{"id":2715,"date":"2008-01-29T20:32:53","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T01:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=2715"},"modified":"2008-01-30T11:20:26","modified_gmt":"2008-01-30T16:20:26","slug":"dr-sobermans-virtual-street-tours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/01\/29\/dr-sobermans-virtual-street-tours\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Soberman&#8217;s Virtual Street Tours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2254\/2229085279_16cd8db100.jpg\" height=\"386\" width=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Earlier this afternoon, <a href=\"http:\/\/stevemunro.ca\/\">Steve Munro<\/a> posted a <a href=\"http:\/\/stevemunro.ca\/?p=740\">long and scathing commentary<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtatransportation.com\/web\/guest\/home\">a study<\/a> by the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario. The author of the report is Dr. Richard Soberman, a well-recognized name in transit consulting. Soberman is the same consultant who oversaw the construction of the Scarborough RT, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/stevemunro.ca\/?p=219\">2006 study to replace the same line<\/a> (favouring an upgrade with new equipment and an extension to Sheppard and Markham Road over LRT or a Danforth Subway extension). In this new report, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/article\/298156\">Soberman pushes the Province to pass legislation<\/a> to ensure the various projects funded by MoveOntario 2020 are funded, and then proceeds to slam many of the projects it funds.<\/p>\n<p>I will leave most of the commentary on the report to Munro, but one aspect that interested me were the online tours of three of the future LRT routes (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtatransportation.com\/web\/guest\/corridors\/eglinton\">Eglinton<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtatransportation.com\/web\/guest\/corridors\/sheppard\">Sheppard<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtatransportation.com\/web\/guest\/corridors\/hurontario\">Hurontario\/Main<\/a>) to be built under Transit City or other provincial funding.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtatransportation.com\/web\/guest\/corridors\/eglinton\"><strong>EGLINTON (view photos) <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Eglinton seems to have a curse when it has come to transit proposals. The TTC once planned a frequent trolley bus route along Eglinton from Yonge to Weston Road, but it fell through as Forest Hill residents objected to overhead wires in their neighbourhood. In the 1990s, construction started on a short first phase of an Eglinton Subway, only to have the hole filled in after newly elected Mike Harris pulled the plug. Perhaps with Transit City, Eglinton will be third time lucky with the underground LRT planned for that corridor. (The Eglinton-Crosstown line is the Transit City Line I am most excited about.) The photo tour starts at Morningside and goes all the way to Dixie Road in Mississauga, passing though suburban, urban and industrial landscapes along the way.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtatransportation.com\/web\/guest\/corridors\/sheppard\"><strong>SHEPPARD EAST (view photos) <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Sheppard Subway was supposed to go to Victoria Park Avenue in its first stage, but was cut back at the same time the Harris government cancelled the Eglinton Line. The Sheppard East Transit City line is the part of the otherwise great plan I am least excited about as it could result in a disjointed, multiple-transfer ride across the top of the city (some cynics on the <a href=\"http:\/\/urbantoronto.ca\/\">Urban Toronto Forum<\/a> have named it <a href=\"http:\/\/urbantoronto.ca\/showpost.php?p=133481&amp;postcount=228\">&#8220;Transfer City&#8221;<\/a>). The Sheppard Subway, expensive and derided as &#8220;the Stubway,&#8221; has proved some worth with intensified development along the route and healthier ridership levels.<\/p>\n<p>Soberman&#8217;s solution to the problem of multiple modes along the Sheppard corridor is to convert the subway to LRT, and have the Sheppard route surface past Sheppard-Yonge and Don Mills for a single LRT line between Downsview Station and Malvern. While an interesting idea, it would disrupt transit on the corridor for at least a year, never mind the political fallout of replacing an expensive subway with light rail vehicles. And on Eglinton, Soberman advocates a change to BRT at Keele\/Weston, so his positions aren&#8217;t all that consistent.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the tour is interesting, as Sheppard passes from the low-density Sheppard\/Morningside area to the canyon-like rows of slab apartment towers in Agincourt, through the subway corridor and on to Downsview.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gtatransportation.com\/web\/guest\/corridors\/hurontario\"><strong>HURONTARIO\/MAIN (view photos) <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Along with Yonge Street through York Region, the Hurontario Corridor between Port Credit and Brampton is one 0f the most interesting corridors in the 905. The big MoveOntario 2020 funding announcement that promised 66% provincial funding for projects like Transit City also provided funds for a similar LRT corridor linking Downtown Brampton and Port Credit.<\/p>\n<p>Port Credit is one of the 905&#8217;s most urbanized and charming former towns, Mississauga City Centre is a bold, yet flawed, attempt at a new downtown, with Square One, office campuses and condo high-rises. After the long stretch of industrial low rises and office parks, Hurontario enters Brampton and becomes Main Street at Steeles Avenue, following the Etobicoke Creek ravine and entering a historic, slowly revitalizing downtown core. It&#8217;s a great cross-section of maturing suburbia. As a bonus, Soberman adds a short section of Brampton&#8217;s Queen Street East to Kennedy Road, past the now-closed hospital and two new high-rise condo sites in what is right now, a old, ugly and underutilized suburban arterial.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Soberman&#8217;s claims, the Hurontario\/Main corridor is well suited to LRT. It happens to hit three different GO Train lines, and the Mississauga Route 19 to Shoppers World is the busiest in that system, running every few minutes in rush hours, and on weekends, packed articulated buses ply the route regularly. More urban development in Brampton and Mississauga, along with bus-based transit improvements in both cities, will feed this transit spine for Peel Region. Soberman, in stating that bus rapid transit is enough, despite funding and current planning for LRT, is seemingly undermining his call for legislated funding for MoveOntario 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this afternoon, Steve Munro posted a long and scathing commentary on a study by the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario. The author of the report is Dr. Richard Soberman, a well-recognized name in transit consulting. Soberman is the same consultant who oversaw the construction of the Scarborough RT, and the 2006 study<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/01\/29\/dr-sobermans-virtual-street-tours\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Dr. Soberman&#8217;s Virtual Street Tours&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4030,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,8],"tags":[379,143,5935,2676,538,8000,851,2021,1529,79,1658,7999,636,2027,316,7995,993,7997,409,1631,7998,1235,1187,57,7996,19,2665],"class_list":["post-2715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-streetscape","category-transit","tag-author","tag-brampton","tag-crosstown","tag-don-mills","tag-downsview-station","tag-etobicoke-creek","tag-forest-hill","tag-harris-government","tag-mike-harris","tag-mississauga","tag-mississauga-city-centre","tag-online-tours","tag-ontario","tag-port-credit","tag-queen","tag-residential-and-civil-construction-alliance-of-ontario","tag-richard-soberman","tag-same-consultant","tag-scarborough-rt","tag-sheppard-subway","tag-sheppard-yonge-mills","tag-square-one","tag-steve-munro","tag-the-905","tag-the-sheppard-subway","tag-toronto","tag-weston"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dr. Soberman&#039;s Virtual Street Tours - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2008\/01\/29\/dr-sobermans-virtual-street-tours\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dr. Soberman&#039;s Virtual Street Tours - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier this afternoon, Steve Munro posted a long and scathing commentary on a study by the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario. 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