Toronto Council’s vote to reconstitute the Toronto Transit Commission may give the new board a better political balance and break Mayor Ford’s stranglehold on transit policy, but that is only the beginning of the work facing our city.
First up will be the March 21 vote on the Sheppard East subway-vs-LRT issue. Already, the Ford camp claims that it almost has the votes needed to spike the LRT scheme and forge ahead with subway plans. Even if LRT prevails, a close margin could provide incentive for attempts to derail the project. The “new” TTC will be in a tenuous position if the momentum of the governance vote does not continue through to the choice of technology.
The future of the TTC, its board and of transit in Toronto is much bigger than the Sheppard decision. We have a “new” board, and later in 2012 it will grow by the addition of four “citizen” members. What should this board be doing?
LRT Design and Advocacy
Land use and Toronto’s Official Plan are integral parts of an LRT network rollout. We know that 1980s-era dreams of suburban development have not been matched by the reality of 2011, but are the proposed mid-rise corridors integral to Transit City any more likely? How do we get from today to the planned tomorrow where the ridership anticipated for the LRT lines will materialize?
For the city’s LRT plans, the TTC must take a hard look at the details. One telling criticism of Transit City was that it papered over annoyances and fudged issues during the public consultation process. For example:
- Even without the incendiary comments by journalists and politicians in the subway camp, there are legitimate concerns that road operations and post-LRT capacity have not been fully addressed. We know from the history of the Ford/Metrolinx Memorandum of Understanding that Queen’s Park was prepared to include widening of Eglinton through western Scarborough to replace the HOV lane displaced by the LRT, but this was rejected by the Mayor. Why isn’t this option still on the table?
- The route between Black Creek and Jane on Eglinton faces difficult choices in alignment and the resulting effect on the Mount Dennis neighbourhood. These choices are complicated by design requirements forced on the project by the TTC which may be excessive. During the EA process, the project’s watchword was to save money on this section of the line, and the “debate” was strongly coloured by financial considerations rather than push-back on the design elements.
- Schemes to handle turning traffic at some locations required roundabout moves with U-turns either across the transit right-of-way or on intersecting streets, and these were not credible both for transit operations and for the manoeuvres required of large vehicles.
LRT can work in Toronto, but the worst possible outcome would be an implementation that builds in problems that could have been avoided. We keep talking about showing Toronto what LRT can do, but if we confirm opponents’ worst fears, their disaster scenarios, we will seal the fate of LRT forever to Toronto’s loss.
LRT advocacy requires more than beauty shots of Paris trams gliding down grassy rights-of-way. TTC and Metrolinx must show examples from various cities of LRT used in ways comparable to what is proposed for Toronto. A great benefit of LRT is that it has so many different implementations, but this very flexibility makes it easy to show inappropriate examples that invite ridicule from subway advocates.
LRT shouldn’t be portrayed as a second-class option, something we are doing only because we’re broke. If that really were the case, Scarborough would never see more than the occasional bus for the next century. What is really needed is an outlook that LRT is good, and that Toronto and its transit system will be much better for the addition of an LRT network.
[For further thoughts on LRT advocacy, see this article on my site.]
Undoing the Damage of an Anti-Transit Ethos
This is no time to waffle, to attempt to make everyone look good on recent transit history. The Ford crew’s interest in transit is, at best, superficial, tied to what might get votes to pull brother Rob through the next election, not to build a transit network people will love to use. On one hand, we (or more accurately, Queen’s Park) have billions to build new transit lines, but on the other we nickle-and-dime transit for service, pack more people on buses, and tell people who live on less-productive routes to find another way home.
The “Core Services Review”, conducted by KPMG in the best manner of consultants telling a client just what they wanted to hear, looked at the TTC and picked the easiest targets for review — improvements from the Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS) during the Miller era. Want to save money? Just undo Miller’s work and — Presto! — all your troubles will vanish. Meanwhile, debate every issue in a “war on the car” context and justify forcing transit to take high-cost options (or nothing at all) rather than looking at co-existence with road users.
Turning back the tide is not simply a matter of reverting to the Miller days, but we must get away from a knee-jerk attitude that if Miller did it, it must be bad.
What do we expect of our transit system? What is “good” service? Should we return to RGS, or find something more subtle that reflects a desire for less crowding, but avoids the most uneconomic (and easily criticized) of operations? How much do we actually save with service cuts, and do we risk strangling growth by undersizing the transit fleet? What would service and subsidies look like if we planned for the riding that is actually on the street, increasing at a rate faster than provided for in the TTC’s budget? “Customer service” is not just about clean stations and trains. Service quality attracts riders, or it drives them away at their first chance to motor, cycle or walk. How much will this cost and what are our options?
The TTC faces a big challenge in its capital budget for system maintenance and renewal. As we have seen in recent subway/LRT debates, the cost of owning an aging infrastructure is poorly understood. “Subways last forever” some claim in obvious ignorance of the many projects to repair tunnels, replace signals and track, upgrade power systems and a myriad of other problems of a 50-year old subway system.
