For those who may not follow their site, Spacing Toronto has an excellent series by John Lorinc about the machinations at City Hall and Queen’s Park behind the many changes in transit plans for Scarborough.
- Prologue: A timeline of decisions
- Part 1: The political background
- Part 2: Playing the “poor Scarborough” card
- Part 3: Ignoring the figures
- Part 4: What About Bombardier?
- Part 5: The Bottom Line, including an interview with Karen Stintz
Reading through this, and in particular the double-dealing at Queen’s Park, not to mention self-serving moves by some city councillors, it is impossible to have any faith in plans or grand statements about the future of our transit system. Even worse, any thought of transparency is a fiction, and transit planning is a secret, political exercise utterly devoid of credibility.
This is not news to those of us who watch the process close up, but seeing the gory details on Scarborough brings a stench of opportunistic grandstanding to every other transit scheme on the table. Does anyone actually care about transit riders, or are we just buying votes with billion dollar promises?
Steve Munro 
I will accept the Scarborough LRT if it is extended south to St Clair and north to Steeles and 100% grade separated and 100% electric and if not, then give us a subway however few stops it may have.
Steve: Yet another demand from Scarborough. FYI, the subway won’t go to Steeles, and I am not sure why you want to get to St. Clair as opposed to further south like Danforth. The Scarborough LRT was always going to be grade separated and electric.
Would you accept a subway with only 1 stop?
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The issue of providing transit is also part of the bigger economic/demographic picture – that transit will prevent congestion from getting worse, and therefore the GTA can continue to grow by over 100,000 people per year and the condo developers can continue building as fast as they can … just as the 2 major parties don’t want to fix or abolish the OMB because it benefits the OMB, if we had a Proposition 13 type thing happen which stopped all future transit expansion, then this would raise questions about needing or allowing the population to continue expanding – and in the GTA, population growth is nearly all immigration driven and is under the control of the federal and provincial governments.
Toronto is at least 20-30 years behind in providing transit – the transit system we have today might have been ok for 1984. The source of the problem is population growth without fully matching it with expenditures on transit. Transit demand is a moving target – I really doubt that the Big Move etc. would be adequate for the population we have today, yet alone for the additional population that will occur over the next 20-30 years. It is a moving target, not a static situation.
Ideally we should have a moratorium on population growth while we catch up – this is not politically feasible, but there is no reason why Canada should have double the immigration per capita as the USA (Canada, 250,0000 immigrants for 34 million, the USA, 1,060,000 for 319 million – do the math!)
In addition, Ontario and all provinces to the east have unemployment above the national average – we should be directing population growth to the provinces where labour markets are tightest.
Under Pierre Trudeau, immigration policy was more realistic. Immigration was cut when unemployment was high, and increased after it dropped. Just before Mulroney came to power, immigration was about 90,000 per year – but around 1990, Mulroney & Barbara MacDougall introduced the policy we have today, a relentless policy of about 250,000 immigrants per year regardless of the state of the economy or the level of unemployment.
Bay Street loves this policy of having a labour surplus and high immgration – but corporate taxes are low and they are not paying for the costs of population growth – as an oligopoly, to them it is more customers to split amongst themselves, and a bigger pool or workers.
Funny how in the 1970s we were telling 3rd world countries how bad high population growth was … we used to recognise that exponential growth cannot go on forever, and growth is costly in environmental and economic terms. We need to revisit this. Bigger is not better.
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I used to believe that transit decisions were made with the greater good at heart.
Then this crap happened. Now I don’t believe anymore.
It’s all just about buying votes.
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Interesting read, and goes basically to the basic issue of electioneering vs governance. I have heard it said that generally the best Prime Minister (or Premier or Mayor) is not the one that wanted the job, but that has been stuck with it. When they can look back at the someone making the threat of them losing the next election and say “promise” and mean it.
