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 This is the crowd that estimated construction costs on the back of an envelope, who “surveyed” the line using out of date Google images, who ignored basics of railway engineering and capacity planning to make outrageous claims for their scheme.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 
I’m afraid that John Tory might believe that if we paint half the trains a different colour, that will boost ridership.
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If the SmartTrack alternative route through the airport lands is not pursued, we are still left with the UPX debacle.
Since your plan has some left over funds, I propose that we do what we should always have been planning to do: reroute the (electrified) Brampton/Kitchener GO line under and through the airport lands, with a station under Terminal 1. Express diesel RER trains continue to take the existing rail corridor.
Oh, and the Crosstown phase II needs to extend north from MACC to terminal 1 (not some satellite hub). It can lie under or T-bone the Pearson GO station, for an easy transfer.
Pearson GO Station – I like the ring of that.
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Interesting how Mayors have great agendas and get elected.
Rob Ford wanted a subway for Scarborough, scuttled the Sheppard LRV and nothing improved in Scarborough — still lacks improved service.
Hopefully Tory does not screw Toronto again.
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Steve you have the sanest view of transit use & planning in this city. Thank you for your on going work.
The idea that we can build a few signature projects and then sit on our laurels for a generation is what got us into the transit deficit that we are now in. Let’s us catch up to the needs we have now and always look to the future and keep building transit to meet the future needs of our growing population.
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Of course, the issue of heavy rail to the Airport Corporate Centre would be solved if UPX was redone so that it made sense from a transit perspective. Basically, turn it into a downtown express component of SmartTrack/GO RER (double the fare of SmartTrack/GO RER with the number of intermediate stops reduced to just Bloor) and then extend the Crosstown to the airport as planned.
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I have to say Steve I agree. I was a little confused as I read through by your failure to mention the DRL – thanks for the final comment.
The sad thing – at least in my mind is that it really comes down to a question just setting priorities. The SSE would fund everything in Scarborough – including the physical service to GO stations. If GO and the TTC got serious about integration, GO could also be about a lot more than the core. Use Kitchener and the Malton GO stop properly, with Finch West through running it to Renforth, and you have a real hub, that makes much more of Toronto, accessible using Kitchener GO, and services to MACC could anchored at Malton and the Renforth Gateway (along with real integration with GO, MiWay and ZUM).
So amen Steve, use ST money to build DRL, SSE for Scarborough LRT & BRT in Scarborough, and we are a really close (Toronto share of fed money?) to closing the loop, with a Crosstown extension, Finch West LRT extension. Still need East Bayfront – but that is a line where TIF really would pay its way – however, I would not actually suggest it (just build it and let the taxes flow). It really is about putting together the base hits, and stop swinging for the fences.
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Great post, Steve.
I will add that basically RER is seen at Metrolinx as RER Phase 1. They have the funding and they have the political stability until October 2018, they will get enough electrification started that it’s more costly to roll it back than tow the line. If the OPC somehow pull off another electoral win or else Ontario tries out the NDP again, then we can build on that foundation. That would include purchasing the Milton corridor (including a possible extension to Cambridge) and expanding all-day service and electrified service to the ‘fridge’.
The largest block for RER Phase 2 is Union Station and USRC. If that can be relieved, then more trains aren’t an issue. Metrolinx is well aware of the limits of our rail network and have been limiting expectations to this.
I agree that Queen’s Park needs to reconsider operating subsidies and costs, but I believe we are near the politically palatable limit of deficit spending on the capital front.
Steve: Part of my impetus for writing this piece is that we have endless debates and political line-drawing without the sobering effect of hard engineering information on possibilities and limitations. If, for example, there were a hard limit of 6 trains/hour/track on most corridors, the reasons for this should be clearly understood. If this is a soft limit that can be solved with enough money and commitment, we need to know that too. I am tired of consultants talking about how other cities run subway-like headways on their rail corridors without addressing the changes needed to allow this on the GO network.
Even the business about legacy running rights needs to be addressed. How often are these rights actually exercised? What would be the impact of saying “ok we will run very frequent service, and your trains will be a necessary but rare, off-peak annoyance”?
@Ross Trusler,
This is the first time I’ve heard of a full GO corridor re-routing to such an alignment. It seems that it would be an unneeded detour for 99% of the riders, not solve any of the issues with the CN Halton subdivision, close some of Bramalea, Malton, or Etobicoke North, cross under two 400-series highways, and spend a couple billion for no increase in ridership.
