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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
Deadpool X
Senior Member
If I got a dollar for every time someone mentioned Mississauga doesn't have good transit because Scarborough sucked in all the funds, I would have been buying Amazon, not the products it sells.
turbanplanner
Senior Member
Blame hazel for rejecting the subway extension and choosing a bus highway that closes at 11
afransen
Senior Member
To me, the story of those projections is that Milton line needs to get addressed because of the huge value unlock better service provides.
T3G
Senior Member
I don't like to frame it in quite so dramatic a way, but it is important to consider that money is finite. Every single purchase means money not spent on something elsewhere.
We should be trying to get the most value out of every dollar. Scarborough deserves transit, yes, but it's not the only community with its hands out asking. It is not fair to any other place in the GTA to build subways deep into Scarborough while others have to fight for literal scraps of bus service, or worse, to entertain the idea of running line 4 to Scarborough Centre, spending an untold amount of money to duplicate the connection between STC and Sheppard while some places have next to nothing.
sixrings
Senior Member
You can’t go on and on and say Scarborough has had it rough for thirty years and then at the same time keep blaming hazel. Hazel is six feet under, her house is for sale and she hasn’t been the mayor since 2014.
sixrings
Senior Member
Is this chart not pointing out exactly what some of us are saying. That the all day service is what is boosting the Kitchener line numbers higher than the Milton line.
sixrings
Senior Member
It’s not a Mississauga vs scarborough thing for me. It’s like others have said that there is only so much money to go around. Yet recently every project in scarborough is the most expensive form of transit. Plus scarborough has some good go service. Because STC (27km) and MCC (26km) are basically the same distance away from the CN tower the disconnect seems more glaring. Yes Mississauga is not part of Toronto. But neither is Vaughan or Richmond hill yet they somehow get lines approved. Anyways over here we’re supposed to be talking about GO. Again the simple issue is that the go train which goes through the busiest part of Mississauga is not all day service. The rebuttal on here is well take the lrt down to port credit. Could you imagine the Yonge line working only a few times a day but the university line working all day. Then when the Yonge people complain you casually say to them just take the bus over to the other line as if they are being ungrateful. I mean the sheppard thread is justifying a sheppard west extension to create duplicate service for the rare times the Yonge line is down. Guess what? The Milton line is down almost all day.
crs1026
Superstar
Too much whining and sour grapes all round in my opinion.
One can’t say that Mississauga is the poor cousin when they are getting an LRT, have already built a busway, and are preparing to build something along Dundas. One might debate those choices versus, say, Milton GO…. but that’s the result of local politicians’ decisions and those decisions are informed by voters’ choices. Mississauga has the transit system its voters asked for.
I would blame Vaughan and Markham well before I threw any shade at Scarborough. They have done pretty well between BRT, a subway (with a second coming) , and two 2WAD lines being built (well, sort of). Maybe they were too good at influencing things.
As for Scarborough itself, it is a huge voter base and has a swing effect on Toronto mayoral outcomes. No big surprise that a succession of political aspirants insisted on erasing their predecessors’ plans and substituting their own “more perfect” plan, with the result that little has gotten off the drawing board until recently. Again, the voters were happy to seesaw with the changes rather than demanding that politicians stay on a single trajectory.
And let’s not leave North York (and Mel Lastman) out of this. Mel set the precedent of thinking of his own reputation ahead of what the greater good required….. building a stub of a vanity line on Sheppard mostly to prove he was the champion rainmaker in the City, while looking the other way when Harris unbuilt an Eglinton subway and generally declaring Toronto to be too poor to fund anything else.
It’s not a pretty bit of history all over. Blaming the other side of the city is very simplistic IMHo.
- Paul
One can’t say that Mississauga is the poor cousin when they are getting an LRT, have already built a busway, and are preparing to build something along Dundas. One might debate those choices versus, say, Milton GO…. but that’s the result of local politicians’ decisions and those decisions are informed by voters’ choices. Mississauga has the transit system its voters asked for.
I would blame Vaughan and Markham well before I threw any shade at Scarborough. They have done pretty well between BRT, a subway (with a second coming) , and two 2WAD lines being built (well, sort of). Maybe they were too good at influencing things.
