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I grew up in downtown Toronto. My family did not own a car. We took the bus, subway and street cars everywhere. We would walk to the grocery store up the street. For almost everything else we would shop at Honest Ed's. It was bliss!
You could do that for the most part to this day, I know many people who live downtown that do not own a car. A lot of Toronto's traffic issues aren't residents of Toronto, it is people from the suburbs who have no real way to get downtown.. besides driving.
@@NotJustBikes Ottawa's highway through the city is a different can of beans. It mostly replaces a railway track. Still, it's annoying that there isn't a ring road around the city, especially heading to Quebec. Trucks have to navigate through Byward and Sandy Hill! And if we had a ring road, the expansion of the 417 wouldn't have been necessary -- not that it helped! Just one more lane, bro! 😁
@@enriquegarciacota3914 It's like a river, except it's depressing and ugly, will degrade your health in several ways just by being vaguely near it, jumping into it means instant death, and it doesn't even transport people efficiently!
Same in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. On a different scale, you can find this in Adelaide as well. I'm guessing it's the same for Perth; never been, but I don't see why this city would be different from all the others. (All these are the main cities in Australia).
"Toronto will commit suicide if it plunges the Spadina Expressway into it's heart...our planners are 19th century men with a naive faith in an obsolete technology. In the age of software, Metro planners treat people like hardware. They haven't the faintest interest in the values of neighborhoods or community. Their failure to learn from the mistakes of American cities will be ours too" Damn. Miss Jacobs did not pull punches.
"What's holding your city back is most likely the politicians, not the planners. Though TRAFFIC ENGINEERS DO A GOOD JOB OF FUCKING THINGS UP, TOO! -Not Just Bikes, Oct 2022 Also, not pulling punches.
Even with all its issues, even though I was living in a car dependant suburb in etobicoke it still had the best transit of anywhere I have lived in ontario. It was a culture shock moving out of toronto to the niagara region let me tell you. I had never even wanted to own a car and I was forced into because the transit was so abyssmal
Oh yeah, for sure. When I moved to Toronto from London (fake), it was like a whole new world of transit. I thought it was amazing. Little did I know how much better it could be outside of Canada. But ultimately, this is what I hate about Toronto: it's good, but it could be *so much better* with just a few small changes. But those changes would involve restricting car traffic a little bit.
@@NotJustBikes Do you have recommendations for what regions to look at for living without a car in Toronto? I grew up in one of the suburbs (Thornhill, the entire city is a suburb), and want to find a place where I don't need a car. I looked at Riverdale and loved the area, but the problem is that it is so pricey, wanted to see if you had other suggested areas to widen the search net.
Yeah, seems like every time you talk about improving and expanding public transit, someone somewhere is like “but what about the cars?!” Usually it’s a politician. Here in California, it’s impossible to get money for public transit without it being tied to money for road widening and other “fix the bottleneck” BS projects. We’re also the state that complains about spending $100 billion on a bullet train but doesn’t even bat an eyelash when you spend the same amount of money to widen 30 miles of freeway. Where are all of those “budget hawks” then?!
Remember, Torontonians: The "Please vote" is not just a platitude. On October 24th, there will be a very real choice between the status quo and Gil Penalosa, a renowned urbanist who fundamentally gets this stuff. Transportation is political, and the chance to exercise your political views is coming in under a month.
I voted today for Quebec's provincial and my vote is completely irrelevant because I'm in a massively CAQ county. But we have a good mayor at least. At that level I feel like a vote can make a lot more of a difference, zones are smaller.
The condo tower/single family home insane juxtaposition of Toronto planning always gets me. Its pretty much the only place in North America where that's so common place everywhere in the metro area.
There's some of that in Atlanta. I lived in a neighborhood in Buckhead that looked for all the world like the suburbs: single-family homes with driveways and two-car garages, but with highrise office towers practically in the backyard.
I sent your last video to my city social media accounts, they made a point to tell me the administration and the planning department saw the video. You're doing the lords work.
It is astonishing how much Toronto has changed in the past few decades. Even when I first moved there in 2000, many people thought I was crazy to live downtown. I was at Richmond and Sherbourne, renting an apartment in a new condo, and it was NOT a desirable place to live at all, so rent was pretty cheap. Now prices are insane.
@@NotJustBikes You have that right. My 27 year old son just moved in with a couple of friends and rented a condo in a historic building at Queen and River (basically Regent Park for those who live in TO). The rent is $4800/month!
I worked in Missisauga, a Toronto suburb, and it was the most wretched place to walk to go eat or do anything at all. At the time, I lived in Montreal, and the company I worked at was making me fly and rent a hotel every week. These few months must have made me emit more carbon than I will in the rest of my life. Now I live in Strasbourg, France, and bike everywhere. It's not perfect, but it's much better than Montreal.
You poor bastard. That's where I grew up in my teen years. Every time I wanted to visit my friends I would have to plan it out and ask my mom to drive me several miles to get to their place. And these were friends who went to the same school as me! Mississauga is no fun for kids/teenagers and neither is any other suburb.
When I was in high-school in scarborough, my then girlfriend moved to mississauga. I took the ttc to visit her and once I got to mississauga I realized I was basically stranded after a 3 hrs journey. The lack of bus service in mississauga compared to scarborough was shocking
Yep. The number of times I had to explain to people that there cannot be an apolitical statement and that refusing to comment on a matter is a political statement in and of itself is genuinely alarming.
Good video as always, though I am less sad about losing transit city! Toronto would be so much better if it had even 20% less cars in it. Edit: Now that I think about it, we built most of the decent stuff in transit city anyways like Eglinton and Finch - albeit worse than we could have!
@@NotJustBikes it was in itself a political plan, a tram for every ward! Even where it should have been a subway like Eglinton and Don Mills. Theres a whole video to be made about transit and governance . . . . we could benefit from a more regional approach - of course, one where the region also had to be less car centric . . .
@@gupadre8255 Nahh, it does make sense. The transit city was like: "Let's combine joureys that would be best served by regional rail with those for metro and use trams to serve it! Why? Cause...they look cool!
I feel like the attempt to dilute the urbanism of the old City of Toronto into the suburban megacity might soon be overcome by the rapid intensification happening across the 'megacity' and even in the 905 suburbs. Enough of North York. Scarborough, Etobicoke are going to be highrise condo neighbourhoods that a majority of wards might come around to low-car thinking. You even see it now, most often there are only 2-3 councilors of 25 that vote in the anti 'war on cars' culture war. There is a decent squishy middle but I feel like the majority of council is just afraid of being bold, including our mayor. They are generally sympathetic to reducing car-orientation, just insist on glacial incrementalism. Toronto will need to dragged kicking and screaming to become less car oriented by sheer inertia.
@@andrew20146 Not to mention Canada is in the midst of the worst housing crisis ever. Homelessness is way up and so many more people are underhoused. We're seeing our quality of life decline in real time and cost of living skyrocket.
As someone who grew up in Bowmanville, and thus Toronto was our occasional stomping grounds in the 70s-90s, this was a treat to watch. The reactions of Vancouver & Montreal, the SKYDOME (forever!) edit, Union always under construction, one more lane, and the “megacity.” And seeing the lot where the Princess of Wales theatre now stands! Humour and nostalgia aside, this was fascinating to learn the history of the car-ification of Toronto. So much of it felt so familiar; I’ve never known any Toronto other than the car-ified version. So by default it feels like that’s how it must have always been. To see how it had succumb to the same transit mistakes of other North American cities (DVP and Gardner, I’m looking at you), and then to learn the $%*!@! reason behind the amalgamation for such petty anti-democratic “reasons” is at first unfortunate and then becoming downright angering. (And, Jane Jacobs, damn, what a powerful writer/speaker!) I get the sense there is some better understanding and planning that’s starting to take hold in Toronto, both with the design of the infill of all those downtown parking lots as well as with the new transit projects. I hope my sense is right, and I’m looking forward to seeing your video on that, and on how those still in the region can advocate for something better than the continual suburban ennui feeding forever into the Don Valley parking lot.
Absolutely love that you're not beating around the bush with politics here, it's important Edit: a reminder that municipal elections all across Ontario are happening THIS MONTH. If you are from Ontario, take some time to read up on your local cantidades for councillor, school trustee, and (possibly) mayor, and make sure you are registered to vote!!!
Yes. Progressives are way too quick to talk about "issues and policy" without coming out and explicitly saying that certain politicians and parties support or oppose them. You can't seriously be interested in fighting climate change and many other issues while embracing the conservative politicians that exist in Canada and we need to say that OUT LOUD, so that people can't just keep pretending they are centrists.
@@rileynicholson2322 I use this argument with a lot of conservatives in the US. If someone says they support gay rights but vote for republicans, I tell them they don't actually support gay rights. Same for every other issue they "agree" with, but then turn their back on for whatever reason.
Change for the better doesn't just happen. You've got to vote for the better people. Superman said he was for "Truth, justice and the American Way", which I take to mean democracy (rather than American Imperialism or oligarchies.)
I'm visiting my mother in Ontario right now, and I am struck by just how dangerously impatient and indifferent to human life the drivers are. I grew up in Canada, but I only started driving after moving to the U.S. I have driven all over the U.S; in every major city in Florida, and every state along the northern border and around the great lakes, and I have never felt so close to a collision as I have in the couple of days I've been here in Ontario. It is crazy, these people drive like they want you dead.
I recently did a coast-to-coast Canada/USA road trip with some folding e-bikes in tow, and got to experience a lot of both the biking and car infrastructure in the major Canadian and American cities along the route. Downtown Toronto has a very respectable bike lanes, and even the "streetcar suburb" neighbourhoods are not too bad either, mainly due to less traffic on the roads. In comparison, driving in the GTA is an absolute nightmare, massive urban freeways with rapid interchanges with hyper-aggressive drivers (myself included). Driving cross-country is fairly pleasant and non-confrontational, but the second I got into the GTA I became stressed and wanted to get out of the car as fast as possible, you drive fast over huge distances and yet you progress very slowly - probably because the city sprawled in order to accommodate cars. Driving in Toronto is not even a good experience, and quite frankly Ontario (and Quebec) drivers are some of the worst I've encountered after driving across the entirety of Canada and the USA - so the fixation on car-centric design is pretty nonsensical, it's an objectively bad transportation experience.
Toronto is proof that designing only for cars makes it worse for drivers. Driving in the GTA absolutely sucks. Merging from the 401 East to the 427 South is basically taking your life into your hands.
I lived in Toronto for 6 years, during the Rob debacle. It was SOOO infuriating when he unilaterally cancelled Transit City, and then later (a year-ish?) it came out that he had no authority to cancel it, and the city counsel just shrugged their shoulders and went along with it. No repercussions, no re-instating contracts, nothing. It was a total gong show.
So many towns and cities are a dozen or so people in positions of authority or influence away from making incredible strides in livability. Toronto is a great example, and I hope everyone watching from North America can see their own places and opportunities reflected here.