It’d be interesting to start our own “non-profit transit policy research organization/think-tank”. COST has been suggested as a joke, but we need a strong vote of reason that both sees the political limitations, but is independent of the political machinations.
Steve: I would warn that even the “fans” and “amateurs” have their pet projects.
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Thanks for this pushback on the usually well-intentioned morass that we’re in – we don’t need to sewer ourselves more with costly follies that blight both capital and operating budgets. We are lucky that there are resourced enough people like yourself that dedicate their knowledge and skills to the public interest, and once there were funds, intervenor funds with EAs to let the affected citizens actually get re$ourced to involve themselves in larger EA projects, and given the billions being swirled around this may be an overdue reversion given the scale of problems and mistakes possible. We cannot trust the TTC Commission to be doing things in the public interest; they’ve been politicized, and Metrolinx seems elitist and beyond, and a majority provincial government is also capable of abrupt turns eg. Hydro sell-off, and any level buy-election promises can create trouble eh?.
There were other bits from the Tues. Ex. Cttee meeting beyond what Steve went to in the a.m. The most salient in this discussion is something that Mr. Tory said during his remarks on a good fairly systemic effort to reduce poverty in our City. This was at about 5:18 pm, if anyone can track down exact quotes from the record please go ahead, but in terms of funding all the things sought and needed, he indicated it was rare to hear people say “you can’t always do both” – and I don’t think he realized just how ironic and telling his words actually were, given the apparent support for the SSE and then his Smart Track effort, which is sooo close to the RER that at times I call it Smart Trick, though heck, it worked to capture imagination and enough votes, and it is far closer to a plan than the SSE, though absolutely we need to spend big on transit, and arguably Scarborough needs improvements, just like everywhere else.
For me that’s been in the core, and the need for east-west changes including waterfront transit, where a “reset” was on the agenda, and predictably got watered down and put into the design to fail category by some of the same folks who seem to have no problem with blowing the billions elsewhere even though there seems to be far less fact to base their schemes on. So to try to move us back to putting heavy transit where it’s needed, I cited the Queen St. subway idea which has a good exposition in Unbuilt Toronto. On p. 139, there’s a salient to this thread nugget about a 1975-ish Metro Toronto Transportation Plan Review that didn’t support the Queen subway. It said that one of the benefits that had been touted in support of the subway, diverting passengers from the busy interchange of the Yonge and Bloor lines, could likely be met by other means, such as an underground streetcar system or by rapid transit in the Don Valley (which the Ontario government was then preparing to build). The two things notable are that we’ve had some 40 years worth of kinda knowing there was a press at Bloor/Yonge, and that we also had thoughts of putting heavier transit into the Don Valley.
Of course, it’s highly likely that the most logical place, the Don Valley Parkway, was NOT in the realm of possibility as we tend to be carrupt, and the votorists have great sway, obviously seen in the still-carservative Council, and also at Queen’s Park, where rather than boosting the gas tax with a health care tax of a few cents a litre we’ll sell off provincial assets e.g. Hydro.
This Hydro sell-off is very relevant to the transit discussions. While sure, there’s a difference between line-on-map transit scheming and reality, the basic fact is that there is a very long, and very wide, and pretty unencumbered linear corridor that slices through Scarborough at a diagonal, and I think we should explore this as a busway. As I can dream of transit, I also see ways of touching upon transit-using Thorncliffe Park, and then to either St. Clair Ave., or the Don Valley in a couple of ways, or both. Busways are renowned in South America eg. the Brazilian City of Curitiba; and sure, while inferior in some ways, they also may be the key to unlocking mobility in Scarborough first, as a fast transit route that’s mostly off-road so we can speed up transit WITHOUT taking space away from the mobile furnaces aka cars, so we can lure some of them onto transit first ahead of squeezing the roadspace there. Also, surface works usually tend to be far far cheaper than digging and tunnelling, though to really do a busway to the core, which is possible, there would be a need for larger works, which would have the benefit of giving benefit to the materials and construction sectors, always part of any transit works it seems, as doing things with paint and political will just ain’t on in Caronto.
I’m sure there are other options; and to use planning lingo of the Waterfront Transit – we need a reset of the SSE, and to some extent Smart Track, and as there are some possible benefits to the need for a DRL, we might be able to fix/do things on three projects/issues in one simpler and cheaper and much faster-done busway project, or some other combination including better use of existing corridors, both rail and road.
