Another way to look at the problem of Mississauga's uncoordinated transit is the movement of its downtown. Mississauga's decision to move its downtown from Dundas and Hurontario to a car-oriented shopping mall, Square One, created this problem. This happened in the 1970s. If they had left their downtown where it originally developed, it would have been walking distance to Cooksville GO Station. That would have meant a one seat ride between Toronto and Mississauga downtowns.
So they moved it away from the existing transit, but right next to a giant freeway interchange. Oops! Furthermore, the streets you mentioned are not pleasant, but could work really well for transit (tram, LRT, BRT) which would complement the longer distance nature of GO. In contrast, the mall relies largely on the freeway, and while freeway express buses can work, they don't offer the same efficiency, simply because they stop less often. They are basically a substitute for what the train would provide. Oops!
Dundas and Hurontario was never Mississauga's downtown as such, it was just a busy highway crossroads hamlet where Mississauga's urban area basically got started. But I agree the city centre should've been built there.
@@ALuimes Late but I think the downtown was originally Streetsville, hence the intersection of Queen and MAIN street. If you look at it on a map, it has many older styled downtown buildings as well as the Streetsville GO Station nearby. I think that was the OG Mississauga downtown.
Much of the undevelopable land is actually farmland with some parkland and nature reserves as well. It's in what is essentially a river valley that's floodprone. It accounts for about a third of Surrey's total area and forms a band across the entire central area of the the city. It's a great asset to the city as it gives quick access to farm fresh produce that's only 25 minutes away from the City Centre, as well as ample greenspace.
Historically that's how things were. In terms of area, towns/cities were not very big. Typically they were no more than 20~30sqmi because people had to be able to walk to the town center. Many if not most are around 10sqmi. Most municipalities in the US are still around these sizes.
Vancouver developers have no qualms with building on flood plains or subduction zones that will collapse in a significant enough earthquake (see Abbotsford and Richmond). The main thing keeping much of Surrey free of development is the agricultural land reserve. There are however underhanded ways of removing land from this federally protected system, primarily by not using it for a number of years then having it recognized as not fertile and allowing the designation to change. This is a huge problem in the speculative real estate market that not only facilitates suburban sprawl but moves away from regional food security.
I feel like the Washington DC Metro Area suburbs do a pretty great job of transit oriented development especially by North American standards. Places like Arlington (Rosslyn-Ballston and Crystal City-Potomac Yards), Alexandria, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Reston, Tysons, Rockville). All also have pretty ambitious growth plans. Some need to focus on more on the pedestrian and cycling experience but still a great amount of progress has been made in the relatively short amount of time that the metro has been around.
I don't disagree that DC has the best TOD in North America, ahead of even Vancouver since as Reece notes, DC TOD is more office heavy than Vancouver TOD is. It will be exciting to see Amazon HQ2 boost ridership at Crystal City. It also helps that from 2010-2020, Greater DC grew an impressive 13%, unlike Greater LA's anemic 2.9% growth. LA can promote TOD all it wants but if LA continues with its stagnant population there's not going to be much demand for TOD. It's no coincidence that the best cities for TOD (DC, Seattle) are the fastest growing, despite Seattle being notoriously NIMBY.
Yeah, DC suburbs were going to be my first example of transit oriented suburbs as well. Nodes of density surrounding metro stops, tapering down quickly as you get further from the station. Clear indication that the place to build is where there is transit, and vice versa.
The main difference between Mississauga and Surrey that is (surprisingly IMO) not mentioned in the video is that Surrey is a defacto borough of Vancouver and so uses its transit system. Mississauga is *not* politically connected to Toronto and has a separate transit system.
Surrey will likely pass Vancouver in terms of population but it has a lot more land. Vancouver will continue to have a lot more density. It is like comparing New York City boroughs. Brooklyn has the most people, about a million more than Manhattan. But Manhattan has almost twice the density. If the city grows (or rather, is allowed to grow) Queens will likely have the most people, simply because it has the most land -- quite a bit more than Brooklyn. Transit is a very important part of this discussion. If you go from low to mid density (in places like Surrey or parts of Queens) without good transit, you end up with a city that is increasingly stratified. People in the more distant places are either forced to buy a car (a burden in itself, but worse with increasing traffic) or endure long, unpleasant trips not only into downtown, but within that increasingly self-supportive area.
Mississauga's problem starts back when it was incorporated 1974, It's an amalgamation of quite a few villages. None were that much Bigger than some of the others to make it the dominate downtown. It started as urban sprawl, that's why it's so sprawly now.
But that doesn't mean it had to be this way there are a lot of ways that the city could have been structured for example high quality links between the various previous villages
@@RMTransit you should ask Mayor Hazel (she is still alive according to wikipedia) about the planning of Mississauga, most suburbanites were jealous of how well Mississauga was run at the time.
@@djsiii4737 If politicans insisted that bridges be made in a way that was dangerous and prone to failure, we would still hold the civil engineers who approve the at fault. Yes there is pressure for ourside groups, including local NIMBYs, but urban planners are highly accountable as the group which gave these plans legitimacy.
Surrey actually started the exact same way as Mississauga. Six Town Centres (Whalley, Guildford, Fleetwood, Newton, Cloverdale, and South Surrey). 100% 60s through 80s style suburban sprawl, with no real city centre. Though there was a plan in 1991, the real planning didn't take place until 2006 where the city started identifying the area that would become the City Centre, and breaking up the suburban mega blocks into a finer, more walkable grid. There is also a focus on making the City Centre a 10 minute city, and focusing on prioritizing more trips via bike or walking. There is still quite a long way to go, and redevelopment is taking place block by block, but what has come the out of it all is showing promise so far.
I feel like most of the North East US could easily make most of their suburbs pretty transit oriented if they added higher density housing units next to all of the suburban rail stations. These would help justifiy more frequency on the regional rail lines and help to push for better inter-suburban bus routes and micro-mobility infrastructure. Also on the not ever hearing of Surrey part it's actually interesting since Linus Media Group is from there. I don't think most of their audience actually knows that though lol.
I figure the not knowing about City A because City B is next door and 10 times more famous is a self fulfilling prophecy of people just rounding their hometown to the nearest major city, so nobody knows of their town so they have to keep rounding because the difference between say Caimbridge and Boston is a river as far as telling someone from California or Texas where you are from. I round my Hometown as "Canada NY" because its 30min from the border and 3hrs from any American city they would have heard of (Syracuse or Burlington). And the North East desperately needs better rail lines. It takes 8hrs by rail to go from Harford to Syracuse but only 4 to drive in a car. (Assuming no traffic jams on the interstate, so avoid Hartford at rush hour and pray nobody crashed on the pike/throughway)
It's crazy how similar Mississauga and Laval (Qc) are. Both the largest suburb to their respective cities, both served by semi-decent bus networks and two radial commuter rail lines, both born from the amalgamation or smaller towns in the 60's, with a downtown area getting built from scratch with various degrees of success... Laval is also debatting of ways to improve its public transit. The 2007 Orange Line extension was transformative and the Pie-IX BRT is coming soon, but local and east-west connectivity is lackluster. Efficient suburb-to-suburb transit is quite the challenge, but it's far from impossible!
Metroland and similar Interwar suburbia that was built in/around London is transit-orientated suburbs - build to be walkable and focused around the stations.
The Suburbs of Liverpool, Chatswood, Parramatta, Strathfield, Burwood and Hurstville in Sydney have great public transit connections both internally and externally.
You mentioned office parks, which I think play a big part in all of this. There have been several trends over the years in terms of office development. At one point everything was in downtown areas. Then in the 1980s came the rise of the suburban office parks. From a transit perspective, this was a terrible trend, which meant that for society overall, it was a terrible trend. Now there has been a rise in edge/satellite cities, with their own downtown areas. This is a big step up from scattered office parks, for reasons the video covered. It allows a suburban city to establish a transit hub that is both a feeder to the main city, but also a strong destination in its own right. Thousands of riders get off buses at downtown Surrey, and transfer to SkyTrain to get into Vancouver. But thousands more will simply walk to their destination. Since transit scales, this greatly improves the likelihood that those buses are higher quality (faster and/or more frequent). Another trend is office clusters in urban neighborhoods -- outside the downtown area, but not in the suburbs either (e. g. downtown Brooklyn). I see this as a positive trend, as it increases the likelihood of good anywhere-to-anywhere transit within the urban core. Speaking of which, this is one possible drawback with a hub-oriented system to a suburban downtown. Within that suburban city, it can be difficult to both serve downtown, and provide a good grid for an increasingly self contained city. If Surrey continues to grow (as expected) than a higher percentage of its population will stay in Surrey, and while many will go downtown, plenty won't. Fortunately, with the extension of SkyTrain, it seems like this problem is solved. Surrey should be able to have a very good grid, while also connecting plenty of people to both downtown Surrey and Vancouver. In contrast, North Vancouver -- which has a thriving, major downtown area -- is "stuck" splitting service between a grid or a hub. (That being said, I wouldn't do anything different, other than spend more money to add frequency).
So far new towns in Singapore try to adopt a transit-oriented design. Sengkang and Punggol integrate "LRT"s into their town plan, Woodlands has an underground bus interchange integrated with the MRT, Tengah will have multiple MRT stations, with some bus only roads and two interchanges. All of these are high-rise suburbs, so I guess transit-oriented suburbs work kinda well in these high-rise suburbs until the peak hour when LRT trains and buses are crowded.
The problem is Singapore employment is still heavily concentrated in the CBD and the new towns are bedroom suburbs. Jurong Lake District will offset this, though.
@@li_tsz_fung I doubt that. There are countless high-rise suburban developments in Europe and they are often regarded as unpleasant at best, and downright dangerous and criminal at worst. The large tower blocks typically are associated with what comparatively little gang activity we have here, drugs and other crime. I believe mid-rise is the best option, no more than 6 or 7 stories, with local shops either integrated into residential buildings or at least not surrounded by massive parking lots, attractive, tree-lined streets and community-building spots like parks, cafés and restaurants. All that can be centred around or located close by a rail connection, with buses doing the local work.
Surprised to see so much talk about Mississauga! It really is a pleasant place to live and grow up in ( if you’re close to one of the villages, a strip mall, or go line ). The increasing number of bike lanes and bike paths is a big improvement, even though the roads (Erin Mills, Winston Churchill for example) that they put them on are wide and dangerous. There is plenty of room for lrt on these massive roads, though it would take a lot of work considering the highways and rail lines it would have to navigate around. (Elevation is a great idea, would love to see it) I like that you emphasized the brt, because it is pretty annoying to make connections to and from each stop. Ideally, a faster way into Square one from all the major population centres, with something to merge the lines, would make it infinitely easier and faster to move around. Great video, by the way!
Mississauga needs to have the UP express (or airport GO spur) pass through the Airport and reach the 403 (either along the Transit way or the 401/410). A direct route from the city center to the employment region and Toronto center would hugely boost development.
You should make a video about travel times between a car and transit? Not just in the city but the suburbs. People live and work in the suburbs. Also can transit compete with cars in the suburbs? Their are more ways to get around town without a car If that is a option.
