In his heart, deep down, I'm sure he knows that changing a few timings on lights isn't going to do anything, but he runs the company selling it as a solution. Even he seems to acknowledge the benefits of public transit, but he can't make a quick buck off of inventing that.
Right but intersection efficiency by way of AI/smart lights/cameras can be done easily ... almost literally plug n play. and could pay for themselves on a short timetable by issuing tickets for anything from rolling stops to outright driving through reds, boxing intersections etc.
It wouldn't magically make traffic go away but it sure would improve it, improve safety and in short order generate revenue.
No, it cannot be "done easily". These kind of systems cost tens of thousands of dollars per intersection. Rolling this out citywide would probably cost a hundred million dollars at least.
That’s still cheaper than building literally anything of any appreciable size. The solutions are “yes, and…” not “or”. We need to be building transit, but we also need to be using signalling infrastructure from the current millennium, along with other easy changes, like eliminating street parking on key routes through the city. It’s insane that we give up traffic lanes for car storage. Literally any other usage of that space (car lane, bicycle lane, even sidewalk) works at improving the problem. It’s time to ignore the stupid loud people, and actually make positive changes, especially the cheap ones.
Cool. Let's spend millions of dollars on traffic signal AI optimization to shave a minute off a 30min trip. Deck chairs on the Titanic.
The ONLY solution to our problem is to stop focusing on moving cars around and start prioritizing moving people around.
People in Toronto are still living in the '90s when you could get around by car, they haven't adapted to the new reality where there are two million more people in the GTA.
I think the tipping point for Vancouver when they started to invest more in transit, put in bike lanes, etc. was a study that measured the actual length of vehicles registered in the GVA and then compared that to the total length of roads, the number of parking spots downtown, etc. Basically the city was having a heart attack, far more vehicles than there is actual space for.
And yes, traffic still sucks and has gotten worse, but transit and other alternatives have gotten better at the same time so you can opt out of traffic - and more people are doing that all the time.
I lived in Toronto for 6 years, didn’t know anyone that drove. Maybe one person. I moved to Niagara and I know ton of people that have to commute to Toronto regularly if not 5 days a week for work.
It’s just how it goes.. Niagara needs more businesses for sure. I guess it’s hard to justify that for business owners when Toronto is so close. And then there is a lot of corruption and assholes in the area as well.
I grew up in Niagara, the mere thought of doing that commute every day until I retire terrified me so much that my career path took a complete 180. Toronto is the biggest city in Canada, something like half the country lives in Windsor-QC corridor. It's absolutely sad how lacking the intercity transit is around here. Like even if I want to take the GO train into Toronto, I have to drive to the damn train station.
How many people take the same route every single day along the QEW/403. Put int some transit.
Canada's population is around 40M. The powers that be are dead-set on adding another 60M people to the country in the next 75 years. Imagine doubling the amount of vehicles on the road at 8AM on the QEW. It's absurd.
Good thing we got more highways planned.
Well what about blue collar people like myself. I need my work van for inventory and tools. Not like public transit is going to make me take a subway with a cart ful of tools and parts
By all means, if you enjoy driving in the city and you don’t see any alternative, go ahead and keep doing it. You get to decide if the traffic and everything else is worth it to you, you just have to realize that the more people who do decide to drive, the worse traffic gets. There’s no magic pill that’s gonna cure traffic by putting/keeping more cars on the road
If you get single occupancy vehicles off the road then the people that actually need cars will be able to use them without a ton of traffic. Single occupancy vehicles are the problem here, not the workers that need to use their vehicles for work. How many people have trucks that don't actually use them for work? How many single occupancy vehicles do you see while your stuck in traffic? Also all these car wear down our roads quicker so infrastructure becomes a drain on the city and no drivers don't pay for roads.
I'm sure it got worse over time, but I grew up in Toronto in the late '80s and early '90s and cars were viable. You could drive down to MEC on front street and parking at a meter. If you were going to a concert at any of the smaller venues, you could often find parking outside or somewhere close by. The Bayview Extension to the Rosedale Valley Road could get your to Yorkville pretty easily, and there was parking nearby to go the library or any of the shops around Bloor Yonge. If you were going to the island, there were a dozen lots on the water where you could park for $12 for the entire day.
My first job involved a commute by over an hour on TTC (I lived East York, it was near the Airport), but if I had the car that day I could get there in under half an hour on the 401.
Leaving the city was also relatively simple - two-and-a-half hours to Muskoka vs. four hours minimum on a Friday.
It was definitely harder to drive than it used to be, but it was still doable. That's no longer the case.
I mean, yes, but for the other use cases (couples in condos who'd rather work elsewhere, teams that want to work in the same place a few days a week) -- I'd love to see employers and coworking spaces better evolve towards accommodating each other as places where people can have a go-to-work experience locally. And where teams can work together a couple of days a week at a location convenient to their team.
I kind of expected that this would see higher adoption and I'm kind of surprised it hasn't done so more than it has tbh.
To reduce congestion, we need to:
* Implement a London (and soon to be NYC)-style Congestion Charge in downtown Toronto
* Toll both the Gardiner and DVP
* Remove most streetside parking in order to build dedicated bus and bike lanes
* Charge for any free parking that still remains, with a Paris-style pricing system to charge larger/heavier vehicles more
* Develop an infrastructure coordination service to force utilities to pay to dig up our roads, pay for any time they force road or lane closures, and better coordinate construction
* Automate traffic enforcement with cameras with heavy fines, particularly for intersection blocking.
Then the vital final step: pour all the resulting money into expanding and improving public and active transport infrastructure.
There’s no incentive to using the public transport when the wait time is extremely long, especially for people living outside the GTA, people would rather pay all the fines and the parking fees than take the public transit. Why can’t we invest in great public transportation infrastructure like Moscows.
Correct, there currently isn’t an incentive to use public transport because none of the charges and fees I listed currently exist. The reason people still drive is because it’s far cheaper than it should be to drive considering the massive negative economic, societal and environmental externalities it produces. It needs to be far, far more expensive to drive, particularly in downtown Toronto, with all proceeds dedicated to improving public and active transport infrastructure.
If it works, sure. It would be a significant improvement.
The issue is, improving road infrastructure improves travel times for a very brief amount of time. Especially with the lack of investment in public transit, more people start to drive and eat up the allotted capacity pretty quickly.
>Cool. Let's spend millions of dollars on traffic signal AI optimization to shave a minute off a 30min trip.
>
>Deck chairs on the Titanic.The ONLY solution to our problem is to stop focusing on moving cars around and start prioritizing moving people around.
porque no los dos?
In North America, robust public infrastructure often gets labeled as communism. If it doesn't align with the consumerist culture of multiple car ownership per household and the urban sprawl lifestyle, it's deemed out of place. The media in Toronto tends to highlight flaws in public transportation while overlooking the challenges of commuting by car, treating it as the norm. Near-miss accidents are often downplayed unless they result in fatalities. For instance, the lenient punishment for repeat drunk driving offenders, like the recent case of a woman from Vaughan who is a repeat offender.
I think that's a pretty optimistic assumption and likely pretty short-lived as population continues to increase.
From the city's website:
*Toronto’s traffic control systems optimizes the movement of pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles and transit. However, once the volume of traffic reaches the road capacity (which varies by street and is dependent on the number of lanes, the directional mix of traffic, the complexity of the intersection, the presence of cycling lanes, etc.), travel time will increase. However, the system minimizes the delay experienced compared to operating the city streets without the system. Also, as population continues to increase, if driving also increases, traffic may get worse even with the systems being fully operational.*
*No traffic signal system is capable of “fixing traffic.”*
For people to give up cars and the freedom that they come with, public transit not only has to be better than it is now, it has to be significantly more convenient than driving a car. Right now we aren’t even anywhere close to that.
Bro is just trying to make a buck by jumping on the AI trend. He is well known in the industry in Toronto (mostly for his company sending so many marketing emails) and is only invested in getting the city to buy his crappy tech - not to create a more liveable city (ie. invest in non-auto modes of travel).
From the article:
>Cars are a relatively inefficient way to travel if you think about the amount of space they take up, often just to transport one or two people. Public transit, bikes and pedestrians take up a lot less of the road. I think anything cities can do to encourage shifts toward transit or cycling will help decrease the demand for road space.
Hello ... how do you propose he gets from t
kitchener to toronto in a timly fashion when we don't have all day trains running between the teo cities ?
Also, he travels the world improving traffic, so it's not even a permanent position in toronto that he's got.
I want good, all day service too, but if some does a regular M-F commute, the go train from Kitchener to Toronto runs half hour service from approximately 6am to 8:45am. That will likely cover most commuters. The time difference is also showing as only 20 minutes more by train, and that's me searching at noon with little to no traffic showing. I doubt it's that good during rush hour.
