Has Transit Short-Changed Toronto?
TTC compounds the problem with poor line management, indifference to service quality and the attitude that “TTC culture” prevents any improvement.
Bus riders in the suburbs encounter similar problems on busy routes, but at least in recent years a fleet refresh plus improved loading standards make some difference although many would argue that the TTC is still only barely keeping up to demand.
Plans and promises for new transit lines are on the back burner in Malvern and Northern Etobicoke, two remote outer parts of the City.
Car drivers see no improvements. Overwhelmingly they drive outside the core, indeed outside the 416. No subway will help them, and transit in the suburbs is a distant second choice.
Even for commuters to downtown, GO has been starved for expansion, and service is very core-oriented. Bus service in the 905 generally supports peak direction, peak period travel, and the idea of a “transit lifestyle” is unheard of. The first line proposed for frequent all day GO service is an airport shuttle at a premium fare serving almost none of the potential demand in its corridor.
There are many plans including the most recent consolidation, Metrolinx’ Big Move, but little action. Planning aims to reduce congestion and pollution, but even the best case only keep pace as population and travel growth outstrip capacity benefits.
Funding stretches out to the dim future, and politicians’ will to engage in debates of tolls or taxes is held hostage by the “no new tax brigade”. Even business groups like the Board of Trade recognize the need to invest in transit, but this is very slow to appear. We won’t see major improvements for years. The glass is more than half empty. After $50-billion in transit spending, congestion won’t be much better than it is today, although more people will be riding transit.
Can we blame motorists for thinking nobody takes them seriously, that nothing will ever be done? Politicians talk about transit, but until quite recently did little to actually improve it. Half measures are the norm, and real transit improvement throughout the GTA is always something for tomorrow when fiscal and political pressure might relax enough for a tiny bit of new spending and revenue generation.
How can regional governments justify big spending on transit when they see little hope of Provincial support and Metrolinx treats local service as something others will pay for?
Motorists are left steaming in their traffic jams. We have built a region on car travel, but at a density the road network cannot support. No subway line will cure problems on the 401.
Our challenge is to build and run enough transit to handle the demands transit can reasonably address. We will never solve all of the road problems> On some roads, life will become worse for motorists as more and more capacity is devoted to transit, cycling and pedestrians.
Trying to “solve” congestion by turning the clock back 50 years on highway plans, by gutting the surface transit system, will do nothing but make even worse the long-standing need for better transit. A “war on transit” solves nothing.
Every politician, every agency at the city and provincial level needs to speak with one voice on transit improvements. The TTC above all agencies must show how it can run better service to improve the lot of transit users today. The City and Province must lead on transit planning, construction and service, and engage voters on the issues of new revenues for capital and operating spending.
Politicians with facile “solutions” who appeal to a motorists’ nirvana that cannot be attained, should be dispatched to the electoral dustbins they so richly deserve.
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David Cavlovic:
September 15th, 2010 at 6:20 am
You have mentioned many times, including this post, what should be done. I guess the question to ask now is, WILL it be done? The cynic in me suspects nothing substantial will be accomplished to solve these problems. And–I’m sorry: I suspect Rob Ford of being anti-transit because he considers it a socialist plot.
Pete Coulman:
September 15th, 2010 at 8:29 am
Hi Steve – just wanted your take on this – I have been reading through the TTC Commission meeting notes, as you know they are all down at the archives, for the years 1966 thru to 1985 recently.(Yes a long, and sometimes boring process). Anyways, from everything I have read it appears Scarborough is mostly to blame in a way for the RT technology. All the correspondence I have read shows Scarborough whining and complaining bitterly to the TTC, the City of Toronto and the Province about not wanting to be ‘second-class’ . They felt that a streetcar line was unfair. If others got a subway, they didn’t want to be stuck with a measly little streetcar etc. There is a good 6 or 7 years of this whining which shows up all the time. I mean they really started whining back in 54, Scarboro was a bunch of disconnected outposts here and there and they were always demanding more bus routes from the TTC. Just never happy! Anyways, do you think this attitude made it much easier for the Province to step in with the ‘new” RT tech????
Peter:
September 15th, 2010 at 8:44 am
A great post Steve, I really wish you had a larger platform to share it with
Daniel Hammond:
September 15th, 2010 at 8:50 am
This is the best description yet of Toronto’s lost decades of transit. While Metrolinx writes another report on how much concrete can be poured, they continue to neglect the basics such as service planning, for example does anyone in GTA transit “management” understand the concept of a “timed transfer” between intersecting lines?
Calvin Henry-Cotnam:
September 15th, 2010 at 10:27 am
I have a lot of issues with Rossi’s plans, but in all fairness I believe it is important to point out a misrepresentation that would not go unmentioned if the tables were turned: Steve wrote, “Rocco Rossi would sell Toronto Hydro, use the supposed proceeds to build subways, …”
Rossi’s plans are to use the supposed proceeds to pay repay the city’s debt, then earmark the payments that would have been used to service that debt to build subways. As many have pointed out, including Steve, using proceeds from the sale of assets is a one-time cash injection, but the intent here is to use those proceeds for a one-time elimination of something that creates an ongoing item on the city budget. Granted, debt servicing payments don’t go on forever, but they are a far cry from a one-time issue.
That said, my concern with Rossi’s plan deals with more on how one can assure that the shift in spending from debt servicing to transit capital funding can be guaranteed to continue past his administration’s tenure. Added to that, there is the lack of planning on how to fund the operation of this new infrastructure.
W. K. Lis:
September 15th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Several of the leading candidates have their own transit plans, mostly stopping what we have currently planned and replacing them with their own. Enough already, do not stop any current construction going on. Else, we will never get anything built.
For those whose plans include just building heavy rail subways, where will the extra money come from? Heavy rail subways need high density to support them. Do the neighbours want high-rise buildings in their neighbourhood?
Streetcars were replaced by buses in most cities in North America. History has shown that decision was a mistake. Toronto did not, but did not expand into the suburbs either. Yes, streetcars are not liked by most of those who drive cars, but are liked by most of their passengers. However, light rail in their own right-of-way would be better in suburbs, if we can ever get the transportation department to give transit the real traffic signal priority they require.
Stuart Hargreaves:
September 15th, 2010 at 11:25 am
The absurd Ford and Rossi plans cap off a profoundly disappointing electoral cycle for anyone who hoped that thanks to Transit City we might finally see the light at the end of Toronto’s long, dark, and depressing transit tunnel.
The crucial problem is leaving projects that are (by their very nature) long-term and capital-intensive to the vagaries and whims of short term political expediency. Without a sustained and guaranteed level of funding from the federal and provincial governments, expensive (in the short term) transit projects that will not reap gains for the city until years after their completion will always be a prime target for small-minded politicians like Ford whose stale and empty rhetoric about a “war on cars” and “defending the taxpayer” reveals only their unsuitability to lead a modern metropolis.
Andrew:
September 15th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Tell me about it. I live in one of those new downtown condos, love streetcars, but have to put up with irregular service. Sigh. You’d think having a far-too-small fleet would actually make the TTC raise their line-management game.
Ed:
September 15th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
What’s not obvious is how to best give feedback to the mayoral candidates.
As the election goes on, I am forced to consider Pantalone and Thompson to be the two best candidates. Thompson’s platform and experience has some obvious drawbacks, but Pantalone’s platform is invisible!
Michael Torres:
September 15th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
The TTC improved service on the 509 Harbourfront route this board period, especially during the peak periods. Six cars in the AM peak and 7 cars in the PM peak. A few years ago, it was 4 and 5 respectively. As always, line managment is still an issue at times with bunching, but overall, service is much better than a few years ago.
David:
September 15th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
If Sarah Thompson was committed to building Transit City, but also included the DRL I’m pretty sure I would be voting for her without a second thought. Not that I might not end up voting for her- I am undecided at this point. At this point I know its anybody but Ford or Rossi.
Smitherman has been jumping left and right- I think this is going to hurt him in the end, unless just prior to the election Ford is still leading and people move to support Smitherman only to block Ford.
In general, Thompson has been growing into her own and recently introduced her bike plan, which is based on sustainable, progressive and urban based planning- exactly what we need. I think if Thompson was to introduce her transit plan today it might look different from what it does. Unlike the other candidates- she is the only candidate who has even been willing to approach how we are going to fund transit in any meaningful way.
Anne:
September 15th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
” “Out there” the pollsters must say there is a gold mine of resentment by those who drive, and by those who would drive given half a chance. ”
I think the current anti-transit/TTC “polling” is actually confusing or conflating *four* different groups (two of Steve’s groups I’m interpreting as follows):
1) “those who drive”: those who hate transit and rarely take it. Btw, I suspect a good many of our city councillors and more than a few of our TTC commissioners fall into this group; I’m open to (and hopeful of) being proven wrong;
2) “those who would drive given half a chance”: those who actually ride the system because economically they have no choice but would prefer to drive;
3) those who actually ride the system, love the idea of transit and would love to see it improved, but endure horrible service and overly long commutes on their particular routes (I’m in this category, if you hadn’t noticed);
4) those who no longer ride the system because of commuting inconvenience, and probably too many adverse experiences, but support the idea of public transit and would use it if it served their needs.
The first group is more or less a “lost cause” in terms of political support of public transit. But, the other three groups represent a significant opportunity for forward-thinking politicians and transit planners.
In my experience, using transit in many other cities (and even using the TTC in the “old” days) was a very positive experience. I don’t know why the TTC, and most everyone who discusses transit in Toronto, persists in presenting public transit as something that’s “good for us”; sounds like the reason your grandmother gave you to take cod-liver-oil: “It’s yucky, but just hold your nose and don’t think about it so it doesn’t taste so bad.” This is an ideal way to turn everyone off the whole idea of public transit. We shouldn’t be preaching a “holier-than-thou” message to commuters that it is their duty to take transit in order to server the larger good, we should be designing transit from the perspective of making it effective and efficient such that it doesn’t require personal sacrifice to take it, so that people are happy to leave their cars at home.
@ Pete Coulman, thanks for your kind words on the other thread!
Stephen Cheung:
September 15th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
“However, these ideas come from somewhere. “Out there” the pollsters must say there is a gold mine of resentment by those who drive, and by those who would drive given half a chance. That translates to support for anyone who wants all transit plans to take a back seat to right-thinking, road-oriented policies. How, in a city that considers itself a progressive, pro-transit 21st century metropolis, is this possible?”
This is assuming that all right-wing thinkers think that way, which we don’t. I want a decent transit system as much as the next guy but in the end, we want a choice on how we want to get around the city. Issues like road tolls, expensive parking at TTC lots, increasing costs, boorish TTC employees, make us realize that it is not worth the trouble going through all the trouble to do our part and take public transit.
“The Rae government begat the Harris regime and an almost complete withdrawal of Queen’s Park from transit funding from which Toronto has never recovered. The TTC slashed service across the board, and particularly hard-hit was the streetcar system. It gained two new lines (Spadina and Harbourfront), but not, on a permanent basis, the extra cars needed to operate them. For a time, system riding was down, and a smaller fleet was all the TTC needed. However, this compromised the TTC’s ability to add service in peak periods. Streetcar lines that once boasted frequent service all day turned into nightmares of overcrowding and unreliability.”
As a conservative, I too am not a fan of the Harris years, though the one bright side of this period of time was that transit systems learned to run leaner and without waste. Gone were the days where buses would run the entire length of their route empty because they ran on areas that did not need service. In fact, I would think that OC Transpo in Ottawa (where I came from) ran a lot better than before the cutbacks. They knew the value of a more efficient operation and the drivers who worked there always remained friendly and courteous.
“Can we blame motorists for thinking nobody takes them seriously, that nothing will ever be done? Politicians talk about transit, but until quite recently did little to actually improve it. Half measures are the norm, and real transit improvement throughout the GTA is always something for tomorrow when fiscal and political pressure might relax enough for a tiny bit of new spending and revenue generation.”
I say no, we do not. But the increasing gridlock of the city can be attributed to people refusing to take public transit. My wife, for example carpools with 2 other people to Downtown Toronto. We crunched the numbers and we found that for her to take the TTC downtown would require more money than driving in a carpool. Previously she used to take the TTC with a different carpool, but that was before the TTC took away metropass parking, which was an attractive incentive to take transit.
“Politicians with facile “solutions” who appeal to a motorists’ nirvana that cannot be attained, should be dispatched to the electoral dustbins they so richly deserve.”
I am not asking for a motorist’s nirvana, even I too think that cannot be attained. But I am part of a growing mass of people who maintain that a person’s method of getting to work, whether it be public transit, or by car, should be their choice. Forcing people into one choice or another is not the way to solve our transit issues. You want to make a better transit system? Make it more attractive to take transit. Give some incentive for people to leave their cars. Forcing people (using such tools like road tolls, bike lanes, etc) instead feeds the perception on the “war on cars”, especially those who feel that they do not have much choice but to drive. Like it or not, these people have a very powerful vote. The more you push, the more those who have no choice but to rely on the car will push right back. And although I believe that Ford and Rossi’s transit plans will never gain any traction, there may be some candidate down the horizon who may explicitly be “anti transit” who WILL declare a war on the TTC when he becomes mayor. All of this will feed into the desire to gut our transportation network and build nothing but expressways. Then you’re in trouble.
TorontoStreetcars:
September 15th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
The only advantages that buses have over streetcars are that a bus can easily move around blockage on the street and that they can even jump in front of each other. A crowded streetcar cannot slow down and wait for the empty streetcar behind it to move in front of it and it can be hard – or impossible in many places like the Lake Shore or St. Clair Ave. – for a streetcar to move around an accident or other blockage on the road.
However, if properly implemented a network of streetcars can work better then buses. However, subways, streetcars/LRT, and buses all have a place in a properly constructed transit plan.
The problem with Go is different in that it is core-oriented. Some routes, like the Barrie and Stouffville lines suffer from being primarily single lined routes, it would make scheduling harder. However, GO could use buses, in addition to trains where possible, to increase service that does not require one to go downtown in the morning and from downtown in the evenings as well as service during the day.
OC, Corktown:
September 15th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
“And although I believe that Ford and Rossi’s transit plans will never gain any traction, there may be some candidate down the horizon who may explicitly be “anti transit” who WILL declare a war on the TTC when he becomes mayor. All of this will feed into the desire to gut our transportation network and build nothing but expressways. Then you’re in trouble.”