Greater Manchester in the UK is currently trying to revolutionise its transport network and the developments so far have been very encouraging. It’s great to see that some city regions are making progress, especially in the UK, as we are far too dependant on cars anywhere outside of London.
@@lowcostfish Precisely why they’re trying to create a ‘London style’ public transportation network whilst improving cycling infrastructure and safety for pedestrians so that people get out of their cars.
Manchester wasn't designed for cars at all. That goes for majority of UK cities. They were all designed for foot and light goods traffic along side some transit. With trams being replaced by trolley busses in the 1920's before all trolley busses were replaced with regents in the 50's and 60's. Andy is quite a decent chap.
Honestly as Toronto born and raised, every point here struck true! I was 14 when Rob Ford was elected and immediately cancelled Transit City, which would have shortened my commute to school in North Scarborough. Watching city council wrestle back the Eglinton LRT was a headache, and that bickering is the whole reason the Scarborough RT doesn't have a replacement before it closes next year. Wasted potential is definitely a good way to sum it up. On the plus side, You can survive car free in the city, and yes even in the yellow belt suburbs, because where the transit a bike lanes really break down is crossing Steeles/427/Rouge River into the 905 :P
I remember rush hour in Toronto when I visited a few years back. We decided to hop on a tram/streetcar, assuming the busses would be stuck in traffic. Only to find out the those where just as stuck... Fixing that would make a big difference.
It's also unfortunate that most people that live in the surrounding cities all want to live in Toronto because of the ease of travel. The roads in my neighborhood in Mississauga haven't changed in 20 years!
I lived in Toronto in the late 1980s. I never owned a car. I lived in North York and took a bus to work. I would take a train to SkyDome to watch baseball. The only time I had a car is when a relative from New Zealand came to visit and we drove to places like Niagara Falls. It is sad to see such a great city become more and more like Los Angeles.
I am reading Jane Jacob's book "The Life and Death of Great American Cities". It's an interesting read! She's a really good author and had some great ideas
Great video as always. Im from Uruguay, and although we have little population, Montevideo (the capital city) is completely car dependant. And i think that’s the same problem in most south americans capital cities. I’ve been in Toronto for a month and i can say you have a really good public transportation system, but i agree with you that it has the potential for it to be even better. Being stucked in the 401 was a new experience for me, and it completely sucked!!
I live in the Toronto Suburb and let me tell you how many arguments I’ve had with my family over this. For them they feel the car centric is no problem. It allows us to live far from the city where everything is quiet and comfortable. When they see an apartment they see nothing more than a rise in crime and corrupt capitalists trying to maximize profits on a piece of land. They see no value in transit because it’s going to “take hours” just to get places without a car. A car you’re safe, comfortable and with people you know. On a train or bus, that’s not the case. Someone help me break this argument down cuz I can’t anymore
First of all the only reason the city is as loud as it is is because of cars. Other forms of transportation don't have nearly the noise footprint. Apartments don't have to be massive, cramped high rises, it's just that there are only a few places that are actually zoned for apartments and so people try to make as much use of it as possible. Public transportation is often faster than cars. Especially when cities are denser because of better zoning laws I don't have any stats, and I suggest looking it up, but I assume that riding a bus with 30 other people is safer than piloting a massive metal and plastic box at upwards of 70 km/h in city limits. Trains and buses can be more comfortable, and there are some great examples of this abroad, that you could probably show your family. I just kinda went through and gave you what I would have said. it's a bit rambly, but I hope it helped nonetheless! Cheers.
Well first of all, most cities in the Netherlands are already really quiet because of the lack of many cars. I don’t see how appartements cause crime rise, it certainly is not the case in the Netherlands. Apartments also allow people who don’t earn a massive salary to have their own place and I honestly think that building single family homes everywhere will drive up the price of land (due to shortage). So ironically I’d say single family homes are because of corrupt capitalists. Being forced to own a car to go anywhere sucks and is a big restriction of freedom and travel times of public transit a pretty decent if you *build good infrastructure*. I’ve driven cars plenty of times where I felt unsafe because assholes use their own car to try and run you of the road or cause accidents, in many cases I am glad to not have to deal with that
I'm from Toronto and this video really spoke to me. I grew up here in the 90's when downtown was very much a city of parkinglots. That photo of massive sprawling parking lots next to Roy Thompson Hall was really jarring. I am happy to say in the last 10 years things have gotten much better, slowly, but surely. And I mean very slowly... 12 years for the Eglinton line? The Ontario Line should open in the 2030s if we're lucky. I'm happy to see a lot of bike lanes in the city center, especially along University, Bloor, and Distillery. And guess what - removing lanes from cars did not impact traffic at all. Who would have thought lmao. There's a good channel called RM Transit who talks a lot about the future development of Toronto. He's an urbanist through-and-through
I have found this channel and watched almost all the videos in the time between the last upload and now, first time watching a new video! I love the informative and educational content, keep up the amazing work NJB!
Thank you. I want everyone that pumps up TO to watch this. I left after only a brief period. These issues were too hard to ignore, especially when you've lived in less car-focused cities.
Toronto is a decent city, but I hate it _so_ much because it's very clearly not able to live up to its potential. A lot of people who love it have just never lived anywhere better, though. I thought it was the best when I moved there from London, Ontario, but that's because I didn't know how much better a city could be.
@@NotJustBikes I love Quebec City but it fails to live to it's potential because of this ring of car dependancy that surrounds the center of the city. It is literally being choked by it's suburbs. The Tramway saga is such an example of suburbs fighting tooth and nail to keep a statu quo that is not even working for them.
@@lucky247365 Montreal is arguably much better for transit then Toronto. Montreal was actually a larger city before the widespread adoption of the automobile. It was once Canada’s largest city. It’s old housing stock is also mostly walk-up apartments, even more dense then Toronto’s old “streetcar suburbs”. So when they built the Metro it was able to serve a lot of the city quite well. It’s much much cheaper to live in a walkable Montreal neighborhood then a Toronto one. Now Montreal has been asleep at the wheel for transit for a long time but the big new project is the REM. This will mostly serve the suburbs but will also help the inner part of the city. Stupidly the second REM, REM de l'Est, was canceled due to NIMBYs. But I’m hoping when the first phase of the REM opens soon, it will show people what they are missing. I think what people miss understand about Toronto and Montreal is that Toronto is surrounded on all sides by an ungodly mass of suburban cities and towns. These not only batter Toronto with car traffic, but also direct provincial politics to make the situation worse in the city for anyone without a car. Montreal has its suburban neighbours of course, but it’s on a much smaller scale. Even though transit expansion has been delayed decades, its going ahead now and it’s even doing a decent job at connecting the suburbs. Connecting the entire GTA is pretty much a impossible task unless some dense urban cores are established.
As someone who has to drive into and around Toronto for specialist medical checkups, I'm gonna enjoy listening to you tear into the city's transportation infrastructure. The city is so ungodly stressful to drive in as an outsider that I have the Jazz station saved in my car because it's the only genuinely calming noise available.
@@pex3 Dragon Mountain Fanboy gets it; it's not the pedestrians, bikes, and public transit that are the problem, it's exclusively the car traffic. Pedestrians and bikes add to the stress only because they are easily hidden within the endless sea of bumper-to-bumper traffic, plus the fact nobody on the highways has any courtesy for other drivers. I was nearly forced into a concrete median trying to get to an on-ramp because the cars beside me simply refused to make room and I could not stop without dangerously impeding traffic.
Watching your videos about the US and Canada makes me grateful for the half-assed and crumbling bike infrastructure in Edinburgh, because at least crossing the street won't kill me, it's not an hour's walk to the nearest supermarket, and buses come more regularly than twice a day. You guys really have it rough. Please vote and good luck!
As a Torontonian, thank you. I will say though that Transit has gotten much better, and we're now investing in massive Transit mega projects that will hopefully get Toronto moving again.
I live in Minneapolis, I feel like we’re going through a lot of the same issues but on a smaller scale. Our city’s history parallels Toronto’s pretty well
'Addiction' is a very useful metaphor for automobile dependence. There is so much infrastructure, often with 100-year lifespans, committed on the basis of short-term trends of technology, oil prices, or population density, and mistakes are frightfully expensive, if not outright impossible, to correct.
I live in Durham region and I love heading into Toronto whenever I can because compared to where I live in Ajax, I can actually walk places! It feels nice to be able to get around without the need of a car. Ajax was developed in the 40s and 50s post ww2 so right from the get go it was entirely designed to be car dependent and full of strip plazas and 4 lane “streets” with incredibly dangerous intersections. I wish it could get better but it’s literally in the design of the town to work against pedestrians.
You should cover Montreal, a great example of a city trending solidly in the right direction with a city council that actively is engaged with a semi-war on cars. Great bike lanes, lovely parking lot transformations, pedestrian streets, and transit.
The issue with Montreal's transit build out is that it's not being done holistically. There's gonna be completely unnecessary gaps in service between the Metro, REM and trains. For example, there's gonna be a shuttle bus between Bois-Franc on the REM and Côte-Vertu on the metro. Just a complete failure of foresight.
I live in Montreal. Very recently, I've been offered a very appealing job in Toronto. The lack of public transportation and car dependency is the top reason I'm still uncertain of my decision. I'm big and fat, yet, when I have to go downtown Mtl, in the summer, I hop on a Bixi Bike at the corner of my street and drive my bike 30 minutes down one of the many bikes lanes. In the winter, I take an express bus, also on the corner of my street, than take the metro. It's so easy here to move everywhere without a car... and that's what makes me hesitate to move to Toronto.
This is a video I feel in my bones. I've lived in Toronto for the last 12 years and I complain vehemently at least 6 times a year about the shitty job Toronto has done serving the people that actually live here. I also get my hackles up any time some car driver gets pissy that ActiveTO manages to make this city better for anyone else. It hurts my heart some days because I love so much about this city, but after living in London (real), Japan, and parts of Europe, where a city isn't designed for the 5% of people in cars, Toronto's addiction to cars is infuriating. I also can't fucking believe that asshole John Tory is mayor of the city he helped screw over with his PC megacity project. What a bastard.
Tell everyone you know to vote for Gil. This is why I am a supporter for things like mandatory voting. Especially on a municipal level, people just don’t care and so the only ones voting are retired grumpy people. And typically those people just want to keep things the same. We could have such a better mayor if only people voted one in. But again, they don’t care or just want the current thing to keep going. It’s sad.
@@pepperpillow I'd really love if they allowed everyone to vote who lived in the city. My partner will be voting but I can't as I'm not a citizen yet 🤷♀️ but we did buy a sign for the challenger in our district cause she actually wants bike lanes. Weston just did a huge revamp and didn't include bike lanes! I was so pissed. Glad to support anyone who'll make this city better to live in.
I recently moved to Toronto from London (real). I live 8 km North of line 2, west end. My god, it's such a frustrating and annoying experience! It's insane how urban planning policies affect people's ability to live car-free and travel reliably. My transit time is usually around 45+ minutes, often 60+ or even 80+ minutes, when considering door-to-door time. Delayed busses (due to traffic), randomly inflated distances due to mandatory parking and big-ass stroads everywhere, missed connections and extended wait times... I simply can't unsee how terrible my daily life is due to this historic obsession with cars.
