Super 80 Posted June 29, 2017 Share Posted June 29, 2017 The elevator to the gallows continues to perform admirably by Ontario accounting standards. https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2017/06/28/upx-costs-province-11-per-ride.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zan Vetter Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 They messed up the roll out, but the new fare seems to have made it very popular. From the weeds, I'd say it will be a long-term success even if it hasn't been in the first two years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FA@AC Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 Our Premier and our mayor think that spending $3.5 billion on a one stop subway extension in Scarborough is prudent. The mayor's promised-by-2022 22 station "Smart Track" plan is going nowhere. The premier is now yapping about a bullet train like service between Toronto and London, Ont. As if. What a joke! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super 80 Posted June 30, 2017 Author Share Posted June 30, 2017 Don't worry, I am pretty sure the Calgary Green Line LRT, which features a multi-billion dollar tunnel under downtown all the way to a gravel lot on 16th Ave, which will be the northern terminus for decades to come and will utilize rail cars that are 100% incompatible with the existing fleet will make all Ontario's urban and transit planning disasters seem prudent by comparison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zan Vetter Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 Hey I'm banking on that HSR plan! 23 mins from my city to YYZ. Yeah I'll believe it when I'm leaving the station... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specs Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 12 hours ago, FA@AC said: Our Premier and our mayor think that spending $3.5 billion on a one stop subway extension in Scarborough is prudent. The mayor's promised-by-2022 22 station "Smart Track" plan is going nowhere. The premier is now yapping about a bullet train like service between Toronto and London, Ont. As if. What a joke! The are 80+ subway stations in Toronto. With more than 1/4 of the city's population Scarborough has 3. If you were paying taxes in Scarborough wouldn't you think that's a bit unreasonable when they've just built a subway to Vaughan and are planning one for Richmond Hill? What do you thing the socio-economic implications are for the residents of Scarborough with such miserable service? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seeker Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 1 hour ago, Specs said: What do you thing the socio-economic implications are for the residents of Scarborough with such miserable service? It all averages out. Scarborough is cheaper because it has crappy public transit connections to downtown Toronto. Improve the transit and property values go up, property taxes go up, house insurance goes up - is anyone ahead? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specs Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 9 minutes ago, seeker said: It all averages out. Scarborough is cheaper because it has crappy public transit connections to downtown Toronto. Improve the transit and property values go up, property taxes go up, house insurance goes up - is anyone ahead? No, it doesn't. We're not talking a minor imbalance here. There is essentially zero practical rapid transit into downtown for many. It's a 90 minute commute to downtown for many in Scarborough, 3 hrs daily. Kids from here pass on University because of it. Some of us send our kids out of town because of it. People can't compete for jobs downtown because of it. Those that do have to incur additional costs for childcare. The size of the priority neighborhoods in that part of the city have been growing continuously since the cities were amalgamated into one. When Scarborough was initially amalgamated into the city it had zero debt on the books for goodness sakes. Now, as part of the city, the residents there have to share in the city of Toronto's debt despite not having seen much of that money back in the form of investment since the city amalgamated. We're paying more taxes, have had literally less than zero investment and property values in relative terms have decreased. This is not a balancing out. In the decades to come, urban planning schools will use Scarborough as a case study in how not to run municipal government. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zan Vetter Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 yeah, Scarborough. Quit whinin think of the taxes you're saving and the home equity you're not building. Which you would probably waste anyway! Can't say I agreed my dude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FA@AC Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 1 hour ago, Specs said: What do you thing the socio-economic implications are for the residents of Scarborough with such miserable service? How much difference will a 1-stop extension of the existing subway service make? Almost every study done has concluded that Scarborough would be better served by the multi-stop LRT line of which the province had offered to pay the full cost. Do you really expect that the 1-stop subway will ever be built anyway when the cost keeps ballooning? