Johnny Au
Senior Member
The CN bypass goes through Toronto at both the city's northwestern and northeastern corners.
Richmond Hill Yonge Line 1 North Subway Extension | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx
- Thread starter 299 bloor call control.
- Start date
innsertnamehere
Superstar
so? Toronto can loose a little if it is going to gain a lot.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
You don't actually have to redraw boundaries at this point. You just need whoever is in charge to look beyond those boundaries. TTC has shown itself utterly incapable of doing so, on a consistent and long-term basis. Metrolinx is supposed to be something different and they're thinking is along the right lines. The question we're all waiting to see how is how that thinking is going to be applied in reality, if at all...
nfitz
Superstar
TTC has had no problem providing service outside it's boundaries when the local municipality has paid for it. If the local muncipality doesn't want to pay, it's not going to get service. Not sure why that's a tough concept.
Uncle Teddy
Senior Member
Steeles in Toronto is mainly established suburban residential neighbourhoods. Not so simple to intensify like older commercial streets.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
It's not a tough concept that you pay for something you get for something.
Providing fee-for-service was not my point. I didn't say the TTC doesn't provide service outside its borders but that they don't look beyond the borders or care about them or perceive them except as fences.
What I was talking about, if it wasn't clear, was the need to have an actual regional transit network, and the TTC's lack of interest in same (unless, as you point out, someone pays them to cross the border a metre or two).
The point, again if it wasn't clear, is that even if the TTC doesn't cross borders (unless, as you note, someone pays them to) PEOPLE are crossing borders all the time, every day, every way. So there's kind of a disconnect there. I'm not sure why that's a tough concept.
So, the point, who pays for what aside, is that Metrolinx (IMHO) is showing the regional thinking that we need to address our actual problems while the TTC is narrowly concenered with only what it perceives to be its own problems.
If you want to take the position that it's not TORONTO'S problem what people do or where they go once they cross Steeles (unless someone wants to pay Toronto to care) and that Andy Byford, Karen Stintz et al have bigger problems than what's going on in York and Peel, that's legitimate, if narrow. My position is that however legitimate that view may be in terms of taxes and funding, it's a generation out of date in terms of on-the-ground reality and that's why Metrolinx exists and why the study cited a few posts ago was a good move forward, while the TTC is just starting to dodder about with its own plans for the DRL, as long as Ford doesn't push through the "priority" lines on Finch and Sheppard first....if it wasn't clear.
Depends where on Steeles. There's high-rise on at least one side of the road at Bavyiew and Don Mills (planned) and there's lots of in-house commercial along Steeles itself. Either way, yes, it makes more sense to intensify on Highway 7. I just think the larger point is that it's easy to see that, but even easier if you look at a map without the arbitrary line drawn at Steeles.
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kEiThZ
Superstar
This. The jurisdictional issues are moronic. Especially when you consider that the massive capital expenses are paid for mostly by the province and the feds.
This is exactly why I believe the capital intensive infrastructure (the subways) should be taken away from the TTC and run by Metrolinx. Leave the TTC to run the buses and streetcars (and LRTs....which really are high performance streetcar services).
smallspy
Senior Member
So....where does that leave commuter rail then, which is not "capital intensive infrastructure"? How about things like busways, where the land alone can cost hundreds of millions of dollars?
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
Don't we already know the answer? GO is already run by Metrolinx, the regional transit authority. With Viva, Metrolinx also owns it but they have a contract with York Region so they do the day to day operations.
So, there you go. It should all be Metrolinx, and it already is.
xtremesniper
Active Member
This. If the local players are too incompetent to play nice with each other then a mother figure needs to step in and get them in line. Enough is enough.
Rainforest
Senior Member
The "mother figure" is an even bigger and less responsive bureaucracy. There is a great risk that it will act as such.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
Less responsive than the TTC? The guys who stalled on Presto, then tried to implement their own system, then adopted Presto and who are now rushing to get Presto implemented before Pan-Am? (I know it was council, not the TTC per se, but the Scarborough subway equivalent should go without saying. It's rather a pattern.)
But, hey, I guess that's possible. Everything's a risk but the province has all the money and all the power. That doesn't guarantee better results, no doubt, but it gives them far greater potential to affect change. Regional squabbling is an increasing issue and I'd like to see the TTC (and other local agencies) overcome that on their own but I don't see things trending that way.
TheTigerMaster
Superstar
Metrolinx is far too political. I have zero faith in them being effective under a PC government.
Rainforest
Senior Member
TTC tried to implement a credit-card based payment system, which in a sense would be more generic than Presto. Metrolinx strong-armed them into adopting Presto instead.
The general trend is that larger systems are less dependent on each individual user and therefore less responsive. TTC is hard to deal with, but I attribute that to its monopolistic position (it has so many riders and a fair number of them are captive riders so it can afford to lose a choice rider here and there) rather than any kind of content or inherent incompetence.
Therefore, I am concerned that an even bigger system (TTC plus GO plus 905 transit services) will be even harder to deal with.
TJ O'Pootertoot
Senior Member
Yes, as well they should have given the timing and circumstances. Presto has hardly been a perfect system but to implement a new system - more accurately, to start looking into a new system, would have seriously undermined what Presto and Metrolinx are trying to do. The fact that they're now trying to rush things for Pan Am speaks to that on it's own. (I also think this cuts both ways and Toronto was trying to engage in a bit of a territorial pissing match with the province and lost, mostly because they needed the then-Transit City funding...)
I don't think the TTC is incompetent. I think they've been up against the wall since Harris gutted their funding and I don't envy them that position. In the meantime, regional growth has swamped them and they've been too busy trying to maintain their own service to be worried about the 905. But the 905 has needs nonetheless and we have a disconnect when the population of the 3 regions is greater than the population of Toronto and TTC carries 85% of the region's transit riders.
It's not a problem to which I pretend to have any solution but some sort of regional coordination is obviously a big part and the TTC both opening its eyes to that, and being given the resources to confront it, strikes me as crucial.
Worse still, Hudak has indicated he'd disband them so, yeah, I guess I agree they wouldn't be very effective.
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