Absolutely, I grew up in a suburb that had decent transit in the form of local and express buses to Stockholm, and currently live in a suburb with subway access. Granted they don't look much like the sprawling suburbs of North America, but there are those types of suburbs along same routes as well, especially around the one I grew up in.
The single-home type suburbs in Stockholm and around still have decent bus access, if not also subway and other rail networks. But on the whole, most suburbs are formed around a central shopping and community services area with a subway station, and housing of various types up to 10-15 minutes walk away. That’s the main reason I probably won’t move away from the city, even if I might move around within.
I'm curious if Brampton can overtake Mississauga as the transit-oriented suburb of the GTA. Downtown Brampton definitely has to increase it's density, but with the Brampton Go at the heart of the downtown, the Ryerson School of Medicine and the Queen Street BRT/Hurontario Street LRT projects, I could definitely see it being a contender in the future.
As well as the current planned terminus for the GO line's 15 minute service, Bramalea GO, is just one stop away so an extension to bring 15 min service to downtown Brampton can be seemed as a no brainer if the Queen/Hurontario projects do meet up. Brampton is often compared to Surrey for many different reasons so having a seamless Brampton-Toronto direct connection would be a really nice coincidence
Excellent excellent Video! Sadly Mississauga is still the best transit connected suburb of Toronto. Mississauga has 3 commuter GO rail lines, not 3. Kitchener line has a stop in Malton which is part of Mississauga (but no where near 'downtown Mississauga' or the BRT or future LRT). Also I think you forgot that if someone takes the future TTC Line 5, yes they'd have to switch lines to get downtown, but they wouldn't have to go to the University-Spadina line, they could switch to the Kitchener GO line at Mount Dennis (albeit its a different service provider).
Am important consideration when developing a transit oriented suburb is that the transit must come first. Perth, Australia, announced a transit oriented suburb in land aslrwady set up for development 15 years ago, with a train station at the centre of the suburb and a new rail line into the city to service it. The announcement proved popular, and lots of people moved there, but the train line was delayed, then cancelled, then reannounced with by a new government with a new route and another delay, and is only now being constructed. All the roads into his suburb had to be upgraded, since no one was using the nonexistent train as they had planned and connections were insufficient. In another 5 years it might become a transit orientated suburb, but everyone there is now used to using their cars, which will hurt the performance of the railway line. If the railway line was built with the suburb, it would have caused a lot less problems in the meantime. Build your transit first.
Suburbs were created by transit systems a century plus ago. If it happened before 1960 most people today ignore it. However: Most transit that appeared around large cities in 1880 onward was to connect smaller villages, towns cities to the CBD of a major city (relatively speaking). Those existing sub-urban villages built before the 1950s often have downtown districts already, whether they ate still vibrant or not. Transit into Boston, NYC, DC, Baltimore, San Fran, Chicago is mostly these villages that are over a century or two old....getting to town. The suburbs most imagine today are the artificial bedroom communities of LA. However LA is sprawled by design of the railroads. The Red Car and Yellow Car built these artificial subdivisions at stops they built in the early 1900s. The Southern Pacific owned the dry land, and wanted to sell it for big profits. By the 1950s the Southern Pacific transit lines now only went to land long ago sold. There was no new land to sell in places where they had existing rail. They wouldn't build out or improve the dilapidated and worn out system without a big cash bailout from citizens....that had for years felt "The Octopus" was ripping them off. WW2 required fast transit (freight and passenger) construction which meant government managed highways....not two different rail lines that took forever to lay by a private company that would only do it if it benefitted them. Citizens voted for highways, and not The Octopus. And then Wally & Beaver, The Harriets, The Petries and The Bradys told us how to live.
I have family on Bainbridge Island, WA. It’s far better than most other wealthy suburbs because it’s built around a ferry system that goes straight to downtown Seattle in 35 minutes.
As of the 2021 Canadian Census, the two cities are only about 150k people apart. Mississauga is at 717,961 (Decline of -0.50% fr the 2016 Census) and Surrey is at 568,322 (increase of 9.70% from the 2016 Census). What is amazing though, is the similarity between the two cities. They are both similar in size (Mississauga at 292.74 km² and Surrey at 316.11 km²) and are the second most populous cities in their respective regions, and growing their own CBDs, and trying to transition from their suburban roots.
Mississauga is far more developed though in terms of infrastructure, highways, hospitals, buildings, although I will give surrey the better connectivity to downtown Vancouver via transit, only north surrey is well connected to downtown Vancouver, the rest of surrey is harder to access via transit, Mississauga has multiple highways that connect it to Toronto I wouldn’t say the same about surrey
The grid system in Mississauga (and Toronto/Brampton/York Region) is a relic of the first colonizers parceling lands into 2km x 2km squares (the concessions), making for the concession and sideroad grid of arterial roads (including the likes of Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue). Of course now that everything is built up it’s kinda difficult to find the political will to knock people’s homes down to make things better.
Great video! This really puts into perspective what a colossal waste Hamilton GO station is, since they don't own the track and cant run trains often, a direct link to Toronto is being lost. Hopefully they can buy the track one day.
I don't agree it's a waste I definitely think more service could be run if it was a top priority it often feels like we act as though things which are difficult are the same as things which are impossible
I suspect it will become a priority over the coming years. Hamilton's downtown is growing quite quickly out of the blue, largely driven by housing prices in Toronto, and with a new LRT coming, that is going to see a huge boost in development. Ever since West Harbour got hourly service ridership has gone up significantly, and I suspect in 5 to 10 years ridership will be high enough, and with enough people living here there will be demand to push to 30 minute service sooner than later. The most unfortunate part is really that West Harbour Go and Hamilton Go Centre are neither directly connected to the LRT plan, and the West Harbour Go barely gets bus service. Hamilton's North/South bus service in the lower city is really bad, because it's such a short route, and it makes getting to transit a pain. I live beside West Harbour (literally a 2 minute walk) but for me to catch the east/west LRT it will take me 15 minutes to walk to the closest station. I could bus it instead but that would take 10 minutes, because I have to walk to the closest bus service and hope I catch the bus and it isn't early or late. I'm hoping with LRT they redesign the bus service.
I believe they are adding a south GO station near Stoney creek at Celebration as well. I think a better solution would be a station west of Parkdale and a second proper stoney creek station, but at least there will be some East-West movement to the West Harbor station. Hopefully they don't decide that all LRT is awful when the currently planned line turns into a failure, and build a North South line to connect West Harbour and Hamilton center, and follow Upper james to the airport. I really hope Hamlton grows as a GO Hub. It could serve commuters from London-Woodstock-Brantford, Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, Niagara-Saint Catherine-Grimsby, possibly commuter service to Caledonia - Nanticoke, and obviously connections to Toronto. For the most part track already exists, and once the GTHA has a transit back bone built by 2030 I think this should be were provincial/GO focus shifts. New frieght track could be built trhough green field around the city for any trains going from USA to Toronto to free up capacity on the Downtown lines.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Confederation Go Station is being built on Centennial Pkwy yes. I don't think Hamilton LRT will be a failure, not in the slightest. I'm betting it will be more successful than even advocates are calling for. Hamilton is growing immensely in the last few years, and is super bad at marketing itself. Hamilton has decades of bad reputation to shake, but people are coming here in droves. The biggest issue is our moronic council. I'm betting that in 10 years after the LRT is in service for a few years there will be a call for LRT along another east/west corridor of the lower city since the B-Line will be too popular. For the A-Line, I'm not sure it will be LRT, because I'm not sure it can traverse the mountain access. It would be nice, and it's technically possible, especially since it's 10 years away and in 10 years I suspect LRT investment will be far more popular than it even is today, but the challenge of the mountain access is a difficult one, and unless James is closed completely to cars (yes please) it will be an on-street tram from the mountain to at least the CN rail where James widens out a bit.
@@PSNDonutDude I hope your right. I agree it will end up at full capacity soon, I just don't think it will offer very high capacity or fast trips, and I think BRTs in the BLAST network will offer better service, which might lead to councilors pushing more BRT in routes that should see LRT. Not because BRT is better the LRT, but this LRT suffered severe creep in my opinion. I would like to see B line extended to Dundas though, and the Via station moved from Aldershot there (where ideally it would also hook up with incoming London trains). A line LRT might be impossible, but if they build it raised I think it could be done. S line LRT is also a no brainer since its purely green field hydro corridor.
I think the importance of Surrey overtaking Vancouver in population is overstated. The fact is Downtown Vancouver continues to dominate as the cultural and economic heart of the region. That won't change because more people technically happen to go to bed at night in another municipality. On Vancouver Island, Saanich has a much higher population than Victoria, but I assume few people outside of BC have ever heard of it. There's no reason to. It's a place where a lot of "Victorians" happen to go to bed at night. Metro regions in BC have fractured local government with relatively small central cities. That's all. Is Central Surrey an important hub for the South-of-Fraser area. Yes! Will Surrey ever replace Vancouver as the "central city" for the region? Not in our lifetimes.
Oshawa Ontario has some real development plans, with several new developments downtown and a planned walkable community in a former downtown industrial site. Along side that they are pushing densification/pedestrianization efforts at two new Go stations. Showing up late to the game, but I guess the city is tired of being in decline for 50 years. Unfortunately may lead to some of that dislocation you mentioned. But hopefully they will be in discussions like this in the future.
Interesting! I need to check that out, I grew up in the area and downtown 'shwa always felt like it was falling apart and the city rudderless. Be nice to see them take urban design seriously. Thanks for the heads up!
@@KannikCat Sadly it didn't just feel that way, things have to be pretty bad when you're basically aspiring to be Hamelton. It will be interesting to see what some bare minimum transit and a little will power can do.
Almost every suburb in Melbourne is built around, and nearly entirely within walking distance of, a train station. And the main shopping strips are always around the station too.
For new suburbia (and perhaps some places where it could be adequately retrofitted, or be chosen as the new way when all the old stuff ultimately needs to be demolished one day) if you had "dense suburbia" you wouldn't need the parking lots. You also wouldn't need downtown quite as much. Suburbia would be able to gain a lot of downtown characteristics. How? Start with a new piece of development land. (Something with lots of low lying areas subject to flooding would be perfect.) Put one long block right down the middle of that land. Make it at least 1km long, and 20 storeys high. (You'd need to also think about how to make it pretty, I think, although it would be the green belts on either side that people would mainly see, so maybe its looks don't matter that much.) Car parks? No. Have a big, expensive parking garage at the highway end of the suburb. Access your car by riding transit or a bicycle to the car park. (Quite a lot of people are quite capable of riding a bicycle even further than a kilometer with very little training, so this is imminently doable. The great big building the inhabitants nest in could provide all weather cover for cyclists who don't like it fresh and envigorating.) But that's just a downtown, right? NO. The idea is to keep the gardens, and resist the impulse to pave everything. Only difference is the gardens would not be contiguous. If you got enough people to live in a place like that, and made sure to ensure their security (for some reasons high-rises seem to favour gangs?), it could offer the best of both worlds, and you'd have a concentration of people that made some kind of transit link "down the middle" (maybe under the building?) feasible - especially if you got really ambitious and extended this out to say 5km long in the end. I intend to stop blathering all this and draw it, and put that on some website, sometime, but learning basic CAD is taking me longer than I expected. So I sometimes need to point out this "obvious" solution. At least for new developments. If you live in sprawl, you have no choice but to just carry on killing the planet (with a petrol or electric car).
