Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
I think we just have some radically divergent perspectives on this issue.
To me, the key is not bus ridership, rather, it's a pre-war built environment. As I've said many times in this thread, our society could have continued building more suburbs like oak park, but we ended up with a bunch of schaumburgs instead.
Whoops.
Even if every single last man, women, and child in schaumburg rode the bus everywhere, it still wouldn't stop schaumburg's craptacular "geography of nowhere" built environment from sucking a giant pair of donkey balls.
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Brampton's built environment isn't that different from Oak Park's though. Large swaths of predominantly residential areas with some retail mixed in, and similar densities, lot sizes, building sizes/types. The average distance to walk to a grocery store is probably a lot more similar than some here would think.
They aren't
*identical*. Oak Park has back alleys while Brampton has mostly front-loaded garages. Brampton's arterials are more limited access and have little buildings fronting onto them. Brampton's retail is more in the form of strip malls at arterial/collector road intersections while Oak Park's retail is mostly lining arterials. Brampton is 25 miles from downtown Toronto while Oak Park is 9 miles from downtown Chicago. Oak Park's side streets follow a rigid grid while Brampton's follow a pseudo grid.
Many of these differences are not a fixed reality and can be changed. The arterials can be redesigned to be more boulevard like (Oak Park has some
wide arterials that aren't entirely inviting to cross too). The land along the arterials can be rezoned to have mixed uses and/or midrises. The strip malls can also be rezoned to have higher density mixed use development. The pseudo grid honestly works fine, the pedestrian walkways and parks connecting the crescents provide the necessary levels of connectivity.
Some more things I would add about suburbs like Brampton, as someone that's familiar with living in Toronto's suburbs.
-A high percentage of kids walk/bike to school. A high percentage of those that don't could
-the majority of the population lives within a 15 minute walk of a proper grocery store
-Parks/playgrounds are very well utilized, in fact I would say that new Toronto suburbs have higher utilized playgrounds within walking distance of the average resident than most pre-war neighbourhoods. If you want to find other kids to play with on a nice day after school, you can find a playground/park with around 50 kids playing in it within a short walking distance, and additional, also there will be smaller less busy playgrounds also within walking distance if you want something more quiet. Also, in Brampton specifically, there's always some Sikh grandpas hanging out in the park gazebos chatting, playing cards, etc. so they're utilized while kids are in school as well.
-Although arterials can be an obstacle for cyclists, the side streets and collector roads are good for biking, and most suburbs have a pretty good network of multi-use trails along ravines, power line corridors and arterials. Some areas can generate high volumes of cycling activity. For example I've been to Milliken which has a similar post-WWII built environment to Brampton and you see quite a lot of people biking around, especially to Pacific Mall/Market Village. I'd estimate that at peak times, there can be up to 100 bicycles parked at the various bike racks along Market Village's mall perimeter (and leaned against walls and trees...).
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.8254...7i13312!8i6656
-transit use to destinations within Toronto's suburbs is still not that high, but about 80% of those destined to workplaces in downtown Toronto commute by train, even though those are mostly post-WWII suburbs