I'm Staying in Toronto. Here's Why.

i talk about toronto a lot in my videos mostly because it's been my home for most of the past decade but also because i think it's one of the best cities you can be in in north america to see a positive urban transformation i mean new people moving to the city every single day and the city is changing every single day and so in today's video i'm going to tell you why i think toronto is still the place to be especially if you like cities and green transportation [Music] i've talked a lot about my life in toronto across the channel and my frustrations with my life in toronto and i think it's gotten to the point where as with any relationship that's under stress it's worth looking at why things started in the first place i've said i'm frustrated with toronto a lot so why am i still here ultimately i moved to toronto because it was changing it was getting better there were plans for more housing and transit and a better city i'd also argue that it's a fairly self-aware place we know what the city's problems are and being here people are passionate about the city we have a lot of urbanist types and a lot of people making cool stuff from twitter threads about cycling here to redesigned versions of the subway map that imagine some sort of alternate history to videos about new tunnels we're taking for subways that someday we'll get to use two threads on twitter about the nuances of transit projects and even urban planning themed greeting cards that you can send to your friends and family not your type etsy store the link will be in the description there are a lot of ways this city is changing and getting better and so come with me as we discuss just some of them in the past i've sometimes complained that this city doesn't have enough great urban spaces or streets but that's changing toronto's main street young street which does have a subway running underneath it is soon getting a car light pedestrian focused redesign from college all the way down to queen street and there's even a new urban ikea location along this strip for people who aren't going to drive to the store and fill up their car with furniture but who might just pop in after taking transit or riding a bike or walking another one of the coolest urban spaces in the city the west toronto rail path which i have a video about up here somewhere that's an urban trail that runs next to one of toronto's most important regional rail lines is actually getting extended in a big way the extension is going to nearly double the length of the path which currently ends at dundas street but in the future will take you all the way down to king that'll make one of the best corridors in the city for getting around on a bike or just walking even better i've also talked about the davenport diamond grade separation a number of times on the channel and beyond the fact that it's going to make one of toronto's regional rail lines way better as well as at a new station at bloor street it's also going to add a brand new branch onto the west toronto rail path which is awesome and of course there's also the portlands project which is building a new island in toronto's harbor and a new mouth for the don river helping to protect the city from climate change in the future as well as helping to open up more land for housing and creating new great green spaces in the city and urban parks it's also getting easier to get to the existing green spaces in the city for example queen's park is actually getting a subway entrance directly within it meaning you don't have to cross any streets to go from the subway to the park even though the entrance to queen's park won't actually be at queen's park subway station that probably calls for a future video if you're interested leave a comment down below and of course there are a million other places from a future enhanced king street that has the transit mall concept made permanent to a rethinking of north york center to an expansion of a lot of the dense nodes that exist in the suburbs the city is changing in a lot of ways very quickly at the same time as i talked about in a recent video transit is getting a huge boost just this week a number of transit systems in the toronto area including the toronto regional rail network go transit enabled contactless credit card payments on transit with the rest of the region's transit agencies likely to follow in the future once infrastructure upgrades are completed as it turns out in my personal opinion the lack of contactless payments on toronto's transit systems was sort of emblematic of the things we get wrong in toronto we're simply behind on doing a lot of the obvious things that other cities do to make life better for residents but at the same time the quiet and unceremonious way that this problem just simply ceased to exist in large parts of the urban area is also emblematic of the way that a lot of the problems we face in toronto do just get fixed over time now i've been a little wishy-washy about whether this city really has the largest transit expansion in north america in previous videos because other cities are planning a lot of stuff but in toronto a lot is getting built today and on the whole even with my complaints which are frequent i do think the projects here are better than other cities in north america and run a wider gamut as well if you're using the existing transit system in the future it's going to get better too not just new lines and services i'm also actually optimistic about the future for transit here and when i say the future i mean the future of it actually getting used and so continuing to exist as a compelling service i don't think new projects we open will go woefully underused or will see poor service like you've seen in some other cities like for example denver on some of its regional rail lines at the same time opening new lines and increasing services only going to increase the demand for non-car based transportation and at the center of almost all of toronto's growth is transit and there's probably no better example of that than union station which is at the center of toronto's central business district which has actually moved south over the years to be basically centered right on the station now it's a bit of a joke among torontonians that union station is always under construction and this kind of joke exists in most major cities for some piece of infrastructure but the truth is that even though some parts of the union station rehabilitation have been poorly planned and executed at the end of the day the station is so much nicer than it was just a few years ago that i don't really care on the transit network itself ridership is also recovering postcovid and that's thanks to the fact that toronto is a transit city service just wasn't cut back to the degree it was in a lot of american cities and i think the reason for that is that it simply couldn't be a lot of people in toronto rely on transit and one-third of households don't own a car at