In this region we’ve allowed colourful lines on a map to be mistaken for truly fast, reliable transit — but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can and should prioritize speed, reliability, and meaningful service over charts that look good on paper but deliver slow trips in reality.
Public transit planners who don’t care about speed of service are basically creating a service for people who can’t afford cars, aka: the loser cruiser.
For transit to really result in mode-shift, which all planning documents seem to advocate for, it has to be time-competitive or faster than driving.
That’s why people like the subway. That’s why people take Vancouver’s SkyTrain. Time is money - time is luxury/more time with family. People will always choose to have more time.
But what do I know. I’m just a land use planner who has taken transit most of my life (except when it took longer than driving).
I work in municipal government and am surprised by the number of land use planners who don't understand much about transit and what makes it good. The importance of frequency and sometimes speed and straight lines are downplayed. A lot of land use planners see more value in the type of neighbourhood transit 'creates' than in the value of service it provides. More people reading Jarrett Walker and Christof Spieler would help.
Why transit planners would downplay things like speed is more baffling.
I’ve noticed that as well. I really think it depends on the planners’ personal lived experience. I grew up in the City of Vancouver and experienced the freedom that an fast and efficient transit system offers someone without a car. I went all over the city on transit long before I had a drivers licence.
Planners who haven’t lived in places with fast, frequent transit don’t really understand what makes a system good. Growing up in the suburbs doesn’t teach one about effective transit.
When I started writing Council reports for rezoning applications, I always made sure to include a section on the transit service near the subject site so the decision makers would at least be aware of the connection between land use and transit. I was the only planner who did that.
Ok, you're missing the real point here:- transit "experts" everywhere have come to the conclusion that the main obstacles to efficient and economical public-transit are passengers and speed. They have realized that if you get rid of the passengers then public-transit works 1000+% better plus running the trains super-slow also extends the life of the infrastructure and makes it even easier to maintain reliable schedules while drastically reducing operating costs and thus minimizing subsidies. Also, running trains very slowly gently discourages would-be passengers and encourages them to go away and bother someone else without the need to shout and yell at them and tell them "to get lost":- it's the Canadian way, right? Let's face it:- public transit is so heavily subsidized now that the best way to minimize subsidies and costs is to get rid of the passengers and run the trains very slowly with very few trains per day:- it's just simple fiscal logic. Transit "experts" have realized this a longtime ago but until Doug Ford and Olivia Chow came along they lacked the courage to pursue this strategy. However this is a politically explosive strategy so they simply quietly started doing it without telling anyone about it to minimize public criticism. Yes, this might be hard to believe but the observable facts speak for themselves:- public transit in the GTA is slowly being phased out with deliberately slow and infrequent service to chase away passengers while minimizing costs while still ensuring that political donors get their share of "pork-barrel" public-works contracts for otherwise useless public-transit projects. This might not actually make sense to mere "nobodies" like you and I but it is eminently sensible to certain smug and self-satisfied politicians who like to snooze like old-time hogs on a sunny day on a nice cozy manure heap and let's face it:- Toronto is becoming the world's biggest sh*t-heap. Just my two-cents worth.
Well, I disagree with you re: this starting with Ford/Chow. It's been going on for literally decades now, well before either of them were major players.
