A Grand Plan

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Richmond Hill or Bust? The Yonge Subway Extension (Part 1)

The proposed subway to Richmond Hill has an odd history as transit projects in the GTA go.  Normally, we are lucky to see anyone pay attention to any scheme for a decade or more, but this subway has gone from a gleam in local organizers’ eyes (and a website) to a top priority transit project with amazing speed.

Along the way, the whole idea of “alternatives analysis”, that pesky part of an “Environment Assessment” that is only a memory, is completely absent.  It’s a subway or nothing.  That’s unfortunate, to say the least, because the whole idea of Metrolinx was to plan on a regional basis, to see how everything fits together and where money would be best spent to improve a transportation network.

The Richmond Hill subway snuck through into the new, fast-track transit project assessment process before Metrolinx had even approved the final version of the Regional Plan.  Somebody wants a subway really, really badly.

As I have said in a comment thread elsewhere, I am not convinced that this line is a good idea especially when there are alternative ways to get people into central Toronto from the same catchment area as the subway extension.  York Region itself has (had?) plans for an LRT network as an end state for VIVA, although I have never taken them particularly seriously.  This may change once there is some real LRT running within Toronto, but as long as it’s an unknown quantity (or worse, something whose “best” example is on St. Clair West), nobody is going to take the mode seriously.

An argument can be made for an extension to Steeles as a way to relieve the bus congestion feeding into Finch Station, but there is some point where a subway has to end.  We cannot keep building a subway north on Yonge Street until we find ourselves in Lake Simcoe.  The demand simply isn’t there, and at some point the idea of a one-seat ride becomes laughable.  Indeed, even going to Richmond Hill, many travellers will depend on bus feeders or commuter parking to access the subway, and the quality of their trip will depend a lot on the amount of local transit or the scarcity of parking.  This problem is already familiar to GO Transit riders.

GO Transit, for their part, plans to upgrade service on their Richmond Hill line to 15 minutes peak, 30 minutes off peak.  This is not the same as frequent subway service, and it will only take people to Union Station, but this is an important part of the mix of services in the corridor.

All the same, any review of the proposal needs to assume that it will be built and that whatever impact this has on the network will have to be addressed.  If we are going down this path, we need to understand the consequences.

In the sections to follow, I will review the TTC report and presentation from December 17.  Parts of York Region’s original EA for this area make interesting reading, especially the ridership forecasts. Continue reading →

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Yonge Subway to Richmond Hill (Update 2)

Update 2:  The presentation from the Commission meeting is now online.  (4MB PDF)

I will write up comments on this project on the weekend.

Update 1:  Here is the text of the motion made by the Commission including the various caveats and requests for additional information.

Original Post:

The TTC staff report on the Richmond Hill subway is available online.  (Warning 15M PDF)

Today, the Commission voted to endorse this report in principle with futher discussion and deputations to follow at the January meeting.  The Commission also reaffirmed that Transit City was its first priority for system expansion, and sought a number of additional reports to clarify the impact of the subway extension on the existing network.

I do not have time now (Wednesday evening) to write this up in full, but will do so over the next few days.  Some material was presented at the meeting which is not in the linked file.

Of particular concern to the Commission is the haste with which this project is rolling forward based on an assessment launched by York Region that had very little consideration for how the line would fit in the overall scheme of the network.  I might be forgiven for thinking, only a month ago, that we had turned away from “my line first” planning to a network view thanks to the Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan.

An argument can be made for extending the subway, but the true cost and impact are lowballed.  Yes, the staff report raises many caveats about service and capacity impacts, but there is no real alternatives analysis, no sense that anyone has looked seriously at larger issues.  I will turn to this when I discuss the report in detail.

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Be It Ever So Humble

Today, the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) issued a press release saluting Metrolinx’ inclusion of the Air Rail Link in the Regional Transportation Plan.  This really isn’t a surprise to anyone.  Metrolinx had little choice given the political situation with a nonsensical premium fare, privately operated route left over from an ancien regime in Ottawa.

The GTAA is thrilled to tell us that

significant environmental benefits will be realized with the implementation of the air rail link. In the first year of operation, it is projected that this will eliminate about 6.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions and see approximately 1.35 million cars from the roads.

Do tell!  That’s 6.6 tonnes, not six thousand tonnes, SIX!  Only when we compare this with the savings that will accrue to other RTP lines do we see the miniscule effect of this route.  Each of the planned GO rail express services will reduce CO2 by over 100K tonnes, and many other RTP projects are well above 10K.