————–
*sigh*. Woodbridge resident or not, it might be time for a few more Ford supporters to attend some of the mayoralty debates and hear how he presents himself. At both that I’ve attended so far, Councillor Ford notes several times how it is his experience running a printing company — and not his time at Council meetings, or committees, or even public information sessions — that qualify him for the mayoralty, and his only mentions of transit or the TTC have been negative swipes at their culture and/or especially future transit plans. For the most part, however, he does not mention ANYTHING of future projects he’d like to see except for the handful in his head that don’t already have plans in motion. He may not be as rabidly anti-Transit as the quote claims someone eventually might be, but he’s about as far from supportive as any lifetime resident of the city could ever imagine hearing in a campaign… and worse, he has advisors who are INDEED anti-transit. So yeah, he won’t be able to build expressways in 416 — the property acquisition alone makes the capital costs insurmountable… but he also won’t be spending any money on making the TTC into a service that more people will “want” to use — budget trimming doesn’t work like that.
When Ford proudly announces at a debate that he supports extra budget and increased revenue to make transit vehicles cleaner, less crowded, and more appealing to non-users, I *MIGHT* let him off the hook and accept that he’s not an anti-transit villain… but he still won’t even be close to getting my vote. Much like his impossible-to-sway supporters who are voting for him regardless of anything else that comes about negatively for his campaign, there’s absolutely nothing that can be said from him at this point that would sway me to consider giving him my “X”. Heck, Ford could even champion DRL at this stage and I both wouldn’t believe he understands it’s purpose or cares any greater about transit. Lost cause… and a potential disaster for city transportation.
Slow cuts and no investment in the future exacerbate the “glass more than half empty” that Steve described. Ford has no positive vision of the future that he can straight-faced say to a watching crowd, so he doesn’t. After all, he may be many awkward things politically, but he won’t lie… So when he doesn’t suggest anything positive for the future and instead relies on his similar experience to 100,000 other senior managers in this city to justify running it, well… *sigh*. That glass is totally empty.
(and Rossi? Clearly just in it for name recognition to run provincially in York Region or northwest 416 next fall. Not worth typing about… )
Kemi:
September 15th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Has transit been short-changed in Toronto … Is that supposed to be a hard question? Of course.!! Transit will always be put on the back burner, that why we have the regional disaster we see today aka the GTA.
M. Briganti:
September 15th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Steve, I think you’re beating a dead horse here. There has to be at least *some* expansion to the road network after 40 years of nothing — transit can’t take 100% of the growth.
And, while I personally don’t agree with the removal of streetcars downtown on aesthetic grounds, the increased traffic levels on King and Queen make streetcar transit ineffective on these two routes … we’re talking now, 2010 … not 1975. Buses wouldn’t be much better, but streetcars just don’t work anymore. Face it — we’re not the same city we were back then. What worked then doesn’t work now. The city has “densified” too much with all of those condos and the lower downtown area is a huge draw now.
You and I have both lived long enough to see things go full circle, and that’s what’s happening now with these proposals. Yes, I saw all of those transit proposals back then too, but they were all far-fetched ideas that were never taken seriously — especially the LRT loop from Islington to Warden via the Finch hydro corridor. It was laughed at back then. Who would have used it? Or, the proposal that would have seen the Spadina subway built as an LRT line with MU PCCs had the wye been kept. It was all meaningless junk.
Steve: And where would you build additional road capacity?
My point about the LRT loop was not even whether it was workable, but that it was one of many plans proposed, but never implemented. Showing off expensive and unworkable high technology took precedence, and once again transit wasn’t the real goal, any more than subway construction was only a side effect of construction stimulation 25 years later by the Rae government.
Kevin Love:
September 15th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
Stephen wrote:
“…a person’s method of getting to work, whether it be public transit, or by car, should be their choice.”
The problem with this statement is that some choices harm others, and therefore must be suppressed. The freedom to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.
Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David McKeown, has produced a report documenting how car pollution kills 440 people in Toronto each year, and injures 1,700 people so seriously that they have to be hospitalized. The mortality costs alone are $2.2 billion per year.
What is most interesting is the solutions to this public health epidemic of death and injury that are recommended by Dr. McKeown. His solutions to the epidemic of death and injury include road tolls, higher gasoline taxes, higher car registration fees and a tax on car parking lots. For details, see Table 8 on page 33.
I agree with Dr. McKeown. Driving cars is a deadly harmful behaviour that needs to be suppressed by taxes high enough to provide a serious deterrence to this behaviour.
M. Briganti:
September 16th, 2010 at 1:42 am
Steve: And where would you build additional road capacity?
For starters, the suburban arterials north of Eglinton can be widened — there is sufficient land available in many areas to add an extra lane in each direction.
I wouldn’t extend the Spadina Expressway south, but the 400 could be extended south via an upgraded Black Creek and maybe trenched or tunnelled in the Georgetown rail corridor the rest of the way (with the trains running in the median like Spadina).
For downtown, a local “504″ subway (but under Queen, not King) with BD-like spacing could eliminate the Queen, King, and Dundas car lines, allowing auto traffic to move much better on those routes. Keep College, Spadina, Bathurst, Harbourfront, and St. Clair as streetcar routes. I know — this is all far-fetched too.
Ed:
September 16th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Stephen Cheung writes:
“Issues like road tolls, expensive parking at TTC lots, increasing costs, boorish TTC employees, make us realize that it is not worth the trouble going through all the trouble to do our part and take public transit.?”
This statement conflates a few things.
First of all, as a “conservative”, or even as a “fiscal conservative”, you are complaining about the concept of user pay when you object to road tolls, the cost of parking, and increasing costs. What is the alternative? And are these costs really why you don’t want to take transit? Why do you expect free parking — a subsidy — anyway? How about the costs of gasoline and auto insurance, both of which have gone up briskly over the past few years. Have you written to Imperial Oil and your insurance company, telling them that these increased costs that it’s not worth the trouble to own and drive a car.
Second, road tolls have nothing to do with the inconvenience, or lack of it, of taking transit. Surely if road tolls were implemented, this would make transit more attractive. And the proceeds would help pay for transit and road improvements. Of course if you always wanted to drive free, road tolls would be anathema.
Third, the percentage of boorish TTC employees is low. I’m not sure that it’s any higher than boorish employees anywhere (and for a year I had to work for a real boor). How about boorish drivers, like the ones who cut off on an exit ramp, then cut back in line further up? Has that discouraged you from driving?
“Forcing people (using such tools like road tolls, bike lanes, etc) instead feeds the perception on the “war on cars”, especially those who feel that they do not have much choice but to drive.”
You know, I’ve had a driver’s licence since 1975, and I’ve owned at least one automobile since 1986. I support more bicycle infrastructure. I find my choice to ride a bicycle to be frustrated by lack of bicycle infrastructure, both downtown and in the suburbs (90% of my riding is in Etobicoke). I’ve also taken transit in the suburbs, and tried to walk there. In fact, the design of the suburbs, and significant portions of downtown, are designed for the car, and are (unintentionally, I expect) hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. For example, to keep traffic flowing on University Ave., pedestrians are expected to take two traffic light cycles to cross, pausing in the median.
Perhaps the response from motorists is, “suck it up, and deal with it.” Of course, that could also be the response of people to motorists — “suck it up and deal with it.” You’re still crying over the fact that TTC parking lots aren’t free any more. We’ve been through that before — do you still expect sympathy?
Stephen Cheung:
September 16th, 2010 at 10:45 am
OC Corktown: I’m not asking for your vote for Rob Ford.
I’m just saying that he’s not as bad as everyone casts him out to be.
“Surely if road tolls were implemented, this would make transit more attractive.”
This statement would only be true if the alternative (in this case, public transit) was quantifiably more attractive than the quantifiable drawback of the road tolls. But we still have a very substandard transit network and forcing people to take such a substandard option is not “attractive”. It is similar to a subway shutting down due to an incident and forcing everybody to take shuttle buses. I would only accept road tolls if the alternative is a transit option better than what we have now. But we don’t have that. Not by a longshot. It would only stir up resentment towards the entity levying these road tolls, and that would spell trouble for the TTC.
Stephen Cheung:
September 16th, 2010 at 10:52 am
“First of all, as a “conservative”, or even as a “fiscal conservative”, you are complaining about the concept of user pay when you object to road tolls, the cost of parking, and increasing costs. What is the alternative? And are these costs really why you don’t want to take transit? Why do you expect free parking — a subsidy — anyway? How about the costs of gasoline and auto insurance, both of which have gone up briskly over the past few years. Have you written to Imperial Oil and your insurance company, telling them that these increased costs that it’s not worth the trouble to own and drive a car.”
Our auto insurance actually went down when we moved to Woodbridge, and despite the higher gas prices, when the numbers are crunched, it is still cheaper for my wife to drive downtown than to take transit.
“Third, the percentage of boorish TTC employees is low. I’m not sure that it’s any higher than boorish employees anywhere (and for a year I had to work for a real boor). How about boorish drivers, like the ones who cut off on an exit ramp, then cut back in line further up? Has that discouraged you from driving?”
I could go into a pages long tirade about all of the boorish TTC employees I have encountered. There is the incident at Broadview station when I was literally threatened with arrest for having a legit day pass which he said wasn’t because it was mispunched by another collector. There is an incident when a bus driver literally took a swipe at me when I asked for a transfer after forgetting to get one. I was yelled at by a collector and called a “deaf doofus” because I needed directions and couldn’t hear over the subway noise. I have been yelled and cussed at by TTC employees at least once every time I try to take the TTC. You may think that the number of boorish TTC employees is small, but I seem to hit a 100% success rate these days. And I’m a really nice guy who’s just trying to do his part to take transit. Do TTC employees have a “Tory Detector” so they automatically switch to their “Anti-Tory” mode when I come around or something?
Leo Gonzalez:
September 16th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
I use the TTC 5 – 6 days per week, and rarely have any problems with “boorish” employees. I do notice the odd exchange of testy words between a driver and passenger, or collector and passenger, but in all my years of using the TTC, I can’t think of anything that affected me personally. Sure, I’ve had the odd driver or collector be rude, but I simply ignore them and it literally has no impact on me. So, compared to Stephen Cheung, who apparently has frequent problems with staff, what’s the difference? Well, perhaps he’s walking into subway stations or onto buses “looking for a fight”, so to speak, while I (and most other riders) tend to keep to myself. And generally speaking, that’s the best attitude to have. If you mind your business, and be polite if you do have to speak with someone or ask for help, you shouldn’t have any problems.
OC, Corktown:
September 16th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Stephen Cheung: And I’m saying Ford IS as bad as everyone casts him to be. I went to the debates hoping to catch some glimmer that he has a goal, a vision, even just a sense of where the city is going or what it could be, and all I and the audience got was negative, defeatist, backwards, and short-sighted responses from him. He generally evaded the questions to stick to the fiscally-related talking points that he knows best, perhaps because he doesn’t know or understand the issue raised or perhaps because he didn’t want his truly negative thought to become a soundbite. Who knows? In either case, it makes him unsuitable to lead a city of this size and stature… but I’m sure he’d do fine as Mayor of Vaughan (oh, if only that were possible… ).
In front of 300 planners and architects several weeks ago, he evaded every question about design and quality during a discussion about how to keep up the recent spate of better-designed new-build properties, yet several times extolled his work in the suburbs that was later discredited anyway as not being not his work alone. He even said, and this is the exact quote, “I’ve turned Rexdale into Rosedale!” in terms of city beautification improvements. 300 people laughed, out loud… only he was being serious. I’m not really comfortable having a mayor that people laugh at for how ridiculous his thoughts and statements are. The sad part was, there were 250 people in that room that were better qualified to run the city than some guy with a printing company… but admittedly equally sad was that there were 200 people in that room better qualified for mayor than several of the other candidates there too.
Several “thinking” Conservatives locally have made it clear that they don’t support Ford, and other well-positioned locals have made references to the need for a vision and goal from the next mayor beyond just cuts, cuts, cuts… references that are pretty clearly aimed at hopefully driving people away from Ford. They all rightly see him as a Tea Party type candidate that exposes the worst of the conservative right rather than it’s stronger points. I would hope that thinking conservatives elsewhere (say, on this site, or any other site that hopes and drives for a better future) are taking note… he’s a one-trick pony who will live up to his one trick cuz it’s the only trick he knows. So that means a stop in the tracks (literally) for numerous projects and a period of discord and discontent in the city not seen in generations. To not see that he’s a threat to so many of the issues and ideas raised on a site like this is bewildering to me. Yes, everyone, Ford really is as bad as he’s cast out to be. Go see for yourself.
Ben Smith:
September 16th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I’m willing to argue that the last time transit investment was really given a priority was with the Yonge line. It was built and planned before the automatic transmission, thus before suburban sprawl was the trend. The thought of an urban area the size of what it is today back then would be like us imaging non-stop city from Port Hope to Peterborough to Orillia to Orangeville to Lake Erie. It offered tight stop spacing through the downtown and old residential of 400-600 meters, and more spaced out spacing of 600-1200 meters through some of the early 20th century suburbs. While today such spacing of even 1.2 kilometers over extended trips across the GTA may become impractical, back then it was a very rapid way to get from the northern suburbs of Eglinton to downtown Toronto.
Of course, not long after the Yonge line was finished, the focus of suburban growth was entering full swing. Visions of Toronto included a massive highway network all through and around the city. Plans for a Queen line, which would have offered an east-west route right into the heart of downtown, were shelved for a line across Bloor and Danforth. When this line was completed, several features screamed “second-class” compared to the Yonge line. Stations used matte tiles making them look very plain, and the stop spacing was tight for the needs of its vicinity, let alone the growing city. This is most likely due to the vision of everyone driving along the highway network, while only those who lived in Toronto proper using the subway.
Of course the highway network was never built. Since then, we have seen plans either being canceled, or compromised to the point of almost uselessness. We tolerate our transit network, but it could and should be better than it is today.
DavidC:
September 16th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
As Metrolinx seems to be moving ahead with the plans as already agreed to and not paying much attention to the bizarre schemes proposed by our Mayoral candidates, I suppose we may be thankful that local politicians were removed from its Board last year. That said, it is sad to see that the Toronto mayor’s race cannot attract at least one candidate who can produce a clear, sensible and REASONED platform that is built on studies and some thought.
