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Symposium: Designing Transit Cities (Nov 19-20)

The expressway of our transit system is the GO network. The arterial roads of our transit system is the subway network. LRT is, depending on number of stops and speed, either an arterial road or a primary collector. When people talk about how they drive across the city fast most often they drove on the expressway and not local streets. We shouldn't look to subway and LRT lines for trips across the city... we should look to subways and LRT lines to take us to GO stations with all day service and integrated fares in the future.
 
Anth said:
It's incredibly frustrating that what is normally the domain of qualified technocrats and engineers anywhere else in the world has been commandeered by dilettante pie-in-the-sky idealists who openly admit their transit policy goals scarcely include improved travel times.

How is this acceptable to anyone? Something will have to give, but hopefully before we waste billions of dollars. Toronto squanders so much of its vast potential it's depressing.
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Yea, it confuses the hell out of me. Whenever you bring it up you are treated to a Sarah Palin-esque denunciation of "elitist" behavior like expecting transit projects to be judged along technical and financial lines as opposed to intentionally unmeasurable concepts like street level redevelopment.
 
If we designed cities simply with "travel times" over everything else, we'd be covered in freeways by now.
 
sixrings said:
I went and here are my thoughts. The main selling point of LRt (and I dont think any one last night pretended that it would be subway like speeds, infact compared it more to a streetcar system) is that where ever they are placed properly in other cities they manage to transform the area. Subways may spur highrise development directly over stops but LRT builds out linear.
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This is completely false.

Density and building heights are dictated by zoning and other planning guidelines, not by which transit vehicles are nearby. We can see this all over Toronto. Just looking at Sheppard, for instance, we have mid-rise Avenues developments at and east of Dufferin/Downsview, which is a subway station...there's no LRT in sight! There isn't really any development (yet) at the Sheppard line's stations - it's almost all between stations. NY Towers is between Bayview and Bessarion, while ParkPlace is between Bessarion and Leslie. Heights and densities along Sheppard itself are or will be mostly lower, Avenues-style. This is due to city policies, to quirks of which sites become developable at which times, etc. Toronto is littered with an enormous number of massive apartment clusters, all surrounded by houses and served by nothing but buses. There's clusters at subway stops like Eglinton and Davisville because certain projects were permitted on certain blocks and not others...the Bloor/Danforth line has spurred virtually no redevelopment because the city hasn't permitted it.

In terms of the unique 'transformative power' of LRT, this is rubbish. Remember that LRT lines tend to only get built in "revitalizing" areas (or they wander around the suburbs connecting the airport, hospitals, and malls to downtown). LRT gets built in trendy areas that are slated for certain types and quantities of growth...the revitalization and the LRT proceed together - the latter does *not* cause the former. If an area is decrepit and has a bad reputation and the city will not allow developers to build anything, it doesn't matter what transit is added, nothing will happen. Everyone forgets that places slated for LRT lines are being rezoned...official plan amendments and other active policies are what will enable the kind of developments people erroneously associate with LRT.
 
So zoning changes everything just like that? If I say "Flemingdon Park is now zoned as luxury estates" does that instantly change it?

The LRT will encourage investment. Already, there are condos being advertised at Bayview Eglinton, with "steps to future LRT station" in the marketing.
 
kettal said:
So zoning changes everything just like that? If I say "Flemingdon Park is now zoned as luxury estates" does that instantly change it?

The LRT will encourage investment. Already, there are condos being advertised at Bayview Eglinton, with "steps to future LRT station" in the marketing.
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You can't do anything without city approval. It starts with zoning. Permit Flemingdon Park to be redeveloped with McMansions and it might happen soon. Don't permit it and it will never happen, no matter how much transit does or doesn't get built.

Mature trees, good schools, and "FREE KITTENS" signs also encourage investment. But if there's an LRT line within 6 blocks, people proclaim that the wonders of LRT alone have caused this investment.
 
