SJD_Toronto
Active Member
Bingo. You nailed it.
- Thread starter JasonParis
- Start date
Voltz
Senior Member
The DRL should have been prioritized over the Spadina extension, not suburban LRT's
And what is with this ongoing bashing of David Miller as some anti-transit zealot?
And what is with this ongoing bashing of David Miller as some anti-transit zealot?
kev1n1m
New Member
Read his Twitter and you'll understand. He's advocating for cancelling the Ontario Line because there is enough capacity on downtown streetcars. It's asinine.
There's a progressive toxicity that permeates thoughts like this that a project not blessed by progressives is bad at any cost. The Ontario Line is a great example, with the routing, technology, trees, etc.
robmausser
Senior Member
Hes doing it to himself. Read his tweets.
robmausser
Senior Member
Fixed it for you, with his true intentions, not what he is typing on twitter.
ARG1
Senior Member
The only reason he's seen today as even remotely pro-transit is because of political circumstances surrounding Toronto when he left, especially Rob Ford's cancellation of Transit City. A lot of people are now looking back at this era with 20/20 hindsight, alongside his incoherent rants on twitter, to realize he was only really "pro-transit" on the grounds that he and his plans were better than the status quo of "do nothing at all". In reality he's a an old timey NDP who was more interested in restricting the growth of Downtown Toronto - to try to keep its small town feel, and to instead push for more decentralized growth in the suburbs. Transit City was simply a means to this end goal, using it as a development to push for suburban growth, rather than to build a proper transit network that would serve the city for the next century. This can be shown not just by looking at his actions historically, namely his inaction on vital projects like the DRL, but also by the things he tweets out today, where (and he genuinely said this) a Lawrence LRT is somehow more important and should be a higher priority than the section of the Ontario Line west of Queen. If that doesn't demonstrate where his priorities lie, I don't know what would.
Fact of the matter is, the current transit plans we have in Toronto's pipeline are far better than what we had during the Transit City era, and while there are many design decisions that are absolutely worth criticizing (EW and SSE being mostly/entirely buried, Downtown OL stations being so deep), his criticisms can instead be boiled down to nonsense like "The Ontario Line is unnecessary because the Queen Streetcar exists" and "The Ontario Line north of Danforth should be an Eglinton Style LRT", and complaining about how UTSC doesn't have Rapid Transit access because I can only assume that he's not aware that projects like EELRT and DSBRT are happening.
T3G
Senior Member
The Ontario Line is obviously a necessity, but in the big picture, it's hard to think of someone not wanting density concentrated downtown to be any sort of problem.
Toronto wants so badly to be Manhattan, but we don't have the transit system required to support that level of density. We won't for decades even if everything that is planned dropped from the sky fully built right this second. And the focus on downtown-centric planning means that everyone with the misfortune of living anywhere in the GTA but there suffers; if there existed actual, real city centres in the suburbs (not pastiches of same like you see at Mississauga City Centre or Scarborough Town Centre), the quality of life would improve dramatically. Focusing all our economic and cultural centers in downtown Toronto is just bad planning, pure and simple.
The Ontario Line is important, but at the end of the day, one rinky dink light metro is not going to improve commuting for anyone but those coming from the eastern inner city. Unless we had an equivalent to New York's Dual Contracts, it would be wise to start thinking of downtown Toronto as a depleted resource and to start creating other places in the GTA worth living and working in. And even if we significantly expanded our metro network, it still wouldn't solve the issue of absurdly long commute times for people from elsewhere. If you have to commute 1.5-2 hours to get to your job in the name of some misguided notion of urbanism, the city has failed.
Jaye101
Active Member
ARG1
Senior Member
Voltz
Senior Member
He has talked about the section west of University, the DRL proposal didn't cross under the station. I'm not fully agreeing with all of his comments, he got more transit started that will actually get built or has been built, despite the efforts of others, some that we are now praising.
APTA-2048
Senior Member
Then can we all stop trying and stop posting every little thing he says about the project in this thread now?
I dunno about everyone else, but I'm more interested in things like construction updates, plan updates, renders, vehicle news, contract awards, etc.
Clicking this thread only to find screenshots of Tweets from someone who has zero say or impact on this project is getting annoying.
T3G
Senior Member
GO Expansion is a band aid on a wound... if one has to travel upwards of an hour, what difference does it make to them if their local line runs every 10 minutes or every hour? They're still pissing away an immense amount of their time, because some enlightened planners decided downtown Toronto is the only place that deserves to have employment, services, arts or culture.
No, de-densifying downtown and trying to correct the mistakes of the last 50 years in the suburbs (a big ask, but it's the only way we can possibly make the GTA a livable place) is the only logical way forward.
No, de-densifying downtown and trying to correct the mistakes of the last 50 years in the suburbs (a big ask, but it's the only way we can possibly make the GTA a livable place) is the only logical way forward.
Jaye101
Active Member
Ah, this makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
nfitz
Superstar
You asked which plan. I simply pointed to the plan.
Indeed ... that would be "cover and cut"!