GO Transit

[westwardloo]

I'll be blunt, and this is an unpopular opinion. I think new large park and ride facilities on greenfield space is a bad idea.

And I realize that I'm not going to convince anyone here, nor am I even going to be seen at anyone at GO/Metrolinx so this is a conversation for conversations sake, but the fact is, building a large park and ride facility is an investment that benefits a relatively small number of people (say 500-1000, who could possibly would use even a very large parking lot), at the cost of long term maintenance of the status quo--a transit station that will remain permanently and completely inaccessible by all the development that absolutely will happen around it. It is another missed opportunity to change the strategy of development in the province, and a significant loss of housing opportunity in a province with a desperate shortage of housing.

But I fully expect that a P&R facility will be built somewhere around the same time the 7 expressway is also completed, because nothing is changing in the province.

Ok, I guess myself and many others will just drive to Toronto then. Personally I live in the country so bus is not an option, but If I lived in the edge of town with bus connection I would not and I suspect a lot of others would not take the bus 30-45 mins to get on a train. I would however take the my car 10-15 mins to then jump on the train.   I just don't understand your all or nothing Bike/walk/take transit mentality. I know you live abroad in Europe (Netherlands) with a much better transit system then us. But they still build park and Ride with parking garages. They still have HWY's connecting small cities. The point is to invest is all aspects of the transportation system. Do I think we can do better on the Bike/ transportation infrastructure, absolutely, but that does not mean we don't invest in car infrastructure as well.

[danbrotherston]

I'll be blunt, and this is an unpopular opinion. I think new large park and ride facilities on greenfield space is a bad idea.

And I realize that I'm not going to convince anyone here, nor am I even going to be seen at anyone at GO/Metrolinx so this is a conversation for conversations sake, but the fact is, building a large park and ride facility is an investment that benefits a relatively small number of people (say 500-1000, who could possibly would use even a very large parking lot), at the cost of long term maintenance of the status quo--a transit station that will remain permanently and completely inaccessible by all the development that absolutely will happen around it. It is another missed opportunity to change the strategy of development in the province, and a significant loss of housing opportunity in a province with a desperate shortage of housing.

But I fully expect that a P&R facility will be built somewhere around the same time the 7 expressway is also completed, because nothing is changing in the province.

Ok, I guess myself and many others will just drive to Toronto then. Personally I live in the country so bus is not an option, but If I lived in the edge of town with bus connection I would not and I suspect a lot of others would not take the bus 30-45 mins to get on a train. I would however take the my car 10-15 mins to then jump on the train.   I just don't understand your all or nothing Bike/walk/take transit mentality. I know you live abroad in Europe (Netherlands) with a much better transit system then us. But they still build park and Ride with parking garages. They still have HWY's connecting small cities. The point is to invest is all aspects of the transportation system. Do I think we can do better on the Bike/ transportation infrastructure, absolutely, but that does not mean we don't invest in car infrastructure as well.

What is wrong with driving to Toronto in this context? Even here, I would not suggest people that live where you live are expected to take transit somewhere, and in fact, would find doing so fairly inconvenient (even if it's more possible than for you).

The point is that I'm arguing for building something that doesn't exist in Canada...a place where transit (and walking, and even biking) are put above convenience for drivers. Such a place does not exist.

You are arguing for making transit a more palatable option for some people, but without changing anything about the car oriented nature of every single place in the country.

I'm arguing for choice. If you want to live in a rural area, and be dependent on a car, that's a choice you can make, and there's nothing wrong with that. But conversely people _should also_ have the option of living in a comfortable urban environment and not be dependent on _or_ dominated by cars. Right now, only one choice is possible in Canada.

Now yes, what I am suggesting is that for you, the most reasonable thing to do is to drive to Toronto, but why do you take that as a problem? That's already the case.

P&Rs are not car infrastructure, their urban infrastructure. Yes, even the NLs has P&Rs, but not as many as you think. Where I live, if someone in the rural area outside the city I live in (somewhere you wouldn't bus/bike/walk to the train station) was going to Amsterdam (or indeed, even the centre of our city) that person would drive to the city and park in a Parking facility on the edge of the city centre. They wouldn't drive to an intercity train station and take the train in.

[danbrotherston]

And also, if we consider the traffic argument, I think my position still is the winner. Yes, building a P&R might take some traffic off the 401 and reduce congestion, but due to induced demand, probably not have any savings in time.

But at the same time, there's going to be 100k new people, and by encouraging the same development pattern all 100k of those people will be in cars that will be added to our already congested streets. So we're (optimistically) -1000 cars on the 401 per day and +100k cars overall.

If instead we built out a station with a transit oriented community around it of 30k residents. Then we're going to be +70k cars overall. This is what I mean about systemic changes. Yeah, taking 1000 cars of the 401 sounds good. But it's a drop in the bucket of the ongoing unsustainable and broken development patterns. If instead, the pattern is changed, that will result in much deeper changes to how things work.

[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.

[danbrotherston]

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.

Lol...Australia and New Zealand are just part of North America the same way Montreal and Quebec are part of Europe. 🤣

To be fair, my experience is not that broad, and really there is lots of diversity in the world, things are not as absolute as we like, but I think these are general trends.

