??? That makes no sense. Ford has spoken in the past of reducing bus and streetcar service. Why would he present a transit plan? Surely he'll do nothing, except perhaps announce that he'll have a couple of 100% provincially-funded subways.
We all know based on his past promises that Ford will push for reductions in the current bus and streetcar services ... and announcing this during the election will only loose him votes of the naive and gullible who seem to think Ford is anything other than the anti-transit person he is.
Earth to nfitz, just what do you think going's to happen once the Transit City light rail system is rolled out and starts haemorrhaging away funds? Transit City is supposed to increase ridership by 75 million but there's no cash for the $70 million to $80 million operating costs the project will need when it's put into operation. Ridership could be well below predictions, even as segments go right down the middle of the roadway in plain sight of drivers stuck in some of the worst daily traffic jams in North America (due to the permanent loss of the centre lanes; complex left turns, intersections, etc.). Operating costs would be so high per passenger mile in such event that the transit district will have no choice but to cut bus service to compensate. How do I know this, it’s been threatened before:
the TTC likely will have to chop 21 surface routes
The cost of wire maintenance, plus the cost of generating electricity, put LRTs at a disadvantage over internal combustion buses. Streetcars crawling along in mixed traffic and obstructing motor vehicle travel lanes when boarding passengers creates additional congestion, thereby gumming up the streets on which they operate. Nationally, motor vehicle engines idling in stop and go traffic wastes 2.3 billion gallons of fuel a year. Keeping the traffic flowing on a street must be viewed as a priority. Therefore, streetcars do NOT belong on high traffic volume arterial streets.
This is why Eglinton being LRT instead of subway between Jane and the Don is simply a political cop-out (and a miscalculated one at that, since the MoveOntario proposal would have given us anything we wanted as it is typical election-time drivel) and a sham (as far as it being “way cheaper” is concerned, that’s a lie for the underground portion).
Comprehensive transit planning in Toronto has been lost. What is currently happening is that a route is chosen for a specific mode such as light rail or the streetcar by a stacked deck of groups pushing their own manipulative agenda. An effort is made to justify that route by wedging the rails into the current transportation infrastructure, then projecting increased (and taxpayer subsidized) density and reworking other transit operations to feed the system with the purpose of manipulating the numbers so the new service will pass muster with the Feds. I think it is clear that new light rail lines with low ridership potential (SELRT, FWLRT) are difficult to justify economically, unless they can help leverage a lot of development and other provable benefits.
It's not cost-feasible to build Streetcar throughout an entire city. Therefore, I am interested in how to make lower cost types of service more attractive to choice riders. Kudos to Rob Ford for at least keeping the discussion of busways citywide and subways where applicable alive in this electoral campaign.
