Beyond 416

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Metrolinx Updates The Big Move, Announces Priorities for Phase 2 Projects (Updated)

Updated December 6, 2012 at 11:20 am:

A warmed over version of the Board of Trade presentation was given to the Metrolinx Board by President & CEO Bruce McCuaig at the Board meeting on December 5.  There were a few clarifications of note:

  • The list of “Next Wave” projects will not be nailed down until the February 2013 Board meeting following a round of public consultation.
  • That consultation will also include a review of the proposed amendments to The Big Move and yet another round of talks about potential revenue tools.  The meetings will probably take place in January at 12 public round tables, as well as a 36-member “Residents’ Reference Panel” doing “deep dives” into the issues at weekend sessions.  This process will report back to the Board in spring 2013.  (There is no info about how the 36 “residents” will be selected for the panel.)
  • It is likely that construction of the Downtown Relief and Yonge Extension subway projects would take place concurrently with Yonge to Steeles opening at roughly the same time as the DRL from Downtown to Danforth.  “Phase 2” of each project would follow.  At this time there is no commitment to going north of Danforth or to any specific route either through downtown or through the east end of Toronto.  This will be the subject of an Environmental Assessment for the project.
  • The goal of TBM was described by McCuaig as having 75% of GTAH residents within 2km of rapid transit at their origin or destination.  That “or” is an important distinction I don’t remember hearing before.  It’s child’s play to have lots of people close to rapid transit at one end of their trip — anyone who works in major centres within Toronto or lives along a subway, LRT, BRT or GO line will qualify.  The more difficult target is to have such access at both ends of the trip because “convenience” is meaningless if only one end is well-served.
  • In an apparent contradiction to the implied 1/3 local funding described in the Star’s article about Mississauga having second thoughts on the LRT project, McCuaig said that we cannot look at traditional federal/provincial/municipal financing models.  Presumably the Investment Strategy will address this problem.

The actual timing of the Next Wave projects varies depending on which document one reads or how one parses the announcements.

  • In the Next Wave handout (linked later in this article), this is described as a 15-year, $34-billion project.
  • The spend rate implied by another part of the same handout is only $1.2b/year, and this translates to a 28+ year timeframe.
  • Metrolinx, in an email responding to this article and my concerns about the status of projects such as the Eglinton LRT to the Airport, said that there would be a “Third Wave” in 2025.
  • At the press briefing following the Board meeting, McCuaig confirmed that for the “15 year plan”, year zero has been reset to 2012.  This implies that TBM’s original 15 year timeframe is now stretched to roughly 20.  Moreover, McCuaig hinted that projects started within the next 15 years may not finish by then.
  • Despite all of the delays, the year 2031 is still the target for completing all of The Big Move.

In previous discussions of the Investment Strategy, Metrolinx has included an allowance for operating the new facilities as they come into service.  This is missing from the $34b of the Next Wave, but will have to be incorporated into the IS discussions.  Moreover operating costs are ongoing while capital are one-time.

In all of this discussion it was amusing to listen to Metrolinx talk about revenue tools, code for the very things some politicians in Toronto find utterly unacceptable preferring to imagine that pools of private capital are available at little or no cost.

The presentation materials from the Board meeting are not yet online, but the hard copy version comes under the unhappy title of “The Big Move In Action”.  Deleting only one space would give a good description of the treatment of project schedules for Transit City by Queen’s Park.  The presentation ends with a page titled “Keep the wheels moving” and a picture of a stone wheel and hammer.  Ontario makes a lot of claims for its triumphs in transportation technology, and I can’t help wondering if this is an early product of the Ontario Transportation Development Corporation.

I mention this because Metrolinx appears to have embraced a new, quaint graphic style for their Big Move and Union Pearson Express websites.

Continue reading →

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TTC Rediscovers the Downtown Relief Line (Update 4)

Update 4 October 21, 2012 at 8:30 pm:

It’s intriguing to look back at coverage of the DRL the last time this was a major issue.  Mike Filey passed along a clipping from the Star from December 2, 1982 that makes interesting reading.  My comments are at the end in Postscript 2.

Update 3 October 20, 2012 at 3:20 pm:

A postscript has been added discussing the various demand simulations as a group rather than individually.  Charts of total demand southbound from Bloor Station as well as pedestrian activity at Bloor-Yonge are provided to consolidate information from several exhibits in the background paper.

