Rocco Rossi - "If I'm elected I will Kill Transit City and eliminate Bike Lanes"
- Thread starter james t kirk
- Start date
I don't ride but it's a good idea. I do almost exclusively use the TTC, and some incarnation of Transit City is desperately needed. Canada really needs to get it's shit together and come up with a coherent plan that sees consistent provincial and federal funding for light rail and transit in urban centres (Like most of Europe), high speed heavy rail nationally (Soros is betting big on this in the States but Canada has some big advantages here and we could undercut the American move and become the primary freight transit corridor for the continent), and for fundamental infrastructure in rural areas (like water purification and waste water treatment). Layer on that a desperate need for big waste water diversion projects for Canadian towns and cities that front onto lakes or oceans (Paris or London had a good recent example of this). The nice thing about all of these projects is that Canada has competitive firms to tender contracts to, they employ people, and there's plenty of economic / health / environmental upsides.
You don't have to be an environut to see that treating every body of water as something to dilute waste water in is a bad idea. You also don't have to be an environut to see that trying to get every working adult into a car in a high density area is impossible and destroys the quality of life for everybody. You don't have to be an environut to see the time and energy efficiency of proper high speed heavy rail, and the road maintenance and quality of driving advantages of relegating transports to 'spoke delivery systems' from rail hubs (and that's ignoring the general desirability of affordable high speed passenger rail)...
And yeah, 'review' is code for 'shelf until critical deadlines pass and the thing falls apart'.
There is a big difference between "eliminating bike lanes" and "eliminating bike lanes on major busy streets and increasing them on other routes".
And other times review, means just that. This echo's the TTC's own report that just came out that highlights the problems with the St Clair Streetcar project where the main problem was a lack of planning and design.
Keep in mind that any mayoral candidate has to inherit the fact that the last TTC construction project is now more than 3 years behind schedule and double the costs approved. This needs to be kept in mind with future projects. I for one agree that the Chair of the TTC should not be an elected official, but an appointed private sector person who is not looking ahead to using his post to springboard his politcal asperations.
it looks like he is saying put the bikelanes on non-arterial routes not no bikelanes.
I like what he is saying- i would like to get rid of these deisgnated lanes for streetcars and build subways- yes higher costs but better long term for the city.
Public Transit is meant for the future
An excellent example is the Danforth overpass of the Don Valley
It was built to accommodate a subway before they were invented
The Sheppard subway will be here for generations as will Light Rail
Yes, and it's far more efficient to build your transit infrastructure in advance of development than trying to retrofit later. As we are seeing... Mind you in the case of the Speppard line I think most Torontonians could have come up with a better placement. But the joy of a Subway line is that if you build it developers will follow so long as there is a scarcity of real estate around subway lines. (Eg, if you were to create 12 random spur lines you'd have a hard time getting a good developer response because there wouldn't be enough 'they' for 'if you build it they will come'.)
Bike lanes on urban arterails is what is needed. Bike lanes on side streets are not really needed now are they. The point of bike lanes is to give cyclists a safe place to drive in traffic. It's safer for cars, safer for bikes. As far as I am concerned, whenever a road is rebuilt, bike lanes should be added.
And that is the ass backward thinking that Toronto has been doing when it comes to bike lanes, they are more concerned with the total kilometers of lanes than the practicaility of them. Even the cycling lobbys in the city are bewiledred at the lack of planning, as many of them have gone on record to state a preferance to have bike lanes on lesser used roads like Sherbourne as opposed to Jarvis St.
I mean take a look at Eastern Avenue, where they spent close to 100 thousand to repaint the road with bike lanes which are never sued, totally ignoreing the fact that one block south on Lakeshore there is a dedicated safe bike path that is perpetually being used. A better example is in Etobicoke where they wanted to put a huge streatch of bike lanes on The West Mall from Dundas St to the Queensway, a roadway that has no TTC stop and nobody lives on.
