Friday, March 16, 2007

A Big Idea for Toronto?


In the decade-plus that I've been driving (where did the time go?) traffic in Toronto has gotten significantly worse. While I can recall times when the DVP would be fast during off-peak hours, now there is no guarantee. The same can be said of certain stretches of the 401.

In that time period I have done my share of transit commuting and I can say with some certainty that there is nothing worse that the purgatory of TTC trips that go very far beyond the subway lines that are the backbones of its system. Buses don't come, or they come late, when they do come they're overcrowded. All that traffic build-up that I mentioned above, makes the bus trips seem interminable.

A couple of my friends live right on Queen St. and I guess if you live and work along a 24-hour streetcar line, this is all theoretical, but most of us don't (even if we really, really want to). Most of Toronto's residents are out in the vast tracts of housing beyond downtown. And out there, the TTC is often a wretched way to get around.

All this is a prelude to saying that something like this is really encouraging. Check out the website here.

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