In my opinion the Drummond Report is, like many other a c t i o n s of its kind [see Mike Harris; Stephen Harper] short sighted and seems to be written by someone who is both ivory towerish and won't personally be impacted by the report.
An example thereof would be charging for parking at GO Trains. Unless the charge is minimal, i.e. a dollar or two a day, it will definitely impact on the use of the trains and put a strain on what already is one of the worst traffic situations [Tim Hudak said it was the worst traffic in North America during the '10 campaign] extant.
And that is only one example.
WFDS
As a 15y GO user I've seen the areas surround the stations become ever expanding parking lots, not only are they filling up faster than the service is expanded but money needed for service expansions is being diverted to buy land and build raised parking.
ReplyDeleteYes,parking costs will piss off some people who'll probably return to driving (until they've been forced to pay big bucks to park in downtown Toronto for a few weeks.) At the same time perhaps more of the people who currently drive a shorter distance than I walk to the station may simply leave the car at home or jump or use the under utilized local transit.
Sure some may start driving again but the smaller towns cannot convert their entire cores into parking lots for transit as they add trains every year. As GO cannot meet growing demand fast enough anyway I don't think a parking fee is going to be a problem.