One literally overnight option for some Bloor/Yonge relief that has been steadfastly ignored and discounted by many is doing a Bloor/Danforth bikeway, especially in the near-core ie. Sherbourne to High Park. It’s really really cheap to repaint a road ie. $200,000 would give us 8kms of painted bike lanes for that distance, and in planning terms, a 1992 study found that the Bloor/Danforth was the #1 best place for an east-west bike lane. They didn’t get out of the biking silo to explore the interactions and synergies between bikes and transit, but there’s a ton of off-street parking atop the subway, plus that massive non-car mobility, so it’s only the best place in Ontario for a bike lane – which might explain why it isn’t done. There was a part of Bloor in the 2001 Bike Plan, that between Sherbourne and Church St., and it would cost about $20,000 and it still isn’t done, with staff arbitrarily denying any changes about a year ago till maybe it’s repaved next year, maybe, if the Gardiner and other big-capital gifts don’t suck some things dry. The Cars Department at the City is saying oh, we need a corridor study, a change from an EA, but still, they only wish to think of cars, and not the transit corridor as I think very few of the City Wall personnel actually use transit, or so it feels ie. carist and carrupt as there are about a half-million daily rides on the stretched Bloor/Danforth subway and even if we shed maybe .5% on to bikes, that’s gotta mean something. The London mayor Johnson in his Mayor’s Vision for Cycling in London on the TfL site recognized how bikeways can ease the transit press citing the Victoria Embankment bikeway. “We could increase effective capacity on this stretch of the Underground by as much as 10 per cent – and for relatively minimal outlay”.
And it’s not just bike safety, nor transit relief, but also climate pressures, as that was the motivator for that 1992 bikeway study, and we still haven’t done enough to give a single long continuous safe east-west bikeway parallel to transit routes, though just recently, yes, there have been a few larger changes, perhaps less-wise in some ways and less-OK in places. But overall, there is such a degree of inaction and misplaced resource, that there is a high degree of climate criminality and it’s a shame that those providing the roadblocks don’t get some high degree of personal liability for inactions, and this should also include bike safety, though the term “passhole” was inspired by another cyclist on the Viaduct.
So we really need a reset on all of this transit stuff, though I think it’s clear we should also dust off those old plans to improve the GO/TTC linkages at both Dundas St. W/GO and the Main St. TTC/GO, and start in to really ease connectivities there.
We also need to be thinking about a reset of the waste of the UPX, and how to improve its utility to us plebes, but we only paid to put it in, and some of us did struggle to get it more as a sub-regional route serving communities on that precious diagonal, but like a few other major projects, fixes were in, or felt that way. As the UPX was more of a Liberal doing, both levels, this is a caution, or should be, sigh.
Pardon length.
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Agree completely: however, some things I would like to add:
— Ensure that Metrolinx continues ahead with an appropriate number of stations on the GO system downtown.
My concern is that Metrolinx might try and renege on the downtown stations (I’m not talking about the Scarborough or Eglinton spur ones, but the Liberty Village, Gerrard and Queen etc stations) to cut costs when the price tag goes up, as it always does. Fare integration downtown will do nothing if we don’t have the proper access. I think this is where the mayor needs to keep fighting to ensure this happens.
— Ensure Metrolinx uses the proper trainsets to service such a system.
I still see them considering Electric Locomotives pulling bilevel coaches in some materials. We need to ensure they pick EMU’s that will do the job of a frequent service with many stops.
— Build a proper connection at Dundas West station.
Without that tunnel I am afraid people will not want to use GO RER to transfer from the Bloor Line.
GO RER should absorb SmartTrack, and I think the mayor’s job should simply be ensuring that Metrolinx sticks to integrating the ideas and concepts laid out in SmartTrack. I think he can save face by doing this, by looking like he is going to work with the province and ensure we downtowners don’t get slowly cut out of the deal.
Steve: Metrolinx has done nobody any favours by dragging out the issues surrounding feasibility of various proposed downtown stations. Liberty Village, for example, is a challenge because most of it is remote from the Weston corridor. If the Lake Shore corridor participated in the “SmartTrack” concept of local service at reasonable fares, then Exhibition Station would also be part of the mix. Queen is a real problem because of grades and property constraints, and it would be very close to a “Great Gulf Unilever” station at the Don River crossing. (I will also confess that I don’t like the idea of my favourite bakery/cafe, Bonjour Brioche, disappearing under a monstrous Metrolinx station.) Gerrard is quite another matter given the large block of adjacent land ripe for development, and the potential for an interchange with a future DRL here. GO/RER isn’t a streetcar line and it can’t stop everywhere. I would even ask whether we need Danforth Station which is an inconveniently long distance from the subway at Main Street. Gerrard might be a better replacement especially if the DRL connected there.
