Updated March 5 at 16:50: An interview done in association with this article is now available.
Starting today, I will be publishing a series of articles both here and on The Mark, a public affairs blog. There is a Toronto section of that site with issues specific to our city, and that’s where my pieces will appear.
Candidates for public office, especially the Mayor, should understand what they’re talking about when they prattle on about public transit. It’s a big part of Toronto’s municipal budget, and easily the largest of our municipal agencies.
Politics by sound bite is no way to run a railway. In the interest of educating would-be office holders and encouraging them to broaden their views of the subject, my own Transit 101. The first article asks many questions, and in coming instalments I will address many of these topics.
No, I am not running for Mayor, or Council, or Traffic Warden, but could be tempted by a fleet of Swan Boats.
The article itself follows the break.
Congratulations! You’ve decided to run for council, maybe even for mayor. You hear that public transit is a hot item these days, something worth learning about. Transit is a big portfolio, an area of complex issues and big, big spending.
Knowing a little might get you through one press conference, but you need to know a lot and think hard about your positions.
The first, most important question, is this: Is public transit something for “us” or for “them”? Do you use it? Would you use it? Will you fight for and represent those who want more and better transit?
When you say you “support public transit,” what do you mean? What is transit? What does it do? Will it have priority in your budget?
Does “better transit” mean getting people off the road so that there’s more room for you to drive? Do you like “transit” as an idea, but want to rein in spending? Do you know where the money comes from, where it goes? Do you have an alternative model good for the long term, or only a quick fix good for a sound bite?
Public transit does not just move people around the city. Everyone knows that commuters, especially those on the subway and GO Transit, love a quick, traffic-free ride to work. There’s also big savings in avoided pollution and fuel consumption. But that’s not all.
Over half of the trips on the TTC are outside of the peak periods, and even in the peak, many people are not going downtown. All that transportation capacity avoids the space needed for cars – storage, driving lanes, and parking – plus the expense of owning them. That’s a huge public and private benefit all over the GTA, even if the auto industry might prefer that we all drive.
Will traffic congestion ever go away? Not likely. At current levels of transit market share (well under 10 per cent outside of the 416, and nowhere near 50 per cent inside of it), we would have to provide vast new transit capacity to make a serious dent in traffic. Much of the congestion is for travel that isn’t well-oriented to a transit network – the typical everywhere-to-everywhere suburban commuting pattern. Some of this can be captured for transit, but not all of it.
The real challenge is the growing demand for travel as the GTA population grows. New homes, offices, and industrial centres pop up everywhere, but not in a way that is easily served with transit. Try to constrain or redirect development, though, and you will meet howls of outrage from developers and politicians who want more of the same.
Toronto has the advantage of an Official Plan, presuming that council sticks with it and the city’s goal to increase density along major streets. However, many 416 residents, not to mention those from the 905 who travel through the 416 on their way to and from work, have a very road-oriented view of travel – it’s the only option that works for them.
Transit solutions that work within the 416, especially in the central area, are less viable the further out we go. If the reach of good transit expands, that boundary between inner and outer cities will move.
Do we let this boundary drift outward with small transit improvements here and there, maybe a new subway line every decade, or do we actively push it outward expanding the range of communities with good transit options?
Transit is all about choice – the ability to leave the car at home or to get by without one much of the time – and this choice only works if there is good service. Many of Toronto’s transit riders could drive, but don’t. Force them away with service cuts in the name of economy, and you may never get them back. You will, however, get the added congestion they bring to the city.
As the balance shifts, transit, pedestrians, and cyclists will take the lion’s share of road capacity and motorists will have to make do with the leftovers. That’s a very hard message for many to swallow.
Road space is finite. What do we use it for? In built-up areas where wider, let alone new roads, are out of the question, any improvement for one road user is at the expense of another. Even where space remains today, there will be no room left tomorrow.
Should transit get priority, and what, exactly, does this mean? Should half of the space on major roads be dedicated to parking? Where do bicycles fit? What happens in areas where “minor” roads for a parallel bike network separate from the arterials don’t exist? Should wide, fast streets be redesigned, “calmed,” or “tamed” to improve the lot of pedestrians?
