The SmartTrack scheme was born of an election campaign, but it was John Tory’s signature project, one he is loathe to relinquish despite its shortcomings.
What’s that you say? I am just being one of those “downers” who cannot see our manifest destiny? What’s that line about patriotism and scoundrels?
At the recent Executive Committee meeting, Tory actually had the gall to say that during the campaign, he didn’t have access to a squad of experts and had to make do with the people he had. Funny that. This is the crowd that estimated construction costs on the back of an envelope, who “surveyed” the line using out of date Google images, who ignored basics of railway engineering and capacity planning to make outrageous claims for their scheme.
When the dust settled and John Tory became Mayor Tory, I thought, ok, he will adapt his plan. Indeed, it didn’t take long for a reversal on TTC bus service and the recognition that Rob Ford had stripped the cupboard bare and then started to burn the lumber at the TTC. A campaign attack on Olivia Chow’s (far too meagre) bus plan changed into championing the restoration of TTC service to the days of the “Ridership Growth Strategy” and beyond. Good on the Mayor, I thought, he can actually change his mind.
SmartTrack is another matter, and what Tory, what Toronto desperately needs is a fresh look at what GO, SmartTrack and the TTC could be if only the fiefdoms and the pettiness of clinging to individual schemes could be unlocked. That would take some leadership. I wonder who has any?
Inevitably comments like this bring out the trolls who say “so what would YOU do” (that’s the polite version). Here’s my response as a scheme that bears at least as much importance as a way of looking at our transit network as the competing visions in the Mayor’s Office, Metrolinx, City Planning and the TTC.
First: Stop trying to make GO into two separate systems. It’s a mainline rail network and should be operated as one collection of lines. The idea that these tracks are something like lanes on the 401 where any bus company can just hop on and off with its own service is complete madness.
Second: Stop trying to keep GO as its own precious independent system immune from those pesky riders in Toronto and their desire for lower fares. We hear a lot about “integration” in the context of the 416/905 boundary, but the worst offender is GO itself with discriminatory short-haul fares and no co-fare with the TTC.
Third: Stop trying to pretend that the “subway in every pot” approach will actually build anything useful.
Fourth: Stop trying to make a new network “self sustaining” or a fare system a “zero sum game”. There is, nominally, $8-billion on the table for SmartTrack and billions more for RER and other transit schemes. Why is this spending a mark of investment in GTHA transit while any hint of new operating subsidies is rejected out of hand?
Here is what comes from these principles:
- GO/RER builds on its own network, but institutes a co-fare with the TTC on ALL branches, not just the two occupied by SmartTrack, and fixes its “distance based fares” so that they don’t discourage shorter trips.
- We hear a lot about “transit equity”, but I am mystified about why those who happen to live near or commute via two of GO’s branches should get a special deal of express travel with SmartTrack while those on other legs of the network (Lake Shore, Milton, Barrie, Richmond Hill) are stuck with the existing fares.
- The Scarborough Subway scheme reverts to the full LRT network in Scarborough including Sheppard East, Eglinton/Kingston/Morningside and the RT/LRT conversion and extension to Malvern.
- On Eglinton West, replace the western leg of SmartTrack with the Crosstown line extension that is already on the books. Stop trying to engineer a complex SmartTrack interchange with the Crosstown LRT at Mount Dennis.
- Abandon the scheme to reach the Airport Corporate Centre (MACC) by a roundabout heavy rail route through the airport lands.
- The idea that the MACC service has to go downtown is complete nonsense, let alone that it should be a through ride to Markham. If someone wants to get to MACC, an east-west route on Eglinton is likely at least as attractive as a trip from Union Station, and we have these things called “transfers” to existing rapid transit routes.
I have no idea what this would cost, and am not going to attempt an estimate, but my gut feeling is that we would have money left over from current plans ($8b for SmartTrack plus $3.6b for the SSE). A big problem is that we don’t even know what the current plans will cost or the upheaval they will entail, and I’m not going to try second or third guessing that mess.
There is no question that a GO-TTC co-fare will drive up demand on GO Transit. Fine. By how much? What sort of infrastructure – track, equipment, stations – is needed to absorb this? How does it compare to SmartTrack which itself will require massive upgrades in two corridors to reach its target frequent 5-minute service?
In Scarborough, if both the Stouffville and Lake Shore East corridors operate with a co-fare, what does this do for access at reasonable cost to the core area as an alternative to the SSE?
Reviewing this sort of proposal won’t be easy, and it will require a fundamental re-think of how the pieces of our transit puzzle fit together. But what we have today is a bundle of competing ideas that don’t fit together at all, politicians too full of their own ego to admit things might be changed, and staff too terrified to say that the emperors have no clothes.
