Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote a long paper about the role of transit and what a truly regional plan would look like. To avoid extensively quoting myself, I suggest that any newcomers to this site read that as a starting point as it contains not just a list of routes, but a philosophy of how one should look at transit.
Since 2006, we have seen Transit City, MoveOntario2020 and The Big Move. The GTA appeared well on its way to real progress in transit although problems, notably the question of local service funding, remained.
Now we have a new Mayor in Toronto, and plans that came from years of work and debate lie in pieces on the floor. Metrolinx and Queen’s Park seem content to “plan” by carving up funding that’s already committed and redrawing their map to suit the whims of a new regime at City Hall.
The fundamental problem in this exercise is the phrase “funding that’s already committed”. When you draw a map with a half empty pen, you make compromises, and you run out of ink leaving huge areas bereft of service.
If redraw we must, then let us do so with a view to a transit network and to a view beyond the end of next year. What does Toronto and the GTA need? How much will that cost? How do we pay for it? If we start with the premise that we cannot afford anything, we should stop wasting our time on planners, engineers and the myth that transit can actually transform travel for the next generation.
The discussion below is Toronto centric because this is a Toronto blog, and that’s where most of the GTA’s transit riders are. All the same, the philosophy of what transit should be affects everyone, especially in those areas where so much transit growth is needed just to catch up with the population.
Some of the info here will be familiar to those who read my commentaries regularly, but I wanted to pull it all together as a starting point. My comments are not intended as the one, definitive “solution”, but to show the need for debate on a large scale, integrating considerations from many parts of various schemes.
[While I was writing this article, the Pembina Institute published its own critique of the Ford transit plan. I do not intend to comment on that document here because it addresses only one part of a much larger collection of transit issues.]
The Map
The two best-known maps of transit schemes are Transit City and The Big Move. The former is actually a subset of the latter, but Transit City is important for its role in establishing the importance of LRT as a choice among transit technologies. LRT lines are now proposed for Mississauga, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa. The concept is no longer the exclusive preserve of a small band of Toronto railfans.
However, Transit City itself isn’t perfect. Some of the lines were not well thought-out and owe their location to connect-the-dots planning and some naïve conceits about fitting LRT into narrow streets. This needs to be changed.
Transit City presumed that a large network would be quickly built, and that the city would grow into its new capacity. However, even without recent political changes, funding limits stretched the seven lines out to two decades before even the first of them started construction. Meanwhile “LRT” streets would languish without service improvements.
BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) was not considered for the lighter corridors on the basis that the infrastructure would have to be upgraded to LRT too soon to make a BRT scheme worthwhile. This might have been true for a quick rollout, but options change when the schedule extends into the 2030s and beyond.
The Big Move does not address the problems of local service or integration with the regional network. The map exists in an odd blank space where local service is “someone else’s problem”. Service and fare policies for GO remain in a never-never land pretending that these routes exist only as express services for commuters, not as part of a regional rapid transit network. Instead, GO may evolve into a mix of truly regional, express services overlaid on more frequent local operations, but the implications of such a change are not yet part of the GO culture.
If we must redraw the map, we must ignore the institutional barriers about each mode and element, and focus on how routes and services will fit together as a whole.
The Missing Pieces
Two major parts of a future network are rarely mentioned, but each is vital for its contribution — waterfront transit and the surface buses and streetcar routes.
On the waterfront, service to the planned growth areas in the East Bayfront, the Don Lands, and the Port Lands is threatened both by Waterfront Toronto’s funding problems and by Mayor Ford’s anti-surface transit rhetoric. These areas are designed around frequent surface transit with easy access to stops. The streets are close to Lake Ontario, many within former lake bed. Subway construction here would be difficult, and the fine-grained service proposed for the eastern waterfront would be impossible. Infrequent service on the Sherbourne bus will not do.
To the west, the new condo forests from the rail corridor south to the lake demand better service, but such plans as there are have the feel of leftovers in a car-oriented road system. Proposed development of the land at Exhibition Place and Ontario Place is completely remote from transit service. It is difficult to understand the rationale for building an LRT line all the way to southern Etobicoke while ignoring major development opportunities that are much closer to downtown and the existing streetcar network.
If Toronto plans to build the equivalent of new small towns on the waterfront, it must include good transit in those plans.
The Bus and Streetcar Network
In 2009, the TTC proposed the Transit City Bus Plan, a scheme to provide a core network of routes with frequent and express service. This fell victim to a turf war between Council’s Budget Committee and the TTC over who had the right to commit the City to changes in transit service and spending. This plan was intended to come back as part of the 2011 budget proposal, but the political players have changed and TCBP’s future is unclear.
Embracing TCBP presumes that the City and TTC actually want to improve transit service rather than looking only for funding cuts and blame-the-unions speechmaking. If we believe people deserve good, improved transit service, that issue is separate from how we pay for it. Partisan speeches do not warm people in bus shelters.
One big flaw in TCBP is the “B” of the title. For reasons best known to the TTC, they did not include the streetcar network even though it contains some of the best-used routes on the system. This has the odd side-effect that the only east-west route in the plan is 94 Wellesley which would get 10-minute all day service while patrons of other services, notably on Kingston Road and Lake Shore would get far worse.
In the technology debates, we hear a lot about bus rapid transit (BRT), not to mention “BRT-light” which is little more than express buses running in mixed traffic. I say “little more”, but even the express proposals in TCBP would be an improvement for those who now face long journeys on major transit routes.
On both the bus and streetcar networks, the service principles of the Ridership Growth Strategy are important. This plan is eight years old, but the basic ideas are sound. RGS brought better service to many routes with improved loading standards reducing the target for the average number of riders on a “full” bus or streetcar.