And all those cars!  1.35 million cars must really be trips, not vehicles.  This means we are looking at about 4,500 cars/trips per day (assuming the equivalent of 300 weekdays per year with weekends counting for half).  That’s about 250 per hour for an 18-hour day.  This has to be some new record for low patronage on a line that many would have us believe will change life as we know it in the GTA.  Ridership would be better if we assumed a higher than 1:1 ratio of passengers to auto trips, but the market for the Air Rail Link isn’t the car pooling crowd.

To put this in context, daily ridership on selected bus routes:  Warden South (4,200), Sherbourne (4,600), Prince Edward (4,200).  Yes, people don’t travel as far on them as Union to the Airport, but these will almost certainly be part of longer trips with transfers to other routes.

Can we please put this line out of its misery?  Metrolinx may be doing an EA for it in the spring of 2009, but what I really want to see is the Benefits Case Analysis.  If this were all to be done with private money, I would say let the project sponsor go broke paying for it, but that’s not the way we do “partnerships”.  How much public money will be wasted on a premium fare design when we could be building facilities and capacity to attract a broader demand at a regular fare?

This study will be a real test for Metrolinx.  Can they face up to the deep flaws in the Air Rail Link proposal, expose them to view, and propose an alternative that actually fits into their Regional Plan?

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Trams vs Skytrain: A view from Vancouver

Today’s Globe & Mail includes an op ed article Rethinking the Need for Speed reporting on a recent study comparing the cost of transportation modes.  The study and the article conclude that trams (streetcars) are the best choice, and that Skytrain (also known as the “RT” in Toronto) is a distant choice.

Those who know me well know that any chance to give the RT/ICTS/Skytrain advocates a black eye is more than welcome, but in this case I have to put a bit of context on the discussion.

The Skytrain vs LRT debate has consumed Vancouver transit advocates, planners and policitians for decades.  The original Skytrain was a combined product of a premier who didn’t like streetcars and of lobbying by the Ontario government to get its then-new ICTS showcased for Expo in Vancouver.  Certain characteristics of the original Skytrain route including the availability of a tunnel under downtown that could handle stacked Skytrains, but not LRT, an available right-of-way that kept down elevated construction costs, and the operational advantage of close headways of short trains tipped the balance in Skytrain’s favour.

Having said that, I must also observe that the technology was used to its maximum during Expo with a far more sophisticated operating model than anything the TTC has ever implemented on any line.  This was automated transit really shining, but only for a brief moment.  Probably the most important thing about the Vancouver system is that the people running it really wanted to make it work.  From the day it opened, they analysed operations (including automatically produced charts such as those you see in my TTC route studies) looking for ways to handle demands and unusual events better.  The idea of throwing up your hands in resignation, the TTC’s approach to line management, was totally foreign.

Skytrain works not just because of the technology, but because the people running the system care to make it run well.

All the same, the love affair with Skytrain wedded Vancouver to high-cost system expansion, and a route design skewed to handling commuters more than local trips.  Indeed, most of the original Skytrain line does not follow city streets, and it depends on local redevelopment, walk-in trade and bus feeders for passengers.

The LRT vs Skytrain debate heated up recently with a proposed east-west line along Broadway, a major bus and trolleybus corridor.  This is a street with much local development and Skytrain foes look to LRT as a way of achieving better local access and support for the community throiugh which the line will pass.  Elevated construction is out of the question, and a Broadway Skytrain will almost certainly be underground adding considerably to its cost.

This is the political background to the Skytrain vs Trams study, and it’s important to read the study in context.  The study itself does not address specific corridors, but simply looks at the operating and capital costs of each mode, as well as the environmental effects.  When the numbers are combined, trams come out on top (or more accurately on the bottom with the lowest cost and carbon impact).  Skytrain is much higher, primarily due to capital cost.

The basic debate in all of this is one of philosophy:  should new transit lines be built to serve long trips where speed between stations is paramount, or should lines serve shorter trips and local demands with easily accessible stations?  In the ongoing debate here, Transit City comes under fire because the lines won’t be fast enough for long trips.  Should that be their purpose?  What role does GO have as a regional carrier within the 416? 

Some Transit City proposals call out for redesign, especially regarding the Sheppard/Finch transfer and the dubious nature of surface proposals for the south ends of the Don Mills and Jane routes.  Work on new proposals is already underway as a spinoff of the Metrolinx studies, but the old plans still get lots of play including the TTC’s own Transit City campaign all over the system.  The TTC needs to update the proposals to remove the less credible options and to indicate that they are not just drawing lines on maps.

Finally, I hope to see the Metrolinx study of options for the Scarborough RT published soon.  This is an ideal chance to convert the line to LRT, and even the TTC’s own recommendation to upgrade with Mark II cars only, barely, made sense if the line would never be extended.