As a candidate, do you look forward to see how the city would address limits on road space, or do you look back to an era when we could pretend car use would grow forever, and everyone else would just get out of the way?
Steve Munro 
Ed said:
My response:
Ed said:
My response:
Ed said:
My response:
Steve: None of this is simple, but I have to challenge your point about gas pricing and the relative proportion and effect it has on operating costs. The problem for a motorist is that payments on the capital value of the car (as well as insurance) are fixed, and somehow the motorist finds the money to cover this. However, fuel is at the margin. If the cost goes up, it may put pressure on other areas of a personal budget.
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Robert Wightman said: “True, but it does not give them [905’ers] right to demand that more roads and parking be built in the city so that they can drive to work.”
Of course no. There is a legitimate 416 vs 905 debate that focuses on serving the cross-border trips with transit: who should pay for the capital and operating costs, and whether and how the “cross-border surcharge” has to be eliminated or reduced.
But I haven’t seen anyone (or at least anyone who understands the topic) proposing to widen Toronto’s streets just to let in more cars from 905. That would be utter nonsense.
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Mr. Wightman –
“Torontonians have never faced squarely” the (proper?) role of the subway in the transit mix? With the province/TTC controlling public participation, just when were the citizenry ever given all the information and choices?
You speak of limited interest in a Kennedy-to-Pearson direct link. Perhaps. I could argue that few desire a direct link between the OSC and Pape Station. Should this hinder plans for the DRL? Your point does not militate against the need for continuous express trips between major destinations or transit nodes. Do we want high capacity local service or do we want high speed express service, you ask? This is like asking whether we want education or health care, and claiming we cannot have both.
I am delighted to find some agreement on the issue of full separation of TC lines (or at least Eglinton) from general traffic. I’ll try to distill things down to a single question, with the following disclaimers. There IS need for medium-range transit development, which would serve, for example, legs at either end of an express trip. One-seat trips for the majority of express riders are not strictly necessary. Granted. I also agree with Mr. Munro about supplementary bus services along major routes even after LRT lines are built.
My question from my OP remains: if Eglinton is not to be a preferred (rapid) line for crosstown services, and GO will not play ball, *what network element will serve* for express trips through the middle E-W band of Toronto?
I am intrigued by ideas like Wogster’s about express cars. Where are the proposals? If I can abuse the notion of “401 model” for one paragraph: that highway was designed as both a bypass and an express road linking Ontario’s major destinations in a belt format. Within the GTA, I see a crying need for a transit equivalent. If we expect LRT lines like Eglinton and Finch to do more than humanize the boulevards – say, to secure an entirely new generation of transit users, building support in turn for funding express lines later – I am afraid we will disappointed.
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Steve said: “… I have to challenge your point about gas pricing and the relative proportion and effect it has on operating costs. The problem for a motorist is that payments on the capital value of the car (as well as insurance) are fixed, and somehow the motorist finds the money to cover this. However, fuel is at the margin. If the cost goes up, it may put pressure on other areas of a personal budget.”
I can see your point; but the cost of transit fares is not negligible and should be taken into account. There was a time when my wife drove to work every day (about 10 km each way) plus the car was used to take our child to / from daycare and for groceries; and even then, our monthly gas bill was smaller than the monthly cost of my MDP subscription.
So, a person who has both a car and a Metropass (a popular combination for people working downtown) will tend to drive less frequently as the gas price goes up. But for someone who currently has a car only and does not pay for transit, a large surge in the gas price has to occur before it becomes economical to pay for transit while still keeping the car.
Another option for a car owner is to get rid of the car entirely, the saving on insurance alone likely beating the cost of MDP. However, such decision would be based on the total cost of car ownership, not on the gas cost alone.
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Slow-peddle says:
March 9, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Since the proposed DRL would not run to the Ontario Science Centre (but I agree that it should go to Eglinton and Don Mills), I fail to see the comparison in your statement. Not many people ride the Subway from Downsview to Sheppard Station as the Sheppard bus is much faster, but that does not mean the line is not needed. Your statement that the Eglinton line would not benefit people who wanted to go from Kennedy to Pearson also does not relate to the usefulness of the line. Very few people ride a line from one end to the other.