Again Ontario and Toronto need governments that have the self-confidence to make fully informed decisions in the best interests of the city, not based on the uninformed and “highly manipulated” mood of the electorate.
You should not build subway for LRT level demands any more than you would buy a full sized bus to move your immediate family. A coach bus in not more comfortable than a nice car, nor is a subway better than an LRT, it is in both cases a question of what is appropriate.
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I’m guessing the question is rhetorical. The best part is that they’re billion-dollar promises that the people making them don’t even have to deliver! In fact, the likelihood of these promises ever coming to fruition is so remote they don’t even need a credible plan to deliver on them.
Subways tomorrow! There’s always a subway tomorrow!
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Scarborough citizens are being forced to choose between 2 lackluster plans. From what I get from the outsiders is that we should just take what’s on the sub par proposal on the table because building any transit infrasture in Ontario is rare.
I don’t buy transit City was ever goinng to be built in full.
1. Sheppard was reduced back to Morningside from the original
2. The Scarb-Malvern LRT was taken off the next wave. Why??? The subway did not impact this funding. Seems more like political smoke.
So what are we getting with Transit City?
1. An above ground Sheppard LRT stub connected to a Subway Stub. – USELESS
2. An above ground LRT stub on Eglinton that serves only those that live in the West end of Scarborough – USEFUL for those in a small area of Scarborugh
3. The orginal alignment of the SRT and proposed LRT is extremely poor no mattter how many stops it provides.
A fully funded complete Transit City could be useful. But a politicly hacked up LRT scheme is not what we need. That crappy 3 stop Subway looks fine for now.
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I never said that it would but I would accept one wherever it goes in Scarborough as it is time to bring Scarborough into the 21st century.
Yes, definitely I will. The farther the stop spacing, the better it is and so the next stop after Kennedy can be STC on the Bloor Danforth subway extension.
Yes, get it to Danforth Ave in the south and Steeles Ave East in the north. Then may be York region can also pay to have it extended to Highway 7.
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I am seriously thinking of putting together a portfolio project at option #3: Revitalizing the SRT using ICTS technology. It is frustrating all this talk about the SRT “dying,” as if it was only built as a temporary piece of infrastructure. Last time I checked, Vancouver is not looking at rebuilding the majority of their rapid transit network because the tech they used had a built in timer which is about to run out.
If we could go back about 10 years, I would have proposed a subway extension. Not because of some “war on the car” or because I have a fetish for third rails over overhead wires, but because a) The SRT was a high performing line considering its constraints, b) Yet despite this, it never generated transit oriented development around its stations, except for perhaps Scarborough Centre, and c) It would strengthen local transit connections between eastern Toronto and its neighbours in Markham and Pickering.
Finally, I get so sick and tired of this rhetoric that “Scarborough doesn’t have a subway.” BULL! For the sake of definitions, it has two subways: The Danforth line with 3 stops within its city limits, and the SRT – which is arguably just as much of a subway as the Sheppard line is to North York – entirely within its city limits! Blame the local politicians who did absolutely nothing with these lines over the last 30 years!
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My 21st Century includes streetcars, LRT, subways, buses and bicycles.
Note how it does not include crayon drawings on a napkin.
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Subway did not impact your funding – really. So when you blow an extra 3-4 thousand at Christmas it has not impact on your visa in January. Wow must be nice.
The understanding that I had as a tax payer was, in effect, Scarborough gets subway instead of LRT. It was instead of one, but both, and all extensions. With this understanding the amount of money is still double.
The $3.6 billion would have fully covered and then some Transit City plans for Scarborough. The Next wave stuff is probably dropped because other areas need transit as well. Have a look at Rexdale.
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On the upside, we got a property tax hike for transit, and while enduring a meeting at City Hall, and the remarks of some, I came up with the term ‘Clowncil’ and thus also, ‘Clowncillor’; but it is still sad given the climate crisis that things are soo messed up.
One way to get even: refer friends and candidates to the spacing series – it is a go-to.
