The details of GO Transit’s service improvements and electrification leading to the rollout of the “RER” (Regional Express Rail) network were announced today by Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca.
The plans will please some and disappoint others, but there is little to surprise anyone familiar with the details of GO Transit’s network and the constraints of the rail lines around the GTHA.
If there are “winners and losers” in this announcement, the benefits clearly fall (a) on lines that are completely under Metrolinx ownership and control and (b) on lines that do not already have full service, that is to say, there is room for growth.
Electrification is planned for most corridors by 2022-2024 starting with the Kitchener and Stouffville routes in 2022-23, followed by Barrie and the Lakeshore in 2023-24. The announcement is silent on the UPX service on the Kitchener line and whether the inner portion of the corridor will be electrified as a first step for UPX before 2022. (I have a query out to Metrolinx on this topic.) These dates have implications for rolling stock plans including purchase of whatever new technology — electric locomotives or EMUs — will be used for electric services, and, by implication the eventual fate of the existing fleet.
The scope of electrification will be:
- Kitchener line: Bramalea to Union
- Stouffville line: Unionville to Union
- Lakeshore East: Full corridor
- Lakeshore West: Burlington to Union
- Barrie: Full corridor
There are no plans to electrify either the Milton or Richmond Hill lines, nor to substantially improve service on them. In Milton’s case, this is a direct result of the line’s status as the CPR mainline. On Richmond Hill, significant flood protection works are needed in the Don Valley as well as a grade separation at Doncaster. Plans could change in coming years, but Queen’s Park has clearly decided where to concentrate its spending for the next decade – on the lines where improved service and electrification are comparatively easy to implement.
The limits of electrification correspond, for the most part, to the territory where all-day 15-minute service will be provided. This will be the core of the “RER” network with less frequent, diesel-hauled trains providing service running through to the non-electrified portions.
One important aspect of the line-by-line chart of service improvements is that there will be substantially more trips (most in the offpeak) before electrification is completed. This allows GO to “show the flag” as an all-day provider and build into a role as a regional rapid transit service, not just a collection of peak period commuter lines. This will also give local transit a chance to build up to improved GO service over time rather than a “big bang” with all of the changes awaiting electrification.
Over the five years 2015-2020, the Kitchener corridor will see the greatest increase in number of trains, although many of these will not actually run through all the way to Kitchener. The service build-up will finish in 2017.
The Barrie line will receive weekend service in 2016-17 with weekday off-peak service following in 2017-18. The Stouffville line also gets weekday service in 2017-18, while weekend service follows in 2018-19.
Minor off-peak improvements are planned for both Lakeshore corridors in 2018-19.
Peak service improvements relative to today vary depending on the corridor:
- Lakeshore East: 4 more trains by 2018-19 on a base of 45 (9%)
- Lakeshore West: 6 more trains by 2019-20 on a base of 47 (13%)
- Stouffville: 4 more trains by 2018-19 on a base of 12 (33%)
- Kitchener: 6 more trains by 2019-20 on a base of 15 (40%)
- Milton: 6 more trains by 2019-20 on a base of 18 (33%)
- Barrie: 2 more trains in 2019-20 on a base of 14 (14%)
- Richmond Hill: 4 more trains by 2018-19 on a base of 8 (50%)
- Total: 32 more trains by 2019-20 on a base of 159 (20%)
Other than making trains longer (where this has not already occurred), that’s the limitation of peak period growth for the next five years on GO Transit. This has important implications for projections of greater transit commuting along the GO corridors, and especially for the shoulder areas within Toronto itself that lie along GO routes, but also face capacity and travel time issues with the local transit system. Unlocking gridlock may be the goal, but the rate of service growth could not be described as “aggressive” especially against the background growth in population and jobs.
This will, or at least should, lead to renewed discussion both of rapid transit capacity within Toronto, and on how GO Transit will address growth beyond 2020. Where should new capacity be provided? What are the realistic upper bounds for various options? How will Toronto deal with demand for expanded suburban subway service to handle growth in the 905?
It is quite clear from the electrification dates that an electric SmartTrack is not going to start running soon, and with frequent all-day service to Bramalea, Aurora and Unionville using diesel-hauled trains operating well before electrification is completed, one might wonder just where SmartTrack as a separate “local” service will fit in.
Beyond these questions lie the more complex issues of travel that is not bound for Toronto’s core. “Gridlock” is commonly cited as the rational for transit spending, and yet this spending does little to improve travel anywhere beyond existing corridors to central Toronto. Demand in the GTHA is not conveniently focused on a few points, not even on Pearson Airport which is a major centre, and single-route improvements do not address the diverse travel patterns of GTHA commuters.
Ontario will spend billions on transit in the coming decade, and sticker-shock has already set in with the huge amount of infrastructure needed. Even this is only a start and the work to truly address travel requirements of the coming decades is only just starting.
Steve Munro 
The problem of course, is how to prevent them, if their travel time is still reasonable. Yes we can zone better within the existing areas, and we can discourage the conversion of farmland, however, it would appear that we are still building far outlying bedroom communities.
I would argue that one way to discourage this is to be clear in terms of what will be built, and ensure that the link to/from transit including GO and greatly improve the access in the areas that are already built up especially areas that we are targeting for intensification. If you are going to live in Port Hope or Cobourg or like, and expect to get real regular transit into Toronto, you are simply asking the unreasonable. Frankly I think Queen’s Park should be looking hard at its transit plans to ensure that they actively support the notion of protecting green spaces, and do not encourage the spread of urban sprawl. Pushing at least GO rail further and further out in my mind would encourage sprawl.
Steve: This is a Catch-22 situation. If we don’t build up GO, the likely effect will be even more traffic congestion and motorists vying for limited space closer to the centre of Toronto. If we do build more transit, it aids in sprawl. Remember, after all, that sprawling Los Angeles was built by the railways and the roads came later.
If we accept that the “real” purpose of transit is to enable workers to get to jobs and to sustain growth in existing nodes, notably the core, then investment in more transit getting people “downtown” serves that purpose. Oddly, it seems to be ok to build this sort of capacity to the outer 416 and all of the 905, but somehow providing more capacity for this type of travel within the 416 is a political hot potato.
