A Grand Plan

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Sprawl Is Good For You?

There are times I pick up my morning Globe & Mail and wonder who selects their articles, especially in the Report on Business where investigative journalism does not exactly reign.  A few days ago, right on the top of page B2, they had a piece of drivel by Brian Lee Crowley entitled “Sick of congestion? Build roads, not transit“.

Is the Globe playing for the Ford Nation readership?  Is their soon-to-be-neighbour on King East, the dwindling Toronto Sun, rubbing off on the Globe’s brand?  Will being at the mercy of the King car give them second thoughts about downtown?  After all, they’re also unable to plump for mayoral candidates who might be seen as part of the downtown elite even thought they might actually be competent for the position.

Crowley argues that building more roads is the secret of success far more productive than building new transit lines.  This is the orthodoxy one expects from someone who views Wendell Cox as an informed, unbiased source of information.  On the issue of concentrating resources on transit construction, Crowley writes:

As urban geographer Wendell Cox likes to say, this idea that road construction only worsens congestion is like believing that building more maternity wards will cause more babies to be born.

This argument is a total non-sequitur because the issue is not cause and effect, but capacity and latent demand.  The existence of a new, comparatively uncongested road will induce more driving simply by making this a more attractive option.  More maternity wards do not, of themselves, make having a family more attractive.  To continue the analogy, it would be like a construction program fixated with on ramps.

Cox is no “urban geographer”, but an apologist for anti-government, anti-transit arguments going back decades.  There are enough transit boondoggles in the USA for anyone to show how vast resources have been spent to build new lines of dubious value.  The USA, like Canada, has a long history of spending on capital projects as a job creation scheme regardless of the intrinsic value of what is actually built.  Pork barrel politics bring billions to cities and to the construction industry that feeds off of them.

That does not make all transit a waste of money any more than recent subway debates would invalidate any transit spending plans for the GTHA.  What those debates do achieve is to undermine the credibility of those who ask for more money when voters are suspicious that nothing of real value will be created.

Only when one is well into Crowley’s piece, does one find the real heart of his argument — lower density cities with spread out jobs and populations, and lots of road capacity, are actually less congested and have shorter commute times than the more traditional configuration of downtown-plus-suburb we know so well.  His poster children are Phoenix and Houston.

Certainly, if one has a city with ample room to grow, a history of leaving wide swaths of land around main roadways, and a development model that favours decentralization, one can easily have uncongested roads.  We saw exactly this in much of the 905 until growth caught up with road capacity and, suddenly, those quick trips through suburbia became a commuting nightmare.  The problem is not just “downtown” but throughout much of the GTA.

Crowley pulls a “bait and switch” on his readers giving the implication that he has a solution to congestion when, in fact, his answer is to not build denser cities in the first place.  One can easily argue that there are many other benefits of density and that the effect on commute times is a trade-off we make for a more “urban” environment.  Our problem in the GTA is that we only half-heartedly embrace a truly “sprawling” city.  We already have a dense core, and the idea of keeping housing and jobs spread out all the way from Steeles Avenue to Lake Simcoe is not a model the development industry cares to follow.

Crowley ends by exhorting planners to think of sprawl as part of their toolkit to make better, less congested cities.  This is complete nonsense.  He starts with the premise that where sprawling cities do exist, there is little or no congestion, but then reverses cause and effect to imply that sprawl can be used as an antidote.  No, it doesn’t work that way.  Our congestion already exists, and more sprawl won’t make it vanish.  Neither will road building, at least on a scale we can afford and tolerate within our already-developed city.

If anything, our problems are compounded by the demands of the industrial sector who want to see less congestion for their trucks and, by implication, a shift of road priority away from individual motorists by spending on alternatives like transit.

Simplistic analyses like this may keep Ford Nation warm at night dreaming of more expressways (provided the roads and traffic don’t go through their neighbourhood).  For the debate about Toronto’s transit future, Crowley’s empty and misleading thesis is a useless distraction.