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“I would accept one wherever it goes in Scarborough”
Yep, doesn’t matter where it goes, how many people it helps, or how much it costs, as long as we build a subway in Scarborough.
How about a circle with zero stops? Then we can save save save by re-using two of the TBMs from Eglinton busy once that project is done.
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I think we have to admit that the Transit City LRT scheme was not a good plan, cancel most of it and cut our losses. My suspicion is that ordering subway or GO cars will greatly reduce LRT cancellation penalties because Bombardier would rather build a different type of rail vehicle than make Metrolinx angry and have it buy from Siemens instead. LRT is unpopular among the vast majority of people I have met, and I am not talking about Rob Ford supporters here. I think that with the almost 24/7 traffic congestion and condo cranes everywhere, a higher capacity method of transit is needed which does not reduce road capacity and this means improving the GO train system since building subways is too costly to build them everywhere. Eglinton should have been a conventional subway with no eastern section and much higher capacity (building an extremely expensive LRT line makes no sense) and the DRL is badly needed but otherwise most funding needs to go toward GO expansion. The Scarborough RT should have just been rebuilt using the existing ICTS technology. The Miller administration did a very poor job with planning Transit City by completely ignoring GO train expansion and by not understanding that building the world’s most expensive LRT line on Eglinton is a bad idea. With limited funding, my guess is that if Miller had made the right decision and supported GO expansion instead of LRT in 2007, there would have been no money for LRT anyway.
Steve: In 2007, GO expansion was on nobody’s radar, and in any event, the purpose of Transit City was to improve local transit between suburban areas, not to provide even more capacity for commuters into the downtown.
LRT is unpopular because most people have no idea what it is taking their info mainly from disinformation campaigns by subway advocates. The whole point of Eglinton being LRT, despite the underground central section, was that the portion from Weston to the Airport, and east of Leaside to eastern Scarborough could all be on the surface.
There is no secret that I had big problems with two parts of Transit City: the south end of the Don Mills Line (Eglinton to Danforth) which should be part of the DRL subway), and the south end of the Jane line (Eglinton to Bloor) which has severe right-of-way constraints. This does not invalidate the rest of the plan. With a big LRT network, keeping ICTS in Scarborough makes no sense at all. It is easy to “justify this” by tearing Transit City apart and leaving the Scarborough LRT as an orphan, but that was never the intention.
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“How about a circle with zero stops?” That’s fine as long as the circle has a good diameter and lies entirely in Scarborough because the issue is that Downtown gets way more transit money per capita than Scarborough.
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TTC Rider is absolutely right. As he points out, the further the stop spacing the better it is.
So I say we should extend the Bloor subway through Scarborough all the way to Highway 7 and it should only have one stop. At Highway 7.
Oh wait, we can’t drop the stop that’s handy for you?
Sorry, you’ll just have to suck it up. As you yourself point out, we have to think about the greater good after all.
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Now that NDPers are doing whatever they can to stick it to Kathleen Wynne, I want to bring up the year 2011.
2011 was the year that the McGuinty administration drafted an MoU with Ford, agreeing to change the projects from Transit City LRT to Eglinton subway, Sheppard Subway (with Toronto being responsible for funding the latter), etc. Wynne was the transportation minister at the time, but I felt that she was being excluded from the drafting process. A volunteer at TEA at the time felt the same way.
Steve, does my memory serve me correctly? Or was Wynne just as responsible for the MoU of 2011 as Ford and McGuinty are?
Steve: I think that whole affair was a McGuinty production, one of the many “legacies” he bequeathed to Wynne as the new leader.
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I just received my final 2014 property tax bill in the mail. It has two line items:
You will note that there is a footnote related to transit, which reads:
…and the message on right reads:
…which, of course, is the TTC’s overall page on all its various ongoing projects — as opposed to the one project that the specific levy is supposed to go to.
