Jimvee
New Member
I believe I saw in Toronto Life or on BlogTO that David Miller lived just north of high park on Gothic Ave, John Tory was at Bloor and Avenue Rd area.
Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s
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ARG1
Senior Member
That is perhaps possible, but the question I would then ask if such investment would be worth it for the sake of creating a decentralized city, or would we be better just upgrading GO transit and doubling down on Downtown (something we should've been doing at the time).
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
If one is going to pin the failing's of decentralization largely on GO you really also ought to consider how the centres would have been served by any of the iterations of GO Urban, ALRT or TTC ICTS plans. Similarly, if you consider Vancouver to have been successful at it, consider the popularity of an expressly anti fast transit LRT advocacy out there over the past 15 or so years. It's been largely academic in practice, but until the skytrain centric plan was chosen it very obviously had an impact in what was being discussed going into the latest rapid transit strategic plans.
robmausser
Senior Member
Good point, GO pretty much tried to be a regional rail system instead of commuter at many points, and even to this day with RER still not implemented 10 years after its inception, GO struggles to not be a commuter rail system but gets shut down by government funding cuts every time.
ARG1
Senior Member
That's fair, although I was mostly thinking about what was on the table since late 80s/early 90s. Obviously a change in history and earlier would have huge ramifications of how we built things, and how even residential development might've proceeded. Even then, I'd argue that whilst it's possible we could've had more orbital city centres, my bigger point was that an alternate universe where downtown Toronto doesn't get developed is borderline impossible. Even if GO ALRT/Urban happened and we saw downtowns develop in areas like STC and York Centre, these would've happened alongside downtown, not instead of downtown.
Apologies, but I'm struggling to understand what you're trying to say with this
crs1026
Senior Member
^Decentralization is not dead, in the sense that we have non-central hubs built or a-building in Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough. And many other smaller hubs planned.
But the desire to build centrally has overtaken all of that in terms of building permits issued. At this point, it’s water under the bridge. Miller is beating last decade’s drum.
And frankly, even arguing that we should cancel anything and plan something else instead is so last-decade Toronto politics. I may not like all of the Ontario Line’s attributes, but the decision has been made, the design work is well along, and at this point Toronto’s interests are best served by just getting the thing finished.
Having said that, I would like to see Finch LRT extended east all the way across the city, and Eglinton East LRT expedited, and more. But that is moving forward, not going back to an older plan.
- Paul
But the desire to build centrally has overtaken all of that in terms of building permits issued. At this point, it’s water under the bridge. Miller is beating last decade’s drum.
And frankly, even arguing that we should cancel anything and plan something else instead is so last-decade Toronto politics. I may not like all of the Ontario Line’s attributes, but the decision has been made, the design work is well along, and at this point Toronto’s interests are best served by just getting the thing finished.
Having said that, I would like to see Finch LRT extended east all the way across the city, and Eglinton East LRT expedited, and more. But that is moving forward, not going back to an older plan.
- Paul
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
Take a look at what more academic planning circles in Vancouver have been discussing; there’s been a fairly popular sentiment, but traceable directly to certain SFU faculty members, that the future of transit planning in Vancouver ought not include any skytrain, should focus entirely on streetcar or light LRT and that speed of transit will only detract from the streetscape of a given corridor. In other words a specific backlash against all the key elements of the skytrain model.
evandyk
Senior Member
I think John Tory was at Bloor and Bedford. But in any event, he's so rich that he could never identify with what normal people face, even if he did take the subway down to city hall at 6 a.m. every day.
smallspy
Senior Member
That is absolutely not true.
Just because it may not have been made public doesn't mean that there weren't multiple departments within the TTC working on the project's specs. That's why when it was announced, it was done so in a fairly final form.
Dan
GenerationW
Senior Member
It certainly was intended to be all-encompassing. Miller's transit lieutenant Adam Giambrone stressed that the DRL would not even be considered until Transit City was fully completed.
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
That may well be the case in terms of what staff were doing privately, but it certainly wasn’t what anyone was saying.
to expand on the note about how Giambrone was positioning things, consider that the general political position would be “what’s a DRL”, followed by the conclusion that it amounts to a Queen st subway and that no serious person would be talking about THAT.
nfitz
Superstar
At the same time, they were pushing Metrolinx to move DRL from the 25-year plan to the 15-year plan.
Still, had they stuck to the original schedule, Transit City would have been long-since finished.
Jimvee
New Member
Let's be honest, David Miller hasn't lived in Toronto in 13 years, he lived in BC and NYC and he is not poor, he is a graduate of Harvard / UofT. Toronto in 2023 is a lot different than Toronto of 2010. I suspect anything from David Miller is politically driven.
ARG1
Senior Member
That's a yikes from me...
jmi22
Active Member
Not disagreeing with you, just curious as to the various attributes of the Ontario Line that people dislike it for. Of course distaste for the project ranges from Millers "never build it or any subway ever again" to just mild disappointment, but I have yet to see the actual pitfalls of the line named. As a connector line, its routing is near perfect, connecting to four subway stations, one existing GO station as well as numerous more going to be built. The two terminus leave the possibility for extensions very doable, and while no routing is confirmed for these extensions, it would be hard to find a route for the west or north extension that would not be outstanding.
In terms of providing service, it simultaneously serves new hubs like Liberty, while also bringing rapid transit to the working class neighborhoods of Thorncliffe and Flemingdon, previously rapid transit deserts. In between these two points the residential neighborhoods of downtown, facing stagnating populations and increasingly poor streetcar service, will finally receive the century overdo Queen subway,
The technology chosen is also amazing, and once completed the Ontario Line will be the most modern heavy rail line in North America. The tech allows for more curving and grade changing routings. This has been used to elevate and run at grade the various portions of the line, lowering costs and time in a city infamous for slow transit construction.
In my opinion, this line is the single best transit project in Canadian history (REM in Montreal might be tied with it) and will bring the city into the 21st century while cementing its status as an international city. The widespread downtown progressive backlash against it has only further cemented their archaic nature in the minds of residents, and surely won no votes from the riders stuck on streetcars in the congested core, or waiting for bus's as the side of dangerous arterials in North York.