‘War on the car is over’: Ford moves transit underground - subways are the answer
- Thread starter alexmst
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Sure that could work.
Not apposed to them as long as the road traffic isn't slowed down as a result.
A combination of things is what is needed to help move people around.
Subways, elevated rail, car pool incentives, all to make the movement of people more efficient.
Unlike Miller's plan to make cars move less efficiently so people would be forces to take public transit.
...and for the subways, can we please have our phones and 3g networks work in them?
My thought is the monorails..such as those at the Airports.
All electric and very green.
You stick a Sono tube in the ground...and lay a track across the top!
Very cheap to build and run.
Run them all through the city and connect them to the Subway.
They could be covered with greenery (vines) so as to be pleasant to look at!
All electric and very green.
You stick a Sono tube in the ground...and lay a track across the top!
Very cheap to build and run.
Run them all through the city and connect them to the Subway.
They could be covered with greenery (vines) so as to be pleasant to look at!
The subway is the better way however, it's the most expensive way. Nothing wrong with Light Rail for now until we can find more money for the TTC. They spent all this money on Metrolinx, lets not waste anymore. Keep the current plan in place as the Provincial and Federal Government are willing to spend money on it.
I think it's best to keep transit systems separate, this way they can work on being efficient in their own regions such as the Go Train being the best way to bring people from the suburbs to the city or Mississauga transit being one of the best transit systems in the GTA.
I think it's best to keep transit systems separate, this way they can work on being efficient in their own regions such as the Go Train being the best way to bring people from the suburbs to the city or Mississauga transit being one of the best transit systems in the GTA.
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Lowering TTC fares to $1 per ride would increase use of the transit syste,
Subways are the best solution. Most of the problem is getting all the people from the suburbs downtown in the morning to go to work and back out again after work. Most people enjoy the ease of subway travel, but hate buses (with good reason). I've talked to many people who were like "I don't mind taking the subway but waiting outside for a bus in the cold/heat/rain/snow really sucks".
When I lived in London UK I took the subways everywhere and didn't even bother owning a car. There it was possible to walk to a station as there were so many lines/stations.
In downtown areas (south of Bloor St) streetcars aren't bad and are certainly better than buses.
Extending the Yonge line north to Richmond Hill (at least to 407, even better up to Elgin Mills) would be a start. Extend the Spadina line north to Major Mac. Build an Eglinton subway line from the airport to Scarborough Town Centre. Build a Queen St subway east and west. Also, build another two north south lines to take the stress off the Yonge line: A Don Mills Rd subway line from Steeles to Union St, and A western line that went north from Kipling up to Brampton.
The Mayor has the right idea though - put transit underground.
Subways are the best solution. Most of the problem is getting all the people from the suburbs downtown in the morning to go to work and back out again after work. Most people enjoy the ease of subway travel, but hate buses (with good reason). I've talked to many people who were like "I don't mind taking the subway but waiting outside for a bus in the cold/heat/rain/snow really sucks".
When I lived in London UK I took the subways everywhere and didn't even bother owning a car. There it was possible to walk to a station as there were so many lines/stations.
In downtown areas (south of Bloor St) streetcars aren't bad and are certainly better than buses.
Extending the Yonge line north to Richmond Hill (at least to 407, even better up to Elgin Mills) would be a start. Extend the Spadina line north to Major Mac. Build an Eglinton subway line from the airport to Scarborough Town Centre. Build a Queen St subway east and west. Also, build another two north south lines to take the stress off the Yonge line: A Don Mills Rd subway line from Steeles to Union St, and A western line that went north from Kipling up to Brampton.
The Mayor has the right idea though - put transit underground.
Good and right idea but it will never work in North America since the loonie left and cuckoo right will do whatever it takes to stall and hopefully kill the plan during the infancy.
The scariest thing out of this will be both constituents (unions, people living in burbs/small towns and automobile manufacturers lobbyists) manage to do it just that without being seen working in cahoots.
And assuming there are no roadblocks erected from both the extreme left and right, and that's big if, the city is going to be bogged down by never ending NIMBY during environmental assessment, neighborhood after neighborhood, delay after delay for as long as a decade, well after any Mayoral term.
Simply put, Canada is no China when it comes to political will, money allocation and execution to build critical and/or refurbishing aging infrastructures. That's the price you have to pay for a democracy.
