Raise the Hammer

I live on St Clair and while the construction period was chaotic and questionably run the end result is a success. I use the line as part of my daily commute downtown and on the whole it is a vast improvement. I cross half the line in about 15 minutes to St Clair West and from there another 15 minutes to union station

I would like to see the airport line link up with St Clair West. Given existing and future development on the the street it makes good sense.

I am in general a Rob Ford supporter but on this topic him and Mr Palacio seem off base.

Steve

I lived in the St. Clair and Bathurst area both before and after the streetcar ROW construction and continue to visit my family there frequently. I must agree with Steve's general observations - the construction period was annoying, but the finished product is a clear improvement over what was there before. Not only is the streetcar itself far more effective, but even the flow of car traffic seems to have improved, probably due to intersection/turning lane/signal improvements that were part of the redesign. Most importantly though, St. Clair's value as a main street has shot up, with trendy restaurants, cafes and condo buildings are appearing all the time.

I'd be interested to see all this quantified by a study as per Councillor Mihevc's suggestion. In the meantime, the mayor's baseless bashing of the neighbourhood, in defiance of both reason and decency, constantly furthers my embarrassment as a Torontonian.

The question I'd like to ask is, is St. Clair an LRT, or a streetcar?

It seems to be used often as an example, both by the Fordites, as well as the pro-LRT camp. But in actuality, I thought LRT was supposed to be a different beast from the traditional street car entirely (more distance between stops, more "subway-like" boarding, priority signals, larger platforms etc).

The differentiation between streetcar and LRT is pretty clear. LRT is multi cars linked together with stops further apart than the couple hundred yards that streetcars and buses use. This is not LRT this is streetcars or trams glorified electric buses that run on rails. Pretty much exactly what was there before just spruced up a bit and giving the streetcars signal priority. Hard to believe that it was worth the money.

It would depend how many transit riders shave a few minutes off their daily commute, as well as how many auto users who experience a travel time benefit to not being stuck in mixed traffic behind transit vehicles.

A few minutes may not seem like much, but when it's summed for thousands of users and drivers in a day, and multiplied across many years, the value of that time (and other potential safety, operating cost, or environmental benefits) can be enormous.

The TTC itself is locally responsible for creating a lot of this fuzziness, stemming from their cavalier use of LRT and similar acronyms.

Though likely the result of thoughtlessness rather than a concerted desire to confuse everybody, they've opened up a vast chasm of confused terminology.

This unfortunate situation has created an opportunity recently seized upon by Toronto mayor Rob Ford et al to sow further confusion in support of their damn-the-torpedoes 'Subways, Subways, Subways' quest. (Known to some as the Let's Build Nothing initiative.)

BlogTO recently ran a two part series that reviewed the history of this linguistic disaster.

http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/03/how_t...

and, Part II:

http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/03/how_t...