Planned Sprawl in the GTA

[salsa]

That is precisely why the Bramalea stop on the Steeles Zum route is where it is.....if it were closer to Bramalea road people would be on here noting how stupid it is to have a higher order bus route stop so far from a regional bus/rail depot like the Bramalea GO station.

If that's the case, then Brampton could have found a better way to do it.


1. First of all, why is this northbound bus stop (on Bramalea Rd) so far away from Steeles?

2. If the goal was to offer an easy connection to GO, then why not create a bus loop in the station itself as was done on Bramalea Rd?



3. Or alternatively, why not move the Zum stop much closer to it, and add a second stop just east of Bramalea? In fact, given that most Brampton intersections are about at pedestrian friendly as a freeway offramp, I think there should be east side and west side stops everywhere before somebody gets killed trying to cross the road.

4. How come the westbound Zum stop is right at the intersection where it's supposed to be, but somehow it's the job of the eastbound stop to be closer to GO?

Sorry, but this is just awful. It doesn't offer an easy transfer from Zum to five other bus routes, nor does provide an elegant connection to GO if that's really what they tried to do. Their attempt to do two things at once resulted in a half ass situation that doesn't help anyone.

There are many things we do wrong in Brampton but I think the city does as good a job as any suburban city (better than a lot) in its transit system growth/development....yes there is a long way to go (and they seem to be willing to go that long way) but when I use BT I don't feel all that inconvenienced.

Sadly, that is true. Service levels today are as good as they can be for a city like Brampton. I guess I've been spoiled by the TTC, because on that same day when I used Brampton transit to pick up my package at Fedex, I bussed all over Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke to take pictures of dozens of condo construction sites. I made well over 20 bus and subway rides, and still had plenty of daylight left. This is how much ground I covered in the span of only six hours, on a holiday schedule in late December. Then when it got dark, it was time to go Mississauga via Brampton Transit, from Humber College to Derry Rd & Bramalea. It was a simple trip requiring only two buses each way, and it wasn't even a long distance trip. However my presto records show that I nearly missed the two hour time transfer by the time I tapped on the fourth bus, so it probably took about 2.5 hours in total to make the full circle back to Humber College, just to go to and from one destination. But I guess I should be thankful that it's not like Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

As for the Boylen Road stop.....seems a bit harsh to be calling out Brampton Transit on the state of a stop serving a primarily industrial area of another city....no?

No. They don't seem to care much about their own city either.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

However, at the time (1952), the plaza was a foreshadowing of the sprawl that was to come. Before 1952, the new subdivisions were still walkable with storefronts facing the street. After 1952, the strip mall, following by the shopping centre, and later shopping malls, hand in hand with the restrictive single-use zoning created a less walkable environment.

I live across the street from this. I am not too impressed with what RioCan wants to do with plaza, I hope that no progress happens to this site until the mid 2020s.

 

[W. K. Lis]

A lot of the problems we have rests with the city, town, township, ville, etc. and their zoning by-laws. Before WWII, zoning was generally lacking or just suggestive. A dentist or doctor could have his office in his home, for example. Unless grandfathered, its not done these days.

Even with zoning these days, the developers get exemptions. We saw that with the seniors residence and long-term-care home that got built in an area zoned for industrial. Unfortunately, now when a facility that would fit in with the zoning (the McNicoll bus garage), they blow their tops. Yet, I remember living near the Parkdale bus garage (now a park) that is now in a residential area.

If zoning can be exempted, allow for mixed use and higher density that walkable neighbourhoods desire. Better yet, just change the zoning by-laws to allow for higher densities and conditions like they were before the 1950's.

 

[ShonTron]

While I hate how far back some of the Zum stops are from the intersections (the insistence on right-turn channelized lanes bothers me greatly), the design is meant to allow buses to clear intersections faster with queue-jump lanes. But while the transit planners are trying to build better transit, the Region of Peel (which has Steeles Avenue, Queen east of Highway 410 and Bovaird) designs roads to accommodate trucks and heavy traffic) prefers to engineer roads not for transit users. The Zum stops on Queen west of Highway 410 and on Main Street are better.