Off-peak headways were improved to 30 minutes maximum and service was extended to 1:00 am, seven days a week, on most of the system. Some routes will never be full even in the peak period, but they serve areas that otherwise would be far from transit. This is not just a matter of convenience, it is one of accessibility, and of ensuring that someone who works off hours will have a ride when they need it.
Finally, advertising good service is not enough. The TTC must actually operate good service. Some unevenness is inevitable on a transit network, but as I have shown in many analyses of operations on streetcar and bus routes, management is vital to providing the best service possible. Advertised 10 minute headways must not become pairs of buses every 20 minutes, and short turns should be rare. This is as much a part of “customer service” as a friendly greeting and accurate website info.
Transit City
As originally proposed, the Transit City plan anticipated completion of seven routes by 2020, but this optimistic schedule didn’t last for long. Rejigging TC is possible in many ways, and my comments here only give some of the options. This is not intended as a definitive list.
My point in raising these is that there are bona fide concerns about some aspects of the TC designs, and these should be addressed. It is quite odd that we can redesign the entire network in a few weeks to suit a preference for subways, but we don’t look at what might be improved for the LRT options.
- Eglinton: Parts of this line require review to address issues raised during the project assessment.
- The section through Mt. Dennis, as currently designed, is quite intrusive. Considering the amount we will spend on the tunnel from Black Creek to Leaside, saying that an underground route at Weston Road is “too expensive” is hard to swallow.
- Treatments of left turns need detailed review, especially in light of actual service levels we will see on the outer ends of the line. If the full service does not run west of, say, Weston or east of Don Mills, then the dynamics of intersections will be quite different than what was presented in the studies.
- Side-of-road alignments should be revisited in the Richview corridor and east of Leaside to Don Mills.
- Sheppard: There is very strong pressure for the subway to be extended to Scarborough Town Centre, but such a move may foreclose any future rapid transit extension to the northeastern parts of Toronto. We need to understand how services in this area could interact to handle present and future demand including:
- Service to the UofT campus as a permanent goal, not just for the Pan Am Games
- Service to Malvern
- Improved GO service on the Stouffville line and new service on the line through Agincourt to north Pickering
- Scarborough RT: If this becomes a subway line, it will never reach Malvern. Indeed, without LRT lines on Sheppard and a rebuilt RT, it would be difficult to justify any sort of LRT network in Scarborough as there would be no critical mass of routes to support a carhouse.
- Finch LRT:
- The Metrolinx scheme to extend this route east and south to Don Mills Station was a triumph of “missing link” planning over common sense. If Finch East is to get improved service, Don Mills, the eastern reaches of a low density stretch of Finch, is not the place to stop.
- If neither Finch nor Jane will see LRT for a long time, bus improvements are needed. Whether taking road space for buses will be acceptable in Mayor Ford’s planning universe remains to be seen.
- Don Mills: This line, like Jane, was to be shoehorned into a street alignment at its southern end by a TTC unwilling to face the obvious — the street is too narrow. In the case of Don Mills, if a separate structure (tunnel, bridge across the Don) will be required, they may as well carry the Downtown Relief Line north to Eglinton and reduce the need for transfer facilities at Danforth.
- Jane: At its southern end, Jane does not have the road width to accommodate an LRT right-of-way. It may make more sense for this route to end at Eglinton and feed into the Eglinton line, possibly as a branch service.
- Waterfront West: This has always been the lowest priority of the TC routes, and its benefit for riders in southern Etobicoke is dubious given alternatives such as the BD subway and GO Transit. As I mentioned above, the real problems are closer to downtown and plans for the WWLRT should focus on these. As for Lake Shore, the TTC should invest in better service on the 501 before advocating a full-blown LRT right-of-way down this street.
Subways
Several subway proposals are on the table, some with more official standing than others. What they have in common is a requirement for a substantial capital investment as well as future operating dollars. Offsetting considerations include ridership benefits and network effects that could trigger additional costs.
- Sheppard west to Downsview: This is one of those “fill in the blanks” connections that looks nice on a map, but I remain unconvinced that it will attract much riding. Through routing to York U and beyond is unlikely given the TTC’s lack of appetite for interlining, not to mention the mix of four and six car trains north of Downsview (unless stations on the existing Sheppard line are expanded).
- Sheppard east to STC: Political pressure for this route is very strong, and I suspect it would be the hardest to dislodge from Mayor Ford’s plan even with the low projected ridership. The problem, coupled with the proposed extension of the Danforth subway north to STC, remains that northeastern Toronto will never see extension of “rapid transit” service beyond that point.
- Bloor-Danforth northeast to STC: See comments above.
- Yonge to Richmond Hill (and beyond): This line has strong political support in York Region, although Metrolinx and Queen’s Park have yet to tip their hands on funding. Only a preliminary and inconclusive “Benefits Case Analysis” for this line has appeared. The underlying question here is the interaction of many factors for which there has never been a public, consolidated study:
- The Yonge extension itself
- Demand effects on the existing route
- Options for additional capacity including closer headways, more trains, platform doors and a new subway yard
- Side-effects of increased YUS capacity on transfer moves to and from the BD line
- The reconstruction and expansion of Bloor-Yonge Station (and possibly other locations where volumes may outstrip station capacity)
- Much-improved service on Richmond Hill’s GO line as proposed by The Big Move
- The Downtown Relief line as an interceptor for inner city demand on the Danforth subway
The Airport
Although the original Transit City saw a connection to Pearson Airport within this decade, the western part of the Eglinton LRT is now in a later phase of Metrolinx plans. It is claimed that the airport authority (the GTAA) won’t be ready with a final plan for airport transit until 2020 or so, and everything is on hold until then. Everything, of course, except the “Blue 22” link to Union Station (aka the “Air Rail Link”or whatever it’s called this week).