A suburb is literally just a primarily residential area whose residents commute to jobs elsewhere. No reason why that commute cannot be done by transit. Some of the earliest suburbs in the US were streetcar suburbs, where residents commuted to jobs downtown by streetcar.
An interesting GTHA suburban downtown that is currently being worked on is Courtice. The city plans to build a massive TOD around the future station on the Bowmanville extension which would be roughly an hour on the GO train from Toronto and be a big hub for cities in the east. Another one in the works is Innisfil on the Barrie line. Hope both of these suburban downtowns don't make the same mistakes as Mississauga. Building right off GO stations is certainly a good start though
I have a question. I live in Austria, where almost 100 percent of the train tracks are electrified. But in your videos about North American transit system almost every train I've seen wasn't electrified... Is that a normal thing, also on tracks through big cities like Toronto?
This is very normal for North America. I don't know the details for Canada, but in the United States, only around 1% of rail is electrified. You see, the U.S. has the best freight rail in the world and it's the freight companies that own most of the rail lines. These companies have not chosen to electrify lines likely due to the high upfront cost and little government support.
@@city7486 also not having wires overhead of the lines means trains can carry weird oversized loads because the entire line is no longer a tunnel. Not that they carry things like wind turbine parts all the time that justify having a very wide and tall clear space relative to the vehicle profile. (Also 3rd & 4th rail is a thing but overhead electrification is much better, especially out in the countryside where most frieght rail is)
The major problem is that the only viable GO train service in Mississauga is lakeshore west as far as I can see the maps of GO RER point to no increase in service on the Milton line
Surprised there is no mention of a western extension of line 2 to Mississauga. While it would be more of a local service it would still serve trips between Mississauga and Etobicoke.
It's interesting that Canadian suburban nodes are awesome with residential, but tend not to have much office. US examples are frequently more office-based, or more mixed.
That's not quite accurate. There is a lot of business in Canadian suburbs but they tend to be centered around business parks which tend to be easily accessible by highways. Historically, highways have provided greater regional connectivity - extremely important in a region the size of the Greater Toronto Area - which has bolstered the business case for them. The densification of suburban downtown nodes has not made them more attractive as the removal of parking spaces coupled with the lack of regional transit access means a business' ability to access talent across the broader region is limited. This leads to business' continuing to favor business parks, or to move to downtown Toronto where all regional rail access leads. For instance, Microsoft Canada moved their headquarters from a business park in Meadowvale (a neighborhood in the north west of Mississauga) to downtown, while Walmart Canada is still headquartered in Meadowvale as opposed to Mississauga's downtown. Even still more people commute for work into Mississauga from neighboring suburbs than out of Mississauga.
I would say that it is basically what Surrey expects to be fairly soon. Downtown Bellevue is fairly compact, with very large buildings covering most of what would be considered the downtown. You can easily walk between big buildings (whether they have offices or apartments). In contrast, from what I can tell, Mississauga is more spread out, with each office building acting more like a self contained office park, or part of a small cluster. From a transit perspective, downtown Bellevue will soon have something similar to what Surrey has (although not nearly as good). It serves as a hub, and within months will be connected to the bigger city (Seattle) via fast and (relatively) frequent mass transit. It will have plenty of connecting bus service, but it is unlikely to be as good as what Surrey has.
Japan is doing exactly this, and they are spreading this idea to other countries as well. Here in Manila, we are rebuilding our main rail lines, starting with the North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) that is now under construction since 2019 and will be finished by 2025. They are proposing to build mixed used developments around the new stations, as well as connect them to other establishments.
How is it that the municipalities of metro vancouver haven't combined into one? Think of how this would simplify the creation of thoughtful regional transit planning?
london's suburbs were built largely before the car and built up around and because of the expansion of the london underground or tube in the 1920s and 30s.
How exactly would thru-running from downtown Mississauga to downtown Toronto be possible on a rail converted Mississauga transit way (which is both fast, and slow, depending on when in the video you mention it?)
Why do people not like density? If the noise is the problem why not change building codes to limit sound emissions? If it's crime, landlords can improve that without raising rents by doing personality tests.
Stroads are bad, particularly for walkability, but I think they are treated a little to harshly. They offer very easy conversation BRT, particularly curb side, that can effectively collect local infrequent buses serving sprawl neighborhoods and offer overall high frequency. Generally they lead to relevant destinations (main cities, sports complexs, hospitals), and the infill is usually a preexisting mix of commercial and dense appartments offering passangers sources and destinations. Once a BRT is present, higher density can be jusfited in lower developed land and massive parking lots, which in turn creates more Destinations near existing neighborhoods. Stroads are bad and should never have been put everywhere, but they aren't disabling if a choice is made to build transit.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 stroads are acceptable if you keep them to 1 lane each way plus turning lanes (sucide lane in the middle that becomes a dedicated turning lane at intersections, possibly widen at intesections for dedicated turning lanes in both directions). Once it becomes 2 lanes each way it becomes exponentially more dangerous and uninviting. And in rural areas they are acceptable because cars are already mandatory for everyone anyway, at best you can make some good bike infrastructure but rural will never be dense enough for comprehensive transit beyond intercity things. (I would still prefer a parking lot behind Mainstreet buildings to a stroad when transit is infeasible)
i contend that there are more reasons for a vancouver resident to go to surrey or richmond than there are for a toronto resident to go to mississauga or richmond hill.
Not sure where you’re getting your population data, but Mississauga isn’t twice the size of surrey. Surrey has about 560,570k, while Mississauga has roughly 720k according to the latest census. Bigger, but not that much bigger. I would say that much of Vancouver’s suburban success in rapid transit comes from it not being amalgamated like Toronto is. Therefore, much more funding and support is given to cities like Burnaby, which is unquestionably the best connected suburb in the country. Toronto makes up a greater proportion of the population of its metro area, so it absorbs much more money and planning, leaving places like peel reigon out in the cold. That’s one way to look at though.
10:55 "The Scarberian backwaters of Kennedy Station" LOL - I rank Kennedy as the worst subway station on the TTC network. It is dirty, decrepit, ugly, the bus service always seems to suck, and it connects to the dying SRT.
I live in Scarborough and yes even though Kennedy is probably the worst east end hub station.. it is getting huge upgrades. In just a few years it will be the east end stop for the delayed LRT (line 5) line, with double tracked GO train rails running frequently, and a line 2 subway extension to Scarboroughs "downtown center". If you ask me it's going to be way better connected than Mississauga will ever be.
I think Reece's point was actually that Kennedy has amazing connectivity but there's nothing actually nearby the station. I took the opportunity to mock how the station's physical appearance is undeserving of its connectivity. I don't actually know if the existing parts of the station have an appearance upgrade planned.
@@simoneh4732 Well that part I'm unaware as to what will happen to the old part of Kennedy station. The New LRT station is the newest addition to the station. As for it's surrounding areas, it's interesting to note that Scarborough has 2 hubs. One at Kennedy and one at Scarborough town center. The town center location obviously is the more attractive one as it's about to go through a major change and become a inner city suburb downtown of it's own. This practice is happening all over the city with Yorkdale and Scarborough leading the way. Town center will benefit the most from Kennedy as the mall is based around transit and a new direct subway stop from Kennedy. That is one of the problems with Mississauga is that it's lacking a proper connection to anywhere. It's all feeding towards Square 1, whereas Scarborough's can lead you to downtown Toronto or downtown Scarborough with one train. Depending on where you live in the city.
How do other Lower Mainland downtowns stack up to the other Golden Horseshoe downtowns? Does Mississauga have tougher competition on top of worse transit?
Mississauga is the biggest but also probably the best Hamilton is okay but the transit options are also quite bad. Most of the Metro Vancouver downtowns are connected to SkyTrain.
I wonder if American-style suburbs could get transit with the liberal application of buses and reserved lanes. The average suburb-to-city highway already has a trillion lanes, why not reserve one on each side and start running buses between the city center and the suburbs? Multiple bus lines could go to different suburbs, while travelling like BRT on the reserved lane once they get to the highway.
Could work, but you would definitely need to make the suburbs more walkable/bikable, at least to get to the bus stations. But also make sure you eat a car lane to do it and don't just widen the road, part of making transit desirable is making cars less desirable. (Focus on good transit first obviously, and use the selling point that driver benefit from transit because a bus full of 60 people ≈ 60cars worth of people now in 2cars worth of space which eases congestion and makes driving more pleasant for the driver) Also, you have to have a whole thing about fighting stereotypes and keeping the busses immaculate and advertising that they are immaculately clean and pleasant.
The problem with suburban downtowns is that they're based on malls that hope that they can spread the walkability surrounding the mall. With that comes ppl having to live close to the mall, since everywhere else is still largely car oriented. Mississauga is desperately trying to sew the fabrics of their scattered businesses and highrises together but it comes at a price. Their inner city transit is not bad but traveling within Mississauga isn't that great either. Sure the new LRT line running north to south will do ok for them, but it's still going to be tough getting to places because it's going to be a streetcar style line and who knows how frequent it'll be for them. Instead of just building condos and trying really hard to compete with the biggest elephant in the room, how about they fix their transit connection first, make more bike lanes, and try to connect their downtown to Toronto's downtown. That way Mississauga can thrive on ppl going to and from both downtowns without have to take different modes of transportation and also making Mississauga a desirable place to live. Instead of having this disconnect between the two cities and also having this weird animosity with Toronto.
They have to keep building the high rises and density before they can improve transit because of costs. Your suggestion might be the better plan, but cities make a lot of revenue through development fees, whereas building rail and bike paths is very costly in the short term, even if cost saving long term. Canadian cities have very strict debt rules, which really has been a good thing in avoiding giant highway interchanges in every suburb, but it does mean that to grow the city needs to be increasing its revenue.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 True. The problem with suburban downtowns is that they're never meant to be like major cities. Theyre meant to be bedroom towns for city workers. Mississauga has been forcing itself for years to be like Toronto in today's world. It's in a way working but it can never be like Toronto. 1. It's too sprawled out to be a city like Toronto. 2. It's not meant to be a city. Square 1 is what saved Mississauga from becoming a place with rows and rows of houses and random condos all over the place like most American suburbs. What Oxford properties is trying to do with that mall, is what they're trying to do to the malls in the GTA that they own. Basically Oxford is looking at these malls like they already have good connection to transit and mostly cars with highway interchanges, so why not build or create a mini downtown so ppl won't always have to head to Toronto or anywhere else for that matter. This is why Mississauga is becoming a downtown on its own. Only time will tell how this turns out. I feel like this formula can only work with inner city suburbs (North York, Scarborough & Etobicoke) because they're older towns with good connections already.