Yooo!! Thank you so much for the content. And I really want to appreciate what yiru channel has done to bring more stress in the importance of urban planning in cities. Not to mention you also go out of your way to shout out and support similar channels. Just subscribed to RM Transit yesterday
I come from the real London and married a girl from Brantford Ontario. I've travelled all over Europe and been to Toronto multiple times and also Fake London. Toronto is so far the best place I've seen in Ontario for transit by far, but as you said, it's still got a long way to go to get up to European levels. Nevertheless, I am encouraged by all the projects going on there. There is some hope at least.
One of the city council candidates in my area is running on a platform of "no more lane reductions on Yonge St". I have no words. Thanks for this video, I'll be sharing it with anyone who lives in Toronto and will listen.
I’m a Dutch city council member, to the Dutch viewers here: North American and British conservatives have a specific libertarian “every man for himself” bent to them. It’s not a feature of conservatism in mainland Europe. The Netherlands has had only two governments that didn’t include the conservatives in some way: If we hated bikes and cities that don’t suck, the Netherlands would not be featured on this channel the way it often is.
the amalgamation of Hamilton, just down the street from Toronto, was a similarly ridiculous and unfortunate event that played out more or less the same way. Though, because much of the amalgamated city land was not yet developed, it may actually turn out beneficial with the new green space and farmland protections that council is trying to put in place. Had the city not amalgamated when it did (and people not advocated for ending suburban sprawl), these areas around the city probably would have continued to be rapidly suburbanized.
One time I was in a Toronto suburb and I was surprised by how difficult it is to walk to a Go Train station. I ended up bushwacking my way across some steep dirt hills and crossing the train tracks just outside of the station. Honestly absurd.
German here who lived in Guelph near Toronto for a while. Whenever I visited Toronto I was happy I could take the extensive streetcar network to my destinations and I would mostly walk everywhere from High park to Cabbage Town (because "old Toronto" really isn't that big that you need a car). But the subway is a joke. Sure, it's great to get somewhere quick for a few stops, but I just wished for a better network. Guelph by the way had a streetcar system back in the days. Unfortunately not anymore. Now you can take the bus to almost everywhere on ridiculously badly timed schedules. In both cities the dependency on cars is obvious. In Toronto on the 401 it's incredibly dangerous and frightening. The big highway bridges through the middle of downtown create unnavigable obnoxious obstacles for pedestrians and also shady sketchy areas. But Guelph made me hate cars. I'm aware that people there are "progressive" and bike quite a lot compared to other cities, but it's ridiculous how car dependent the city design is. Malls, drive throughs, the Hanlon stroad cutting through the city. I'd love to see a video about Guelph on your channel.
I’ve been thinking about moving to Guelph as I live in rural Ontario and need to make a move to a more populated area. Did you like the city? Would it be better to move to Kitchener/Waterloo or Barrie? Would love to hear your insight
A little offtopic: The reason for 2FA to kick in when your on a public network (e.g. train's WIFI) is that you are on a public network, I know crazy right. The only other security feature here is your password, but since this could be leaked/bruteforced/guessed/... they created 2FA. So the 2FA to kick in on public networks is exactly what you want even tho it might be a bit annoying.
I lived in a condo at Yonge and Fitch until 2017 and owned a car, it was the only way to live cuz I had to work in the suburbs and go to school in Scarborough. Now I’ve been in the Amsterdam for 5 years and never thought about owning a car, and the cost savings in terms of pure $ and time is immense
Excellent analysis as always.🌟 Btw, some of us cranky old timers are very much on the left! But then we tend to live in “orange” neighbourhoods. (Orange is the colour of my métro line… and of the left in Canada.)🍊😉 Megacity: The irony was that it was the other way around in Montreal. The goal was to make wealthy suburbs to finally pay their fair share of the central city’s expenses. And of course it was a (reddish then) Tory (Charest) who scuttled it. At least Toronto has relatively improving regional rail. The problem with Montreal is that it’s not the capital of Quebec, a huge advantage for Toronto. Necessary transit projects in Montreal are stalled (Blue line) or cheapened (Mascouche and Pie-IX lines) by the car addicts in the rest of the province (especially Quebec City). Or we get the REM whose business plan forces it to be profitable and thus “palatable.”
Great video! Do you think it would be possible to do a video similar to this one about Montreal? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. It seems to me their metro line is well developed for North American standards, the new REM is very nice and the missing middle problem isn’t really present. There are disgusting roads like decarie boulevard for example.
NJB doesn't like to say positive things about North America 😅 but I agree that MTL is pretty great for NA standards anyway. It could be better, but there are some really great neighourhoods that are very walkable/bikeable and have good transit connections. Most housing on the island is missing middle, which is great.
I was an avid cyclist in Toronto during the Ford Mayorship and let me tell you, cyclists became targets for drivers during that time. Many times drivers would swerve towards you or crowd you out in to the curb. Worst mayor ever. And his brother is just as bad.
It hasn't gotten much better. Commuting by bike is still seen as some sort of leftist political statement. I'm just trying to get to work in the way that sucks the least.
Thank you for not straying away form the politics. Being politically active has become so stigmatized that many will avoid municipal politics for fear of social rejection, which is exactly what conservatives want because it keeps the conservative status quo chugging along. Many people are onboard with urbanism but few are willing to be active and loud about it because they don't want to be seen as part of the same political group that is characterized by people like Rob Ford
Honestly you are speaking of Toronto, but I hear history of what's exactly wrong with my hometown of Moscow, Russia. Back in USSR they took American model of North American city planning (just change suburbs to commie blocks), because they thought that when communism arrives everyone would own a car. The whole city despite having world class public transport is still oriented towards cars. They demolished alot of tram lines to build stroads, filled all empty land with parking lots. It slowly syarted to change, but now after the war started all politicians oriented towards normal city planning either left or were not reelected during the last election, as they are seen as threat to dictatorship of putin.
Sad to know about this, since the USSR really seemed to have done urban planning well back then, like how Khruschovkas were built with tram stops, pharmacies, shops, and schools within walking distance. I hope you're safe as well.
Another amazing video Jason, thanks so much for your hard work making high quality videos! I feel the same way about Portland, Oregon. It could be so much better, yet continues to not crack down on cars nearly as much as it should to truly be a safe urbanist city.
I went to Toronto as I do quite often for check ups at the sick kids hospital. And that traffic, WOW, it’s incredibly horrendous worst part is; a couple years ago there was a bus line (grey hound) that drove us all the way there and back without much waiting walking or driving at all. Guess what happened to those grey hound busses lolllll?!.
I’ve been living in downtown Toronto while a lot of these new urban developments have been made. Right now I’m in a new area called the Canary District which is an amazing pedestrian-forward mini neighborhood by Toronto standards, but from what I’ve seen seems to be mostly a private development. When it was first built it was actually the “athletes village” for the pan am games, and then local residents moved in after. For the most part though, Toronto’s new pedestrian-forward projects are contained in small projects throughout the city rather than a change to its core infrastructure.
Any opinions on Montréal? It's my closest city and when I compare Toronto to MTL, I always feel like Toronto is too spread out and you have to walk farther to get places. I haven't experienced European cities but I think MTL is pretty decent by NA standards. Lots of improvements could be made of course, but areas like Le Plateau, Mile End, Mont Royal, etc. I find are really walkable and bike friendly.
@@kelseyduerksen6404 don’t think you’ve seen much of Toronto then. Many many more walkable neighborhood’s that are bigger than mile end and le plateau with access to subways or streetcars or both. That being said, Montreal is better to look at since it has more middle housing.
Hey, Jason. You’ve just made your best ever video, at least in my opinion. I LOVE this video so much that it’s difficult to place into words. We need to remove this car addiction from most of the western world, to be entirely honest… … I’ve genuinely had conversations with people before where on purpose they don’t pay attention to my conversations in any major detail if I mention urban planning and removing the need for car dependency. Thinking that something from 1910/1920 won’t work a century later… They literally invented most of the best ergonomically made products back then… Bikes, trams, trains, clothing, and baggage (which won’t break at the slightest milligram of usage)… I’ll just say “thank you” for this video, anyway.
0:26 Gotta say it’s interesting that you haven’t brought up Montreal once on this channel (except here), even though it is miles ahead of most NA cities planning wise. Maybe I missed a time you talked about it (I know you brought it up in your missing middle video).
NIMBYism It doesn't have to be a hill conservatives die on though! It's a poison that's afflicted every flavour of political theory. We can get rid of it
It's difficult for conservative voters to sympathise with city dwellers who are leftists. I am a conservative voter and as much as I want to have better infrastructure and walkability, I fundementay disagree with leftists on so many other issues that its a stalemate.
Swede here, don't worry, social democrats are capable of that as well. In the 60's a lot of beautiful areas and city centres were changed into concrete boxes. Look up Borlänge for some reference.
Cool but lets be honest, you are still going to vote for them, aren‘t you? If you do, you might be ashamed but you still directly support them, which also includes this aspect of their policies.
The new 413 highway isnt about moving cars, its about drawing the boundaries for the next 20-30 years of sprawl... Basically surround an are w a highway and fill in the space w low density housing
Once you reach the edges of Toronto you realize how non pedestrian friendly it can get. If you live near a subway line or streetcar line. Life is walkable and nice. example, st Clair west, little Italy, Greek town, Yonge and Eglinton, junction triangle, high park, riverside, and of course anyone who lives downtown. If we were to focus on old Toronto, I feel like we would rate the city less harsh, Old Toronto is about the size of Vancouver (100 kmsq) which is small, Toronto after amalgamation is now 630sqkm now imagine if Vancouver amalgamated with Surrey and Richmond and Burnaby we would be calling Vancouver a car centric city also, but we all know “old Vancouver” is pedestrian friendly. The problem started with Toronto becoming a mega city because no one can get projects done, building subways to the suburbs is now the main objective instead of building more trains where most people live, which is the core. Somehow we let suburbia dictate how the city should be built even though they represent less than half. Similar to how this video reference the destruction of the mount pleasant streetcar, we can’t let history repeat itself. If anyone has suggestions on how to make a real change with city council pease let me know.
As someone who moved from Toronto to Boston, I would kill to have the TTC back. I thought the big North East cities would have comparable transit to Toronto, but it's not even close here. The subways and buses are infrequent and unreliable and we just had a major subway line shut down for a month due to a huge maintenance backlog.
I will never understand these green commuter „go“ trains that just stand abandoned on the tracks at the station for 80% of the time.. Being from Europe, this „concept“ of trains going into the city in the morning and then only going out again once in the evening instead of just running on a regular schedule all day long just blows my mind..
Voting methods is a whole other issue, but I guess other creators like CGP Grey have already covered that. It is extremely frustrating that political parties in Canada can win an absolute majority with only 30-some percent of the popular vote.