Links to Other Articles in Response:

Jarrett Walker on Human Transit

Todd Litman on Facebook

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The Problem With LRT Publicity (Updated)

Updated on December 12, 2013 at 5:40 pm:  Maps of the original SLRT alignment proposed by the Transportation Plan Review and the alternate alignment proposed by me and Robert Wightman have been added at the end.

Original article from December 10, 2013:

Back when glaciers still plied the northern outskirts of Toronto, there was something called the Metropolitan Toronto Transportation Plan Review.  It was an outgrowth of the decision to halt construction of the Spadina Expressway and take a new look at Toronto’s transportation plans.  At the time, folks living in The Beach and the east side of downtown were fighting against the Scarborough Expressway.  This project would have linked the (former) stub end of the Gardiner at the Don east to Woodbine, north to the rail corridor, and then east to link up with the 401 in eastern Scarborough.

The MTTPR (as it was called) looked at alternatives to the expressway and in March 1974, they came up with a scheme to build an LRT line with two branches.  This would follow Queen Street (as part of the streetcar service) to east of Broadview, then follow the rail corridor to Scarborough Junction.  One leg would head east to Morningside, while the other turned northeast to the Scarborough Town Centre.

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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.

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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.

DTRES_Demand_Comparisons

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.

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Inching Ahead on Downtown Relief (Updated)

Updated December 4, 2013 at 7:00 pm:

Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee considered the proposed consultation process from City staff regarding the Downtown Relief Line and approved it with only one minor amendment, that a contest be set up to name the new line.

Those of us who remember the last such contest will know that it produced, as a moniker for the line now serving Scarborough Town Centre, that heartwarming name, “RT”.

Two presentations were made by Metrolinx and by City staff.

The Metrolinx presentation gives an overview of the Yonge Relief Network Study which will consider capacity problems and approaches to relief from a network point of view including the possibility that some of the modeled demand can be shifted from the subway to GO Transit.  Included in this is a map (page 4) showing the projected locations and degrees of capacity shortfall on the 2031 network.

What is quite striking about this map is that while there may be a severe problem south of Bloor Station, the situation north to Sheppard is not exactly rosy with demands ranging up to 100% of capacity.  The need to divert demand north of Bloor is quite evident, although it is rarely mentioned in discussions of “downtown relief”.

The City presentation gives a précis of the report, but shows more clearly (page 10) that at this stage all that is happening is consultation on the Terms of Reference and the Public Consultation that would occur in a future study.  This will come back to Council in the spring of 2014 for approval of the full study.

This is a hybrid version of the Environmental Assessment process.  A Transit Project Assessment is intended to be fairly brief (120 days) based on a predetermined project.  However, the DRL is so far-reaching and expensive a proposal that the City wants to ensure a valid review of all options has taken place before locking in to the formal TPAP review which offers little opportunity for amendment.

An important factor will be the co-ordination and integration of the network-wide study by Metrolinx and the local route and station planning by the City and TTC.  Metrolinx will have a good sense of the network options by mid-2014 just at the point the City process enters its “alternatives” phase and the creation of a “long list” of options.

The greatest challenge in the short term will be to ensure that the Terms of Reference do not preclude options that should be considered.  In this regard, limiting the study area to the initial phase of a DRL from downtown to Danforth may be valid for detailed planning of alignments and stations, but not from the larger view of how a second phase north to Eglinton or other extension options might affect the route selection on the first phase.

The City plans extensive consultation on the ToR including public input from community and advocacy groups.

Another challenge will be the credibility of demand and capacity figures used to model the future network.  For reasons that I will discuss in a separate article, some of the modeling numbers cited by the TTC’s Downtown Rapid Transit Expansion Study are suspect on two counts:

  • The projected service levels and demands on the northern GO lines (a) do not necessarily match with Metrolinx’ plans as stated in The Big Move, and in particular demand assigned to the Richmond Hill GO line is trivial.
  • The projected increase in total demand flowing into the core from the north with the Richmond Hill subway is only 1,000 per peak hour.  Much of the extra subway demand comes from trips reassigned from the GO rail lines.

