User:Antigrandiose/Archive

Other Great Lakes Urban Agglomerations

We should include Milwaukee with Chicago if we're gonna start combining cities around the Great Lakes. Unlike the cities around Lake Ontario, these metro areas are actually contiguous. Maybe we could call this new area, which will be similarly defined by locals trying to make their cities seem larger and more important than they actually are, "The Silver U", or maybe even "The Platinum Penis". I'm drafting the article as you read this. --Antigrandiose (talk) 02:14, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you inserted this section into the middle. Anyways, I'm not sure what you are referring to... The Golden Horseshoe is a political area in Ontario, and thousands of reliable sources attest to its existence. I don't think it has anything to do with having the city with the biggest penis. Also, aside from Niagara Falls, Barrie and narrow greenbelts, the GTA is contiguous from Hamilton to Oshawa and Lake Ontario to Newmarket. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 06:51, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

It was originally put after the section that had a sentence that began, "IF the golden horseshoe includes Buffalo, New York...." I thought it related to that section nicely, although it seems as if I’d committed a faux padia.

I was being facetious. My intent was to have a teaching moment by parodying the promotional tone of this article. Also, and I know I'm partially to blame for this, but let's stop talking about penises. It's just that if western Lake Ontario reminds some people of a horseshoe then, oh well, Lake Michigan reminds me of something else. But back to my main point: it's easy to combine areas and make them seem larger than they are. I could be wrong, and I'll be the first to admit if I am, but I can't seem to find any other articles that combine distinct metro areas like this one does. (Regions don't count). Just because some cat who makes dishwashers thinks that a section of a great lake is a distinct region doesn’t make it so.

Even the name has the ring of promotionalism. It makes me think of the Golden Nugget, the Golden Corral, or--and this is regionally relevant--the Golden Corridor.

If the State of California were to merge (you know, like Toronto does) Orange and San Diego Counties, it would add over three million people to the LA region. (I would propose we call it La Costa Ora, by the way). Also, as I originally stated, if you were to put everything from Michigan City, IN to Bayside, WI within the sphere of Chicago (also contiguous with a few greenbelts), it would add about two million people to my proposed Platinum Penis region. (Sorry, I slipped).--Antigrandiose (talk) 04:25, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Golden Horseshoe

I think we really need to expand the Canadian part of this article. It still isn't any longer than the American part is.--Antigrandiose (talk) 05:40, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

"World's Busiest Highway"

As of 08 August 2007, the 401 was claimed to be the "world's busiest highway" in at least two sentences. Two references are provided, but neither actually back up this claim. The first says it is "among the world's busiest highways", which I believe. The second comes from the Toronto Sun (bias?) and says it is "probably" the busiest in the world, which I don't believe.

It's a big highway by Canadian standards, yeah, but the GTA has only some 5,000,000 people - comparing that with cities like Mexico City, Tokyo, New York City, or Jakarta - all of which have many more people and some of which have much worse infrastructure - I think this claim should be dropped. I am therefore changing the claim to "one of the busiest highways in the world," which is surely more accurate and maintains the point - that it's a busy highway! Dmhaglund 13:11, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

9 million people in the horseshoe area. the land area covered by that area is similar to the large metro cities you are comparing it to.

Well the GTA comment is irrelevant since a) most of the 401 is nowhere near the GTA and b) "only" 5 million is still freaking big compared to most of the world. However, sit between Brockville and Cornwall and tell me its busy... you can't. It *IS* busy in many places, but as you mention, the 'world's busiest' is an unrealistic claim. Camcurwood (talk) 04:47, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think this claim is dubious, too. The sources cited have an interest in promoting the region, and Canadians have a seemingly insatiable desire to promote every aspect of their country on Wikipedia (e.g. "busiest this", the "second biggest" that, or the third biggest that, all with dubious citations). According to the article, there's 8.1 million people in the Golden Horseshoe. If it were in the US and a metro area, it would be fourth, between Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth. (It would also be further behind LA and Chicago if the US defined Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the same way that this vast Golden Horseshoe region is defined, because San Diego is contiguous with LA and Milwaukee is contiguous with Chicago).

