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I thought their voices were heard and that's why they are getting a subway?

There is a very legitimate complain that whatever the city / province are going to build in Scarborough, takes way too much time. The subway option was on the books since 2013, with committed funding, and entirely under control of the City's transportation department till 2019. Nothing was produced except a pile of studies.

And the active consultations regarding the SRT replacement have been carried out since 2007/8; enough time to design and build any option, it could be running already if the city and the province got their acts together.

On top of that, there are multiple groups of riders whose interests don't always align. Hence even if there were no unreasonable delays, some of the groups would complain because they didn't get what works best for them.
 
There are no fix-all solutions for transit in Scarborough. Going all in on the LRT or all in on the subway in order to fix Scarborough's transit crisis will lead to equally bad outcomes. This one line/extension cannot do everything for everyone.

The LRT would've been much better at addressing local transport needs with Scarbrough, but it does nothing to address regional travel (including towards Downtown). That requires an additional solution (on top of the LRT plan).

The subway is marginally better at addressing regional transport, but its still a very poor solution. Of course people will advocate for it, because subways are all we know in Toronto.

I'm not sure the LRT's on the table would be that much better for addressing the local trips. In the corridors where LRT runs, yes. Eglinton East, the section of Kingston Rd, Sheppard East all would see improvements with LRTs. But the majority of local trips would still be either entirely on buses as they are today, or partly on a bus and partly on a small section of LRT.

Local trips are not that easy to improve; need the majority of arterials equipped with transit lanes. The LRT projects currently on the books for Scarborough would / hopefully will advance in that direction, but well below 50% coverage so far.
 
Yet "Metrolinx News" consistently justifies those decisions, based on their own reasoning (if you could call it that).

The Metrolinx news talks about the benefit of things being done. It isn't the business case, it is the case for doing something over nothing. For the Metrolinx Blog, why would they talk about other decisions that could have been made if the time for decision making is over? If no competing alternatives and perspectives are presented, knowing that logically there are always benefits and drawbacks to every approach, then it isn't analysis but rather an opinion piece. Unfortunately even our more trusted news organizations push out more opinion pieces than they once did, but at least some are appropriately labelled as such. But Metrolinx Blog is a blog about what they are doing, not a news source of journalistic standards.
 
There are no fix-all solutions for transit in Scarborough. Going all in on the LRT or all in on the subway in order to fix Scarborough's transit crisis will lead to equally bad outcomes. This one line/extension cannot do everything for everyone.

The LRT would've been much better at addressing local transport needs with Scarbrough, but it does nothing to address regional travel (including towards Downtown). That requires an additional solution (on top of the LRT plan).

The subway is marginally better at addressing regional transport, but its still a very poor solution. Of course people will advocate for it, because subways are all we know in Toronto.

Ultimately the best solution would addressed local transit, with enhanced GO Transit for trips downtown.

The SSE is not going to have a dramatic impact on the latter.

Too bad the Scarborough LRT didn't go through. Now we'd be focusing on a Sheppard extension to SSE, along with a DRL to Sheppard. Probably better than the current plan for trips downtown if we're looking at a subway solution.
 
The Metrolinx news talks about the benefit of things being done. It isn't the business case, it is the case for doing something over nothing. For the Metrolinx Blog, why would they talk about other decisions that could have been made if the time for decision making is over? If no competing alternatives and perspectives are presented, knowing that logically there are always benefits and drawbacks to every approach, then it isn't analysis but rather an opinion piece. Unfortunately even our more trusted news organizations push out more opinion pieces than they once did, but at least some are appropriately labelled as such. But Metrolinx Blog is a blog about what they are doing, not a news source of journalistic standards.

I don't expect them to be. But as a government agency I certainly expect transparency and accountability - not endless PR spin.
 
I don't expect them to be. But as a government agency I certainly expect transparency and accountability - not endless PR spin.
I'm not sure I have the same expectations. I expect Metrolinx to be transparent about what they are doing and personally I think they are good at that... they have many town halls, significant public participation, and they seem to approach business case analysis in sound ways, they respond to feedback and consider alternatives. Personally I think we are pretty fortunate in Toronto to have agencies like Metrolinx and Waterfront Toronto as they are because without that transparency it would be much harder to see the political meddling. However, the reality is that there are directives from the government that take decisions out of their hands. Those decisions aren't "Metrolinx" decisions so I'm not sure that I expect them to answer for those decisions. Metrolinx Blog isn't the Ministry of Transportation news or the news from the Premiers office. To try to answer for those decisions would be to bite the hand that feeds it and in the end serves no purpose once the decisions are already made. It is much better for the Metrolinx team to do the best they can in the mandate they are given and recognize that anything that improves transit for people is an improvement to the nothing that would have happened without that hand that feeds them.
 
man yall werent kidding with the pr/propaganda spin

praises an internal employee for thinking of this,but at the same time raises more questions than answers them.

