Metrolinx $55 Billion Plan

[unimaginative2]

I can speak with some authority on the subject of Berlin and Brazil, having been in both places this week. I would say that I feel just as safe in Toronto as I do in Berlin, and somewhat more safe than in this rather peaceful corner of Brazil. Obviously with bad neighbourhoods in Sao Paulo, there's no comparison. It's ridiculous to suggest that Scarborough (a place I have walked around many times at night) is remotely comparable to real bad neighbourhoods in the first world, let alone the third world. I'd probably take Scarborough even over Marzahn or Hellersdorf.

If you're talking about maintenance of public facilities, Toronto -- despite its recent decline -- still comes out far, far ahead of both places, especially when you exclude the federally-funded national capital bits.

P.S. the idea that there are neo-nazi gangs rampaging in the streets of Berlin is absurd. It's one of the most progressive cities on earth, aside from occasional unfortunate graffiti in the poorest bits of the old East.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I'm not actually convinced Finch ridership would transfer to the Sheppard line once the various LRTs are in place, and I do believe LRT along Finch serves riders between Finch and Steeles better than subway along Sheppard.

Some would switch over from Finch East. Some would even switch over from Steeles East...people will often go more or less out of their way to take a long subway ride instead of a long bus ride. Given the enormous numbers of people riding east/west bus routes at the top of the city, "some" is not insignificant.

 

[unimaginative2]

Note that he was saying they won't switch to the various LRTs being proposed, which is certainly true. Nobody's going to take a bus down to Sheppard, transfer to a surface streetcar barely faster than the existing bus, and then again to the subway. They'll just stay on the bus all the way to Yonge. On the other hand, if they just finished the damned subway, lots of people would transfer.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

The Sheppard he's talking about is a fully extended subway line, not Sheppard as an LRT/subway combo.

 

[adma]

I challenge you to walk around parts of Jane/Finch or Scarborough after dark.

Did you ever go to the Sao Paulo/Rio equivalents of said parts of Jane/Finch or Scarborough?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Did you ever go to the Sao Paulo/Rio equivalents of said parts of Jane/Finch or Scarborough?

He probably stayed in Alphaville...it's like someone visiting Hill Crescent in Scarborough and then declaring the whole borough is wonderful.

 

[Dichotomy]

Did you ever go to the Sao Paulo/Rio equivalents of said parts of Jane/Finch or Scarborough?

I'd wager I've been in more back rooms and back alleys in more cities than most!

Seriously, I don't seek out trouble. On our ride from the airport to Copacabana, you could clearly see the favelas up in the hills of Rio. Having said that, we wandered around many streets, both downtown and around our hotel area until very late at night and saw nothing that would alarm me. It helps to be with a native and to act like a native. LOL I am glad I tan quickly! I find it odd that in Sao Paulo all the condos are surrounded with electrified fences, barbed wire - even the luxury places. It struck me as a lot of 'over kill.' I think a lot of that has more to do with lack of manpower and money on the part of the police. Cops don't get paid there what they do here. Even in the small towns we visited, homes are surrounded with a 8' concrete wall, with either jagged bits of steel or razor metal lining the top. I never felt threatened, though.
On a business trip to Chicago several years ago, a co-worker called the cops on me when I never returned to the hotel that night. When I got back to my room (after a very pleasant stay somewhere else! ), he and 2 cops were going through my luggage. The cops were distressed that I had been wandering around Chicago at night. I thanked them for their concern, but dismissed it.

I've seen the underbelly of many a city. When I visit cities I go out of my way to avoid the touristy spots; to mingle with the natives, so to speak. There are ugly bits in ALL cities.

 

[Dichotomy]

He probably stayed in Alphaville...it's like someone visiting Hill Crescent in Scarborough and then declaring the whole borough is wonderful.

No, but I had many friends in Crescentown 25 years ago and have been there more recently ....that is the perspective I am talking about. Do we want to raze those buildings because of the scumbags living there now? Oh, it's so easy to blame the design, the buildings.

Armchair critics are too quick to bandaid the symptoms and leave the disease.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Everything in other cities seems great when you're a carefree tourist...and Crescent Town is not in Scarborough.

 

[Dichotomy]

Everything in other cities seems great when you're a carefree tourist...and Crescent Town is not in Scarborough.

Picky, picky. Not many people remember East York.

I worked at Warden/Eglinton for 11 years. I am well aware of the wealth (Danforth Rd., north of Eglinton, for example) and lack of, in Scarborough.

Like I said (not that you can read), I don't hang out with the tourists. My extended family lives in Pernambuco and Paraibas. Not a lot of touristy places there (other than Joao Passoa - nice beaches). I've travelled a lot and hate the tourist spots.

 

[kEiThZ]

I challenge you to walk around parts of Jane/Finch or Scarborough after dark.

Grew up in big bad Malvern. And guess what, it wasn't so big and bad. There were some hotspots to be sure. For example, the over abundance of co-op housing in the community doesn't help. They stopped building them once residents started protesting against more co-ops coming in. It's these tiny pockets that are hotspots of crime. Despite that, I have never felt any fear at walking home at night, and I often would cut right through some of those co-ops. It's nowhere on par with the third world. In fact, Scarborough has lower per capita crime rates, than North York or Etobicoke....yet we get the bad rap. There are places to fear at night in TO....Regent Park.....