I mention this only to make my point about Highway 401: I have a hard time believing that the transportation kommisars in New York and Los Angelas and Chicago are all so much more talented than the ones in Toronto (in that they were able to avoid the apparent congestion that just seems to be plaguing Toronto). Is Toronto congested compared to LA? Does anyone really think that more people commute to downtown Toronto than downtown Chicago? Either someone is measuring the same thing in different ways or this is nothing more than another empty boast. --Antigrandiose (talk) 01:38, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you may be confusing the Golden Horseshoe with the Greater Toronto Area. The Golden Horseshoe is not a Metropolitan Statistical Area or Census Metropolitan Area rather an area or region similar to the Boston–Washington megalopolis, Inland Empire, or South Florida metropolitan area. The Golden Horseshoe contains several different “MSA’s” or “CMA’s” within it.

As for the 401’s claim to be the “busiest”. You ask “Is Toronto congested compared to LA ?” . Toronto has in fact surpassed Los Angeles in traffic congestion as illustrated [1]here. A fact someone not familiar with Southern Ontario would have to consider is that the interstate system in the United States is far superior to the 400-Series system of Ontario. There are far more interstates to use in the area’s you mention. While in Southern Ontario the 401 is the only major east – west freeway across this particular area of the province. Where the freeway system in Chicago and LA may serve the local community more, the 401 is a major “thru-fare”. All thru-traffic and cargo between Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, etc. uses this freeway. Po' buster (talk) 16:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Please also see this discussion from last year. Mind matrix 17:33, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Mindmatrix. I wasn't confusing metro Toronto with the Golden Horseshoe, I was just trying to compare the largest chunk of real estate I could find to make the comparison more fair. The article you cite (as well as the link to the older discussion) references commuting times, though, and not how busy the highway is, e.g. vehicles per hour. (People who live in Ventura, California and work in Hollywood aren't driving on California'a busiest highways, although their commute time is longer that some of the people who are). It's hard to find a reliable source for vehicles per hour or day or whatever; I'm just personally skeptical. I look at a map of the Toronto (and the Golden Horseshoe) area and the LA (and the SoCal) area and I see 401 and 407 connecting Toronto's east and west suburbs. The only significantly large suburban area seems to be Mississigua. Granted, Mississagua (pop. 700,000) is larger than most US counties, but if you look at the arteries between Orange (pop 3,000,000) and LA counties, there's only two interstates as well, and only one that goes to downtown LA (directly from Orange County). Also, Chicago's far north (Comparable in size to Mississagua) and southeast Lake County, Indiana suburbs share I-94 and 90 (joined together) as their exclusive freeway (or tollway) to Chicago. I've lived in those two metro areas, and I'm sure a New Yorker or someone from Dallas could provide a similar example. --Antigrandiose (talk) 12:22, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Try comparing the freeway networks, LA's versus Toronto's. Toronto's is one of the worst, and hasn't been updated in 50 years. The 401 is the spine through the GTA (Which fwiw, Oshawa is a bedroom community; Milwaukee is not), and is the sole east-west commuter highway in a region of 8 million people. Also compare transit statistics (percentage of riders).

What it really comes down to though, is the AADT. I haven't found government figures on the SMF for 2006, but 2001 was (I believe, top of my head here) 390,000 vehicles on an average day, compared with 431,900 on the 401. It'd be nice to get figures that line up year-wise, but here's looking forward to 2011. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:28, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Floydian... it's the weekend so I don't have much time, but I'll write a few-sentence-response on maybe Monday. In the meantime I invite you to look at the map and what I wrote about the 5 and thr 405. They're the main drags from a county of three million into LA county.

