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30 Comments

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Nice, Nice

By Robin Rix

20080829nicetram2.jpg
20080829nicetram.jpg
Torontoist’s European bureau decamped this past weekend to the French Riviera. And you can rest assured that—between enjoying the beaches and drinking on sunny patios—we took time to consider the public transportation system.
Nice has a good (and not over-infrastructured) blend of transit modes: trams on dedicated lines along the most-travelled stretches, buses that blanket the city, and affordable intercity coaches. A 25-minute ride to a medieval village for one euro ($1.50)? Sounds good to us.
What also piqued our interest was seeing well-manicured grass amid the tram tracks. Is it relatively inconsequential? Perhaps. Does it enhance the functioning of the transit system? Perhaps not. But we like it because it’s quirky, attractive, and, in its own way, urban art.
Toronto officials, take note! Form needn’t always follow function; sometimes, little things are worth doing just because they add beauty.
Photos by Robin Rix.

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Comments

  • Mark Ostler

    Looks good. I really regret not staying there for a few days on my way to Barcelona back in 05.

  • Gauldar

    Wow, that’s impressive looking. A little green patch goes alot way in city life. I went to France with my family back in 2000 when we did a tour of Europe, and I must say their train system blows ours out of the water. It’s ammazing what a little forward thinking and innovation can do for public transportation.

  • David Toronto

    It helps to notice that the streets are much wider than they are here. A look at the Nice transport system photos show greater turning radii than we could ever have here.
    Could the Nice vehicles negotiate our tight turning radii?

  • Miles Storey

    You can’t underestimate the positive effect of a bit of green in the middle of a city. Putting grass down between the tracks along lower Spadina for example would be sweet. Maybe City Place could be persuaded to pay for it over the Front St bridge, it would help compensate for the tinted window forest they’re growing down there.

  • antiboy

    I can just hear the scoffs of Torontonians if something like this was attempted. Seems like a uniquely European idea to me.

  • Gauldar

    The streets being wider do cause other problems though. Alot of morons on mopeds try and slip by cars in the spaces between them, and you’ll notice alot of cars mostly with gnashes in the front passenger wheel well area due to collitions with vespas. I do like the system though, but stupid drivers have their own impact where ever you are I guess.

  • Jake Bauming

    Vegetation, including grass, regulates the flow of runoff, as oppose to asphalt. It looks great, but also lessens the stress on the sewer system. When Toronto’s waterfront LRT system is employed, pray that City Hall heeds the demands of the public and installs grass between the rails. In fact, don’t pray: contact Gord Perks, councillor for Ward 14, where the LRT will be located.

  • David Toronto

    . . . stupid drivers have their own impact where ever you are I guess.
    ————-
    And we have them in abundance in this city!

  • Rajio

    Manicured lawns are a huge impact on global warming – so much is put in to maintaining them from watering to pesticides, to mowing. If something like this was adopted, say, along spadina it would be green but not necessarily environmentally sound. With perhaps more research something LIKE this could be done but without all the mowing et cetera – something which can effectively be self maintaining.

  • rocketeer

    For the people who want it in Toronto, wouldn’t it cause problems in the winter with regard to clearing the roads? Even if it didn’t, after the first snow there’d be enough rock salt on the ground to kill anything even remotely green.
    Looks neat, probably not a good fit for our own city unfortunately.

  • antiboy

    Yeah, Gauldar, mopeds trying to illegally slip by cars and hitting them is totally the driver’s fault.

  • Astin

    I’d guess the grass also helps regulate pedestrian flow. Take a look at Spadina any day of the week and you’ll see people crossing the tracks in the middle of the road. Things like the grass are subtle ways of directing people to the designated pedestrian areas.

  • Mark Ostler

    I think Gauldar was referring to the moped riders. They are, after all, driving a motor vehicle (and if they’re slipping in and out of traffic, then they’re doing it recklessly and stupidly).

  • Gauldar

    Mark, yep.