Perhaps the TTC’s page on that project was not used because all it says is:
To be honest, when I look at my tax bill and see what the transit levy actually comes out to, I don’t mind the money at all — it is not really that big a number. It’s the politics and the whether the specific project is the best place to have spent that money and that political capital.
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Except that would require a sole-source contract which is a non-starter in this city thanks to the same person who has been trying to kill Transit City.
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“That’s fine as long as the circle has a good diameter and lies entirely in Scarborough because the issue is that Downtown gets way more transit money per capita than Scarborough.”
You do understand that I’m attempting to be satirical? Are you trying to be satirical? Usually one does not satirize one’s own position. Please note that my circle has no stations because you said the only thing that matters is that we spend a boatload of money on Scarborough — it matters not one bit whether we do so in an effective way.
Ok, revised proposal: circular monorail with no stops. Essentially the same as my earlier proposal, except it will actually be visible once it’s done so everybody can see the monorail vehicle looping around.
Steve: Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
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Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Scarborough must have a subway, spare no expense, because “Downtown” gets way more transit per capita than Scarborough. Doesn’t matter if it serves many people. In fact, TTC Rider has established that it can serve no one at all, as long as it is in Scarborough.
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I am pretty sure that “downtown” transit routes have lower subsidies per rider and I would like to see the proof that the overall expenditure per capita (riders and non riders) is higher downtown. I think not.
In any case, while I participated in this debate myself, the competition between regions of the City is unproductive and should not form the basis for transit planning. What we all need is the maximum possible service, the minimum waiting time possible and – outside of rush hour – sufficient service to provide a seat for all. The type of vehicle doesn’t matter.
One of the things that I have learned as a left leaning idealist, is that there is only so much wealth. If a disproportionate amount of the wealth is squandered on a pet project, it is no longer available for other needs. In Scarborough’s case, what is likely to get neglected is the frequency of service on feeder buses – not appealing if it is 20 below or 35 degrees.
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That’s fine as long as the whole route between Eglinton and Steeles passes through Scarborough. Only downtowners won’t agree to this as they can’t bear the thought of new subways being built anywhere but what directly serves downtown. A DRL subway won’t relieve the crowding at the Yonge-Bloor station or the Yonge Line. Why? Say the DRL passes through King and St Andrew stations. Not everybody on the DRL is going to/from King St and so the people from the Bloor Danforth Line that you hope transfer to the DRL will have to transfer to a 3rd subway train to go to Queen or Dundas or College or Wellesley or Union or wherever it is that they are going and they would rather stick with their original route consisting of only 2 subway trains. If you want a connection between Bloor Danforth Lines by-passing Yonge-Bloor, then you can connect Sherbourne, Wellesley, and Bay stations for a cheap 3 stop DRL but that doesn’t really serve Downtowners well and so Downtowners would be outraged with the suggestion. An extra Bay station already exists and so the suggestion will save tens of millions of dollars.
No, you can remove my stop as I am not selfish like the people who not only prevented the burial of the LRT to east of the DVP but insisted on a Ferrand Drive stop even though it is 2 min WALK from the Don Mills stop. But STC is more than a 100 times busier than stops like Chester, Old Mill, Castle frank, Bessarion, etc and so if you are going to skip an STC stop, then you better shut down all of these stations as well. I have no problem with skipping an STC stop as long as all stations less busy than STC are also closed.
Steve: When you launch into a diatribe about what downtowners might or might not want, you really send the BS factor right through the roof. The scheme to use Lower Bay is not workable because there isn’t enough track time on the University Subway for all the trains that would feed into it. As for doubling back from King to come a few stations north, well, maybe people won’t do that, but there are a pile of riders who want to go right to the core in walking distance of DRL stops.
Then there’s the whole issue of sending the “DRL” further north to serve Thorncliffe, Flemingdon and Don Mills & Eglinton. Those are folks who now have to take a bus down to Danforth and who could get a direct ride.