We had ranked ballot voting for exactly one municipal election in Fake London, then Doug Ford banned it... Interesting observation though...the frontrunner in the first round for every seat ended up winning the runoffs, if I recall correctly.
Great video agreed 100% I don't blame you for being mad about Rob and Doug, i would have also cursed out mike harris a TON. Really hope Toronto can improve a lot. Being out in Borington, always like seeing Toronto as less stroads (in some areas) and just FAR FAR FAR Better transit.
I saw the thumbnail and my reaction was kinda just a feeling of depression… then I watched the video and had a great time. Really good video as always!
Took a road trip last month to visit family in Pickering. Drove the 401 from Michigan and it was bumper to bumper from Oakville all the way across the city! The normally 45 min drive from the airport to Pickering to 4 1/2 hrs. Love the family up there but never again driving there
I moved to Toronto as a teenager. Well first I lived in the suburbs with my sister. We moved a lot within a few years. I worked downtown but cummuted from (Woodbridge, Richmond Hill, and finally Mississauga). My commute was close to 2 hours each way through transit, and well over an hour via car. So I eventually moved to Parkdale, and lived in (Toronto proper) for many years. I couldn't believe how much my quality of live went up. Not only was I saving time on the commute. I was able to take advantage of all the wonderful amenities Toronto has to offer. Also meeting great people in return. I can't see how anyone would choose to live in the suburbs. It's almost like everyone is being forced or persuade to live there. Also I would like to mention. Maybe urban planning has turned much more political, due to the lobbyists of corporations. Corporations that will gain profits with a car dependant city.
I remember driving into Houston of the North (Toronto) during Carnevale years ago... we were creeping so slow on the freeway that I was about to don a colorful feathery costume and start dancing Soca 🕺
Thank you for finally bringing up the politics behind planning. I watch a small selection of city planning UA-camrs, and I believe you're the first one I've seen to actually get into it (beyond just superficial) and take a stance. And though you may insist others like Strongtowns are better suited to dish out actionable advice, GO VOTE is a great start and I hope everyone eligible follows your advice.
When you look at the history of the Toronto streetcars it becomes pretty clear that they're still around not because the city wands to build a successful transit network, but rather because they couldn't come to a decision on how to remove them all. The system is woefully behind any tram system in Europe, and is just running on the fumes of the old trolly network. It's an absolute shame, because with some proper investment, it could be a very functional network. At least they don't need a guy to push the tracks with a stick at most switches these days.
I can relate to the 401 being a traffic nightmare. Back about 10 years ago, my brother and I were taking the 401 through Canada since it's the quickest way to get from Chicago to northern Vermont (and back again in our case). We had been making very good time on the 401 since east of the GTA, the road opens up and moves rather quickly. But the segment from Oshawa to Kitchener took us 4 hours total because we hit it right at the 2 PM rush hour. It might have also been Canada Day since there were people waving Canadian flags on overpasses and the chatter on the radio was of NHL free agency, but I digress. But still, it was ridiculous that a drive which normally takes ~90 minutes took us 4 hours.
Video suggestion: I would be very interested in a video about life as an immigrant/expat. I know this is a little different than your usual content but I myself experienced living abroad and would like to see how other people might experience this.
I credit this channel primarily with my recent decision to sell our 2nd car and get a cargo e-bike. I got a regular bike at the start of the summer and loved it so I sprung for a decent e-bike. Literally just sold the car today and the e-bike will be arriving within a week and I am super excited =) Even though bike infrastructure by me is pretty garbage most of the nearby streets are actually streets and so I have a reasonable number of options for places to go that don't require dealing with a lot of car traffic. That being said, we need some fucking bike infrastructure...
Even if they use mixed urban planning, the single bedroom apartments/condos will be over a million dollars and lets not even mention family housing; thus making people go further away from the amenities and non-car infrastructure to just afford a place to live ergo making people use cars just to go from home and work. If they build the infrastructure it HAS TO BE affordable and not sold to millionaires but to people whom are living and working in the city and not as secondary monetary income properties. Part of the problem now is that affordable places to live are a commute away, instead of within a decent proximity of where people need to live and work.
My gf lives in the GTA without a car and I live in Boston. Every time I visit her its just so frustrating to travel car free. Even walking 1km is unpleasant. There are sidewalks sure but when you are walking next to high speed stroads and navigating massive parking lots its not fun. While the Boston-area has its issues (cough MBTA) it is one of the few North American regions with great walkability, unique, dense neighborhoods and decent bike infrastructure.
Have you lived in Australia? Cities there are so incredibly similar to the ones in North-America. When I lived in Brisbane it was a huge struggle for me being from The Netherlands, used to decent public transport and safe bicycle lanes which only exist intermittently and you basically end up still using sidewalks along multi-lane roads designed just for cars. The first week it took me 2 hours to get some groceries because I didn't have access to a car and there were no bus-stops where I lived, so I had to walk through a bunch of neighborhoods and around several highways to get to a supermarket.
I've been living in the Toronto area since 1997 when I was a kid and I was never addicted to cars. I've always loved the transit system here and I fell in love with them the first time I saw the TTC in 1997. I guess I am part of a small minority from Toronto who thinks this way though.
I find the comparison to my city--Melbourne, Australia--an interesting one. Like Toronto, it fell in love with the car and built suburbs instead of medium density housing. Greater Melbourne is a third larger than Toronto, but with 3/4 the population! So, if my maths is correct, that makes Melbourne 55-60% of the population densely of Toronto... However, unlike Toronto, it kept and expanded it's tram network to be the largest (existing) in the world while also building an overland rail network that's larger (in length) than any metro system in the world--not bad for a city of 4.9m! Also WTF is Toronto doing with its rail network?! (I've watched your video, but the scale of it's failure wasn't apparent to me until comparing it to Melbourne's.) Melbourne's train network is ~1000km long with annual ridership of 243m. Toronto's is actually pretty long--625km--but only has 13.5m annual ridership. Even if that was 20m pre-pandemic, and adjusting for the difference in length, that's still close to an order of magnitude fewer people per km of track. Perhaps the main difference is that if you want to go to the CBD (Central Business District, i.e., downtown in Australian), you do not drive unless you really hate trains (or trams and bikes depending on where you live). Cars are only quicker than walking or (if you live far enough away or are unfit enough) cycling and car parking space has to compete with any other commercial enterprise, so it's very, very expensive. Having said all that, I would not want to live anywhere that was a field in 1940, so there's still a lot to improve. But I think there's also a lot that North American cities could learn from Melbourne that they can't learn from the much smaller and denser cities of Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
My only experience of Toronto is taking the 401. One time on the way back to the US, we went through Toronto at 1AM on a Monday and there were still tons of cars.
I've been to Toronto several times, and I love it. But yes, everything you presented here is... frustrating to see even from an outside point of view. I am annoyed that they got rid of trolleybuses in many neighbourhoods* that had their streetcars removed; that they only now are building out different projects (Eglinton, Finch West, Scarborough Subway, GO upgrades in places); that they still haven't zoned areas for "missing middle" that you can find only in the downtown/Old Toronto areas and should be wider. I can't wait to see the next video where you address this. But, if King Street is any indication, things looks hopeful. [*American who prefers Commonwealth spellings for many words.]
I live in the United States. Your Clarion call for voting in local elections; doesn't just apply to Canada. Anybody concerned about their local areas should be voting regardless of country. Your examples show why, you should vote. The future will always be filled with the consequences of the past. Also a note, Ford was a joke even to us in the United States. Thanks for another great video.
when you show footage of cities and add those little writings telling us which city it is, that is really useful since to me they are all the same, i could not spot any difference
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Thanks to sponsorships like these I'm able to license historical video and images that aren't available anywhere else, and I like that.
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I took your advice on this a few months back, Nord has been great
How can I be sure that you posted this video and not someone using your ip?
I am watching this at 420 views... oh the irony
@@NotJustBikes I subscribed to Nebula and now I am taller, stronger and better looking.
I grew up in downtown Toronto. My family did not own a car. We took the bus, subway and street cars everywhere. We would walk to the grocery store up the street. For almost everything else we would shop at Honest Ed's.
It was bliss!
I visited Toronto a few months before Honest Ed's imploded, and my greatest regret was not having time to see it with my own eyes.
RIP Honest Ed's.
Good old Ed's. God do I miss that place.
This is what I do - and I live in a small English village, ie. just using public transport to get around.
You could do that for the most part to this day, I know many people who live downtown that do not own a car. A lot of Toronto's traffic issues aren't residents of Toronto, it is people from the suburbs who have no real way to get downtown.. besides driving.
The idea of putting a highway thru a city centre is just insane.
And yet, there's a highway through the centre of basically every major city in North America except ... Vancouver. Any others?
@@NotJustBikes Ottawa's highway through the city is a different can of beans. It mostly replaces a railway track. Still, it's annoying that there isn't a ring road around the city, especially heading to Quebec. Trucks have to navigate through Byward and Sandy Hill! And if we had a ring road, the expansion of the 417 wouldn't have been necessary -- not that it helped! Just one more lane, bro! 😁
It becomes two cities separated by a highway at that point
@@enriquegarciacota3914 It's like a river, except it's depressing and ugly, will degrade your health in several ways just by being vaguely near it, jumping into it means instant death, and it doesn't even transport people efficiently!
Same in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. On a different scale, you can find this in Adelaide as well. I'm guessing it's the same for Perth; never been, but I don't see why this city would be different from all the others. (All these are the main cities in Australia).
"Toronto will commit suicide if it plunges the Spadina Expressway into it's heart...our planners are 19th century men with a naive faith in an obsolete technology. In the age of software, Metro planners treat people like hardware. They haven't the faintest interest in the values of neighborhoods or community. Their failure to learn from the mistakes of American cities will be ours too"
Damn. Miss Jacobs did not pull punches.
love it
"What's holding your city back is most likely the politicians, not the planners. Though TRAFFIC ENGINEERS DO A GOOD JOB OF FUCKING THINGS UP, TOO!
-Not Just Bikes, Oct 2022
Also, not pulling punches.
@@praesentius can confirm, am a tamed traffic signal engineer, albeit in the UK.
Even with all its issues, even though I was living in a car dependant suburb in etobicoke it still had the best transit of anywhere I have lived in ontario. It was a culture shock moving out of toronto to the niagara region let me tell you. I had never even wanted to own a car and I was forced into because the transit was so abyssmal
Oh yeah, for sure. When I moved to Toronto from London (fake), it was like a whole new world of transit. I thought it was amazing.
Little did I know how much better it could be outside of Canada.
But ultimately, this is what I hate about Toronto: it's good, but it could be *so much better* with just a few small changes. But those changes would involve restricting car traffic a little bit.
@@NotJustBikes Do you have recommendations for what regions to look at for living without a car in Toronto? I grew up in one of the suburbs (Thornhill, the entire city is a suburb), and want to find a place where I don't need a car. I looked at Riverdale and loved the area, but the problem is that it is so pricey, wanted to see if you had other suggested areas to widen the search net.
