Comment on Public transit in Chengdu, China versus Toronto, Canada

• Flatfire@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  We have two LRT lines opening in short order. Both the eglinton crosstown and finch west. They’re also actively working to make all the Line 2 stations accessible by way of adding elevators where the designers in the 1960s saw no need for them. Believe it or not, they’re aware, but the TTC fights more than just a budget when trying to implement these things.

  Besides NIMBYs, there’s the rapid expansion of the GTA to consider, which has led to either a redevelopment of land or a requirement for mass transit in places that were developed 20 years ago without consideration for it. As densification occurs, it is both more required, but more logistically complicated. The current municipal gov does genuinely seem interested in fixing this, but doing so is kind of a nightmare without the funding to buy property and redevelop entire civic centers. Add to the fact that the provincial government seems to wage its own war against changes to anything that would affect a car’s right of way and the downtown suddenly becomes this unchangeable monolith.

  Then there’s the bonus factors of Bombardier, the supplier of basically every train for every LRT or Subway line in Canada, the fact that Toronto is actually a collection of smaller municipal regions with their own concerns and challenges, and that they’re also still trying to add ATC to all of Line 2 in order to replace the aging trains there. It becomes pretty clear that building out an entirely new transit system under the directive of your federal government with next to unlimited funding is probably a lot easier than reworking a 60 year old subway network that had vastly different aspirations than now.

  China runs the benefit of uniform prioritization of these networks, in places that had no previous infrastructure to contend with. They aren’t currently splitting a budget between maintaining/retrofitting 60 year old subway lines, stations and cars. I’d be more interested in see if they were able to continue this kind of buildout in 30 years, or if they end up facing a lot of the same logistical challenges.

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  • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I’d be more interested in see if they were able to continue this kind of buildout in 30 years

    The Beijing subway opened in 1971, when they had less than half the current population. All I can say is that it felt slow, like 2 hours to get what looked like 3-4 blocks on a map

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    • Flatfire@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I think I’d almost consider it the same as starting with nothing when they began the next phase of construction in 2002. The map then vs now demonstrates that, and mostly follows China’s industrial/modern expansion in urban environments in recent memory. I think it’s still difficult to comprehend what a massive shift they’ve had in urban construction since the mid-90s as they’ve become the economic center for trade and manifacturing in the last couple decades. The transit still can’t keep up with demand, even with a subway system so extensive. It’s also still a very car-centric urban environment and I imagine now faces many similar civil construction challenges as in North America. It’s a good part of why I’m curious to see how things shape up in the coming decades for them and how they overcome those challenges at a scale Canada hopefully never needs to contend with.

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