Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

i agree. Downtown transit service is horribly slow. It is often much faster to walk then to ride ttc downtown! All the streetcar lines should be in their own row!

The only way for that to happen realistically downtown is to tunnel them. I doubt the city would ever approve of changing King, Queen, Dundas, or College into 1 lane in each direction roads for vehicles while transit vehicles get their own centre lanes. Further outside of the downtown, at grade could be done, but only with expropriation and ripping down 1 side of the street to make way for the wider ROW (in essence 3 lanes in each direction). St. Clair was lucky in that it already had a parking lane plus 2 lanes in each direction, so the additional ROW could be put in without actually widening the street, but the afore mentioned streets aren't that lucky.
 
The only way for that to happen realistically downtown is to tunnel them. I doubt the city would ever approve of changing King, Queen, Dundas, or College into 1 lane in each direction roads for vehicles while transit vehicles get their own centre lanes.

Yea, at some point something is going to have to go in underground. Even assuming King or Queen could be given exclusive ROWs (that is a big assumption), it would turn them into de facto car free streets. While that in itself may sound nice, the traffic will have to go somewhere. Richmond and Adelaide can't pick up the slack. It would basically force us into building some kind of pseudo expressways along Richmond and Adelaide to minimize disruptions (something like the double deck roads in Chicago). Otherwise people will just move to the suburbs.

If you were to take a horizontal cross section of Toronto, we are a pretty flat city in terms of infrastructure. In NYC for example, some of the water pipes are nearly a 1/4 km below the streets, they are building a commuter terminal 50m right under midtown that will handle more than twice what Union does (with less then half the tracks, I might add) and all over the city they have seemingly countless bridges, tunnels and viaducts carrying just about everything, even a park now. We have PATH, the Gardiner and a subway of no particular grandeur. Not that we should copy NYC or anyone else for that matter, just that way more emphasis here needs to be placed on high quality transportation infrastructure and this idea that streetcars stopping every hundred meters on narrow roads will carry us into the future is totally ridiculous.

A certain type of Torontonian has not only ignored the need for mobility, they fight against it. Jarvis should be shrunk. Richmond and Adelaide should be shrunk, the Gardiner should be torn down, Queen/King should be (basically) blocked off, half of University should be replaced with astroturf, Front Street Extension must be killed, Queen's Quay has to be halved, Porter eats babies (ergo, cancel the bridge), Blue22 is evil, every arterial road must carry an "LRT" row and when in doubt, bike lanes must be added. Even sewers have been targeted. Sewers! That's not to cast judgment on the projects one way or another, just that it is a worrying fad amongst a certain type to argue for what is, cumulatively, a massive reduction in the transport systems. If we are going to get rid of that much infrastructure it is irresponsible to not talk about replacements.
 
Whoaccio, this idea that "the traffic must go somewhere" neglects to recognize that part of the reason there's so much traffic on King is that transit along King is slow and unreliable so many with the option prefer to drive.
 
I agree that King has got to be the most logical place to put a transit mall. Doing so would most likely give a massive boost to pedestrian life on the street, and would make the King streetcar so much more reliable.
 
I'd be interested to know how a reconfiguration which improves the roads overall capacity can be considered a hindrance to mobility?

A reserved tram lane on a street as wide as King is very much possible. Other cities do it to great success.
 
A certain type of Torontonian has not only ignored the need for mobility, they fight against it. Jarvis should be shrunk. Richmond and Adelaide should be shrunk, the Gardiner should be torn down, Queen/King should be (basically) blocked off, half of University should be replaced with astroturf, Front Street Extension must be killed, Queen's Quay has to be halved, Porter eats babies (ergo, cancel the bridge), Blue22 is evil, every arterial road must carry an "LRT" row and when in doubt, bike lanes must be added. Even sewers have been targeted. Sewers! That's not to cast judgment on the projects one way or another, just that it is a worrying fad amongst a certain type to argue for what is, cumulatively, a massive reduction in the transport systems. If we are going to get rid of that much infrastructure it is irresponsible to not talk about replacements.