Dubious Claim

The back and forth in the above section entitled "fourth most heavily-used urban mass transit system" is entertaining. Now that it's two years later I'd like to take a second look at this. The article on the CTA says that its daily ridership is 1.7 million. This article claims 1.5 million for the TTC. Something is wrong. I tend to believe the numbers provided by the agencies more than an unsourced, dubious boast by a Canadian TV network in 2005. I will change the number from third to fourth in a few days unless new sourced facts come to light and in the absence of serious objections. --Antigrandiose (talk) 02:35, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Fourth?

I put something like this on the TTC page because it states that it carries 1.5 million passengers daily, and this article has the CTA at 1.7 million passengers daily. The TTC article claims that the TTC is the third largest city-transit system in North America (and cited a five-year-old unsourced claim from a TV network website) and this article states (with no citation) that the CTA is the fourth largest. Something is wrong here and I think this should be resolved. I put the citation needed tag in the CTA article. My position is that based on the information in the articles, the CTA should be listed as third and the TTC as fourth. I'll make changes in a few days unless someone can cite something that proves me wrong. --Antigrandiose (talk) 05:47, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Tourism

I added the two citation needed tags to the tourism section because it contradicts this which does have citations. Maybe Toronto/Silver Horseshoe cheerleaders can not only provide citations, but also fix the chart. Isn't it just obvious that more international visitors go to Toronto than Rome? I just hope this isn't a deliberate snub against Canada. --Antigrandiose (talk) 07:31, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Section: Criticism and practical problems

This article states that one of the problems with this convention is that "It is not immediately clear on an analogue clock whether a time is a.m. or p.m." Calling 6:00 p.m. "1800" won't solve this problem, either. (The only reason I noticed this is that I've been working on a 24-hour analogue clock. Everybody seems to like it so far except for little kids).

And one more thing: Is it really more complicated to implement in software and digital electronics? How much code does it take to convert 1300 to 0000 to pm? That's like saying it's more difficult to eat a 45 oz steak as opposed to a 40 oz steak. Technically, yea. But no one's gonna notice.

Vancouver population

metro cities especially in the US cover 15-25 thousand squared kilometers. wouldn't most of BC's population be within 15-25 thousand squared kilometers of Vancouver ? it's a really small area that most of BC's population lives in. why is metro Vancouver quoted within such a small area ? is there an area similar to the green belt in Toronto that covers a larger area ? it just seems weird because Vancouver feels like a city close in size to Montreal, but Montreal has twice as many people (2-3 times as much area as well).Grmike (talk) 11:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)grmike

Vancouver is in a unique position in that there isn't really a lot of room for it to grow besides east. The north has the mountains, there is the border to the south and the Strait of Georgia to the west. Vancouver does have its fair share of sprawl but not as extreme as other Canadian or American cities. If we were to use the American metro definition, we would be including the Fraser Valley, the Sunshine Coast and parts of Vancouver Island. єmarsee • Speak up! 01:19, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, unlike Montreal, Vancouver is broken into various municipalities. You can drive through five cities in less than one hour. If you consider the entire Lower-Mainland where people commute to and from on a daily basis, then it comes to be much closer in size to the largest metropolitan areas in Canada. Mkdw ^talk 11:11, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

If you drive through Montreal, you can drive through five cities in less than one hour. Montreal is not as monolithic as you think, though there are attempts to make it so. And until a decade ago, Toronto wasn't monolithic either (over the last decade several Ontario and Quebec cities were forcefully amalgamated by the provincial governments) 70.29.210.242 (talk) 06:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm tired of reading comments that go something like this: the reason US cities are so much larger (population wise) than Canadian ones is that their metro areas are so much bigger. No kidding? I think that's putting the cart before the horse. The cities are bigger. US cities don't incorporate their neighboring suburbs like Canadian cities do. This is why a city like Toronto, for example, is almost the size of Chicago, but its Metro area is a little more than half its size. Including the entire population of a state or province will make them seem bigger, but they're too big for most people to think of them as metro areas. (I'm not suggesting that Southern Californians think that their region should be viewed as a metro area, but many editors believe that the Golden Horseshoe should). Montreal has about 800,000 more people than San Diego, but if you were to extend Montreal's metro region by 10 or 20 miles in every direction would you really have that many more people? What about San Diego? Or Chicago. --Antigrandiose (talk) 09:26, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