We now know that the “SRT” will run north into Malvern and possibly north of Steeles Avenue.  The cost comparison between LRT and Skytrain should spell the end of the RT as we know it.

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GO2020: GO Transit’s Answer to Metrolinx

GO Transit announced its plan for the next decade’s worth of expansion of (mainly) commuter rail service in the Greater Toronto Area on December 12.  The full text is an immense PDF (66MB) on GO’s site that you can download should you desire.  The Service Plan, however, fit in a lot less space, and I have reformatted this as a 115K PDF.

Although the text talks about how GO2020 fits in with the Metrolinx Regional Plan, there are a few noteworthy differences especially regarding very frequent service in some corridors.  Metrolinx has the electrification of some lines in its short term plans, but it remains to be seen whether this is tehnically viable at a cost that will fit within Metrolinx’ budget.  Moreover, there are serious questions about the ability of Union Station to accommodate all of the traffic (trains and people) that Metrolinx forecasts for this hub.

GO’s plans have the advantage of looking out little more than a decade, a timeframe in which the plan is actually credible.  Metrolinx has much at the 15-25 year horizon, and while this will keep planners gainfully employed, it does little to address current problems. Continue reading →

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Subway Fleet Planning(?)

The TTC’s ongoing inability to correctly provide for its fleet requirements gets embarrassing at times.  A big one comes during consideration of capital budgets when there always seem to be brand new projects that appear out of thin air even though they should have been foreseen.

The questions of subway capacity and fleet size are not small change, something to be fixed up with the underspending in a few minor accounts.  If you get it wrong in one direction, nobody can fit on the trains, and the lead time to fix this condemns riders to horrendous service.  If you get it wrong in the other direction, you have a bloated fleet, an investment in trains and yard space that might have gone to more deserving projects, and a padding factor that works against efficiency in maintenance because there’s always another spare train in the yard. 

The TTC’s surrent subway fleet plans do not include cars for the subway extensions beyond Steeles Avenue, nor for the allegedly closer headways we require to accommodate all of the riding growth the Richmond Hill line will bring.  Cynics might be tempted to say that the whole question of subway capacity has been manipulated to the TTC’s budgetary advantage, but I have always taken the view that much that appears to be Machiavellian can be explained by bad planning.

This post and the much longer paper attached to it will examine TTC fleet planning and the degree to which we are not seeing the full story of options for future subway services. Continue reading →

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Metrolinx Benefits Cases: VIVA First Out

Metrolinx has started the publication of its Benefits Case Analyses with the York VIVA system.  The SRT replacement study is also completed, and I expect to see it online soon.

These papers will appear in a section of the Projects Page on the Metrolinx site.

There is nothing too surprising in the VIVA study.  The map, excerpted from the full report, shows the staging options for the construction of exclusive bus lanes, here called “Rapidways”.

The core of the system radiating out from Richmond Hill Centre north to 19th, east to Unionville and west to Vaughan Corporate Centre would be finished by 2013.  In Option 1, the remainder of the network would be completed by 2018, or if Option 2 is chosen, by 2026.

A quite fascinating part of the BCA comes in the ridership estimates.  In the “Base Case” (just leave VIVA as it is with provision for modest fleet expansion), the projected 2021 ridership is 28.0-million per year.  This rises to only 30.3-million for either of the options studied.  Similarly, 2031 ridership is projected at 31.3-million for the Base Case, or 34.0-million for either of the optional networks.

Various factors are at work here.

The core of the demand falls on the first stage network that is common to both options, and the impact of the extensions is so small that it doesn’t make a difference (Before anyone accuses me of VIVA-bashing, that is a direct paraphrase from the report.)  Although the implementation of the Rapidways will give existing users a better riding experience, the comparatively small jump in riding suggests that most of the potential market is already using the system.

Updated:  In a comment posted following this post, “Dave R in the Beach” notes that the big jump in ridership is from current ridership of 6.8-million to the Base Case value of 28.0-million, and this is largely due to the subway extension.  In my response, I observed that the marginal gain from either BRT network is small and may reflect the comparatively small contribution the reserved bus lanes make to overall trip times when the much longer subway segment of the journey is included. [End of update]

An unknown acknowledged in the BCA is the question of land use planning.  Will York Region redevelop along the Rapidways, and how much will this contribute to future demand?

In the end, the BCA does not specifically recommend one option over the other, but the message about getting most of the benefit for 60% of the capital cost is quite clear.  We will see how this fares when Metrolinx puts together its detailed plan for project staging.

