[Action Jackson]

Now, I imagine I may be about to get a load of crap here, but what the heck, I'm going for it in any case.

I've been a lurker here for some time, and I just took the time to register. Before I go on, I'll explain that I am a 25-year-old college student (business, marketing major) who lives in Oshawa, out in the sticks. That said, as my job and my social life sees me in the city at least twice a week and often more than that, I think this sticks dweller can comment on Toronto.

This election is an interesting one, but one which to me had shown that we have a division problem in Toronto, as it seems that the suburbs seem to be very unhappy over the Miller years in Toronto and want things changed, and the result of this has been intelligent, center-right candidates like John Tory, Sarah Thomson and Rocco Rossi being runover by the big-mouth fatass from Etobicoke. My reading here has figured that this forum rather dislikes Rob Ford, and I can sympathize - he's known more for Toronto Sun headlines and PR stunts than actual policy. This is idiotic, as far as I am concerned on the part of the suburban voters. But what I am seeing here is that people here are thinking that the status quo is the only option. That doesn't make sense either. The rise of Ford is because of Miller's excesses. Its only been fifteen years since Bob Rae was replaced by Mike Harris. Do people who voted then regret that now? Yep. So why are we hating on Ford? And beyond that, why does this gap between the suburbs and the city exist?

How about thinking for everyone?

I oppose Transit City for this season. What Toronto needs is not a vast system of light rail. It has its place and purpose, but on Eglinton what is needed is a subway. The city needs a downtown relief line. Fixing the Sheppard Subway is needed, too. But one of Ford's major appeals is that he wants to make life easier for drivers - though removing streetcars (and buying several hundred buses to fix the capacity loss) is idiotic. But did Miller and company ever even care about this? Nope. They acted as if increasing traffic congestion was the goal.

Can we not figure out a way of working on this problem? How about looking at how to expand capacity on the roads we've got and removing bottlenecks? Syncing traffic lights, more one-way streets, removing on-street parking in places, keeping bike paths off of the heaviest-traffic roads?

For transit, if subways are too expensive and LRT is too slow or too small, what about going up, using elevated rail or even monorails? And for routes that stay buses that are too crowded, what about going for double-decker buses?

The overall question is simple - if the city has been focusing only on the core for the past seven years, as many people clearly believe, why is it right to swing the pendulum back and let downtown areas rot? It shouldn't be, if you ask me.

Let's start thinking of everyone who lives in the city. Forget "sticking it" to anybody. Hate isn't healthy, or so I have been told.

 

[nfitz]

The overall question is simple - if the city has been focusing only on the core for the past seven years, as many people clearly believe

The biggest problem I have with Transit City is that it does NOTHING for the core. Smitherman's transit plan does nothing for the core. Pantalone's transit plan does nothing for the core. Ford's transit plan is a joke.

Yes, what is needed on Eglinton is a subway. The Transit City plan for Eglinton is LRT running in a 10-km subway tunnel, with 90-metre trains running every 3-4 minutes at the same speed as a regular subway line - and then running on into the suburbs on the surface. Both Pantalone and Smitherman support this; Ford wants to cancel this and instead run buses.

 

[Coltaine79]

Welcome to the forum. You have the right attitude, by not engaging in outright flaming and instead by trying to start a constructive, positive, discussion.
I don't think anyone is going to crap on you, since recently the forum has even been tolerating in-your-face actual trolls (probably Rob Ford shills) :/
... enjoy

 

[toto]

Transit City isn't about getting people downtown quickly. It's about building thriving, self sustaining neighbourhoods, where people can walk or take a short transit ride to do the things they need to do. It is about bringing the density and vitality of core streets like Queen, Bloor, Spadina, College and the many others, out into the suburbs. Building subways are great for moving people through neighbourhoods, not so good at building them. Especially where they have never existed. Ford's transit plan will insure the status quo for the burbs. Grid lock. Sidewalks void of pedestrians. Hundred hectare, big box retail parking lots. Although, with his plan, people living in Scarborough will be able to get downtown a few minutes faster.

 

[Coltaine79]

I tend to disagree... I don't think "thriving neighborhoods" can be forced into being built simply by stringing an LRT line through them.

Hypothetically speaking, if an LRT line could build a neighborhood, I don't see how it would be that much superior to a bus route (for example).

 

[Dandy Horse]

welcome aboard Action,

its really good that your thinking about these things. im also a partial- torontonian (lived there for three years before moving back to Newmarket four months ago, and am in the city four days a week for school and friends).

i do have 2 pieces of information that might help you understand why a lot of transit/ city aficionados agree with the transit city LRT plan.