The TTC capital budget is tailored to the City’s self-imposed debt ceiling and the low level of provincial funding. Accounting tricks push items beyond a 10-year horizon so their value does not show up in long-range projections, but this does not make the issues go away. That financial fakery has been around since well before Rob Ford’s tenure. If we must debate new funding schemes for transit, we must actually know the scale of spending required.
Just raising funds to build a few kilometres of subway is useless if the network to which it will connect is still falling apart. Capital needs of the transit system must be well-understood by Council so that everyone knows our current options and future exposures to higher costs or disintegrating infrastructure.
How much necessary, or at least highly desirable work, is sitting in limbo because we don’t have the money to pay for it? How bad is the pressure for better service and how much new riding could we encourage if only service were operated at a level commensurate with potential demand? Council cannot simply issue spending edicts and implement cuts without informed debate.
Whether we agree with the specifics of RGS, the premise was sound — provide a menu of options and costs, and let Council decide whether to fund a better system. Understand the implications of not funding that system. Ensure that capital plans and the effects of deferrals are well-understood.
Accessibility
Council must recognize and deal with the financial plight of Wheel-Trans. The very low cost recovery on WT has huge effects when there is an edict to cut budgets, or if annual increases do not keep pace with demand. The portion of Toronto’s population needing accessible transit is growing thanks to the cohort of aging baby-boomers, and that cannot be wished away with exhortations to make do with less or dismissed as “gravy” we should not fund. Improvements to base system may, eventually, allow more riders to stay there rather than needing Wheel-Trans, but demand for this specialized service won’t go away.
Funding should not be diverted from regular transit service to prop up Wheel-Trans, and riders waiting for their bus to appear should not be told that it was cancelled to pay for W-T operations. That’s a resentment we do not need and should not encourage.
Council and the TTC should not create artificial distinctions in eligibility that create rivalries between groups. Recent events with the TTC’s budget and the diversion of funding from regular service to handling dialysis patients on Wheel-Trans show that these riders are considered deserving on W-T service, but they may not be quite deserving enough in 2013. This is a ludicrous situation. Options for service levels and eligibility, as well as the cost of each option, must be before Council as part of the budget debates so that the effects of cuts or improvements are clearly understood and acknowledged.
Rapid Transit Within Toronto
Over 25 years ago, the Downtown Relief Line was pushed onto the back burner to focus political and funding support on a suburban network and on growth that never materialized. How will we address the shortfall in capacity for the core area? GO Transit took up most of the slack for a few decades, and more recently this was supplemented by short-hop trips by people living near downtown. Growth is not stopping, and we have capacity problems in many parts of the network.
What are the realistic projections for the outer 416 (the area known as the “inner suburbs”)? Where do people living there actually want to travel? What new lines do we need to support the potential demand for transit? How can we ensure that plans and projections are regularly updated to reflect actual developments and prevent the tyranny of aging plans that were dubious when written and worthless now?
Toronto must plan for a network of routes and focus on widespread improvements to transit, not just one or two megaprojects. The transit file will not go away after we tinker for a few months and pronounce ourselves satisfied for this generation.
What about LRT beyond the Metrolinx “5-in-10 Plan”? Why should Toronto wait for Metrolinx to publish “The Big Move 2.0” before debating what else we will need? What are Toronto’s priorities especially for lines whose function will be mainly local? Should we keep other Transit City lines as a starting point (Jane, Don Mills, Scarborough/Malvern) or should we look at some alternative network? Are we serious about providing good transit to the waterfront? What about the improvements proposed in the Transit City Bus Plan?
Is there a role for GO Transit within the 416, or must be provide all capacity for new riding within Toronto on TTC routes?
Planning can tell us what we might have under various scenarios, policy will chose among these and direct the actual implementation, and regular review should ensure that the plans we make today are actually working and relevant a decade in the future.
Revenue Tools and the Role of Queen’s Park
Astute readers will, by now, have asked “what about more money from Queen’s Park”. The question is valid, although a supply of tin cups and training courses for street-corner beggars are all we are likely to see from that quarter.
That we need new revenue to invest in transit is no secret at either the provincial or municipal level. Some hope for an eventual federal presence, but that’s unlikely with the crew now in charge and the need for any program to be national in scope. We must plan to raise the needed cash locally rather than making any progress contingent on a federal share.
The menu of revenue options has been cited many times by Metrolinx (in backgrounders for its “Investment Strategy” due in 2013), by Gordon Chong (in his Sheppard subway proposal) and by groups such as the Board of Trade. We know that there is only a handful of “big ticket” sources such as a regional sales tax, a levy on commercial parking lots, tolls or fuel taxes. Calculating how much each would-be source might provide is easy. What is hard is making the decision to collect the money from voters who trust no politician to spend wisely.
Toronto and Queen’s Park will be fishing in the same pond for revenues, and the amounts both will require are not small. The original “Big Move” was pegged at $50-billion over 25 years, but that was in 2008 dollars and didn’t allow for basics like actually operating the network once it was built or beefing up local transit systems to be feeder-distributors to regional services. The number today is more like $75-billion and growing. Toronto’s need for properly funding the TTC is outside of this pot, but is running at over $1-billion annually separate from expansion projects for both operating and capital subsidies.