There is a problem with this:

The underlying assumption is that roads move people.

In fact, roads move cars.

And moving people and goods is the goal.

The object is how to move the most people and goods.

And Transit is much preferable option for the former (along with sidewalks/bike lanes for the 'last mile') ; then freight rail and short-haul truck for the latter.

This produces maximum efficiency.

That's the goal; and more lanes of traffic is not the solution.
 
I could not have said it better myself, Northern Light. I agree with every point there (including the need for freight rail!) I see a place for cars in the future, but I don't see a lot of people using them. The only thing I would elaborate on is that biking can in fact be useful for even medium-range trips, but I get your point.

Actually, biking and other forms of "active transportation" is really overlooked in the entire region as an actual method of transportation. More bike lanes would be nice, and we definitely need more bike paths, hopefully ones that won't be extravagant as Railpath is.
 
I agree that King has got to be the most logical place to put a transit mall. Doing so would most likely give a massive boost to pedestrian life on the street, and would make the King streetcar so much more reliable.

In the downtown yes, but what happens when it exits the downtown and there are no viable side streets to divert the traffic onto? As I mentioned earlier, the only other option is expropriation and demolition of 1 side of street to allow for a widening.

The downtown also has the problem that a good percentage of the parking lots for the towers have exits or entrances that use King St, and it's hard to redesign an underground parking lot once it's already set up that way, especially when it's private property.
 
Well I see several options. The first is to ban cars on the entire King route, while extending Front St and allowing the rest of the traffic to use Richmond and Adelaide. Of course, this is going to get some criticism because a) "It's all about the war on cars" and b) "Front, Richmond and Adelaide wont be enough" To that, I say that the route makes the most sense as a totally car-free zone, and that I would rather have one foot forward and meet a strong wind rather than stay back doing nothing.

The second option is to only ban cars on certain points on King St, and possibly put ROWs or "Streetcar only between the hours of ____" zones in the rest. The problem I see with this is that is that it makes the road sort of an obstacle course, and with the annoyances and confusion that will arise out of that, you might as well take cars off the street entirely.

The third is to just give it a private ROW like Spadina and Harbourfront have. This I am partial to. The ROW improves travel times a bit, but there are priority issues that need to be resolved before a real worthwhile improvement is seen. The problem I have with LRT is that a) King St. already has a higher transit ridership than car ridership which makes it an excellent place to put a transit mall, and that b) it might very well end up being a large cost with little gain, due to the costs of building the ROW.
 
Whoaccio, this idea that "the traffic must go somewhere" neglects to recognize that part of the reason there's so much traffic on King is that transit along King is slow and unreliable so many with the option prefer to drive.
Well, that's part of the reason I am advocating improving rapid transit downtown. So traffic can "go somewhere" that doesn't involve more roads. The point was that if we just keep reducing road capacity, and don't provide any corresponding increase in alternatives, we will either have to put road traffic elsewhere downtown or have the traffic just go to the suburbs, both of which are undesirable and in the long run more damaging than just putting in rapid transit.
Norhtern Light said:
There is a problem with this: The underlying assumption is that roads move people. In fact, roads move cars. And moving people and goods is the goal.
Well I clearly missed the cars that are being driven by crocodiles. This idiom is incredibly misleading as it makes false distinctions between various means of getting around based on purely normative reasoning. Roads obviously allow increased mobility for a population, just as subway tunnels offer increased mobility for people (not subway trains), airports improve mobility for people (not airplanes) and ports make the shipment of goods (not container ships) easier.
Norhtern Light said:
And moving people and goods is the goal. The object is how to move the most people and goods. And Transit is much preferable option for the former (along with sidewalks/bike lanes for the 'last mile') ; then freight rail and short-haul truck for the latter. This produces maximum efficiency.That's the goal; and more lanes of traffic is not the solution.
Once again, this is flawed thinking. More road capacity is self evidently an improvement in transport capability. So is more rapid transit, more (and better) buses, more LRT, more freightrail, more airtravel, more shipping and so forth. Making normative judgments that one is better or more appropriate than another doesn't help anything.

