The next battle in the War on Cars?

[VivienM]

Did anybody read this?
http://www.thestar.com/article/461864

[Jucius Maximus]

All they have to do is make the public transit fast, pervasive and reliable. And get it running AFTER LAST CALL!!

Charging more money to people who have no choice but to drive won't do anything to get them off the road when they have no other choice!

[KawaiiTentacleBeast]

I've never been to Toronto or Vancouver, I think Calgary public transit is OK, not great, and I ride it every day. Everyone from Toronto and Vancouver tells me that Toronto and Vancouver public transit is light years better than Calgary's, which would lead me to believe that Toronto and Vancouver have excellent public transit and you're all a bunch of whiners.

[HP_John]

The TTC sucks. There's no ifs and/or buts about it.

[VivienM]

I've never been to Toronto or Vancouver, I think Calgary public transit is OK, not great, and I ride it every day. Everyone from Toronto and Vancouver tells me that Toronto and Vancouver public transit is light years better than Calgary's, which would lead me to believe that Toronto and Vancouver have excellent public transit and you're all a bunch of whiners.

Oh, Calgary public transit...

I went to Calgary last year; a friend told me that at least the C-train was clean compared to the Toronto subway. I thought she was a little strange... until I got back to Toronto. Then I realized just how right she was.

And let's not compare Calgary public transit with Ottawa - two similarly sized cities, yet Calgary was smart and invested in light rail, while Ottawa built a labour-intensive, polluting bus rapid transit system that can't scale. Oops. But hey, that's what happens when transit unions dictate planning instead of Albertan common sense...

[HBP]

If they don't create easy transit options for the tens of thousands of commuters to get downtown every day it's nothing but a cash grab. I would love to be able to hop on a subway ~5 minutes from my house, and get downtown within an hour. Instead, if I were to subway in rush hour traffic with the current transit situation, it would take me almost 2... just not practical.

[torrento]

TTC is expanding to North York University, options are there.

NORTH York University?

[MacGyver]

The reason that Toronto roads are so congested is that the provincial government and city keeps building more of them, and continually widen the ones they already have. The only saving grace now is that there is no more room to widen most of them without expropriating houses, but now it's obvious that the damage is done and going back is impossible without obliterating the regional economy that depends on truck traffic.

Of course the provincial government (whichever party happens to be in power) doesn't support tolls on 400 series highways. If you take freeways away, there's no other opportunity in - not Toronto - but the entire GTA to appeal to the middle-class sub-urban-dwelling daily-commuting car-driving voters they depend on to keep them in office. Unfortunately this practice has created a virtually unsolvable problem that got dumped on the City of Toronto's lap.

If the provincial government put half as much money into public transit in Toronto as they have into building and maintaining the 400 series of highways within Toronto city limits, you'd have a transit system that would make New York and London jealous.

The other problem is that urban planning is still car based. North American city zoning has taken advantage of huge swaths of land available to us to segregate "different" land uses to make the NIMBYs happy, but makes it extremely difficult for people to live near where they work.

And get it running AFTER LAST CALL!

The TTC needs to do track maintenance sometime, so they can't run 24/7. At night they have about three good hours to do what they need to before the trains start rolling again, and six hours on Sunday mornings.

[Ebola]

Oh, Calgary public transit...

I went to Calgary last year; a friend told me that at least the C-train was clean compared to the Toronto subway. I thought she was a little strange... until I got back to Toronto. Then I realized just how right she was.

And let's not compare Calgary public transit with Ottawa - two similarly sized cities, yet Calgary was smart and invested in light rail, while Ottawa built a labour-intensive, polluting bus rapid transit system that can't scale. Oops. But hey, that's what happens when transit unions dictate planning instead of Albertan common sense...

It was all city council's mess up in Ottawa, and they continue to get it wrong.

The might finally be on the right track now, with plans starting for a downtown tunnel for light rail and subsequent light rail expansion east-west, and to the airport.

