[nfitz]

From the Hudson to Albany is all I-87. (I say, without checking a map first ...)

 

[lordmandeep]

I-81 is a fun drive going to NY...

 

[ShonTron]

I-87 is crowded, but I-90 sure isn't. I've gone two minutes (I kept track...it's a pretty boring drive) without seeing another car in either direction.

I've done the NY Thruway several times, and have been on (not all at once) just about the entire road from the Pennsylvania state line to Albany, and the entire Niagara and Berkshire (Albany to Massachusetts state line) spurs. Apart from around Buffalo, the NY Thruway isn't that busy, 4 lanes is plenty. The yokels making short drives don't use it partly due to tolls and also long stretches between interchanges. That helps. I found the same thing with the Ohio Turnpike and Indiana Toll Road (I-80/90).

Michigan's interstates are brutal, I agree, though the little bits of I-94 I did between Ann Arbor and the Indiana line (I used the old US 12 instead much of the way) were pretty quiet. I-5 between Sacramento and LA is quiet until you hit the LA Metro region. The 401 is, by North American standards, pretty damn busy the whole way from Quebec to Windsor.

 

[kEiThZ]

KEITHZ:
The question you should ask is why can the TTC rely on the fare box more - that ability doesn't take place in a vacuum. Don't forget the correlation between cost of fares and desirability of transit use - to blindly rely on the fare box is quite likely to result in the perverse outcome of declining transit use.

Sure. But none of the cities mentioned in the article and Toronto itself have that problem. It's all relative cost anyway. Transit could be 10 bucks a ride and the public will still take it if it's cheaper and more convenient than driving. The other half of the equation is the cheap cost of owning and operating a car in the US. That's what forces governments to subsidize transit so heavily in the US. If the made driving more expensive (as we have in Toronto) than transit would not need such heavy subsidies.

Building a system that relies on the fare box for O&M makes that system robust in the face of fluctuating funding from other governments. That's why Toronto will have minor or no cuts in service during this downturn compared to the cities listed here who face the unenviable task of either having to drastically raise fares or dramatically cut service. This does not mean that outside funding is not required for capital expenditures which are usually well beyond anything a fare box could capture, but for O&M the fare box should be sufficient.

That's not congruent with reality. Most of the possible capital projects will likely result in a loss in operating costs

See above. It all depends on the operating environment that you create and business model you use. For example, handing a transit monopoly to a union might increase your costs a tad.

- and the capital funding is probably reliant to some degree on financing by higher levels of government regardless of the differential in mill rate.

The point that I was trying to make was that for all the hemming and hawing by Torontonians about the lack of transit, they haven't voted with their pocket books to pay higher taxes for better city services (including transit). The mill rate is merely an indicator of our collective decision.

The presence or absence of transit plans at the municipal level is probably not going to dictate the priorites of higher levels of government either given the calculus of politics.

Yes and no. Sheppard stubway, Sorbara subway: yes. Building a DRL, extending the RT: no. A plan gives you an option and a starting point to debate with. If Toronto had said from day one that there would be no extensions outside the 416 till the DRL was built cause that was the priority for the system, we might well be drilling a tunnel at Pape right now. It's because Toronto has no master plan that it falls whim to any political master willing to throw some cash its way. Lack of a master plan makes Toronto a transit cash whore.

The point is - transit service has to rely on government support precisely because it's not a money making operation in all but the highest density environments - and that's lacking in most jurisdictions.

AoD

Fair enough, but that does not mean that attempts should be made not to reduce that reliance and to move towards self-sustainment. Going back to my original argument, the more self-reliant the system is the less likely it is to suffer from politicization or suffer drastically during an economic downturn.

 

[nfitz]

I-81 is a fun drive going to NY...

That's my preference, if the traffic on the George Washington or the Lincoln tunnel is decent ... normally when I'm on I-87 I'm actually heading from New York City to/from Montreal ... or starting in the Bronx, and not wanting to deal with the George Washington. Even from Syracuse to Toronto I usually take I-81 and 401, rather than I-87, as it's only about 20-minutes further (from where I am in Toronto, assuming no traffic) - however the Gananoque border crossing is always delay-free (for me at least), and the QEW always seems a mess from Oakville to St. Catharines.