However, I give you top marks, and kudos, for your excellent observation and sardonic comments re: the following:
"transit "experts" everywhere have come to the conclusion that the main obstacles to efficient and economical public-transit are passengers and speed"
Hi again:- ok, I was being a bit facetious and sardonic:- I'm actually a long-time survivor of public-transit in Toronto. I was born a few months before the last wooden TRC car finally left service and my mother actually travelled alone to a downtown hospital on a TTC streetcar when her labour pains started and she birthed me shortly after walking into the hospital:- I actually came close to being born on a Toronto streetcar on a busy downtown street on a dark and stormy night! The problem with the TTC, Go Transit, and Metrolinx in building new rail-transit of any type is organizational senescence and a simple lack of any practical experience in designing and building new rail-transit lines. For so many decades there was no investment in new rail-transit that all the experienced rail-transit engineers retired or moved on and were replaced by third-rate engineers "trained" at the University of Toronto, the World's worst engineering school, who functioned purely in a custodial capacity. They in turn ensured that only other third-rate custodial engineers were hired and they do a quite good job of frustrating the timely and economical development of new rail-transit in Toronto in a very vivid expression of Parkinson's Law at work. Look what happened with Deutschebahn:- they had big beautiful ideas but those third-rate U-of-T dunderhead engineers managed to frustrate them to the point that they finally gave up and walked away. Just look at London UK where they built the massive new 117-km long Elizabeth metro line in 13 years on time and within budget:- they had very competent engineers designing and building it and they brought in experts from all over the World. The homegrown "fart-heads" at Metrolinx managed to design and build the much shorter Line 6 (19 km) in "only" a mere 15 years (but it's not quite open yet!) for well over the original budget. Likewise look at the super-slow Flexity trams in Toronto (aka "snail trams"). They are just too delicate to run quickly on Toronto streets with two sections cantilevered from three main sections on only 3 bogies per tram. However they solved this problem in Helsinki in 2013 with "Škoda Artic" trams featuring articulated bogies:- these are very robust low-floor trams with only three longer sections on 4 articulated bogies which can run up to 80 kmh in even very snowy conditions on Helsinki's semi-medieval tram-rail network. It's a very successful design which is being widely adopted across Europe. Of course this is good old "T'rawna" where a "not-invented-here-f*ck-off" mentality prevails among the low-IQ rejects from U-of-T's wretched engineering school who have never heard of "Helsinki" and could not even pronounce it properly. The best and really only "fix" for Toronto's trams would be to replace the Flexities with "Artics" and sell the Flexities to transit-operators elsewhere who can run them comfortably on entirely reserved tracks but Doug & Crew won't go for that:- they want to chase "sugar plums" down the rabbit-hole of a giant $100+ billion tunnel under the 401:- Doug Ford seems to have his own problems with intra-cranial "dry rot" and it apparently runs in his family. "Nuf said!
I suspect there must be some sunk cost fallacy playing a role here in the decision not to change the platform alignment. The Oshawa Go station was fully renovated within the last decade, so there would be a desire avoiding having to demolish or abandon it so soon.
Of course, a 200 m radius curve is possible after the existing station, but this would require more expropriation from the neighbouring industry (looks mostly like parking storage from Google maps so no structures demolished hopefully).
Is there a link to more information for the current chosen alignment?
Even runs much closer to "Durham College" (in Whitby) if you really want to stop there.. with the added bonus of being much closer to where people live rather than simply playing host to a massive car park in the middle of an industrial park. A stop around Atlantis Drive would allow you to provide a pedestrian route from north to south, eliminating the man-made barrier of the railroad.
You would still of course be more than entitled to put a second Oshawa station in around Stevenson, instead of the squiggly Thornton's Corners stop in the middle of a field.
Planning documents going back to the 1960s envisioned Oshawa and Mississauga as new industrial centres for the GTHA as industry needed.to take advantage of highway and intermodal connections to get materials to plants and products to market. Oshawa GO station seems to be a holdover from that time. It has many structural and geographic similarities to Clarkson GO station in Mississauga, including the railyard, industrial sidings and the auto plant nearby.
I don't know what preserves Oshawa GO other than the fact it exists. It has no development potential unless it gets rezoned, and even then it's next to an active railyard and I'm sure the railyard would rather have the station gone so they can use the tracks. VIA is there but could it not also use the CP tracks? The next stop east of Oshawa is Port Hope where the CN and CP tracks are side by side.
This is a good piece. It's notable that the original plan for the Bowmanville extension was to bypass Oshawa GO station. The current plan makes use of the existing bridge east of the GO station, meaning there is no bypass.
Building a new overpass diagonally over the GO station parking lot (and potentially a new station) and a crossing over the 401 is an interesting idea. It likely only happens if a parking structure is built on the northwest parking lot first to provide coverage for parking spaces would be lost to the construction, the new station building and the pillars for the guideway.
What would be really interesting is if the parking structure was designed ahead of time for as easy connection to the elevated station, so once the station is built it all becomes part of a multi-platform station complex.
Even better if that parking structure is designed to allow for future development above the parking structure. Oshawa GO doesn't currently have a Major Transit Station Area plan because it is in an industrial area and next to a rail yard, but there is room for mixed-use or commercial development. Precedent from Sheppard & Leslie and Pickering shows people will live and work near a site that offers connections to transit and the 401.
Fellow computer science nerd here with a phonetically identical name and an interest in transit. Just chiming in to say that when others are threatened by the transferability of our analytical skills, it means 1) we're over the target and 2) they're insecure. Cross-disciplinary learning and perspectives advance discourse, which most people welcome in any area.
