Mapleson
Active Member
Because it's downtown Toronto and not downtown Vaughn.And why does it fall on Toronto and the TTC to make downtown more accessible?
They are providing $8.2 billion for transit in Toronto, we chose 1 LRT subway instead of 3 surface LRTs. I'd have to dig through the numbers, but the TTC gets over $250 million in operating and capital funding from the province.What are the other municipalities in the GTA and the province doing to help with this issue?
Toronto's concern should (be) for it's residents not for someone in Vaughan to come into the city easier.
Toronto's concern for its residents also helps Vaughan residents. People that live in the former metro-Toronto still work downtown. When people can't get to work because there's congestion, work looks for somewhere less congested.
Transit City was underfunded as it was. 7 LRT lines got broken down into two phases and the count in phase one kept slipping until we had 3 left for mostly political reasons.Transit city provided a viable solution though it didn't go far enough without the DRL.
BC and Quebec are both much more liberal than Ontario atm. I doubt the Ontario Conservatives would bring in a car tax or raise the gas tax, which pushes us back to 2015. If traffic keeps getting worse, it might actually be an election issue.In Vancouver all the municipalities agreed to a 1 cent gas tax to fund transit. In Montreal they just added the same car registration we removed and on top of that the province adds another car registration fee for everyone in the province to fund transit. Would the other GTA communities or province do this?
Actually, by not wanting to 'make driving easier' means by de facto you are punishing drivers. By not optimizing our road space more people have to wait longer, regardless of the mix used to optimize the space.There seems to be a misunderstanding that I want to ‘punish’ drivers b/c I don’t believe in facilitating driving. NOT wanting to make driving easier does not mean wanting to punish drivers. No where in any of my posts will you find that. I simply want the ‘emphasis’ to be switched from a car-oriented focus to a ‘transit-oriented’ focus, both in terms of transportation AND land-use planning as the MAIN way to relieve congestion and facilitate mobility.
I’d give them alternative choices
It's the general assumption that there is supressed demand for our road space and combined with our growing population and economic prospertity we will not have less congestion, only a smaller increase in it. The GTA gains 100,000 people a year and there are 19-21 million annual overnight- or day-trips by Canadians to Toronto; that's 57,000 trips per day. That's as much visiting traffic as most Ontario cities generate locally.The discussion is in the context of Ford’s plan…which I think is placing the emphasis in the wrong place (i.e. making driving easier (which again let me reiterate does NOT automatically mean making it harder)). In fact, the byproduct of focusing on transit (instead of driving) is that driving would in fact become easier as fewer drivers mean less congestion. I also said that in one of my first posts on the subject. So how could I be punishing drivers when I support plans to build MORE transit which’ll mean more road capacity for those that continue to ‘have to’ drive?
That has been the shift we've seen under McGinty. We have Metrolinx to develop regional transit, billions of dollars for transit expansion, and the Places to Grow Act. Unfortunately, we've used our political window and now must wait (7 years on average) for the poltical winds to shift back from minimalist conservation to progressive expansion. Our personal opinions don't matter in the public perception of their "preferred" mode of transport. People take the car when they must, because it's easier. No matter how expansive the transit network and how close the headways, there will always be a sizable portion of journeys that it won't support. Grocery shopping is a prime example, where people find it easier to take a private vehicle once a week rather than walking daily. The popularity of Costco is another indicator that some portion of society still embraces the 1950 style of urban living. Just because we don't agree with them, doesn't make them wrong, but forcing our design opinions on them is saying their livestyle choice is no longer acceptable.I think the focus/emphasis/priority (whatever you want to call it) of any transportation strategy should be on transit, NOT on driving.
And that means giving everyone – including suburbanites – an ALTERNATIVE to the car, not make car driving the ‘preferred’ or ‘easiest’ option…THAT was the old 1950’s way of doing things and THAT’S what I’m against. I think we need to address the problems caused by sprawl with a NEW approach and a NEW focus.
VIA Rail was formed to preserve the unprofitable passenger rail service from CP and CN. Mulroney also privatized CP and Petro-Canada that used to bring in profits. Look at rural Britain for the consequences of full privatization of transit: overcompetition for trunk routes (as these passengers tend to transfer) and underservice of outlying areas. We are constrained by costs for the total network provided and unless we have full-cost recovery fares, every expansion means more public subsidy. When the municipal, provincial, and federal governments are all running deficits, you have to do the best with what you have and hope you don't get less next year.Full seats/routes DO subsidize empty routes. If you owned a private bus company, would you really run half-empty buses as often as full buses, especially if those half-empty ones had to travel further, thus consuming more fuel and labour costs, AND increase your operating/maintenance costs? I would hope you wouldn't for the sake of your business. It's the same reason why Mulroney discontinued unprofitable trunk lines with via rail many years ago, b/c the main rail corridors which ran closer to capacity subsidized those that did not. As he said, "Use it or lose it".
I work as a transportation engineer at a consulting firm. Ironically, most of my site visits for transit improvement projects require me to drive parallel to transit lines (for example, photographing road-rail intersections for future grade seperation). Speed, comfort, cost, and flexibility are the areas that transit has to outperform private transport. Your vision might happen in our lifetime (next 50 years), but it won't get done in the next two decades.Coruscanti Cognoscente, when you say that you're forced to drive and that you'd love to see the roads downtown improved too, would you not love to never have to worry about driving at all cause you could get anywhere in the region anytime? THAT'S my vision...and that vision will never happen if we don't change how we think about moving around...i.e. again...I know I'm a broken record, but it has to be TRANSIT focussed.