That's the outcome of what the automakers and P&C Insurance companies want. In a twisted way, they have all the vested interest to see the Unions suck the TTC dry.
Our subways suck! We need to improve and expand them, Ford is right in what he's doing. If we settle for the LRT, that's what we will be stuck with. Building subways will do 2 things, the first will be improve the transit system and secondly it will create thousands of jobs here in the city, construction, maintenance and permanent TTC jobs. I don't think Ford will be able to kill off alll the LRT lines, a combination of both will in the end be what we will be stuck with. McGuinty will cave and give in on the subways, it's an election year after all and he's as spineless a leader as you'll ever find.
It's quite unsightly. If it was regular subway track, only elevated, the cost saviings would be minimal. The cost of building subways is in the stations, not in the tunnels. Building the tunnels accounted for 9 percent of the cost of building Sheppard. That's NINE percent. Once you factor in the cost of building and maintaining the elevated structure, I don't see much of a savings at all.
We already have the Scarborough LRT which is elevated rail and it's not working out. The TTC has 3 existing rail platforms, none of which are compatable: subway, Streetcar, and Scarborough LRT. This means you need to stock 3 of everything.
I'm ALL FOR making the use of the automobile LESS efficient and forcing people to take transit.
Today's vision of transit is more than providing a means of transporting people, it IS about forcing them out of their cars. The reason is very simple - stop using gasoline and spewing pollution into the atmosphere.
It's really that simple.
Maybe Ford is right - it is a War on Cars. But so what - that's not necessarily a bad thing. The more people who put away the car for urban travel and take transit - the better. Keep your car for when you're travelling outside of the sicy (assuming you live in the city.)
Successful cities are not designed around the use of automobiles.
So you think it's efficient to introduce a 4'th mode of rail transit to the City of Toronto.
We've already got:
Subway
Street car
Scarborough LRT
None of them are compatible and it required keeping parts of 3 of everything, having crews that service subway, street car and Scarborough LRT (and not working on each other)
And you now want to introduce a fourth.
AND make it an unsightly elevated structure to boot.
Except for Adelaide and Richmond I hope Ford gets rid of all the one-way streets downtown Toronto. They are fucking pointless, here you have a street that can easily be used by 2-way traffic and instead they clog up downtown arteries by making them one-way. Absolutely pointless!!
I hope a successful battery powered car is not too far off as it will start to phase out the pollution aspect of driving and improve air quality in the city. A combination of electric subways and electric cars are the way of the future.
Of course we need to build more nuclear reactors to give us the clean power to charge all these electric cars...
Of course we need to build more nuclear reactors to give us the clean power to charge all these electric cars...
Yes it is a bad thing because it creates MORE pollution.
Taking 45 minutes to go 4 km creates much more pollution than a car going 4 km in 15 minutes!
Unless you transportation runs on cat piss, we're stuck with gasoline at the moment.
Fucking up Toronto's streets won't bring alternative fuel any sooner.
If there were subways everywhere sure wouldn't need cars but that's not what we have now.
The point is get people where they want to go faster and more efficiently is what is needed and that includes cars.
If you want to focus anger on cars, focus on all the single drivers going to and from downtown by themselves.
Lets say between 8 am and 6 pm there should be incentives for carpooling to downtown and penalties for not.
Free parking downtown for the day if you have more than 3 people carpooling with you.
And a tole if you are by yourself.
That would cut the number of cars in half.
Toronto doesn't end at Bloor, it goes all the way to Steels now.
People still need to drive, just do it more efficiently.
Toronto has done public transit wrong for years. Coming from Montreal where the subway is cheaper and runs WELL, and having been to Tokyo where public transit is LEGENDARY and driving a car is a Fool's Errand, I can safely say people in the GTA need to get off their asses and support public transit rather than fighting it. I'm just glad I decided to live close to where I work (now 3km away), as i feel nothing but shock and sympathy for the fools that spend 2+ hours of their lives in gridlock commuting daily while I can walk/bike to work in minutes.
The TTC should adopt Japan Rail's "Pay as you Go" system - they charge users by DISTANCE traveled, not one unilateral fee that lets you ride as far as you want. They have expertly measured the distance and time between each stop, and users simply pay fare according to how long they're using the service for, to the nearest distance category. For instance if you're traveling < 10km, the rate is like 180 Yen (= ~$1.60 CAD); traveling 20km?, the rate becomes like 250 Yen ($2.25); going a ridiculously farther distance like 25-30km? You pay 320-380 Yen, etc.