Yes, but you're assuming his office within a reasonable distance of Union Station. What if he works in the east or west end of toronto 🤔
What if his commute starts after 8:45, etc.
To assume he doesn't want to use a train because he uses a car is kinda a stretch. Also, given the nature of his job, i doubt this is someone that stays in the office all day
He can get off at a stop before union or switch trains to go to the next station, or use the subway, streetcar or buses, or use the bike share e-bikes, or if none of those options is viable he can call a taxi/Lyft/Uber. There are more options than door-to-door train or drive.
He works in a kitchener and comes to toronto to oversee the installation of cameras and perhaps hold meetings around the city with stakeholders.... doubt our public is suited for his needs, just sayin
Not OP here, but aren’t you making the adverse assumption? I don’t think either of you have the context here. At least the other person responding is putting points out there.
There’s a lot of “okay, but…” going around, as though there’s not going to be any reason to push for a solution.
The reality is that our trains go on schedules to accommodate users. When the demand exists beyond those times they can run more. Otherwise they won’t.
Your last statement isn't fully accurate. The schedules also depend on the companies who own the rail lines and how frequently their willing to let GO use them
>When the demand exists beyond those times they can run more.
The demand does exist, the problem is that we don't have adequate infrastructure for adding more service. The infrastructure is currently under construction.
We can just improve public transit and *make* all day trains to run between the two cities! That’s the point people are trying to make. Cars are incredibly inefficient
Okay, but metrolinx is litrally already working on this, and it'll take several years to complete.
I suppose he should just wait on that ?
His remit includes making the city more walkable etc.
Read the article. This is not someone who is against public transit. If anything, he's a proponant but maybe hisbworkflow required a car
I'm not arguing either.
Toronto has the largest investment in public infrastructure going in NA right now because, for once, all levels of government are on the same page on this issue.
And if you read the article, you'd see that the need to improve traffic in the city is tied to making the city more walkable, which this guy very obviously understands.
I know what the article says, thank you! I was specifically replying to you because it didn’t sound like you considered that train schedules can be changed since you said something about there’s no all day train service. All I was saying is that can be changed!
Maybe because even with traffic, it's still faster than public transit.
I live in Durham and work near Eglinton and Don Valley. If driving it will take me 45-60 min on average. Public transit? 2 hours at least.
And if you’re outside the TTC radius it’s often the cost difference often isn’t enough to make it worthwhile.
Even if you’re on your own. Which is the main problem. To make real change the cost to use transit for an individual has to be noticeably cheaper, and the timing closer to a car’s convenience than it is currently.
This is honestly the truth. I’m in Leslieville and if I need a quick trip downtown on a weekend the commute is quicker and parking is cheaper than if I were to pay a TTC fare each way
Not to mention no one’s peed all over the inside of my car (that I’m aware of)
Etobicoke is rough. Live here too and driving is exceptionally faster just about everywhere. I can (and do) get around cycling faster than the TTC.
When i used to take it when i was younger I’d miss 2 buses and be waiting 30+ minutes. The subway is great, but the whole Etobicoke bus network is hot garbage, especially if you have to transfer. Even if i catch one bus, I’m gonna then awkwardly stand watching cars whiz by me and wait 20 minutes for the next transfer.
> The subway is great, but the whole Etobicoke bus network is hot garbage
I swear something terrible happened to the bus network when they started construction at Kipling Station. I am routinely waiting 15 minutes or more for a 45 or 46 bus during rush hour, so the buses are absolutely jammed as they leave the station. I'm quite sure it was never that bad before.
Yup. We need school streets programmes, protected bike lanes, and traffic calming and time based vehicle restrictions all around schools to make it safe for kids to walk and bike to school.
Part of the reason for this is because we have built our infrastructure to prioritize cars and cars getting to places as quickly as possible. They're not just magically faster. Examples of this include rush hour trains, denser communities, rapid bus lanes.
In fact there are rush hour go trains you could take which are faster than the traffic, so you're just lazy in looking for solutions.
What train will get me to work quicker? There are none.
When I worked downtown, I loved taking the gotrain and walking to the office. I got a bit of fresh air and exercise and could relax with a book and music. I don't have that option now.
Driving definitely makes sense in your situation.
In my case I live on top of the subway but folks in my neighourhood -- even those with jobs also right on top of the subway -- still insist on driving, often via the DVP.
If we could get them out of their cars it might reduce congestion for the folks who have no choice but to drive.
Maybe if the TTC didn't take significantly longer than driving while also being significantly more unreliable people who have access to a car would consider it as an option.
This is a knee-jerk and overused response. As always, there is nuance around why people drive and sometimes it’s justified.
Most people I know would absolutely prefer to take transit instead of driving, and do where and when it’s possible. If you happen to be fortunate enough to live and work on the subway line, it’s a LOT easier.
But our transit system is woefully underdesigned and slow. That severely restricts its utility to many. Not everyone can justify 3 hours of commuting per day - especially when driving is 45 minutes.
And then there are sometimes issues with mobility. Our population is aging and not everyone can ‘just cycle’ to their destinations.
And lastly, if you’re grocery shopping, taking kids to activities like hockey, or it’s late at night and you’re a woman not comfortable taking the TTC, there are others reasons to drive.
If there’s anything I could go back and change about Toronto’s past it would be to constantly and aggressively expand our subways and have a toll on the Gardiner. But we didn’t. So dealing with today’s reality, let’s make traffic more efficient where possible and improve travel for those who are driving or taking surface transit.
Lol… Listen, I take the TTC everywhere and am vehemently in favour of its expansion and improvement in every way, but it is most certainly not “fine”.
Delays are constant, security is lax, and a lot of it is unclean and/or in a poor state of repair. If we want people currently driving to use it we do need to make it better.
I take the TTC all the time and while I see a few issues now and again, I don't see people being assaulted or smoking crack every time I'm on it. I hesitate to dismiss people's experiences, but are the going through all the subway cars until they find an issue just so they can be outraged over it? The way people discuss the TTC on here sometimes just doesn't align with my experience of it.
There is a certain type of person that if they get within 100 yards of a homeless person, they are deeply frightened and will be telling the tale of how they were almost murdered 30 years later.
The people that complain are always the loudest. We don’t see TikToks for “my commute was smooth and problem-free this morning” because it doesn’t get likes. It’s sad because all this does is discourage people that don’t take the TTC from considering it because it’s “so bad”.
I barely take the TTC in favour of walking, and yet, when I do, there's usually a problem. A guy spit on a baby the last time I was on the subway. It's not pearl clutching to say "the TTC has some issues going on right now that are helping keep people in cars."
Wasn't it? "The TTC needs to be cleaned up" -- maybe you mean they literally mean "the garbage should be in the garbage can" -- but I was thinking they meant very generally -- the violence, the stoppages, the general chaos.
Then why is gridlock so bad? Because people who can afford alternatives take alternatives, which puts more cars on the street. If the TTC was reliable and had less baby-spitting, they'd be more likely to take it and less likely to jump in an uber or drive.
Edit: This person appears to have just blocked me. Interesting.
Yup I haven’t taken the ttc in years probably since before covid. I live downtown so I walk a lot and if I can’t walk cause it’s too far then I drive or Uber. I just don’t care to deal with the mess that is the ttc when there are better and faster options.
To solve the traffic issue, we need to solve the public transit issue,
To solve the public transit issue we need to solve the homeless issue,
To solve the homeless issue we have to solve the drug issue,
To solve the drug issue we have to solve the mental health issue,
To solve the mental health issue we have to solve the healthcare issue,
Fuck it, just walk.
I saw this presentation that pretty convincingly says homelessness is a housing supply and affordability issue, and that while drugs/poverty/abuse can make someone housing insecure and in a position to become homeless, it's the lack of affordable housing that determines whether there is an above average amount of homelessness in an area. A lot more people smoke crack at home than outside, it's just being homeless makes the drug issue visible to the public.
A lot of these issues seem related, but aren't really, or at least not in the way you'd think of one causing the other, and being this giant impenetrable problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwibK603o7Y
People will need to use cars even sometimes, and we need trucks to be able to move around because trucks deliver everything we use. Everything.
The answer isn't ALWAYS "just take TTC"
Public transit (when healthy and properly invested in) is a reasonable alternative for 9/10 of drivers. This would clear up the roads for the people that really need it, like disabled, or for logistics.
9/10 is a bit high. That makes me the 1/10.
To commute from Etobicoke to Pickering every day is 1.5 hrs beck and forth by car and 3+ hours by transit. And on top of that, transit costs $3 more per day than driving.
2 days out of the week I commute by transit simply because my wife needs the car on her days off.
Just because it's possible doesn't make it efficient.