all mayan included of course service on regional rail is also getting better trains are busy demand is there and honestly a lot of the frustration people have is that there just isn't enough service and capacity to handle all of the people that want to use it i've actually gotten a lot more into urban cycling recently in toronto as well and while the city has a lot of ground to make up on its peers like montreal vancouver and ottawa the city is actually better for biking around than you might imagine and i think the fact that so many people in toronto are immigrants whether from other parts of canada or other parts of the world means that people are constantly comparing our infrastructure here whether it be cycling or transit or something else to other places in the world and that means that we're always trying to improve the city does not have enough bike infrastructure but new development in areas like the waterfront and the portlands will actually have pretty good infrastructure from day one at the same time numerous new transit stations and regional rail stations which have opened or are opening soon already include really nice bike parking new office developments are also designed so that people can get there on a bike including bike parking and even showers and change rooms because yes it does get very hot and sweaty in toronto in the summer it's not my favorite thing about this city the city is also rapidly building out new bike lanes during covid a massive number of new lanes opened and now they've been mostly made permanent and are they world class not always but a lot of them are actually pretty good for example the lanes on university avenue at the same time car light streets like shaw are awesome on top of that we're starting to see protected intersections for cyclists built across the city and a ton more are planned including in the central area and as with transit as the infrastructure continues to get better and better and better more people will be using it and thus the demand for more infrastructure will only increase and is any of this actually having an impact on how many people are cycling well looking at bikeshare toronto would probably be a good indicator and the system is booming it's now one of the largest bike sharing systems in north america with over 600 stations and there are plans to take it to over a thousand in the next couple of years use really exploded during the pandemic but it's actually stayed high even as things have waned and that's because people tried cycling and realized why it's so great at the same time as it's becoming much more popular the network is also rolling out e-bikes which aren't amazing today because they are often left uncharged but new charging stations are being added to the network to help solve that problem and all of this is also just visibly noticeable when you're walking along the streets in toronto you see more cyclists than you would see in the past and when i talk to friends it seems like more people are biking as well businesses are also adopting cycling a lot of courier companies or delivery companies are actually piloting delivering by bike and as not just bikes pointed out in a recent video on cargo bikes we even have a cargo bike delivery service called nearby here in toronto now on top of this major expansion of non-car mobility options in the city new development is only piling on top of that i already mentioned transit oriented development but other new development is doing things like incorporating charging stations for those bike share toronto e-bikes and someone mentioned to me recently that they were surprised to see a development sign that said there will be several thousand parking spots for bikes at a new condo tower but only a couple of spots for cars but this isn't just an exception this is the trend with new development in toronto and what it really is is a vote of confidence in the fact that you'll be able to get around the city in the future without a car as i've mentioned previously on the channel we're also just generally building a lot of stuff around the city and that makes it feel dynamic and really interesting if you go and walk down a street one week in another you'll notice a lot of changes and changes for the better as we speak right now several architecturally interesting and iconic new office towers are being built in the financial district at the same time the skyline is being redefined while toronto has been building more high rises than other north american cities in recent years it doesn't have any super tall skyscrapers which are over 300 meters tall but several are actually now under development or already under construction mostly on young street which i think will make the city look even more interesting in the future so much is actually going on on this front that i actually made a video about it about a year ago just walking along young street and looking at all the changes the city also feels like a growing cultural center for north america now i don't know a ton about youtubers but there seems to be a lot of them living in the city and at the same time the film industry here is just doing incredibly well but putting all of that aside even if you get sick of toronto it's easy to go to other places from here as well the airports have had very well publicized problems in the last few months but once things get back to normal pearson is a great airport which you can travel to much of the world from and billy bishop airport which is in lake ontario near downtown toronto is an airport that you can actually walk or cycle to which is something you can't save for most airports in north america of course starting this year you'll also be able to travel to other cities like montreal and ottawa using new via trains which are completely modern and far more comfortable than the old ones which means your travel options from toronto are honestly excellent i think it's important that when you look at a city you don't just base your assessment on where the city is today but where it's going in the future and while i think toronto is a fairly good city today i think it has a really bright future in front of it i've made my frustrations with the city well known and that's because i think there are ways we could be doing better but at the end of the day being able to do better doesn't mean what we're already doing isn't good and honestly what i think matters most about this city is that it's changing for the better every single day which is something you won't experience in every single city and is incredibly frustrating because the way we do most cities in north america and canada is broken and fortunately seeing a north american city that actually fixes that problem is something i think i can see here in toronto so for now i'm staying thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 93,303

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning

Id: V-NQDLbZ50M

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2022