• Councillor makes bid to save city’s heritage [ Toronto Star ]
• Public transit summit for council crew [ National Post ]
• TOslogans past, present and future [ Toronto Star ]
• Commuters may soon HOVER over traffic jams [ National Post ]
• Toronto Public Space plans to hit ‘as-yet undisclosed targets’ across city with art attack [ National Post ]
• Streetcar’s Corktown project fulfills desire [ National Post ]
Tuesday’s Headlines
By Julie Yamin
Read more articles by Julie Yamin
5 comments
I really like the HOVERPORT idea. What I don’t get is why it a trial has to go through all this bureaucratic mess before they even attempt it. What kind of possible investment would you need to see if this works? In fact, why does the city have to do it at all? Couldn’t a private company akin to AutoShare or Zipcar try this out? Hell, or even a Facebook group 🙂
Maybe the reason it’s been so difficult to brand Toronto is that it doesn’t really have anything to offer tourists. I mean, does it really…? The congestion? The smog? And not even a crystal blue sea to swim in… Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great city to live in, but does it have more than
London, Paris or New York to offer to tourists? Why WOULD anyone come here for a holiday? Perhaps aligning our culture with those three cities wasn’t the worst idea. At least it was a selling point.
And I love what Joel Peters said about our supposed diversity. Look around, there’s more diversity in almost every other major city in the world. It’s also become part of their lives and history and art, not just a label by which they brand themselves, as if they just discovered the meaning of the word.
US tourists used to come here to do their shopping, now that their dollar is almost comparable to ours it’s not worth their while. I think it’s a matter of waiting until our dollar cools down a little. Until then, the opportunity cost of coming here is, to be honest, a better alternative: visiting Paris, London or New York.
Re: HOVER – there already are carpooling databases and websites set up for people that want to look for regular carpooling partners. This is different in that it doesn’t involve a commitment – people looking for drivers and passengers congregate at the designated locations and connect “on the fly”. This means you could have a different passenger/driver every day, so hence police checks to provide some level of security.
Washington DC has a similar concept called slugging, which has been in place since the 70’s… drivers wanted to fill up their cars so they could use the HOV lanes. However there’s an added incentive since there’s more HOV lanes there than there are here, and there’s one highway into downtown DC that allows HOV traffic ONLY in the peak direction. I don’t think DC has any background checking involved.
If we’re so willing to toss maybe 3/4 billion into lakefront transport, without really thinking too much about it, why not see if a smaller percent of that could bring the HOVER into play instead of the FSE, the WWLRT and the Union Station tunnel expansion?
HOVER isn’t really a new idea, it’s an officially condoned “Slugging” program, which is popular in the Washington Metro area – where at carpool lots, would-be carpoolers wait in line for a driver to pull up who’s going ro the same destination. All benefit from the ability to use HOV lanes (no money is exchanged).
In Washington, there’s a set etiquette to this unofficial program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging