Tag: dvp

• How to save 8 minutes on Toronto’s highways

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  Three months ago when Toronto City Council voted
  not to remove the Gardiner Expressway
  East (which in
  my view was a mistake), it did so with a commitment to look at tolling
  options for both the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway (which in
  my view is a positive thing).

  Last week a preliminary report was released
  discussing some of those tolling options. If reading dry city reports is your thing,
  you can do that here.

  The Coles Notes version (CliffNotes for you
  Americans) is that a $3 flat toll on both the Gardiner and the DVP – the same
  cost as riding transit in this city – would be expected to reduce vehicles on the highways by 9% and 12%, as well reduce end-to-end travel times by 3 minutes and 5
  minutes, respectively. There’s obviously a lot more in the report, but these
  figures stood out for me.

  Given how monumental the
  3 minute delay was in the Gardiner East debates, it will be interesting to
  see whether people treat a 3 minute time savings in a similar way. I suspect
  they won’t. The cost will be the larger issue.

  I’ve been a
  vocal supporter of tolls and road pricing on this blog. One of the main reasons
  for that is because I view the demand for highways as being largely inelastic
  and therefore a potentially great source of transit funding.

  The discouraging part of the above report is
  that its primary goal is to explore tolls for the purpose of “offsetting
  capital, operating, and maintenance costs.” The primary goal is not to come up
  with sustainable sources of transit funding.

  Having these costs paid for by user-fees as
  opposed to general taxes is still a good thing in my view. But an even better thing
  would be to help fund mobility solutions that we know will be far more
  effective at getting people around this region as millions more people move here
  in the coming decades.

  The other discouraging part of the report is
  that near the end it explains that while the City of Toronto Act of 2006 allows
  for toll highways, they cannot be implemented without the Province passing
  regulation.

  It’s a reminder that our governance structures do
  not reflect the current urban reality of this country.

  2015.09.15

• Thinking of cities in terms of hardware and software

  Ted Serbinski is a Partner at Detroit Venture Partners. He works with billionaire Dan Gilbert. And obviously lives in Detroit. 

  On Monday of this week he wrote a post called, 24 Business Insights I’ve Learned from Billionaire Dan Gilbert. It was clearly inspired by a blog post Gilbert did last year called 27 Things I’ve Learned in 27 Years. They’re both great reads.

  But in particular I liked Ted’s 22nd point called “balance the hardware with software.” It goes like this:

  “Another interesting insight is Dan’s approach to rebuilding Detroit. You need to balance what buildings you own (e.g., the hardware), with what companies lease them (e.g., the software), along with properly connecting building to building via placemaking (e.g., more software), to create a truly vibrant area.”

  It’s an interesting analogy and I think it’s incredibly relevant to Detroit. The City of Detroit has great hardware. As I said before, the city is filled with gorgeous historic buildings. The bones are there. But hardware is useless without the right software. 

  2013.11.15