When I was in New York a few weeks ago, my friend (a New Yorker) said to me that he couldn’t imagine owning a car (he used to but got rid of it with zero remorse). He then elaborated on all of the nuisances that driving in the city produces.
There are parts of Toronto where you can feel similarly. I feel fortunate to live in one of those parts. Of course, there are other parts of this city where the exact opposite is true. It’s inconvenient not to have a car. These are typically areas where lower land costs have been exchanged for higher transportation costs.
The City of Toronto has a land area of approximately 630 square kilometers. If that’s all the land we had (the metro area is almost 6,000 square kilometers), you can bet we would think about land use and transportation a bit differently.
When I was in New York a few weeks ago, my friend (a New Yorker) said to me that he couldn’t imagine owning a car (he used to but got rid of it with zero remorse). He then elaborated on all of the nuisances that driving in the city produces.
There are parts of Toronto where you can feel similarly. I feel fortunate to live in one of those parts. Of course, there are other parts of this city where the exact opposite is true. It’s inconvenient not to have a car. These are typically areas where lower land costs have been exchanged for higher transportation costs.
The City of Toronto has a land area of approximately 630 square kilometers. If that’s all the land we had (the metro area is almost 6,000 square kilometers), you can bet we would think about land use and transportation a bit differently.
of the republic’s total land area is taken up by roads.
Because of this, they just announced that they have lowered their vehicle growth rate (for cars and motorcycles) from 0.25% per annum to 0% effective February 2018. They can do this through their Certificate of Entitlement (COE) quota. And it won’t be revisited until 2020.
Put differently: No more cars and motorcycles until, maybe, 2020.
On September 14, 2017, Hyperloop One announced the 10 winners of its Global Challenge. These are the world’s “most promising” Hyperloop routes; selected through a process that began in May 2016 and involved more than 2,600 registered teams.
The winners:
Canada | Toronto-Montreal
India | Bengaluru-Chennai
India | Mumbai-Chennai
Mexico | Mexico City-Guadalajara
UK | Edinburgh-London
UK | Glasgow-Liverpool
US | Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh
US | Miami-Orlando
US | Cheyenne-Denver-Pueblo
US | Dallas-Laredo-Houston
If you aren’t familiar with what Hyperloop One is trying to accomplish, here is a quick video explaining the basics. Their goal is to have the world’s first operating Hyperloop by 2021.
If you happen to live in one of the above regions (about 148 million of us do), then you are probably already seeing the headlines in your feeds. For Canada, the promise is of connecting 25% of our country’s population
of the republic’s total land area is taken up by roads.
Because of this, they just announced that they have lowered their vehicle growth rate (for cars and motorcycles) from 0.25% per annum to 0% effective February 2018. They can do this through their Certificate of Entitlement (COE) quota. And it won’t be revisited until 2020.
Put differently: No more cars and motorcycles until, maybe, 2020.
On September 14, 2017, Hyperloop One announced the 10 winners of its Global Challenge. These are the world’s “most promising” Hyperloop routes; selected through a process that began in May 2016 and involved more than 2,600 registered teams.
The winners:
Canada | Toronto-Montreal
India | Bengaluru-Chennai
India | Mumbai-Chennai
Mexico | Mexico City-Guadalajara
UK | Edinburgh-London
UK | Glasgow-Liverpool
US | Chicago-Columbus-Pittsburgh
US | Miami-Orlando
US | Cheyenne-Denver-Pueblo
US | Dallas-Laredo-Houston
If you aren’t familiar with what Hyperloop One is trying to accomplish, here is a quick video explaining the basics. Their goal is to have the world’s first operating Hyperloop by 2021.
If you happen to live in one of the above regions (about 148 million of us do), then you are probably already seeing the headlines in your feeds. For Canada, the promise is of connecting 25% of our country’s population
Daniel Doctoroff (chairman and CEO of Sidewalk Labs and former deputy mayor of New York City) and Eric Schmidt (executive chairman of Alphabet and former CEO of Google) recently contributed a piece to the Globe and Mail about “why Toronto is the ideal place to build a neighborhood of the future.”
It’s about the partnership they working on with Waterfront Toronto. I wrote about that announcement, here.
