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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

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Thursday’s headlines

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TRANSIT
• Toronto’s transit plans on separate tracks [ Toronto Star ]
• Miller backs city plan over Metrolinx draft [ Globe and Mail ]
• New downtown subway far off, Metrolinx says [ National Post ]
• LRT ‘sweet spot’ sought [ Toronto Sun ]
• Eglinton train wreck [ NOW Magazine ]
• New bike lanes for the ‘burbs [ Toronto Sun ]
• Bike theft charges rolling up [ Toronto Sun ]
• Getting around [ Eye Weekly ]
• Dandyhorse cycling mag gets into gear [ Eye Weekly ]
• Yonge & Dundas scrambled [ Eye Weekly ]

POLITICS
• Toronto pushes for new sign bylaw [ Toronto Star ]
• City refuses payout for pothole harm [ Toronto Sun ]
• Tories paying lip service to Toronto won’t collect much on election day [ Globe and Mail ]
• Tories give $5M to foil local gangs [ Toronto Star ]
• Feds fight youth gangs [ Toronto Sun ]
• Ottawa to spend $4.9M to keep at-risk Toronto youth out of gangs [ National Post ]

MISCELLANEOUS
• Waterfront Toronto to delay some projects [ Toronto Star ]

3 comments

  1. Yes, new bike lanes seem to be springing up all over the place lately, but are they actually any good, or are they in fact counter productive or just road stripes in the door zones?

    I’m getting the feeling that they’re rushing to put in new cycling infrastructure without actually designing GOOD cycling infrastructure.

  2. One day we’re going to have to face the reality that transit lines are infrastructure like sewer and water lines and that development charges and tax increment financing are the way to pay for them.

    In my view property developers in the GTA are not paying the cities the fair cost of the extra infrastructure their sites require, and that the cities have been using the funding they do get for inappropriate uses like current spending.

    In Ireland, large developments near existing transit have to pay for new stations as they hit milestones of houses built. It’s not a perfect system but if developers in the western downtown had paid their fair share we wouldn’t need to worry about how the Western Waterfront LRT would be financed.

    As for the downtown relief line – it’s only one of the most critical needs given the increasing overcrowding of stations like Yonge/Bloor and the packed B-D subway west of Pape – who cares eh? In the short term, some relief could be had by making the King streetcar more regular by enforcing parking and turn restrictions and evicting the taxis from King and Bay onto neighbouring streets like Adelaide. But the city are still running scared and the police won’t enforce to the needed extent without the TTC paying them as if it was a private company running a film shoot!

  3. Mark while I can agree with what you propose the picture as presented is quite telling… each faction doing its thing regardless of the impact on another.

    Sad but accurate and the CEO, Miller has only added to this problem.

    And any dollars that go into his coffers get priorized to hiring more staff NOT providing better or new services.