable to today.
Anyways, if we're going to talk about buffoons who set transit back 10 years, why don't we discuss Miller's cancellation of the previous plan?
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Architect
The Eglinton crosstown more than accounts for future growth, if you read anything about it you would know that. The LRT is exactly what is needed there, anything more would have been a waste of money. There have been many studies on this, and no matter how much you try to stuff the Ford-esque nonsense about "subway subway subway or nothing", it doesn't make it right.
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I've seen some figures that "account" for future growth along current trends, but none that account for potential shifts in demographics, or that weigh the cost of peoples' time or the opportunity costs of forgone large-scale developments that often accompany transit lines. If you could provide me with documents that discuss these factors, I would love to read them.
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Originally Posted by The_Architect
It is underground in the right areas and aboveground in the right areas. It also has the ability to be easily turned into a subway when the need arises in 100 years or so. While we're wasting money on the Sheppard stubway why don't we build a subway on Trafalgar road in Oakville as well?
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Again, I don't think Sheppard was a waste of money at all. The whole street has completely transformed in the past decade with lots of dense, transit-oriented development. Looking at old photos my dad took of it in the late 1990s, it's almost unrecognizable in some spots. Anyways, if traffic patterns warranted a subway along Trafalgar, I'd say go for it. The government exists only to correct for externalities, so by all means, build one if there are massive benefits to be had.
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
Hopefully this loss is a backbreaker for the Frauds and proof that they have no hold on the council, and the city and its politicians won't put up with their bullshit "my way or the highway" dictator crap.
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Dictator? Rubbish. Even the ILO has more power than the Ford brothers could ever dream of. They're just two votes, and the council decision proved that.
NOW CAN WE PLEASE MOVE THIS INTO THE TORONTO LOCAL??