Transit City Plan

[M II A II R II K]

Maybe this isn't necessarily a bad thing, now that all that money won't be spent on this not to rapid transit expansion, may shift to more worthy projects like a DRL or something.

 

[Fresh Start]

How would BRT help Eglinton??????

I did say "plus modest subway extensions" which I probably should've worded expansions. Eglinton Avenue from Highway 27 to Wynford Heights has the density to support a subway today, so I'd more than recommend a subway for it. From Hwy 27/Dixon it's just another couple kilometres over to PIA so best to provide rapid service through to there as well. Eglinton East however from Wynford Hts to Kingston Rd could make due in the mean time with Bus Rapid Transit along dedicated traffic-free lanes. Density is lighter through this area and a subway here would directly compete with an inclining B-D subway for riders.

But this is precisely my point, instead of aiming for a full crosstown LRT line in one shot that no one can afford, build a shorter subway line and serve the outlying areas with BRT which often can exceed the average speeds of tram cars.

 

[Fresh Start]

Good lord....

Transit is dead in Toronto, and you think it was because of LRT. First it's Miller's fault, now LRT. You just can't stop making crap up, it's amazing.

Riiiiight, like I'm the one who's making crap up and slandering people.

Maybe the review process will include the issues around spending billions of dollars of the money from the entire province to facilitate snail's-pace streetcars that do nothing to make it easy to get from one side of the city to the other; but satisfy the vanity of only a handful of people. We don't need the streetcars along Eglinton. As anyone who lived through the St. Clair construction, or the recent bridge repairs at Eglinton and Chaplin Cres. will know, the building process will tie up traffic along these busy routes all day, every day for years, more than doubling travel times for Torontonians through the affected areas. Just this construction alone will cost the city more in lost productiveness (Toronto annually loses $3.2 Billion due to workers stuck in traffic) than the streetcars will ever recoup. The streetcar plans also call for the removal a lot of stops along the routes, forcing the elderly to at times walk several blocks uphill to get to their stops.

If you were McGuinty, would you be investing billions into a system which the majority of the public does not like, a system that has major deficiencies in maintaining what they have, a system that went overbudget by almost 3x on the St. Clair streetcar system, on a system where management is so misaligned to what the public actually needs? Is there ANYONE out there who would invest in Toronto, considering Toronto's propensity to elect complete ineptitude? "We're broke! We're not! We just found $250 million...wait..we're broke again...no..we just found $100 million more!" To me, this is a no brainer and McGuinty is doing the right thing. He is leaving an opportunity for federal money to be left on the table, afterall. Why pour billions of our money into something which presently is so fundamentally broken? Fix the system first, and then invest the money wisely.

Toronto politicians have to get real. Miller likes streetcars because of the horrendous amount of money required to build and maintain them to keep his union buddies gainfully employed. But building a mass transit system isn't a one up competition. We can brag about having 120 kms of pretty lines on a map that'll never get past the proposal stage or we can introduce moderate but practical rapid transit solutions to this city. Subways need only be built along high density corridors, everywhere else can rely on the bus network.

 

[GraphicMatt]

- The Eglinton LRT was set to have operating speeds comparable to our subway system
- Building right of ways for buses will also slow down traffic, especially if they use the opportunity to do other necessarily utility work which they will
- Frequently placed stops slow down operating speed regardless of whether you're talking about a bus or a train
- The St Clair streetcar went overbudget and fell behind schedule(but it was a low budget project to begin with so we're not talking eHealth level waste here or anything) due to a combination of deciding to do a whole bunch of other utility work at the same time, court challenges from NIMBY residents and, yes, bad management
- The Provincial Liberals also announced first that they would have a larger budget deficit than they actually ended up with. This is fairly common.
- What federal money is being left on the table?
- Miller certainly is no fan of unions at the moment and they're no fan of his. He likes LRT because it's affordable and presented an opportunity for a network of transit in North Toronto, as opposed to a singular extension of the subway system.
- This decision had nothing to do with technology choice. BRT would face similar challenges. More on the operating side, likely, as the province is very unlikely to reassume their portion of the TTC's operating budget. Transit City was cut because it was an expensive capital project in a region that traditionally supports the party. It was a safe cut that they're betting won't have a significant impact on the 2011 election.