you could have a point if it wasn't for the example of Boston. unlike cities like Denver and Houston whose metro areas are 2 or 3 times larger than Toronto's (thus having densities 2 or 3 times smaller but total numbers that are comparable) metro Boston has an area very similar to Toronto's. but guess what they did ? they created another combined statistical area that covers much more area (thus giving it a huge advantage over Toronto) in order to inflate their numbers. Toronto, Montreal, and especially Vancouver do not have larger 'combined statistical whatever' areas. it's not just a coincidence that every major American metro area covers a lot more land than their Canadian counterparts. the ones that don't almost always come up with an extended boundary. if Denver has 2.6 million, Seattle has 3.3 million, Houston 5.7 million, Chicago 9.8 million then Vancouver has 3.6 million, Montreal has 5-5.5 million, Toronto has 8.5 million. there's nothing wrong with viewing them that way. Grmike (talk) 17:24, 10 April 2010 (UTC)grmike

No they don't! You're confusing American metro areas with American CSAs, and then claiming that regions in Canada are bigger than American metro areas. The Houston area is bigger than the Toronto area, in any honest measurable way.

The article on Boston says that the city's metro area has 4.5 million people. What parts of the Boston area do you want to take out to make it more like a proper Canadian metro area? It's CSA is larger, but no one would consider Providence or Manchester to be part of the Boston area. A CSA is something that is contrived by the US Census Bureau, and like so much of what the US government does, is nonsensical and is ignored by everyone except for Canadians on Wikipedia. From what I can glean from the article, a CSA is an arbitrary combination of metro areas, much like the Golden Horseshoe in Canada. My point wasn't to compare a spread-out CSA like Denver to Vancouver, but if you want to, Vancouver would only have 2.5 million people. (I don't know where you get 3.6 million, but it seems to be an example of a trend I notice on Wikipedia where a lot of facts about Canada are unsourced and seem to be exaggerated). My point was to show that a lot of places that are considered singular urban areas, like Chicago and San Diego, are really part of larger contiguous urban areas, and their populations would be even larger if combined, and not these spread-out CSAs that Canadians continuously whine about.

It just seems to me that a lot of Canadian commentators on Wikipedia want to do everything they can to make Canadian cities seem bigger and American cities seem smaller, or at the very least characterize American cities as being unfairly big: "Toronto would be just as big as Chicago or Houston, if it weren't for underhanded counting tricks." Are you kidding me?

I don't think that your word "advantage" is appropriate, though. Being bigger or smaller than another city doesn't convey an advantage, it's simply a matter of civic pride, which is something that Canadians seem to have in excess.--Antigrandiose (talk) 09:32, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Main attractions

Canadian National Tower

Toronto's most famous landmark is the CN Tower, a 553 metre- (1,815 foot-) tall steel and concrete transmission tower and observation deck which is the second tallest freestanding structure in the world. The CN Tower was surpassed by the Burj Khalifa tower in September 2007; prior to that, it was considered to be the tallest free-standing structure in the world. But it is now recognized that the CN Tower is the tallest free-standing tower in the world, although not the tallest tower.

Biggest in the World?

I put a (citation needed) template by the claim that Gooderham and Worts Distillery was the largest distillery in the worldin the 1860s. I think Wikipedia needs a short article that covers the few places and things in Canada that aren't the biggest/busiest/coolest places on earth. --Antigrandiose (talk) 04:11, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Peacock Template

I put the (avoid peacock terms) template at the beginning of this article. I don't know enough about this building to make the necessary corrections, but telling me that it's "the most distinctive landmark" that "still impresses today" tells me nothing, either. --Antigrandiose (talk) 05:07, 19 April 2010 (UTC)