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View Poll Results: Better public transit?
Toronto 39 35.45%
Chicago 71 64.55%
Voters: 110. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 06-18-2018, 04:09 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by usroute10 View Post
How in the world is Toronto able to fund all of the construction of all these rapid transit lines???? This is BILLIONS AND BILLIONS worth of expansion/new lines!
A forward-thinking Ontario province. Canada, in general, is progressive in many ways, and it's manifested in their spending toward quality mass transit. Canada is tiny, pop-wise to the U.S., but yet they are not only investing heavily in mass transit, they are also planning a high-speed railroad/passenger line from Toronto to Windsor, ONT. Practically every, if not every, Canadian city over 400K has rail rapid transit in some form. A far cry from the United States, where some metro areas of over 3M have none at all: Detroit, San Antonio, among them. Then other huge ones, like Houston and Phoenix are barely getting started -- but at least they're doing something...

America has a negative view of mass transit: it's communistic in nature for poor and minorities while Americans (see well-off white Americans) treasure their "freedom" to drive their cars -- and clog highways while wasting fuel and valuable man/woman hours behind the wheel ... but happily all the while not having to deal with "others." While many American cities don't have enough rail transit, in those cities that have it spending for upkeep is way too stingy. I mean, as great as the New York City subway is, it's an embarrassment in terms of its filth and dinginess. Other countries around the world wouldn't tolerate this and have a much healthier view toward transit and HSR... So they invest.

... to Americans, this seems weird.
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Old 06-18-2018, 04:15 PM
 
1,669 posts, read 4,224,099 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TheProf View Post
But Chicago is nearly twice as large as Toronto, so it needs larger coverage.
Chicago isn't nearly twice as large, the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area (closest thing to an American MSA for the Toronto area) has about 7.5 million people as of this year (and growing rapidly) vs. 9.5 for the Chicago MSA (not growing much at all right now).

As for city proper, Toronto is somewhere between 2.8-2.9 million vs. Chicago's 2.7 million.
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Old 06-18-2018, 04:32 PM
 
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Including Hamilton in Toronto's metropolitan area would be like including Milwaukee in Chicago's, 71 vs. 83 driving miles, respectively. Adding Milwaukee's metro area to Chicago would bump up Chicago's total by 1.6M... CSA, 2M.
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Old 06-18-2018, 05:14 PM
 
1,669 posts, read 4,224,099 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TheProf View Post
Including Hamilton in Toronto's metropolitan area would be like including Milwaukee in Chicago's, 71 vs. 83 driving miles, respectively. Adding Milwaukee's metro area to Chicago would bump up Chicago's total by 1.6M... CSA, 2M.
Hamilton is 71 km from Toronto, not miles! That's only 44 miles by car. Milwaukee is 92 miles from Chicago by driving distance -- over twice as far as Hamilton is from Toronto.

The Chicago MSA has a area of 10,856 sq. mi., while the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area has an area of only 3,190 sq. mi.

You can see the Toronto skyline from downtown Hamilton on a clear day.
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Old 06-18-2018, 05:21 PM
 
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Chicago has similar issues to New York (really good near the core and subways, but buses run less frequently than one would like, and compared with cities like Philadelphia, which has buses every 7-10 minutes on most lines all day). In the core, perhaps Chicago, but perhaps a wash. Not sure.
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Old 06-18-2018, 05:49 PM
 
Location: In the heights
36,898 posts, read 38,810,969 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticman View Post
Hamilton is 71 km from Toronto, not miles! That's only 44 miles by car. Milwaukee is 92 miles from Chicago by driving distance -- over twice as far as Hamilton is from Toronto.

The Chicago MSA has a area of 10,856 sq. mi., while the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area has an area of only 3,190 sq. mi.

