War on Public Transit
- Thread starter Brill
- Start date
The vehicle that lasts a decade is the smallest part of the route cost, and even the fuel savings aren't so much up against the costs of switching the vehicles on any given route (which probably doesn't connect with a TTC yard, so you periodically have two vehicles off-route) and then switching them back again. Driver cost doesn't change until you cut the number of runs, and therefore the drivers it takes to do them.
The real problem for the TTC and for cars is peak-use hours that strain resources then leave that expensive infrastructure underused at other times. Smaller buses is a good idea, but since the system has excess capacity in vehicles for the peak hours, using them makes sense. The real answer for transit and drivers alike is more effort to smooth out the peaks, like time-differentiated fares, road-tolls and parking taxes.
Anytime vavog... For the record, I love riding my bike when the weather is nice and I take the TTC when it makes sense and/or is more cost effective.
Actually trains could NEVER run on TTC tracks. The gauge is different. Always has been. Railway Gauge in NA is 4'-8.5". TTC uses 4'10 7/8"
It is unique to Toronto.
It was done so that Trains could not drive down a city road.
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/streetcar/4002.shtml
But it may be the case in other cities, I dunno. Just not Toronto.
Of course roads are a general good. It's the essence of social responsibility—some would call it social-ism—that the general population owns and pays for such general goods. Who could argue against that?
But you shot yourself in the foot saying the problem is that what drivers pay doesn't go to roads and transit. It isn't nearly enough to pay for building and maintaining what we have, even if it did. But how do you know that every one of those 'general revenue dollars' that did wasn't collected from a gas tax? The amount still had to be topped up by all the non-drivers. What exactly is wrong with providing some of the necessary costs from the overall public purse and the rest from user fees/driver pays. We do it for all sorts of institutions and purposes from athletic stadiums to hospitals, what makes drivers uniquely oppressesd?
Sorry if my haste to respond left an impression I thought streetcar and railway tracks were interchangeable in any way, except perhaps as they 'obstruct' drivers. My point was that we once had tracks everywhere—and built today's society with the enterprises they served—returning to that shouldn't be scary.
Anyone who is frightened by it should be trying very hard to defer oil usage by wasteful, inefficient vehicles, not defend it by suggesting we should be grateful all that excess packaging we know and love now arrives at the packing plant 'just in time' to be shipped out again.
That business owner figured out how to use the 401 we paid for as his warehouse instead of building one. That spur I bump over every morning down in the Portlands seems a much better deal to me, even if today's factory owner saves by just paving the few feet from his lot to our streets.
PS: One of my best childhood memories is sitting on my uncle and aunt's front lawn in Dundas and watching a steam locomotive haul boxcars down their street to the factory at the end of it. Nothing today compares.
Last edited:
The hybrid buses cost $750,000 for lets say a 20 year life span
Smaller bus may be $250, 000
Put that 500,000 into a market fund and after 20 years you have 3 - 4 million dollars
Do that with 50 buses and you have 200 million dollars plus fuel and maintenance savings
Is my logic wrong ??? Of course it is cheaper to provide no service but this means more people will become independent of the TTC as they now buy a car and the TTC has lost a paying customer and we have to build more roads so what have we saved ?
But if you've invested that half million, your bottom line has stayed the same, and the order has gone out to save, not just hold the line. Applying the investment income will save a tad, but then your half million per vehicle's sitting uselessly locked up somewhere looking very attractive to somebody at City Hall. Like the 'surplus' from last year that might better have been 'locked' away for a rainy day, or paid down debt to reduce interest costs instead of being spent to buy taxpayer services, so taxpayers don't have to—pay more taxes that is.
I don't claim to know about this stuff, what I posted earlier is my recollection of what I've read over the years from TTC people responding to the idea every time some one thinks it up anew. Their point is always that the added overhead costs—staff, garage, parking, parts inventory etc. but principally wages—negate, if not exceed, any savings from purchase and operating costs. Eventually gas may be priced that high, but it's not there yet. So if you have got this all figured out, I'd sugest you inform TTC, their new Board Chair Karen Stintz, or at the very least your Councillor.
And who wants to ride in a 15-20 year old worn out dirty bus? A few people's poor hygiene doesn't help matters either. This comes down to Harper and the fed fault for not providing enough funds for the TTC. Those subway trains should had been replaced by now, not its coming soon. Toronto seems too expensive to me for what it offers. Not just the TTC but everything. I'm better off staying outside the city.
I didn't shoot myself in the foot, nor did I say costs shouldn't be shared by the overall public.
The cost of roads should be shared by all, everybody befits by them. If there was no roads, there be no goods in stores to buy. Roads are are a necessary to just about everybody in some way or another.
What you did say was:
and from general coffers drivers pay for some of the roads as do all citizens. They use more, maybe they even pay more. What then, is the problem? If I misunderstood, please be more explicit, so we can stop this unseemly agreeing that roads are a public good we all pay for.
Makes sense as they now have more vehicles to house, I suspect they have thought about it and decided not to buy a smaller bus as the finances make no sense. What transit has two sizes of buses ? Another factor may be smaller buses would not be mass produced therefore no discount
We do have smaller community buses for a few areas but they are controversial because they are empty quite often
I see what you're getting at, I meant to say the problem is "all" the money that's collected from drivers doesn't go toward roads and public transit. It goes into general coffers. And yes, we're arguing the same point! lol
Originally Posted by S.C. Joe
The cost of roads should be shared by all, everybody befits by them. If there was no roads, there be no goods in stores to buy. Roads are are a necessary to just about everybody in some way or another.
The cost of roads should be shared by all, everybody befits by them. If there was no roads, there be no goods in stores to buy. Roads are are a necessary to just about everybody in some way or another.
In a country as large as Canada, the automobile is more than a preference.
@ Fuji: Kensington market. Right in the heart of the city. Parking is cheap, groceries are even cheaper and I don't have to take transit home with all my bags - they go right in the car which is one of the most fuel efficient ones on the road today. That answer your question? If I have more than one friend or neighbor come with me, it is even cheaper than transit.
What someone's gonna make us drive from here to Moose Jaw? Are there no trains, planes or buses? Why do we have to go there? Have we no choice?
For most people, most of their travel is to work and back, and in the olden days before we all thought we 'had' to travel by car, people chose to live conveniently close to where they worked. It was a real estate selling feature, whole towns like Leaside were planned and built that way.
S.C. Joe, to whom I replied, said so himself; he chooses not to live in T.O.. If that choice is only feasible when he drives his own car back and forth, that doesn't mean he 'has' to own a car; he could have chosen to live where he didn't 'need' one. Like the parents who 'have' to drive their kids to hockey, or people who 'have' to bring their own LaZboys home from Leon's, no one's forced the life-style on them. When they have to pay its true costs, my bet is they'll 'have' to choose differently.
Remember Eatons? Their delivery trucks were once about the most common commercial vehicle on the road. And it was no extra cost (they were too honest to say 'free delivery'). Why doesn't the MTHL run buses the way schools do? Why aren't there equipment rooms where you lock up the kids' gear and transport it in one big load?
In a country as large as Canada, transportation of some sort may be a necessity, but that doesn't mean most needs of most people cannot be met within just a few kilometres, and by various sorts of efficiently shared means. Like delivery trucks, subways, buses and streetcars. And walking would do us more good than driving to the treadmill parlour.
Of course cars are a choice.
