ION Stage I: what would you do differently?

[ac3r]

Also, please correct me if I’m remembering wrong, but didn’t ac3r also say something about how we should have built a subway? It’s a bit weird to both say we could save a bunch of money by just buying some buses instead of building an LRT system, and also that we should have built a subway. Which is it, did we waste money or not spend enough? Especially when the subway alternative is clearly not feasible here and now and the more buses alternative is basically what we were doing before we got the LRT.

I don't think ac3r has argued that we simply spent too much for rapid transit, but rather that we spent too much for a system that is (he thinks) deeply compromised. It's quite reasonable to say we could have spent significantly less to get BRT that's just as good, or somewhat more to get a system that's much better.

At least someone can read hah. Yes, I believe the LRT in the state we built it has many flaws, especially for a region that is already as big as ours and with the growth projections we have. We are expected to have 800'000+ people by 2040, though that number may be even higher because that projection was done years before we even experienced any major growth. BRT could have carried almost the same amount of people as the LRT for significantly less.

My argument is that since the LRT seems to have so many issues with speed and operating within the traffic of the urban cores, we could have buried or elevated certain sections of it. I have not really argued for a subway system - at least not heavy rail like Toronto - and it was indeed studied but was deemed too expensive at the time we studied the feasibility of one. I don't know how many or if any of you work in fields related to engineering, urbanism, architecture, infrastructure etc. Indeed the tunneling would have cost money, but in the case of an LRT (especially in a city as undeveloped as ours...we don't have massive skyscrapers with deep foundations to worry about) you can get away with cut and cover tunneling which is significantly cheaper. We wouldn't need boring machines to tunnel anything here. Someone even tried to suggest the little creek running uptown would drive up costs to the extreme...really? It's a creek, it's not that hard to deal with.

Since this thread is more fantasy about what we could have done, the reality of whether or not we did it doesn't really matter now. We've got the LRT already. So for example:

A benefit of this would have meant that we would not end up with these ridiculous split stations blocks away that separate the northbound and southbound track.

In practice - again I am citing Nürnberg because 1. I lived there for quite a while and know their network well. 2. They are a comparable city in terms of population and geographic size...

This shows how easy it is to transition from surface level to underground using cut and cover tunneling:

This shows how you can elevate it on a very simple viaduct, which is significantly cheap to do as it does not disrupt much. On my poorly illustrated map, I would perhaps elevate things around Borden Station, swinging it over the rock climbing place, continuing that to Mill Station where you can then return to surface level as it currently is now.

Which is it, did we waste money or not spend enough?

I think we spent too much for what we got. We could have spent less and got close to the same, or more and got a system that would have been truly independent, not relying on the very roads we all claim to despise here, that goes just as slow as cars at times and has to stop at red lights to let them pass.