Rob Ford's Toronto

[Irishmonk]

Damn, that Parisian LRT looks GOOD!

Damn those French, do they have to be perfect at everything?

 

[canmark]

An interesting TV commercial for Mercedes showing an advertising campaign they did in the Berlin subway where Mercedes drivers could use the remote on their car keys to view a video along the subway platforms. A point that the commercial seems to show is that people who drive cars and take public transit--are the same people! Ford seems to operate on the assumption that people who drive cars and people who take public transit are mutually exclusive. But they are not. I drive AND take the TTC to work every day. People who take the bus also own cars. People who own cars also ride the subway. Better transit helps... everybody.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Damn, that Parisian LRT looks GOOD!

It's not just the French, especially when the federal government subsidizes the operation and the capital costs better than Canada (and Ontario).

Also helps when the roads department does not interfere with their excuses for not having grassy right-of-ways or control of transit priority signals.

 

[Torontovibe]

I love the fact that these LRTs don't have to destroy the public realm with a mass of over-head wires. Why is it, in Toronto, the streetcar wires dominate everywhere and provide way too much clutter, yet other cities can do it with minimal wires and make it look so much nicer? We need to find a way to minimize those ugly wires. Spadina is probably the best at this but Queen Street & Dundas are a disaster.

 

[W. K. Lis]

I love the fact that these LRTs don't have to destroy the public realm with a mass of over-head wires. Why is it, in Toronto, the streetcar wires dominate everywhere and provide way too much clutter, yet other cities can do it with minimal wires and make it look so much nicer? We need to find a way to minimize those ugly wires. Spadina is probably the best at this but Queen Street & Dundas are a disaster.

The wires are still there, just the photo is not focused on them.

Just like wrinkles, they can be blurred out.

 

[nfitz]

Also helps when the roads department does not interfere with their excuses for not having grassy right-of-ways or control of transit priority signals.

To be fair ... can you imagine what grass in the ROW would like like here with our road salt usage and hot-dry summers? Perhaps in another decade or two if this global warming continues ...

 

[Tulse]

Grass requires maintenance: watering (if you want to avoid the problem of hot-dry summers), but also mowing, fertilizing, weeding, etc.

Another major consideration is that the LRT median can potentially be used as a clear route for emergency vehicles, and driving such vehicles on grass may not be optimal. It was apparently this consideration that scotched the use of grass in the median for the Queens Quay LRT. As Steve Munro reported:

On the streetcar right-of-way itself, the hoped-for grass median has been replaced by paving because neither the TTC nor the Fire Department were happy with the problems of driving on and maintaining sod.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I love the fact that these LRTs don't have to destroy the public realm with a mass of over-head wires. Why is it, in Toronto, the streetcar wires dominate everywhere and provide way too much clutter, yet other cities can do it with minimal wires and make it look so much nicer? We need to find a way to minimize those ugly wires. Spadina is probably the best at this but Queen Street & Dundas are a disaster.

If it was just streetcar wires that'd be okay. Unfortunately in downtown Toronto the electricity, telephone, cable tv and other utilities use overhead wires, in addition to streetcar wires.

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

Grass requires maintenance: watering (if you want to avoid the problem of hot-dry summers), but also mowing, fertilizing, weeding, etc.

Another major consideration is that the LRT median can potentially be used as a clear route for emergency vehicles, and driving such vehicles on grass may not be optimal. It was apparently this consideration that scotched the use of grass in the median for the Queens Quay LRT. As Steve Munro reported:

First I heard of that. Very disappointing, but I get it.

 

[hawc]

The LRT median can potentially be used as a clear route for emergency vehicles.

On Spadina I watch Ambulances, Fire Trucks and Police cars regularly driving up and down the LRT median when traffic is jammed. It works pretty well.

Of course the Fire Department is 99% of the time responding to a false alarm in some newly built condo, whose alarm system triggers every other day from dust or something.

Anybody know why when a condo is brand new the fire department ends up responding to false alarms non-stop for the first year or so?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

To be honest, the lawns are probably not going to last if the plan is to have emergency vehicles on it. I'd rather have an attractively done concrete pad (maybe even a permeable one?) than an awfully maintained lawn.

AoD

 

[CanadianNational]

Since it's Queen Quay, I think it still deserves some kind of special treatment. If we can't have grass, then how about paving stones, cobblestones, planking or something decorative but durable?

 

[nfitz]

Since it's Queen Quay, I think it still deserves some kind of special treatment. If we can't have grass, then how about paving stones, cobblestones, planking or something decorative but durable?

Looks pretty good to me:

 

[hawc]

^^^ Rollerblader, cyclists and joggers right next to speeding streetcars. What could go wrong?

 

[W. K. Lis]

Since it's Queen Quay, I think it still deserves some kind of special treatment. If we can't have grass, then how about paving stones, cobblestones, planking or something decorative but durable?

Of course, they ignore driveable grass blocks, where the grass grows through openings in the blocks.