This article is the third section of my critique of the December 2013 review of the Metrolinx Big Move Plan written by Michael Schabas for the Neptis Foundation. It should be read in conjunction with Part I and Part II.
Beyond 416
Neptis Reviews Metrolinx: A Critique (IV)
Liberals Plan Transit One Tweet At A Time
Premier Kathleen Wynne recently unveiled the Moving Ontario Forward plan which, at this point, consists of a website and a general idea of what level of spending we could see. The details won’t be released until the budget is tabled in early May.
Some ideas come out in comments by Transportation & Infrastructure Minister Glen Murray who is as active on Twitter at times as he is in press scrums. How much these comments are realistic, how much they reflect government policy or detailed study, is quite another matter.
From a funding point of view, there will be two pots of money – one for the GTHA and one for the Rest Of Ontario. When the Transit Panel released its Making The Move revenue tool proposal, misinformed media stoked the idea that rural gas taxes would go to pay for subways in Toronto even though this was explicitly rejected by the panel.
The solution is to fund the non-GTHA projects with non-GTHA money, in effect building a wall around whatever the “GTHA” means for planning purposes from day to day. This may quiet those who feel “Toronto” gets everything, but with the scale of transit operations in southern Ontario, “Toronto” grows every time the government announces a new GO service.
The political rhetoric takes the Scarborough-vs-Downtown battle over rapid transit spending to a province-wide scale. Perish the thought that Thunder Bay should pay one penny toward a rapid transit line in Toronto even though they will reap the benefit from cars manufactured to operate it. The Liberals bought into this divisive talk to win a by-election in Scarborough, ironically in a riding that won’t even see a subway line. The danger is that even within the GTHA, voters may well ask “why should I pay for a service I won’t use”.
According to the Premier’s announcement, “nearly $29 billion” will be split between the GTHA and non-GTHA funding pools over the coming decade with four sources of funding:
- “Repurposing” the sales tax (HST) now charged on gasoline and diesel fuel for on-road use;
- “Redirecting” 7.5 cents of the existing fuel tax;
- Sales of government assets, and
- Proceeds of a “Green Bonds” program.
Among the tactics proposed by the Transit Panel was the leveraging of any revenue stream through borrowing. A government that once was terrified of more public debt may now embrace it with the proviso that it can be retired with earmarked revenue.
The problem here is that new spending requires either new revenues, or cuts in expenses elsewhere. Shifting existing tax streams into a transit fund will leave a hole in general revenues that could be made up by other taxes on classic targets such as the well-to-do and the corporate sector. We must await for the budget for any details.
A backgrounder from the Ministry of Finance hints at some of the projects that might be funded:
Proceeds from the dedicated fund for the GTHA would help build the next set of priority projects included in Metrolinx’s regional transportation plan, The Big Move. Projects identified in The Big Move include: GO Rail Service Expansion (more two-way, all day and rush hour service) on key corridors, Brampton Queen Street Rapid Transit, Dundas Street Bus Rapid Transit, Durham-Scarborough Bus Rapid Transit, Hamilton Rapid Transit, Hurontario-Main LRT linking Mississauga and Brampton, a Relief Line, and Yonge North Subway Expansion to York Region. The fund could also support other transit infrastructure projects that stimulate economic development and improve mobility, such as the East Bayfront Light Rail Transit project.
This list sticks mainly to the established Metrolinx plans and implies that they still have some relevance in this very political setting. However, a backgrounder on GO Regional Express Rail ups the ante:
The new Moving Ontario Forward plan would work toward phasing in electric train service every 15 minutes on all GO lines.
This is a rather careful statement, and the words “work toward phasing in” have been the death knell of more than one project, most recently the Transit City LRT plan. The backgrounder talks of the benefits, oddly, of relieving subway congestion rather than of the much larger regional role GO could have.
It would also give commuters within Toronto another way to get downtown by increasing service between GO stations and Union Station. A commuter could get to Union Station from Danforth GO Station in just 9 minutes, or from Bloor GO Station in just 15 minutes.