1. The eglinton crosstown will be a subway if it gets built. By definition a subway is an underground electric railway. thats what the Eglinton will be from the Don Valley to Keele street. in either side of that it will run it it's own right of way, never in mixed traffic. The only difference between the Eglinton line and any other subway in Toronto will be that it will have the new vehicles, which are different than both the current streetcars and the current subways. if it's an electric train that runs underground, its a SUBWAY. ok

2. Previous to the extension of the University/ Spadina Line north, and the shepherd subway, Subways (such as Bloor street and Yonge) were only built in places where surface transit was already being used to capacity (think of those old pictures of Yonge with full streetcars going as far as you can see). In this way, the population was already down with transit, and they were proving it by riding it so much that the current system was actually unable to support the number of riders,

at which point,GET THIS:

the plan was to put the streetcars underground. It was not until half way through building the subway lines that the TTC decided to go with a larger car design (the original red rockets were still smaller than the silver ones we have today, which are smaller than the new subway trains we'll be getting soon).
These two streets, along with Queen, Dundas,college, ossington, church etc. were built around electric rail transit, and as a result are well connected, densely populated and diverse neighborhoods, where everyone can walk to get the things they need (a job, church, food, clothes, money, beer etc).
The key aspect of this is that the subway was put in after, but the streetcar is what really made the neighborhood what and where it is.

To use the streetcar suburb of Parkdale as an example, think of a place like Lansdowne and Queen. this place is relatively far from downtown, yet has a complete, relatively straight walking street with retail and residential uses that goes directly into downtown. This was not created under a pedestrian only based system, or a motor coach based one, It was built based on an electric rail system. The rails are why queen street is what it is today, the rails are why queen street is where it is, and isn't, say, two blocks north and all curly-cue like the newer motor-based suburban speedways. The rails are why all those people are there, its what their community is centered around, it is a lifeline, and it is a physical connection to downtown, the subway, union station and the rest of the country.

If the plan is to eventually have subways going everywhere in the city, or at least to have better public transit, changes need to be made to the inner suburbs. In places like the urban part of Eglinton, it is possible to build a subway, and thats what we're doing. In the more auto-centric places, where buildings do not come up to the sidewalk, and where the population is not centered on anything, let alone the central street axis (like on yonge, bloor, college ect), this must get started, an axis must be implemented.
that is where LRT comes in. however, unlike the original streetcars, the LRT cannot just go on the road, because there is already something using the road (cars), but, becasue the road is so wide, part of the road can be given to the LRT, especially in places where there is enough space to have 4 lanes of traffic plus 2 dedicated LRT lanes (which is the condition on the sprawly suburban arteries anyway, so the solution is easy to implement).

as for RT bus systems, yes they work, but they are by no means as good as electric rail transit. the motor -coaching of North American transit system was a calculated, deliberate act put forth by General motors and their fake company 'American City Lines', who at one time owned 90 American city transit systems, each one 'decideing' to take out it's trams and buy GM buses with tax dollars. just check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal . basically, buses suck, and they do so on purpose, so that people want to drive instead, which also makes people want to move to the suburbs, where driving is easier, which basically kills the inner city.
buses are also a bumpy, vibrating ride that both pollutes the earth and physically shakes the riders bodies. not good at all.

there's also a few studies that suggest the actual rails bring business (as they represent a permanent investment in the street, rather than a bus line that can fade away or simply stop coming). this has been part of the reason why LA has started putting its streetcars back in.

 

[Chuck]

Transit City isn't about getting people downtown quickly. It's about building thriving, self sustaining neighbourhoods, where people can walk or take a short transit ride to do the things they need to do. It is about bringing the density and vitality of core streets like Queen, Bloor, Spadina, College and the many others, out into the suburbs. Building subways are great for moving people through neighbourhoods, not so good at building them. Especially where they have never existed. Ford's transit plan will insure the status quo for the burbs. Grid lock. Sidewalks void of pedestrians. Hundred hectare, big box retail parking lots. Although, with his plan, people living in Scarborough will be able to get downtown a few minutes faster.

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 doesn't front the sidewalk, there are hundreds of stores scattered amongst many shopping plazas. Schools, high schools, libraries, malls, movies...all within walking distance or a short bus trip away. There are countless other examples of streets like this in the suburbs, and they sure didn't need LRT achieve this.

Transit wise, the best thing by far for Toronto would be to build a few key suburban subway lines sometimes originating downtown such that no one is ever more than a 10 minute ride to a subway station by surface transit. This would have a much greater positive impact than substituting a 45 minute bus ride with a 35 minute LRT ride, only to dump you on an existing overcrowded subway line with a further 25 minute ride downtown.