Michael Vanner:
September 16th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
To “M. Briganti” I have a question why do you want to take away public transit on King and Dundas Streets and build a subway on Queen St.?
All we need is a few more streetcars and better line management not a hellishly expensive subway that would compel me and my neighbours to pay for, in aesthetics and in dollars. Just because someone from suburbia is stuck behind a streetcar’s open doors does not justify the capital expense of a subway. The entire ethos of downtown living is being able to hop on the streetcar to go a handful of stops, do your thing and then go home. All the while enjoying the vibrant street life of downtown. Not scurrying down some rat hole to be hurled through a nondescript dark tunnel.
Your transit is for long-haul suburban dwellers not urban life. Keep your hands off my (and Steve’s) streetcar!
Ben Smith:
September 16th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Re: Stephen Chung
I think I’m on the same page as you in a lot of ways, so I can try and help explain some issues regarding the “war on the car.”
First, road tolls: I will agree that without a proper alternative, or at least be part of a plan to get an alternative built, it does end up being nothing more than another tax because people will still need to drive. With that said, I think Sarah Thomson has the right idea: During rush hour, there are a wealth of options getting into the city, and if one of these options is not within walking distance for you, you can always take local feeder routes or drive to them. While I believe that increased rates on downtown parking would be more productive (for reasons I won’t get into here), a toll executed like this I would not oppose. And it would be far more moderate than the “toll everyone who drives into downtown at any time $50″ mentality which some here believe in religiously.
Bike lanes: With the increase in downtown population, improving cycling infrastructure makes sense. First, the way a vehicle’s internal combustion engine works, it is designed for traveling longer distances at a steady pace rather than short stop and go bursts (this will change with hybrids and electric vehicles though). Therefore for trips within the core, it is better to limit car use as much as possible. Secondly, if everyone who rode bikes within the city drove instead, it would create even higher amounts of gridlock and congestion. Cycling is a very healthy and efficient way of getting around dense areas, and provides a competitive yet affordable alternative to driving. In many cases, cycling is faster than driving in downtown Toronto.
With that said, I think we need to be strategic about where we put them. Jarvis is a good example. We took away a lane of traffic for a bike lane, yet we did not improve alternatives along the corridor. And since Sherbourne has a bike lane close by, the effort to get them on Jarvis could have been used towards improving east-west lanes which is where our bike network is most lacking.
(PS: I have an assignment coming up in a few weeks where we need to write a short “letter to the editor” about an environmental issue. Looking at how that bit on bike lanes came out, I think I will use that. So my prof doesn’t accuse me of plagiarizing, my full name is Benjamin Smith and my YorkU student number is 210—-57. Obviously, I am not going to post the full thing).
TTC Parking and the Vehicle Registration Fee: This is one area where I do agree with you, and am hoping the new mayor reconsiders how the current regime handled these. First not only is it far better to park at a TTC station than downtown, but this setup increases the amount of choice riders holding a pass. This means that a choice rider may be more likely to take transit a short/moderate distance for an errand. Now unless they drive a Hummer, it becomes for cost effective to drive for this same errand than spend $5 both ways.
The thing that gets me about the VRF is that it penalizes only Torontonians. I used to rent a basement apartment one side street north of Steeles, and I saved $60 per year because of it. If the $60 was charged province, or even just region wide with the money going straight to your local municipal transportation department then I could support it. In its current implementation I cannot.
hamish wilson:
September 16th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Good post, and helpful comments, for the most part.
We do seem to like to put subways in the less-wise places, and when we finally get to some plan that isn’t too bad, people must mark it up to make them look more electable.
That said, there are some very significant shortcomings and flaws in what has funding and momentum now eg. the rail link to the Airport, and some aspects of the Transit City, which especially includes some aspects of the WWLRT.
I still think we need a push to explore doing a Front St. transitway, and it could be done with buses, or streetcars too, but we’ve lost a certain flexibility in the Queen/Gladstone area with all those condos because the local Councillor wasn’t so aware of things/potential plus the OMB/general blindness for actual growing transit.
I also agree with the comments about being careful where bike lanes get put – and while I don’t want to go back to 5-lane Jarvis, it’s absolutely true the Sherbourne St. is nearby, and I’d happily trade Jarvis for Bloor St. bike lanes, best spot in older TO for an E/W lane only since 1992. Bloor bike lanes arguably could expand the capacity of the B/D subway, as if we could shed crush loading onto bikes, even 1 or 2%, that is very cheap capacity ie. essentially for the price of paint, and a study, though the study is about equal to the entire cost of just repainting the entire danged road.
Caronto, the Carrupt…
Oh, the cover of eye mag has a great dig at Mr. Ford….
he’d be a nightmayor…
wish I’d thought of that term!
Michael Greason:
September 16th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
TTC employees are not boorish. Most are helpful and friendly – eager to look after passengers and are proud of their profession. A few are somewhat curt, but that is a long way from boorish.
Car Travel is massively subsidised at the current time. Road Tolls or other increases in car expense (gas taxes, registration fees) are not a “new” tax. They are a reduction in the subsidy. More money for transit would not be a net subsidy of transit. It would be a balancing of the subsidy currently given to cars.
I am not a conservative. If one must have a label, I am a socialist, but not always aligned with others that have the same label. However, conservatives, from my point of view, come in several flavours. As an example, I read and respect The Economist. It is much more conservative than me, but no less altruistic in its approach to issues. On the other hand I despise the National Post. It is merely a resentful hateful “me first” forum.
I believe that a certain amount of redistribution will make our society more equitable. A true conservative disagrees with me based on the (sincerely held) belief that interfering with the market means less total wealth which affects us all, and ultimately the poor the most. (The popular expression is “A Rising Tide Raises All Boats.) People who call themselves conservatives, but really only have a selfish, resentful “me first” agenda are not, in my view defensible. (Just to be clear – I disagree with most of what Stephen Cheung writes, but this is not intended to be an attack. I respect his right to his opinions.) Rob Ford is the epitome of the resentful “me first” attitude that is despicable. There is no empirical defence for his arguments – the man is a buffoon. Taking away from others will do nothing to ease the burden on the oppressed.
Rob Ford’s numbers simply don’t add up. If the entire City Council salary and expense budget was eliminated – not something I advocate – it would not even make a small dent in the budget problems this City is burdened with. Until Mr. “Time for a Change” begins to meaningfully reverse the damage of the Harris years we will always have a crisis.
The statements from Mr. McCuaig and Mr. Webster today are accurate and to the point. How we can cut taxes and spend billions on subways at the same time would be a mystery. At the same time, walking away from the Provinces (meagre) transit commitments would make the mystery even deeper.
I am going to vote for Joe. It does not make headlines to say, in essence that I live Toronto and am going to do my best to preserve what is good and incrementally improve that which isn’t. On the other hand, it is eminently more defensible than embracing more of the Harris/Lastman nonsense that caused all our problems in the first place.
JoeyC:
September 16th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Great column Steve. I am so disheartened by what I’m hearing from all the candidates.(Actually, I give credit to Pantalone for speaking realistically – albeit depressingly – about what we can afford.) Why don’t you run for office?
W. K. Lis:
September 16th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
St. Clair is still the only route in Toronto with timed transfers, which allows stopovers on transit trips. It is time for timed transfers to be expanded all across the TTC, maybe starting with the next fare increase.
M. Briganti:
September 16th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
To Michael Vanner …
Yes, we will keep our hands off your lovely toy streetcars, so you can enjoy listening to them DING. They’re just as much my streetcars as they are yours, and I don’t want to see them go either, but they’re just not practical on King and Queen anymore. A subway along Queen would draw enough riders from King and Dundas that all three routes could be abandoned. King, Dundas, and the outer parts of Queen would get buses while the central part of Queen would operate like the BD with no surface transit. A subway further south won’t have the same effect.
Based on your criteria, Bloor and Danforth aren’t “vibrant” streets because they don’t have streetcars on them. And the people that live along Bloor and Danforth have to descend into a hellish climate-controlled cave to ride a few stops knowing that their train will never be more than 5 minutes away. Same goes for the Yonge subway crowd south of Bloor. What an awful suburban life they live. And now we’re condemning the Eglinton LRT riders to the same fate — but let me guess, it’s different for them because there’s a low platform and no third rail?
Mark C.:
September 17th, 2010 at 9:30 am
If these so called “fiscally conservative” mayoral candidates pay due diligence, they’ll decide that tunnelling is way to expensive. The problem is that whomever is elected may attempt to freeze LRT construction… in that scenario, the tables might turn and Metrolinx might be the ones to shove LRT down the city’s throat… imagine that.
With respect to replacing the 501/504 with a subway, dream on. I do believe in a DRL, but mainly as an express routing that will connect the B-D and underserved areas to downtown (such as Liberty Village and the Lower/Don Distillery District). By the time it gets built (if ever), it will be a major priority to relieve overcrowding on the B-D and lower Yonge, not to replace local transit.
Leo Gonzalez:
September 17th, 2010 at 9:30 am
Michael Greason says “I am going to vote for Joe.”
This is a good example as to why Ford may win. Thomson and Pantalone will snag a good 15 to 20% of the vote, which is going to allow Ford up the middle to win with only 30 – 35% of the vote. For this reason, I will not necessarily vote for the candidate who I would like to see win, I will vote for whoever has the most realistic chance of beating Ford. By all accounts, that will likely be Smitherman. Even though he is definately not my preferred candidate, I’d rather see him as Mayor than Ford.
Adam Kretschmann:
September 17th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Too all the commentators denying that the TTC has churlish employees your comments deviate strongly from the reality of the situation. The TTC had 31,000 complaints for the first eleven months of 2009 (I apologize but I could not find the 2010 statistics) which works out to somewhat less than three complaints for every employee. They also established a blue ribbon panel to address the issues this year.
Andrew:
September 17th, 2010 at 10:36 am
To Michael Vanner: One fine Saturday a few years ago, I had a bunch of errands to run on various points on Queen West, and I thought, “Why not take the streetcar?” (I lived just east of Yonge at the time, a few blocks north of Queen.)
Several hours and much frustration later, I returned home with a single errand done, mostly thanks to poor streetcar service.
Lesson learned: these days, if I need to run more than one errand downtown, I take the car. Much easier to “enjoy the vibrant street life of downtown”.
Ed:
September 17th, 2010 at 11:50 am
M. Briganti writes:
“A subway along Queen would draw enough riders from King and Dundas that all three routes could be abandoned. King, Dundas, and the outer parts of Queen would get buses while the central part of Queen would operate like the BD with no surface transit.”
Inexplicably, the Wellesley bus can be jampacked, especially east of Yonge where it serves large numbers of apartment buildings. And Wellesley/Harbord is about as far from Bloor as King is from Queen.
The Annette, sorry Dupont, bus continues to operate as well, despite being about as far from Bloor as Dundas is from Queen.
Your suggestion that we could abandon King and Dundas carlines does not make sense, except in a wishful way.
“Based on your criteria, Bloor and Danforth aren’t “vibrant” streets because they don’t have streetcars on them. And the people that live along Bloor and Danforth have to descend into a hellish climate-controlled cave to ride a few stops knowing that their train will never be more than 5 minutes away. Same goes for the Yonge subway crowd south of Bloor. “
Good luck doing the expropriation required to put in the subway line, unless you bury it in the middle of Queen Street, which would be a construction nightmare to make streetcar track replacement look like an afternoons’ tree-house project for some bored schoolkids. There’s a reason there’s a row of parks and parking lots following the Bloor-Danforth and Yonge alignments. You’re proposing that for Queen?
In addition, the Bloor-Danforth stations were built on the cheap. Every new station on your Queen local line will need a second exit and handicapped access. More expropriation. Good luck with that.
scottd:
September 17th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
M. Briganti > The Georgetown corridor does not have to room any car traffic. There is already issues about whether there is enough bridge room for the new rail lines. Putting a car route would somewhat deflate Metrolinx’s flawed argument for rushing the expansion of the corridor, that somehow it will reduce cars on the roads.
Toronto Streetcar> One issue that has plagued the Uxbridge/Stouffville bus/rail lines has been lack of demand. I remember it go so bad for a while that the GO bus from Uxbridge stopped at Warden and didnt even come downtown. Most of the traffic is one way commuter traffic and a single line can handle more (and Metrolinx is counting on it). The issue is demand and the fact that a vast majority of people like those in my family prefer to drive.
scottd:
September 17th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Stephen Cheung> Mr Ford accomplished very little in terms of public policy during his council years and one who follows City Hall knows that even the right wingers rarely sided with him and they actually voted with the majority most of the time (even if they deny it at election time).
To me there is a difference between commuter traffic and local traffic. As a downtowner with a car and a bike I don’t find congestion a problem except during rush hours. (I think the gridlock concept is more a PR campaign than a reality outside of the rush hour.) To me there is a big difference between a local family going on a trip or to the grocery store and thousands of single occupancy cars commuting along Bloor Street which has a subway. We really need to start looking at car traffic by type, for local traffic bike lanes present no war on anybody. The only war is the war on healthy communities by those that want to drive EVERYWHERE all the time.
The reality is that many people will ALWAYS choose a car over transit no matter how good that transit it. Conservatives always love subsidies when it for selfish reasons but hate subsidies for the common good. As a car owner, and transit user I would love to see road tolls, higher gas prices, higher taxes to pay for transit and other innovations such as usage based insurance. This would help ensure that where I live is more of a community and less of a highway.
Steve: Continuing on that sentiment, I am offended by a suburban politician who applies the model of a hypothetically congestion-free, six to eight lane suburban arterial road to streets downtown where people actually walk, shop, eat, live. When I come out of a Film Festival screening at 11 pm, all of the streets in the entertainment distract are full of people, and the restaurant patios are busy. If this were in Rob Ford’s burbs, there would be acres of parking around the cinemas and no street life, indeed no streets in the “city” sense of that word. And, by the way, there’s not very much transit service around at 11 pm, and the congestion is not caused by streetcars. It’s caused by a busy commercial neighbourhood full of activity.
