ADRM
Senior Member
My one question is how is the city planning to enforce the rules of the King St pilot project to ensure that cars are not going through intersections.
Insufficiently.
My one question is how is the city planning to enforce the rules of the King St pilot project to ensure that cars are not going through intersections.
What's so profound is that like the Danes and the Dutch, the Swiss (in this case Zurich) made a *social compact* a generation ago to make things better, and make the city for people, not cars. Take a look at their transportation map:Here is what Zurich does:...
They are different level to us.
That video reminded me of the next stop screens which I LOVED while I was in Zurich. YRT/Viva was piloting the exact same screen in York Region, but I'm not sure what happened with the project.Here is what Zurich does:
They are different level to us.
What's so profound is that like the Danes and the Dutch, the Swiss (in this case Zurich) made a *social compact* a generation ago to make things better, and make the city for people, not cars. Take a look at their transportation map:
![]()
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project_details.cfm?id=93&index=93&domain=
Zurich has a population of less than .5M. Less than Hamilton.
And Toronto wants to claim to be "World Class"? But what standard? Bravado? Parking spots? Pedestrian deaths?
What's also interesting about Zurich is that it is one of the lower tax regions of Switzerland. There's some excellent discussion on this on-line, my apologies, I failed to bookmark the links, but comparison is made of Zurich (largest conurbation in Suisse) to Bern (half the size, but also with an excellent rail and transit system). Bern is the 'socialist' capital of Helvetia. The point is, (and Fribourg also comes into the discussion as one of the lowest tax enclaves) that *funding* *as we see it* is not the real determinant of the very successful Swiss model. It's *mindset!* (And thus priorities) The Swiss remade themselves when it comes to the automobile a generation ago. Something a number of other nations have done. Something that remains a theory in Canada...
Excellent post! But we may differ on a few points well worth further discussion, because I think you are cutting slack for Toronto where none should be: Canada, like Australia, is much more an urban demographic than the US or UK, for instance. This defies the senses of many, how could that possibly be? I don't have definitive reference at this moment, the 'Google state of mind' isn't focused right now, I will provide it later, as this is a very important point, and you set-up an excellent basis for further discussion, but for now:I agree completely that our built environment is ultimately the reflection of our aspirations, of our vision for what a good city should be. That's where CHF and Canada differ radically, and maybe it's understandable. They're a more densely populated, much richer country with a city form that predates the automobile. We're a poorer country with a harsher climate, extraordinarily low population density even in our inhabited areas, and cities that were mostly built after the automobile became the dominant mode of transport....And King Street? Let's aim low. It's the Toronto way.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/art...d-ranks-of-vertical-dwellers/article24697531/We should recognize Canada as a nation of highrise-dwellers
Katerina Cizek
The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Jun. 02, 2015 8:00AM EDT
Last updated Friday, Jun. 05, 2015 4:23PM EDT
[...]
When Canadians think “highrise nation,” we tend to look elsewhere, and imagine the density of Singapore, New York City or Hong Kong. Yet, Toronto’s downtown St. James Town neighbourhood has a density of 63,765 people per square kilometre, compared with Hong Kong’s densest district, Kwun Tong, at 57,250. And even on the outskirts of Toronto, a strip of 19 rental highrises at the north end of Etobicoke’s Kipling Ave. that we’ve come to know well in our project holds just over 35,000 people per square kilometre. You’d never feel it driving by.
Canadians generally have two impressions of vertical living: public housing or condos.
Little attention has been given to another kind of vertical housing, the privately owned, generic, concrete postwar rental apartment building. We don’t have any public consciousness of how many of them there are in Canada, and what it means for the country. I was shocked to learn that there are 1,189 of these buildings in Toronto alone, and most of them in the suburbs, built between 1947 and 1985. Between Niagara Falls and Oshawa, Ont., there are close to half a million apartment units in postwar buildings alone. They stretch across the cities of Alberta and Quebec, are scattered across Ottawa and the Maritimes. They are invisible to many of us. We just don’t see them with the naked eye. [...]
I really don't agree with that at all. Most of Canada and the US is dependent on cras. Although it is changing a bit but not as much as ppel on her seem to think. Right now most Millennials living in the city of Toronto don't own cars or even have driver's licenses. Just building public transit will not mean poel will use it as it may not be always convent for them to use.Toronto's auto-centric structure is a direct result of our political structure, which will never change.
The reason why trains in North America don't reach the speed of train in Europe or Asia is because of the infrastructure isn't available, high speed trains require dedicated rights of way that are 100% straight as much as possible, any curves have to be extremely wide, we don't have the space to do this her because of how close the cites are and because we built bigger highways.Fribourg is smaller than Guelph, and Bern is about a quarter million people, and yet this RER reaches 140 kmh in stretches. You'll note very little in the way of density between the two centres mentioned, and yet their *commuter services* go faster than VIA does in this nation. This is a double-decker EMU.
I really don't agree with that at all. Most of Canada and the US is dependent on cras. Although it is changing a bit but not as much as ppel on her seem to think. Right now most Millennials living in the city of Toronto don't own cars or even have driver's licenses. Just building public transit will not mean poel will use it as it may not be always convent for them to use.
We don't have the space? Really?The reason why trains in North America don't reach the speed of train in Europe or Asia is because of the infrastructure isn't available, high speed trains require dedicated rights of way that are 100% straight as much as possible, any curves have to be extremely wide, we don't have the space to do this her because of how close the cites are and because we built bigger highways.
yup pretty much highways took up the space that a high speed train could run in.We don't have the space? Really?
It's because we're too preoccupied sucking on exhaust pipes and considering it normal.
It's because we're too preoccupied sucking on exhaust pipes and considering it normal.
Look around the world. HSR only works in places where there's literally no other alternative, since airports are pushed to their capacity.