Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Melbourne. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Melbourne. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, November 15, 2024

Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-Toronto

The Greater Toronto Area has been the only place in Canada where some Australian size residential towers have been permitted. So far, Montreal & Vancouver won't allow any residential towers to even reach 65 stories.

If Montreal were to ever allow something like a La_DefenseParramatta or a Canary_Wharf on the London_Docklands, then some Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto size towers would potentially be allowed.

Extremely restrictive Vancouver can't stop Burnaby, Coquitlam & especially Surrey from eventually having some Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto size towers.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/3200-east-broadway-vancouver-rupert-station-mst-aquilini Since these buildings would be within the small city linmits of Vancover, they won't be allowed to be on the scale of what Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto permit.

No residential or office tower within the city limits of little Vancouver is allowed to be as tall as the Telus_Sky tower at 222.3 m (729 ft) in Calgary and Seattle's Rainier_Square_Tower at 850-foot (260 m). 

The Living_Shangri-La tower, at 200.86 metres (659 ft) and the Paradox_Hotel_Vancouver at 188-metre (617 ft) are the tallest within Vancouver.

Unfortunatly, Montreal can't quite be included into the category with, Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-Toronto (BSMT). That's because their tallest buildings still have to be shorter that what Paris & Melbourne allow. However, the Greater Montreal transportation infrastructure is at a level of what you would expect for a big city to have. Fortunately, Québec has never been thwarted by anything like a BC Mind Virus (BCMV).


https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Brisbane%2C+Sydney%2C+Melbourne+and+Toronto

https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=GTA 

https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Brisbane+Airport+Railway+Line

Friday, August 8, 2025

North East Link Tunnels - The Big Build Victoria, Australia

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/news/north-east-link/tbms-resume-digging-victorias-longest-road-tunnels

 https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/north-east-link/design/north-east-link-tunnels/map 

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/metro-tunnel

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/suburban-rail-loop London has the Circle Line, Chicago has its elevated loop, Toronto has an underground loop, so it makes sense that Melbourne would also have a train loop. 

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/news/suburban-rail-loop/faster-easier-journeys-with-srl-east Melbourne like most real cities, have an extensive regional road system, but having a good regional rail network might even be more important & beneficial. https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/suburban-rail-loop/about/project-benefits

Unfortunately, Greater Vancouver is still lacking with its transportation infrastructure. 

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/regional-rail-revival 

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/projects/roads

https://bigbuild.vic.gov.au/library/west-gate-tunnel-project/maps


L.A. and Melbourne in the 1960s really started to plan on a big scale. Of course Vancouver went in the opposite direction.

https://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/maps/1968_final_proposed_transit_master_plan_concept_map.jpg , https://cityplanning.tumblr.com/post/24841307901/past-visions-of-l-a-s-transportation-future  

https://transitmap.net/1969-melbourne-plan , https://images.theconversation.com/files/303673/original/file-20191126-112489-1mpon3i.png?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip , https://theconversation.com/50-years-on-from-the-melbourne-transportation-plan-what-can-we-learn-from-its-legacy-127721  

https://transitmap.net/melbourne-trains-1981

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/a-birdseye-view-of-melbournes-transformation-from-1945-to-2015-20150226-13pd5v.html

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Why Greater Toronto Has Several Skylines

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI9WJa9Q8dA 

Of course many large urban areas around the world have more than 1 or 2 skylines or tower clusters. 

For the longest time, no building in Vancouver or BC, was allowed to be as tall as the 1930s CIBC tower, which is now a stump.

https://www.blogto.com/city/2017/05/toronto-lost-observation-deck-commerce-court-north/

https://www.torontojourney416.com/canadian-bank-of-commerce-building/ 

https://www.25king.ca/the-history 

It wasn't until the early 1970s when stumpy, Vancouver allowed a building to be taller than the L.A. City Hall, or the Smith Tower in Seattle. 

The 1930s CIBC tower, the L.A. City Hall and the Smith Tower, would still be prominent towers in Vancouver, but stumps in their own cities. 

Despite Vancouver being divided by an inlet and a river, the city wasn't able to build a huge wall along Boundary Road. Thus, the KEEP THEM OUT agenda was a little thwarted. The various White city councils tried to do the next best thing. That was to symbolically impose various restrictions as a reluctance to think, plan and build on a BIG city scale. The time especially from 1960 to 2000 had predominantly White City Hall and its councils continually impose several overlapping restrictions. 

