China could build high speed rail through Canada to the USA

[RC8]

Wait, 2 additional highways going downtown AND a bunch of new subway/LRT lines? I'd actually be quite pleased with that. The Spadina expressway didn't happen because it required the complete destruction of mature neighborhoods. But replace 'mature neighborhoods' with 'rows of derelict mud-brick houses without electricity or plumbing' and the calculus would change considerably.

Anyway, I'm a paid wumao, have to earn my dinner somehow, so here's my reply to your comments. It is true that China's earliest cities to modernize had misguided policies and built too many ring roads, as well as roads that were too wide. Unfortunately, the rest of your comments do not reflect reality or any real life facts. Chinese decision-making, if anything, can be characterized as too orderly, too top-down, and with not enough respect for grassroots opinions. Basically, the opposite of what you've described. Furthermore, your claim that Chinese construction workers are not paid a fair wage is frankly laughable, given the trend in blue collar wages there.

I grew up watching dirty, chaotic, backwards Chinese cities build themselves into modern metropolises. Before there were so-called 'disastrous highways into downtown' and 'inhumane subways built by slave labor', people got around on donkey carts, crush-load minivans and cycling, often on unpaved dirt roads. Too wide roads that favor the automobile are still better than no roads at all. You never had to live there, you don't understand that five years of delay due to public consultation and environmental assessment meant five more years of backwardness. In the past, to visit my grandmother, I'd have to ride a donkey cart for 30 minutes to go from the train station to her house, and she lived in a town of 200,000 people. That part of town now has a paved road, donkey cart ride is replaced by a 5-minute cab ride, and a high speed rail link is being built. Perhaps you think I should still ride a donkey cart the next time I go see her.

The point is, China had built all this infrastructure very quickly because she was backwards and poor, and there was a real sense of urgency. They have built entire road networks and subway systems in a span of 20 years, without bankrupting their cities. You might scoff at that, but I think that's an inspiration to developing countries around the world. Despite some misguided projects and accidents due to hasty planning and construction, the net effect of this transformation has led to a major improvement to peoples' lives. This is why, in my opinion, to call the transformation of Chinese cities an 'urban catastrophe' is an insult to the 500 million Chinese people who live in cities.

Toronto today has about 70 km of higher-order transit. I did a regression study a while back, compared to the world average, a city of Toronto's size, density and prosperity should have 142 km of higher-order transit. The reality is the transit here is at least 30 years behind. If you don't want to learn from China, that's fine, but so far Toronto has not learned from ANYONE. And don't blame Rob Ford, he is a symptom but not the disease. The fact that one single politician can cancel existing transit plans on a whim is the real problem, and maybe you should ask Londoners how they'd tackle this issue.

'Top-down' in the Chinese case does not mean listening to experts - it means listening to relatively qualified people who defend the interests of an entitled elite, even when it entails going against the advice of serious experts.

What has happened in China is an urban catastrophe because many modern Chinese cities had the potential to become the greatest cities in history. Instead, they blew it, and now air is essentially unbreathable in all major cities (dwell into the peer-reviewed public health literature regarding the impacts of air pollution and you will see the magnitude of the disaster). Meanwhile, the pedestrian and transit experience is brutal as soon as you leave the downtown core of cities (and even there it's far from great).

Not all that was done was bad, of course. But here in Toronto we have very little to learn from the Chinese experience. All in all modern Chinese cities are utterly unsustainable and provide a very poor quality of life. Given the infrastructure to support these cities is all very recent and - as you point out - wasn't cheap, this is awful.

My friend from Shanghai recently travelled to a Chinese city he remembered as a very rural and peaceful (and backwards) back in time (name escapes me). Now pollution is thick, noise from traffic is everywhere, crossing the street is a chore. "The price of progress", he said, as he pointed out it looked less poor today.

While I am in no way advocating for leaving things the way they were, you need to realise that this 'one or the other' false dichotomy of underdeveloped miserable place vs. polluted city with ridiculously high rates of traffic accidents is nonsense. With the budgets allocated and the expertise available around the world, Chinese authorities could have helped cities develop in much more intelligent and sustainable ways. To this day they refuse to do so, as far as I understand.