They use a swipe card honor system, where you have to swipe to get on (not charged yet), and then you have to swipe to get off, at which point your e-card is debited and if you haven't selected a high enough fare ticket to cover your ACTUAL distance traveled (e.g. you miscalculated or changed stops), the exit turnstile slams shut and directs you to a convenient top-up machine to pay the missing difference (if you paid by tokens/cash, instead of the e-card). No penalty fee or recriminations, just an honest mistake is assumed.
The same goes for their commuter rail system, which is an intricate network and both the subway and rail permeate EVERY sector of the city. It must have cost a FORTUNE to put in all that infrastructure, but guess what? It's THERE NOW AND EVERYBODY AND THEIR DOG USES IT GLADLY. There is seldom a slowdown (practically unheard of unless someone gets hit, and they're so socially conscious over there that even would-be jumpers have the courtesy to kill themselves elsewhere without inconveniencing everyone).
Toronto has waited TOO LONG, and lived by the ridiculous personal vehicle North American culture despite seeing the inevitable choking of the city with congestion, which is only going to get worse, not better with time unless public transit moves efficiently where cars cannot: i.e. either underground (Subways) or WAY ABOVE GROUND (monorails). The problem now is that real estate is so expensive that this dream will likely never be realized. Who can afford to buy out all the land necessary to dig underneath major arteries like Eglinton, or Steeles? In my opinion, Toronto needed at least two more East-West parallel lines that cut through the city along those roads, and another two North-South lines, perhaps near Don Mills and Islington/Jane Creek area...
Streetcars, sharing the same clogged roadways as the cars they're trying to circumvent, is retarded, and I can only assume that some poser San Francisco-wannabe proposed them back in the day when Toronto was still quaint and trying to be New York Jr... Funny thing being, NY's subway system also rocks and dwarfs ours.
The TTC should adopt Japan Rail's "Pay as you Go" system - they charge users by DISTANCE traveled, not one unilateral fee that lets you ride as far as you want. They have expertly measured the distance and time between each stop, and users simply pay fare according to how long they're using the service for, to the nearest distance category. For instance if you're traveling < 10km, the rate is like 180 Yen (= ~$1.60 CAD); traveling 20km?, the rate becomes like 250 Yen ($2.25); going a ridiculously farther distance like 25-30km? You pay 320-380 Yen, etc.
They use a swipe card honor system, where you have to swipe to get on (not charged yet), and then you have to swipe to get off, at which point your e-card is debited and if you haven't selected a high enough fare ticket to cover your ACTUAL distance traveled (e.g. you miscalculated or changed stops), the exit turnstile slams shut and directs you to a convenient top-up machine to pay the missing difference (if you paid by tokens/cash, instead of the e-card). No penalty fee or recriminations, just an honest mistake is assumed.
The same goes for their commuter rail system, which is an intricate network and both the subway and rail permeate EVERY sector of the city. It must have cost a FORTUNE to put in all that infrastructure, but guess what? It's THERE NOW AND EVERYBODY AND THEIR DOG USES IT GLADLY. There is seldom a slowdown (practically unheard of unless someone gets hit, and they're so socially conscious over there that even would-be jumpers have the courtesy to kill themselves elsewhere without inconveniencing everyone).
Toronto has waited TOO LONG, and lived by the ridiculous personal vehicle North American culture despite seeing the inevitable choking of the city with congestion, which is only going to get worse, not better with time unless public transit moves efficiently where cars cannot: i.e. either underground (Subways) or WAY ABOVE GROUND (monorails). The problem now is that real estate is so expensive that this dream will likely never be realized. Who can afford to buy out all the land necessary to dig underneath major arteries like Eglinton, or Steeles? In my opinion, Toronto needed at least two more East-West parallel lines that cut through the city along those roads, and another two North-South lines, perhaps near Don Mills and Islington/Jane Creek area...
Streetcars, sharing the same clogged roadways as the cars they're trying to circumvent, is retarded, and I can only assume that some poser San Francisco-wannabe proposed them back in the day when Toronto was still quaint and trying to be New York Jr... Funny thing being, NY's subway system also rocks and dwarfs ours.
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