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I would hope not, but I’m reluctant to bet money on it.
I listened to Tory on Newstalk1010/CFRB during the time he was there, and though he was somewhat pragmatic about things.
Let me clarify what I mean by that: on one hand, as Steve has pointed out,
On the other hand, one consistent message that Tory routinely espoused during his time on the air was that we should stop spinning our wheels coming up with grand plans that are thrown out with a new administration.
We all know how well he followed that idea.
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Steve – why can we not just say enough – and call SmartTracks dead? Pursuing this, is a mugs game, like anything that is meant to solve all problems. Let us get on with the idea of building a network, not a line. Metrolinx should get a engineering report, that indicates that parts of it simply cannot be supported, and other parts will be far too much of a detraction from the provinces RER proposal and have done with it. Otherwise, just call RER – ST, and proceed with RER plans, and let Tory have his win.
As Mr Iacocca used to say “Lead, follow, or get out of the way”. Metrolinx needs to make it clear that Mr Tory does not have lead, he is not following – so he needs to get out of the way. Perhaps we could do the unthinkable and let Jennifer Keesmaat and her staff lead.
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Can anyone explain the reasoning behind adding a new heavy rail line along Eglinton Avenue West from the GO/UPX mainlines west to the Airport Corporate Centre? The plan has always been to extend the LRT light rail line farther west along Eglinton Avenue West possibly using the Richview Expressway preserved right-of-way.
To my way of thinking it is beyond stupid. Heavy Rail is subject to federal rules and regulations as well as standard crew size of TWO persons per train (as per UPX) compared to one on the TTC. People are always yapping about overpaid TTC Operators and now this will DOUBLE the staffing costs.
Steve: First off, the Richview right-of-way has, in places been sold and developed. It is not available. Second, the brains trust behind SmartTrack were fixated on a western heavy rail leg from the start, and gave no thought to the problems of running a very frequent service at street level along Eglinton. (And for all the Tory fans, yes, it was originally to be at street level, no tunnels, until Tory’s campaign was forced to backtrack.)
Beyond stupid does not begin to describe this scheme, and it puts the lie to any idea that Tory had real “experts” who thought beyond a quick=and-dirty campaign idea.
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GO will not have the capacity to offer much in the way of capacity for people in these areas to get down town. As long as that is recognized then the stations have value for people who need to work in that area but will probably not offer much release for those who go farther down town.
Unfortunately they will have about 800 of these by the time they get around to electrifying and they won’t throw them out. Initially they will use electric locomotive on RER service with diesel locos on longer haul. As they add service they will start with EMUs but they cannot afford to throw out the current stock before it is life expired which will probably be in 2050.
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There should be a phased approach to lowering the prices on inter-toronto trips on Go. This way they can scale up the cost to both the city and GO (I would propose 50% from each, and do it .50 cents a year until it matches TTC rates) – even if you assume all 100,000,000 annual Go Transit rides are inter Toronto that works out to only $25 million in operating costs a year…I speculate there is no-where near that many….probably it would be closer to $1million a year in total operating cost changes.
They can then also pause the changes if they can’t run enough trains.
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“A Smarter SmartTrack” – great wording Steve! I hope it materializes.
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Actually, Tory followed that idea fairly well. He accepted all major transit projects that were either in early stages of construction or on the books at the time of his election:
– Eglinton LRT
– Scarborough Subway
– Finch W LRT
– Sheppard E LRT (sort of; at least he never spoke against it publicly)
– GO RER
He came up with SmartTrack as his own “grand plan” but that did not conflict with any project approved before he took the office.
Steve: Tory made frequent comments indicating he viewed SmartTrack as the one and only project Toronto needed. It was going to do everything — bring more jobs, reduce youth violence (I’m not kidding, the campaign actually claimed that), and be self sustaining. The caveat about plans “approved before he took office” misses the point that Tory often dismissed the Relief Line as unneeded because ST would fix that problem (which it most definitely will not).
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I think it might be helpful to have a “Why Toronto’s Smart Track is not London’s Crossrail” post … it seems like emulating London by digging a huge tunnel for heavy rail might sound like a great idea … but northern Etobicoke is not downtown London.
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I absolutely agree, and I believe that we won’t see any consultant written report of this kind, as there is little money available for systematic review and policy guidance. Metrolinx doesn’t want to be told what to do, and they are happy enough to allow everyone else to remain ignorant of the problems that they face.
