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Does Toronto look to North America or elsewhere for inspiration for transit/infrastructure?

Burnt creek said:
It is silly to look to Europe for reference points for urban planning or transit. Canadian and american urban centres were built up over the past 200 years. Many european urban centres have 2000 years of history and were not built up but rather evolved to what they are today. Toronto is a city on grid that is constantly growing and needed to expand, whereas most older cities in europe are not. There are few exceptions in europe like Turin for example. But basically, one needs only look at map of your typical north american city and your typical european city and you should see the differnce.

There are so many other societal differences between europe and north american that i dont even want to go there because there are volumes of text in this subject. Laws in regards to private property, access to private property and building laws are very very different. As is culture. Businesses and the economy is very different especially the marketing ditribution channels (which affects transportation needs) and commercial development. Even the notions or concepts of urban Versu suburban versus rural are differnt. There is no where near that kind of gap or differnences between canada and the US. Canada and the US were frontier nations settled by outsider/pioneers, europe is not. We were instilled With british institutions. All that stuff impacts what kind of city you will have and whether european ideas or thought can apply here. This goes for transit as well. Then there is jurisdictional differences and variations on the powers of of city versus national governments. Again, this will also impact transit development.

Every time i have gone accross the Atlantic, it was always to to see people (usually family or extended family). Or to connect with people. Thats different from the many who go there as tourists. Also, i can speak three languages fluently. When you go there as tourist, hang with tour guides and tour buses, and go the places where only tourist go (ie.: the cobblestone plaza's), you dont really know or learn much about what its really like to live there. You are in bubble. I believe that many of these types who constantly think that we need to compare ourselves to europe and have this romantizied notion that we need to make our city like european city, are people who have only been there as tourist. You also might be surprised to learn that i have had guests from europe tell me how impressed with our expressways and business parks, and how you can acquires homes and property so easily and how peacefull and clean our suburbs are. Again, all this affects the kind of city we live in. And transit needs.

How you get to work, what your work hours are , where your business and/or work place is located...etc. again, there are differences here between TO and many euro city. Again, this has direct impact on transit needs. As does the economy as a whole. We (US and Canada) are a much more tolerant and flexible society that can adapt to change better than europe. This is shown by the fact that we can and will easily move re locate if needed and to improve our livelihood. In Europe, people are more reluctant to relocate. Again, this also impacts transit and urban planning and influences. In europe, some of the ethnic ghettos are underserved by transit, why? Because they're ethnic. Is that what you want inspire yourself from? We dont have those same attitudes in regards to our identity.
We are very close to the US in very many ways, anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.
Click to expand...
What's silly is dismissing what European cities are doing based on a sentiment that amounts to little more than "we're not Europe". Toronto is just as close to Europe as most of North America in a lot of ways. There's almost nothing in North America like what GO Transit is becoming, or even what it is now. The density, transit use and highrises of Toronto's suburbs are almost unheard of in North America. And there's nowhere else on the continent that's building infrastructure and high rises at the pace we are.

There's nothing romanticized about looking to Europe (or Asia or Australia) to see what's possible with how to build a city. People do that because there's very little in North America that matches the kind of city that Toronto is becoming. Toronto has no more in common with Atlanta than with Stockholm or Singapore.

Revised_petrol_use_urban_density.JPG
 
Burnt creek said:
In europe, some of the ethnic ghettos are underserved by transit, why? Because they're ethnic. Is that what you want inspire yourself from? We dont have those same attitudes in regards to our identity.
We are very close to the US in very many ways, anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.
Click to expand...

To be fair, if we're talking about both North America and Europe in either case there exists the problem of impoverished ethnic neighbourhoods that get screwed over when it comes to policy and planning (though in American cities they're more likely to be historically segregated African American neighbourhoods while in Europe it's more recent immigrant enclaves), so that's not something exclusive to one side of the Atlantic or the other.
 
One way to entice users to actually use public transit, bicycles, or walk in their city centres, is to go car-free.

See link for a list of car-free places in the world.

Toronto already has a few car-free places: Toronto Islands, Distillery District, Leslie Street Spit
 
MisterF said:
What's silly is dismissing what European cities are doing based on a sentiment that amounts to little more than "we're not Europe". Toronto is just as close to Europe as most of North America in a lot of ways. There's almost nothing in North America like what GO Transit is becoming, or even what it is now. The density, transit use and highrises of Toronto's suburbs are almost unheard of in North America. And there's nowhere else on the continent that's building infrastructure and high rises at the pace we are.

