This article is the last 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, Part II and Part III.
GO Transit
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 (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.
Will The TTC Board Ever Discuss Policy, or, Good News Is Not Enough (Updated)
Updated January 21, 2014 at 2:20 pm: The description of the loading standards introduced with the Ridership Growth Strategy has been corrected.
The election season is upon us in Toronto, and transit made an early appearance on the campaign with mayoral candidate David Soknacki’s proposal that Toronto revert to the LRT plan for Scarborough. I am not going to rehash that debate here, but there is a much larger issue at stake.
The Ford/Stintz era at Council and at the TTC has been notable for its absence of substantive debate on options and alternatives for our transit future. Yes, we have had the subways*3 mantra, the palace coup to establish Karen Stintz and LRT, for a time, as a more progressive outlook on the TTC Board, and finally the Scarborough debate.
But that’s not all there is to talk about on the transit file. Do we have a regular flow of policy papers at Board meetings to discuss what transit could be, should be? No. Ford’s stooges may have been deposed, but the conservative fiscal agenda remains. Make do with less. Make sacrifices for the greater good, whatever that may be. Show how “efficiency” can protect taxpayer dollars even while riders freeze in the cold wondering when their bus will appear.
Every Board meeting starts with a little recitation by the Chair of good news, of stories about how TTC staffers helped people and the good will this brings to the organization. There is ever so much pride in improved cleanliness and attractiveness of the system – a worthwhile achievement, but one that should become second nature to maintain. It should also be a “canary in the coal mine”, a simple, obvious example of what happens when we make do with “good enough”, with year-by-year trimming to just get by.
If the bathrooms are filthy, imagine the condition of the trains, buses and streetcars you are riding. I’m not talking about loose newspapers blowing around, but of basic maintenance. From our experience in the 1990s, we know how a long slide can take a once-proud, almost cocky system to disaster, and how hard it is to rebuild.
In a previous article, I wrote about the threat to basic system maintenance posed by underfunding of the Capital Budget, an issue that has not received enough public debate. Part of the problem is that the crucial maintenance work that must occur year over year is treated the same way as new projects. Maintenance competes with the glamour projects for funding, and may be treated as something to be deferred, something we don’t need yet. Couple that with starvation of funds for basics like a new and expanded fleet and garage space, and there’s a recipe for a TTC that will decline even while more and more is expected of public transit.
The budget isn’t the only issue that deserves more detailed examination, and many other policies should be up for debate. Within a month, the TTC will have a new Chair as Karen Stintz departs for the mayoralty campaign. Within a year, Toronto should have a new Mayor, one whose view of transit is not framed by the window of his SUV. At Queen’s Park we may have a Liberal government with a fresh, if shaky, mandate to raise new revenues for transit construction and operation, or we may have a populist alternative with a four-year supply of magic beans.
In the remaining months, the TTC Board has a duty to lay the ground for the governments to come, especially at City Hall. The 2015 budget debates should be well informed about the options for transit, if only for planning where Toronto will need to spend and what services the TTC will offer in years to come. Will the TTC rise to this challenge, or sit on its hands with a caretaker Board until the end of the current term?
Here is a selection of the major policy issues we should be hearing about, if only the TTC would engage in actual debate to inform itself, Council, the media and the voters.
- Fare structure: What is the appropriate way to charge fares for transit service? By time, distance, week, month? How does smart card technology change the way fares are collected and monitored? What are the implications for regional travel and integration?
- Service standards: What loading standards should be used to drive service improvements? Should the TTC build in elbow room to encourage riding and to reduce delays due to crowding? Should there be a core network of routes with guaranteed frequent service?
- Service management: What goals should the TTC aim for in managing service? Do the measures that are reported today accurately reflect the quality of service? Are bad schedules to blame for erratic service, or does this stem from management indifference or from labour practices that work against reliable service? What are the tradeoffs in the relative priority of transit and other traffic? What are the budgetary effects of moves to improve service?
