Visions for the GTTA

posted by Andrae Griffith @ 12:40 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

MetroTHINK

A few weeks ago I began to feel that this blog needed a refresh. I originally started writing here in 2006, just after the Ontario government created the agency now known as Metrolinx. I had high hopes for the agency to improve public transit across the GTA, improve coordination between municipalities, and end cycles of ad-hoc planning.

While the debate over the future of transportation expansion within the 416 seems to suggest that Metrolinx's ability to end cycles of ad-hoc planning is limited by the willingness of successive councils to build upon the plans of their predecessors, I do believe that the agency has been successful. After many years, the Ontario government used the agency as a vehicle to plan and fund transit expansion projects. The agency encouraged us to think outside of our municipal boundaries and deal with transportation problems that extend beyond the jurisdiction of a single transportation provider. Finally, the agency developed a long term transportation vision that dealt with the big picture - not just transit planning for a single corridor.

Whatever comes of the debate occurring in the 416, I believe Metrolinx will play a key role in continuing to integrate transit systems - even if they wish to deal with their own internal issues by themselves. The TTC will continue to expand regardless of the debate, as will Brampton Transit, Durham Region Transit and the rest of the transit providers. However, Metrolinx will be key in making sure someone who lives in Brampton can connect to Toronto without having to travel through Markham first.

While this blog was originally a vision for what Metrolinx could be, it was never meant to be exclusively about Metrolinx and transportation. Throughout the years I've discussed land-use planning, urban design, architecture, heritage conservation, politics and plenty of other urban issues that I feel make cities and towns unique and exciting places. I'd like to continue to talk more about those issues, but I have recently felt that the name I selected too strongly branded me as a one-dimensional Toronto-based transit blogger. This is why I've chosen to give this space a refresh.

Visions for the GTTA is now MetroTHINK. It's a "subtle" reminder of where I came from, but I feel it gives me the freedom to explore many different topics on the places and spaces we all call home - wherever that may be. MetroTHINK is all things urban and regional.

Right now I've used some wonderful Wordpress plugins to migrate all the posts over to the new blog www.tinyurl.com/metrothink, and some more wonderful plugins to redirect all the Blogger traffic to the new site. The Visions for the GTTA website is still online, since it's literally a vision for the GTTA that I hope may one day be realized. I will eventually find a way to redirect the RSS feeds, but in the mean time please update them accordingly.

2010 may have been a year of global economic slowdown, but hopefully 2011 will see the sun shine brightly on the glass skyscrapers, lively parks and stately brownstones in cities all over the world.

The CN Tower's reflection in Waterpark Place

Labels: admin, last one out please turn off the lights

posted by Andrae Griffith @ 11:01 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Thoughts on phasing

My most recent post, "Thoughts on Priorities", tries to argue that there is no reason why a small, lower-priority project cannot be implemented before a priority project as long as:

• The small project doesn't affect the speed of the design and implementation phases of the priority project.
• The small project doesn't prevent the priority project from being funded.
• The small project doesn't build something that precludes the priority project from being built.

This post aims to look at the issues from a different angle - is it better to implement a complex project in phases, or to wait until the full build can be completed in one operation?
Read more »

Labels: GTTA plan

posted by Andrae Griffith @ 12:48 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

Semantics are fun!

A friend of mine who supports Transit City sent an email to Karen Stintz, and got a response from which I will now quote:

"As you may know, Transit City was not fully funded by the Province of Ontario or the Federal Government. The transit plan that has been funded is the Metrolinx Plan and that plan includes transit investment on Sheppard, Eglinton, the Scarborough RT and Finch. Stopping Transit City does not jeopardize the Metrolinx Plan."

While I do have the utmost respect for Karen Stintz, and have considered living in her ward, it must be said that the above quote is either factually mistaken or inadvertently misleading. The Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan identifies numerous policies for improving transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and building physical infrastructure is a part of the RTP. Transit City is the marketing name for a subset of projects within the RTP, and those projects include the half tunnel, half surface Eglinton-Crosstown LRT; the fully grade-separated Scarborough RT upgrade; and surface LRT lines on Finch, Jane, Sheppard, Don Mills and Eglinton/Kingston/Morningside. The first phase of some of these projects have been funded, but others are unfunded at this time.

Transit City is a part of the Metrolinx plan. In my opinion, it's an integral part. As such, cancelling it is cancelling part of the Metrolinx plan. If cancelling part of something places the rest of it in jeopardy, then cancelling Transit City jeopardizes the Metrolinx Plan.

My position on this issue was made quite clear several posts ago, so I'm not going to repeat it. However, if we are going to have a discussion on these issues of the day, then we need to make sure that we're debating with facts - not with lies, hearsay and misinformation.

Labels: GTTA plan, light rail, municipal sillyness, politics, ttc

posted by Andrae Griffith @ 2:18 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Thoughts on priorities

Once upon a time, most of the employment lands were located downtown and most of the residential lands were located uptown. It was fairly easy to plan the transportation network, because travel would always be downtown in the morning and uptown in the afternoon. Whichever line was the most crowded deserved an upgrade. Today, we live in a very complex region with travel patterns that resemble a spider web. There are plenty of jobs downtown, but a large number of office parks and factories are now located in the 905. There are plenty of houses in the suburbs, but more and more people are now living downtown. This has made prioritizing the lines much more difficult.

Under the old paradigm, the people in Markham would benefit from more GO Transit service because they would be going downtown. In today's world, however, is it better to invest in more GO service towards Toronto, or to invest in better VIVA service within the town?

This blog post isn't about which transit line should be our top priority - I don't think we will ever receive consensus on that topic. This is, however, a post about where small projects should fit in the capital budgets of the various transit providers.
Read more »

Labels: GO Transit, GTTA plan, politics

posted by Andrae Griffith @ 11:39 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Thoughts on co-fares

Most of GO Transit's parking lots are full during the day, and many fill up long before the last train of the rush hour has departed. At my home station, Brampton, demand for parking is so high that one has to arrive before 7:10 am in order to get a parking spot even though the last train departs for Union for nearly another hour. GO Transit has expanded lots at many stations and has even entered into the business of parking structure construction - including one massive one planned for Erindale GO - but many planners believe the land around GO stations would more productive if they were developed into transit-supportive communities. If this becomes an urban development goal, then we'll have to find other ways to get people to the station.
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Labels: GO Transit

posted by Andrae Griffith @ 10:16 PM 2 Comments Links to this post

Can subways build a transit city?

Rob Ford, Toronto's incoming mayor, was elected on a platform that called for subway construction instead of light rail construction. From the people I have spoken to, many are concerned about the future of Transit City, David Miller's initiative to build a series of light rail lines across Toronto. While there are many good reasons to forge ahead with Miller’s plan, what if we could build these proposed lines as subways. Are we still building Transit City?

Transit City became synonymous with light rail transit, but in many ways, the modal choice was the means to an ends. For transit city, the end goal was to add capacity and reliability to locally-oriented transit and to support constant strings of mid-rise development along Toronto's avenues. In essence, the true goal of Transit City was to transform suburban arteries into more vibrant, successful streets where people can live, work, play and shop. It was a project to urbanize the suburbs and attract investment by making these lands just as attractive for development as the downtown core. If subways can build a transit city, then these are the standards by which a subway plan must be measured.
Read more »

Labels: GTTA plan, light rail, politics, streetcars, subways, ttc

posted by Andrae Griffith @ 5:36 PM 0 Comments Links to this post