If the “real” purpose of transit is travel on a much broader basis especially for the types of trips that are now heavily or exclusively served by autos), then the network requirements are completely different. We are seeing some “local” projects within the 905, but nothing today shows signs of competing with the 401 and 407 for east-west travel.
LikeLike
I would hope however, we can build high capacity & frequency service to be attractive into the areas that are already built up, and perhaps just beyond, so that the ride from a nice condo in the outer 416 makes for a much better lifestyle & Financial choice than a big lawn in Port Hope for those working in the core, or for that matter anywhere else in the 905. To me this is also an issue with really pushing to frequent and fast a service to Barrie, before the areas much closer have much better service. I am of the mind that one of the primary points of decision is time, and fast long haul service – can make a distant point seem closer than one inside 416. Morningside and Sheppard, needs to be a lot “closer” time wise than Bowmanville.
Also in terms of competing with 401/407 – is there enough demand in the corridor to justify something that is really higher order that serves the north end. The 401 is really in the end only the equivalent of 6 or so GO trains per hour/direction, or an LRT, it just has a phenomenal feeder system. If you could run an LRT along/beside the 401 and actually connect it with local transit, it would still require a phenomenal local feeder system, as I expect the destinations and origins to be painfully spread, to extremely small or relatively low density nodes.
Steve: It’s not just the 401, but the whole collection of east-west roads that serve a demand that is unmet by transit, especially for trips that go outside of the 416. These are dispersed and very difficult to serve.
LikeLike
What FACTS are you stating? That there has been a traffic impact study done for Oshawa GO Station that said it would require widening Bloor St? Please point me in that direction, because I’ve not seen one. Otherwise, you are not stating facts, but opinion.
First of all, the plans have not been cancelled, just are unfunded. Second of all, my suggestions are an interim solution to the problems until such an extension is funded. Thirdly, my position isn’t to blindly support anything, but to compare the costs to benefits and support first the ideas that make the most sense economically and feasibly.
A group business case was completed that included the Bowmanville Extension, however it was never funded and fell behind many other projects.
One bad decision is not an excuse for more. I am against the SSE completely. I am for the Bowmanville Extension when money is available and more rewarding projects are already built.
It’s funny how you’re willing to cut off your nose to spite your face. The Business Case Analysis for the Bowmanville corridor included costs for track improvements west of Oshawa. RER would cover those costs and increase the potential ridership on the extension. Thus costs go down and benefits go up. This improves the business case and leap frogs the project up the line.
Milton acted as a collection point for Guelph, Cambridge, and KW. The 85K population is for the Municipality of Clarington, not the Town of Bowmanville. The Milton Line opened in 1981 and was primarily to serve Mississauga. It’s not as if it were an equal choice between two growing towns.
The issue is that Union is the system choke point, so reduced capacity per hour there means reduced capacity for the system as a whole. With the positioning of GO doors, in theory, you could have up to 5.1m wide “doors”, so you wouldn’t need super exact train stopping.
It’s a fine line to walk, but less subsidizing road costs, stricter building regulations, and more transit can cut down on the problem. The underlying issue is that people don’t price their travel time the same as their mortgage. An hour commute daily at a $25 wage is $1000 a month for a mortgage, which is $175K more on house prices. Unless there is a real effort to fight the war on all fronts, we end up losing ground.
LikeLike
I find this curious. Time is determined by distance and rate, not just distance, and rate is faster along higher order road and transit lines. So (aside from ecological concerns), why would we privilege points that are closer but further (in construction cost) from infrastructure? I would argue the opposite, that we should discourage building further from infrastructure lines. Ideally, as suburbia is built, we would plan to put major destinations in a linear position to make (future) transit cheaper to build and more efficient, and therefore built sooner.
I think there’s more value in connecting downtown to urban centres like Guelph, Oshawa and Barrie rather than places that never urbanized in the first place. This allows households to hold two jobs in different urban centres, while living in one of them.
As it happens, in 10-12 years it will still take longer to get from Barrie to downtown than it does from Morningside and Sheppard. Barrie will get a 60 minute diesel service frequency. While Morningside and Sheppard will have electric LRT service about every 6 minutes.
LikeLike
The problem of course is that the 401 is the largest point of concentration, and it is not clear to me, that even it could reasonably served viably by alternative transit. The most we could hope to do is to provide linkage to the centres we can serve, and hope that this will be enough. If we served say STC (and the LRT/Subway line), Sheppard/DVP and a Don Mills LRT/Sheppard Subway, NYCC and say Yonge, Yorkdale and the Spadina Line, the Airport + Crosstown/Kitchener GO/Mississauga Transitway and the Hurontario LRT – does that provide enough linkage to have an impact on the highway i.e. would it actually fill more than a 2 car LRT every 5 minutes? Transit cannot hope to address all these trips – or even eliminate congestion, merely hope to skim the more readily served. Is that enough to have an effect, and enough to justify a real project?
The problem of course is that politically we cannot price the highways and short of that what are the real choices. Highways in transportation are the perfect example of the tragedy of the commons argument in economics. How do you actually effectively ration the use of roads, when pricing is not permitted? There are clearly people who drive from areas that are well served to areas are well served. There are times where you find yourself wondering as public transit would be faster and cheaper, and yet some do not want to suffer any personal crowding. It is seen as a right to drive – even when it imposes serious costs on others. Essentially some congestion will be required – just to discourage road use. The issue is that congestion needs to be kept to a level where commercial deliveries are still possible, and there is a viable way for those who must make trips that are not and cannot be well served by transit can still reasonably travel.
LikeLike
The concern I have with getting Barrie type locations much faster service is that it creates a large series of centres for auto based urban sprawl as well as the ones that already exists. The other concern I would have with regards to driving too much to existing infrastructure routes that stretch great distances, is that when we have actually overloaded them – it will be very hard and expensive to expand capacity, as the run lengths will be very long. This has been one of the issues we already have with building subway out a great lengths instead of a series of shorter parallel lines. The length of line that is required to significantly relieve the load is much greater. I am imagining the Yonge subway issue stretched all the way to Barrie, with a line of great density, and lots of buses running to said rail line – what happens when it is full, what and where do you go to relieve the issue?.