This ignores the problem of transferring between routes and the substantial barrier now posed by GO’s separate and punitive fares for travel over short distances within the city. It also presumes there would be capacity available for such short-hop trips. Near-downtown trips were an odd choice to feature in such an important announcement.
Although the “Downtown Relief Line” is still mentioned as an important part of overall plans, work now underway by Metrolinx and comments by some politicians imply that they would love to put this project on a slow track with GO improvements taking up the role. If nothing else, this would free up money in the short-to-medium term for large pet projects elsewhere. Both GO and an expanded subway system have a role to play, but too much rhetoric has focused on single-line “solutions” rather than a network view.
All this begs the question of just how much of The Big Move will actually survive the Minister’s interventions.
In qualifying the electrification plans, both the Premier and the Minister talk of “lines that we own”, although the Minister is on record about acquiring more track for GO:
“We’re looking at higher speed connectivity, buying up rail lines more aggressively, improving service outcomes and more regular two-way GO service,” Murray said of the priorities that will be laid out in the budget.
… he said the province is actively buying up rail capacity so that GO Trains are no longer seen as “tenants” on other railroad’s lines.
“We now own 80 per cent of the track that we need to own, we will be buying up the remaining 20 per cent and a lot of that is on the lines that come to Kitchener,” Murray said.
[Kitchener-Waterloo Record March 31, 2014]
That will be a challenge considering that portions GO does not yet own are the main lines of CNR and CPR, not lightly used or abandoned branches.
GO has long had an aversion to electrification both because of objections from the railways whose lines would be affected, and from a chronic lack of strong, dedicated funding that could expand service and operations to a range where electrification made sense. Changing that outlook would be quite a coup, but this depends on continuity in the government and long-term commitment to transformation of the GO network. GO must have a publicly announced plan for expansion and improvement beyond whatever is needed to win the election of the day.
On the municipal front, things are not quite as clear. Although the Metrolinx Investment Strategy included 25% of new revenues for municipal projects (with 15% going to transit), municipal funding was completely absent in this announcement. Indeed, Murray has rather testily noted that Toronto, especially, already gets money from the gas tax and has revenue tools such as Vehicle Registration Tax that it chose not to use.
The gas tax revenue, of course, has been established for many years and is worked into the budgets of all local transit systems. It is not “new money”, and can hardly be cited in response to questions about the hoped-for Investment Strategy dollars. [Toronto splits its provincial gas tax between the operating and capital budgets. See 2012 financial statements at page 26 (operating, $91.6m) and page 28 (capital, $75.0m).]
Murray also spoke of “High Speed Rail” in the Toronto KW London corridor, an idea that has been floated before. Although this was unclear in the press statements, Murray’s Twitter exchanges claim that the corridor would see 320 km/h operation (see below). The problem with the Toronto-Kitchener-London corridor, however, is not simply getting from one and to the other, but to the many stations in between.
The line once had reasonably frequent VIA trains on rider-friendly schedules, but this service withered through years of cutbacks and, more recently, competition from GO expansion. The infrastructure needed for operation at this speed is substantial, and one must ask whether the corridor’s demand could be better served simply by more frequent service at typical (Canadian) rail passenger speeds up to 150 km/h. Better service for southwestern Ontario risks being highjacked as an HSR technology project rather than a service improvement that could be delivered faster at much less cost.
The operative phrase throughout the announcement was “wait for the budget”. A Liberal party website promotes the Moving Ontario Forward plan, but is short on details pending the budget announcements.
Meanwhile, Minister Murray, a prolific tweeter, adds his own spin to the debate. [The tweets have been edited to remove extraneous user ids and hastags. All of this can be retrieved by browsing Murray’s Twitter account @Glen4ONT.]
On April 17, an exchange about GO and Downtown Relief, Murray shows support for both regional and local relief.
