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  #61  
Old Posted Feb 3, 2012, 11:10 PM
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Originally Posted by telyou View Post
Why do suburbanites think their special and deserve such great mass transit?
Because the future of transit lies in the suburbs.

And just because there is grass on each side of the road, does not mean you can automatically fit in LRT tracks. Unless they are elevated, you would get into the issue of the trains having to go much too slow, because of issues with hitting people or cars who get onto the tracks somehow. Unless you want chain linked fences lining our main roads.
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  #62  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2012, 3:49 AM
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Mayor Rob Ford’s transit plan under fire


Feb 05 2012

By Tess Kalinowski

Read More: http://www.thestar.com/news/article/...lan-under-fire

Quote:
About 120 respected academics and civic leaders are urging Toronto city councillors to overturn Mayor Rob Ford’s transportation plans or risk crippling the city’s transit planning for the next century. Among those calling for an end to what they say is a “war on common sense,” are U of T Cities Centre Director Eric Miller; planning consultant and author Ken Greenberg; former Toronto chief planner Paul Bedford and former mayor David Crombie. Many of the players are the same city leaders who rallied last year against Councillor Doug Ford’s plan to put a Ferris wheel and shopping mall on the east waterfront.

- They now say the mayor’s determination to tunnel the east end of the Eglinton LRT is a waste of billions of dollars that will deprive tens of thousands of daily commuters in other areas of Toronto of rapid transit for years to come. “No private sector firm would be so wasteful in its use of company resources,” says the group’s letter, which also urges the city to restore plans for LRTs on Sheppard and Finch avenues. “Clearly we’re deeply concerned,” said Greenberg. The letter coincides with a plan by councillors to take the transit debate to a special meeting of council this week where Ford’s refusal to compromise on Eglinton could become the latest in a series of mayoral defeats.

- Sunday’s letter to council comes as a study from environmental think-tank Pembina Institute, also shows the previous Transit City light rail plan would be more effective in moving people and reducing pollution than either Ford’s underground plans for Eglinton and Sheppard or a compromise transit plan proposed earlier by TTC chair Karen Stintz. “Subways are not trophies but a tool to be used very judiciously,” warned Greenberg, who urged Torontonians to consider that leading cities around the world are building LRTs and bus rapid transit. “There’s no war on cars. What we are seeing is a war on common sense,” he said, citing a move by the mayor’s allies on the TTC board last week preventing the release of a report looking at the pros and cons of the mayor’s Eglinton plan.

- Those arguing for subways regardless of their potential ridership and cost, said Greenberg, are “people hanging on desperately to a mid-20th Century way of life where driving is the be all and end all.” What people want is good transit, with the reliability and frequencies of subways, said Miller. LRT can provide that on a separate right-of-way where it doesn’t compete with the traffic that hinders the downtown streetcars. “Burying the eastern portion of Eglinton is simply a waste of money,” he said. Putting the entire $8.4 billion that the province has committed to Toronto into Eglinton creates “one gold-plated line in one corner of the city,” said Miller. The alternative, a return to an earlier plan to run it underground only on the narrower, congested stretch of Eglinton, between about Black Creek and Laird, would save about $2 billion.

.....
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  #63  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2012, 6:12 PM
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Originally Posted by telyou View Post
Why do suburbanites think their special and deserve such great mass transit?
Well first of all, there's more of us than there are of you. Toronto's inner suburbs have a combined population of about 1.7 million people (includes York, Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York), which leaves about 800,000 people in the core (I consider East York part of the core. It was never a true suburb). So I would think that we deserve some suitable mass transit options as well, thank you very much.

Second of all, we have all been amalgamated into one giant, schizophrenic city with multiple needs and multiple personalities. So until we de-amalgamate and allow the municipalities to freely compete, we all have obligations to each other. Trust me, we're not extremely fond of paying to rebuild streetcar tracks or 120-year-old water pipes, but it can't be helped.


Quote:
Originally Posted by miketoronto View Post
The norm in suburban Toronto however, is 4 lane arterial roads, with left turning lanes in sections.

So the idea that us suburbanites live on these huge wide wides, is actually not very true.
Exactly. Anyone who generalizes Toronto's inner suburbs as a windswept land of 8-lane arterials with no sidewalks and no street frontage has obviously never spent much time there. Points of interest may be few and far between, but that's what bikes are for.

Now, places like Vaughan and Richmond Hill... that's a different story.
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  #64  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2012, 7:50 PM
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The Toronto region as a whole is 2.5x denser than the average North American city. Toronto and Greater Toronto's suburbs are in fact quite dense, but with some exceptions as Wharn stated.

This density warrants better transit, mostly along the lines of light rail. However, Toronto's communities continue to get denser, with large apartment blocks replacing homes.

With a little foresight, building subways/RT now will ensure there won't be as many transit deficiencies in the long term as Toronto continues to intensify.
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  #65  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2012, 7:55 PM
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Then don't buy a house at Islington and Steeles and expect to get home within 15 min. Have kids? Too bad. It is your choice to live like so many suburbanites say so make due. It can't that whay well you feel like it

-Signed a guy in Oakville.
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  #66  
Old Posted Feb 6, 2012, 7:57 PM
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Looks like TC will be back on wednesday.
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  #67  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2012, 12:54 AM
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-Signed a guy in Oakville.
...the land of the Range Rover.

