bobbob911
Active Member
I used to live at Broadview and Danforth for a number of years and I think the main reason they would want to keep that TDSB site is that the police use it so frequently to set up a speed trap ![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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[...]We are privatizing part of a ravine (the Playter Garden Station) [...]
- Will this impact future OMB hearings for other ravine construction? (e.g. a large house or private patio on the side of a ravine)
- How much will they be paying the city for rent?[...]
There were some very testy/vocal people, some were loudly arguing, but consisted of only 15% of the room.
Most were related to the parking, the toy factor, resistance to change, and Don Valley environment. What Tulse wrote.Did they bring up anything reasonable for objections?
Some questions I have...did they answer these at the meeting?
We are privatizing part of a ravine (the Playter Garden Station).
- What environmental studies will be done?
- Will this impact future OMB hearings for other ravine construction? (e.g. a large house or private patio on the side of a ravine)
- How much will they be paying the city for rent?
- what is the top of the building? Can it be a green roof that is at the same level as Playter Gardens (effectively making Playter Gardens bigger)?
- The building looks pretty big. What else is in this proposed site (other than a ticket window and the gondola)? Will the city restrict the usage?
General questions:
- do they have an agreement with the owner of the property in the Ravine? (City or Brickworks or another party?)
- if it does fail will there be a trust account set up to remove all infrastructure and revert to natural state? (instead of the city paying)
- Does the transit laws allow for a private transit company in Toronto? Does this require a provincial or municipal change in law?
A bigger gondola = also bigger stations on difficult geography = costs much more = may not be privately fundable = taxpayer rescue = white elephant.The gondolas are quite small.
I would not like to hang my bike outside, with the side bags tilted.
Too much trouble (and for just a single bike?).
Make it bigger so that many bikes can ride inside. If not, don't build it.
The gondolas are quite small.
I would not like to hang my bike outside, with the side bags tilted.
Too much trouble (and for just a single bike?).
Make it bigger so that many bikes can ride inside. If not, don't build it.
Still... I would fully and totally approve of my own taxpayer money for this, but I know many would not. Many even said TTC should operate it! They advertise this as a recreational attraction rather than transit, partially because of the TTC monopoly. That said, it also has transit advantages as well (e.g. dog walking in Don Valley by Riverdale residents, inexpensively park-and-ride at Brickworks to go to Danforth area, bringing bikes easily out of the valley, etc)After Bixi I think we all know that any talk of insulating the taxpayer is crap.
Still... I would fully and totally approve of my own taxpayer money for this, but I know many would not. Many even said TTC should operate it! They advertise this as a recreational attraction rather than transit, partially because of the TTC monopoly. That said, it also has transit advantages as well (e.g. dog walking in Don Valley by Riverdale residents, inexpensively park-and-ride at Brickworks to go to Danforth area, bringing bikes easily out of the valley, etc)
To me the public vs private source is moot as the Capex cost is only 10 dollars per annual ride (20M for 2.5 million passengers per year). Even if it falls short of traffic expectations by 80 percent, it should be able to at least break even according to my independent napkin math.
My research elsewhere shows gondola annual operating expense is typically only six figures for this format of gondola, which really helps convince me. I was encouraged very few modern urban gondolas fail (i.e. going bankrupt), and those that did, were much more white-elephanty types.
This is just a common modern accessible microcapsule with a good track record, similar to Mount Tremblant - they paid only 7 million for theirs fully enclosed capsules albeit with much simpler non-enclosed stations.
That's what they say at all public meetings. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can get a crowd riled up more than a suggestion at a public meeting that a nearby school board property might be sold. Loss of green space! Loss of public land! Condo towers! More traffic! They learned a long time ago that, unless there are actual plans, their public position has no room for speculation.
I suspect that TDSB has no concrete plans for this land at present.
I am sure they see it as an asset - it has a phenomenal location right on the subway, centrally located, with good DVP access (although the site itself has lousy ingress and egress). I've lived on the Danforth for almost 15 years, and for most of that time barely noticed the site. Only this past summer did I walk around it a bit, and posted some photos on the Urban Toronto thread for the site. Some really interesting architecture, albeit slowly rotting as the TDSB neglects it. But when they say its a long-term asset, they are probably also thinking of land value. If they didn't first have to offer it to other public sector bodies, and could auction it off to developers, it might be surplus already.
At some point, the Province may require TDSB to sell underutilized sites such as this. The final decision might not be the Board's.
ETA: But back to the topic of this thread, I don't think anything is going to happen with this site in the short-term, such that the gondola project might look to it for parking relief. And TDSB isn't going to entertain contractual parking arrangements which could adversely impact/complicate future plans for the lands.
You're welcome!Thx for all the updates, Jhon. I was going to go to the presentation but didn't because lazy. This was a great round-up, as was the front page article.