Laurie:
September 17th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
“A subway along Queen would draw enough riders from King and Dundas that all three routes could be abandoned. ” M. Briganti
My situation is fairly typical for downtown users. I take the Dundas car from near Ossington to Univesity to get to work. The trip is usually 15 minutes. But it takes nearly 10 minutes, walking at a good clip, to get from Dundas to Queen. And walking over to Ossington then waiting for a bus to Queen is even longer. You’ll have a hard time persuading the Dundas car riders this proposal is a good idea.
The King and Queen cars might possible be eliminated, if the subway ran under Adelaide or Richmond, which are within 5 minutes walk of both streets. But I say, put in the subway and leave the streetcars, they serve the short haul needs of the many people who live, work and play in the area.
That said, I do want a Queen (or King, or Adelaide) subway for long trips, and zipping through the downtown congestion. Furthermore, the subway might attract travellers who now drive along King and Queen, which would reduce the traffic which ties up these streetcars making them more effective too.
Steve: You have raised an important issue here, the access time to get to (and from) a subway line’s stop. People on the old section of Yonge and BD don’t face huge hurdles for this because stations are close together. On the Eglinton LRT, the proposed layout east of Yonge is not so felicitous, and a surface bus will be required to offset walking distances. Remember, by the way, the word “accessibility” and it refers to more than Wheel Trans. If someone faces a long walk to get to service, especially with a steep grade, that service may as well not exist for some riders. West of Yonge, the station spacing is more like that on the Bloor line, but there will still be complaints about longer walks, I am sure.
Still Waiting For The 501:
September 17th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
“The problem with this statement is that some choices harm others, and therefore must be suppressed.”
Indeed, and I’m not understanding this rhetoric of “choice” when it comes to public space. When hundreds of thousands of people have to share limited space, as they do in downtown Toronto, your “choices” are necessarily going to be limited by the need to accommodate other people. Why is making it more expensive to drive an infringement on “choice”, while removing the option to ride a streetcar isn’t? Every government action takes away some choices for some people. That doesn’t tell you anything in and of itself.
Maybe Stephen Cheung personally supports transit, but his favourite politicians clearly do not. Ford’s transit plan for downtown is all about getting non-drivers out of the way of cars — not getting us where we want to go, just getting us out of the way, in buses or on go-nowhere-in-particular recreational walking and bike trails.
Jim Hoffman:
September 17th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Adam Kretschmann said “The TTC had 31,000 complaints for the first eleven months of 2009 (I apologize but I could not find the 2010 statistics) which works out to somewhat less than three complaints for every employee”.
It seems unlikely to me that if every TTC employee is boorish (or churlish, for that matter) they would each get only three complaints from all the people they harass in one year. This statistic does not tell me that most TTC employees are generally boorish to riders. Also my experience, which on the average includes interactions with 3 employees per day, suggests that either I am very lucky to have at most one complaint a year or that TTC employees do not generally deserve to be called boorish. When someone else tells me almost every employee they meet is a boor I think that either they unknowingly do something to get poorer treatment than most people get or they only remember the unpleasant experiences (perhaps confirmation bias).
Steve: For the record, I ride the TTC a lot. Most employees I meet are at least civil, some downright friendly. There’s the occasional curmudgeon, but often even they are provoked. It is important to distinguish between outright rudeness, and complaints about things like being unable to board, or having transfer disputes.
Karl Junkin:
September 17th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
There is no purpose for the DRL to duplicate GO service. We already have GO lines for express travel, and now the discussion is on electrifying them to run much more frequent service, some of which could be in place before a DRL would likely be constructed.
Such duplication of infrastructure is uneconomical, and express trains are not even the TTC’s target market, but even more uneconomical are long tunnels with no stations. If the money is going to be sunk into tunnels, they must have frequent stations to be easily accessed, well-connected to the broader transit network, and serve a wide variety of destination-origin pairs, in order to draw the high ridership needed to justify their investments. The bread-and-butter of transit is large volumes of scattered shorter trips, and subways are no exception, and need to be capable of that function, especially in the off-peak where it needs every rider it can get.
Subways should not be express, and like both the original Yonge (1954) and Bloor-Danforth (1966) lines, which are the most successful subways, good subways should replace a popular, heavily-used surface route, and they can if they’re designed as a local service (like central B-D or south Yonge), as they should be.
Will Oxford:
September 17th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
To Adam Kretschmann — the fact that the TTC received 31,000 complaints doesn’t prove that the TTC has “churlish employees” unless we know how many of those complaints were actually about employees as opposed to late vehicles, cleanliness, etc.
To Andrew — your experience notwithstanding, it really is possible to run errands downtown using the streetcar. I do it all the time. My rule is never to wait, because waiting is aggravating — you get the “watched pot never boils” effect, which is pretty powerful even though it’s all in your head. I just start walking right away, and get on the streetcar if and when it comes. (Which, believe it or not, it usually does — and it feels like it comes much sooner if you’re not waiting around for it.)
Steve: I strongly advise use of the NextBus website if you have browser capability on your PDA of choice. It allows you to “look over the hill and around the corner” to know whether a car is only a few minutes away, or coming some time next week. I use it regularly to make on the spot stay-or-walk decisions, and sometimes to look at alternate routes if they are nearby. It’s the best unadvertised service the TTC has.
Brent:
September 17th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Stuart Hargreaves said:
“The crucial problem is leaving projects that are (by their very nature) long-term and capital-intensive to the vagaries and whims of short term political expediency. Without a sustained and guaranteed level of funding from the federal and provincial governments, expensive (in the short term) transit projects that will not reap gains for the city until years after their completion will always be a prime target for small-minded politicians like Ford [...].”
Really, the main problem is the fact that it takes so long to construct a project, in combination with the high cost. A number of Transit City routes have received guaranteed funding (even if for staged construction) and the contract for LRVs has been signed, but that hasn’t stopped Ford and others from suggesting that we can turn transportation policy around on a dime. It takes so long to plan, design and build a new line that construction hasn’t progressed that far (ignore the time and budget expended for planning and design), and the construction budget is so large, that it can be tempting to see little consequence in halting construction in favour of substantially different priorities. Transit City was announced not long after Miller’s re-election, and it took four years to plan, design, get the public on board, get other levels of government on board, get funding lined up, get construction contracts signed, and get construction underway.
For that matter, there were TBMs at work under Eglinton when Harris pulled the plug. Funding wasn’t the issue for that, since funding had been announced and construction was underway — it was the fact that it takes more than one election cycle to get substantial infrastructure projects planned, designed, funded and built. It’s also complicated by having multiple levels of government involved, with different election cycles.
(Multiple levels of government could be a challenge for Transit City. We’re relying on Metrolinx and the provincial government as having veto power over a Ford administration, for example, but if the provincial election also results in a change in government to the Hudak Tories, Transit City may lose the support of the two main funding partners.)
A saving grace could be that it works both ways. If Rossi were to promise a Toronto tunnel, for example, it would be unlikely that construction would be underway by the time he was up for re-election, allowing someone to run on an anti-tunnel position.
W. K. Lis:
September 17th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
How quickly we forget. 2008 and the price of gasoline and other petroleum products was skyrocketing, only coming down with the recession. We wanted alternatives to the car: less sprawl, more bicycle lanes, more transit.
We have still not got out of the recession, which is why the price of gasoline is lower than in 2008. The demand is not there, but will return. The price of gasoline will go up, as the supply goes down or the demand goes up. Putting more cars on the road, as some mayoralty candidates seem to want, will also increase demand. Do they own oil stock?
Remember 2008, and don’t stop building better transit. Build all kinds of public transit now, for our future depends on them.
DavidC:
September 17th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Steve says:
“I strongly advise use of the NextBus website if you have browser capability on your PDA of choice. It allows you to “look over the hill and around the corner” to know whether a car is only a few minutes away, or coming some time next week. I use it regularly to make on the spot stay-or-walk decisions, and sometimes to look at alternate routes if they are nearby. It’s the best unadvertised service the TTC has.”
I agree BUT, and it’s a big but, is that the NextBus system (Beta though it still is) is not ‘tweaked’ when a route is in a fairly long-term diversion. They have ‘disabled” it for the 504 stops on Roncesvalles while it is under construction but not for the stop not being served for 3+ weeks due to the trackwork at Parliament. It is not very good to tell people that the next car will be at Jarvis in 5 minutes if, when you go there, you see a sign saying “Service on Queen”! Surely it’s not hard to do this – even just a “Construction Project” note on the page for all the stops on a Route would be enough.
The TTC also needs to connect its various systems better (actually, at all!). It would be useful (and easy?) to add the phone numbers for each stop to NextBus (and the web schedules). The NextBus version for San Francisco has exactly such a note:
Stop number: 15650
Phone: 5-1-1
SMS: 41411 “nbus sf 15650″
Finally, the route maps on NextBus have still not returned – though I was assured they were coming back ‘soon’ several months ago.
Still Waiting For The 501:
September 17th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
I also have taken many, many TTC trips to run errands on Queen West. I don’t have context for Andrew’s story — how far away from each other were his destinations? is he unable to walk short distances? was he carrying something heavy? — but I find it amazing that a person who lived downtown would entirely give up on public transit after one bad experience. I’m hardly an uncritical admirer of the 501, but it does get me where I want to go most of the time — and since I don’t have and can’t afford a car, I don’t have the luxury of writing off the TTC.
I have also had few truly bad experiences with TTC operators, and I’ve been taking the TTC regularly or semi-regularly since 1993.
OC, Corktown:
September 17th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
“The reality is that many people will ALWAYS choose a car over transit no matter how good that transit it. Conservatives always love subsidies when it for selfish reasons but hate subsidies for the common good. As a car owner, and transit user I would love to see road tolls, higher gas prices, higher taxes to pay for transit and other innovations such as usage based insurance. This would help ensure that where I live is more of a community and less of a highway.
Steve: Continuing on that sentiment, I am offended by a suburban politician who applies the model of a hypothetically congestion-free, six to eight lane suburban arterial road to streets downtown where people actually walk, shop, eat, live… If this were in Rob Ford’s burbs, there would be acres of parking around the cinemas and no street life, indeed no streets in the “city” sense of that word.”
———–
Hear, Hear!! Both of you! I live downtown and bike, walk, or transit/taxi to fun and services — which works especially great if that “fun” includes any alcohol. I work in northern Don Mills, so commute by car 95% of the time — which works especially well if I’m staying late. Yet as a driver I don’t want to see any changes to downtown that better favour automobiles — I welcomed the Jarvis change (I’ve always HATED that centre alternating lane — the new set-up is clearer, easier to drive and easier for tourists to comprehend, especially for those of us who only end up driving downtown off-peak), I would happily pay a toll for my commute if that went to new projects, and have no complaints about gas taxes that support transit (bring ‘em on!). Apparently that makes me crazy to penny-crunching suburbanites, but it’s my neighborhood, my downtown streets that I live on, and my property values at stake… and I reject having them changed just to benefit suburban drivers at my expense. I’ll defend the King Streetcar until I’m blue in the face… and even as a driver on King Street, I’d support a plan to limit car traffic on that road during peak hours (and off-peak too). It’s practically a local street in the evenings — at least east of Yonge anyway — with plenty of capacity on Richmond/Adelaide so aside from old vehicle issues I’ve rarely seen problems with the King car service that are much more than just automobile traffic getting in its way. Fewer drivers on King, and presto! improved King Streetcar service. Ford instead wants to make King into all rubber-wheel traffic, for what gain? None that would benefit the locals, that’s for sure. I don’t want him instilling suburban attitudes onto my neighbourhood, no more so than suburbanites want downtown attitudes foisted onto them. Two different worlds, and I’ll be looking for mayoral candidates that understand there is a difference and don’t look to homogenize all of us under a common suburban-style brush.
So much of the inner-suburb congestion is related to the street patterns anyway. Downtowners don’t experience gridlock off-peak the same way, as city-core drivers have a closer grid to find workarounds and locals know better than to drive on the same streets that the non-locals get directed to on their GPS. If the new leader wants to start barreling through the mile-and-quarter grid to provide new road space in congested Scarborough and North York, go ahead… get them towards the street pattern that streetcar development at the turn of the last century did and they’ll become happier commuters – way more smaller through streets rather than funneling everything to mega-wide arterials. But much like so many other notions and ideas that too will be sluffed off as crazy and impossible (and let’s face it, it is), but to tackle congestion out there by attacking the areas that work better is equally crazy to me. I suppose I give mild kudos to plans that put heavy rail through stretches of the suburbs, but doing that without radical changes to the street pattern above and alongside that rail just turns the effort into a wasted one to me. You want a downtown style system, you gotta make a downtown style community along it. To me spending less on LRT is better bang for the buck, as it demands less of the wholesale overhaul of the neighbourhood than HRT. Sure, it could be harder to zip along at 80kph in your car, and left turns are a hassle, but you’ve better matched a system to what the planners in the 50s gave us when they devised those roads. But suburbanites, as Steve suggested, often seem to only see things in the patterns and styles they’re accustomed to… for the two big city solitudes, I suspect never the twain shall meet.
Gordon:
September 17th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Toronto Hydro is a capital asset owned by Toronto and has been paid for over time by Torontonians through their hydro bill. As an asset, it can be sold to raise cash. But the buyer now has a large capital debt that he must service by increasing the hydro bill. Also expect then to add 6-10% just for profit that the city does not currently collect.
In fact Torontonians will be forced to pay and pay for whatever cash was raised as an increase in hydro rates. This is WORSE than a tax to raise the money.
Adam Kretschmann:
September 17th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
The star read some of the complaints long story short, some of the drivers are boorish
For all the talk of transit expansion has anyone here considered what might happen if interest rates rise? The choice of the next mayor might turn out to be a less important variable than most people think. Also worth pondering – a sovereign debt crisis or even all of the above…
TorontoStreetcars:
September 17th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
With the talk about a new subway line and the Dundas, Queen, and King cars I would like to enter the discussion:
1) What about the services provided by the Dundas and King cars outside the downtown core if these lines are abandoned?
2) Along with the DRL, we do need a Queen subway. However, the three streetcars mentioned (Dundas, Queen, King) need to be kept for two reasons – to bring people into downtown and for short haul service. The subway will help get people from the suburbs into downtown (and if it serves Roncesvalles Ave. and Broadview) will connect with the King car. I am sorry, but no one can make me believe that people would walk from Dundas St. down to Queen to catch a subway if they are going a short distance.
