Civdis
Active Member
Sorry if this has been posted but I can't seem to find any info. Is there any info on the station designs for the Terminal 1 and Union station locations of the ARL?
I was just watching the news and they had John Tory speaking about this new campaign (http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/tra...how-would-you-spend-an-extra-32-minutes-a-day) to get the public aware/supporting the $50 billion of capital needed for the Big Move...be noted only 20% ($10bil) of that capital had been committed.Yes, politics is a huge influence. You kinda need to find the logic through the distortion that politics creates.
Getting re-elected is the first job of a politician.
After visiting 26 major cities in Europe, only 3 cities had express point to point airport rail services at premium price, while the remaining had bus, metro, regional rail, intercity and tram/rail service the airport also at regular transit fare. Those 3 cities with express service had the other type of service also.
I have to say, I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I thought about how this project represents a bit over 10% of the money committed (a bit over 2% of the $50 billion) and despite the capital spent there are no plans for it to impact anyone's commute!
London, Vienna, and ?
Amsterdam maybe?
I'm not sure how the funding works, but is some of the money going to ARL going to improve the commute on the Georgetown Line? Particularly, is the West Toronto Diamond separation part of ARL funding or a separate GO project entirely?
London, Vienna, and ?
As drum118 stated Toronto, as ussual, is doing things ass backwards.
Almost every city on the planet that build express trains to their airports do so AFTER they provide Metro service. In other words they make sure that the average person and those thousands who work at the airport are provided mass/rapid transit first and after that they worry about the business class. The taxpayers are paying for this line but none of them will be able to afford to take it. This is made even worse by the fact that they won't even get a discount if they already have paid their transit fare to get to Union or Bloor. I won't include Weston which shouldn't even have a stop as who the hell is going to pay $25 bucks to get from Weston to Pearson when they could take a cab far cheaper than that? Also this is a line for only those that can use it as a tax write-off................what kind of business person or well healed traveller will get off at Weston for god's sake?
Not only is this line an affront to the taxpayers of Ontario but is going to actually cost the city of Toronto money. Anyone who is willing to part with atleast $25 per person to get downtown is not taking transit to begin with. All this line is doing is transferring people who would take a taxi to get there. Toronto gets tax revenue from cabs but transit is tax free. This line is simply going to cost cabbies a good chunk of their income and Toronto much needed tax revenue. This thing is going to bleed red ink.
Ontarians are paying through the nose for a smelly, polluting, business class route that does absolutely nothing for 99% of Torontonians, and will cost the city money on a line nobody wants.
A cab ride to the airport costs a flat $50 fee no matter of the origin. So, it will cost that much regardless if you take taxi from Union or Weston Rd. Also, this line should be much faster than fighting the traffic on 427/QEW during most of the time. I can see that there would be enough people more than willing to use this line. There are enough people who live, work or visit downtown these days.
I agree with you that we should be building a "commuter" access to the airport first (through a combination of Eglinton LRT / Finch LRT and DRL extensions to provide access to uptown, midtown and downtown). However, we should not dismiss Airlink as a totally useless endeavour.