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Smitherman's Transit plan

LAz said:
About as stupid as I have heard. Comparing a million person city to humongous Toronto. Sad. Appalling actually.

Exactly the same as mentioned above. Why compare such small cities.
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Because by doing so you would be comparing us with a plan that has successfully delivered a far greater subway network growth over the past 25 years for a much smaller city than Toronto. You wouldn't want that here I guess. We should compare ourselves to NYC perhaps because it is big which is the really important factor in comparisons right? What percentage network growth has New York seen over the past 25 years?
 
What percentage growth has the city of New York seen over the past 25 years? How much money has New York been getting from the State and Feds? Not much, if my politics serve me well.
 
We should compare ourselves to NYC perhaps because it is big which is the really important factor in comparisons right?
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We should compare our selves on a per capita basis.


New york is a special case as their suburban development was subway driven, early on. They aggresively expanded their system, first with elevated rapid transit and then with the metro.


You can nickel and dime things, but still, compare things on a per capita basis.


If we look at european cities we can clearly see how smaller ones are in many ways far superior compared to us in terms of transportation. The scandivaian capitals kick ass dude. Oslo, Stockholm... for such small cities they have amazing systems that we could only envy. Naturally they took our metropolitan toronto stuff and applied it to their entire metropolitan area, not just a small part. or other places like Copenhagen where development was put on routes like a finger, rather than unplanned monstrosities.
Lets just look at all sorts of placesi n europe. Sure, we might get a hard time to find something exactly comparable - cities are different - but we certainly should not compare the tiny places like zurich.





Nevertheless, Toronto until the 1980s was way up there in terms of transit. We were one of the better places in the world. Then things went chronically wrong in the 1980s, and what we have had by today is that systems much smaller than ours in the 1980s have expanded and are superior to what we have. We fell behind while others went forward.


When you look at those tram/lrt small cities - keep in mind when their transportation system was created - when they were even smaller than they are now. In that framework that might not be bad. London, ont, might deserve some tramming. But Toronto, a whole different thing does not. If their sizes in the past were what they are now, they would have gone for metro construction - every major european city does.

Most importantly, they do not care if they have to spend a bit more. Their coordinated development and auto-disincentive is what makes the difference.
 
LAz said:
If we look at european cities we can clearly see how smaller ones are in many ways far superior compared to us in terms of transportation. The scandivaian capitals kick ass dude. Oslo, Stockholm... for such small cities they have amazing systems that we could only envy.
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OK dude. I thought we shouldn't compare ourselves to smaller cities like Brussels but it is OK to compare ourselves with Oslo and Stockholm? In any case part much of Oslo's subway was heavy rail before becoming metro, and Stockholm's Green line was tram tunnel before it became metro and Stockholm has a large number of existing tram lines. So maybe building the system others will envy involves building trams/LRT, subway, and expanding heavy rail, not just assuming subway is the solution. Of all the projects planned in this city only the DRL, SRT replacement, the University Line extension, and the Yonge Line extension make sense as subway. Cross suburban lines make perfect sense as LRT and there is a ton of untapped opportunity on the heavy rail lines if they get electrified.
 
OK dude. I thought we shouldn't compare ourselves to smaller cities like Brussels but it is OK to compare ourselves with Oslo and Stockholm?
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It is not. Zurich for example is too small.
But if we do compare ourselves to those cities we will see that we are behind on so many levels. Saying lets build a few tram lines is far behind what europe does - cities the size of toronto do not opt for those options. We are taking policies of small cities and applying it here.


Do you see the problem that is going on, this selective case picking by the tram proponents??? We are inferior in every way.




So maybe building the system others will envy involves building trams/LRT, subway, and expanding heavy rail, not just assuming subway is the solution.
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I have no problem with certain tram lines. The problem is that a few of these lines are outright stupid. Not extending the sheppard subway by oh say 2 km is a major problem.
I am not screaming only metro. I am just saying that metro should be done more than the plan wants. The only metro expansion that miller will have is the line up to vaughan. Okay, as much as I dislike vaughan, okay, so they get that... but what else? That is minuscule. This is sub-par compared to european cities. We are a failure compared to them.








But seriously, if we are going to compare ourselves to european cities then lets do it in a real manner. But lets compare them in a real way. Not in a bogus way to say OH THESE GUYS HAVE TRAMS... we should look at what kind of guys have what kind of trams... and what kind of guys have what kind of subways... when looking at things more critically - rather than in fantasy - we will see that we are behind big time.
We were on par with them. But nay, no more.
 
Let's compare ourselves to NYC, The NYC equivalent of Sheppard Avenue would probably be somewhere in Staten Island. Compare away.
 
Let's compare ourselves to NYC, The NYC equivalent of Sheppard Avenue would probably be somewhere in Staten Island. Compare away.
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It's an american city dude. If you take a big city take something like seoul.
The only reason why Noo Yawk has such a big system is because they built most of it when it was cheap to build it.
The point is that it is America, and America is anti-transit. American cities are disasters and should only be looked at when wanting to find bad things, not good things. Maybe that's a bit of a simplification, but is it more or less.
 
LAz said:
The point is that it is America, and America is anti-transit. American cities are disasters and should only be looked at when wanting to find bad things, not good things. Maybe that's a bit of a simplification, but is it more or less.
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That's less of a simplification then a plain ridiculous statement. You must not have ever been to New York or Boston or Chicago or etc tc. Obviously there's plenty of horrible planning and sprawl in the States, more than most countries, but you can't just throw out the good with the bad.
 
kettal said:
Let's compare ourselves to NYC, The NYC equivalent of Sheppard Avenue would probably be somewhere in Staten Island. Compare away.
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Staten Island railway, heard of it? And the area around Sheppard is actually a lot denser than Staten Island, or even areas of Staten Island close to SIR.
 
Second_in_pie said:
What percentage growth has the city of New York seen over the past 25 years? How much money has New York been getting from the State and Feds? Not much, if my politics serve me well.
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The difference is US Counties can impose a Sales Tax. NYC sales tax rate is 4.5 percent, New York State sales tax of 4 percent, and Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District surcharge of 0.375%, for a total of 8.875%. Give Toronto 1% onto the HST and an extra 0.25% just for transit and then we can compare.
 
Ansem said:
and yet the Montreal Subway will get a 33% extension...
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I'm from Montreal too. That's the same extensions (hardly 33%) that they have been promising since the 1980s. It remains unfunded.

And they never propose to extend the existing lines with LRT? What about the plan they had in the 1970s to build LRT from Honoré-Beaugrant east to Rivieres-des-Prairies?

Montreal isn't doing much better than us these days. There hasn't been a metro station built on the island in over 20 years.
 
^ Some value is gained by looking at what other systems do right or wrong and repeating or avoiding it as applicable. Toronto is a very unique context, but we can match elements of Toronto in other cities, so long as we don't just say "why can't we do that?" We do things the way we do them now because of all the past baggage we carry along. Look at our underlying problems and the necessary solutions become a lot clearer.
 
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