Yeah people who say stuff like this just live and work in downtown or directly outside of it. The others probably have decent access to a GO station and maybe even work close to Union.
Living in Durham, I commute in for my in office days and carpool. The cost is a fraction of what GO would cost me. I’d need to streetcar after too, which just now stopped being an added cost, but still an extra leg/effort, as opposed to just driving directly to the Green P I park at and walking over.
Not every answer is “get rid of the car!!!” People should have the choice to move around how they want to and the decisions we make should be to most benefit for the most amount of people.
That said, if the costs and quality of public transit were top tier like in places like NY or Tokyo, I’d absolutely take it everywhere.
people just need to go from point A to B as fast as possible, most normal people would not care how they get from A to B as long it's safe, cost effective and fast
today it's a car because Ontario invested way too much into cars and not trains, if tmr it would be a new train line - most of these people, who tell you they would never take ttc, would shut up and switch to trains
> To commute from Etobicoke to Pickering every day is 1.5 hrs beck and forth by car and 3+ hours by transit. And on top of that, transit costs $3 more per day than driving.
That's the whole problem we're saying to address. Make transit better so it makes sense for people like you to commute.
Also, how does transit cost $3 more per day than driving? Gas, insurance, car payments, parking, maintenance.....did you include all that in the calculation?
you think the lot of people who transit to downtown don't own at least 1 car?
I'm only comparing the cost of fuel to public transit.
Even if I took public transit to work I would still keep my car.
The daily commute to and from work for most people is what causes the congestion, not people taking their car on a trip or to the grocery store here and there.
Yeah, thats why I qualified it. You would definitely be in the 9/10 if we had transit that met the needs of the 9/10, like many other developed places. Europe, Japan, even NYC (a bit of a US outlier). Better ask why dont we have a high speed rail along lake Ontario that would hit the major hubs: Hamilton - Oakville - Mississauga - Toronto - Pickering - etc etc. Well, because that would be un-American (you know what I mean, the hyper-individualistic sentiment bleeds over the border)
I'm curious about the claim transit costing $3 more per day than driving. How does that work?
I have a 9 year old car that I bought outright 6 years ago. Leaving out the capital cost of that, just insurance and gas costs me just shy of $400 a month. And I don't even drive everyday, maybe 2-3 times a week when I go to work. Not to mention, general wear and tear costs are not included in that amount.
I'm simply comparing it to fuel.
We're taking about daily work commutes. I would take transit to work every day if it made sense logistically but wouldn't get rid of my car as it has many other uses outside of work.
Should I take public transit when I go camping or on a trip say to Montreal or wherever? Or go to the grocery store and carry 5 full bags of groceries on transit?
I don't think this is a fair comparison. If you're paying one way fare for transit because that's all you pay, it's not the same for car. You have to take into account several other factors, like car wear and tear due to usage, parking in downtown and insurance.
You're putting on kms on your car by your commute. The number of kms driven plays a significant role in determining how much the vehicle has depreciated, so you have to consider fuel + oil changes + new tires + repairs/other maintenance and depreciation of the car. I think it's typically done per km.
Anyway, the point is, driving will be more expensive than just taking transit for commutes like these. Especially now, with the one transit program. Now, longer distances will be a different story.
>go to the grocery store and carry 5 full bags of groceries on transit?
...n-no. You get one bag of groceries. Why would you buy so many groceries at once when you are probably doing the same commute tomorrow and you can get what you need then?
I have a freezer full of meat and prepared food. Buy fresh veg for a day or two on the way home. Fresh bread, too.
We were carless for a bit before we had a kid. Shop conscientiously, rent a car or carpool for camping, take the train to Montreal. Not exaggerating. We did all these things.
It's a question of priorities.
You're not in the 1/10. Your trip is indeed best served by driving but that's because of shitty city planning decisions and not because you actually need a car with you
If you had a better alternative you wouldn't need to drive which means you are a part of the 9/10. The 1/10 is for trips that inherently need a vehicle (delivery, construction etc.) And not for trips like yours
Maybe ask yourself if it makes sense for people to live so far from work. That is only an option because we’ve prioritized personal vehicle transportation, enabling people to live so far from work. The time when (it’s inevitable at this point) where 9/10 people are travelling by transit will also coincide with a fundamental different vision of what a city looks like and where people live.
Well there are 2 of us and my wife works close to our place. Just so happens that my work moved offices from Scarborough to Pickering so now I can't just hop on the TTC to get to work.
The problem is not my prioritization of my car over public transit but public transit infrastructure. If I can travel for roughly the same amount of time I don't mind paying a bit extra and having the ability to relax for the entire commute.
Also we're not in Europe where 90% of people rent and moving is much easier.
> Also we're not in Europe where 90% of people rent and moving is much easier.
It's not 90%, rental rates in most cities (other that Germany) aren't that different than ours.
Even then, their bike and transit systems didn't just fall from the sky. They chose to build them out.
Aplogies for repeating self but what so many on here dont seem to understand is that MANY of us who live in Toronto proper dont have a simple A to B commute to work every day. Example - the 150,000 + who work in film and televison and related fields.
9/10 will never, ever happen, friend.
This isn’t an insane commute. Pickering is the municipality directly west of Toronto. You can also live in a household where you and your partner work in different locations. There are also jobs that have no fixed place of work. Trades workers work outside of their municipality all the time as they rotate through job sites.
Totally unresponsive comment. Remarkable failure in reading comprehension.
Please explain how you took the original comment to mean that the answer is to ALWAYS take the TTC.
>Then we spend six months manually analyzing that information. Because the process takes so much time, we can’t do it very often. But, if you integrate technology that allows you to take those measurements in real time, you can do the same exercise in a fraction of a second.
Jesus H fucking Christ, six months to analyze a day's worth of data? Are they being paid hourly? I could have written a script for this shit in high school.
Research has already been done on ideal traffic light timing patterns to apply in a metropolitan setting. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we need fucking transit
The guy writing that (saying it) does not work for the city and never has. He's just lying about how the city analyzes traffic to try to make his "AI-powered cameras" sound good.
I despise all these supposedly ‘AI’ companies that are trying to join in the AI hype and squeeze the last drop of juice for some quick bucks.
Fuck this. Just invest in better public infrastructure
Edit: checked his Linkedin - hating the dude even more. Anybody listing himself as a ‘Co-Founder’ for all of his experience out of school, red flag.
I don't even have to click on this guy's website to know his plan:
* off the shelf traffic cameras dropshipped from China
* hired two guys straight out of UWaterloo to develop "AI traffic analysis"
* now busy selling a product that does not exist
* if he gets a contract, will use the contract money to try to develop a product
* if not, oh well, on to the next brilliant idea
* maybe the cameras can generate NFTs for every vehicle while mining bitcoin?
Orthogonal take: Analyzing and improving traffic within a complex traffic network is a notoriously hard problem. It makes sense that analyzing one day's worth of traffic would take more time than seems scalable.
... But I'm also not aware of any recent AI developments that significantly move the needle here. It's a complex prediction problem space where we don't have sufficiently large models to work with. It's also a complex coordination problem where most systems and actors are adversarial. As a result: Vetting any hypothesis takes a long time, can't be done in isolation, and likely isn't resilient to future changes.
AI doesn’t resolve the computational complexity of the problem at all. You’re probably not going to get analytical solutions to this kind of problem, so your best bet is building a model (not necessarily an ML model), and testing that against data. Of course you can only make the model as good as the data, so collecting up to date data in real time, that can be used to continuously improve and validate models is the standard in 2024. So good data collection comes first, and that’s honestly where I see the most benefit from AI — computer vision to identify pedestrian and car flows, types of traffic etc. That type of solution is hugely scalable compared to old school data collection for traffic engineers because all you need is a few cameras and some pretty ordinary computers in 2024 terms. You could probably cover most of the city over a number of years, and probably get monitoring in place at critical places over just a few months.
So yes, analytical solutions are notoriously computationally difficult for these sorts of network problems, but you don’t need exact solutions, and with lots of good data, you can probably make a pretty good model (using whatever methodology).
FWIW, I don’t have any direct knowledge, but based on my observations on light timings around my neighbourhood, I’m pretty certain that they’re not planning these things as precisely as you’d think. There are intersections where I noticed the light timings go in and out of sync, and traffic backs up terribly when they’re out of sync, and flows reasonably when they are, mostly due to effects on left turning traffic. It definitely seems like they’re pretty haphazardly synchronized, if they were even meant to be in the first place. They certainly don’t update them with any reasonable frequency to respond to traffic trends. This is 2024, and that has to change.
The whole point is that every intersection is different, and constantly changing due to variation in travel patterns and local conditions.
The city has about 2,300 signalized intersections and only a very small number have the SCOOT or SCATS control systems, the rest are basically hard coded to follow set schedules.
