All aboard for more subways

[Hipster Duck]

This argument is going nowhere. We all agree that we need rapid transit and improved quality and reliability. The technology choice debate will go on forever as we can never satisfy everyone. I think instead of arguing about technology we should brainstorm ideas about how to best pay for all the needed capital expansion nut also the operating funding. We need to demand politicians commit to funding transit and not just bamboozle us with hollow promises of riding lines that will never be built due to lack of stable funding.

I agree completely, lead, and that is why I am beginning to steer clear of the Transportation & Infrastructure section of the forum. We might as well just call it the Subway vs. LRT section from now on.

Also lost in all this is that everyone is debating mode choice, when the ultimate goal of transportation is just to transport people to the activities they value: jobs, entertainment, shopping, services. Another useful strategy that is a little more upstream than just building rail lines around an auto-dependent city is to come up with creative ways of encouraging access to those services in car-dependent areas. I do not know what that would entail specifically, but ideas like encouraging farmers markets to set up occasionally in food deserts like Malvern and Jane and Finch, encouraging telework, providing more mobile city services (making housecalls, rather than requiring people to travel to a central spot) seem like a good place to start. This strategy sounds a little kumbaya at first, but that is because there has never been a rigorous debate about it. If we spent half as much of our energy thinking of creative strategies to provide access to services as we do debating subway vs. LRT, I am sure something relatively robust and serious would start to take form.

 

[gristle]

road space is vital. That is why you maximize road space by building ROW's for transit. One Transit vehicle carry a lot more passengers than a car. Efficient use of road space. You argument is so anti-transit it's funny..

Yes, road space is vital. But it was pointed out to you that automobiles are not going anywhere soon. Reducing existing road space for cars and other vehicles only adds to congestion. Building additional subway lines solves both issues - it leaves roads open to vehicles (including buses), and it enables high-volume public transit. Anyone arguing for the construction of additional subway lines is in no way ant-transit in my books.

 

[Justin10000]

It was hardly a fleshed-out proposal like Transit City, and transit in general was nothing close to major issue in that campaign. .

Some of the Transit City lines were outlined in his platform, and he made it a major part of his election. Make all the excuses, and assumptions you want. Miller made Light Rail a part of his platform, and he won.

 

[kEiThZ]

Sure they do. A Vienna equivalent of STC would be Donaustadt, and it has long been only served by a streetcar.

Donaustatdt is the equivalent of Malvern not STC. It's only got 150 000 people. And it's not the central transportation hub for a suburb of 600 000 residents. Donaustadt is more akin to Pickering than it is to STC.

 

[kEiThZ]

Miller won over the bridge. If his supporters take that as public endorsement of Transit City so be it. I trust, when an administration which does not endorse Transit City is elected this Fall, they'll accept that the public has withdrawn its endorsement of the scheme.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

How does it miss the point? Jane Jacobs supported people on the street, she opposed things that took people off the street (like the PATH and Eaton Centre). I don't think she ever argued against subways, (she says nothing for or against them in Death and Life, but I do think it is a reasonable extrapolation from her philosophy.

"Subways remove people and eyes from the street, therefore they are bad for street vibrancy and safety". Therefore anything that removes people from street level is bad for street vibrancy. Have I summed up you position well enough?

This is you dichotomy not mine, it is up to you to prove it not me. I have shown numerous examples of things that would be "bad" given the above Jacobsian position re "eyes on the street" yet prove themselves to be the opposite of what a Jacobsian view predicts. From the postive impact the PATH system has had (or counter the lack of negative impact), to the vibrancy of Yonge-Eglinton (and you so graciously added Yonge-Bloor, and Dundas square), to the high crime rates along Parliment (or east or Jarvis/Corktown) despite being predominately low rise neighbourhoods served by surface transit.

Which brings me back to my point, just because Jacobs says it will be bad doesn't automatically make it bad.

 

[kEiThZ]

Which brings me back to my point, just because Jacobs says it will be bad doesn't automatically make it bad.

