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  #81  
Old Posted Aug 26, 2017, 12:23 AM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by Doady View Post
D-DOT in Detroit had 26.1 million boardings in 2016. That's half of MiWay bus system in Mississauga (54.2 million). The City of Detroit is probably not wealthier than Mississauga, and Detroit transit fares are half price. Cost doesn't seem like a huge factor. And Detroit is probably not easier to drive around in than a post-war suburb, built for the car. I think what makes the biggest difference is the amount of transit service.
Detroit (the city proper) has semi-decent transit service, in theory. Main corridors like Woodward have buses every few minutes. I think the main corridors still have 24/7 service.

Detroit, in practice, has horrible bus service, because the schedules are unreliable, the buses are horrible and waiting on the street is unsafe.

And the city is built for the car. There's almost never any congestion, the roads are massive, speed limits high, and freeways everywhere.

Mississauga is full of immigrants, who are culturally inclined to transit, and there are no safety issues. Driving in the Toronto area is expensive and difficult. Housing costs are extreme.
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  #82  
Old Posted Aug 26, 2017, 5:50 PM
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Innsertnamehere Innsertnamehere is online now
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yup. Its not a state to state thing, its a country to country thing. Insurance in the GTA for an experienced driver is typically still around $3000 a year, far more when you are first starting to drive. That cost is nowhere close in the US. Add dirt cheap gas and the easy availability of cheap, old cars, and it means that you don't need to make much money to own and operate a vehicle. Day to day use of an old beater in a typical american city is probably around $300 a month. If you have a job of any kind that approaches full time hours, that is a reasonable expense. Toronto has double the gas cost, triple the insurance cost, much higher real estate costs cutting into your income, and used cars are far more expensive.

The fact is that operating an automobile in the US is dirt, dirt cheap. So nobody takes the crappy transit systems that are available.
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  #83  
Old Posted Aug 26, 2017, 5:53 PM
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Doady Doady is online now
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Detroit (the city proper) has semi-decent transit service, in theory. Main corridors like Woodward have buses every few minutes. I think the main corridors still have 24/7 service.

Detroit, in practice, has horrible bus service, because the schedules are unreliable, the buses are horrible and waiting on the street is unsafe.

And the city is built for the car. There's almost never any congestion, the roads are massive, speed limits high, and freeways everywhere.

Mississauga is full of immigrants, who are culturally inclined to transit, and there are no safety issues. Driving in the Toronto area is expensive and difficult. Housing costs are extreme.
Even if immigrants are more culturally inclined to transit (I'm not sure that's true), it wouldn't explain Kingston or other small Canadian cities. If there is a cultural difference, it's USA vs. Canada. Especially different attitudes about race...

I'm not saying auto infrastructure/costs and culture don't have an effect at all, but I don't think those are the main reasons TTC ridership increased so much since 2003. I think you downplay the role of governments and transit agencies too much.

I also think you underestimate how easy it is drive in the Toronto area. It is still vastly post-war and suburban, the infrastructure still autocentric. It's the same infrastructure the buses use, which carry more than half of the transit riders.

There hasn't been much if any effort to make it harder to drive. Like the City of Toronto recently couldn't bring itself to demolish a crumbling and underused portion of the Gardiner. Focus always been on making it easier to use transit, through urban design and increased service.
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  #84  
Old Posted Aug 27, 2017, 7:55 PM
ue ue is offline
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Originally Posted by Doady View Post
The only LRT proposed or U/C that I like is Hurontario-Main in Mississauga. In Toronto, I would support Wilson LRT, and maybe Lawrence East LRT (if possible) and Scarborough LRT. But the focus of rail expansion in the city of Toronto should be subways: Pape-Don Mills, Eglinton, Sheppard, in that order.

With the huge mandatory underground portion and the Richview Corridor, LRT is obviously a stupid choice for Eglinton. Sheppard already has subway, so don't even think about Finch so close by. And Sheppard is a major part of the city's Avenues plan. Jane, Finch and Islington are not.

What the City of Toronto is doing with LRT is idiotic. Don't think I want other cities doing the same. Again, too much focus on image. Building LRT just for the sake of having LRT. No regard for how the LRTs fit into the larger network, or into the city's Avenues plan. It's the opposite of what made the TTC a success in the first place.

So yeah basically I agree with everything you said.
I agree. On the one hand, it's great Eglinton is finally getting rail, as it's long overdue, but it's been done so half-assed. Eglinton is such a major east-west corridor that it really should be subway, but the City cheaped out, obviously. Is there even a possibility of upgrading it in the future?
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  #85  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2017, 1:37 AM
lrt's friend lrt's friend is offline
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I agree. On the one hand, it's great Eglinton is finally getting rail, as it's long overdue, but it's been done so half-assed. Eglinton is such a major east-west corridor that it really should be subway, but the City cheaped out, obviously. Is there even a possibility of upgrading it in the future?
Isn't this the most expensive transit project in Toronto history?

The problem is that making it a full subway would have driven the price up to dizzying levels and extended out completion by years. And that doesn't even consider where all the extra money was going to come from. The parts of the Eglinton Crosstown that are at street level is post war suburban, is it not?

If the more critical Downtown Relief Line is ever going to get built, we cannot be spending billions on suburban subways.

Make a choice. You cannot have everything.
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  #86  
Old Posted Aug 28, 2017, 8:51 PM
ssiguy ssiguy is offline
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Toronto is finally catching up on transit expansion after decades of stagnation. It would be very unfair however to give the credit to the city of Toronto itself. Toronto has contributed NOTHING for the Eglinton Crosstown or RER as the province is picking up 100% of the cost of construction, vehicles, and maintenance/garages. It's easy to build something when someone else is paying for it.

Toronto refuses to tax itself enough to pay for the transit it needs. Eglinton could easily be grade separated it Toronto was to contribute funding but it flat out refuses to. Toronto is only contributing one-third of the cost of the soon to open Spadina subway extension which is probably why it's late nd over budget.

Thank goodness it's the province building all these projects because if it even gave Toronto all the money to do it, construction would have hardly started and it would come in very late and most assuredly grotesquly over budget.
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  #87  
Old Posted Aug 31, 2017, 5:37 PM
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Originally Posted by lrt's friend View Post
Isn't this the most expensive transit project in Toronto history?

The problem is that making it a full subway would have driven the price up to dizzying levels and extended out completion by years. And that doesn't even consider where all the extra money was going to come from. The parts of the Eglinton Crosstown that are at street level is post war suburban, is it not?

If the more critical Downtown Relief Line is ever going to get built, we cannot be spending billions on suburban subways.

Make a choice. You cannot have everything.
Building light rail with a mandatory 10km underground section and having to build tunnels with enough room for overhead wires is not saving money.

No one said we should build subway all along Eglinton East anyways. Eglinton West has much higher ridership than Eglinton East, has the Richview Corridor for easy grade separation, and would connect to the airport and the Mississauga Transitway (also grade separated).

If they extend this LRT to the airport, it will be 30 km long, with just 9 km on street.

If choice is based solely on price, just build BRT. Or the the choice can instead be based on what actually what best fits the corridor and takes advantage of the opportunities it offers, and LRT doesn't do that.
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