If the numbers for the Yonge subway and the GO network are dubious, then what of the potential demand from a DRL, especially the component north of Danforth to which the TTC assigns a low demand and priority?  Earlier at the same P&GM meeting, City staff presented information about the “Feeling Congested” consultations that have been underway.  This included a preliminary evaluation of various additions to the transit network in which the Don Mills corridor, including the proposed LRT to Steeles, ranked highly (see map, page 19).

A future line cannot both be highly ranked and of little value, and this suggests at a minimum that the criteria by which it was evaluated are not the same in each case.  The challenge for the DRL’s Terms of Reference process is to determine which evaluation is correct.

The original text of this article from December 2, 2013, follows the break.

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Crosstown LRT Interchanges with the Yonge-University-Spadina Subway

The TTC meeting agenda for November 18 includes a report on the proposed designs for the connections at Eglinton and at Eglinton West Stations between the existing subway line and the Crosstown LRT now under construction.

Eglinton is a particularly complex station because the location is constrained by nearby buildings, the platform space is already at a premium with four existing links between the subway and mezzanine levels, and this is expected to be a busy transfer location.

Eglinton West is somewhat simpler in part because the existing station is offset from Eglinton Avenue and the link between the two stations will occur at the south end of the existing structure.

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Yonge Subway Shutdown Between Eglinton and St. Clair Postponed to 2016

TTC CEO Andy Byford has issued a letter to members of the Commission and to Council advising that a planned shutdown of the subway for major reconstruction in the vicinity of Davisville Station has been put off until 2016.  In the meantime, sufficient repairs will be done to keep trains moving at a reasonable speed through this section.

The underlying problem, quite literally, is that the foundation and drainage below the track have failed causing the track to be unstable.  The condition has been addressed off-and-on for a few years with slow orders, but this does not solve the problem.

This and other areas of the subway system with wood tie/stone ballast track will be 60 years old in 2014. This is well past the normal operating life for such systems.

Detailed investigations have determined that in addition to normal wear and tear, the area below the stone ballast and the associated subgrade drainage systems have both failed, allowing enough movement of the track system to cause abnormal track movement which, in turn, can cause the signal system to fail safe. Subway service in the area is safe, but reliability on our busiest line is not where it needs to be.

The TTC will have to dig down substantially below track level, and this is the sort of maintenance that cannot be carried out overnight of on a weekend.  The number of buses and operators needed to bridge this section of the line is well into the hundreds, and the TTC does not have these resources.  Short shutdowns may be attempted and these will be co-ordinated with other work in the same section of the route.

If ever there were a need to demonstrate that subways do not last 100 years, as some short-sighted advocates claim, this is a perfect example.  The Yonge line is now 60 years old and parts of it are showing their age.  Indeed, another  section at Lawrence Station also requires major repairs even though it is barely 40 years old.

Read the full memo.

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Construction That Never Ends (Update 4)

Updated November 14, 2013 at 6:20 pm:

According to the TTC CEO’s report for November, the date for resumption of streetcar service on Queens Quay has been changed to June 21, 2014.  Brad Ross of the TTC advises that their website will be updated to reflect this new target date.

Updated October 26, 2013 at 4:32 pm:

According to the TTC CEO’s report for October (at page 20), service will not resume on Queens Quay until August 2014, not the end of June as previously reported.  I have asked the TTC to verify this date and explain why completion has slipped yet again.

The TTC memo listing service changes for the November and December schedule periods came out today, and it contains a few startling items:

  • The Yonge Subway tunnel liner program, originally expected to wrap up at the end of 2013, will now run an additional year to the end of 2014.
  • The loop at the foot of Queens Quay will not be available for service as expected in November, and service on the 510 streetcar will not resume until mid-February 2014.
  • The track on Queens Quay itself will not be available for service as expected in December/January, and service on the 509/510 streetcar will not resume until the end of June 2014.