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One of the things I can tell you as a right leaning businessman and former economist, is that people and business also respond to taxes and perceived/expected taxes, along [with] costs of congestion, employees etc.
The Toronto region and the province of Ontario has to solve its congestion issue and remain cost competitive, so absolutely there are real requirements to make it work and restrictions on the costs involved.
One of the reasons that manufacturing is not recovering in Ontario is cost, you cannot simply pile on more, for labour (required for ridiculous cost of living), transport or taxes. This perforce means most cost effective solution to achieve like travel times and road and subway network relief. Business will see an unneeded Scarborough subway as another boondoggle.
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Indeed:
Could that be the real plan – ensuring that money is soaked up and can’t provide services elsewhere? Gardiner + Scarborough = no room to change/d0 anything including maintenance….
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@ Malcolm. I’m referring to provincial (Metrolinx) funding. Nothing really changed from the province except Metrolinx priorities. I understand your frustration as a “taxpayer” in City of Toronto.
We are all neglected and forced to fight over insufficient planning & funds. The City increase is another discussion. My opinion is that Torontonians who already have decent transit don’t want to share and those in other areas of neglect don’t want to pay for any other projects until they see theirs.
As a resident of Scarborough I’ll be much happier having one solid access to the City of Toronto’s core transit infrastructure than a BS political Liberal scheme that holds us hostage any longer.
Basically we are being pitted against one another by our politicians.
Vote Liberal: Face more lies & get promised projects that will never fully come to fruition
Vote Conservative: Probably get nothing
Vote NDP: End up with Liberals plan & a realization there is no real plan
Not looking promising
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Sometimes when we open up the “legacies” can of worms we only look in and see the “worms” on the surface.
Look a little deeper and (coincidentally of course) we see:
A subway extension to the riding of the then-Finance Minister whose family name is connected to a well known development company.
Highway upgrades connecting the northern parts of the GTA to the riding served by the then-premier.
A subway running through the area of Toronto that the then-mayor had represented as mayor (pre-amalgamation) for decades.
A proposed bus way on Eglinton Avenue West running through the riding of the then-Premier that was upgraded through a subway.
A highway built to connect the 401 to Brampton (the riding represented by the then-premier).
And if we look forward it is probably a significant coincidence that the MPP for Niagara West-Glanbrook will build the mid-Peninsula highway if his party is elected premier.
All coincidences … spread across the political spectrum … reinforcing what Douglas Adams said about lizards.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: For the benefit of readers who are not Douglas Adams fans, the “Ford” in the quote linked here is not any of the clan currently installed at City Hall, but Ford Prefect who is another character altogether.
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Steve,
From a funding POV, independent of mode, do you feel that Scarborough has been treated equitably on a per capital basis?
The reason I ask, is I am curious if there is a case for significant transit infrastructure investment in Scarborough. Maybe it’s better/more buses/routes, maybe it’s better cycling infra, or maybe BRT/LRT/Subway.
Where I’m getting to, is I wonder if part of the Subway vs. LRT debate is not about route or tech, but the perception of ~$3.5B (well really going to be $4.5-5B) invested in a huge part of the city of TO, vs. “just” ~$1.5B for the LRT.
Could we not give Scarborough residents a choice? I mean, couldn’t we leave the $-spend fix, and give that community council the power to run a referendum and have the residents choose between 2 plans. I would imagine, that once residents see what ~$3.5B-5B of multimodal investment will buy, vs. just 3-stops, we’ll all get the result we want and ALL of scarborough, not just the part around STC gets an upgrade?
Basically I see this whole thing about the “me too,” don’t leave Scarborough behind attitude …
Oh and all of you should read this article which epitomizes the terrible choices we have next week.
Steve: Has Scarborough been “treated equitably”? That’s a loaded question because so much spending is either years in the past when the population was lower, or is freighted with fictional growth that is more about Scarborough’s aspirations to be a “real city”, to have a “real downtown”. For an earlier example, see North York.
