GO Transit

[plam]

I think commuter rail is a uniquely North American phenomenon. No other country (or at least none I can think of) builds a transit system that is designed to cater only to commute hour drivers. So yes, if the only goal is to do that, then a P&R makes sense. But I don't think that should be the goal here.

As for what other countries do, some do have P&Rs, but they're generally smaller, and as suggested by ijmorlan cover at most half the station area.

For me, the problem with the Breslau station is that this is station that will be surrounded by a moat of parking, and exist for no other reason. Worse, development will almost certainly follow the station and grow around it, but with no plan and a shitty station area, this development will be unplanned, and car focused.

There is an opportunity instead to build a transit focused new complete community around it. How often do we open a new rail transit station? This is precisely what was done in the neighbourhood I live in, they opened a new station, and built a whole community around it.

But there are two big obstacles here. First, nobody has even imagined that you can build a transit community like this in North America. But bigger than that, you'd have to accept that people in KW that WANT to go to Toronto would have a choice: live in the transit focused area, or drive instead. The idea that we should give up on getting people living in a car dependent suburban wasteland sounds wrong, but I think it makes sense. People who live in a car dependent area aren't going to make extensive use of transit. We should instead by providing the opportunity for people to live a car light lifestyle by providing a good experience in such a place.

Like many things, this is about a deeper concept of freedom and choice. E.g., not "I expect to drive wherever I want, even a transit station" the choice should be "what kind of lifestyle do I want to have"

Overall I agree that park and ride is very status quo focussed and not really actually an efficient use of money---but what is, when it comes to cars?

Commuter rail makes me think of Paris's RER. And indeed, they have "parcs relais" which seem to be park and ride, though only on the furthest-out stations: https://www.transilien.com/fr/page-depla...rcs-relais

Wellington, NZ does have commuter rail, as does Auckland. Wellington's rail stations come with parking lots.

It's my impression that some places are trying to build in a downtown after the fact like the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre. I really don't want to think about Vaughan though.

But when we have greenfield here we all too often build fiascoes like the Boardwalk. Ugh.