 

[Action Jackson]

Welcome to the forum. You have the right attitude, by not engaging in outright flaming and instead by trying to start a constructive, positive, discussion.
I don't think anyone is going to crap on you, since recently the forum has even been tolerating in-your-face actual trolls (probably Rob Ford shills) :/
... enjoy

I'm not gonna cause flamewars over Ford or his policies. What is the point? Ford IMO just represents anger. Misguided and potentially destructive anger, but causing more anger is attempting to make two wrongs equal a right. That makes no sense at all, does it?

@ toto: Yes, the Eglinton LRT is underground. For the cost of it, why not go the full distance, then, and move the trains up into elevated areas outside of the tunnels? The thing seems half-baked, and Transit City as a whole looks to be planned to handle what is there now. Why not go big? People say there isn't enough money, but considering the hoped-for two km a year of subway line costs $600 million (TTC's price estimates), my thought is that one could find a way to find $600M in savings in the operating budget (which has ballooned under Miller) and use that money to build the subway lines instead. I may be too simplistic on this, but I just think that Transit City is a bit a half-assed job. Considering the money on deck, why not go for the big stuff? And in a city with a $9.2 Billion operating budget, I would imagine it is possible to cut that by 6% and use that money to instead build the transit system Toronto really needs.

I have no issues with LRTs. As a life-long train nut, I rather like the things. But with Toronto's traffic problems as they are, the likelihood of two million new people in the GTA in 20 years and our own infrastructure issues, why are we using LRTs for trunk routes? Use the LRTs to feed into the subway lines. Chuck has the right idea IMO for this, despite the fact that I doubt one could build a subway system that would be able to make it possible to have the whole city within a 10 minute surface ride from the subway.

As far as buses go, they have their place, even in a major city. They could be more comfortable, yes - GO Transit buses got those used by the TTC or DRT covered by miles, and they work where the cost of building a new infrastructure makes no sense. Here in Oshawa, the Simcoe Street Corridor could probably use an LRT very well, though there probably isn't room to build it. There are many places in Toronto where Buses are the form of transit that makes the most sense.

And would finding ways of making it easier for drivers not make sense, too? This the whole thinking of everyone thing again. No matter how good transit is, some people just won't give up their cars, simple as that. So why not make sure they can move as easily as possible, too? I know this is gonna drive some people crazy, but I think Rossi's "Toronto Tunnel" idea merits consideration at least. I also think that one option here might be expanding the Gardiner by adding some underground lanes. One way roads should be obvious, and maybe Toronto could do as Los Angeles did with downtown roads with some intersections being elevated so that the roads pass under each other.

And the one single thing I can say good about Ford is that I do believe him when he makes his "stopping the gravy train" comments. I would hope that we all can see that fiscal responsibility is a good thing. But IMO cutting taxes shouldn't be priority one - fixing the problems in Toronto should be, no?

 

[Chuck]

10 minutes to a subway station isn't that hard to accomplish if you break it right down. Suppose a bus averages 12 km/hr in rush hour. In 10 minutes, it will travel 2 km, which is the distance between concession roads. Just by building a subway on Eglinton, most of the city south of Lawrence would be 2 km or less from a subway station. Add in the Sheppard subway, and those two lines raise the figure to 75% or more in the central part of the city. Add in the DRL with extensions north of Bloor on both ends, and you'll probably be 80% of the way there or more.

Can you imagine how much better this city would be if three quarters of the population only had to spend 10 minutes or less on a bus per trip? It would revolutionize transit in a way Transit City never could, even if Transit City were to include 3 times the length of track.

 

[ssiguy2]

Welcome aboard Action!
I agree with most of what you say but be warned..................you mentioned a taboo subject for the TTC, elevated transit. You even had the nerve to mention the dreaded "M" word.
"M" is considered a foul joke in Toronto and on UT. Didn't you know that Toronto is far to "world class" for that? I have been an advocate of "M" for a long time but am often laughed at even though it is faster, more comfortable, quieter, higher capacity, less disruptive, and easier to build than LRT and far cheaper and more urban friendly than elevated subway or SkyTrain.
Sao Paulo is beginning construction on it's new 100km, 40,000 pphpd "M" with our own Bomardier no less but that is irrelevant.
I think you will find UT quite interesting. As long as you don't mention the "M" word than you will get along just fine.

 

[Action Jackson]

Welcome aboard Action!
I agree with most of what you say but be warned..................you mentioned a taboo subject for the TTC, elevated transit. You even had the nerve to mention the dreaded "M" word.
"M" is considered a foul joke in Toronto and on UT. Didn't you know that Toronto is far to "world class" for that? I have been an advocate of "M" for a long time but am often laughed at even though it is faster, more comfortable, quieter, higher capacity, less disruptive, and easier to build than LRT and far cheaper and more urban friendly than elevated subway or SkyTrain.
Sao Paulo is beginning construction on it's new 100km, 40,000 pphpd "M" with our own Bomardier no less but that is irrelevant.
I think you will find UT quite interesting. As long as you don't mention the "M" word than you will get along just fine.