Yeah, seems like every time you talk about improving and expanding public transit, someone somewhere is like “but what about the cars?!” Usually it’s a politician. Here in California, it’s impossible to get money for public transit without it being tied to money for road widening and other “fix the bottleneck” BS projects. We’re also the state that complains about spending $100 billion on a bullet train but doesn’t even bat an eyelash when you spend the same amount of money to widen 30 miles of freeway. Where are all of those “budget hawks” then?!
I live in St Catherines, Niagara, and it's sooo challenging to live here without a car
@@Alex-Shulman Waterloo is doable.
Remember, Torontonians: The "Please vote" is not just a platitude. On October 24th, there will be a very real choice between the status quo and Gil Penalosa, a renowned urbanist who fundamentally gets this stuff.
Transportation is political, and the chance to exercise your political views is coming in under a month.
+
@@caramelldansen2204 the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants
I voted today for Quebec's provincial and my vote is completely irrelevant because I'm in a massively CAQ county. But we have a good mayor at least. At that level I feel like a vote can make a lot more of a difference, zones are smaller.
@@caramelldansen2204 communism is not any better lmao
@@caramelldansen2204 Brave empty words unless you have a plan and an armed militia.
I heard of a stray dog in turkey that rides the bus train and ferry and I’m like wow this dog has better access to transit than me here in America
Not only calling it the SkyDome, but editing in a SkyDome logo. Beautiful.
What are you talking about? It's always been called the SkyDome and that is a 100% unaltered image. 😂
Has big "Sears Tower" energy.
The condo tower/single family home insane juxtaposition of Toronto planning always gets me. Its pretty much the only place in North America where that's so common place everywhere in the metro area.
Yeah, it's not hard to get that footage. I have it from dozens of different spots in the city.
Vancouver would like a word with you.
Look up Burnaby in metro Vancouver,
There's some of that in Atlanta. I lived in a neighborhood in Buckhead that looked for all the world like the suburbs: single-family homes with driveways and two-car garages, but with highrise office towers practically in the backyard.
@@georgedaole-wellman3950 only place where I've been in the US, my host address was in Buckhead :)
I sent your last video to my city social media accounts, they made a point to tell me the administration and the planning department saw the video. You're doing the lords work.
Nice!
As someone who moved to Toronto in 2010, photos of city from the 60s to 90s are chilling
It is astonishing how much Toronto has changed in the past few decades. Even when I first moved there in 2000, many people thought I was crazy to live downtown. I was at Richmond and Sherbourne, renting an apartment in a new condo, and it was NOT a desirable place to live at all, so rent was pretty cheap. Now prices are insane.
Same team. So much change in the last 10 years. Hopefully we can ramp it up.
@@NotJustBikes You have that right. My 27 year old son just moved in with a couple of friends and rented a condo in a historic building at Queen and River (basically Regent Park for those who live in TO). The rent is $4800/month!
@@NotJustBikes Roughly my hood (Adelaide and Jarvis) still not very desirable, but a LOT more expensive and the gentrification has barely begun.
@@NotJustBikes sherbourne is still crack/heroin central
I worked in Missisauga, a Toronto suburb, and it was the most wretched place to walk to go eat or do anything at all. At the time, I lived in Montreal, and the company I worked at was making me fly and rent a hotel every week. These few months must have made me emit more carbon than I will in the rest of my life.
Now I live in Strasbourg, France, and bike everywhere. It's not perfect, but it's much better than Montreal.
Congrats on getting out!
You poor bastard. That's where I grew up in my teen years. Every time I wanted to visit my friends I would have to plan it out and ask my mom to drive me several miles to get to their place. And these were friends who went to the same school as me! Mississauga is no fun for kids/teenagers and neither is any other suburb.
When I was in high-school in scarborough, my then girlfriend moved to mississauga. I took the ttc to visit her and once I got to mississauga I realized I was basically stranded after a 3 hrs journey. The lack of bus service in mississauga compared to scarborough was shocking
Hazel McCallion, the mayor responsible for the dystopian mess that is Mississauga is regarded by many as a secular saint.
"Urban planning is inherently political." Thank you, Not Just Bikes! Such an obvious statement, yet bizarrely controversial.
In 99% of cases, people who say "keep the politics out" actually mean "keep any politic out that is not mine"
@@steemlenn8797 Same with the phase, "Too political."
Yep. The number of times I had to explain to people that there cannot be an apolitical statement and that refusing to comment on a matter is a political statement in and of itself is genuinely alarming.
Good video as always, though I am less sad about losing transit city! Toronto would be so much better if it had even 20% less cars in it. Edit: Now that I think about it, we built most of the decent stuff in transit city anyways like Eglinton and Finch - albeit worse than we could have!
Aww, I liked Transit City. :(
@@NotJustBikes it was in itself a political plan, a tram for every ward! Even where it should have been a subway like Eglinton and Don Mills. Theres a whole video to be made about transit and governance . . . . we could benefit from a more regional approach - of course, one where the region also had to be less car centric . . .
@@gupadre8255 Nahh, it does make sense. The transit city was like: "Let's combine joureys that would be best served by regional rail with those for metro and use trams to serve it! Why? Cause...they look cool!
I feel like the attempt to dilute the urbanism of the old City of Toronto into the suburban megacity might soon be overcome by the rapid intensification happening across the 'megacity' and even in the 905 suburbs. Enough of North York. Scarborough, Etobicoke are going to be highrise condo neighbourhoods that a majority of wards might come around to low-car thinking. You even see it now, most often there are only 2-3 councilors of 25 that vote in the anti 'war on cars' culture war. There is a decent squishy middle but I feel like the majority of council is just afraid of being bold, including our mayor. They are generally sympathetic to reducing car-orientation, just insist on glacial incrementalism. Toronto will need to dragged kicking and screaming to become less car oriented by sheer inertia.
@@andrew20146 Not to mention Canada is in the midst of the worst housing crisis ever. Homelessness is way up and so many more people are underhoused. We're seeing our quality of life decline in real time and cost of living skyrocket.
As someone who grew up in Bowmanville, and thus Toronto was our occasional stomping grounds in the 70s-90s, this was a treat to watch. The reactions of Vancouver & Montreal, the SKYDOME (forever!) edit, Union always under construction, one more lane, and the “megacity.” And seeing the lot where the Princess of Wales theatre now stands!
Humour and nostalgia aside, this was fascinating to learn the history of the car-ification of Toronto. So much of it felt so familiar; I’ve never known any Toronto other than the car-ified version. So by default it feels like that’s how it must have always been. To see how it had succumb to the same transit mistakes of other North American cities (DVP and Gardner, I’m looking at you), and then to learn the $%*!@! reason behind the amalgamation for such petty anti-democratic “reasons” is at first unfortunate and then becoming downright angering. (And, Jane Jacobs, damn, what a powerful writer/speaker!)
I get the sense there is some better understanding and planning that’s starting to take hold in Toronto, both with the design of the infill of all those downtown parking lots as well as with the new transit projects. I hope my sense is right, and I’m looking forward to seeing your video on that, and on how those still in the region can advocate for something better than the continual suburban ennui feeding forever into the Don Valley parking lot.
One more reason I'm disliking Conservative politicians. 👎 Stopped voting them since 45 took a dump on our Democracy.
based skydome
Absolutely love that you're not beating around the bush with politics here, it's important
Edit: a reminder that municipal elections all across Ontario are happening THIS MONTH. If you are from Ontario, take some time to read up on your local cantidades for councillor, school trustee, and (possibly) mayor, and make sure you are registered to vote!!!
Yes. Progressives are way too quick to talk about "issues and policy" without coming out and explicitly saying that certain politicians and parties support or oppose them.
You can't seriously be interested in fighting climate change and many other issues while embracing the conservative politicians that exist in Canada and we need to say that OUT LOUD, so that people can't just keep pretending they are centrists.
@@rileynicholson2322 I use this argument with a lot of conservatives in the US. If someone says they support gay rights but vote for republicans, I tell them they don't actually support gay rights. Same for every other issue they "agree" with, but then turn their back on for whatever reason.
I will immediately go out and vote for whichever party wants to Legalize machine guns AND build bike lanes.
Change for the better doesn't just happen. You've got to vote for the better people. Superman said he was for "Truth, justice and the American Way", which I take to mean democracy (rather than American Imperialism or oligarchies.)
I'm visiting my mother in Ontario right now, and I am struck by just how dangerously impatient and indifferent to human life the drivers are. I grew up in Canada, but I only started driving after moving to the U.S.
I have driven all over the U.S; in every major city in Florida, and every state along the northern border and around the great lakes, and I have never felt so close to a collision as I have in the couple of days I've been here in Ontario. It is crazy, these people drive like they want you dead.
I recently did a coast-to-coast Canada/USA road trip with some folding e-bikes in tow, and got to experience a lot of both the biking and car infrastructure in the major Canadian and American cities along the route. Downtown Toronto has a very respectable bike lanes, and even the "streetcar suburb" neighbourhoods are not too bad either, mainly due to less traffic on the roads. In comparison, driving in the GTA is an absolute nightmare, massive urban freeways with rapid interchanges with hyper-aggressive drivers (myself included). Driving cross-country is fairly pleasant and non-confrontational, but the second I got into the GTA I became stressed and wanted to get out of the car as fast as possible, you drive fast over huge distances and yet you progress very slowly - probably because the city sprawled in order to accommodate cars. Driving in Toronto is not even a good experience, and quite frankly Ontario (and Quebec) drivers are some of the worst I've encountered after driving across the entirety of Canada and the USA - so the fixation on car-centric design is pretty nonsensical, it's an objectively bad transportation experience.
Toronto is proof that designing only for cars makes it worse for drivers. Driving in the GTA absolutely sucks. Merging from the 401 East to the 427 South is basically taking your life into your hands.
@@spindriftdrinker greater toronto area
Chicago is better :)
@@hellfreezer3037 Saying Chicago is better (and it is) isn't saying much.
@@NotJustBikes you got it right. We call it the basketweave. My family and I got in a write-off 401W to 427S 15 years ago.
Politics comes from the greek word for “city”.
It literally meant “the affairs of the city” or “city planning”!
I lived in Toronto for 6 years, during the Rob debacle. It was SOOO infuriating when he unilaterally cancelled Transit City, and then later (a year-ish?) it came out that he had no authority to cancel it, and the city counsel just shrugged their shoulders and went along with it. No repercussions, no re-instating contracts, nothing. It was a total gong show.
So many towns and cities are a dozen or so people in positions of authority or influence away from making incredible strides in livability. Toronto is a great example, and I hope everyone watching from North America can see their own places and opportunities reflected here.
So true! I've been bothering my city council people to let them know that my small city could be so much better.
Greater Manchester in the UK is currently trying to revolutionise its transport network and the developments so far have been very encouraging. It’s great to see that some city regions are making progress, especially in the UK, as we are far too dependant on cars anywhere outside of London.