Since Vancouver can't control immigration or the movements of non-white people, keeping things small and backwards, means that less people will move there than to Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. However, with a mild winter climate, more and more people want to move to backwards BC, especially small-minded Vancouver and provincial Victoria. 

In spite of immigration and Multiculturalism, Vancouver was to perpetually promote its small scale agenda. 

While the first Skytrain line can finally run 5 car trains, the stations weren't designed to become long enough to eventually accomodate 9 car trains like the big city Montreal Metro has. 

The 2nd and 3rd Skytrain lines are still only running 2 car joke trains. Running 8-10 car trains is what a proper big city would do, but not backwards Vancouver. 

Narrow bridges provides strong symbolism of the cities narrow-mindedness. When bridges are too narrow, its difficult to have a proper express or rapid bus system. The reluctance to build parallel bus and HOV bridges helps to maintain the congestive planning approach that is vancouver and the Greater Region. 

Vancouver's refusal to build parallel bike bridges has meant that 2 lanes were removed from the Burrard Bridge, 1 lane from the Cambie Bridge and 2 lanes from the Granville Bridge. 

Keeping buildings symbolically short when compared to what scenic Sydney, Auckland, SF and Seattle allow, also helps to maintain Vancouver's reluctance to enter the big and tall urban scale. In fact, the scenic setting that Vancouver is in has been used as the main excuse to continually scale the city down. Yet, several scenic cities around the world are either able to have wider bridges, wider roads, longer trains or taller buildings. 

The world is mostly composed of non-white people. Canada has less than 1% of the world's population and stubborn Vancouver symbolically remains as a small provincial backwater on the Pacific Rim. 

https://centralparktower.com.au Unlike Perth, Vancouver forbids 50 story office towers and Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne size residential towers. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/108_St_Georges_Terrace In fact, no office building in Vancouver has been permitted to have a 40th floor. However, since Burnaby and Surrey aren't under the restrictive controls of Vancouver, they will eventually allow office towers over 40 stories. 

Despite Australia having less people than Canada, Perth is allowed to have taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains than Vancouver. Taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains are even less likely in Halifax than whats in Brisbane or Queensland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q1_(building) To see buildings on a similar scale of what Brisbane allows, one has to get to Greater Toronto. Brisbane is allowed to have some buildings that would even be impressive in Melbourne and Sydney. 

While Montreal is allowed to have taller buildings than Vancouver, Montreal isn't allowed to have Sydney size towers. Especially not on the scale of what Melbourne and Toronto permit. 

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

West Georgia Street in Vancouver

 https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/west-georgia-street-rush-hour-vancouver-bc--72550243987409307

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/skytrain-north-vancouver-west-vancouver-north-shore

The Lions+Gate+Bridge is a classic 3 lane bottleneck, or the quintessential urban chokepoint. The LGB could become an excellent foot, bus & bike bridge, if only a tunnel could be built close to it.

Five-blocks east of the park, Georgia Street is continually seven lanes wide.

https://vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/west-georgia-complete-street.aspx

While that segment of W. Georgia_Street is 7 lanes wide, an 8 lane tunnel could cross the 1st Narrows. A 7 lane tunnel might be a little cheaper with a middle centre lane section & barrier, two 4 lane compartments would be much better. During the morning, all 4 lanes could be heading into Vancouver with 1 as a HOV lane. Then, during the afternoon, all 4 northbound lanes would be open with the 4th being a HOV lane.

The 4 lane northbound tunnel could emerge just north of the LGB. Then the surface route could connect to Marine Drive and then turn onto Capilano Road. The Cap interchange is already there. Simply moving the yellow line over one lane would allow 3 lanes of northbound traffic on Capilano Road. 

A reconfigured TCH & Taylor Way interchange could allow for 3 southbound lanes right down to the mall, simply by moving the yellow line over 1 lane. Then, a 3 lane Taylor Way southbound tunnel could start just south of the Marine Drive intersection. A southbound HOV lane would have to be routed into it.

