- cross-posted to:
- canada
https://stateofcitiessummit.ca/files/041224_Understanding-the-Drivers-of-Transit-Construction-Costs-in-Canada-A-Comparative-Study.pdf
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A city the size, stature and wealth of toronto having the metro system it does is such a grave embarrassment. It is also the reason the city has some of the worst traffic in North America comparable probably only to LA. Hell will freeze over before the Eglington LRT is open.
There was a meme going around in several Toronto facebook groups earlier this year that showed comparison between Chengdu and Toronto metro in 2010 and then 2023 or whenever, and in that time Chengdu went from not having a metro to having like 13 lines, and in that same time Toronto lost the Scarborough LRT line and built nothing else really other than extension to Vaughn. Just sad, such a beautiful, diverse and fun city needs more metro and less traffic.
It's so bad, my favorite part is how the subway system always shuts down when there's a hint of snow too. Like you'd think we could figure this out by now given that it's a yearly occurrence.
On top of that now you have the subway being slowed down significantly over certain sections of track i guess due to overwhelming backlog of maintenance required. A city like Toronto should have a dozen subway lines and they are now only building the Ontario Line because materially they have no choice but to build it, and it still could be another 7-10 years until its open. Meanwhile when I was living in Guangzhou they built a whole extension to my relatively remote suburb in seemingly months only.
In Toronto there is more ongoing and proposed construction than any other city in the world outside of China. I'm a native Torontonian who moved away a long time ago now and every time I visit the city feels almost completely different, its a level of growth in the past decade thats not comparable to any other western city I don't think. Just makes me sad that anarchy of capitalism and lack of central planning is hamstringing such an awesome place.
Completely agree, it's just so frustrating to watch. It's not like this is an intractable problem, it's just a complete failure of society.
In the time between when I moved to Scarborough and first heard of the Scarborough subway extension, I've dropped out of school, moved to downtown Toronto, lived there for 5 years, moved to KW, moved again, and graduated college. 11 fuckin years. I will eat my pants if it ever gets completed lol
Canada is absolutely unable to build any infrastructure. It's so embarrassing.
most places cant even shovel the damn sidewalks let alone plan and execute long-term projects
I love how the solution is to just dump heaps of salt to make everything extra slushy.
Meanwhile the regime leader of Ontario is trying to take out bike lanes with no logical or scientific backing other than him and his moronic voters believe that bike lanes are causing traffic, not our god awful infrastructure everywhere else
The thing that gets me with all of these projects in the west is how each governing entity is completely unable to ask others with experience and expertise for help. Every single time any sort of infrastructure project comes up it seems like the wheel needs to be reinvented, rather than asking someone else who successfully built a wheel for some advice.
I get that subway projects are huge undertakings, but bigger and more dense cities have done it before. None of this is new.
I suspect that this is an artifact of capitalist mechanics. These contracts are typically handed out to private companies to implement since there's no state owned industry to speak of. As a result, the companies want to extract as much money as they can from the government leading to long running and overbudget projects.