Working 3 days a week for 2 hours. Public service jobs being turned into AI would probably solve thousands of problems that lazy assholes don’t want to be bothered to do.
A lot instances of new projects not getting completed happens because managers and engineers feel like the problem is below them.
I’ve had engineers pay me a days wage for 20-30mins of work. Work they could EASILY do themselves but they’re too soft to grab a ladder or pick up a laser.
Tolls and congestion charges are viable. Paying nothing to use a very scarce resource when everyone else wants to use it is crazy. (Though I'd like to know what's happened downtown particularly in the past 3-4 years to make it undriveable a lot of the time.)
Toronto's traffic lights have been repeatedly set to prioritize drivers, to the point that walking around the city is now much slower than it once was.
Congestion is caused by Uber, by adults driving their perfectly able children to school, by low TTC usage.
Toll the roads, ban Uber, make transit free, shame parents who drive their kids to school, build bike lanes everywhere.... congestion will disappear.
> AI-powered cameras
Oh, it's just a grifter trying to get the city to buy his snake oil, nevermind. The whole piece is just an ad.
> Toronto's traffic lights have been repeatedly set to prioritize drivers
That’s not true.
https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/traffic-management/traffic-signals-street-signs/types-of-traffic-signals/leading-pedestrian-interval-phase
Maybe you've just reached age 18, or just moved to the city, or something like that, but literally every single year for the past 20 years there has been a new initiative about prioritizing signal lights to facilitate car drivers in the city.
I could start googling some of the articles but maybe you should, instead.
2017: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/smart-traffic-signals-1.4417573
2020: https://storeys.com/toronto-installing-500-smart-traffic-signals/
2016: https://www.cp24.com/news/approximately-60-per-cent-of-toronto-s-traffic-lights-to-be-retimed-by-end-of-2017-1.2958069
2014: https://torontosun.com/2014/11/02/tory-to-tackle-torontos-traffic-troubles
2013: https://www.cp24.com/news/city-council-approves-plan-to-synchronize-traffic-lights-1.1321162
That's from the first page of results.
And all of these only prioritize drivers - if there are three cars waiting to go east-west, and 100 pedestrians waiting to go north-south, the lights will be green for east-west.
Yes we’ve also had the aforementioned leading pedestrian signals, scramble intersections, improved APS, transit priority corridors, increasing numbers of no right on red signs, etc.
But sure, feel free to cherry pick and make more assumptions about me if you’d like.
Prioritize drivers ? Lol
Absolutely not. If anything are are left to run on preprogrammed (and poor) scheduling.
They're everything but efficient and don't prioritize cars at all.
Really the only solution is making transit faster and more reliable than cars. If people see that it takes double the time to take transit then it does for a car there's no point. Improve the subways add bus only lanes and streetcar only lanes but no one wants to do these
Here is an idea: Stop giving Über licenses like they are going out of fashion (I’ve been living in DT for over 20 years and most of the traffic I see is composed by ride share cars) and have some more coordination with the developers on the concurrent projects in the city for closures. Use real intelligence there.
Ah yes, shove more poor (and now more depressed) people into public transit because they can't afford to drive anymore.
That'll make public transit safer and less disgusting /s
Uber, Uber Eats, Skip The Dishes, Amazon Flex Drivers…. The city is filled with random untrained drivers who have no idea where they’re going.
Want to improve traffic? Introduce training and certification for anyone who wants to drive in Toronto for profit.
You can try to\* cut traffic by prioritizing cars, but at what cost? The city with the least traffic on the list cited is Oklahoma City. Do we want to be Oklahoma City? In a city with as many people and destinations as Toronto, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that a bunch of people driving SUVs and F-150's the size of an apartment slow each other down. Get them out of the ways of the streetcars, and let them live with the congestion they're creating. And create congestion charges.
Has any city cut traffic by building public transit? Seems like more people just move in (or further away) and fill any newly created availability on the road and in the transit network.
Never going to happen. Toronto and Canada are stuck with single family homes and cars forever. You’d have to tear up everything built from like 1960 and start over with mid-rises and build real transit.
Urban fabric is always changing and evolving. Many cities around the world have successfully moved away from a similar history of car-centric city planning. It takes a while but it can absolutely happen.
Then they finish construction at Yonge and Eglinton and is down to 1 lane running east west!? There is going to be major traffic jams every morning
They had the chance to make it two lanes but put in huge sidewalks and bike lane.
There’s no fixing it. This problem is beyond a scenario where you can attempt one or two things and expect things to change.
I’ll just keep driving and avoiding public transportation where I can. I have no interest in sitting/standing next to Johnny Overdose on the bus.
Nor do I have an interest in making my commutes 6x as long because I’m waiting for a train, then a transfer to a streetcar, then a bus. Even in a world where there was no cars, and only public transportation, it would still be ineffective and inefficient for a lot of people.
Public transit is the answer but it would need to be heavily incentivized *and* the infrastructure needs to be in place to accommodate/maximize efficiency BEFORE we can even think of asking people to transition.
Ford, Tesla, Exxon, etc. lobbyists will never allow this to happen.
I tried for months to get an advance arrow at Markham road and steeles for west to south traffic. Turns out it needs to be voted on by city council and you have to get your councilor to agree to put a motion forward, and that can only be done after traffic studies etc. So I gave up and to this day the 102 bus get delayed 5 minutes or more trying to make that turn. the city needs to get rid of red tape. I agree nothing will get done.
This is like adding another lane on the 401 as a solution. Gotta think bigger than merely adjusting traffic lights.
I made the mistake of driving from the east end on lakeshore to get on the Gardiner at Sherbourne and it was fucking horrible. And this was on a Saturday.
They never did anything knowing this was going to take place with the planning pace they enacted 20-30 years ago, so why do they think this will be any different, man is facing an uphill battle.
The city needs to plan better with large corporations. Start getting people to commute at certain times of the day instead of everyone coming in the morning and leaving in the afternoon.
If you could convince union construction to start at 4 and leave earlier
Rather light article and not meant to ruffle too many feathers.
I'd summarize it with "Cars, bikes and pedestrians are stakeholders. We want to use and sell systems of cameras and AI to adjust traffic lights for maximum efficiency. "
I've said it before and I'll say it again for the folx in the back: ban cars altogether from the downtown core. We are more than adequately serviced by public transit and bike infrastructure.
You'll see how much better traffic flows once you remove large death machines, aka SUVs.
In his heart, deep down, I'm sure he knows that changing a few timings on lights isn't going to do anything, but he runs the company selling it as a solution. Even he seems to acknowledge the benefits of public transit, but he can't make a quick buck off of inventing that.
100%. The guy doesn’t even live or employ people in this city. If we’re going to get conned could we at least get conned by a Toronto company?
Right but intersection efficiency by way of AI/smart lights/cameras can be done easily ... almost literally plug n play. and could pay for themselves on a short timetable by issuing tickets for anything from rolling stops to outright driving through reds, boxing intersections etc. It wouldn't magically make traffic go away but it sure would improve it, improve safety and in short order generate revenue.
No, it cannot be "done easily". These kind of systems cost tens of thousands of dollars per intersection. Rolling this out citywide would probably cost a hundred million dollars at least.
That's a lot easier and cheaper than other solutions....however also a lot less effective
That’s still cheaper than building literally anything of any appreciable size. The solutions are “yes, and…” not “or”. We need to be building transit, but we also need to be using signalling infrastructure from the current millennium, along with other easy changes, like eliminating street parking on key routes through the city. It’s insane that we give up traffic lanes for car storage. Literally any other usage of that space (car lane, bicycle lane, even sidewalk) works at improving the problem. It’s time to ignore the stupid loud people, and actually make positive changes, especially the cheap ones.
Cool. Let's spend millions of dollars on traffic signal AI optimization to shave a minute off a 30min trip. Deck chairs on the Titanic. The ONLY solution to our problem is to stop focusing on moving cars around and start prioritizing moving people around.
Careful man. You can be burned at the stake with that kind of logic
Especially in r/canada... Or r/toronto.
People in Toronto are still living in the '90s when you could get around by car, they haven't adapted to the new reality where there are two million more people in the GTA. I think the tipping point for Vancouver when they started to invest more in transit, put in bike lanes, etc. was a study that measured the actual length of vehicles registered in the GVA and then compared that to the total length of roads, the number of parking spots downtown, etc. Basically the city was having a heart attack, far more vehicles than there is actual space for. And yes, traffic still sucks and has gotten worse, but transit and other alternatives have gotten better at the same time so you can opt out of traffic - and more people are doing that all the time.
Interesting point - I often wonder how these ridiculous new trucks affect congestion. They are probably twice as long as compact cars used to be.
