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Dufferin Street: Eliminating the jog

If they're the kind of businesses that feel they need a 400 extension or revived Spadina in order to invest in Toronto, then they're substantially less attractive to Torontonians. Okay?



http://www.toviaduct.com/

Also

http://spacing.ca/wire/?page_id=1244


ugh. not that thing again. the biggest problem with these elevated highways are the on/off ramps. where will we put them all? how will this solve the traffic problems? the traffic will get relocated and build up in the areas where the ramps are. and if there will be no ramps within the city for the 400 extension, what's the point? anyone coming from the 401 or 400 can take the 427 down. that's what i used to do. it's pretty fast.
 
A local stop on Gladstone would be lost? For shame! To think we'd lose that when we fix something that has bothered drivers and pedestrians alike on Dufferin for many a year. The nice thing about this jog is that Dufferin actually is a straight line, it just has to be reconnected.

The walk to Dufferin or Beaconsfield isn't far, but it will inconvenience hipsters (well, at least the ones not on their fixed-gear bikes) heading to Spacing magazine launches and other such events. :p

The stop at Gladstone and Queen makes sense only because it is the easiest place to connect between the Dufferin Bus and the Queen Car.
 
One of either the 400 extension or to a much lesser extent the Spadina Expressway is desperately needed, would make downtown substantially more attractive to businesses. A 400 extension is a brilliant idea, and would have 100% of my support as long as it's done in a non obtrusive way. It's beyond ridiculous that there is no high capacity road link between the downtown core and the central-west part of the city.

The lack of motorways in Central London, or through western San Francisco, or to downtown Vancouver, or cutting across Manhattan, is beyond ridiculous as well.
 
The lack of motorways in Central London ...
Road access into London isn't that lacking. There are many main arteries in, and remember, London isn't that large - it's quite compact. Toronto seems more difficult to drive into these days, with the congestion charging in London - and with London you have increasingly good transit alternatives.

Tell me, what would knock down in London to build motorways?
 
The lack of motorways in Central London, or through western San Francisco, or to downtown Vancouver, or cutting across Manhattan, is beyond ridiculous as well.

I am not familiar enough with any of those cities to really comment, but what I can say is that some of them have among the largest subway systems in the world, while others have twice as many highways leading into the CBD if not more. If you read my post in full, you'll see that I think it's just as wrong that GO and the TTC haven't seen major expansion either.

I think that the state of transportation in Toronto is pathetic. Many of those that that could take transit don't because they live miles from the subway, while those few that legitimately need to drive get stuck in traffic due to the fact that so many potential transit trips are made by car, and the the highway network is incomplete.

I would never support a brand new highway - I think that the 407 was completely a step in the wrong direction. The same can be said of sprawl producing extensions to the 404 and 427. But finishing the 400 would be different as it completes the highway network and would take cars off local roads.
 
Allow me to apply this statement to other things:

Toronto circa the late 1980s:

"The Downtown Relief Line is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Or perhaps Toronto circa the late 1960s:

"A light rail line up the Weston Sub is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Or maybe the start of the 1990s:

"A subway under Eglinton West is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Not saying I support the idea, but saying that something is retarded just because you think it will never happen is, well, retarded.

Very well put.
 
If they're the kind of businesses that feel they need a 400 extension or revived Spadina in order to invest in Toronto, then they're substantially less attractive to Torontonians. Okay?

So that rules out manufacturing, which is daft. We need a varied economic base in the city. One of the key reasons most manufacturers left the city is poor access to transportation.

Myself, and the hundreds of thousands, who work in the manufacturing sector in the GTA, probably find the idea that our jobs and our businesses are unattractive to "Torontonians".
 
Allow me to apply this statement to other things:

Toronto circa the late 1980s:

"The Downtown Relief Line is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Or perhaps Toronto circa the late 1960s:

"A light rail line up the Weston Sub is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Or maybe the start of the 1990s:

"A subway under Eglinton West is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Not saying I support the idea, but saying that something is retarded just because you think it will never happen is, well, retarded.

We don't think it's retarded because it will never be built. We think it's retarded because extending an elevated freeway through an established residential neighbourhood champions automobile-forward planning theories that were discredited in the early 1970s. It's also retarded because it's severely overengineered and ridiculously expensive to build: who except some Dubai sheik with ties to Osama Bin Laden's construction business would dream of building a 4 km long cable stayed bridge over dry land?

