Recent content by DB9

The biggest issue I find is that there doesn't seem to be any political will to champion a realistic transit solution for Scarborough, especially amongst Scarborough based politicians. RER/Smarttrack barely registers on the radar for politicans in the borough, even though it's sorely needed...

I wonder how much crack cocaine one would have to smoke to think little Robbie's funding plan will magically get his Sheppard subway fantasies built.

The irony of all this is that the "elites" living downtown are the least impacted - their transit rides are the shortest and in many areas of downtown the majority walk to work. This is basically self-flagellation and self-mutation by the suburbs.

How does this vision shortchange the suburbs? If anything, the projects are still skewed to benefit the suburbs..even the relief line primarily benefits the suburbs, particularly around North York & Scarborough near the DVP, and the Yonge line's capacity north of Bloor.

Meanwhile real hispter-ville Liberty Village/WQW can't even get a RER stop built yet.

More disturbing is that the relief line will likely be pushed to the back of the queue (to prioritize SSE and Yonge North), and there's a real chance the whole system system could collapse from overloading in ten years.

Hmm...Singapore's MRT is pretty what you typically expect from Asian subway systems, it's about on par to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, etc...

Singapore is probably the most Disneyfied out of all the cities I've visited. Even their nightclub district Clarke Quay and Chinatown is impeccably clean, but unbelievably sterile. Parts of it feels like walking in Orlando's Downtown Disney. The Marina Bay Sands area is practically a mini Vegas...

This seems to be wishful thinking at best. Let's take for example Queens and Bronx NYC, which would be analogous to Scarborough. Their transit coverage is pretty decent, and yet - there aren't a lot of banks or Fortune 500 companies (with their high-paying professional jobs) decamping their...

Exactly - even if all the transit fantasy projects "that Scarborough deserves" were built - companies will still prefer to locate downtown, because that's where employees want to work. There is a "dearth" of leadership because even Scarborough councilors know all the subsidies in the world won't...

Seeing that mess of visual clutter makes me wish that the MTO would do away with their half-baked signage and adopt the UN standards. Just as easy to understand, without words screaming "ACHTUNG! BETRETEN VERBOTEN!"

The process of getting a driver's license in Ontario is also laughably easy - compared to the rigorous process in European countries like Germany it's almost a cruel joke.

This is hyperbole that's so detached from reality I don't know where to begin. Driving on any major arterial road in West Scarborough during morning or evening rush hour is worse than a "Friday night" on QQW, and I wouldn't even call the former the "worst driving experience in TO". On many...

Local space is definitely not an issue. Pretty much everything along the Sheppard corridor from Markham Road to Vic Park can be demolished and rebuilt to higher density. Most of it are ugly generic strip malls with a sea of parking that's barely half full at the best of times. Also, all the...

This is the frustrating part of this whole subway debate. There is no active political voice in Scarborough fighting for RER, even though it's the best solution for Scarborough that works. The subway debate is pointless if RER doesn't get implemented properly - Scarberians will be stuck with...