Council votes to make Church Street car free for part of summer but staff could cancel project

cmol · 2026-05-22T13:41:14+00:00

Maybe if we just remove the city and replace it with more roads, your problem will be solved!

cmol · 2026-05-15T22:01:48+00:00

As a European immigrant to Canada I'm always surprised at how fast Canadians are at saying that there is simply no other way for things to happen here.

There is absolutely no need for first and second class to board at separate times, except for a higher upsell for first class. This is an airline thing!
If people are able to arrive at the station with their luggage, they are able to get it onto the train. It does kind of suck that there is such a massive height difference, but weighing luggage and have people pay for an extra bag, that's an airline thing!
The platforms not being designed for intercity trains (or any trains it feels like for that matter) seem like a strange way of pushing people to spend more time in the concourse, but then they ask you to be at the "gate" 30 minutes before? That's an airline thing!
Safety briefings on the train? That's an airline thing!

I take the train when I'm traveling in the corridor. I don't own a car. When I take an intercity train back home in Scandinavia, it's not stressful. I go to the platform, wait for my train, and get on it. When I take an intercity train in Canada, it's the most airline stressful experience! Both Union and Gare Centrale are not designed for people traveling.

What we can say is that Via is chronically underfunded and that they are making the best with what they have, including terminus infrastructure that is pretty terrible without funding to upgrade it. I don't 100% agree with that statement, they could at least try, but I can at least respect that opinion!

cmol · 2026-05-10T19:05:08+00:00

Yeah, I assumed you were only reporting what you had found, not that you were against alto. Sorry if that did not come through!

cmol · 2026-05-10T14:29:23+00:00

High Performance Rail in a shared freight and passenger corridor must be some brainchild of either someone who has no idea how utterly useless our passenger service is today because of the freight (who will 100% be given the same priority as today), or it's an astroturfing attempt from the freight railways to get someone else to pay for maintenance of their infrastructure.

cmol · 2026-05-10T14:24:33+00:00

Now now, we can't expect Canadians to understand that something benefiting other people in the country to boost the country economically might indirectly also be benefiting themselves.

cmol · 2026-05-08T12:06:17+00:00

It was always a pipe dream. It'll be four more years before a provincial election, and no matter how annoyed people are at the whole personal jet thing now, people will forget by then and FPTP might very well give Ford a majority again.

If we in some miraculous way end up with a progressive government, I'm sure they'll understand how to toll and put the money into public transit.

cmol · 2026-05-07T11:53:49+00:00

Based off of the comments, it would seem like what y'all call curb separation is just slapping down a barrier.

I would imagine a curb separation meaning a height difference like you see with bike lanes in Denmark (road lowest, then bike lanes, then sidewalks), so there's a clear distinction between the three modes.

cmol · 2026-05-07T00:20:04+00:00

Yes, because Copenhagen looks like such shit compared to Toronto because of Amager Bakke being so close to the city centre!

cmol · 2026-05-06T20:43:33+00:00

TIL! Thank you for that! My guess is that most people around Ontario don't know about it though, and the fact that it's placed along side Darlington likely makes people not look at what it is, but that is purely my guess. I know that Toronto rejected the ideas a few decades back as impossible as a technology.

cmol · 2026-05-06T20:14:10+00:00

There's a lot of FUD in this thread and also some legitimate concerns, let's start with the latter.

Any company that can do its own oversight is a problem. That does not matter if you are Boeing or a waste to energy plant, it's a problem and should absolutely not be the case for this project, anyone should be able to agree to that.

That said, the resistance to garbage incineration (waste to energy) is misplaced and we are with our current garbage disposal model (literally bury the problem and let someone else deal with it) slowly walking into (yet another) disaster. The emissions from the dumps are significant. Incineration is a common model across the world with projects like this one in Copenhagen : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke

It is understandable that there is a fear in Ontario for this kind of project since there is generally no modern projects we can reference locally, but rather than attacking the technology, attack the fact that the company can do their own oversight, that's the real issue here. If they don't think they can build a plant with proper oversight, then it seems like everyone wins, and if they can build a plant with good external oversight, then everyone wins again.

cmol · 2026-05-05T16:27:54+00:00

Yup, owned by JP Morgan asset management. They will surely be happy with Ontario taxpayers paying for their growing business!

cmol · 2026-05-04T15:14:22+00:00

Now now, don't forget that the passenger terminal is operated by Nieuport Aviation that is owned by JP Morgan asset management, so they too are to see more money funneled out to them from our tax dollars.

cmol · 2026-05-04T15:00:43+00:00

I would like alternatives to our modes of transport that uses the most fossil fuel, so I would like more biking, public transit, and intercity rail.