The ARL is now a Metrolinx project, but it is still projected to be a premium fare service for airport travellers, not for commuters to the airport or within the corridor. The handstands performed by Metrolinx to justify this approach is closely related to the project’s long life as a PPP and the need to charge higher fares to recoup the capital investment. (The situation is much more complex, but here is not the place for that debate.)
What is completely unclear at this point is the relationship between the ARL, the Eglinton and Finch LRTs (and possibly the Hurontario/Brampton LRT) and the Mississauga busway. Gradually many services may aim in the general direction of the airport, but whether and how they will actually serve it is a mystery.
In The Big Move, the airport is listed as one of the two major transit hubs on the GTA (the other is Union Station), but we have yet to see an overall study of how transit can link the GTA as a whole to the airport, or any sense that this has any importance in regional planning.
GO Transit
GO Transit has an uneasy relationship with the local transit services throughout the GTA. GO is happy to piggyback on other agencies to provide feeder/distributor capacity, but operates primarily as a peak period, peak direction service heavily dependent on parking lots. Parking has its place, but it cannot serve a more diverse trip pattern where destinations are poorly served by local transit or by walking, or where trips occur long after parking lots are full.
The Big Move foresees a considerable amount of counter-peak and all-day travel on GO corridors, and this will require a major rethink of how riders access the regional rail system.
Notable by its absence from long range funding announcement is any idea of how GO services will expand from their present level to even the early stages of The Big Move. This expansion will compete with other projects for capital and operating funding. Cost recovery will fall as service expands beyond cherry-picking the most profitable trips and moving to all-day operation.
Within the coming weeks, GO will release its Electrification Study for consideration at the Metrolinx board meeting of January 26. Although I have attended some of the community workshops for this study and commented at length on interim papers, I will hold off on a detailed review here until the final version is published.
This study presumes that rail service will increase substantially before any electrification is done, and the cost of these increases is considered to be separate from the conversion to electrification. This avoids charging the mode conversion for infrastructure and service that would be built regardless of the mode or timing of conversion, but it assumes that the money to reach this “reference case” will actually be spent. As things stand, we see little indication of major GO expansion plans on the scale contemplated by The Big Move.
Finally, Metrolinx must rethink GO Transit’s fare structure. During the electrification study, and a parallel study regarding capacity issues at Union Station, it became clear that GO contemplates shifting some of its demand onto the TTC as one option. Aside from the question of where such riders would actually fit, there is the matter of fare integration.
As GO evolves into an all-day, bidirectional service on many corridors, it will simply be one more part of a large network and premium fares with limited transfers will become harder to justify. I can’t help remembering how the TTC found itself in difficulty charging an extra fare to travel into “zone 2”, largely that part of its network outside of the old City of Toronto.
If GO’s capacity is assumed to be available as part of networked travel, then its fare structure must not artificially discourage riders. This is a difficult balancing act given the many transit systems in the GTA and the inevitable cross-subsidization that will occur (much as it does today within the TTC’s system between busier and lighter route).
Conclusion
Will the transit network, all of it, be able to provide attractive, competitive service for travel, or will it be starved for operating and capital funds? Will transit be a real alternative, will it actually limit need for growth in auto traffic, or will it remain, on a grand scale a distant second choice?
These are huge and complex questions. They are not being asked, let along addressed, by most of the agencies and “thinkers” of our region. The whole story, the entire debate, turns on a few subway lines. True regional planning lies somewhere in the dust.
Steve Munro 
It would be very interesting to see the frequencies increase on GO Transit’s commuter rail service. I think GO Transit’s trains are overlooked a bit in the overall schemes of things. If you just increased the frequencies on that to 15 minutes in both directions, you would have a frequent service.
Instead of trying to build subways everywhere, why not just transform existing rail assets (GO Transit) into services that offer frequencies that come very close to that of a subway? Perth, Australia has trains every 15 minutes that run to Mandurah, a town of 85 000 or so, which is 70 km from the CBD.
It might be cheaper and faster.
Steve: The rail corridors do not match all of the demand patterns, and especially the fine-grained local service requirements, of the TTC. However, the rail lines are important as resources that could provide alternative paths for long, express trips. This would shave demand off of the TTC corridors.
A related problem would be proper fare integration with the TTC because, otherwise, many would say “build me a subway” with a TTC logo and fare on it rather than an expensive GO train.
Because the two networks are always planned independently, options involving a mix of services are never considered.
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You ask, and I answer, based on our current mayor and prime minister, and likely future premier:
Q: Will the transit network, all of it, be able to provide attractive, competitive service for travel? A: No, because only subways matter, and we can only afford to build extensions to low-density suburban areas because that is where our voters live.
Q: or will it be starved for operating and capital funds? A: It’s been that way for decades, and Torontonians have taken it meekly, so why change now? Can’t anger our voters in Western Canada / 519 / 905 / 705 / Etobicoke / North York / Scarborough by giving money to pinkos in downtown Tronno.
Q: Will transit be a real alternative, will it actually limit need for growth in auto traffic, or will it remain, on a grand scale a distant second choice? A: No, it will be a bone we toss the poor people in our district who can’t afford a car to drive to their McJob. Real Canadians like Mayor Ford and Councillor Minnan-Wong drive everywhere, and only take the subway when they go to New York or Paris to remind themselves how much their own city sucks.