The decision to change the alignment from the old double track bridge between Whitby GO and Oshawa GO in 2020 with the announcement of the potential closure of the GM plant never made sense even if it would save a bit of money. Then we found out the GM plant was going to stay open and instead of going back to the old plan Metrolinx decided to do whatever this is. Now a warehouse is being built where the original bridge would have gone.
There's a bunch of other things impacting the speed of the line as well. Not enough double track is being built so Metrolinx is capped at 30 minute service with the infrastructure and trains will need to be padded in order to pass each other in the right spot. This line could easily be electrified too since it's technically a separate railway from CP which would also for faster service and also interoperability with the rest of the planned EMU Lakeshore East fleet.
Two excellent posts from 2011 - and the very eye-opening discussions, also concerning Toronto transit - seem relevant here (and could just as easily have been written in regards to the projects Reece writes about above):
As a resident of Oshawa, I immediately agree, and my first concern was the connection to the Via station(which was recently built) although frankly you could move the Via to Whitby if you wanted.
With a station planned on both sides of the curve though, I do wonder how big an impact the slow speed will have? I also want to point out the planned Ritson station is supposed to be developed with a large no mandatory parking housing development. So even with lower speed, you do have built in demand, and frankly right now it is quicker for me to bus to the Pickering Go and get the train there, being able to bus to Ritson will save a lot of time regardless.
Also, for the record the Oshawa Go station isn't surrounded by strip malls, its all just parking for trucking companies... (and next store of course is an auto dealership).
I am not sure on the plans for the Bowmanville station, but perhaps like Ritson it is meant to have minimal parking, in which case Oshawa GO becomes the parking lot east of Whitby regardless and those drivers would always skip Bowmanville (idk if that's good or bad).
I think my biggest concern is Oshawa is currently planning rapid transit (a gonadal is under study ffs), and I want to ensure that the GO plan works with this to incorporate transfers (Which may be the point of the Thornton Station iirc).
Ultimately, I would like the train to be as fast as possible, but also not delayed for another 10 years. So I would love the better curve, and I'll write them emails, but I am scared of another study.
A gondola is not the worst idea in the world, but its also not the best idea in the world.
There are certainly strip malls / big box stores in the general area.
More studies are annoying, but its obvious that this will slow things down. Stations on either end have only modest impact especially when we move to less slug like trains.
re Gondola, maybe it could be a good idea, pretty sure its just meant to suck up time so they can push back building an LRT on Simcoe.
Didn't mean to argue on strip malls, if you walk 1.5km along a no sidewalk 70km/h road then there are box stores in Whitby. I was just saying if you are looking from google maps, it may look like there are strip malls to the east of the station, but its actually much worse.
Idk, as a waiting user, who relies on transit, I'm willing to settle on the slower crossing if actually is getting built. Waiting 2 years to study a new alignment before starting would mean two more years of bussing 3 cities to a go station. I guess its the opposite of how I don't think the HRS should go from Toronto-to-Ottawa, but would rather see them build what I see as a worse route there than build the better route in 10 years.
As an aside what is going on with this "aerial cable car" nonsense that Durham region seem to be coming up with on Simcoe.. nothing a simple tram (à la Finch West, perhaps not) couldn't do.
Paris just opened its 6 stop urban aerial cable car that goes over a highway, TGV line, and other obstacles a lot more cost-effectively to build & to operate than traditional modes could.
Okay? I'm not decrying the use case of a cable car. I'm well acquainted with C1, Metrocable and what have you. A flat, straight highway is not that use case.
I don't think it's the worst idea in the world, or the best idea in the world. A tram probably does make more sense . . . . but the execution risk does seem higher!
In this region we’ve allowed colourful lines on a map to be mistaken for truly fast, reliable transit — but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can and should prioritize speed, reliability, and meaningful service over charts that look good on paper but deliver slow trips in reality.
Yeah, it's a huge issue. Speed and capacity need to be front and centre.
Public transit planners who don’t care about speed of service are basically creating a service for people who can’t afford cars, aka: the loser cruiser.
For transit to really result in mode-shift, which all planning documents seem to advocate for, it has to be time-competitive or faster than driving.
That’s why people like the subway. That’s why people take Vancouver’s SkyTrain. Time is money - time is luxury/more time with family. People will always choose to have more time.
