[Hydrogen]

Park and rides take cars off the roads. The fact that services like GO show up after the fact suggest that suburban sprawl was emerging or already there. Transit comes after the fact, and does not cause sprawl. At best, one can say that it services sprawl once it exists, but does not create it.

Take away that service and people will drive.

 

[Hipster Duck]

What would Downtown Toronto be like without GO? What would Downtown be like if all those transit riders drive and park downtown instead. I do think that GO, with its insane focus on park-and-ride lots, reinforces the low density of the suburbs. But I also think that it has curbs sprawl at the same time.

Downtown has to be the most accessible area of town to the widest number of people, otherwise it will not have the concentrating power to be a central business district. If GO would not have been built, and the road network never expanded, dowtown Toronto would basically look like it did in 1960, although much of the commerce would have likely fled to a more easily accessible area, whether it would be accessible by car or by public transit.

 

[kEiThZ]

While it is true that many can get downtown faster on GO than those who live in Toronto can on TTC, to say that GO facilitates sprawl is ludicrous.

GO is an enabler that allows people to buy homes in the outer suburbs. Essentially GO allows an individual to live further away from downtown, have a larger house and property, but maintain the same or a shorter commute time from downtown than living in the 416.

GO ensures that you can live 30 mins from the nearest GO station on a 1 acre lot that you bought for half a million in Clarington, and still make it to Union in roughly the same time that it takes a rider in Scarborough using the TTC to get downtown.

It's true that if GO was not there, we would have lots more traffic on the 401 and the Gardiner. Paradoxically, that would probably have resulted in higher parking rates downtown (with higher demand), and increased commute times, deterring many from moving further away from the 416.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

There's two sides to this coin. As stated Go does shorten the commute from the suburbs into downtown, but then so do highways. While trains are inherently better in many (most?) ways to the personal automobile and thus a better option, there has to be a transit supportive environment on the other end of the line (read 905 burbs). Otherwise you wind up with vast parking lots that are swamped at 7 am and 6 pm every day. This is the exact type of environment we are trying to avoid in a suburban setting that is trying to avoid sprawl. There has to be municipal policies in effect that make the train stations centres of density, and public transit, encouraging more people to leave the car in the driveway instead of driving to a parking lot.

I think a lot of the early Go stations had some density and pro transit situations and didn't require very large parking lots, and were well served by transit. While I find that GO stations built today are vast swamps of parking where the station could be up to a km away from any major road.

Amazing how we are arguing that GO's free parking is beneficial, while TTC's pay (by metropass or cash) is not.

 

[lordmandeep]

considering GO floods a very small section of downtown with over 200,000 people from outside Toronto is a good thing.


I do not think 200,000 people from the outer suburbs would come all in cars if there was no GO transit.

 

[doady]

GO is an enabler that allows people to buy homes in the outer suburbs. Essentially GO allows an individual to live further away from downtown, have a larger house and property, but maintain the same or a shorter commute time from downtown than living in the 416.

GO ensures that you can live 30 mins from the nearest GO station on a 1 acre lot that you bought for half a million in Clarington, and still make it to Union in roughly the same time that it takes a rider in Scarborough using the TTC to get downtown.

It's true that if GO was not there, we would have lots more traffic on the 401 and the Gardiner. Paradoxically, that would probably have resulted in higher parking rates downtown (with higher demand), and increased commute times, deterring many from moving further away from the 416.

You assume that all employment has to be located downtown. Even with GO, only a small proportion of jobs in the GTA are located downtown. So your argument makes no sense.

Without GO, most of downtown would be parking lots, like in Detroit, which has no rail transit service, and yet is much more sprawlier than Toronto.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

This is, at best, a chicken-egg argument.

This is a 20th/21st Century Reality:
-We increasingly live and work in cities
-Not everyone can live in cities so people commute

Yes, commuter rail is designed to allow people to work in the city without living there but that's a recognition that suburbs exist, not what creates them in the first place.

When all this sprawl talk goes on, I think of New York.
Manhattan is hugely dense, well served by transit, but also has gridlock.
The other boroughs, and beyond, also have good subway and commuter rail networks but it's silly to argue that those things somehow facilitate people getting to work in Manhattan as if it's a negative. You can't move a core: Manhattan will always be Manhattan and downtown TO will always be our downtown.

What you can do is ensure that there is a good transit system so not everyone is using one mode to get to the same place. You can also try to develop other work nodes so you have the same volume but it's going in different directions on those different modes.

It seems to me that's what Places to Grow and Metrolinx are trying to accomplish. It's already happening in the form of people commuting from 416-->905. Don't forget - the Metrolinx plan is not in a vaccuum. The Greenbelt and planning regime for the GTAH set out how much low density sprawl there can be. Time will tell how it works out.