 
I'm not sure I have the same expectations. I expect Metrolinx to be transparent about what they are doing and personally I think they are good at that... they have many town halls, significant public participation, and they seem to approach business case analysis in sound ways, they respond to feedback and consider alternatives. Personally I think we are pretty fortunate in Toronto to have agencies like Metrolinx and Waterfront Toronto as they are because without that transparency it would be much harder to see the political meddling. However, the reality is that there are directives from the government that take decisions out of their hands. Those decisions aren't "Metrolinx" decisions so I'm not sure that I expect them to answer for those decisions. Metrolinx Blog isn't the Ministry of Transportation news or the news from the Premiers office. To try to answer for those decisions would be to bite the hand that feeds it and in the end serves no purpose once the decisions are already made. It is much better for the Metrolinx team to do the best they can in the mandate they are given and recognize that anything that improves transit for people is an improvement to the nothing that would have happened without that hand that feeds them.

They will soon come and accuse you of being a paid shill.
 
I'm not sure I have the same expectations. I expect Metrolinx to be transparent about what they are doing and personally I think they are good at that... they have many town halls, significant public participation, and they seem to approach business case analysis in sound ways, they respond to feedback and consider alternatives. Personally I think we are pretty fortunate in Toronto to have agencies like Metrolinx and Waterfront Toronto as they are because without that transparency it would be much harder to see the political meddling. However, the reality is that there are directives from the government that take decisions out of their hands. Those decisions aren't "Metrolinx" decisions so I'm not sure that I expect them to answer for those decisions. Metrolinx Blog isn't the Ministry of Transportation news or the news from the Premiers office. To try to answer for those decisions would be to bite the hand that feeds it and in the end serves no purpose once the decisions are already made. It is much better for the Metrolinx team to do the best they can in the mandate they are given and recognize that anything that improves transit for people is an improvement to the nothing that would have happened without that hand that feeds them.
That's the problem.

The government shouldn't be taking these decisions out of their hands.

Metrolinx News serves as PR for government decisions.
 
Metrolinx News serves as PR for government decisions.
I guess you would need to give me an example of something you believe they have posted that is unfair or untrue. There is nothing I have read that seems to be "Fake News" to me. They don't publish "we buried the rail corridor in Weston, we are going to bury Eglinton West LRT where there is a massive road right-of-way, we are going to bury through low density Scarborough, but outside the windows of office buildings and apartments on Don Mills (where we buried the LRT) we are going to be elevated because the magical formula says that makes sense". Should they call out the political medling? It isn't like they decided this or have control and if they did call it out then Metrolinx could be rolled into the Ministry of Transportation and for a whole subway project we would be lucky to get a single press release.
 
I guess you would need to give me an example of something you believe they have posted that is unfair or untrue. There is nothing I have read that seems to be "Fake News" to me. They don't publish "we buried the rail corridor in Weston, we are going to bury Eglinton West LRT where there is a massive road right-of-way, we are going to bury through low density Scarborough, but outside the windows of office buildings and apartments on Don Mills (where we buried the LRT) we are going to be elevated because the magical formula says that makes sense". Should they call out the political medling? It isn't like they decided this or have control and if they did call it out then Metrolinx could be rolled into the Ministry of Transportation and for a whole subway project we would be lucky to get a single press release.

I see where you're coming from. The problem is that Metrolinx is supposed to be a somewhat arms length government agency that implements transit plans based on transit needs. It's become a PR agency for the Ministry of Transportation.

"Fake News?" Certainly debatable. I'd say the "News" below is certainly questionable.

 
I think an article titled "the upside of" makes it pretty clear that there are "downsides" not being talked about :)

The problem is that Metrolinx is supposed to be a somewhat arms length government agency that implements transit plans based on transit needs.
It is supposed to be that, and to the extent it can be that it tries which is why they do business case analysis. I can't fault Metrolinx for what it can't control.
 
I see where you're coming from. The problem is that Metrolinx is supposed to be a somewhat arms length government agency that implements transit plans based on transit needs. It's become a PR agency for the Ministry of Transportation.

"Fake News?" Certainly debatable. I'd say the "News" below is certainly questionable.


They really might as well be rolled back into the Ministry of Transport given that MX doesn't have any political independence.
 

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