But what do I know. I’m just a land use planner who has taken transit most of my life (except when it took longer than driving).
I work in municipal government and am surprised by the number of land use planners who don't understand much about transit and what makes it good. The importance of frequency and sometimes speed and straight lines are downplayed. A lot of land use planners see more value in the type of neighbourhood transit 'creates' than in the value of service it provides. More people reading Jarrett Walker and Christof Spieler would help.
Why transit planners would downplay things like speed is more baffling.
I’ve noticed that as well. I really think it depends on the planners’ personal lived experience. I grew up in the City of Vancouver and experienced the freedom that an fast and efficient transit system offers someone without a car. I went all over the city on transit long before I had a drivers licence.
Planners who haven’t lived in places with fast, frequent transit don’t really understand what makes a system good. Growing up in the suburbs doesn’t teach one about effective transit.
When I started writing Council reports for rezoning applications, I always made sure to include a section on the transit service near the subject site so the decision makers would at least be aware of the connection between land use and transit. I was the only planner who did that.
I often see transit sections, but they say: the route 8 is nearby, or something similar. Nothing at all about destinations, frequency, etc.
That land use planning is dominant is no doubt part of the problem. The cart frequently comes before the horse.
Ok, you're missing the real point here:- transit "experts" everywhere have come to the conclusion that the main obstacles to efficient and economical public-transit are passengers and speed. They have realized that if you get rid of the passengers then public-transit works 1000+% better plus running the trains super-slow also extends the life of the infrastructure and makes it even easier to maintain reliable schedules while drastically reducing operating costs and thus minimizing subsidies. Also, running trains very slowly gently discourages would-be passengers and encourages them to go away and bother someone else without the need to shout and yell at them and tell them "to get lost":- it's the Canadian way, right? Let's face it:- public transit is so heavily subsidized now that the best way to minimize subsidies and costs is to get rid of the passengers and run the trains very slowly with very few trains per day:- it's just simple fiscal logic. Transit "experts" have realized this a longtime ago but until Doug Ford and Olivia Chow came along they lacked the courage to pursue this strategy. However this is a politically explosive strategy so they simply quietly started doing it without telling anyone about it to minimize public criticism. Yes, this might be hard to believe but the observable facts speak for themselves:- public transit in the GTA is slowly being phased out with deliberately slow and infrequent service to chase away passengers while minimizing costs while still ensuring that political donors get their share of "pork-barrel" public-works contracts for otherwise useless public-transit projects. This might not actually make sense to mere "nobodies" like you and I but it is eminently sensible to certain smug and self-satisfied politicians who like to snooze like old-time hogs on a sunny day on a nice cozy manure heap and let's face it:- Toronto is becoming the world's biggest sh*t-heap. Just my two-cents worth.
Well, I disagree with you re: this starting with Ford/Chow. It's been going on for literally decades now, well before either of them were major players.
However, I give you top marks, and kudos, for your excellent observation and sardonic comments re: the following:
"transit "experts" everywhere have come to the conclusion that the main obstacles to efficient and economical public-transit are passengers and speed"
Bravo. Slow clap, standing ovation...