@@nanaokyere7141 I think pickering has at least as good a shot as Scarborough, but I agree. Also old cities with a center, like Oshawa and Hamilton. But for the most part I think suburbs will grow into Hashtag cities, with density along linear corridors that have frequent transit and gaps of somewhat walkable but car oriented suburbs. Cars are much higher capacity if each trip needs only a short distance and is on the road a short time. And BRTs along arterials mean frequent stops that allow medium density evenly spread, and occasional larger TODs maybe served by Regional or LRT lines. That or people will spend 3 hours at a time playing video games traffic with a self driving car and sprawl with most of thier time spent working from home and having everything delivered. Hopefully its the first one.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 I know right. I agree. The suburbs in the GTA especially are becoming satellite cities of their own, as witnessed with the new Vaughn center and the soon to be built Richmond hill center. They're all feeding off of the extension of the line 1 subway on both sides of York region and it's kind of like Toronto's subway tentacles are grabbing these suburbs closer in to be joined into the city. Don't get me wrong I think it's a good idea and that they should've done this decades ago, I just don't like that it was politically fueled. The University/Spadina side of line 1 for example was originally supposed to end at York university, but because of political interference and the promise of more funding, they pushed it up to Vaughn. In return it automatically created an extension into the suburbs for the first time and made Vaughn create a city center from scratch. The only problem with these new city centers popping up is that they're solely basing their new centers on one suburb station as its main station feeding into Toronto while building a whole new city around it. This alone will create bottle necks if we're expecting our population to rise a few million in the GTA in the coming years. Only time will tell. As for Pickering, they're integrated nicely with GO trains out there so they should be getting electrified first as it's going to be on the Lakeshore east line, with expanded tracks and more frequent service. Pickering does have a better shot at becoming a better suburb city because of how close it is to Scarborough, it also has an Oxford properties mall right across from the GO station and is also creating a BRT with Scarborough to run from Pickering town center to Scarborough town center, benefiting a lot of UTSC and Centennial students in Scarborough in the coming years.
@@nanaokyere7141 You are right, Pickering does feed into your initial point. I think the development of new city centers based on Transit stations that feed to Toronto are probably for the best. They might lead to some capacity issues going south with more people living on the station, but at the same time they will provide local jobs so people in the Vaughan suburbs will be able to work in office parks or other employment without commuting to Toronto. Also, they will provide a higher demand for uptown travel from people in North York, meaning any capacity extension in the future will provide more utility instead of empty trains going north to collect people in the morning or vice versa. But overall I think that capacity in the Northern portions of line 1 fairly underutilized, and even if trains were leaving Vaughan or Richmond hill full GO connections, which are increasing capacity, at Downsview and Langstall will provide an experess service most users going downtown will use, freeing line 1 capacity for Toronto usage. Plus the VIVA busways will provide cross town rapid transit, and hopefully after line 4 is extended to Scarborough town center they will finally extend it west to the University line.
Last I checked the two largest Universities in British Columbia were UBC (wedged between the city of Vancouver and the ocean), and Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. While Surrey is getting smaller campuses for these two, they're just that, minor. What Vancouver & Surrey really need is an upgrade of the heavy rail line; running Vancouver(Pacific Stn) -- Braid(Skytrain) -- Nordel(S.end Fraser Bridge) -- Cloverdale(176th/56th) -- S.Surrey(176/24th?) -- then down into the US; and build it to carry fast (230kmh) rail. not only would you have a useful commuter route, taking pressure off the already busy Skytrain Line, you have the 1st quarter (70km) of the fast rail line from Vancouver to Seattle. This is mostly existing rail line/right of way as part of the BNSF tracks. Yes, there needs to be a new bridge SE of Braid, and some rail built along 176 (which is mostly farm land), but wow, that would make a huge difference. Skytrain will be a complete disaster once it stretches to Langley, because it will be 100% full before it crosses the Fraser heading to downtown Vancouver, it's already pretty bad (in pre-covid times) by the time it hits New West.
What a classic example of poor town planning. Its like they built all the buildings and then thought about how do we move people around. Best answer is build an underground tube system that goes to all the spots.
"And the best routes will require you to pay several different fares" That's an interesting way of saying "worst case scenerio, you only have to pay an extra fare in Toronto"
@@RMTransit It's ridiculous. Now imagine if the original proposed extension of line 2 subway were to extend to Square 1 instead of where it's western stop is now at Kipling, we wouldn't have this conversation.
@@RMTransit I've always been shocked at the disconnect between the GTA cities when it comes to transit. I mean if New York can can have the MTA cover all five Boroughs with one system....
@@ALuimes Fair enough though I was more pointing out the complexities in handling a transit system for a large urban area. Metro Vancouver has 21 cities and they all have one unified transit system in TransLink. Sure it's a smaller Metro area, but I'm sure the system would work well for the GTA.
Transit should be cheaper. Vancouver Transit is costly 3.45 to 4$ to travel to surrey one way. Fuel is cheaper compared to transit cost and if you have a hybrid or an EV, transit in Vancouver doesn't make sense. Transit makes sense if you dont own a car since you save money on parking/Insurance/lease cost etc.
I enjoy your videos sometimes, but you talk so fast at times that I have difficulty following what you're saying. Do you have to fit your topic within a certain time limit? You just talk faster and faster as the video goes on until I can't keep up.
I was about to "Like" and "Subscribe", but am limiting myself to "Comment" since I cannot support your benighted views on pineapple with respect to pizza.
Reese, this is a great piece, but I have to disagree with your statement that LRT in Surrey "failed". How can you gloss this over without even mentioning politics. If terrible Linda Heppner had won the mayoral election in 2018, instead of terrible Doug McCallum, there would be an LRT SYSTEM in Surrey by now.
As it turns out, Doug McCallum's promise that Surrey would have a skytrain extension to east Surrey, and possibly to Lanley by 2024 will not be fulfilled, even though he has tried as hard as he can. Poor Doug does not control Translink. And Translink are in far over their heads. So construction on Surrey Skytrain extension will start in 2024 and is projected to be competed 2028. I doubt that it will. Doug is done for as of October 2022.
@@AlCatSplat skytrain may be superior IF you are trying to travel 10 km or more in a single jump. But if you are just trying to travel a km or 2, say from your home to a grocery store and back with a load of groceries, or trying toget you two small children to school, you would be better off to step onto a tram, than to schlep to the nearest skytrain station.
Suburban downtowns? In the US new suburbs don't have 'downtowns', mayB a few businesses near the RR station but a downtown? NO. Old suburbs had a downtown, now the stores are either converted to housing or house lawyers, real estate brokers, or insurance agents, not real stores. well, mayB a musical instrument shop, or some other business taking advantage of cheap rent, mayB a tattoo parlour. One sure killer of the downtown is the parking meter, one ticket and the shopper will NEVER return. Old suburbs don't have enough parking, either at the transit station or generally. Big old houses were converted to apartments or were built before parking spaces were required, this is a problem. the auto has proven itself, it will be around for at least a few more years, get used to it, city fathers (and mothers). The downtown is the shopping mall but mind you, I HATE strip malls, they should be outlawed, some communities do, it's called zoning.
I'm deleting this because I realised it was hurtful to RM. I had intended to give "whiny English twat" cadence in jest, but that's fallen flat at best. Everybody below was right to pile on.
In UK english the ur sound is more of an \ʌr\ or sometimes \ər\, Reece seems to pronounce it more like \ʊr\. It's probably how it was pronounced in UK english before there was a vowel shift after the place was founded. American/Canadian english is well known for keeping archaic vowel sounds that have since changed in UK english.
There is the Milton line where the Cooksville GO that unfortunately is on the CP line, which means it is not about to offer 2-way all-day service. The Hurontario GO - however and the connection to Port Credit should make it not too bad to get to Mississauga city center.
@@RMTransit the question will be getting CP - to actually offer the space. Politically this would require the federal government for it to be mandated. I would suggest - working with CP to get air rights - and build an elevated light metro - in its ROW (connect that abandoned Rail corridor - Brampton Orangeville - to core with frequent service)- .
ps-should have a look at the density around Kennedy- I understand Scarborough town council made a choice (while it was still a thing) to actually reduced allowed density there, and increase it at the STC- and this even before the SRT was built. Choice made to have density - where there was highway - not transit access.
@@MNEWALL1 a light Metro doesn't really make sense when you have a passenger rail service you could simply expand there's lots of room to just put passenger tracks next to the freight tracks there doesn't need to be anything too complicated
@@RMTransit Except CP - seems to have been more than a little resistant to any such proposals - and the provincial government has no direct influence. It may be CP wants that track space for future expansion - but I am under the strong impression - they have not been interested in having that space taken up beyond the degree to which it is- inside Toronto - or even Mississauga. The Scarborough side - offers the great possibility of connections- that have not been able to be actioned either it seems. Perhaps it is becoming more open, but I have not heard that.
Another way to look at the problem of Mississauga's uncoordinated transit is the movement of its downtown. Mississauga's decision to move its downtown from Dundas and Hurontario to a car-oriented shopping mall, Square One, created this problem. This happened in the 1970s. If they had left their downtown where it originally developed, it would have been walking distance to Cooksville GO Station. That would have meant a one seat ride between Toronto and Mississauga downtowns.
So they moved it away from the existing transit, but right next to a giant freeway interchange. Oops!
Furthermore, the streets you mentioned are not pleasant, but could work really well for transit (tram, LRT, BRT) which would complement the longer distance nature of GO. In contrast, the mall relies largely on the freeway, and while freeway express buses can work, they don't offer the same efficiency, simply because they stop less often. They are basically a substitute for what the train would provide. Oops!
Dundas and Hurontario was never Mississauga's downtown as such, it was just a busy highway crossroads hamlet where Mississauga's urban area basically got started. But I agree the city centre should've been built there.
@@ALuimes Late but I think the downtown was originally Streetsville, hence the intersection of Queen and MAIN street. If you look at it on a map, it has many older styled downtown buildings as well as the Streetsville GO Station nearby. I think that was the OG Mississauga downtown.
It can be good to have undevelopable land, it garentees a certain amount of green space and, as said, can push some density.
Yep I certainly think it's benefited Metro Vancouver
Much of the undevelopable land is actually farmland with some parkland and nature reserves as well. It's in what is essentially a river valley that's floodprone. It accounts for about a third of Surrey's total area and forms a band across the entire central area of the the city.
It's a great asset to the city as it gives quick access to farm fresh produce that's only 25 minutes away from the City Centre, as well as ample greenspace.
Historically that's how things were. In terms of area, towns/cities were not very big. Typically they were no more than 20~30sqmi because people had to be able to walk to the town center. Many if not most are around 10sqmi. Most municipalities in the US are still around these sizes.
Vancouver developers have no qualms with building on flood plains or subduction zones that will collapse in a significant enough earthquake (see Abbotsford and Richmond). The main thing keeping much of Surrey free of development is the agricultural land reserve. There are however underhanded ways of removing land from this federally protected system, primarily by not using it for a number of years then having it recognized as not fertile and allowing the designation to change. This is a huge problem in the speculative real estate market that not only facilitates suburban sprawl but moves away from regional food security.
