I would have to argue that the suburban avenues are not nearly as bad as you paint them to be. Consider an avenue such as Don Mills, north of the 401. It has comparable density to any of the downtown streets that you mentioned. Buses run literally ever 2-5 minutes all day long. Though the retail...

I always take the subway to work as the cost of commuting by Zipcar would be astronomical. It's only when I'm already at work that I use car sharing to go places. Neither the car sharing costs nor the metropass are taxable benefits as the former is a cost specifically associated with my job...

I don't think it's ghettoization at all, because 1) it is 100% voluntary, and 2) Toronto is welcoming, so an immigrant would not be subjected to the least bit of racism or discrimination had they moved to a 'white' area instead. Today at least (recognizing that Toronto was a different place 2...

I believe that Toronto is actually quite segregated, albeit voluntarily, non income based, and inclusive of a vast array of cultures. Much of Markham and Scarborough are over 75% Asian. Much of Brampton is predominantly south asian. 95% of Jewish people live within 3 km of Bathurst. Midtown is...

Many companies are changing with the times. I drive a ton for my job, but instead of owning a car have opted to use Zipcar to the tune of several thousand dollars per year in rentals (100% expensable).I have the option of using my transportation allowance for a metropass, and do just that. None...

Let's not cloud the real issue here. It's not the "public" aspect of public transit that bothers most people, it's the fact that unions are too powerful and too expensive. Most ironic of all is the fact that the only other transit system in the GTA operated by the ATU 113 union is the...

Just have to make better use of our existing roads: 1) Make downtown one large one way street zone where feasible, especially on north-south streets. 2) Coordinate signals to reduce the number of red lights encountered. 3) Continue to remove impediments to the street grid through projects...

I would agree with that. Better have something than nothing. As long underground TC routes that might conceivably be subway one day are built to accomodate subway trains, or at least equivalent lengthed LRT trains, fair enough. For the record, I'm a heavy user of the St. Clair line and admit...

What Transit City line boosts capacity into the core? If one were to draw a box bounded by about Jane, Pape, and Eglinton, only one Transit City line would penetrate the box, mostly using existing infrastructure in the downtown portion.

It takes a real smart cookie to waste $8 billion of funding from upper levels of government on streetcar lines. Even by the TTC's own bloated cost estimate, that's over 40 km of subway when municipal funding is added. You mark my word - Toronto will not receive another funding boost of this...

Centralization is not a post war phenomenon. It started with the inception of business districts in the 1800s, and hit its peak during the age of streetcar suburbs decades before the 1950s. Centralization does not at all mean segregated land uses, it just means keeping office type jobs in the...

As per previous years, I found the art itself to be lame and underwhelming. It's amazing what people will take pictures of these days. People watching was much more entertaining. The subway was mad busy at 3:30 am, and the station guard was letting everyone in for free. Some work trains drove by...

I have often thought that the biggest oversight in GTA planning was the concept that providing jobs in the suburbs will reduce commute times. With people going through so many job changes throughout their career, buying a home close to work is only good for your first job which might last 5...

Historically you are absolutely correct, but today that is no longer the case. The small size of many American transit systems is shocking - even large cities (except in the northeast) have transit systems that operate on a frequency and scale resembling Mississauga Transit or YRT. Downtown...

True in theory, but not in practice. Cars drive faster on College than they do on Richmond or Adelaide through the core, and yet College is the livelier street. It all comes down to built form. Stopped cars and delivery vehicles always shield pedestrians from the brunt of traffic, and this is...

I prefer street names to neighbourhood names. I'd have a much easier time associating with 'Finch Station on the Spadina line' than I would 'Chesswood Station' had they gone that route. I'm sure that we'd be better off having multiple stations with the same name, than if we go a route where...

They should have closed down the entire street from property line to property line, Avenue to Church, worked 24 hours per day, and finished the job in 2 months. One rudimentary lane might have been kept open for emergency vehicles only. But it does look great, wonderful improvement.

Bingo! To a pedestrian, land use and the manner in which buildings meet the street is far more important than what happens on the part of the road used by cars. Walk along Richmond west of Yonge, and it becomes quite clear that the street is dead because there's no way for a pedestrian to...

Like any mode of transit, streetcars offer the optimum level of service only for a specific capacity per kilometre. The problem is that streetcars can attract enough continued interest in an area that they eventually become overburdened and can no longer keep up with the demand. At that point...

Why does this argument keep coming up? There is no correlation between directionality of a street and pedestrian activity. New York is the only true pedestrian city in North America, yet it's got nothing but one way streets - many of them being 6-7 lanes wide. St. Catherine is Montreal's Yonge...