3) For me, the subway should start somewhere near Humber River/Humber Loop and head east (or northeast) to Queen and Roncesvalles (with access to the subway there) and then east along Queen to somewhere east of Broadview. This would then make two connections with King (at Roncesvalles and Broadview), but also allow the TTC to re-assign most of the 501 streetcars to provide better service on the east and west ends of the route with some service through the downtown core (in part to supplement the 502 in the core) for short haul users.
At the end of day, I am not anti-car, but if there is reasonable and convenient service people will take transit. The problem in Toronto is that the service is not always the best as the best option. However, if we did not have it, people would find that it would take longer to get everywhere by car.
Ernie:
September 18th, 2010 at 1:37 am
Has transit short-changed Toronto? I think that it is the transit and city planners that have short changed Toronto. Their myopic North American view of how transit should be run has ruined the city of neighbourhoods. Let’s count the examples:
1) St. Clair ROW – that project was handled so badly that it has spooked many a BIA about building more LRT’s in Toronto.
2) Scarborough RT – All I can say is this. Thankfully Scarborough is blessed with many local and express connections.
3) Sheppard Subway – A stubway that doesn’t even help buses run on time because most buses have to pass through the busy Sheppard-404 interchange. Notwithstanding the fact that it acts like a spur of the Yonge line because it doesn’t connect to the Spadina line.
4) Spadina Subway – Building a subway in the middle of a freeway? Best way to drive away local demand due to high car traffic (not safe for pedestrians).
5) 501 Queen – Enough said.
6) TTC-GO connections – I think Toronto is the only city in the world where going from one system to another is difficult and expensive. Not to mention the extra fare North of Steeles/West of Renforth/Airport.
7) My personal beef: Museum station. Low use station gets a ugly makeover. Gets dirty easily. Still not accessible (not even with chair lifts). Adding this station creates tight curves such that cross platform interchange at St. George or Bay station (like Lionel-Groulx in Montreal) is impossible.
I could go on, but you get the feeling that transit planners in Toronto don’t really care about making things work in the long run.
Roman:
September 18th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
For those people who think that streetcar elimination and road extension might resolve the traffic congestion i would recommend to take a look at Mexico City. It has an extensive subway network. Its streets and boulevards are much wider comparing to Toronto plus it has several highways in the city core. All streetcars but two lines that were converted into LRT/subway lines ceased operation in 1979. They have buses that were supposed to “effectively replace streetcars”. What we have at the end of the day? Enormous traffic congestion. What i’ve heard from its former residents it takes 2 hours min to get to a job. In fact, the entire city is a parking lot now. Is that what you want for Toronto?!
At the same time, Vienna with its 5 subway lines, 30 tram ( primarily POW) and 83 bus routes doesn’t have major problems with traffic. Having said these two examples I wonder where exaclty would you prefer to drive?
My point is don’t be ignorant to what is going on “out there” if you don’t want to repeat the mistakes of other cities. No doubt, if you eliminate something now you can get an immediate result, i.e. a little bit faster traffic on this particular street. But, please, also think of what would happen down the road too.
Ben Smith:
September 18th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Re: Karl Junkin
“Subways should not be express, and like both the original Yonge (1954) and Bloor-Danforth (1966) lines, which are the most successful subways, good subways should replace a popular, heavily-used surface route, and they can if they’re designed as a local service (like central B-D or south Yonge), as they should be.”
Subways are ideally designed for medium to long distance commutes, not local ones. There are several reasons for this.
First, costs. When you are spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to build one kilometer of transit in its own corridor, you had better hope it moves faster than the streetcar or bus on the street. Obviously it is also to handle increased demand and capacity, but even the most dense cities in the world operate subways with spaced out stations.
Secondly, accessibility. Even if we had our subways stopping as frequently as local buses for local access, passengers would still have to navigate into and out of stations rather than simply boarding from the side of the road. This delay makes subways less practical for local use that surface options.
Finally, it just begs to human nature to increase the speed of transit. People may want transit from their front door straight to their destination at high speeds, but we can’t do both. More frequent stops allows for increases the likelihood of door-to-door commutes, but at slower speeds. Research shows that people are willing to travel longer distances to reach faster transit. Do you think people would drive/walk/bus long distances to suburban GO stations if they stopped every 500 meters? These are overwhelmingly choice riders who choose to take transit over driving because it is faster. In many cases, there are local options available to their destinations, yet people still take faster commuter services.
Obviously our subway is not designed for long distance commuter trips, that is what commuter rail is for. With subways, it comes down to a balanced compromise between providing speed with good local service. While there is no set rule for station spacing, generally it is about a kilometer give or take depending on density and desired speed.
M. Briganti:
September 18th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Ben, maybe in the suburbs yes, but downtown no. I agree with Karl.
Ernie said …
“7) My personal beef: Museum station. Low use station gets a ugly makeover. Gets dirty easily. Still not accessible (not even with chair lifts). Adding this station creates tight curves such that cross platform interchange at St. George or Bay station (like Lionel-Groulx in Montreal) is impossible.”
I don’t know how many times I have to explain this, but St. George and Bay are inside a *grade* separated wye. They are not transfer stations by design, so the comparison to Montreal is invalid. Those tight curves? … look at the church at Avenue Rd. and Bloor — there’s your answer.
Steve: Also the ROM and the Massey Building on the southwest and southeast corners respectively. It’s a tight fit for those tunnels.
“4) Spadina Subway – Building a subway in the middle of a freeway? Best way to drive away local demand due to high car traffic (not safe for pedestrians).”
Pedestrian access to the Spadina subway does not involve crossing Allen Rd.
Karl Junkin:
September 18th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Re: Ben Smith
A subway has the same economic fundamental as a surface route (rail or free-wheeled): It will perform better, collecting higher revenues while experiencing less crowding, with a higher volume of scattered short trips than a high volume of concentrated long trips. Subways are for short-to-medium distance commutes when built well. Because the original Bloor-Danforth and Yonge lines were replacing local streetcar services, they had to be designed for short as well as medium distance commutes, and this is a good thing as it is a key factor in their strong performance.
The primary factor is capacity, not speed, because the simple reality is that any exclusive grade-separated transit route will travel faster than a transit route that shares traffic signals with intersecting road traffic (I’ll exclude mixed traffic and all-door loading issues since that can be resolved on surface routes). When spending hundreds of millions of dollars per kilometre, you have to be able to draw as high a ridership as possible, which you will not do if you are not serving the highest possible set of origin-destination pairs.
Furthermore, economics dictates that it is woefully inefficient to run both a bus service and a subway service in the same corridor, and only a subway designed to accommodate local as well as medium distance trips will avoid the pitfall of requiring bus running on top of it.
Capital is one thing, but the operating costs have to be factored in as well, as that’s the recurring, annual, permanent expense that has to be dealt with. The running structure has to be maintained regardless of how many people are riding the trains on it, so it had better be able to serve all transit trips in its corridor.
Do you know why a subway ultimately cannot stop as frequently as a bus? It’s because subway trains are ~137m long. That’s longer than city blocks in a number of parts of town.
Having to enter a station does have some impact on accessibility, but this is offset by having 24 sets of doors to load and unload from. This is why the fundamental of subways being built for capacity, not speed, is so critical. It hardly means that a subway cannot serve local trips. If subways couldn’t serve local trips, streetcars would still exist on Bloor St and Danforth Ave, but they don’t, because the Bloor-Danforth line was engineered to serve local trips along the length where it replaced a streetcar (mostly). Beyond Jane and Main, the distances between stations get substantially farther apart, but they weren’t replacing a popular streetcar route at that point and so the engineers lost their way and designed the line poorly in those sections.
Most people still drive to most GO stations, and moreover, GO’s schedules still leave a lot to be desired on most (if not all) of its routes. One of the reasons people drive a lot to GO is that any delay on their bus trip to the station would mean 15+ minutes until the next GO train at most stops besides Oakville.
Subways, even off-peak, generally come at intervals scheduled no greater than 6 minutes. In rush hour, it’s less than 2.5 minutes. It’s that frequency, which when combined with the exclusive grade-separated right-of-way translates into very high reliability, that makes subways so attractive. While the exclusive grade-separated right-of-way increases the speed of service by default, how attractive the service is is determined by its reliability and its convenience. Convenience is influenced by how easily accessed the system is at both ends of a trip, i.e., the origin-destination pairs. The closer the stations along a subway route, the greater the number of origin-destination pairs that subway can serve, and that drives up its ridership.
If people are travelling very long distances, they should not really be using the subway unless they don’t mind taking a while. They should be using GO service; that’s the kind of trip that GO exists to serve. Fares are an issue, of course, but just because the fare system discriminates against certain trip types doesn’t mean the TTC should be serving trips with subways that are uneconomical for subways to serve. Reality is that subways are uneconomical for large volumes of long haul trips concentrated at a certain destination in/near downtown. So is driving, for that matter, but the road network is subsidized to such unsustainable degrees that nobody realizes how uneconomical it actually is to live so far from work.
Research shows that able-bodied young adults are willing to walk farther to reach a railway with high travel speeds, but there are many people, which will continue to become an increasing percentage of the population, who are not willing, and some not even able, to walk as far as an able-bodied young adult. What about those travelling with children? What about those travelling with things to carry above a certain weight? What about those that have difficult terrain between them and a subway station? What about access during times of year where the weather is a little less than hospitable? The research that suggests anybody can walk 800m to a subway stop is bogus, because it has far too narrow a scope that is unrepresentative of the broader needs that transit must be designed to service if it is to be a real travel option to most people. Subways must be local in nature to reach the most people, and being able to reach most people is good for the economics of subways.
A kilometre is way too high, and the Bloor-Danforth line actually never even hits 1km between Jane and Main, although in 4 instances it comes quite close (but one of those is crossing the Don Valley). Almost all are less than 700m, and many are even under 600m. Along southern Yonge, you’ll find stations less than 500m apart. This is good subway design, evident by the ridership that lines with such station spacing carry. It’s also good for the economic activity along a corridor, as businesses do better in areas with close station spacing (see Bloor West east of the Humber) than those with far station spacing (see Bloor West west of the Humber). It’s the convenience of access and the reliability, not the speed, that drive the popularity of the service. Not to suggest that there isn’t a time threshold considered tolerable, but as you seem to agree, that’s where GO comes in, as it is designed for that.
Steve: I have to chime in with one more observation. Despite much of the TTC mythology to the contrary, large parts of the subway depend for demand not on walk-in trade, but on feeder routes. In areas where that’s your primary mode of access, the placement of the stations is almost secondary because nobody actually walks to them. In areas with significant pedestrian traffic and fine-grained local demand, things are much different. One cannot apply a model from, say, lower Yonge or the central BD line to a suburban subway line.
W. K. Lis:
September 19th, 2010 at 10:23 am
One problem I don’t like seeing are these amateur transit planners, who try to put forth their ideas without doing research into their ideas. They don’t know the costs involved, or the infrastructure needed to support it, or what zoning is required to make it so, or what is required to maintain it, or to see what history has produced elsewhere from their or other ideas. They maybe good at brainstorming ideas, but don’t want to take the time to scrutiny them.
We saw what happened to cities across North America when the great idea of replacing streetcars with buses happened without good research. We ended up with cities like Detroit with their empty downtowns without sprawl all around.
Roman:
September 19th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
The Nanos Research survey of 1,021 Torontonians pegged support from decided voters at: Ford — 45.8 per cent; Smitherman — 21.3 per cent; Joe Pantalone —16.8 per cent; Rocco Rossi — 9.7 per cent; and Sarah Thomson — 6.4 per cent.
No doubt, such results are devastating. And apparently these elections are all about Ford. Sadly, but we have no choice but to vote either for him or the candidate who could stop him. By now its Smitherman though I personaly would prefer Pantalone. If this disposition changes by October 25, it will make sense to vote for Pantalone or Thomson. Other two candidates MUST revoke their nomination if they really care about Toronto. I have to admit though, even combined these three don’t accumulate enough votes to beat the right extremist Ford (44.5% vs 45.8%).
Brent:
September 19th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
I agree with most of what Karl wrote above, but one thing does stick out. He argues that a subway can serve local (i.e., shorter-distance) trips, and that Bloor–Danforth was designed in such a fashion. I should add that while much of this has to do with station spacing, it also has to do with the design of the station itself. In particular, this refers to the distance required to walk (and, to climb stairs) to travel from the entrance to the platform — compare Don Mills with, say, Woodbine — but it can also refer to the route (travel time) for a bus to enter the bus loop (Downsview, I’m looking at you).
From what I recall, the Spadina extension stations will be moving in one direction, while the underground Eglinton LRT stations will be moving in the other direction.
I would imagine that the station size / design not only negatively impacts accessibility and convenience, but also cost. A great deal was made of the Sheppard stations being “bare bones” (concrete walls at platform level; unfinished ceilings), but I would have to think more savings would be achieved by more modest station footprints/layouts, closer to what we see on the older stations.
Steve: Yes, when the Sheppard line opened, I was astounded to find how deep and unfriendly the “secondary” exit from Bayview, the one that would supposedly serve the new high rises to the south, actually was. The older parts of the city have fairly shallow subway stations, generally speaking, with surface connections a short distance from the trains.
Mike:
September 20th, 2010 at 10:59 am
“The TTC contemplated suburban transit and proposed a ring line using streetcars (what we now call LRT) northeast into Scarborough, then across the Finch hydro corridor, and finally south and west to meet the western subway terminal. The line included a branch to the airport.”
I had not heard of this before. Do you have a link to a map of this proposal?
Steve: Please refer to a previous article I wrote about the SRT. It includes a link to a Globe and Mail article and map showing this scheme.
Jacob Louy:
September 20th, 2010 at 11:46 am
Numerous blogs and “reports” exist explaining why LRT and Streetcars are superior than buses due to economic, financial, environmental, and physical reasons. It is touted in many blogs that Streetcars are very effective at revitalising neighbourhoods and encouraging economic activities.
Very few articles make a case for streetcars over subways however, besides from that streetcars cost less. I’d like to read up on how streetcars compare with subways not in terms of capital and operating costs (we heard that too many times), but in terms of neighbourhood renewal or economic development. Here are a few questions I have (some may be severely biased):
What would happen to the neighbourhood if Queen Streetcar were to be replaced by a Queen Subway (with small stop spacing)? How about with longer stop spacing (600 metres)? This is assuming limited or no surface transit on Queen Street.
