ssiguy2
Senior Member
Everytime I look at a Toronto area transit I get dizzy. There are so many different systems, the entire area is completely disjointed, different fares, endless transfers, no coordination with the road network, and bureaucracies whose primary goal is to maintain their "turf".
Getting from one end of Toronto to the other is not only time consuming but also a logistical nightmare. By allowing all the different cities and transit agencies to control their respective transit it has resulted in an uncoordinated system. All the cities of the GTA focus only on their own needs {and voters} which has left regional planning as an after thought.
When I look at how easy it is to negotiate Greater Vancouver transit and then compare it to the GTA my heart really does go out to the long suffering commuters in Toronto. In short, it's a mess. All the way from Lion's Bay to Aldergrove, White Rock to UBC and all points in between there are only 3 different fares and just one transit system. There is complete integration and leaving one city to go to another is not the mind numbing experience it is in Toronto. Vancouver has learned that in order to make a city more transit fiendly now and into the future requires thinking like one of the transit riders themselves. Transit users don't care about different cities or their agendas and tax bases. When people are taking transit they think regionally and so must a transportation agency. People don't want some imaginary line they have to cross to become a logistical nightmare. When people are going from Miss to Ajax, Oakville to Markham, or Milton to York U they don't want to have to take an endless series of transfers everytime they cross an imaginary boundary nor do they want to spend 15 minutes on the computer trying to figure out the fare.
In Metro Vancouver you only pay a one zone fare unless you cross a zone boundary and there are only 3 zones within the huge 19 different municipalities Translink serves. Travelling, for example, just in the Fraser Valley/Surrey area is one zone and costs the exact same amount as someone who lives and travels just within the City of Vancouver. There is no guess work needed........travel within one zone, pay one zone fare, 2 zone travel is 2 zone fare, and 3 zone travel is 3 zone fare. This has not only made the system easy to figure out but also has lead to more regional connections where you don't have to transfer to another transit system every time you cross a municiple boundary. It has made commuter rail a breeze as well. It's incredibly easy, whatever you paid for transit ticket to get to the station is automatically deducted from the commuter premium fare. If you began your journey on the train it doesn't matter where you are going, the fare is valid for the entire Metro Vancouver Translink system with endless transfer for a 2 hour period. None of this some transit agencies give you a discount and some don't crap.
A similar such arrangement for the GTA {I don't think Hamilton need be part of it} would have the GTA divided into 3 zones for Toronto Zone 1 , Peel/Durham/York Zone 2, and Halton Zone 3. Not only is the cost easy to figure but it helps get rid of transfers from different systems.........everything would be under Metrolinx, including GO just as WCE is under Translink. This would result in such things as the Miss Transitway being able to seelessly continue right across Eglinton to the end of the route in Scar. People don't mind taking taking transit but hate waiting for it and the transfers which was a shortcoming of TC that Miller and the boys never acknowledged.
Another thing that Translink is which the TTC and all the other transit agencies are not is a transportation system. The GTA views highways, bikeways, walkways, and transit as completely different creatures that have nothing to do whith each other. This has led to uncoordinated transportation which is why the GTA has almost no HOV/Bus only lanes on it's freeways. This is why the new Port Mann bridge has incorporated into it, new bike lanes, walk ways, bus-only on/off ramps for Rapid Bus, Hov lanes, and the bridge and HOV and bus-only lanes are designed for easy transference over to LRT in the future. Could you imagine Toronto ever doing that? The Canada Line SkyTrain over the Fraser River has bike and walk lanes underneath the main track corridor, again impossible in Toronto.
Toronto had {atleast for it's transit service} such a system once.........it was called the TTC that served all of Metro Toronto. At the time it covered all of what would have been the entire Toronto area population. The trouble is that the TTC didn't expand it's borders as the population grew beyond them. It's time to update that visionary plan into the 21st century GTA. Whether that be called Metrolinx or even the TTC, it should cover all of the GTA as it once did 50 years ago.
Getting from one end of Toronto to the other is not only time consuming but also a logistical nightmare. By allowing all the different cities and transit agencies to control their respective transit it has resulted in an uncoordinated system. All the cities of the GTA focus only on their own needs {and voters} which has left regional planning as an after thought.
When I look at how easy it is to negotiate Greater Vancouver transit and then compare it to the GTA my heart really does go out to the long suffering commuters in Toronto. In short, it's a mess. All the way from Lion's Bay to Aldergrove, White Rock to UBC and all points in between there are only 3 different fares and just one transit system. There is complete integration and leaving one city to go to another is not the mind numbing experience it is in Toronto. Vancouver has learned that in order to make a city more transit fiendly now and into the future requires thinking like one of the transit riders themselves. Transit users don't care about different cities or their agendas and tax bases. When people are taking transit they think regionally and so must a transportation agency. People don't want some imaginary line they have to cross to become a logistical nightmare. When people are going from Miss to Ajax, Oakville to Markham, or Milton to York U they don't want to have to take an endless series of transfers everytime they cross an imaginary boundary nor do they want to spend 15 minutes on the computer trying to figure out the fare.
In Metro Vancouver you only pay a one zone fare unless you cross a zone boundary and there are only 3 zones within the huge 19 different municipalities Translink serves. Travelling, for example, just in the Fraser Valley/Surrey area is one zone and costs the exact same amount as someone who lives and travels just within the City of Vancouver. There is no guess work needed........travel within one zone, pay one zone fare, 2 zone travel is 2 zone fare, and 3 zone travel is 3 zone fare. This has not only made the system easy to figure out but also has lead to more regional connections where you don't have to transfer to another transit system every time you cross a municiple boundary. It has made commuter rail a breeze as well. It's incredibly easy, whatever you paid for transit ticket to get to the station is automatically deducted from the commuter premium fare. If you began your journey on the train it doesn't matter where you are going, the fare is valid for the entire Metro Vancouver Translink system with endless transfer for a 2 hour period. None of this some transit agencies give you a discount and some don't crap.
A similar such arrangement for the GTA {I don't think Hamilton need be part of it} would have the GTA divided into 3 zones for Toronto Zone 1 , Peel/Durham/York Zone 2, and Halton Zone 3. Not only is the cost easy to figure but it helps get rid of transfers from different systems.........everything would be under Metrolinx, including GO just as WCE is under Translink. This would result in such things as the Miss Transitway being able to seelessly continue right across Eglinton to the end of the route in Scar. People don't mind taking taking transit but hate waiting for it and the transfers which was a shortcoming of TC that Miller and the boys never acknowledged.
Another thing that Translink is which the TTC and all the other transit agencies are not is a transportation system. The GTA views highways, bikeways, walkways, and transit as completely different creatures that have nothing to do whith each other. This has led to uncoordinated transportation which is why the GTA has almost no HOV/Bus only lanes on it's freeways. This is why the new Port Mann bridge has incorporated into it, new bike lanes, walk ways, bus-only on/off ramps for Rapid Bus, Hov lanes, and the bridge and HOV and bus-only lanes are designed for easy transference over to LRT in the future. Could you imagine Toronto ever doing that? The Canada Line SkyTrain over the Fraser River has bike and walk lanes underneath the main track corridor, again impossible in Toronto.
Toronto had {atleast for it's transit service} such a system once.........it was called the TTC that served all of Metro Toronto. At the time it covered all of what would have been the entire Toronto area population. The trouble is that the TTC didn't expand it's borders as the population grew beyond them. It's time to update that visionary plan into the 21st century GTA. Whether that be called Metrolinx or even the TTC, it should cover all of the GTA as it once did 50 years ago.