The solution for instance in the short term for Sheppard and Morningside, would perhaps be a BRT in Gatineau to Kennedy stations, and perhaps even to the top of a DRL eventually. This would make a quick trip, and only require a moderate addition of line. The marginal cost and length would not be that great and there remains a fair amount of parallel capacity possible with the other LRT lines. I think in the long run, we are better to encourage things closer to home, especially where they are already built up, and to the extent possible build parallel capacity. Note this type of approach however, requires a DRL, which I believe is required regardless.
LikeLike
Again, your sarcasm and belittling get you know where. Please refer to this parking forecast document provided by Metrolinx. Here are the FACTS that you requested!
Please read page 62 of the document that specifically states that major traffic improvements must be made AND Bloor St. must be widened to accommodate new parking!!!!!! How is that for fact??? Please do your research before for attacking and ridiculing others!!!
You provided a hypocritical statement as Bowmanville will be considered a mobility hub and a collection point for those who live in Lindsay, Port Hope, Cobourg, Clarington, and Peterborough just as Milton does. So what is your argument?? Both will serve the exact same purpose.
Traffic must be heavy enough going into Toronto from those areas served by the Bowmanville GO extension or is the Ontario Government wasting Billions on a 407 extension and a north/south 407 leg between the 401 and 407 in Courtice???
The whole purpose of public transit is to reduce the automobile traffic congestion especially into the Toronto core. If new highways into Toronto from Clarington are being built, I might suggest a need for greater public transit from Clarington into Toronto!!!!
LikeLike
Transit is found along expressway corridors because an oversized ROW is available cheaply. It strikes me though as one of the least desirable places to put transit, since travel time (by road) is at its best at these locations, and therefore transit at the least advantage.
Steve: Just for the record, I never said that we should put transit in the 401, only that the 401 (and other east-west routes) serve a demand that will be very hard to shift to transit.
If you’ve ever lived in a city with a high transit share in its core, you often find that congestion exists in lower density areas but abates in the denser downtown. Downtown Toronto’s congestion, given its sufficient density and only partially restricted geography, indicates to me that a much larger transit share is achievable there.
Ideally roads are priced at the level which maximizes throughput, which is to say that enough trips are discouraged to prevent congestion. Of course, without road pricing the cost is limited to travel time, and that is seldom enough to prevent congestion (and throughput drops).
This is Steve’s Catch-22. However, based on StatsCan’s commuting share data, note that Barrie, Kitchener and Oshawa are not bedroom communities, but satellite cities. A rail line to these cities at this distance tends to reduce inter-city auto travel more than any increase auto travel induced within a satellite city.
In the middle is more tricky. Aurora and Pickering are bedroom communities, and we would have less auto dependence if in some counter-factual world, they had remained tiny urban towns and their latter arrivals had instead made their home in denser neighbourhoods in the core of Toronto. The problem is that the invention of the automobile and post war wealth made this unlikely. Toronto has a relatively small freeway network, yet 30 years ago the DVP made Aurora the same trip time to downtown Toronto as Leaside.
I agree that this is an issue. But keep in mind that you’re talking about the problems of a city of 15M+ people, who will have more wealth and density to afford and justify doubling their tracks.
LikeLike
I might suggest that the cost of a Bowmanville GO train extension would be worth it in the long run and not a “quick win” as Metrolinx forecasts that the Lakeshore East line growth (59% from 2011 -2031) will outpace the Lakeshore West line and become the largest level of ridership on the GO Train network. Please read page 59 of this document.
Again, if the Ontario Liberal government sees a need to spend BILLIONS to build a new east/west highway into Toronto from Clarington and that Metrolinx forecasts a 59% growth on the Lakeshore East Line to become the largest serving ridership on the GO network, in my opinion, a GO train extension into Bowmanville is well worth it.
I don’t see congestion easing into the Toronto core with a 3 stop Scarborough Subway and I believe looking and planning for the future will prevent the dire circumstances of traffic congestion especially in the Toronto area that we see ourselves in today. Mike Harris cancelling the Eglinton Subway back in 1990’s had little forethought of the ramifications of their actions that we are all feeling today. Why must we keep making the same mistakes and not be planning ahead???
LikeLike
The concern I would have with placing Barrie, Milton or Bowmanville fast frequent service, is that I think they will attract rapid additional growth. Milton‘s sign I would note now says 100,000: this centre has grown leaps and bounds.
While Milton can claim to be the fastest growing community and says it expects to be 228k by 2031, I would say this is really excessively quick growth, that will make worse all of the 401 corridor issues. Some of this is driven by rail access, and the easy relatively quick access to Union (1 hour trip 9 morning trains, 9 evening). To what degree is Milton’s expected explosion being aided by GO, and is this the nature of growth that we desire.
I would note there are only 7 trains from Unionville and 5 from Richmond Hill – which makes missing a train at Richmond Hill a disaster, but at Milton a mere inconvenience. I would prefer that we intensify service to Richmond Hill service, and maker sure that there is a top class transit feeder structure to that point.
While I agree the issue is not Barrie itself – but inducing Milton type growth in the points between Toronto and Barrie, and this overloading a network, quickly. I think in terms of Bradford having a Milton type population explosion, and it being heavily Toronto bound. The notion of the city being 15 million prior to the issue arising, depends heavily on the orientation of the growth. Also a double tracked GO electrified track with automatic train control with GO only trains – would still be capped out at something like 12 trains per hour assuming that they could actually had station space to run to. This is a hard thing to imagine, but I think there is a great deal to be said, for extending RER.
The problem of course, is that resolving the issue, using means other than road pricing (i.e. tolls or congestion charges), encourages further highly disbursed growth. While I suspect that there are a moderate number of 401 trips from say Scarborough to NYCC or the airport area, or Mississauga to the STC, NYCC. The problem of course would still be concentrating these trips enough from the origin point, to a cross town rapid transit service, and making this service fast enough to be competitive, while still accessible enough to be desirable.
