Roads: Gardiner Expressway catch-all, incl. Hybrid Design (2015-onwards)

[goreckm]

They’re angry at the carbon tax because idiots like Poilievre keep feeding them BS about how it’s what’s causing all the problems with the economy. That same guy is also telling them “freedom” is owning two cars on a half-acre lot in a SFH suburb somewhere far away from a city.

Hey, I agree with you there, but the current economic situation makes the feelings easy to stir up. We'd probably meet our climate goals better by building more transit, more nuclear and renewables, and subsidizing peoples switch to EVs (ala Norway). And, most people aren't moving to suburbs with half-acre lots. Their moving to townhouses, semis and small detached houses wherever they can afford them.

We’re nowhere near being Detroit yet, and we’re still growing at an extremely intense rate; so someone didn’t get the note about moving away.

While the number of international immigrants is certainly large, the number of interprovincial and intraprovincial people moving out of Toronto is greater than the numbers coming in.

First off, that’s going to be an hour and a half commute on a good day.

If someone’s driving from Pickering to Brampton every day for a job, I have to say they’re a bit of an idiot for thinking that’s in any way sustainable.

People will do a lot to keep afloat in this economy. Just the act of buying a new house and moving is not cheap, not to mention finding something that a family can afford. Based on an median household income of $100k in the GTA, a family can afford to buy a ~400K house. Just doing a quick lookup for townhouses, semis or detached with 3+ bedrooms shows the closest available would be Kitchener in the West and Cobourg in the East, or Innisfil to the North, not exactly close by.

Get investors out of the market then. They’re driving a lot of what the builders are making and are a good part of the reason rental prices are so high.

Cities like toronto are seeing more than half of all condos and more than a third of all SFH housing snatched up as “investment properties”.

Yes, investors would need to be decimated, but much more importantly, there would need to the correct housing built. Your going to need tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of units built that are 3+ bedrooms, 1500sqft+ space, walking distance to transit, for < $500K. Apart from the manhattan project like investment, we would also need to solve problems with bringing in enough trades and generally driving down the cost of construction. Unless there's an idea on how to make that happen, we're going to be stuck with sprawl as long as the population keeps going up. Population stagnation or loss will help (if it ever comes to pass), but I fear the resulting consequences of that won't be pretty.

We can (and need) to invest in better transit for people already living near mass transit, and those that can live in the new developments going up around them as that improves the situation for everyone, but, punishing people that can't afford to live near transit hubs is not the solution.

 

[evandyk]

Right now you can't really build (at least in Toronto) 1500sf for $500K just in construction costs, never mind land costs. That's $333/sf. We just built a laneway house not quite that big but in that range, and it came in about $422/sf. You could make compromises we didn't want to in order to get that down, but probably not by 25% very easily.

 

[afransen]

Hey, I agree with you there, but the current economic situation makes the feelings easy to stir up. We'd probably meet our climate goals better by building more transit, more nuclear and renewables, and subsidizing peoples switch to EVs (ala Norway). And, most people aren't moving to suburbs with half-acre lots. Their moving to townhouses, semis and small detached houses wherever they can afford them.

All the modelling (and empirical evidence) is that pollution pricing is far more effective than subsidies.

 

[goreckm]

All the modelling (and empirical evidence) is that pollution pricing is far more effective than subsidies.

While that's probably true in most scenarios, I wonder if that applies to the GTA in particular, since housing mobility is so limited. And more effective in what though? Sure, we can probably make it so that a driver who drives to work in 45 minutes takes transit for 75 minutes instead because they can't afford to drive anymore, but, is this desirable? We need to find ways to reduce CO2 while simulatenously improving the quality of life, otherwise the push back will be enormous (as we can see already).

 

[afransen]

While that's probably true in most scenarios, I wonder if that applies to the GTA in particular, since housing mobility is so limited. And more effective in what though? Sure, we can probably make it so that a driver who drives to work in 45 minutes takes transit for 75 minutes instead because they can't afford to drive anymore, but, is this desirable? We need to find ways to reduce CO2 while simulatenously improving the quality of life, otherwise the push back will be enormous (as we can see already).

People can insulate their homes, replace windows, buy a more fuel efficient vehicle (hybrid or EV), change the type of vacations they take, etc. all while keeping the same rotten commute.

 

[goreckm]

People can insulate their homes, replace windows, buy a more fuel efficient vehicle (hybrid or EV), change the type of vacations they take, etc. all while keeping the same rotten commute.

Yes, but all of that requires money. All I'm saying is the government needs to make it easier to make the right choice. The subsidies on some of the insulation and window replacement is great, we need more of that.

 

[afransen]

Yes, but all of that requires money. All I'm saying is the government needs to make it easier to make the right choice. The subsidies on some of the insulation and window replacement is great, we need more of that.

The only way to provide those subsidies is to tax people. There is no free lunch.

Add to that the the majority of subsidies go to people who would have done something anyway makes for very inefficient government spending. Every year, millions of Canadians make a decision about what kind of car to buy, We can give each one of them $10k each to make the right decision, funded by taxes on the general population, or we can give price signals that make people lean more toward making the less polluting choice, at no cost to anyone else.

