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This seems badly thought out. First, the cheapest way to decrease wait times is almost definitely hiring more staff. Even if you doubled staffing the costs would be negligible next to the billions of dollars this project entails. Second, the walk from the new processing facility to the gates is...

That doesn't follow at all from what I said. It's disingenuous to apply an argument made in 2016 to 1954. Things change, obviously. I'd also note that the original Yonge line did take reducing capital costs quite seriously (eg. large amounts of above ground track). I also don't agree that the...

It'd be easier to just have the 14 turn down Duplex and head into the Yonge & Eg bus station. There will be tons of room left in that bus station after the Crosstown opens and it'd just be a 5-6 minute detour.

Cars, like any other thing on earth, are inefficient at some things, moderately efficient at some and highly efficient at others. There aren't that many situations where vehicle weight / passenger is relevant metric of efficiency. In fact, most of that added weight is going to safety, fuel...

My general point was that reducing capital (+operating) costs should be a more immediate goal than planning for a capacity crunch 50 years down the line. Shorter stations and rolling stock that can accommodate sharper turns and gradients are part of that. The lifetime costs of the Pape-St.Andrew...

That's a completely inaccurate portrayal of Vancouver. Current capacity on the Expo line is about 15,000 pphpd, which should be expandable to 26,000 (close to the current Yonge line) with more trains. The Canada Line has a reduced capacity (15,000 max) due to shorter platforms. While these...

To the extent that anybody is subsidizing anyone else's infrastructure it's extraordinarily minimal. Government spending on non-health, non-education activities is minimal to begin with. The notion that there is some kind of economically significant sprawl subsidy is just wrong. Maybe if you...

I think you're being a bit blithe about affordability issues in the GTA. Even limiting our view to condos, the median Toronto household would have to dedicate ~36% of their income to housing. Anything over 30% is deemed 'unaffordable.' And we're just talking about modestly sized Toronto condos...

No I didn't. I used an aggregate measure of the entire housing market, including both SFDs and condos. In the aggregate, Toronto's housing market is very unaffordable relative to incomes and in the aggregate this has negative impacts. Condos are cheaper but that's the result of smaller unit...

The conclusion isn't that one-sided. It also notes that policies like increased social housing, better transit and fewer barriers to new construction. Housing prices in the GTA are high relative to incomes and it has a major impact on the region's future. It is a very serious issue if home...

And it could be rolled out incrementally on a route by route basis. No need for one giant megaproject.

That sounds fine in the abstract but I'd suggest that stations typically never develop into centres of civic life due to their nature. The pressure to build 'impressive' structures in this case has led to sprawling pavilions and bus stations that have no relationship to the nearby context and...

Houston's apparently overtaken the 401 with a 26 lane stretch. The IH-10 now has "12 main lanes (six in each direction), eight feeder lanes and six managed lanes. The managed lanes carry mass transit and high-occupancy vehicles during peak hours and are made available to single-occupancy...

I think this is a false dichotomy. The argument against the shed is a little more robust than 'I think it's ugly, let's get rid of it.' Critics have also been keen to note that the shed actually interferes with the station's primary purpose as a transit hub by impeding things like...

From my limited perspective, Queen has always seemed slightly more practical than King or a more southerly alignment. 1.) The rail corridor will see a substantial increase in rail traffic. It would make sense to locate any new rapid transit slightly farther away from that to improve coverage...

Old people as a demographic have a ton to gain from driverless cars. For every stereotypical curmudgeon who would cling to their traditional car there should be many seniors who fear loosing the capacity to drive and the massive loss of freedom that entails.

I'm more upbeat about the prospects of the surface subway. The obvious downside is, as you note, less ideal station placement in downtown's eastern shoulder (~Dundas or Gerrard). In the context of the overall project this seems fairly minor though. That station will probably have modest...

These are unknowable things; how would the car know there are 50 children on the bus? The bus could well be empty. And yet, swerving a transport truck at high speed to avoid this empty bus could just as easily pose a serious hazard to other road traffic. Again, decelerating to 50km/h from...

??? That's not how things work in San Francisco at all. The private shuttles mostly service suburban office campuses that probably would have had a <5% transit modal share without the buses. They're not poaching people from municipal services, or whatever poaching does occur is negligible.

The car wouldn't be able to make a calculation like "100% chance they will be killed." That's unknowable. Nor would the car be able to tell if fewer people would be killed by driving off the road; imagine a school at the base of the hill. These question's don't accurately reflect the real...