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Displaying (2) Comments | Comment on this piece | Report objectionable art
Steve: This item has been slightly edtied by inserting paragraph breaks for clarity, to tidy up the spelling and to create a hotlink.Rossi is right in one regard, recall Transit City. That someone else is footing the bill for it is not a good enough excuse to waste allocated transit dollars that truly stems from the taxpayer's pocket. It is really our money being spent, and the voice of the citizenry needs to be heard out. On-of-touch bureaucrats in Ottawa and Queen's Park whom do not ride transit daily, do not know in great detail what areas of Toronto are heavy congested; where needs alleviations and the depths of the relief needed. They can only go by what the TTC tells them, which is colored by their own political biases.Only in a world where the current TTC brass thinks that building new stations to is warranted that the notion of expanding out the subway in parts of the city that are already densely populated can seem unreasonable.Light-rail is not a substitute for corridors which easily could handle over 10,000 pphpd were routes coordinated to serve the requisite stations and neighbourhoods where traffic would be high. A $7 billion light-rail project around a major artery like Eglinton is a disservice. A subway line built in phases offers up a real opportunity for sustainable growth and TOD intensification around the station sites. People are not going to leave their cars at home in droves for that, to stand at exposed island platforms to take over an hour to get across the city. No way. This may actually force more residents back into their cars due to mass construction on the surface of major arteries for years on end; affecting local businesses and commerce, and affecting residents' transit options. Why does Transit City not include a single provision for improving the transit services through central downtown east-to-west? Why is Miller only waiting until the end of his term in office to suggest we build a DRL? Why did the TTC cancel the $3-$5 million EA report on DRL feasibility yet has the money available to puke up grotesque monstrosities like the $130 million artsy , futuristic Steeles West Stn design above? Why is all the money going towards projects the majority of the city's population will never have a need to ride on daily?Sorry if that sounds like a regionalist perspective but corridors like Eglinton and the DRL are of far more public worth to the entire region and the money should be going towards ways to improve higher-order transit services in the CORE first, PERIPHERY secondary. It doesn’t matter how direct your commute from suburbia to downtown was if it’s far less convenient to get across the core once off the subway. Why is it that 3 suburban urban centres (Vaughan, Richmond Hill and Mississauga) are located within a few kilometres of major preexisting commuter railways which feed into downtown Toronto; yet zero efforts are being made to better integrate these lines to their urban developments?Why is it Toronto butchering its own redevelopment potential (along Sheppard East, Eglinton, DRL path) for the sake of extending subways into other cities, by building excessively large station facilities which discourage on-site development potential with leasing of the air rights above stations? Something smells putrid here and let’s not kid ourselves in thinking that any of these transit projects are truly being built with the daily transit customer in mind.Relocating the bus-to-train transfer station a few kilometres deeper into suburbia is a mockery of what local service metro subways were designed to do; cater to actual preexisting built up and densely populated areas. Since when has the subway replaced GO Transit for interregional travel? Are we going to wait until the trunk subway lines are so clogged up with commuters whom were funneled either by Transit City lines or meandering extensions to highway corridors, before we realize that gee, maybe another east-west subway was needed to siphon away some trips? Transfer City = FAIL!Steve: I can sympathize with some of your statements, but there are a number of factual errors that must be corrected. First and foremost, the subway extensions into York Region are not Toronto's doing, they are thanks to political machinations at Queen's Park. Moreover, they are definitely not products of the Miller administration.Transit City was deliberately not designed to serve high capacity, core oriented commuting trips. The whole idea is to beef up routes in the suburbs where transit demand is expected to exceed bus capacities in the coming decades, and to support intensification of suburban housing on major streets. The real market for a lot of this is not to get people out of their cars (especially those who are commuting long distances) but to give better service for existing riders and provide a real alternative for the many new residents who will come to the TC corridors. If any agency should be the target of your ire, it's GO Transit which, starved for capital, has dragged its feet for decades on major service improvements. Even those will mainly serve core-oriented trips because that's where the rail lines go.The design of the new stations on the Spadina extension is dictated by a few important facts. First, Toronto has large trains, and the stations must be 500ft long to hold them. Second, the depth of the stations is dictated by bored tunnel construction which must be far enough down to avoid hitting varioud things like utilities, and to deal with the hills and dales of Toronto's geography. Third, the need for dual exits, lots of escalators and elevators is driven both by the building code (fire safety) and by accessibility requirements. Making the stations actually look nice adds a small amount to the cost. If you want classic TTC bathroom stations, you may want to talk to all the politicians and residents who complain about how sterile our system looks.The TTC recently called tenders for the DRL study. I know that the City tried to cut that study out of the budget, but as far as I know the study is going ahead. My real concern is that it be a fair study of options, not a whitewash for a no DRL position.
By: | Sep 03, 2012 | Report Comment
that LRT will not be able to provide the ctapciay needed for the corridor in the long-term future. An LRT advocate's response:-Some LRT lines run parallel to high ctapciay GO routes, and therefore, the heavy demand for long-distance travel along that route has already been taken care of.-Should the ctapciay of an LRT line be exceeded, another LRT line can be built very easily on the next suburban arterial road. This is an affordable way of easing the burden off existing LRT lines, while expanding the transit network to reach many more neighbourhoods.With regards to the second argument LRT advocates make, is it feasible just to plan another parallel LRT line as a means of increasing ctapciay? I think it's a great idea, but I wonder why it's hardly discussed as a solution.Also, you were discussing catchment areas for different transit corridors, and how they affected ctapciay requirements in a different post (the Queen Street Subway Debate). Are catchment areas the same if we considered trips not bound for the core? And how large would the Eglinton LRT's catchment area be?Steve: This gets a bit tricky depending on whether one is looking at current or future land use patterns. The Transit City plans (and indeed The Big Move) assume lane use projected out 15 and 25 years from today including new locations of both homes and jobs. Certain things basic geography will never change, but if there is an evolution of a new residential corridor along Eglinton, then it can originate more traffic destined for many places. Conversely, if there is a new office complex, this will draw traffic from around the region.Some of the traffic is a direct result of the interconnection of lines. If Eglinton connected with a DRL at Don Mills, then it will act as a feeder to that line and will attract traffic Eglinton might not otherwise get. However, the presence of the DRL will also siphon off some trips that might otherwise have continued west to Yonge, and this will reduce the peak point demand on Eglinton.The big problem with so many proposals, especially in a campaign atmosphere, is that they look at a few squeaky wheels , but don't consider overall network behaviour. Funding tries to prioritize routes based on accounting mumbo-jumbo establishing which route, on its own, might make sense, when a network view might produce a different result. The best example of this is the whole debate about the effects and benefits of adding ctapciay to the existing Yonge subway, extending the line to Richmond Hill, expanding GO service, and building the DRL. If the DRL is only view in isolation, it costs a lot and doesn't appear to serve the region. However, if it is seen as providing a relief valve for the YUS, this improves options on a regional scale and may avoid some of the upgrade costs.Finally, as to building a parallel line. There are not too many cases where this is a simple option, although it is attractive. For example, Finch East is an obvious parallel to Sheppard, but the section for several kilometres east of Yonge was left as low rise residential in the Official Plan due to some horse trading among politicians and planning staff. Steeles might be another location, but it only makes sense if the YUS goes at least that far north to provide a good connection.As with so much planning, it depends , and there isn't one easy, standard solution for every problem.
By: | Apr 13, 2012 | Report Comment
under_construct
margaretz
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