Raise the Hammer

Until we pimp the hell out of the Lakeshore line, Hamilton-Toronto transit commutes will rarely drop below 60 minutes. Hopefully Facetime holds those marriages together.

Aside from anything else, the very fact that people are willing to invest that much of their time going so far from home puts the lie to the talk of balanced, diversified live-work communities.

The Big Move is expansive enough to contain both highway-friendly and transit-friendly measures. For example:

"Improvements to the transportation system in the first 15 years of the plan are not limited to transit. Hundreds of lane-kilometres will be added to the region’s expressway network with the completion of the Highway 407 East extension to Highway 35/115 and the extensions of Highways 404, 427 and 410, as identified in the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

Improvements to existing 400 series highways are also part of the RTP. For example, they include widening Highway 401 from Highway 410 to Hurontario Street, including HOV lanes, and new HOV lanes on Highway 400 between Major Mackenzie Drive and King Road, on Highway 427 from Highway 409 to Highway 407, and on the QEW between Trafalgar Road and Guelph Line.

Carpool lots will be added to the highway network to encourage carpooling and to support interregional bus services and HOV lanes.

In addition, arterial road widenings and extensions will be added to the road system, in accordance with the 10-year municipal road programs and longer range road network expansion plans in the Transportation Master Plans of the Cities of Toronto and Hamilton and the regional municipalities of Halton, Peel, York and Durham."

http://www.metrolinx.com/thebigmove/en/lookingforward/5_2_first15years.aspx

Remember that all day GO service we were supposed to get the second Liuna station opened, and now has turned into 6 trains a day.

http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/20...

That GO service we needed 10 years ago? Guess it wasn't quite as done a deal, which frankly infuriates me. This reeks of the liberals scratching Bratina's back to skirt out LRT and let the province reduce the investment of the big move that's takes negative flack from the HST suggestion. Now he can sit back and say "Oh well...we need to focus on full day GO service."

Seriously, a real provincial leader would tell CN "You either free up space for all day GO, or we expropriate it from you" or "Fine, then we build a new track next to yours, and we'll sell usage of it to VIA."

They can't expropriate federally regulated lands. Those railway right of ways were granted to the railway companies by the federal government. The province has no jurisdiction over those lands.

Was listening to CBC radio one on the way home last week (the late afternoon radio show out of Toronto), heard the substitute host, when mentioning the Metrolinx Big Move announcement, put verbal scare quotes around the "H" in GTHA, and the financial commenter (Kate Macnamara?) refer to Hamilton as Toronto's Labrador.

If this is indicative of attitudes toward the GTHA, there's a whole lot that needs improving here before transit infrastructure is ever going to follow.

< Aside from anything else, the very fact that people are willing to invest that much of their time going so far from home puts the lie to the talk of balanced, diversified live-work communities.

What are their options?

You got that wright :)

During the past 10 years of commuting between Hamilton and Burlington, I've been joking to myself that I will retire before Lakeshore West gets modernized.

Then the James North station was announced and suddenly there was hope for us to participate in a transit renaissance in the GTA. I thought, electrification and all day service between TO and Niagara? In my lifetime? Beautiful steps forward!

Nope, not happening. I get the impression that Metrolinx wants to implement some amazing projects but there is no political will.

So people will sit on the QEW/401 like sardines in cans and we will all breathe smog and avail of Hamilton's bustling cancer center. Hopefully public and political will changes and this situation is not for much longer.

Also I'm experiencing commuting burnout just as described in the article. Fortunately time on the GO train is spend reading and relaxing.

Comment edited by mikeonthemountain on 2013-06-06 09:07:27

I agree that the destruction of quality of life, due to the issues we are having progressing as a region, can be described as evil. If the externalities of this were actually measured, I think it would be appalling how much quality of life and time-opportunity is being robbed from people due to absence of awesome transit, complete streets, walkable neighborhoods, and the cafe's and culture and street life that ensues.

the destruction of quality of life

Get used to it, it is our future. We are trying to build what should have been built decades ago, while our sun sets and the Asian sun rises. We are looking for more and more money as the poverty line inches closer to our mean income and the middle class shrinks more and more each year.

Meanwhile I see high-speed rail lines, stadiums, conference centres, multi-lane highways, public transit and basically entire cities being built at an unbelievable scale and rate in a country with a growing middle class where money flows like wine at an Italian wedding. High times indeed for other parts of the world, while we struggle to pay the mortgage on our decades of fiscal irresponsibility.

