Whew. 90 posts since I last had time to check the thread. But, I read it all. I think that if people considered other people's arguments (almost every thing I read was a good argument) then we would make progress. Instead, we get locked in one viewpoint. That's bad debate.
Policy Wonk, I wrote out a good page of counter-arguments for you, half of which were later put forth by other posters such as fusili, sim, YNAT, Bassic Lab, and TheChemist. But, you have already decided what is absolute fact. You can read them if you'll actually consider what I've written. I agree with the above posters, mostly, but I have my own perspective too.
So, I'll just answer this one, cause I have opinions too:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Policy Wonk
But why don't we cut the bullshit and get back to what this is really about.
Most of you don't care about headways, right-of-ways and had probably never heard of interlining before this topic. This is about favoring the subway concept over the Nose Creek plans because Nose Creek is perceived to be in the service of the suburbs, which it is and the Centre Street subway would be a catalyst for the intensification of Centre Street.
That is all well and good, but it doesn't really serve to mitigate the tremendous political, financial and practical challenges that would go with the subway and intensification route.
|
We know about headways, right-of-ways, and especially interlining, which is half our capacity problem. We easily know as much as you do. Some of us are using the intensification as the main angle, but most of us are using the angle that a subway will serve BOTH functions and not ONLY suburbanites or residents of intensification. We know what the political, financial, and practical challenges are, and you've apparently missed several good strategies for dealing with them that were posted.
I favour the subway concept for this reason:
it serves people. It does not skip areas people would want to travel to and from. Look at how many people use the 301, and especially the 3, there are obviously reasons to travel to places on Centre St. Additional costs are made up for by the sheer potential for ridership it provides.
You are essentially advocating ignoring everyone but *one* demographic of ridership. Just like how the South line works, a line that was built with similar poor planning and would have hit high levels of ridership had it been built along Macleod somehow instead of out of the way along a rail corridor with stations far from everything. It would not need to depend on suburban travel from the far far south if it caught more ridership further in. But, that's almost a separate argument of its own.
Ultimately, I advocate building a system that provides rapid transit, and from there feeder and crosstown routes, to ultimately reach as many places in the city as efficiently as possible. I use myself as an example. I now commute from Dalhousie to Centre St like a suburbanite. But, I also counter-commute to Crowfoot. And, I take more train trips to various stations all over the city than either of those. I know plenty of people who do the same, and plenty of people who don't do the downtown commute at all. And many of them have cars.
If we are going to provide a service, why not make it useful to as many people as possible? This is efficiency, this generates more ridership, this is not merely a flight of fancy. This is not about "cool". It's about being USEFUL. And people USE a useful transit system.
That is my perspective, and other than to clarify it if asked, I'm not going to prolong the debate further. Next topic. We can come back to this one after the NCLRT consultations, at which we can voice all these arguments.
Prev
we can do it 
Linear Mode
