Toronto Ontario Line 3 | ?m | ?s

ARG1 said:
On a side note, David Miller should probably be banned from talking about Transit:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1659940089504333824
Click to expand...

Miller is out for lunch. I would understand if we was just against the diversion to the Exhibition, or wanted to postpone the segment west of Yonge. But he seems to be against the OL stations under Line 1 altogether, and that's just nuts.

The OL or any other form of DRL needs to go across downtown for connectivity and service. The TTC's previous version of DRL, being better than Doug Ford's version in some ways, had stations under both branches of Line 1, and connections at both those stations.
 
ARG1 said:
On a side note, David Miller should probably be banned from talking about Transit:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1659940089504333824
Click to expand...
If he bothered to do literally any research before tweeting, he'd know that part of the reason the OL tunnel is so deep is so MX can avoid having to underpin the stations on Queen the way they did with the two Line 1 interchange stations on Eglinton. Just conveniently ignoring that the OL plan does account for lessons learned from Eglinton because it doesn't fit his narrative.

Rainforest said:
Miller is out for lunch. I would understand if we was just against the diversion to the Exhibition, or wanted to postpone the segment west of Yonge. But he seems to be against the OL stations under Line 1 altogether, and that's just nuts.

The OL or any other form of DRL needs to go across downtown for connectivity and service. The TTC's previous version of DRL, being better than Doug Ford's version in some ways, had stations under both branches of Line 1, and connections at both those stations.
Click to expand...
I mean, technically Queen station on the DRL wasn't actually under the Line 1 Queen station due to a stupid obsession with having a station entrance at City Hall at the expense of making the transfer there absolutely terrible, but otherwise, yeah I'm not sure how Miller thinks a downtown subway that doesn't connect to existing stations makes any sense.
 
Rainforest said:
Miller is out for lunch. I would understand if we was just against the diversion to the Exhibition, or wanted to postpone the segment west of Yonge. But he seems to be against the OL stations under Line 1 altogether, and that's just nuts.

The OL or any other form of DRL needs to go across downtown for connectivity and service. The TTC's previous version of DRL, being better than Doug Ford's version in some ways, had stations under both branches of Line 1, and connections at both those stations.
Click to expand...

Miller, like Jack Layton is part of the old hat city council Liberals who despise intensification downtown.

Network 2011 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Jack Layton emerged as the leader of the councillors opposed to the DRL, concerned it would lead to further intensification downtown. Layton and his allies were strong followers of Jane Jacobs, and believed in preserving downtown neighbourhoods as they were and redirecting office developments to the suburbs. The new developments in the suburbs would allow true urban communities to develop there, and create a multi-directional traffic that would make far better use of existing downtown infrastructure.
Click to expand...

Its why Miller's Transit City had no DRL or downtown rapid transit expansion on it.
 
I wonder when a study will be done on the east-west traffic around the Queen street closure. As someone who lives and works in the area, it doesn't seem to have changed much.
 
Voltz said:
The DRL was a separate plan, Transit City was not some exclusive all encompassing transit expansion plan.
Click to expand...
Except it WAS; the staff position was that it was out of scope, but any political comment from the people behind it was NOT that a DRL was separate and upcoming, but that light rail was the modern form of rapid transit, that subways were impractical, downtown had them already and no one should be wasting the effort on them.

To the point that the DRL study that went forward, and only did so under Ford, came out of a series of hairbrained schemes for getting largely surface light rail, or Don Valley busways downtown.
 
robmausser said:
Miller, like Jack Layton is part of the old hat city council Liberals who despise intensification downtown.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's true .. at least, the idea to spread intensification across multiple urban centres instead of pulling everything downtown, looked reasonable at the time. Proven wrong later as the downtown grew anyway, but the concept wasn't crazy from the strart.

While today - what is he suggesting? Build DRL / OL up to Yonge from the east, but do not build any stations under Line 1? Means, DRL to run at the same depth as Line 1, connect to Yonge&Queen, but get forever prevented from extending west of Yonge? What kind of planning is that.