I feel like the Washington DC Metro Area suburbs do a pretty great job of transit oriented development especially by North American standards. Places like Arlington (Rosslyn-Ballston and Crystal City-Potomac Yards), Alexandria, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Reston, Tysons, Rockville). All also have pretty ambitious growth plans. Some need to focus on more on the pedestrian and cycling experience but still a great amount of progress has been made in the relatively short amount of time that the metro has been around.
I don't disagree that DC has the best TOD in North America, ahead of even Vancouver since as Reece notes, DC TOD is more office heavy than Vancouver TOD is.
It will be exciting to see Amazon HQ2 boost ridership at Crystal City.
It also helps that from 2010-2020, Greater DC grew an impressive 13%, unlike Greater LA's anemic 2.9% growth. LA can promote TOD all it wants but if LA continues with its stagnant population there's not going to be much demand for TOD. It's no coincidence that the best cities for TOD (DC, Seattle) are the fastest growing, despite Seattle being notoriously NIMBY.
Yeah, DC suburbs were going to be my first example of transit oriented suburbs as well. Nodes of density surrounding metro stops, tapering down quickly as you get further from the station. Clear indication that the place to build is where there is transit, and vice versa.
The main difference between Mississauga and Surrey that is (surprisingly IMO) not mentioned in the video is that Surrey is a defacto borough of Vancouver and so uses its transit system. Mississauga is *not* politically connected to Toronto and has a separate transit system.
Surrey will likely pass Vancouver in terms of population but it has a lot more land. Vancouver will continue to have a lot more density. It is like comparing New York City boroughs. Brooklyn has the most people, about a million more than Manhattan. But Manhattan has almost twice the density. If the city grows (or rather, is allowed to grow) Queens will likely have the most people, simply because it has the most land -- quite a bit more than Brooklyn.
Transit is a very important part of this discussion. If you go from low to mid density (in places like Surrey or parts of Queens) without good transit, you end up with a city that is increasingly stratified. People in the more distant places are either forced to buy a car (a burden in itself, but worse with increasing traffic) or endure long, unpleasant trips not only into downtown, but within that increasingly self-supportive area.
Mississauga's problem starts back when it was incorporated 1974, It's an amalgamation of quite a few villages. None were that much Bigger than some of the others to make it the dominate downtown. It started as urban sprawl, that's why it's so sprawly now.
But that doesn't mean it had to be this way there are a lot of ways that the city could have been structured for example high quality links between the various previous villages
@@bill_r * and their engineers and politicians. don't blame everything on planners
@@RMTransit you should ask Mayor Hazel (she is still alive according to wikipedia) about the planning of Mississauga, most suburbanites were jealous of how well Mississauga was run at the time.
@@djsiii4737 If politicans insisted that bridges be made in a way that was dangerous and prone to failure, we would still hold the civil engineers who approve the at fault.
Yes there is pressure for ourside groups, including local NIMBYs, but urban planners are highly accountable as the group which gave these plans legitimacy.
Surrey actually started the exact same way as Mississauga. Six Town Centres (Whalley, Guildford, Fleetwood, Newton, Cloverdale, and South Surrey). 100% 60s through 80s style suburban sprawl, with no real city centre.
Though there was a plan in 1991, the real planning didn't take place until 2006 where the city started identifying the area that would become the City Centre, and breaking up the suburban mega blocks into a finer, more walkable grid. There is also a focus on making the City Centre a 10 minute city, and focusing on prioritizing more trips via bike or walking.
There is still quite a long way to go, and redevelopment is taking place block by block, but what has come the out of it all is showing promise so far.
I feel like most of the North East US could easily make most of their suburbs pretty transit oriented if they added higher density housing units next to all of the suburban rail stations. These would help justifiy more frequency on the regional rail lines and help to push for better inter-suburban bus routes and micro-mobility infrastructure.
Also on the not ever hearing of Surrey part it's actually interesting since Linus Media Group is from there. I don't think most of their audience actually knows that though lol.
I figure the not knowing about City A because City B is next door and 10 times more famous is a self fulfilling prophecy of people just rounding their hometown to the nearest major city, so nobody knows of their town so they have to keep rounding because the difference between say Caimbridge and Boston is a river as far as telling someone from California or Texas where you are from. I round my Hometown as "Canada NY" because its 30min from the border and 3hrs from any American city they would have heard of (Syracuse or Burlington).
And the North East desperately needs better rail lines. It takes 8hrs by rail to go from Harford to Syracuse but only 4 to drive in a car. (Assuming no traffic jams on the interstate, so avoid Hartford at rush hour and pray nobody crashed on the pike/throughway)
It's crazy how similar Mississauga and Laval (Qc) are. Both the largest suburb to their respective cities, both served by semi-decent bus networks and two radial commuter rail lines, both born from the amalgamation or smaller towns in the 60's, with a downtown area getting built from scratch with various degrees of success... Laval is also debatting of ways to improve its public transit. The 2007 Orange Line extension was transformative and the Pie-IX BRT is coming soon, but local and east-west connectivity is lackluster. Efficient suburb-to-suburb transit is quite the challenge, but it's far from impossible!
Metroland and similar Interwar suburbia that was built in/around London is transit-orientated suburbs - build to be walkable and focused around the stations.
The Suburbs of Liverpool, Chatswood, Parramatta, Strathfield, Burwood and Hurstville in Sydney have great public transit connections both internally and externally.
You mentioned office parks, which I think play a big part in all of this. There have been several trends over the years in terms of office development. At one point everything was in downtown areas. Then in the 1980s came the rise of the suburban office parks. From a transit perspective, this was a terrible trend, which meant that for society overall, it was a terrible trend. Now there has been a rise in edge/satellite cities, with their own downtown areas. This is a big step up from scattered office parks, for reasons the video covered. It allows a suburban city to establish a transit hub that is both a feeder to the main city, but also a strong destination in its own right. Thousands of riders get off buses at downtown Surrey, and transfer to SkyTrain to get into Vancouver. But thousands more will simply walk to their destination. Since transit scales, this greatly improves the likelihood that those buses are higher quality (faster and/or more frequent).
Another trend is office clusters in urban neighborhoods -- outside the downtown area, but not in the suburbs either (e. g. downtown Brooklyn). I see this as a positive trend, as it increases the likelihood of good anywhere-to-anywhere transit within the urban core.
Speaking of which, this is one possible drawback with a hub-oriented system to a suburban downtown. Within that suburban city, it can be difficult to both serve downtown, and provide a good grid for an increasingly self contained city. If Surrey continues to grow (as expected) than a higher percentage of its population will stay in Surrey, and while many will go downtown, plenty won't. Fortunately, with the extension of SkyTrain, it seems like this problem is solved. Surrey should be able to have a very good grid, while also connecting plenty of people to both downtown Surrey and Vancouver. In contrast, North Vancouver -- which has a thriving, major downtown area -- is "stuck" splitting service between a grid or a hub. (That being said, I wouldn't do anything different, other than spend more money to add frequency).
So far new towns in Singapore try to adopt a transit-oriented design. Sengkang and Punggol integrate "LRT"s into their town plan, Woodlands has an underground bus interchange integrated with the MRT, Tengah will have multiple MRT stations, with some bus only roads and two interchanges. All of these are high-rise suburbs, so I guess transit-oriented suburbs work kinda well in these high-rise suburbs until the peak hour when LRT trains and buses are crowded.
High-rise suburb is something the west need to try more. If they can connect it with express railway, it can benefit so many people
I always find it interesting in Singapore because it mostly feels like contiguous Urban space to me!
The problem is Singapore employment is still heavily concentrated in the CBD and the new towns are bedroom suburbs. Jurong Lake District will offset this, though.
@@li_tsz_fung I doubt that. There are countless high-rise suburban developments in Europe and they are often regarded as unpleasant at best, and downright dangerous and criminal at worst. The large tower blocks typically are associated with what comparatively little gang activity we have here, drugs and other crime.
I believe mid-rise is the best option, no more than 6 or 7 stories, with local shops either integrated into residential buildings or at least not surrounded by massive parking lots, attractive, tree-lined streets and community-building spots like parks, cafés and restaurants. All that can be centred around or located close by a rail connection, with buses doing the local work.
From Almere to Zoetermeer, transit-oriented suburbs are everywhere in The Netherlands.
Surprised to see so much talk about Mississauga! It really is a pleasant place to live and grow up in ( if you’re close to one of the villages, a strip mall, or go line ).
The increasing number of bike lanes and bike paths is a big improvement, even though the roads (Erin Mills, Winston Churchill for example) that they put them on are wide and dangerous. There is plenty of room for lrt on these massive roads, though it would take a lot of work considering the highways and rail lines it would have to navigate around. (Elevation is a great idea, would love to see it)
I like that you emphasized the brt, because it is pretty annoying to make connections to and from each stop. Ideally, a faster way into Square one from all the major population centres, with something to merge the lines, would make it infinitely easier and faster to move around.
Great video, by the way!
Mississauga needs to have the UP express (or airport GO spur) pass through the Airport and reach the 403 (either along the Transit way or the 401/410). A direct route from the city center to the employment region and Toronto center would hugely boost development.
Well I do think that's an attractive option the issue is it would be very expensive with our current methods of construction
You should make a video about travel times between a car and transit? Not just in the city but the suburbs. People live and work in the suburbs. Also can transit compete with cars in the suburbs? Their are more ways to get around town without a car If that is a option.
Absolutely, I grew up in a suburb that had decent transit in the form of local and express buses to Stockholm, and currently live in a suburb with subway access. Granted they don't look much like the sprawling suburbs of North America, but there are those types of suburbs along same routes as well, especially around the one I grew up in.
Good Transit definitely makes all the difference!
The single-home type suburbs in Stockholm and around still have decent bus access, if not also subway and other rail networks. But on the whole, most suburbs are formed around a central shopping and community services area with a subway station, and housing of various types up to 10-15 minutes walk away. That’s the main reason I probably won’t move away from the city, even if I might move around within.
I'm curious if Brampton can overtake Mississauga as the transit-oriented suburb of the GTA. Downtown Brampton definitely has to increase it's density, but with the Brampton Go at the heart of the downtown, the Ryerson School of Medicine and the Queen Street BRT/Hurontario Street LRT projects, I could definitely see it being a contender in the future.
As well as the current planned terminus for the GO line's 15 minute service, Bramalea GO, is just one stop away so an extension to bring 15 min service to downtown Brampton can be seemed as a no brainer if the Queen/Hurontario projects do meet up. Brampton is often compared to Surrey for many different reasons so having a seamless Brampton-Toronto direct connection would be a really nice coincidence
Excellent excellent Video! Sadly Mississauga is still the best transit connected suburb of Toronto. Mississauga has 3 commuter GO rail lines, not 3. Kitchener line has a stop in Malton which is part of Mississauga (but no where near 'downtown Mississauga' or the BRT or future LRT). Also I think you forgot that if someone takes the future TTC Line 5, yes they'd have to switch lines to get downtown, but they wouldn't have to go to the University-Spadina line, they could switch to the Kitchener GO line at Mount Dennis (albeit its a different service provider).
Am important consideration when developing a transit oriented suburb is that the transit must come first.