Update 2 October 19, 2012 at 11:00 am:

This article has been reformatted to merge additional information from the background study as well as illustrations into the text.

At its meeting on October 24, 2012, the TTC will consider a report on the Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study.  The full background paper is also available on the TTC’s website.

A study by the City of Toronto and TTC, including consultations with Metrolinx, concludes that transit demand to the core by 2031 will grow at a rate that exceeds the capacity of all of the current and planned transit facilities.  Ridership will be 51% higher than today.  The residential population south of College from Bathurst to Parliament will grow by 83%, and employment by 28%.

Capacity is an issue today as Table A-1 in the background paper shows.  Several corridors into downtown are already operating over their design capacity.  This is particularly the case on GO where the target is to have few standees, and there is more room for additional passengers in the design capacity than on the TTC subway services.

Table A-2 shows the projections for 2031.  All of the shortfalls are on GO, but the TTC lines are close to saturation.  This presumes a considerable increase in the capacity of various lines.  For example, the YUS goes from a design capacity of 26,000 to 38,000 passengers per hour (pphpd), an increase of 46% which may not actually be achievable.  Similarly, the BD line goes to 33,000 pphpd, an increase of 27%.

Exhibit 1-10 shows the components of projected capacity increase including 36% from running trains closer together.  As discussed at some length on this site previously, the constraints on headways arise at terminal stations.  A 36% increase in trains/hour implies a headway of about 100 seconds as compared with 140 today.  This cannot be achieved with existing terminal track geometry, not to mention the leisurely crew practices at terminals.

On the GO lines, the projected capacity on Lakeshore West doubles, and smaller increases are seen on other routes.  It is worth noting that the projected capacity of the north-south corridors to Stouffville, Richmond Hill and Barrie are nowhere near the level of service implied by The Big Move, probably because these lines are not targets for early electrification.  This contributes to the capacity shortfall in the northern sector.  Recommendation 1 of the study includes encouragement that Metrolinx review the possibility of increased capacity in those three corridors.

The full list of lines included in the modelled network can be found in the background study at section 1.2.1.

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Tim Hudak Has A Plan (Updated)

Updated October 16, 2012 at 8:30 pm:

The Toronto Star reports that Tim Hudak has pledged to redirect all of the money earmarked for a Toronto LRT network to subway construction if he is elected Premier.  This is a truly bizarre stance for someone who claims to be trying to save Ontario money when we consider that almost none of the pledged $8-billion plus has actually been spent or committed, and this is all net new money, new borrowing Ontario will have to undertake.

Hudak was playing to his audience of Ford-friendly councillors who do not have control of Council on the transit file, but who seem to be attempting an end run around Council by having Queen’s Park support his position unilaterally.  Anyone who thinks they will get a full-blown Eglinton subway, and a Sheppard line (STC to Downsview) and a BD extension to the Scarborough Town Centre for these funds is dreaming.  Sadly, however, Toronto has a bad habit of wanting more than it can afford especially when someone else will foot the bill.

If I try to put myself in a conservative mindset (and that’s with a small “c”), I would be asking how much of that $8b actually needs to be spent at all, or spent on transit rather than some other portfolio.  That would be a common sense thing to do, the kind of approach we might expect from Mike Harris.  Alas, “common sense” also includes buying off local politicians by keeping their pet subway projects alive.

But no, Tim Hudak wants to spend $8b he doesn’t have on overbuilding a partial subway network apparently because he thinks this will play well to Ford’s base.  He might want to think about the uproar over paltry hundreds of millions wasted on shifting power plants out of Liberal ridings and consider whether the lure of the megaprojects has clouded his vision.

Of course, all this depends on “affordability” which is tied to the end of the provincial deficit, and so Hudak will likely never have to borrow that $8b whatever he might spend it on.  All he will achieve is even more delay in building any transit for Toronto.

Thanks to the Liberals’ tinkering with project schedules and love for P3 implementation, little work will actually be tendered by the time the government falls sometime in 2013.  Cancelling the Finch and Sheppard LRT lines will be child’s play, and the SRT upgrade will probably morph into an unbuilt subway while the SRT lies at death’s door.