You can see the Toronto skyline from downtown Hamilton on a clear day.
Google auto selects km and miles, so he probably got bit by that.
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Old 06-18-2018, 06:00 PM
 
1,669 posts, read 4,224,099 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marothisu View Post

Even if talking about a city versus the rest of metro area, that's not really that true of Chicago "falling apart" outside of it considering there are a handful of suburbs next to the city that are over 10K people per square mile -

Berwyn: 14,279 ppsm
Stone Park: 14,194 ppsm
Cicero: 14,150 ppsm
Elmwood Park: 12,906 ppsm
Oak Park: 11,119 ppsm
Harwood Heights: 10,362 ppsm
Evanston: 9584 ppsm


As far as I know, the densest cities outside of Toronto are Mississauga (6391 ppsm), Brampton (5772 ppsm), Richmond Hill (4996 ppsm)...
Of course the difference between those Chicago suburbs and the Toronto suburbs you've listed is that those Chicago burbs are tiny compared to the massive suburban cities of Mississauga (pop. 730,000) and Brampton (pop. 600,000). Mississauga and Brampton both include within their boundaries enormous swaths of industrial areas with no residents, and Canada's largest Airport (Pearson International is within the borders of Mississauga. Take away those non-residential areas and the density figures would rise considerably -- especially in Mississauga which has many high density neighbourhoods full of residential towers. Richmond Hill is also quite big with 200,000 people but noticeably less dense than Mississauga and Brampton.
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Old 06-18-2018, 06:24 PM
 
Location: Chicago
4,745 posts, read 5,527,747 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticman View Post
Hamilton is 71 km from Toronto, not miles! That's only 44 miles by car. Milwaukee is 92 miles from Chicago by driving distance -- over twice as far as Hamilton is from Toronto.

The Chicago MSA has a area of 10,856 sq. mi., while the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area has an area of only 3,190 sq. mi.

You can see the Toronto skyline from downtown Hamilton on a clear day.
Chicago's urban area has 9.1 million people in 2600 square miles. It's smaller than the Greater Toronto Area in terms of physical size. Hasn't this been done to death yet?
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Old 06-18-2018, 06:25 PM
 
4,465 posts, read 5,015,098 times
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fa
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticman View Post
Hamilton is 71 km from Toronto, not miles! That's only 44 miles by car. Milwaukee is 92 miles from Chicago by driving distance -- over twice as far as Hamilton is from Toronto.

The Chicago MSA has a area of 10,856 sq. mi., while the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area has an area of only 3,190 sq. mi.

You can see the Toronto skyline from downtown Hamilton on a clear day.
Fair point about Toronto -- Hamilton, they are closer than I'd stated; Google does switch over to kilometers instead of miles. However, Chicago was listed as just under 85 miles from Milwaukee; city hall to city hall.. OK, I still stand by my original point: the L isn't that much greater in terms of city/close-in urbanized suburban coverage (if at all) than Toronto's TTC rapid transit/rapid-transit like rail lines, including the subway + LRT with significant grade-separated portions. Toronto's transit is new, by Chicago's standards: subway began 1954, GO transit commuter rail, 1967, vs. Chicago's L opened 1892, and commuter rail, around the Civil War... Both Toronto and its transit network are expanding considerably while Chicago is shrinking while its aging rail network has CTA battling Springfield for maintenance and operating funds. And yes, GO commuter rail, while smaller (due to a smaller metro area) gets points over Chicago for centralization, coordination (1 downtown terminal vs. 4 for Chicago) and plans for electrification of most of the GO system (once completed) vs. just a small portion (Metra Electric, South Shore Line) of Chicago's commuter rail network.

... and as one poster noted, the TTC subway, alone, moves a couple hundred K more passengers per day than the L despite having less than half the L's route miles. The impact of the L in growing Chicago in the late 19th/early 20th centuries is parallel to TTC's subway on Toronto, esp the Younge Street corridor; esp the ridiculous TOD (mini downtowns) along that street. The L tended to develop Chicago neighborhoods, with residential 'flats', apts and many stand-alones...

... but don't in anyway interpret this as my perception of Chicago. Despite the obvious crime issues prominent in the news these last couple years, Chicago is a great world city -- one of my faves on many levels -- great downtown, greater, beautiful neighborhoods, fantastic lake setting, amazing restaurants, culture, music, etc., and, yes, great transit; esp by American standards... and I voted for Chicago over Toronto, transit-wise, but just not by that much for reasons given.
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Old 06-18-2018, 06:34 PM
 
Location: Upper West Side, Manhattan, NYC
15,331 posts, read 23,753,676 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drro View Post
Well, I haven't been taking the train to Englewood or Riverdale or something, my experience comes from Chicago's 'regular' neighborhoods outside of downtown. My concern wasn't just the trains themselves but also the stops and the areas surrounding those.
So what is your concern? I mean if you are actually afraid of an area like Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Lincoln Square, Roscoe Village, etc then it tells me and everyone else familiar with Chicago everything they need to know about you.
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