Second_in_pie said:
Well I see several options. The first is to ban cars on the entire King route, while extending Front St and allowing the rest of the traffic to use Richmond and Adelaide. Of course, this is going to get some criticism because a) "It's all about the war on cars" and b) "Front, Richmond and Adelaide wont be enough" To that, I say that the route makes the most sense as a totally car-free zone, and that I would rather have one foot forward and meet a strong wind rather than stay back doing nothing.

Just saying "war on cars" doesn't immunize potentially dumb ideas from being dumb. Even if we take for granted this proposal was possible, it isn't, I see no reason why ROWifying King and/or Queen like that is the best solution. Richmond and Adelaide become pseudo residential after Spadina, so they would have to be expanded between Spadina and Roncesvalles, which would piss off everyone, and as it is the neo-luddite crowd is out to make them bidirectional and remove lanes so I can't imagine why they would all of sudden cheer its' expansion. The Front Street Extension, which was deemed valuable in the 80s, has been killed again by the neo-luddites on totally spurious grounds, so I don't get how that would get done. Queen's Quay is being shrunk, which will force traffic northward, and the Gardiner's future is always precarious, which would force even more cars onto streets like King. It would be next to impossible to create any kind of new road parralel to either King or Queen.

And what would we get in return? An improvement on the status quo no doubt, and some serious public realm improvements could be had, but ultimately why not just do what everyone else does when they run of space on the surface? Dig! Given that is easier to run electric trains through a tunnel than cars, a metro system of some sort would be easier than creating new road capacity in the corridor.
 
Miller's solution to encourage transit usage: make driving in the core as hellish an experience as possible. I am with Whoaccio on this one. Miller has scarcely proposed any serious improvements to downtown transit. New streetcars and some work on Queen's Quay is about it. Yet, he's proposing to reduce road space. How is that an increase in transport capacity? Whoaccio is bang on is suggesting that Miller and his gang are neo-luddites.

I would be much more supportive of sacrificing road capacity if transit was seriously being improved in the core. But I think its back a**wards to reduce road capacity on major arteries, tear down highway links (Gardiner to DVP), etc. before transit links into and inside the core are improved.
 
I would be much more supportive of sacrificing road capacity if transit was seriously being improved in the core. But I think its back a**wards to reduce road capacity on major arteries, tear down highway links (Gardiner to DVP), etc. before transit links into and inside the core are improved.
Of course I have to agree with you there. We can't just go around destroying car capacity and just assuming people will want to take transit instead. They will probably continue driving (because Transit isn't convenient enough,) and that will just end up making rush hour even more hellish than it already is.

Unfortunately, the King Streetcar isn't nearly regional enough to be able to offset all the cars that would be taken off King St. It might provide more options for existing transit riders (and freeing up Bloor-Yonge,) but it won't really get people out of cars.
 
I don't support reducing road capacity in general, but I appreciate what they're trying to do on Queen's Quay at least. I don't like the ROWing ideas for Queen/King/Richmond/Adelaide et al.
 
Build the DRL first, THEN see how much demand there still is for ROWs along King/Queen. Like I said earlier, the "Queen Subway" is a long ways out, as it would be a response to the overcrowding on the DRL, same as how today the DRL is a response to the overcrowding at Bloor-Yonge.

In the interim however, the new higher capacity streetcars should generate some interesting results. In addition, the implementation of transit priority signaling (not sure if this is being looked at or not) could improve capacity without making any major structural changes (ie a new ROW). It's a band-aid solution, but it, coupled with the DRL and GO transit improvements, might be enough, for now at least.
 
Yet, he's proposing to reduce road space. How is that an increase in transport capacity? Whoaccio is bang on is suggesting that Miller and his gang are neo-luddites.

Which road are you talking about here? Making exclusive transit lanes on King could improve road capacity.
 

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