Toronto Council needs to wake up and remind Mr. Hudak that the Mayor does not speak for the City.  Does Hudak even care, or is he just giving his pal a chance to say “screw you” to his opponents?

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Raining on Civic Action’s 32 Minute Parade

This morning, the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, or CivicAction for short, launched its “What Would You Do With 32?” campaign.  They have a video with all sorts of folks musing on how they would spend all the extra time they would have if the full Big Move plan were implemented.  Very nice, very charming, very misleading, very wrong.

Getting. Around. Town. Can. Take. An. Eternity.

But it doesn’t have to. It can be so much better.

There’s a plan in place to dramatically improve transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area – one that could actually save you an average of 32 minutes on your daily commute. [From your32 website]

At the press conference, that number troubled me because I didn’t remember seeing such a calculation anywhere in the background papers to Metrolinx’ The Big Move.  It turns out that this number is not a saving relative to today’s trips, but a comparison of our future, 25 years out, in Big Move or “do nothing” scenarios.

What’s so important about the number 32?

32 represents the number of minutes per day, on average, that you’ll save on your commute if The Big Move is funded and realized – that’s eight days a year or about two years over the course of your life. It is the difference between the average commute time if The Big Move is built (77 minutes; Source: Metrolinx), and the commute time if no comprehensive system is in place (109 minutes; Source: Metrolinx). [From your32 website]

Anyone who thinks there commute will be 32 minutes shorter than it is today is dreaming.  For comparatively short commutes, a 32 minute saving is physically impossible unless Metrolinx has an unannounced program to teleport us around the city.  (Given Queen’s Park’s track record on transit technology, I wouldn’t be too keen on trying it out, although I can think of some guinea pigs who surely won’t be missed.  The concept of a short-turn does not bear consideration.)  Even for long commutes (over 90 minutes), a 32 minute saving is a substantial chunk of a trip, and it won’t be made over every segment.

The biggest problem for transit riders is not the “rapid” part of their trip today (subway or GO train) but it getting to and from the rapid line at both ends.  These parts of the trip don’t lend themselves to big reductions in travel time.  We might extend a subway to Vaughan, but unless you live in a condo on top of the station, you still have to get to it.  Many transit trips are all surface because even with The Big Move, they will not lie along rapid transit corridors and going out of the way (as an expressway driver would) to use them would be counterproductive.  The Big Move (and associated funding schemes) don’t address this problem and leave local municipalities to find the funds, if they are willing, to boost what are seen as feeder services to the subway, not as vital lines in their own right.

Yesterday’s discussion at Toronto’s Executive Committee included the important observation that people need to feel they are getting something concrete in return for a new tax they might pay.  Civic Action’s campaign has two phases — one to talk about what might be, and one to talk about how we might pay for it.  The fundamental problem, however, is that they are selling those “32 minutes” that don’t really exist.  Most commute times will not get 32 minutes shorter.

Don’t forget that’s an average, and so even greater savings are obviously forecast for some travellers while others will get little.  I am not sure of the arithmetic validity of these claims.   It’s noteworthy that the Metrolinx models were not capacity constrained and they forecast ridership on some routes like the main TTC subway lines well in excess of their actual capacity.  That translates into full trains and pass-ups, something riders know today, never mind 25 years in the future.  A missed train is extra wait time, but I suspect the Metrolinx model does not allow for this problem.  As for the TTC, there are limits on how many trains and riders can be stuffed into the existing system, and few of the updates needed to handle more riders (even if we assume they are practical) are part of The Big Move.

The basic problem with the “Your 32” campaign is that it tries to find something to sell — those 32 minutes — because it cannot talk about specifics of what network and services we might actually see.  Metrolinx’ plans are years old now, and there are already components that must be added to make the whole package work.  Among these are the proposed Union Station West (for additional capacity and operational flexibility), GO electrification (a prerequisite for very frequent service) and the Downtown Relief Line (with expanded reach and an earlier implementation date to make both Union West and the Richmond Hill subway practical).

Metrolinx has been hinting at an updated Big Move for some time.  One was expected this fall, but they now expect to release a “technical update” in Spring 2013, and there is no sense of how much this update will address.  We must hope that, at least, the 2013 plan contains all of the projects that the new Investment Strategy will fund, and that we won’t have an “oops” where a major component such as electrification is missing from the list.

