But why? It seems pretty clear that subways to to a degree reduce street life, and this counters her basic premise.
Stop focusing so much on street-life. The whole jist of what she was saying is that the expressways are the problem. When you think of jacobs, think of the highways and opposition to them. She was not a tram supporter. By no means did she ever advocate tram over metro.
Her rhetoric does actually support metros. Her ideal thing would be to have no highways whatsoever - and then where would those people go - try cramming them all into a tram - metro is the only alternative.
Why do you ignore the larger cities on the list? Take Frankfurt, a metro area of 5.6 million. It has daily subway ridership of 300,000, about a third Toronto's. Instead it uses trams. Or take Munich with a metro population of 5.2 million. Munich has similar subway ridership to the Toronto system that we think of as so inadequate. The big difference again is a much larger tram system. Vienna, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen are a bit smaller, but follow the same pattern of a high tram to subway ratio.
We tend to compare Toronto to much larger cities like London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, but Toronto isn't a city with a 20 million people metro area. Those much larger cities are all subway based, but in truth Toronto is much closer population wise to tram based cities like Frankfurt or Melbourne.
You do not even address my point as to why do you pick those tiny hamlets!
Frankfurt -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Germany_with_more_than_100,000_inhabitants - it has under a million. End of story. Small.
Melbourne - that city is bellow the list. You compare us to something worse? Jee, howabout looking at hm, lets see, the capital of Gabon or Zambia?!
Munich - how dare you even mention them? They are a much smaller city than toronto - with a metro system that is significantly larger and significantly newer.
Vienna - Also significantly smaller than toronto. But despite its much smaller size - less than half - its metro system is very extensive, and was first opened in the second half of the seventies.
Copenhagen - half a million people... what the hell? Why? Why? Why man? Why?!?!?! COME ON MAN, HAVE MERCY, I BEG YOU!!!
Sorry, had a small break down, it's just so mind boggling to me how the hell can one compare such small cities. But lets look at copenhagen for a minute or two. They have a very extensive regional rail system. VERY extensive. But even over that they built a metro system which was opened in 2002 - and it's only gonna expand.
Please man, have mercy. Really. Spare us the apples and oranges crap. If you really want to be like that, then lets compare london, hamilton, regina, and subbury to toronto. I would be so ashamed if I were you.
We tend to compare Toronto to much larger cities
But you compare them with much smaller ones. London is not a 20 million person city. London is about 10. Moscow is about 10.
I got one for you. Berlin. And they have TWO metro systems, the S bahn and U bahn, and boy are those huge - both of those dwarf our miserable thing here.
Or howabout St. Petersburg?
Cities all over europe that are much smaller than Toronto have systems that blow us out of the water - like Stockholm for example. Cities that are the same or similar size blow Toronto away so bad, like Berlin. Or even the bigger ones - just cut their system lenghts in half - and you will see how many times bigger they still are than this miserable little system that we have.
Or you can compare toronto to failures like st. louis, minniapolis, and hmm... nowheresville.
Jane Jacobs was a big supporter of Toronto's streetcar system - the Jane Jacobs award in 2005 went to Steve Munro for his part in saving Toronto's streetcars.
But from who was she saving them - from the Automobile.
She was not advocating their expansion to be a priority over metro expansion.
When you think of her name think of someone who opposes the auto.
Like I said, fixated on one technology. Which, in your case leads to a general ignorance of transit in general.
So you are proposing that it does not stop at the lights. That can be done by either slowing it down or making it fully separated - and you may as well pay a little bit more to make it a real metro if you are gonna go through the trouble of making it separated.
That's your opinion. My opinion(and conincidently most credible transit planners), is that Sheppard is not a success, but rather an expensive mistake. I am not going to deny 50,000 riders isn't a lot, but that translates to around 5,000pph? Far below the minimunm threshold of a subway. If the subway was such a success, it should be attracting more riders, even in it's truncated state. The intermediate stations are barely used, especially Leslie, considering the hospital nearby.
Tell them to go eat some b.s.
It is totally a success. It would be an even bigger one if it were bigger - the short distance limits it.
I will not look at how much what translates to. Its ridership has exploded since it was opened. The only logical thing is to expand it to downsview (and later to jane), and eastwards to STC. We need rapid transit in toronto, a real alternative to the car.
The ridership at bayview is almost 8,000 - that is quite outstanding. Leslie has five and a half.
Tell you what - howabout you go about closing stations that have less than bayview. Close chester, the old mill - heck, replace the lines with tram lines. That would make the tram-addicts quite happy. Here's the new report on ridership - get your plan ready now, because this insane and blind love for trams is like a fanatic religious zeal.
http://www3.ttc.ca/PDF/Transit_Planning/Subway_ridership_2008-2009.pdf
To cap things off ...
... building subways for profit is a very sad thing. All those huge systems in europe - they would not be anything like they are if they used this narrow thinking. Those few that did, like Belgrade, are a failure in terms of transportation. They can shit on their 100+km of tram - it does not alleviate traffic. That is why all over europe metro systems are being expanded, built, or planned.
We are in a different position here. We have been put up against the wall and have been drained thanks to neoliberalism. What we have for examples are the failures of the US - and that I regret is what we are going to be at the best.
