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Had a fun rush hour subway ride home today.

 

Got on with a buddy from class, then when he got off, I started walking down the train towards the car that lets out right at the escalator (I've done my homework, see) and ran into more friends on the way.

 

Thankfully, even at rush hour, the subway tends to get relatively empty at Bloor-Yonge station because of how spread out Toronto is East-West. It was still full enough that I didn't get a seat or anything, and walking from car to car was not the easiest task, but it's not like sardine can full post Bloor.

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Had a fun rush hour subway ride home today.

 

Got on with a buddy from class, then when he got off, I started walking down the train towards the car that lets out right at the escalator (I've done my homework, see) and ran into more friends on the way.

 

Thankfully, even at rush hour, the subway tends to get relatively empty at Bloor-Yonge station because of how spread out Toronto is East-West. It was still full enough that I didn't get a seat or anything, and walking from car to car was not the easiest task, but it's not like sardine can full post Bloor.

 

This is literally the worst story ever.

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Unilaterally, yes. If there aren't equivalent subsidies to other kinds of living. But that's not particularly relevant. Subsidies are provided when we want to encourage certain things.

 

A large reason we have all of this overbuilt (and under demand) sprawl is because the governments encouraged has encouraged it since the 50s and 60s. Subsidies for mortgages and homeowners discriminates against those who don't want it or can't afford it. Again, that's fine, but with all we've learned over the last half decade is that building this ONE specific form of development is wholly unsustainable. And that's not an envronmentalist thing, it's simple municiple finance. The property taxes recovered from low density areas aren't enough to cover the cost of supplying them with the infrastructure they demand.

 

The whole thing now is that we want to provide people with a choice. If a large number of people didn't want to live in urban, walkable areas, real estate in places like Vancouver and Manhattan (and Toronto) wouldn't be so ridiculous. The market doesn't lie. Home prices will (if they haven't already) start decreasing among suburban neighborhoods as the demand falls and there starts to be excess supply (seems like this is especially focused in the southern USA, not necessarily here). The market is showing us that we have under supplied urban residential type housing. More people want to be living in or near downtown than our supply of housing.

 

I was in Vancouver last week and thought about this a lot. Several times we met someone somewhere, and while we had to have a car (our rental house was in Burnaby, we had a toddler, etc), we often got there after people who were going by public transit. Getting around the city in a car was a hassle, but it was amazing to me how much easier it was when you just take cars off the roads. Providing good bike/walking lanes got so many cars off the road that it was easy for cars to get around. For whatever reason, seems like the city is full of houses, rather than condos and apartments, so the house price is ridiculous and there isn't enough living space downtown, but that is easily remedied over time. With the suburbs easily transit-accessible, commuters all take public transit and it is much faster than cars. Like in Toronto, many of those suburbanites still own cars for the purpose of getting to neighbourhood locations, like restaurants and hockey rinks.

 

This link will talk about walkability.

 

http://www.walkscore...ve-more/canada/

 

MLS listing come with a walk score.

 

Where I live is a 77

Very Walkable

Most errands can be accomplished on foot.

 

Yonge and Eglinton is a 97

Walker's Paradise

Daily errands do not require a car.

 

Where Serge lives in Pickering would be a 26

Car-Dependent

A few amenities within walking distance.

 

 

Edit: the walkability of where I live is one of the reasons we are here. I think it's especially important with teenagers to have good walkability and good transit.

 

Funny, I got a 25, though my neighbourhood is super-walkable. I am less than a 20-minute walk from a grocery store, neighbourhood pool and hockey rink, grade school, corner store and junior high. I bet some of those things are just over a kilometre away though, so maybe it didn't work. Also, looks like I got hit for not walking to any restaurants, which I don't care about.

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I was in Vancouver last week and thought about this a lot. Several times we met someone somewhere, and while we had to have a car (our rental house was in Burnaby, we had a toddler, etc), we often got there after people who were going by public transit. Getting around the city in a car was a hassle, but it was amazing to me how much easier it was when you just take cars off the roads. Providing good bike/walking lanes got so many cars off the road that it was easy for cars to get around. For whatever reason, seems like the city is full of houses, rather than condos and apartments, so the house price is ridiculous and there isn't enough living space downtown, but that is easily remedied over time. With the suburbs easily transit-accessible, commuters all take public transit and it is much faster than cars. Like in Toronto, many of those suburbanites still own cars for the purpose of getting to neighbourhood locations, like restaurants and hockey rinks.

