A Grand Plan

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All Over The Waterfront (Update 4)

Update 1, March 17, 5:50 pm:  More details have been added about the various alignment options for the Waterfront West line through Parkdale.

Update 2, March 24, 7:55 pm:  Feedback from the TTC about Parkdale alignment details.  Details of Queen’s Quay public meetings added.

Update 3, March 25, 6:00 am:  The preferred option for the Kingston Road line is BRT.

Update 4, March 28, 11:10 pm:  The presentation from the March 25 public meeting on the Queen’s Quay redesign is now available online.  Note that this file is almost 18MB for those of you with slow network links.  The document is quite extensive, and I will review it in a separate post.

Transit planning on Toronto’s waterfront leaves much to be desired thanks to the patchwork of overlapping studies and projects for two decades.  Options for the portion between Parkdale and Bathurst Street have changed with the recent cancellation of the Front Street Extension, but no planning based on ths possibility has ever been conducted.

Throughout its history, planning for the waterfront has been fragmented and compromised to fit around whatever other projects had real political clout.  To help focus discussion of the waterfront as a whole, this post gives an overview of all of the projects and schemes from Long Branch to West Hill. Continue reading →

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Michael Ignatieff on Transit (Updated)

Updated:  Michael Ignatieff was on CBC’s Metro Morning yesterday (March 23) but, alas, the interview was not deemed worthy of a podcast.  Please see the comment from “Ed” dated today for a precis.  It appears that Ignatieff is still out of touch with the details of what Toronto actually needs.

Over the weekend, I received news from Michael Ignatieff’s “Town Hall” meeting in Halifax.  (For the benefit of foreign readers, Ignatieff is now the Leader of the Opposition in Ottawa, the Liberal Party.) 

Marcus Garnet sent an email to a Transport 2000 list, and this found its way to me.  Below are extracts. Continue reading →

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Fare By Distance? Not When It Suits GO (Updated)

Today, GO Transit implements a 25-cent across the board increase in all fares.  Writing in the Star, Tess Kalinowski reports displeasure among commuters who have been slapped with higher relative increases for short trips than for long ones.

This isn’t the first time GO increased fares disproportionately, but the cumulative effect sets a pattern.

One commuter who travels from Old Cummer to Union complained that:

… the flat-fare hike means riders who live in Toronto are subsidizing passengers travelling from places such as Hamilton and Barrie.

“Over the last five years, I’ve seen my fares go up 27 per cent. Somebody from Barrie has seen their rates go up 9 per cent, Oshawa 14 per cent, Hamilton 10 per cent,” he said.

In response, GO replies that many costs have nothing to do with how far someone travels:

Transit officials defended the increase, saying many of the system’s costs, such as snow removal, station improvements and communications, are fixed and have nothing to do with distance. They also worry about discouraging riders from farther afield by pricing them out of the system.

Strange, that argument.  It’s precisely the one for which I, among others, have been villified when suggesting a flat (or at least flatter) GTA-wide fare policy.  Long distance riders are subsidised with free parking, new make-work garage building, and proportionately lower fares relative to the resources they consume.  Why?  Because we don’t want them driving to and from work.  The costs — both physical to provide and maintain infrastructure, and social to consume so much land with unproductive roadways and a low-density lifestyle — are greater than what it takes to subsidise their commute by GO.

As regulars here know, I have a big problem with parking construction as an alternative to improved local feeder bus services.  This issue will only grow as GO becomes less of a peak period carrier and more of an all day regional rapid transit system.  That’s one of the many areas Metrolinx, in its less than infinite wisdom, chose to ignore.  We won’t have “Mobility Hubs” complete with soaring interiors and palm trees as Metrolinx envisions if stations are surrounded by parking garages, and those who cannot afford to dedicate a car to all-day storage at a GO lot will still be isolated from regional transit services.

Finally, those who advocate for fare-by-distance as a “benefit” of the “Presto!” card (or whatever technology is eventually adopted) should compare notes with the folks at GO for whom high costs for long trips are a very bad idea indeed.  Queen’s Park and its agencies don’t seem to have a consistent view of how we should price transit.  There is no perfect system, and all of them will distribute benefits and rewards inequitably.