There’s also the question of what network we are talking about. When Transit City was on the table, Scarborough had the richest haul of all: the Eglinton line west into North York and the “old city”, the Scarborough Malvern line east on Eglinton and up Morningside, and the Sheppard line east from Don Mills Station. The SRT conversion came along later because it was obvious a unified LRT network made sense. That would have chewed through a huge proportion of the Transit City money. I get a bit testy when someone talks of Scarborough’s share in terms of one LRT line.
The people who put Transit City together were looking to make major improvements in Scarborough’s transit, but never got the chance due to interference first from Queen’s Park and later from the Ford circus who convinced everyone that only a subway would do.
The problem with a referendum would be to get a truly unbiased set of options on any ballot. Given the behaviour and disgusting parochialism shown by some Scarborough Councillors, I wouldn’t hold my breath. The whole debate will be polluted for years by the disinformation campaigns of the current administration.
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With the rather demonstrable demand for a DRL, and with the lack of progress from government to actually do something about it, would there be enough ridership to make a completely private venture economically viable? (or at least to get it started and be bought out to finish it?)
Steve: No, and in particular, the part that needs to be built first would also be the most expensive.
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I doubt anyone would confuse Rob Ford with someone who knows where his towel is.
Perhaps Rob + Doug makes one two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox, though.
Steve: Any suggestion of a resemblance between the Fords and the citizens of a planet in the vicinity Betelgeuse are at best scurilous.
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@Steve
Actually a very high perentage of Scarborough citizens would just like to be considered Toronto citizens which ironically is the same City we pay taxes to. Unfortunately many people who reside in other areas of Toronto thinks it make sense to segregate approx 75% of Scarborough as if it’s in another isolated City.
I fully understand that areas of the City which were blessed by the transit Gods from years past have needs which are overdue as well. But to claim that you understand what a citizen of North East Scarborough goes through riding the TTC and even try to lump those people in with the Western Scarborough citizens views is unacceptable.
And saying Scarborough is neglected is an understatement & I’m sure you are tired of hearing it. So let the Citizens of Scarborough decide what’s the best transit with the monies available and move forward. Any politician can draw up transit plans and ever claim they are fully funded. But that doesn’t make the plan the best available for the people who will use it.
Steve: If eastern and western Scarborough consider themselves different camps, there is little hope for the larger city. This is getting ridiculous.
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Kevin’s comment:
Aren’t you forgetting about the third line item. You know, the one to pay for the $505 million Gardiner boondoggle.
OOppss… sorry, I forget. Public transit spending requires in-your-face taxes. But car spending money magically appears out of nowhere.
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Moaz Yusuf Ahmad said:”Sometimes when we open up the “legacies” can of worms we only look in and see the “worms” on the surface”
The reason that we all need to have a healthy awareness of the options really before us, and where the real needs are, and where there are only wants. I really wish for instance someone would publish a list of travel times on and off peak to rapid transit for the various areas of the city and region, and then keep it in the limelight.
This is one of the reasons I greatly appreciate Steve’s publishing bus headway performance data. Projects that regularly by-pass the most pressing issues, or that spend big dollars to address management issues should have a large spotlight shone upon them.
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But the problem is that Downtowners tell us all the time what we want in Scarborough. We wanted underground LRT for the Scarborough portion of the Eglinton LRT (just like the non-Scarborough portion) but Downtowners told us that the middle of the street is better for us. We want to extend Bloor Danforth subway further east into Scarborough subway but Downtowners tell us that we want LRT because it has more stops (we don’t want more stops, we want a subway). We want to extend the Sheppard subway into Scarborough but Downtowners tell us that there isn’t enough density in Scarborough. Why are we having DRL information sessions in RICHmond hill when a subway to RICHmond Hill will make the crowding on the Yonge Line much worse? Plus the density of RICHmond Hill is much less than that of Scarborough and there are way more jobs in Scarborough than in RICHmond Hill.