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With the Sheppard West extension: I’d love for it to be built, I live right by Downsview Station and it would sure make my life easier. The reality is, however, it won’t happen for one reason nobody talks about: it has to cross Earl Bales Park and the Don Valley east of Bathurst. To get across the city would have to build an entire new viaduct, either separate from Sheppard Avenue or rebuild the Sheppard bridge as a two-level viaduct like Bloor Street. The cost of that would be so much that I really think it would kill any plans to connect the Sheppard line to Downsview.
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I agree that the simple addition of a proper transfer at Dundas West station to the GO Trains (requiring no extra fare) and increased GO frequency would go a long way. It would essentially give you one half of the DRL for very little cost. Add a new stop at Queen street + electrification and you have something really useful.
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I have an idea that the pro-LRT study that just came out will fall on deaf ears within the Ford administration. I suspect that he’s one of these people who’s convinced that he’s right you’re not going to convince him any differently no matter what.
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I am, according to Rob Ford and others, a Downtown Elite. The fact that I do not sip Chardonnay and do not like Espressos is irrelevant. However, if I may be so bold (and politically incorrect) to identify Rob Ford supporters, they are the uneducated rich. By this expression, I do not mean to demean them or their “education” per se, but rather their intensity of involvement in understanding the complexities of our urban experience. In short they do not care and are unwilling to accept any challenge to their beliefs based on actual facts.
On that basis, while I appreciate your detailed analysis (and the Pembina Institute’s conclusions) I doubt anybody is paying attention in the current corridors of power. Decisions are made based on preconceptions, biased thinking and emotion. No amount of actual logic will shift that thinking. Steve Munro, The Pembina Institute and this writer are all just “Latte sipping elites”. (I forgot about Lattes, I don’t like those either.)
What Rob Fordism is definitely not about is representing the “common man”. The Rob Ford transit plans will lead to no serious improvement for the urban poor who surround us in the “inner suburbs”. They will continue to wait in the cold for the sporadic service provided by buses, unless of course they get considerably older and happen to live near Sheppard.
And don’t get me started about how it must be like to wait for sporadic service in the suburbs where the actual service is provided by the inaccessible (full) Orion Disaster Bus – another government fiasco.
The Rob Ford elite, meanwhile, ride their SUVs with the heat on and grumble to their drive through Timmy’s about how unfair life is to them.
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Steve said …
“Sheppard west to Downsview: This is one of those “fill in the blanks” connections that looks nice on a map, but I remain unconvinced that it will attract much riding. Through routing to York U and beyond is unlikely given the TTC’s lack of appetite for interlining, not to mention the mix of four and six car trains north of Downsview (unless stations on the existing Sheppard line are expanded).”
Such a connection, even without a wye, would link three suburban growth centres — VMC, NYCC, and STC. Surely you can see the value in that.
Steve: I am not convinced that there would be a large enough demand between them to justify a subway, relative to the many other calls on transit capital spending.
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It sank my heart to read that a Sheppard Subway extension could preclude any LRT in Scarborough for a very long time. But what if 4 (or 8) years later, after Ford is ousted, a Transit City II is conceived and instead suggest a Finch East LRT line (past Don Mills Road too)?
Where can I read your criticisms of Transit City?
Steve: They are in the article, for starters.
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BrisUrbane says: “Instead of trying to build subways everywhere, why not just transform existing rail assets (GO Transit) into services that offer frequencies that come very close to that of a subway?”
I’ve also thought that the simplest way to achieve a Downtown Relief subway is just to utilize the existing surface rail corridors rather than tunnel underneath what must be the most expensive piece of real estate in the City of Toronto (the CBD-Fininacial District) and building a really long bridge across the Don Valley for the route between Pape Village and Thorncliffe Park.
It could act as a branch of the Bloor-Danforth subway line running west from Kennedy to Greenwood Stn. West of Greenwood it veers down the service tunnel, through the storage yard and onto the Kingston Subdivision. Stops would be located at Jones, Carlaw (Gerrard Square), Degrassi, West Don Lands, Parliament, Javis, Union Stn, John, Spadina and Bathurst. Then following the Weston-Galt further stops at Shaw/Liberty, Queen-Dufferin, Lansdowne, Dundas West Stn, Dupont, St Clair, Rogers, Eglinton, Weston, Oak, Etobicoke North, Highway 27 and Pearson. I’ll defer to Steve as to whether such a scheme could work logistically.
Steve: There are a few problems with this scheme. First, if you create a branch of the BD line at Greenwood, it would be difficult to have enough service both on the “DRL” and on the BD line west of Greenwood. Yes, one could concoct a turnback to fill in service west of Greenwood, but this would set up an operating model that almost guarantees irregular service.
Second, it does not address north-south demand from the Don Mills corridor that would still have to get down to Danforth. Moreover, the routes serving Flemingdon/Thorncliffe would connect with the BD line west of the point where the DRL splits off in your plan.
Third, there is a limited amount of real estate in the rail corridor especially through the Union Station area. GO is already considering an alternate route through downtown (a GO “subway”) as one way of addressing capacity constraints through Union. Any new east-west line through downtown will have to go under one of the streets, not in the rail corridor.
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I would like to talk of a couple of items in your article.
I am very disappointed that the Transit City Bus Plan didn’t get all of its funding. There were two items in that booklet that would have greatly benefited my commute and the first one is adding an extra bus leaving from Victoria Park Station and travelling east on Danforth Ave. to Kingston Rd. This proposed bus route would have served the not very accessible Variety Village area and Birchmount High School in the area as well. This bus route would have complemented with the #12 Bus route and service the Cliffside Village area-giving it an even quicker link to Victoria Park Subway Station. Another thing in this booklet was plans to extend the sheltered waiting area at the improving Victoria Park Station. This would have given me and a lot of other riders better shelter as we wait for the 12 buses (my bus) or the 67 bus. I am grateful for the improvements to my transfers at the newly improved VP Station but I think, like the Transit City Bus Plan pointed out, that it could have been even better.