There's nothing romanticized about looking to Europe (or Asia or Australia) to see what's possible with how to build a city. People do that because there's very little in North America that matches the kind of city that Toronto is becoming. Toronto has no more in common with Atlanta than with Stockholm or Singapore.

Revised_petrol_use_urban_density.JPG
Click to expand...

I'm really surprised as to how even New Yorkers consume significantly more gasoline than us per person (not in absolute terms of course as they're a bigger city), when their share of non-car transport is much higher. Tourists? Commuters from outside the city going home to and from New Jersey? Though I don't know if they would count. People stuck in traffic for long periods of time or driving around looking for a parking spot?
 
wild goose chase said:
I'm really surprised as to how even New Yorkers consume significantly more gasoline than us per person (not in absolute terms of course as they're a bigger city), when their share of non-car transport is much higher. Tourists? Commuters from outside the city going home to and from New Jersey? Though I don't know if they would count. People stuck in traffic for long periods of time or driving around looking for a parking spot?
Click to expand...
I believe that chart is measuring urban areas, including suburbs. New York's suburbs are very large and sprawling, which would explain how the urban area as a whole uses so much gasoline per capita. I'd bet that Manhattan is much lower.
 
MisterF said:
I believe that chart is measuring urban areas, including suburbs. New York's suburbs are very large and sprawling, which would explain how the urban area as a whole uses so much gasoline per capita. I'd bet that Manhattan is much lower.
Click to expand...
The "Hotel Row" along Tonnele Avenue in North Bergen, NJ is extremely poorly served by public transit, despite it being directly connected to an expressway leading to midtown Manhattan.
 
Toronto is probably not even a typical city by even Canadian standards, let alone by USA standards. I don't see what "typical North American city" vs "typical European city" has to do with this.

Even speaking of the typical, Canadians are 2.5 times more likely to use transit than people of the USA, while Europeans are 2 times more likely to use transit than Canadians or 5 times more than US people. In other words, in terms of transit use, Typical Canadian City is exactly in the middle, right in between Typical US City and Typical European City.

So there is nothing far-fetched about Toronto looking to Europe for ideas. It is already more than halfway there.
 
MisterF said:
I believe that chart is measuring urban areas, including suburbs. New York's suburbs are very large and sprawling, which would explain how the urban area as a whole uses so much gasoline per capita. I'd bet that Manhattan is much lower.
Click to expand...

So the 20 million NYC metro area would be more sprawling than the GTA, right? But the city itself with five boroughs I'd imagine would still be much lower than Toronto's six. I think New York city, as defined by the five boroughs, is the only city in the US or Canada where the majority don't use the car as the main way of getting to work, but other transport modes.
 
doady said:
Toronto is probably not even a typical city by even Canadian standards, let alone by USA standards. I don't see what "typical North American city" vs "typical European city" has to do with this.

Even speaking of the typical, Canadians are 2.5 times more likely to use transit than people of the USA, while Europeans are 2 times more likely to use transit than Canadians or 5 times more than US people. In other words, in terms of transit use, Typical Canadian City is exactly in the middle, right in between Typical US City and Typical European City.

So there is nothing far-fetched about Toronto looking to Europe for ideas. It is already more than halfway there.
Click to expand...

To be fair, there's a big gap in the US and Canada between the most transit-friendly, big cities (or second, or next handful of them) and then a long tail trailing off, of the remaining transit-unfriendly cities going down the list. North America seems to be the kind of place where lots of big, city urbanites can use transit as much or almost as much as Europeans but the numbers are then swamped by small towns, suburbs, middle-sized towns with poor or even non-existant transit and where walking or biking is impractical, whereas Europe tends to have more places where even small towns are either walkable or transit-friendly, so it's not just "big city" or nothing.
 
wild goose chase said:
To be fair, there's a big gap in the US and Canada between the most transit-friendly, big cities (or second, or next handful of them) and then a long tail trailing off, of the remaining transit-unfriendly cities going down the list. North America seems to be the kind of place where lots of big, city urbanites can use transit as much or almost as much as Europeans but the numbers are then swamped by small towns, suburbs, middle-sized towns with poor or even non-existant transit and where walking or biking is impractical, whereas Europe tends to have more places where even small towns are either walkable or transit-friendly, so it's not just "big city" or nothing.
Click to expand...