The roads in manchester are so badly designed. Feels like wherever I go I'm waiting at traffic lights to cross 4 lanes of traffic.
@@lowcostfish Precisely why they’re trying to create a ‘London style’ public transportation network whilst improving cycling infrastructure and safety for pedestrians so that people get out of their cars.
Manchester wasn't designed for cars at all.
That goes for majority of UK cities. They were all designed for foot and light goods traffic along side some transit.
With trams being replaced by trolley busses in the 1920's before all trolley busses were replaced with regents in the 50's and 60's. Andy is quite a decent chap.
Honestly as Toronto born and raised, every point here struck true! I was 14 when Rob Ford was elected and immediately cancelled Transit City, which would have shortened my commute to school in North Scarborough. Watching city council wrestle back the Eglinton LRT was a headache, and that bickering is the whole reason the Scarborough RT doesn't have a replacement before it closes next year.
Wasted potential is definitely a good way to sum it up. On the plus side, You can survive car free in the city, and yes even in the yellow belt suburbs, because where the transit a bike lanes really break down is crossing Steeles/427/Rouge River into the 905 :P
I remember rush hour in Toronto when I visited a few years back. We decided to hop on a tram/streetcar, assuming the busses would be stuck in traffic. Only to find out the those where just as stuck... Fixing that would make a big difference.
Look up the king street priority corridor. It’s a great streetcar success story.
It's also unfortunate that most people that live in the surrounding cities all want to live in Toronto because of the ease of travel. The roads in my neighborhood in Mississauga haven't changed in 20 years!
I lived in Toronto in the late 1980s. I never owned a car. I lived in North York and took a bus to work. I would take a train to SkyDome to watch baseball. The only time I had a car is when a relative from New Zealand came to visit and we drove to places like Niagara Falls. It is sad to see such a great city become more and more like Los Angeles.
I am reading Jane Jacob's book "The Life and Death of Great American Cities". It's an interesting read! She's a really good author and had some great ideas
Great video as always. Im from Uruguay, and although we have little population, Montevideo (the capital city) is completely car dependant. And i think that’s the same problem in most south americans capital cities. I’ve been in Toronto for a month and i can say you have a really good public transportation system, but i agree with you that it has the potential for it to be even better. Being stucked in the 401 was a new experience for me, and it completely sucked!!
I live in the Toronto Suburb and let me tell you how many arguments I’ve had with my family over this. For them they feel the car centric is no problem. It allows us to live far from the city where everything is quiet and comfortable. When they see an apartment they see nothing more than a rise in crime and corrupt capitalists trying to maximize profits on a piece of land. They see no value in transit because it’s going to “take hours” just to get places without a car. A car you’re safe, comfortable and with people you know. On a train or bus, that’s not the case. Someone help me break this argument down cuz I can’t anymore
First of all the only reason the city is as loud as it is is because of cars. Other forms of transportation don't have nearly the noise footprint. Apartments don't have to be massive, cramped high rises, it's just that there are only a few places that are actually zoned for apartments and so people try to make as much use of it as possible. Public transportation is often faster than cars. Especially when cities are denser because of better zoning laws I don't have any stats, and I suggest looking it up, but I assume that riding a bus with 30 other people is safer than piloting a massive metal and plastic box at upwards of 70 km/h in city limits. Trains and buses can be more comfortable, and there are some great examples of this abroad, that you could probably show your family.
I just kinda went through and gave you what I would have said. it's a bit rambly, but I hope it helped nonetheless! Cheers.
Well first of all, most cities in the Netherlands are already really quiet because of the lack of many cars. I don’t see how appartements cause crime rise, it certainly is not the case in the Netherlands. Apartments also allow people who don’t earn a massive salary to have their own place and I honestly think that building single family homes everywhere will drive up the price of land (due to shortage). So ironically I’d say single family homes are because of corrupt capitalists.
Being forced to own a car to go anywhere sucks and is a big restriction of freedom and travel times of public transit a pretty decent if you *build good infrastructure*.
I’ve driven cars plenty of times where I felt unsafe because assholes use their own car to try and run you of the road or cause accidents, in many cases I am glad to not have to deal with that
To add to it: it is not financially viable to maintain suburbs
I'm from Toronto and this video really spoke to me. I grew up here in the 90's when downtown was very much a city of parkinglots. That photo of massive sprawling parking lots next to Roy Thompson Hall was really jarring.
I am happy to say in the last 10 years things have gotten much better, slowly, but surely. And I mean very slowly... 12 years for the Eglinton line? The Ontario Line should open in the 2030s if we're lucky. I'm happy to see a lot of bike lanes in the city center, especially along University, Bloor, and Distillery. And guess what - removing lanes from cars did not impact traffic at all. Who would have thought lmao.
There's a good channel called RM Transit who talks a lot about the future development of Toronto. He's an urbanist through-and-through
I have found this channel and watched almost all the videos in the time between the last upload and now, first time watching a new video! I love the informative and educational content, keep up the amazing work NJB!
Thanks!
Thank you. I want everyone that pumps up TO to watch this. I left after only a brief period. These issues were too hard to ignore, especially when you've lived in less car-focused cities.
Toronto is a decent city, but I hate it _so_ much because it's very clearly not able to live up to its potential. A lot of people who love it have just never lived anywhere better, though. I thought it was the best when I moved there from London, Ontario, but that's because I didn't know how much better a city could be.
Same. I lived there for less than a year. I'm sooooo much happier in Montreal
@@NotJustBikes I love Quebec City but it fails to live to it's potential because of this ring of car dependancy that surrounds the center of the city. It is literally being choked by it's suburbs. The Tramway saga is such an example of suburbs fighting tooth and nail to keep a statu quo that is not even working for them.
@@kateb2643 Isn't Montreal worse for transit?
@@lucky247365 Montreal is arguably much better for transit then Toronto. Montreal was actually a larger city before the widespread adoption of the automobile. It was once Canada’s largest city. It’s old housing stock is also mostly walk-up apartments, even more dense then Toronto’s old “streetcar suburbs”. So when they built the Metro it was able to serve a lot of the city quite well. It’s much much cheaper to live in a walkable Montreal neighborhood then a Toronto one. Now Montreal has been asleep at the wheel for transit for a long time but the big new project is the REM. This will mostly serve the suburbs but will also help the inner part of the city. Stupidly the second REM, REM de l'Est, was canceled due to NIMBYs. But I’m hoping when the first phase of the REM opens soon, it will show people what they are missing. I think what people miss understand about Toronto and Montreal is that Toronto is surrounded on all sides by an ungodly mass of suburban cities and towns. These not only batter Toronto with car traffic, but also direct provincial politics to make the situation worse in the city for anyone without a car. Montreal has its suburban neighbours of course, but it’s on a much smaller scale. Even though transit expansion has been delayed decades, its going ahead now and it’s even doing a decent job at connecting the suburbs. Connecting the entire GTA is pretty much a impossible task unless some dense urban cores are established.
As someone who has to drive into and around Toronto for specialist medical checkups, I'm gonna enjoy listening to you tear into the city's transportation infrastructure. The city is so ungodly stressful to drive in as an outsider that I have the Jazz station saved in my car because it's the only genuinely calming noise available.
@@pex3 uhm it isn't the walkers and cyclists that make driving in Toronto stressful...
@@pex3 stressed and alert are not exactly the same thing
@@pex3 Dragon Mountain Fanboy gets it; it's not the pedestrians, bikes, and public transit that are the problem, it's exclusively the car traffic. Pedestrians and bikes add to the stress only because they are easily hidden within the endless sea of bumper-to-bumper traffic, plus the fact nobody on the highways has any courtesy for other drivers. I was nearly forced into a concrete median trying to get to an on-ramp because the cars beside me simply refused to make room and I could not stop without dangerously impeding traffic.
Watching your videos about the US and Canada makes me grateful for the half-assed and crumbling bike infrastructure in Edinburgh, because at least crossing the street won't kill me, it's not an hour's walk to the nearest supermarket, and buses come more regularly than twice a day. You guys really have it rough. Please vote and good luck!
I can see Leith Walk shying away at this comment just now
As a Torontonian, thank you. I will say though that Transit has gotten much better, and we're now investing in massive Transit mega projects that will hopefully get Toronto moving again.
I live in Minneapolis, I feel like we’re going through a lot of the same issues but on a smaller scale. Our city’s history parallels Toronto’s pretty well
Thanks NJB, I've always had a interest in city design and transit. I love the level of detail you go into yet, you have a great overall message.
Thanks so much!
'Addiction' is a very useful metaphor for automobile dependence. There is so much infrastructure, often with 100-year lifespans, committed on the basis of short-term trends of technology, oil prices, or population density, and mistakes are frightfully expensive, if not outright impossible, to correct.
As someone in the tabarnak province, I appreciate the shout out
I live in Durham region and I love heading into Toronto whenever I can because compared to where I live in Ajax, I can actually walk places! It feels nice to be able to get around without the need of a car. Ajax was developed in the 40s and 50s post ww2 so right from the get go it was entirely designed to be car dependent and full of strip plazas and 4 lane “streets” with incredibly dangerous intersections. I wish it could get better but it’s literally in the design of the town to work against pedestrians.
You should cover Montreal, a great example of a city trending solidly in the right direction with a city council that actively is engaged with a semi-war on cars. Great bike lanes, lovely parking lot transformations, pedestrian streets, and transit.
montreal is heaven
The issue with Montreal's transit build out is that it's not being done holistically. There's gonna be completely unnecessary gaps in service between the Metro, REM and trains. For example, there's gonna be a shuttle bus between Bois-Franc on the REM and Côte-Vertu on the metro. Just a complete failure of foresight.
I live in Montreal. Very recently, I've been offered a very appealing job in Toronto. The lack of public transportation and car dependency is the top reason I'm still uncertain of my decision. I'm big and fat, yet, when I have to go downtown Mtl, in the summer, I hop on a Bixi Bike at the corner of my street and drive my bike 30 minutes down one of the many bikes lanes. In the winter, I take an express bus, also on the corner of my street, than take the metro. It's so easy here to move everywhere without a car... and that's what makes me hesitate to move to Toronto.
This is a video I feel in my bones. I've lived in Toronto for the last 12 years and I complain vehemently at least 6 times a year about the shitty job Toronto has done serving the people that actually live here. I also get my hackles up any time some car driver gets pissy that ActiveTO manages to make this city better for anyone else.
It hurts my heart some days because I love so much about this city, but after living in London (real), Japan, and parts of Europe, where a city isn't designed for the 5% of people in cars, Toronto's addiction to cars is infuriating.
I also can't fucking believe that asshole John Tory is mayor of the city he helped screw over with his PC megacity project. What a bastard.
Tell everyone you know to vote for Gil. This is why I am a supporter for things like mandatory voting. Especially on a municipal level, people just don’t care and so the only ones voting are retired grumpy people. And typically those people just want to keep things the same. We could have such a better mayor if only people voted one in. But again, they don’t care or just want the current thing to keep going. It’s sad.