Do subways hinder walk-in-trade trips to businesses and services?
Steve: This is a bit tricky because construction of a Queen Subway would have a very severe impact on the neighbourhoods involved that would make the St. Clair project look like child’s play. It would also depend on how many existing buildings needed to be demolished to provide all of the primary and secondary entrances, as well as emergency tunnel exits for locations with wider station spacing. There is also the question of whether one would do a deep bore tunnel or cut-and-cover. There are tradeoffs in cost, local side-effects, and complexity of stations for this choice. The original Queen subway would have run in a cut rather like the section of the Yonge line north of Rosedale. This would have been along the north side of Queen behind the existing stores through a neighbourhood that was described in the plan as being run down and not seriously affected by that type of invasive construction. Things have changed a bit.
On the BD line, there were large areas that were affected by the change from streetcar to subway service that caused the loss of walk-in trade, and it took a long time for some areas to recover. Queen Street is also seeing a lot of development either in progress or planned. Wider station spacings would tend to encourage very dense development at the stations.
Why hasn’t Bloor/Danforth redeveloped into high-density, now that it has a subway line underneath?
Steve: City policy was to preserve low-rise neighbourhoods, and much of the original BD ran through areas that were not ready for development anyhow. The subway itself does not make development, and this is a myth the TTC has perpetuated for decades.
Don’t subways increase land values? Doesn’t that mean the small business owner pays higher rent or taxes?
Steve: Yes, land values tend to go up, and can price neighbourhoods out of small business (and residentail tenant) reach. There would be a similar, if smaller, effect with an surface LRT line, but the downtown streetcar streets are not candidates for that sort of operation.
Andrew:
September 20th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
In case anyone still cares about my streetcar errand experience …
I’ve lived downtown for my entire time in Toronto so far, about a decade. I’ve been fortunate always to live near the subway, and have work either within walking distance or also on the subway. Also, over the distance of a few streetcar stops (at which the streetcars apparently excel), I prefer to walk, so I don’t use the streetcars much. I am a metropass holder and a car owner.
On the day in question, I had a bunch of errands to run, all along Queen Street. I started off at Queen and Church, and decided to do the farthest errand first (around Dufferin) and work my way back — I realize that’s a long distance in streetcar-land, but it’s not an outrageous distance on the map, or on the subway (Gmaps calls it 4.4 km, and along Bloor it would be 7 subway stops from Yonge). Anyway, the first car took forever to arrive, and the car inched through dense Saturday traffic across downtown. From when I started waiting, I think it took an hour to get to Dufferin. My errand completed, I started waiting for the eastbound car. Again, it took forever to arrive and was slow. By this time I knew I had to meet someone later, so I bailed on the rest of my errands and just went home. I got back about three hours after starting. By contrast, taking my car, three hours is tons of time to visit 3-4 places along Queen.
I grant that this may have been a bad day for the streetcar, but I’ve noticed that bad days are not untypical. I used to live on Dundas east of Yonge, and on a Saturday it would not be unusual for me to walk all the way from my place to Spadina without being passed by a streetcar. Also, on that brutal stretch from Church to Yonge, beside Yonge-Dundas Square, if the streetcar happened to be at the corner I used to hop on for the quick trip to Yonge … until I realized that, even if the streetcar was right there, much of the time it was faster to walk.
As long as I’ve been a Torontonian, I’ve never really been interested in the streetcars. I put that down to two things: first, I didn’t grow up here, so they are not caught up in any of my fond childhood memories; and second, I’ve been to other cities with tram systems that work well, and it’s dispiriting to then come to Toronto and understand how mediocre the Toronto streetcar system is in comparison.
It’s true that some drivers wouldn’t take transit under any circumstances, but the vast majority of people, like me, are rational, and will take the best mode of transport that suits their needs. And so, like me, lots of people have decided that they would rather drive on Queen Street than take a slow and frustrating ride on the streetcar. As a result we have jammed streets that slow the streetcars further.
As long as I’m on the soap box … let me also say this: in retrospect, the decision decades ago to keep the streetcars has been shown to be, more or less, a failure. Two reasons: first, the fact that in 2010 we are still having serious debates about whether to keep the streetcars — while other cities are reinstalling them left and right — is clear evidence that they (i.e., the TTC’s streetcars, not streetcars in general) don’t work as transit. By comparison, our world-class subway system works very well, so it’s no surprise that “subways everywhere” is a resonant message. Second, the mediocre streetcars suck all the oxygen out of the room when it comes to talking about LRT, because everyone’s first impression is that the TTC will be running new streetcar tracks all over the city instead of the subways that everyone wants (memo to the “Where No Streetcar Has Gone Before” people: not helping). If you want to know why Transit City didn’t capture the public imagination, the explanation is three words long: Five Oh One.
W. K. Lis:
September 20th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Time for one GTA transit authority?
I think the time has come for Metrolinx to take over the TTC, MiWay, Viva, GO Transit, etc. under one umbrella organization across the GTA.
Each organization will still be separate, getting representation from the city they operate under or privately run, but overall control will be from people who
are more expert in transit than petty politicians with their latest brainstorming idea. And I don’t mean General Motors or their ilk.
Steve: Sounds like the old political Metrolinx that Queen’s Park got rid of because they couldn’t stand the idea of elected politicians having control. As for “experts”, be careful what you ask for. The gang in power tends to appoint “experts” who support their agendas.
Stephen Cheung:
September 20th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Once again, I will go on a rant about Boorish TTC employees.
Bought a day pass last Saturday with my wife. Went first to Chinatown and walked down to the King and Spadina area where I wanted to take a streetcar east to St Andrew Station.
Wife is holding TTC pass and goes ahead of me first (she’s 5 months pregnant, so she goes ahead). A family of six with 4 kids crowd in front of me before I am able to get on. My wife is waiting for me near the entrance of the streetcar to identify me as her husband.
Streetcar driver: “Hey, you have to pay your fare”
Me: “I’m actually with my wife, we have a day pass”.
Streetcar driver: “I didn’t see you get on with your wife, you’re not with her. Pay your fare.”
Me: “Well I got separated from my wife when that family came on board.”
Streetcar driver: “I don’t care. Pay your fare or I have you arrested”.
Me: “Look, my wife is here, we have a day pass.”
Streetcar driver: “I don’t care.”
Me: “Do you want ID identifying myself as her husband? Besides, isn’t it supposed to be two adults who share a pass?”
Streetcar driver: “I don’t care. I enforce rules. Pay your fare or you will get into trouble.”
Me (incredulous): “Why? We’re together. We ARE following the rules. We have a day pass.”
What the streetcar driver said next really got my blood boiling.
“You ethnic people think you can do what you want? You think you can tell me what to do? You Chinese Right-Wingers are the worst of the lot. Get out or there will be trouble.”
What makes him think I am a right winger based on my appearance??!!?? And how dare he address me based on race?? Wife tells me to calm down and that we will get off the train. As she gets off, driver snatches the day pass from her hand. The action gives her a nasty papercut.
Streetcar driver: “You don’t deserve to use this.”
Me: “Hey, we bought that pass”
Streetcar driver: “And you misused it. Get out now before I call the police”
Me: “I want your badge number. I am going to file a report on this”
Streetcar driver: “You won’t get it. I work hard for you and this is how you treat me? Get out now before there will be trouble”.
Now at this point several passengers are trying to tell me to get out as I am holding up the car. Wife tells me to let it go and leave. Streetcar doors slam shut and driver speeds off. We end up taking a taxi to Yorkdale.
This is the umpteenth time I have gone to the TTC and gotten this kind of treatment. Is there something about weekend drivers being absolutely miserable? Why are people defending these people when I encounter them every time I go on the TTC? Boorish employees just a small portion? I think not.
This time, I did not file a complaint with the TTC customer service. Just too angry to. From now on, I will be driving downtown. We’ve staked out a lot that is $3 per day. Saves me a lot of the stress I have to go through with the TTC being jerks as they are. With my wife being pregnant, she did not have to witness such a jerk ruining our day out for us.
When Rob Ford is elected (and I know he will), I hope he handles the issue of all boorish TTC employees first and foremost. All of them need to be canned. Now. The TTC needs major housecleaning if they want my business again. Accountability and Customer Service, two words I enjoy hearing but are absolutely missing from the TTC vocabulary.
Steve: I fully agree that the way you were treated was unacceptable. The problem with large organizations, as even the blustery Rob Ford will find, is that it is not easy to reach down and pluck out the bad apples. This has less to do with the presence of a union than with the fact that the TTC’s culture is one of always finding someone to blame. Many, I would say the vast majority of operators do not act like this, but a culture that says “you’re all at fault” can produce a poisonous environment for everyone. Just this morning, I overheard a conversation between an operator and a fellow employee about how terrible the division they work in is, and how everyone in the TTC knows it. The problem? A superintendent that gives all of the staff a hard time.
The TTC prefers to co-opt a “customer service” panel and have it write recommendations on how riders should behave.
Firing everyone is simply not practical, and is undeserved by almost everyone be they staff or management. However, failure to hold those who do screw up accountable, failure to accept that the organization is far from perfect, that is a recipe for disaster which the TTC has managed to bring upon itself.
David Aldinger:
September 20th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I was just at CITYTV’s website and just got to see part 1 of an anti-privatisation video and I think everybody who visits this website very definitely needs to see that video. I’d sure love to read your take on it, Steve.
L. Wall:
September 20th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Would the need for deep stations have anything to do with the citizenry’s general opposition to cut and cover construction (a design trade off) or is it just a choice that the TTC has made?
Going back to what Steve has said in the past, a lot of people arriving at the subway do so via a feeder bus. Now look at an old propsoal with express-like station spacings like the old DRL with stops at Queen East, Atiritari, St. Lawrence, Union, Skydome, and Spadina.
Having very wide spacings like this will force a lot of riders to bookend their trips with transfers on both sides or a transfer and a long walk. So instead of a trip looking like bus-to-subway-to-destination, it would look like bus-to-subway-to-another-bus (or long walk). Which one is more convenient? What’s the point of “saving” a couple of minutes only to lose it to a walk or transfer? As Karl has said before, it is false economy.
Mike Vainchtein:
September 21st, 2010 at 2:04 am
Roman says:
For those people who think that streetcar elimination and road extension might resolve the traffic congestion i would recommend to take a look at Mexico City. It has an extensive subway network. Its streets and boulevards are much wider comparing to Toronto plus it has several highways in the city core. All streetcars but two lines that were converted into LRT/subway lines ceased operation in 1979. They have buses that were supposed to “effectively replace streetcars”. What we have at the end of the day? Enormous traffic congestion. What i’ve heard from its former residents it takes 2 hours min to get to a job. In fact, the entire city is a parking lot now. Is that what you want for Toronto?!
At the same time, Vienna with its 5 subway lines, 30 tram ( primarily POW) and 83 bus routes doesn’t have major problems with traffic. Having said these two examples I wonder where exaclty would you prefer to drive?
On the other hand Mexico City has 10 times the population of Vienna and 3 times the population of the entire country of Austria which could contribute to traffic a lot more than presence/absence of streetcar lines. I am not disputing that a proper network of LRT/subways will help ease traffic problems, just making an observation on the relative size of the cities in question.
Leo:
September 21st, 2010 at 11:55 am
@M. Briganti: At Lawrence, it involves crossing the Allen Rd onramps. That’s not fun.
Mark Dowling:
September 21st, 2010 at 1:26 pm
On Sunday, I exited a bar at Church and Richmond just after noon with the intention of taking the 504 to Broadview. (The 504 is currently diverting along Church and Queen). I walked to Queen and turned right. Queen Street was quiet traffic-wise. 1.3km later according to Google Maps a 504 turned up at Sackville Street. I don’t have a time for that but let’s assume Google’s 15 minute estimate.
On arrival at Broadview another 504 pulled in behind just after I had alighted, and the LCD display inside indicated the next one would arrive in 19 minutes. On Sundays, the advertised headway at that time of day is 6-7 minutes.
With Rob Ford polling the way he is, I think we will soon see whether the TTC really wants to keep streetcars in downtown.
Steve: We will also see what BS excuse they make up to explain why they cannot run reliable service. We can then see how they try to handle all the passengers with buses. This is reminiscent of 1972 when the trolleybus replacement of streetcars on St. Clair assumed a 1:1 replacement and a significant cut in capacity. As things stand, the 504 cannot handle all of the demand it has today in the peak period.
Still Waiting For The 501:
September 21st, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Mr. Cheung, that is awful and I am so sorry you were so badly treated.
However, I have to scratch my head at this: When Rob Ford is elected (and I know he will), I hope he handles the issue of all boorish TTC employees first and foremost. All of them need to be canned. Now. The TTC needs major housecleaning if they want my business again. Accountability and Customer Service, two words I enjoy hearing but are absolutely missing from the TTC vocabulary.
Rob Ford isn’t going to do anything about the quality of service on the TTC, probably not anywhere and certainly not downtown. Rob Ford has made it clear on multiple occasions that he doesn’t use the TTC and his main concern is getting TTC vehicles out of the way of private cars.
Union-busting tendencies aside, a mayor who doesn’t respect transit riders himself is not going to enforce respect for transit riders.
Stephen Cheung:
September 21st, 2010 at 6:08 pm
“Union-busting tendencies aside, a mayor who doesn’t respect transit riders himself is not going to enforce respect for transit riders.”
Not necessarily. Rob Ford has been lobbying for better transit in his Etobicoke ward. I don’t have the articles, but I do know that Ford has pushed for better transit service AND gone to bat for some riders victimized by these boorish TTC employees. He’s just as frustrated that these guys are still in the service. He blames union protectionism. So do I.
Steve: Ford has been totally absent on the issue of the quality of service in southern Etobicoke, and has let other Councillors do a half-assed job of defending their constituents. I have never seen Ford at a Commission meeting in person or by letter advocating for better transit, and of course his own plan contains nothing for Etobicoke.
Andrew Marshall:
September 21st, 2010 at 8:33 pm
While I have had my differences with Mr. Cheung’s stance on the issues, the event he describes, if true, is not acceptable at all and the employee should be disciplined. The general attitude alone sounded disgraceful, but the racial slur cannot be tolerated in a city that prides itself on diversity.