Getting people in the GTA to agree to new taxes or fees will not be easy, and this will require a demonstration that something is actually happening to improve transit. The glacial pace on just about everything, coupled with the recent political deadlock in Toronto, has not helped one bit. We hear lots about gridlock, but have little hope that it will change for most travellers in the near future.
Going after new revenues really must be a joint municipal-provincial project. Whether this is possible with an anti-tax Mayor in Toronto and a provincial government afraid to mention new revenues is quite another matter. Somebody has to start this discussion on a broad public scale, not just in workshops preaching to the converted.
TTC and Metrolinx
The TTC must engage much more publicly in debates over regional planning and the role of transit. Metrolinx gets a bye on this vital topic because so much interest focuses on Toronto politics rather than on what transit should do on a wider scale. How do local and regional systems interact? How do fares and service structures distort riding choices? How do we eliminate barriers to cross-border riding — not just with one smart card to collect two fares, but with real service and fare integration?
Torontonians must have confidence that the TTC and City Council can be trusted with the transit file. Some call for shifting responsibility for transit to Queen’s Park — hand it all to Metrolinx. Someone, anyone else must be able to do better job. There is a naïve faith that Metrolinx would rise to a TTC-sized challenge and a demand for service far beyond the comparative simplicity of GO Transit.
The TTC and Metrolinx should work together, but “togetherness” does not mean that the TTC meekly stays out of the debate. If Metrolinx won’t discuss transit issues, the TTC and Toronto should. Toronto could a lead regional discussion of where transit is going and reassert the political dimension of input to transit planning lost when the political Metrolinx board was disbanded. That will be a challenge under Mayor Ford who seems uninterested in regional efforts, but Toronto must make common cause with 905.
There is a need for advocacy at the TTC — we may not have the money today, but we need to know what we would build, what service we would provide, what we want our transit system to be when and if the money is available. This is independent of whether transit is financed through new revenues or expenditure efficiencies.
Our city used to be “Toronto the Good Enough”, but now that must be styled as “Almost Good Enough”. We (or the mythical taxpayers on whose behalf politicians act) don’t really want to pay for what the city needs. If that is our goal for transit, it will never be a credible alternative. Transit will continue to be a service for a city and region far smaller than what Toronto is today. That will guarantee eroding political support, and the irrelevance of transit as a choice outside of the core.
Steve Munro 
How in the world does the cost of these things rise by $25B in just 4 years? Is a plan that costs $75B today, agreed upon (an impossibility), & funded (an absurdity), going to simply cost $120B in a few years before the next regime assumes power, decides it’s the wrong plan, and cancels everything? I think the appropriate outlook here is to ignore all talk, assume the current network—built using magic, apparently, 40 years ago—is the only one we will use in our lifetimes.
Steve: The extra $25b is largely operating costs and money to fund local system improvements to feed the much enhanced GO lines. These were not included in “The Big Move 1.0” estimates. Also, frankly, TBM 1.0 was lowballed for political reasons. Bedford, on the other hand, wants to be realistic about what things will really cost so that debates about finding new revenues take place in an environment reflecting reality. If we’re not prepared to find this kind of money ($3b annually for 25 years), then stop expecting a large scale upgrade of transit services in the GTAH.
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Two things:
(1) When all service was pushed to 1am (or was it 1:30am?), I found that completely wrong.
EACH route (and I guess each branch within the route) need to be examined, not every route needs “every 5 minutes” service. Not every route should have service past 10pm.
(2) I went to a Crosstown LRT open house, Giambrone was on vacation, Mihevc was around, I had a concern which was: why are we expanding if we can’t keep up with maintenance. He told me we won’t expand if we can’t maintain.
So…Shouldn’t we be worrying about maintenance of whatever is built (lrt/subway)?
We can have LRT lines on Steeles/Finch/Sheppard/York Mills-Ellesmere-Wilson/Eglinton/Lawrence/St. Clair.
We are still going to have to worry about maintenance. More we have, the more we will have to maintain.
Steve: There was another immensely long post by Miroslav here, but I have removed it. Some things are better left out of public view.
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Nice write up Steve.
I especially agree with your view of an integrated regional transportation system because realistically it is the only way to move forward.
I think a TTC wide conversion to Presto is going to be the catalyst that sets in motion the regional view that is required for transit in the 21st century. As always, it comes down to money, but once that bridge is crossed it will open the floodgates to new ideas because they will (literally) be speaking the same language through the same technology.
It won’t be easy but as you have written above, the outer 416 won’t have much to complain about if it meant taking the Sheppard Subway/LRT to Oriole and then transferring to a Go Train for an express trip to union for a co-fare price/fee. Or taking the 54 bus to Rouge Hill and transferring to a Go Train for a ride to Union.
The idea of giving Metrolinx “just” the subway won’t work. We need to think big.
