Mississauga Hurontario-Main Line 10 LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

[sixrings]

Well what exactly are the negative externalities on the streetscape if its not the noise?

The York Street offramp isn't unpleasant, it's the massive mega highway literally right next to it, as such you can't look at it in isolation. By contrast, I think the park under the Richmond and Adelaid viaducts is actually quite nice (well was, I haven't been there in a few years now so I don't know if it has changed).

First, the location you linked is actually kinda nice, and I would absolutely love to have that in Toronto. Second, are you seriously arguing by using 19th century functional infrastructure? We don't live in the 1800s anymore, we live in the 21st Century where we are actually quite good at building nice looking els. Just look at this: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.188...!2e0!5s20210301T000000!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e2, or this: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.254...rOTw0XBPUsLbA9uRIQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e2, or heck you can even look at cities like Tokyo: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.663...m3LEVSuCEwSedj0wTw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e2

South East Asian Cities especially love putting els everywhere, and they do so respecting the urban fabric and making nice walkable areas, all without needing to sacrifice the speed and efficiency of the transit itself.

You have a source? Maybe some actual statistics to back up your claim? At best, the only thing you have here is a subjective claim on els being ugly, but even then that's extremely subjective. I can't think of any modern elevated metro that has had a negative impact on pedestrian movement and business viability, and cities like Vancouver and Hong Kong have basically proven that all of these claims are unfounded. And no, you can't just point to Chicago and New York that are >100 years old and are barely holding together due to poor maintenance.

Whatever time you lose by having to go up a small flight of stairs is made up by having a faster and more frequent train, and that's assuming that you lose time in the first place since you don't have to worry about waiting for a green light to cross the street to reach the median (as a reminder, if you have a far side stop, the train approaching the station has a green light, ie the crosswalk to the station has a red light and unless you want play frogger, you will miss the next train). I don't want to count how many times I have reached a Viva Station only to have missed the bus because I had a red light and couldn't cross Yonge Street to reach the platform, and since LRTs have much stricter limitations in terms of frequencies, missing a train on a median LRT is far more impactful and problematic than missing a train on an el. This is before we even talk get to the trains themselves which are often better and roomier for those with physical disabilities.

I was in Taipei with the modern elevated transit you are talking about. It still killed the street vibe.

 

[sixrings]

Now imagine if like Yonge Street it had actual rapid transit, and not something that is barely faster than the bus outside of rush hour. Maybe perhaps it could actually convince a lot of people to get out of their cars?

Yonge street didn’t immediately start with a subway.

 

[sixrings]

We should at least be grade separating major intersections for surface rail.

My area looks similar to this; I'd love having a modern El nearby if it meant getting higher order transit 10 years earlier and at half the cost per mile.

You want to put elevated on dundas to extend line 2 I will give in. But hurontario should try its best to be aesthetically pleasing. I could agree that if Brampton managed to get underground on Main Street then the lrt should have been underground from square one to dundas. But that’s a whole other topic and we can’t keep going back on what ifs. We have a plan.

 

[T3G]

Well what exactly are the negative externalities on the streetscape if its not the noise?

The fact that the street is going to be perpetually in shadow is not a significant enough negative? Why would anyone in their right mind hang out under an El, when they could go literally anywhere else?

Second, are you seriously arguing by using 19th century functional infrastructure? We don't live in the 1800s anymore, we live in the 21st Century where we are actually quite good at building nice looking els.

I don't see what relevance the century we are living in has to your argument. If memory serves, elevated structures in the 21st century are still very much visible, so until we figure out some way of making them invisible and no longer blocking out the sun, any kind of puffery about how we have progressed as a civilization has no bearing on the conversation.

In fact, we've moved significantly backwards. The New York Els don't have solid floors, so sunlight is allowed to seep through to at least some extent. These horrible concrete structures you're citing will not, and so when it's dark, it will be much more so.

And no, I don't find any of your examples to be particularly impressive. The first two are located on wide, inhospitable stroads, which were lost already - as is Hurontario, so you want an El on a road like that, go crazy - so there was nothing of value lost to begin with. In your Tokyo example, I find the whole street to be bleak, clinical, and sterile, so the El slots well in with the whole vibe.

