A Grand Plan

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Commuter Parking for Metropass Users (Update 1)

Update 1, August 27, 10:00 pm:

After a lengthy debate regarding the fairness of charging for parking and various alternatives, the Commission voted 5-3 this evening to implement the staff recommendations.

Original post:

Today, the TTC will consider a proposal to eliminate free parking for Metropass users at its lots.  When I first heard of this, my reaction was supportive because, as a non-driver, I don’t benefit from whatever subsidy the parking lots represent.  Some media comments have placed this subsidy as high as $7 per user per day, an unconscionable amount of subsidy that would be intolerable if “parking” were a proposed new route.

However, looking closely at the figures reveals a different story.

The TTC loses $3.6-million annually on parking operations on a total budget of $6.3-million.  In other words, the cost recovery is about 43 percent.  Things don’t look too good yet.

However, there are 14,000 parking spaces and this means that the loss per space is about $250 per year, or about $1 per weekday.  This is nowhere near the figure cited above, and is much more in line with a reasonable incentive to use transit. 

By analogy to bus and streetcar routes, the subsidies vary from route to route, but the network is most important.  At $1/space/day, this subsidy is higher than the average for many bus routes, but not completely off the map.

Conversely, if the TTC were able to fill its lots even with a parking charge of $2 or more, they would make far more than is needed to offset the operating cost.  Bluntly, the TTC’s numbers don’t add up.

Lest you think that I am an advocate for commuter parking, that’s quite another matter.  Parking lots have many undesirable characteristics including the poisoning of land for community use — buildings generating lots of pedestrian activity and a sense of neighbourhood.  New parking lots have property and construction costs, and if structures are involved, those costs will be substantial.

Even existing lots can represent lost opportunities.  When the outer stations on the Bloor-Danforth line were built, land was cheap and a lot of it was already in the public sector.  Parking was an obvious land use.  Only now, 40 years after the lines opened, are we starting to see development at some locations that should have appeared years ago if the common myths about subway stations creating development could be believed.  In effect, the TTC strangled development right where it would be most desirable by dedicating so much land for parking.

As an aside, I should note that some lots such as Finch are on land that cannot be developed, and this at least puts the Hydro corridor to some use.  However, there is a limit to how far east and west from Finch Station parking can be built, and sites like this are an exception in the system overall.

On GO Transit, the lots at stations are full by 7 am, and massive parking expansion is really not in the cards.  GO has more stations in industrial areas where high density residential development is less likely, but the problem remains that there’s a limit to how much land the transit system can dedicate to parking.

The real problem is that feeder services to GO and TTC stations leave a lot to be desired especially as demand on both systems grows, bidirectional travel becomes common, and frequent all-day GO service is finally getting serious discussion in transit plans.

As for the existing TTC lots, my position is this:  if they can be redeveloped both to liberate the capital value of the land and to provide more transit riders while converting sterile transit terminals to community centres, so be it.  In those odd cases like the Hydro corridor where redevelopment is not practical, let people park, but recognize that there are limits to this and that parking is not a panacea for attracting riders to transit. 

As always, good service is the key.

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Green is Nice, Working is Better

The New York Times has an article today about a scheme in NYC to operate escalators at variable speeds.  This is intended to save energy by slowing down escalators when nobody is on them.

Despite claims by the MTA, several of the “converted” escalators either were not working at all, or were not behaving as advertised.

The nub of the issue comes right at the end of the article:

Rick O’Conor, who runs the Roosevelt Islander blog, questioned the need for the new technology. “It’s not of primary importance to have motion-activated escalators,” he said. “It’s of primary importance to have escalators that work.”

He said that all 10 escalators at the Roosevelt Island station had been out of order recently, and that his elderly mother had had to walk up the stairs. “A group of teenagers were nice enough to ask if she wanted them to carry her,” Mr. O’Conor said, adding that his mother pressed on.

Of the 10 escalators at Roosevelt Island on Monday, two had yet to be fitted with the sensors and two were shut down.

Another resident, Valentina Montecinos, 28, said, “Sure, it’s a good idea to save energy, but these escalators are never working anyway.”