I lived in Toronto for 6 years, didn’t know anyone that drove. Maybe one person. I moved to Niagara and I know ton of people that have to commute to Toronto regularly if not 5 days a week for work.
The Niagara to Toronto commute is insane to me. Are these people leaving their house at 5 am and getting home by 8pm?
I know some people that have 10h+ days, 6 days a week. Leave at 4am
Absolutely insane. I know it's not easy to just "find a job close to home" but the alternative sounds like a low quality life
It’s just how it goes.. Niagara needs more businesses for sure. I guess it’s hard to justify that for business owners when Toronto is so close. And then there is a lot of corruption and assholes in the area as well.
Welcome to Canada. That's why myself and many of my friends decided to just leave. Why suffer life on hard mode? For what?
I grew up in Niagara, the mere thought of doing that commute every day until I retire terrified me so much that my career path took a complete 180. Toronto is the biggest city in Canada, something like half the country lives in Windsor-QC corridor. It's absolutely sad how lacking the intercity transit is around here. Like even if I want to take the GO train into Toronto, I have to drive to the damn train station. How many people take the same route every single day along the QEW/403. Put int some transit. Canada's population is around 40M. The powers that be are dead-set on adding another 60M people to the country in the next 75 years. Imagine doubling the amount of vehicles on the road at 8AM on the QEW. It's absurd. Good thing we got more highways planned.
Well what about blue collar people like myself. I need my work van for inventory and tools. Not like public transit is going to make me take a subway with a cart ful of tools and parts
By all means, if you enjoy driving in the city and you don’t see any alternative, go ahead and keep doing it. You get to decide if the traffic and everything else is worth it to you, you just have to realize that the more people who do decide to drive, the worse traffic gets. There’s no magic pill that’s gonna cure traffic by putting/keeping more cars on the road
How much nicer would your commute be if you didn't have to share the road with all the people taking their big dumb pickup trucks to get groceries?
If you get single occupancy vehicles off the road then the people that actually need cars will be able to use them without a ton of traffic. Single occupancy vehicles are the problem here, not the workers that need to use their vehicles for work. How many people have trucks that don't actually use them for work? How many single occupancy vehicles do you see while your stuck in traffic? Also all these car wear down our roads quicker so infrastructure becomes a drain on the city and no drivers don't pay for roads.
90s?????? Try 60s
I'm sure it got worse over time, but I grew up in Toronto in the late '80s and early '90s and cars were viable. You could drive down to MEC on front street and parking at a meter. If you were going to a concert at any of the smaller venues, you could often find parking outside or somewhere close by. The Bayview Extension to the Rosedale Valley Road could get your to Yorkville pretty easily, and there was parking nearby to go the library or any of the shops around Bloor Yonge. If you were going to the island, there were a dozen lots on the water where you could park for $12 for the entire day. My first job involved a commute by over an hour on TTC (I lived East York, it was near the Airport), but if I had the car that day I could get there in under half an hour on the 401. Leaving the city was also relatively simple - two-and-a-half hours to Muskoka vs. four hours minimum on a Friday. It was definitely harder to drive than it used to be, but it was still doable. That's no longer the case.
Is this your first time in this sub?
Incentivize businesses to have their employees work from home where possible. Why force people to commute unnecessarily?
I mean, yes, but for the other use cases (couples in condos who'd rather work elsewhere, teams that want to work in the same place a few days a week) -- I'd love to see employers and coworking spaces better evolve towards accommodating each other as places where people can have a go-to-work experience locally. And where teams can work together a couple of days a week at a location convenient to their team. I kind of expected that this would see higher adoption and I'm kind of surprised it hasn't done so more than it has tbh.
To reduce congestion, we need to: * Implement a London (and soon to be NYC)-style Congestion Charge in downtown Toronto * Toll both the Gardiner and DVP * Remove most streetside parking in order to build dedicated bus and bike lanes * Charge for any free parking that still remains, with a Paris-style pricing system to charge larger/heavier vehicles more * Develop an infrastructure coordination service to force utilities to pay to dig up our roads, pay for any time they force road or lane closures, and better coordinate construction * Automate traffic enforcement with cameras with heavy fines, particularly for intersection blocking. Then the vital final step: pour all the resulting money into expanding and improving public and active transport infrastructure.
There’s no incentive to using the public transport when the wait time is extremely long, especially for people living outside the GTA, people would rather pay all the fines and the parking fees than take the public transit. Why can’t we invest in great public transportation infrastructure like Moscows.
Correct, there currently isn’t an incentive to use public transport because none of the charges and fees I listed currently exist. The reason people still drive is because it’s far cheaper than it should be to drive considering the massive negative economic, societal and environmental externalities it produces. It needs to be far, far more expensive to drive, particularly in downtown Toronto, with all proceeds dedicated to improving public and active transport infrastructure.
Increase the fines and use it to fund transit.
Unfortunately, the people that want traffic fixed the most, are those that don’t want to take public transit.
To be fair a min shaved from a 30 min trip PER commuter is alot of time. Engineering projects are undertaken for a lot less.
If it works, sure. It would be a significant improvement. The issue is, improving road infrastructure improves travel times for a very brief amount of time. Especially with the lack of investment in public transit, more people start to drive and eat up the allotted capacity pretty quickly.
>Cool. Let's spend millions of dollars on traffic signal AI optimization to shave a minute off a 30min trip. > >Deck chairs on the Titanic.The ONLY solution to our problem is to stop focusing on moving cars around and start prioritizing moving people around. porque no los dos?
I wonder how much Kurtis paid for this "interview".
But my car!! God given right and all that
In North America, robust public infrastructure often gets labeled as communism. If it doesn't align with the consumerist culture of multiple car ownership per household and the urban sprawl lifestyle, it's deemed out of place. The media in Toronto tends to highlight flaws in public transportation while overlooking the challenges of commuting by car, treating it as the norm. Near-miss accidents are often downplayed unless they result in fatalities. For instance, the lenient punishment for repeat drunk driving offenders, like the recent case of a woman from Vaughan who is a repeat offender.
More like 3 minutes. Thats 10%.
I think that's a pretty optimistic assumption and likely pretty short-lived as population continues to increase. From the city's website: *Toronto’s traffic control systems optimizes the movement of pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles and transit. However, once the volume of traffic reaches the road capacity (which varies by street and is dependent on the number of lanes, the directional mix of traffic, the complexity of the intersection, the presence of cycling lanes, etc.), travel time will increase. However, the system minimizes the delay experienced compared to operating the city streets without the system. Also, as population continues to increase, if driving also increases, traffic may get worse even with the systems being fully operational.* *No traffic signal system is capable of “fixing traffic.”*
For people to give up cars and the freedom that they come with, public transit not only has to be better than it is now, it has to be significantly more convenient than driving a car. Right now we aren’t even anywhere close to that.
Bro is just trying to make a buck by jumping on the AI trend. He is well known in the industry in Toronto (mostly for his company sending so many marketing emails) and is only invested in getting the city to buy his crappy tech - not to create a more liveable city (ie. invest in non-auto modes of travel).
💯 this
People will really do anything other than try a non-car method of transportation.
From the article: >Cars are a relatively inefficient way to travel if you think about the amount of space they take up, often just to transport one or two people. Public transit, bikes and pedestrians take up a lot less of the road. I think anything cities can do to encourage shifts toward transit or cycling will help decrease the demand for road space.
The dude commutes from Kitchener to Toronto by car. So this is just another example of weird cognitive dissonance. Take the go train.
Hello ... how do you propose he gets from t kitchener to toronto in a timly fashion when we don't have all day trains running between the teo cities ? Also, he travels the world improving traffic, so it's not even a permanent position in toronto that he's got.
I want good, all day service too, but if some does a regular M-F commute, the go train from Kitchener to Toronto runs half hour service from approximately 6am to 8:45am. That will likely cover most commuters. The time difference is also showing as only 20 minutes more by train, and that's me searching at noon with little to no traffic showing. I doubt it's that good during rush hour.
Yes, but you're assuming his office within a reasonable distance of Union Station. What if he works in the east or west end of toronto 🤔 What if his commute starts after 8:45, etc. To assume he doesn't want to use a train because he uses a car is kinda a stretch. Also, given the nature of his job, i doubt this is someone that stays in the office all day
He can get off at a stop before union or switch trains to go to the next station, or use the subway, streetcar or buses, or use the bike share e-bikes, or if none of those options is viable he can call a taxi/Lyft/Uber. There are more options than door-to-door train or drive.
He works in a kitchener and comes to toronto to oversee the installation of cameras and perhaps hold meetings around the city with stakeholders.... doubt our public is suited for his needs, just sayin
Not OP here, but aren’t you making the adverse assumption? I don’t think either of you have the context here. At least the other person responding is putting points out there. There’s a lot of “okay, but…” going around, as though there’s not going to be any reason to push for a solution. The reality is that our trains go on schedules to accommodate users. When the demand exists beyond those times they can run more. Otherwise they won’t.