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/this-week-in-history-the-great-georgia-harris-viaduct-opens-in-1915 Aparently, no one bothered to make sure that the 4 lane structure could properly support streetcars. Thus, the inept city couldn't use it as a major east-west streetcar route.

https://spacing.ca/vancouver/2011/06/16/the-viaducts-past-present-and-future-part-1 Even in the 1970s there was no concept to have an express bus corridor betwen Vancouver, Burnaby & Coquitlam. 

https://viewpointvancouver.ca/2015/01/13/john-mackie-the-georgia-viaduct-and-the-freeway-fight-1972

Then when the first 2 SkyTrain lines were built, the stations were barely half the length of the 152.5 meter Montreal Metro stations. Evidently, this was to save money, but the stations should have still been built to proper big city standards. Then to further reinforce the symbolism of congestive planning agenda, the 3rd line only has enough clearance for 50 meter stations. 

Sydney started to have taller buildings than Vancouver by the early 1960s. https://ca.pinterest.com/pin/west-georgia-street-1960--497647827546801125 It took until the end of the 1960s for Melbourne to start having taller buildings than Vancouver. Then as Melbourne soared into the 1970s, Vancouver started to create a series of overlapping restrictions to thwart the city.

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/british-columbia-vancouver-skyline-1970s-with-possible-building-site-of-west-coast-transmission-building--716424253196467928 Despite being a Pacific city, Vancouver & Canada don't seem to be interested in having a proper metropolis on the scale of Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane. The tallest buildings in Vancouver must be shorter than even the tallest in Perth, Seattle & Calgary. Most of the roads & bridges are to be half the width & the trains are also to be a half-length joke. Thus, Greater Vancouver has been in a perpetual state of congestion.


https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Georgia+Street

Friday, March 7, 2025

Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-SF-Boston-Toronto (B-S-M-SF-B-T)

 Auckland, NZ, along with Perth, WA and Seattle, WA have no problems with taller buildings and wider bridges than what Vancouver allows. Established cities like London & Paris, NYC & Chicago, big L.A. and even smaller Singapore, all seem to plan, spend & build more infrastructure than backwards Vancouver does. 

Cities like Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-SF-Boston-and-Toronto are all on a much larger scale, simply because they don't have anything like the overlapping restrictions that backwards Vancouver & BC has imposed for itself.

https://x.com/CityHallWchVAN/status/1517347123225718785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Escreen-name%3Acityhallwchvan%7Ctwcon%5Es1 What seems big in little Vancouver is small or just average in many other cities.


https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-Toronto 

https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Brisbane+Airport+Railway+Line

Monday, March 20, 2017

Melbourne Trams


Published on Mar 11, 2015
Route 96 is the busiest tram line in Melbourne. Filmed on the 8th of March 2015 this shows first hand how busy the line actually gets, especially through the City! Bombardier E Class Tram 6010 was the vehicle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POzqFlAzJGc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_6AhPIIabw

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Toughest time ever to afford a house in Vancouver, Canada

 https://vancouversun.com/news/toughest-time-ever-to-afford-a-house-vancouver-in-full-blown-crisis-rbc-report

If developers were allowed to build, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane size towers, as long as they also built some commonly affordable rental buildings, that would be an incentive. Sure, developers can build sky-high in Dubai, NYC & Chicago, but that's usually just for luxurious condo suites.

If developers in Vancouver & BC in general want to build much taller towers, they should also build a lot of low to mid-rise commonly affordable condominiums & rental units. Thus, by doing that in tandem, would allow them to build, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane size towers. 

Unfortunately, unless the very strict Vancouver height limitations are updated to proper big city standards, semi-tall luxurious condo towers will be built, but with no incentive for developers to build a lot of affordable housing for a much larger market.

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

A 22-storey rental housing tower proposed next to Whole Foods Kitsilano

 https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/2268-2294-west-3rd-avenue-1902-1912-vine-street-vancouver-tower

22 not 44 or 66 floors. They are allowed to build so much taller in Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane, because they don't have such restrictive Vancouver zoning restrictions to deal with. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane & Perth are not only warmer than Vancouver, but just as scenic in their own ways.

Unlike Singapore, Honolulu still prevents 50-60 story buildings. Today there are still no buildings with a 50th floor on Oahu. 

https://www.de-simone.com/projects/project/ko_olani-tower 47 stories.