Kiely from Tianjin , China.

Public transit users are more tolerant of longer commuting times

In larger metropolitan areas, 6% of workers who used an active mode of transportation (walking or bicycling) to get to work were dissatisfied with their commuting time. Public transit users were more likely than car users to be dissatisfied with their commuting times (23% versus 18%). Public transit users’ higher level of dissatisfaction was primarily due to the fact it took them longer on average than car users to get to work.

However, when commuting times were taken into account, a complex
relationship between transportation mode and satisfaction level emerged(Chart 4). For shorter commuting times, public transit users were less satisfied than car users. Yet, as commuting time increased, the pattern was reversed. For example, 21% of car users with commuting times between 30 and 44 minutes said they were dissatisfied, compared with 10% of public transit users.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2011002/article/11531-eng.pdf

Love it. Bob Bratina picks All-Day GO service over LRT, and then doesn't deliver.

In other words, a lot of outlying communities are able to claim "diversification" but in reality, dynamic career opportunities and accompanying renumeration are often not located in those communities. The luckiest locals are those able to successfully make their own options.

That's hilarious!

Hamilton: The Ambitious City..... =>

Hamilton: The 20 Minute City .... =>

Hamilton: Toronto's Labrador.

You're doing a great job there Bob and the rest of council. Way to run a city....

Whenever I hear the cavalcade of naysaying regarding global warming or fixing the banking sector or building ambitious transit projects, I'm reminded of this comic:

The Pain

Basically, when did we become a country of such can't-do wussies? We Canadians have our own massive mega-projects to point to - a freaking robotic baseball stadium, the (former) world's tallest freestanding structure, nation-wide railroads, and that whole space-robot-arm thing. What happened to us?

Actually, I thought that whole episode spoke very badly of CBC Toronto, not our own city. Yet why should I have been surprised, we lived in Toronto for years, and that's what they think of people who don't live there. Got tired of it. It's one of the reasons we left.

Lets be clear about GTHA BIG MOVE. The vast majority of already executed and new projects will be east and north of Mississauga. Hamilton is just a way to get the rest to pay up without whining too much. As commented above the west lakshore line is the only way to relieve the problem of us going to TO for whatever reason. Now they are finding reasons not to do it. You wont hear the same roadblocks occurring on the big moves from Mistersaga and eastwards.

That's good to know, if that is the case then the province should be pressuring the Federal government to make CP/CN make them accessible. They certainly have avenues and contacts with the federal ministry of transportation. The province knows there is a 6 Billion dollar traffic congestion issue and the 403/QEW is the busiest highway in the province. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out better, quicker, more expansive rail access along this corridor is needed to deal with this problem.

I'm just glad there's no rails or room to run them along the Skyway. With how long this is taking, they'd probably try to avoid Hamilton all together.

Comment edited by -Hammer- on 2013-06-07 12:04:43

I don't think any reasonable person would argue we don't need significant investment in public transit and in fact our transportation infrastructure in totality. What reasonable people are fed up with is government dipping into their pockets again to pay for it when there is already enough government revenue to cover the $2 billion a year they say they need to fund The Big Move.
Ontario government expenditures have gone up almost %100 percent since 2001-2 from around $65 Billion to this years $127 Billion. $2billion a year out of that number is less than 2%. Every one of us has had to as some point make difficult decisions with our finances and prioritize what we spend it on. Usually that has meant making decisions about more than 2% of our household budget. Yet we do it and move on. This government is drunk on public money and spending like a sailor on shore leave in Bangkok. Only $477 per household? Really?( Thats on the low side. The announced average is $917 per household. ) Think about that statement for a minute. Maybe it's not that much money to you or me, but for a large percentage of the people in this city that is enough to cause some stress in their daily/monthly lives. And it's not necessary.

This is an election issue, not minor piece of legislation you try to sneak through on the QT. Lets hope Ms Horvath has the jabronies to pull the plug on this corrupt, inept government and we can have this debate in the public forum where it belongs.

Signpost: Metrolinx coming to Hamilton to talk transportation Hamilton Spectator Transportation talk

Metrolinx is coming to Hamilton to talk about its regional transportation plan and how to fund it. The briefing and question period is on June 12 from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at Liuna Station at 360 James St. N. RSVP to eric.barkman@metrolinx.com

Love the time of day this is being presented. Mid morning when anyone who might actually be using public transit is at work. # Whitewash.