Now imagine if like Yonge Street it had actual rapid transit, and not something that is barely faster than the bus outside of rush hour. Maybe perhaps it could actually convince a lot of people to get out of their cars?

I tire of this line of argument. Buses and trams with private lanes, but not grade separation, are used all over the world to great effect, we're just too good for them in Toronto & region.

In the rest of the world, traffic light priority means that the vehicles sail right on through and are a fast and efficient way of getting around town. I recently had a chance to try out VIVA Blue for the first time. The problem with the service wasn't that it wasn't provided by some ridiculous, multi billion dollar subway line, the problem was that it stopped at every single traffic light and every single traffic light took forever to change. Instead of growing a spine as a region and implementing transit priority, we think that the solution is blowing money on subways and massive grade separation projects, and until we outgrow this mentality as a region, we will always be a tier below the great cities of the world.

 

[sixrings]

Well what exactly are the negative externalities on the streetscape if its not the noise?

The York Street offramp isn't unpleasant, it's the massive mega highway literally right next to it, as such you can't look at it in isolation. By contrast, I think the park under the Richmond and Adelaid viaducts is actually quite nice (well was, I haven't been there in a few years now so I don't know if it has changed).

First, the location you linked is actually kinda nice, and I would absolutely love to have that in Toronto. Second, are you seriously arguing by using 19th century functional infrastructure? We don't live in the 1800s anymore, we live in the 21st Century where we are actually quite good at building nice looking els. Just look at this: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.188...!2e0!5s20210301T000000!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e2, or this: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.254...rOTw0XBPUsLbA9uRIQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e2, or heck you can even look at cities like Tokyo: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.663...m3LEVSuCEwSedj0wTw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!5m1!1e2

South East Asian Cities especially love putting els everywhere, and they do so respecting the urban fabric and making nice walkable areas, all without needing to sacrifice the speed and efficiency of the transit itself.

You have a source? Maybe some actual statistics to back up your claim? At best, the only thing you have here is a subjective claim on els being ugly, but even then that's extremely subjective. I can't think of any modern elevated metro that has had a negative impact on pedestrian movement and business viability, and cities like Vancouver and Hong Kong have basically proven that all of these claims are unfounded. And no, you can't just point to Chicago and New York that are >100 years old and are barely holding together due to poor maintenance.

Whatever time you lose by having to go up a small flight of stairs is made up by having a faster and more frequent train, and that's assuming that you lose time in the first place since you don't have to worry about waiting for a green light to cross the street to reach the median (as a reminder, if you have a far side stop, the train approaching the station has a green light, ie the crosswalk to the station has a red light and unless you want play frogger, you will miss the next train). I don't want to count how many times I have reached a Viva Station only to have missed the bus because I had a red light and couldn't cross Yonge Street to reach the platform, and since LRTs have much stricter limitations in terms of frequencies, missing a train on a median LRT is far more impactful and problematic than missing a train on an el. This is before we even talk get to the trains themselves which are often better and roomier for those with physical disabilities.

The source on if it’s subjectively aesthetically pleasing is the fact that it gets voted down so often by people in the local areas that politicians know it’s doa so it doesn’t actually get proposed anymore. Wouldn’t eglinton westbhave been the perfect place yet we went underground. Wouldn’t the subway to Vaughan work? Yet we went underground. How about the Scarborough subway extension again underground. What about Main Street Brampton lrt. It’s definitely not going above ground. It’s not going above ground in Hamilton either, Quebec City isn’t or in Kitchener. To top it off the one above ground lrt we are ripping down. Sure it was in a dumb spot with dumb technology but we easily could have converted it to lrt yet we didn’t.

 

[ARG1]

The fact that the street is going to be perpetually in shadow is not a significant enough negative? Why would anyone in their right mind hang out under an El, when they could go literally anywhere else?

This is literally the same argument NIMBYs use against any form of densification. Who would ever want to be in downtown Toronto and hang out next to high rises? All of the streets are perpetually in Shadow!

I don't see what relevance the century we are living in has to your argument. If memory serves, elevated structures in the 21st century are still very much visible, so until we figure out some way of making them invisible and no longer blocking out the sun, any kind of puffery about how we have progressed as a civilization has no bearing on the conversation.

