Anti Public Transit article....

[Inkarnate]

Why are most of you guys so anti-car? Wouldn't you rather have the freedom and convenience of owning your own vehicle instead of riding buses and subway trains?

Hi Wendell Cox. Welcome to the Urban Toronto forum.

 

[Dan416]

If only Toronto had a more extensive subway and commuter rail system, we could take even more cars off the road.

 

[urbanboom]

If only Toronto had a more extensive subway and commuter rail system, we could take even more cars off the road.

Plus an LRT system on major roads! That'd be quite something

 

[bloor_christie]

I've been lurking around here for a bit but now I feel like I need to say something.

First of all, I agree mostly with this article:

# Dense areas require mass transit. Toronto's downtown core needs more subway lines.

However, the subway extension to Vaughan, and the Sheppard line are billion dollar mistakes! You could even say the same about the University line north of Eglington.

These lines are such a waste of tax money - billions and billions of dollars flushed away on capital and operating costs. It ranks just as bad as the Ontario's recent eHealth fiasco.


# The TTC should be privatized, and competing companies should be allowed to build and operate their infrastructure.

This needs to be done ASAP!!

Toronto would see a lot more transit projects if private companies would be allowed to invest in it. In fact, this is how the TTC started - a bunch of private transportation companies.

The cities with the best transit systems, are often ones that are run by the private sector. I've lived and worked in both London and Tokyo.

# Toronto needs more throughways.

The crosstown expressway should have been built - if we had it, we wouldn't have the mess we have now on the DVP and Allen. You can thank Toronto's special interest groups for this mistake. Instead we have an under-used subway line that will eventually go to Vaughan.

 

[DavidH]

Toronto would see a lot more transit projects if private companies would be allowed to invest in it. In fact, this is how the TTC started - a bunch of private transportation companies.

Uh, no. The TTC was started because the previous private companies were *not* making the necessary investments.

Having said that, I'm not necessarily opposed to private companies having a role as contractors (see Bombardier with GO, or the various companies that operate YRT) provided that the public sector controls routes, service levels, and fares.

 

[TOareaFan]

I don't get it.

I am generally a right wing fiscal guy......but I never understand this argument:

1. Most transit is a waste of billions of dollars

2. If we privatize transit the competition will bring more transit.

The private sector seldom rushes to invest billions in waste of money projects...they are, typically, in search of profits.

As a fiscal "righty" I am ok with that. I actually believe that the only "businesses" that the taxpayer should invest in are those that lose money.....that is, businesses/services that we all agree we need but that would not exist unless we collectively invest our tax dollars in them because, as "money losers" they will not attract private capital. There are a limited number of these businesses but things like libraries and transit are examples.

Now, could someone explain to me how this business that represents a multi-billion dollar waste of money is gonna attract all of that private investment?

 

[GraphicMatt]

Privatized transit is, in except in rare, perfect conditions like Asia, a pipedream. It's like privatizing national defence. It doesn't work because turning a profit really shouldn't be a priority. A profitable transit line would generally run at very low frequencies, experience only crush loads, not operate at all on weekends and serve only a few, limited spots with high density.

And any additional expressways built in the 70s would be just as gridlocked as our current expressways are.

 

[RapidTransit]

So, not much of a difference. lol

 

[W. K. Lis]

One problem we have to overcome is the current building of facilities that cater to the automobile. Developers build some nice buildings, however, they turn their backs to public transit and pedestrians. They tear down blocks of buildings and replace them with a single building in the middle of parking lots. Or they build buildings where the entrances are not facing the street, but the parking lot in back.

See this article "Unappealing by Day ... and Can Creep You Out at Night" that includes a video, by clicking on this link. It shows what happens when we ignore the pedestrian and transit.

 

[TOareaFan]

So, not much of a difference. lol

In your joke, though, lies a bit of wisdom.....one of the constant holdbacks for public transit in this region is the insane requirement that we put on it with regards to recouping costs at the fare box.

So, yes, GraphicMatt's description of what private sector owne public transit would look like is scarily close to what we have in many parts of the GTA right now....but it doesn't need to be that way.

We have imposed unrealistic cost recovery requirements on public transit because we seem afraid to announce publicly that we are subsidizing public transit and proud of it!

 

[DavidH]

So, yes, GraphicMatt's description of what private sector owne public transit would look like is scarily close to what we have in many parts of the GTA right now....but it doesn't need to be that way.

Indeed. My local route runs during rush hour only at 30m frequencies. Well, we do see evening/Sunday service at hourly frequencies but takes the scenic tour around time, resulting in a route that is essentially useless for any real trip. It gets funded because we have to provide *some* service but we don't fund it enough to actually provide a useful service, so the end result is that the buses are usually empty. and then we say "no one wants to ride transit."

 

[Rainforest]

The problem with this article is that it does not attempt to classify the transit systems. Quite obviously, the carbon impact of transit is reversely proportional to the average load factor. The average load factors vary greatly between the systems.

There is no surprise that a bus carrying 3 or 5 passengers pollutes more than 3 or 5 cars it replaces. But a typical TTC's major street bus carrying 30 - 50 people, or a subway train carrying 500 - 800 people, can't possibly pollute more than the cars it replaces. TTC does have low-load routes, and even the major routes have light loads off-peak; but the point is that the ratio of high-performance trips to low-performance trips differs between the transit systems.