Absolutely, this is one of those issues that is an underlying assumption that needs to be challenged. Throw some money at CN/CP and a new set of running rights can be negotiated.
Fair enough. A strong system of accountability and checks-and-balances would be needed to ensure objectivity. If anyone is interested, I’ve started a Google Group to this end. Email: sosta@googlegroups.com
Metrolinx never committed to downtown stations, so there is nothing to renege. Their current station location study will separate the chaff from the wheat and ST will take another step to looking like RER. The Metrolinx position would be “these are the stations that make sense to build, if you want others, you cough up the money for them.”
The network is designed from a signal and switch perspective for a few long trains, not many short trains. The switch-over falls mostly into “RER Phase 2”. The basic infrastructure will be in place for EMU on the UPX with a mix of electric and diesel trains on GO routes. Diesel will be phased out as the fringe network is electrified, and the core electric locos will move to the fringe with new service being EMU.
This is completely in the City’s court. Metrolinx built their half, but there is no desire from the City to pay to complete the connection.
While I’m generally a fan of their work, they don’t have the heavy rail experience to lead here.
GO is already constrained by volume of passengers and volume of trains at their high pricing. Lower prices will only cut revenues and provide a lower comfort level on trips.
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This video swiping at UPX and to some extent the Smart Track was somewhat played at the Executive Committee, and is worth watching. (Best part may be the “HELLLOOO”)
There is also a good companion video swiping at how costly the Gardiner repairs are, and where are the tolls etc. done by the same folks, and thanks to them.
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That must be the reason for GO’s new paint scheme; the top half of the coach is for RER and the bottom is for DumbTrack, sorry SmartTrack.
Metrolinx should publish a chart that shows:
1. The maximum capacity of the two line that would make up SmartTrack, what Union Station can handle and the current loads so everyone can see how much room there is or isn’t.
2. The effect on travel times when all those stops are added.
3. How many riders would be diverted off Yonge.
4. A timeline as to when each stage of RER would be started and finished for each line.
It is time to take the wind out of Tory’s sails. Pardon the sailing reference but his plan is full of hot air and he needs to tack back to the practical rather than continuing on with something that will not work with our infrastructure and legal situation.
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Speaking of which. Is there any word on negotiation between the government and the Matty Moroun wannabe sitting on the crossways?
Steve: According to comments elsewhere, this is an issue for Toronto because Metrolinx considers the remaining part of a potential connection a “city” project. Classic “regional integration”, and yet another example of the mentality infesting Metrolinx to the detriment of service improvements.
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But Robert politically he has a beautiful, beam or at least broad reach going, and he is making great time. If he tacks back like you suggest, he will lose headway, especially now if he has to go upstream.
Perhaps somebody should point out he started on Lake Erie (and the current body of water is far too narrow to be a Lake), he has a strong port wind, and that wind is out of the west, that he is already well past Port Colborne, past Fort Erie, and he is passing a largish island with a little one down at the end. Is that mist he (we) can see over there??
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I would argue to you that part of the issue is we that have focused down on a couple of heavy rail corridors. When the ones selected are in fact not an answer to the real problems. The largest problem with SmartTracks is not that it will be hard to make work in the rail space, but that even if it works perfectly it will not solve the largest/important/pressing issues. I would have grave questions about the impact of Richmond Hill as Hamish’s video suggests, but it is at least likely to be closer to the right spot – but would be very hard to connect well.
I was actually suggesting that city planning take the overall lead, which must start with actually properly identifying the need. Solutions should follow from there, what we have is a half baked solution in search of a real problem. If city planning concludes it is in the wrong spot, to solve the city’s problem, the discussion should be closed.
I suspect that something like TransitCity combined with a DRL are much closer to an answer than SmartTrack. This is not surprising in that they form a network, not a single line, and routes selected to solve a defined problem, not ones that happen to be available. City planning needs to define the issues, set the priorities, and then let the heavy or light rail & or BRT planners take over the implementation portion as required. The experts in implementation should be giving the required information to city planning, to let them first paint the broad strokes. Once the problem is properly defined, then experts in that area can be engaged.
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Well said Steve. Completely agree.
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The drawback I see with SmartTrack or RER is that it inevitably remains a downtown-oriented radial system. You can get from Point A to downtown or vice versa no problem, but as soon as you want to go from Point A to Point B, you will have to go via Union Station unless you’re lucky enough that the two points are on a single route.
