What Toronto can learn about transit, museums and parks from Melbourne |
Commuters use the escalators from the platform to the concourse at Town Hall station after the opening of Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel rail on Nov. 30.Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images
Melbourne and Toronto are similar in many ways.
Both began their modern lives as distant outposts of the British Empire and grew into vibrant, prosperous cities. Both have been enriched by waves of immigration from first Europe, then Asia. Both boast thriving downtowns with thickets of glass towers. Both are national hubs for finance and the arts. And both are home to roughly a fifth of the national population, when their hinterlands are factored in.
They’re practically twins, separated at birth, on opposite sides of the globe. Except that everything in Melbourne is, well, better.
The Editorial Board: The slow death of public transit service
A Torontonian riding the rails in Melbourne can only hang his head in shame. The city’s network of trams (what Toronto calls streetcars) is one of the biggest in the world, with 1,600 stops and a fleet of nearly 500, big and small. It is run by a private company on contract for the state government. Though three-quarters of the system shares the road with cars, it seems to work much better than the snails on rails that cross downtown Toronto.
Along with the trams, Melbourne has 16 commuter rail lines........