- Budgets and Subsidies: Both the Operating and Capital Budgets have been cut below the level recommended by TTC management. These cuts will affect service and maintenance in the short and long term, but there has been no debate about the effect, especially if these are not quickly reversed in a post-Ford environment. The Capital Budget faces a huge gap between available funding and requirements. Over ten years, the shortfall is 30% in available financing versus requirements, and this is back-end loaded so that the shortfall rises to 50% in later years. The proposed level of City subsidy is barely half what would be needed if Queen’s Park returned to its historical 50% capital funding formula. Hoped-for money from Ottawa is more likely to finance major projects such as new subway lines, not the “base” budget for capital maintenance. The budget, especially capital, is not well understood by the TTC Board or Council in part because of the confusing way in which it is presented. Toronto cannot begin to discuss subsidy policies if those responsible for decisions cannot understand their own budgets.
- The Waterfront: While battles rage over subway and LRT proposals for the suburbs, a major new development on the waterfront is starved for transit thanks to cost escalation, tepid interest by the TTC, and the perception that waterfront transit can be left for another time. The pace of development may be threatened if good transit does not materialize on Queens Quay, and later to the Port Lands, but meanwhile this project sits on the back burner little understood by most members of the TTC Board and Council.
- Rapid transit plans: The artificial distinction between GO and the subway (or even higher-end LRT operations such as the proposed Scarborough line) will disappear as GO becomes a frequent all-day operation. There will be one network regardless of the colours of the trains. GO service to the outer parts of the 416 is particularly important as an alternative to subway construction serving long-haul trips to downtown. Subways, LRT and BRT each has its place in the network, but electoral planning must not leave us with fragments of a network rather than an integrated whole.
- Accessibility: The need for accessibility extends all the way from the severely disabled who require door-to-door service, through a large and growing population who have some degree of independence, to those whose only problem may be bad knees or a weak heart. Neither the TTC nor the City has taken the issues of accessibility particularly seriously in recent years. There may be good words, but the budget and service policies clearly limit the growth of the parallel Wheel Trans system. Meanwhile, retrofitting the system for full access is delayed thanks to funding limitations at both the City and Queen’s Park. What we do not know is the true extent of the need for accessibility on the TTC and what this means for service and infrastructure.
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.
Future Demand on the Downtown Subway Network
Recent discussion about the Downtown Relief Line study and its Terms of Reference sent me back to the TTC’s Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study (DTRES) published last year for a look at the demand projections.
What I found there was rather troubling.
The TTC looked at three scenarios to model future shortfall in network capacity by 2031:
- The existing TTC and GO networks
- An enhanced “reference network” with improved subway and GO service
- The reference network plus the Yonge extension north from Finch to Richmond Hill
The demand model outputs appear in three separate tables within that study, but it is not until we consolidate the information that some anomalies really jump out.
There are four sets of numbers in this table with columns corresponding to the three model networks.
- Capacity: This gives the capacity of each route based on service levels and train lengths.
- Inbound demand: This is the modeled demand on the network.
- V/C: This is the ratio of demand to capacity. A value near to or greater than 1.0 indicates that the line will be over capacity during at least part of the peak period.
- Inbound deficiency: Where the capacity is lower than the demand, this is the magnitude of the shortfall.
The capacity of the reference network is about 50% greater than the existing one. Note that for the northern GO services, ten-car trains are assumed although 20% could be added to the capacity with 12-car trains on the same presumed schedules. (The model also considered the east-west GO services and their effect in draining trips off of the BD subway that would otherwise contribute to demand south of Bloor Station.)
The modeled demand is also about 50% greater than the demand that the model assigns to the “existing” network configuration. This shows the modeled effect of increased transit service on network demand. However, this also begs the question of where those trips would be if the TTC and GO improvements did not take place. An obvious useful addition to the discussion would be the added road trips, or the trips simply not taken because there was no network capacity to handle them.
The big surprise is that there is almost no difference between the total demand with or without the Richmond Hill extension. Indeed, most changes are re-assignments of trips from GO lines and the University subway in the “reference” network to the Yonge subway in the “reference + YSE” network.