Glen Murray: #RER15Min will build transit ridership on local transit routes. Need 2 plan GO-local transit connections together. Greater demand w/RER
Robert Zaichkowski: I wonder if #RER15Min will lead to GO stations being placed closer together? Could be a good #ReliefLine solution.
Glen Murray: Robert you are absolutely right. Downtown relief needs system wide relief & increased capacity downtown.
Also on April 17, an exchange about the Scarborough Subway.
Rob Salerno: So if Scarb has access to improved GO service, is there still ridership/need for a subway there?
Glen Murray: MLX will make that decision. We will meet our commitments.
Rob Salerno: erg, so now the Scarb subway may be cancelled if @Metrolinx says it’s not necessary?
Glen Murray: No. Let MLX do their job.
Rob Salerno: Huh? Those two sentences are contradictory.
Glen Murray: No. MLX has made a decision. I don’t imagine that will change, but it is their decision.
Oh come off it, Glen. The idea that Metrolinx makes any decision independently of the government is riotously laughable. The Liberals ran on a Scarborough Subway platform to win the Scarborough-Guildwood by-election, and Murray himself is pushing a subway from Kennedy Station to Scarborough Town Centre via the existing SRT alignment.
It’s amusing that in one line, Murray says that Metrolinx “will make” the decision, and later that they “have made” it. One of these statements cannot be true.
Is there now a recognition that the rationale for the subway may have been cooked to placate Scarborough voters (not to mention the Scarborough Liberal Caucus)? Might a proper analysis show that another option including GO improvements might be preferable? If Metrolinx made a decision, where was this analysis? Nobody has ever published a review including GO services, the subway option and the Scarborough LRT network proposals.
Even better, what would happen if an independent Metrolinx actually concluded that the Scarborough Subway was a waste of money? Would such a report ever see the light of day?
In a discussion with the Globe’s Oliver Moore, we hear about the benefits of more frequent off-peak service.
Oliver Moore: Increased GO service will lead to higher ridership and lower subsidy required, @Glen4ONT says. Could lead to more competitive fares.
@GTAMOVEnetwork: The big problem is spending the money required to take GO transit from “commuter” to “rapid transit” and in ensuring that the investment in GO Transit will not be pulled back in the first 3 years when ROI is not great.
Glen Murray: Not an issue at all.
@GTAMOVEnetwork: I very much hope so. This is going to be a huge investment and ROI won’t be seen for a long time.
Glen Murray: Not true. 1/2 hour Lakeshore service increased ridership & fare revenue by 30% in less than a yr.
This discussion dodges the basic point that capital costs have never been considered in evaluating GO’s business, only day-to-day operating costs. The situation is the same at the TTC. It is very unlikely that GO will make a profit from extra fares with expanded service. If anything, one could argue that service improvements should come as quickly as possible to maximize the ridership and convenience from the capital investment.
On service to Niagara Falls, London and “HSR”:
Glen Murray: Niagara will be getting 15min Regional Express Rail. See today’s announcement. Completed with in 10 yrs.
Tom W: Wynne said GO-owned tracks only – still valid? Or will GO be buying tracks from Burlington to Niagara Falls?
Glen Murray: No. All tracks we own or lease.
Tom W: Thanks! Also, does “high-speed rail” to London mean 200+km/hr?
Glen Murray: 320KM
Tom W: To be clear, you’re promising a train with a top speed of 320 kilometres per hour running from Toronto to London?
Murray really seems to be freelancing on both of these issues given the ownership and existing uses of the corridors in question, not to mention the challenge of truly high speed operation in the KW-London corridor.
On April 17, asked about travel across Toronto rather than to the core:
Glen Murray: #RER15Min is 15 minute service across the GTHA using Electric Multiple Units (EMUs) running on all GO lines. Huge reduction in congestion.
Saurabh: Someone going from York region to Peel can bypass Union?
Glen Murray: Yes. Once the Crosstown is complete. It is under construction now.
Someone should mention to the Minister that his own government chopped off the western end of the Crosstown, and unless the boundary of Peel Region is now at Weston Road, the Crosstown won’t get someone to Peel from Richmond Hill even presuming they wanted to take such a route.