 

Urbanists call that Vancouverism.

 

I haven't been since I was like 2 years old, but I hear non stop about how great Vancouver is. I've taken a look at their public transit system quite a few times, and I'm always impressed.

 

Toronto could learn a lot from them. They run exclusively with LRT technology and do just fine. For some reason, the public seems to think LRTs are streetcars or something here. Well, it's because the politicians tell them that.

 

I think their downtown is the most densely populated in North America, outside of New York. Maybe Chicago.

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Urbanists call that Vancouverism.

 

I haven't been since I was like 2 years old, but I hear non stop about how great Vancouver is. I've taken a look at their public transit system quite a few times, and I'm always impressed.

 

Toronto could learn a lot from them. They run exclusively with LRT technology and do just fine. For some reason, the public seems to think LRTs are streetcars or something here. Well, it's because the politicians tell them that.

 

I think their downtown is the most densely populated in North America, outside of New York. Maybe Chicago.

 

Metro Vancouver is a third the size of Toronto and the city itself is a quarter the size of the city of Toronto and because it is surrounded by water and mountains there is very little land so you get lots of density in a small area. What makes Vancouver work can't be compared to other places necessarily.

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zach,

 

whats your view on cabs? Having been the Manhattan on several occasions, what makes that city run is the cabs..everyone takes a cab...sure people dont drive, but 1000s of cabs congest the city...no street cars, not much bus action...they do have a subway though that is good..

 

maybe Bob can comment on Hong Kong..how is the traffic situation there...bikes, buses??

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Cabs are far better than everyone bringing their own car. It's like car sharing, right? Instead of having a bunch of cars clogging up valuable land while they are in storage, cabs and car shares are used by other people.

 

The problem starts when you have a lot of empty cabs roaming around looking for fares. That's similar to the effect that happens in a lot of cities where motorists are cruising for parking. That tends to be a large portion of the cause of congestion in those situations (and it's exacerbated when on street parking is free or very cheap, compared to private garages). So yeah, that's a bit of an issue.

 

I haven't seen very much research on cabs, though. I'm sure there's some, I just haven't thought too much about it.

 

The thing about congestion, is it just is what it is. It's the market equilibrium of demand and supply for road space. In any major city, with a dense core, it's basically impossible to eliminate congestion, so the goal then becomes how to move the highest number of people most efficiently. That's why subways, buses, streetcars, etc are far more suitable for downtown than the private automobile. It's just about the space that's available.

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Toronto moves a bit more than 900,000 people by subway/RT, by comparison. (Both are weekday averages, btw).

 

New York's system is significantly more evolved than Toronto's of course, and has many many more miles of track. Toronto has an absolutely incredible bus system though, which NY doesn't really need because of the subways. Toronto's buses and streetcars served about 1.6 million passengers (boardings) per day (unclear if that's weekdays or all days) (ref: http://stevemunro.ca/?p=7891).

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The NY subway system moves over 5,000,000 people per day. I'd say that it's the subway that makes that city run, not the cabs.

 

thats pretty huge..just found this stat , its from 1999 though

 

in 1999, 241 million passengers rode in New York taxis. The average cab fare in 2000 was $6; passengers paid a total of over $1 billion in fares that year

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what about a city like Los Angeles?

 

where there is really no transportation system that most people use...there isnt a condensed downtown....and the highways are the worst in the world..

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Hong Kong is unique.

 

90% of people there take public transportation since owning a car and having parking for one is just insanely expensive. There are about 20,000 taxis that take 1 million passengers per day. Taxis are included in that public transportation figure.

 

Lots of double decker buses and of course a great subway system.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Hong_Kong

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Los Angeles is a very interesting city. I think you'd be very surprised at their transit network currently, and what they have planned.

 

Yes, it is a highway city/region, but it developed that way because of the streetcar and other passenger rail systems. It has a polycentric city, in that it does not have one single dominant downtown, but rather has all sorts of these denser nodes dispersed all over, connected by highways (originally by commuter rail).