....and the corollary: Just because Jacobs said it was good a quarter century ago doesn't mean that still holds true today.

Times change. People change. Cities change.

 

[W. K. Lis]

All the mayoralty candidates seem to be for more rapid transit. Whatever form it will be, is mostly different. However, to really do any kind of rapid transit needs the support of the provincial and, hopefully, the federal governments. Money is needed to build rapid transit, and Toronto is being shortchanged by the higher forms of government. We need a mayor who will be able to persuade the province and Ottawa that Toronto and the other cities need help.

 

[SimonP]

Donaustatdt is the equivalent of Malvern not STC. It's only got 150 000 people. And it's not the central transportation hub for a suburb of 600 000 residents.

STC has only about 20,000 actual inhabitants. Far smaller than somewhere like Donaustatdt. And saying that STC is a "transportation hub" is a circular argument. It's only a hub because the city hasn't built anything like a Sheppard or Kingston Road LRT to divert traffic.

 

[LAz]

I think you need to do some more research here. Saying Frankfurt has less than a million people would have been like saying that Toronto had only 2 million in 1996. Metro population figures are the most important here. Frankfurt metro has 5.6 million. Munich has 5.2 million . This is right around Toronto's metro pop of 5.1 million.

Look at other things on wikipedia. Do not look at the metropolitan area. There is the city area. Then there is the Urban area. And then metropolitan area.

Toronto - city - 2,503,281 , Urban - 4,753,120 , Metro - 5,113,149
Frankfrut - city - 667,330 , Urban - 2,295,000 , Metro - 5,600,000
Munich - city - 1,326,807 , Urban - 2,606,021 , Metro - 5,203,738


So, it is much better and appropriate to look at Urban Area. The metro area down there would cobble up a bunch of smaller cities. In Toronto what would the metro area gobble up - oshawa? So lets not look at the metro area.

The best example is Chicago. The city is almost 3. The urban area is like 8.7. And the metro area is almost 10. The metro area includes far out places like northern wisconsin and northwest indiana. We should not include these far away places. In Europe it's different, because there is less open space.


Now that we have indeed confirmed that we are dealing with apples and oranges..... well there is not more to be said. The whole argument that you are pushing is pathetic when we take this into consideration. Lets not even mention how much better served by metro their city alone is.

That said, I don't think there is any need or desire to turn Sheppard East or Eglinton West into a new Yonge and Dundas. My ideal, and I think most people's dream, is for those areas to become more like Queen West, Roncesvalles, Little Italy, or the Beaches. All areas that are built around streetcars.

And my idea is to offer alternatives to the car, so that people can go from one part of town to another without too much trouble.

As to Jane Jacobs on subways, it turns out she didn't much like them. Here is a passage from an article in the Toronto Star from 1971, when the northern extension of the Spadina line was being debated:

"On the witness stand she startled the Spadina hearing by totally damning the Spadina rapid transit line. She is a gray-haired lady with grown children and a very pleasant smile and she comes on with a soft clear voice that has just a trace of acid in it. She said that she couldn't imagine a better way to bankrupt a public transportation system than to build the Spadina subway."

I would agree with her. In the general framework under which we are limited, cities should pay for everything themselves. Meanwhile in superior places subway construction does not bankrupt the city or the transit company because the funding comes from the national government.

At any rate, the spadina and younge lines were not really designed to serve as alternatives to the car. They were designed to compliment the car. We notice that they used the same sad mistakes that were done in san fran's bart - far away stations that are used for commuting more then short personal trips. We need to use the metro for more than just getting to work or going to school. This is one thing that people including our subway promoters here do not get.

Another useful strategy that is a little more upstream than just building rail lines around an auto-dependent city is to come up with creative ways of encouraging access to those services in car-dependent areas.

Holy smokes batman, are you even aware of what you are saying? That would trigger so much backlash. You are calling for what only a radical would be calling for - car disincentives. And car disincentives is something that is so badly opposed by the auto lobby in the US and Canada. Subways can easily be funded from gas tax alone. But we are strongly discouraged from even thinking about that.
Don't trample on big money. Big money does not like that. Big money likes to build lies to the downtown to reduce the insane congestion. Big money likes to strengthen the downtown because that is where the big moolah is. Big money does not like to discourage use of the car, because that is where they put their money.