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I’m guessing the Platform Screen Doors is not going to happen? I only found this PDF and nothing else. Must be filed under “G” or dropped as a cost savings.
Steve: Yes, it was put on the back burner to cut capital costs. What was really galling, though, was that it was classed as “state of good repair” and thereby inflated the SOGR backlog quite substantially. The TTC is not above misrepresentation now and then.
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I’ve often wondered why we encourage building in areas that are already near or over capacity … from a transit (and I assume other utilities – water, electricity, etc) perspective it seems to make sense to encourage building around areas that are currently under utilized … I understand that it’s not really easily possible to tell what lines are profitable etc. but surely it would save us money if we didn’t have to upgrade overcapacity lines … and where lines are under capacity, more dense development would increase the usage and hence profitability of the line …
So the idea would be, create areas of the city that are “overcapacity”, and jack up the fees in those areas … lowering the fees in the areas that are under capacity … this encourages developers to build in other areas, it keeps the costs for upgrading utilities down, and it increase the recovery on currently under-performing utilities…
For example, it doesn’t make sense to build new condo’s at Bay/Bloor with the current issues at the station … so why not jack the prices up … likewise there is more capacity on the Spadina side of the line, so let’s lower the prices for development there … if we want to actually build a Sheppard subway line we need to get people living there … let’s lower the prices, then build the line once the capacity is there … if we can make lines that are profitable from day one, and take lines that aren’t and make them …
Steve: Your proposal has one huge flaw … developers hate to be told where to build, and they especially don’t want to pay higher development fees in “hot” parts of town.
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@Miroslav Glavic
I disagree; every route SHOULD have service past 10pm. It’s silly to look at individual routes and deem them “uneconomic” – at minimum, you need to look at the whole transit system and preferably at the whole transportation system.
For instance, would you be willing to accept more deaths from drunk driving as a result of many route cuts past 10pm? Or local bylaws closing bars at 10pm (try getting that effected)?
Running mostly empty buses late at night looks like a waste of money superficially, but the benefit of having transit options around the clock (or nearly so) may mean a family can forgo a second car or let someone get home safely after a monthly binge. We don’t turn off streetlights at 3 a.m. because most people have gone to bed, or close hospital emergency rooms when they’re not busy.
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Miroslav,
The premise of running all service until 1 a.m. is city-wide coverage. As the TTC is a social service designed to maintain the mobility of all Torontonians, all Torontonians should be within a five minute walk of a transit stop. For that access to mean anything, a bus has to be at that transit stop every thirty minutes or better whenever the service is in operation. That’s the minimum that Torontonians should have.
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As a regular reader of this blog and others I am always interested in hearing about how our public transit is/isn’t getting better. Since I wrote a dissertation on the sorry state of transit in Toronto in 2007, and its negative effect on traffic, the environment, tourism and the economy, a lot has happened.
Starting that summer, the York University/York Region subway extension was funded, Transit city was announced, the new streetcars were proposed. Since then, Presto has come along. The streetcars were funded, the Union Station upgrade has started, the Transit city EA’s were completed and construction started on the University Line extension. Service upgrades such as next train/ streetcar info. have been introduced and expanded. The new subway cars were tendered, bought, tested and are now running. The Airport Rail Link was finally approved. In the last 5 years Toronto’s transit has moved into the 20th century. Yes, I know it’s the 21st. But that’s my point.
Slowly, but surely, better late than never, after long neglect transit is moving forward. The biggest threat however now seems to be this subway/LRT, Ford v Miller, city v suburb, camp v camp mentality that this whole debate has fallen into.
This city is getting nearly $9 billion of investment in transit. That doesn’t include the new streetcars, new subway cars, and the University Line extension. But I find the whole debate has become destructive. There are advantages and disadvantages on either side. Subways v LRT, do you want fewer stops, heated stations, larger trains, or longer lines and lower costs. It’s really quite simple. We are like the kids in the candy shop telling mama what we want with no idea about the wider ramifications. We can only have what we can afford. Lets make a choice, a democratic choice and a choice on the facts. The pros and the cons.
We keep hearing hearing that subways are too expensive. They are not. They can do the so called ‘heavy lifting’ of the transit system. They are worth every penny. We have heard that LRT’s are just streetcars, not that there’s anything wrong with streetcars. But LRT’s are so much more. They can go above or below ground, at grade, separated from traffic or not. They can go down the middle of the road like a streetcar and they can make the tight turns, like the Scarborough RT. A lot of what we hear about mass transit in the media from our politicians is propaganda, completely out of context. We don’t need only one mode of transport. Different lines can accomplish different things. These are the people who should be representing our interests and informing us.
It’s time for compromise. Very few cities have trains that run underground all of the time, not even New York, Paris or London. The above ground sections are mainly in lower density suburban areas. I think this is the way to go in Toronto. It’s the plan for Eglinton Crosstown, that’s what LRT does.
However, the intermodal change on Sheppard at Don Mills makes no sense to me. I favour a subway extension here. Even a short one. It’s my opinion, even as one of those Scarborough residents who’s been cheated out of transit by the downtown elites.
