I really enjoyed it. He's a great speaker. It was well attended. It seemed like there were many people involved with planning or transit there. I'm not sure how many people were just interested members of the public like myself.
Disclaimer: this is my attempt to summarize & paraphrase the 2 hour talk. If anybody disagrees with my interpretation feel free to correct me.
The main theme was that the overall point of transit is "abundant access". That means maximizing the # of places people can get to using transit in a given amount of time. You can map what areas you can get to using transit & walking in 15, 30, or 45 minutes for example. However, it's not about accessing the greatest area geographically, it's about accessing the greatest amount of places to go, so residential, employment density & density of other destinations matter.
He said that it doesn't matter to people whether the vehicle has rails or tires, pantograph or third rail, what matters is the ability to get people to the places that matter to them. We too often get sidetracked by debates about technologies on specific lines rather than focusing on the overall network. He also made the point there is never one overall solution for every situation like "subways subways subways".
Equity: there are multiple types of equity. One interpretation of equity is that everyone should get the same level of service no matter where they live in the city. Another is that the level of service should increase linearly with density. The third one is that service should match demand, and the level of demand actually increases at a higher rate than linear when density increases. For example, if you double the density, the transit demand will more than double (I think he said it's parabolic).
Unlike San Francisco, Toronto has a grid network of concession roads which is perfect for a frequent grid network. By using a grid of long continuous frequent transit lines, you can create the freedom to go anywhere because if you choose any two points on the map, you can walk to the nearest road with transit, take that line, then make one transfer, then take the 2nd line and get off and walk to your destination. There would only be one transfer, which is less annoying since the routes are frequent.
With respect to creating a grid system: he criticized short transit lines which create unnecessary transfers specifically calling out the Sheppard line. He also criticized the fact that our bus lines create forced transfers when you cross a subway. For example, on the Finch or Eglinton bus lines, to continue across Yonge, you must transfer to another bus at the station.
His overall recommendation was more frequent bus lines along our street grid, eliminating the transfer at subway stations. Rather than thinking of buses as dumping people at the subway so they can go downtown, frame it as a network to go from anywhere to anywhere.
When Keesmat mentioned the longer streetcars at decreased frequency, he mentioned that a decrease in frequency from 3 to 4 minutes can be OK, but 10 minutes to 30 minutes is obviously much worse.
Weather was mentioned, he said that people are very resilient to bad weather, however, he also mentioned heated bus shelters, and that you obviously can't built subways on every street.
He said we too often debate thinking about whether to implement short transit lines rather than creating a network. He prefers long continuous lines so that there are no transfers to continue in the same direction.