Route Without YSE With YSE University Subway 25,100 23,500 Yonge S of Bloor 35,800 39,400 Barrie GO 7,500 7,400 Richmond Hill GO 2,500 2,200 Stouffville GO 8,600 8,000 Total 79,500 80,500
Why would we spend billions of dollars building a subway to Richmond Hill to carry no more total riders on the network than we do without it?
There are two obvious responses to this question:
- Some of the new trips have destinations at or north of Bloor Street and therefore they do not contribute to the count of riders into the core area.
- In the model’s world, the subway extension does not attract any net new trips beyond what would occur simply with better service on the subway to Finch and enhanced GO services (i.e. with the reference network).
This is a rather strange situation considering that the holdup on building the Richmond Hill extension arose from the claim that it would overload the Yonge line. However, in the model, it does this primarily by attracting trips that would otherwise have been on GO or on the extended University subway.
(At this point, I have to wonder whether a similar methodology produced the inflated ridership projections for the Scarborough Subway, but that is another matter.)
The model shows very low ridership on the Richmond Hill line. Indeed, the greatest number of riders (2,900) is obtained with the “existing” network and the value falls even though GO service is improved in the “reference” and “reference + YSE” networks. This implies that the model prefers to assign trips to the “faster” Yonge subway especially when it goes all the way north to Richmond Hill.
On the BD line, although an increased capacity is included in the model (about 27%), ridership only goes up in the section east of Yonge. This implies either that demand from the west is static (difficult to believe) or that it is going somewhere else in the model. Where? Is growth assigned mainly to GO because it competes well with the subway for traffic in Mississauga while to the east Scarborough is poorly served by GO?
There is no question that Toronto needs more capacity into the core area, but the modeled numbers in the DTRES are suspect. If anything, they may understate the problem and the potential benefits of alternatives to stuffing more riders onto the Yonge subway.
The TTC has a long history of downplaying the need for anything beyond Yonge subway capacity expansion (more trains, new signals, bigger stations) to the detriment of long-term planning for better GO service and new TTC subway or LRT services. For many years, all we heard about from TTC was the need for a Richmond Hill subway. Any other project was cold-shouldered because it threatened that favoured scheme. Only when capacity problems could not be ignored did the TTC turn to the “DRL” as a possible solution.
Toronto has been ill-served by this blinkered planning, and coming studies on the future of the transit network (without regard to the paint scheme on the vehicles) must be based on a fair and accurate assessment of how new and improved services will contribute to moving passengers and limiting the growth of congestion in Toronto.
Nov. 30 GO Lakeshore West Shutdown
This thread has been created to hold comments about a GO shutdown that have been accumulating in the Eglinton Station thread.
All such comments will be moved here.
The Big U and the little u
The Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel has ventured off its supposed path of looking at ways to fund transit growth in the GTHA to at least one proposal for a change to the Metrolinx Big Move plan. This showed up at recent open houses in a handout that is not yet available online.
[The image above was posted on Twitter by Rishi L (@CdnEnginerd). Click for full size version.]
The purpose of this map is to show how office employment is not sited along existing or proposed rapid transit lines. With this as a jumping off point, the Panel suggests there is a need for a “Big U”, a much enhanced GO Transit route from Meadowvale, through Union Station and then north via the Uxbridge Subdivision (Stouffville line) to Markham.
A related factoid (one of those handy bits of information whose presence is supposed to silence critics) is that employment concentrations generate far more transit usage than residential ones. It is certainly true that it is much easier to serve a place like downtown Toronto with a transit network that acts like a big funnel, but this does not eliminate the need to serve the residential ends of those trips.
Toronto’s Bloor-Danforth subway and GO’s commuter lines, for example, spend much of their time running through comparatively low-density neighbourhoods, collecting passengers as walk-ins, park-and-rides, and transfers from the surface transit network. Every time a new transit route is proposed, we hear how it will only be viable if stations are surrounded by huge condo developments. This is utter nonsense because any transit route has a catchment area. The problem is to ensure that transit, sidewalks and bike lanes serve that area and deliver riders to a network that will take them where they want to go.
