Better ways?
Posted by gigantichound on 16 Jun 2007 at 03:56 pm | Tagged as: Toronto
So apparently every bright idea about transit anybody has had in Central Ontario for the last 50 years is now public policy, from running GO trains on the midtown CPR tracks to an LRT down Pape (or is it Greenwood?) to reviving the Radial Line in Hamilton, for a total of 52 proposals. Contingent on a lot of money from the feds, or course.
Do we believe in any of this?
Some random points:
- I prefer the GO link to Pearson in this proposal to Blue22 – it seems like a thriftier use of scarce resources.
- The Science Centre becomes a major transit node, as the Don Mills and Eg LRTs cross the crosstown GO line.
- I’m looking forward to seeing how they plan to run rapid transit up the escarpment in Hamilton. Funicular-style systems have been used in the past. Space in the various cuts in Hamilton is limited – you can’t just blast out more roadway at this point. I guess it could run in traffic, TTC-style.
I wanted to post something on this yesterday, but thought better of doing it from work.
It’s contingent less on the feds (the Globe quotes someone from MTO saying part of it could go ahead even if there’s no federal funding… about 2/3 of it, one presumes) than on the outcome of the election. I wonder if the Liberals haven’t misjudged the timing of this… there was very little to appeal to anyone in the lacklustre Ontario budget, and if gridlock is such a problem, and there are so many good plans out there, why hold them all back? A good faith gesture would have been to throw some money into a few key projects (besides the much-debated York U./Vaughan subway line) over the last couple of years, with some dollars committed in the recent budget, and then announce now how these projects fit into this super comprehensive plan that will do even more. Instead, the swing voters in the 905 are supposed to swing on the promise of great things to come to a party with a poor track record of keeping promises. Huh.
Boo, hiss on the title: Moving Ontario Forward Together. It’s only missing “…into the 21st century!” Bleh.
A lot of the light-rail proposals look reasonably sensible. Jane, for one. Dundas west from Kipling to Hurontario, for another.
Not sure where you’re getting the LRT down Pape or Greenwood from… The only line I see on the map anywhere close to Riverdale is a GO train expansion up the Don Valley to Richmond Hill. My dream of having a subway stop at Gerrard and Carlaw will remain unfulfilled for the next 20 years, I guess…
Just to the left of the E in E YORK.
It’s project 42:
Don Mills Road Light Rail Transit from Steeles Avenue to the Bloor-Danforth subway
[...] On the plus side, does this mean Move Ontario gets off the ground? In interviews after the initial announcement (made before the official [...]