I've lived in a number of developing world cities (and my family lived in Beijing back in time) and have had to deal with similar issues first hand. I have seen time and time again how the advise of experts is discarded when authorities are told they'll have to drive less. In Shanghai less than 20% of people drive a car to go places, yet 90% of public space is allocated mostly to car drivers. Transit lines are built when they are way overdue and then service is kept at levels that guarantee excessive crowding at peak hours. Barriers are erected to prevent people from crossing streets, rather than measures put in place to slow down traffic.

In Toronto I happily ride my bicycle or take a streetcar to get things done. It's not a perfect situation here, but it sure as hell is much nicer and easier than in most developing world cities with 20 subway lines.

P.S. the bit about fair-wages was referring to ksun's comments, not to any conditions I know of in China.

 

[agoraflaneur]

But you agree that this is mostly an economic and political issue, not an issue about Islam? The Western media too often criticizes them on the basis that they are Islamic, and Islam is not Western civilization, and therefore everything they do is oppressive, theocratic, backwards.

I do agree that as in any culture, there exists biases and stereotypes in western media that should be challenged. Obviously Islam is presented negatively often in western media. The problem is partly bias, but also partly their actions. There is a connection between anti-democratic theocracy and their maltreatment of temporary labour as in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Doha, where almost all of the feats of construction you refer to are. We don’t criticize Turkey for their labour practices because they don’t have terrible treatment, and it isn’t just a coincidence that Turkey is democratic – democracy engenders respect for citizens.

Whether the public wants to drive or take transit is a culture that can change. Nobody says Torontonians have to drive. NYers don't drive much, do they? China use to have a predominantly transit culture, but in the past decade things changed rapidly. People who can afford it seem to fall in love with cars.

I would be the first to agree that we need to change our car-loving culture, but you again compare cities which are incomparable.

GTA
Population: 6M, Density 850/Km2
Size of area: 7124 Km2

Chengdu
Population 7.6M, Density 3600/Km2
Size of Area: 2121 KM2

As you can see, metro Toronto is 3 times the geographic size of Chengdu with about 3 times less density. That is why there can be subways everywhere. If you want them, I suggest you move to China, because we won’t be getting that dense anytime in the next few decades.

This vastness of North American cities (and Toronto is actually quite dense for NA) creates, was created by and is engendered by a culture of cars. You and I are on the same page with trying to get people out of their cars, but you can’t compare Chinese cities to Toronto – full stop. NYers also do use cars a lot more than their Chinese counterparts.

I don't buy this "because we are north Americans there will never be such a transit culture as they have in Europe/Asia" argument.

Too bad that the facts on the ground about density don’t really care about what you do or don’t buy. Again, I agree with you about the goal, but ignoring the culture and reality of the place you live is no way to actually accomplish a goal.

Madrid is of comparable size of Toronto yet had a transit system 4 times of Toronto does

Madrid has 6,321,398 people and covers 5,335.97 Km2. Its density is close to 2000, compared to Toronto’s 850. That is more than twice as dense. Hey, I am not saying we don’t need to build lots more transit. Probably enough to get to half of Madrid. You do realize that if Toronto were even 50% denser we would have 9M people in the same area, right? If we reached Chinese levels we would have 18M. This isn't a small point.

To anyone who would have put the planned expressways into Toronto – if you can’t see that Toronto would have been destroyed from a design standpoint, it will be impossible to have a debate. We simply didn’t build enough transit to counter not building the expressways, mostly because drivers didn’t want to pay.

There are more Chinese cities similar in population to Toronto than nearly anywhere else; we just don't hear about them very often.

But there aren’t any Chinese cities that have similar densities or planning to Toronto – at least none I know of. There are no cities where the majority of people drive cars, live in large houses, have jobs that pay 50K+, have a clean environment, and where therefore people don't want to spend money on things they (wrongly) believe won't benefit themselves. Only now that the transportation situation is getting so bad as to really affect drivers have we in Toronto reached the point that all the provincial parties are going to build the DRL, and that we have the Spadina extension, the Eglinton Line, the UPX, etc. under construction. So the comparison is moot.

