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London Rapid Transit (In-Design)

Please link me to the video where he said exactly what you are asserting here.

He's praised GO for being decent by North American standards. Heck, he says it's better than VIA. His criticism has centered around the car-centric nature of GO. And Bloomington is the epitome of that.

If you think Bloomington is the absolute best way to spend transit dollars in the GTA, I have a Nigerian prince you might be interested in meeting.

Sunk investment fallacy seems rampant among Canadian transit nerds. The only explanation I have for why so many keep trying to polish so many turds. We aren't going to get better by making excuses.
His "The Trains that Subsidize Suburbia Video". I'm honestly not in the mood to rewatch the video to verify his exact wording and find timestamps, so I'll just paste the comment I made with all of the problems I had with the video when it came out: https://pastebin.com/aNuRbLQY

Since its off topic, I'd rather not respond to more questions in this thread, but I can answer concerns in PMs possibly.
 
In the end it just comes to cost and disruption. It would be the most expensive project in the city's history and cause 10 years of construction headaches. When done it wouldn't operate much better than today. If we 'do nothing', the road will operate much worse 10 years from today however.

That Wonderland widening shows what is wrong with London. Over $200M and a decade of construction. For an 8 km stretch. They almost went ahead with that. But then they say they can't find money for bus lanes?
 
Keeping the NL and London comparison theme going, let's look at Utrecht, population 360,000, slightly smaller than London's 383,000. Density: Utrecht 3,800 people/km^2, London 900 people/km^2. That's a big difference, and it can make all the difference towards supporting a city's budget and transportation infrastructure.

Such statements are where the phrase "truth, lies, and statistics" came from.

Yes, the Utrecht has about 360k in the city compared to London's 435k and metro Utrecht is 660k compared to London's 550k so they are certainly comparable at first but then dig a little deeper and you will find that the Utrecht is only 40km from Amsterdam and part of the Randstad Urban Agglomeration of 8.4 million. In such a huge urban area obviously Utrecht is going to have a higher population density and much higher transit ridership.

As for London only having 900/sq km, that is indeed quite low and even lower than nearby St.Thomas at 1050 but again let's look at the numbers more closely. London looks sparse because it annexed a huge amount of area in the 1990s. Half of London has almost no one living there. London stretches all the way to St.Thomas but there are probably fewer than 2,000 people that live south of the 402/401. This does not even include the fact that London Airport is within the city boundaries.
 
I see someone else calling for parts of cities to be raze and start fresh like I have being doing for 60% of Mississauga.

London city core needs to be built just north of the 401 with better n-s grid system, but leave the heritage buildings.

Like most US cities, London roll up the carpets at 5 pm and turns the light off in the downtown since the early 90's. The downtown being going south since the 90's and very dead with huge numbers of vacancies stores and buildings. Even heritage buildings were torn down or are falling apart due to the vacancies. On Aug 1, 2019, London join the long line of having no McD in the downtown when the Market Tower store close with no info from the owner who had 3 other location nor the building owner as to why. Even the city has pull various departments from the Market Tower and place them back in City Hall. Crime and homeless is a major issue for the core.

The King Rd is basely done, but transit still using King going east.

The BRT or Transit is not going to help to fix the downtown problem, but new residential building and redeveloping the existing buildings will as well employment.

The Heritage buildings or fronts needs to be retain, as its one thing that stands out for the city.

Transit really sucks and I have used it to the point it has required me to make 3 transfer to get to/from where I wanted to go.

BRT is a tough sale and LRT will be a failure.
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Other city views
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I’d really object to the idea that the lrt as proposed would have failed.

Ultimately it would have been connecting the intercity travel options to the places that transit does kind of work in London, and was going to do so as a rather high quality implementation for being mostly in a mixed ROW.
 
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I see someone else calling for parts of cities to be raze and start fresh like I have being doing for 60% of Mississauga.

London city core needs to be built just north of the 401 with better n-s grid system, but leave the heritage buildings.