Also still missing is a worked example of putting the many components of The Big Move through a prioritization scheme.  That process will inevitably set off a noisy political debate as people discover that their pet projects are now at the back of the queue (if they are still in the mix at all), and that major spending on new transportation capacity is decades away in some areas.  How badly will the transit map be gerrymandered to convince taxpayers and politicians throughout the GTA that they should buy into a region-wide funding scheme?

If we could raise $3-billion in new annual revenue, some of this would have to go to operations and to municipal transit systems, and it will be a quarter-century or more before the whole plan is completed.  One might ask the boffins at Queen’s Park whether the construction industry can even burn through capital at that rate given their concerns about the constructability of Transit City on a compressed timeframe.

John Tory, the chair of CivicAction’s board, spoke not just of traffic congestion but of leadership congestion.  This begs the obvious question of Mayor Rob Ford and his supporters.  At some point, “transit leadership” must include some blunt words about Ford’s views on transit and on funding.  Partnerships with the private sector might work, although there are no guarantees and transit riders (not to mention taxpayers) will be left holding the bag if these deals fall apart.  To his credit, Tory did not treat these partnerships as a source of free money, and talked of the need to pay back investments made by the private sector one way or another.

CivicAction recruited a council of over 40 “regional champions” for their cause.  What, exactly, they will do is still a bit vague, although one might hope they would organize outreach at the local level.  You too can become a “local champion” and take the message to your community.  This all has a rather amateurish feel to it, but I may be pleasantly surprised.  Much will depend on the resources available to these champions including clear answers from government agencies about the transportation schemes and revenue tools they are promoting.

A recent poll showed that 90% of GTA residents don’t even know about The Big Move, and if they don’t know about the plan in general, they certainly don’t know what it might (or might not) do for them.  Getting new revenue such as a regional sales tax will be an uphill battle if people see this as just another tax grab.  When and if CivicAction gets down to the task of explaining The Big Move, they will discover just how hard finding those phantom 32 minutes will be, and this could further undermine its credibility.

The potential revenue from new taxes and fees are well-documented, most recently in the City’s report, and the City consultations will focus on the money side of things.

“Your 32” might have been a nice idea in a different context, but I fear CivicAction fails on two counts.  First, the underlying premise is wrong, and there is no way to sugar-coat that statement.  It’s not a question of interpretation, but of misrepresentation.  Second, the real debate will focus on raising money for major expansion of transit, and this demands concrete answers about what we would actually build and what the benefits of various network components will be.  CivicAction depends on Metrolinx for this sort of information, and that agency remains silent on the details.

Advocacy by local municipalities and by CivicAction is hamstrung because there is no way to know what the provincial priorities might be.  Will The Big Move will be treated as little more than a bag of election goodies to dribble out as Queen’s Park sees fit?

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Toronto Contemplates Transit Funding / Reviews Transit Plans (Updated)

Updated October 9, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Toronto’s Executive Committee considered a report on transit funding mechanisms today.  In the following report, I have included only the most interesting or important of comments to give the flavour of the debate.

The proceedings were rather odd in that a presentation, cued up for City Staff, was never heard, but a “private citizen” managed to give a half-hour long deputation thanks to many friendly questions from Committee members.  That “citizen” was Dr. Gordon Chong, former head of Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited, an all-but-bankrupt subsidiary of the TTC used to conduct a study of the Sheppard East subway extension for Mayor Ford.

Chong liberally drew on his transit experience including years as head of the Greater Toronto Services Board, a provincial agency predating Metrolinx.  Throughout his deputation, the highly misleading map of four cities’ subway system was projected to emphasize how little Toronto has done.  (That map purports to show how little Toronto has in comparison with London, New York and Madrid while ignoring the fact that these were much larger cities, much sooner.)

A “glaring omission” from the collection of transit plans in the staff report, Chong said, was his own Sheppard report and the information produced by KPMG about tax increment financing (TIF).  Chong clearly implied that the report was biased, but missed the fact that the Council motion directed the inclusion of “approved” plans for review, something Chong’s most emphatically was not.  As for TIF, it is mentioned, but rejected as a funding mechanism as staff argue that such revenue is needed for general support of city services and should not be earmarked just for transit capital projects.