 

[Johnny Au]

I do agree that as in any culture, there exists biases and stereotypes in western media that should be challenged. Obviously Islam is presented negatively often in western media. The problem is partly bias, but also partly their actions. There is a connection between anti-democratic theocracy and their maltreatment of temporary labour as in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Doha, where almost all of the feats of construction you refer to are. We don’t criticize Turkey for their labour practices because they don’t have terrible treatment, and it isn’t just a coincidence that Turkey is democratic – democracy engenders respect for citizens.

Doha is the capital of Qatar.

 

[agoraflaneur]

Oops, typo. Was first listing countries then cities, then I guess I forgot to delete Qatar. Thanks for that.

 

[ksun]

So the comparison is moot.

Moot:
subject to debate, dispute, or uncertainty, and typically not admitting of a final decision.

 

[ksun]

This is why, in my opinion, to call the transformation of Chinese cities an 'urban catastrophe' is an insult to the 500 million Chinese people who live in cities.

Such complacency reflects a deep rooted bias and ignorance, and the fact I cease to be surprised by such comments over the past few years is simply amazing.

China has tons of growth problems and is far from a perfect model in terms of urban planning. But I am simply speechless about the conclusion that all China achieved was an "urban catastrophe". Instead of looking at things more objectively and fairly, many still are in the habit of outright dismissal.

I am fairly familiar with Shanghai and I visited it pretty frequently. While building a lot of wide streets for cars hard for pedestrians to cross, which I resent, the city made considerable efforts in preserving and reusing heritage buildings, creating more urban green space and improving pedestrian experiences in many parts of the city, with a lot of successes. I am not sure how many Canadians really know about them. Even those who actually have visited the city may not have the luxury of time to visit all the quaint and peaceful streets in plenty pockets of Shanghai. It is by no means a very liveable city just like any city of its size, but I have no qualm in claiming that it made quite some achievement in urban planning that is way ahead of Toronto's. Its fare system for example is smart enough to charge by distance, and to provide a discount for any subway-bus transfer. That alone is probably 10-20 years ahead of TTC which is still stuck in the 1980s. The while taking forever presto plan is such an expensive fiasco only Toronto can tolerate.

And regarding the expressway map, has it become a general consensus that expressway = evil on this forum? I don't see why a fully built Spadina expressway will do so much harm to the city. And if I am not mistaken, the primary reason it was abandoned was because it was supposed to go through rich people's backyards such as Forest Hill and the Annex, not because Toronto didn't want highways? And I suppose if it were designed to be placed a bit further to the west, or if Forest Hill/Annex were St Jamestown and Regent Park (which were by no means considered "established neighbourhoods"), the project might have a chance to go ahead.

Look I don't drive and I definitely don't like highways. I hope everyday that Toronto may turn into a Paris or Madrid kind of city. But considering the transit choices in Toronto, especially considering its reliability and speed, what options did the city give to average people? Unless we build sufficient and efficient transit for people across the GTA to get to where they want to be, all this resentment toward car driving is unwarranted. Do we really expect people to take transit for 50 minutes from Don Mills and Eglinton when it is a 15 minutes ride.

A friend of mine lives at Don Mills/Sheppard just by the subway line. Last year he somehow decided to go to the airport via transit and it turned out the fastest way is to take the sheppard line, then Yonge line, and then Bloor line to Kipling and the 192 bus, the total timing being almost 2 hours, when driving takes about 25 minutes. He did miss the plane and I am sure he will never do a similar thing again. Is this the way Toronto attempts to convince people transit is good and driving is bad?

 

[ehlow]

And regarding the expressway map, has it become a general consensus that expressway = evil on this forum? I don't see why a fully built Spadina expressway will do so much harm to the city. And if I am not mistaken, the primary reason it was abandoned was because it was supposed to go through rich people's backyards such as Forest Hill and the Annex, not because Toronto didn't want highways? And I suppose if it were designed to be placed a bit further to the west, or if Forest Hill/Annex were St Jamestown and Regent Park (which were by no means considered "established neighbourhoods"), the project might have a chance to go ahead.

Look I don't drive and I definitely don't like highways. I hope everyday that Toronto may turn into a Paris or Madrid kind of city. But considering the transit choices in Toronto, especially considering its reliability and speed, what options did the city give to average people? Unless we build sufficient and efficient transit for people across the GTA to get to where they want to be, all this resentment toward car driving is unwarranted. Do we really expect people to take transit for 50 minutes from Don Mills and Eglinton when it is a 15 minutes ride.

