Random city facts

[isaidso]

Here are a few random/obscure facts about Toronto.

- Maple Leaf Gardens hosted the NBA's 1st ever game in 1946
- home to the largest public library system in north America
- Highway 401 is the busiest in the word
- Hanlan's Point Stadium in Centre Island is where Babe Ruth made his first professional home run
- Raccoon population estimated at up to 200,000

[dubu]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

are you on acid?

i drank 12 beers and smoked weed, that usually doesnt go well mixed with forums. thanks for not banning me from the oldest forum on the internet. speaking of random city facts, we have a old cool city forum. wish there were more girls though.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Here are a few random/obscure facts about Toronto.

- Maple Leaf Gardens hosted the NBA's 1st ever game in 1946
- home to the largest public library system in north America
- Highway 401 is the busiest in the word
- Hanlan's Point Stadium in Centre Island is where Babe Ruth made his first professional home run
- Raccoon population estimated at up to 200,000

Highly debatable

[Kngkyle]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

wait, wat???? that is wild. thats true?

Yep, it was the pre-cursor to the city reversing the flow of the river. The city was lifted to build sewers and clean the streets, except the sewers flowed into the river which then polluted the drinking water. So then they reversed the flow of the river. Now the city is trying to clean up the river which requires more big engineering projects like this -

• Video Link


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

https://gizmodo.com/chicago-was-rais...bui-1646409024

[Yuri]

São Paulo

--- Even though it's one of the oldest cities in the American continent (found in 1554), it had only 30,000 inh. up to the first Brazilian Census in 1872. City started to grow with the great influx of European immigrants up to 1940 and from 1960's from people coming from the poor Northeast Brazil. It overcame Rio de Janeiro to become the largest city in Brazil only in the 1960's. Today it's one of the largest metro areas in the world.

--- São Paulo is a very cosmpolitan city and there are more Italians than any Italian city and more Lebanese than Beirut. It's also by far the largest Japanese diaspora in the world, with 400,000 or so. Domestically, there are also more Northeasterners here than in any Northeast Brazil metropolises.

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Highly debatable

Indeed. Marginal Tietê (São Paulo) probably carries more vehicles daily.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Highly debatable

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

São Paulo

Indeed. Marginal Tietê (São Paulo) probably carries more vehicles daily.

Your perception is that it surely couldn't be and have concluded that it therefore must be false. The data quite clearly shows that the 401 is the busiest. A quick Google search was all you needed to do. The 401 is pegged at 500,000+/day.

The 401



https://www.dangerousroads.org/ranki...-highways.html
https://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-b...ica-1559577839
http://livetrucking.com/this-north-a...-in-the-world/

[suburbanite]

Only one of those articles uses the busiest in the world claim, and provides zero data from other countries to do so.

[Yuri]

Marginal Tietê seems to be more carrying capacity and cuts through São Paulo area from east to west:


Brasil ao minuto



We are talking about a metro area with almost 11 million private cars, plus trucks from the entire country that crosses it as São Paulo Ring Road northern section is still not ready.

About numbers, well according to Google estimates for Marginal Tietê daily traffic ranges from 400,000 to 1,000,000. I find hard to believe Toronto east-west highway sees more traffic than São Paulo east-west highway.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

A highway in Toronto is not going to be busier than one in Sao Paulo or any other major city. Don't be ridiculous

[Innsertnamehere]

The 401 at it's busiest point, just west of the Highway 400 interchange, handles 458,000 vehicles daily during summer months (Source, page 1074). I'm sure the summer weekday number is well about 500,000, since the 458k number averages in weekends which have lighter traffic flows.

This is known to be busier than any highway in the US or Europe, and China doesn't really have any roads large enough (14+ lanes) that could handle that level of throughput, no matter how congested.

The only other real possible contestant to "beat" the 401 is the Marginal Tietê in Sao Paulo.. and while it may be busier, it has a 4 lane "collector" lane that has at grade intersections on it that technically disqualifies those lanes as freeway lanes, as well as any traffic on those lanes as "freeway" traffic. I would be surprised if the remaining lanes in the two "express" carriageways amounted to more traffic at any given point than the 401.

The 401 probably is the busiest freeway in the world, but mostly on a technicality.

[Yuri]

^^^
I don't think it's relevant if all the lanes are "freeway", free of grade intersections. The whole system is called Marginal Tietê and works together. Call it street, avenue, road, highway or freeway. It's just a name.

I have no doubt it carries considerably more cars than 401. There are almost three times more cars in São Paulo than in Toronto and both highways are pretty much the only meaningful east-west link in the two metro areas.

[toddguy]

Why are people arguing over who has the ugliest most traveled mega-freeway? Both of those things look awful...painful just to look at them and just imagining being in that traffic...?

On Topic: Columbus was once the "buggy capital of the world".

[lrt's friend]

Tom Cruise lived in Ottawa, Canada for 3 years during his childhood. Cruise was his middle name. His real surname is Mapother. His family fled back to the USA in darkness of night because his father was abusive.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Marginal Tietê seems to be more carrying capacity and cuts through São Paulo area from east to west:


Brasil ao minuto



We are talking about a metro area with almost 11 million private cars, plus trucks from the entire country that crosses it as São Paulo Ring Road northern section is still not ready.

About numbers, well according to Google estimates for Marginal Tietê daily traffic ranges from 400,000 to 1,000,000. I find hard to believe Toronto east-west highway sees more traffic than São Paulo east-west highway.

1.2 million per day.

https://m.folha.uol.com.br/banco-de-...-por-dia.shtml

[KevinFromTexas]

Robert Redford learned how to swim in Austin's Barton Springs Pool on visits to his grandparents. It's one of the reasons he became an environmentalist.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Kngkyle

Yep, it was the pre-cursor to the city reversing the flow of the river. The city was lifted to build sewers and clean the streets, except the sewers flowed into the river which then polluted the drinking water. So then they reversed the flow of the river. Now the city is trying to clean up the river which requires more big engineering projects like this -

• Video Link


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

https://gizmodo.com/chicago-was-rais...bui-1646409024

So glad the deep tunnel was in that video otherwise I would have had to do it.


Kudos to you.


Reversing the river or at least the Deep Tunnel [ TARP ] are unknown to most urbanites.

A quick video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSsrrKMwPzQ



Although St. Louis peps know about the reversal of the river....

• Video Link

Chicago was built on a swamp.

Actually DT Chicago flooded in the Great Chicago Flood. And it was not even due to rain but a break into the massive subterranean tunnels.

The way they fixed it was send the water to an even deeper tunnel the TARP or Deep Tunnel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood

Who many have heard about the Great Flood of Chicago of 1992?

• Video Link

[jtown,man]

I know this is SSP and all....


but those highways are sexy in all their massiveness.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

1.2 million per day.

https://m.folha.uol.com.br/banco-de-...-por-dia.shtml

That is across the entire highway by the looks of it, not a single point. Measuring by that metric would probably get I-95 as the busiest highway with the single most amount of daily trips made on it.

This has been debated several times in these boards, but as others have mentioned, it's a rather depressing metric.

The point is that Toronto has an extremely busy highway for a city of its size.

I always enjoyed the fact that Toronto was only ever meant to be the temporary capital of the province, with the intent to move it to London, at least during the late 18th century. Once it was established in Toronto, none of the governers wanted to move, so it stayed there to this day.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by isaidso

The 401

Even as an Angeleno, this visual is mind-boggling. We don't have any freeways that are anywhere near this wide in the Southland.

[urbanlife]

Portland is home to the smallest park in the world, the Mill Ends Park.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_Ends_Park