MisterF
Senior Member
Downtown streetcars function more like buses than subways, at least the way that they're operated now. They're no substitute for a comprehensive rapid transit network. As you correctly pointed out, some of the streetcar lines are overloaded and need to be replaced with a faster, higher capacity mode. But it started happening a long time ago. That's how the Yonge and Bloor lines came to be.It's cute as a comparison, but not very useful given the differences in urban context - also their Metro is probably playing the role of our (badly overloaded) streetcar network.
AoD
I don't think he's suggesting any of that. Riots in Paris suburbs have nothing to do with what technology the trains in the area use. Don't be ridiculous.They don't build subways into the suburbs, but they'd build them out into the lake? Okay.
Also, considering the divisions betwen inner city and suburb in Paris, the isolation of the suburbs and their exclusion from Paris, which culminated in many riots, I'm not sure that is the model for Toronto, especially considering Toronto suburbs own problems. And Toronto's suburbs are politically united with Toronto, not separate like those Parisian suburbs. Unless you are seriously suggest that Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, East York, York should be kicked out of Toronto and no longer served by TTC at all. I don't agree with that.
RER doesn't have to provide inferior service to subways. The RER in Rome for example has trains running every few minutes, while the subway in Atlanta has headways as low as half an hour.
You're looking at this in a way that's too specific to that one example. Some cities restrict the subway network to the inner city with RER serving the suburbs (Paris). Some have a central subway system that extends deep into the suburbs above ground and with stations far apart, often using rail ROWs and functioning more like RER (Washington). And others have an RER system that goes underground in the central city, functioning more like a subway (Sydney).Well, that's another problem with the comparison: geographical range. You can basically extend the metro + RER outwards in all directions until you run out of France (maybe there'll be people commuting in from Belgium one day ...), but transit here covers the lakeshore and extends northwards.
Maybe a better candidate for the why-aren't-we-like-Paris game is Washington: its metro extends well beyond the city into towns in adjoining states that are politically separate but which contribute to its funding.
The point is that underground subways in the outer suburbs tends to be wasteful and aren't often done. And that mass transit should be the technology that makes sense in the context of the area it serves, not just subways everywhere.