This is certainly true, until the congestion “price” reaches the point where the transit service in a ROW is going rapidly streaming past the cars. This then constitutes an advertisement for transit, until it actually has a real impact on traffic – when those in the transit vehicle can also see that traffic is moving. Also, while the ROW may be cheap, such a transit line requires some very expensive stations/connections with the balance of transit.
I would generally agree that this is one of the least desirable places to put transit, and would only serve the much longer distance trips, acting in effect to link the other rapid transit lines across the region at point much further north.
LikeLike
I believe that Toronto’s core bound share is actually fairly high – about 75%. This is not to say it could not be higher, but … Also transit usage in and around the core & downtown, is fairly good, however, I would agree that a higher share could be achieved, if there was space on services like the King car, and the Queen car ran more consistently. However, the shoulder areas really need better service in order to get the share any higher.
Toronto really suffers as a whole from the issue of non core destinations being scattered like bird short across the region. If there were fewer more sizable concentrations – say NYCC and STC were twice their size and the airport area was not so dispersed (and was better served by local transit), a regional share for transit could be notably higher.
Creating better linkage to the airport employment area does not appear to be as high a priority as I believe it should be, and generally I think that transit needs to move to being part of city planning, being used to reinforce what would be anyway, and creating density in such a way as transit will be competitive, if not preeminent.
LikeLike
If you think missing 1 of 5 trains is bad, imagine when there were only 2! If there was a silver lining, nearby B and C buses ran pretty frequently to Finch.
At this point, my mischievous side must point out that Richmond Hill also lies between Toronto and Barrie. Since Bradford is out in your books, I’m hoping your line isn’t drawn between Aurora and Newmarket. More seriously, I sadly noticed that when travelling up Yonge, there are really no gaps any more between Toronto and Bradford, where once each community was more clearly identifiable All that can be said is that RH, Aurora, Newmarket and Bradford have urban cores, while Oak Ridges and EG do not.
Moving back up to the macro level, what we’re discussing here is: the amount of travel induced by building transit, and thereby inducing growth further away from Toronto’s core, and in more auto-dependent communities.
I don’t think you’re wrong about this, but there are exceptions and counter-arguments. My summary would be:
1) Newmarket is further away but less car-dependent than Richmond Hill.
2) The amount of induced travel must be small overall, since GO’s share is already small overall in these communities. That is, they are dominated by auto commuting, even for Toronto-bound commuters.
3) Within GO’s customers, I doubt that a high share is induced.
4) Even where GO induces people to move to a more distant suburb, frequently this reduces auto dependence. One of the major causes of moving to suburbs is for one spouse to be closer to work. GO allows the household to move there, keeping the Toronto worker out of a car, and reducing car commuting for the suburban worker. (On the other hand, sometimes employers are induced to relocate because of GO’s availability, but then they do so around stations.)
Given the above, I think GO is likely to reduce auto use by shifting modes more than it induces auto dependence. But I do not have studies to back this up, and am prepared to be wrong.
LikeLike
Now we are getting to the crux of the matter. Why do people travel? What is transit for? I would break it down into three categories: economic, visitation, and recreation. While thinking about this I came up with an interesting idea. Even though our most frequent trips are job related, our purchasing events are one underlooked thing that motivates people to cars or transit. If we had store-to-door delivery for milk and eggs, there would be one more tie to the car severed.
I would introduce pricing in a politically palatable way (especially one that conforms to human nature). Step One, is to repeal the gas tax (it is too visible and regular) and hike the vehicle registration fee to be cost neutral. Step Two, convert Vehicle Registration Fee into a distance based system (based on vehicle weight). Step Three, implement automatic 5% annual increases to car tag prices, so that it becomes standard.
I’ll use England as my comparison (130K km² vs 140K km² for Southn Ontario) because I’m familiar with it, it has several significant regional populations, and 56M people in total. For the roads, they use active management to reduce the impact of congestion. Having everyone drive at 15kph on the worst sections of 401 would actually speed things up during rush hour. For transit, they are going for higher speed regional service to increase system capacity. We actually have a pretty good surface transport system, we are just horrible at managing it.
Please tell me what you found sarcastic or belittling, because that is not my intention. Your provided report says:
The fact is that the widened of Bloor Street was already need and planned, so it’s not a cost to add onto a parking structure, as you implied. I had asked the question of how close to capacity Bloor Street was, and this tells me it was already expected to exceed demand due to natural growth and so needed widening anyway.
The difference is one of quantity and distance, the cities I named have a combined population of 567K, while your list of towns equals the population of Kitchener. I didn’t name any of the smaller communities within the same range. You included Clarington as the population of your center as counted it again in the list of collection points.
Guelph, 122K, 46km
Cambridge, 127K, 50km
Kitchener, 219K, 60km
Waterloo, 99K, 64km
Lindsay, 20K, 77km
Port Hope, 16K, 52km
Cobourg, 19K, 63km
Clarington, 85K, 28km
Peterborough, 79K, 84km
My point is that there was a different set of circumstances when the Milton line opened and there is a better business case for expanding west than east. I am in favour of expansion in all directions, but with limited funds, some projects must be delayed at the cost of others. Unfortunately, the Bowmanville Extension was too far down the list to get funded.
I haven’t stayed up to date on the traffic side of transportation, but in general expanding transit will only ever capture a small share of road demand. It’s not a case that we can just build new GO lines and not build highways, we need to do both.
You might suggest that, but the business case as seen in 2008 does not support that suggestion. The growth of Lakeshore East undercuts your suggestion that RER level improvements are a waste of money without the Bowmanville Extension. In addition, this says nothing about how much new ridership and shorter car trips would be created by the Bowmanville Extension.
You are completely entitled to that opinion, but the facts as currently available in published reports do not support that opinion.
On this site there tend to be two groups of people: those that support/reject a project irrationally based on feelings and opinions and those that support/reject a project based on their particular set of parameters. There is no possibility of consensus with the first group, but the second will listen to alternative presentations and at the very least admit when a valid point is made, even if they don’t support the conclusions. I would say very few, if any, individuals in the second group support the Scarborough Subway Extension. However bad the Scarborough Subway Extension is though, it doesn’t impact on the facts of the Bowmanville Extension. Even if the Vaughan Subway Extension and Scarborough Subway Extension were not built, there are still many unfunded projects with a better net-present-value than the Bowmanville Extension.