Perth, Australia, announced a transit oriented suburb in land aslrwady set up for development 15 years ago, with a train station at the centre of the suburb and a new rail line into the city to service it. The announcement proved popular, and lots of people moved there, but the train line was delayed, then cancelled, then reannounced with by a new government with a new route and another delay, and is only now being constructed. All the roads into his suburb had to be upgraded, since no one was using the nonexistent train as they had planned and connections were insufficient.
In another 5 years it might become a transit orientated suburb, but everyone there is now used to using their cars, which will hurt the performance of the railway line. If the railway line was built with the suburb, it would have caused a lot less problems in the meantime.
Build your transit first.
The Vancouver area is very well developed. Love the way they develop new condos! They look STUNNING!
Suburbs were created by transit systems a century plus ago. If it happened before 1960 most people today ignore it. However:
Most transit that appeared around large cities in 1880 onward was to connect smaller villages, towns cities to the CBD of a major city (relatively speaking). Those existing sub-urban villages built before the 1950s often have downtown districts already, whether they ate still vibrant or not.
Transit into Boston, NYC, DC, Baltimore, San Fran, Chicago is mostly these villages that are over a century or two old....getting to town.
The suburbs most imagine today are the artificial bedroom communities of LA. However LA is sprawled by design of the railroads. The Red Car and Yellow Car built these artificial subdivisions at stops they built in the early 1900s. The Southern Pacific owned the dry land, and wanted to sell it for big profits.
By the 1950s the Southern Pacific transit lines now only went to land long ago sold. There was no new land to sell in places where they had existing rail. They wouldn't build out or improve the dilapidated and worn out system without a big cash bailout from citizens....that had for years felt "The Octopus" was ripping them off.
WW2 required fast transit (freight and passenger) construction which meant government managed highways....not two different rail lines that took forever to lay by a private company that would only do it if it benefitted them.
Citizens voted for highways, and not The Octopus.
And then Wally & Beaver, The Harriets, The Petries and The Bradys told us how to live.
I have family on Bainbridge Island, WA. It’s far better than most other wealthy suburbs because it’s built around a ferry system that goes straight to downtown Seattle in 35 minutes.
As of the 2021 Canadian Census, the two cities are only about 150k people apart. Mississauga is at 717,961 (Decline of -0.50% fr the 2016 Census) and Surrey is at 568,322 (increase of 9.70% from the 2016 Census).
What is amazing though, is the similarity between the two cities. They are both similar in size (Mississauga at 292.74 km² and Surrey at 316.11 km²) and are the second most populous cities in their respective regions, and growing their own CBDs, and trying to transition from their suburban roots.
Mississauga is far more developed though in terms of infrastructure, highways, hospitals, buildings, although I will give surrey the better connectivity to downtown Vancouver via transit, only north surrey is well connected to downtown Vancouver, the rest of surrey is harder to access via transit, Mississauga has multiple highways that connect it to Toronto I wouldn’t say the same about surrey
@@thiccboi1726 I'd definitely agree with you there.
The grid system in Mississauga (and Toronto/Brampton/York Region) is a relic of the first colonizers parceling lands into 2km x 2km squares (the concessions), making for the concession and sideroad grid of arterial roads (including the likes of Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue). Of course now that everything is built up it’s kinda difficult to find the political will to knock people’s homes down to make things better.
"Surry is a city you have probably never heard of"
My RUclips feed:
Skytrain! skytrain! SKYTRAIN!
Great video! This really puts into perspective what a colossal waste Hamilton GO station is, since they don't own the track and cant run trains often, a direct link to Toronto is being lost. Hopefully they can buy the track one day.
I don't agree it's a waste I definitely think more service could be run if it was a top priority it often feels like we act as though things which are difficult are the same as things which are impossible
I suspect it will become a priority over the coming years. Hamilton's downtown is growing quite quickly out of the blue, largely driven by housing prices in Toronto, and with a new LRT coming, that is going to see a huge boost in development. Ever since West Harbour got hourly service ridership has gone up significantly, and I suspect in 5 to 10 years ridership will be high enough, and with enough people living here there will be demand to push to 30 minute service sooner than later.
The most unfortunate part is really that West Harbour Go and Hamilton Go Centre are neither directly connected to the LRT plan, and the West Harbour Go barely gets bus service. Hamilton's North/South bus service in the lower city is really bad, because it's such a short route, and it makes getting to transit a pain. I live beside West Harbour (literally a 2 minute walk) but for me to catch the east/west LRT it will take me 15 minutes to walk to the closest station. I could bus it instead but that would take 10 minutes, because I have to walk to the closest bus service and hope I catch the bus and it isn't early or late. I'm hoping with LRT they redesign the bus service.
I believe they are adding a south GO station near Stoney creek at Celebration as well. I think a better solution would be a station west of Parkdale and a second proper stoney creek station, but at least there will be some East-West movement to the West Harbor station. Hopefully they don't decide that all LRT is awful when the currently planned line turns into a failure, and build a North South line to connect West Harbour and Hamilton center, and follow Upper james to the airport.
I really hope Hamlton grows as a GO Hub. It could serve commuters from London-Woodstock-Brantford, Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, Niagara-Saint Catherine-Grimsby, possibly commuter service to Caledonia - Nanticoke, and obviously connections to Toronto. For the most part track already exists, and once the GTHA has a transit back bone built by 2030 I think this should be were provincial/GO focus shifts. New frieght track could be built trhough green field around the city for any trains going from USA to Toronto to free up capacity on the Downtown lines.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Confederation Go Station is being built on Centennial Pkwy yes.
I don't think Hamilton LRT will be a failure, not in the slightest. I'm betting it will be more successful than even advocates are calling for. Hamilton is growing immensely in the last few years, and is super bad at marketing itself. Hamilton has decades of bad reputation to shake, but people are coming here in droves. The biggest issue is our moronic council.
I'm betting that in 10 years after the LRT is in service for a few years there will be a call for LRT along another east/west corridor of the lower city since the B-Line will be too popular.
For the A-Line, I'm not sure it will be LRT, because I'm not sure it can traverse the mountain access. It would be nice, and it's technically possible, especially since it's 10 years away and in 10 years I suspect LRT investment will be far more popular than it even is today, but the challenge of the mountain access is a difficult one, and unless James is closed completely to cars (yes please) it will be an on-street tram from the mountain to at least the CN rail where James widens out a bit.
@@PSNDonutDude I hope your right. I agree it will end up at full capacity soon, I just don't think it will offer very high capacity or fast trips, and I think BRTs in the BLAST network will offer better service, which might lead to councilors pushing more BRT in routes that should see LRT. Not because BRT is better the LRT, but this LRT suffered severe creep in my opinion. I would like to see B line extended to Dundas though, and the Via station moved from Aldershot there (where ideally it would also hook up with incoming London trains).
A line LRT might be impossible, but if they build it raised I think it could be done. S line LRT is also a no brainer since its purely green field hydro corridor.
I think the importance of Surrey overtaking Vancouver in population is overstated. The fact is Downtown Vancouver continues to dominate as the cultural and economic heart of the region. That won't change because more people technically happen to go to bed at night in another municipality. On Vancouver Island, Saanich has a much higher population than Victoria, but I assume few people outside of BC have ever heard of it. There's no reason to. It's a place where a lot of "Victorians" happen to go to bed at night. Metro regions in BC have fractured local government with relatively small central cities. That's all.
Is Central Surrey an important hub for the South-of-Fraser area. Yes! Will Surrey ever replace Vancouver as the "central city" for the region? Not in our lifetimes.
Oshawa Ontario has some real development plans, with several new developments downtown and a planned walkable community in a former downtown industrial site. Along side that they are pushing densification/pedestrianization efforts at two new Go stations.
Showing up late to the game, but I guess the city is tired of being in decline for 50 years. Unfortunately may lead to some of that dislocation you mentioned. But hopefully they will be in discussions like this in the future.
Yeah hopefully Oshawa can become a bit more Transit oriented
Interesting! I need to check that out, I grew up in the area and downtown 'shwa always felt like it was falling apart and the city rudderless. Be nice to see them take urban design seriously. Thanks for the heads up!
@@KannikCat Sadly it didn't just feel that way, things have to be pretty bad when you're basically aspiring to be Hamelton. It will be interesting to see what some bare minimum transit and a little will power can do.
Almost every suburb in Melbourne is built around, and nearly entirely within walking distance of, a train station. And the main shopping strips are always around the station too.
For new suburbia (and perhaps some places where it could be adequately retrofitted, or be chosen as the new way when all the old stuff ultimately needs to be demolished one day) if you had "dense suburbia" you wouldn't need the parking lots. You also wouldn't need downtown quite as much. Suburbia would be able to gain a lot of downtown characteristics.
How? Start with a new piece of development land. (Something with lots of low lying areas subject to flooding would be perfect.) Put one long block right down the middle of that land. Make it at least 1km long, and 20 storeys high. (You'd need to also think about how to make it pretty, I think, although it would be the green belts on either side that people would mainly see, so maybe its looks don't matter that much.)
Car parks? No. Have a big, expensive parking garage at the highway end of the suburb. Access your car by riding transit or a bicycle to the car park. (Quite a lot of people are quite capable of riding a bicycle even further than a kilometer with very little training, so this is imminently doable. The great big building the inhabitants nest in could provide all weather cover for cyclists who don't like it fresh and envigorating.)
But that's just a downtown, right? NO. The idea is to keep the gardens, and resist the impulse to pave everything. Only difference is the gardens would not be contiguous.
If you got enough people to live in a place like that, and made sure to ensure their security (for some reasons high-rises seem to favour gangs?), it could offer the best of both worlds, and you'd have a concentration of people that made some kind of transit link "down the middle" (maybe under the building?) feasible - especially if you got really ambitious and extended this out to say 5km long in the end.
I intend to stop blathering all this and draw it, and put that on some website, sometime, but learning basic CAD is taking me longer than I expected. So I sometimes need to point out this "obvious" solution. At least for new developments. If you live in sprawl, you have no choice but to just carry on killing the planet (with a petrol or electric car).
Shouldn't it be that Surrey is buidling 'sattelites' for the two largest universities (UBC and SFU) in western Canada?
A suburb is literally just a primarily residential area whose residents commute to jobs elsewhere. No reason why that commute cannot be done by transit. Some of the earliest suburbs in the US were streetcar suburbs, where residents commuted to jobs downtown by streetcar.
Check out the history of Metroland where the metropolitan railway created the suburbs around what is now the metropolitan line in London.
What's going on with the editing? There were several cuts that sounded like a skipping record.
Was wondering aswelly
"much of Surrey is cannot be developed because it is low lying and flood prone" - Richmond exists, and the ALR exists.
An interesting GTHA suburban downtown that is currently being worked on is Courtice. The city plans to build a massive TOD around the future station on the Bowmanville extension which would be roughly an hour on the GO train from Toronto and be a big hub for cities in the east. Another one in the works is Innisfil on the Barrie line. Hope both of these suburban downtowns don't make the same mistakes as Mississauga. Building right off GO stations is certainly a good start though
I have a question. I live in Austria, where almost 100 percent of the train tracks are electrified. But in your videos about North American transit system almost every train I've seen wasn't electrified... Is that a normal thing, also on tracks through big cities like Toronto?
