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From Toronto here, and just wanted to clarify that the headline is somewhat misleading in claiming that "it worked". Article begins: > One year after Toronto t
by Dave_TRS 8y ago
From Toronto here, and just wanted to clarify that the headline is somewhat misleading in claiming that "it worked". Article begins:
> One year after Toronto turned King Street in a transit- and walking-priority street, streetcar ridership, biking and walking are way up.
What "worked" is that removing cars did indeed make space for faster streetcars and biking - but this is not surprising, practically a truism!
The purpose of doing a pilot was see if the trade-off is worth it in real life. Worse traffic congestion for cars in the downtown core in exchange for a fast street for transit and bikes. It will be interesting to see what the city decides.
- crispyambulance 8y agoIt is not just a matter of traffic throughput. Part of the purpose "complete streets" movement is to enable pedestrian and other slow-moving traffic for the purpose of increasing or preserving the vitality of urban cores. You have a different "kind" of downtown when it has enough foot traffic as opposed to people zooming by at 50 kmh pissed-off about looking for parking or trying to get home asap. If the metrics only measure throughput of bodies past intersections, they're missing a large part of the point.
- Sharlin 8y agoDid car traffic really just move elsewhere? Reduced demand [1] is just as real an effect as induced demand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Reduced_demand_(the_inverse_effect) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Reduced_demand_...
- jspash 8y agoYes of course, as that was the purpose of this trial. Increase the cost (in time and convenience) for drivers, therefore reducing the demand to use this particular route by car. In turn it increases demand for people using other modes of transportation due to the lower "cost" of different ways of getting around. But if you are asking, did the cars from King St. just clog up other streets? Well, some of them did. But the increase of 20,000 users of the streetcars had to come from somewhere. A number of them were most likely the displaced automobile users. Now the hard part is making the decision on whether or not the trade-off is worth it. The cynic in me thinks that the local businesses, or a vocal/powerful minority, will end up winning this battle and things will go back to how they were. Maybe they will reduce the restriction to a block or two to keep everyone happy. Time will tell.
- mtreiber 8y agoThe interesting thing is that traffic congestion for cars in the downtown core didn't change at all! The study found that average car travel times on adjacent streets vary by less than a minute compared to before the pilot. https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/8fe2-King-Street-Dashboard_July_August-Update_Final.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/8fe2-King-...
- mortenjorck 8y agoIn 1979, Chicago tried making a stretch of State Street pedestrian-only (allowing bus/taxi access). It was considered a failure, and was returned to regular motor traffic in 1996. It’s too bad – Chicago could certainly benefit from a major pedestrian district (there is a small one up in Ravenswood), but the reasons for the State Street project’s failures are debated. This piece is a good exploration: https://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/11/why-was-the-state-street-pedestrian-mall-a-failure/ https://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/11/why-was-the-state-str... Hopefully Toronto’s avoids the pitfalls of Chicago’s experiment, and eventually serves as a model for this kind of conversion.
- kristianp 8y agoHow long is the blocked-off section? The article doesn't mention it. If it's a long section, that's a lot of businesses affected. Surprising though that the increased passengers of Trams didn't increase business demand in that section.
- DKnoll 8y agoIt's not blocked off. You are only allowed to make a left or right turn when you are on King St.; you're not allowed to travel on it for more than one block. There are jersey barriers by some TTC stops but they're in place to protect pedestrians from being struck and slow traffic.