Steve: There will still be an intermodal change if the terminal is at Vic Park or at STC. An extension needs to be justified by something other than the presence of a transfer connection.
There are pros and cons on either side like I say, but at least I’m not professing to say that either LRT or subways is the entire answer to all our problems are doing us a disservice.
We have a long way to go Toronto, so lets work together. Facts are better than mantras. Ideas are better than ideological camps.
We have a long way to go to get to the future. But we are getting there.
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This is an indictment of the Toronto Planning Department and the great number of councillors who consistently thwart the direction of the Official Plan.
We pay professionals to project densities, councillors to uphold policies and devise Official Plans but allow the development community to run rough shod over the whole lot. It is the development industry, in lock-step with councillors who direct planners, that got in the way of the densities we needed in order to avoid the mess we’re in today.
David Miller was scared of the developers, kept development charges low and wasted opportunities for some common good. Since all transit is political, I’d say we got poor value for money having an NDP Council for so long.
Steve: And I’m sure a non-NDP Council will be just as ineffective in this regard. Those developers are not all card-carrying NDP members, and they have a lot of friends in the Liberal and Tory parties.
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Steve,
Agreed, they’re all players in the farce we call Council. I take it too that you agree the TO planners have a lot to answer for.
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In my perspective, transportation is substandard in Toronto for two primary reasons: there are below-market user fees for automobiles (parking, roads, highways, expressways) and it is cheaper to build outward rather than upward. Parking in the suburbs is typically zero, and the cost of GO Transit fares is similar to the combination of gasoline, parking and highways, when gasoline, parking and highways should be considerably greater due to higher capital, operational and maintenance costs, and external costs (congestion, air and noise pollution, sedentary lifestyle, loss of quality and quantity of work hours).
Making it cheaper to build upward rather than outward would be accomplished as follows: upzone all properties to five storeys, eliminate minimum setback restrictions, reduce development charges to zero for medium and tall buildings, increase development charges for low buildings, and shifting property taxes based primarily on the value of the building to the value of the land.
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Christopher Dodd says:
I never cease to be amazed at people who think that Toronto has a sorry transit system. Compared to most systems I have ridden on in the US, and there are a lot, Toronto has a service to be only dreamed of. Many cities have rush hour service of only every 1/2 or worse and Toronto is doing this with the lowest per passenger subsidy rate. If only the politicians would subsidize at the rate of Ottawa or Montreal and see what kind of service we would run.
The fault for all this and the reason it finally started is all political. Toronto has finally caught up to and passed the point where it was when Harris stopped all provincial funding. Now all we have to worry about is fallout from the Drummond report just when transit is getting back to where it was.
The city has made a democratic choice. It is called representative democracy. Instead of having a plebiscite on every item which turns into an uninformed popularity contest we elect people to make those choices for us. We have heated subway stations? The only time I have been in a hot one was in the summer. Most are protected from the elements but there are still a lot that are not.
True subways can do the heavy lifting but if there isn’t any heavy lifting to do why spend the money. Subways are not worth the money if there is not enough demand to justify them. You are correct in saying that there is too much misinformation.
Very true. It started with the Yonge extension. The TTC was forced to go under the Don River instead of crossing the valley on a covered bridge because the people did not want to see a bridge. Then the extension from Kennedy to Warden was buried instead of being in an open cut because residents didn’t want to see or here the subway. Why is the Spadina extension in a tunnel all the way, because politicians are too afraid of NIMBY’s. Has any of them stood above the open cut section of the Yonge subway and listened to the awful racket? Probably not!
The systems that have the highest ridership are usually based on a grid system and as a result have a high number of forced changes. The change is not an inconvenience if it results in better service and shorter travel times. It is not the downtown elites who have cheated you out of better transit but the suburban politicians with delusions of grandeur about their borough that resulted in expensive and unneeded subways that have dried up the capital and operating budgets. You were unfortunate enough to live in a borough whose politicians didn’t scream loud enough. It is the downtown elite who are cheated because they can’t get on the system because all the space is taken up by those suburban types. The downtown elites pay handsomely for their location and deserve a system that they can actually get on, forget about getting a seat, just get on it.
I have an idea. Let’s build the Sheppard LRT all the way to Yonge St. and turn the Sheppard Stubway into a linear car barn. It is 5.4 km long and every 6 car train is about 137 m long so we could store up to 40 trains on the south track and use the north track to bring trains back to go into service. They could build a couple of service bays at the west end and they would not need to build a new yard in upper York, probably in East Gwillimbury
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Almost all cities that have subways that run above ground in sections have full grade separation on the above ground sections. Hence my belief that elevated rail makes far more sense than at grade light rail on Eglinton East. High capacity is needed if we want to through route the crowded SRT with the Eglinton tunnel section, eventually allowing a 0 transfer ride from Scarborough Centre to Pearson. The only city that is planning to build light rail with substantial tunnelling that I can think of is Ottawa, but this system will be mostly grade separated using the old alignment of the Transitway, mostly parallel to the 417, so it is totally different from Eglinton East with at grade intersections and excessive numbers of minor stops, and also Ottawa is much smaller than Toronto.