Alas this is the fate of so many good ideas that bedevil transit systems and other public agencies.  In the name of some higher goal, be it the environment or fiscal responsibility, something is rolled out through an organization that is already doing a tenuous job of running their system.  The new, improved function doesn’t work and may even work less reliably than what it replaced, and “going green” takes a black eye.

Toronto has a bad habit of ignoring or downplaying the importance of a lot of things like reliable escalators and elevators.  Without these, many people can use the subway and RT only with difficulty or not at all.  We hear a lot about “safety” and the number of checks that must be made before a machine can be restarted.  The point is that if you’re going to have this technology, then it has to run reliably and staff must be available to keep it online.

Meanwhile, if anyone has some brilliant brainwaves about transit, make sure that they can actually work successfully rather than creating one more way for riders to be annoyed with poor service. 

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How Many People Will Ride the Eglinton Line? (Updated)

[Update:  As promised, I have received the updated ridership projections TTC is using for Transit City.  They have been added in the body of this post.]

Recently, there has been a lot of ink about the technology choice for an Eglinton rapid transit line, whatever it may turn out to be.  Earlier this weekend, after a nagging period when I thought the ridership projections looked a bit off, I went back to the source material to check.

In the Globe article on July 24, Adam Giambrone says that the route’s projected 9,000 riders in the peak hour of the morning rush in 2021 don’t justify a subway.   Hmmm.  9,000 you say?

[This section has been updated.]

Let’s have a look at the original Transit City projections and the revised values now in use as part of the EAs in progress.  Original values are in parentheses.  Current values are for 2031 and reflect anticipated population and employment growth, although further refinements are possible as the EAs progress.

  • Eglinton:  5,000-5400 (4,700) (see below)
  • Scarborough-Malvern:  4,600-5000 (3,900)
  • Don Mills:  2,600-3000 (2,900)
  • Sheppard East:  3,000 (2,700)
  • Jane:  1,700-2,200 (2,700)
  • Finch West:  2,300-2,800 (2,300)
  • Waterfront West:  2,000-2,400 in 2021 (Taken from EA document) (2,200)

The revised values are current while the originals date from March 2007.

The Eglinton projections do not include Airport ridership.  However, traffic to Pearson will generally not co-incide with the peak time, location and direction and is unlikely to make much if any impact on the required level of service.

In the Sheppard EA, there is a note that peak ridership on a full Sheppard Subway to STC is projected to be about 5,000/hour versus 3,000 projected for the LRT east of Don Mills.  This appears to support arguments that a subway network will attract more riders, but the TTC also notes that the majority of the additional riders are merely diverted from other transit services.  What is unclear is the impact of less accessible transit service for local trips and the effect on transit usage and pedestrian amenities in the areas between subway stations.

If we look at the Eglinton projection of 5,400, we can expect that a full subway would attract more riders, but still well below the level needed to justify that level of capital investment, and still leaving the question of what other routes these riders might have used.

Even with revisions, none of the lines was expected to come anywhere near subway-level demand.  I am particular struck by the drop in the estimated demand on Jane which begs the question of whether it is an appropriate corridor for this technology.

[End of Update]

Eglinton is a particularly important case because it is at least two separate routes west and east of Yonge, and the demand accumulating at any point will be affected by what routes and services intersect it.  For example, as on the bus service, riding east of Eglinton West Station will be lower than to the west because many trips will transfer to the Spadina subway.  East of Yonge, the provision of an alternate, fast route to Danforth or further south via a Don Mills or Downtown Relief line will drain much load that would otherwise continue west to the Yonge Subway.

Many months ago, I asked Metrolinx to release the detailed ridership projections for each component and segment of their various “test case” networks.  I was assured that this information would be published concurrently with the draft Regional Transportation Plan.  Alas, that plan sits in limbo and will not appear until, at best, late September.  The modelling is for the test cases was done long ago, and there is no reason Metrolinx should keep the results secret. 

Of course, the numbers may not back up some of the plans people have for various rapid transit schemes, and the data could set off a debate about just what sort of network is really needed.