@@pepperpillow I'd really love if they allowed everyone to vote who lived in the city. My partner will be voting but I can't as I'm not a citizen yet 🤷♀️ but we did buy a sign for the challenger in our district cause she actually wants bike lanes. Weston just did a huge revamp and didn't include bike lanes! I was so pissed. Glad to support anyone who'll make this city better to live in.
I recently moved to Toronto from London (real). I live 8 km North of line 2, west end. My god, it's such a frustrating and annoying experience! It's insane how urban planning policies affect people's ability to live car-free and travel reliably. My transit time is usually around 45+ minutes, often 60+ or even 80+ minutes, when considering door-to-door time. Delayed busses (due to traffic), randomly inflated distances due to mandatory parking and big-ass stroads everywhere, missed connections and extended wait times... I simply can't unsee how terrible my daily life is due to this historic obsession with cars.
Yooo!! Thank you so much for the content. And I really want to appreciate what yiru channel has done to bring more stress in the importance of urban planning in cities.
Not to mention you also go out of your way to shout out and support similar channels.
Just subscribed to RM Transit yesterday
I come from the real London and married a girl from Brantford Ontario. I've travelled all over Europe and been to Toronto multiple times and also Fake London. Toronto is so far the best place I've seen in Ontario for transit by far, but as you said, it's still got a long way to go to get up to European levels. Nevertheless, I am encouraged by all the projects going on there. There is some hope at least.
One of the city council candidates in my area is running on a platform of "no more lane reductions on Yonge St". I have no words.
Thanks for this video, I'll be sharing it with anyone who lives in Toronto and will listen.
As someone who lives off Yonge, honestly fuck that, I want zero cars in my neighborhood, and a return to 15 minute or better service on the 97.
I’m a Dutch city council member, to the Dutch viewers here: North American and British conservatives have a specific libertarian “every man for himself” bent to them. It’s not a feature of conservatism in mainland Europe. The Netherlands has had only two governments that didn’t include the conservatives in some way: If we hated bikes and cities that don’t suck, the Netherlands would not be featured on this channel the way it often is.
They still suck
the amalgamation of Hamilton, just down the street from Toronto, was a similarly ridiculous and unfortunate event that played out more or less the same way. Though, because much of the amalgamated city land was not yet developed, it may actually turn out beneficial with the new green space and farmland protections that council is trying to put in place. Had the city not amalgamated when it did (and people not advocated for ending suburban sprawl), these areas around the city probably would have continued to be rapidly suburbanized.
One time I was in a Toronto suburb and I was surprised by how difficult it is to walk to a Go Train station. I ended up bushwacking my way across some steep dirt hills and crossing the train tracks just outside of the station. Honestly absurd.
German here who lived in Guelph near Toronto for a while.
Whenever I visited Toronto I was happy I could take the extensive streetcar network to my destinations and I would mostly walk everywhere from High park to Cabbage Town (because "old Toronto" really isn't that big that you need a car). But the subway is a joke. Sure, it's great to get somewhere quick for a few stops, but I just wished for a better network.
Guelph by the way had a streetcar system back in the days. Unfortunately not anymore. Now you can take the bus to almost everywhere on ridiculously badly timed schedules.
In both cities the dependency on cars is obvious. In Toronto on the 401 it's incredibly dangerous and frightening. The big highway bridges through the middle of downtown create unnavigable obnoxious obstacles for pedestrians and also shady sketchy areas. But Guelph made me hate cars. I'm aware that people there are "progressive" and bike quite a lot compared to other cities, but it's ridiculous how car dependent the city design is. Malls, drive throughs, the Hanlon stroad cutting through the city. I'd love to see a video about Guelph on your channel.
I’ve been thinking about moving to Guelph as I live in rural Ontario and need to make a move to a more populated area. Did you like the city? Would it be better to move to Kitchener/Waterloo or Barrie? Would love to hear your insight
A little offtopic: The reason for 2FA to kick in when your on a public network (e.g. train's WIFI) is that you are on a public network, I know crazy right. The only other security feature here is your password, but since this could be leaked/bruteforced/guessed/... they created 2FA. So the 2FA to kick in on public networks is exactly what you want even tho it might be a bit annoying.
+1 for the "Tabarnak" over Montréal at the start of the video 😆
0:22
_"Toronto is the best city in Canada. Toronto is one of the top three best cities in Canada."_
-Not Just Bikes
I lived in a condo at Yonge and Fitch until 2017 and owned a car, it was the only way to live cuz I had to work in the suburbs and go to school in Scarborough. Now I’ve been in the Amsterdam for 5 years and never thought about owning a car, and the cost savings in terms of pure $ and time is immense
Congratulations on getting out!
You don't need a car if you live on Yongue & Finch. Not saying it's better than Amsterdam but you don't need a car
Excellent analysis as always.🌟 Btw, some of us cranky old timers are very much on the left! But then we tend to live in “orange” neighbourhoods. (Orange is the colour of my métro line… and of the left in Canada.)🍊😉
Megacity: The irony was that it was the other way around in Montreal. The goal was to make wealthy suburbs to finally pay their fair share of the central city’s expenses. And of course it was a (reddish then) Tory (Charest) who scuttled it. At least Toronto has relatively improving regional rail. The problem with Montreal is that it’s not the capital of Quebec, a huge advantage for Toronto. Necessary transit projects in Montreal are stalled (Blue line) or cheapened (Mascouche and Pie-IX lines) by the car addicts in the rest of the province (especially Quebec City). Or we get the REM whose business plan forces it to be profitable and thus “palatable.”
It's a shame coz Quebec could be a good city too, there is already a nice city center, but public transport are a joke
The one good thing about the highways in Toronto are the highway signs that say, "If you're reading this sign, you're stuck in traffic - TTC"
Great video! Do you think it would be possible to do a video similar to this one about Montreal? I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. It seems to me their metro line is well developed for North American standards, the new REM is very nice and the missing middle problem isn’t really present. There are disgusting roads like decarie boulevard for example.
NJB doesn't like to say positive things about North America 😅 but I agree that MTL is pretty great for NA standards anyway. It could be better, but there are some really great neighourhoods that are very walkable/bikeable and have good transit connections.
Most housing on the island is missing middle, which is great.
I was an avid cyclist in Toronto during the Ford Mayorship and let me tell you, cyclists became targets for drivers during that time. Many times drivers would swerve towards you or crowd you out in to the curb.
Worst mayor ever. And his brother is just as bad.
It hasn't gotten much better. Commuting by bike is still seen as some sort of leftist political statement. I'm just trying to get to work in the way that sucks the least.
Thank you for not straying away form the politics. Being politically active has become so stigmatized that many will avoid municipal politics for fear of social rejection, which is exactly what conservatives want because it keeps the conservative status quo chugging along. Many people are onboard with urbanism but few are willing to be active and loud about it because they don't want to be seen as part of the same political group that is characterized by people like Rob Ford
Would love a vid comparing fake london with Kitchener Waterloo. I lived in both and amazing how different the transit is in both.
13:52 i never thought id hear him curse
Honestly you are speaking of Toronto, but I hear history of what's exactly wrong with my hometown of Moscow, Russia. Back in USSR they took American model of North American city planning (just change suburbs to commie blocks), because they thought that when communism arrives everyone would own a car. The whole city despite having world class public transport is still oriented towards cars. They demolished alot of tram lines to build stroads, filled all empty land with parking lots. It slowly syarted to change, but now after the war started all politicians oriented towards normal city planning either left or were not reelected during the last election, as they are seen as threat to dictatorship of putin.
Sad to know about this, since the USSR really seemed to have done urban planning well back then, like how Khruschovkas were built with tram stops, pharmacies, shops, and schools within walking distance.
I hope you're safe as well.
Another amazing video Jason, thanks so much for your hard work making high quality videos! I feel the same way about Portland, Oregon. It could be so much better, yet continues to not crack down on cars nearly as much as it should to truly be a safe urbanist city.
I went to Toronto as I do quite often for check ups at the sick kids hospital. And that traffic, WOW, it’s incredibly horrendous worst part is; a couple years ago there was a bus line (grey hound) that drove us all the way there and back without much waiting walking or driving at all. Guess what happened to those grey hound busses lolllll?!.
Yep. Toronto is proof that designing primarily for cars makes things worse for drivers.
Transportation in Toronto is terrible for everybody.
I’ve been living in downtown Toronto while a lot of these new urban developments have been made. Right now I’m in a new area called the Canary District which is an amazing pedestrian-forward mini neighborhood by Toronto standards, but from what I’ve seen seems to be mostly a private development. When it was first built it was actually the “athletes village” for the pan am games, and then local residents moved in after. For the most part though, Toronto’s new pedestrian-forward projects are contained in small projects throughout the city rather than a change to its core infrastructure.
Any opinions on Montréal? It's my closest city and when I compare Toronto to MTL, I always feel like Toronto is too spread out and you have to walk farther to get places. I haven't experienced European cities but I think MTL is pretty decent by NA standards. Lots of improvements could be made of course, but areas like Le Plateau, Mile End, Mont Royal, etc. I find are really walkable and bike friendly.
Toronto is walkable
@@bobmarley7787 Sure, I just find that Montréal is a bit more walkable after having been in both cities.
montreal you can live in a mid sized unit in a nice residential area and step outside for food or to take the subway. 10/10
@@willtheoct I think the metro could be more expansive but it's not bad. And Montréal actually does mixed use pretty well.
@@kelseyduerksen6404 don’t think you’ve seen much of Toronto then. Many many more walkable neighborhood’s that are bigger than mile end and le plateau with access to subways or streetcars or both. That being said, Montreal is better to look at since it has more middle housing.
Currently living in Etobicoke with no car.
I can feel this video in my soul.
Hey, Jason.
You’ve just made your best ever video, at least in my opinion.
I LOVE this video so much that it’s difficult to place into words.
We need to remove this car addiction from most of the western world, to be entirely honest…
… I’ve genuinely had conversations with people before where on purpose they don’t pay attention to my conversations in any major detail if I mention urban planning and removing the need for car dependency.
Thinking that something from 1910/1920 won’t work a century later…
They literally invented most of the best ergonomically made products back then…
Bikes, trams, trains, clothing, and baggage (which won’t break at the slightest milligram of usage)…
I’ll just say “thank you” for this video, anyway.
I live in New Jersey. Our equivalent of Rob Ford is Chris Christie, he cancelled building a train tunnel into Manhattan.
They share a similar physique as well.
0:26 Gotta say it’s interesting that you haven’t brought up Montreal once on this channel (except here), even though it is miles ahead of most NA cities planning wise. Maybe I missed a time you talked about it (I know you brought it up in your missing middle video).
But then he would have to talk about the... **shudders** ...french!!
@@QemeH *Québécois.
As a conservative myself, I am deeply ashamed of them fucking up cities.
NIMBYism It doesn't have to be a hill conservatives die on though! It's a poison that's afflicted every flavour of political theory. We can get rid of it
It's difficult for conservative voters to sympathise with city dwellers who are leftists. I am a conservative voter and as much as I want to have better infrastructure and walkability, I fundementay disagree with leftists on so many other issues that its a stalemate.