Councillor Michael Thompson pursued the scheme of a Scarborough subway with a BD extension that would loop back along Sheppard to close the loop at Don Mills Station.  Chong replied that if Toronto could deal with the “money issue”, then there is no reason we can’t have the best in transit.  Thompson observed that a casino might bring in $75-100m annually and could fund transit projects.  The oddity here is that both treat any new money as a bonanza to be used for the best possible transit (where they want it) when fiscal conservatives might be expected to argue for careful husbanding of whatever loot might come their way.  There is also the small problem that the municipal share of projected revenue for a Toronto casino is probably an order of magnitude lower than the Councillor’s claim.

Various Councillors mused about a regional agency to dispense transit dollars and decide which projects should be built.  An underlying assumption was that, of course, the network of suburban Toronto subways would rank high on the list, and nobody seemed to contemplate that a 905-dominated agency might have other more pressing needs or think that the investment in all those subways was of dubious value.

Chong had only veiled contempt for the “expert panel” who reviewed his report and recommended, instead, for the LRT option on Sheppard.  He strongly supports subway construction presuming the money is available, supported by the best possible feeder bus network.  Councillor Norm Kelly asked whether the LRT plan was “an aberration”, and Chong replied that all previous TTC Chief General Managers had supported subways.  Although he invoked the name of David Gunn, he neglected to mention that Gunn boycotted the opening ceremonies of the Sheppard line.

Next the Committee turned to questions of staff. Continue reading →

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CLRVs Visit Boston

Back in 1980, the Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC) had suffered the demise of their planned magnetic levitation train system in Toronto, and the “Intermediate Capacity Transit System” (ICTS) we know as the Scarborough RT had not yet been foisted on Toronto.

During a brief period when the only viable UTDC product was its new light rail vehicle, the CLRV, they shopped the design around to various systems.  The only taker they ever got was San Jose, California, for a small order.  Three CLRVs found their way to Boston for a demonstration, and I was lucky enough to catch them out on the Riverside line in May 1980.

A train of 4027 and 4029 prepares to leave Riverside Yard (the outer terminal of the line which includes a large parking lot and the carhouse/shops for the route.  A train led by Boeing car 3400 sits beside the CLRVs.  The overhead in Boston at this point was set up for operation by cars with either trolley poles (the remaining PCC fleet) or pantographs (the Boeing cars).

The CLRV train pulls out of the yard.

… and onto the main line.

The Riverside Line was build on an abandoned railway corridor, the Highland Branch, and opened in 1959.  A new connection into the existing central subway (a streetcar subway dating from 1897) was built to bring cars through downtown.

Here the CLRVs pass outbound through Reservoir Yard.  The larger part of this yard and an old carhouse are out of shot to the left, and they serve the Cleveland Circle line which terminates there.  Work cars in the yard include a PCC converted for use as a line car, and several “Type 3” passenger cars adapted as snow plows, essential equipment for a network with so much private right-of-way.

Outbound at Newton Centre station.

The shot below is from May 1972 at Kenmore Station which opened in 1932.  Readers with eagle eyes and long memories will recognize this shot which I loaned to the UTDC for inclusion in a brochure advocating the wonders of LRT which, at the time, the Ontario Government was actually pushing as a product, if not as a “solution” for Toronto.  It didn’t last long, and they went back to their old lies about how there was nothing to fill the gap, the missing link, between buses and subways — hence the need for an “intermediate” capacity system.

Kenmore Station is a busy place and has separate platforms for routes which diverge here.  Boston cars have doors on both sides so that they can serve island platforms like this.  Needless to say, the CLRVs served only stations with right-side platforms.  (The sign in the front window says “All stops except Kenmore” because the Riverside trains used the outside tracks at this station.)  Yes, that’s a three-car train of PCCs sitting at the platform.

Finally, a look outward towards Riverside terminal (off to the left behind the trees in the distance)  in October 1968.  The small building on the right is an abandoned railway station.  This line could have been a model for the Scarborough RT, an implementation of “LRT” at the high end of what this technology can accomplish with almost complete grade separation, rapid transit station spacing, and speedy operation.  (Although the CLRVs are capable of 70mph operation — itself a design excess by the UTDC — they were limited to 50mph operation on the Highland Branch.)

By the time the SRT and its expensive ICTS opened at a cost more than double the original estimate for LRT, the Riverside line had been operating for 25 years.

