toto
Active Member
Was building the bloor street viaduct with space for a subway later impractical? Was building RC Harris for double the original volume at the time impractical? Was building the subway all the way out to Warden impractical in the sixties? Warden was farm pasture back then.....
They can be called one of two things, impractical or forward thinking.
As for LRT's vs subways, I don't care which. Just bury them. If you want to get people out of their car and take transit, they need to be underground. No one will give up their car to stand in the middle of Eglinton in the dead of winter waiting for an LRT. They'd be willing to leave their car if they could wait underground where it's warm.
What's the point of giving Scarborough a surface LRT, if there would be enough volume to justify a subway in 20 or 30 years? We'll be barely finished paying off the LRT and we'll have to start paying for the burying of it. Build it properly the first time. It only gets more expensive every day.
Hopefully in 20 or 30 years, exciting, vibriant new neighbourhoods would have developed along LRT routes, so that people living in Scarborough could walk, bike or take a short ride on an LRT to their destination, be it work, shopping or play. In other words, Main suburban roads like Eglinton and Sheppard would be like Queen and Dundas. Subways along these roads would all but kill any life on them not near a station. Please don't use the excuse about life between current subway stations isn't dead. It isn't dead, because it was there long before the subway. Not the case in the suburbs.