Steve: You seem to be unaware that the Eglinton-Crosstown line is already planned to be through-routed with the converted SRT and, once the line is extended west to the airport, you will have a 0-transfer ride as you wish.
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Dear Steve, I hope that, whatever the nature of the urgent personal matter you are currently dealing with, you come out from it on the other side in the best possible way.
Whether or not we who read and comment on what you have to say in this forum agree with you, I firmly count myself as one among many of us here who highly esteem you for your superb contribution to intelligent and informed discourse on all matters related to Toronto’s transit, and I value and cherish you highly not only as a fellow human being, but also for your obvious intelligence and clear desire that your forum contributes to a better and more constructive dialogue than if it were not here.
All I can say is, “Thank you, Steve!”
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Has anybody else noticed the link between Council’s meeting on March 21 to resolve the Sheppard extension issue and Mayor Ford’s conflict of interest court case on March 27? Ford may find he has to accede to the panel of experts recommendations to remain in office.
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Glad to hear that all went well and great to have you back again!
Steve [in reply to Andrew]: You seem to be unaware that the Eglinton-Crosstown line is already planned to be through-routed with the converted SRT and, once the line is extended west to the airport, you will have a 0-transfer ride as you wish.
But if the peak volume on the SRT southbound at Kennedy is around 10,000 pphpd, through-routing the SRT with the Eglinton LRT will only encourage many of those riders to remain on the vehicle as it travels at grade on Eglinton (unless many of those riders are indeed headed elsewhere other than westbound). That’s why many of us assumed that the resurrection of the original in-street alignment meant that through-routing was out of the question.
Steve: It’s called a short turn. Some of the service will originate northbound at Kennedy for the heavier loads on that section. Some of the service will run through along Eglinton. There may be a similar situation further west depending on what other north-south lines intersect Eglinton, eventually, and the need (or not) to run all trains through from east of Yonge to the airport. It’s amazing that we are able to run multiple overlapping services on bus and streetcar lines, but the moment someone talks about doing it with LRT, there are gasps of horror.
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If one of the province’s principles is to disrupt traffic as little as possible, during and after construction, somehow I feel that this could be used as an injunction to stop any surface LRT construction, whether lanes are taken away or not.
Steve: The operative words are “as little as possible”. This does not mean “not at all”. Indeed, I would argue that the disruption from underground station construction will be massive compared to what will be needed to build surface rights-of-way. As for post-construction, it’s a question of “the greater good” which does not always mean making it possible to drive from Etobicoke to Scarborough without ever hitting a red light or a traffic snarl.
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What I meant is that the clause “disrupt traffic as little as possible” makes any comparison of post-construction conditions bias toward grade-separated options. I sure hope that it’s not an official binding clause that anti-LRT advocates would jump on.
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I believe the TTC was, and is still against thru-routing the SRT with Eglinton unless the entire route is fully grade separated. If they change their mind, a center pocket track west of Kennedy (a la St. Clair W.) will be required to properly enable the operation. The last design I saw under TC was for segregated revenue service operation.
My guess is that they won’t interline, because headways on the surface portion of Eglinton will inevitably be slightly irregular, and that will screw up their scheduling with respect to interlacing in the short turns. This type of arrangement would compromise headway uniformity east of Kennedy, and require that service headways be multiples of each other.
We see this with the AM short turns at St. Clair W., where each train has to re-enter service in its precise preordained place, halfway between two scheduled southbouth trains from Downsview. This was the same problem we had with the old wye system, where trains had to hit their marks so precisely, they could not be more than 65 seconds behind schedule.
Train length is another issue. The SRT will most likely use longer LRT trains than a semi-exclusive Eglinton line.
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Steve is the Eglinton line presently scheduled to go only as far as Weston Road? I understood that while it may not go all the way to the airport right away it would nevertheless go into Etobicoke. Did I miss something?
Also, what parts of Transit City were stalled because of Dalton McGuinty’s back tracking two years ago?
Steve: Although many drawings showed an indeterminate western terminus near “Black Creek”, there have been confirmations since the whole LRT/subway debate got underway that the line will run through to Jane initially. That gets it just barely into Etobicoke.
The original plan for Transit City was for the entire thing to be completed by 2020, but that was very optimistic, based on low cost estimates, and without full provincial funding ever being committed. However, the Finch line would have been started earlier until the shift to the “5-in-10” plan when that route was moved to the latter half of the decade. Another change with “5-in-10” was that the SRT officially became an LRT conversion project linked with Eglinton. This should have been done from the outset, but the TTC persisted in doing the EA for an “SRT” extension as if the ICTS technology would stay in place.
The lines that have fallen completely off the map are:
Don Mills: There are big problems at the south end of this line where the TTC’s schemes for surface operation are so outrageously bad as to be laughable. This was one contribution to the lack of credibility of Transit City. A related problem was that the TTC simply refused to talk about the DRL which could operate north to Eglinton, a more sensible place for a surface Don Mills line to begin.