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I may be wrong at this, but don't get twisted. Zoning is INDEED the first move to development. Designate certain site as "high-residential zone" and it will be done. Ditto for low-rise commercial, light industrial district, and so on... But that is a low-value development since it began. (Don Mills, Jane any1?) It does not guarantee that once zoned, it will instantly be a highly desired development zone. Good access to public transportation, key locations to landmark (park, schools - regardless of good or bad, historic relevance), access to shopping districts will appreciate the value of the properties.

Mature trees, "good schools" and "a little garden with pretty little f*#Y$ng animals" are small boon, yet not an essential key to convince the developers to invest the area. They are side benefits, and they are followed by existing establishments (shopping areas, parks, schools, rapid transit.) North American cities are intensifying through reliance on rapid transit, which is followed by pedestrian-friendly properties, street-retails and higher-density buildings. Transit City is planned to revitalize much of the impoverished T.O. neighbourhoods that previously missed the opportunity of good access to rapid transit.

Rapid transit is a vehicle to intensification, higher-valued properties and improvement of the auras in any neighbourhood.
 
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hbl33 said:
It does not guarantee that once zoned, it will instantly be a highly desired development zone.
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I did not say that you can zone for desirability. I did say that the type and quantity of development is explicitly controlled by the city, and not by transit mode. Whether or not there's street retail, how high the buildings are, how large the units are, the massing, whether or not X building will be permitted on Y lot, and on and on. What the city can't really do - what even good transit can't do - is control the pace at which this development happens. Demographics change, politicians change, the economy changes, trends change, the OMB interferes, etc.

hbl33 said:
Transit City is planned to revitalize much of the impoverished T.O. neighbourhoods that previously missed the opportunity of good access to rapid transit.
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No, Transit City is planned to run LRT lines through areas slated for intensification or revitalization. Either they were already slated for growth, or the official plan will be rewritten to designate them. Finch West's Avenues development began long before the LRT was considered, and Sheppard West is seeing prototypical Avenues developments - the exact type of development that, it is hoped by the city, will magically appear along the LRT lines - even though it was slated to be served by a subway extension, and is now slated to be served by nothing other than buses.

Consider the Bridlewood Mall redevelopment: http://www.urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=625

This is a priority neighbourhood and is slated to receive absolutely no improved transit other than a queue-jump on Finch, but the project is huge and will go a fair way towards making the area more urban.
 
Is anyone surprised that the "Designing Transit Cities" symposium was a love-in for LRT? I'm sure not.
 
I learn nothing from Thursday night session other than TTC changes colours surrounding transit on one side of the road and lacks vision. Lack of vision is nothing new.

What was said only reinforce my views.

By the way, I didn't know we had trolley buses running around our streets.

Friday session was also almost the same thing.

The chap from Paris shows our lack of thinking on land use and designs.

Mid density is great to a point, but you still need tall buildings.

St Clair got beaten up on Friday and gave Cal Brook a link to the photo's I have shot this year to show how poorly his design was for St Clair. I have shot over 1,600 photo's and video's for Phase II along to show how TC should not be built. Will release the link once I get a handle on Phase IV and III. 80 pages alone for Phase II and counting.

Following up on something the Mayor said Thursday and what I have been saying for years along with what was said early this year by the folks from Paris, time to remove lane of traffic. Most of all, remove turning lanes.

By doing so, you can put bike lanes in, wider platforms for accessibility, but most of all, having sidewalk space.

US cities that are building LRT lines are building straight lines well St Clair is a snake with centre poles to close to each other.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
Is anyone surprised that the "Designing Transit Cities" symposium was a love-in for LRT? I'm sure not.
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Me neither, especially when the nascent subway-supporting activist group doesn't even bother to show up.
 
I know there poles still around, but the speaker said 3 times that we have trolley buses still in service considering they left in the 90's. Someone was out of date on info for TTC.
 
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