TC was billion dollar plan that covered the entire City not JUST malvern. THE SRT extension which was the single LRT line which would help malvern was no where near a Billion dollars.
TC was a plan that was going to cost at least $12 billion and likely much more than that. The Sheppard line alone was nearly a billion bucks. The SRT extension and Morningside LRT were also heading to Malvern. And by the TTC's own documents, released at their open houses, all those billions would have saved most riders between 10-20 minutes. Hardly all that meaningful when you're still left with an hour long commute.
People are being over dramatic about TRANSIT CITY costs. When in reality everything Surface level was a DEAL in comparison to Subway costs. Its the underground section which costs a fortune. Guess what? SUBWAYS cost a Fortune too.
Nobody's being dramatic about anything. Some of us are merely decrying the one size fits all approach as inappropriate. And we're also questioning value for money. LRT does give you more kilometres per $. But that's not the metric most riders care about. They care about one thing and one thing only: how fast they'll get to their destination. By this metric, LRT was poor value. Subway may not have been better either, because there's a trade-off between the subway's speed and how far you can extend the subway. The best-return on this front would have been the GO network. That's one system that would have gotten residents to the core very quickly.
I'm pretty sure that is the whole point of that post.
Not quite. I was suggesting that spending billions to only improve commute times by 10-15 mins is wasteful.
People push really hard for subways because it would be cheaper for them, even though they're far more expensive overall. TTC is $2.50 flat fare, while a trip on GO would probably cost over $5. It's the usual issue: people only think about what affects them directly. The same issue is present with driving. Emissions, parking lots, roads etc. have significant costs, but drivers don't care because they are not charged for them.
Yeesh. It's nonsense like this that makes fair debate impossible.
This is urbantoronto urban myths. The public wants subways because they believe subways get them to their destinations really fast. Not because of some fare differential (which can easily be fixed through policy changes) or because they are selfish motorists. And the public most certainly does not care about gentrification and planning. They want to get from A to B as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
The solution, just like in the case of driving, is to charge people in a way which directly reflects the costs they are incurring. There's no reason a GO train is so fundamentally different than a subway that we should be charging people double the price to ride. To optimally manage demand, the fare system should ignore who owns what infrastructure and who runs what service. Instead, it should focus on the most effective way of getting large numbers of people from A to B.
I agree. And I think the same argument should be applied to infrastructure investment too. The dollars should go to the projects that provide the most bang for the buck for the most people, taking into account the whole region. This is where Metrolinx dropped the ball.
Once you start looking at the 416 and its networks as part of a region, everything changes. A short subway extension to Agincourt (to connect to the GO line) makes sense. LRT on Ellesmere instead of Sheppard makes more sense (a point that was supported by Durham region). Eglinton makes sense. Midtown GO makes sense. Electrification of GO makes sense. Adding GO stations inside the 416 and integrating fares with the TTC makes sense. Etc.
In practice, it would mean harmonizing GO and TTC fares, and probably involve some kind of distance fee such as zones or timed fares, to increase costs for long-distance local transit commuters while making local trips cheaper.
Sadly, I don't see it happening. This is why I firmly believe the subway and LRT networks should be put under the same management as the GO network.
The main objection to having Edmonton or Calgary-style LRT with complete railway-style priority is that it would delay motorists. In other words, the same argument as against every other infrastructure improvement.
By the time the designs for the outer segments of the Eglinton LRT are finalized, Rob Ford will be gone and we can do the logical thing (not spending a billion dollars to save motorists a minute or two).
Don't mistake Rob Ford's views for the public's views. Yes, he wanted the lines buried to avoid conflicts with traffic (though mind you, it's not all bad...grade separation helps the LRT too). The majority of the public cared about speed and access from the comments I saw at the Sheppard Open houses. Questions focused on how much time would be saved, construction disruption and whether a long walk to the nearest stop was involved. Traffic interference was one among many concerns. Not the only one.
