In order to build these sorts of things you generally need to steal people’s homes and businesses. We used to do that happily, as long as the victims were poor and brown. But the commie left doesn’t let us steal poor people’s homes anymore, even if they’re brown.
disloyal_royal on
In the case of Toronto, partisanship killed development. Rob Ford (yes, the crack mayor) was a conservative who believed in infrastructure development. The next mayor didn’t want to support any of the previous administration’s policies, so a subway expansion was scrapped.
Luckily enough time has gone by that the current progressive mayor can basically resurrect the old plan, but under a different political banner, so there is a massive expansion being built now. It is also fortunate that Rob’s brother is the Premier of the Province, where a substantial amount of the funding comes from. We finally have a combination of a right wing pro infrastructure leader with the budget and enough time has passed for the progressives to not dismiss the plan because the other side came up with it.
SavagePlatypus76 on
Conservatives
New_Apartment_6301 on
According to the left it’s Trump’s fault. As far as the left, fund a multi-billionaire dollar high speed rail, years later the money is gone and there is no high speed rail. The leftists are the real crooks laundering money.
LorenaBobbittWorm on
I think it’s a huge combination of things but a big part of it is that North American governments, especially local governments, have issues with eminent domain (seizing land for the greater good). Not to mention labor cost, and what is often strong opposition to new transit lines especially connecting the city to suburban/“quiet” neighborhoods.
soareyousaying on
You want to know the real reasons? Decades of comforts with no sense of struggle, which creates pockets of local mafias called bureaucracy. Now they are everywhere, and nobody’s budging out of their comfortable little nests, pointing their fat fingers on the other parties and blame all problems on them.
believeit0itsbutter on
Lmao you couldn’t pay me to get on an Indian subway.
aquarain on
The population of Toronto has grown by 500,000 since 2002. About 20%, to 3,000,000.
The population of Delhi grew that much last week. Only slightly kidding. Population rose from 15,000,000 to 35,000,000 since 2002. That’s 133%. At the current rate of growth Delhi will have more meters of subway system per resident than Toronto approximately never.
Subways are very expensive people movers per passenger mile travelled. They’re generally built with taxes or loans against future fares and taxes. In Delhi reorganizing surface transportation is much more cost effective. Cost is important. Median income in Toronto is $100,000/year. In Delhi it’s $5,500.
rothmal on
And on top of that, it actually gets you somewhere. Rather than just having lines where the choice is between the middle of nowhere and downtown.
kakotakafuji on
population density and nimby
Sufficient-Contract9 on
I believe it was originally put off as a means of bolstering the american car industry. Some very wealthy so very powerful people made efforts to diminish (legally) the use of public transits in order to help their emerging industry to flourish. Which was also beneficial to the american government at the time. This tradition has been heavily instilled in the american life style to the point that public transit is sort of taboo. Trains are viewed as sort of a “poors” transport system and we over here care very much about our social and economical appearance. Plus who the fuck dosent love the personal freedom of owning a car.
brinerbear on
Nimbys, red tape, and lack of proof of concept of a successful system. And you can’t say well Taiwan or Singapore has a great system or _______ has an amazing system or amazing high speed rail etc. We need actual examples in Canada or the United States.
Ryuga_42069 on
I’d give it a few reasons.
1. Car culture, taking public transit is given a stigma in most parts of the contient, tell people you take the bus and they’ll look at you like you’re poor. It’s hard to change that perception, when a 2003 Subaru is seen as more luxurious than a public transit card. Public transit in a lot of cities is just seen as sketchy.
2. Car lobbies that ensure our local, provincial/state and federal governments prefer highway expansions over public transit, $30B to maintain the highways for 5 years? YAY! $15B to build a subway that’ll reduce congestion in one of the worst areas of town? ARE YOU CRAZY???
This is perplexing as an Indian. We have our fair share of challenges. Below is a rant. If we can do it by accident, anyone can do it.
Look, we have bureaucracy that is the stuff of legends.
Funding issues are omnipresent. Changing as political winds blow.
And land acquisition is a right pain too. The government gives compensation, typically at least market rate, however the disbursement is often flaky, depending on the government department. Generally, metro rail corporations are efficient when it comes to this.
However, the property owner can file a case in the high court if they feel the acquisition or compensation is unjust. The very first outcome of filing such a case is a “stay orders” — an order requiring construction to halt at that property till proceedings are complete. This process can take at least a year to resolve.
Many of these cases are filed by what I call “BMW environmentalists”. They fail to see the CO2 savings from the metro, and cling too tightly to lone trees — never mind that compensatory afforestation is mandatory.
And if the land to be acquired is defence, forest or railways land? God help you.