This is a different point and probably a valid point. The bike lanes need to be planned. I think they need to be on major arteries, but they do need to be planned, they should interconnect and hook up. As it stands yes, you ride along on a bike lane, and then suddenly it dumps you onto a major section of road with no bike lane and nowhere to go.
The city has demonstrated the same lack of planning with respect to traffic lights enabled for the blind with the bird tweets. They are scattered around the city here and there, and the city likes to brag about how many of them there are.
One small problem: They are not consecutive, they do not form a route that a blind person can walk. What is the blind person supposed to do when they get to the intersection that hasn't got them? Just because the next one on has them again isn't much use, is it, if you can't cross the road in between?
That the city fails to plan these things properly does not change James' point though: The bike lanes are not needed on side streets. It is precisely the arterial roads that need bike lanes.
Like Rocco Rossi stands a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected. Smitherman is the front runner.
Subways = good, LRT = bad. Thta's my 2 cents on this. The Sheppard subway was the best thing they've done in a long time. Extending the subway to York U is another great idea. Extending the Yonge subway to Hwy 407 is another great idea.
I'd like to see subway lines on Eglinton east and west, Queen St east and west, Don Mills north and south, and an airport to Union station express line with NO STOPS IN BETWEEN as that defeats the purpose of it.
Also the Spadina expressway would have been a great idea way back when it was supposed to be built. Perhaps Jane Jacobs is roasting in a circle of hell for screwing that up for us with her meddling.
I'd like to see subway lines on Eglinton east and west, Queen St east and west, Don Mills north and south, and an airport to Union station express line with NO STOPS IN BETWEEN as that defeats the purpose of it.
Also the Spadina expressway would have been a great idea way back when it was supposed to be built. Perhaps Jane Jacobs is roasting in a circle of hell for screwing that up for us with her meddling.
Remember Barbara Hall was the frontrunner, then David Miller came up out of nowhere to win his first term.
It isn't the fact that there are NO bike lanes, just that they are used poorly. For eg: along eastern ave it is 2 lanes east/2 west. ALL the way from where it is King st up until Carlaw. Then they put in bike lanes, cut the traffic to 1 lane each way....for 6 blocks! Then they go back to 2 in each direction. R E T A R D E D. Couple that with the fact that they cut dundas down to 1 in each direction they have effectively closed one of the two main routes down.LOL!
Glad I don't live in the GTA... NO BIKE LANES????
Bike lanes do NOT have to be on major thoroughfares. COuple that with the fact that maybe 1 rider out of every 30 cars uses then and THEN only for about 4 months a year. (this year being the exception due to lack of snow). Bike lanes are just not an effective use of transportation routes. It would be far better to devise a system like Jarvis where in the morning, 3 lanes go south/2 north. Then in the evening, 3 lanes go north/2 south. Denote 1 lane for bikes from April to October.
In addition, put bike only paths on routes like the railway right of way. You could pave it, cover it, and put in exits to major cross streets. That way as a bicyclist you wouldn't have to worry about car doors, getting cut off, sharing a lane etc. It'd be healthier too since you won't be sucking on car exhaust.
LRT is faster to build and wwwwwwaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy cheaper to build and maintain
The speed of the LRT WILL BE HALFWAY BETWEEN A BUS AND A SUBWAY
Until it breaks down (as they tend to do quite regularly)and the whole line becomes unusable until the broken trolley is fixed.
Add in the icing problems, the construction idiocy and the disruption to the homes and businesses during construction and you ahve problems.
Subways are more expensive and should be used where needed, LRT systems should be used where there is a right of way that can be delegated to them. I do not mean takeing over a street to provide a right of way, using something like a hydro right of way would work as well.
A subway along Queen would have made a hell of a lot more sense than the Sheppard subway. I suspect the same would be true of the York university part of the York subway (why they want it ending in a middle of nowhere is another issue)
