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Transit City Plan

Which transit plan do you prefer?

  • Transit City

    Votes: 95 79.2%

  • Ford City

    Votes: 25 20.8%
  • Total voters
    120
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
Downtown streets barely move at all during rush hour anyway. Reducing it to one lane will make little difference. People will use alternative routes.
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There are no alternative car routes downtown. The only east west roads in the south part of the city are Queen's Quay (which Miller wanted to narrow), Gardiner (congested, and Miller wanted to get rid of it), Lake Shore (congested), Bremner (doesn't go very far), Front (congested), King/Queen/Dundas/College (streetcars), Richmond/Adelaide/Wellington (one way, do not go all the way across downtown), Wellesley/Hoskin/Harbord (does not go all the way across), Bloor (congestion caused by pedestrian scrambles), Dupont/Davenport (congestion caused by bike lanes), St Clair (congestion caused by streetcar ROW), Eglinton (congested). If your intention is to ban cars from driving on streetcar tracks, making it impossible to drive downtown to the point that delivery trucks have difficulty getting through, watch every business downtown pack up and move to Mississauga :)
 
Electrify said:
LRT might as well mean 'Light RAPID Transit,' with the way it is implemented when compared to its streetcar/tram light rail counterparts.
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I would agree that compared to the streetcars, Transit City LRT is rapid.

However, compared to other LRT around the world, Transit City is not rapid. If LRT stands for Light Rail Transit, then it is the vehicle that defines it and it could be as slow as a streetcar or fast as a comuter rail - depending on how it is implemented.
 
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BurlOak said:
I would agree that compared to the streetcars, Transit City LRT is rapid.

However, compared to other LRT around the world, Transit City is not rapid. If LRT stands for Light Rail Transit, then it is the vehicle that defines it and it could be as slow as a streetcar or fast as a comuter rail - depending on how it is implemented.
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What slows ALL rapid transit down is the station or stop spacing. The closer the spacing, the slower the overall speed. The fastest interburban or radial (rural streetcars) was the Red Devil, operated by the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad between 1929 and 1953. It's commercial speed maximum was 145 km/h (90 mph). It wouldn't reach those speeds inside a city.
 
The saddest part in all of this is that Ford was unable to come out with a study which supported his views on Sheppard 100%. Even the oil industry has been able to produce scholarly papers which suggest climate change is a hoax, despite being brutally flawed. The closest we'be seen is the Gong paper, and even that suggests that the private sector would be unable to cover all of the costs.

Let me see ONE report which days that a Sheppard subway can be paid entirely by the public sector and will have massive transport benefits for the entire region, and we can talk about a subway expansion. Hell, if I don't care if it is flawed, I just want one.Ford wants a paper recommending his views, even I could put together something. It would be flawed and easily torn apart by anyone with a working brain cell, but I can do it.
 
Electrify said:
The saddest part in all of this is that Ford was unable to come out with a study which supported his views on Sheppard 100%. Even the oil industry has been able to produce scholarly papers which suggest climate change is a hoax, despite being brutally flawed. The closest we'be seen is the Gong paper, and even that suggests that the private sector would be unable to cover all of the costs.

Let me see ONE report which days that a Sheppard subway can be paid entirely by the public sector and will have massive transport benefits for the entire region, and we can talk about a subway expansion. Hell, if I don't care if it is flawed, I just want one.Ford wants a paper recommending his views, even I could put together something. It would be flawed and easily torn apart by anyone with a working brain cell, but I can do it.
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That's why Ford wants a CGM at the TTC who would lie for him.
 
OK, I think the poll has run it course. I'm merging the "False Dilemma: Transit City or Ford City?" with the regular "Transit City Debate" thread.
 
The fundamental problem of Transit City is that all its routes are designed as feeder routes rather than trunk routes. For example, the Sheppard LRT would be a major east-west line but it doesn't even connect to the Yonge Subway. Billions of dollars of LRT should not be for feeder service, especially when the would-be backbone of this feeder LRT network, the subway system, is already at capacity. The plan is just not ambitious enough. The lack of ambition also extends to the obsession with on-street operations for the proposed LRTs, even when other options, such as prexisting ROWs (e.g. the Richview corridor), are already available. The plan doesn't utilize of the flexibility of LRT, which is one its main advantages.

Of course, in terms of not utilizing the flexibility of LRT, the Fords' plan is arguably even worse. An $8 billion all-underground/elevated LRT? Wow. And yes, it is LRT, not subway. No fare-paid boarding zones means no TTC subway, it's as simple as that. The Fords' obviously have never taken transit in Toronto and have no clue what the TTC Subway is. $8 billion and we wouldn't even get a proper subway for all that money, it's just crazy.
 
Just curious but do you think Mayor Ford might try to recruit international companies to come in and construct subway lines if they present cheaper construction rates than Canadian companies?
 
Juan_Lennon416 said:
Just curious but do you think Mayor Ford might try to recruit international companies to come in and construct subway lines if they present cheaper construction rates than Canadian companies?
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I'd be very dubious of a company that claims it can be substantially cheaper than the current estimates.
 
International companies have already bid on transit city projects. Dragados was among the companies responding to the Sheppard East carhouse RFP. I don't think bringing in foreign companies has resulted in significant infrastructure procurement cost savings, but obviously that's an unprovable hypothesis (although the fact that foreign companies are doing some but not all of the work would tend to support the hypothesis).
 
But is the Sheppard LRT not suppose to eventually hook up to the Yonge subway? Perhaps they should start that point and go west out to Humber
 
From CODE OF CONDUCT FOR MEMBERS OF COUNCIL CITY OF TORONTO, at this PDF:

XII. CONDUCT RESPECTING STAFF

Under the direction of the City Manager, staff serve the Council as a whole, and the combined interests of all members as evidenced through the decisions of Council. Members shall be respectful of the role of staff to provide advice based on political neutrality and objectivity and without undue influence from any individual member or faction of the Council. Accordingly, no member shall maliciously or falsely injure the professional or ethical reputation, or the prospects or practice of staff, and all members shall show respect for the professional capacities of staff.
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Palma said:
But is the Sheppard LRT not suppose to eventually hook up to the Yonge subway? Perhaps they should start that point and go west out to Humber
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It was to connect to the Yonge subway at Finch.
The "master plan" had the Finch West LRT crossing Yonge and continuing to Don Mills, where it turned south, and then then interlined with Sheppard.
 
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