 

[SimonP]

"Subways remove people and eyes from the street, therefore they are bad for street vibrancy and safety". Therefore anything that removes people from street level is bad for street vibrancy. Have I summed up you position well enough?

This is you dichotomy not mine, it is up to you to prove it not me. I have shown numerous examples of things that would be "bad" given the above Jacobsian position re "eyes on the street" yet prove themselves to be the opposite of what a Jacobsian view predicts. From the postive impact the PATH system has had (or counter the lack of negative impact), to the vibrancy of Yonge-Eglinton (and you so graciously added Yonge-Bloor, and Dundas square), to the high crime rates along Parliment (or east or Jarvis/Corktown) despite being predominately low rise neighbourhoods served by surface transit.

Which brings me back to my point, just because Jacobs says it will be bad doesn't automatically make it bad.

My point in bringing up Jacobs is not to say "we must do all that Jane does," instead I am saying that building subways is not necessarily compatible with her philosophy. If you accept the underpinnings of Jacob's view, and I think pretty much all of us do, then you have to present an argument for how subways don't contradict it.

To your specific points, it is pretty clear what the cause of crime along Parliament is: Regent Park. The design of Regent Park is a classic "not enough eyes problem." It has buildings that turn away from the street, focused instead on inner court yards. The street grid is has been removed, forcing any outsiders to veer around the neighbourhood. After her fight against expressways, Jane Jacobs opposition to such "urban renewal" schemes is probably what she is most known for.

As to the PATH system, is there any concrete evidence that it is good for the city? Yes, it helps people get out of the rain, but the financial district is pretty dead at street level. Would the city be distinctly worse without the PATH? Most cities, even cold ones, survive without such a system.

 

[LAz]

My point in bringing up Jacobs is not to say "we must do all that Jane does," instead I am saying that building subways is not necessarily compatible with her philosophy. If you accept the underpinnings of Jacob's view, and I think pretty much all of us do, then you have to present an argument for how subways don't contradict it.

Kick granny away and look into grandpa, aka Vuchic. Start with his book "transportation for livable cities".

 

[gweed123]

The downtown section IS curbside bus-only lanes. Do not try to differeniate between the downtown lanes, and the Woodroffe lanes. They are the same. Curbside lanes will not work on Jane, and would probably still require road-widening, and property demolition anyways. I never said anything about LRT not requring road-widening or property demolition. Making stuff up?

Are you actually serious??? A downtown street and a suburban arterial are the same thing, just because they both happen to have curbside lanes? The downtown section is the most used area on the entire system, with every BRT route passing through it. Woodroffe only has the 95. "Do not try to differentiate between the downtown lanes and the Woodroffe lanes". I just did.

Even if you are doing road widening on Jane, doing BRT would still be cheaper than LRT, because of the infrastructure costs associated with the tracks. BRT is the right solution for Jane (north of Eglinton at least), as it is the right solution for Don Mills north of Eglinton.

 

[junctionist]

Widening Jane would require a lot of demolition and destruction, particularly south of St. Clair. Jane might as well be a subway line because buying up the half million dollar houses and even pricier mixed-use buildings would push the cost into or beyond subway territory. The question also arises if LRT would be beneficial for Jane if we're suddenly demolishing a lot of housing and displacing families.

Also, it's too bad for the people living around St. Clair west of Gunns Loop who are told that the streetcar will be extended (after many years of waiting) with the construction of the Jane LRT.

 

[Voltz]

Miller won over the bridge. If his supporters take that as public endorsement of Transit City so be it. I trust, when an administration which does not endorse Transit City is elected this Fall, they'll accept that the public has withdrawn its endorsement of the scheme.

He was talking about his re-election, where LRT was a major part of his platform, and subways where a major part of his opponents .