DRL to Thorncliffe and poor crime ridden Flemingdon Park? That’s a false promise and will never happen and you know it. They are having DRL information sessions in RICHmond Hill. You can say that DRL will go to Don Mills /Eglinton as part of Phase 2 but why will you hold DRL information sessions in RICHmond Hill even before Phase 1? The same reason as to why subway went to Vaughan which has density much lower than Scarborough and there are way fewer jobs in Vaughan as compared to Scarborough. Besides, John Tory’s new SmartTrack plan renders the DRL subway unnecessary.
Steve: It also renders the Scarborough subway even more unnecessary. The whole point of his plan, although it may not be obvious, is to avoid building subways.
DRL sessions are held in Richmond Hill because they need to understand why they will not be getting a Yonge subway extension any day soon.
And while we’re on “crime ridden” epithets, you might want to look in your own back yard before slagging the folks west of you.
Please note that I consider this exchange at an end since you can’t be civil about people living in other parts of Toronto.
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I live downtown and am mighty proud of it. However, I don’t presume to tell others what they are entitled to – especially super sensitive Scarborough. However, I do understand basic facts about transit – the higher the capacity the more money it costs and it is a waste to build high capacity transit where the demand is low. This is pretty basic.
In Scarborough – and Etobicoke where I grew up – demand is not the same as on the King Car. I chose to live downtown as an adult in order to benefit from higher level transit – but in my case higher level means the King Car, The Queen Car and the Ossington bus. Only rarely do I use the subway.
I am really tired of the concept that a low demand area – any area – “deserves” a high capacity transit service when the demand does not exist. While I love my streetcars – which really are streetcars not just in Rob Ford’s world – I hear others screaming that reserved right of way LRTs are somehow inadequate. Reserved right of way LRVs have been highly successful elsewhere and provide much better services than buses. This idea that having subways is some kind of badge of honour – regardless of the paltry and expensive contribution to community – sickens me. I use the Ossington bus for most of my local journeys and it is adequate, but less than a reserved right of way LRT.
I am really, really tired of the concept that “downtown decides” what transit gets built in other parts of our great city. I expect that transit planning should be based entirely on demand – and meeting that demand – and nothing else.
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We’re talking about Hwy 11 here to North Bay, Harris’ riding. The other projects you mention were not coincidences, but Hwy 11 is an all-party affair.
The upgrades started under Davis, and is still not completed, with some interchanges scheduled for construction over the next 2 to 20 years. There was a hiatus during the Peterson gov’t. Rae [got] some of the EAs rolling under new legislation. Construction resumed in the last year of the Eves gov’t. It is now at least 4 lanes since completion under the McGuinty gov’t in 2012. Thank goodness too. That much traffic and death is best handled with a divided expressway.
There’s not much coincidence here between Harris and Hwy 11 construction. What’s impressive is the amount that all parties are willing to spend on 69 between Parry Sound and Sudbury on a less busy route, vs. say busier portions of 17.
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Michael surely you understand that only downtown has MPPs and of course MPs and councillors. All elections are decided by the people who live in the downtown, as those in North York, Etobicoke, East York, and Scarborough have no votes. That is why Queen’s Park is downtown, City Hall is downtown etc.
The fact that downtown has subway and streetcars has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that these lines were largely built prior to the formation of Metro (let alone amalgamation), and of course nothing to do with the fact that the province stopped making major transit investments circa 1980 except for those intended to win elections.
The part I am trying to figure out is, how this group managed to get so many of the residents of Scarborough to come out so strongly against a plan that would have brought their part of the city superior transit access. However, given the level of clear political mastery displayed by downtowners, I am not surprised. Now of course, Steve appears to not be sticking with the plan with trying to point out to those poor souls its benefits, (or perhaps he doth object too much and that is just part of the masterful marketing). The downtown cabal is clearly much more organized than any political party anywhere in the world ever has been, and is using its wide array of marketing skills to make sure that it has utter and total control.