Worse, where there's a gas station on the corner, the shelter is on the far side of the gas station entrances. At least it's an attempt though to provide higher-quality bus services and speed the express buses; Brampton Transit's ridership is about 20 million in 2014; ridership continues to grow much faster than population. Bramalea/Steeles is the worst, you're right. The northbound 15/115 Bramalea should stop on the nearside, on the southeast corner, especially now that the gas station is gone. Perhaps the local 15 and 11 buses should enter the GO loop.

I could also show images of really bad Mississauga, York Region TTC stops. Heck Humber Loop is an awful mess. As long as traffic engineers are in charge of building on-street transit infrastructure, we're not going to get things right.

 

[innsertnamehere]

My favourite "bad bus stop" is probably still this one in Northern Richmond Hill near the Seneca King Campus. I honestly wonder if anyone has ever even used this stop.. there are essentially only a couple of rural houses within walking distance.

going the other way. The streetview actually has the bus in the image too!

 

[salsa]

That's hilarious. Well at least the scenery is pretty. I sure as hell would rather stand there than next to a freeway in St Louis Missouri.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Bloomington through that stretch will probably be widened to 4 lanes soon (they just finished it between Bathurst and the 404, this is between Bathurst and Dufferin), so it won't be long for this world. I get a bit of a chuckle when I drive by it every once and a while.

Rural stops are interesting in general. The rural GO buses have informal stops on side concessions as well, The uxbridge bus often stops on side concessions to drop off residents despite it not formally being a stop.

 

[howl]

I thought I talked about both. You say that "there hasn't been a new neighbourhood built in the last twenty years in the GTA that wasn't much more walkable that those built in the 1980's", so why is the walk score considerably worse in the GTA compared to older 416 suburbia? Why are new plazas today being build exactly the same way as 30 years ago, as if we don't know any better than that?

The point I was making is that almost all new developments and projects are internally walkable and can be connected to a larger network once that network is developed, but changing an entire city takes decades. They may not get good "walkability" scores now because the city around them hasn't evolved at the same pace. It's incremental changes, not haussmannian urban engineering. Your comment about planners not having figure it out is disingenuous and insulting. Planners have had it figures out for decades, but change takes time.

Many of the examples on the last few pages that are being held up as "bad" examples of new or planned development are actually very walkable internally and will eventually be connected to larger pedestrian networks over time. However the reality is if it can't accommodate cars as well as pedestrian then it ain't gonna sell, so it ain't gonna get built.

 

[W. K. Lis]

A rural bus stop in Poland. A least there is shelter from rain, snow, or hot sun.

From https://www.google.ca/maps/@53.0029...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sgCv8TL3-BcZyE1HFQler9Q!2e0

At least in Europe, they have local bus services in rural areas.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Ah, come on....those rural European bus stops are for intercity buses....and sometimes seem to be used more than bus stops in the middle of suburbia here.

That New Amherst in Cobourg must easily have the nicest subdivision houses North America has ever seen. They actually look attractive to me.....this is a first. I'm speechless.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Ah, come on....those rural European bus stops are for intercity buses....and sometimes seem to be used more than bus stops in the middle of suburbia here.

That New Amherst in Cobourg must easily have the nicest subdivision houses North America has ever seen. They actually look attractive to me.....this is a first. I'm speechless.

Those Cobourg houses are nice.
The New urbanist development in Niagara-on-the-Lake, with its neo-Georgian architecture is pretty nice as well.
(Like most of the NU developments discussed above, its failing is that it's internally walkable but there aren't many destinations, at least so far. But there is a plaza on the main road that goes to old NOTL so I've seen worse...)

It's still being built out but you get the idea...

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Ah, come on....those rural European bus stops are for intercity buses....and sometimes seem to be used more than bus stops in the middle of suburbia here.