Small cities, small towns, and suburbs in Canada have transit ridership that exceeds that of large cities and central cities in the US. They are not much like their counterparts in the US.

Code: 
ANNUAL BOARDINGS 2005-2006

URBAN AREA    TOTAL         POPULATION  PER CAPITA
New York      3,453,093,200 17,773,000  194
-Newark
Vancouver     284,132,400   1,953,252   145
Calgary       129,997,400   988,079     132
Washington    461,502,800   4,251,000   109
San Francisco 427,764,500   4,170,000   103
-Oakland-Concord-Antioch
Boston        401,542,300   4,077,000   98
Winnipeg      58,100,000    641,483     91
Victoria      25,586,100    304,683     84
Chicago       603,966,200   7,702,000   78
Champaign     8,910,500     116,000     77
Philadelphia  352,923,000   5,296,000   67
Portland      110,634,100   1,729,000   64
London        20,950,800    353,069     59
Los Angeles   666,952,400   12,149,000  55
-Long Beach-Santa Ana
Seattle       159,698,800   3,002,000   53
Baltimore     105,151,300   2,149,000   49
North Bay     2,574,547     53,100      48
Hamilton      29,898,663    647,643     46
Guelph        5,679,575     127,270     45
Kitchener     18,718,811    422,514     44
-Waterloo
Las Vegas     53,571,400    1,256,000   43
Pittsburgh    70,268,700    1,769,000   40
Milwaulkee    53,096,400    1,399,000   38
Cleveland     66,610,200    1,767,000   38
Denver        86,260,600    2,311,000   37
-Aurora-Boulder-Longmont-Lafayette-Louisville
Atlanta       150,252,400   4,172,000   36
Peterborough  2,711,100     76,925      35
Thunder Bay   3,570,825     103,247     35
Minneapolis   81,021,800    2,519,000   32
-St Paul
San Diego     89,924,400    2,903,000   31
Kingston      3,272,328     109,431     30
Miami         158,502,100   5,331,000   30
SaultSteMarie 1,882,773     68,084      28
San Jose      39,132,500    1,649,000   24
St. Louis     48,902,300    2,106,000   23
Dallas        82,019,800    3,746,000   22
-Fort Worth-Arlington
Salt Lake     36,649,900    1,889,000   19
City-Ogden-Provo-Orem
Sacramento    32,862,800    1,767,000   19
Orlando       24,807,600    1,335,000   19
Phoenix-Mesa  60,477,100    3,270,000   18
Providence    20,175,200    1,242,000   16
Virginia B.   24,241,500    1,521,000   16
Riverside     23,322,400    1,828,000   13
-San Bernardino
Columbus      14,789,500    1,197,000   12
Detroit       47,558,500    3,931,000   12
Jacksonville  11,296,900    992,000     11
Tampa         22,992,900    2,251,000   10
-St. Petersburg
Kansas City   14,506,200    1,454,000   10
Indianapolis  8,810,200     915,000     10
Nashville     7,465,300     984,000     8

Canadian data from 2006
US data from 2005

Code: 
TRANSIT AGENCY                BOARDINGS (2013)
Mississauga Transit           50.9 million
Greater Cleveland R.T.A.      49.0
Metro (St. Louis)             48.0
VIA Metropolitan Transit      45.2
Utah Transit Authority        44.1
Milwaukee County Transit Sys. 43.6
Pace Suburban Bus             39.9
Detroit D.O.T.                34.8
Connecticut Transit           27.7
Sacramento Reg Tr Dist        27.6
Niagara Frontier T.A.         26.9
Charlotte Area Transit Sys.   26.0
Memphis Area T.A.             10.2

http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2013-q4-ridership-APTA.pdf
 
Last edited:
Johnny Au said:
Meanwhile in NYC: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...6-a-month-to-trim-a-minute-off-their-commute/

New Yorkers are willing to pay US$56 a month to trim a minute off their commute, given the opening of the Second Avenue subway in Manhattan and the closing of the L Train in Brooklyn for a few years.
Click to expand...

Assuming you make 40 trips, that's $1.4/minute or $84/hour.

Middle class living on Manhattan island have incomes in the $250k/year range, which with 60 hour work week is $83/hour.

In short, I don't find that to be an unreasonable rental rate change.
 
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