[BeaverFever]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Near the limit? Well past the limit, and putting street level transit is a step in the wrong direction.

Subways do have their place and they'll go just fine under Eglinton and Sheppard.

BTW, that type of attitude, that people outside the City are secondary is just plain ignorant. You want to make life better in your City? Accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people who travel into Toronto to work and run the City. Hell, 70% of the staff at City Hall don't live in Toronto.

Subways under Eg and Sheppard don't benefit anyone except the people travelling along Eg and Sheppard. For the same money, you could put Light Rail on both of those streets and maybe a half dozen others.

Plus, there is absolutely no research to suggest that enough people will use subways under Eg and Shep to even justify the astronomic costs. Look at the current Sheppard line, its a ghost town. For someone who claims to be such a fiscal conservative you're sure willing to spare no expense for a big white elephant project that benefits you.

And yes, residents first, vistors second. If you CHOOSE to work in Toronto and CHOOSE to leave in the cheapie suburbs, tough luck. Take the GO train. Those of use who live here shouldn't have to bend over backwards and subsidize your crappy suburban lifestyle.

[sandorski]

The focus should not be on Traffic, but on how many People can be moved along a corridor and through the city as a whole. If it becomes a nightmare to drive "Downtown", but movement of People and Goods increases dramatically, who cares? Drivers will just need to decide not to go there or they can be accommodated with Low Cost parking at major transit stations(Free parking would make even more sense).

[BeaverFever]

Subways are good for moving large numbers people from one area of the city to another.

They are NOT good for moving people from their initial point of origin to their final desitnation point (e.g to/from your doorstep) because stations are far apart and most destinations are not on a subway line anyway. They are also NOT cost-effective unless they are moving large numbers of fare-payers. A subway that is only ever 1/4 full is an expensive albatross around the city's neck.

[Lemmy]

LRT isn't streetcar. The Eglinton proposal isn't going to be anything like St. Clair. But even if it were, any policy discouraging automobile traffic in Toronto would be a positive change.

[OnTheIce]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Subways under Eg and Sheppard don't benefit anyone except the people travelling along Eg and Sheppard. For the same money, you could put Light Rail on both of those streets and maybe a half dozen others.

Plus, there is absolutely no research to suggest that enough people will use subways under Eg and Shep to even justify the astronomic costs. Look at the current Sheppard line, its a ghost town. For someone who claims to be such a fiscal conservative you're sure willing to spare no expense for a big white elephant project that benefits you.

And yes, residents first, vistors second. If you CHOOSE to work in Toronto and CHOOSE to leave in the cheapie suburbs, tough luck. Take the GO train. Those of use who live here shouldn't have to bend over backwards and subsidize your crappy suburban lifestyle.

Wow, how false is that.

Do you know that people drive to Subway stations and then take the train into Toronto? The people that use the Yonge line aren't just people who live on or travel on Yonge.

The Sheppard line is Ghost line? Yea, those numbers keep growing, are larger than the Scarborough RT and have spawned tons of development along it's path. New retail, condo's, etc. More tax dollars for your fine City.

All those people in East Scarborough that have brutal transit options would happily drive to a East Subway location and take the train along Sheppard or Eglinton.

When you accommodate all those people clogging up your roads, you make the City better for the residents. Neither project benefits me at all, it just makes more sense for the future of the City; having been a resident of Toronto for 23 years.

Crappy suburban lifestyle? Yea, it sucks living in a house double the size for the same price, with good roads and infrastructure.

[OnTheIce]

Lemmy Lemmy:

LRT isn't streetcar. The Eglinton proposal isn't going to be anything like St. Clair. But even if it were, any policy discouraging automobile traffic in Toronto would be a positive change.

LRT is a fancy streetcar, no matter how fancy it looks.

And the LRT option isn't going to get people out of their cars.

[andyt]

We're getting people out of their cars in Vancouver. It's not hard at all. The suburbanites whine because it's inconvenient to drive their SUV hogs downtown. But they don't pay taxes here, so fuck them. Seems to be one of the greatest arguments against amalgamation - the suburban trogs don't get a voice in how the city is run and so can't turn it into LA north. It's a good thing.

Coming up, tolls on all the bridges and road pricing. More good stuff to make people actually pay what it costs to drive.

[raydan]

I started to try to compare Toronto with other large cities like New York but figured out it would be difficult and there are a lot of variables. Strange that New York's subway system is huge with over 400 stations and Los Angeles has about the same number of stations as Toronto with 70... so the size of the city is not the only factor.

I also found it strange that Toronto and Montreal have about the same number of stations which leads me to believe that there would be some room for growth for Toronto. Montreal's subway is also busier than Toronto.

[andyt]

And yet take a look at NYC - you can't drive downtown there, it's permanently plugged up. LA covers a much bigger area, it was built up after the car with suburban sprawl, Manhattan is an island NYC has lots of choke points (bridges). So no, comparisons don't work that well.