That New Amherst in Cobourg must easily have the nicest subdivision houses North America has ever seen. They actually look attractive to me.....this is a first. I'm speechless.

Those Cobourg houses are nice.
The New urbanist development in Niagara-on-the-Lake, with its neo-Georgian architecture is pretty nice as well.
(Like most of the NU developments discussed above, its failing is that it's internally walkable but there aren't many destinations, at least so far. But there is a plaza on the main road that goes to old NOTL so I've seen worse...)

It's still being built out but you get the idea...

 

[SunriseChampion]

Yeah, those aren't bad either. What the actual hell is going on? I literally can't believe what I'm seeing. No ridiculous overuse of peaks, gables, and valleys. Decent brick facades. Decently scaled. No driveway pollution (think light or noise pollution but with driveways).

I'm impressed. (Impressing me is hard to do...ask my friends or underlings at work )

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Yeah, those aren't bad either. What the actual hell is going on? I literally can't believe what I'm seeing. No ridiculous overuse of peaks, gables, and valleys. Decent brick facades. Decently scaled. No driveway pollution (think light or noise pollution but with driveways).

I'm impressed. (Impressing me is hard to do...ask my friends or underlings at work )

Andres Duany was involved in the design of the NOTL community (as well as Cornell, of course, and I think...North Oakville?). The execution varies but I drove through the NOTL one last year and thought it did the ersatz historical architecture thing nicely, without feeling like Disney or something.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Interesting article over in ibiketo.ca, at this link:

New Liberty Street but the same old crappy car-centric traffic engineering

Ugh. Toronto is building new roads, but despite all the talk about making the city more pedestrian and cycling friendly, cyclists and pedestrians are still second-class citizens.

We usually focus on old streets and making them more bike friendly by slapping on some paint where expedient, or physical barriers if we really care. It's rare that an old city like Toronto builds new roads, but as it fills in its former industrial lands with condos, a handful of new roads are being designed and built. In the Cherry Street extension in the Don Lands. In each case—even though the City is serving tens of thousands of people who would prefer to travel by transit, foot or bike—it seems that the City refuses to get out of a car-centric frame of mind. In the Don Lands, for example, the City built an extension to Cherry Street that could have easily included proper physical separation, but they pretended that we still lived in the 90s and defaulted to paint. And in Liberty Village, it's even worse, there's no cycling infrastructure at all.

Over a decade ago as Liberty Village was first being filled in with condos, the City took a decidedly suburban, car-centric approach for such a population dense neighbourhood. This has resulted in a neighbourhood that is effectively trapped by railway lines and heavy car traffic. It's now quite uncomfortable to walk or bike into and out of Liberty Village. The main east-west street, East Liberty street has no bike lanes and is always jammed full of cars.

Toronto is undergoing an environmental assessment for New Liberty Street which will be just to the south of East Liberty. But even here, their old-school traffic engineering prioritized on-street parking over safe cycling. The City's proposed plan is to build a multi-use path that vanishes 300m from Strachan Ave. Multi-use paths are already a compromise, since they force two different travel modes that want to go at much different speeds to intermingle. And then to add insult to injury, the planners decided that at the intersection that it'll be all given over to cars.

Some of the detailed problems with the City's plan, as detailed by the groups:

1. Motor vehicle lanes widen to 4.1m and the multi-use path vanishes at the private road. Without connectivity, the multi-use path is useless to children / parents / seniors.
2. New Liberty doesn't connect for northbound Strachan or eastbound Ordnance cycling traffic, and north-south parking garage access streets nor East Liberty St. have no bicycle accommodation.
3. Two 5.5% grades are introduced at the private road. Such slopes are difficult for children / seniors to climb, especially without any safe right-of-way to balance in.
4. The highway off ramp-like New Liberty / Strachan intersection introduces three bicycle-car turning conflicts, has poor sight lines.
5. The turning radii for car lanes at the New Liberty / Strachan and East Liberty / Strachan intersection encourage fast car turns through conflicts. Normalizing at 11m radius is sufficient.