This is very normal for North America. I don't know the details for Canada, but in the United States, only around 1% of rail is electrified. You see, the U.S. has the best freight rail in the world and it's the freight companies that own most of the rail lines. These companies have not chosen to electrify lines likely due to the high upfront cost and little government support.
@@city7486 also not having wires overhead of the lines means trains can carry weird oversized loads because the entire line is no longer a tunnel.
Not that they carry things like wind turbine parts all the time that justify having a very wide and tall clear space relative to the vehicle profile. (Also 3rd & 4th rail is a thing but overhead electrification is much better, especially out in the countryside where most frieght rail is)
Yes. Although Ontario GO is planning on changing that...bit by bit
Helsinki's regional trains are a good example of TOD, especially the western portion of the Helsinki rail loop!
The major problem is that the only viable GO train service in Mississauga is lakeshore west as far as I can see the maps of GO RER point to no increase in service on the Milton line
The first "suburbs", in victorian England, were spurred by rail, right?
"to connect the entire city" - shows future transit map of Surrey with no connections to South Surrey or Cloverdale
Wait for few more years and NDP will ask Translink for Rapidbus
Surprised there is no mention of a western extension of line 2 to Mississauga. While it would be more of a local service it would still serve trips between Mississauga and Etobicoke.
It's interesting that Canadian suburban nodes are awesome with residential, but tend not to have much office. US examples are frequently more office-based, or more mixed.
That's not quite accurate.
There is a lot of business in Canadian suburbs but they tend to be centered around business parks which tend to be easily accessible by highways. Historically, highways have provided greater regional connectivity - extremely important in a region the size of the Greater Toronto Area - which has bolstered the business case for them. The densification of suburban downtown nodes has not made them more attractive as the removal of parking spaces coupled with the lack of regional transit access means a business' ability to access talent across the broader region is limited. This leads to business' continuing to favor business parks, or to move to downtown Toronto where all regional rail access leads. For instance, Microsoft Canada moved their headquarters from a business park in Meadowvale (a neighborhood in the north west of Mississauga) to downtown, while Walmart Canada is still headquartered in Meadowvale as opposed to Mississauga's downtown. Even still more people commute for work into Mississauga from neighboring suburbs than out of Mississauga.
@@zenvd04 I'm talking about offices in urban highrise formats alongside light rail.
How would you say Downtown Bellevue/Spring District stacks up to Downtown Mississauga or Surrey Central as a suburban TOD Downtown?
I would say that it is basically what Surrey expects to be fairly soon. Downtown Bellevue is fairly compact, with very large buildings covering most of what would be considered the downtown. You can easily walk between big buildings (whether they have offices or apartments). In contrast, from what I can tell, Mississauga is more spread out, with each office building acting more like a self contained office park, or part of a small cluster. From a transit perspective, downtown Bellevue will soon have something similar to what Surrey has (although not nearly as good). It serves as a hub, and within months will be connected to the bigger city (Seattle) via fast and (relatively) frequent mass transit. It will have plenty of connecting bus service, but it is unlikely to be as good as what Surrey has.
Japan is doing exactly this, and they are spreading this idea to other countries as well.
Here in Manila, we are rebuilding our main rail lines, starting with the North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) that is now under construction since 2019 and will be finished by 2025. They are proposing to build mixed used developments around the new stations, as well as connect them to other establishments.
I used to have buses that ran though my neighbourhood in Durham until the pandemic took that away from me
Anyone else watch this channel enough to know about Surrey lol?
How is it that the municipalities of metro vancouver haven't combined into one? Think of how this would simplify the creation of thoughtful regional transit planning?
london's suburbs were built largely before the car and built up around and because of the expansion of the london underground or tube in the 1920s and 30s.
BRT AND LRT not OR. They’re basically the same thing in terms of speed, convenience, cost etc. It’s a matter of passenger demand.
How exactly would thru-running from downtown Mississauga to downtown Toronto be possible on a rail converted Mississauga transit way (which is both fast, and slow, depending on when in the video you mention it?)
Really interesting. Big grid layouts don't always favour transit for sure.
Why do people not like density? If the noise is the problem why not change building codes to limit sound emissions? If it's crime, landlords can improve that without raising rents by doing personality tests.
The gvrd needs an inter urban express train. Something the connects all the downtowns with one and other
GO RER should hopefully help Mississauga a lot. (If only it went downtown)
The Suburbs of Every Major Japanese City.
Done.
Uhhhh.... Yeah no not really
Oh woah! never caught a video within the minute ^^
I noticed you didn't appear with those hand gestures of yours. Is there a reason for that?
"modern suburban downtowns are actually good" - shows endless pictures of stroads.
Stroads are bad, particularly for walkability, but I think they are treated a little to harshly. They offer very easy conversation BRT, particularly curb side, that can effectively collect local infrequent buses serving sprawl neighborhoods and offer overall high frequency. Generally they lead to relevant destinations (main cities, sports complexs, hospitals), and the infill is usually a preexisting mix of commercial and dense appartments offering passangers sources and destinations. Once a BRT is present, higher density can be jusfited in lower developed land and massive parking lots, which in turn creates more Destinations near existing neighborhoods.
Stroads are bad and should never have been put everywhere, but they aren't disabling if a choice is made to build transit.
You're a man of culture aswell
Hello fellow watcher of Not Just Bikes.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 stroads are acceptable if you keep them to 1 lane each way plus turning lanes (sucide lane in the middle that becomes a dedicated turning lane at intersections, possibly widen at intesections for dedicated turning lanes in both directions).
Once it becomes 2 lanes each way it becomes exponentially more dangerous and uninviting.
And in rural areas they are acceptable because cars are already mandatory for everyone anyway, at best you can make some good bike infrastructure but rural will never be dense enough for comprehensive transit beyond intercity things. (I would still prefer a parking lot behind Mainstreet buildings to a stroad when transit is infeasible)
i contend that there are more reasons for a vancouver resident to go to surrey or richmond than there are for a toronto resident to go to mississauga or richmond hill.
Yes viennas see stadt very much is
Not sure where you’re getting your population data, but Mississauga isn’t twice the size of surrey. Surrey has about 560,570k, while Mississauga has roughly 720k according to the latest census. Bigger, but not that much bigger. I would say that much of Vancouver’s suburban success in rapid transit comes from it not being amalgamated like Toronto is. Therefore, much more funding and support is given to cities like Burnaby, which is unquestionably the best connected suburb in the country. Toronto makes up a greater proportion of the population of its metro area, so it absorbs much more money and planning, leaving places like peel reigon out in the cold. That’s one way to look at though.
Can you talk about the future “Suburban Rail Loop” of Melbourne?
Already did a video on it!ruclips.net/video/Cg7exp3gIA0/видео.html
Hey, you may do another video on a similar Rapid Transit System being developed around the National Capital Region of India.
10:55 "The Scarberian backwaters of Kennedy Station" LOL - I rank Kennedy as the worst subway station on the TTC network. It is dirty, decrepit, ugly, the bus service always seems to suck, and it connects to the dying SRT.
I live in Scarborough and yes even though Kennedy is probably the worst east end hub station.. it is getting huge upgrades. In just a few years it will be the east end stop for the delayed LRT (line 5) line, with double tracked GO train rails running frequently, and a line 2 subway extension to Scarboroughs "downtown center". If you ask me it's going to be way better connected than Mississauga will ever be.
I think Reece's point was actually that Kennedy has amazing connectivity but there's nothing actually nearby the station. I took the opportunity to mock how the station's physical appearance is undeserving of its connectivity. I don't actually know if the existing parts of the station have an appearance upgrade planned.
@@simoneh4732 Well that part I'm unaware as to what will happen to the old part of Kennedy station. The New LRT station is the newest addition to the station. As for it's surrounding areas, it's interesting to note that Scarborough has 2 hubs. One at Kennedy and one at Scarborough town center. The town center location obviously is the more attractive one as it's about to go through a major change and become a inner city suburb downtown of it's own. This practice is happening all over the city with Yorkdale and Scarborough leading the way.
Town center will benefit the most from Kennedy as the mall is based around transit and a new direct subway stop from Kennedy. That is one of the problems with Mississauga is that it's lacking a proper connection to anywhere. It's all feeding towards Square 1, whereas Scarborough's can lead you to downtown Toronto or downtown Scarborough with one train. Depending on where you live in the city.
How do other Lower Mainland downtowns stack up to the other Golden Horseshoe downtowns? Does Mississauga have tougher competition on top of worse transit?
Mississauga is the biggest but also probably the best Hamilton is okay but the transit options are also quite bad. Most of the Metro Vancouver downtowns are connected to SkyTrain.
@@RMTransitHow about, like, Brampton, Milton, or Oakville compared to Langley or White Rock?
When you are going to cover Delhi? I've been waiting for it egarly
He's mentioned delhi in 2 videos so far with decent portions of each video being about Delhi. Can't wait for the actual delhi video though
Patriotic asians holy f what are they annoying
And he did video(s) on it
I wonder if American-style suburbs could get transit with the liberal application of buses and reserved lanes. The average suburb-to-city highway already has a trillion lanes, why not reserve one on each side and start running buses between the city center and the suburbs? Multiple bus lines could go to different suburbs, while travelling like BRT on the reserved lane once they get to the highway.
Could work, but you would definitely need to make the suburbs more walkable/bikable, at least to get to the bus stations.
But also make sure you eat a car lane to do it and don't just widen the road, part of making transit desirable is making cars less desirable. (Focus on good transit first obviously, and use the selling point that driver benefit from transit because a bus full of 60 people ≈ 60cars worth of people now in 2cars worth of space which eases congestion and makes driving more pleasant for the driver)
Also, you have to have a whole thing about fighting stereotypes and keeping the busses immaculate and advertising that they are immaculately clean and pleasant.
They should be
The problem with suburban downtowns is that they're based on malls that hope that they can spread the walkability surrounding the mall. With that comes ppl having to live close to the mall, since everywhere else is still largely car oriented. Mississauga is desperately trying to sew the fabrics of their scattered businesses and highrises together but it comes at a price. Their inner city transit is not bad but traveling within Mississauga isn't that great either.
Sure the new LRT line running north to south will do ok for them, but it's still going to be tough getting to places because it's going to be a streetcar style line and who knows how frequent it'll be for them. Instead of just building condos and trying really hard to compete with the biggest elephant in the room, how about they fix their transit connection first, make more bike lanes, and try to connect their downtown to Toronto's downtown. That way Mississauga can thrive on ppl going to and from both downtowns without have to take different modes of transportation and also making Mississauga a desirable place to live. Instead of having this disconnect between the two cities and also having this weird animosity with Toronto.