 

[jswag]

GO is an enabler that allows people to buy homes in the outer suburbs. Essentially GO allows an individual to live further away from downtown, have a larger house and property, but maintain the same or a shorter commute time from downtown than living in the 416.

GO ensures that you can live 30 mins from the nearest GO station on a 1 acre lot that you bought for half a million in Clarington, and still make it to Union in roughly the same time that it takes a rider in Scarborough using the TTC to get downtown.

It's true that if GO was not there, we would have lots more traffic on the 401 and the Gardiner. Paradoxically, that would probably have resulted in higher parking rates downtown (with higher demand), and increased commute times, deterring many from moving further away from the 416.

What I was saying was that people don't make the choice to move to Clarington because of the GO service. People move to Clarington because they can buy, using your example, a 1 acre lot for half a million. While a GO Station may be somewhere on their list, I would still say it's not a "clincher".

The future of GO stations will be really interesting, as I said, with the mobility hub concept being initiated. I'd also like to see GO experiment with paid parking, perhaps as a pilot program on one line first. Even if you charge a dollar a day, people will be forced to think twice about taking their car to the station.

It is true that in the far suburban stations, such as Milton, there is fairly thin transit service to the station. However, in the inner suburbs such as Scarborough, for many there is no excuse but laziness to make such a decision. (Keep in mind there are other options, such as taking your bike or walking. I have a 20 minute walk to the station every morning and I see people who would have a 10 minute walk driving past me). As long as parking fees are matched with improved transit connections, it will be a winning situation (and by improved connections, I mean both routes, as well as fare integration.)

As others have said before me, GO is not an enabler, it arrived only after the sprawl began. We had a choice-- increase road capacity, or move people in a more progressive matter. Ignoring the suburbs has never been a choice.

And KeithZ, there's one thing that's missing from this discussion-- the fares that people pay for GO service are much higher than an equivalent trip (if indeed there is one) on the TTC. It's an express service-- you pay for speed.

 

[DavidH]

I'd also like to see GO experiment with paid parking, perhaps as a pilot program on one line first.

I hear this may be coming in 2009.

 

[wyliepoon]

What might be needed is some integration between the transit plan and the greenbelt. Perhaps what is needed is the transformation of some of the GTA's outer suburbs (Newmarket-Aurora, Milton, Pickering-Ajax, Whitby-Oshawa, Bradford, Stouffville and even Barrie) into "satellite cities"- fully self-sufficient towns and cities with frequent rail service into Toronto. Each would be wrapped in its own greenbelt or growth boundary, inside which development at higher density would be encouraged. In the end these would become "islands" of urbanity in a greater GTA greenbelt.

 

[jswag]

What might be needed is some integration between the transit plan and the greenbelt. Perhaps what is needed is the transformation of some of the GTA's outer suburbs (Newmarket-Aurora, Milton, Pickering-Ajax, Whitby-Oshawa, Bradford, Stouffville and even Barrie) into "satellite cities"- fully self-sufficient towns and cities with frequent rail service into Toronto. Each would be wrapped in its own greenbelt or growth boundary, inside which development at higher density would be encouraged. In the end these would become "islands" of urbanity in a greater GTA greenbelt.

To some extent thie government likely believes it has achieved this integration through the Places to Grow Act which was implemented along with the Greenbelt Act. However, it is merely a start, a small effort to stem the spread of sprawl. 40% of all new development is required to occur within existing built-up areas. This doesn't sound like much, and it isn't really, although it helps stem the tide. The concept of sattelite towns is always the goal, though it is rare to find it successfully implemented anywhere in the world.

What is good is that none of these communities seem to have the goal of being bedroom communities. However, the implementation of their economic development policies has led to communities that are strictly zoned (ie limited to no mixed use). In effect, the Metrolinx plan, with its recommendations for improved train frequency, does treat each suburban community as a sattelite town. However, one of the most difficult things for Metrolinx has been, and will continue to be, trying to integrate inter-suburban (i.e. Ajax to Aurora)trips into the system (currently trips that can realistically only be served by auto). This may be unrealistic without significant land use changes (i.e. really strong core areas in these communities).

 

[wyliepoon]

The concept of sattelite towns is always the goal, though it is rare to find it successfully implemented anywhere in the world.

I think the Hong Kong model for "New Towns" is one that the GTA could follow... satellite cities located in suburban Hong Kong with Manhattan-like density but surrounded on all sides by forested hills, farms, villages and fishponds. Almost all are served by frequent commuter rail service (the former KCR).

Satellite cities in the GTA would work if we replace the "Manhattan-like" density of HK with a lower density that fits Toronto's context.