 

Anyways, the rail system alone in LA County moves 363,000 people per day.

 

Currently, they have a mix of heavy rail (like Toronto's subway), light rail, and bus rapid transit routes (which are not counted in the above number).

 

They actually have a number of new subway lines in different phases of evaluation or construction.

 

There's a chapter in Straphanger devoted to LA, which is quite fascinating. It's talked about a lot in Human Transit, as well.

 

The Los Angeles Metropolitan Area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_metropolitan_area) actually has a higher population density than the New York Metropolitan Area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area), though LA is dispersed a lot more evenly than New York, which peaks in Manhattan, obviously.

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i remember watching a documentary of some sort a few years back, where they built these great systems in LA, but no one used them..relatively speaking..

 

the other unique part of LA is the difference in classes (economically) that are spread over the regions..

 

you can be in Beverly Hills one minute, then drive to Compton in East LA, where you dont want to end up..we have that here in Toronto, but not nearly to that extent

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Yeah, there are a lot of class segregation issues in LA. And it's almost exclusively the lower classes that use the public transit system. That's pretty normal for a large area city, where the car is dominant.

 

However, the freeway traffic is at levels of pure insanity these days, and the only way to get out of it is to expand alternative transportation modes, which they are doing. And they have a really ambitious and aggressive plan to do so. I can't really reiterate it all off of the top of my head, though.

 

Again, haven't been to that city, either. The times I've come across it in the books I read, though, have actually changed my view of the city. I always just assumed it was a sprawling wasteland, highway culture, etc. And it is, to some extent, but I did not nearly give it enough credit. It is in California, after all, a very liberal state, generally.

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Hong Kong is unique.

 

90% of people there take public transportation since owning a car and having parking for one is just insanely expensive. There are about 20,000 taxis that take 1 million passengers per day. Taxis are included in that public transportation figure.

 

Lots of double decker buses and of course a great subway system.

 

http://en.wikipedia....rt_in_Hong_Kong

 

found the subway system ridiculously easy to use, even for me a 1st time tourist.

And I found taxis were pretty inexpensive and a great way to get around.

 

I have found most places I go to for work (Milan, Florence, London, HK), the last thing I would want there is a car.

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I use to go to LA for work purposes at least once a year. Went to the movie studio and I don't think anyone took the transit. Everyone drove because it is all about the bling in LA. Absolutely no one wants to take transit.

 

Sorry forgot to mention, I worked for Paramount Pictures for 11 years. They are cheaper than MDG on their employees.

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I just met a new client. Perfect job for someone at fcp

 

He sells beer to bars and restaurants. The company pays for his car and cell phone. All the bars feed him all the time

 

He offer me a couple of kegs for my services. I said no

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It took nearly 6 months, but I finally went to get my address on my drivers license and health card changed to Toronto.

 

I happened to walk past a ServiceOntario location while dicking around downtown with not much to do.

 

I must say, compared to the horror stories you hear about the DMVs in the US, we have it very easy here. No more than 15 minute wait, not in line, but in a relatively comfortable chair, and processed quickly and by friendly, helpful staff.

 

Also, I officially grew 2 centimetres.

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It took nearly 6 months, but I finally went to get my address on my drivers license and health card changed to Toronto.

 

I happened to walk past a ServiceOntario location while dicking around downtown with not much to do.

 

I must say, compared to the horror stories you hear about the DMVs in the US, we have it very easy here. No more than 15 minute wait, not in line, but in a relatively comfortable chair, and processed quickly and by friendly, helpful staff.

 

Also, I officially grew 2 centimetres.

 

You also could have just changed your address online in 5 minutes.

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It took nearly 6 months, but I finally went to get my address on my drivers license and health card changed to Toronto.

 

I happened to walk past a ServiceOntario location while dicking around downtown with not much to do.

 

I must say, compared to the horror stories you hear about the DMVs in the US, we have it very easy here. No more than 15 minute wait, not in line, but in a relatively comfortable chair, and processed quickly and by friendly, helpful staff.

 

Also, I officially grew 2 centimetres.

 

Never seen chairs at the Service Ontarios I've been to. Must be more of that downtown subsidized living I keep hearing about.

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