Personally, I’ve been through Union in rush hour, and unless it was my destination, I would much rather avoid that shuffling march-of-the-penguins mess if I possibly can.
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While I fully disagree with you on the Scarborough Subway Extension.
I 100% agree this SmartTrack sham needs to be halted immediately. The Sheppard LRT & SMLRT should be built or planned to built as well in the immediate an near term future.
Also fully support the fare integration with local transit and GO. It amazes me how long it take to make even the most important things accomplished. Its absurd.
Enough studies just do something!
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Olivia Chow has made a real difference in society; it’s time for her to run for the federal NDP leadership and become the first Chinese Canadian prime minister of Canada.
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I would not call that a drawback, as a demonstrated high demand exists for the downtown-oriented trips and the existing system hardly can meet that demand during the peak periods. Moreover, the demand for such trips keeps growing.
Either the transit system has to support that demand, or the downtown employment growth has to be restricted. The latter option is probably unwise for many reasons.
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Maybe there’s a post somewhere here on what the qualities of good transit planning are, and if not, maybe UITP/APTA or CUTA have a guide. What would be included? Some ideas …
– redundancy in options, so there is less of a brittle system eg. B/Y, or Union
– robust service is to reflect destination of ridership and densities
– origin/destination data is shown for both transit, and cars too
– transparency of the data
– full explorations of options, including less palatable politically eg. King St. RoWay or some other squeezing of the private car, and layered with milk run, sub-regional and regional lines
What else?
As a small point, I only offered a link to a video; glad it’s done, but I didn’t have any role in it.
Steve: No, there isn’t a post such as you describe. However, I can offer a few observations about your list. First off, the whole idea of redundancy and robustness in a network presumes that we actually built ahead of demand rather than long after we are in crisis. This is a question of political philosophy, not of transit planning.
As for data, a big problem has been the granularity of data and modelling. This was imposed both by technology limitations of previous eras, and by the fact that for road networks, a less fine-grained model worked well enough. For motorists, the access time to a new road is generally not a big deterrent, whereas the access time (walking, waiting, transfers) is much more of an issue for transit riders. A new expressway could be dropped in the middle of Scarborough on a coarse-grained model, and it would “behave” more or less the same regardless of location. With the transit network, there is a big difference between a line in the Stouffville GO corridor, the RT (especially if it were extended to Malvern), the McCowan subway and an LRT on Eglinton/Morningside. This drives a need for much more careful modelling and challenges the old systems.
King Street is a particularly interesting discussion both for politics and for planning. I for one do not believe that a full-blown right-of-way can be justified there. Certainly much better transit priority during extended peak periods (and some off-peak periods), but problems on this line are not confined to the core area, and where there are issues, there are also many residents who legitimately have claim to some of the street’s capacity (not to mention political clout in numbers to demand it). I also do not believe that we can “fix” King in isolation from other streets. The single biggest problem is that there isn’t enough service on that line, and that’s an issue with the long delay in replacing the fleet and expanding its capacity. Come the new year, there will be even more buses, but not necessarily more capacity, in King as cars are shifted to Queen to improve service there. (Details are not yet published by the TTC.)
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@Malcolm N,
This I can agree with. CityPlanning is great at… city planning. We definitely need more of a need-based system for selection and funding. We need City Council to be working in an environment where if they say “we want a subway”, there is a background of information saying where that money would be best spent.
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5 years ago the person in charge of Singapore’s EZ-Link fare and payment card explained to me in detail the company plan to stop manufacturing cards and just focus on the back end software and marketing EZ-Link as a service and cashless lifestyle concept. Other companies and banks would be free to make the cards so long as they tied into the EZ-Link system.
Maybe it’s time for Tory to drop all connection with a physical Smart Track and just keep saying “Smart Track is just a service concept and the line we drew was just an idea reflecting how that could work,” until people throw up their hands and stop pressing him.
Bonus … this allows Smart Track to also be “offered” on the Lakeshore corridor and the Bradford line … plus the crosstown corridor should that ever become a possibility.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: My little proposal includes decoupling the brand from the specific corridors with the express purpose (pardon the pun) of making cheaper/better service available to all. Of course there’s the little matter of making enough room/capacity for this, but it’s time we had an honest, open discussion of just what can and cannot be done with the GO network rather than going one ministerial photo op at a time. The Big Move (revised) must be informed by actual capabilities, not by the “let’s draw a network” planning that went into Big Move 1.0.
