simply Dan
Active Member
Better to have thousands of parking spots in places like Milton or Whitby than extra cars in the downtown core and on our highways every day.
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JasonParis
Moderator
...but even better to have those suburban stations developed properly so as either:
i) people can find work where they live
ii) transit service is offered on a level where a quick hop on the bus from a GO station isn't that big a deal.
i) people can find work where they live
ii) transit service is offered on a level where a quick hop on the bus from a GO station isn't that big a deal.
doady
Senior Member
GO does want less parking at its stations, otherwise it would not subsidize the discounted 50 cent fare when using MT, BT, YRT, etc.
ShonTron
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Hah hah!
Then why boast about all the parking spots they build each year?
Then why boast about all the parking spots they build each year?
AnarchoSocialist
Active Member
Because it is a government agency and whenever they spend public money on anything they boast about it and talk about how wonderful it will be whether it is a parking spot or new washroom or 6 lane highway.
I don't see the parking lots as being all that bad. Like simply Dan said they keep cars out of the city and parking lots are rather temporary. At least it is a way of getting more people to use public transit and when some of the lots with more central locations find themselves being desireable for development it would take virtually no effort to tear up the parking lot. At least it is providing some sort of service at the moment (even if it is not ideal, it still serves a purpose).
unimaginative2
Senior Member
GO will remain a parking-oriented service as long as it remains a rush-hour-only commuter service. There's no point in focusing real transit service on GO stations which only see trains for a few hours each day. If GO trains ran better than hourly service, you'd see real connecting transit service and real pressure for redevelopment of those stations.
AnarchoSocialist
Active Member
^Exactly. Once lines start to see proper service then redevelopment wont be far behind. In the meantime, the parking lots are fine, and if anything, serve to reserve the land so that nothing else is built on it until the day GO can start selling it off.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
There is absolutely nothing on the planning radar to suggest that this will ever happen. There was an opportunity to create a transit-oriented development at Rouge Hill a few years ago - at a station with all-day service on a really attractive part of the lake - and instead the opportunity was squandered with a typical subdivision. With a handful of exceptions, GO train stations are located far away from the smaller, regional downtowns making the creation of a seamless urban fabric a futile experiment. In this regard, a similar system like Metra in Chicago is in a much better position to be a proper "urbanizing" tool.
Sean's right. GO might as well be a part of the 400 highway system, or a parking authority by proxy. It is an agent for sprawl.
ShonTron
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It's only in those handful of locations where the municipality and/or market forces (which are only partly caused by having GO there) have conspired to create real TOD - Port Credit and Brampton being the best examples, Hamilton potentially (station not surrounded by sea of parking, in historic centre).
Some other stations have high density around - Cooksville a good example, but there's very little interaction - the station surrounded by parking.
There are plans for Burlington's station to be surrounded by TOD, but that depends on whether the oft-rumoured Sprawl-Mart goes in next door (which would be a travesty). Supposedly Mount Pleasant will become the centre of a higher density node, but that's the muncipality driving that.
Almost ironically, GO Transit's original goal in 1967 was to provide a commuter service that would relieve pressure on the QEW (and mitigate the need for widening through built-up areas) and other highways through mostly established areas.
doady
Senior Member
Would downtown Toronto be as dense now without GO Transit? Better to have all that parking space in the suburbs than in downtown, is it not?
CDL.TO
Moderator
Indeed. It may help drive residential sprawl, but it's a great force for preventing commerical sprawl. If the jobs in the downtown core office towers had been located in suburbia with everyone having to drive, just think how much worse the sprawl would be. A strong commercial core has helped keep the desirability of residential Toronto neighbourhoods high (for those who don't desire the long commute), in turn also preventing sprawl.
A quick look at the development of North American cities over the past 50 years just shows us that without good movement of workers in and out of the core (and for that matter, ONLY the core), what certainly doesn't happen is a dense and successful downtown.
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
I am not arguing against having suburban transit access to the core, I am arguing against the form of the current GO trains. In 1967 we could have made the decision to build something like an S-bahn that knit together various regional commercial centres but instead we just built enormous parking lots in some industrial backlots and ran 3 or 4 monster trains in and out of them in the mornings and evenings.
CDL.TO
Moderator
Oh, for sure. I would say the only option that GO is better than is no commuter rail service at all (or no off-peak service on Lakeshore).
waterloowarrior
Senior Member
a bunch of big shots... what's being announced? Federal funding for GO Trip projects?
ShonTron
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Feds are already paying for GO Trip. Could be a re-hash (ie work starting on an announced project) or maybe something new.