Which of course would make you the authoritative source for transit policy in North York and Scarborough.
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  #68  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2012, 1:09 AM
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Union Station Revitalization


Pic by me from Sunday February 05, 2012.
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  #69  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2012, 1:35 AM
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Looks like TC will be back on wednesday.
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  #70  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2012, 8:54 PM
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Council is 25 votes strong. Too Bad.
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  #71  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2012, 8:58 PM
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Council is 25 votes strong. Too Bad.
So?
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  #72  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2012, 9:21 PM
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So?
Too Bad for Ford.
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  #73  
Old Posted Feb 7, 2012, 10:53 PM
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Originally Posted by dennis1 View Post
Then don't buy a house at Islington and Steeles and expect to get home within 15 min. Have kids? Too bad. It is your choice to live like so many suburbanites say so make due. It can't that whay well you feel like it

-Signed a guy in Oakville.
And that is why transit will fail, if we have people talking like this.

The alternative is people will just drive. Don't accommodate that guy on Islington, and you think he will care? No, he will just hop in a car.
And in a city the size of Toronto, having people living 15 KM from the city centre is not far out in the North American context.
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  #74  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2012, 12:42 AM
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Well according to Ford, his supporters, and Transit City haters TC will make commuting by car hell on earth thus forcing people onto transit. So would this not make people want to take transit? Anyway we shouldn't be funding an underground LRT out to Scarborough when we can fund multiple LRT routes across the entire city including Scarberia.
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  #75  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2012, 4:31 AM
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Well according to Ford, his supporters, and Transit City haters TC will make commuting by car hell on earth thus forcing people onto transit. So would this not make people want to take transit?
That's the wrong kind of attitude. You don't want to force people into transit by purposely making the car comparatively worse, you want to entice people to use transit by making it better in absolute terms. That way everyone wins; transit riders are better off, and people whose work patterns and time structure still warrant a car are also better off.

Toronto really should be copying the transport policies of cities like Madrid. Fantastic expressway system, fantastic subway system (almost 300 kilometres in a city with a metro area smaller than Toronto's), both of which work together to reduce congestion and move people around. Another thing to note about Madrid is that they have less than 30 kilometres of LRT, versus the proposed 120 kilometres that Miller was trying to shove down our throats. Transit City sought to reduce road capacity in favour of relatively slow surface transit, which is not the right way to go about this. Which is why I don't understand why we have the TTC planning this... let's just call in the Spaniards.
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  #76  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2012, 6:38 AM
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Originally Posted by Wharn View Post

I don't understand why we have the TTC planning this... let's just call in the Spaniards.
I agree. The Spanish Solution is a transit marvel. There should be an outsider conducting a project of this scope anyway.

Efficient roads and transit are a win for any city. Toronto fails in both categories.

I think the only way Toronto will try to get back on track is winning the Olympics and the massive transport funding associated with it... That is, if they ever host such games.
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  #77  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2012, 7:36 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wharn View Post
Toronto really should be copying the transport policies of cities like Madrid. Fantastic expressway system, fantastic subway system (almost 300 kilometres in a city with a metro area smaller than Toronto's), both of which work together to reduce congestion and move people around. Another thing to note about Madrid is that they have less than 30 kilometres of LRT, versus the proposed 120 kilometres that Miller was trying to shove down our throats. Transit City sought to reduce road capacity in favour of relatively slow surface transit, which is not the right way to go about this. Which is why I don't understand why we have the TTC planning this... let's just call in the Spaniards.
Fundamentally one of the problems is that the total number of dollars invested in transportation aren't matching the rapid population growth in the Toronto area. When a city is adding 100,000 people per year you can periodically build multi-billion-dollar subway lines but still gradually fall behind. The federal government and province need to step up to the plate because they collect most of the tax dollars.

Other Canadian cities operate at a smaller scale but many are in a similar position. Lots of time and money is being wasted on inefficient commuting but nothing seems to change. People scoff at supposedly expensive transit projects but will proceed to sit in traffic for hours upon hours, week after week.
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  #78  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2012, 8:32 AM
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Originally Posted by Wharn View Post

Toronto really should be copying the transport policies of cities like Madrid. Fantastic expressway system, fantastic subway system (almost 300 kilometres in a city with a metro area smaller than Toronto's), both of which work together to reduce congestion and move people around. Another thing to note about Madrid is that they have less than 30 kilometres of LRT, versus the proposed 120 kilometres that Miller was trying to shove down our throats. Transit City sought to reduce road capacity in favour of relatively slow surface transit, which is not the right way to go about this. Which is why I don't understand why we have the TTC planning this... let's just call in the Spaniards.
We'd all love to have Madrid's metro system. How is Spain's economy doing by the way? We can't build what we can't afford. they probably shouldn't have their transit system. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...tral-bank.html
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  #79  
Old Posted Feb 8, 2012, 11:21 PM
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We'd all love to have Madrid's metro system. How is Spain's economy doing by the way? We can't build what we can't afford. they probably shouldn't have their transit system. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...tral-bank.html
If a country with an economy as shitty as Spain's can do it, theoretically a country with one of the most solid economies in the world can also do it. Theoretically. It's just a matter of not having the grossly incompetent TTC handle this.

In other news, the Metrolinx chair seems to be offering tacit support for the Fordway plan: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02...t-plan-a-lift/

My favourite part is the bit where Bruce McCuaig (Bruce... must be an Australian, obviously sent here to destroy our perfect country ) cites a 25% reduction in travel time by going with the underground option.
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  #80  
Old Posted Feb 9, 2012, 1:17 AM
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Originally Posted by miketoronto View Post
And that is why transit will fail, if we have people talking like this.

The alternative is people will just drive. Don't accommodate that guy on Islington, and you think he will care? No, he will just hop in a car.
And in a city the size of Toronto, having people living 15 KM from the city centre is not far out in the North American context.
It got passed. Rob is mad but who cares!!
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