 

[kettal]

Don't bother reading Dentrobate's posts. If you've read one, you've read them all.

 

[Fresh Start]

Apologetics and more slander, is this what "healthy" debating on this forum has come to?

 

[urbanboom]

Don't bother reading Dentrobate's posts. If you've read one, you've read them all.

He's kinda funny in a way.
Each of his soliloquies have funny tidbits like "Forcing the elderly to hike uphill" I lol'd, not gonna lie. Kinda like Toronto's transit equivalent to US "death panels". Or things like "satisfy the vanity"... that's a good one too. I should compile a list.

 

[GenerationW]

- Miller certainly is no fan of unions at the moment and they're no fan of his.

A) I don't believe that for a minute, and B) it doesn't matter anyway since he's halfway out the door.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Plans are in the work for Transit City for the city of Los Angeles. Wait a minute, LOS ANGELES? TRANSIT CITY?

Yep, you read that right. TRANSPORTPOLITIC has an article on just that. Here's the article:

Forget that old cliché about Los Angeles. It’s not the old highway-obsessed metropolis it used to be. In fact, as L.A. matures, it’s densifying, shedding its abhorrence towards public transportation.

The region already has one of the most ambitious transit expansion plans in the country; a new light rail line to East L.A. opened last year, the Expo light rail line from downtown to Culver City is under construction, and dozens of other routes are in planning throughout Los Angeles County. The passage in November 2008 of Measure R, an additional half-cent sales tax for transit, means that these projects aren’t just conjectural.

But L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has always been a strong proponent of new rail and bus lines, isn’t satisfied by the thirty-year timetable that will be required to complete the projects lined up for $13.7 billion in local funding. (Measure R would also fund $27 billion in transit operations, maintenance, and roads projects.) Current financial assumptions indicate that the Mayor’s highest priority–an extension of the Westside subway (Purple Line) to Westwood–wouldn’t be complete until 2032. A fixed guideway link along I-405 between the San Fernando Valley and UCLA would have to wait until 2038.

For Mr. Villaraigosa, this situation isn’t feasible: he wants his subway as soon as possible, rather than force his city’s inhabitants to spend decades more in congestion. But over ten years, Measure R is only expected to bring in about $3 billion for transit capital projects–enough to build the first phase of the subway, but nothing else. Because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority represents L.A. County’s ten million inhabitants, not just the city’s four million, prioritizing a line that would provide service to a tiny percentage of the region’s overall geographic area would not be politically feasible.

In October last year, the mayor suggested an alternative: ask the federal government to loan Metro billions of dollars to complete the majority of the county’s transit projects, in the city and out, in ten years, rather then thirty. The transit authority would then pay Washington back for twenty more years as revenues from Measure R trickled in.

The 30/10 proposal would allow Metro to construct the full Westside extension, but also two easterly extensions of the Gold Line, two new branches for the Green Line, several busways in San Fernando Valley, a link along I-405, and new light rail lines downtown, along Crenshaw Boulevard, to Santa Monica, and via the West Santa Ana branch corridor. The West Santa Ana branch corridor would be served by commuter rail. All by 2020.

It was a brilliant solution to an intractable political problem by ensuring the extension of transit in corridors everywhere in the county within a tight time frame. The fight over which lines to prioritize would simply not have to happen.

This “big bang” strategy would not only dramatically improve the city’s public transportation system by opening rapid transit lines to areas of the county previously ignored, but also act as a stimulus for hundreds of thousands of construction workers currently out of work. But who in Washington would be ready to make such a deal? How serious was the mayor anyhow?

Considering the Mayor’s schedule over the past several weeks, it appears he’s dead-set on the proposal. Last week, he went to Washington to garner the support of several members of Congress, and got it, including from influential Oregon Democratic Representative Peter DeFazio, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit. California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, who is currently running for reelection, announced that she would support the effort. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood signaled that he was open to the opportunity in a meeting in Los Angeles last month.

If the city is able to move forward on the 30/10 project, it will set quite an intriguing precedent for the dozens of other cities across the country currently considering major transit expansion proposals. The multi-billion-dollar bridge loan Mr. Villaraigosa hopes to have handed over to Metro would be a unique solution to a problem caused by limited short-term revenues. And it implies that Washington should get into the game of agreeing to act as an investment bank for municipalities that can guarantee a source of income over the long term.