 

[zang]

My tone was not "be happy for what you're getting" I was trying to counter your claim of " if money goes to improving transit (speed, reliability and affordability), the majority of the complaints will be from entitled car owners" The only people I see complaining about the expansion are ironically transit advocates.

Okay, so all the complaints about Queen Street? About driving on Eglinton? About the King Pilot Program? Or shall we pull the vintage Rob Ford "St. Clair Disaster" moniker out of the cupboard?

Drivers are almost always the ones who complain most about transit, pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure, guaranteed.

Transit advocates who complain know that the transit we're getting is still inadequate (much so for future needs), and still doesn't address the problem that we're the 3rd most congested city in the world that rarely ever does anything to make it actively harder to drive into the city or give active priority to transit on the streets; which quite frankly is one of the easiest and most effective ways of reducing downtown gridlock.

Getting a bit off topic here but long ago the TTC operating budget was funded by 3 levels of government, on top of that there were fare zones.

As it should be, and is in many, many cities. A lot of that goes back to Mike Harris. But subsequent governments have held just as tight to the purse strings.

I feel the vast majority of the issues there are cultural!

I think the TTC has a lot less money than you may think they do. Stuff still costs money, and tight budgets have made it so hard to do just about anything at the TTC.

Example: Higher ups *know* that Wheel Trans is inefficient and is subsidized to the tune of tens of dollars per ride; almost entirely because so little investment has been made in that program that they're reliant on cab companies for what seems the majority of trips. Pennywise, pound foolish. But the TTC just doesn't have the money to buy a big enough fleet and man it. So we'll keep Beck, Co-op and Royal afloat for the next few decades.

Begging at the feet of higher governments for thirty years hasn't worked all that well, when they all want to build a feel-good photo-op campaign promise, rather than maintenance and capital for less attractive things. How much do the Conservatives and Liberals want to spend to move the streetcar system into the 21st century with proper signalling and switching that doesn't have to be done manually by driver hopping out of the vehicle with a stick? I'll tell you; not very much. They'll gladly pay to put shiny new Flexitys on those tracks though.

Take a look at just about any subway station in the city. There are very few (outside of brand new stations), where panelling isn't missing, notification screens aren't inoperable/missing, etc. The TTC needs more money, as it still takes an inexplicably large amount of its income from the farebox as one of the least operationally subsidized transit systems in North America.

Even things that are effectively free are poorly handed. Forgetting to put out or update service advisories, maintenance not having or following SOPs. ROW being SLOWER then mixed traffic (st clair)

Yes, that is a problem.

But it almost always comes down to cars.

We don't want to put all streetcar lines on their own ROWs because of cars. We don't want to give transit priority because of cars (see St. Clair). Drivers–especially those from outside of the city–hold an inordinate amount of political sway here, and we've always chosen to make life easier for them over making life easier for everyone. Even our transit priorities have been skewed in the wrong direction for a very long time, see the University Line Extension over building the DRL (now roughly the Ontario Line)—a line in the planning for what? 50 years? We'll happily shove more people onto transit while ignoring capacity issues, while capacity issues on roads and streets are tackled at the drop of a hat. We'll take what higher governments give us, because we have little power to do things on our own.

 

[goreckm]

The only way to provide those subsidies is to tax people. There is no free lunch.

Add to that the the majority of subsidies go to people who would have done something anyway makes for very inefficient government spending. Every year, millions of Canadians make a decision about what kind of car to buy, We can give each one of them $10k each to make the right decision, funded by taxes on the general population, or we can give price signals that make people lean more toward making the less polluting choice, at no cost to anyone else.

Yes, but people see these price signals as taxes anyways, and why it's unpopular. And they will be gone soon, so I think we can safely say that they don't work in the long run. Your making people choose between paying more for what they're already doing, or make potentially undesirable changes to their lifestyle, non of which is going to be popular. Somebody that can barely afford their lease/loan won't be looking at the cost of gas vs electricity. Maybe if times are great people will do a little sacrificing for the "greater good", but we're not in those times now.

 

[adys123]

Yes, but people see these price signals as taxes anyways, and why it's unpopular. And they will be gone soon, so I think we can safely say that they don't work in the long run. Your making people choose between paying more for what they're already doing, or make potentially undesirable changes to their lifestyle, non of which is going to be popular. Somebody that can barely afford their lease/loan won't be looking at the cost of gas vs electricity. Maybe if times are great people will do a little sacrificing for the "greater good", but we're not in those times now.

What do you mean when you say that they won't work in the long-run, if anything I would argue that they work in the long-run but is politically unpopular in the short-run.

 

[turbanplanner]

Okay, so all the complaints about Queen Street? About driving on Eglinton? About the King Pilot Program? Or shall we pull the vintage Rob Ford "St. Clair Disaster" moniker out of the cupboard?

Drivers are almost always the ones who complain most about transit, pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure, guaranteed.

Transit advocates who complain know that the transit we're getting is still inadequate (much so for future needs), and still doesn't address the problem that we're the 3rd most congested city in the world that rarely ever does anything to make it actively harder to drive into the city or give active priority to transit on the streets; which quite frankly is one of the easiest and most effective ways of reducing downtown gridlock.