But finishing the 400 would be different as it completes the highway network and would take cars off local roads.

By this logic, we should complete the Richview expressway across Eglinton because it 'completes the network'. Freeway building isn't about drawing lines on a map that link up to each other, those cars exit the freeway somewhere and often depost themselves on local roads. There would almost certainly be entrances and exits in Parkdale under such a scheme and the area would suffer from an onslaught, rather than a reduction, of car traffic.
 
Developing a "varied economic base" in the city doesn't mean no other considerations are valid, or more important. Is the large smelly slaughterhouse appropriate at Front/Bathurst? No. Would farms and cow pastures diversify the economic base of the city? Yes. Are they appropriate for a relatively dense urban area? Of course not. How about some kind of mining operation?

Anyway, while some light industry is certainly appropriate for some parts of the city, large factories and industry simply must be relegated to the fringe, or to areas within the city where they do not greatly impact the quality of life for others.
 
why did the factories who had railway service leave? traffic doesn't effect them.

the traffic in the 905 is also bad. if businesses leave toronto because of traffic, they're not gonna be too happy in the 905.

cityplaceN1, hit the nail on the head. property values went up which means people that owned factories could sell and make a killing and buy cheaper land in the 905 or others areas. there was profit to be made. also, don't forget that alot of de-industrialization happened in times when the economy wasn't doing to well like the early/mid 90's. even NAFTA had an effect.

this is not a one cause issue.
 
Allow me to apply this statement to other things:

Toronto circa the late 1980s:

"The Downtown Relief Line is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Or perhaps Toronto circa the late 1960s:

"A light rail line up the Weston Sub is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Or maybe the start of the 1990s:

"A subway under Eglinton West is not a retarded idea!"
"If it's not retarded, why will it never come to pass?"

Not saying I support the idea, but saying that something is retarded just because you think it will never happen is, well, retarded.

Not as retarded as saying something will never happen, bacause it is not retarded. Sound dumb? You need to think more about the question I asked. I want to know why people who support it can say it will never happen. I think it's because they know this scheme is from the back of a napkin with only catch phrases and sound bytes like "maximizing use of existing corridors", "complete the highway network" and "support business in Toronto". The scope is not equivalent to a new subway line or rail sub, it would completely alter the transportation patterns of the region with no way to tell in advance if its benefits would outweigh the costs. It exists merely to satisfy someones desire for a faster commute with unrelated plans (like the underground Queen car) tacked on to try and gain broader appeal.
 
Not as retarded as saying something will never happen, bacause it is not retarded. Sound dumb? You need to think more about the question I asked. I want to know why people who support it can say it will never happen.

A precondition of supporting any idea is that it will happen?

A perfect example of supporting an idea that will never occur, but seems to be quite popular here, is the whole Transit City plan. That plan will never be completed, ever, yet people here think it quite supportable.
 
why did the factories who had railway service leave? traffic doesn't effect them.

the traffic in the 905 is also bad. if businesses leave toronto because of traffic, they're not gonna be too happy in the 905.

cityplaceN1, hit the nail on the head. property values went up which means people that owned factories could sell and make a killing and buy cheaper land in the 905 or others areas. there was profit to be made. also, don't forget that alot of de-industrialization happened in times when the economy wasn't doing to well like the early/mid 90's. even NAFTA had an effect.

this is not a one cause issue.

Certainly those issues were all part of why some manufacturing, especially the large scale stuff, left the city. I don't think it was so land value driven as you might think, however. Only fairly recently has the trend been to convert buildings into lofts/offices/etc., but if you get away from the downtown area there is still a lot of space that could be utilized much better and is not valued too highly.

Where I am now, there are a lot of small industrial units, say under 10,000 sq. ft., that employ under 20 people or so. All typically traditional light industrial stuff. A lot of the companies aroud here would love to have a showroom and shop location in the city, for obvious reasons. The trouble isn't finding affordable land/buildings, it's the logistics of being no where near a highway (and very slow in-town traffic) that kills the idea. Rail service is great, if everyone involved is on a rail line, but that's rarely the case and transshipment can be expensive.

I think my point, which has been lost in some of the rhetoric here, is that when we look at these transportaion issues, we have to remember that there is more than just single occupancy vehicle issues. The movement of goods is just as important, and a strictly LRT/Subway/Bus approach ignores an important component of the GTA's economy.
 

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