This is one of the biggest issues with suburbia I find. People move somewhere without thinking about non-auto transportation. A car per spouse, and the kids are easily driven around...all is fine. But once the kids turn into teens, and parents are sick of chauffeuring these dependent teens around (just as the teens are sick of being chauffeured), then the question is: do we buy them a car (+ insurance, +maintenance, + fuel, etc); or demand better transit from our governments? Considering the costs of vehicle ownership, the latter seems to be the case more often than not.
So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg. Do we blame the gov’t for allowing auto-centric neighbourhoods where transit (or even sidewalks for that matter) is either nonexistent, or a low-quality and costly ad hoc afterthought? Or do we blame the public for choosing to live in an auto-centric neighbourhood, and not having the foresight to know that walking / cycling / transit could’ve been very useful to them in the future.
That's precisely the problem, especially since many people thought there was nothing wrong with building that way, for decades. That's why I don't get Nfitz's "you can't complain" attitude.
Of course you can - because we want better. Someone who works downtown might try to buy a house in Leaside and find the costs are so high they have to up to Richmond Hill. Now we have to punish that person by saying "Look, transit sucked in RH when you bought it so don't expect us to add all-day 2-way GO because you're unhappy"?
You'll note, Nfitz, I put in "at face value," recognizing that housing costs are not necessarily what they seem in the suburbs but that's still how people think; and it's part of much larger problems regarding planning and governance. We've talked plenty on this thread and others, for example, about how the current transit set-up dissuades people who live near Steeles (myself included) from taking convenient YRT service because of the double fare. That's a simple but obvious example of doing something that runs counter to what you're trying to do on a bigger scale.
In the last muni election there was a guy running who was opposed to new BRT lanes and he basically said it was because, "Hey, everyone around here drives cars so let's not fool ourselves that some fancy bus is going to change that." That's about the dumbest, least-helpful argument I can think of. If you believe in making things better, you try to make things better, you don't throw up your hands and say, "too bad!"
York Region Transit, and many other suburban systems, have challenges trying to create a transit culture that goes beyond sheer necessity. I don't see anything to gain in suggesting this is a game that was lost long ago. It's still going on.
