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If council was able to defeat Ford on tax cuts then Transit City could come back

There is one problem. Most of the councillors on the board of the TTC are Ford followers.

When the council voted 23-21 in favour of a proposal to use $15 million from the city’s $154 million 2011 surplus to reverse cuts to the TTC, school pools, arenas, community grants, shelters, daycares and leaf collection, the following councillors who are also on the board voted the following:

City Councillors on the TTC Commission Board:

  • Karen Stintz, TTC Chair AGAINST
  • Peter Milczyn, Vice-Chair AGAINST
  • Maria Augimeri FOR
  • Vincent Crisanti AGAINST
  • Frank Di Giorgio AGAINST
  • Norm Kelly AGAINST
  • Denzil Minnan-Wong AGAINST
  • Cesar Palacio AGAINST
  • John Parker AGAINST

Also remember that Di Giorgio is also the budget chair, and Minnan-Wong is the roads chair. It will need the influence of the citizens or (as Rob likes to call them) taxpayers of Toronto to change their minds. So write in, talk to them, and tell your neighbours and friends.
 
Gosh I sure hope not. But as long as the SELRT stays dead I'll be mostly happy.
 
It won't be "Transit City" if they do decide to bring it back. Transit City (the plan) wasn't just the three east-west LRT lines. Do people honestly think the current funding will even get us Finch West, Eglinton, and Sheppard? So either way, the original Transit City probably won't be completed until well into the next decade or maybe the one after that. With that logic, why are people so keen on sticking with "Transit City" when it's not even funded in whole?
 
11th said:
It won't be "Transit City" if they do decide to bring it back. Transit City (the plan) wasn't just the three east-west LRT lines. Do people honestly think the current funding will even get us Finch West, Eglinton, and Sheppard? So either way, the original Transit City probably won't be completed until well into the next decade or maybe the one after that. With that logic, why are people so keen on sticking with "Transit City" when it's not even funded in whole?
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I would settle for Eglinton to the airport and a start on Finch (from the province).

Much of the cost on SELRT was getting over/under the highway and connection to Don Mills at subway level. A 2 station extension of the subway to Vic Park would get it past the difficult portion and a BRT or something can be funded later on.

So the City and Feds can work out a plan to do that. That $50M/year in the vehicle registration tax was sufficient to cover this over 10 years split with the feds.
 
For now, Del Grande is the budget chair, not Di Giorgio. I hadn't realized the degree to which the TTC board is stacked with representatives from the suburbs. How many of these people ever use the TTC for anything? Would Denzil have used it as a teenager, or did his bike-fearing parents drive him everywhere? I went to check Matt's scorecard to see if all of them voted to eliminate the Vehicle Registration Tax. They had, but in the spirit of giving the mayor some respect on his first initiative, most councillours had voted to eliminate it, even Layton and Wong-Tam.

I'd be happy if for now they don't waste money burying Eglinton beyond Laird, or on planning ways to bury Eglinton beyond Laird. Most harmful, thick-headed decision ever. Try to set aside the financial and political capital for a day when the TTC is controlled by people who have some greater concern for transit than ensuring that the poor people don't get in front of their cars.
 
The Transit City Bus Plan is still on the TTC website. For a good laugh click on this link, except that I have to cry.

Commission endorses Transit City Bus Plan
Bus service every 10 minutes or better proposed on 21 routes.

September 2009

Commissioners voted in favour of major improvements to TTC bus service over the next five years. In partnership with the City of Toronto’s Transportation Service, the TTC’s Transit City Bus Plan (TCBP) calls for:

Bus service every 10 minutes or better on 21 Transit City Bus Network routes, during the day and evening, daily, starting in the fall of 2010.
New or enhanced express bus service on 15 Transit City Bus Network routes, starting in the fall of 2014.
New or enhanced express bus service on three future Transit City LRT corridors, starting in the fall of 2011.
20-minutes-or-better service on all other TTC bus routes during the day and evening, daily, starting fall 2011 and fall 2012.

The TCBP, endorsed at a City Hall meeting on Aug. 26, also proposes additional on-street route supervisors, transit signal priority at 1,150 intersections, 10 new queue jump lanes at some of the city’s busiest intersections, and 75 more bus shelters at locations specified by TTC. When fully implemented, the TCBP will attract an additional 7.5 million customer-trips annually. The cost of the network is estimated at $77 million to build and $39 million (net) annually to operate.