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The Fate of OneCity (Updated)

Several postmortems have appeared on blogs about the supposed death of OneCity and what might follow:

Updated July 19, 2012 at 7:00 am:

Updated July 16, 2012 at 11:15am:

My own take on OneCity’s fate together with the original article detailing proposals for dealing with transit planning follow the break.

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The Missing Half of OneCity

Last week brought the excitement of the OneCity network announcement, followed by mildly supportive words from Queen’s Park and its agency Metrolinx, followed in turn by rather stronger provincial denunciation of a City that can’t make up its mind on transit.  Queen’s Park can hardly talk about consistency given their happiness to leap into bed with Rob Ford’s subway plan until Council gently reminded their provincial cousins that the Mayor had not bothered to ask for Council’s approval.  Meanwhile, delivery dates for provincial “commitments” drift off into the 2020s with the flimsiest of excuses about the limitations of an overheated construction market.  This is the same provincial government who talks about the power and capabilities of international companies just itching to work in the Toronto market.

All this kvetching detracts from two major issues.  First, once we get past the obvious conflicts created by proposals for the Scarborough Subway and the Scarborough/Etobicoke express services taking over the GO/ARL corridors, the rest of OneCity doesn’t step on any provincial toes.  As with so many of the debates here (and on other transit blogs), it’s the “I’m 100% right and you are 100% wrong” outlook that gets in the way of intelligent conversation.  There may be a role for the Scarborough Subway, although I am less certain about the proposed services taking on GO corridors.  At least we should get more information about the options and effects, not to mention defensible costs and demand projections (something neither the TTC/Toronto nor Metrolinx have been strong on in either Transit City or The Big Move).

Second, and at least as important, is the complete absence of money for improved service and maintenance, including a huge capital backlog on the TTC for vehicles and facilities.  The Ford era saw “savings” through cuts in presumed future growth.  A bus order for system growth was cancelled, and a new garage dropped from the plans.  The size of our future streetcar fleet was trimmed about 10%.  Who knows how many cars we really need given the strangulation of streetcar routes for service by the TTC.  Service growth in general was artificially depressed by changing loading standards to fit more people on each  vehicle.

These were all one-time fixes, fudges that got Toronto through two budget cycles while meeting the meddlesome demands of an administration for whom transit was just too much fat waiting to be cut.

The sad part is that thanks to two years of see-no-evil budgeting, nobody really knows what the true backlog in operations and maintenance might be, or what it will cost to put things aright.  Even if OneCity gets some sort of approval and funding, its projects won’t see a rider for years, and in some cases decades.  Should people who cannot get on the King streetcar or Finch West bus have to wait a decade for someone to address their problems?

OneCity is a plan for enhancing transit on major routes, but it’s only half of a network plan.  Most Torontonians will still ride on ordinary bus and streetcar routes for part or all of their journeys, and they are just as deserving of good service as those who will have new subway and LRT lines.  Indeed, even those who will, someday, see a new faster route should not have to wait for its construction.  “Coming in 2021” is cold comfort to someone waiting for a bus in February 2012.

If Council refers OneCity to staff for a report on costs and first-cut details of projects, we will learn more about the options for rapid transit in Toronto.  A long-overdue, informed conversation may actually happen rather than endless posturing for one neighbourhood or another.  But it will only be half a conversation.

Toronto needs to know what it will take to bring better service before we can build our rapid transit dreams, and what might come to many corners of our city that will never see a subway, LRT or BRT line.  What is our goal for these neighbourhoods?  What does “good service” mean to this newly enlightened Council?  How much will it cost?

These questions are just as important for transit’s future as contemplating the route of a new subway or the mechanics of a tax increase.  Council needs to ask them loudly and strongly as part of an integrated review of Toronto’s transit network.

Meanwhile, down the road at Metrolinx, a little humility might be in order.  This is an agency which, until fairly recently, did not even acknowledge the importance of local transit as part of the regional system, and still boasted about its high farebox recovery thanks to cherry-picking the most cost-effective services.  The provincial “investment strategy” must sustain not just the simplest, cheapest lines on the GO Transit map, but a wide range of services across the region including those provided by local carriers.

Is Toronto, is Ontario, serious about transit being a real alternative, about providing a “car-free” option to a much wider market of riders, or do they both simply prefer to hold press conferences with pretty maps?

