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Dilla said:
and then, in the same, silly breath, complain about how unfriendly to cars downtown is. You poor thing.
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Who's complaining? Last Sunday I took my family of four to the museum. We drove our car to the Green-P parking across from the Museum on Bedford, stayed five hours at the museum and it cost us $5 for parking. Had we taken the TTC from our house in Cabbagetown it would have taken at least twice as long to get there, and it would have cost nearly double for a $9 TTC family day pass. Had we gone on Saturday, the max parking rate at the same lot is $12, again only $3 more than the TTC day pass. And if the day pass isn't sold at my local convenience store, the cash fare would exceed the parking rate.

And for my motorcycle, downtown is the tops. I can park in any metered spot for nothing. If there isn't a posted time limit, I can park there all day.

With wide avenues like University, Lakeshore, etc. this city is made for the car. I'm not complaining at all.
 
It seems like every debate about bicycle lanes, highways or 'transit friendly access' degenerates into an 'us' versus 'them' argument. It need not be like that.
People live downtown for a lot of reasons, although I would hardly call the Smart Center on St. Clair 'downtown.' I live downtown because I am gay. Frankly, if I had a choice, I would probably prefer a medium sized city, but my partner is more enamored with big city life than I am. I don't like what is happening to this downtown by a long shot.
The suburbs (IMO) are the worst of both worlds. Give me Caledon East over Scarborough any day. By living downtown, I can stagger home at 4 in the morning, if I so choose, or drive to Ikea for a quick browse on a rainy Sunday.
As has been said here, SmartCenters are a work in progress, like all urban environs. Being a business, they will cater to pedestrian traffic if the business model is there. If it is not, then they won't. We can social engineer all we want, but it seems that on forums like UT the mantra is about 'people friendly' cities at the expense of people who drive.
There is no reason why both cannot co-exist. After all, people drive cars.
 
TKTKTK said:
A couple things:

1) You're using a pretty old format Smart Centre, in a run-down neighbourhood, as an example of what they're capable of.
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They have a brand-new Smart Centre on the north side of Eglinton, east of Victoria Park ... somewhere. It's horrific. Everything is miles from the street. But what is really bizarre, is it's actually difficult to walk from one building to the next. I'm not sure I'd want the people behind this anywhere near a development near me.

annoyedcanadian said:
As a Leslieville resident, I for one would look forward to the opportunity to have a wider variety of retail shopping that didn't require me to head up to Eglinton Ave. or accross the Gardiner to the Sherway area.
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I'm further east than you, and there's little that I can't find near Yonge and Dundas. I'll resort to the big box places in suburbia if I'm driving near them anyway - or occasionally if there's something very specific ... or to use up all the store credit I have at Baby's R'Us. But I have little desire to drive frequently out there.
 
Currently, the big store designers have an American auto oriented education and livelihood behind them. They grew up in suburbia and grew up thinking the auto was king. If they had an European pedestrian education and livelihood, they would present a better design than what they are proposing today. We have to keep drumming in to those designers that we want the pedestrian to be first, not the auto.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Currently, the big store designers have an American auto oriented education and livelihood behind them. They grew up in suburbia and grew up thinking the auto was king. If they had an European pedestrian education and livelihood, they would present a better design than what they are proposing today. We have to keep drumming in to those designers that we want the pedestrian to be first, not the auto.
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Good luck with that. This is not Europe.
 
Dilla said:
and then, in the same, silly breath, complain about how unfriendly to cars downtown is. You poor thing.
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Did I? I'm not sure I've ever said that. Don't feel too bad though, I've got a nice car — I enjoy any extra time in it :)
 
Dichotomy said:
I live downtown because I am gay. Frankly, if I had a choice, I would probably prefer a medium sized city, but my partner is more enamored with big city life than I am.
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Sounds almost like a Green Acres-in-reverse situation.

And in an age where queers are supposedly colonizing and gentrifying places like Prince Edward County and Warkworth and whatnot, orientation as something anchoring you to the city out of necessity seems increasingly yesteryearish...
 
I did my time in the boonies: Collingwood for 11 years. Nice place to visit - well, at least it was up until a few years ago before all the waterfront was bought up and (surprise!) condos put on it, and the base of the mountain was bought up and condos put on it, and...well, you get the picture.:)
 
W. K. Lis said:
Automobiles = pollution = fat
Pedestrian = exercise = healthy
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Universal proclamations = incorrect

Automobiles don't have to pollute. If the effort to get rid of cars was put into ensuring that cars were clean, you'd have seen appropriate progress years ago.


I've seen many fat pedestrians, so there must be a little more to being healthy than that - not to mention that I'm a very un-fat automobile user :)
 
W. K. Lis said:
Automobiles = pollution = fat
Pedestrian = exercise = healthy

Read this excerpt from the Saturday Sun: Transit is No. 1 with Toronto.
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I read that article, too. Funny that: city hall is trying to social engineer the city out of the automobile. If given a choice, I wonder how many people would choose Tiny Tin Can over their car? Why don't we put THAT to a referendum?

But if everyone abandoned their cars, where would the city get the money to build those lovely parks by the bay? Millions in parking tickets, millions in parking fees, millions in speeding tickets - how to replace that money?

Because even if the automobile vanished from Toronto tomorrow, its not like the roads can be dug up and replaced with tomato gardens. How else are we going to get goods hauled into the city? Are they going to be trucked in by TTC, too? Tell that to the Teamsters. :)
 
Godwin'd. . .


with less auto use, those parking lots could be sold and developed for million and the money used to pay for the parks...
 
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