The second area, and I don’t know how much is municipal funding compared to provincial funding, is grade separating more of the GO lines where they presently cross streets at grade. The Stouffville Line is getting grade separated at the Agincourt GO Station now, I don’t know if that is Sheppard East LRT funds or GO funds but this type of investment improves the efficiency of the GO route, and the street traffic it also greatly increases the safety of these corridors. I hope the province, or municipality grade separates this line at Danforth Rd., near Midland, as it is a busy roadway with a frequent bus route-the #16. I recently had some time off over the holidays and checked out the Dufferin underpass and was impressed, I hope we find the funds to eventually separate all of GO lines where they presently cross at grade- Sheppard at Agincourt will be much more efficient and safer for the trains and buses (hopefully LRT) that presently cross this busy intersection
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Transit isn’t an option to many people who live in the inner suburbs. I have found that those people I know who can afford to drive have just given up on the TTC and now drive to where they need to go. Huge rail fans and transit advocates like myself and a friend of mine have also decided to start driving. When the TTC announces “service improvements” on your bus route that result in a 90 minute one-way commute turning into a 2 hour nightmare, when you factor in rude drivers, poor service and the cancellation of (or significant delays) to planned transit improvements such Transit City, public transit is not an alternative. With Rob Ford in the Mayors’ chair I fear that transit service will revert to the awful lack of service we experienced in the late 80s/early 90s.
GO Transit does have a role in improving service in the inner suburbs but they don’t seem to have any interest in doing so (and even if they did they lack the funds). I would be willing to pay more to take GO and get to where I need to go more quickly and reliably.
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I agree with your points that extending the purple and green lines to Scarborough Town Centre means absolutely no future transit improvements to the rest of Scarborough ever. Like I have commented before, extending two subway lines to STC makes no sense when you take into consideration the fact that most Scarborough residents don’t live around the mall. Other commentators point of malls being “trip generators” isn’t entirely true since many bus routes feed into STC station. If all those bus routes feed into another station that does not have a mall, STC wouldn’t generate as many trips.
I also agree with your point about Metrolinx initial plan of wanting to extend the proposed Finch West LRT to Don Mills station. Finch East is a very busy bus route. There are many people who take the bus all the way to McCowan and Finch which has a high concentration of condos. Finch crosstown makes much more sense to me. Even though a Finch crosstown line was never on the map it wouldn’t be too difficult to improve transit service on Finch East if both the Finch West and Sheppard East lines were built in their entirety as originally planned. You could just move some of the buses from those two routes onto Finch East and you would have even more reliable service.
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“Subway to Richmond Hill and beyond”. Very Buzz Lightyear-ish, and just as ridiculous. The right political machinations will have it extended to North Bay!
Steve: I hear strains of heroic music and a voice-over talking about “… the final frontier …”.
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Citing the Pembina Institute will cut no ice at City Hall. De Baeremaeker is already testing out talking points that losses from underused subways mean increased taxes – that’s the kind of line that weakens Ford’s grip, not organisations like TEA or Pembina who Ford can claim would never support his plans no matter what they said.
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The common man, Rob Ford’s supporters, are also 116 Morningside riders enduring crap service. When the election was going on many were mislead in thinking about the Sheppard Subway and where it was going to go. These supporters are friends of mine who bought their first home in the Morningside-Sheppard area and thought the subway was coming to town.
I told them about the LRT which was a few years away, Rob Ford spewed Subway and they jumped on the bandwagon, assuming it was the case in mere heresay. Election comes and goes and I informed them of the plan Rob Ford proposed, (Read a paper at least…) lets just say their votes wouldn’t gone to Ford. Lets be honest it was a good campaign, but there was a ton of smoke screens and ignorance all over the place.
Steve: I don’t often have cause to quote Abraham Lincoln or P.T. Barnum (to whom this is also attributed), but “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” We will see how long it takes for this to apply to the Ford era.
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The new post inspired me to reread the original “Grand Plan” from 2006.
There, on page 1 of your document, this paragraph stood out, almost as if it had been written in bold, all caps and italics:
“If we are serious about building a transit city, we must do far more to show we really
mean business. This means big spending on transit and smart spending on transit. This means real commitment to how transit can change our city. Any fool can announce support for one subway line that will take years to design and build while the rest of our transit systems decay.”
Looks like you had ESP, Steve!
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My sense has been the push for subways has mainly been that they run underground and thus do not impact road capacity for motorists. That they can carry more people and generally provide fast travel times for transit riders (assuming ones trips begins and ends at a subway next to a subway station) is a nice side benefit one can point to. With traffic congestion increasing as more vehicles compete for non-increasing road space, advocating for LRTs or even increased bus service does become difficult, especially when those now in control of City Council are not transit riders. We seem firmly of the mindset that roadways are only for cars, trucks and buses. I wonder what it will take for that to change? An oil crisis? If putting LRT lines on roadways, even very wide ones is a non-starter with a Ford council, what about utilising the Hydro right-of-ways, with stops a points were it crosses a road?
Steve: Two points here. First off, although subways may be able to carry more people than LRT, this does not automatically manufacture demand in a corridor, especially if the stations are widely spaced and the line is designed more as a line-haul shuttle between an outlying bus terminal and the central system. Second, the Hydro corridors are generally not located where people want to go, and Hydro is not very keen on having transit lines running along their property.