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specs Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 2 hours ago, FA@AC said: How much difference will a 1-stop extension of the existing subway service make? Almost every study done has concluded that Scarborough would be better served by the multi-stop LRT line of which the province had offered to pay the full cost. Do you really expect that the 1-stop subway will ever be built anyway when the cost keeps ballooning? The SRT was built prior to amalgamation with the purpose of forming form a closed loop between the subway, The Scarborough Town Centre (STC) and North York Town Centre. Those 2 town centres were booming at the time. Once the city was amalgamated though all of the municipal affairs and local government offices were closed up and moved downtown which effectively made the SRT an orphan with no purpose to serve. The SRT has since been in operation for 25 yrs shuttling back and forth to the STC and has proved nearly useless for commuting purpose for all in Scarborough who don't live or work at the STC. How are new cars on the same track and an extension that goes further out into Scarborough with even longer commuting times going to improve life for residents in Scarborough? The subway extension, in conjuction with the Smart Track stop at Lawrence East will actually improve transit times for existing riders that used to use those SRT stations and they they will also appeal to users who in the past chose to drive into downtown and to people who couldn't make the commute work because of the commuting times. From Lawrence Smart Track Station to downtown will be a 25 minute ride. By LRT and subway it typically takes 50-60 minutes today. More than that though, the subway extension will provide easier access to the Town Centre from downtown and will eventually connect to Sheppard. The city planning dept has already started working on redevelopment of the area to facilitate growth. That was never going to happen to happen with the LRT. I've read every study published on the LRT. Believe me, not a single has any credibility in determining which solution is best, the LRT or Subway, for the residents of Scarborough. It all started with Miller pushing the LRT solution. It was cheap and allowed him to add other new LRT systems across the city, in places that already signifcantly better transit service. A subway wasn't really considered in his proposals as ridership numbers were based on people living or working within 400 metres of the LRT. That kind of excludes the transit concerns of the the other 635 000 people in Scarborough who use busses to connect to the subway 10 kms away. His reports also pushed the development opportunities as a way to offset costs. That was astonishing. New cars on the same track was going to promote new development on a service that had already een inoperation for 25 years? I owned a business on Midland avenue for 10 yrs. Believe me, the SRT did not drive any new development in that time and here's Miller saying saying newer vehicles on the same track will? Metrolinx then took Miller's 2010 report and literally plagiarized it to publish it as their own. I can cite you word for word for pages and pages. They would of course as they had the same goals as Miller - go cheap in Scarborough to allow for additional new service elsewhere. We can do a fact based report on the subway but you need to consider that thereafter, the same approach will have to apply to every other proposal that comes along. Politicians don;t want to go down that road. The DRL would never get built for one because it isn't generating any new ridership. So yeah, the subway will get built. It's become too political now. Scarborough residents are consistently voting as a block and they will favour the politician that supports it. It will be hard for any other mayoralty, MP or MPP candidate to defeat that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FA@AC Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 39 minutes ago, Specs said: So yeah, the subway will get built. It's become too political now. Scarborough residents are consistently voting as a block and they will favour the politician that supports it. It will be hard for any other mayoralty, MP or MPP candidate to defeat that. Having a handfull of MPs and MPPs who represent Scarborough ridings support the subway extension hardly makes it a given that the thing will be built. The cost keeps rising. Rob Ford had an entire term to tell us how he was going to pay for his subway expansion, but he could never come up with an explanation. Meanwhile, he cancelled plans to build the LRT--it would be opening soon had he not put the kibosh on it--that the province was willing to fund, and nothing has been built. I'm not so sure that Scarberians are unanimous in support of the subway either. Some journeys will be faster with it, and some will be slower once the SRT line is shuttered and not replaced. The Eglinton crosstown line might pick up some of the slack once it's running. Is the Smart Track stop at Lawrence East a sure thing? Tory promised 22 stations by 2022, and the project seems to be going nowhere. There have been rumblings of there perhaps having been something hooky going on over the Lawrence East stop, too. I vaguely remember reading something about it recently. I think it was suggested that Metrolynx, perhaps as a result of some sort of gerrymandering, had disregarded a study suggesting that that particular stop was not a good idea. We can probably agree that successive governments at both the municipal and provincial levels have made a mess of transit here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEFCON Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 Life in the Toronto catch basin ... ain't it grand. It'll be an even better place to exist ten years and another million bodies, or so from now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fido Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 4 hours ago, Specs said: People can't compete for jobs downtown because of it and someone in Edmonton cannot compete for a job in Calgary because there is no $5 high speed rail connecting the two cities here either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specs Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 6 hours ago, Fido said: and someone in Edmonton cannot compete for a job in Calgary because there is no $5 high speed rail connecting the two cities here either. But the guy in Edmonton is not paying for the Calgary guys transit system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fido Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 Provincial and Federal money pays for most of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homerun Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 7 hours ago, Fido said: Provincial and Federal money pays for most of it. You mean increased Provincial and Federal debt pays for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 32 minutes ago, Homerun said: You mean increased Provincial and Federal debt pays for it. Which means we all pay for it, some Canadian Tax Payers more than others...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.