Because we listen with our hearts and not our minds too often. You’re complaining about bad planning, while also complaining about being the victim of good planning. We are tied to all our historical baggage and we can only struggle to do the best we can in the areas that are not rigid with problems.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good point. Well put.
LikeLike
I would argue from a pure behaviour modification perspective, the gas tax is actually better, in that it has an effect more immediately. Also people are likely to try to evade the registration cost by fiddling with their cars, or lying on their forms or both. It would appear behaviorally the delay in paying for something has a substantial impact on how people react to the expense. This is why no money down is so effective, they actually make a great deal of money on people who later will suffer through paying substantial interest because they would not deal with a problem that they had pushed off. I would argue that you are likely right – it would be easier politically to push the cost into registration, however, it does little to push people in terms of time of journey (I drive the same number of kms crossing Toronto at 3 in the morning) and does little to deal with the issue of exactly where those kms are driven. The most effective rationing would be an honest to goodness toll on the busiest highway, that actually varied by time of day and day week to respond to the level of cost that driver was imposing on others.
The point in my mind is to try and convert people to transit from auto. To the extent that people are travelling to well served areas from somewhere that transit can be reasonably accessed, I think we have some hope. I would rather intensify transit and GO – RER close to Toronto first, and hope (perhaps vainly) to create density. The advent of 407 BRT actually gives me some vague hope for the area. The problem in my mind is that it appears that most development – regardless of initial intent – seems to start as car centric, and because of the resultant parking lots, and lack of space to run truly superlative transit, gets stuck that way. However, as I said, your note that their is no breaks really between the communities is absolutely the problem, in that Toronto, has in effect just sprawled out that far. I would rather see a line of density along the new rapid transit routes, where nearby transit/walking oriented business and higher density housing would grow, rather than just extending the range of car oriented development with drive and park oriented GO services.
LikeLike
P.S – To the Matthew Philips portion of my last comment – of course an honest to goodness real toll on the 401 especially one highest at peak, would also be the surest form of GTA regional suicide for the party that brought it in.
LikeLike
Fiddling with odometers hasn’t been widely successful for a while, and VRT doesn’t increase the incentive much relative to vehicle depreciation. Lying on license plate forms isn’t terribly common either, because in Ontario it invalidates one’s auto insurance. (Advertizing this fact would be a helpful deterrent). Incentive to lie about one’s municipality would also be low, since VRT rates wouldn’t vary much between municipalities. I’m aware that there are always people driving around without licenses, stickers and insurance, but they are not a large proportion overall.
Fuel taxes for roads are going to become increasingly less of a proxy for road use. Divergent ICE designs, hybrids, diesels and EVs are creating too much diversity for this to work much longer.
Fuel taxes as a Pigouvian carbon tax on the other hand, has merit.
Road pricing is best of all, but impractical to implement everywhere without destroying anonymous travel.
LikeLike
I don’t like partial tolling, especially on through routes. The people that work and live along the 407 definitely have a valid beef IMO. Either toll all provincial and county highways, or don’t.
If we toll just the Toronto or GTA section of the 401, we most highly penalize the very traffic we most want the 401 to serve: traffic without an origin or destination in Toronto. There are ways to prevent this, but we would never see them in reality.
LikeLike
Yes, but creating a sufficient incentive – will bring the inventiveness out. The important part to note however, is that people do not seem to worry much about depreciation when they drive, while they worry quite a lot more about fuel, even though they are actually very similar sized costs, the fuel cost is however, now.
This would depend on how it is done, and the same could be said for instance of the Presto Card – especially where there is tap off. If there were simply old fashioned – capacity restricting toll booths, well no issue other than the line ups (which would be substantial at peak). Also I do not think the idea of road tolling would be required everywhere, although a toll high enough to be effective on the 401 would likely have interesting (negative connotation) impact on parallel roads. A surtax on parking in some areas, might actually have a similar effect, as long as it was paid for by the road user, not the employer.
LikeLike
I know for many, they plan their trips currently to go through Toronto off peak. The tax of having to spend the extra time to get through Toronto is enough to induce many to time their trips, and in some cases time their trips and pay the toll on the 407.
The problem with any blunt disincentive, is that there unforeseen and /or undesirable second order effects. The idea of a parking tax, which I suggested above, would have a second order effect of making it less attractive to work in areas that were subject to said tax (this likely areas reasonably served by transit), and raise the cost of doing business of doing business there. I really think the big thing with raising the vehicle registration tax, is that it would make a larger pool of funds available – as long as we sustain a tight focus on using them to improve transit, you are changing the relative incentives.
Also Matthew – your point with regards to also building roads, in an environment like Toronto, this can induce exactly the type of development we do not want, and be rapidly swamped with new traffic. Some may be required, but need to be very careful.
The goal needs to be to improve transit enough that we increase the modal split systematically across the region, where a Toronto wide goal of 40+% would be reasonable, along with a goal of trying to ensure that 80% of new growth was taking place in already developed areas, and a large portion of that within inner 905 and 416. Basically take the growth wherever possible in areas served by transit, and the equivalent of all new trips to be taken up by transit (some clearly would be redirection of existing trips).
I do not have an issue with extending transit to Guelph when we are realistically talking about 1 person working in Guelph or KW and the other Toronto, but most of the growth in Guelph has been in the south end (closest part to Toronto/Mississauga), and I suspect where the choice of location was based on Toronto centric considerations, and the second job if local was opportunistic (ie I live here, let me see if I can find a job close by). I could be wrong, but growth in Guelph has been mostly towards the 401, and the north end is still largely where it was 20 years ago.
LikeLike
Fortunately, implementation in other jurisdictions does not bear this out – odometer fraud has not risen appreciably when VRTs have been introduced.
LikeLike
No kidding. Toronto traffic determines whether it is faster to go through the Soo or Sarnia to get to Chicago from Ottawa. Montreal though is king in Canada – you couldn’t avoid it until the A-30 was recently completed, and it could affect departure time from Halifax.
