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I hope people got down to Dundas Sq On Friday to see Bombardier LRT mockup. No different than what I saw up in Ottawa or in Toronto last year.

Since Bombardier was a major sponsor of Car Free Day, they were keeping a low profile.

New banners were up with TTC front and centre. Should have taken a picture of them.

When I saw the picture above the ALRV, it looked like the picture was shot in Toronto using Bombardier FLEXITY Outlook, but it was in Eskisekir Turkey on closer look.

No handout on the LRT.

A conversation caught my ear where it was stated that if Bombardier gets TTC order, the LRT’s will be built in Quebec since they have finished NYC order They also have a plant in NY that needs work also.

So much for BUY Ontario, Buy Canada now.

It only took 24 months to get the Eskisekir system up and running. Not bad considering they had nothing in place at the time. It will be interesting to see if Mississauga gets their system up and running in the same time frame that will only have one line and is about the same length.

www.skyscrapercity.com/sh...p?t=211314

www.lightrailnow.org/fact...turkey.htm
 
Mississauga and Brampton to Partner on LRT

It's official, its going to be LRT not BRT along Hurontario.

Louroz

Cities to partner on light rail transit

By: Joe Chin

October 2, 2007 - Mississauga and Brampton appear set to collaborate in building a light rail train line along on Hurontario St., from Port Credit to Brampton.

The first step is to commission a feasibility study that Mississauga planning staff wants the City of Brampton to jointly fund.

Mississauga has already received $2.2 million from the Province to undertake an environmental assessment, with the City chipping in another $2.2 million.

As far back as 1996, Mississauga planners have envisioned Hurontario St., from Port Credit to the north municipal boundary, as a major transit corridor. The corridor carries the highest ridership of any Mississauga Transit route, approaching 25,000 riders each day. Mississauga Transit's busiest route is the one that runs from the GO Station in Port Credit to Shopper’s World in Brampton.

According to Martin Powell, Mississauga’s Commissioner of Transportation and Works, the City was poised to go it alone.

But then the Province announced its comprehensive $17.5 billion transit funding program, which, among its 52 initiatives, called for a LRT line from Lakeshore Rd. in Mississauga to Queen’s St. in Brampton.

“As the corridor has inter-municipal implications, it would be advantageous to demonstrate co-operation and collaboration on the study to facilitate the ultimate implementation process with the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority (GTTA),†said Powell.

Brampton has expressed a desire for improved service integration on the Hurontario corridor between Brampton and Mississauga City Centre, he added.

Because we are further along, Mississauga will administer the study, which should be completed by the end of the year. Brampton will be billed for its share of the study.

Meanwhile a team comprised of staff from both cities will be established to begin work on the project by the end of the year.

Adding urgency to building the LRT is the 2006 provincial Places To Grow plan, which identifies both Mississauga’s and Brampton’s city centres as areas for intensification. As such, they’re required achieve a density of 200 people plus jobs per hectare, which requires the building of so-called higher order transit.

jchin@mississauga.net
 
Applause for both municipalities.

It takes forward-looking officials to see beyond their own city limits. It takes forward looking councillors to see beyond his/her own ward limits. The province is inept at leading inter-jurisdictional initiatives so this represents real innovation and leadership on the part of both cities.

And given that both MCC and Brampton Centre are designated intensification areas, the Hurontario line will act as a hub-and-node like system connecting several trip-generating, mutli-use desintations. The LRT has the potential to link many residential, institutional, retail and employment uses along a sinlge spine across several zones. And if they really align this move with a committment to transit-oriented development then it sounds like the makings of a success to me.
 
An aside:

Adding urgency to building the LRT is the 2006 provincial Places To Grow plan, which identifies both Mississauga’s and Brampton’s city centres as areas for intensification. As such, they’re required achieve a density of 200 people plus jobs per hectare
Click to expand...

