Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1425

Today is municipal election day in Toronto.

About 8 months ago I publicly announced here on ATC who I would be supporting , and my position hasn’t changed. I was disappointed by the fact that he ended up backing away from his initial promise of a true downtown relief subway line ( see blog post ), but I nonetheless continue to support his candidacy.

In the words of Mike “Pinball” Clemons, he’s “the right man at the right time.” Click here if you can’t see the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouqv782giyw]

But I’m not here to try and sway your vote. That is ultimately your decision. However, I am here to encourage you to get out and vote. Regardless of who you might be supporting, I think it’s important that you get out and take a position. So I hope you do that today.

Happy Monday!

This morning I woke up to a post from venture capitalist Fred Wilson talking about the cost of loyalty when it comes to local transportation markets. More simply, it was a cost comparison between regular city taxis and ride sharing services such as a UberX, Lyft, and Sidecar in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

The data was sourced from whatsthefare.com and looks like this:

The way to understand this chart is to think about it as the answer to this question (from whatsthefare.com ): If I were to take 1,000 rides over my lifetime with one individual service, how much more would I pay than if I compared prices and always picked the cheapest option?

What you should immediately see is that regular taxis are far more expensive in San Francisco and Los Angeles compared to all of the ride sharing services. In the words of Fred Wilson: “That is crazy. They are going to go out of business in those markets with that pricing.”

In my words: They are fucked.

I wonder where Toronto would place against these cities. My gut tells me that we would be closer to San Francisco than New York. And if that is the case, I think you can figure out what that means.

I thought this would be an interesting post given yesterday’s point about our cities being multi-modal . We urbanites have many more options at our disposal than we did only a few years ago. And if they’re cheaper and more convenient, we’re going to use them. I think that’s a good thing.

This afternoon I rode Toronto’s new streetcar for the first time on my way home from Chinatown. I had been meaning to do it for weeks now, but this was my first opportunity.

The experience was infinitely better than what you get today on our current streetcars. I felt like I was in a new city. The proof-of-payment system makes onboarding much faster and the 4 loading doors means you just get on the train where there’s the most room – instead of getting on at the front and fighting your way to the back.

The other thing I liked is that they now have a map of our streetcar network within the train (see above image). Toronto never used to do this. For whatever reason, we didn’t like mixing subway lines with streetcar lines on the same map. 

But why be so pedantic?

For one thing, our subway map looks pathetic without these additional streetcar lines on it. So for the sake of Torontonian morale, please fill it up with what you can.

But the other reason why I think it’s important to include them is that we shouldn’t be thinking about our cities just in terms of specific technologies (subway, streetcar, and so on). Our cities are now multi-modal . Which means we navigate them using many different means, from subways and streetcars to bikes and Uber cars. What people care about is getting from A to B in the most efficient and enjoyable way possible.

This may seem like a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one. And maybe, just maybe, these new maps will serve as an important reminder to us that there’s a lot of fixed rail in this city and that it could be far better optimized if we just tried a little harder.