And finally on April 19:
Glen Murray: Projects 4 Prov funding will b evaluated by MLX based on Big Move priority & net benefits.
This, of course, presumes that “net benefits” are fairly calculated and don’t include politically inflated assumptions.
When the budget comes out, we will see just how much of the “promises” made here have survived.
Metrolinx Contemplates Relief (4)
Public meetings regarding the Metrolinx Yonge Corridor Relief Study and the City of Toronto/TTC Relief Line Project Assessment have been announced:
- Saturday April 5, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm at the Sheraton Centre Dominion Ballroom (Queen Street opposite City Hall)
- Tuesday April 8, 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm at Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church (10066 Yonge Street, north of Major MacKenzie) (Metrolinx study only)
- Thursday April 10, 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm at Riverdale Collegiate (1094 Gerrard Street East at Jones Avenue)
- Saturday April 12, 9:00 am to 12:00 noon at Holy Name Parish (71 Gough Avenue, Danforth one block west of Pape) (City/TTC study only)
A new website has been created under the name regionalrelief.ca with links to various aspects of these studies. There are three main branches only one of which contains new content.
- The Metrolinx branch takes readers to the Metrolinx Regional Relief Strategy project page which reflects the status as of the February 2014 board meeting.
- The City of Toronto branch goes to a subsite dedicated specifically to the Project Assessment for the Relief Line. This includes a mechanism for public participation in formulation of the Terms of Reference for this study.
- The York Region branch goes to the VivaNext page for the Yonge subway Richmond Hill extension.
I will update this article if new material appears before the public meetings.
Metrolinx Contemplates Relief (3) (Meetings Postponed)
The meetings originally announced for the week of March 1st in Toronto and Richmond Hill have been postponed by joint agreement of the parties involved. New dates later in March will be announced.
Metrolinx will hold three public meetings to discuss the Regional Relief Strategy on March 1st and 3rd in Toronto, and on March 5th in Richmond Hill.
Metrolinx Contemplates Relief (2)
This article is a continuation of a previous commentary on the Metrolinx Yonge Network Relief Strategy.
On February 14, 2014, the Metrolinx Board considered the presentation on the Yonge Network Relief Study, but little information was added in the debate. One question, from Chair Robert Prichard, went roughly “shouldn’t this have been started two years ago”, but it was left hanging in the air without a response. Two years, of course, has brought us a new Provincial Premier and a recognition that her predecessor’s timidity on the transit file wasted a great deal of time.
Moreover, there is a long overdue acknowledgement that Metrolinx cannot simply plan one line at a time without understanding network effects including those beyond its own services.
Originally, I planned to leave the next installment in this discussion until public consultation sessions began, but I have now decided to make some brief comments on the various options that will be on the table. (See Yonge Network Relief Study, page 11.)
Metrolinx Contemplates Relief
At its meeting on February 14, 2014, the Metrolinx Board will receive a presentation on the Yonge Network Relief Study. Despite the need for better regional transit links (and by that I mean links that do not take people to downtown Toronto), the elephant in the room has always been the unstoppable demand for more capacity into the core area. Planning for and debates about catching up with the backlog of transit infrastructure cannot avoid this issue, and it skews the entire discussion because the scale and cost of serving downtown is greater than any other single location in the GTHA.
Conflicting political and professional attitudes across the region colour the view of downtown. Toronto suburbs, never mind the regions beyond the city boundary, are jealous of downtown’s growth, and for decades have wanted some of the shiny new buildings and jobs for themselves. But the development, such as it was, skipped over the “old” suburbs to new areas in the 905 that could offer lower taxes possible through booming development and the low short-term cost of “new” cities.
Strangling downtown is not a new idea, and politicians decades ago foretold of gleaming suburban centres to redirect growth together with its travel demand. The transit network would force-feed the new centres, and downtown would magically be constrained by not building any new transit capacity to the core.