Metrolinx could do everyone a big favour by looking at the impact of various options for fare structures, including the wider issues of local service funding and the broad social value of mobility for everyone.  Will they will have the fortitude to take on this issue (and revenue tools in general) rather than studying only infrastructure we may never be able to afford to build and operate?

Update 1, March 14 at 3:50 pm:  Andrew Salmons of Milton has created an online petition requesting not only a reversal of today’s increase, but a lowering of GO’s cost recovery ratio so that fares could be reduced.

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Metrolinx Manages Public Participation

In today’s Globe and Mail, Jeff Gray has an article about the a Positioning and Communications Strategy dated July 10, 2008 from Metrolinx.  Gray had requested this document from Metrolinx via a Freedom of Information request, and what came back contained one deletion on its final page.

An uncensored copy of that page found its way to the Globe and Mail, and the missing text makes for interesting reading.  Under the heading “Consultation Process”, we find:

Our consultation period needs to be tightly structured and telescoped.  The last thing we need is for this to be highjacked by nimbies or local politicians on the make.  These should be mainly informational briefings.  We should salt the sessions with supporters.  An orgy of consultation will mire this in controversy and delay.

Metrolinx Chair Rob MacIsaac disavows this text saying “those are not my words” and that the paragraph in question was “something that I did not especially agree with”.

I will take MacIsaac at his word, but two critical points remain:

  • These may not be MacIsaac’s words, they are somebody’s or they wouldn’t have appeared in this paper.  They show a mindset bent not just on controlling and streamlining public participation, but of treating any criticism as a force to be neutralized rather than as constructive alternatives to the Gospel of Metrolinx.
  • The nature of the advice in this paragraph, although embarrassing, is no different in character from the sort of comments found throughout the document.  The text was severed on the ground that it was confidential advice to the government, an excuse that is transparently inappropriate.  The Privacy Commission has ruled on several occasions that embarrassment is not valid grounds for withholding information.  Who decided to sever this paragraph from the version sent to the Globe?  Did Rob MacIsaac participate in this decision?

Metrolinx public participation was, in fact, largely structured as information sessions with limited scope for meaningful input.  As the Regional Plan went through various drafts, some public, others private, there was a consistent sense that actually changing anything was almost impossible.

Critiques of demand projections and network structures were met with claims that it was too expensive and time consuming to look at alternatives even though (a) that’s what planning is all about and (b) more recently published Metrolinx studies show clearly that refinements continued to be made in the demand model and network layout.

Metrolinx professes a love of public participation, but their planning process is quite secretive and controlled.  Even the “public advisory committee” is subject to a gag agreement, and this group is expected to provide support for the RTP.  The last time I looked, “public advice” was public, and members of advisory bodies are free to dissent.  If Metrolinx wants trained seals, just hire more consultants.

The process of detailed benefits case analysis is conducted completely out of the public eye, and even when reports emerge, the data in them is too superficial to permit an analysis of how the results were calculated.

Quite recently, indeed, there has been a change in the methodology that causes the value of auto trips diverted to transit to be priced at a much higher level (compare the Scarborough RT and VIVA BCA reports) with the effect that the financial “benefit” of the transit investment appears greater than it might actually be.  This is the hallmark of an agency in a defensive mode trying to put the best possible face on its work.

Metrolinx could be doing a lot of good work, but this is undermined by its secrecy and its distrust of the very communities it serves.  If Metrolinx assumes that opponents are all nimbies or politicians “on the make” at Metrolinx’ expense, then it is short-changing the public.  Indeed, if the politicians on the Board are grandstanding when they don’t happen to agree with the Chair, this shows contempt for the foundations of the organization.

MacIsaac may not have written those words, but whoever did, and whoever approved hiding them from the Globe do not belong in the public service.

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Is McGuinty Impatient With Metrolinx?

A story in last Sunday’s Toronto Sun claimed that Premier McGuinty is miffed at delays by municipal politicians that  get in the way of spending money on transit.  Reaction from sitting members of the Metrolinx board reads quite the opposite (both in that article and a followup piece), and my own take on the Board from personal observation is that they are getting on very well.  They would love to spend money if only Queen’s Park would actually let them.