Because technology has improved that we don't need to worry about a lot of the negative externalities of Els. We can build Els that are far less noisier and polluting than the metal monsters found in Chicago and NYC.

In fact, we've moved significantly backwards. The New York Els don't have solid floors, so sunlight is allowed to seep through to at least some extent. These horrible concrete structures you're citing will not, and so when it's dark, it will be much more so.

And no, I don't find any of your examples to be particularly impressive. The first two are located on wide, inhospitable stroads, which were lost already - as is Hurontario, so you want an El on a road like that, go crazy - so there was nothing of value lost to begin with. In your Tokyo example, I find the whole street to be bleak, clinical, and sterile, so the El slots well in with the whole vibe.

Hmm, I wonder what thread we're on, and I wonder what the context of the conversation is. Also remind me, what streets are we building all of our LRTs on again? I'm pretty sure the surface section on Eglinton as well as Finch can easily be classified as stroads. The part that aren't stroads we're burying under.

. Modern Els are much narrowerI tire of this line of argument. Buses and trams with private lanes, but not grade separation, are used all over the world to great effect, we're just too good for them in Toronto & region.

Look at any major city in Europe that uses them, it's only for local trips serving specifically funneling towards actual transit like RER or Metro. Also this is how Asian Cities especially in Japan build their transit networks. How many trams are being built in cities like Singapore or Tokyo vs Metros. This is the standard we should be looking at, not small European cities like Prague that have the population of Ottawa.

In the rest of the world, traffic light priority means that the vehicles sail right on through and are a fast and efficient way of getting around town. I recently had a chance to try out VIVA Blue for the first time. The problem with the service wasn't that it wasn't provided by some ridiculous, multi billion dollar subway line, the problem was that it stopped at every single traffic light and every single traffic light took forever to change. Instead of growing a spine as a region and implementing transit priority, we think that the solution is blowing money on subways and massive grade separation projects, and until we outgrow this mentality as a region, we will always be a tier below the great cities of the world.

And here we are, "the only problem with median transit is TSP", as if hitting every traffic light on green is consistently possible. Even in transit first cities like Frankfurt, the surface section of the U-Bahn still frequently stopped at intersections when I was there. It wasn't for long, but it still did stop.

The source on if it’s subjectively aesthetically pleasing is the fact that it gets voted down so often by people in the local areas that politicians know it’s doa so it doesn’t actually get proposed anymore. Wouldn’t eglinton westbhave been the perfect place yet we went underground. Wouldn’t the subway to Vaughan work? Yet we went underground. How about the Scarborough subway extension again underground. What about Main Street Brampton lrt. It’s definitely not going above ground. It’s not going above ground in Hamilton either, Quebec City isn’t or in Kitchener. To top it off the one above ground lrt we are ripping down. Sure it was in a dumb spot with dumb technology but we easily could have converted it to lrt yet we didn’t.

Is this really the argument you want to make? That it's aesthetically unpleasing because NIMBYs exist? The same people that vote them down are the same people that push for endless SFH and suburban sprawl, the same people that push for car oriented strip malls, and get angry everytime a midrise is proposed and complaining about how destroying the local Nofrills with "impact the character of the neighbourhood". These people were also against Transit City and LRTs, so I guess LRTs have no merits in making the local area aesthetically pleasing either.

Also, should Eglinton West be elevated? Yes. Should SSE not be 40m deep dug using a Single Bore TBM? Yes. Should we have upgrade the SRT to use standard Light Metro vehicles and extended it west along Eglinton (and not as a stupid LRT)? Absolutely. The fact that we are dropping the ball so hard on transit construction and planning isn't news to anyone. We either have someone like Miller who pushes for massively underbuilt transit, or someone like Ford who pushes for Overbuilt transit, and whilst I'd much rather Overbuild than Underbuild, neither of these 2 realities are good or ideal, so stop self sourcing as a way to prove a point. I'll you're saying is we suck at building the right thing which everyone knows.

Yonge street didn’t immediately start with a subway.