Steve: Don’t tell them about the secret handshakes.
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Transit creates demand based on what is provided. In fact I love what the manager of transit planning in Brisbane says, which is “Capacity Drives Demand”.
If we build a light rail line that is slow and forces transfers where there should not be done, then demand will be lower.
If we build a subway that provides a faster ride, and removes an unneeded transfer, then demand will be higher.
If we build a BRT line that has to stop at stop lights, demand will be even lower.
So there is not this demand that we naturally have to fill. We create the demand by providing good quality, fast transit. If we don’t, the demand will simply go to the automobile.
Steve: That’s a tautology that leads to a conclusion that we should only build subways (and avoid designing them so that anyone has to transfer). People will have to transfer somewhere in the course of their trip because it is impossible to give everyone a one-seat ride. The issue is to make this change as painless as possible.
I’m not going to make excuses for how the TTC designed Kennedy or Don Mills Stations, but I am tired of their long transfer paths being used as a justification for subways everywhere. The proposed revisions at Kennedy for an LRT station (and I am think of the version with all three lines still intact) as well as the design options for Don Mills make the connection much simpler.
By the way, when are you going to boycott the Sheppard subway because of that inconvenient transfer at Yonge?
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@Michael – a service does not generate a demand, it merely supplies it. Building much more capacity than potential demand will not force it to appear. Yes a more attractive service will either cause substitution from a existing service (bus or car) alter the timing of a trip or may even induce one by so lowering the cost in time money and discomfort. However, there is a point where the social benefit is vanishingly small and the cost tremendous. Saving a minute in a 15 minute twice daily trip for instance. There is social value where inducing somebody off a road will have significant benefit to others. Building past the point of social significant return with public money is wasteful.
Tunneling instead of [traffic] light priority is a significant waste of resources. Of course not having transit priority on a busy transit route BRT/LRT or not, is wasteful.
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Steve,
I recall that in the Ford-McGuinty MOU days, you were always “scared” that Metrolinx wanted to convert the Eglinton line to SkyTrain (ALRT, or whatever its called). I also recall a 2006 TTC report that says that concluded that SkyTrain was the best solution for SRT.
The question is; how was Metrolinx planning on running Eglinton as SkyTrain – underground or elevated?
Also, could it be that this was the first example of politicians over-ruling the transit experts and converting the plan to the Transit City LRT.
Steve: Actually, the TTC report on the SRT had an interesting history. They hired Richard Soberman to review the options, and at public meetings, he was quite clear that he favoured the LRT option, joking about in his earlier days at UTDC he had managed to sell the city on the RT technology. There was actually some heavy-duty arm twisting by Queen’s Park at the time including a threat to withhold subsidies if their new technology was not used.
The TTC eventually reported, but Soberman’s paper was nowhere to be seen and quite clearly his opinion had been supressed. Later, it turned out that even the TTC’s numbers only worked for an upgrade of the existing line, but fell apart when extension to Malvern was included. Add this to the proposed network of LRT lines in Scarborough with which the “RT” could share maintenance facilities, and the argument for the RT technology simply did not hold water.
You have to be careful which “transit experts” you listen to, and what political games they are playing or masters they are serving at the time. The idea that “expert” reports are free of bias is a pleasant fantasy, but in the real world we must always be on the lookout for conclusions that are written to fit an agenda. That’s the sad fact that 40+ years of transit activism have taught me.
As for Eglinton, the tactic of converting it to RT technology was confirmed to me by more than one well-informed source, and was the subject of a heated fight between then Mayor Miller and those at Metrolinx who were pushing the option. Bombardier would have received a sole-source contract to extend (!) the RT to the airport.
With recent revelations about Queen’s Park’s involvement in the Scarborough subway proposal at least a year before it became public, I have no idea what, exactly, their transit policy for Toronto is. One thing I do know is that they cannot be trusted.
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