Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[taylortbb]

That seems defeatist. If we had two-way all-day GO trains running Kitchener to Toronto, every 30 mins or better, 60 min end-to-end travel time, I bet we'd make a huge dent in 401 passenger volumes. That doesn't even require the ambitious HSR proposals, running some EMUs and upgrading the track to class 5/6 standards would do. GO had a proposal to do something similar for Toronto-Hamilton they called Super GO.

The only reason we need to keep widening the 401 is that we refuse to invest in any alternatives. We're stuck in a cycle of "people don't take trains because service sucks" so "let's not improve trains because no one uses them" so "people don't take trains because service sucks" so....

Not sure if even a good quality GO system would put a huge dent in it. You have a family and friends, and anything by train is too expensive, and too time consuming. Last time it cost us $120 round trip from Kitchener to Toronto plus $24 for TTC, grand total was close to $150. Never again. 401 to Downsview Station, $15 gas ($1.15 per litre), $5 parking, and $24 TTC. Transit was the most expensive component still, but total cost less than 1/3.

That means we're doing a bad job of pricing structures. We're probably over charging for transit for families (need better family passes and so on), and under charging for vehicles (gas taxes don't nearly cover the full cost of highway maintenance, never mind the capital costs). Obviously $150 roundtrip to Toronto for a family is not reasonable.

In any case, the average persons per vehicles on our roads is 1.1. The vast majority of trips are single occupant vehicles, where price structures are already competitive. We don't need to get 100% of passenger cars off the 401, but getting half of them would a MASSIVE win.

It isn't just a matter that 'service sucks' - any sort of transit isn't geared to families, those with disabilities, those who don't have copious amounts of time on their hands, and those that don't live close to the mains.

Now, if you're single, without children, not taking care of an elderly parent, don't have a disability, you have time, then sure, transit is better.

Transit doesn't have to be slower. I did specify 1 hour DTK to Union. That's easily achievable for a train, without getting in to HSR, but is much faster than driving. Transit shouldn't require one have "copious amounts of time on their hands", it only does because of poor service. Do you believe the entire population of NYC, a city famous for being in a rush, has "copious amounts of time on their hands"? They clearly use transit a lot.

Obviously WR won't have NYC-style subways everywhere anytime soon. However, the belief that transit is inherently incompatible with families doesn't hold up if one examines many other cities around the world. Somehow in Japan, even in smaller WR sized cities, this would be considered totally normal, but in North America it's considered totally inconceivable. Yes, our cities are different, but only because we have chosen for them to be different.

I sometimes wonder for those people that don't drive, and/or those that hate cars, even have a slight understanding why people actually drive.

This is just insulting, but it's also inaccurate. I own a car. I'm also from Toronto, so I go there a lot to see friends/family. I do almost all of my trips by driving there, because it's the most convenient way to do so right now. I completely understand why people make that choice, because I make that choice too. If the GO service I described existed, I'd rarely drive.

Though I think in the future transit will be different -- we'll have self driving vehicles that can pick up people and families at a cost that is more favourable than car ownership. But that's still a ways away.

Many decades away I'd say. Far enough that it's not worth planning our cities around a technology that might happen in decades. We have problems to solve now, and need to use the technologies we have now.