LRTs and Subways
Feb. 13th, 2012 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeI have seen far too many repetitions recently (like this) of the idea that putting in LRTs is somehow intrinsically inferior to subways.
I'm not even going to go into the details of the obvious point -- that it would be inappropriate and wasteful to massively overbuild where projected demand out to 2050 is insufficient. (Maybe if we lived in a post-scarcity society... but we don't.) And I won't point out that the people whom Mayor Ford really means when he talks about "people" wanting subways aren't the poor saps waiting for the fourth overcrowded Finch bus in a row, who'd be happy to have anything which carried a significantly higher number of people at even a marginally greater speed, but the motorists on the roads who don't take transit in any case.
What I will point out, because nobody seems to have done so, is that there is a set of people you can point to, and blame, for the fact that Etobicoke and Scarborough will get little in the way of subway service[1]. It's the urban planners who allowed Toronto's "inner suburbs" to sprawl at low density during the 1950s-1990s. If we'd had planners -- and it would have had to be at the provincial level, not city, because of the Vespra problem[2] -- who were willing to require development up to a reasonable level of density (while reserving space for dedicated transit) and encourage the sort of mixed-use zoning which tends to generate "vibrant" communities, there would be much better transit now, and fewer people having to commute for two hours or so from the edge of Scarborough. And the higher densities might even support subway service.
[1] They have a bit, along the Bloor-Danforth line. Just not very much.
[2]Barrie tried to prohibit the building of sprawling malls to protect its downtown. The builders simply went outside the city borders to the neighbouring townships and built there.
I'm not even going to go into the details of the obvious point -- that it would be inappropriate and wasteful to massively overbuild where projected demand out to 2050 is insufficient. (Maybe if we lived in a post-scarcity society... but we don't.) And I won't point out that the people whom Mayor Ford really means when he talks about "people" wanting subways aren't the poor saps waiting for the fourth overcrowded Finch bus in a row, who'd be happy to have anything which carried a significantly higher number of people at even a marginally greater speed, but the motorists on the roads who don't take transit in any case.
What I will point out, because nobody seems to have done so, is that there is a set of people you can point to, and blame, for the fact that Etobicoke and Scarborough will get little in the way of subway service[1]. It's the urban planners who allowed Toronto's "inner suburbs" to sprawl at low density during the 1950s-1990s. If we'd had planners -- and it would have had to be at the provincial level, not city, because of the Vespra problem[2] -- who were willing to require development up to a reasonable level of density (while reserving space for dedicated transit) and encourage the sort of mixed-use zoning which tends to generate "vibrant" communities, there would be much better transit now, and fewer people having to commute for two hours or so from the edge of Scarborough. And the higher densities might even support subway service.
[1] They have a bit, along the Bloor-Danforth line. Just not very much.
[2]Barrie tried to prohibit the building of sprawling malls to protect its downtown. The builders simply went outside the city borders to the neighbouring townships and built there.