Jane: Like Don Mills, this line has problems with narrow streets at the south end. It could be argued that this should actually operate as a branch of Eglinton given the low demand in Etobicoke. In any event, we won’t see service here for a long time.
Scarborough-Malvern: The original route of this line went from Kennedy Station east via Eglinton and Kingston Road, then north on Morningside and up to Malvern Centre. It didn’t take long for the Malvern end to become part of the SRT extension, and the proposed line was cut back to Sheppard thereby losing part of the rationale for its name. The northernmost part of the route, from Sheppard south to UTSC campus, has attracted some interest as a potential extension of the Sheppard line putting its terminal at a place with significant demand. However, there is no funding in place for this yet.
Waterfront West: This route would link to the Long Branch streetcar (partly converted with reserved lanes) to the Harbourfront line by an as-yet undetermined route. The TTC wanted to fiddle the line somehow through Queen/Roncesvalles (a real mess of a design, but typical of what they tried to do under TC), while Mayor Miller and others favoured a route through the western waterfront in the median of a realigned Lake Shore Blvd connecting north to The Queensway at Colbourne Lodge Road. This route is probably the lowest priority of any in the overall plans even though it has existed as an approved project since 1990.
Waterfront East: None of the eastern waterfront lines were part of Transit City, and this was a big strategic mistake because funding for them fell through the cracks. They are a comparatively cheap addition to the system, but don’t have the glamour of an Eglinton-Crosstown megaproject. The right-of-way for the Cherry Street section will be built as part of the reconstruction of that road now in progress. The Queen’s Quay East portion is mired in design and funding issues for the Union Station connection (should have been done as part of the work already underway there, but wasn’t because nobody had the money or the will to make it happen). The Portlands portion is dependent on the realignment of streets planned with the Don River mouth and park project which is all tied up with Doug Ford’s dreams of Ferris Wheels and Monorails.
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Nit pick: Close but, no cigar! The boundary between the City and Etobicoke was the Humber River which is just west of Jane Street.
Steve: I stand corrected. Etobicoke will be free of new LRT lines at least until we build Finch and extend Eglinton.
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And now, apparently, the knuckleheads are selling off land held in reserve for decades to build the Richview Expressway! This land could provide a wide right of way for a surface LRT line at minimal cost.
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Hi Steve,
I’ve read the most recent report comparing options for Sheppard, and one thing that struck me was the claim that if the Sheppard subway were somehow to go ahead, supplanting the lrt there, it would mean that the srt/lrt could not be extended to Malvern. This strikes me as odd. Would this decision be the result of operational issues or due to fiscal constraint. It seems to me that an extension of the srt/lrt to Sheppard and beyond would be advantageous even in the absence of the Sheppard lrt.
Steve: If “Option B”, the Sheppard subway extension to STC, is chosen, there will be no Sheppard LRT east of Kennedy north station and, therefore, no Conlins Road carhouse nor anything for an extended SRT to connect with. In this case, the “SRT” will continue to end at McCowan and the yard will be repurposed as a small storage area for LRVs on the east end of the Eglinton-Crosstown line. There will never be service across the 401 and into Malvern in this scenario, and actually, the saving in building that north end of the “SRT” makes up the extra money that might be available to fund Ford’s subway. Ford has consistently misrepresented the effect of his subway plans on northeastern Scarborough.
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Have to disagree. I remember the construction of the LRT subway tunnel on Bay south of Front via cut and cover, and St. Clair was almost as bad. Of course, Bay was closed until the temporary decking was put in place, but pedestrian access was maintained throughout. Bloor was different, because the subway never actually went under Bloor.
If subway stations are built like Queens Park and St. Patrick, surface disruption is minimal. Surface LRT construction will be more disruptive, because road widening is required in many areas. This is why our per km cost for LRT is so high. If we were to compare that with cut-and-cover subway, the difference per km between the two wouldn’t be anywhere near what it is now.
The numbers need to be compared fairly. In the absence of road widening, LRT costs are much lower, but so is cut-and-cover subway. Why we can rip up a street for LRT, but not subway, is totally beyond me.
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Steve, I know you have previously rejected the idea of holding public office but in the new scheme of things would you accept appointment as one of the private citizen members of the Commission? I think your contribution would be very valuable. You would also be able to deal with Commission staff in something other than just an advocacy role and you would be in a position to influence other commissioners. I can’t think of where they are going to get four better commissioners.
Steve: I have received a lot of encouragement to stand for this position, but have not decided whether I want to make the change from an advocate/blogger to a Commissioner.
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Why do I get the idea that Rob ford has no respect for democracy?
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Steve –
Do you have any changes you would like to see on the current Sheppard and Eglinton LRT proposals? Specifically to address speed – we could follow what other cities do and build it at the side of the road and go under core intersections and put in wider stop spacing? It would make the LRT proposal seem less like St Clair and more like a subway. Of course, it comes with slightly higher costs, but definitely nowhere near what a subway costs.