As for Scarborough itself, it is a huge voter base and has a swing effect on Toronto mayoral outcomes. No big surprise that a succession of political aspirants insisted on erasing their predecessors’ plans and substituting their own “more perfect” plan, with the result that little has gotten off the drawing board until recently. Again, the voters were happy to seesaw with the changes rather than demanding that politicians stay on a single trajectory.
And let’s not leave North York (and Mel Lastman) out of this. Mel set the precedent of thinking of his own reputation ahead of what the greater good required….. building a stub of a vanity line on Sheppard mostly to prove he was the champion rainmaker in the City, while looking the other way when Harris unbuilt an Eglinton subway and generally declaring Toronto to be too poor to fund anything else.
It’s not a pretty bit of history all over. Blaming the other side of the city is very simplistic IMHo.
- Paul
sixrings
Senior Member
If Mississauga has the transit system it asked for does that mean that Scarborough for the last 35 years had the transit system it asked for?
Again I am a former Scarborough resident and was just there yesterday. I love where I grew up. It isn’t about blaming one area or another it is about finite transit dollars being spent.
The reason Scarborough keeps coming up is because they sure seem to be spending those finite transit dollars at a fast pace. Let’s build a danforth extension. We’re not fully happy. Let’s build the sheppard out to STC.
As for saying that Mississauga should be happy because it got a brt, is getting another brt and a lrt. Well Scarborough turned down a sheppard lrt, eglinton east lrt and art conversion. So even in the transit city plan Scarborough would have been significantly winning in comparison. The two subways vs the two brts and one lrt is laughable.
As a downtown Mississauga resident I don’t feel like the “poor” cousin to these other areas but the fact remains Mississauga is the one city centre without a rapid transit which connects directly to Toronto.
All your posts suggests is that where the votes are is where we build. It isn’t even who cries the most, whines the most, is outraged the most. But the area who can win whom ever an election. Crazy we tried to take politics out of our transit planning with metrolinx and in the end we’re even more political because now we’re committed to spending large sums of money. So it’s a war over those transit funds.
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crs1026
Superstar
To a degree, yes.… in that the voters did understand that scrapping one plan to achieve another had a delay factor and a wasted effort factor and a cost escalation….. but those things were not valued by the voters.
If Rob Ford, or Karen Stinz, or even Doug Ford had been challenged on why they weren’t sticking with the last administration’s plans, we might have more transit running in Scarborough today.
It was a vanity contest, and the voters were fine with that.
I don’t like Doug Ford, and I dissent from some of his transit choices, but I give him credit for declaring a plan and ending any and all debate on what the plan should be, and getting on with building (perhaps a tad too arbitrarily, but that’s in the finer points). But again, if prior administrations gave short shrift to Milton Go, well, so did Doug…. so it may not have the voter prominence in anybody’s politics.
My point was, as previously noted, money is finite, and some worthy project will not quite make it over the line. Milton GO is too big and expensive to have fit in the current basket without crowding out other things….. so while it may have gotten less attention than it deserved, pursuing it would have excluded other things, possibly creating an even less equitable or effective outcome.
Responding to that prioritization, however it falls out, with sour grapes is a kind of divisive politic that makes decisions worse, not better.
- Paul
sixrings
Senior Member
Well I guess I am reacting to the idea that the next level of funding could be a sheppard east subway which again leaves the Milton line out.
The current funding is fine. Im content. It’s just I rarely hear anything about the Milton line but I constantly hear about the sheppard line even after the danforth extension was announced. So perhaps I’m upset for no reason. I don’t know what the future funding looks like.
crs1026
Superstar
I would hope that the "next basket" will include a combination of municipal level transit and regional level (GO) projects. Quite reasonable that GO Milton would be one of those.
The point is - while other corridors were a little cheaper, Milton GO will be equivalent to a crosstown subway in expense. It will need to compete with other projects of that size and cost.
It's interesting to consider what might be in that second basket - full Niagara service? Milton? Full double track to Kitchener? HFR to London?
- Paul
turbanplanner
Senior Member
two different issues for two different cities. The TTC offered in 2001 to study a subway to square one, they even made a report. Mississauga decided to focus on a bus highway
sixrings
Senior Member
Again Hazel is no longer our mayor and these decisions were during her time.
Maybe naming everything hazel has given off the idea that she’s going to run this city from the grave. But she’s not. She’s gone. It’s time to move on.