This is just network effects. According to StatsCan, less than 10% of Guelph commuters work in the GTA. Being near major transportation facilities like the 401 however has obvious, significant benefits, and so this is where the City of Guelph has identified lands for development in its official plans. Meanwhile, the north has some geographical and ecological constraints.
LikeLike
Yes there is the effect of the fact that people are also heading towards Kitchener / Cambridge, which is quite evident when you drive through – heading west when you clear the highway 8 exit the delays usually clear, and traffic drops dramatically just west of Kitchener. There is also the impact of the industrial area at the south end of Guelph near the Hanlon which has grown notably. However, even 10% of overall is substantial. Years ago few had either member of a working household working in the GTA, so 10% would be substantial, as it would mean 15% of households, and a much larger portion of newer residents – likely 25% or more – that is a fair chunk of that growth all things considered – not a Milton like impact but still meaningful. Some will also be the relocation concentration of Ministry of Ag near the University and growth in the University as well, for all of which GO is good as it will reduce congestion and road trips that would otherwise be Toronto based or Toronto centric.
LikeLike
You are correct, that separating cause and effect greatly diminishes the learning correlation. However, a gas tax has other drawbacks: user objection due to the regularity and visibility, discouraging governments from pushing higher fuel efficiency standards as it provides diminishing returns with greener cars, and there is a positive correlation between higher fuel efficiency and miles driven.
I would say that it falls under the same conditions as your car insurance. If fraud is detected then everything is invalid. You could also tie it to oil changes, so that it’s not a once yearly number. Basically, make the penalties for fraud sufficient that it wouldn’t be worth the risk of getting caught (just like most people now cap their 401 speeds at 149kph). If it’s a $50,000 fine, loss of vehicle, and a 5-year driving ban, I doubt a significant amount of people would risk it.
Effective, but not efficient. The major problems with tolling are capital infrastructure costs and cost transparency. It’d be interesting to see the cost comparison of just having a GPS for every car (if you can buy a GPS tag for a dog for $20, then you could do Ontario’s car’s for $200M). Of course, it’s the back-end processing that really adds to the cost of the system over the long-term.
Steve: I find it fascinating that voters will acquiesce to all sorts of invasive procedures related to “security”, but will fight tooth and nail against tracking as an invasion of privacy. As you comment below, this is really a lost battle as other devices track your movements.
Converting to walking is even better. The main issue is that travel demand continues to grow, and while transit is making a larger share of the pie, total road usage is still going up.
Anonymity is both over estimated and over valued. There have been a few studies recently where location data was reconstructed from battery usage data with 90% accuracy (it was a proof of concept investigation). Google Maps and Bing track your times and locations. [A link to Google Maps here has been deleted because it requires a Google logon which some people on this planet do not have nor want.]
Samsung Televisions (and others) can record video and audio of their field of view. Samsung T&C states:
It’s been leaked that the NSA has a list of keywords to trawl this type of data based on key phrases. So basically, if you have a SmartDevice or are in sight/hearing of anyone with a SmartDevice, you have no real anonymity.
I think Cambridge and KW are also a big draw. Highway 7 between Kitchener and Guelph as been a rush-hour nightmare for long enough that Highway 24 is a major alternative.
LikeLike
The other question that I think needs to be asked is – how can we build services to make better use of GO – that is not core bound or oriented? Can the Hurontario LRT be made to serve trips from say Kitchener to Mississauga Town Centre, or even Oakville. Would it be feasible to build a number of BRT or LRT to link heavy rail lines at points well beyond the core, to support a wider use of rail to support more of the city, and create better 2 way use, and use of some of the train for outer portion only miles ie use the seats twice on train bound for Union. Services to link the Stouffville line with NYCC, Lakeshore to the 401/Mississauga Road office concentration, etc. How much extra ridership could be generated that way, making transit a practical alternative to driving by filling in a little more of the web and using GO as a sort of anchor?
LikeLike
I believe the figure I saw from the 2011 census is 6% of households. The figure has been dropping since 2001, so I would think newer households are less than 6%. The southern growth just makes sense from a local and network perspective, and does not require any GTA commuting to explain.
LikeLike
I am one of the evil people that uses Google, TomTom etc data to track everyone’s movement through cities like Toronto, what they buy every day, what websites they visit, etc. Ironically, I don’t carry a smartphone. If there is some good news, it is that reliable reconstruction remains difficult, and impossible if a target so chooses. Identifying 3rd parties at distance is actually getting harder with the latest smartphones and OS revisions, not easier.
Technology and implementers can evolve to close these holes, and likely will, if unrestrained. Our society will be unrecognizable or even untenable if governments do not start to set boundaries for everyone, and abide by them.
In the case of travel, what’s important is that we at least make anonymity a low-barrier option, even if few opt for it. If we lose the ability to be move anonymously, to have any privacy, we will have undone the chief social benefit of cities, a crucial component of liberal societies. What’s at stake is, well, everything. At least collectively, anonymity cannot be over valued.
LikeLike
Yes I would agree that converting to walking is better still, and a large part of that is neighborhood design. When I lived in a neighborhood like my mother’s or brother’s I walked all the time. Work took me away from such a neighborhood (sadly) and essentially I am hard pressed to do anything without at least a bike. The requirement in many of the 905 and even outer 416 to have large amounts of parking for fights against denser design and walkable access. Also transit has grown in the last few years (post Miller) despite what appears to be the opposite of a ridership growth strategy.
Steve: Careful. The growth is largely in the off peak where capacity is available. Peak growth is constrained.
I would argue that Queens Park needs to insist that all municipalities reduce the amount of required parking in all areas within the Greenbelt, and especially in areas that would designated as high frequency transit served. These would need to include any areas that the municipality wanted as primary commercial space. The next big thing would be then to implement a region wide ridership growth strategy, that included transit integration with GO and frequent transit service from GO services to the commercial centers in the municipality.
The travel demand is increasing for a couple of reasons, clearly population growth, and the dominance dual income families with increasingly split work locations, but also neighborhood design, with most new development in the 905 being extremely car centric. Pushing for local centers with walkable retail, mixed into higher density neighborhoods including a mix of fully detached, semi detached, mid rise, and townhomes, on narrower streets and close to transit would change this. Total road usage had been going up at a faster rate than anything else in part due to zoning and density choices, providing shared space in small local parks instead of huge lawns could go a long ways to providing for family space while still not eating up the volumes of land, and thus requiring extensive auto use. We need to change the model including parking requirements in order to change the mode mix. This cannot just be something looked at for the shoulder areas of downtown.