As for GO – it has some good potential to fill in some gaps within the city if only it ran most of those route with 2-way all-day service. Rather than extending the YUS line up to Vaughn, GO could upgrade of the Barrie-Bradford line (now wholly owned by GO) with 2-way all-day service. Something similar could be done with the Stouffville line (at least there is now a station next to the Kennedy station). At least GO is adding track along its busy Lakeshore line to improve service. It would be nice to see some fare integration within the city. In San Francisco it was possible for one to use a MUNI pass to access and ride the section of BART that ran within city limits.
Phil
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Forget about trying to convince Rob Ford that Transit City is the way to go. He’s too stubborn to listen and understand any facts presented to him. He is like those people who believe that vaccines cause autism, despite the facts to the contrary. You can even have Stephen Hawking make a presentation, but Rob Ford would ignore him for his own stubborn ways.
I hope that the other councilors will be able to read and listen to all the facts presented and act accordingly.
Steve: To be fair to Mayor Ford and his allies, the analogy to the autism story is not proper as it is clear that fraud was involved in that claim. While Ford may have his biases and be misinformed, there is a difference. Now if you want to talk about statements made to win an election, truth and electioneering have at best a tenuous relationship. For Ford runs aground is in carrying over half-baked campaign pledges into his working program.
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On the topic of a Yonge North extension, Steve said, “Only a preliminary and inconclusive “Benefits Case Analysis” for this line has appeared.”
That is not true, according to the VivaNext website, “In April 2009, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment unconditionally approved the Environmental Project Report for the Yonge subway extension.”
It goes on, “In the fall of 2009, a conceptual design contract was awarded to look at specific engineering elements. It is expected that the conceptual design work will conclude by the end of 2010. Full funding is not yet secured for the Yonge subway extension project.”
Steve: I refer to the Metrolinx Benefits Case Analysis. There may be an approved EA, but that does not establish that the line is a good investment, nor does it deal at all with the spinoff problems of capacity on the lower part of the line. I quote from the covering report:
Sharkey commented on the Sheppard West extension, “To get across the city would have to build an entire new viaduct, either separate from Sheppard Avenue or rebuild the Sheppard bridge as a two-level viaduct like Bloor Street. The cost of that would be so much that I really think it would kill any plans to connect the Sheppard line to Downsview.”
That concern did not impact the Yonge North extension plans! It has to cross the east Don north of Centre Street (between the proposed Clark and Royal Orchard stations) and the plans call for replacement of the existing bridge with a two-level bridge. The new bridge would place the subway’s elevation similar to the existing car traffic, with the road moved above it, reducing the ‘dip’ that drivers currently experience in the area.
As for the idea of interlining a Sheppard West extension with the Vaughan extension, I always thought that if both subways were needed (which I don’t believe they are), those two should be connected without interlining with the YUS line (track connections needed for carhouse moves, but not revenue service). That way, the whole extension to Vaughan could be built like the Sheppard line with stations finished for four-car trains.
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What ticks me off is the Northlander makes no stops between Washago and Union, despite travelling through Richmond Hill GO. If I want to take the train North I have to take the Richmond Hill GO (right outside my apartment) to Union and get to see the Don Valley Scenery twice in the morning.
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There is Front St. – it doesn’t have any transit on it now, and has width greater than King/Queen in many places, and there’s some precedent study for it, not just my dreaming of a Front St. transitway. My dreaming was for a surface ROW but in the core, split it up a bit between Front and Wellington, to easy all the pressures. Wellington is a short walk from Union Station.
Steve: Front does not work because of the vast amount of pedestrian traffic crossing from Union Station to points north, and underground is already occupied by the subway and its mezzanine. Wellington is the next logical choice for a street close enough to Union, King and St. Andrew stations to make good connections.
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ESP of?
Expensive Scarborough Pandering?
Excessive Subway Premonition?
Extending Sheppard Prematurely?
Erasing Smarter Plans?
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If you’re a downtown elite, why do you care about transit in the suburbs?
Steve: I could answer “Noblesse oblige”, but the real reason is that unless transit in the suburbs improves, there will be no political support for good transit anywhere. We already have a taste of this with Rob Ford’s so-called mandate.
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“We will see how long it takes for this to apply to the Ford era.”
If the battle that is brewing over the police budget is any indication, that day may already be at hand.
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We’re very lucky that Steve has again offered his time, expertise and perspective, and this blog for sharing of critically necessary views on some transit futures in this greenhouse century.
I’m pleased that we see informed criticism of both Transit City and the Blue 22 etc. proposals as the mere fact of putting together a group like Metrolinx and having the province commit to many welcome millions of dollars for transit projects still does not mean that we will get the best routes or a well-linked network.
I’ve been more focussed on bike issues and the south of St. Clair transit to really get into the details of the initial proposals for Transit City, but clearly Eglinton was a long-time winner that should have been built years ago instead of having the tunnel filled in by a Ford-ite Mr. Harris.
Other routes north have seemed essentially sensible.
Given deficit situations, governments may be unwilling to spend as how we would like, and the danger of having Mr. Ford being able to shred plans and divert us all to an extension of a stubway is that – like the original one – it will eat up scarce money for a longer time, and will cost us operating funds too.
I suspect that other commenters are quite correct about Mr. Ford’s inability to change his mind/feelings – and we need to really work on other councillors, and they have the voting majority. And despite just being elected, they also may be responsive to facts.
We have opportunities to write letters to papers with the Pembina/TEA report, and also Gordon Chong has a piece in the Star.
I hope all readers and commenters on this site will make a point of providing their inputs in a different forum, though the comment sites on many papers’ sites can lead to despair, and an understanding where Mr. Ford gets support from.
If you’re writing anything, don’t forget to copy people, and not just on the city side of things, but the provincial level as well.
Thanks Steve.
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One thing I find curiously missing in your recent analysis is a discussion of what fare structure should be in place. You discuss it somewhat within the GO section and I understand the Grand Plan focuses upon infrastructure.