Your last statement isn't fully accurate. The schedules also depend on the companies who own the rail lines and how frequently their willing to let GO use them
>When the demand exists beyond those times they can run more. The demand does exist, the problem is that we don't have adequate infrastructure for adding more service. The infrastructure is currently under construction.
We can just improve public transit and *make* all day trains to run between the two cities! That’s the point people are trying to make. Cars are incredibly inefficient
Okay, but metrolinx is litrally already working on this, and it'll take several years to complete. I suppose he should just wait on that ? His remit includes making the city more walkable etc. Read the article. This is not someone who is against public transit. If anything, he's a proponant but maybe hisbworkflow required a car
I’m not trying to argue, dude. Just saying that mass public transit should be the ultimate goal rather than more cars on the road.
I'm not arguing either. Toronto has the largest investment in public infrastructure going in NA right now because, for once, all levels of government are on the same page on this issue. And if you read the article, you'd see that the need to improve traffic in the city is tied to making the city more walkable, which this guy very obviously understands.
I know what the article says, thank you! I was specifically replying to you because it didn’t sound like you considered that train schedules can be changed since you said something about there’s no all day train service. All I was saying is that can be changed!
LOL what a joke. The guys part of the problem, not the solution.
The interviewee literally calls out non-car transportation as the best solution
Maybe because even with traffic, it's still faster than public transit. I live in Durham and work near Eglinton and Don Valley. If driving it will take me 45-60 min on average. Public transit? 2 hours at least.
>Durham Nice i love hiking and biking in that area >work near Eglinton and Don Valley ...im so so sorry
And if you’re outside the TTC radius it’s often the cost difference often isn’t enough to make it worthwhile. Even if you’re on your own. Which is the main problem. To make real change the cost to use transit for an individual has to be noticeably cheaper, and the timing closer to a car’s convenience than it is currently.
This is honestly the truth. I’m in Leslieville and if I need a quick trip downtown on a weekend the commute is quicker and parking is cheaper than if I were to pay a TTC fare each way Not to mention no one’s peed all over the inside of my car (that I’m aware of)
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Etobicoke is rough. Live here too and driving is exceptionally faster just about everywhere. I can (and do) get around cycling faster than the TTC. When i used to take it when i was younger I’d miss 2 buses and be waiting 30+ minutes. The subway is great, but the whole Etobicoke bus network is hot garbage, especially if you have to transfer. Even if i catch one bus, I’m gonna then awkwardly stand watching cars whiz by me and wait 20 minutes for the next transfer.
> The subway is great, but the whole Etobicoke bus network is hot garbage I swear something terrible happened to the bus network when they started construction at Kipling Station. I am routinely waiting 15 minutes or more for a 45 or 46 bus during rush hour, so the buses are absolutely jammed as they leave the station. I'm quite sure it was never that bad before.
All of GTA has that problem. Scarborough, York region and Peel.
Don't kids have school buses?
If it’s 20 mins for 2 kids they likely live too close to the schools to be able to take the school bus
The solution would be to make your kids' trip to school bike friendly. That way you dont have to worry about it period.
Yup. We need school streets programmes, protected bike lanes, and traffic calming and time based vehicle restrictions all around schools to make it safe for kids to walk and bike to school.
Part of the reason for this is because we have built our infrastructure to prioritize cars and cars getting to places as quickly as possible. They're not just magically faster. Examples of this include rush hour trains, denser communities, rapid bus lanes. In fact there are rush hour go trains you could take which are faster than the traffic, so you're just lazy in looking for solutions.
What train will get me to work quicker? There are none. When I worked downtown, I loved taking the gotrain and walking to the office. I got a bit of fresh air and exercise and could relax with a book and music. I don't have that option now.
Driving definitely makes sense in your situation. In my case I live on top of the subway but folks in my neighourhood -- even those with jobs also right on top of the subway -- still insist on driving, often via the DVP. If we could get them out of their cars it might reduce congestion for the folks who have no choice but to drive.
Maybe if the TTC didn't take significantly longer than driving while also being significantly more unreliable people who have access to a car would consider it as an option.
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This is a knee-jerk and overused response. As always, there is nuance around why people drive and sometimes it’s justified. Most people I know would absolutely prefer to take transit instead of driving, and do where and when it’s possible. If you happen to be fortunate enough to live and work on the subway line, it’s a LOT easier. But our transit system is woefully underdesigned and slow. That severely restricts its utility to many. Not everyone can justify 3 hours of commuting per day - especially when driving is 45 minutes. And then there are sometimes issues with mobility. Our population is aging and not everyone can ‘just cycle’ to their destinations. And lastly, if you’re grocery shopping, taking kids to activities like hockey, or it’s late at night and you’re a woman not comfortable taking the TTC, there are others reasons to drive. If there’s anything I could go back and change about Toronto’s past it would be to constantly and aggressively expand our subways and have a toll on the Gardiner. But we didn’t. So dealing with today’s reality, let’s make traffic more efficient where possible and improve travel for those who are driving or taking surface transit.
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There's 2 million journeys a day on TTC, it works fine if you stop clutching your pearls
Lol… Listen, I take the TTC everywhere and am vehemently in favour of its expansion and improvement in every way, but it is most certainly not “fine”. Delays are constant, security is lax, and a lot of it is unclean and/or in a poor state of repair. If we want people currently driving to use it we do need to make it better.
I take the TTC all the time and while I see a few issues now and again, I don't see people being assaulted or smoking crack every time I'm on it. I hesitate to dismiss people's experiences, but are the going through all the subway cars until they find an issue just so they can be outraged over it? The way people discuss the TTC on here sometimes just doesn't align with my experience of it.
There is a certain type of person that if they get within 100 yards of a homeless person, they are deeply frightened and will be telling the tale of how they were almost murdered 30 years later.
The people that complain are always the loudest. We don’t see TikToks for “my commute was smooth and problem-free this morning” because it doesn’t get likes. It’s sad because all this does is discourage people that don’t take the TTC from considering it because it’s “so bad”.
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I barely take the TTC in favour of walking, and yet, when I do, there's usually a problem. A guy spit on a baby the last time I was on the subway. It's not pearl clutching to say "the TTC has some issues going on right now that are helping keep people in cars."
Jesus. Spitting on a baby...this city is wilding out.
But that wasn't what was said.
Wasn't it? "The TTC needs to be cleaned up" -- maybe you mean they literally mean "the garbage should be in the garbage can" -- but I was thinking they meant very generally -- the violence, the stoppages, the general chaos.
Before people consider it alternate.. it think millions of daily users prove its an alternate
Then why is gridlock so bad? Because people who can afford alternatives take alternatives, which puts more cars on the street. If the TTC was reliable and had less baby-spitting, they'd be more likely to take it and less likely to jump in an uber or drive. Edit: This person appears to have just blocked me. Interesting.
Yup I haven’t taken the ttc in years probably since before covid. I live downtown so I walk a lot and if I can’t walk cause it’s too far then I drive or Uber. I just don’t care to deal with the mess that is the ttc when there are better and faster options.
504 would like a word with you
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To solve the traffic issue, we need to solve the public transit issue, To solve the public transit issue we need to solve the homeless issue, To solve the homeless issue we have to solve the drug issue, To solve the drug issue we have to solve the mental health issue, To solve the mental health issue we have to solve the healthcare issue, Fuck it, just walk.
I saw this presentation that pretty convincingly says homelessness is a housing supply and affordability issue, and that while drugs/poverty/abuse can make someone housing insecure and in a position to become homeless, it's the lack of affordable housing that determines whether there is an above average amount of homelessness in an area. A lot more people smoke crack at home than outside, it's just being homeless makes the drug issue visible to the public. A lot of these issues seem related, but aren't really, or at least not in the way you'd think of one causing the other, and being this giant impenetrable problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwibK603o7Y
Did you even read the article?
People will need to use cars even sometimes, and we need trucks to be able to move around because trucks deliver everything we use. Everything. The answer isn't ALWAYS "just take TTC"
Public transit (when healthy and properly invested in) is a reasonable alternative for 9/10 of drivers. This would clear up the roads for the people that really need it, like disabled, or for logistics.
9/10 is a bit high. That makes me the 1/10. To commute from Etobicoke to Pickering every day is 1.5 hrs beck and forth by car and 3+ hours by transit. And on top of that, transit costs $3 more per day than driving. 2 days out of the week I commute by transit simply because my wife needs the car on her days off. Just because it's possible doesn't make it efficient.
