2014 Municipal Election: Toronto Transit Plans

[M II A II R II K]

 

[salsa]

It's still bullshit. Try again Tory.

 

[MrsNesbitt]

Here we see John Tory living up to his surname.

 

[ehlow]

I prefer the newer version, since it means Eg Connects would still go forward with some adjustments, theoretically.

 

[salsa]

Some adjustments = more cars, no bikelanes, no wider sidewalks, less trees

 

[MrsNesbitt]

Not to mention the fact that the change is likely just to sound slightly more palatable on the issue. If Tory became mayor he'd almost certainly go ahead and push for outright cancellation.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Yup. We've seen his true colors on the issue.

 

[Rainforest]

At that point is it where you choose to live. If you chose to live far, then you deal with living far. Obviously, there are people who live in the periphery because of cost but at the end of the day, you are saying subway > bus but in a nicer package.

The goal of transit is to serve all citizens, including those living far from downtown whether they do so by choice or necessity. Obviously, it is impossible to give everyone same travel time, but when an improvement can be made at a reasonable cost for those who live further apart, it ought to be made.

The subway is a trunk line yes, but that does not mean we build subways everywhere. If a subway is on Eglinton then one is not needed on Lawrence, etc. Under this theory, you can also justify a Western DRL along Weston Road all the way north, but we know that would have chronically low ridership.

No, I would not give much priority to a Western DRL along Weston Road. First of all, areas it would serve are already better off than Scarborough, as almost everybody will be within a 15 - 20 min bus ride to either the western leg of BD subway or the Spadina subway with extension. Furthermore, Weston GO corridor is wide and can support more local type of service in addition to what it already has.

Scarborough is worse off now, therefore I believe that one subway extension deep into Scarborough is justified (but not two).

Certainly, we cannot and will not build subways everywhere.

 

[Rainforest]

Historically subway or transit access has not always correlated with high property values. However, that was the past, and in the present and near future it is trending towards that. In the past, traffic was not nearly as bad as it is today, and gas prices were also much lower. There were much less people in the city and much of what are now condos downtown used to be giant parking lots.

Now you're seeing even the rougher neighbourhoods that are near transit start to rise in price, like east Danforth for example. This type of thing changes all the time, Cabbagetown used to be very cheap, now houses are > $1 million. It's pretty clear that neighbourhoods near transit will continue to rise in price.

Lawrence West was mentioned. Many of the houses near Eglinton West, Lawrence West & Wilson are actually selling for very high prices. Every house property listed for sale near Eglinton west of Allen mentions the future Eglinton Crosstown as a selling point.

Your expectations are logical. All I wanted to say that the presence of subway stations does not always correlate with the property values. You can see some very expensive areas, like northern Bayview / Leslie, or southern Etobicoke, with no particularly convenient transit.

Certainly, transit matters amongst other factors.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

The goal of transit is to serve all citizens, including those living far from downtown whether they do so by choice or necessity. Obviously, it is impossible to give everyone same travel time, but when an improvement can be made at a reasonable cost for those who live further apart, it ought to be made.

Right. So if the numbers only add up to a subway or LRT, then that should be the appropriate choice, not based on politics like the Scarborough subway.

No, I would not give much priority to a Western DRL along Weston Road. First of all, areas it would serve are already better off than Scarborough, as almost everybody will be within a 15 - 20 min bus ride to either the western leg of BD subway or the Spadina subway with extension. Furthermore, Weston GO corridor is wide and can support more local type of service in addition to what it already has.

Scarborough is worse off now, therefore I believe that one subway extension deep into Scarborough is justified (but not two).

Certainly, we cannot and will not build subways everywhere.

Scarborough is only worse off because of the transfer at Kennedy. That could have been solved with LRT but...politics.

 

[ehlow]

Some adjustments = more cars, no bikelanes, no wider sidewalks, less trees

That's not what I meant when I said "some adjustments", and whether that's what Tory wants, I doubt it has been specified.

I have been completely supportive of Eglinton Connects and have gone to several public meetings about it.

Firstly, this is all theoretical because Tory may not be elected, but even if he is mayor any adjustments and approval of Eg Connects will go through council, and we all know the mayor's platform is never fully implemented.

However, let's say Tory is elected. It is possible that the modifications he would make to Eglinton Connects would be only on the 3-lane section between Mt Pleasant and Avenue. It's possible that instead of going from 5 lanes to 3 lanes, it goes from 5 lanes to 4 lanes along with the rest of the street, leaving wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and trees. It's also possible that street parking is removed as an adjustment.