Like most US cities, London roll up the carpets at 5 pm and turns the light off in the downtown since the early 90's. The downtown being going south since the 90's and very dead with huge numbers of vacancies stores and buildings. Even heritage buildings were torn down or are falling apart due to the vacancies. On Aug 1, 2019, London join the long line of having no McD in the downtown when the Market Tower store close with no info from the owner who had 3 other location nor the building owner as to why. Even the city has pull various departments from the Market Tower and place them back in City Hall. Crime and homeless is a major issue for the core.

The King Rd is basely done, but transit still using King going east.

The BRT or Transit is not going to help to fix the downtown problem, but new residential building and redeveloping the existing buildings will as well employment.

The Heritage buildings or fronts needs to be retain, as its one thing that stands out for the city.

Transit really sucks and I have used it to the point it has required me to make 3 transfer to get to/from where I wanted to go.

BRT is a tough sale and LRT will be a failure.
51826252115_336141928c_b.jpg

51824580752_025a17659e_b.jpg

51825637433_203e6b401b_b.jpg


Other city views
51825529286_730ab43f2f_b.jpg

51826251910_1ab8d1e0d5_b.jpg

51824580592_02d8dab91b_b.jpg

51826251770_0f4e641554_b.jpg

51824580422_ba330503fe_b.jpg

51825871904_c534c5324c_b.jpg

51825528901_2cf9e25f91_b.jpg
Them so good bones. If they were able to tax based on cost to the city (if all cities could), it lower taxes in the downtown core and help it come back to life.
 
Yeah. I don't buy the idea that the LRT would have failed. But I do agree that BRT is somewhat low risk for London and let's them rapidly build up a rapid transit network that they are sorely lacking. In the age of electric buses, this is also slightly more efficient than traditional BRT. What is terrible, however, is them gimping the BRT by not covering all four directions in the city.

London city core needs to be built just north of the 401 with better n-s grid system,

This would make London even more car dependent than they are today. You envision them building a new compact downtown. Reality would be them building a downtown with 6 Lane stroads. The lack of highways through London and existing built form has sort of been a saving grace, acting as a deterrent to going full Mississauga. If they had the choice, they absolutely would. Just look at all the new West and North end subdivisions that would fit right in to anything in 'sauga.
 
I’d really object to the idea that the lrt as proposed would have failed.

Ultimately it would have been connecting the intercity travel options to the places that transit does kind of work in London, and was going to do so as a rather high quality implementation for being mostly in a mixed ROW.

It would likely be a decent success. It would be one of the best first steps in breaking the car culture in the city.
 
It would likely be a decent success. It would be one of the best first steps in breaking the car culture in the city.
Rail doesn't break car culture, good service does. Now this ultimately depends on how much service you're sacrificing between the two. If you're comparing a BRT with 5 minute headways, with an LRT with 15 minute headways, the former is far more likely to get people out of their cars, because as it turns out rail preference doesn't run deep enough for most to make such a large difference in ridership change, especially if you're considering on street LRT.
 
Rail doesn't break car culture, good service does. Now this ultimately depends on how much service you're sacrificing between the two. If you're comparing a BRT with 5 minute headways, with an LRT with 15 minute headways, the former is far more likely to get people out of their cars, because as it turns out rail preference doesn't run deep enough for most to make such a large difference in ridership change, especially if you're considering on street LRT.
It isn't that simple. Places like London, where the car is king, bus is thought of for the poor people.Even a fast, frequent bus passing you in traffic is still for poor people. So, for London, if you really want the people to leave their car, you need to give them something that isn't thought of for the poor. I agree,, frequency will matter. I doubt that they will replace buses on 5 minute frequency with an LRT on a 15 minute frequency.
 