The problem lies with the part-time chair, Rob MacIsaac, who doesn’t understand the difference between being a leader and being a dictator.  Some of the decisions have not gone his way, and major debates are still in progress on two large groups of projects:

  • Eglinton and Scarborough RT/LRT.  Before the draft regional plan even came out, MacIsaac plumped for an updated RT technology line along Eglinton in complete defiance of Toronto’s stated desire to build this route as LRT.  Moreover, Eglinton and Scarborough are pushed as one continuous route from Malvern to the airport.  MacIsaac was rightly criticised for jumping the gun on his own regional plan, but he wasn’t too happy about it.
  • Yonge Richmond Hill Subway.  This is a high priority project for many, but Toronto had the temerity to suggest that more was involved than just building more subway track.  There is the capacity of the existing line and its stations to take into account.

In both cases there are valid technical and planning arguments to be heard.  Some at Metrolinx seem to think the Regional Plan, which describes itself as a guideline, not as a cast-in-stone design, is inviolate and to question it is just about treasonous.  This is total hogwash.

Metrolinx screwed up badly in two ways.  First it conducted much of its planning in secret, despite a lot of pro forma public consultation, and changes to the general direction of the plan were not well received.  Second, Metrolinx has produced a network and associated demand model for 2031 that may work perfectly well provided that we built it all and the wheels don’t come off anywhere in the meantime.  What they did not look at is a “Plan B” in case we don’t have enough money, or even a staging exercise of how interim versions of the network will perform.

There are things to like and things deserving of valid, constructive criticism in the plan, but the word “NIMBY” is heard more and more these days as a catch-all epithet to drown out real debate.  This is unworthy of the plan and of the Premier’s goals with MoveOntario 2020.

The Sun reports:

But instead of a dragon slayer, there is growing concern that the Metrolinx board, dominated by municipal politicians, is enabling red tape, funding disputes, resident opposition and parochial decision-making.

Those who have expressed concern with the “consensus” goverance model include its chair and, sources tell Sun Media, Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Dalton McGuinty doesn’t sit in the meetings, and we have to assume that someone is whispering in his ear claiming all is not well in Metrolinxland.  Chair MacIsaac does, but his Board has a mind of its own.

Red tape?  Look no further than the byzantine approval process for projects that were already proposed by municipalities and annonced as part of MoveOntario. 

  • The TTC can study all it likes, but it’s on the City of Toronto’s dime unless Metrolinx feels the project is worthy of design funding.
  • Then we get a super-fast Transit EA, but it’s so fast that we have to do a lot of work before even officially starting it so that we have some idea of what we might be building.
  • Then we have to submit not only the EA, but also put up with the “Benefits Case Analysis”, a process that brings a bunch of dubious economic arguments to evaluating options for a line.  They sound good, but the intent is to wrap some quasi private sector value for money analysis around the project, and the methodology is open to question because so much underlying information is not published.  The BCA may completely overturn the results of the EA, or of other network plans, but there is no way to challenge it, much less review its content.
  • When the BCA doesn’t come out the way it is expected (see Scarborough RT BCA which actually supports conversion to LRT), we have to find some way to delay even further such as linking this with another project (the Eglinton line).
  • Construction is dependent on provincial budgetary decisions, even though MoveOntario was supposed to be financed with borrowed money and paid for after lines actually started to run.

Funding disputes?  Well, that’s no surprise given that the original $11.6-billion from MoveOntario assumed that Ottawa would kick in a 1/3 share and top up the pot to about $18-billion.  Fat chance, but it allowed McGuinty to announce a list of projects he couldn’t possibly pay for, never mind the inevitable inflation in projected costs for all of them.  When money is tight, politicians jockey for position in the queue.

Toronto isn’t trying to block the Richmond Hill subway, but there are many valid questions about the timing of various projects such as Richmond Hill GO improvements and alternative ways of adding to subway capacity.  The problem here is as much with TTC staff as with the politicians.  When Metrolinx own demand projections show that there may be a better set of projects that would accomplish all of the goals, and Toronto says “we think you should look at these options”, that’s not obstructionism, that’s trying to build the network in an optimal way.