The first proposal for a subway in Toronto was in 1910, with a Streetcar Subway running under Yonge Street and Queen Street. Back then the population of Toronto was half of what Mississauga has today, and the urban area didn't spread that much farther than Rosedale. When the subway was actually built in 1954, the population of Toronto was a little over a million, something that Mississauga will likely reach in a decade or so with the current levels of immigration being brought in by the Federal Government. Mississauga is also a lot more sprawly and a lot more spreadout where speed is a much larger necessity than it was in Toronto back in the first half of the 20th century (never mind the fact that Toronto didn't have to compete with the car back then). If there was a perfect time to build a Metro in Mississauga both to get ahead of developments that could lead to reduced costs, as well as in anticipation for new developments and for a massive influx of new immigrants into the country, that time would be NOW, TODAY.

 

[afransen]

You don't agree that if a street is a vibrant shopping strip, putting up an elevated guideway over it is going to negatively impact people's desire to hang out there? How many successful businesses have a front end letting out underneath the Gardiner?

On what planet is Hurontario a vibrant shopping strip?

 

[sixrings]

On what planet is Hurontario a vibrant shopping strip?

Hurontario is just about to go through massive redevelopment. I would expect that there will be some retail on hurontario to replace the grocery stores and shoppers drug marts that the development takes over.

 

[afransen]

Ground-level encourages use by having transit vehicles be visible and easily accessible.

Ground level ensures that there will low frequency (due to the expense of operators), slower speeds and disruptions due to conflicting traffic.

 

[afransen]

Hurontario is just about to go through massive redevelopment. I would expect that there will be some retail on hurontario to replace the grocery stores and shoppers drug marts that the development takes over.

There is not, and likely never will be, walkable urban retail facing on to Hurontario. It is a traffic sewer. New developments are still being built with a grass boulevard buffering from Hurontario.

 

[sixrings]

Anyways we’re back on the “what we should have done” circular conversation. We have a plan. We’re constructing. It’s not perfect. But it’s a significant improvement.

If you want to tackle Mississauga transit with fantasy proposals maybe it’s best to look at dundas, cooksville go or a line 2 extension. The ship has sailed on hurontario and this negativity is just wasted energy.

 

[T3G]

Hmm, I wonder what thread we're on, and I wonder what the context of the conversation is

Yes, I wonder indeed. Care to scroll back up and see?

On what planet is Hurontario a vibrant shopping strip?

It's not, but the discussion was not about Hurontario specifically. It was a strawman, posted in response to a picture of the elevated guideway, that "This must be the intrusive elevated rail everyone's talking about!"

Since this is neither an extended portion of elevated rail, nor does it make reference specifically to covering a suburban stroad, it feels appropriate to respond that some suburban hellscape is not the vision of urbanism I want to protect when I rail against elevated transit.

 

[ARG1]

Anyways we’re back on the “what we should have done” circular conversation. We have a plan. We’re constructing. It’s not perfect. But it’s a significant improvement.

If you want to tackle Mississauga transit with fantasy proposals maybe it’s best to look at dundas, cooksville go or a line 2 extension. The ship has sailed on hurontario and this negativity is just wasted energy.

What an interesting argument, that because shovels are in the ground we shouldn't be criticizing the decision. Hmm...

I just hope that you stick to your own words.

 

[sixrings]

There is not, and likely never will be, walkable urban retail facing on to Hurontario. It is a traffic sewer. New developments are still being built with a grass boulevard buffering from Hurontario.

Traffic sewer. Damn it let’s bomb Mississauga and start over. You really hate the city you pay taxes in don’t you. Must be depressing.

 

[afransen]

I don't fetishize arterials as the only streets being suitable for place-making. This city (I mean Greater Toronto) has its head so far up its butt when it comes to the role of different streets. Hurontario is, and always will be, a road that prioritizes flow/movement. There are no alternatives. We can choose other streets to prioritize for place-making. It is allowed to have streets that do not have a role in flow, but rather place-making.

You're the one talking about trying to jam the pig in a dress and put lipstick on it. It will still be a pig. We can make Hurontario safer and more pleasant, but it is too wide and has too much traffic to be a place where someone will want to linger and drink a coffee on a patio and watch people walk by. We, as a greater Toronto community, do ourselves a disservice by insisting only large arterials should be targets for urban placemaking.