Hi again:- ok, I was being a bit facetious and sardonic:- I'm actually a long-time survivor of public-transit in Toronto. I was born a few months before the last wooden TRC car finally left service and my mother actually travelled alone to a downtown hospital on a TTC streetcar when her labour pains started and she birthed me shortly after walking into the hospital:- I actually came close to being born on a Toronto streetcar on a busy downtown street on a dark and stormy night! The problem with the TTC, Go Transit, and Metrolinx in building new rail-transit of any type is organizational senescence and a simple lack of any practical experience in designing and building new rail-transit lines. For so many decades there was no investment in new rail-transit that all the experienced rail-transit engineers retired or moved on and were replaced by third-rate engineers "trained" at the University of Toronto, the World's worst engineering school, who functioned purely in a custodial capacity. They in turn ensured that only other third-rate custodial engineers were hired and they do a quite good job of frustrating the timely and economical development of new rail-transit in Toronto in a very vivid expression of Parkinson's Law at work. Look what happened with Deutschebahn:- they had big beautiful ideas but those third-rate U-of-T dunderhead engineers managed to frustrate them to the point that they finally gave up and walked away. Just look at London UK where they built the massive new 117-km long Elizabeth metro line in 13 years on time and within budget:- they had very competent engineers designing and building it and they brought in experts from all over the World. The homegrown "fart-heads" at Metrolinx managed to design and build the much shorter Line 6 (19 km) in "only" a mere 15 years (but it's not quite open yet!) for well over the original budget. Likewise look at the super-slow Flexity trams in Toronto (aka "snail trams"). They are just too delicate to run quickly on Toronto streets with two sections cantilevered from three main sections on only 3 bogies per tram. However they solved this problem in Helsinki in 2013 with "Škoda Artic" trams featuring articulated bogies:- these are very robust low-floor trams with only three longer sections on 4 articulated bogies which can run up to 80 kmh in even very snowy conditions on Helsinki's semi-medieval tram-rail network. It's a very successful design which is being widely adopted across Europe. Of course this is good old "T'rawna" where a "not-invented-here-f*ck-off" mentality prevails among the low-IQ rejects from U-of-T's wretched engineering school who have never heard of "Helsinki" and could not even pronounce it properly. The best and really only "fix" for Toronto's trams would be to replace the Flexities with "Artics" and sell the Flexities to transit-operators elsewhere who can run them comfortably on entirely reserved tracks but Doug & Crew won't go for that:- they want to chase "sugar plums" down the rabbit-hole of a giant $100+ billion tunnel under the 401:- Doug Ford seems to have his own problems with intra-cranial "dry rot" and it apparently runs in his family. "Nuf said!
I suspect there must be some sunk cost fallacy playing a role here in the decision not to change the platform alignment. The Oshawa Go station was fully renovated within the last decade, so there would be a desire avoiding having to demolish or abandon it so soon.
Of course, a 200 m radius curve is possible after the existing station, but this would require more expropriation from the neighbouring industry (looks mostly like parking storage from Google maps so no structures demolished hopefully).
Is there a link to more information for the current chosen alignment?
Oh absolutely, but thats exactly it, the cost should not overwhelm the better alignment which has a much bigger benefit than the cost.
Information is seldom shared openly by Metrolinx and the Ontario Government unfortunately.
A wider curve is possible, but the vertical issues remain!
I can only advocate for a much smoother alignment..
https://i.ibb.co/R4g3L3yT/image.png
Even runs much closer to "Durham College" (in Whitby) if you really want to stop there.. with the added bonus of being much closer to where people live rather than simply playing host to a massive car park in the middle of an industrial park. A stop around Atlantis Drive would allow you to provide a pedestrian route from north to south, eliminating the man-made barrier of the railroad.
You would still of course be more than entitled to put a second Oshawa station in around Stevenson, instead of the squiggly Thornton's Corners stop in the middle of a field.
This is absolutely a better alignment
Planning documents going back to the 1960s envisioned Oshawa and Mississauga as new industrial centres for the GTHA as industry needed.to take advantage of highway and intermodal connections to get materials to plants and products to market. Oshawa GO station seems to be a holdover from that time. It has many structural and geographic similarities to Clarkson GO station in Mississauga, including the railyard, industrial sidings and the auto plant nearby.
I don't know what preserves Oshawa GO other than the fact it exists. It has no development potential unless it gets rezoned, and even then it's next to an active railyard and I'm sure the railyard would rather have the station gone so they can use the tracks. VIA is there but could it not also use the CP tracks? The next stop east of Oshawa is Port Hope where the CN and CP tracks are side by side.
This is a good piece. It's notable that the original plan for the Bowmanville extension was to bypass Oshawa GO station. The current plan makes use of the existing bridge east of the GO station, meaning there is no bypass.
Building a new overpass diagonally over the GO station parking lot (and potentially a new station) and a crossing over the 401 is an interesting idea. It likely only happens if a parking structure is built on the northwest parking lot first to provide coverage for parking spaces would be lost to the construction, the new station building and the pillars for the guideway.
What would be really interesting is if the parking structure was designed ahead of time for as easy connection to the elevated station, so once the station is built it all becomes part of a multi-platform station complex.
Even better if that parking structure is designed to allow for future development above the parking structure. Oshawa GO doesn't currently have a Major Transit Station Area plan because it is in an industrial area and next to a rail yard, but there is room for mixed-use or commercial development. Precedent from Sheppard & Leslie and Pickering shows people will live and work near a site that offers connections to transit and the 401.
