Friday, November 20, 2015

Toronto suffers from decades of #publictransit neglect

TTCriders.ca: "The TTC needs to be funded, maintained, and expanded.  For decades, various levels of government have let down our beleaguered transit system.  Canada remains the only G7 country without any national transit strategy.  The Progressive Conservatives of the 1990s cut provincial operating funding that has still not been restored by the current governing Liberals.  City Council slashed bus routes, cancelled LRT lines, and reduced service to levels it is only now able to restore.  Even now, fares are set to increase again.

The 90s and 00s were bleak times for the TTC, but there have been signs of improvement over the past few years.  The Eglinton-Crosstown and Finch LRTs will be welcomed, while City Council has restored the service cuts of the previous administration.  GO RER, if implemented wisely, can do wonders for regional commutes. UPX, though underused and overpriced, can easily be made into a useful service if re-imagined as a true public transit line. These are encouraging signs."

Monday, February 23, 2015

Real issue isn’t best transit; it’s who owns the street

Bogota BRT
Toronto Star : "Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, sees the bus not just as a way to move large numbers of people, but as nothing less than an instrument of democracy. His argument is simple: a bus with, say, 30 passengers is entitled to 30 times as much road space as a car with a single occupant. Hard to disagree with that.
In Toronto, however, the subtext to the transit debate is more a sense of entitlement than the desire for mobility. It’s one thing to assert that we have a right to accessibility, another to insist we “deserve” a subway."



photo credit