Updated October 2, 2013 at 10:25 am:

Waterfront Toronto has posted a Construction Update for the Queens Quay project.

Updated October 1, 2013 at 6:00 pm:

Yonge Subway Tunnel Liners

I have received a note from Brad Ross at the TTC explaining the current situation.  The work has proven more extensive both in complexity and scope than originally thought.  In reply to one comment in this thread, I gave the opinion that all of the asbestos had been removed from the tunnels, but according to Ross, there is still some present and this adds to the slowness of the work.

The tunnel liner project involves the inspection of some 10,000 tunnel liners. To date, 4,000 liners have been inspected, 950 identified in need of repair, and 850 of them repaired. The process is not a speedy one as many of the liners are covered in material, including asbestos, which needs to be removed before a liner can be inspected. Add to that the time it takes for crews to get to the work location, set up, clean up, and return to the yard. As we examine liners, we’re identifying more and more that need to be repaired, mostly due to water damage. In short, the project timeline increases as the work involved increases. We are now working to determine what a reasonable completion date might look like and what the overall impact to subway service north of Eglinton will be over the next 12-18 months. Once we have that, we’ll communicate it widely.

[Email from Brad Ross, Executive Director, Corporate Communications, TTC, October 1, 2013]

Waterfront Toronto Queens Quay Project

I met with Waterfront Toronto staff to discuss the status of the project.  They have issued a construction update detailing the current situation.

Because the lanes occupied by the TTC right-of-way are essential as extra space into which construction or temporary road lanes can be shifted for utility work, the new trackbed cannot be laid down until all utility work requiring traffic diversions in an area is completed.

This work has been affected by a number of factors notably:

  • A late start by Toronto Hydro who did not receive funding approval for their Capital Program from the Ontario Energy Board in time to meet the original schedule.
  • Ground water conditions that at some locations were more challenging than expected.
  • Subsidence and resulting damage to existing utilities when areas were de-watered for construction access.  This was anticipated, but the extent of the problem is hard to gauge before the work is actually done.

The area around Spadina and Queens Quay has many utilities competing for space and for construction access.  Some planned work has been complicated by new, more stringent provincial labour safety standards for work near live hydro lines.

Most of the splicing chambers for the new track are complete, but one critical one that will feed Queens Quay Loop is inaccessible at present due to competing work in the same area.  This has slowed installation of the grounding cables for the loop which will tie back to that chamber.

The intent is to have the trackwork in the loop finished by yearend.  TTC would then install its overhead in preparation for service at the start of the February 2014 schedule period which will fall in the middle of the month.  The track installation will likely be done mainly in November, and partial shutdowns of the streets around the loop will be required.

There are three sets of special work (loop entrance from Queens Quay, loop exit to Spadina and the Spadina & Queens Quay intersection).  A preliminary plan for this might have broken the work into three stages, but Waterfront Toronto hopes to consolidate this into two.

A further complication will be the partial closing of Lake Shore Blvd. to complete the track connection south from new rails on Spadina.

Waterfront Toronto expects to publish details of the work schedule soon.

As for the tangent track on Queens Quay, the major constraint is that the space cannot be given up until utility work in a section is clear.  The intention is to build the foundation slab in pieces as various sections of the roadway become available.  Track installation would be completed in spring 2014, followed by overhead catenary, with a target date for streetcar service in late June.  (If the schedule periods for 2014 follow the same pattern as in 2013, this would be Sunday, June 22, 2014.)

Waterfront Toronto’s work plan for summer-fall 2014 will concentrate on the area south of the streetcar right-of-way which will contain the new cycling path, an expanded pedestrian area, and many trees.  Some finishing work will occur in early 2015 in advance of the Pan Am Games.

What is frustrating about all of this is that the delay in Hydro’s approval at the OEB was well known a year ago, and Waterfront Toronto has maintained rather hopeful dates for resumption of service that strained credibility as the construction wore on and on and on.