Having said that, I would like someone on the right to explain to me how they expect someone like Mr. Ford to cut taxes and spending (and let’s not beat around the bush, that means staff wages) and improve customer service as he keeps repeating. I have no issue with a wage freeze when economic circumstances dictate, but if anyone can think that wages can be cut across the board, staff laid off, and the remaining employees threatened into providing better service, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them. This is especially true at the TTC, as it has been documented here before how they are constantly looking for new operators and the washout rate is high. We can argue that things like fare collection could be done with more automation, but this is not like a supermarket where you can fire all the cashiers and stock clerks one day and have a brand new staff trained a week later.
Wogster:
September 21st, 2010 at 8:46 pm
The key to transit is a simple one, you need to make transit in such a way that people want to use it, that means that vehicles need to be: on time, clean, frequent, inexpensive, and there should be seats available on most vehicles for most trips. Staff should be courteous and neat. This is really the prime directive of transit.
What we have in Toronto currently, is vehicles that are late or missing, when it does come, it’s dirty, expensive, crowded the driver looks like a slob and has a horrible attitude. This is what needs to be fixed, fix this and the rest falls into place.
Andrew:
September 22nd, 2010 at 9:36 am
I really hope that the next commissioner of the TTC, whoever they are, makes service quality a priority. It’s just impossible to advocate for expanded transit when service is unreliable. I obviously don’t know the inside story, but it does seem like one area where Admiral Adam has fallen short.
Jacob Louy:
September 22nd, 2010 at 9:43 am
Sorry that happened Stephen Cheung, but you really should have reported that specific employee, instead of blaming the entire union and expecting innocent employees to be fired. You can’t just jump to the conclusion that the union condones such behaviour. How would you like it if a distant co-worker of yours got you fired because he said something sexist? That wouldn’t be fair to you or anyone else, whether you’re unionised or not.
Stephen Cheung:
September 22nd, 2010 at 11:42 am
“The general attitude alone sounded disgraceful, but the racial slur cannot be tolerated in a city that prides itself on diversity.”
The racial slur was less offensive than his comment about me being a right-winger. I frankly don’t care about the fact that I’m chinese, it’s more of the attack on my personal and political views that set me off. Seriously, are TTC employees singling me out because I have conservative tendencies? And how do they figure this out? Someone outside of this forum suggested it is what I wear.
Oh I get it, it’s because my wife buys my clothing for me. I don’t usually know what I’m wearing, she just hands stuff to me and says “You’re wearing this today”. I just looked at the tag on the shirt on my back and it says Banana Republic.
It’s all becoming clear now: clean shaven, well dressed guys must be right-wing jerks, that’s what it is. Maybe if I dressed like a slob maybe I’d get more respect from TTC drivers.
My friend said it correctly: “Wardrobes and TTC together react like hot oil and cold water”.
Still Waiting For The 501:
September 22nd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
He’s just as frustrated that these guys are still in the service. He blames union protectionism. So do I.
I don’t care how Rob Ford feels about things. I care about what he’s done and what he’s promised to do, and he has promised to make my commuting options worse, not better.
Kristian:
September 22nd, 2010 at 5:43 pm
If Rob Ford were a streetcar operator I have a feeling he would be just as angry, mouthy and possibly racist as the guy in the above incident. Choose your heros carefully.
W. K. Lis:
September 22nd, 2010 at 7:21 pm
According to what I gather from spacingtoronto.ca’s article, it seems that 28% of the cars (mostly single-occupant from what I have seen) that come into downtown Toronto are the main cause of traffic congestion, which degrades the commute for us all. If all those 28% switched to public transit, or biked, or walked, the commute would be better for all of us. Not possible, but I can dream.
Still Waiting For The 501:
September 22nd, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Maybe if I dressed like a slob maybe I’d get more respect from TTC drivers.
I don’t dress like a slob. I wear the same kinds of clothing brands you do and most TTC drivers are perfectly civil to me. You ran into one nasty individual. Don’t generalize.
Ian Folkard:
September 23rd, 2010 at 9:19 am
Hi Steve.
While thinking about short changing I was wondering, again, about Ford and the streetcars. I have a nasty feeling that his idea of replacing them with buses will be on a one for one basis. Ford is about a transit friendly as National City Lines.
Stephen Cheung:
September 23rd, 2010 at 10:19 am
“You ran into one nasty individual. Don’t generalize.”
No, this has been ongoing. As I have said before, almost every trip on the TTC was met with one angry TTC employee who literally gets in my face and hurls insults at me for no reason whatsoever.
I wouldn’t be generalizing if this was a one-off experience.
Still Waiting For The 501:
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:04 pm
All right, then. But by hypothesizing that you get picked on because you don’t look like a slob, you’re implying that the rest of us who don’t have those experiences are slobs. I don’t appreciate that.
L. Wall:
September 23rd, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Perhaps then it is the way that you carry yourself? Do you walk with a chip on your shoulder and express yourself in a similar tone as you do here? I say this because I am a “minority” too and I make three or four round trips a week by TTC and I haven’t run into such operators in two years. My only beef the past couple of years has been operators skipping stops.
Stephen Cheung:
September 23rd, 2010 at 5:57 pm
I’m generally a nice guy and carry on as much as anyone else. I give my seat up for the elderly, disabled, pregnant women, etc. If you were to meet me in person, you’d find me one of the nicer people around. I don’t publicly talk about politics with random people, though I do have frequent debates with my close friends. I don’t carry about like someone who has a chip on their shoulder. I do not greet TTC employees the moment I enter TTC service, I’m just a guy who is trying to get from point A to point B.
As for the reasons why I did not report this incident to TTC customer service, I have no trust in them to follow up on my complaint. Time and time again, my complaints always seem to be dismissed as unfounded and the offending employee is still on the system. The Broadview collector who gave me a horrid experience a few years back over another day pass issue (because it was mispunched by another TTC employee) is still there. How does one expect to have faith in the system if the system does not listen to its customers?
As for my comment about being a slob, it was sarcasm after my friend’s rather sarcastic comment about me being so well dressed compared to other people we know in our circle of friends.
Wogster’s comment about fixing the TTC is spot on, it needs to be an attractive option, not the “only option” direction that we are being steered into. Being forced into this direction has erupted into rider revolt that has been brewing for several years now. People are tired of it. People are tired about the way this city is being run. That’s why Ford is so popular.
Steve, I did not listen to last night’s debate but I was wondering if you can pose a few questions to the candidates yourself in the final debate scheduled in a few weeks time. As a right-winger, I have full confidence in your ability to dissect this issue and at least give some clarification to everyone’s plans for transit. If all of you have concerns about Ford’s transit plan (even I have some concerns, but they take a backseat to Ford’s other priorities), they need to be asked in the form of pointed questions in a televised debate.
DavidC:
September 24th, 2010 at 4:25 am
Mr Cheung says: “No, this has been ongoing. As I have said before, almost every trip on the TTC was met with one angry TTC employee who literally gets in my face and hurls insults at me for no reason whatsoever.”
I have lived in Toronto for a decade and take the TTC fairly often; I have come across FAR more pleasant and helpful TTC employees than the kind Mr Cheung appears to see on every trip. In fact I can only think of one or two incidents where I have witnessed staff rudeness, though some employees are certainly not always cheerful. I have definitely never seen the a TTC employee “hurling insults’ at a customer – though I have seen customers doing that to an operator. Yes, the TTC can be improved, by both its complacent management and by its unionised staff, but making blanket statements that are extremely hard to believe is not the way to make a point.
Calvin Henry-Cotnam:
September 24th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Stephen Cheung wrote, “I have no trust in them to follow up on my complaint.”
Stephen is not alone in this. When the ‘sleeping collector’ and the ’7 minute break’ stories broke in the news, I heard one commentator on the radio going on about how the ‘proper channels’ should be followed and that this tactic should only be a last resort. What he failed to realize, is that for years anyone who went through ‘proper channels’ have been left feeling like they are pissing into the wind. It would see, we only have a ‘last resort’ available to us.
I too have no confidence that the TTC has the will or capability to address problems. The last time I wrote with a problem was in 1996. I felt there was a safety issue (an inattentive driver was off in another world missing stops), but only got a “we’re looking into it” response with no follow-up about what actions were taken. I don’t need to know personal details about the driver himself, but they couldn’t even come up with something that looked like they were taking it seriously. Contrast this to the occasional problem I have had with YRT, where there is an immediate “we’re looking into it” response followed by a more serious follow-up message as soon as appropriate. In one case, I received a personal telephone call from an inspector and the complaint was about how someone ELSE was treated by an operator.
I have to commend Stephen Cheung for his restraint in the matter. Given the events as described, I wouldn’t be letting the vehicle move until a higher authority had arrived. Unfortunately, that causes an inconvenience to other passengers. What really incensed me was the part about the operator confiscating the pass. I don’t know how it was done, but I suspect that would be interpreted by myself or anyone I would be travelling with as an assault and would invoke a call to 911 or a press of the emergency button on the driver’s terminal.
As a final note, I would like to encourage anyone who finds a TTC employee who goes out of the way to be helpful, or is cheerful in a way that raises the spirits people around them, to send in a compliment to the TTC. Positive feedback is as important as negative feedback (even if negative feedback is only possible through a last resort method like sending a photo or video to the media).
Gord:
September 24th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Reading through this post/topic and the related comments brings several of my own comments to mind.
First of all, I must say that Steve has provided an excellent background analysis to the topic. I will comment that the original Yonge subway was proposed in the 1930′s and was finally approved in the late 1940′s. The Toronto TRANSPORTATION Commission self-financed its construction through the fares that the TTC had collected during the wartime period (when auto travel was severely curtailed due to rationing (fuel, tires, etc.)) – more revenue than expenditure! In 1954 the Province created Metropolitan Toronto and the new Toronto TRANSIT Commission was given the mandate to provide transit service to the entire municipality with the province providing operating subsidies to the TTC for the low cost recovery routes that would be established and operated in the former Boroughs of Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke. At this point in time, the TTC ceased to be self-sustaining and came to rely on the Province and the Metro level to provide operating subsidies.
My second comment/analysis will be directed toward Stephen Cheung: you have made several comments here about “boorish TTC employees”. Several of your comments raise questions in my mind:
My first question is was this particular streetcar operator rude and “boorish” to every embarking passenger? Or just the visible minorities? Or just you? You state that every one of your experiences with TTC are confrontational or are dealt with in a “boorish” manner by the employee. I will make my comment based on what you have stated here (and in previous “rants”). I am not apologizing for ANY rude behaviour by any TTC employee. I have a strong background in customer service (24 years working in the private sector) prior to joining the TTC as a Bus Operator. My experience as a TTC Operator is to stay calm, speak in a non-confrontational manner and explain to the customer what the problem is. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the customers then become angry and escalate the issue. I don’t personally know you, so I am speculating here, but when you state that every TTC experience is handled by “boorish” employees, I am led to observe that you must very quickly become angry and fuel the behaviour of the employee. Your statements about union members and your far right conservative ideology (that I am sure detests unions) may also play a factor in your dealings with the TTC and its employees. If I am wrong in my comments and observations, I apologize to you.
Finally, Steve, I apologize to you for the length of my post, as I look back on it and realize that this is extremely long.
Calvin Henry-Cotnam:
September 25th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Gord said, “In 1954 the Province created Metropolitan Toronto and the new Toronto TRANSIT Commission was given the mandate to provide transit service to the entire municipality with the province providing operating subsidies to the TTC for the low cost recovery routes that would be established and operated in the former Boroughs of Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke. At this point in time, the TTC ceased to be self-sustaining and came to rely on the Province and the Metro level to provide operating subsidies.”
A couple of corrections… Scarborough, North York, and Etobicoke were townships prior to and after the creation of Metropolitan Toronto in 1954. They did not become boroughs until 1967 when an amalgamation took place to reduce Metro from 13 municipalities to six.
The other point is about when the TTC ceased to be self-sustaining for operational costs. From a number of sources I read, the TTC did not become dependent on government subsidies for operations until January 1, 1973 when two zones within Metro ceased to exist.
Steve: Yes, it was the elimination of zone fares, part of the “deal” to win support at Metro Council from suburban members, plus the rapid growth of population in areas requiring longer trips, on average, than on the older part of the system. More resources/trip, but no more revenue.
Mike Vainchtein:
September 26th, 2010 at 11:39 am
The other point is about when the TTC ceased to be self-sustaining for operational costs. From a number of sources I read, the TTC did not become dependent on government subsidies for operations until January 1, 1973 when two zones within Metro ceased to exist.
Starting in 1954 TTC had operating losses in 1954, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1968 and then every year since 1971. However, before 1971 the operating losses were covered by investment returns from earler profits. In 1971 the TTC started receiving operating subsidies.
Stephen Cheung:
September 26th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
“My first question is was this particular streetcar operator rude and “boorish” to every embarking passenger? Or just the visible minorities? Or just you?”
I do not converse with the TTC employees. I am not a troublemaker. I simply get on, pay my fare, and get off. If a driver raises a legitimate concern on the way I do my business, I have no issues with that. But unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. Most of their comments towards me have left me shocked and dumbfounded. And very angry in the end.
If you want to accuse me of being Mr. Angry and cause my own problems, go right ahead. But let it be known that with each issue that I have with the TTC, my resentment grows. Anyone who has been through what I have been through would think the same way. Yet until last week, I took the TTC judiciously because it was the right thing to do.
I love taking public transportation. I’ve been to many public transit facilities in several parts of the world. With each experience I have with them worldwide brings me a lot of positive feelings about them. Consider my trip to Lisbon. First day on the Lisbon Metro started off with confusion. But it also brought a Lisbon Metro employee, who, despite not speaking english, was able to understand my concerns without little problem. I have not heard this kind of courtesy on the TTC ever. The union says that they have to worry about a lot of things, such as driving a large heavy vehicle, ensuring that everyone gets to their destination at the prescribed time, worrying about safety issues, enforcing fares, etc. This is the worst possible excuse one could make for the TTC. I’ve seen employees worldwide treat customers with the utmost respect. I rarely see it here. And myself in particular have been in the crosshairs of these guys for a long time. There used to be a time when the TTC was very friendly and courteous. Those days are long gone and it will be a long time before I take another TTC vehicle again.
