You guys are going to think I'm crazy, but in many ways, LA is the most progressive transit city in North America right now.
That is not crazy at all. Los Angeles is a rather interesting which sadly I dont know nearly enough about.
Good for St. Louis for building this line, but if the point of this thread is to make Toronto feel bad for its current transit planning, there are far better examples than this one. Most European city would do the trick nicely.
That being said, I dont find Toronto's transit situation to be in a particularly terrible position. The problem with the GTA is that any solutions that are going to be required to build a better transit system (GO expansion, logical subway expansion, work to the Lakeshore and Weston lines, even streetcar lines) are going to require a massive investment in capital to do them right. And you can peddle ad hoc, temporary solutions but without the investment in the backbone portions of the network, its just buying a year or two before those solutions become limited.
Toronto also has one thing that most North American cities cannnot claim and this is a growing and established market in high density residential construction. Not just downtown where the past decade has brought about some hugely positive benefits, but also in the suburbs with high density nodes springing up. Yes these places will all need some sort of transit in the future, but its far easier to service these kinds of areas which have critical numbers to meet ridership targets, and, provide alternatives to transit and cars such as walking, biking, etc which are efficient, healthy, and cheap forms of transportation.
Im not crazy about just building a number of LRT or commuter rail lines into the suburbs as most suburbs stand. You can spend billions creating a new network, but if it the lines are just heading to car parks, green fields and low density residential pods, how are these lines ever going to recover their costs at even a moderate level?
In short, why subsidize stupidity? If you are more progressive suburb like Mississauga who has come to realization that most post 1950's suburban forms are unsustainable, and are making genuine attempts to develop and redevelop your city in a more sustainable, less car dependant manner, and want help from the province and federal government to build transit or other projects that will help meet these goals, great! Im all for that. But if your a suburb such as Vaughan which is by and large a sprawling wasteland in its most offensive forms who wants a subway line built out to a big empty field? A polite answer to them should be "go away".
Toronto may be a little slow in adressing transit needs for the city as it is today. But thats not entirely bad and to be somewhat expected. Planning transit for a region that can vary in size and scope from 3 - 8 million is not easy. And when the region keeps growing, it makes it even more difficult. Transit will begin to greatly improve in the near future but until it does, why worry (unless you happen to be a professional or student who works in that field, in which case, worrying is why you are there in the first place)?