A friend of mine lives at Don Mills/Sheppard just by the subway line. Last year he somehow decided to go to the airport via transit and it turned out the fastest way is to take the sheppard line, then Yonge line, and then Bloor line to Kipling and the 192 bus, the total timing being almost 2 hours, when driving takes about 25 minutes. He did miss the plane and I am sure he will never do a similar thing again. Is this the way Toronto attempts to convince people transit is good and driving is bad?

I think it's a general consensus among people who pay attention to urban issues that:

A. Highways often don't help relieve traffic long term that much because they always fill up with traffic soon after anyways
B. Highways often make the neighbourhood it runs through worse.
C. At this point it would be better to spend money on upgrading our transit system than build new highways in Toronto.

A lot of people think that the Annex is one of the best & nicest neighbourhoods we have. St Clair & Bathurst is great too.

It's not about resentment of driving. I drive all the time, I don't live in the above neighbourhoods, but I would not want a highway running through it because I love those neighbourhoods and love visiting them.

Throughout North American history in different cities, highways have damaged & divided many neighbourhoods, often making them much worse than they were before.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I think it's a general consensus among people who pay attention to urban issues that:

A. Highways often don't help relieve traffic long term that much because they always fill up with traffic soon after anyways
B. Highways often make the neighbourhood it runs through worse.
C. At this point it would be better to spend money on upgrading our transit system than build new highways in Toronto.

D. The cars need to use small local roads to get to their final destination
E. Cars need places to be stored once they reach their downtown destination (or whatever the destination).

C. At this point it would be better to spend money on upgrading our transit system than build new highways in Toronto.

It's a little crazy how inefficient roads are compared to transit. The Gardiner Expressway eastbound moved only 4,000 vehicles into downtown at it's peak hour. More people pass through Bloor-Yonge station in about two minutes.

 

[ehlow]

I'm just going to add that ksun makes a valid point that our transit system is inadequate and uncompetitive to a car for many trips.

Yesterday I was going to the TTC Russell Car yards at Queen east & Greenwood. I live near Yonge & Eg.

Getting there by TTC takes 1 hour. Getting there by car took 30 min. Having said that, parking was very difficult to find so next time I may take the TTC anyways .

But anyways, the point is there are many trips within the city that take too long to get to by transit, so I'm glad to see major expansions happening.

 

[LNahid2000]

Getting there by TTC takes 1 hour. Getting there by car took 30 min. Having said that, parking was very difficult to find so next time I may take the TTC anyways .

I got there by bike from Mount Pleasant and Sherwood in less than 30 minutes

 

[nfitz]

Yesterday I was going to the TTC Russell Car yards at Queen east & Greenwood. I live near Yonge & Eg.

Getting there by TTC takes 1 hour.

That doesn't sound right. It's only about 25 minutes from Eglinton station to Coxwell station. And it's about a 35 minute walk from there to Russell Yard. And it's always quicker to take the Coxwell bus than walk. 45 minutes from Yonge/Eglinton Greenwood Yard through Coxwell station and the Coxwell bus should only take 45 minutes. And probably closer to 35 minutes when the 501 streetcar is back in service in a few weeks.

Driving is almost always faster anwhere in Toronto on the weekend, and outside of rush hour. It's the parking, and all the other issues that tend to be the deciding factor for me.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I'm just going to add that ksun makes a valid point that our transit system is inadequate and uncompetitive to a car for many trips.

Yesterday I was going to the TTC Russell Car yards at Queen east & Greenwood. I live near Yonge & Eg.

Getting there by TTC takes 1 hour. Getting there by car took 30 min. Having said that, parking was very difficult to find so next time I may take the TTC anyways .

But anyways, the point is there are many trips within the city that take too long to get to by transit, so I'm glad to see major expansions happening.

I don't think public transit travel times will ever be comparable with driving for the majority of trips. The time waiting for a vehicle, transferring, dwell times (etc...) quickly adds up. But the travel time situation does need to improve.