As to the answer to your question, I have no idea. I wasn’t even on the car for longer than a minute when my wife and I got turfed.
Steve: Something I have to chime in on here is the issue of “corporate culture”. The TTC has long been a place where finding blame or finding an excuse takes precedence over everything. They are, after all, a perfect organization studied by visitors from other galaxies. This attitude long ago percolated down to the front line where many staff do an excellent job in spite of rather than because of the organization. Only in such a context could a “Customer Service Advisory Panel” have its recommendations highjacked with a section instructing customers on how to behave. This was disgraceful, but nobody at the TTC including the Commissioners seems the slightest bit bothered by it.
The very idea that there could be 26, count them, 26 things customers should do better gives license to the yahoos working at the TTC, and absolves management of the need to do a good job because the customer is always wrong, somehow. Meanwhile, good employees hear the horror stories, and have to put up with the ill will the whole organization reaps from the actions of others.
Karl Junkin:
September 27th, 2010 at 9:16 am
@Mike Vainchtein: Those years you cite losses for coincide with the opening of new parts of the subway network, except for 1962. I see nothing unusual about incurring losses in those years given that it takes a bit for travel pattern adjustments to settle and that there will always be some variance in projections that need to be adjusted afterwards. The system needs to be ready for anything but will only know where best to allocate resources with certainty after the new operations have been in effect for at least a month.
Chris:
September 27th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Given Rob Ford’s dedication to the business model for government functions, I’m surprised he hasn’t been a stronger advocate for competition in public transit. The TTC troubles are well known and it wouldn’t take much for the idea of competing urban bus companies from gaining a foothold in the public imagination. Let the TTC keep the subway or better yet be taken over by Metrolinx, but it may be time to reconsider their monopoly in bus transportation within the city of Toronto. A jitney or van based competitor would be one way of shifting people who now take their cars into a more space-efficient mode of transportation. This is done is many cities around the world — especially in Asia — and is a useful complement to standard bus service.
One of the main reasons why people do not opt for the bus or the subway is because the rider experience is so negative. Imagine a bus that guaranteed a seat for you with no standees, and lots of leg room.
nfitz:
September 27th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Stephen Cheung’s comment’s don’t add up. He tells us
I have been yelled and cussed at by TTC employees at least once every time I try to take the TTC
and also tells us that
I do not converse with the TTC employees. I am not a troublemaker. I simply get on, pay my fare, and get off and I took the TTC judiciously because it was the right thing to do.
There is absolutly no way in the world that a regular transit user gets yelled and cussed at by TTC employees at least once every time they try to take the TTC. Stephen is either not being entirely truthful here, or there is a lot more to the story. Or he’s simply trolling.
Off hand I can only recall 2 incidents I’ve been involved with (both with collectors) over the last 5 years I’ve been regularly taking transit. Oh, and perhaps an unnecessary sarcastic comment from a streetcar operator … but it wasn’t yelling or cussing, just cutting (and I politely cut him right back and kept on going …). And to be honest … I can be a bit confrontational sometimes.
To suggest that these things happen every time one takes transit is stretching credulity well past the breaking point.
I’d suggest not posting any further comments (perhaps including this one …)
Steve: This will be the end of this particular exchange. The lesson here is to avoid tarring the entire organization rather than individuals. Some candidates may be complete idiots, blowhards who couldn’t add two and two at the best of times. This doesn’t make all politicians worthy of our scorn.
Karl Junkin:
September 27th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
The obvious connundrum to what Chris refers to is that that path runs head-on into the volatile debate over fares. A clear, if not vast, majority of trips would probably see their fares rise substantially. I have lived in a society that has a model along a similar principle and it is a lot more expensive to travel in such systems.
James Bow:
September 27th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
In response to Chris, I can only say this: it’s a fallacy to assume that public transit in our cities has no competition. It has a major competitor, and that’s the private automobile. The car has been kicking public transit’s ass up and down the continent since the Second World War. As long as we continue to provide heavy subsidies for the benefit of automobile drivers, it’s unlikely that the allure of profitable public transit will be sufficient to generate enough private interest to provide the level of service we’ve deemed necessary in our cities.
Steve: We have a form of privately operated transportation in Toronto called taxis. You may have noticed how hard it is to find one if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those are market forces at work, and the same would apply to any variation on a jitney service.
David Aldinger:
September 27th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Actually, James, the automobile has been kicking transit’s ass up and down the continent since well before World War II. Undoubtedly not as much so before as after but you might say that the asskicking got much worse after the war.
Chris:
September 28th, 2010 at 11:12 am
I would agree the private automobile is the primary competition to public transit, as James rightly points out. In most places, public transit has been losing this competition. Indirect car subsidies are part of the story to be sure, but I think many public transit advocates do not give sufficient consideration to the difference in transportation experiences. The private car is a preferable experience for most people while the bus or subway is something to do avoided, if possible. So even if private car ownership is made more expensive through additional taxes and tolls, I’m uncertain how much of an effect it will have in shifting habitual drivers into public transit riders. Obviously, some will make the change. Money talks. But many drivers are likely willing to put up with higher taxes and traffic jams because they prefer the experience. For most drivers, riding public transit is not a compelling option. (Full disclosure: I’m saying this as a cyclist. I don’t own a car.)
I guess I’m saying the economics of it are important — very important — but there are other less tangible factors in the equation as sociologists like Veblen and Bourdieu have noted. A jitney or microbus service would be one way to improve the public transit experience for people who are willing to pay more. Carpooling also lies further along this spectrum of good vs bad experiences in terms of comfort, getting work done, etc. I have to think an innovative company armed with the latest technology could arrange an efficient neighbourhood-based home pick-up as well. Just thinking out loud here.
I wonder if the car has been triumphant because it is the embodiment of the values of freedom and independence that is at the core of our liberal democratic political culture.
Steve: I suppose that’s why all those thriving transit-oriented Europeans have such repressive governments and lifestyles. A lot depends on what you call “freedom” — if it means being able to go through life without owning a car, without having to pay for all its little problems, find it a parking space, fill it with gas, drive through unbelievable traffic, well that pretty much sums up why public transit is a good thing.
The car won out in NA because transit gave up the battle, and the industrial machine wanted people to drive, not ride. Neither private transit companies nor municipalities (often in very fragmented cities) could afford the investment needed to reach out to suburbia.
Chris:
September 29th, 2010 at 11:25 am
I agree the differences between Europe and NA reveal many salient points in the transit equation. I love going to Europe and experiencing their denser, more pedestrian-friendly cities. Paris, Stockholm, London — these are iconic cityscapes I have visited. How could anyone not be impressed with the way public transit and cars have been integrated in places like that?
But as we know, the respective urban histories followed different trajectories. Most major European cities predate the automobile, and indeed most forms of mechanized transportation. As a result, cars were the johnny-come-lately there and had a tougher time competing with well-established built environments and growth patterns. Plus the political and social culture arguably places less of an emphasis on personal freedom. (I agree, Steve, that it is very much a loaded and ideological concept and deserves every scare quote foisted upon it) Theirs is a more communitarian society based on ethnic and usually linguistic homogeneity. It’s easier to sit next to someone on the tram who is part of the national “family”. With the rise of significant levels of immigration in the post war era, some of this communitarian feeling may be eroding. In the future, this may become an obstacle for public projects such as transit. We will have to see.
In NA, by contrast, history dealt us a very different hand. Once the native people were forced off the land, settlers realized the joys of wide open spaces. Older cities like Boston and New York had densities like Europe and not surprisingly have decent public transit systems. But newer cities like Toronto, the low urban density precludes public transit efficiencies. Culture is also quite different with the “we-ness” being largely absent as NA society is less like a family a more like a small town or something even looser. This is another cultural obstacle to large public project funding.
Over time, Canada could become more like Europe. Higher urban densities is part of the plan and that’s a good thing. Culturally, I’m less optimistic about the engendering of communal spirit that should underwrite major public works projects. We’re growing less alike and have less and less in common with our neighbours and our fellow citizens. Technology may be accelerating this social differentiation.
Economically, we may have no choice but to follow a more European model as there are limits to road building to accommodate new cars. So that is another factor that is pushing things towards more public transit investments.
But public transit needs to be sold to the public. That requires politicians with vision who have the public trust. Miller had this in the beginning but lost it through various missteps. If Smitherman wins, I’m not sure he will have the trust to do something. He’s getting more political traction from promising spending cuts, so that will likely act as a brake on transit spending. And as long as the Toronto and Ontario governments are running big deficits, I’m not optimistic that a compelling case can be made for major transit spending. That’s why it may make sense to encourage new types of transit options, either under the auspices of the TTC or through some private ventures. Government is maxed out right now, and unless and until the economy recovers, big spending is going to be a tough sell.
Sorry for rambling here.
Still Waiting For The 501:
September 29th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
I don’t really understand the contention that the car is the embodiment of freedom and independence. Cars and driving are costly and heavily regulated, and drivers rely on outside suppliers of fossil fuel and a network of government roads. If I wanted to be fully independent, I’d walk or bike everywhere — otherwise I’m just choosing the form of my dependency.
Calvin Henry-Cotnam:
October 1st, 2010 at 8:31 am
Still Waiting For The 501 , “I don’t really understand the contention that the car is the embodiment of freedom and independence.”
Ah, but you are trying to apply pure logic to human nature. The feeling that the car is the embodiment of freedom and independence sits alongside the concept that getting an income tax refund is a good thing. Pure logic says that our personal finances would be better off if we each ended up paying a small amount (under $1000) at tax time instead of getting a refund, but who can find someone that would enthusiastically agree?
Chris:
October 2nd, 2010 at 11:52 am
Certainly, the automobile is dependent on cheap fuel and subsidized roads. However, the car=freedom equation is based on the travel experience itself.
In a car, I am free from the sound of other people’s iPods, inane cellphone conversations, smelly food, obnoxious teenagers and all the other joys of communal travel.
It goes without saying that walking and cycling also partake in these freedoms. That’s one reason I am an avid cyclist.
Still Waiting For The 501:
October 5th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Fair enough. I think that notion of “freedom” is very much historically determined, though, and is not necessarily what philosophers of centuries past had in mind when they wrote about freedom. Up until very recently, owning a private enclosed vehicle was a privilege reserved for the very rich, and people used to live and work in much closer quarters than they generally do in the contemporary West. The “freedom” not to interact with other people is not synonymous with democratic freedom.
Chris:
October 5th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Agreed that freedom is defined by history and culture. And while freedom from other people is not synonymous with democratic freedom, it is something that people have found desirable over the past 100 years. As Sartre said in a somewhat different context, “hell is other people”. People have voted with their feet to leave public transit wherever economically feasible.
I think transit advocates need to do a better job of acknowledging that the public transit experience is pretty negative. It’s a big reason why more people don’t leave their cars. To get people to make the switch, you can punish the car drivers through taxes, toll, traffic jams, or try to lure them with rewards by making transit more pleasant. Not easy I know, but it’s something to ponder. Even though transit is a fraction of the cost of driving a car, most people still choose to forgo the savings and take the car.
People will put up with bad experiences on airplanes because there really aren’t many choices when travelling 2000 miles. In a city, people do have travel choices and will avoid the cattle car crush of rush hour whenever possible.
Still Waiting For The 501:
October 6th, 2010 at 9:07 am
ITA that transit needs to be as pleasant as it possibly can be, and a huge portion of this blog and its comments are on just that subject. In fact I think it’s part of an anti-transit agenda to assume that transit riders should just put up with discomfort and inconvenience.
But you did say private auto travel is “the embodiment of the values of freedom and independence that is at the core of our liberal democratic political culture”, and this other stuff about convenience and comfort strikes me as moving the goalposts.
Steve: Although I wan’t the one to make the statement quoted here, what I will say is that “convenience” and “comfort” should be expected to some degree from a transit system. It will never be the same as having your own car — including the cost of buying, insuring, maintaining and operating it, not to mention endless time spent in traffic jams or looking for parking spaces — but this does not excuse any attitude that we “can’t afford” better transit.
Stephen Cheung:
October 6th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
“I think transit advocates need to do a better job of acknowledging that the public transit experience is pretty negative. It’s a big reason why more people don’t leave their cars. To get people to make the switch, you can punish the car drivers through taxes, toll, traffic jams, or try to lure them with rewards by making transit more pleasant. Not easy I know, but it’s something to ponder. Even though transit is a fraction of the cost of driving a car, most people still choose to forgo the savings and take the car. ”
It’s good to know that someone is thinking the exact thing I am. Except for some people I know (including my wife), it actually is cheaper to take the car rather than public transit. Some people do try to take Transit as it is the right thing to do, but we aren’t doing anything to further encourage that behaviour.
The carrot needs to come before the stick, not the other way around, which is the approach that the TTC has been trying to take as of late.
Jim Hoffman:
October 7th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Stephen Cheung said “The carrot needs to come before the stick, not the other way around, which is the approach that the TTC has been trying to take as of late.”
Carrot money would be great! Now all we need is carrot money.
Mapleson:
October 10th, 2010 at 4:29 am
Stephen Cheung, are you including insurance and deprecation in that cost analysis? I’m pretty sure you’re not going to spend $18,000 on MetroPasses in your life. Forgetting that insurance agencies give coverage for a fixed number of kilometers for payment rendered, and growth accelerating with distance.
I have to drive a private vehicle for work purposes as I go outside the 416 and off-times to GO Transit. I would love Metrolinx to take over all the local transit bodies with half funding coming local and from higher government. Metrolinx is already doing the capital planning, integration, and expansion of the GTA, why not do the operational planning, integration, and expansion as well?
Steve: Actually, I spend over $1k on Metropasses every year at current prices, and over the 30 years the pass has existed have probably spent over $20k on them. Mind you, a car is unlikely to last 30 years, but I don’t have to insure my Metropass.
Still Waiting For The 501:
October 12th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
“The carrot needs to come before the stick, not the other way around, which is the approach that the TTC has been trying to take as of late.”
Sure, there’s some waste and inefficiency at the TTC, just as there is at every large organization, but is there enough to make radical improvements to service without any more revenue? I just don’t see it. I’m not a fan of TTC management, but I haven’t seen any evidence that they’re misusing funds to that extent.