15 Comments
In order to build these sorts of things you generally need to steal people’s homes and businesses. We used to do that happily, as long as the victims were poor and brown. But the commie left doesn’t let us steal poor people’s homes anymore, even if they’re brown.
In the case of Toronto, partisanship killed development. Rob Ford (yes, the crack mayor) was a conservative who believed in infrastructure development. The next mayor didn’t want to support any of the previous administration’s policies, so a subway expansion was scrapped.
Luckily enough time has gone by that the current progressive mayor can basically resurrect the old plan, but under a different political banner, so there is a massive expansion being built now. It is also fortunate that Rob’s brother is the Premier of the Province, where a substantial amount of the funding comes from. We finally have a combination of a right wing pro infrastructure leader with the budget and enough time has passed for the progressives to not dismiss the plan because the other side came up with it.
Conservatives
According to the left it’s Trump’s fault. As far as the left, fund a multi-billionaire dollar high speed rail, years later the money is gone and there is no high speed rail. The leftists are the real crooks laundering money.
I think it’s a huge combination of things but a big part of it is that North American governments, especially local governments, have issues with eminent domain (seizing land for the greater good). Not to mention labor cost, and what is often strong opposition to new transit lines especially connecting the city to suburban/“quiet” neighborhoods.
You want to know the real reasons? Decades of comforts with no sense of struggle, which creates pockets of local mafias called bureaucracy. Now they are everywhere, and nobody’s budging out of their comfortable little nests, pointing their fat fingers on the other parties and blame all problems on them.
Lmao you couldn’t pay me to get on an Indian subway.
The population of Toronto has grown by 500,000 since 2002. About 20%, to 3,000,000.
The population of Delhi grew that much last week. Only slightly kidding. Population rose from 15,000,000 to 35,000,000 since 2002. That’s 133%. At the current rate of growth Delhi will have more meters of subway system per resident than Toronto approximately never.
Subways are very expensive people movers per passenger mile travelled. They’re generally built with taxes or loans against future fares and taxes. In Delhi reorganizing surface transportation is much more cost effective. Cost is important. Median income in Toronto is $100,000/year. In Delhi it’s $5,500.
And on top of that, it actually gets you somewhere. Rather than just having lines where the choice is between the middle of nowhere and downtown.
population density and nimby
I believe it was originally put off as a means of bolstering the american car industry. Some very wealthy so very powerful people made efforts to diminish (legally) the use of public transits in order to help their emerging industry to flourish. Which was also beneficial to the american government at the time. This tradition has been heavily instilled in the american life style to the point that public transit is sort of taboo. Trains are viewed as sort of a “poors” transport system and we over here care very much about our social and economical appearance. Plus who the fuck dosent love the personal freedom of owning a car.
Nimbys, red tape, and lack of proof of concept of a successful system. And you can’t say well Taiwan or Singapore has a great system or _______ has an amazing system or amazing high speed rail etc. We need actual examples in Canada or the United States.
I’d give it a few reasons.
1. Car culture, taking public transit is given a stigma in most parts of the contient, tell people you take the bus and they’ll look at you like you’re poor. It’s hard to change that perception, when a 2003 Subaru is seen as more luxurious than a public transit card. Public transit in a lot of cities is just seen as sketchy.
2. Car lobbies that ensure our local, provincial/state and federal governments prefer highway expansions over public transit, $30B to maintain the highways for 5 years? YAY! $15B to build a subway that’ll reduce congestion in one of the worst areas of town? ARE YOU CRAZY???
That being said, it is slowly changing, in Toronto 3 new lines are under construction (Line 3 Ontario, Line 5 Eglinton and Line 6 Finch West) which will take the Subway system to something more like this.
[Future Toronto Rail Map](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toronto_Subway_2030.png#mw-jump-to-license)
This is perplexing as an Indian. We have our fair share of challenges. Below is a rant. If we can do it by accident, anyone can do it.
Look, we have bureaucracy that is the stuff of legends.
Funding issues are omnipresent. Changing as political winds blow.
And land acquisition is a right pain too. The government gives compensation, typically at least market rate, however the disbursement is often flaky, depending on the government department. Generally, metro rail corporations are efficient when it comes to this.
However, the property owner can file a case in the high court if they feel the acquisition or compensation is unjust. The very first outcome of filing such a case is a “stay orders” — an order requiring construction to halt at that property till proceedings are complete. This process can take at least a year to resolve.
Many of these cases are filed by what I call “BMW environmentalists”. They fail to see the CO2 savings from the metro, and cling too tightly to lone trees — never mind that compensatory afforestation is mandatory.
And if the land to be acquired is defence, forest or railways land? God help you.
This is cool