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syn said:
Agreed.

Let's not forget that Ford's problem with Transit City in 2010 wasn't that it was poor transit, but rather that it was part of the "War On The Car". His entire transit platform was about appealing to car culture.

For the past while our transit philosophy has been about projects that don't make things anymore difficult for drivers.
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The irony of that is that the on street Eglinton portion of the LRT widened the road so that no lanes were lost, and the Scarborough LRT was entirely grade separated.

The only issue I take with the at-grade portion of the Crosstown is that its not great rapid transit, it has nothing to do with its effect on cars.
 
robmausser said:
The irony of that is that the on street Eglinton portion of the LRT widened the road so that no lanes were lost, and the Scarborough LRT was entirely grade separated.

The only issue I take with the at-grade portion of the Crosstown is that its not great rapid transit, it has nothing to do with its effect on cars.
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Eglinton did have an additional bus/HOV peak hour/general off peak lane.
 
ARG1 said:
Those cities don't put cars on a pedestal? I'd like you to find a point in Amsterdam where you're not at least 5km away from a motorway. I'll wait.
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Maybe you should realize that Amsterdam's contiguous urban area is like 15km across, maybe 25km if you use the most extreme measurement possible.

Toronto's continuous urban area is at least 30 km across no matter how you measure, and the only reason some measurements are only 30km is because of the lake. Most measurements are in the ballpark of 50km, and if you measure Burlington to Oshawa that's 100km.

30km from Amsterdam gets you to Utrecht. 50 gets you to Rotterdam. 100km gets you to Belgium. Or Germany. That's how terrible Toronto's car-centric sprawl is. Now, I wonder, where is Amsterdam's car-centric urban sprawl?

Distance to a highway is a silly question. The question more worth asking is, what proportion of OD pairs within a city have no reasonable alternative to driving? Or, what is the car mode share in the city? (hint: Amsterdam's is only 27% auto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share)

Amsterdam has good road infrastructure, good transit infrastructure, good cycling infrastructure, and good pedestrian infrastructure. Toronto has decent road infrastructure and terrible everything else.
The reason they can afford stuff and we can't is because as soon as you put cars on the pedestal and create massive swaths of car-centric urban sprawl, suddenly you need more roads, more services, more bus routes, more of everything per capita and per taxpayer, and suddenly you can no longer afford anything.
 
And yet Amsterdam's average population density is almost identical to Toronto, if I'm understanding the numbers right.
 
sche said:
Maybe you should realize that Amsterdam's contiguous urban area is like 15km across, maybe 25km if you use the most extreme measurement possible.

Toronto's continuous urban area is at least 30 km across no matter how you measure, and the only reason some measurements are only 30km is because of the lake. Most measurements are in the ballpark of 50km, and if you measure Burlington to Oshawa that's 100km.

30km from Amsterdam gets you to Utrecht. 50 gets you to Rotterdam. 100km gets you to Belgium. Or Germany. That's how terrible Toronto's car-centric sprawl is. Now, I wonder, where is Amsterdam's car-centric urban sprawl?

Distance to a highway is a silly question. The question more worth asking is, what proportion of OD pairs within a city have no reasonable alternative to driving? Or, what is the car mode share in the city? (hint: Amsterdam's is only 27% auto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share)

Amsterdam has good road infrastructure, good transit infrastructure, good cycling infrastructure, and good pedestrian infrastructure. Toronto has decent road infrastructure and terrible everything else.
The reason they can afford stuff and we can't is because as soon as you put cars on the pedestal and create massive swaths of car-centric urban sprawl, suddenly you need more roads, more services, more bus routes, more of everything per capita and per taxpayer, and suddenly you can no longer afford anything.
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The point being though that the city is quite accessible by car, with there being a highway that connects the outer ring road directly into the CBD.
 
Undead said:
And yet Amsterdam's average population density is almost identical to Toronto, if I'm understanding the numbers right.
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What are you comparing to what?

If you compare the 6.6 million in the urban portion of the Randstadt, you get a density of 1,500/km². Compare to the 6.4 million in the GTA where you get a density of only 849/km².
 
Ample parking, multiple lanes, and lack of connections will be a challenge against transit for many years to come if not forever in Toronto. To compare it to Europe and cities like Amsterdam is ridiculous at best. Transit here only works if you live, work, and play near transit. If you do, good for you, but you are missing the other 1000km of Ontario :)
 
afransen said:
You mean the Randstadt vs GTA? They have lots of farmland between cities.
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from wiki

Capture.PNG
 
ARG1 said:
Except that's not how it works in Europe. You go to cities like Berlin, Tokyo, Madrid, and even Sydney , and they have extensive highway networks, even moreso than what we have here in Toronto. The reason why Transit has such a high marketshare then is because transit in these cities IS COMPETITIVE WITH THE CAR. I can take the U-Bahn in Berlin, and comfortably get from one side of the city to the next with barely any issues. Meanwhile in Toronto we're building subpar Light Rail lines that stop at every red light, and that ultimately don't show any advantage over the car. People don't take the car because they're stubborn, people take the car because most of the time its the best and most convenient option.
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Also It's because Toronto was built around the car. So it's always going to be the king of the road. We must remember that our government LOVES to drag their heels when it comes to building better/more transit in favor of cars. Because of this, Toronto is now playing a 30 year catch up game with the rest of the world, and it doesn't help that we lack transit options as well, resulting in the attractiveness to get a car in the first place and to get places faster while clogging up our highways in return.
 
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Don't forget that Amsterdam is much older than Toronto.

Amsterdam was incorporated as a city as early as 1300, which is over half a millennium before York was incorporated as Toronto in 1834.
 
Johnny Au said:
Don't forget that Amsterdam is much older than Toronto.

Amsterdam was incorporated as a city as early as 1300, which is over half a millennium before York was incorporated as Toronto in 1834.
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Age doesn't really affect the size of the city. HK is a newer than TO. Then there is many great ancient cities that became deserted. Dubai wasn't much beyond a tiny settlement till oil became important. A city could be receive a complete facelift in a matter of 20-30 years.
 
A nationalized subway policy can make constructing new subways very cheap like you can see in many countries in Europe - or in the poster child of national-scale efficiency China. Economies of scale at a national level would make creating new infrastructure very efficient. Tunnel boring machines/gantry cranes could be shared between cities/projects. Experienced workers would go on straight to the next construction site when they finish their current one instead of going to a condo site. And modular station designs can be reused to fit whatever locale the station sits in.
One can dream...
 
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