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TTC: Flexity Streetcars Testing & Delivery (Bombardier)

TOareaFan said:
Cities of just over 100k in population that had their built form largely defined centuries before the automobile was invented? ;)
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It sure beats the likes of Barrie or Kingston, doesn't it?

There are cities in Ontario like Kingston or Belleville where riding a bicycle from one end of the city to the other would take about 15 minutes or less. These cities, built mostly before the car became king, continue to embrace the automobile with its gridlock, noise, and pollution. In the process they make local retail less profitable, their city less liveable, their land less desirable, and their people less happy.

Toronto is being held hostage by its amalgamated suburbs, but it would just take one generation of enlightenment to turn the likes of Kingston into very desirable, successful, healthy, and idyllic towns. Streetcar networks and bicycling infrastructure could make a massive difference there.
 
RC8 said:
There are cities in Ontario like Kingston or Belleville where riding a bicycle from one end of the city to the other would take about 15 minutes or less.
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I wish ... I remember cycling across Kingston as a student. 30 minutes (10 km) to downtown from where I lived was more typical. From one end of suburbia to the other is more like 60 minutes. Sure, if it had developed to a 120,000 person city with the same density as it had in 1900, it might be like that. But there's significant suburban sprawl there.
 
RC8 said:
It sure beats the likes of Barrie or Kingston, doesn't it?

There are cities in Ontario like Kingston or Belleville where riding a bicycle from one end of the city to the other would take about 15 minutes or less. These cities, built mostly before the car became king, continue to embrace the automobile with its gridlock, noise, and pollution. In the process they make local retail less profitable, their city less liveable, their land less desirable, and their people less happy.

Toronto is being held hostage by its amalgamated suburbs, but it would just take one generation of enlightenment to turn the likes of Kingston into very desirable, successful, healthy, and idyllic towns. Streetcar networks and bicycling infrastructure could make a massive difference there.
Click to expand...

I would not argue that Innsbruck is a more balance/idyllic setting than our cities of similar size....but I just think that we sometimes make arbitrary comparisons without taking into account other realities.

Sure, those cities you mentioned may have been conceived and initially "planned" before the car became King but much of their growth would have come after the car was invented (Kingston had, what, about 30,000 residents after WWII?)....so it had become a "factor" in the design/planning of urban settings (unlike Innsbruck which dates back to the Stone Age).

So timing and other factors come into it. Is Innsbruck a lofty and nice target to want/aim at? Sure....should we beat ourselves silly if we don't quite get there? Absolutely not!
 
With the weather forecast of snow, ice pellets, and freezing rain, it seems to be a nice morning to do a bad weather test of the new streetcar. Don't want to have the same problem the CLRV had when they first faced salted roads on a regular run and ended up being shorted out.

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