The maps are nice, and the accompanying studies will fill yet more space in my library (or storage on my hard drive), but it’s the space and time in between that’s most important.  Riders will wait a very long time for some of these brave new transit lines to appear, and they deserve better than a walk to a crowded, infrequent bus route or a drive to a parking lot that fills before 7am in the meantime.

Toronto Council should demand that the TTC look not just at shiny new lines for the indefinite future, but that it address its real requirements today.  If the “new TTC” gets bogged down planning for the 2020s while transit continues to wither from overcrowding and underfunding through the 2010s, they are not doing their job.

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Where Should We Put the “Downtown Relief” Line?

The Downtown Relief Line has been in the news a lot lately, what with dreams of vast new revenues to pay for transit expansion and, at long last, a recognition that more people want to travel downtown than we have transit capacity to handle.

Back in the 1980s, the Network 2011 plan included a line from Union Station to Don Mills and Eglinton by way of the rail corridor, Eastern Avenue, Pape, a bridge across the Don Valley, and Don Mills Road.  This scheme was turned down in favour of the Sheppard Subway as part of a misguided idea that if we simply stopped building new lines into downtown, growth would stop.  In fact, GO Transit did a fine job of providing extra capacity, and more recently the new downtown condos have raised short commutes by streetcar, cycling and foot to levels nobody expected thirty years ago.

The Yonge subway filled up, for a time,but the pressure fell off thanks to the 1990s recession and the general drop in transit use.  That’s no longer the case, and suddenly everyone wants to “do something” about transit capacity downtown.  The TTC, shamefully, downplayed anything beyond its own mad scheme to stuff thousands more riders onto the Yonge line, a project requiring major changes in signalling, reconstruction of Bloor-Yonge station (and possibly others) for extra capacity, a much larger subway fleet (and yards to hold it) and possibly even the addition of platform doors at all stations.

Council asked the TTC to look at a DRL, and there is even supposed to be a study.  However, its web page is the only sign that anything is going on.

Meanwhile, every would-be transit planner in town is busy drawing maps, to the point where a credible plan can be found simply by dropping a piece of spaghetti on a map of the city and declaring this a route.  (Post-graduate degrees are available to those who can determine the ideal height from which to drop the pasta and cooking time needed to produce the best results.)  What’s missing in a lot of this discussion is a view of how a DRL might fit into a wider network, not to mention a few basics about how a new rapid transit line will, or will not, fit in some of the proposed alignments.

One of the better proposals is on Phil Orr’s DRL Now site.  It’s not perfect (no proposal is, including those I have floated from time to time), but at least this is a place to start with sufficient detail to understand what is going on.  Drawing a swoosh across a map is easy (politicians do it all the time), but designing something that might actually work is a lot harder.

A major challenge with some versions of this line is that proponents try to do too much.  Playing “connect the dots” with a transit route has its limitations, and trying to hit too many of them causes the line to wander out of its way.  This ties back to a fundamental question:  what is a DRL supposed to do?

If we believe some of the simpler plans (notably one in last week’s Star proposed by Councillor Pasternak), the DRL’s sole function is to get people from the Danforth subway to Union Station.  This is far too simplistic and guarantees the line will not be well used except as a peak period relief valve.

Other schemes take the route south of the rail corridor to serve the Port Lands and eastern waterfront.  Aside from the problems of building such a line in landfill beside Lake Ontario, the route would not provide the fine-grained transit access possible with a surface LRT, and would vastly overservice an area whose expected demand is lower than the existing Sheppard subway.  Connection to Union Station from the south would also be a big challenge.

From time to time, I am asked “what would you do”, but to start that discussion, a few first principles:

  • A”DRL” should not exist solely to relieve the Yonge line’s peak traffic problem, but should provide new links within the transit network giving rapid transit to areas of the city that do not have it today.  Indeed, the regional function within the network may well be as important as the “relief” function at Bloor-Yonge.
  • Any proposed route through downtown must respect the actual built form of the streets and buildings.  Diagonal routes through built-up areas should be avoided as they are difficult if not impossible to build.
  • Stations must be located where it is physically possible to build them.  Some routes use rail corridors without considering how either a surface or underground station might fit or be built.
  • A “DRL” is not the complete solution to capacity problems on the subway.  These problems originate north of Steeles Avenue, and a major role in trimming peak demand falls to GO Transit which has several north-south routes that could drain traffic otherwise headed for the Yonge line.

