London, ON

[Admiral Beez]

With the disclaimer that I haven't been everywhere:

Kingston

I don’t know if I can call it a city, but I like Cobourg. It has excellent rail connections and a nice urban, pedestrian downtown, with IIRC from my recent motorcycle club ride and bbq there, no evident beggars or roadside crazies.

 

[kEiThZ]

You're not suppose to say that lest it challenge this preconceived notion that London is a sprawling urban planning wasteland.

You must not have read the article. They are still sprawling. But thanks to the urban growth boundary they just aren't sprawling on to farmland, like some other cities in Ontario. They deserve some credit for not totally caving to developers. But it doesn't in any way mean that sprawl has stopped in London.

London is also reviewing it's parking requirements for the first time in 3 decades. The proposal {which is expected to pass council} would see the parking requirements for residential drop by half and for retail and commercial 33 to 50% depending on usage and square footage.

That's nice. So now there will be less parking. But they won't build a proper rapid transit network to actually give those people an alternative. Just make them struggle more with parking.

London not getting HFR due to politics is not BS.

Having an opinion doesn't make it a fact. The facts are:

• going west of Union was never proposed;
• there's no cheap unused corridor available to London; and,
• the provincial government was more interested in pushing high speed rail than working with VIA on to integrate HFR west of Toronto.

You can keep whining. But spouting nonsense doesn't change the historical record.

 

[ssiguy2]

I never said London doesn't sprawl but then name me one city {just one} in Canada that doesn't. At least London has a clear and enforced urban growth boundary which many Canadian cities don't.

As far as rapid transit, London is currently building 24 km of REAL BRT and the western leg which was cancelled looks like it's going to be back on the table sooner rather than later. Newsflash..............rapid and reliable transit does not require steel wheels.

 

[kEiThZ]

At least London has a clear and enforced urban growth boundary which many Canadian cities don't.

The brag of a C student sitting in a class full of D students....

As far as rapid transit, London is currently building 24 km of REAL BRT and the western leg which was cancelled looks like it's going to be back on the table sooner rather than later. Newsflash..............rapid and reliable transit does not require steel wheels.

You seem to forget that they started with a light rail proposal and bargained themselves down to a gimped BRT. And apparently now "real BRT" doesn't include a tunnel in the core.

Like I said earlier. They have so much potential. They squander it with terrible decisions. And these efforts? While better than nothing, I'm skeptical they will stop the city from choking on traffic a decade from now.

 

[ssiguy2]

The reason the downtown Richmond tunnel wasn't built as either a LRT or bus one is due to Richmond Row merchants not wanting it and I agree with them.

RR is the city's most pedestrian friendly and beautiful street and is lined by great shopping, a massive number of restaurants and cafes, up against absolutely gorgeous Victorian architecture, St. Paul's Basilica which is in Canada's top 10 most beautiful, and stunning Victoria Park, which is probably the most beautiful downtown park in the country. Richmond is not a very wide street especially near the tracks {which the tunnel was suppose to help avoid} and it would have required the destruction of nearly a dozen buildings.

If one of the reasons you want to build rapid transit is to encourage pedestrian friendly environments, then you don't start by tearing down your most successful one.

 

[jeicow]

…. Richmond is not a very wide street especially near the tracks {which the tunnel was suppose to help avoid} and it would have required the destruction of nearly a dozen buildings

That’s not entirely accurate. The 800 m BRT/Emergency vehicle tunnel wouldn’t have required the demolition of any buildings on Richmond Row, though it would have let automobiles at-grade.

It was the underpass option, which would have eliminated the grade crossing (both BRT and automobiles), that would have required the demolition of two blocks of buildings. I recall it ended up being a comparable price to the tunnel.

 

[Haljackey]

Ya the only way to build proper transit on Richmond is to build a tunnel. If you're doing all that work it better not be BRT... you may as well put in a full subway line from Victoria Park all the way north to the Thames River, then running at-grade over the river toward Masonville mall.

That would be the only way the northern RT leg could ever get done. But it would be shot down due to high cost. At least the west leg could get another look at once the next municipal election is done.

London is building transit-oriented development and transit villages without transit to service them. Wut.

 

[ShonTron]

With the disclaimer that I haven't been everywhere:

Kingston

Solid choice. Good parks, vibrant downtown (with a high quality public realm), and It has a very good bus system for a city its size too.

Another city that punches above its weight is Peterborough.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Peterborough is very disappointing to me, albeit I haven't been there in a while so it may have changed. The downtown is generally in poor condition and the wider city isn't anything exciting. Why do you like it, Shontron?

I agree with Kingston personally. Ottawa as well of course, but it's a lot larger.

 

[ShonTron]

Peterborough is very disappointing to me, albeit I haven't been there in a while so it may have changed. The downtown is generally in poor condition and the wider city isn't anything exciting. Why do you like it, Shontron?

I agree with Kingston personally. Ottawa as well of course, but it's a lot larger.

The downtown is better than a cursory glance might tell you - unless it's all gone downhill in the last two years. Some good restaurants, bars, and shops. Peterborough is also quite bikeable.

The only thing it really needs is a better connection to Toronto than the painfully slow GO bus to Oshawa.

 

[ssiguy2]

Some good news for London urbanism today.

The city council has voted in favour of sweeping new parking requirement changes. All areas along/close to rapid transit corridors and transit villages will no longer have any parking minimums. It also allows a development currently with parking to sell off part of it's parking lands for other development. for areas that are outside the transit corridors, parking minimums have been reduced city-wide by 40% and all mid-size/large developments must have bicycle parking infrastructure. These changes includes both residential and commercial developments.

 

[ssiguy2]

Some potentially REALLY big news for London.

It seems that London is at the top of a potential investment by Boeing. In fact, high executives from Boeing are visiting the city next week and Ottawa has been pushing for this kind of development and especially if it revolves around research and/or manufacturing of Boeing's planned zero emissions next generation planes.

 

[ericmacm]

Some potentially REALLY big news for London.

It seems that London is at the top of a potential investment by Boeing. In fact, high executives from Boeing are visiting the city next week and Ottawa has been pushing for this kind of development and especially if it revolves around research and/or manufacturing of Boeing's planned zero emissions next generation planes.

Here's a couple of links to the CTV articles about this. If this is for a manufacturing facility, this will be huge for London. Boeing has a small Canadian presence at the moment - it currently has a composite factory in Winnipeg, as well as a number of software and support-based facilities for commercial/military aviation in Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa, but I would imagine that it is looking to further expand into Canada after the collapse of Bombardier. There is over 1000 acres of shovel-ready industrial land near YXU that is owned by the airport, which would be perfect for such a facility.

 

[JasonParis]

I wonder if there are any other Canadian locales in the running. But London would seem to make a lot of sense regardless.