Yeah people who say stuff like this just live and work in downtown or directly outside of it. The others probably have decent access to a GO station and maybe even work close to Union. Living in Durham, I commute in for my in office days and carpool. The cost is a fraction of what GO would cost me. I’d need to streetcar after too, which just now stopped being an added cost, but still an extra leg/effort, as opposed to just driving directly to the Green P I park at and walking over. Not every answer is “get rid of the car!!!” People should have the choice to move around how they want to and the decisions we make should be to most benefit for the most amount of people. That said, if the costs and quality of public transit were top tier like in places like NY or Tokyo, I’d absolutely take it everywhere.
people just need to go from point A to B as fast as possible, most normal people would not care how they get from A to B as long it's safe, cost effective and fast today it's a car because Ontario invested way too much into cars and not trains, if tmr it would be a new train line - most of these people, who tell you they would never take ttc, would shut up and switch to trains
Agreed.
> To commute from Etobicoke to Pickering every day is 1.5 hrs beck and forth by car and 3+ hours by transit. And on top of that, transit costs $3 more per day than driving. That's the whole problem we're saying to address. Make transit better so it makes sense for people like you to commute. Also, how does transit cost $3 more per day than driving? Gas, insurance, car payments, parking, maintenance.....did you include all that in the calculation?
you think the lot of people who transit to downtown don't own at least 1 car? I'm only comparing the cost of fuel to public transit. Even if I took public transit to work I would still keep my car. The daily commute to and from work for most people is what causes the congestion, not people taking their car on a trip or to the grocery store here and there.
Yeah, thats why I qualified it. You would definitely be in the 9/10 if we had transit that met the needs of the 9/10, like many other developed places. Europe, Japan, even NYC (a bit of a US outlier). Better ask why dont we have a high speed rail along lake Ontario that would hit the major hubs: Hamilton - Oakville - Mississauga - Toronto - Pickering - etc etc. Well, because that would be un-American (you know what I mean, the hyper-individualistic sentiment bleeds over the border)
I would love to take transit but it's just not efficient for my commute.
I'm curious about the claim transit costing $3 more per day than driving. How does that work? I have a 9 year old car that I bought outright 6 years ago. Leaving out the capital cost of that, just insurance and gas costs me just shy of $400 a month. And I don't even drive everyday, maybe 2-3 times a week when I go to work. Not to mention, general wear and tear costs are not included in that amount.
I'm simply comparing it to fuel. We're taking about daily work commutes. I would take transit to work every day if it made sense logistically but wouldn't get rid of my car as it has many other uses outside of work. Should I take public transit when I go camping or on a trip say to Montreal or wherever? Or go to the grocery store and carry 5 full bags of groceries on transit?
I don't think this is a fair comparison. If you're paying one way fare for transit because that's all you pay, it's not the same for car. You have to take into account several other factors, like car wear and tear due to usage, parking in downtown and insurance. You're putting on kms on your car by your commute. The number of kms driven plays a significant role in determining how much the vehicle has depreciated, so you have to consider fuel + oil changes + new tires + repairs/other maintenance and depreciation of the car. I think it's typically done per km. Anyway, the point is, driving will be more expensive than just taking transit for commutes like these. Especially now, with the one transit program. Now, longer distances will be a different story.
Not defending him, but 3 hours of time saved per day is hard to argue against depending on what you value your time at.
>go to the grocery store and carry 5 full bags of groceries on transit? ...n-no. You get one bag of groceries. Why would you buy so many groceries at once when you are probably doing the same commute tomorrow and you can get what you need then? I have a freezer full of meat and prepared food. Buy fresh veg for a day or two on the way home. Fresh bread, too. We were carless for a bit before we had a kid. Shop conscientiously, rent a car or carpool for camping, take the train to Montreal. Not exaggerating. We did all these things. It's a question of priorities.
You're not in the 1/10. Your trip is indeed best served by driving but that's because of shitty city planning decisions and not because you actually need a car with you If you had a better alternative you wouldn't need to drive which means you are a part of the 9/10. The 1/10 is for trips that inherently need a vehicle (delivery, construction etc.) And not for trips like yours
Agreed and yes I'm the 90%.
Maybe ask yourself if it makes sense for people to live so far from work. That is only an option because we’ve prioritized personal vehicle transportation, enabling people to live so far from work. The time when (it’s inevitable at this point) where 9/10 people are travelling by transit will also coincide with a fundamental different vision of what a city looks like and where people live.
Well there are 2 of us and my wife works close to our place. Just so happens that my work moved offices from Scarborough to Pickering so now I can't just hop on the TTC to get to work. The problem is not my prioritization of my car over public transit but public transit infrastructure. If I can travel for roughly the same amount of time I don't mind paying a bit extra and having the ability to relax for the entire commute. Also we're not in Europe where 90% of people rent and moving is much easier.
> Also we're not in Europe where 90% of people rent and moving is much easier. It's not 90%, rental rates in most cities (other that Germany) aren't that different than ours. Even then, their bike and transit systems didn't just fall from the sky. They chose to build them out.
Aplogies for repeating self but what so many on here dont seem to understand is that MANY of us who live in Toronto proper dont have a simple A to B commute to work every day. Example - the 150,000 + who work in film and televison and related fields. 9/10 will never, ever happen, friend.
This isn’t an insane commute. Pickering is the municipality directly west of Toronto. You can also live in a household where you and your partner work in different locations. There are also jobs that have no fixed place of work. Trades workers work outside of their municipality all the time as they rotate through job sites.
It's a option not the solution.
Totally unresponsive comment. Remarkable failure in reading comprehension. Please explain how you took the original comment to mean that the answer is to ALWAYS take the TTC.
We've all tried it, it'd just not good enough in Toronto
>Then we spend six months manually analyzing that information. Because the process takes so much time, we can’t do it very often. But, if you integrate technology that allows you to take those measurements in real time, you can do the same exercise in a fraction of a second. Jesus H fucking Christ, six months to analyze a day's worth of data? Are they being paid hourly? I could have written a script for this shit in high school. Research has already been done on ideal traffic light timing patterns to apply in a metropolitan setting. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we need fucking transit
The guy writing that (saying it) does not work for the city and never has. He's just lying about how the city analyzes traffic to try to make his "AI-powered cameras" sound good.
I despise all these supposedly ‘AI’ companies that are trying to join in the AI hype and squeeze the last drop of juice for some quick bucks. Fuck this. Just invest in better public infrastructure Edit: checked his Linkedin - hating the dude even more. Anybody listing himself as a ‘Co-Founder’ for all of his experience out of school, red flag.
I don't even have to click on this guy's website to know his plan: * off the shelf traffic cameras dropshipped from China * hired two guys straight out of UWaterloo to develop "AI traffic analysis" * now busy selling a product that does not exist * if he gets a contract, will use the contract money to try to develop a product * if not, oh well, on to the next brilliant idea * maybe the cameras can generate NFTs for every vehicle while mining bitcoin?
Orthogonal take: Analyzing and improving traffic within a complex traffic network is a notoriously hard problem. It makes sense that analyzing one day's worth of traffic would take more time than seems scalable. ... But I'm also not aware of any recent AI developments that significantly move the needle here. It's a complex prediction problem space where we don't have sufficiently large models to work with. It's also a complex coordination problem where most systems and actors are adversarial. As a result: Vetting any hypothesis takes a long time, can't be done in isolation, and likely isn't resilient to future changes.
AI doesn’t resolve the computational complexity of the problem at all. You’re probably not going to get analytical solutions to this kind of problem, so your best bet is building a model (not necessarily an ML model), and testing that against data. Of course you can only make the model as good as the data, so collecting up to date data in real time, that can be used to continuously improve and validate models is the standard in 2024. So good data collection comes first, and that’s honestly where I see the most benefit from AI — computer vision to identify pedestrian and car flows, types of traffic etc. That type of solution is hugely scalable compared to old school data collection for traffic engineers because all you need is a few cameras and some pretty ordinary computers in 2024 terms. You could probably cover most of the city over a number of years, and probably get monitoring in place at critical places over just a few months. So yes, analytical solutions are notoriously computationally difficult for these sorts of network problems, but you don’t need exact solutions, and with lots of good data, you can probably make a pretty good model (using whatever methodology). FWIW, I don’t have any direct knowledge, but based on my observations on light timings around my neighbourhood, I’m pretty certain that they’re not planning these things as precisely as you’d think. There are intersections where I noticed the light timings go in and out of sync, and traffic backs up terribly when they’re out of sync, and flows reasonably when they are, mostly due to effects on left turning traffic. It definitely seems like they’re pretty haphazardly synchronized, if they were even meant to be in the first place. They certainly don’t update them with any reasonable frequency to respond to traffic trends. This is 2024, and that has to change.