Saving the current station and on a bridge is just not worth the squeeze
Fellow computer science nerd here with a phonetically identical name and an interest in transit. Just chiming in to say that when others are threatened by the transferability of our analytical skills, it means 1) we're over the target and 2) they're insecure. Cross-disciplinary learning and perspectives advance discourse, which most people welcome in any area.
Oh absolutely, I still just like to remind people how prevalent this is!
The decision to change the alignment from the old double track bridge between Whitby GO and Oshawa GO in 2020 with the announcement of the potential closure of the GM plant never made sense even if it would save a bit of money. Then we found out the GM plant was going to stay open and instead of going back to the old plan Metrolinx decided to do whatever this is. Now a warehouse is being built where the original bridge would have gone.
There's a bunch of other things impacting the speed of the line as well. Not enough double track is being built so Metrolinx is capped at 30 minute service with the infrastructure and trains will need to be padded in order to pass each other in the right spot. This line could easily be electrified too since it's technically a separate railway from CP which would also for faster service and also interoperability with the rest of the planned EMU Lakeshore East fleet.
All correct and all issues to keep pressing on. At the very least double track should be protected for in all these new bridges they are building!
Two excellent posts from 2011 - and the very eye-opening discussions, also concerning Toronto transit - seem relevant here (and could just as easily have been written in regards to the projects Reece writes about above):
https://humantransit.org/2011/02/political-motivations-and-the-consultants-task.html
https://humantransit.org/2011/02/basics-expertise-vs-activism.html
It's Reece :)
Woops! Thanks for the correction!
As a resident of Oshawa, I immediately agree, and my first concern was the connection to the Via station(which was recently built) although frankly you could move the Via to Whitby if you wanted.
With a station planned on both sides of the curve though, I do wonder how big an impact the slow speed will have? I also want to point out the planned Ritson station is supposed to be developed with a large no mandatory parking housing development. So even with lower speed, you do have built in demand, and frankly right now it is quicker for me to bus to the Pickering Go and get the train there, being able to bus to Ritson will save a lot of time regardless.
Also, for the record the Oshawa Go station isn't surrounded by strip malls, its all just parking for trucking companies... (and next store of course is an auto dealership).
I am not sure on the plans for the Bowmanville station, but perhaps like Ritson it is meant to have minimal parking, in which case Oshawa GO becomes the parking lot east of Whitby regardless and those drivers would always skip Bowmanville (idk if that's good or bad).
I think my biggest concern is Oshawa is currently planning rapid transit (a gonadal is under study ffs), and I want to ensure that the GO plan works with this to incorporate transfers (Which may be the point of the Thornton Station iirc).
Ultimately, I would like the train to be as fast as possible, but also not delayed for another 10 years. So I would love the better curve, and I'll write them emails, but I am scared of another study.
A gondola is not the worst idea in the world, but its also not the best idea in the world.
There are certainly strip malls / big box stores in the general area.
More studies are annoying, but its obvious that this will slow things down. Stations on either end have only modest impact especially when we move to less slug like trains.
re Gondola, maybe it could be a good idea, pretty sure its just meant to suck up time so they can push back building an LRT on Simcoe.
Didn't mean to argue on strip malls, if you walk 1.5km along a no sidewalk 70km/h road then there are box stores in Whitby. I was just saying if you are looking from google maps, it may look like there are strip malls to the east of the station, but its actually much worse.
Idk, as a waiting user, who relies on transit, I'm willing to settle on the slower crossing if actually is getting built. Waiting 2 years to study a new alignment before starting would mean two more years of bussing 3 cities to a go station. I guess its the opposite of how I don't think the HRS should go from Toronto-to-Ottawa, but would rather see them build what I see as a worse route there than build the better route in 10 years.
As an aside what is going on with this "aerial cable car" nonsense that Durham region seem to be coming up with on Simcoe.. nothing a simple tram (à la Finch West, perhaps not) couldn't do.
Paris just opened its 6 stop urban aerial cable car that goes over a highway, TGV line, and other obstacles a lot more cost-effectively to build & to operate than traditional modes could.
Okay? I'm not decrying the use case of a cable car. I'm well acquainted with C1, Metrocable and what have you. A flat, straight highway is not that use case.
Why not? An obstacle is an obstacle, be it vertical or horizontal.
I don't think it's the worst idea in the world, or the best idea in the world. A tram probably does make more sense . . . . but the execution risk does seem higher!
Unfortunately if Metrolinx were to be involved, the execution risk of an LRT or BRT would be exponential...