Resident opposition?  That sounds like the Weston Corridor debate, something that has been largely outside of Metrolinx until the recent reassignment of the study from GO.

Parochial decision making?  The Metrolinx Board is a model of co-operation.  If anything, Metrolinx itself has failed to address funding concerns for local transit systems without which the regional plan is meaningless.  Local policians may be forgiven for wondering how they will pay for their share of the whole system.  That’s a policy problem from Queen’s Park, not the Board.

If the Premier’s has sleepless nights thanks to such a biased view of Metrolinx operation, it doesn’t say much for his ability to collect political intelligence.  On the other hand, if he has a private agenda requiring hands on management by his office, he should tell everyone what it is and stop pretending the regions have anything to do with transportation.  Wear the problems and the challenges, don’t just show up for the photo ops.

If the Sun article clearly reflects Rob MacIsaac’s view of his own Board, then he has some explaining to do.  “Leaders” don’t slag their own.  That part-time job at Mohawk College should become full time.

[For those who are just coming to this article, there is a long comment about the role of politicians and “professionals”.]

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GO Kitchener-Waterloo & Guelph

Mark Dowling passed along a link to the presentation materials from the recent GO Transit EA meeting in Kitchener.

You can follow the story of GO service from a Kitchener-Waterloo perspective on the GOKW Blog.

One of the fascinating points about the proposal for this corridor is that it recognizes that this line has bidirectional demand, as well as local demand that isn’t going to downtown Toronto.  This has always been the case, although VIA has done the worst to discourage people from using their service.

Intriguingly the track plans in the display materials show a substantial increase in VIA service in the future.  Those of us who travel to Stratford will relish better service, but the real bread-and-butter on this line is the traffic to and from universities.  It’s always been a natural corridor for better service, and maybe, finally, we may actually see it.

Also worth noting is the idea of eventually moving Kitchener Station so that the line will make a good connection with the planned KW LRT line.

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Ontario Parks

This morning, Premier McGuinty announced that, with the generous assistance of our friends in Ottawa, we are about to see a boom in transit spending.  On parking lots.

About $175-million will go to expanded parking at 12 GO Transit sites, half of which will receive parking structures.  This marks a reversal from the “we won’t build structures because they’re too expensive” policy of many years.  Moreover, it does nothing to address capacity on trains nor on the local transit systems that many GO riders use to reach those trains.

Metrolinx may be working on a regional plan, but this announcement sounds like an echo of the days when commuting meant driving to a parking lot.  Yes, we can build it quickly, but is this what we should be doing with transit infrastructure dollars.

Lurking down at the end of the announcement, almost as an afterthought, is $75.5-million for the Hamilton Junction grade separation.

It appears that the cost of these projects will be shared 50/50 by both governments.

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Transit City Status Update

This month’s TTC agenda includes a long update on the status of the Transit City plans.  I will not attempt to précis this report, but will touch on points of particular interest.

Funding is in place to allow continued work on Environmental Assessments [sic] and other engineering work, but the real challenge comes later this year when construction is slated to begin on Sheppard.  The fog may clear a bit once the provincial budget is announced and we know just how much money will flow to Metrolinx and to transit in general.

A related problem, of course, is the question of new LRVs for the existing and future streetcar/LRT networks.  By the time the budget is out, the TTC should know what the bids for new cars look like, and Queen’s Park will have to decide whether they are serious about paying for them. Continue reading →

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Yonge Subway Tunnel Repairs Phase 2 Begins (Updated)

Effective Sunday, February 15, repairs on the subway tunnel liners between Eglinton and Finch will shift further south and the late-night turnback operation will move from Lawrence to Eglinton.

The 97 Yonge route will operate from Eglinton to Finch station stopping in Lawrence, York Mills and Sheppard stations enroute to make connections with east-west routes.  The late night extension of routes south to Lawrence Station will end, as will the 97F service via Yonge Boulevard.