I'd rather those adjustments happen and the rest of Eglinton Connects (95% of it) remain the same than have the whole thing cancelled. That's all I'm saying.

 

[salsa]

Scarborough is only worse off because of the transfer at Kennedy.

No. Scarborough is worse off because too many residents face long bus rides to reach any rapid transit.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

No. Scarborough is worse off because too many residents face long bus rides to reach any rapid transit.

Unless the Scarborough Malvern LRT is built, that problem will never be solved.

 

[diminutive]

This article appeared in the G&M today.

Why traffic congestion is driving Toronto crazy

Frustrated drivers are shaping up to be this election’s key voting bloc.

In spite of data showing that commuting times here aren’t so bad – the best available information shows that the bulk of Torontonians commute about as long as people have spent on their daily travels throughout history – congestion, construction, stress and the demands of modern parenting can come together to make it seem worse. It’s a combination that has turned the issue into electoral gold in this autumn’s municipal election.

Four years after Rob Ford won the mayoralty and vowed to end the “war on the car,” the leading mayoral candidates are desperate to be seen as allies of drivers.

John Tory vows not to accept any solution for the Gardiner East that will increase commute times. Olivia Chow talks tough about construction that closes lanes to traffic. And Mr. Ford vows to bury as much transit as he can, thereby reserving road space for drivers.

But even though transportation is looking like the hot-button issue of this election – anecdotal evidence of woes abound, scratch a commuter and you’ll get a story – it’s surprisingly hard to find good information about the reality on the roads.

Much of the available data looks at the region – which advocates say has a $6-billion congestion problem – but it’s not clear on the face of it that there is a crisis specifically in Toronto, where the candidates are scrambling for votes. In fact, for an issue that tends to provoke such angry public rhetoric, useful data about Toronto itself is thin.

When asked about Toronto commute times, city-planning staff point to three-year-old data from Statistics Canada. The 2011 National Household Survey showed that in 40 of the city’s 44 wards, the median one-way commute time was either 30 or 31 minutes. The outliers were the three downtown wards, with median commute times in the low- to mid-20s, and Ward 44, in east Scarborough, where it was 35 minutes.

Other 2011 numbers from Statscan showed that the average one-way commute for the residents in the City of Toronto was 33.5 minutes. This is almost exactly in line with regional figures released this week as part of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, which looked at GTA commute times.

More recent figures come from an Angus Reid poll released last month by Move the GTHA, a transportation advocacy coalition. One-quarter of Toronto commuters took no more than 15 minutes each way on a typical day, their data shows, and a total of 56 per cent took no more than half an hour. Only 12 per cent commuted an hour or more each way.

Admittedly, averages and medians may be cold comfort to those whose commutes are at the extremes. And 12 per cent can make a vocal minority. Plus, normal routines risk being thrown out of whack by long-term lane closings on the Gardiner and by the prospect of an unusually disruptive summer of construction, as the city prepares for the Pan American Games. There’s also no question that crowding is a serious problem in parts of the transit system, which is straining as it carries more than 10 million people each week.

But what’s striking about Toronto commutes is how well they bear out Marchetti’s Constant. This planning and transportation principle holds that people are willing to travel about an hour a day and arrange their life accordingly. In medieval cities, that took the form of walls enclosing a space small enough that people could walk to the centre and back in that time. Horse travel stretched the distance people were willing to go, early public transit extended it again with so-called “streetcar suburbs” and the postwar commuter boom let people go even farther. But the time people have been willing to budget for travel has remained remarkably consistent, and the data show that still holds true for most commuters in Toronto.

...

I agree with much of it. The rhetoric around congestion has become millenarian in tone. Looking at data from US cities, I don't see how our commutes are really so much worse than a city like Chicago.

Like the author says, obviously ensuring reasonably free flowing goods and people is important to any city, but I think the tone of conversation here has gotten out of hand.

That's not a comment for or against any specific transit policy, but could maybe help explain why transit isn't always the biggest election issue and politicians can rarely be held to account for their poor behaviour on that file. Maybe lots of us think things are really kinda ok?

 

[dowlingm]

Some adjustments = more cars, no bikelanes, no wider sidewalks, less trees

Exactly. It's been tagged a nice to have and therefore will always fall victim to other priorities because in Toronto we are not permitted to have nice things.