What is missing from the chart above is any indication of where the people who work in those centres actually live. Looking at the Meadowvale end of the line, how many people come from the area that would be served by the GO corridor and a feeder network to it? There is a lot of territory north, west and south of Meadowvale for which a rapid transit line to the east will do absolutely nothing. Similarly, many who work in Markham live west, north and east of the employment centres. Indeed, most of the red dots on that map are well west of the rail corridor.
Much as I sympathize with the Panel’s desire to get people talking about how parts of any network proposal might actually serve the region, I fear that we are seeing a classic example of someone who got out their crayons and drew a map. The job will quickly change from discussing the philosophy of transit planning (and, don’t forget, funding) to defending the specifics of a proposal.
That is precisely why I have been so restrained about getting out my own crayons except in special circumstances. The recent Don Mills Subway discussion needed a line on a map to illustrate how the “downtown” focus needed to change. Well over half of the debate this triggered became a matter of dueling proposals between “my” line and “your” line that added little to the real issue — the need to see what such a line could connect and serve beyond simply diverting trips away from Bloor-Yonge Station.
People would even argue that there wasn’t “enough” development in some locations to justify such a route ignoring what is there today, what is in the pipeline for tomorrow and what could occur with planning and political encouragement. Meanwhile, we build a subway to land that was recently the middle of nowhere, and propose one through miles of low density residential development as a vote-buyer claiming that only with a subway will Scarborough reap the development it “deserves”.
There is one big problem with the “Big U” — it diverts attention from the “little u” otherwise known as the “Downtown Relief Line”. It doesn’t help one bit that the version of the “little u” shown on the map is the Pape-Queen-Roncesvalles alignment, one that is guaranteed to be very expensive and fails to recognize shifting development patterns (ironically, one of the goals of the “Big U”). It ignores the southerly shift of population and jobs, avoids the available Weston rail corridor where we are spending a fortune to intensify transit infrastructure for a Toonerville Trolley to the airport, and it stops at the Bloor-Danforth subway missing the opportunity to reach further north to be more than a “downtown” line.
“Alternatives analysis” is a fine art in many projects, but the real art for many agencies is to ensure that what you always wanted to build is the “preferred” choice. This is often guaranteed by setting up straw man comparisons so that the one you want shines out as the best of breed. Such may be the situation with the DRL where, on darker days, I suspect that the whole idea is to paint as grim a picture as possible so that it will never be built. Remember that the TTC for decades claimed we didn’t need a DRL, that they could stuff everyone into an upgraded Yonge-University line. Expanding YUS capacity on a heroic scale was their “preferred alternative”.
With the Big and little U’s, we risk being trapped into specifics of route designs that looked good on a napkin in a bar, but which need much more thorough discussion as to purpose and specifics. They are good as starting points for discussion, but are most definitely not the final answer in their respective fields. Moreover, they are not alternatives to each other, a point that is often lost as the political imperative says “build in the suburbs, not downtown”.
The Big Move and the Investment Strategy that supports it have one gaping hole. Very little attention is paid to the role of or funding for the feeder network to a regional system. Moreover, the plethora of lines on the map hides the fact that many of them will not have the most frequent service on the planet. Not all “rapid transit” lines are created equal. As a recent Metrolinx report noted, the growth in “rapid transit” recently has mainly been in “BRT Light” for which the infrastructure requirements are minimal along with the service levels. Crowing about progress in bringing transit to the millions ignores the question of how attractive that transit will be and how people will connect from the trunk routes, such as they may be, to their homes, work and other destinations.
This will be an important issue for network design on both the Big and little U’s. One would serve rail corridors and be totally dependent on local service to deliver riders from homes and to employment locations. The other would serve established and growing neighbourhoods and would enjoy an existing, well-developed set of local transit services as feeders. These are not trivial differences, but they show the problems that will arise if the study does not look beyond the edges of station platforms.
