Leo_Chan said:
Well then. Could you explain the location of one of the densest communities in the city is at? All I see are single detached houses, a Don Valley Parkway, some trails, a business park, and an Ontario Science Centre. Where's the density you're referring to?

I can see 3-5 possible station locations between Danforth and Eglinton. A 7 km 3 stop "extension" to the unbuilt line would make sense, but a 1 stop would too.

Yes, I know about the secondary plan for the Don Mills Eglinton area.
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I think what Tiger's referring to are the apartment building clusters at Cosburn, Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park. I'd also add in a stop at Mortimer for its proximity to Centennial College and feeder route bus.
 
Leo_Chan said:
Well then. Could you explain the location of one of the densest communities in the city is at? All I see are single detached houses, a Don Valley Parkway, some trails, a business park, and an Ontario Science Centre. Where's the density you're referring to?

I can see 3-5 possible station locations between Danforth and Eglinton. A 7 km 3 stop "extension" to the unbuilt line would make sense, but a 1 stop would too.

Yes, I know about the secondary plan for the Don Mills Eglinton area.
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Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park.
 
Leo_Chan said:
Well then. Could you explain the location of one of the densest communities in the city is at? All I see are single detached houses, a Don Valley Parkway, some trails, a business park, and an Ontario Science Centre. Where's the density you're referring to?

I can see 3-5 possible station locations between Danforth and Eglinton. A 7 km 3 stop "extension" to the unbuilt line would make sense, but a 1 stop would too.

Yes, I know about the secondary plan for the Don Mills Eglinton area.
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Thorncliffe Park, Flemingdon Park, Cosburn/Pape. That whole corridor is one of the densest residential corridors in the region. Those communities are far more dense than the Don Mills/Eglinton intersection.
torontoavgdensity4ro0-gif.37923
 
Sadly, population density has absolutely nothing to do with where Council decides to locate transit lines and stations.
 
ADRM said:
Agree with all of that, with a few caveats. On the road tolls, again, Tory was misleading folks by saying the revenues would be used "to build transit" because, in reality, the lion's share of that revenue was going to be dedicated to funding the reconstruction of the Gardiner East. Under his plan, no significant funding from road tolls was to be dedicated to the Relief Line, waterfront transit, Eglinton East, SmartTrack, or anything other than wastefully propping up an underused expressway.
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The tax may not have directly paid for the DRL or other transit projects (although I think a fraction of it was supposed to be earmarked for transit) but at least it freed up fiscal headroom for more spending on transit projects.

Since the city had decided its top priority was the Gardiner rebuild, it would be spending those billions no matter what. Having a revenue source means that there is general revenue freed up for other things.
ADRM said:
Not to get too off-topic (though, really, it's all topical because there's less than no money to advance the Relief Line further than the province's $150M we're currently churning through), but there are two important considerations with regard to municipal financial autonomy. First, and this has been covered well by the local non-Toronto Sun media, Tory has a multitude of fiscal levers available to him that he's not willing to pull for fear of his own electoral life.
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There were a lot of good things about the tolls though.
  • Tolls are progressive, since wealthier people are more likely to use them.
  • They're user-pay, so bus-riding apartment dwellers aren't paying for it through general revenue.
  • They're the first step for congestion pricing, which is the only thing that can actually reduce congestion.
  • You're finding revenue for transit by dis-incentivizing driving, which is much more effective than paying for it from general taxes (sticks and carrots are more effective than carrots at increasing transit mode share).
That being said, yes, a vehicle registration tax, which the city already has the power to collect, would have accomplished a lot of the same things but Tory lost surprisingly narrowly to Doug Ford, so he doesn't want to throw him that talking point...
 
aquateam said:
The tax may not have directly paid for the DRL or other transit projects (although I think a fraction of it was supposed to be earmarked for transit) but at least it freed up fiscal headroom for more spending on transit projects.

Since the city had decided its top priority was the Gardiner rebuild, it would be spending those billions no matter what. Having a revenue source means that there is general revenue freed up for other things.


There were a lot of good things about the tolls though.
  • Tolls are progressive, since wealthier people are more likely to use them.
  • They're user-pay, so bus-riding apartment dwellers aren't paying for it through general revenue.
  • They're the first step for congestion pricing, which is the only thing that can actually reduce congestion.
  • You're finding revenue for transit by dis-incentivizing driving, which is much more effective than paying for it from general taxes (sticks and carrots are more effective than carrots at increasing transit mode share).
That being said, yes, a vehicle registration tax, which the city already has the power to collect, would have accomplished a lot of the same things but Tory lost surprisingly narrowly to Doug Ford, so he doesn't want to throw him that talking point...
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I'm totally pro-tolls for all the reasons you correctly listed. It's just way too simplistic to believe Tory's talking points right now, i.e. "they rejected our tolls proposal > tolls were gonna be how we paid for all the transit we need > now we can't do that so they need to pay for all of it.
 
