New Transit Funding Sources

[rbt]

That's what's unfortunate. GO is really good for suburb -> Toronto trips. but not Suburb -> Suburb trips. I'm sure most people on the 401 are doing crosstown trips between east end suburbs towards the west end suburbs, etc.

A lot of that is timing.

A trip from Oshawa to the office buildings around the airport could be done via LakeShore East and Georgetown corridors if trains ran more frequently.

Very few people have a driveway onto the 401. Most take a few different streets with 401 as the trunk route. High frequency GO on LakeShore West/Georgetown would compete pretty well with 401 as a trunk route provided the feeders were up to snuff.

High frequency GO on LakeShore West/Barrie would compete fairly well with 401 between South Mississauga/Oakville and Vaughan.


If you're going from Oshawa to Oakville, GO LakeShore may already be the fastest way to get between those suburbs. You're stuck once you arrive at the train station though.


Highway 407 BRT will do for trips between northern portions of the burbs.

Beefed up GO service on current routes could provide an alternative for a large number of trips currently using the 401.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Oshawa to Georgetown route using the existing corridor could provide an alternative.

 

[TOareaFan]

Oshawa to Georgetown route using the existing corridor could provide an alternative.

i hate to sound like a broken record.......but none of these hypothetical/"would be good if" services help the guy that, today, hears "if you don't like our proposal for 401 tolls, take the train".....unless you plan on delaying tolls until those crosstown routes exist.

 

[M II A II R II K]

General road and car taxes would do the job. Only charge tolls on city roads that are actually too congested in the hopes of reducing congestion and making money off of it.

 

[rfid]

You're right that no round trip ticket can beat that -- Toronto - Niagara on Via currently runs as low as $45.20 for round trip (the "Economy-special fare"). You save 20 cents by driving.

You save a lot more if there's more than 1 person in the car

 

[EnviroTO]

Funding sources for subway construction are
1 Local taxpayers
2 Provincial taxpayers
3 Federal taxpayers
4 User fees on non-transit (fees on transit reduce ridership which is the opposite of the objective)
5 Companies pay for transit now with guarantee taxpayers will pay it back with interest and profit
6 Government expropriates and gets into the real estate and development business on a large scale with significant tax payer seed money (similar to the port lands project but with a more expensive buy in cost)

 

[MisterF]

Re: cost of driving: there's more to it than just gas. Routine maintenance adds a lot to any given trip. People always seem to forget about that.

 

[Tulse]

Re: cost of driving: there's more to it than just gas. Routine maintenance adds a lot to any given trip. People always seem to forget about that.

And insurance. And parking. And, oh yeah, the cost of the vehicle itself.

 

[andrewpmk]

Much as alternate routes (e.g. Lakeshore GO, Milton GO, Georgetown GO, Highway 407 BRT) might be much better routes than Eglinton subway/Sheppard subway for some trips that currently use the 401, I think that these two lines will provide a substitute for a lot of them.

If the Eglinton and Sheppard subways are built according to the Ford proposal then it will pretty much be possible to get from any part of the northern suburbs of Toronto to somewhere else in the northern suburbs of Toronto using those lines combined with a bus. Furthermore the lines would directly serve numerous employment areas including Eglinton/Yonge, North York Centre, Eglinton/DVP, Consumers Road, Scarborough Centre, Downsview and Airport Corporate Centre (with the westward extension to the airport). Plus there would be bus connections from Renforth/Eglinton (with the airport extension) to many parts of Mississauga, and bus connections from Scarborough Centre to Durham Region, and probably numerous bus routes from the Sheppard subway to Markham. In rush hour when 401 is severely congested this would be an attractive alternative to driving.

Many of the really long routes across the city would be better served by these alternative routes. However for many people these alternative routes would be useless. For instance, if you work at Airport Corporate Centre and live at Bathurst/Lawrence, or St Clair/Dufferin, or Bayview/Finch to just pick some random examples, then various combinations of the Eglinton line, buses and other subway lines would be very attractive as an alternative to driving, while GO and the 407 BRT would be useless.

 

[Dan416]

I wish Toronto wouldn't shy away from building real LRTs with crossing gates and 100% priority--but this would piss off drivers too much for Ford.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

I wish Toronto wouldn't shy away from building real LRTs with crossing gates and 100% priority--but this would piss off drivers too much for Ford.

That would be so cool. But I agree.

 

[Dan416]

That would be so cool. But I agree.

I also think they should convert all existing streetcars to LRT--declare the lanes that the streetcars operate in to be streetcar only, cut the number of stops in half, and ideally activate some signal priority. That alone would make the streetcar system usable.

 

[ssiguy2]

That would make TC true rapid/mass transit but let's not blame Ford for that one. The TC design was 100% Miller's doing.
Funny how the supposed car-loving cities of Alberta are willing to give their LRT lines 100% priority with rail crossings and crosswalks while supposedly transit-friendly Toronto is willing to create a very slow moving system just so the cars won't be inconvienced.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Calgary didn't build a single highway into the core, and sorry, in the year that he is mayor, Fraud could very well have directed changes to the plan that would prioritize LRT if he chose to do so. He didn't.

AoD

 

[rbt]

Funding sources for subway construction are

3 Federal taxpayers

Flaherty indicated a few months back that if the federal government was to invest in subways it would be in a line to the Environment Ministers riding (Peter Kent is in Thornhill).

I think getting money for the Yonge line would be easy.

Sheppard Subway, because of the amount of politics around it including TTC reports stating it isn't necessary, probably would not get Federal funding at this time. The rest of the country would be very angry about their perceived waste of funds.

The Spadina line had support of the TTC, Vaughan, Toronto Council, and the province.