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While there are a lot of riders going to and from downtown, there are also a lot of riders going between other points. Those riders don’t want to go downtown, but wind up being forced to travel on a via-downtown routing because that’s what the system offers. This takes them extra time, distance, and possibly money, while taking up space at downtown choke points such as Union station.
There’s a big difference between how GO lays out its bus network, and how it does its rail network. Every rail link goes to Union station, and that’s the only transfer point, while the bus routes have many nodes which are useful transfer points. RER/SmartTrack is on rails, following the rail corridor, so it will have the radial layout of existing GO rail lines, and their poor layout for anything other than downtown-bound trips.
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It is equally important to remember, that no only does not everybody want to head to the core, but – even for those who do, not nearly enough of them are close enough to these 2 rail lines for it to really be a slam dunk.
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I’m lucky that my last comment got some responses from Steve.
With getting towards redundancy for systemic strength, I’m not suggesting that we build in advance of demand, we have enough of that at our detriment already, but that we manage to at least react somewhat to crowdings within the decade say.
Origin/destination data really should be obtained or developed, especially if the billions are in play, plus the operating costs. If we can write off $75M or whatever to switch from a plan to a scheme, then we can afford really really good data, and – if we wish to lure the drivers from their cars – we need to go beyond mere existing transit data too. My sense is though, that there is sooo much demand for mobility in all directions pretty much, that we can’t assume a single silver bullet approach will work, and we likely need to avoid big digs to look for surface routes, which may include political will and cracking silos eg. Hydro corridors or excessways.
With King St., yes, a RofWay there isn’t really going to be the fix nor likely either. That was why I was promoting a Front St. transitway instead of the Front St. Extension for quite a few years instead of a Front St. Extension, thinking that a faster sub-regional and almost separated RofW would help bleed off demand from King/Queen while providing faster sub-regional trips in from lower Etobicoke and parts of Parkdale. We may well have blown that opportunity, but a small hint of an improvement may still lurk in having/obtaining extra land on the north side of the Weston corridor from Front/Bathurst to Queen/Dufferin. At this point, maybe anything is better than nothing – so even a mere lane width to have a reversible busway might be a start.
Steve: We have origin-destination data already. We simply choose to ignore it.
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I am a real data junkie, and would like to see this at a postal code granularity – for at least once, so that the model can operate at the individual bus stop level. However, if we ignore the data we have – it is really pointless to have it at a higher resolution.
Steve: You will have to go to the Transportation Tomorrow Survey site for the data. The most recent is from 2011 (the survey is done every five years).
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When I said:
I did not initially respond as Steve took the words right out of my mouth:
After thinking about this further, and in the context of news stories on this being the anniversary of the election, I realized that the point that Tory repeated over and over again when he was on the radio was not simply that plans of the old administration are simply thrown out (think Rob Ford and his “Transit City is dead” press conference), but that new grand plans by new administrations tend to eclipse other things to the point that they fall off the table.
Michael Forest mentioned several projects that he claims that Tory “accepted” along with his ST plans. Let’s look at each of these…
Eglinton LRT: This was well under construction at the time of introducing ST. This is not germane to my point.
Scarborough Subway: Given the strong Ford support in Scarborough, of course he did when campaigning. As it became clear that this would compete for users with ST, new ideas for the routing that push it further east while still heading for Sheppard and McCowan could scuttle this project by making it bizarre and double its original cost estimate.
Finch W LRT: This was so far off the SmartTrack (geographically, so to speak) there was no point in attacking it, but just how much of this has moved forward? Is this project languishing in the darkness cast by SmartTrack? Are they even roughing-in an underground platform at the new Keele/Finch subway station?
Steve: Yes, provision has been made for a connection at Keele/Finch. This was in the plans originally as part of the Transit City integration when the Spadina extension was designed. There is no station, but a connecting link to it is available, and the subway structure does not conflict with an underground LRT station.
Sheppard E LRT: The LRT line that we could have been using for over a year now still languishes in the sidelines, barely ever being mentioned. Hints that the federal money earmarked for it being diverted to either ST or SSE pop up every now and then.
GO RER: SmartTrack was, for the most part, just a branding of this for Tory’s campaign (Let me take something that is in the works, push to get it sooner, put my own name on it, and claim the glory when it gets done.). You say To-MAY-to, I say To-MAH-To.
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If, as Calvin Henry-Cotnam suggests, the Smart Track was a simpler re-branding of GO/RER, maybe we should call it “Smart Trick” – and at least it worked to exit the Ford, which may be why the provincial government was pretty silent on the re-branding to exit the bull, though we still have some left as planning is beyond a shambles.