Getting back to the Metrolinx plan....I am quite happy to see them challenge some of the Transit City concept's weaker plans....we need regional thinking to transit in the GTA. Metrolinx might get us there...in a quarter century.....better late than never.

 

[toraerach]

P.S. the idea that there are neo-nazi gangs rampaging in the streets of Berlin is absurd. It's one of the most progressive cities on earth, aside from occasional unfortunate graffiti in the poorest bits of the old East.

Maybe not in Berlin...I shouldn't have said that, but there have been in Germany and there is definately some significant racial tensions in the East. Really anywhere in Europe though there is some tension with immigrants that we just don't have here. I'm not saying that these things are common, but they do happen there and not here (for the most part) and we should be happy about that. I was merely trying to point out to Dichotomy that Toronto isn't that bad of a place.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Picky, picky. Not many people remember East York.

I worked at Warden/Eglinton for 11 years. I am well aware of the wealth (Danforth Rd., north of Eglinton, for example) and lack of, in Scarborough.

Like I said (not that you can read), I don't hang out with the tourists. My extended family lives in Pernambuco and Paraibas. Not a lot of touristy places there (other than Joao Passoa - nice beaches). I've travelled a lot and hate the tourist spots.

Being picky is better than being selectively ignorant of reality. Unless you have a job there, you are a tourist when you are in Brazil.

Getting back to the Metrolinx plan....I am quite happy to see them challenge some of the Transit City concept's weaker plans....we need regional thinking to transit in the GTA. Metrolinx might get us there...in a quarter century.....better late than never.

In some ways, Metrolinx' plans are no better than random LRT schemes like Transfer City...too much regional thinking can spoil the transit broth.

Metrolinx has regional aspects that Transfer City lacks, but I can see local/feeder bus service, which is and still will be the basis of public transit in the city, being almost completely ignored by all of these plans (unless a bus route is being replaced by streetcars or subways). A few hourly or rush hour only bus routes will see buses added, bus stops will get next vehicle countdowns, but I can see many other routes continuing to choke on their own success. Will the Lawrence bus still take a wildly unpredictable time to travel 5km through Scarborough? Will a bus still see random delays of more than a light cycle because buses have bunched, 50 people are getting on at the same time, paying cash fares, and dragging strollers inside? Will there be express/Rocket service on more bus routes, greatly improving travel times for those corridors not lucky enough to get upgrades? Are bus routes going to be rerouted/rescheduled if necessary to connect with all this new GO service?

Big plans like Metrolinx are focused on the big picture and big projects, but we can't just assume that little things will just happen naturally or be taken care of by some TTC bureaucrat...they haven't happened so far, despite being cheap and easy. This is the kind of stuff the TTC used to be pretty good at recognizing the need for (back when the future held like zero funding); it's the kind of stuff that really matters to riders and often determines if they take transit at all. I'd love to see less emphasis on planning arrow-based transit lines that may never get built and more emphasis on fare paying and fare integration, what's going to happen to my local bus route, etc. We can run GO trains every five seconds to Timbuktu but if there's no changes in store for a highly used bus route like Lawrence East (or a hundred other similar routes), is the city really any better off?

 

[RedRocket191]

This leads into another issue:

Should Metrolinx takeover local transit to ensure it complements the RTP, or should they leave local transit in the hands of local providers, who probably know the neighbourhood dynamics a bit better?

I examine this in my latest article at www.metronauts.ca

I don't think anyone disagrees that local transit is critical, but it will depend on how much power they are given / take.

Sorry for the shameless self promotion

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Should Metrolinx takeover local transit to ensure it complements the RTP, or should they leave local transit in the hands of local providers, who probably know the neighbourhood dynamics a bit better?

I don't know if they need to take over local service as much as they (and I say "they" because Metrolinx is positioning itself as our comprehensive voice of reason) definitely need to make sure that a bajillion dollars aren't spent on half of peoples' commutes and the other half of their trips are thrown to the wolves...we can build a billion dollar rapid transit line but if people have to wait 15 minutes for a bus and then it takes 25 minutes to travel 5km on that bus to get to a subway or GO station, all those lofty ridership goals may not happen. And bus routes are only going to get worse in the coming years due to overcrowding and traffic.

Between political posturing and the city's streetcar binge, it's possible that all those little bus-related improvements may fall by the wayside as billion dollar projects become the sole focus. The TTC, YRT, MT, etc., will probably still bring 20 minute service all day to every bus route and call that a revolution, but it really is more important to improve service on routes like Lawrence East (and I mention the 54 because it's one of the busiest and worst bus routes that might be absolutely unchanged by these bajillions of dollars).

Articulated buses, more diamond/bus lanes, more and better bus shelters, quicker methods of fare collection, fare integration with GO/905, more express branches/Rocket service, etc., etc. For what you get back from them, this stuff is dirt cheap...exellent bang:buck ratio. GO trains to Gormley, bike storage and showers, all this stuff is fine but there's literally a million bus riders out there waiting for help.