Any analysis useful for policy-setting, must classify the transit systems under study: by the size of city, its density, structure of roads and highways etc. Then, perhaps, we will see that public transit has negative environmental impact in small towns or rural areas, but very positive impact in big cities.

Debating the North-American average is about as useful as calculating the average temperature of all patients at a hospital, and prescribing each and every patient aspirine when, and only when, the average temperature exceeds 38 C.

 

[PukeGreen]

The crosstown expressway should have been built - if we had it, we wouldn't have the mess we have now on the DVP and Allen. You can thank Toronto's special interest groups for this mistake. Instead we have an under-used subway line that will eventually go to Vaughan.

Successful protests against criss-crossing the city with freeways 40 years ago have absolutely nothing to do with the current plan to expand the subway towards Vaughan. Describing one as a direct result of the other is illogical.

And if there were more highways, more people who currently take transit would say "hey, I'll just drive, it's faster" and buy cars. Within a short time the new highway would be just as jammed as the old, and we'd be back to square one.

In regards to the "eventually to Vaughan" expansion, many strong transit supporters (including myself) also feel that the TTC should properly maintain and improve what already exists before making large new expansions. It's because of the politics of funding formulas that governments find it easier to make grandiose announcements allocating billions to new projects, rather than steady, regular investments of millions every year we need to maintain infrastructure.

Finally, privatization: terrible idea, because it makes the erroneous assumption that all worthwhile transit lines must be profitable. It disregards the "chicken and egg" problem, ie. transit lines are most heavily used when the areas they serve are very dense; but areas do not get built-up to that density unless they are well served by transit. A solid transit infrastructure needs to come first, with payoffs years or decades down the road. And the payoffs don't come directly back to the transit line in the form of fares; they come indirectly to society and government in the form of tax dollars and jobs generated by the resulting development. The problem is that both governments and corporations are ill-suited for that far-distant type of planning, since governments are always catering to the next election, and corporations to the next fiscal quarter.

A few more thoughts to consider:

- why must transit be profitable enough to "pay for itself" when nobody expects any highway to "pay for itself" (in Ontario, anyway, where "toll" is a dirty four letter word).

- most of the known problems with Toronto's transit infrastructure have their root cause in decades of inadequate funding; so pointing to these problems as justification that transit doesn't work and we should cut funding further is pretty brutal.

- all those fans of privatization should keep in mind the ongoing debacle of the Highway 407, which shows that corporations can be just as idiotic as governments -- but at least governments are somewhat accountable to the population as a whole.

 

[milanista]

I've been lurking around here for a bit but now I feel like I need to say something.

First of all, I agree mostly with this article:

# Dense areas require mass transit. Toronto's downtown core needs more subway lines.

However, the subway extension to Vaughan, and the Sheppard line are billion dollar mistakes! You could even say the same about the University line north of Eglington.

These lines are such a waste of tax money - billions and billions of dollars flushed away on capital and operating costs. It ranks just as bad as the Ontario's recent eHealth fiasco.


# The TTC should be privatized, and competing companies should be allowed to build and operate their infrastructure.

This needs to be done ASAP!!

Toronto would see a lot more transit projects if private companies would be allowed to invest in it. In fact, this is how the TTC started - a bunch of private transportation companies.

The cities with the best transit systems, are often ones that are run by the private sector. I've lived and worked in both London and Tokyo.

# Toronto needs more throughways.

The crosstown expressway should have been built - if we had it, we wouldn't have the mess we have now on the DVP and Allen. You can thank Toronto's special interest groups for this mistake. Instead we have an under-used subway line that will eventually go to Vaughan.

Your first 2 points have some merit, but your third is just out of left field. Toronto does not need more highways/throughways. No city does. Highways kill cities and only service those who believe that the whole point of anything is to be able to comfortably drive through it. The subway should not be going to Vaughan I agree, but that has nothing to do with why the DVP and Allen are congested. The Allen abruptly ends at Eglinton, that's why it's a mess. It should have never been built in the first place anyway. The DVP is the closest north-south highway to downtown, thats why it's congested, that's not rocket science.
Thank God the crosstown expressway and Spadina expressway and all the rest were never built, because that would have been the beginning of the end. Areas like the Annex and Rosedale (2 of Toronto's most beautiful) would no longer exist. I'm more interested in cities that serve people, not cars.

There is no doubt in my mind that if the crosstown and Spadina expressways were built, Toronto's core would be a sad place.

 

[TrickyRicky]

If you consider yourself a transit advocate one thing I think you should be careful about in these kinds of arguments is dismissing the actions of people who believe they are acting in their own self-interest. People generally don't own SUV's, drive to the store with ample parking etc. to kill the environment or destroy the fabric of cities. They are just going about their little lives trying to make a go of it in this world the best they can.

I like the posts of people who state their personal experiences and how not having a car, or limiting their car usage was a conscious decision born from a desire to enhancing their quality of life.

You can preach from the pulpit and use abstract altruistic arguments to support your case (the environment, the feel of the city etc.) but people will not respect you for it. Perhaps you don't care, and actually you shouldn't care about their respect. Except, when people don't respect you you will find it hard to convince them your argument is legitimate.