Someone forgot to tell GO Transit where service and ridership grew over the decades. Downtown Toronto continued to build, and that is now compounded by the shift of residential construction into the older central city.
Thanks to the early 1990s recession, the subway capacity crisis that had built through the 1980s evaporated, and the TTC could talk as if more downtown capacity was unneeded. To the degree it might be required, the marvels of new technology would allow them to stuff more riders on existing lines. A less obvious motive was that this would avoid competition for funding and political support between new downtown capacity with a much-favoured suburban extension into York Region. Whenever they did talk about “downtown relief”, the TTC did so with disdain.
Times have changed. Long commutes are now a burden, not a fast escape to suburban paradise. Every debate starts with “congestion” and the vain hope that there is a simple, take-two-pills-and-call-me-in-the-morning solution. Top that off with an aversion for any taxes that might actually pay for improvements, or sacrifices in convenience until that blissful day when transit arrives at everyone’s doorstep.
Travelling to NYC
This thread has been created to hold comments accumulating elsewhere on travel by air, rail or bus from Toronto to New York. The discussion started with my observation:
By analogy, I offer my own recent flights to NYC which took about one hour flying time each way. They also included nearly two hours of “get to the terminal early for international security checks”, flight delays at both ends (the return trip was almost two hours late leaving), and delays on the tarmac to obtain a gate. We actually sat in EWR on the ground for almost as long as we had been in the air. The speed of the trip was better than driving, especially in the winter, but an elapsed time of 8 hours from arriving at YTZ to being out of the terminal at EWR is only slightly faster.
Translate that to the transit experience and you will see why I have a problem with folks who only look at the “whoosh” factor as a train speeds by people who used to board a bus a five minute walk from their homes.
Don’t Just Fund Transit, Build Transit
Back in December, the advisory panel reviewing the Metrolinx Investment Strategy released its report recommending a number of revenue generation tools and showing how these could support an accelerated construction plan for many transit improvements. As background to this proposal, I asked for details on how the panel had worked out the spending pattern and the project timing. Recently, this information was forwarded to me.
What is most interesting about this paper is the chart showing project timing and spending on page 4. The projects include:
- Upgrades to GO Transit for all day service on the Milton, Barrie, Richmond Hill, Stouffville and Georgetown-Kitchener corridors;
- Electrification of the UPX to Pearson Airport;
- LRT lines on Hurontario-Main and in Hamilton;
- BRT for Dundas Street and Durham-Scarborough;
- An unspecified rapid transit line for Brampton Queen Street;
- The Relief Subway line plus partial extension of the Yonge line.
The work is spread over 2015-25 with peak spending in the years 2017-21. The annual expenditures are not constrained by the size of the income stream because bridge financing would be used. This would carry the program through to the later years when revenue would be used to pay down debt rather than to fund current construction.
What is so striking about this plan is that the goal is to build transit as quickly as reasonably possible, not to hamstring construction work with hand wringing about the amount of each year’s spending allocation from Queen’s Park. Much of the hope vested in The Big Move was lost thanks to the extended delivery times for projects which, in turn, were dictated by the abject fear of financing the work with new revenues. A bold plan was neutered by the McGuinty Liberals’ terror of criticism by the “no new taxes” brigade.
It’s all well to point to a list of “funded projects”, but if the delivery dates for construction and completion drift off into the future, the funding announcements are just so much toilet paper.
Overall construction time for each project is sourced from the Metrolinx Investment Strategy. However, the capacity to deliver these projects as outlined has not been factored into schedule development – the Panel’s proof of concept deliberately advances Next Wave projects to begin construction faster than currently anticipated and after the design period is complete. [Page 1]
That phrase “capacity to deliver” brings me to one of Metrolinx’ favourite excuses for an extended rollout schedule – a claim that the construction industry cannot possibly do so much work in so short a time. That fails on several counts notably that the original Big Move, unconstrained by a spending slowdown ordered by Queen’s Park, planned a $2-billion annual outlay (plus inflation) over 25 years, a period we would be well into by now but for Queen’s Park’s reticence.