The proposed route on DRL Now (click on “Interactive Map” under the “Station Information” pulldown) includes four phases:

  • Don Mills and Eglinton to City Place
  • City Place to Dundas West
  • Don Mills from Eglinton to Sheppard
  • Dundas West to Pearson Airport

I have concerns with a few details of this plan, but the basics are good.  Another view of the route is available via Google Maps.  This has the advantage of showing the detailed alignment rather than a “route map” graphic.

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Paying the Piper

Now that Metrolinx and, presumably, their masters at Queen’s Park have determined that we will build a network of four LRT lines in Toronto, we can turn to the larger question of paying for “The Big Move” and the “Investment Strategy”.  Some Toronto Councillors are already talking about the need for dialogue with neighbouring municipalities in the 905 for a co-ordinated strategy on transit funding.  This is long overdue.

Once upon a time, the Metrolinx Board actually contained politicians, the very people who would undertake this sort of debate and who, when the going got rough, would have to stand up at public meetings defending the plan and dodging the rotten tomatoes.  Nobody on the current Metrolinx Board has to get elected even as dog catcher, much less as a mayor, and the staff are even further insulated by the fact that almost all of Metrolinx’ business takes place in the refined, quiet space of private meetings.

This is no way to build public support for anything.

The term “Investment Strategy” has a comforting feeling that plays to those who like to wrap public works in the mantle of private enterprise.  We will “invest” in the future of transit and of our region.  That’s fine as far as it goes, but “investment” implies capital, something notoriously absent from government accounts in part due to the economy, but in part to the fact we are loathe to tax ourselves for the services we want.  (Or slightly more accurately, we don’t want to pay taxes for services somebody else wants, but we think we will never use.)

One way or another, somebody has to pay to expand and improve transit service given decades of disinvestment in that field.  Toronto likes to think of itself as a “Transit City”, but in fact stopped investing at a rate needed to keep up with population and travel growth decades ago.

The Investment Strategy is often portrayed as something we have to study, to examine, to fathom the depths of public financial options, but, no, the numbers have been available for everyone to see for years.  Metrolinx produced its first report (one without the word “Draft” stamped on it) in June 2008.  It contained the following table showing the types of revenue stream that Metrolinx might tap.

ISTable2008

This was back in the days when we were only looking for $2-billion annually over 25 years for a $50-billion Big Move.  Since then, the actual budget has grown thanks to inflation, the recognition that some project estimates were low, the need to factor in operating costs and the likely demands to fund local transit agencies as part of the grand scheme.  We now hear numbers in the $75-100b range, and that will take a lot of tolls or taxes to pay off.

A more recent version of this table was produced in 2011 for the Civic Action Summit, but the changes lie mainly in the size of the numbers, not in the types of revenue.

TCSATable2011

The important work Metrolinx must perform is to produce the menu of projects and spending options for which any new revenue streams might be imposed.  To that end, the publication of an updated “Big Move” (not expected until late 2012) and the incorportation of spending options to support local transit are essential.

Moreover, Metrolinx must address jurisdictional issues between GO Transit and the TTC to reconcile demand and capacity problems for the core area.  If we are to collect billions in new taxes, they should not be wasted trying to stuff every available passenger into the Yonge Subway.  Some belong on a Downtown Relief Line (and a real relief line, one that goes north at least to Eglinton, not just to the Danforth subway), and many more belong on the many existing and potential GO rail corridors leading north out of downtown.

The GTA must understand what the real cost of bringing transit up to a competitive level where it will actually make inroads into car traffic in the 905, the sources of funding which might be used, and the limitations (financial and operational) on what can be done.  This type of integrated planning is glaringly absent from Metrolinx work over the past years.

The question of new taxes (by whatever name) is on the table, and the discussion must move into the political arena.  This is not a job for anonymous bureaucrats or a board of unknowns meeting in secret.  Indeed, any decision on the provincial side will be taken at Queen’s Park by the Cabinet and the Premier’s Office with Metrolinx providing a comforting rubber stamp and a patina of independence.

Toronto Council should take this debate not just to its own voters, but to the 905 regions so that we can all have an informed debate and build political support for improving transit.