Or maybe I can't understand what Miller really wants, but then he did a very good job of not making himself clear.
 
I know that Miller knows a lot about transit, but he doesn't really seem to care that much about people actually living and moving around downtown. Which is not the only thing people want to do, but is a pretty major part of it!
 
In fairness to Miller, he definitely lived centralish when he was mayor.

My best guess of his genuine desire at this point would be a reversion to the TTC subway plan, including the City Hall station, if not an outright abandonment of a new central subway altogether. On that note about not seeming to care, I 'd categorize the whole range of anti-intensification sentiment as being a line of thought that puts urbanism, in a very urban design sense of the word, ahead of transportation and views demand for fast transit as not altogether unrelated to the desires that get us highways.

As far as the multi centric stuff goes, I really don't think it was ever proven wrong, let alone crazy... The problem wasn't the concept but the premise of the additional development nodes being the sole destination for new development. The idea that we could somehow contain pressure in the traditional core while having strong growth essentially everywhere else never madea whole lot of sense, even if you were to think it somehow desirable.
 
Bureaucromancer said:
As far as the multi centric stuff goes, I really don't think it was ever proven wrong, let alone crazy... The problem wasn't the concept but the premise of the additional development nodes being the sole destination for new development. The idea that we could somehow contain pressure in the traditional core while having strong growth essentially everywhere else never madea whole lot of sense, even if you were to think it somehow desirable.
Click to expand...
The big problem with the idea of a polycentric Toronto is and always has been GO Transit. As the GTA was going through its phase of massive suburban sprawl in the 90s, and developments started appearing further in the 905, without a strong highway network, people resorted to GO Transit to reach their jobs, and GO responded in kind by opening many infill stations as well as expanding parking capacity in the suburbs. This put Union Station in an interesting spot as it became the premier destination for companies to set up offices (where you can catch all suburbanites), and by extension, that's where residential was favoured due to the proximity of jobs. Its not to say that Decentralization is impossible or a fool's errand, cities like Vancouver show how a decentralized city could look like and how it could be beneficial from a city planning perspective, but I think the reality of the situation is that Centralization was ultimately unavoidable in Toronto, at least not without a complete revamp of how the region was developped during the 90s, something most local politicians in Toronto would never have had any control over.

In fact, we can look at what was built (North York Centre) as an example of the faults of Decentralization. North York Centre is only connected to the rest of the rapid transit network via subway to downtown, and by local bus services to Thornhill and Richmond Hill. If we imagine a world where more emphasis was put on its development, we could imagine maybe 2WADGO on the Richmond Hill Line, as well as the fully complete Sheppard Line from Sheppard West to MCC. Still at best, we have a job centre that only attracts residents from Scarborough, North York, Southern York Region, some downtown folk, and maybe some 401 commuters. Compare that to Downtown where as an employer you could catch workers commuting from virtually anywhere within the GTHA, and you can guess which part of the city would be more appealing to invest in.
 
ARG1 said:
In fact, we can look at what was built (North York Centre) as an example of the faults of Decentralization. North York Centre is only connected to the rest of the rapid transit network via subway to downtown, and by local bus services to Thornhill and Richmond Hill. If we imagine a world where more emphasis was put on its development, we could imagine maybe 2WADGO on the Richmond Hill Line, as well as the fully complete Sheppard Line from Sheppard West to MCC. Still at best, we have a job centre that only attracts residents from Scarborough, North York, Southern York Region, some downtown folk, and maybe some 401 commuters. Compare that to Downtown where as an employer you could catch workers commuting from virtually anywhere within the GTHA, and you can guess which part of the city would be more appealing to invest in.
Click to expand...

All true, but might be fixed by the extended Sheppard line. Or more likely, by a new E-W crosstown line that incorporates the existing Sheppard subway, but not necessarily aligned with Sheppard all the way. Say, if it connects to the majority of GO Train routes: LSE, Stouffville, RH, Barrie, future Bolton, and Georgetown - that will create a viable transit option for workers who live near one of those GO lines and work in North York.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top