A Grand Plan

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Smart Card Wars

With the election upon us, some candidates have decided that transit Smart Cards are an issue they can use to say “I’m the best candidate” by hitching their star to Ontario’s Presto card program.

The Star reports that the TTC will proceed with a tender for an Open Payment system later this year with the intent of a 2011 rollout.  Mayoral hopeful Rocco Rossi has his own scheme called “Presto Plus”.  Can the TTC actually commit to a new system with the current regime still in office?  Rossi’s campaign confirms that he would cancel the TTC’s scheme if he were to become mayor.

Metrolinx would love to see the TTC sign on to Presto, but many questions remain about just what Presto can do for a truly integrated transit system.

Smart Cards are yet another example of the way that transit technology wars in the GTA get in the way of solving fundamental transit problems.  The technology choice becomes more important than the service it provides.  Here are a few questions anyone with “the answer” should consider.

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Paying the Piper (2)

On July 12, the Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA) held a round table at Wychwood Barns to discuss their recently published paper on transit funding.  Please refer to my first article on this topic for details.

The round table added nothing to what we already know on this subject, but did provide insight into public policy debate here in the GTA.  Although this was officially a TCSA event, it was clearly at the service of Metrolinx who had a strong presence.  Rob Prichard, Metrolinx CEO, gave opening remarks.  As I have already noted, John Brodhead, Metrolinx VP of Strategy & Communications, co-chaired the working group behind the TCSA paper.  Other Metrolinx staff were scattered through the crowd, some as facilitators at tables.

Invited participants included activists of varied backgrounds, a few politicians, professionals from government and industry, representatives from various business groups, a few from the media, and others from the collection of “usual suspects” one sees at this type of gathering.  The idea, the hope, was that the collected wisdom of this group might inform future debate and recommendations about how to proceed.

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New Second Exits at Donlands and Greenwood Rouse Community Ire (Update 5)

Updated July 15, 2010 at 11:00 am:

With luck, this will be the last update in this thread.

At the TTC meeting on July 14, there was a long presentation and discussion of the issues at Donlands and Greenwood Stations.  The presentation materials are not yet online as the project pages are being updated by the TTC to reflect recent changes.

Greenwood Station

TTC staff recommended and the Commission approved that the community’s alternative proposed second exit route be used.  This route passes through the back yards of numbers 11 and 15 Linsmore rather than through a site now occupied by any house.

The first version of this scheme included the expropriation of the house now under renovation at 9 Linsmore.  A newspaper report of the affected landowner gives some idea of the background and suggests that his 7-year renovation project is a long-standing annoyance to at least some in the neighbourhood.

In any event, it appears that other owners on Linsmore may be willing to sell, and one way or another, that’s where the exit will go.  The only remaining issue for the TTC is to determine the location of a sewer that may interfere with the proposed route to the exit, and the feasibility of diverting this sewer to suit the new construction.

Donlands Station

The situation at Donlands is more complex than at Greenwood.  TTC staff did a much more thorough job at the Commission meeting, compared with the public meeting a few days earlier, of explaining the standards and calculations used in evaluating the alternatives.  Their target for the path length from the point where an exit stair meets the platform to the surface is two minutes.  This keeps the total exit time, including getting to the exit on the platform, within the overall code targets.

The original group of exit proposals by the community fails to meet the exit time criterion.  However, a new alternative came to light at the Commission meeting.  This would link into the east, rather than the west, end of Donlands Station.  The exit passages would all lie under roads rather than houses, and the exit building would be on the north-east corner of Donlands & Strathmore where there is now a school parking lot and a vent shaft to the subway.  TTC staff will report back on this option once they have a chance to review it.

The most contentious part of the discussion turned on whether the TTC would give approval to any plans on July 14, or would wait until their August 23 meeting to finalize their choice.  The community, understandably, does not trust the TTC, and a deferral would have been a sign of good faith from the Commission.  Such an action would not have slowed work because the Council meeting at which expropriation will be considered is not until August 25.  A TTC recommendation could be taken to Council as supplementary information, a routine process.

On a split vote of 6-3, the Commission decided not to delay approval, and decided to give staff the authority to proceed with the three proposals now on the table:  (a) Donlands & Strathmore, (b) the new TTC alternative with a building in the Dewhurst road allowance and (c) the original scheme using property now occupied by 1 & 3 Strathmore.

Staff assured the Commission that they will report back in August with the outcome of their review.  More generally, there is a recognition at TTC that a public consultation process is needed for “small” projects that don’t trigger formal Environmental or Transit Project Assessments.

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Paying the Piper

The Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA) recently published a discussion paper on transit and transportation infrastructure funding in the GTA.  This document will be discussed at an invitational working group meeting on July 14.

There is little new information in this report which follows on the heels of a similar paper by the Board of Trade (see my post from May 2010) and a Metrolinx review of revenue options in 2008.  Much more fascinating is the process:  a major discussion of provincial infrastructure planning and revenue generation policy is taking place outside of the agency charged with that task.  Indeed, Metrolinx VP John Brodhead is listed as a co-chair of the working group along with TCSA’s Julia Deans.