GO/RER is a very good start but it should be more, not simply stop in a decade or so content with electrification and 15 minute headways. Queen’s Park has to get serious about funding transit, much more than they have to date, including both capital and operating (including fare restructuring) costs. GO needs heavy duty engineering reviews of just what our rail network is capable of handling.
SmartTrack is GO in disguise and should be merged into GO’s service plans. Sorry, Mayor Tory, but there won’t be any blue and green trains. As for your consultants and lobbyists, I am sure they can find work elsewhere.
For the LRT lines, I don’t care if we call them “Transit City”, I just want to see them built. Give Scarborough the three routes they were originally promised plus access to GO service on two corridors at a reasonable cost, and I suspect they will live without a subway extension.
There are “naysayers” to a scheme like this, of course, who will gripe that we will never see the whole plan built. Well, I choose to be optimistic despite the best effort of politicians and lobbyists to bring gridlock and despair to transit planning.
My bottom line is simple: give this idea a fair shake and tell everyone why it won’t work for solid technical, planning and financial reasons, not simply because you have a warehouse full of outdated campaign literature.
Postscript
Readers will have noticed that I did not mention the Downtown Relief Line here. It has a place in the mix too, but my concern was to throw all of the pieces of the GO/SmartTrack/SSE puzzle up in the air to see what might happen when they land. I am certainly not abandoning the DRL project, but it’s a bit further off than the timeframe for the projects discussed above.
Steve Munro 
Your single track sections lead to single platform terminal stations and are never going to see two trains in the station at the same time like many world class systems do. One of the Chicago airport stations has three platform but I can’t see the use of the third platform except for storing cars. It is very different operationally to have a 350 m long single “track or lane” section in the middle of a line than at the end. Now do you know of a real “world class state of the art 3P mass rapid transit jewel” that has a 350 m long single track section in the middle and operates true mass transit?
How can you call it “world class state of the art 3P mass rapid transit jewel” when it can only run 2 car trains as its platforms are only 50 m long and its trains are 40 m long, 2 cars of 20 m each. This will have a extremely limiting effect on capacity in the future. The short platform lengths and single track terminal stations make for cheaper construction but for extremely expensive retro fitting if capacity gets to 15,000 pph. Vancouver got taken by a 3P deal. Have to love SNV Lavalin.
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More than a million people live beyond the airport along the Kitchener line, and it won’t be long for it to be 2 million. Unlike UPX or a downtown-oriented GO spur or other modes, this is a configuration that serves them too, and so I expect there will be ridership. I bring it up because if we’re discussing fixing the mess of SmartTrack and UPX, then it is worth mentioning the configuration which is best in the long term, based on the experience of other cities.
I cannot say what the demand would be for a GO airport station, and I doubt a cost-benefit analysis would have it rise to any priority given Toronto’s sorry state any time soon.
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There’s no vision here, and none required. It’s just the next incremental step in BRT conversion to LRT. It’s not being built out in advance, it’s the penalty paid for building BRT 30+ years ago, and it means that the rest of the city’s backlog of projects has to be put on hold until after 2050.
The problem with Ottawa’s BRT network is that converting it to LRT incrementally means one or two decades when the system gets worse for a majority of trips before it gets better.
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Ross the portion I was referring to
This takes LRT over half way to Cumberland from core. Having LRT run to Orleans for Ottawa, would be like Toronto having continuous rapid transit route well into Pickering – nearly – Ajax. I think most in Toronto would be excited about an effective link with enough capacity simply from Mississauga Town Centre to Pickering Town Centre, and frankly that is basically what the mayor of Ottawa is suggesting. Should we already have it sure, but in a world where every body is playing catch up – actually building a link before the previous one is over capacity is visionary. Yes, to be truly visionary – it should likely go from Cumberland to Stittsville, and branch to Manotik, but well from the perspective of Toronto.
I will grant you that the core portion of the BRT was always an issue, and should have been addressed at the time, even with a proper BRT routing through core, and as something that could reasonably have been converted. However it really was only the core portion that was the issue, as they wanted to avoid a tunnel then. I would say however, that Toronto had massive capacity problems in subway in the late 1980s from a system developed long before that. So in your 30 years – Ottawa built and then fully used a system, and is building major capacity again, in a time Toronto has not moved, and has had an issue the entire time.
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With options that I’ve been thinking about, if it is felt to be less optimal for re-using an existing set of supports in a sensitive environmental zone for a two-way busway, why not think of only one-way bus traffic then, such as incoming in the morning, exiting in afternoon? Or, given the space of the existing Don Valley Parkway corridor, take some space from it for a lane of busway, and have it cross over up to the Thorncliffe Park area? (yes, a bigger-ticket thing).