However, the current unwillingness on the part of most observers, councillors and the media on the “one fare to take them all” system will eventually end. I’m not looking forward to that discussion as I see significant social dislocation if the inner suburbs have to pay more to get beyond their immediate borders. But, can a true grand plan be discussed without a discussion of fares within the discussion of how funding happens?
Steve: I agree that fares are an important part of the overall scheme, and that’s why I mentioned them especially as they relate to GO. Imagine a situation where you have a single TTC fare that would take you from Vaughan or Richmond Hill to downtown, but a much higher fare for GO? Imagine if those who advocate fare by distance as a “solution” on local systems. I have already written that rebalancing TTC fares so that they were scaled by distance would roughly triple, yes triple the cost of getting to Richmond Hill by subway. The political support for this sort of thing would collapse, and we will see pressure for some alternative scheme. Yes the folks in the 416 suburbs will also get whacked, while “downtown elites” like me get off with cheap rides of a few kilometres for most of our trips.
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North Bay? Nah….after a quick run up the main streets of Aurora and Newmarket, Sutton is the obvious terminus.
Metropolitan-Yonge-University-Spadina.
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About GO being neglected overall as “existing rail assets”, they have existed for decades as a piggyback operation running on CN/CP tracks where spare capacity existed. They have been upgrading all the GO Stations from 10-car platforms to 12-car platforms because they can’t just run more trains without new GO-owned tracks, but they can run longer trains in the slots the already have.
If it was just a “simple addition” why wouldn’t have GO Transit done it already? As Steve said, there are a lot of infrastructure improvements (grade separations, corridor expansions, etc) that need to be in place before electrification makes sense.
Steve: All the same, GO has until recently not been given much money with which to expand capacity regardless of how they do it. Electrification has advantages as the service level builds up, but I will leave a discussion of that until the electrification study comes out.
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One thing I’ll say in favour of Rob Ford, his transit ideas might make surface travel bad enough people will figure out the “war on cars” is really a “war on traffic jams”. When you rule out whole classifications of technology based on demagoguery, you just end up with a more expensive, lower quality system. All things have a place or should at least be considered on their own merits.
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Unfortunately in the modern democratic world, you need only fool quarter of the people for one day every 4-5 years.
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I’m a regular Sheppard Subway user (home and work are both just off stations). You get the Westbound morning crush and the Afternoon Eastbound crush, but if you travel between 9am and 3pm or 6pm on a weekday or counterflow, you never have to worry about finding a seat or normally even having to sit next to someone shady.
While it sounds good on paper, who exactly would be making a trip from VMC to STC?
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Nothing new will be build under Ford’s mayorality. Parts of Transit City might live on without the name, but to plan and assess a new route will take longer than Toronto’s political attention span. If ‘Ford City’ gets turned over in half a decade or two, then we’ll have enough construction break where we twittle our thumbs while trying to decide all the things we can afford but don’t want or want and can’t afford.
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“This means big spending on transit and smart spending on transit.”
Smart spending is open to many different interpretations. To some people, LRT is smart spending as it addresses the needs of the Toronto Region as a whole and can be built within a short amount of time and lower cost. I fall into this camp. I like subways but we don’t have the resources to build an entire city of subways.
To others, the idea that a subway is preferred is due to the idea that ridership will increase beyond the capabilities that an LRT can provide. Just look at the Scarborough RT experiment: the line has obtained the moniker “Sardine Rapid Transit” for good reason, and why is there a supplemental shuttle service from STC to Kennedy? And don’t forget to mention the connection at Kennedy, as it sucks up valuable commuting time.
The point is, while the SRT may have been a success in some factors, to others it is a failure and it is these people who state that this should have been built as a subway in the first place. After all, this was what was requested before the SRT was opened in 1985(?). To these people, the “smart solution” is to build the Sheppard East LRT as a subway: build it now so we do not have capacity issues down the road. Nobody wants another Scarborough RT fiasco, and this is probably what Ford wants to avoid.
Steve: The SRT is a sardine service because the cars were so expensive we could not afford to buy many of them. LRT is perfectly capable of handling the demand current, latent and projected on the SRT. Yes, the connection at Kennedy is crap, but that’s an issue of design as much as the existence of a connection at all. If anything, the RT is an great ad for the perils of building with an expensive technology and being unable to expand its capacity or reach.
Aside from some quibbles with Sheppard East, I too support Transit City. But I do understand Ford’s idea to extend the Sheppard Subway: the line is too small and it is hard to justify its operation given its present meager ridership. Obviously I would prefer if the line was extended east to Victoria Park, and west to York University, taking control of the proposed Spadina Extension. Then you have a dedicated east/west line in the north part of the city, connecting such areas as York University, North York Centre, Fairview Mall, and potentially STC in the future. But I digress, cost is indeed an issue. One wonders if David Miller was around before shovels even hit the ground, would Sheppard be built as an LRT instead?
Steve: I am intrigued that you, among others, suggest through routing Sheppard with the Spadina extension. This would create a transfer at Downsview somewhat like what we now have between the BD and SRT at Kennedy. Why are some transfers good, while others are abhored?
This brings me to Eglinton-Crosstown, this line is pretty much a go as far as I am concerned but the question is how the underground portion will be built? Will it be done so that it could accommodate subway cars in the future? Or will we end up with a potential SRT mess? Here is some food for thought: I’m hearing musings of a potential subway line between Jane and Don Mills, given that the underground portions would be between Keele and Leslie, why not build a subway between Jane and Don Mills? There is more justification for this as a subway than Sheppard, even if it was extended to STC in the east as Ford wants.