Metrolinx itself may be unwilling to discuss the so-called “Investment Strategy”, but this does not stop well-connected external groups from pursuing a more activist agenda.  After years of decrying excessive public sector spending, Toronto’s business community has discovered that failure to spend on infrastructure costs the city dearly in lost productivity and attractiveness for investment.  This is not a problem that turns around overnight even assuming we all agreed on what to do.

Queen’s Park may be horrified of proposing new taxes, tolls, “revenue tools”, but with the understanding that spending on transportation in urban regions is essential, even the more conservative elements at the Pink Palace will have to take notice.

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Metrolinx Meeting Followup June 2010 (Updated)

Updated July 6, 2010:  Metrolinx has now published the Benefits Cases Analyses for the Hurontario, Dundas, Durham and GO projects.  I will comment on these in a separate post.

The original article from July 2 follows below:

This article is a followup to the agenda preview I posted on June 28, 2010.  It is a rather lengthy commentary, as much an editorial as a report on events, with the intent of reviewing Metrolinx’ role over coming months and the complexity of the work facing the organization. 

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GO Transit Electrification Study Update

Where Did The Study Come From?

GO Transit’s Georgetown corridor, home to many existing and proposed services, has not been a happy place for the Environmental Assessment process, especially on the southern end of the line.  Officially, this project was the Georgetown South Service Expansion (GSSE), now shortened to the Georgetown South Project.  However, the project has a troubled history thanks to:

  • Extreme insensitivity to local concerns about noise and vibration from the West Toronto Diamond grade separation project eventually resulted in a successful appeal to the Canadian Transportation Agency forcing GO to change its construction methods.
  • Proposals to slice through Weston with a widened rail corridor, including closing streets that linked the commercial strip on Weston Road to the residential communities to the east, infuriated local residents.  This was compounded by their discovery that, initially at least, much of the additional traffic on the corridor would be for the premium fare airport shuttle from Union Station.

This established a confrontational relationship between GO and corridor residents.  When Metrolinx published The Big Move, it was obvious that vastly expanded service would be operated along this line including:

  • All-day service at least to Brampton on the Georgetown line
  • All-day service to Milton
  • Peak period service to Bolton (a line that now has no GO operations but shares the corridor to the north end of Weston)
  • All-day service to Barrie (a line that shares the corridor from Dundas Street south to the rail yards at Bathurst)
  • All-day service every 15 minutes on the Air Rail Link from Union to Pearson Airport operating via the Georgetown line and a spur to be built into the airport lands

GO was so preoccupied with opposition in Weston that it failed to take account of the quickly growing population around the rail corridor south of West Toronto Junction.  Aside from the question of daily train movements, GO further alienated residents with a proposal for the Strachan Avenue grade separation that would have created a major barrier within the new King West / Liberty Village community.  This matter was not resolved until intervention by Metrolinx and a compromise solution acceptable to the City of Toronto was adopted.

GO runs popular services, and as a provincial agency it is used to getting more or less what it wants.  Public participation and accommodation have not been GO’s strong suits.

When the Georgetown South project revealed that there would be over 400 train movements per day on the southern end of the corridor, residents were more than a little upset.  Their concerns about noise and pollution were not  helped by GO’s appeal to the greater good with claims that, overall, there would be less pollution thanks to auto trips diverted from highways.  Those highways are not in backyards in Weston, the Junction and Parkdale, and the benefits that might accrue on Highways 400, 401 and 427 were little comfort to those who would see their local rail corridor gain vastly more traffic than it has today.

From this swelling activism came a demand that GO electrify its system to reduce noise and pollution levels in the neighbourhoods through which it travelled.  Electrification had been considered before, but only in the context of the Lake Shore corridor, and only for lower service levels than The Big Move contemplates.  This has always been a “nice to do” that gets shunted aside thanks to budget constraints and a desire to concentrate on building service.  By late 2009, the demand for a detailed study reached a level where Queen’s Park and Metrolinx could not dodge the issue, and GO’s Electrification Study was born. Continue reading →

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Neighbourhood Maps Return! Riders Still Somewhat Mystified.

Last September, I reported on the travesty of new “area maps” for the streets around subway stations.  They were so hopelessly inaccurate that an excellent Toronto trivia contest could have been held to spot all of the errors.  In very short order, they vanished.  (It’s amazing how quickly the TTC can move when it’s embarrassed.)

Joe Clark reports that a new area map has just appeared at Christie Station and has posted photos on Flickr.

Have a look.  What is missing?  The TTC routes serving the area!  There’s a nice green line showing the subway, and the stations are marked, but no surface routes.  Yes, riders can look at the big map right next-door to see the local routes, but it wouldn’t hurt to have them on the area maps too.

Also missing-in-action is the alternate entrance at Bathurst/Markham.

The next question for trivia seekers is this:  will the TTC replace the even older generation of local maps which can be found in selected locations around the system?  These missed the first wave of really inaccurate updates, and were not removed in the great purge.  Does the TTC even know they exist, and will they update them with brand new maps?