Slow-peddle says:
Unfortunately there is none that will satisfy your definition of express trip but the Eglinton line will cut the travel time from Brentcliffe to Keele from 48 minutes to 19. I drove this one afternoon to see what the driving time was and it was a lot longer than 19 minutes; it was closer to 40. There is a finite amount of money available and it should be spent to maximize the benefits to the largest number of users and not to satisfy the needs of a few. To run any form of express service would require 4 tracks at least at the stations and this would make the right of way wider than the available road space. Unfortunately when Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough grew in the 50’s and 60’s all design decisions favoured the private automobile over transit and we are now paying the price. There is no right of way available that would serve your requirements except possibly the Hydro corridor above Finch but that would require grade separation at all the local streets and would raise the ire of anyone whose house backed on to it.
GO does offer a 407 express bus service which connects most of the universities and community colleges, except those in the downtown, together. If the province were to implement HOV and bus lanes on the 401 then a similar service might be possible there but I fear that once the buses got off the highway they would be stuck in slow moving local transit. There is no easy corridor into which a high speed cross town line could be placed except for the CP’s NorthToronto Sub which is probably too far south and which would probably over load the Yonge and Spadina Subways or the CN’s York/Halton subs. Since these are CN’s main Toronto freight lines they are not likely to allow that.
METRA, the GO equivalent in Chicago, is planning a suburban rail line that would connect all the spokes of the radial commuter rail lines together. This line would be outside of the “City of Chicago” limits. It might be possible to run a service from either Pickering or St. Clair on the Lake Shore East line along the York sub or up the Uxbridge sub to the York and then across the top of Toronto to Bramalea. This would join everything but the Lake Shore West and Milton lines together. Joining up to those lines would be difficult except at Milton and Burlington which would be too far out to help most people. Alas Toronto’s existing infra structure and geography do not allow for a good cross town “express” line. One could argue that a service across this line would help to build up counter peak and suburban loading while not causing much of an increase in demand at Union Station.
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I think the short answer is “Yes, if every LRT line replaced a very busy bus line seat-for-seat.” However, it’s obvious that at least some of the planned LRT lines actually represent some expansion in capacity, not a strict replacement.
(I’m not even sure it’s necessary to put track maintenance and road maintenance on comparable budgeting; in Chicago the rails are simply cheaper to operate per-passenger and per-passenger-mile than the buses even though the buses get ‘free road’. In LA, the Wilshire Subway will be very expensive to build, but with articulated buses running every five minutes AND regular buses running every five minutes AND special express articulated buses running every five minutes during ‘rush hour’, which is several hours long both morning and evening, the operations costs will be far, far lower than the current three-buses-every-five-minutes peak bus service, even though the capacity will be much larger.)
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Seems like a slight exaggeration given the efforts made to get separated ROW east of Pickering Junction, and the deliberate efforts to purchase the ROWs primarily used by GO even when CN wasn’t planning to abandon them, and the efforts to get exclusive tracks on the existing services. They’ve made significant efforts to get ROW; it hasn’t just fallen into their laps! 🙂
It would seem more accurate to say that since the end of 1982, GO has been much more interested in consolidating existing service than in offering new services. The buses seem designed mostly as feeders or hours-of-service-extensions, or even bustitutions, with a few exceptions.
Steve: I refer to existing rail corridors. Unlike an urban transit system where we are forced to build a right-of-way wither by tunneling, taking over part of a roadway, or in a few cases using a hydro corridor or valley, GO has always used tracks that are in place. This is the low hanging fruit of system building, and GO is only now seeing what happens when they try for major expansion within a corridor (Georgetown), let alone contemplate anything new.
Because of this, GO has not been subjected to the same sort of public consultation pressures as the TTC, and GO gets to look so much more “successful” by comparison.
