Transportation infrastructure influences the shape of cities for centuries. The road pattern of ancient Rome still provides settings for a thousand sidewalk cafés, long after most Imperial buildings have crumbled to dust. Yet governments seldom think carefully about how their transit decisions will influence future city form and the quality of experience enjoyed by?or inflicted on?our children and grandchildren. This is evident in Vancouver, where I am a professor of urban design at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Along part of the city?s Broadway Avenue corridor, current officials insist on building an absurdly expensive ($400-million per kilometre, and rising) subway. Why" Ostensibly because it?s faster, doesn?t conflict with street traffic, and is theoretically capable of moving more people. But other high-capacity surface rail options can be had at less than a fifth of the cost. Toronto also has donned blinders in insisting on an as-yet-unfunded $3.5-billion one-station subway extension of the Bloor-Danforth line. Their choice is especially shocking given an earlier provincial government offer to pay for a high-capacity surface light rail system to serve the same district. Toronto is leaving billions on the table to satisfy its urge for a subway, seemingly compelled by a desire for Very Big Things. The alluring high-speed underworld. Photo by Aaron Yeoman.
This is sad, because both cities once enjoyed extensive surface rail transporta...