I lived next to a downtown hotel which had several Tour buses idling in its driveway most days. By far the worst noise is the diesel engine just idling. It goes on interminably and it gets under your skin. Closing the windows does nothing. The subsonic vibration travels through everything. You can't read quietly, you can't watch TV and you certainly can't sleep. You eventually go mad and run naked in the night screaming at anyone who will listen... Or move. I moved.
 
City living is not for everyone. and you dont know till you live in it what its like. (i supose) ive never understood though why the trains come directly into a city. rather then out side of it and using transit systems only to get around. For Toronto or vancouver theres no need to even have cars there. These cities really arnt that big to walk around. People are really becomming lazy. (Example... if they cant find a parking spot near an entrance no matter what its for, they say hell with it and drive back home. lol. At least they do out this end. and everywhere else I have been in Southern Ontario)
 
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ptbotrmpfn said:
ive never understood though why the trains come directly into a city. rather then out side of it and using transit systems only to get around.
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Simply because the rail system predates our current transit infrastructure.
 
Ottawa's train station is outside the core, and you use transit to get there. And everyone complains about that. No perfect solutions.
 
It's a nightmare in bad weather. I was in Ottawa earlier this week and it took 45 minutes to get to my hotel--and a heavy cab fare. I would have been better off taking the Transitway. Train stations should be downtown where people can easily get to things.
 
In even older cities like Paris and London the lines tend to be terminate outside the core in multiple stations (e.g. Gare du Nord). I suppose they were unwilling to plow through the core, or perhaps there was an element of competition. Once they developed subway technology you see things like the Metropolitan line in London, connecting the terminals (I suppose there is the Snow Hill tunnel, but they stopped using it for a while).

Ottawa is the worst. Great station building, but it's really frustrating to think that the old downtown station is still standing, with no way to reach it. The bus (and soon LRT) connection is not so bad, but a lot of trains arrive late at night, and it can be an uncomfortable 20 minute wait, outside, in -30.
 
In London the core does have stations present, though. Fenchurch Street, Cannon Street, and Liverpool Street are all within the boundaries of the City, and others like Charing Cross and London Bridge aren't that far away.

Agreed on Ottawa. It's a fantastic station, but compared to everywhere people want to go it's in nowhereland.
 
Bits and pieces:

Interesting article on the history of the mainline train stations in London here.

Essentially, Toronto was able to get a downtown train station easily because we had easy access along the lakefront to our rather young and not-so-built-up city.

Today our land is more valuable, and there's talk about covering over the tracks at Oxford Place, and even talk of the incredibly expensive option of moving the tracks underground at Union as we try to get a little space back (they're dreaming). Backstage is rising partly on land that used to house three stabling tracks beside Union Station.

In regards to the GO bus terminal at Union there have been some thoughts about bringing it all inside a larger complex, but there is no serious plan in the works for that at current, so it's staying. If bus and train sounds are a problem for people at Backstage and L Tower, the better have chosen suites on the higher floors.

42
 
Technically those three are terminals, and I think it's fair to say that they're on the edge of the City proper (although the scale is a bit different). For each of those you also have a Paddington, Euston, King's Cross, or Waterloo. What mainline station you end up at depends more on where you're coming from than where you're going.
 
gregv said:
Not sure if The Star is being dramatic as the photo in today's print edition looked like a bump not a crash.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...st_after_crane_smashes_into_condo_window.html
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... with picture in the print edition:

8434603093_278974577b_h.jpg


It might have been a bump only, but it did break a window it seems. Pictures from last night:

8434721128_4763fadee4_h.jpg


Zoomed in on SW corner of 10th floor:

8434638033_168185cbf6_c.jpg


What I am wondering about is why the boom wasn't raised or tied down so that it couldn't bump into the L Tower. Yesterday's wind gusts were very strong at times.
 
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At first I didn't realize that the image was warped because of the crease in the paper, and I thought the entire facade of the tower was dented.
 
Conrad Black said:
Crane from Backstage?
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Yes the very same. It wasn't fully rigged up at the time, and for some reason the boom was left in a horizontal position very close to L Tower facade for more than a week after the crane was assembled (see pictures on Backstage thread). Yesterday's storm then pushed the boom into the L Tower window wall on the 10th floor.
 
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