What does 200 people plus jobs per hectare really mean according to the Places to Grow plan? 200 people/hectare is the same as 20,000 people/km^2 which is a number that is matched by only a handful of neighbourhoods in all of Canada, such as West End Vancouver, St. Jamestown and parts of St. Lawrence, if even. That's roughly the same population density as inner Paris.

If Mississauga were to even strive for this overly ambitious number, it would have to start from scratch, because nothing built or planned comes close to achieving this level of density.
 
Mississauga Urban Growth

If Mississauga were to even strive for this overly ambitious number, it would have to start from scratch, because nothing built or planned comes close to achieving this level of density.
Click to expand...

HD:

May I refer you to two links:

The first presents amd confirms the business case that Misssissauga and Hurontario Street is ready and can support rapid transit because the land use and trip generators are present there today.

http://www5.mississauga.ca/corpsvcs/communic/html/movingforward/mary_raulerson.pdf

The second speaks about the newly declared Urban Growth Centre (Hurontario Street - City Centre) to guide future land use development and density outside of that urban core.

http://www.mississauga.ca/file/COM/Proposed_Height_Limitations_Corp_Report.pdf

Louroz
 
I don't doubt that Mississauga could support higher order transit, just that the 200 residents/ha. figure (plus jobs) is not in line with what Mississauga is currently planning or building. The second report you refer me to lists a ceiling of 138 units/residential hectare on a selected number of properties.
 
Hipster Duck said:
I don't doubt that Mississauga could support higher order transit, just that the 200 residents/ha. figure (plus jobs) is not in line with what Mississauga is currently planning or building. The second report you refer me to lists a ceiling of 138 units/residential hectare on a selected number of properties.
Click to expand...

Hipster Duck (love the name btw), I've got to disagree. I think Mississauga can and will have enough of a transit-supportive density in nodes along this line. However, the real question is whether citizens in Mississauga and Brampton will have a transit-supportive attitude or if residents/workers will change their behaviour to support such a corridor. Skepticism should be focused on the second point.

Still, I do believe in the field-of-dreams argument that if you build it they will come. If LRT is built to link this area the density and mixed uses will follow (with the appropriate level of planning and TOD principles). One only needs to look at the successes and failures of other lines in Toronto (read: Sheppard), Vancouver and transit-oriented development LRT corridors in California.
 
That's based on your own personal opinion.

The facts and what is actually taking place on the ground speaks otherwise and is already proving you wrong.

The purpose of the 2nd link was to highlight the included appendix which outlined the map of the new urban growth centre. The selected high density outlined in the report is also important to support transit outside the core.

Louroz
 
CSW and FM

Please read my posts. I said that I believe that Mississauga can support higher order transit. What I take issue with is that Mississauga and Brampton's intensification goals are 200 people plus jobs per hectare. As I said before, this number is both high (20,000 people/km2 is not much different from Manhattan's 25,000 people/km2 figure) and - furthermore- is not supported by the evidence you provide me in the Mississauga planning report which states that the maximum density allowed for only certain areas of the growth corridor is 138 units/residential hectare (not total hectares). Either the Ontario "Places to Grow" plan is misguided, or the writer of the article got his facts wrong.
 
Great news. Not sure if I like them partering though. I think I'd rather Mississauga just do it's own thing and go as far as it's own borders.
But I guess for the sake of public transit, it makes sense to go into Brampton.

Either way, I'm looking forward to taking the LRT to Port Credit!
I HOPE that this will not be similar to Spadina, or it will be usless, and we might as well just keep buses.
I'd prefer a monorail, but whatever, that's my opinion.
 
Hipster Duck said:
CSW and FM

Please read my posts. I said that I believe that Mississauga can support higher order transit. What I take issue with is that Mississauga and Brampton's intensification goals are 200 people plus jobs per hectare. As I said before, this number is both high (20,000 people/km2 is not much different from Manhattan's 25,000 people/km2 figure) and - furthermore- is not supported by the evidence you provide me in the Mississauga planning report which states that the maximum density allowed for only certain areas of the growth corridor is 138 units/residential hectare (not total hectares). Either the Ontario "Places to Grow" plan is misguided, or the writer of the article got his facts wrong.
Click to expand...