LikeLike
There will always be recognizable elements in our society, but I would argue that we live in a materially different society than 25 years ago (I pick this date because it’s when my family first got a car phone and my first year learning computer programming). Where we will be in another 25 years is impossible to say, but as more things become networked there will be few areas that provide complete anonymity. Basically, you have three choices to embrace the change, find some middle ground, or reject modern technology.
I agree that any choice should be a low-barrier one. I disagree that it would actually make someone anonymous. Basically, all you can choose is the level of accuracy and detail.
I would argue that it is the freedom of choice, not the freedom from observation, that is the principle benefit of cities. I think this will be a boomerang effect. While a different data set, the UK has 20% of the world’s CCTV and an average Londoner is captured on 300 different cameras daily. Of course, nothing is done with this mountain of data until something happens, but then police can backtrack criminals and locate witnesses. From the transportation side of things, speeding tickets can be issued automatically based on point locations or average velocity.
My position is less anonymity, but more privacy and transparency to what is known about you and by whom, and much more oversight into who and how that information can be used, and strong consequences for abuse.
A century ago, people worried about answering the telephone while not dressed properly. Our social values can easily change given enough time. The benefits/drawbacks of anonymity is based around a core lack of concern about what others will think of your actions. I think we will shift to a model where we are unconcerned about being culled from the herd to be scrutinized so long as we don’t do anything to initiate it.
In tracking transit data, you can separate the user and the actions. You don’t need to know individual travel patterns as much as the overall whole of what happens.
LikeLike
CCTV footage is cheaply available in bulk by aggregators, and routinely scanned for commercial use in its entirety, not only when certain triggers occur. London’s CCTV density is so great, and aggregators so plentiful, that we can identify and track people’s entire day with it, even when they don’t carry a cell phone. More recently we can reasonably guess what their eyes are focusing on.
There is freedom of choice outside of cities, but seldom is there freedom of observation. If you read about the development of cities, much of the literature identifies the anonymity they introduced as the catalyst for social change through diminishing chilling effects, allowing greater diversity, religious freedom and even increased trade.
Without providing for anonymity, the state holds all the cards, and abuse will eventually be total, consequences nil. The panopticon makes extinguishing a liberal society easy and therefore much more likely, and its re-establishment nearly impossible.
This is a huge challenge, and one so far we seem unable – even unwilling – to surmount. It begins with not tolerating the state to collect, collate or use identifiable information on everyone’s travel patterns.
Herbert’s Bureau of Sabotage seems less plausible and more desirable with each passing year.
LikeLike
Steve your point with regards to ridership growth being off peak is basically reinforcing my basic point that transit share could and should be growing faster. The capacity constraint issue also means there is less reason to choose transit if you need to travel on peak. How much mode selection change would be induced with a substantial capacity increase improved service and decreased crowding? There are clearly limits today today to delayed/under/misplaced investment. How much more ridership in a system not capacity constrained? Also with walkable retail and transit access? I think this is a deliberate planning choice.
Ford moved Toronto in the exact opposite direction.
LikeLike
Firstly, that would be included in my “something happens” category. An advertiser purchases data for commercial use. Secondly, when you say identify, do you mean recognized as a consistent individual or matched to a specific identity (as a side note, I wonder what such systems think of twins)?
This depends on your definitions. When you look at the extremist fringe of society, these individuals/groups tend to prefer rural to urban due to the ability to control outside observation.
Anonymity is a scale, not a binary state. The state already holds all the cards and it is only strong institutions that balance that threat. The level of abuse and consequences is tied to the strength of oversight, not the level of observation.
So it’s OK to monitor all your phone calls, SMS, and emails, but not where you go? To me the whole thing boils down to risk versus reward. There are some extreme risks, such as the extinction of liberal society, but with a low likelihood. The reward of less time spent in traffic is much more visceral and likely. The issue is where is the balancing point.
LikeLike
It’s not an event. An operator purchases the continuous streams, and processes it all. As for identify, I mean matched to a specific identity. Twins have readily distinguishable gaits at a young age.
Anonymity is neither. Identity lies on a scale, but the scale is discontinuous, with anonymity discretely lying beyond.
The liberal state only holds a limited set of cards. A state that holds all the cards is no longer a liberal one.
I would agree, except that you cannot have abuse of observation without observation. Since the strength of oversight will inevitably fail, the only remedy is to go without observation in some fashion. One problem with my argument is that technology has made inescapable, pervasive observation economically feasible, and so the only way to limit observation is through strong institutions. Nonetheless, limiting observation is better than trying to (only) eliminate abuse of observation. The latter is closing the barn door after the horses have bolted.
Of course not. It is not OK to monitor any of those without permission freely given. Not collecting travel data is the beginning, not the end.
Risk is the wrong paradigm for extremities in any domain. That leads to picking up nickels in front of the steamroller. In this case, the extinction of liberal society is not a likelihood, but a certain eventuality. We are the proof: it happened quite rapidly. We no longer live in a liberal society, but a surveillance society.
It isn’t much of a reward to balance, is it? The idea of balancing rewards against abridging or snuffing out liberal society is a little absurd in practice. Having a liberal society is a higher category in the hierarchy of needs. Perhaps only only water, food, air and procreation are above it.
LikeLike
I have to disagree. You are never absolutely anonymous, except when you are completely isolated from life and civilization. By definition, anonymity and identity are two sides of a coin. The more of one that is available, the less of the other. If true anonymity were possible, we’d have a much more serious crime problem.
This is a circular definition. Just look at the powers of CSAS, NSA, MI6/SIS, etc. With international cooperation, what limited domestic citizen protections exist can easily be circumvented.
Just like you can’t have drunk drivers without cars. The issue is that the apparent benefit to society to have cars outweighs the harm caused by them. Any use of electronics is susceptible to observation, and limiting observations from one source is not going to impact every other source. Just like our overspending on fighting terrorism, it’s a battle that cannot be won, and the potential to outspend the returns are great.