This totally includes the relative paucity of origin-desination data, thanks for that link Steve. My sense of what should be required for the billions is really fine-grained info about where people live by postal code, and then where they’re going, more or less by postal code, and I’m less sure that a 5% capture rate is quite enough. Some areas are more important than others – and I’m not talking only Scarborough, but the Thorncliffe Park area. That area seems to have really heavy transit use according to the TTC’s map this year showing bus frequency, and it’s pretty close to Bloor/Yonge ie. plenty of feeding into Broadview, and then??
Steve: Most of the buses serving Thorncliffe Park go to Pape (25 Don Mills and 81 Thorncliffe Park), but the effect is the same. Only 100 Flemingdon Park comes to Broadview Station.
Other data that would be nice to see is a Danforth subway crowding index by train wait-time in crush hour. So presumably in the far east it’s a green, and then at what points along the line coming into the core does it become yellow, orange, and red – red being say, waiting for three trains ahead of getting a seat.
Steve: Never mind getting a seat, just getting on is a challenge.
What would also be nice to see is data on the relative economic performances of our heavy transit projects of the last few decades. Start with the first Spadina extension, though it was lumped in to the University/Yonge line to dilute info. Then the Sheppard stubway, where I’ve heard it was/may be c. $10 a ride extra cost. Chronologically, we now have the UPX fiasco, and then the second Spadina/Sorbara extension, and how will that do? The Eglinton line is likely going to be the best performer of all, eventually. The point being, we’ve trended to put the big projects in to places where they don’t/won’t really provide enough boo$t to the large system, but rather a drain. And that’s a set of political choices, bad ones, and we can see the bad choices again with how Exec Cttee is refusing to cough up enough $ to have a good look at all the EAs/projects along the Waterfront in a reset urged by the planner. It’s as if we have another design to fail exercise, in such a logical corridor for transit (east-west, from the pinch point of High Park to the core) that it goes back maybe a century.
A final note that in digging up piles, I came across something of about a decade ago called SmartRide LRT, a remarkably similar to Smart Track proposal from Aecon, for using both the rail corridors and some hydro corridors. This proposal targetted the Richmond Hill line for use. It’s all sufficiently complicated that I don’t know the relative merits and dis-benefits of one rail line vs. the other, but to use the language for the Waterfront morass, it’s time for a reset, and the EAs really need to be combined into a cross-silo examination of what options really are, and that these include less-palatable to the carservatives on Council of the conversion of some of the Don Valley Parkway to busways. It’s an existing corridor, we own it, it could be done pretty quickly, so why not?
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Steve…love your scheme. My only question relates to part of your bullet 2 (“RT/LRT conversion and extension to Malvern”). Some folks have been promoting “Smart Spur” as an alternative to that LRT line – namely a spur line for GO EMUs off the Stouffville corridor at Ellesmere to Scarborough Centre and on to Malvern. Would avoid the redundancy of having two technologies in the same corridor between Kennedy and Ellesmere. And would offer a transfer-free ride between Scarborough Centre and Union. Comments on this alternative?
Steve: The GO corridor does not have the capacity to absorb the loads now carried and projected for the SLRT. My opinion of “SmartSpur” is not fit for family audiences.
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Couple of things – first I firmly agree on the postal (6 digit) resolution level, as it really does allow you to get a sense of what will and will not make sense, and a model be built that will more reasonably reflect behaviour created. However, second at a postal code level of resolution 5% will not be enough. This would need to be very much a census type project. 5% uptake would leave out entire codes. It should be included in the next census or if all employers could be convinced to provide locations of work, and residence, this would solve the problem. Alternately, if Stats Canada could collect data from the Revenue Canada rolls, ie, stripped of name,and earnings containing only matched pairs of postal codes.. However, this would provide a very detailed information set for modelling of alternate transit networks.
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@Calvin Henry-Cotnam: My original statement (not merely “claim”) is correct, as it passes the scrutiny of formal logic. A a matter of fact, all five major transit projects have been accepted by the new mayor, and none of them got thrown out.
Remarks made in your post are, for the most part, correct as well. But none of them disproves my statement.
On a side note, I’d like to dispute your remark on Finch W LRT. This project is not “languishing in the darkness”; the first construction contract is set to be awarded in 2016. To my knowledge, an underground connection is planned at the Finch West subway station. Your pessimism is unfounded.
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