Author: Steve

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Winners and Losers

The election results are almost complete as I write this, and it’s worth celebrating.

First, a huge round of applause to Joe Mihevc who not only won in Ward 21 against all of the anti-St. Clair rhetoric, but won with over 50 percent of the vote.  My post a few days ago may have seemed anti-Joe, but it’s a call to try harder, to question the assumptions, to make our transit system as good as it can be.  Maybe with this election out of the way, Councillor Mihevc and his allies can push for better street designs, better neighbourhoods and better transit service with renewed vigour.

Next is Gord Perks in Ward 14 who won despite two other major left-of-centre candidates.  Gord and I go a long way back, and for him this is a huge change — from being an amateur polician to a professional one, from the perennial critic and gadfly to a Councillor.  I may even have to make deputations that don’t agree with him just to prove I haven’t gone soft!  And to think that only recently Gord dreamed of finding time to be at the Film Festival rather than juggling three or four environmental issues at once. Continue reading →

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How Do We Calculate the Cost of Transit Operations? Part 1: The Raw Data [Updated]

Yes, friends, I am finally starting to dig through the backlog of issues, and I’m starting with an analysis of the TTC’s route cost and revenue figures.  These are normally reported in the annual Service Plan, but since there was no plan published this year, the stats for 2005 appear in a stand-alone document at this link.

This data, reformatted as a spreadsheet and with additional columns can be obtained here: 2005 Route Statistics.

I have written before about how untrustworthy these numbers are as a guide to operating costs and service productivity.  Various comments came in, and I have held them awaiting a chance to work on this in more detail. Continue reading →

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How Joe Mihevc Got Conned On St. Clair [Updated]

[I received a very long response to this item via email which contains enough information that I believe it is worth having alongside the original post here.  I have added it below.]

Back in the dark ages when we had public participation meetings on St. Clair, there was a huge amount of concern about intersection design and curb cuts.  The folks along St. Clair were deeply suspicious, and rightly so.  As I have often written, the road engineers cannot be trusted with anything and need to be wrestled to the ground for the slightest design improvements.

Then, finally, construction started.  I had talked to Councillor Mihevc several times about the need to corral the engineers, and met with him and Jim Teeple, the TTC’s project manager, in the cafe over Loblaw’s one day.  I was assured that Joe had his eyes open and was working hard to minimize the intrusions of the project.

That was when the project stopped at the east ramp into St. Clair West Station.

Then something odd happened.  In the interest of speeding up construction, the work for 2006 was extended west to Vaughan Road.  What we now see is the same ridiculous curb cuts that were in the original TTC plans, and which many had assumed we would be able to fix as part of the detailed design for the section from Bathurst west.

It didn’t happen.  The road folks got their widenings, the community got ridiculously narrow sidewalks, and Joe has turned into an apologist for this outrage.

Now we have to go into detailed design for the next section actually believing that we have a chance to get proper treatment for pedestrians and businesses along the street.

The TTC and Council must insist that roads be designed for people and neighbourhoods, not just for cars. Continue reading →

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Closing Remarks from the GTA Transit Summit

The following text is adapted from the notes of my closing remarks at the GTA Transit Summit on Saturday, November 4.

Think Big

If there was one vital thread running through the weekend’s presentations, it is this:  population growth vastly exceeds our plans for providing more and better transportation services, and the public is getting fed up with excuses for what we cannot do.  Politicians need to recognize the true scope of the problem and stop using unworkable shared funding schemes as their excuse for inaction.

The GTA population is growing at a rate of 100,000 per year.  Over half of this will locate outside of the 416, and growth within the 416 is substantially higher in the outer suburbs where transit service is the worst.  The TTC does a tolerable job (it could do much better) at providing support for a car-free lifestyle in the central area, but everywhere else a car is an absolute necessity. Continue reading →

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The World’s Fair, the Gardiner and the Front Street Extension

[This item was originally posted last Saturday morning, and it has been recreated here following the recent system crash.  The comments submitted by various folks have vanished into the ether.]