If anything, L.A.’s proposal is the best example yet of a project that could really take advantage of a national infrastructure bank, which could provide low-interest loans to governmental agencies to pursue major projects of future importance. The bank would be able to rely on Measure R as an assurance that it will eventually get its money back, and L.A. will be able to benefit from a quick advancement of its rail and bus systems, creating a veritable rapid transit network that in the United States would rival only New York’s in route length.

But the national infrastructure bank does not yet exist. Nor does the Federal Transit Administration have the funds or mandate to pursue a similar policy. So, unless Congress acts on its own, Los Angeles’ transit plans will continue to be relegated to a thirty-year timetable.

Today, with one senator blocking funding for the Department of Transportation and 2,000 workers currently furloughed, it seems unlikely that politicians in Washington will be able to get their together well enough to fund transit at standard levels, let alone sponsor a national infrastructure bank.

That’s a disappointment, since the twelve projects Mayor Villaraigosa has selected for investment would each contribute to the creation of a strong transit system in America’s second city, something that’s been sorely lacking for decades.

Update, 21 March: The Source revealed last week the Mayor’s plan for the 30/10 project, demonstrating the planned expenditures as well as expected completion dates for each of the projects, as shown in the updated map above. Here are the basics:

* Current long-range transportation plan assumes $18.3 billion in transit expenditures over 30 years. 65% of funds would come from Measure R, with 23% from New Starts and 12% from other sources.
* The 30/10 Initiative would allow total expenditures to be reduced to $14.7 billion because of avoided inflation, since projects would be completed in ten years, twenty years ahead of schedule. More cost savings could also be possible because of a cheaper construction market.
o Of that $14.7 billion, $5.8 billion is expected to be available from existing sources, with around $8.8 billion still necessary, which could be provided through a loan from the federal government.
o Measure R would then pay back its $8.8 billion in debts for projects completed between 2010 and 2020 with $10.4 billion in tax revenue received between 2020 and 2040.

And Ontario just cut $4 billion from Toronto's version of Transit City.

Human Transit also has an opinion on the article, click on this link.

 

[Justin10000]

Don't bother reading Dentrobate's posts. If you've read one, you've read them all.

Fresh Start is Dentrobate?? Are you serious?

 

[ssiguy2]

All together now...................

Ding dong TC is dead sing it high sing it low ding dong the stupid little TC is dead. Come on Torontonians get out of bed, dig below or elevate instead, ding dong TC is dead. Din dong TC is dead.........which TC?.............Miller's TC, yes ding dong the little TC is dead.
Yes.................let the joyous news be spread, the tonkya- toy TC atlast is dead.

 

[Dan416]

All together now...................

Ding dong TC is dead sing it high sing it low ding dong the stupid little TC is dead. Come on Torontonians get out of bed, dig below or elevate instead, ding dong TC is dead. Din dong TC is dead.........which TC?.............Miller's TC, yes ding dong the little TC is dead.
Yes.................let the joyous news be spread, the tonkya- toy TC atlast is dead.

It's not like they're cutting funding to TC because they realized TC was ill-conceived. They cut it due to the budget. Without money for TC, where are we gonna get money for subways? That said, I'd still take the equivalent $$$ amount of subways than LRTs.

 

[taal]

TTC hippos?

Say it aint so:

http://stevemunro.ca/?p=3553

 

[Justin10000]

SOS -> Save our Swanboats. HAHHA!

 

[Justin10000]

All together now...................

Ding dong TC is dead sing it high sing it low ding dong the stupid little TC is dead. Come on Torontonians get out of bed, dig below or elevate instead, ding dong TC is dead. Din dong TC is dead.........which TC?.............Miller's TC, yes ding dong the little TC is dead.
Yes.................let the joyous news be spread, the tonkya- toy TC atlast is dead.

Miust be some damn good weed, out there in BC!

Of course, you seem to be too stoned to realize, no money for Transit City definitely means no money for subways. Monorails? Not even on the table. Just look at the cost of the Las Vegas Debacle, and the crappy Newark Skytrain(rode it, bumpy, and tiny).

(Waiting for cookie cutter rant on Monorails, and speed)

I could just copy and paste one of your posts from Skyscrapercity. They're all the same anyways.