[VivienM]

The reason that Toronto roads are so congested is that the provincial government and city keeps building more of them, and continually widen the ones they already have.

Uhm, the CITY keeps building more roads?

Do some Googling. Look into the brilliant expressway plan from the 1960s. What you will find is that due to the left-wing panic of the day ("urban decay"... now it's climate change), the city STOPPED building roads in the early 1970s... when less than half of the plan had been built. So we have something like 40% of the expressways that were thought necessary in the 1960s...

In fact, the city is destroying roads. Byebye the eastern part of the Gardiner. Byebye two lanes on St. Clair. Now they want to get rid of another Gardiner portion.

The provincial government, to its great credit, has continued expanding infrastructure in the 905, but things have basically stagnated in the 416 for 30+ years.

The real problem is that fundamentally, voters are hypocritical. They clearly like cars (as demonstrated by the rise in car registrations in the 416 in 30 years), but they keep voting for politicians who are opposed to providing car infrastructure. It seems everybody wants to have his/her own car, but have the neighbours taking public transit. So the infrastructure stagnates or shrinks, and the number of cars goes up. Oops.

[VivienM]

It was all city council's mess up in Ottawa, and they continue to get it wrong.

The might finally be on the right track now, with plans starting for a downtown tunnel for light rail and subsequent light rail expansion east-west, and to the airport.

Knowing their history, they'll find a way to screw it up.

Wasn't there a proposal for a BUS tunnel under downtown too? A stupid idea, but... it'd make the unions happy...

[PsioniC]

The TTC needs to do track maintenance sometime, so they can't run 24/7. At night they have about three good hours to do what they need to before the trains start rolling again, and six hours on Sunday mornings.

So many other transit systems around the world run 24/7, or at least untill after last call. There must be a way to do it. Possibly extend TTC service hours on Fridays and Saturdays to get the biggest night crowd and decrease the hours on Sunday for extra maintenance when night crowds will likely be the smallest.

[VivienM]

Possibly extend TTC service hours on Fridays and Saturdays to get the biggest night crowd

What makes you think the TTC staff/union wants to deal with tens of thousands of drunk people heading home?

I, in my foolish idiocy, once took the subway home from the airport at 11PMish on a Thursday or Friday. A group of extremely rowdy drunk undergrad-aged 'kids' got on my car and started causing trouble, and nobody did a damn thing... and that was at 11PM. After last call I'm sure things would be way worse...

I can assure you I learned my lesson, though - every single time I've flown in late at night afterwards, I've paid my $55-60ish bucks for a dude in a Town Car to drive me home...

[PsioniC]

What makes you think the TTC staff/union wants to deal with tens of thousands of drunk people heading home?

I, in my foolish idiocy, once took the subway home from the airport at 11PMish on a Thursday or Friday. A group of extremely rowdy drunk undergrad-aged 'kids' got on my car and started causing trouble, and nobody did a damn thing... and that was at 11PM. After last call I'm sure things would be way worse...

I can assure you I learned my lesson, though - every single time I've flown in late at night afterwards, I've paid my $55-60ish bucks for a dude in a Town Car to drive me home...

I'd much rather them cause trouble for the people on the subway than attempt to drive home.

Also, people are just out later on the weekends. Many times I will be out past 1:30 - 2am on weekend nights without any drinking or partying.

Also, come on man. You ran into trouble once on the TTC, big deal. I've run into drunk rowdy people on Queen St. before, I don't avoid Queen St. now, that would be ridiculous. I'm sorry you had one bad experience, but come on. You're being pretty ridiculous.

[VivienM]

Also, come on man. You ran into trouble once on the TTC, big deal. I've run into drunk rowdy people on Queen St. before, I don't avoid Queen St. now, that would be ridiculous. I'm sorry you had one bad experience, but come on. You're being pretty ridiculous.

Queen Street is different from the subway from like... Islington to Spadina.

There are certain places where you expect crowds of rowdy drunks. Conversely, there are other places where you don't.