That said, I completely agree, as I said in my first message, I'm unlikely to convince anyone here, and I certainly have zero influence over Metrolinx or GO, they're going to do as they are planning to do I'm sure. But even if they decided they wanted to do better, even if they had politicians and planners on board to do something better, I would still not expect it to be truly revolutionary, there is just so much inertia in the system. But I think there's still value in challenging the status quo, because even the idea that we should be changing things fundamentally can shift the overton window. One person cannot change the direction, but neither can zero people. One step at a time. Maybe someone makes enough noise that they build a nice station square that makes access just a little nicer than a sea of parking. Maybe next time they do as ijmorlan suggests and builds only half the station facing parking.

But to me, the real shame is that there are not that many opportunities to build a greenfield train station like this, and certainly for the KW & Guelph communities, probably only one.

[KevinL]

Europe is not immune to this; Britain has stations near motorways with large parking areas (usually with 'Parkway' in the name), and France has been know to build high-speed stations outside of smaller urban centres and put parking lots with them. But the Park-and-Ride is certainly most common here in North America.

[tomh009]

Ok, I guess myself and many others will just drive to Toronto then. Personally I live in the country so bus is not an option, but If I lived in the edge of town with bus connection I would not and I suspect a lot of others would not take the bus 30-45 mins to get on a train. I would however take the my car 10-15 mins to then jump on the train. 

But it's not automatically 10-15 minutes. SW Kitchener to Breslau is 20 minutes (without traffic). St Jacobs is 20 minutes. Laurelwood is 25 minutes. Baden is 25 minutes. Add 5-10 minutes for traffic, or more, and now you are in the 30-40 minute range.

Do you see that as a reasonable time to drive to a GO station?

[westwardloo]

Ok, I guess myself and many others will just drive to Toronto then. Personally I live in the country so bus is not an option, but If I lived in the edge of town with bus connection I would not and I suspect a lot of others would not take the bus 30-45 mins to get on a train. I would however take the my car 10-15 mins to then jump on the train. 

But it's not automatically 10-15 minutes.  SW Kitchener to Breslau is 20 minutes (without traffic). St Jacobs is 20 minutes. Laurelwood is 25 minutes. Baden is 25 minutes. Add 5-10 minutes for traffic, or more, and now you are in the 30-40 minute range.

Do you see that as a reasonable time to drive to a GO station?

I know people that drive 60 minutes to the burlington GO station on Saturdays in the summer to see Blue jays games all the time. 20 mins to a GO station is nothing. when I lived in Toronto I walked 15 mins to get to a subway stop. 

Personally I would love to see GO expanded into west kitchener as well. It would be a fairly good location for transit, walkers, bikers and cars to access a station near the Boardwalk. It could even spur a future redevelopment of that crapshoot of a box store plaza. 

Just because Breslau would be a Park & Ride style station doesn't mean the Region or Township couldn't plan to build a mixed use space around the station that provides retail, commercial space and housing. I think the location picked for the Breslau GO also has the potential to have trails built to it from all the neighbourhoods in Breslau. So hopefully those residents would take bikes/ walk.

[danbrotherston]

But it's not automatically 10-15 minutes.  SW Kitchener to Breslau is 20 minutes (without traffic). St Jacobs is 20 minutes. Laurelwood is 25 minutes. Baden is 25 minutes. Add 5-10 minutes for traffic, or more, and now you are in the 30-40 minute range.

Do you see that as a reasonable time to drive to a GO station?

I know people that drive 60 minutes to the burlington GO station on Saturdays in the summer to see Blue jays games all the time. 20 mins to a GO station is nothing. when I lived in Toronto I walked 15 mins to get to a subway stop. 

Personally I would love to see GO expanded into west kitchener as well. It would be a fairly good location for transit, walkers, bikers and cars to access a station near the Boardwalk. It could even spur a future redevelopment of that crapshoot of a box store plaza. 

Just because Breslau would be a Park & Ride style station doesn't mean the Region or Township couldn't plan to build a mixed use space around the station that provides retail, commercial space and housing. I think the location picked for the Breslau GO also has the potential to have trails built to it from all the neighbourhoods in Breslau. So hopefully those residents would take bikes/ walk.

Geometry is a physical law. If you build a P&R facility then the station is surrounded by parking, not housing and businesses. Walking is inherently a slow mode. Things have to be very close together for it to be useful. But putting things very close together is geometrically impossible when you are planning on accommodating 1000 parked cars all day.

This is actually why cycling is so powerful. It lets you spread things out a little bit more without consuming the vast amount of space that cars require.

So yeah, it doesn't matter if the region surrounds the station in housing, and I have no doubt that they will. The fact will be even people living next to the station will probably drive to it, because the alternative is walking through acres of surface parking which is unpleasant on a cold winter night, or a hot summer day, or even pleasant spring day. Which means the development pattern of those houses will remain the same, they will mandate 3-4 car spaces per house (because every member of a household will need to drive) and then everything will be spread out and entirely car dependent.

This is WHY this kind of thing is fundamental. It is extremely hard to change things incrementally, which is why a new greenfield development like this is such a missed opportunity.

In other news, we just had a local election here in the Netherlands. While the previous government implemented a paid parking scheme across the whole city. A protest party ran to oppose this (and other*) policy. While they didn't win, they did come second. But the people who support this party would never want a city like Kitchener, but they cannot imagine how just allowing every single person to drive and park everywhere for free would lead to it. The same way most people in Kitchener cannot imagine how a city that doesn't have that could function.

People have a fundamental lack of imagination...

* For interest the other top policies of this party: More police, less immigrants, no wind turbines, no more apartments. Some things are very familiar here.