  • Jake Bauming

    Just as trees’ branches and leaves on a well-used roadway quit growing in the shape of the large trucks that carve their path through the hanging canopy, having LRT trains or trams constantly moving back & forth will limit the growth of the grass. Naturally, it will still have to be maintained, but consider seeding the ground with more appropriate grass seed.
    The stuff in our yards was brought over by Europeans to feed their cattle because it grows quickly. It also needs a tonne of water. Something like Wildflower Farms’ grass seed requires very little maintenance and very little water. Laying grass between the tracks can easily be done and the benefits outweigh the costs, provided it’s done properly. The waterfront LRT system will run through an area which the city is attempting to reconfigure as parkland. Grass between the tracks is a better alternative to cement considering the tracks and/or adjacent area will ostensibly be surrounded by grass, anyway.

  • andrew phillips

    I was just in Nice last week with some friends and yeah we were fully blown away by the advanced tram system there. Right away our first reaction was “wow, toronto is living in the stone age”. They were so smooth and advanced. Even the map inside lit up to let you know which stop you were at.
    Something else I noticed in southern France and while I was touring around barcelona was the public bike rental systems. You pay an annual fee to be a member and then they place computer operated bike racks (about 20 bikes per rack) strategically around the city. Simply enter your member code, take a bike, use it as long as you want, and then leave it at another rack when your finished.
    I see Toronto has this similar kind of system for cars…why don’t we have it for bikes? What a great way to save the environment and lower emissions in the city. I could be naive, do we already have a system like this?

  • Paul Kishimoto

    Do want.
    Rajio, I don’t think you have to worry about that. The city could just plant a breed of grass actually suited to our climate, instead of the high-maintenance golf-green stuff some vain homeowners prefer.
    I wonder how it would work in the winter. I guess they would have to switch from using normal snowplows to something that actually runs on the rails.

  • Paul Kishimoto

    Jake beat me to posting ;_;
    Andrew, I think the city is planning something similar, and it was reported on Torontoist. A lot of the comments focused on how BikeShare was allowed to die, instead of the potential of bike sharing itself.

  • Gloria

    I’m still waiting for someone to adequately explain how the grass would survive snowplows.

  • torontothegreat

    That looks amazing. The grass is also functional in the sense that it would deter cars from thinking it’s a roadway for them to use.

  • Nick

    I have also seen grass growing between the tracks in e.g. the tramline to the beach in the Hague, Netherlands.
    Re. Gloria’s concern, the TTC could readily adapt a streetcar to have a plow on the front. Actually now that I think about it, how does the TTC cope with snow on the 501 line that runs down the middle of the Queensway? I recall that there is just gravel ballast between the tracks. I also recall that I was disappointed when they redid this line a couple of years ago that gravel was all that they used, not grass. It would have been perfect there.
    And re. manicured lawns versus environmental impact of concrete versus some other vegetation ground cover, I’m sure someone at U of T could do a study as a thesis project!

  • Paul Kishimoto

    @#19: I’m still waiting for you to actually read my suggestion that they not use snowplows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po9A8_6YD4A
    Observe the few inches of snow left on the ground, which wouldn’t obstruct the passage of trains or streetcars. Grass is often found under snow, rather than vice versa.
    Any other hairs to split?

  • Gloria

    @19: Kinda. How much does a rail snowblower cost?

  • Svend

    I like the look of grass but I think attractive cobblestones would be a better idea. They would stand up to salt and also wouldn’t be destroyed by a plow blade.
    Saying this, I still think concrete is best. The rail needs solid support and it looks clean, plus the money can be spent on more important things.

  • rek

    Why not plant appropriate grass and stop using salt? At least on the associated streets. Don’t other cities use sand or something else?
    This would be great to see on the street car ROWs.

  • TokyoTuds

    Forget the grass, how about those nice (pun intended) low-floor, quiet trams they are using.

  • rek

    Tokyo – They’re coming.

  • TokyoTuds

    Ahh, good to hear they are coming. I’ve been to Nice and a dozen other European cities with these lovely trams. I am so glad Toronto is re-investing in its streetcar network.

  • rek

    Personally I don’t like the looks of these modern street cars. They’re too lozengey, inoffensively nondescript. I like the looks of Toronto’s current street cars. I like the white cap, the tall and narrow cabins, the bits and pieces that jut and curve independent of the mass silhouette. I want to see that aesthetic applied to the low-riding replacements. They are Toronto icons, and we’ve lost plenty of those already.

  • TokyoTuds

    I have to agree in that I like Toronto’s streetcars looks too. Maybe we could keep them on the downtown lines and put the “lozenge” type on new lines to be built.
    But I don’t care for the TTC streetcar’s noise and lack of comfort ….