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Nathanael says:
March 14, 2010 at 5:05 pm
All the Rights of Way that GO has purchased from CN and CP were for all intents and purposes abandoned by them even though they may not have been able to stop all service on them as yet. GO did the railways a favour by taking them off their books while still allowing them to access a couple of industries. East of Pickering Junction there was an unused strip of land north of the CN and south of the 401 so the GO sub was no major problem to build. CN had effectively abandoned the use of most of the Uxbridge sub as it has, I believe one train to Miliken and nothing north. There might be 1 or 2 trains on the Bala Sub south of the York sub to access industries at the waterfront. There is one way freight a couple of times a week up the Newmarket sub north of the York and a couple down it to switch industries. Similarly they only have a couple of switch runs on the Weston sub. CP has embargoed the Belleville sub from Leaside to Union because of a bad bridge and they stopped running anything on the Galt sub from West Toronto to Union also. GO also bought the Toronto Terminal Railways from CN and CP as neither one runs anything there though CN still sends the odd through freight across it.
GO is going to actually have to design and build a new right of way in Oshawa to join the GO sub to CP’s Belleville sub to extend service to Bowmanville. GO has made excellent use of existing and underutilized rail corridors by purchasing them where possible. They did actually build new track from Pickering to Oshawa but that right of way was there. They haven’t had to put in track on a new corridor yet. Now they are finding out the problems of boldly going where no train has gone before, or nowhere near as many as they want to run. Yes, up until now most of the right of way has fallen into their lap. The original GO line was partly the idea of CN to find a use for their soon to be underutilized Lake Shore corridor and to get rid of two costly commuter trains to Hamilton that they did not want to run. I will grant you that GO has made good use of these corridors and is spending money to upgrade them but they haven’t developed any “new rail corridors” yet.
Steve: Go has bought or is in the process of acquiring the CN highline through Union as well as the Oakville Subdivision. This is a matter of public record, if you know where to look.
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Steve:
Have they bought the part west of the point where the Halton Sub joins in? I can not see CN selling their main freight line to Chicago or even a small part of it.
Steve: I do not know the specific mileages, only that GO is buying part of it. I suspect as you say that CN would not part with the part west of the junction with the Halton Sub.
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Hi Steve,
You’ve mentioned earlier that the Spadina extension would add $10 million annually to TTC’s operating costs. Is this $10 million/year to pay off the initial capital costs? Or does it really cost $10 million annually to operate the Spadina extension subway line (excluding capital costs)?
Steve: That is $10m in extra operating costs, net of new revenue from additional riding. Either we get a special subsidy from somewhere, or $10m+ worth of service has to disappear elsewhere to subsidize the happy riders from York U and Vaughan.
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I have Googling Metrolinx’ purchase of anything owned by CN but cannot find anything after the Weston and Newmarket Subs. DO you know where to find it?
Steve: The acquisition of the Oakville Sub and the High Line were listed on the February 19, 2010, agenda for the Metrolinx Board under item 18 Contract Approvals. This was on the hard copy distributed at the meeting. However, the online version does not show the individual acquisitions.
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These purchases are beginning to seem like part of a plan. Well, I guess it is part of a plan, of course. I guess they’re really trying to buy all the tracks they run on (see Ontario Auditor’s 2009 Report). It’s just that these announcements always seem to come out of the blue. I guess that’s because the negotiations with CN are taking place behind closed doors, and when negotiations finish on any given piece of line is a bit random.
Am I correct that they acquired only *part* of the Oakville sub? How far west does their new ownership go?
I wish them luck particularly getting the Kingston and Uxbridge subs, at which point they could seriously think about taking over dispatching — they would control three entire lines and all the dispatching handoffs would be at outlying points (no back-and-forth).
Steve: At this point, Metrolinx has discussed acquisition of part of the Oakville sub, but has not consumated a purchase. It would not make sense for CN to sell any part of the Oakville/Kingston corridor beyond junctions with their freight bypass at Burlington and Pickering. They already own the Uxbridge sub, the Newmarket sub, the Weston sub, the Galt subdivision from West Toronto to Union, and the disused former CP Don Branch.
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