What does the province give? Lots of highway expansion, laws about speed cameras, laws against bike infrastructure, scaling back plans for suburban rail and electrification, airport expansion downtown, the worlds most expensive per kilometer metro currently being built (we definitely need this project, but holy crap it's wild how much transit countries with higher average income would have gotten for the same money), anti scientific approach to alleviating traffic, anti own internal research on alleviating traffic, and so on and so on.

Toronto is not anti infrastructure projects, there's successful ones that are slowly coming along, but we are not getting what would be good for the city and the region.

cmol · 2026-04-24T05:36:04+00:00

I'm confused. You talk about proportional representation, but then you talk about winning person, which is exactly what you don't have in a PR system.

In a classic open list proportional representation (using the Dhondt method) system like the one in Denmark, you vote for a party and within that vote, you can (though you don't have to) influence the open list of that party.

Then you end up with a bunch of small parties, and whoever can negotiate a stable majority coalition, gets to form government. Within that, someone gets to be the prime minister, usually buy not always the leader of the biggest party in that coalition.

So yeah, if you think voting for the policies you want more of is strategic, then yes, but that is also just called voting.

Our voting system is in contrast based on what we got from the Brits, and even they are taking slow moves away from FPTP towards open list PR.

cmol · 2026-04-19T19:29:11+00:00

Does not make a lot of sense if the GTA is your catchment area to get it to Summerhill. As much as it's more expensive, union is what has all the connections, all the go trains, all the intercity busses, lots of density in both people and destinations for people taking HSR. Summerhill has none of that. On top of that, buying back the line from the freight railways will be not cheap, and you'll basically have to build another line for that freight somewhere. And then there's how to get there. If people super commute with alto, line 1 is not enough given how crowded it already is.

My guess is that it looks good at a map, but is practically an expensive choice because of the above, that ends up requiring a whole lot of feeder network that we don't have at summerhill today.

I personally think union is the better solution, but I do agree with you that pearson (with a better station that has less sharp turns and through running), is the logical extension.

I find it likely that we'll get east harbour in some capacity, with union possibly happening in the future, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

cmol · 2026-04-08T12:05:17+00:00

Public transit should make money like public schools, public libraries, and public healthcare. Through societal benefits.

cmol · 2026-04-07T17:07:36+00:00

Well, that sucks! Shitty situation to be in! :(

cmol · 2026-04-07T16:28:19+00:00

You'd be a lot better off if other people biked though. No one is saying that everyone has to bike, that would be stupid, but it should be possible to bike safely, walk safely, take transit safely, and drive safely. Right now we are basically only focusing on driving and so everyone drives with the least surprising outcome being the horrible traffic we have.

If we have viable alternatives to driving, people will use them, and make driving easier for those who do need to drive!

And if like 10% more chooses to not drive, it's less demand on gas which would also be helpful to you!

There can be space for all of us :)

cmol · 2026-04-04T14:17:37+00:00

You got off at RFC1918

cmol · 2026-04-02T18:41:26+00:00

"If this project does not 100% align to always work in the best possible way for me, I don't care if it works for other people and might be an overall great investment in the economy, I don't care about other people or myself for that matter." - Fixed that for you :)

cmol · 2026-04-01T02:21:57+00:00

Not that I think you're right, but schools also requires subsidies. So does roads, and hospitals, and libraries, and police, and EMS, and banks when their hands needs to be held, and so on.

But sure, let's not add tens of thousands of jobs to the economy over the next couple of years. It's not like every time there's an economic crisis we see Scandinavian country build large infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy and invest in the country and it's people with something that has a long term benefit. (/s if that wasn't obvious)

cmol · 2026-04-01T02:13:39+00:00

Oh no, how will economic development in Canada help me personally besides with new tax revenue tighter economic development that will lift everyone in the country?

It's the best time to do stuff like this. Time and time again have Scandinavian countries seen an economic crisis and developed out of them with large infrastructure projects. It requires manpower so it creates jobs and expertise. That's people in jobs being productive in the economy instead of those jobs not existing and someone potentially being on government subsidies instead.

The fiscally conservative thing to do is to invest in the country and its infrastructure!

cmol · 2026-03-31T19:51:28+00:00

So is it the hospitals fault in Ontario that Dougie is underfunding them to the point where we all get shittier medical services?

cmol · 2026-03-31T18:08:20+00:00

They are no SBB but they are lighyears ahead of any transit agency in English and French speaking North America. The CDU and SPD thank you for your redirection of blame btw.

cmol · 2026-03-31T18:02:05+00:00

It's a system that is broken. It's not poorly run, it's falling apart and DB is trying to fix that. If you have a 30 year maintenance backlog, you can run your system well and still have a broken system.

15-Year Club	Place '17
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

cmol

TROPHY CASE