The good thing is that transit doesn't need to be faster than driving to get people out of their cars. Price is also a factor. Also there are many people who find driving/car ownership more stressful than transit.

 

[ehlow]

I got there by bike from Mount Pleasant and Sherwood in less than 30 minutes

Nice. I'm still not in great shape though since I didn't bike during the winter, and I went with someone else who doesn't have a bike. I'm starting to bike again though and it's great, especially in weather like this weekend.

That doesn't sound right. It's only about 25 minutes from Eglinton station to Coxwell station. And it's about a 35 minute walk from there to Russell Yard. And it's always quicker to take the Coxwell bus than walk. 45 minutes from Yonge/Eglinton Greenwood Yard through Coxwell station and the Coxwell bus should only take 45 minutes. And probably closer to 35 minutes when the 501 streetcar is back in service in a few weeks.

Driving is almost always faster anwhere in Toronto on the weekend, and outside of rush hour. It's the parking, and all the other issues that tend to be the deciding factor for me.

I'm actually about a 10-15 minute walk from Eglinton station. Anyways the time estimates were just what Google Maps told me. In general I usually use transit when going downtown. I agree lack of or cost of parking can be a big deterrent to driving.

I don't think public transit travel times will ever be comparable with driving for the majority of trips. The time waiting for a vehicle, transferring, dwell times (etc...) quickly adds up. But the travel time situation does need to improve.

The good thing is that transit doesn't need to be faster than driving to get people out of their cars. Price is also a factor. Also there are many people who find driving/car ownership more stressful than transit.

I agree, but all I'm saying is that for some trips, we can do better than being double or triple the car time.

If Eglinton Crosstown and the DRL happened, I think many trips would significantly decrease in travel time. In the above trip the DRL would still be 2km away from my destination, so it may not help a huge amount.

However, let's say someone from Yonge-Eg is going to Liberty Village, it takes 45 min to one hour. You can either take the King streetcar from St Andrew, or the Dufferin bus from Dufferin station. If the DRL were to go there, the King streetcar would be replaced by a subway trip of 3-4 stations, so probably 5 minutes instead of 15-20.

The areas I find myself going to often but don't have good rapid transit access are usually those areas east & west of the core south of Bloor, say Dundas & Dufferin or King west the beaches, or Leslieville. I actually think that for me, a Queen street subway that goes further east than the DRL could actually be more useful, but anyways I do understand that going up Don Mills is the way to go for relieving Yonge.

 

[ksun]

That doesn't sound right. It's only about 25 minutes from Eglinton station to Coxwell station. And it's about a 35 minute walk from there to Russell Yard. And it's always quicker to take the Coxwell bus than walk. 45 minutes from Yonge/Eglinton Greenwood Yard through Coxwell station and the Coxwell bus should only take 45 minutes. And probably closer to 35 minutes when the 501 streetcar is back in service in a few weeks.

Driving is almost always faster anwhere in Toronto on the weekend, and outside of rush hour. It's the parking, and all the other issues that tend to be the deciding factor for me.

you have to account for the highly unpredictable bus schedule. Sometimes it is 2 minutes if you are lucky, sometimes it is 20+ minutes on a bad day.
It is not uncommon to wait more than 15 minutes for the 506 according to my own experience.

Yes, driving is almost always faster, but the example of from Don Mills station to Pearson taking 2 hours versus 25 minutes driving is real and the time difference is excessive.

 

[ehlow]

you have to account for the highly unpredictable bus schedule. Sometimes it is 2 minutes if you are lucky, sometimes it is 20+ minutes on a bad day.
It is not uncommon to wait more than 15 minutes for the 506 according to my own experience.

Yes, driving is almost always faster, but the example of from Don Mills station to Pearson taking 2 hours versus 25 minutes driving is real and the time difference is excessive.

Any suburb to suburb trip is usually really bad by transit. Buses & subways have such close stop spacing that any trip of medium to long distance takes very long. I took a bus from Yonge to Kennedy once on Eglinton East, it was brutal, took about 1 hour. It was stuck in traffic, completely packed full of people.

From Sheppard & Don Mills, almost anywhere you go it's much faster by car. Even if you go from Sheppard & Don Mills to Sheppard & Yonge, a trip directly along a subway line, it can be faster to drive.