I would imagine that if monorails (Yeah, dammit, I said it! ) are looked down upon it would probably be because people think of them as suited for amusement parks and places with less well developed transport systems. Hell, I just also said that the Toronto Tunnel idea should be taken seriously - that ought to have anybody living on the west side of Downtown go postal on me. I just think that any transit and planning discussions should be focused on the goal of moving people around the city as easily, efficiently and comfortably as possible. Roads, expressways, subways, streetcars, light rail trains, full-on commuter trains, buses and bicycle routes all play parts in this. In transit discussions, that is where my comments would be aimed at.

 

[spider]

Transit City isn't about getting people downtown quickly. It's about building thriving, self sustaining neighbourhoods, where people can walk or take a short transit ride to do the things they need to do. It is about bringing the density and vitality of core streets like Queen, Bloor, Spadina, College and the many others, out into the suburbs. Building subways are great for moving people through neighbourhoods, not so good at building them. Especially where they have never existed. Ford's transit plan will insure the status quo for the burbs. Grid lock. Sidewalks void of pedestrians. Hundred hectare, big box retail parking lots. Although, with his plan, people living in Scarborough will be able to get downtown a few minutes faster.

Everyone here knows that "Transit City" means replacing Buses with Street cars. Suppose I just arrived in town from elsewhere and was told that "Transit City" meant replacing Street cars with Buses would the message above mean anything different to me? I live in the suburbs by choice because I do not consider the streets and neighbourhoods you quote to be a desirable place in which to live. You leave my suburbs alone and I will extend the same courtesy to you. Chacun a son gout.

 

[js97]

Transit City isn't about getting people downtown quickly. It's about building thriving, self sustaining neighbourhoods, where people can walk or take a short transit ride to do the things they need to do. It is about bringing the density and vitality of core streets like Queen, Bloor, Spadina, College and the many others, out into the suburbs. Building subways are great for moving people through neighbourhoods, not so good at building them. Especially where they have never existed. Ford's transit plan will insure the status quo for the burbs. Grid lock. Sidewalks void of pedestrians. Hundred hectare, big box retail parking lots. Although, with his plan, people living in Scarborough will be able to get downtown a few minutes faster.

nailed it on the head....Transit city is NOT about getting people into downtown quickly, it's an 'attempt' at social engineering neigbhourhoods.

Unfortunately, Miller forgot that most of the employment opportunities still reside in the financial institution.
Traffic is reasonable on saturdays and sundays, it's most congested during the weekday.

You really can't 'engineer' neighbourhoods like the Annex, Queen west, Danforth, leslieville, St Clair West, Eglinton West, Yonge & Finch, etc.

Those neighbourhoods where built on density, ethnic and cultural enclaves. They sprouted from innovation and consumer demand, not exactly big brother planning. (New donmills pedestrian mall isn't that popular now no?

I find only 'downtown' residents support 'LRTs' (euphanism for street cars). Go canvassing in the burbs, they all prefer subways.
Also, from a logistical standpoint, it's such a patchwork of 'non-connecting' routes, multiple transfers etc etc, that it's really not designed to 'move' people over extended distances.

You want thriving neighbourhoods across a city, take a look at NYC. They have a great subway system, but they also have 8 million people proper (compared to 2.5 here in Toronto)

Subways where expensive to built in 1950's, but they managed. They will have to fund the way.

 

[Tewder]

Building subways are great for moving people through neighbourhoods, not so good at building them.

Are you serious? Just what are you basing such a comment on? What major city with a major subway system has such underdeveloped neighbourhoods?

Building more streetcars would be a completely regressive strategy for development on a scale that is forecasted for Toronto over the next few decades. The city needs to plan for the future and not just for now which is why we are in this state of gridlock to start with. Getting started on a slow, steady and manageable plan is the best course of action, and we need to start now.

 

[Action Jackson]

Are you serious? Just what are you basing such a comment on? What major city with a major subway system has such underdeveloped neighbourhoods?

Building more streetcars would be a completely regressive strategy for development on a scale that is forecasted for Toronto over the next few decades. The city needs to plan for the future and not just for now which is why we are in this state of gridlock to start with. Getting started on a slow, steady and manageable plan is the best course of action, and we need to start now.

I agree fully. Transit City is too small of a plan IMO. They need to think big here.