Here is an excerpt from the Globe article:
“The eastern waterfront will be a place where residents, companies, startups and local organizations can advance new ideas for improving city life. It’s where a self-driving test shuttle will take its first steps toward becoming a next-generation transit system that’s cheaper, safer and more convenient than private car-ownership. It’s where new insights into advanced construction methods will start to reveal a path toward more affordable housing development. It’s where explorations into renewable energy and sustainable building designs will show promise toward becoming a climate-positive blueprint for cities around the world.”
These are some of the first details that I have heard about their vision for Toronto’s eastern waterfront.
Some of you are probably worried – after reading the above excerpt – that by focusing on self-driving vehicles, we are setting ourselves up to repeat our previous mistakes. But if self-driving vehicles are destined to become a reality (and it certainly feels that way), it is critical that we understand their impact and how they might best dovetail with the public transit systems we already have in place.
I am thrilled that all of this will be happening right here on our doorstep.
It would mean Toronto-Montreal in just 39 minutes:
This is shorter than many morning commutes. So it’s not hard to see why this is a tantalizing proposition. It would mean a union of our two biggest cities and our capital. More accessible Montreal bagels. And maybe, just maybe, a strengthened sense of bilingualism in this country.
But there are also critics who believe that all of this Hyperloop hype is simply a distraction. Why not focus on proven technologies as opposed to some fanciful pipe dream that may never materialize? This is about stroking political egos as opposed to real progress.
My views are pretty simple on this one.
Will Hyperloop Canada happen? Maybe. Maybe not. I sure hope it does. But it may not. It’s easy to draw lines on a map. It’s much harder to actually execute on those lines. And of course, logistics aside, the technology is still being developed.
But if all we ever focused our energy on were things that have already been “proven”, we likely wouldn’t create many new things. Things that today are proven, were once unproven. But they became proven because there were folks who didn’t let that minor detail deter them from trying. They went for it.
So if a private company would like to go out and raise $160 million from private investors to try and figure out how to sustainably connect Canada’s two largest cities in 39 minutes, I am more than happy to cheerlead. Because I’m not the one trying. Who am I to naysay?
Daniel Doctoroff (chairman and CEO of Sidewalk Labs and former deputy mayor of New York City) and Eric Schmidt (executive chairman of Alphabet and former CEO of Google) recently contributed a piece to the Globe and Mail about “why Toronto is the ideal place to build a neighborhood of the future.”
It’s about the partnership they working on with Waterfront Toronto. I wrote about that announcement, here.
Here is an excerpt from the Globe article:
“The eastern waterfront will be a place where residents, companies, startups and local organizations can advance new ideas for improving city life. It’s where a self-driving test shuttle will take its first steps toward becoming a next-generation transit system that’s cheaper, safer and more convenient than private car-ownership. It’s where new insights into advanced construction methods will start to reveal a path toward more affordable housing development. It’s where explorations into renewable energy and sustainable building designs will show promise toward becoming a climate-positive blueprint for cities around the world.”
These are some of the first details that I have heard about their vision for Toronto’s eastern waterfront.
Some of you are probably worried – after reading the above excerpt – that by focusing on self-driving vehicles, we are setting ourselves up to repeat our previous mistakes. But if self-driving vehicles are destined to become a reality (and it certainly feels that way), it is critical that we understand their impact and how they might best dovetail with the public transit systems we already have in place.
I am thrilled that all of this will be happening right here on our doorstep.
It would mean Toronto-Montreal in just 39 minutes:
This is shorter than many morning commutes. So it’s not hard to see why this is a tantalizing proposition. It would mean a union of our two biggest cities and our capital. More accessible Montreal bagels. And maybe, just maybe, a strengthened sense of bilingualism in this country.
But there are also critics who believe that all of this Hyperloop hype is simply a distraction. Why not focus on proven technologies as opposed to some fanciful pipe dream that may never materialize? This is about stroking political egos as opposed to real progress.
My views are pretty simple on this one.
Will Hyperloop Canada happen? Maybe. Maybe not. I sure hope it does. But it may not. It’s easy to draw lines on a map. It’s much harder to actually execute on those lines. And of course, logistics aside, the technology is still being developed.
But if all we ever focused our energy on were things that have already been “proven”, we likely wouldn’t create many new things. Things that today are proven, were once unproven. But they became proven because there were folks who didn’t let that minor detail deter them from trying. They went for it.
So if a private company would like to go out and raise $160 million from private investors to try and figure out how to sustainably connect Canada’s two largest cities in 39 minutes, I am more than happy to cheerlead. Because I’m not the one trying. Who am I to naysay?