You're right, the density targets are high. And regardless if the article is wrong or not, Places to Grow is misguided (it has no teeth). But LRT requires a much smaller density threshold then 200ppl + jobs per hectare. For reference, the City of Calagary requires 6-8 dwelling units per acre or roughly 55 persons per hectare plus jobs. The Victoria Transport Policy Institute (vpti) uses a measure of 9 dwelling units per acre for LRT and 12 dwelling units per acre for Rapid Transit. By Places to Grow Standards, that is somewhere between 67 and 90 people plus jobs per hectare. And finally, Portland Oregon which is like the mecca of all things transit-oriented development established a guideline of between 12-18 dwelling units per acre in an urban setting. Since there are roughtly 2.5 acres in a hectare and an average of 2.98 persons/dwelling then that means Mississauga needs between 90 and 134 people plus jobs per hectare for only its urban areas. The rural/suburban sections require between 7-10 people/acre according to the same source (http://www.uoregon.edu/~cpw/project...erials/Transit Oriented Development_Brief.pdf).

That more than meets what Mississauga planners have come up with (138 people plus jobs per hectare). So yes, you were right when you said that the 200 people+jobs measure ment was bogus. But the point rests in Mississauga's general willingness to accept LRT and transform from a suburban commuter 'burb into a true urban centre. The Hurontario corridor is the most likely candidate for success in the entire Great Golden Horseshoe. (Highway 7 between Vaughan Corporate Centre to Markham is probably the second best given each city's drive towards TOD and the relative success of VIVA).

As for Mississauga's document about maximum height, I'm not sure that it is the proper reference for this discussion. For all of these references above, the density targets are to be between 600m and 1.5km of the station node. I believe (this is from memory) that The Growth Plan document uses 750m as the radius for a station. Also, what makes Places to Grow so inadequate is that it only requires 40% intensification within the built area for all new development. Well, Mississauga is growing inside the built-up boundary at a rate that far exceeds 40% intensification. But that is neither here nor there. By comparison, New Zealand has a similar set of policies that call for a 70% intensification threshold in its urban areas to combat sprawl and faciliate TOD.

*note, according to data obtained from the 2006 census, the average number of person per private dwelling in Mississauga amounts to 2.98 person per dwelling unit. This figure was used to approximate values.
 
The 200/hectare figure seems to only be applicable to a node of, essentially, a few hectares in size around [or, within walking distance of] stations (or something a bit larger when it comes to major nodes that theoretically "need" to be linked, i.e. the centres). 200 per hectare is a useless measure unless we know how many hectares are involved, thereby knowing the total number of people/trips. "Density" alone is not necessarily important to transit success, particularly if many riders get to something like a light rail line by way of a bus connection...in that case, the minimum density you may need is only that required to run a basic feeder bus network.
 
It's 200 people AND jobs per hectare. It isn't too difficult. According to the GTTA, the Mississauga City Centre Urban Growth Centre (which includes the entire Hurontario corridor between the QEW and Bristol, plus all of MCC) already had an approximate density of 100 people plus jobs per hectare as of 2001. The people plus jobs per hectare of the rest of the urban growth centres are as follows

Downtown Toronto 470
Yonge-Eglinton Centre 210
Downtown Hamilton 185
North York Centre 150
Etobicoke Centre 90
Scarborough Centre 90
Downtown Oshawa 75
Downtown Brampton 65
etc

http://www.gtta.com/en/news/Needs and Opportunities_2007-01-29.pdf
 
Those figures are a bit arbitrary since the areas convered by each centre varies substantially. The Yonge & Eglinton node covers about 4 blocks of towers, small enough that the Minto towers alone will markedly increase that 210 figure. Scarborough's area is, currently, at least 50% parking lots and flora. Mississauga's covers a huge swath of land that will takes decades to fill up. North York might have the easiest time of reaching the 400 target, especially if they're using just the zone zoned for redevelopment as the base for calculations.
 
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