LAz
Active Member
Most of the world certainly doesn't. The two biggest English speaking cities in the world are New York and London. Neither uses "metro". Chicago doesn't call them metros. Vancouver doesn't call them Metros. Heck, it's hard to find an English-language city that uses Metro other than Washington D.C. It's not relevant what other languages call a subway ...
I am not even sure that vancouver's system is high capacity.
I don't see why you bother to look at the english world only. Look at the whole world in general. Most call the thing a metro. And that is how I will call it. I chose to do so on purpose.
Chicago calls its system the L train. Nobody calls it that. Vancouver calls its system the skytrain. Few systems call theirs that. They're Metro systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems - indeed, they are metro systems.
Baltimore, LA, Miami... you said washington. You forgot india. And then the rest of the world. tsk tsk tsk
Light rail is the next best course of action we have available since it would be more economical and can be built expeditiously.
I do not think that anyone is saying "lets build subways all at once".
Building subways continually - slowly but continually - is something that is feasible.
Stop the line at the busy hub of Sheppard and Vic Park? It's among the most developmentally neglected intersection of major roads in the City. If not, 'one or two stops' is a huge project.
Neglected you say? That's exactly what a Subway can remedy.
Don't forget, Eglinton LRT will be underground where it counts.
But to save 3 thousand dollars some folk want to make it a tram tunnel rather than a metro tunnel. *barf*
There is a certain logic in leaving things "half finished" because extending the subway to VicPark or Kennedy would...
There is a big difference between the two. If it is too much to go to Kennedy, then going to Victoria Park should be a minimum.
I walk the Don Mills to Consumers Road section of Sheppard every weekday, except for rain and bitter cold I take the bus, so it'd be hugely in my favour if they'd "just" extended the subway a few more kilometers. However, for everyone else that goes farther, 2km of LRT is better than 1km of subway
They want to go underground at consumers or somewhere around. So they want to pay big money for that... if they are going to pay that big money to dig, then they may as well extend the metro rather than tunneling a tram.
Nobody is talking about subways being bad or unwanted, only about being affordable and cost-effective.
I can not and will not buy this - because if cost was the concern then they would build BRT rather than LRT. Simple as that.
The extension to VP will be about 450 million dollars. If they can find 20 billion for trams, then no way in hell can you expect me to believe that they can not find some for that extension.
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You can't replace the car on trips from one suburb to another with a subway.
I do not want a subway between vaughan and richmond hill. There is no big plan for suburban subways. Sheppard is in Toronto.
One environment is built for drivers and the other is almost un-drivable. A subway can't compete like that.
A subway can provide an alternative. Having one that is so small - like the current sheppard branch - is really not taking advantage of the corridor.
In the Stockholm example LRT was build and converted to subway.
Go read a thing or two about stockholm. They build a tram line that was mainly under-ground right when world war two started. Then after the war they turned it into a metro, and went about aggressive metro expansion. They built their lines out into sparsely populated places, and suffered big operational losses. They however integrated transit and growth, so the result was that their transportation system is one today where people drive cars far less than elsewhere.
The stockholm example is not one where one thinks of "oh, they converted one small tram tunnel into a metro". That is not what someone thinks of who looks into that system. What one gets out of looking into that is "they aggressively expanded the system, invested loads of money into it, and built it to places way before demand was there to be begin with". That is the stockholm example.
Sheppard is not in the "Manhattan" zone of Toronto.
And why must we built subways only to the mahattan areas? We have to provide alternatives to the car. We need fast cross-town routes.
It is my dream to see sheppard go from Jane to STC. Only that way can there be a viable alternative to taking the car.
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