One of the biggest questions asked at council yesterday (about Toronto’s transit future, in case you missed that whole thing) was about density. One side argued that we’re not dense enough to support a subway, the other said “Build it and they will come”. Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina) had one of the last opportunities to speak and refuted this whole “Build it, they’ll take transit” idea really nicely by pointing out that we built the Spadina part of the Yonge-University-Spadina line with that in mind, and it STILL hasn’t worked.
I was going to blog about density today, and so started researching, but found an awesome and incredibly post about it already written, less than two months ago. You can find it here:
No, really, the suburbs can’t support subways (Or why Toronto still isn’t dense)
There’s a follow-up to it, here:
Density and Subways, revisited
If you don’t know exactly what I mean, here’s a map of what it’s all about.
Ironic as it seems, a high school student would say subway would be a bad idea in sparse areas. (cough)
No need to argue about it, it’s geographical common sense.
However in the early 1900′s, they had light rail running the East end. Before the subway reached eastward. Probably learn from history and got light rail or something more environmentally friendly.