This is the real debate the Transit Panel should engage — does The Big Move really serve the market it claims to address? How useful will it be in attracting trips out of cars and onto transit? Can developers and owners of residential and employment properties expect a real improvement in travel to and from their developments, or will their value be strangled by poor access? Underlying all this is the basic question of whether we are spending all of those billions in the “right” place and what benefit each component of the proposed network will achieve. That speaks directly to the concept of spending wisely, not just for the sake of generating construction jobs and photo ops for the next generation of politicians.
Returning to the “little u”, there will be a motion before Council from Councillor Josh Matlow, seconded by Cllr. John Parker (also a member of the TTC Board), to accelerate work on the EA for a “Relief Subway Line”. Moreover, it asks that Council confirm such a route as “Toronto’s next subway expansion priority”. It will be intriguing to see how this motion fares amid the current circus at City Hall, the recent battle over the Scarborough Subway and a faction claiming that downtown “has enough subways” already.
If this proceeds, it will be vital that it not be hamstrung with narrow terms of reference that filter out options before they are even discussed. A major shortcoming of the new “Transit Project Assessment” protocol is that there is no consideration of alternatives because the decision that something is a “good project” is already assumed. Debating alternatives just gums up the works in what is supposed to be an expedited process, but actually winds up as an exercise in selling an already-determined choice. This is precisely the criticism many had of Transit City that compounded the process with less than stellar detailed planning and “sales”. (Moreover, once a project is approved, it can be amended beyond all recognition, even though the original design was the one that “justified” the project in the first place.)
There is no point in doing a study if the underlying desire at the political and staff level is to sell a “Big U” as a replacement for the “Relief” line, whatever we call it. The terms of reference must ensure that all options are reviewed, including cross-jurisdictional issues such as repurposing the Weston corridor’s UPX trackage for rapid transit. We must not prejudge the outcome by requiring one continuous line to serve both legs of the U/u, especially considering that in some variants both western legs run in the same corridor.
Will Toronto Council, Metrolinx and Queen’s Park embrace the need for a full study of these routes without prejudice toward any preconceived doodlings on maps?
Metrolinx Benefits Case Analysis for the Richmond Hill Subway
Metrolinx has published a study of the proposed subway extension to Richmond Hill updating a Benefits Case Analysis done in 2009. The new report is dated May 2013, but it has only recently been publicly released.
Background information in the study gives an indication of the demand challenges facing the transit network in coming decades. The study itself shows many of the shortcomings of Metrolinx analyses in the selective use of information and limited scope of alternatives comparison.
The study looks at four options for the Richmond Hill line:
- A Base Case assuming substantial additions to existing subway capacity, leaving things as they are with buses serving the existing terminal at Finch Station.
- Option 1: Full subway extension to Richmond Hill Centre close to the existing GO station.
- Option 2: A two-stop subway extension to Steeles with buses serving the area beyond.
- Option 2A: A Steeles subway extension accompanied by improved GO service on the Richmond Hill corridor.
Notable by its absence is an option of both a full subway line to Richmond Hill and improved GO service or any analysis of how demand would divide between the two routes.
The study notes that the Metrolinx Board, in response to earlier analyses, requested additional information:
- Possible adjustments in project scope, timing or phasing;
- Consideration of the extent to which improved service levels on the parallel GO Richmond Hill rail corridor off-loads some of the demand on the Yonge Street subway; and
- The cost impacts of the various options on the subway yards strategy, Yonge-Bloor subway station improvements, and a future Downtown Relief Line to bypass the Yonge-Bloor congestion pinch point. [Par. 1.12, page 3]
The 2013 report does not address these requests because it does not include any option where both the subway and improved GO service operate to Richmond Hill. Although parallel studies (such as the TTC’s own subway yards needs analysis) do look at some aspects of the third point above, this information is not integrated into the analysis, nor is there any review of configurations that could avoid some of the cost of increased subway capacity. This should follow in the Metrolinx study now underway of the Relief Line and associated alternatives, but that sort of network-based review is years overdue.