I believe we are similar in outlook, if not terminology. I think that limiting observation is impractical, but limiting the use of the observation is achievable. When one route is closed, people will find another to approximate there desired goal.
The issue is that all of this is on the table. Bill C-51 allows for any action not violating existing laws or rights/freedoms to be undertaken without review and actions that would do so to be undertaken with a warrant. Our Privacy Acts have gaping loopholes, such that CSAS has virtually no limitations.
I would pick up nickles in front of a steamroller given it was sufficiently slow and far away. Risk is the paradigm for every extremity. How safe do you build a building? Sufficient to withstand a 5.0 earthquake? 8.0? 9.5?
We have had state surveillance for at least 150 years, it’s just a question of ease and extent. I would also say that liberal and surveillance societies are independent scales. You can have high-liberal societies at either end of the surveillance scale (USA/UK to Holy See/Monaco) and you can have low-liberal societies at either end (Saudi Arabia/Cuba to Mongolia).
From my experience in third-world and communistic countries, I’ll have to disagree. A liberal society is desirable. It is easier to exist in a liberal society, but not necessary for happiness and wellbeing. I disagree as well about the segregation of needs into a discontinuous hierarchy. Every need has three critical points: an absolute minimum, a desired minimum, and a too-much tipping point. If you take the hierarchical view, possibly stability/safety is categorically higher, which is why we are willing to accept the infringement of the state in exchange for a perceived increase in stability/safety.
LikeLike
We don’t agree on the definition of identity and anonymity, I don’t agree that they are zero sum, but discrete from one another. I hold that anonymity is possible without isolation, through the unknowable and the action of unknown unknowns.
It’s not a tautology, I made a corollary statement for clarity. By definition, liberal states are limited ones, not all powerful.
The ascendency of CSIS, NSA, MI6 and their accompanying secret courts precludes the liberal state. Has technology sealed the demise of the liberal state? Maybe. But since they could not avoid abuse – or couldn’t even fathom that certain technology was simply anathema to the liberal state – these liberal states have amply demonstrated that abuse will be the norm.
I’m not arguing against trade-offs in general. There are some things that don’t have valid trade-offs, thinking again about hierarchy of needs. The need for a free society and a liberal state is of a higher order than any benefits than can be derived from total surveillance; they are not comparable.
A more concrete example is torture. A liberal state does not curb abuse of torture, it grants freedom from torture, the first positive freedom. This is because torture is the total abnegation of self. Proponents of torture can argue that torture has benefits, but the argument is moot, because there is no risk-benefit analysis to be done. There is only a certainty of the liberal state losing its soul.
Today we monitor everyone’s conversations, can identify everyone and in cities like London, know where they are at all times, while predicting fairly accurately in others. We can tell what people are looking at most of the time, and are starting to accurately predict what they are *thinking*. This is the total abnegation of self, regardless of whether this power is abused.
It was a reference to AIG during the GFC. You don’t get to know where the steamroller is or how fast it is going. It’s existence is an unknown unknown. You may be convinced it doesn’t exist, because it’s never been seen before. The steamroller is a black swan. Risk is not the paradigm of black swans, the most extreme of extremities.
The term ‘surveillance society’ refers to pervasive, unavoidable surveillance, not surveillance of any kind or completeness.
Freedom from surveillance is a necessary but not sufficient condition of a liberal state. Therefore, illiberal states need not be surveillance states, but surveillance states are not liberal. The Five Eyes are no longer liberal societies.
What you write is logically true to some extent but not borne out by studies of human psychology, which works on a hierarchy of needs. Happiness and wellbeing have no bearing when you can’t breathe.
—-
I want to leave off by saying that I have enjoyed our conversation. Steve has generously allowed us to stray from the topic, but I am going to try to resist replying to your next post. You have the last word.
Cheers.
Steve: You’re welcome. It will give me less work to edit and format long comments!
LikeLike
As this is my last post on the topic, I’m going to wrap-up and stray a bit more. Thank-you Steve for your forbearance.
I think half this discussion is about finding common ground within terminology. Total power is not diminished within a liberal state, it is just more evenly divided amongst the participants.
I believe the underlying problem is that there still exists a two-tiered system of rights, protections, and freedoms: citizens and foreigners. Without a strong, unified global system, there will always be strong motivation by nation states to infringe on the lower tier. The UN is a working start, but it will probably be a few centuries before there is both equal protection for all and equal choice for all. I see three general outcomes: a Big Brother global state, a revolt against the assumptions of our current system, or a gradual decline from the current state.
This is a very modern stance, and I’m not sure that it’s ever been completely filled. I’m against torture, not for any nebulous feelings, but because it’s a short-sighted tactic. The consequences of practicing torture outweigh any strategic advantage gained from such information (except in such an extreme case as an imamate [??] nuclear/biological war that would eradicate human life). As you can probably tell, I’m a moral relativist.
If the steamroller is an unknown unknown, then I will continue to pick up my nickels, because to do otherwise is a path of complete inaction. The best possible path is to have a flexible system with maximum resiliency. If the steamroller is a known unknown, then at least specific preventative actions can be taken, which while making the nickel-picking more costly will provide a measure of protection.
By definition, this is correct, but equally we cannot know how, if at all, our actions impact that possibility. Maybe the sun exploded 8 minutes ago, and we are all as good as dead. Any action can be justified in response to an unknown unknown. We can only act as well as possible within our scope of knowledge.
Just to clarify, I wasn’t saying that that some needs have a higher priority, only that they are all relative. I would argue breathing is integral for your well being, but equally, I can hold my breath to swim underwater for either pleasure or safety. I don’t argue with the psychology study results, only the framework in which they are placed. My main counter to the status quo is suicide: my ability to breathe has no bearing when my happiness and well being are sufficiently low that I make the conscious choice to end it all. In the moment, my choice seems like the rational one as the potential for future suffering outweighs the potential for future happiness. An unknown unknown might skew the future outcomes, which is the power of hope and despair. In such a state, it is possible to preserve in the dual-state, but as the scales tip, one of the two solutions must be realised.
LikeLike