M II A II R II K
Senior Member
OPINION: Catching Up On Public Transit
2010/02/25
Chrisy Luo, Economist for the Ontario Ministry of Finance
Read More: http://www.citytv.com/toronto/cityn.../70963--opinion-catching-up-on-public-transit
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“Our lessons come from the Journey, not the Destination...†- Don Williams Jr. Having recently returned to Toronto after living in Paris and London, a journey in Toronto’s urine-free TTC fills me with nostalgic glee. Nostalgia is appropriate. Toronto’s public transit system lags far behind OECD standards.
The antiquated technology and infrastructure employed by the TTC is a blight on the city’s youthful reputation - one made all the more ironic by the fact that the current chairman of the TTC is only 32 years old. The widely anticipated “Presto†card - the smartcard that will be used for fare payment across the entire GTA - is already old technology in many cities and will soon be made obsolete by direct debit payment methods.
The mobile phone-friendliness of the subway systems in Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo puts the TTC to shame, a failure of customer service that will only become more inconvenient with the growing use of smart phones. But the city is now attempting to catch up. The Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), to be commissioned by Metrolinx in 2010 with the support of an unprecedented $11.5 billion commitment by the Government of Ontario and another $6 billion from the feds, promises to “bolster our global economic competitiveness, protect our environment, and improve our quality of life.â€
Some of the priorities targeted in the plan are long, long overdue - the construction of an accessible rail connection between Pearson International Airport and Union Station for example. But there are also major problems. By trying to increase transit access to the city centre, Toronto seems to be modeling itself (as it so often does) after New York, where most commuters travel into the city centre from outlying areas. But Toronto and New York are very different places. When you look at changes in urban conditions and regional development policies over the past decade, those differences become stark.
New York has an extremely high concentration of economic activity in Manhattan. Toronto, however, has a number of widely distributed suburban economic hubs in Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Scarborough, and other areas. Torontonians require a public transit system that flows in all directions at once to accommodate all of these hubs, not a one-way stream into the downtown core. The city would be better served by a system modeled after the Metro in Paris, which consists of four interconnected networks that provide access to every corner of the city with connections to the surrounding suburbs.
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Christy Lou audio take on what the TTC needs: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/970-next-stop-for-the-ttc/
2010/02/25
Chrisy Luo, Economist for the Ontario Ministry of Finance
Read More: http://www.citytv.com/toronto/cityn.../70963--opinion-catching-up-on-public-transit
#######################################
“Our lessons come from the Journey, not the Destination...†- Don Williams Jr. Having recently returned to Toronto after living in Paris and London, a journey in Toronto’s urine-free TTC fills me with nostalgic glee. Nostalgia is appropriate. Toronto’s public transit system lags far behind OECD standards.
The antiquated technology and infrastructure employed by the TTC is a blight on the city’s youthful reputation - one made all the more ironic by the fact that the current chairman of the TTC is only 32 years old. The widely anticipated “Presto†card - the smartcard that will be used for fare payment across the entire GTA - is already old technology in many cities and will soon be made obsolete by direct debit payment methods.
The mobile phone-friendliness of the subway systems in Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo puts the TTC to shame, a failure of customer service that will only become more inconvenient with the growing use of smart phones. But the city is now attempting to catch up. The Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), to be commissioned by Metrolinx in 2010 with the support of an unprecedented $11.5 billion commitment by the Government of Ontario and another $6 billion from the feds, promises to “bolster our global economic competitiveness, protect our environment, and improve our quality of life.â€
Some of the priorities targeted in the plan are long, long overdue - the construction of an accessible rail connection between Pearson International Airport and Union Station for example. But there are also major problems. By trying to increase transit access to the city centre, Toronto seems to be modeling itself (as it so often does) after New York, where most commuters travel into the city centre from outlying areas. But Toronto and New York are very different places. When you look at changes in urban conditions and regional development policies over the past decade, those differences become stark.
New York has an extremely high concentration of economic activity in Manhattan. Toronto, however, has a number of widely distributed suburban economic hubs in Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Scarborough, and other areas. Torontonians require a public transit system that flows in all directions at once to accommodate all of these hubs, not a one-way stream into the downtown core. The city would be better served by a system modeled after the Metro in Paris, which consists of four interconnected networks that provide access to every corner of the city with connections to the surrounding suburbs.
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Christy Lou audio take on what the TTC needs: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/970-next-stop-for-the-ttc/