Swede here, don't worry, social democrats are capable of that as well. In the 60's a lot of beautiful areas and city centres were changed into concrete boxes. Look up Borlänge for some reference.
Cool but lets be honest, you are still going to vote for them, aren‘t you?
If you do, you might be ashamed but you still directly support them, which also includes this aspect of their policies.
It would be fun if you started visiting big cities around the world while reviewing its transportation infra-structures and safety.
I plan to do that, starting in Europe. Taking the time off to travel is tough though.
The new 413 highway isnt about moving cars, its about drawing the boundaries for the next 20-30 years of sprawl... Basically surround an are w a highway and fill in the space w low density housing
Once you reach the edges of Toronto you realize how non pedestrian friendly it can get. If you live near a subway line or streetcar line. Life is walkable and nice. example, st Clair west, little Italy, Greek town, Yonge and Eglinton, junction triangle, high park, riverside, and of course anyone who lives downtown. If we were to focus on old Toronto, I feel like we would rate the city less harsh, Old Toronto is about the size of Vancouver (100 kmsq) which is small, Toronto after amalgamation is now 630sqkm now imagine if Vancouver amalgamated with Surrey and Richmond and Burnaby we would be calling Vancouver a car centric city also, but we all know “old Vancouver” is pedestrian friendly. The problem started with Toronto becoming a mega city because no one can get projects done, building subways to the suburbs is now the main objective instead of building more trains where most people live, which is the core. Somehow we let suburbia dictate how the city should be built even though they represent less than half. Similar to how this video reference the destruction of the mount pleasant streetcar, we can’t let history repeat itself. If anyone has suggestions on how to make a real change with city council pease let me know.
As someone who moved from Toronto to Boston, I would kill to have the TTC back. I thought the big North East cities would have comparable transit to Toronto, but it's not even close here. The subways and buses are infrequent and unreliable and we just had a major subway line shut down for a month due to a huge maintenance backlog.
Partly because money thatbwas supposed to go to the MBTA went to the Big Dig instead.
I will never understand these green commuter „go“ trains that just stand abandoned on the tracks at the station for 80% of the time..
Being from Europe, this „concept“ of trains going into the city in the morning and then only going out again once in the evening instead of just running on a regular schedule all day long just blows my mind..
Thank god for compulsory instant runoff voting
Voting methods is a whole other issue, but I guess other creators like CGP Grey have already covered that.
It is extremely frustrating that political parties in Canada can win an absolute majority with only 30-some percent of the popular vote.
@@NotJustBikes Hear hear!
@@NotJustBikes Not just America with our fucked up Electoral College (and, honestly more egregious, our Senate) I guess.
We had ranked ballot voting for exactly one municipal election in Fake London, then Doug Ford banned it...
Interesting observation though...the frontrunner in the first round for every seat ended up winning the runoffs, if I recall correctly.
Great video agreed 100% I don't blame you for being mad about Rob and Doug, i would have also cursed out mike harris a TON.
Really hope Toronto can improve a lot. Being out in Borington, always like seeing Toronto as less stroads (in some areas) and just FAR FAR FAR Better transit.
I saw the thumbnail and my reaction was kinda just a feeling of depression… then I watched the video and had a great time. Really good video as always!
THANK YOU for calling it the Sky Dome!
Fantastic video! This channel really is one of the most important things on youtube.
Took a road trip last month to visit family in Pickering. Drove the 401 from Michigan and it was bumper to bumper from Oakville all the way across the city! The normally 45 min drive from the airport to Pickering to 4 1/2 hrs. Love the family up there but never again driving there
I moved to Toronto as a teenager. Well first I lived in the suburbs with my sister. We moved a lot within a few years. I worked downtown but cummuted from (Woodbridge, Richmond Hill, and finally Mississauga).
My commute was close to 2 hours each way through transit, and well over an hour via car.
So I eventually moved to Parkdale, and lived in (Toronto proper) for many years.
I couldn't believe how much my quality of live went up. Not only was I saving time on the commute. I was able to take advantage of all the wonderful amenities Toronto has to offer. Also meeting great people in return.
I can't see how anyone would choose to live in the suburbs. It's almost like everyone is being forced or persuade to live there.
Also I would like to mention. Maybe urban planning has turned much more political, due to the lobbyists of corporations. Corporations that will gain profits with a car dependant city.
I remember driving into Houston of the North (Toronto) during Carnevale years ago... we were creeping so slow on the freeway that I was about to don a colorful feathery costume and start dancing Soca 🕺
Thank you for finally bringing up the politics behind planning. I watch a small selection of city planning UA-camrs, and I believe you're the first one I've seen to actually get into it (beyond just superficial) and take a stance. And though you may insist others like Strongtowns are better suited to dish out actionable advice, GO VOTE is a great start and I hope everyone eligible follows your advice.
Just today after work I got short turned on the 504 king car, so this is some neat timing lol
When you look at the history of the Toronto streetcars it becomes pretty clear that they're still around not because the city wands to build a successful transit network, but rather because they couldn't come to a decision on how to remove them all. The system is woefully behind any tram system in Europe, and is just running on the fumes of the old trolly network.
It's an absolute shame, because with some proper investment, it could be a very functional network.
At least they don't need a guy to push the tracks with a stick at most switches these days.
I can relate to the 401 being a traffic nightmare. Back about 10 years ago, my brother and I were taking the 401 through Canada since it's the quickest way to get from Chicago to northern Vermont (and back again in our case). We had been making very good time on the 401 since east of the GTA, the road opens up and moves rather quickly. But the segment from Oshawa to Kitchener took us 4 hours total because we hit it right at the 2 PM rush hour. It might have also been Canada Day since there were people waving Canadian flags on overpasses and the chatter on the radio was of NHL free agency, but I digress. But still, it was ridiculous that a drive which normally takes ~90 minutes took us 4 hours.
Video suggestion: I would be very interested in a video about life as an immigrant/expat. I know this is a little different than your usual content but I myself experienced living abroad and would like to see how other people might experience this.
I credit this channel primarily with my recent decision to sell our 2nd car and get a cargo e-bike. I got a regular bike at the start of the summer and loved it so I sprung for a decent e-bike. Literally just sold the car today and the e-bike will be arriving within a week and I am super excited =)
Even though bike infrastructure by me is pretty garbage most of the nearby streets are actually streets and so I have a reasonable number of options for places to go that don't require dealing with a lot of car traffic.
That being said, we need some fucking bike infrastructure...
Even if they use mixed urban planning, the single bedroom apartments/condos will be over a million dollars and lets not even mention family housing; thus making people go further away from the amenities and non-car infrastructure to just afford a place to live ergo making people use cars just to go from home and work.
If they build the infrastructure it HAS TO BE affordable and not sold to millionaires but to people whom are living and working in the city and not as secondary monetary income properties.
Part of the problem now is that affordable places to live are a commute away, instead of within a decent proximity of where people need to live and work.
My gf lives in the GTA without a car and I live in Boston. Every time I visit her its just so frustrating to travel car free. Even walking 1km is unpleasant. There are sidewalks sure but when you are walking next to high speed stroads and navigating massive parking lots its not fun. While the Boston-area has its issues (cough MBTA) it is one of the few North American regions with great walkability, unique, dense neighborhoods and decent bike infrastructure.
Your girlfriend lives in Grand Theft Auto?
Depends where in the GTA
In downtown or close to it has better walkability and public transit than Boston
@@bobmarley7787 she lives in Mississauga which is super car centric.
@@todddammit4628 Greater Toronto Area
Have you lived in Australia? Cities there are so incredibly similar to the ones in North-America. When I lived in Brisbane it was a huge struggle for me being from The Netherlands, used to decent public transport and safe bicycle lanes which only exist intermittently and you basically end up still using sidewalks along multi-lane roads designed just for cars. The first week it took me 2 hours to get some groceries because I didn't have access to a car and there were no bus-stops where I lived, so I had to walk through a bunch of neighborhoods and around several highways to get to a supermarket.
I thought Rob Ford was a Chris Farley character
I've been living in the Toronto area since 1997 when I was a kid and I was never addicted to cars. I've always loved the transit system here and I fell in love with them the first time I saw the TTC in 1997. I guess I am part of a small minority from Toronto who thinks this way though.
I find the comparison to my city--Melbourne, Australia--an interesting one. Like Toronto, it fell in love with the car and built suburbs instead of medium density housing. Greater Melbourne is a third larger than Toronto, but with 3/4 the population! So, if my maths is correct, that makes Melbourne 55-60% of the population densely of Toronto... However, unlike Toronto, it kept and expanded it's tram network to be the largest (existing) in the world while also building an overland rail network that's larger (in length) than any metro system in the world--not bad for a city of 4.9m!
Also WTF is Toronto doing with its rail network?! (I've watched your video, but the scale of it's failure wasn't apparent to me until comparing it to Melbourne's.) Melbourne's train network is ~1000km long with annual ridership of 243m. Toronto's is actually pretty long--625km--but only has 13.5m annual ridership. Even if that was 20m pre-pandemic, and adjusting for the difference in length, that's still close to an order of magnitude fewer people per km of track.
Perhaps the main difference is that if you want to go to the CBD (Central Business District, i.e., downtown in Australian), you do not drive unless you really hate trains (or trams and bikes depending on where you live). Cars are only quicker than walking or (if you live far enough away or are unfit enough) cycling and car parking space has to compete with any other commercial enterprise, so it's very, very expensive.
Having said all that, I would not want to live anywhere that was a field in 1940, so there's still a lot to improve. But I think there's also a lot that North American cities could learn from Melbourne that they can't learn from the much smaller and denser cities of Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
My only experience of Toronto is taking the 401. One time on the way back to the US, we went through Toronto at 1AM on a Monday and there were still tons of cars.
I've been to Toronto several times, and I love it. But yes, everything you presented here is... frustrating to see even from an outside point of view. I am annoyed that they got rid of trolleybuses in many neighbourhoods* that had their streetcars removed; that they only now are building out different projects (Eglinton, Finch West, Scarborough Subway, GO upgrades in places); that they still haven't zoned areas for "missing middle" that you can find only in the downtown/Old Toronto areas and should be wider.
I can't wait to see the next video where you address this. But, if King Street is any indication, things looks hopeful.
[*American who prefers Commonwealth spellings for many words.]
I live in the United States. Your Clarion call for voting in local elections; doesn't just apply to Canada. Anybody concerned about their local areas should be voting regardless of country. Your examples show why, you should vote. The future will always be filled with the consequences of the past.
Also a note, Ford was a joke even to us in the United States.
Thanks for another great video.
The crazy thing is that I am a *car enthusiast*. I love cars. But I hate crappy suburbs. They're not even fun to drive in... Why do we have these???
Copying US style urban "planning" was popular back in the day.
when you show footage of cities and add those little writings telling us which city it is, that is really useful since to me they are all the same, i could not spot any difference