Subways sound ideal, hell even our Skytrain is nicer than LRT. But it costs, and because it costs so much we haven't built enough of it. That's the trade off. To make another possibly erroneous comparison, European cities seem to do very well with streetcars. And in Vancouver we still have trolley buses - those are nice. No streetcar tracks. They certainly haven't expanded those into the suburbs, but they haven't got rid of them either, even tho the buses cost twice as much.

[OnTheIce]

andyt andyt:

We're getting people out of their cars in Vancouver. It's not hard at all. The suburbanites whine because it's inconvenient to drive their SUV hogs downtown. But they don't pay taxes here, so fuck them. Seems to be one of the greatest arguments against amalgamation - the suburban trogs don't get a voice in how the city is run and so can't turn it into LA north. It's a good thing.

Coming up, tolls on all the bridges and road pricing. More good stuff to make people actually pay what it costs to drive.

But they do shop, eat and spend a ton of money in your City.

Will be funny to see what happens when you add tolls and business move outside the City because their sales get killed.

[andyt]

If they move out of the city, they'll forgo the business of Vancouverites, so they'll have to make some very careful calculations there. If it's "Gimme Caps Are Us" then they should have already relocated, if it offers something more sophisticated they're better off where they are. But it's good if the 'burbs get more built up - Vancouver is full anyway. And the 'burbs are starting to do the same thing, build up transit and start city cores, so the SUV hogs will have to move further and further out. It's a good thing. And so far, while vehicle traffic is down in Vancouver, visits from the burbs are up. Guess we're just more evolved here.

[bootlegga]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Lemmy Lemmy:

LRT isn't streetcar. The Eglinton proposal isn't going to be anything like St. Clair. But even if it were, any policy discouraging automobile traffic in Toronto would be a positive change.

LRT is a fancy streetcar, no matter how fancy it looks.

And the LRT option isn't going to get people out of their cars.

Guess you didn't read the PDF I posted on the previous page - Low floor LRT is not a streetcar.

http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/2 ... tation.pdf

Low floor LRT is the future, while underground subways are the past (and the distant past at that). Here's just a couple photos from the report.

1:

Low floor LRT.jpg [ 99.79 KiB | Viewed 114 times ]

0:

Low floor LRT 2.jpg [ 92.61 KiB | Viewed 111 times ]

The report lays out lots of advantages of using low floor LRT as well, like having stops closer together (making the line more user friendly) and the ability to have bus/LRT interchanges at a fraction of the cost and space of subway stations with bus interchanges. Given how the lack of real estate to build in Toronto is, it makes total sense.

Of course subway lines allow both cars and transit to occupy the same roadways, but subsurface lines also do little to get people out of their cars. What happens when they get downtown and can't find parking for their vehicle? One of the key reasons to build train lines to downtown cores is to ease congestion, not ignore it or add to it.

Spending billions of dollars on underground lines to service suburbanites is a colossal waste of funds. Build on the surface wherever possible with as many stations as possible and make it user friendly and ridership increases. Edmonton's LRT is proof of that.

[bootlegga]

raydan raydan:

I started to try to compare Toronto with other large cities like New York but figured out it would be difficult and there are a lot of variables. Strange that New York's subway system is huge with over 400 stations and Los Angeles has about the same number of stations as Toronto with 70... so the size of the city is not the only factor.

One of the key reasons is age - the New York Subway system is based on train lines built in the 1860s (subways began operation in 1904) - while LA's entire system only dates back to 1990!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Rail ... _County%29

[raydan]

But not the only reason, Boots.

Toronto is larger than Montreal and the subway was built 12 years earlier, but they have the same number of stations. Montreal has more ridership and they are also looking to expand.

[OnTheIce]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Guess you didn't read the PDF I posted on the previous page - Low floor LRT is not a streetcar.

The report lays out lots of advantages of using low floor LRT as well, like having stops closer together (making the line more user friendly) and the ability to have bus/LRT interchanges at a fraction of the cost and space of subway stations with bus interchanges. Given how the lack of real estate to build in Toronto is, it makes total sense.

Of course subway lines allow both cars and transit to occupy the same roadways, but subsurface lines also do little to get people out of their cars. What happens when they get downtown and can't find parking for their vehicle? One of the key reasons to build train lines to downtown cores is to ease congestion, not ignore it or add to it.

Spending billions of dollars on underground lines to service suburbanites is a colossal waste of funds. Build on the surface wherever possible with as many stations as possible and make it user friendly and ridership increases. Edmonton's LRT is proof of that.

Sorry, but what works in Edmonton and what works in Toronto, isn't even in the same category. The suburbs of Toronto have more people than all of Edmonton.

Coming from someone who actually drives on these roads in question (was just down on Eglinton Ave) in Scarborough removing 2 of the 6 lanes would be utter chaos on a road that's the economic hub of this area.

Of course the LRT isn't a streetcar, but they're very similar in a lot of ways...including taking up vital room on the road for vehicles that aren't going away.

I don't get why we don't stick with busses if the LRT plans to have as many stops? I mean, at least a bus can drive around accidents,debris, ice, while the LRT is just stuck in it's tracks and they have to bring in a bus to move the people anyways.