Sunday, October 16, 2005

TheStar.com - Transit ruling a victory for persistence

Go-o-olly, the way some supporters of the streetcar right-of-way on St. Clair W. are talking, you'd think Toronto will plain just come to an end if the project doesn't proceed:

Toronto Star - Oct 15 2005

From the article:

"This is a nightmare," says Gord Perks of the Toronto Environmental Alliance. "The thing that's infuriating about all of this, if you look at the 50 biggest cities in North America, over 40 of them have in the last 10 years either put in exclusive rights-of-way for light rail or plan to. Toronto, which is theoretically the streetcar city, can't seem to do that."

Well, perhaps it's because Torontonians know more about streetcars than people in those other cities. I suspect not many other cities are installing 'streetcars' as non-rapid transit - they are in fact installing light-rail systems.

Of course, two of the most successful transit cities - Montreal and Ottawa - have been successful at building transit use in recent years by deploying busways and rapid-bus services. I guess we should phone up the STM and OCT and warn them that they will be incurring the transit gods wrath for not using light-rail systems!

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