John Tory did not "abandon" SmartTrack; he is basically done with it. He secured some modest improvements to the rail service in the interests of Torontonians, now he can claim that his mission is accopmlished.

Thus, he turned his attention to the Relief line.

Regarding the Relief line stop spacing, there should be a balance between the cost and the service. We can't realistically expect stops every 500 m or 700 m to replace the surface transit entirely, but we shouldn't build an express line that does nothing except connecting the Pape station to downtown. A reasonable spacing would be every 1.5 - 2 km.
 
Rainforest said:
Regarding the Relief line stop spacing, there should be a balance between the cost and the service. We can't realistically expect stops every 500 m or 700 m to replace the surface transit entirely, but we shouldn't build an express line that does nothing except connecting the Pape station to downtown. A reasonable spacing would be every 1.5 - 2 km.
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i agree with your statement, but 1.5-2km is wayy too much i think around 1km is alright for the most part. realistically queen street and pape will still need some sort of infrequent local service
 
It's pretty hard to argue that we can't realistically expect 700 m station spacing when we're building exactly that on Eglinton at this very moment. The downtown portion of the relief line is exactly where that kind of station spacing is needed.
 
MisterF said:
It's pretty hard to argue that we can't realistically expect 700 m station spacing when we're building exactly that on Eglinton at this very moment. The downtown portion of the relief line is exactly where that kind of station spacing is needed.
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i kind of agree. but the argument against that idea is that ppl are supposed to want to use the relief line to save time, if u attempt to replace local service w the subway, u aren't really saving time. I think 700m is way too close for a subway but it shouldnt be too far either. u need to balance between serving the local community while also saving time for the riders coming from the east.
 
adrianaliu said:
i agree with your statement, but 1.5-2km is wayy too much i think around 1km is alright for the most part. realistically queen street and pape will still need some sort of infrequent local service
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1.5-2km apart belongs in deep suburbia, not the epicentre of the city.

Like I've said before, reasonable stop spacing would be: University, Yonge, Jarvis, Parliament, Sumach, Broadview, Carlaw for the west-east segment...

and: Gerrard, Danforth, Mortimer, Gamble, Overlea @Thorncliffe Pk E, Gateway N and Eglinton for the north-south segment.

That's 14 stations, including 4 interchanges, so really only 10 unique stations. With stop frequency like this no parallel bus or streetcar service would be required.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
To be fair, the system did brought about a much higher level of transit usage than peers in the US, and the problem with downtown transit wasn't acute at the time. If there is one issue, it is that they didn't (reasonably?) foresee the failure of the multi-centric plan and missed the boat on core intensification. The 90s recession and the mid 90s to early 2000s 905 commercial boom (and stagnation in the 416/core) didn't help making the case for downtown transit either. The problems with Yonge would have boiled over if not for these intervening circumstances and probably moved DRL earlier.

AoD
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While all of that is true, it has to be said that American cities are a pretty low bar for comparison. Look outside the US and you'll see lots of cities smaller than Toronto with more people riding the subways. Like Montreal for example. Or Prague.

TheTigerMaster said:
I'll believe it when I see it. We've seen GO Transit gutted once by the previous PC government. Fool me twice, shame on me. Patrick Brown says hi.
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By that logic we should never plan or build anything. The fact remains that the current plan is to turn the GO network into a second rapid transit system that would complement the subway. Besides, while I'm as nervous about what a Premier Brown would do as anyone, he hasn't released a transportation platform yet. There's a much stronger transit culture now than 20 years ago and a projected balanced budget this year. It will be a lot harder to justify gutting transit now than it was for Mike Harris.

adrianaliu said:
i kind of agree. but the argument against that idea is that ppl are supposed to want to use the relief line to save time, if u attempt to replace local service w the subway, u aren't really saving time. I think 700m is way too close for a subway but it shouldnt be too far either. u need to balance between serving the local community while also saving time for the riders coming from the east.
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You're mistaken. The relief line, even if more stations are added to the current plan, would still be faster than the equivalent ride on Lines 1 and 2. From Pape to Queen on existing lines is 10 stations. On the relief line there are 7. There's no scenario where the RL wouldn't be faster. Besides, new subway lines don't need to be faster than existing lines to provide relief. As long as the RL is around the same speed as the other lines it will do its job.
 
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