They have to keep building the high rises and density before they can improve transit because of costs. Your suggestion might be the better plan, but cities make a lot of revenue through development fees, whereas building rail and bike paths is very costly in the short term, even if cost saving long term. Canadian cities have very strict debt rules, which really has been a good thing in avoiding giant highway interchanges in every suburb, but it does mean that to grow the city needs to be increasing its revenue.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 True. The problem with suburban downtowns is that they're never meant to be like major cities. Theyre meant to be bedroom towns for city workers. Mississauga has been forcing itself for years to be like Toronto in today's world. It's in a way working but it can never be like Toronto. 1. It's too sprawled out to be a city like Toronto. 2. It's not meant to be a city. Square 1 is what saved Mississauga from becoming a place with rows and rows of houses and random condos all over the place like most American suburbs. What Oxford properties is trying to do with that mall, is what they're trying to do to the malls in the GTA that they own. Basically Oxford is looking at these malls like they already have good connection to transit and mostly cars with highway interchanges, so why not build or create a mini downtown so ppl won't always have to head to Toronto or anywhere else for that matter. This is why Mississauga is becoming a downtown on its own. Only time will tell how this turns out.
I feel like this formula can only work with inner city suburbs (North York, Scarborough & Etobicoke) because they're older towns with good connections already.
@@nanaokyere7141 I think pickering has at least as good a shot as Scarborough, but I agree. Also old cities with a center, like Oshawa and Hamilton.
But for the most part I think suburbs will grow into Hashtag cities, with density along linear corridors that have frequent transit and gaps of somewhat walkable but car oriented suburbs. Cars are much higher capacity if each trip needs only a short distance and is on the road a short time. And BRTs along arterials mean frequent stops that allow medium density evenly spread, and occasional larger TODs maybe served by Regional or LRT lines.
That or people will spend 3 hours at a time playing video games traffic with a self driving car and sprawl with most of thier time spent working from home and having everything delivered.
Hopefully its the first one.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 I know right. I agree. The suburbs in the GTA especially are becoming satellite cities of their own, as witnessed with the new Vaughn center and the soon to be built Richmond hill center. They're all feeding off of the extension of the line 1 subway on both sides of York region and it's kind of like Toronto's subway tentacles are grabbing these suburbs closer in to be joined into the city. Don't get me wrong I think it's a good idea and that they should've done this decades ago, I just don't like that it was politically fueled. The University/Spadina side of line 1 for example was originally supposed to end at York university, but because of political interference and the promise of more funding, they pushed it up to Vaughn. In return it automatically created an extension into the suburbs for the first time and made Vaughn create a city center from scratch.
The only problem with these new city centers popping up is that they're solely basing their new centers on one suburb station as its main station feeding into Toronto while building a whole new city around it. This alone will create bottle necks if we're expecting our population to rise a few million in the GTA in the coming years. Only time will tell.
As for Pickering, they're integrated nicely with GO trains out there so they should be getting electrified first as it's going to be on the Lakeshore east line, with expanded tracks and more frequent service. Pickering does have a better shot at becoming a better suburb city because of how close it is to Scarborough, it also has an Oxford properties mall right across from the GO station and is also creating a BRT with Scarborough to run from Pickering town center to Scarborough town center, benefiting a lot of UTSC and Centennial students in Scarborough in the coming years.
@@nanaokyere7141 You are right, Pickering does feed into your initial point. I think the development of new city centers based on Transit stations that feed to Toronto are probably for the best. They might lead to some capacity issues going south with more people living on the station, but at the same time they will provide local jobs so people in the Vaughan suburbs will be able to work in office parks or other employment without commuting to Toronto. Also, they will provide a higher demand for uptown travel from people in North York, meaning any capacity extension in the future will provide more utility instead of empty trains going north to collect people in the morning or vice versa.
But overall I think that capacity in the Northern portions of line 1 fairly underutilized, and even if trains were leaving Vaughan or Richmond hill full GO connections, which are increasing capacity, at Downsview and Langstall will provide an experess service most users going downtown will use, freeing line 1 capacity for Toronto usage. Plus the VIVA busways will provide cross town rapid transit, and hopefully after line 4 is extended to Scarborough town center they will finally extend it west to the University line.
Last I checked the two largest Universities in British Columbia were UBC (wedged between the city of Vancouver and the ocean), and Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. While Surrey is getting smaller campuses for these two, they're just that, minor.
What Vancouver & Surrey really need is an upgrade of the heavy rail line; running
Vancouver(Pacific Stn) -- Braid(Skytrain) -- Nordel(S.end Fraser Bridge) -- Cloverdale(176th/56th) -- S.Surrey(176/24th?) -- then down into the US; and build it to carry fast (230kmh) rail.
not only would you have a useful commuter route, taking pressure off the already busy Skytrain Line, you have the 1st quarter (70km) of the fast rail line from Vancouver to Seattle.
This is mostly existing rail line/right of way as part of the BNSF tracks. Yes, there needs to be a new bridge SE of Braid, and some rail built along 176 (which is mostly farm land), but wow, that would make a huge difference.
Skytrain will be a complete disaster once it stretches to Langley, because it will be 100% full before it crosses the Fraser heading to downtown Vancouver, it's already pretty bad (in pre-covid times) by the time it hits New West.
What a classic example of poor town planning. Its like they built all the buildings and then thought about how do we move people around. Best answer is build an underground tube system that goes to all the spots.
Would you consider Vaughan a transit oriented suburb?
Not really no most of it has pretty lackluster Transit service
Pineapple so belongs on pizza
No.
Have you tried to play city skylines
Yes, I got the game right when it came out
openttd is better and free, run tell that.
"And the best routes will require you to pay several different fares"
That's an interesting way of saying "worst case scenerio, you only have to pay an extra fare in Toronto"
Having to pay two fares to travel between two cities which are directly next to each other is craziness
@@RMTransit It's ridiculous. Now imagine if the original proposed extension of line 2 subway were to extend to Square 1 instead of where it's western stop is now at Kipling, we wouldn't have this conversation.
@@RMTransit I've always been shocked at the disconnect between the GTA cities when it comes to transit. I mean if New York can can have the MTA cover all five Boroughs with one system....
@@nicholasjamesbourne Those five boroughs are part of one city, so they naturally have one transit system
@@ALuimes Fair enough though I was more pointing out the complexities in handling a transit system for a large urban area. Metro Vancouver has 21 cities and they all have one unified transit system in TransLink. Sure it's a smaller Metro area, but I'm sure the system would work well for the GTA.
DEF HEARD I LIVE THERE DONT ASK *I mean SURREY*
Wasn't Rocketman what Trump called the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un...... o.O
Chúc c Mây năm mới nhiều sức khoẻ và thật thành công ạ
Transit should be cheaper. Vancouver Transit is costly 3.45 to 4$ to travel to surrey one way. Fuel is cheaper compared to transit cost and if you have a hybrid or an EV, transit in Vancouver doesn't make sense. Transit makes sense if you dont own a car since you save money on parking/Insurance/lease cost etc.
Transit makes sense because trains don't get stuck in traffic.
😀 😃 🙂 👍
I enjoy your videos sometimes, but you talk so fast at times that I have difficulty following what you're saying. Do you have to fit your topic within a certain time limit? You just talk faster and faster as the video goes on until I can't keep up.
I was about to "Like" and "Subscribe", but am limiting myself to "Comment" since I cannot support your benighted views on pineapple with respect to pizza.
We won't survive if they don't work, so they'd better work!
Reese, this is a great piece, but I have to disagree with your statement that LRT in Surrey "failed". How can you gloss this over without even mentioning politics. If terrible Linda Heppner had won the mayoral election in 2018, instead of terrible Doug McCallum, there would be an LRT SYSTEM in Surrey by now.
As it turns out, Doug McCallum's promise that Surrey would have a skytrain extension to east Surrey, and possibly to Lanley by 2024 will not be fulfilled, even though he has tried as hard as he can. Poor Doug does not control Translink. And Translink are in far over their heads. So construction on Surrey Skytrain extension will start in 2024 and is projected to be competed 2028. I doubt that it will. Doug is done for as of October 2022.
I'd rather wait longer for a proper SkyTrain system than make do with a sub-par LRT that is made redundant by RapidBus.
@@AlCatSplat skytrain may be superior IF you are trying to travel 10 km or more in a single jump. But if you are just trying to travel a km or 2, say from your home to a grocery store and back with a load of groceries, or trying toget you two small children to school, you would be better off to step onto a tram, than to schlep to the nearest skytrain station.
Laughs in Hongkongese
Suburban downtowns? In the US new suburbs don't have 'downtowns', mayB a few businesses near the RR station but a downtown? NO. Old suburbs had a downtown, now the stores are either converted to housing or house lawyers, real estate brokers, or insurance agents, not real stores. well, mayB a musical instrument shop, or some other business taking advantage of cheap rent, mayB a tattoo parlour. One sure killer of the downtown is the parking meter, one ticket and the shopper will NEVER return. Old suburbs don't have enough parking, either at the transit station or generally. Big old houses were converted to apartments or were built before parking spaces were required, this is a problem. the auto has proven itself, it will be around for at least a few more years, get used to it, city fathers (and mothers). The downtown is the shopping mall but mind you, I HATE strip malls, they should be outlawed, some communities do, it's called zoning.
I'm deleting this because I realised it was hurtful to RM. I had intended to give "whiny English twat" cadence in jest, but that's fallen flat at best. Everybody below was right to pile on.
Its as though his accent doesn't have the foot-strut split when I'm fairly sure that Canadian accents do.
Surrey in BC was established by an Englishman who named it after his native county of Surrey in England. It's pronounced in just that same way.
In UK english the ur sound is more of an \ʌr\ or sometimes \ər\, Reece seems to pronounce it more like \ʊr\. It's probably how it was pronounced in UK english before there was a vowel shift after the place was founded. American/Canadian english is well known for keeping archaic vowel sounds that have since changed in UK english.
@@pauly5418 As a native of Surrey in the UK I can tell you that Rees is using a different pronunciation to the one I would use.
Canadians pronounce place names differently than Brits.
More at 11.
There is the Milton line where the Cooksville GO that unfortunately is on the CP line, which means it is not about to offer 2-way all-day service. The Hurontario GO - however and the connection to Port Credit should make it not too bad to get to Mississauga city center.
The Milton Line could have more frequent service and several political parties are already talking about frequent service on it!
@@RMTransit the question will be getting CP - to actually offer the space. Politically this would require the federal government for it to be mandated. I would suggest - working with CP to get air rights - and build an elevated light metro - in its ROW (connect that abandoned Rail corridor - Brampton Orangeville - to core with frequent service)- .
ps-should have a look at the density around Kennedy- I understand Scarborough town council made a choice (while it was still a thing) to actually reduced allowed density there, and increase it at the STC- and this even before the SRT was built. Choice made to have density - where there was highway - not transit access.
@@MNEWALL1 a light Metro doesn't really make sense when you have a passenger rail service you could simply expand there's lots of room to just put passenger tracks next to the freight tracks there doesn't need to be anything too complicated
@@RMTransit Except CP - seems to have been more than a little resistant to any such proposals - and the provincial government has no direct influence.
It may be CP wants that track space for future expansion - but I am under the strong impression - they have not been interested in having that space taken up beyond the degree to which it is- inside Toronto - or even Mississauga.
The Scarborough side - offers the great possibility of connections- that have not been able to be actioned either it seems. Perhaps it is becoming more open, but I have not heard that.
what city is at 1:15
Vancouver specifically the neighbourhood of gastown near the steam clock