Regional and Intercity Bus\Rail Transportation

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

My gawd, look at how far New York City sprawls out.

Are you seriously comparing Ottawa to a metro area that is 15 times the size? By the way, the New York metro area with its "sprawl" has double the density in its MSA compared to the Ottawa CMA.

Oh and the residents of New York City aren't seeing their property taxes provide transit discounts to Long Island residents. In fact, a lot of cities in the US have rules paying city workers who choose to live outside the city's boundaries less.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Congestion fees encourage transit use, as do parking fees. They do not prevent sprawl.

Evidence?

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

But at the same time, every city that does this, offers a transit alternative.

Not really true. But if this is the approach, sure, let's have a congestion charge for outside the greenbelt and then offer 10 min bus service to all the suburbs. I'm cool with that.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You want some utopian society where everybody is stuck in condo towers, and because everybody is crammed into a small area, land prices will skyrocket, and those condos will mostly be cheap commie blocks like I saw in Eastern Europe, before sanity returned to those countries. That's all we will be able to afford.

If you've been to Europe, you'd know how ridiculous and ignorant this strawman is. Par for the course for you.

Most of Europe doesn't have tower blocks of condos. But what we have in Ottawa (and Canada in general) is the insistence on a specific form of housing at any and all cost: detached housing. Somehow people think the same 2000 sqft in a 3-storey urban town or in a large low-rise condo is far less acceptable. And they cling to this nonsense even as cities grow into the millions. And when they can't get it in the city, society has to subsidize them getting their detached dream in the exurbs.

Suggest they change and you get the same ignorant strawman. "This isn't Europe. I don't want to live like a peasant in box." From the set who've never actually visited or lived in a medium sized European city. Or they'd know that's not true. That people in Europe live in houses too.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

In Canada, many people will choose to leave that environment and take their money with them to the exurbs.

And if they do, they should not be subsidized.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You want an economic and transportation barrier between city and country. That simply will not work. No city does that. There is always an alternative transportation system.

I agree that congestion charges are a hard sell. You know what would be a good start though? Zero effort to support them or subsidize them. No transit passes or discounts to these folks. And not one penny of Ottawa's taxes to build infrastructure to them. Either they pay for it. Or the province can do that.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

There is no possibility in charging people entirely fairly for public services that they use. We have property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes and user fees. None can be assessed for perfect and entirely fair cost recovery.

I could not care less about cost recovery. I only care that the City of Ottawa is not subsidizing or facilitating their sprawl. We already pay higher than necessary taxes to fund our own sprawl in our suburbs. Can't afford to fund their on top of all that.

I'm starting to wonder if you actually own property and pay property taxes. I don't see how anybody could get that tax bill and not be upset to see it spent inefficiently paying for sprawl.