The intent of thinking is to have an express route to the near-core from Thorncliffe Park area, and that would take away load/unloading issues in the corridor/valley, though yes, space is still needed somewheres.
If a streetcar route out to the Zoo isn’t so feasible, then what about ensuring Thorncliffe Park is given another option by largely tunnelling for a streetcar beyond Mount Pleasant to have a linkage, and a loop of some description within Thorncliffe Park. I’d urge buses, some of which could be turned on to Mount Pleasant, but maybe we could run buses and streetcars on the same parts of tunnelled RofW so as to not further overload Yonge.
In Scarborough itself, why not add in a Gatineau busway into the mix of options? The land is still theoretically publicly-owned; we need to start up another transit corridor as a relief, and this is a good-enough diagonal; and surface works are cheaper and faster done, and there’s a potential to have some real destinations reachable with it. I think it’s a standalone option, but we also need to improve linkages to the core, so that’s been part of my motivation for dreamings.
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I would make the argument that Malton GO could reasonably serve as an airport station, if the airport circulator simply ran just a little further. You could rename this station (as they have the airport) Pearson. Malton GO is only a couple of KM from the terminal, and only a 500 meters or so off airport property. Alternately move the GO station to Goreway – and have the circulator use the current UPX spur. However, I think a GO line, using the very expensive tracking, and the most direct route to Union makes a lot more sense than a very low capacity airport only mini train. A GO train every 15 in both directions, serves more use than a special one, going only downtown. Also if the airport circulator, also picked up the Renforth Gateway, and the Crosstown, actually got all the way there – as originally planned, airport transit would actually make sense. Get really ambitious and run Finch West LRT to Malton, and a Kipling LRT/BRT to Renforth Gateway, and Toronto Airport looks like a major transit hub. Also I think this would likely be less disruptive than moving the rail line.
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Exactly where does this tunnel go Hamish? If we are building a substantial tunnel from Thorncliffe Park, and not overloading Yonge, does that not take us towards the core? If we are doing that will that not attract load from the Crosstown, Don Mills North bus, as well as your Gatineau busway? If we are headed where most of the load is going anyway – to avoid sending it to Yonge, are we not headed to core? If so – this would be the route of a DRL, and well, if we are spending money for a tunnel it better intercept Danforth as well. I believe that you would find that if not overloaded and reasonably quick this would attract somewhere north of 15 k riders – which is why it should be subway.
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The rough thoughts for connecting the Thorncliffe Park to the St. Clair area do involve some heavier works of bridge/tunnelling to emerge at Mount Pleasant. If buses, they could turn to go down Mount Pleasant in a near-express service, and some of the thinking is to avoid the two existing and overloaded subways, as well as easing the transit pressures on the system from the Thorncliffe Park area, which may be significant. Maybe I don’t know how to interpret origin-destination data or find them if they exist, but judging from the current TTC route map which shows bus frequency, there’s a fair bit of transit usage from this relatively isolated area.
Toronto has been part of a group of cities tackling climate change, though I think we’re beyond being laggards. In scanning the C40 site, there’s a good section on BRTs and usages.
Reverting to the LRTs as planned and funded, and then adding in a Gatineau-only busway with faster links to the Main/Danforth connections would be a better and faster-done deal for all of us, moreso if we ensure incoming buses get to drive right into the GO connection then go back up to the Main Station. I think there are plans of maybe 30 years ago to draw upon for a starting point for improving connections here.
Steve: You make the mistake of conflating service level with source of demand much as subway boosters speak of, say, the Danforth subway while ignoring that much demand originates from feeders. The knot of routes through Thorncliffe Park is a direct result of geography — the absence of through north-south streets and the valleys that concentrate routes heading south to the Danforth line. Your scheme attempts to fill in the grid by replacing a very long missing chunk, but it is not clear that all of this capital expense really adds to the network.
All of this is a means to make the Gatineau BRT somehow work at its south end, and you still have not explained where a very frequent bus route will go when it gets downtown.
Certainly Thorncliffe Park is a major residential area and it could be more if its “north” side were redeveloped with something other than big box stores, but that speaks to a major stop on a rapid transit line, not a justification for a Gatineau BRT.
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My concern – would be if we actually did run those buses onto say Mt Pleasant, I am not convinced this would even work between St Clair and Bloor, but really get lost – once they are all dumped out on Jarvis. I am imagining 300 buses per hour – or 5 buses a minute running down Jarvis. I think this would mean chaos in the core, and imagine seeing buses stopped along the side of some street in the core 10 long – trying to negotiate in and out of traffic.
I also fail to see how this fixes issues for load at Yonge / Bloor, which if we are going to spend billions on a route, should be in the cards. If we are going to do extensive tunneling would it not make sense to reserve this for the area south of the near or beyond the south end of Don Mills, through core. I can see making this underground LRT, but even this begs the question of capacity – you could certainly accommodate the 300 buses per hour equivalent, but well any growth and you are pushing it.