Three would-be projects tell us so much about how screwed up Toronto’s priorities are. The proposed World’s fair is one of a long line of mega-events that would rocket Toronto to its place in the stars, a great city shining out for the world. Once upon a time, people came from all over North America to see “The City That Works” not for its one-time fairs, but for its neighbourhoods, for its commitment to a liveable city. We were renowned for that, and we managed to bring thousands of tourists here on the strength of that reputation. We really had something world-class to show off.That was 30 years ago. Continue reading →

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How Frequently Can We Run Subway Trains

A comment in my review of David Miller’s platform triggered a technical discussion about this issue.  To segregate this from the thread on Miller himself, I have moved the relevant information here.  If you plan to add to this issue, please do so here.

The issue was previously reviewed in this post.

I made the comment:

Mayor Miller claims that we will improve capacity on the Yonge line by 40% through new trains and signalling.  Running the trains more frequently will require changes at Finch Station (probably a northerly extension) to allow for faster turnarounds, and will definitely require some changes on the Spadina line (currently planned as part of the York U extension).  Don’t plan to see those empty, uncrowded trains until a decade from now, at least.

This provoked various responses: Continue reading →

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Some Days, You Need Dedication to Ride the Rocket

A few days ago, I set off on what should be a straightforward trip by transit, but the planets and stars were not well-aligned for me.  The problems I encountered don’t show anything unusual for regular riders, but they also show the combined effect that can result.

Here is the planned journey:  Leave Scarborough Town Centre via the 190 Rocket to Don Mills, Subway to North York Centre, (pick up package), Subway to Eglinton, bus east to Mt. Pleasant. Continue reading →

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A Look At Candidates’ Transit Policies: David Miller

Once again, in the interest of full disclosure, I will state that I am supporting Mayor Miller for re-election.  Having said that, I count myself among the camp of Millerites who feel that all the talk of structural reform in the past three years overshadowed crucial work on portfolios such as transit.  We still put off to tomorrow improvements we should have made yesterday, and the transit system does not even keep pace with current demand.

Let’s have a look at Miller’s Transit City platform.  You can read the details at this link.

Miller’s basic premise is that “good, reliable transit is at the core of a prosperous, liveable city”.  If we actually see this borne out with spending priorities and real moves to improve transit, this will be a welcome relief from years where transit got the short straw.  This is not just a question of spending, but of recognition that every aspect of city planning must be seen in the context of making transit better. Continue reading →

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A Look At Candidates’ Transit Policies: Jane Pitfield

In the interest of full disclosure, I will state up front that I am supporting David Miller.  All the same, the two serious candidates’ platforms deserve review and comment, and I will start with Jane Pitfield.  In another post, I will look at David Miller.

If you are or represent or support one of the other 257 candidates for Mayor, please do not write me asking for equal time.  This is a private blog and I am not bound by fair time rules like the CBC.  As far as I am concerned, there are only two candidates worth looking at in this race, and I am not going to waste time and space on the rest.  They have their own blogs anyhow. Continue reading →

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Two Kilometers a Year

We hear a lot from subway advocates about the need for an ongoing project to expand the subway system.  Leaving aside the question of how we will pay for it, what would we actually see for our efforts?

The building rate proposed is two km/year.  If we were going to build west from Yonge Street and we started today, it would be late 2010 before we reached Jane Street, late 2014 to reach the western boundary of the city, somewhere like the airport for example.  Every penny we could scrounge would go into that line, and by 2015 we would still have big transit problems in most of the city.  This assumes we start tomorrow, and we all know that nothing will happen for at least two years while we debate where the line will go, design it and get EA approval.

If we are serious about expanding the transit network in a meaningful timeframe, we have two choices:

  • build much more than two km/year and be prepared to pay for it, or
  • use something other than subways to expand transit capacity, and build lots of that.

Mayoral hopefuls and other subway advocates need to be honest about the costs and benefits of their plans.  The two km rate was once floated by Rick Ducharme, back when we actually thought that would cost $200-million or so.  The Sheppard Subway, our most recent project, was 6 km long and cost us almost $1-billion not including the vehicles that were purchased separately.  Even allowing for the huge expense of the junction at Yonge Street, $200-million hasn’t bought two km of subway for a long time.

I will return to the issues involved in building LRT in a future post and will incorporate many of the comments that are stacked up in feedbacks from various readers that have accumulated in my inbox.