Bus service will run every 3 minutes Monday to Friday, and every 4’30” on Sundays.  As in Phase 1 of this project, subway service will run through to Finch on Saturdays.

Updated:  An early plan to use the “special events” bay (the old surface terminal at the Duplex Avenue end of the station) has been changed.  Shuttle buses will use the regular terminal.

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GO Georgetown South Open House Reviewed

Robert Wightman reports:

I was at the GO South Georgetown open house in Mt Dennis (Eglinton and Weston Rd.) today.  Some interesting things that I learned are:

  1. There will be a seven or eight track corridor from the TTR yards up the Weston Sub to the North Toronto sub where two tracks will head west on the Galt Sub. GO owns the Galt Sub south of the Diamond at the North Toronto Sub. If there are eight tracks one will probably disappear at Lansdowne where the Newmarket sub branches off.
  2. Bloor station will be two island platforms serving four tracks. It will be possible to have the Milton trains stop here. There would be four ARL (Air Rail Link formerly known as Blue 22) trains, four Mt. Pleasant locals, one or two Kitchener express trains, plus one or two Milton trains each way each hour in base service. God knows what it would be like in rush hour. There would be a direct connection to Dundas West Station, finally.
  3. There will be a four track depressed line in a 650 m long tunnel through Weston north of Lawrence. The station for Weston would be moved south to a level area so that the north end of the station, four tracks, would be just north of the bridge at Lawrence with most of the station to the south. There would be two CP tracks and one or two CN tracks go through at grade as they do not want to run them down and up the grade. Clearance would be 22 feet, 6.8 m in the tunnel, enough for electrification at 25 KV AC.
  4. Future stations are planned for Eglinton, to connect with the LRT to form a major transit hub and one at Woodbine. These would not happen until the line is electrified. The electrification would probably be at 25 KV AC but this has not been finalized though everything is being built with adequate clearances. Apparently when the Deux Montagnes line in Montreal was re-equipped it was converted to 25 KV AC according to the consulting engineer I talked to.
  5. The ARL line will be run with two car trains of self propelled Budd RDC’s on a 15 minute headway. There would be four trains providing the service with a two car hot spare train. (It would be plugged in with warm engine oil and be either heated or cooled to the proper temperature to be quick a change off.) There would also be one spare car for running maintenance. I do not think that this is an adequate spare ratio but we shall see.
  6. SNC Lavalin wants high platforms to provide easier loading and unloading but the GO guy and the consulting engineer doubt that this will happen as it make for under utilized station platforms at Union Station and will require gauntlet tracks at the line stations to allow freight and express trains to pass the high platforms. The artist’s rendering shows low level bi folding doors at each end, sort of like skinny doors on the single level GO trains.
  7. The line from the GO line to the airport is extremely interesting. The consulting engineer said that it was “straight from Canada’s Wonderland.” It consists of a light and airy, perhaps even flimsy, elevated single track line down the middle of the Goreway to get to the Airport and then grades up to 5% to get through the airport to a two track 80 m long island platform. This will allow for expansion to three car trains. He also said he saw a drawing of a two car train with a high platform sliding double door in the middle of the car. This would allow for faster loading and unloading.
  8. Every level crossing from Strachan Avenue to the airport will be closed or grade separated for passenger trains. It will be interesting to see what happens to the two remaining level crossings in Brampton but this study did not go that far. They figure that there will be 240 + trains a day through Weston with the freights still making level crossings at two streets.
  9. There was no one there who knew much about the rush hour only service to Bolton. One map had a line labelled enhanced GO service to Orangeville and one person thought that they were going to run GO trains through the Forks of The Credit but I think that it means better bus service to meet the more frequent GO trains.

I will try to get out to the meeting in Kitchener tomorrow night for the extended GO service but as I have to be at the airport for 6:00 a.m. Friday I may not make it. Apparently the storage area at Baden is the third choice. There is not room at the Kitchener station to store trains and they do not want to do a reversing move on the mainline so the yard must be to the west. The storage areas at Milton and Richmond Hill are accessed by yard trackage and are considered a reversing move so they do not have to change ends and perform a brake test.