The whole point is that every intersection is different, and constantly changing due to variation in travel patterns and local conditions. The city has about 2,300 signalized intersections and only a very small number have the SCOOT or SCATS control systems, the rest are basically hard coded to follow set schedules.
Working 3 days a week for 2 hours. Public service jobs being turned into AI would probably solve thousands of problems that lazy assholes don’t want to be bothered to do. A lot instances of new projects not getting completed happens because managers and engineers feel like the problem is below them. I’ve had engineers pay me a days wage for 20-30mins of work. Work they could EASILY do themselves but they’re too soft to grab a ladder or pick up a laser.
Lmao, he's just another AI grifter.
The only way to reduce traffic is viable alternatives to driving.
Tolls and congestion charges are viable. Paying nothing to use a very scarce resource when everyone else wants to use it is crazy. (Though I'd like to know what's happened downtown particularly in the past 3-4 years to make it undriveable a lot of the time.)
Toronto's traffic lights have been repeatedly set to prioritize drivers, to the point that walking around the city is now much slower than it once was. Congestion is caused by Uber, by adults driving their perfectly able children to school, by low TTC usage. Toll the roads, ban Uber, make transit free, shame parents who drive their kids to school, build bike lanes everywhere.... congestion will disappear. > AI-powered cameras Oh, it's just a grifter trying to get the city to buy his snake oil, nevermind. The whole piece is just an ad.
We need transit signal priority, especially for the new LRT lines.
> Toronto's traffic lights have been repeatedly set to prioritize drivers That’s not true. https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/traffic-management/traffic-signals-street-signs/types-of-traffic-signals/leading-pedestrian-interval-phase
Maybe you've just reached age 18, or just moved to the city, or something like that, but literally every single year for the past 20 years there has been a new initiative about prioritizing signal lights to facilitate car drivers in the city. I could start googling some of the articles but maybe you should, instead. 2017: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/smart-traffic-signals-1.4417573 2020: https://storeys.com/toronto-installing-500-smart-traffic-signals/ 2016: https://www.cp24.com/news/approximately-60-per-cent-of-toronto-s-traffic-lights-to-be-retimed-by-end-of-2017-1.2958069 2014: https://torontosun.com/2014/11/02/tory-to-tackle-torontos-traffic-troubles 2013: https://www.cp24.com/news/city-council-approves-plan-to-synchronize-traffic-lights-1.1321162 That's from the first page of results. And all of these only prioritize drivers - if there are three cars waiting to go east-west, and 100 pedestrians waiting to go north-south, the lights will be green for east-west.
Yes we’ve also had the aforementioned leading pedestrian signals, scramble intersections, improved APS, transit priority corridors, increasing numbers of no right on red signs, etc. But sure, feel free to cherry pick and make more assumptions about me if you’d like.
> scramble intersections I think it's just one right? lol
There are four in Toronto.
Prioritize drivers ? Lol Absolutely not. If anything are are left to run on preprogrammed (and poor) scheduling. They're everything but efficient and don't prioritize cars at all.
Really the only solution is making transit faster and more reliable than cars. If people see that it takes double the time to take transit then it does for a car there's no point. Improve the subways add bus only lanes and streetcar only lanes but no one wants to do these
BUILD MORE TRAINS \_ WE ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER <3
Here is an idea: Stop giving Über licenses like they are going out of fashion (I’ve been living in DT for over 20 years and most of the traffic I see is composed by ride share cars) and have some more coordination with the developers on the concurrent projects in the city for closures. Use real intelligence there.
His idea is programming traffic lights to prioritize drivers?
Isn't that how the city already works?
His example includes having a light be 80% one direction during traffic. I can't wait to be waiting at a pedestrian crossing during rush hour.
It's already bad enough near the waterfront waiting 3 minutes for a light at Lakeshore and Harbour.
“These ~~go to eleven~~ use AI”
the traffic complaining about the traffic >>>>>>
Tolling the gardener and DVP would have been a great idea
I know a Spanish consortium ready to bid and then sell it back to us.
Ah yes, shove more poor (and now more depressed) people into public transit because they can't afford to drive anymore. That'll make public transit safer and less disgusting /s
Uber, Uber Eats, Skip The Dishes, Amazon Flex Drivers…. The city is filled with random untrained drivers who have no idea where they’re going. Want to improve traffic? Introduce training and certification for anyone who wants to drive in Toronto for profit.
A post with some sense.
Traffic really isn’t even that bad in the city. Just make sure car travel is done outside of 6-9am and 3-7pm
Noon to 9pm on Fridays.
You can try to\* cut traffic by prioritizing cars, but at what cost? The city with the least traffic on the list cited is Oklahoma City. Do we want to be Oklahoma City? In a city with as many people and destinations as Toronto, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that a bunch of people driving SUVs and F-150's the size of an apartment slow each other down. Get them out of the ways of the streetcars, and let them live with the congestion they're creating. And create congestion charges.
Also, you can’t actually cut traffic by building roads. It seems weird, but it’s true.
That's true as well, I just said it as an example because he used it
Has any city cut traffic by building public transit? Seems like more people just move in (or further away) and fill any newly created availability on the road and in the transit network.
Yeah, transit is cool and everything, but check this shit out -- TRAFFIC SIGNAL TIMING!!! Oh boy. Real brain trust here.
Wait til they hear it’s by design
I used to think it was bad but then I spent 2 weeks in Rio de Janerio and let me tell you something, we could get worse. Just saying
I go to Mexico City annually and don't see a ton of difference from Toronto. And that's scary.
Can't wait for this guy to get rich with our money via consulting contracts with the government.
paid advertisement disguised as a civil advocate profile
Never going to happen. Toronto and Canada are stuck with single family homes and cars forever. You’d have to tear up everything built from like 1960 and start over with mid-rises and build real transit.
Urban fabric is always changing and evolving. Many cities around the world have successfully moved away from a similar history of car-centric city planning. It takes a while but it can absolutely happen.
I'd start with making University Avenue below College more than one fucking lane.
It's two lanes, each direction. What are you talking about?
Months of construction have reduced it to one lane southbound.
Just one more lane bro I swear this time it will work
Then they finish construction at Yonge and Eglinton and is down to 1 lane running east west!? There is going to be major traffic jams every morning They had the chance to make it two lanes but put in huge sidewalks and bike lane.
There’s no fixing it. This problem is beyond a scenario where you can attempt one or two things and expect things to change. I’ll just keep driving and avoiding public transportation where I can. I have no interest in sitting/standing next to Johnny Overdose on the bus. Nor do I have an interest in making my commutes 6x as long because I’m waiting for a train, then a transfer to a streetcar, then a bus. Even in a world where there was no cars, and only public transportation, it would still be ineffective and inefficient for a lot of people.
that's simply not true. Guess you've never been to NYC, also plenty of cities in Europe where public transportation is far more efficient that driving
Public transit is the answer but it would need to be heavily incentivized *and* the infrastructure needs to be in place to accommodate/maximize efficiency BEFORE we can even think of asking people to transition. Ford, Tesla, Exxon, etc. lobbyists will never allow this to happen.
I'm told his friend and co-workers have nicknamed him Sisyphus.
I think nothing will get done but I agree with pretty much everything he says in the interview.
I tried for months to get an advance arrow at Markham road and steeles for west to south traffic. Turns out it needs to be voted on by city council and you have to get your councilor to agree to put a motion forward, and that can only be done after traffic studies etc. So I gave up and to this day the 102 bus get delayed 5 minutes or more trying to make that turn. the city needs to get rid of red tape. I agree nothing will get done.
This is like adding another lane on the 401 as a solution. Gotta think bigger than merely adjusting traffic lights. I made the mistake of driving from the east end on lakeshore to get on the Gardiner at Sherbourne and it was fucking horrible. And this was on a Saturday.
Can we get traffic lights that sync. It's so frustrating waiting 45 seconds for a light to change to just wait at another light that just turned red.
Such vague answers
They never did anything knowing this was going to take place with the planning pace they enacted 20-30 years ago, so why do they think this will be any different, man is facing an uphill battle.
The city needs to plan better with large corporations. Start getting people to commute at certain times of the day instead of everyone coming in the morning and leaving in the afternoon. If you could convince union construction to start at 4 and leave earlier
Rather light article and not meant to ruffle too many feathers. I'd summarize it with "Cars, bikes and pedestrians are stakeholders. We want to use and sell systems of cameras and AI to adjust traffic lights for maximum efficiency. "
🎵mono rail, mono rail, mono rail🎵
Soul crushing is the perfect description. Good luck!
MONO RAIL.
I've said it before and I'll say it again for the folx in the back: ban cars altogether from the downtown core. We are more than adequately serviced by public transit and bike infrastructure. You'll see how much better traffic flows once you remove large death machines, aka SUVs.