The TTC will be conducting public information meetings about the plan.
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You can still (at the moment) download the Transit City Bus Plan at this link in PDF form.
 
rbt said:
I would settle for Eglinton to the airport and a start on Finch (from the province).

Much of the cost on SELRT was getting over/under the highway and connection to Don Mills at subway level. A 2 station extension of the subway to Vic Park would get it past the difficult portion and a BRT or something can be funded later on.

So the City and Feds can work out a plan to do that. That $50M/year in the vehicle registration tax was sufficient to cover this over 10 years split with the feds.
Click to expand...

+1

This is exactly what I've wanted to see done on Sheppard. It doesn't hobble the subway in the long run. And provides some improvement in speed on the corridor.
 
Id rather have 2 stops and get to warden. Skip the consumers stop and contemplate adding it in later
 
with all the arguing and fights, I am still unsure what transit-city proposed was something like the St Clair streetcars or more like the Vancouver skytrain (except on ground level)? I know it is not subway.
 
On the "light rail heaviness scale" of 1 to 10, where 1 is like Spadina or St. Clair and 10 is like the Calgary C-train, Transit City would have been a 3. The vehicles would have been bigger, and the stop frequency would be down to every 400-500m (not every 200m), but it would have been St. Clair style platforms and shelters rather than Calgary style stations.

The Vancouver skytrain is not even in this category. The skytrain is a fully grade separated, automated metro with sometimes enormous stop spacing (20 stations over 29 km on the Expo line). It's the same as the Scarborough RT, and perhaps even heftier, since it runs 6 car trains at rush hour at 90 second frequencies. The expo line, for example, carries 200,000 passengers a day and takes just 40 minutes to travel the 29 km from King George station in Surrey to Waterfront station in downtown Vancouver.
 
kkgg7 said:
with all the arguing and fights, I am still unsure what transit-city proposed was something like the St Clair streetcars or more like the Vancouver skytrain (except on ground level)? I know it is not subway.
Click to expand...
Parts of Jane, Don Millls, Sheppard East, Eglinton were in a subway.

Probably more like St. Clair on the surface sectons of seven of the lines, and more like the Vancouver skytrain for the SRT to LRT conversion and extension from Kennedy to Malvern. The difference is that on suburban arterials, compared to St. Clair, the road right-of-way are far wider (so no loss of existing lanes) and and road crossings, lights, and stops are spaced further apart. Speed-wise, the surface sections of LRT in Transit City would be similar in spped to the existing LRT on Queensway from Roncesvalles to Humber Loop.
 
Hipster Duck said:
On the "light rail heaviness scale" of 1 to 10, where 1 is like Spadina or St. Clair and 10 is like the Calgary C-train, Transit City would have been a 3. The vehicles would have been bigger, and the stop frequency would be down to every 400-500m (not every 200m), but it would have been St. Clair style platforms and shelters rather than Calgary style stations.

The Vancouver skytrain is not even in this category. The skytrain is a fully grade separated, automated metro with sometimes enormous stop spacing (20 stations over 29 km on the Expo line). It's the same as the Scarborough RT, and perhaps even heftier, since it runs 6 car trains at rush hour at 90 second frequencies. The expo line, for example, carries 200,000 passengers a day and takes just 40 minutes to travel the 29 km from King George station in Surrey to Waterfront station in downtown Vancouver.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for the details. It is really nice to know. It is almost streetcar, basically, with slightly larger capacity and longer gaps.

With that knowledge in mind, I wouldn't mind Transit city being replaced by something closer to subways at all, particulary on Eglinton. Having a stop every 400-500 meters hurts the purpose of rapid transit, except in the highly dense downtown area (King to Queen is only 400m). I think 1,000 meter is more appropriate. However, I don't see the point of burying it outside the Bayview-Bathurst. the 400-500 per stop design make sense only where the area is dominated by highrises where you expect severl dozen people to enter and exist at each stop. To have a whole train of people waiting for 3 passengers enter/exist is ridiculous.

Additionally, even if this line goes to Pearson, it would probably take longer than if one takes the subway + 192, which takes about 60 minutes from downtown. How does that make any sense.
 
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