It isn't that simple. Places like London, where the car is king, bus is thought of for the poor people.Even a fast, frequent bus passing you in traffic is still for poor people. So, for London, if you really want the people to leave their car, you need to give them something that isn't thought of for the poor. I agree,, frequency will matter. I doubt that they will replace buses on 5 minute frequency with an LRT on a 15 minute frequency.
I'm pretty sure its basically been proven that this is a load of nonsense. Compare the way Toronto has developed since the 1950s compared to cities like LA or Portland. Toronto built massive car oriented suburbs but also ran a frequent bus services to those suburbs, meanwhile these american cities thought the same thing of "Busses are for poor people, and the only transit these car oriented folk would take is rail", and built a ton of LRT instead. Guess which city gets more ridership per capita?

The reality is, people don't actually care about whether a mode is rail or bus. They might claim they do, but ridership statistics from across the US has failed to actually prove that. Even Denver, a city that has spent a lot of time and money building a vast LRT and Regional Rail network has less ridership per capita than YORK REGION, and it makes sense. If you're someone who believes that busses are for poor people, then replacing a bus with a streetcar or light rail isn't likely to change their commuting patterns. They might go "oh, cute train", ride it for a day, see that its extremely slow and infrequent, and go back to using the car. Even in the most car oriented cities, service will ALWAYS beat mode in terms of attracting ridership, service meaning speed and frequency.
 
I'm pretty sure its basically been proven that this is a load of nonsense. Compare the way Toronto has developed since the 1950s compared to cities like LA or Portland. Toronto built massive car oriented suburbs but also ran a frequent bus services to those suburbs, meanwhile these american cities thought the same thing of "Busses are for poor people, and the only transit these car oriented folk would take is rail", and built a ton of LRT instead. Guess which city gets more ridership per capita?

The reality is, people don't actually care about whether a mode is rail or bus. They might claim they do, but ridership statistics from across the US has failed to actually prove that. Even Denver, a city that has spent a lot of time and money building a vast LRT and Regional Rail network has less ridership per capita than YORK REGION, and it makes sense. If you're someone who believes that busses are for poor people, then replacing a bus with a streetcar or light rail isn't likely to change their commuting patterns. They might go "oh, cute train", ride it for a day, see that its extremely slow and infrequent, and go back to using the car. Even in the most car oriented cities, service will ALWAYS beat mode in terms of attracting ridership, service meaning speed and frequency.

Ok, put BRT in and watch it fail... And then wonder why it failed.

Toronto vs LA... So, uhm, You really need to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit. What does Toronto still have that is long gone from LA?
 
Ok, put BRT in and watch it fail... And then wonder why it failed.

Toronto vs LA... So, uhm, You really need to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit. What does Toronto still have that is long gone from LA?
LA's B and D line is about 30 km long. Their ridership is ~130,000 daily.

Line 1's ridership is about 600% higher, on a line that's about 25% longer.

It must be good connecting bus services.

~

Toronto also has people like you who repeatedly use events from most of a century ago, to excuse mediocre transit today.

There is no way around this: it's a stupid position to take, especially in Toronto, where the TTC is proof that good bus service attracts riders.

Let's do some more LA and Toronto comparison, in case you couldn't handle the first example.

Finch West bus = 13.32 km and 45,000 daily ridership. C Line LRT (LA) ridership = 35,000 daily ridership on 32.2 km. What does the Finch West bus have that the C Line LRT doesn't?

Good service and good routing choices.
 
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Ok, put BRT in and watch it fail... And then wonder why it failed.

Cause York VIVA and the Ottawa Transitway were such failures?

BRT is damn easy in London. And has the benefit of providing more transferless rides while increasing local service frequency. See what Ottawa did with its Transitways. BRT has worked fantastically well in cities of London's size (population and geography). And given that LTC is moving to electrify its fleet, the comfort level onboard won't be all that different to actual riders.

Also who cares what the folks who will never ride transit say? Give them LRT and they'll claim the bus ride to the LRT and the lack of a fast subway stopping near their front door, prevents them riding transit. They will always have excuses (aka moving goalposts). And you will find them everywhere. They aren't unique to London.
 
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