Steve: OK. Enough with this thread already. Any more comments about a Gatineau/BRT/St. Clair connection will be deleted. If I have not made myself clear enough, I think it’s a really, really bad idea born of the same kind of planning that brought us John Tory’s Goggle-Map-Inspired Smart[sic]Track.
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But Steve, BRT is the answer to all our problems. If anyone wants to see what BRT is like when it gets dumped onto a 4 lane street just go to Sparks St. in Ottawa in the p.m. rush hour. It is basically a lane of parked buses and a lane of buses trying to park for 4 or 5 blocks. A closer example would be Yonge St. north of Finch but it is much wider. Eglinton Avenue East used to be bad before the Bloor Subway (sorry line 2) opened. I haven’t been on it in years and I won’t until Metrolinx is finished.
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I mistakenly said Spark St. Ottawa which is the pedestrian mall. I should have said Rideau St. BRTs are great in cities with very wide streets and low labour cost, neither of which we have in Toronto
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Alternately – Robert, they run at much lower capacity or in dedicated roadways, which we might still have – in the GTA. However, ideally they do not run in existing roadways – unless goofy wide, at high capacity. Even then – with high labor costs, the high capacity – needs to be required for a short interval – so that the BRT can drop back to something more reasonable – like a bus every signal cycle. However a bus every 3 minutes, does not make massive capacity.
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Here is a question for anyone who can answer: Why are there no Smarttrack stations planned between Danforth and Scarborough stations?
I live in the “Birch Cliff Heights” neighbourhood (bounded on the west side by Warden, south/east side by the lake, north side by the GO tracks). This neighbourhood has always felt like a transit dead-zone in terms of reaching downtown quickly, especially given how close it is to several stations. If I lived closer to Vic Park, I could use the 502/503; if I lived closer to Danforth or Scarborough GO stations, I could use GO. As it is, these stations are just out of walking reach. To get to a subway station, I need to take either the 12, 69 or 20 bus. To get to the Scarbourough GO station, I need to drive or bike (impossible in winter).
Given a reasonable number of (presumably) wealthy professionals who would probably work downtown within the Fallingbrook/Birchcliff areas, why are there no better options within walking distance. Does everyone in Scarborough just commute by car? Could some load be taken off the roads by adding a Smarttrack Station between Danforth and Scarborough? (There are so many Smarttrack stations everywhere else, but that stretch.)
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Probably because:
a) there are no areas that have enough room for a station to be built.
b) putting a station in there would add too much travel time to the rest of the users, and
c) Tory and his cronies have no idea about how transit operates and only wants to put forth an idea that would win him votes and when it can’t get built will claim it is because others refuse to see the value and possibilities in his totally stupid SmartTrack.
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I can’t answer anything about what the ST planners were thinking, but I can tell you why there isn’t a GO station between Danforth and Scarborough.
1. Assume that a station is near a cross street.
a) Victoria Park – It’s less than 1km from Danforth
b) Warden/Danforth – It’s on a curve, which means low visibility, awkward platforms, and more land required for spreading the tracks to place island platforms.
c) Birchmount – This is a quasi-viable location, but it’s location leading into a curve would mean more space required.
d) Kennedy – It’s less than 1km from Scarborough
2. They are saving space for more mainline tracks.
3. GO Trains tend to be “full” by the time they have passed Scarborough Junction.
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Thanks for the replies. In regards to the points made around adding too much travel time and saturating train capacity at Scarborough GO Station: if this is true, then why is there a Danforth GO Station?
Steve: You have to remember that stations on the Lake Shore corridor are located, mainly, where there were old CN/VIA stations of which Danforth was one. It wasn’t a case of careful planning and choice of new locations, simply using what was already there.
To be clear, what I cannot understand is that while there are several proposed new stations in the east end/northern Scarborough/Markham, all within relatively close proximity, yet there is a service gap in an area with downtown commuters and no convenient proximity to the TTC subway line (in contrast with Danforth GO).
Steve: Many of the proposed locations are intended as alternatives within an area (e.g. Queen/Don and Liberty Village areas). The many stations up the Stouffville Corridor are an offshoot of the SmartTrack scheme.
Mapleson’s suggestion of a Birchmount station (near Birchmount and Highview) is very sensible in my mind, as there is affordable room for development. It’s the same confusion I have with the fact that the Kingston Road streetcar line isn’t extended past Birchmount (where there is a traffic island with room for dedicated lanes).
I’m probably missing or misinformed regarding transit data in the area. I’ve always thought many residents in the Bluffs/Cliffside areas commuted downtown for work. Maybe I’m wrong.
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