Steve: Speed is really a red herring in the Eglinton context with so much of the line already underground (including dipping under Don Mills and under Kennedy). Side of the road only makes sense for the portion of Eglinton between Leaside and Don Mills. Don Mills Station (Eglinton) needs to be designed with a view to a future NS rapid transit line, either a Don Mills LRT or the northern end of a DRL east. The current proposal is to put the Don Mills LRT on the surface, and this is a very bad choice given the importance of this location as a future transit hub. If we must dig up the intersection anyhow, let’s do it once. The alignment through Mount Dennis was artificially constrained during the EA for budgetary reasons and some of the TTC’s technical requirements (a pocket track west of Weston Station) made the structure larger and harder to site than it might be otherwise. This section of the route needs a major rethink.
As for Sheppard, there are a few changes worth looking at. First, we need to ensure that the interchange at Don Mills isn’t a hacked-together job that constrains LRT capacity. One version of the shared platform level I saw had only one LRT turnaround track, and that’s a recipe for disaster. Far better to put a proper LRT platform at the east end of the mezzanine level with simple access down to the subway. Another important part of the Sheppard line will be the “Morningside Hook” down to UTSC which almost became part of the official scheme. This should be studied so that it can be ready-to-roll if funding were to materialize.
The concept of “speed” is much abused and looks only at the rate of vehicle progress along a line, not the access time to stations. For the underground part of Eglinton, this will be equivalent to a subway because of the stop spacings and the need to navigate to/from platforms.
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To Mr.Briganti, Please don’t mention St.Clair in this strand. A frivoulous lawsuit that stopped construction dead for more than a year had more to do with that mess than anything….a law suit that was thrown out of court!
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Steve, looking at video clips on You tube of LRT in Charlotte NC where the profile seems similar to what we are getting, I notice that at least some of the intersections if not all of them have crossing gates and the trains actually blow moderate (and harmonically attractive) sounding air horns as they approach the crossing at speed. I realize that what we have on St. Clair and Spadina is not priority signalling and perhaps that method would impress me were I to experience it but on St. Clair, for example, a streetcar may make good time and pass the automobiles but then it approaches an intersection where the light is red and it must wait. The next stage is the left turn stage which allows the cars to not only turn left but to go straight ahead while the streetcar remains stopped. Then the streetcar finally gets a green light and it crosses the intersection only to stop at the station platform. You will never EVER convince the people in the suburbs or anywhere else for that matter, that they are getting a “rapid” transit line while anything remotely like this situation is allowed to exist. The big divider between subways and street LRT’s is not one of speed as in kms/hr. It is that the former do not have traffic lights (encountering red block signals on the subway is relatively rare and it is is resented).
Any comments?
Steve: The fundamental difference between St. Clair, Spadina, Harbourfront and Sheppard is that on the three “streetcar LRTs”, crossings of the right-of-way are very frequent. This is a function of the street grid in the old city, plus some unwillingness by politicians to close intersections that are not transit stops. As for crossing gates, that really is not going to work at an intersection of two 8-lane+ roads. Imagine how long the gates would have to be for intersections on Spadina!
There is a generic problem with the way traffic signals are managed in Toronto, and it applies to regular streetcar lines as well as to “LRTs”. The traffic folks won’t put a detector for an oncoming car any further away from a signal than the next upstream intersection, and there is no cascading of information down the street so that a car a few blocks away will trigger a green wave leading to its next stop. With the short block lengths in the old city, a car is not detected (and influencing a traffic signal) until it is too close to avoid a hold at an unwanted red.
I do not agree that suburban people will never, ever be convinced that LRT is acceptable. They have been outrageously lied to by subway proponents, and far too much emphasis has been placed on the “speed” between two stations rather than the overall accessibility of the LRT line (both as to stop spacing, and the fact it stays north of the 401 and goes to Morningside).
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While we are talking about traffic signal detectors, let’s not forget that most in Toronto don’t respond to bikes and motorbikes, and furthermore triggering one on a minor street begins a new cycle with a full long green period for the default major street. The ONLY light which I have found to behave properly (ssshhhh!) is King and Tecumseh.
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To remind you of my role in preserving the streetcars in Toronto.
Steve: Good to hear from you after all these years.
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Steve, you said,
I agree with you completely, Steve. I am not suggesting that suburbanites expect to be riding 60 mph trains but like all of us they would dislike continually pulling up to an intersection at a red light and then waiting while the light goes through the left turn phase (during which the cars, and not just those turning left take off) only to stop again at the passenger stop on the other side of the intersection when the transit light finally turns green. It is not so much a matter of speed as it is a matter of not feeling like one is stopping and starting while the automobile traffic goes cruising by. This is the situation on St. Clair and Spadina which are both local lines. How much more frustrating will it be if it is that situation which prevails on the express LRT’s planned for the suburban routes. I believe people in the suburbs as elsewhere will love a half decent LRT line once one is up and running and the lies are exposed but I do feel that a signaling system which gives priority to the LRV trains is essential if people are not to feel gypped.
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