Pseudotsuga

I get the (wrong) logic behind some anti bike lane cycling people, but an anti bus lane transit rider??

Yeah, I think it might be just an ideological gulf - my view is the market does pretty well at meeting people's needs in other sectorsI'm not sure why housing is different. It rarely sets out INTENDING to do a public service. I think there demonstrably is ways to make more $$$ selling cheaper stuff

sorry, to be more clear I mean that you can only raise prices arbitrarily to a point which depends on a) there being people willing to pay that much and b) there not being someone else offering the same thing for less. If that's not happening there's gotta be a reason why b) doesn't or can't happen

I mainly think that market mechanisms should get some attention because they would be the simplest to implement and the farthest-reaching for the level of political and economic resources that we'd be putting into it. Doesn't preclude nonmarket stuff, I just think there are more hurdles there

If you can keep ratcheting up the price, it's because you can get away with it. I think the question worth investigating is why these undercuts don't happen, or also keep going up. I've never said I think we only have market mechanisms to work with, and I think most of us would agree.

this only works if some bozo can't come in and offer what you're offering for less, in which case you end up with nothing. You keep ratcheting up the prices until there comes a point where nobody would be willing to pay it, at which point you also end up with nothing.

...simpler and more predictable, which cuts down on things like timelines and having to budget huge contingency costs

A lot of big devs have, frankly, no idea what they're doing. But all it'd take is someone deciding to get the money instead of cartelizing and undercutting everyone else on price. You could also save a lot of hassle for everyone, including nonprofits or public housing, by making the process...

...concrete you'd be required by law to pour for no reason. There's a pretty long list here. There's a disconnect between the people who would be building here (who have an stake in building stuff) and those buying it out to rent it out like BlackRock (who have an interest in restricting supply)

Well, why not? There's a lot of things you could do to reduce costs. Stuff like loosening land use restrictions are bit more indirect by diffusing demand across a bigger geographic area, but you've also got stuff like parking minimums, which would reduce costs by reducing the amount of physical...

You can also make it easier for cheaper alternatives to be profitable and eat the lunch of pricier ones. Ryanair still exists in a world where their own existence makes flights cheaper. Ofc the big players will probably complain, so social housing etc has a role to play for sure

Well, why would any business sell stuff in a competitive market then? You’re not going to be making money on stuff you don’t build if you’re a developer. If costs decrease you can build more stuff viably, and you can make more even if the margins on each individual project are smaller

My concern is that it’s immigration cuts, and so people will conclude we just need more immigration cuts

Our rail system doesn't need to be The Best and we shouldn't try, but I'd like it to at least be as good as peer countries instead of letting cynicism make it worse on purpose. I'd like to walk and chew gum at the same time, even if it'd take a lot of unlikely reform.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but my thinking is that other countries actually do have their Frecciarossas or KTXes or whatever, and that you guys' research shows that better things are possible. I'd like to think so too, even if I don't have a ton of faith in our system.

yeah, that's true. That's been my reservation about the project (that and the question of how they're gonna get onto the island of Montreal). I guess the question remains of what the best way to get from Toronto to Ottawa if a straight line isn't gonna cut it?

idk I just think that demand for the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal city pair routes would outweigh pretty much all the other pairs by a substantial margin, but I might just be doing vibes based analysis. I think it makes sense to focus on those.

Cost for sure an issue, though.

Better than with Alto? It’d be better than status quo but if you have a effectively one line with all your major cities on it I don’t know if there’s a real reason to not eventually put HSR on it

You’ll be pleased to know she lost her Council seat in the time since and has failed repeatedly to get it back

The Vancouver YIMBY community reached this position long ago

Hey I’ve seen that one irl on several occasions

The Pokémon in the top left

N: Gulfoss, Iceland
S: Cape of Good Hope, South Africa
E: Tokyo, Japan
W: Pearl Harbour, Hawaii

I know for TransLink on the select high-volume RapidBus they do do ADB for they kind of just accept it as a cost of doing business to keep it moving faster, unless they have special inspection policies I'm not aware of

Would that be while the bus is rolling between stops, in that case?

I think the other issue is that I think we also want to minimize interaction (and thus conflict) between riders and agents of the law as much as possible. We don't want to end up criminalizing poverty...

I've seen some suggestion that you actually do see a good deal more fare evasion on the artics but Im not sure of the details. This is the big hurdle from everything I've heard, especially with TransLink having a pretty precarious situation wrt their operations budget they don't want to undercut

if I had any idea of how bad back door fare evasion is I would love to see what the cost-benefit analysis here is, because my hypothesis is that it wouldn't even be that bad.

@denisagar.bsky.social lol

I mean I think we here are in favour of ADB...the problem is getting TL's fare evasion obsessives on board.

confused as to why, but at least we're getting some IMC trolleys while we're at it.

Having an east-west trunk makes perfect sense, getting rapid transit out to Coquitlam makes sense, but putting everything into building that ahead of Broadway or RAV feels like a weird artifact of the days GVRD was trying to make fetch happen with Coq as a regional hub a la Metrotown