Steve: The reason for building Eglinton as LRT is that extensions don’t have to stay underground or be completely grade separated. The future demand on Eglinton, while higher than Sheppard, is still less than on the SRT especially in the outer sections that would/could be at grade.
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Currently, a certain fraction of Sheppard subway users heading downtown gets on the northbound train to Finch first in order to snag a seat. If Sheppard were extended to Downsview, they could conceivably go to the less packed Spadina line with equal success.
I think you are underestimating the network effects of this extension proposal.
Steve: Possibly, but the real problem is that we need more north-south capacity without people going four km out of their way.
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Steve wrote (about my pointing out there is an approved EA for the Yonge North extension), “There may be an approved EA, but that does not establish that the line is a good investment, nor does it deal at all with the spinoff problems of capacity on the lower part of the line.”
Absolutely! My purpose was to point out that there are people with some degree of political clout out there (i.e.: York Region Council) who will be pushing for funding, without those considerations, that will no doubt use the “we have already done all this work” argument in an attempt to help secure that funding – something LRT advocates such as ourselves are using as one of several arguments for keeping Transit City. Fore warned is fore armed!
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Point taken, but it’s not a dip there. It’s another Prince Edward Viaduct that’s needed.
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A little insensitive to the minds of righties, huh?
I could say a lot of bad things about the left, but truth be told everyone, right or left, has different ways of solving a problem.
Ford, like most Torontonians, is loyal to his city and has his idea on how to make things work. Other people might sing similar praises for Miller as he too had his visions on how to grow the city. I’m eagerly awaiting the results of the proposed “hybrid” plan and would like to see how that pans out. On the other hand, I am encouraged by the increasing criticism to his rejection of Transit City (the Pembina report in particular), the louder the voices get, the more the evidence piles up, we shall see what he truly thinks. If, despite criticism as loud as a jet engine, Ford refuses to listen and outright rejects Transit City, then he may see his popularity plummet faster than Charlie Sheen can fall during a bender.
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Steve: I am intrigued that you, among others, suggest through routing Sheppard with the Spadina extension. This would create a transfer at Downsview somewhat like what we now have between the BD and SRT at Kennedy. Why are some transfers good, while others are abhored?
The issue that I have with Spadina continuing all the way to Downsview and not Sheppard is that it makes it that much harder for riders on the Yonge Line to transfer over to the proposed Spadina extension. For riders to York University, this means that they would need to transfer twice, once at Sheppard-Yonge, the other at Downsview. Despite improvements to the 196, I know people who still find it inconvenient to use this route from Sheppard/Yonge station, the transfer at Downsview station takes a while. My cousin in particular prefers the 60C from Finch Station even if the bus now takes a few minutes more than taking the 196.
There are also people who travel on the Finch West and Steeles West routes who head to points on the Yonge Line, having the Sheppard Route go straight to York University would mean that they would not have to transfer to Downsview. Otherwise, they too would rather stay on the bus all the way to Finch Station instead of taking the Sheppard Line to Sheppard-Yonge, and reducing even more pressure off of these busy bus routes
Of course this means there is that transfer at Downsview for those on the Spadina Line, I don’t doubt it, but somehow, I feel that having Sheppard extended to York University is the better option.
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GO Transit has rail lines all over Toronto, and almost all of them radiate from Union Station and spend a large part traveling through suburbs within the TTC area.
Australia generally we don’t have separate subway/commuter rail services running. Services are mixed together. So you might have a freight train, a coal train and then a passenger train all pass your station platform. We do have freight lines, but very few, like where we might have a busy line, one track might be dedicated to freight use.
The ticketing and fares could be sorted out at the organisational level. For example, both Brisbane and Sydney have public trains contracted to run private services to the airport, which is a private line charging a much higher separate fare. The train just travels seamlessly from the public rail network into the private tracks and lets passengers off at those stations (who get charged the higher fare). No need for passengers to transfer, no different train, same train drivers. Perhaps this contracting approach or fare zone approach could be looked at ?
It would be interesting to see the cost to build more stations in GO Train corridors within the TTC area (that might help the fine grain service issue and demand), look at contracting TTC to run those services (or TTC contracting GO train?) within the TTC area (that would solve the ticketing, fares and different organisations issue) and how much to increase capacity and where (solve the capacity problem) then potentially you could have 7 “new” frequent rail lines that, while not as good as “subways everywhere”, would come pretty close.
The cost of doing that would have to be compared with other options such as Transit City and plans that Rob Ford might have, of course.
This post from humantransit.org might be helpful.
Australians are hearing a lot about Toronto and the TTC since controversial transport academic, Dr Paul Mees of RMIT in Melbourne released his “Transport for Suburbia” book examining why the TTC outperforms Melbourne, Australia despite both cities being uncannily alike.
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Hi Steve.
Great article, and an even better sense of timing that it came out on the same day that Chong’s piece in the “Star” and Gee’s piece in the “Globe”.
In reading his article it seems pretty clear who advised Ford to build the rest of Sheppard. That type of attitude represents all that was wrong with the TTC’s planning in the late eighties and early nineties. It is no coincidence that Chong was on the commission during the time when nothing was done.
The BRT in the hydro corridor is another questionable item. Highway coaches? I wonder the time to load them was ever taken into account when this was proposed, or the fact that the existing bus route is operating at capacity. I suppose we can take some comfort that CNG buses were not suggested.
Hopefully, influence can be brought upon council to sink Ford’s (and Chong’s) proposal.
In the meantime, by my calculations, there are about 1,387 days before we can get rid of Ford. I would think that in that time period LRT will be up, running, and working in K-W so there will be close reference point that can be used to counter all of the “information” that Ford and his supporters are spreading about LRT.
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