A great deal of the work outlined here would be underway and completed before the end of the “first wave” of Big Move projects. This shows the effect of more aggressive planning where providing service is the primary goal rather than dragging out spending. If a similar approach had been taken sooner, we could be riding new transit services in the next few years, not hearing over and over about a handful of projects such as the Spadina extension that have been in the pipeline for quite a long time.
Metrolinx staff are supposed to be reviewing the timing of at least the Sheppard LRT project with a view to beginning this earlier. In the current political situation, with the Scarborough subway/LRT debate heating up again, it is hard to know whether Metrolinx will even have the backbone to discuss a speedup of the Sheppard line publicly.
This shows everything that is wrong with that supposedly independent agency – policy debates, “what if” discussions never take place in public, presuming that they take place at all. This might embarrass politicians and show voters what options would actually cost, and how soon they new services could be available, if only we had the collective will to proceed for the benefit of the GTHA as a whole, not for individual by-elections that skew political focus.
Whether any of this comes to pass will depend on how much of the Transit Panel’s recommendations are incorporated into the government’s budget for 2014-15, and whether the opposition parties force an election. The key point is that voters need to believe that any new taxes will actually benefit them, and will do so soon, not a decade or more in the future.
We have had enough of spineless government on the transit file. Dalton McGuinty was a huge disappointment substituting delay for action, and Kathleen Wynne has only one chance to prove that she really believes in attacking the deficit in transit construction head on.
No excuses. Build now.
Tearing Apart The Big Move
The Neptis Foundation has published a long report which provides a serious critique of projects in the Metrolinx Big Move plan and proposes significant alterations to the proposed network. Everything is based on cost-effectiveness although the critique depends on implementation of the overall scheme rather than the usual piecemeal approach to network expansion. Of particular note is the need to regard GO as a high frequency, high capacity regional system closely integrated with local transit.
There is too much in this report for me to comment on as I write this (midnight, December 11), but I will try to pull together more extensive remarks in the next day or so. Meanwhile, coverage of this report will appear in the Wednesday Star, and this is likely to stir up several hornet’s nests.
A quick review indicates the following significant issues:
- The Downtown Relief Line disappears and its “relief” function is provided by a combination of GO Transit upgrades and increased subway capacity.
- The only service to Pearson Airport remains the Union Pearson Express which is considered to be profitable (operating cost recovery only) despite a conclusion to the contrary by the Provincial Auditor. The wider question of this service’s ability to absorb greater demand and a wider variety of traffic is not examined beyond a proposal for a “frequent user” fare that would attract trips by airport workers, not just business class travellers.
- Electrification of GO Transit is essential.
- Fare and service integration with GO is an essential part of the proposal.
- Several stations on the Eglinton Crosstown line would be dropped, and the proposed at grade section would become an elevated structure. This takes us back to a version of the Eglinton line originally pushed by Metrolinx as a regional facility, and begs the question of transit service to the now wider “in between” locations that would lose their stations.
- The Richmond Hill subway would also lose some of its stations pending contributions by developers along the line.
- The Scarborough Subway, LRT and Sheppard LRT would be converted to one consolidated, automated line to attract more riders.
At first blush, I cannot help thinking that this report is hopelessly naive on a few counts.
First, it depends on a co-ordinated scale of network expansion we are unlikely to see, especially for the GO component which is used to justify dropping other parts of the Big Move network.
Second, there is a focus on cost-benefit that at first glance appears to preclude the function of new transit lines as part of a network. A related issue is the question of marginal new ridership where a large expenditure to improve the quality of service for existing riders is given no credit for that benefit as they generate no net revenue.
Third, there appears to be no discussion nor appreciation of the role of local services for areas beyond the immediate reach of rapid transit stations. This is very much a return to the kind of thinking that infected early days at Metrolinx.
I will leave further comments until I have a chance to read all of the details.
Steve Munro 