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Originally Posted by Crawford
The fact is that Toronto is a difficult city to travel long distances via arterials. This is absolutely tied into its relative lower auto commute share, because its very difficult to use car headed downtown during peak hours. It has relatively few freeways and major arterials, and a very high percentage of streets aren't thru-streets.
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There are several things going on in your statement.
Yes, Toronto has somewhat fewer freeways, relative to its size, than its U.S. counterparts; this is particularly true near downtown.
On that, we can agree.
The suggestion that we have few through streets or few arterials is just weird.
I think you mean (feel free to clarify) that in your mind an arterial must be six-lanes.
That's just not the case in Toronto.
Arterials are defined by their utility, including running straight-through for long distances, and typically by being 4-lanes, plus turning lanes.
Though the more suburban you get in Toronto, the more common six-lane roads become.
In downtown Toronto, the principal N-S arterials are Jarvis/Mt. Pleasant, Yonge, University/Avenue Road, Spadina and Bathurst.
Two don't reach from the south end of downtown or the Lake to at least the 401, Spadina and Jarvis Mt. Pleasant; though the latter still goes quite a distance.
Jarvis is 5 lanes, (Mt. Pleasant 4); Yonge is 4, University is six, Spadina is 4+ an LRT in exclusive lanes, and Bathurst is 4.
Distance btw Bathurst to Spadina is 600M, Another 800M to University, 600M to Yonge, and 500M to Jarvis.
One would find a similar situation w/E-W roads.
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Just take a look at core Toronto, and you'll see half the streets aren't thru-streets, and the thru-streets that exist tend to be narrow for North American standards. Yonge would be a back alley in Detroit in terms of car capacity. There's basically one downtown freeway, and it's narrow. Streets often end and then restart following every arterial.
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Capacity is a different discussion. Yonge is a 4-lane arterial (for now, consideration is being given to narrowing/pedestrianizing portions).
But it certainly goes straight-through to well beyond Toronto's urban boundary.
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And, outside the core, the six and eight lane, 55 MPH type arterials you see everywhere in American sprawlburbia are much less common. This is a good thing, BTW. But it absolutely makes it harder to commute 50 miles every day. In suburban Detroit, for example, you have the eight lane Woodward, then just to the west, the eight lane Telegraph, then just to the west the six lane Orchard Lake, then just to the west the eight lane M-5. All high speed, high capacity corridors, making it very easy to live a totally autocentric lifestyle. I haven't seen this degree of autotopia anywhere in Canada, and certainly not in the GTA.
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This again conflates a few things.
Rural highways in Ontario are typically 50mph, not 55mph.
Major highways, are typically 60mph, not 70mph.
So yes, our arterials do have lower posted speeds.
Typically 40mph/60kmph, sometimes 45/70.
But those are relatively abundant in our burbs.
The roads you noted in Detroit, I measured on Google as being approximately 6km apart.
At Yonge street, in the suburbs, at 16th Avenue, you have a distance of 14.25km between the major N-S highways (400, and 404).
9.5km from Yonge to the west, 4.75km from Yonge to the East.
But there are several large arterials in between.
Yonge is six lanes here.
Bathurst is 4
Dufferin is 4
Keele is 4
Jane is 6
All of those intervening arterials btw Yonge and 400 are 2km apart.
All them go for very long distances, mostly to the Lake, though Jane stops at Bloor.
Again, the area east of Yonge is similar.