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Where Will Fido Sleep?

Those who ride the Danforth subway might be forgiven for thinking that we did not fit into the “One Stop” universe as so few of “our” stations had video screens.  Not enough eyeballs, obviously, to make it worth their while.

Just last week, however, things started to change with the disappearance of the electronics from the old “Metron” displays and the installation of new “One Stops”.

Gone is the full working set of Metrons at Donlands Station which faithfully displayed ads for a travellers’ kennel near Pearson Airport for all those years.  Now dogs on the Danforth will have to put up with what passes for news and the occasional, if erratic, notice about service blockages.

At least the time will be correct.

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Metrolinx Agenda and Regional Transportation Plan

The agenda for this week’s Metrolinx Board meeting has been online for about a day.  From this, you can link to the final version of the Regional Transportation Plan and to other reports.

I am not going to comment in detail on this material until after the Board meeting so that I can incorporate any information about discussions there as well as last-minute changes, if any.

There is some interesting reading in the covering report concerning feedback from the public consultation process, and the changes made to the draft plan flowing from those meetings.  The public appears to be ahead of Metrolinx on some things especially on the need to move projects that will relieve demand in the Yonge Street corridor forward from the 25-year to the 15-year plan.  I will be writing about this in much more detail in coming days.

Another important evolution in the RTP is that Union Station is now one of the “Big Moves”, a major goal in its own right.  How much Metrolinx has actually thought about the implications of all of the service they plan to concentrate on that site is quite another matter.  This too will be the subject of a future post.

An important change in tone came in later versions of the RTP as it evolved — this is a “conceptual plan”, not a prescriptive, carved-in-stone map of what will be.  That change, had it come earlier in the Metrolinx process, could have avoided many spats about proposals that were touted long before anyone even knew what was required.  Moreover, Metrolinx could have concentrated on the larger picture — where are the demands, how would people flow through various optional networks — rather than trying to nail everything down in one definitive map.  We still don’t know enough about alternative approaches to the transportation problems, and probably won’t until Metrolinx gets around to its detailed studies.

Those studies (the “Benefits Case Analyses” or “BCAs”) have not yet appeared on the public agenda although we know when they are supposed to be available.  The BCA for York Viva was presented in private session at the November board meeting, and the BCA for the Scarborough RT is up this week.  Metrolinx needs to stop hiding vital reports in private session and bring this most important step in project and alternatives evaluation out into public view.

Finally, the eternal question of money remains unanswered, and there is almost a three-year built-in hiatus between the completion of projects paid for by the MoveOntario seed money, and the point where new funding might actually flow to Metrolinx.  This is an unacceptable delay whose only purpose is to buy political time for the options of tolls or some other form of additional tax to be massaged into public acceptance.

We are supposed to be planning a sustainable transit network, not an election campaign, and the sooner Metrolinx and Queen’s Park get on with figuring how to pay for everything we need, the better.

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Metrolinx Chair Goes Part Time

The following press release came out today:

MacIsaac to become part time Metrolinx chair following release of final report

TORONTO, Nov. 6 /CNW/ –

NEWS

Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology in Hamilton has announced that Rob MacIsaac has been selected as its new president starting February 1, 2009.

MacIsaac will continue his work as Metrolinx board chair on a part time basis.

Since 2006, MacIsaac has built a team to get the regional transportation agency up and running, and to develop a Regional Transportation Plan and Investment Strategy for a seamless and convenient transportation network for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The final plan is expected to be released before the end of the year.

QUOTES

“I would like to thank Rob for the outstanding success he is achieving in establishing Metrolinx. His vision and leadership is instrumental in working with area elected officials to develop the first Regional Transportation Plan for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. I am pleased that Rob will continue to lead a dedicated team that will continue to deliver,” said Transportation Minister Jim Bradley.

My own take on this is that Metrolinx needs full-time leadership from someone who is dedicated to making the process of building our transportation network truly open.

Too much of Metrolinx’ work has been shrouded in secrecy with critical studies kept from public view.  The massive spending required to overcome decades of neglect, the trade-offs and the need for political and public support demand transparency.  Everyone must trust that the spending is wise and appropriate to the task, and that decisions are made on public needs, not on deals between politicians and lobbyists. 

Decisions may be made out of sight with the best of intentions, but without public understanding and trust, they will be vulnerable.  Metrolinx needs to learn how to have full public debates about the merits of various schemes, and keep the “commercially confidential” stuff separate from the basic question of building our regional network.

The November Board meeting, when Metrolinx is expected to approve a final version of the Regional Transportation Plan, will be interesting indeed.