As it should be, and is in many, many cities. A lot of that goes back to Mike Harris. But subsequent governments have held just as tight to the purse strings.



I think the TTC has a lot less money than you may think they do. Stuff still costs money, and tight budgets have made it so hard to do just about anything at the TTC.

Example: Higher ups *know* that Wheel Trans is inefficient and is subsidized to the tune of tens of dollars per ride; almost entirely because so little investment has been made in that program that they're reliant on cab companies for what seems the majority of trips. Pennywise, pound foolish. But the TTC just doesn't have the money to buy a big enough fleet and man it. So we'll keep Beck, Co-op and Royal afloat for the next few decades.

Begging at the feet of higher governments for thirty years hasn't worked all that well, when they all want to build a feel-good photo-op campaign promise, rather than maintenance and capital for less attractive things. How much do the Conservatives and Liberals want to spend to move the streetcar system into the 21st century with proper signalling and switching that doesn't have to be done manually by driver hopping out of the vehicle with a stick? I'll tell you; not very much. They'll gladly pay to put shiny new Flexitys on those tracks though.

Take a look at just about any subway station in the city. There are very few (outside of brand new stations), where panelling isn't missing, notification screens aren't inoperable/missing, etc. The TTC needs more money, as it still takes an inexplicably large amount of its income from the farebox as one of the least operationally subsidized transit systems in North America.



Yes, that is a problem.

But it almost always comes down to cars.

We don't want to put all streetcar lines on their own ROWs because of cars. We don't want to give transit priority because of cars (see St. Clair). Drivers–especially those from outside of the city–hold an inordinate amount of political sway here, and we've always chosen to make life easier for them over making life easier for everyone. Even our transit priorities have been skewed in the wrong direction for a very long time, see the University Line Extension over building the DRL (now roughly the Ontario Line)—a line in the planning for what? 50 years? We'll happily shove more people onto transit while ignoring capacity issues, while capacity issues on roads and streets are tackled at the drop of a hat. We'll take what higher governments give us, because we have little power to do things on our own.

I interpereted your point as drivers will complain about the money spent on transit projects. The vast majority of people are happy or at least neutral about the money we're spending on the new lines.

Do you not see all the people complaing about the TTC service? I think some complaints from drivers are fair. Slowing down 95% of people to benefit 5%? (Bloor extensions westbound) Someone here broke their collar bone from the crap job they did with the st george intersection. (Though I do support that project overall)

A lot of people are nearly impossible to serve with transit, so they're rightfully mad if you try to make driving even harder.


I agree a lot of opex issues need to be fixed, but I also think the TTC needs an overhaul of their management culture! The bolts holding the RT down not being signed off by an engineer is not a money problem, not having a proper SOP for when your work car stops leaking is a management issue.

I agree that you think the state of a lot of things is pathetic, I've worked in a similar environment and a lot of the time the people in charge don't care because "they have bigger problems"

What capacity issues on the road is the city fixing? Other than band-aid fixes for temporary closures? I still feel the TTC will needlessly cripple a dedicated ROW based on how poorly the manage their current assets. I've had 30 min gaps on a 10 min streetcar because they don't do "free" things like leap frogging breaks on surface routes (though they do it on the subway side)

 

[adys123]

I interpereted your point as drivers will complain about the money spent on transit projects. The vast majority of people are happy or at least neutral about the money we're spending on the new lines.

Do you not see all the people complaing about the TTC service? I think some complaints from drivers are fair. Slowing down 95% of people to benefit 5%? (Bloor extensions westbound) Someone here broke their collar bone from the crap job they did with the st george intersection. (Though I do support that project overall)

A lot of people are nearly impossible to serve with transit, so they're rightfully mad if you try to make driving even harder.


I agree a lot of opex issues need to be fixed, but I also think the TTC needs an overhaul of their management culture! The bolts holding the RT down not being signed off by an engineer is not a money problem, not having a proper SOP for when your work car stops leaking is a management issue.

I agree that you think the state of a lot of things is pathetic, I've worked in a similar environment and a lot of the time the people in charge don't care because "they have bigger problems"

What capacity issues on the road is the city fixing? Other than band-aid fixes for temporary closures? I still feel the TTC will needlessly cripple a dedicated ROW based on how poorly the manage their current assets. I've had 30 min gaps on a 10 min streetcar because they don't do "free" things like leap frogging breaks on surface routes (though they do it on the subway side)

That's the point that I don't think you're understanding, there is fundamentally no more space for supply side capacity issues. That's before you consider the social and environmental cost of driving. Unless you want all roads and no buildings. So the issues that we are currently focused on is people movement and people throughput, of which general purpose lanes are the least efficient at.

 

[infrastructureTO]

An empty Gardiner this weekend:

 

[kotsy]

Making the best of a cloudy "sunrise"

 

[JJTheJetPln]

An empty Gardiner this weekend:

Those photos reminded me of the onset of covid and the request of everyone to stay at home. I was driving downtown and wondering why there weren't that many cars on the road. It often felt like this.