If you could change one thing about Toronto, what would it be?

[nfitz]

The U.K. and France both have pretty relaxed laws on alcohol

Boy ... if you think that the requirement that pubss close at 11 pm is a relaxed law on alchohol ...

Sure, they've recently dropped that; but it will take years for the effects of that change to permeate through the culture. I'm not even sure if most of the pubs have made the request to extend the hours!

 

[Whoaccio]

Right, exactly - although "exurban" might not be it, it might also spur more concentrated development in the 905 around employment lands - this will likely lead to worse transportation from a car prescriptive, in other words - driving to these locations will be more difficult then driving downtown. Also, downtown will always have the transit advantage - there is no sign of this changing, although transit projects will improve the ability to reach certain suburban employment districts just as much, if not more money / effort will be spent improving the transportation to downtown but as I've already indicated it's not downtown that has the most to worry (although, slow job growth (not negative / stagnate) vs the suburbs in downtown is still worrisome).

Odd, I sort of imagined the process in reverse. I figured that a substantive increase in gas prices would make commuting downtown relatively more difficult than commuting into the 'burbs (more congestion, slower speeds = more wasted fuel). From an all out fuel efficiency perspective, we should all spend our time on the highways and off of congested local roads anyways. Studies have shown that jurisdictions with lower average trip times subsequently grow more than those with higher trip times, and commuting downtown by car is generally harder than commuting to some office park beside a highway offramp. Higher gas prices should accentuate that trend as most people try to minimize commutes.

I am thinking more of a generic American city here than Toronto specifically. So, in our case, public transit does give the CBD a big edge over surrounding areas that you may not find in Atlanta.

In any case, I'm pretty sure there are some very efficient coping methods to deal with higher gas prices short of the suburbs going Mad Max. The most obvious is boosting vehicle occupancy. Two people is just a bit less than a 50% improvement in efficiency over single occupancy travel. Simple reductions in horsepower, which I assume would inevitably flow from higher gas prices, could have similar effects. Not totally relevant to Toronto, but warmer jurisdictions could easily cut oil demand by moving towards vehicles like Vespas (which would make gas cheaper for us). These are my observations from looking at poorer cities. They tend to be just as sprawly as many North American cities (Joburg is a whole new level of sprawl), but their residents tend to have less than a quarter our incomes. They cope by using higher occupancy vehicles (usually Van-pooling, which as far as I can see is the most economic form of travel and part of why I keep scratching my head over the TTC monopoly), using vehicles with smaller energy outputs (i.e. Tata Nano, 33hp), and using more efficient travel plans (i.e. 4 day weeks).

 

[devjohnson]

Probably a tad bit of the Eaton Centre, and the First Canadian Place...bleh

 

[paul]

if I only got one

Restructure the whole region. De-amalgamate and resurrect Metro, and annex the entire GTA. Give Metro broader tax powers and hire some sane planners, and give them authority (no crying to the OMB).

My hope would be that that would lead to and end to the construction of endless suburbs, which while trendy today, will inevitably decay and leave a ring of gray around the city. Ideally the districts would be more empowered to deal with local issues as well -- no more city-wide garbage strikes.

 

[Felino]

More subway lines downtown.

We need atleast one more line going east-west (Dundas, Queen, King or Adelaide).

A close #2 would be for the city to ban panhandling.

 

[GenerationW]

The Society for Numerical Uniformity says...

Legislate that all new buildings must have a thirteenth floor, and all new streets must use thirteen as a street number. This outdated, idiotic superstition has to go!

 

[afransen]

What about four?

 

[cracktowner]

Resurrect and honour all rivers.

 

[Second_in_pie]

^^ That'd actually be quite nice

 

[GenerationW]

What about four?

What about it?

 

[Whoaccio]

In Chinese (and Korean?), "four" is a homophone of "death." Quite a few condos nowadays skip the 4th floor as a result. I think I Hong Kong, some buildings even skip floors 39-50. There is even a name for it, tetraphobia. Skipping floor 13 is triskadecaphobia.

 

[LeonSKennedy]

Make it mandatory for any city council member to wear a helmet and not just for biking work.

Seriously, how about restoring watersheds, creating more retention ponds, and add ban right-hand turns on red.

 

[borgo100]

instigate a rule that would see buildings built in the downtown district to have 1% of their property tax taken off for every 100 ft built over 700 feet

 

[Josef]

Hmmm, either change the colour of the C.N tower to a solid white or cream colour or replace the rails on the gardnier to look half decent. When travelling on the gardnier often, I can't help to see the rusted metal rails and wonder
what tourists think of it before approaching Toronto. Couldn't they invest
in properly galvanized metal?

 

[Hipster Duck]

In any case, I'm pretty sure there are some very efficient coping methods to deal with higher gas prices short of the suburbs going Mad Max. The most obvious is boosting vehicle occupancy. Two people is just a bit less than a 50% improvement in efficiency over single occupancy travel. Simple reductions in horsepower, which I assume would inevitably flow from higher gas prices, could have similar effects. Not totally relevant to Toronto, but warmer jurisdictions could easily cut oil demand by moving towards vehicles like Vespas (which would make gas cheaper for us). These are my observations from looking at poorer cities. They tend to be just as sprawly as many North American cities (Joburg is a whole new level of sprawl), but their residents tend to have less than a quarter our incomes. They cope by using higher occupancy vehicles (usually Van-pooling, which as far as I can see is the most economic form of travel and part of why I keep scratching my head over the TTC monopoly), using vehicles with smaller energy outputs (i.e. Tata Nano, 33hp), and using more efficient travel plans (i.e. 4 day weeks).

I agree. I don't think that the hollowing out of suburban areas is going to occur - that is more a prophesy that urbanites would like to see, rather than something that is actually plausible.

Smaller, lower-HP vehicles are certainly one way that transportation for the burbs might manifest itself; another thing I expect is private paratransit (aka: jitneys) to start. These services are much more flexible and responsive to growth, demand, built form, etc. than a single, government run public transit operator. I think that with a strong regulator (this could be a new role for Metrolinx) and a public agency that builds jitney-friendly infrastructure (such as HOV lanes, special stops, etc.) we would have an ideal regional transportation system for a sprawling city such as ours.