The last thing we need is a huge rush this fall to ram through a draft plan just so that Queen’s Park can announce something in time for the next election.  Given both the economic situation and the frosty reception from Ottawa to fund MoveOntario, let alone Metrolinx, the pressure to approve something, anything may have waned a tad.

Without question we need to spend more on transit, but let’s do so where and how it’s demonstrably needed rather than pre-announcing routes and technologies. 

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Metrolinx vs Toronto: What To Build on Eglinton

Jeff Gray and Matthew Campbell report in today’s Globe on the potential for conflict between Metrolinx and the TTC over the future of Transit City and, in particular, the choice of technology for the Eglinton line.

I have written at length about this before and won’t rehash the arguments here, but a few remarks in the article deserve comment.  Rob MacIsaac parrots subway boosters with this gem:

“If you’re going to travel from one end of that line to the other, we think you’d probably better pack a picnic lunch,” Mr. MacIsaac said.

“We would like to find a way to speed it up for people who are travelling longer distances.”

And why, he asked, build something that could end up overcrowded?

“There’s little point in spending a lot of money on an LRT line that will end up with passengers whose faces are pressed up against the windows.”

Why indeed would someone ride from Scarborough to Pearson Airport or Mississauga when MacIsaac’s own plans call for an express route across the 401 corridor?  The whole point of a network is that it must serve a variety of demands — some long haul, some local.  Just as we now have GO Transit for commuters from the 905 to downtown, we would also have high-speed services for trips across the 416/905 region.

A trip from Scarborough to Pearson is longer than a trip from Pickering to downtown Toronto, and comparable to a trip from Richmond Hill.  Misguided planners and politicians insist on treating it as a local trip that should be stuffed into the TTC network.  Having created this straw man, they claim this justifies a full-blown rapid transit line on Eglinton.

As for demand, the TTC’s projection for Eglinton is 9,000 per hour, and this would be on the busy central part of the route that will be underground.  Outer parts of the route will easily be within the capacity of surface LRT which has the added advantage of lower cost and more attractive station spacing for local demands.

Despite its protests that its work is only “test cases”, not formal plans, Metrolinx is showing its true colours by making technology choices long before they have demonstrated the need for their network schemes.  Public consultation is a sham designed to give people a warm fuzzy feeling about Metrolinx rather than engaging them in a real debate.

MacIsaac’s comments about Eglinton show that the real agenda is to push through a major rapid transit project, likely a western extension of the Scarborough RT.

The Metrolinx Board has not met publicly since June 13, and the regional plans were last on the agenda on April 25.  Their next meeting is scheduled for late September.

It’s time for the Board to tell the chair to stop musing about network options that are not yet even a draft plan.

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Transit: Too Important For The Politicians? (Updated)

In today’s Star, Christopher Hume advances the argument that the only way we are going to get some decent decisions about transit hereabouts is to have a regional board with real teeth — taxing and expropriation powers.  Moreover, this board should not be composed of politicians, but of “experts”, whatever that may mean.

As regular readers here will know, I have my doubts about “experts” for many reasons, but principally because they inevitably serve some political master.  Somehow they get appointed, and that usually results directly from kissing the hand that blessed them for their supposedly apolitical role.

Just because someone is unelected and has a degree in a professional field does not make them ideal to handle the complex job of not only planning and operating a regional transportation system, but of convincing people (and those pesky politicians) that the money raised and spent actually goes for a good cause.

The TTC used to be an un-elected body, then a mix of Councillors and appointees.  That dysfunctional arrangement eventually led to a complete takeover by Council to ensure that the TTC actually operated for the public good.

To date, Metrolinx, an organization largely run by “experts” even though the public face is that of politicians, has done poor job of explaining itself and its proposals even to those, like me, who take the trouble to read all of their material.  Already, we see an immense web of transit lines with no data to justify individual components.  “Test cases” constructed as straw plans to see how they behaved in a traffic model threaten to become unchangeable blueprints for our future transit network without benefit of proper analysis.

I contrast this with the outcry from many “expert” quarters when Transit City was announced that the presumption of LRT foreclosed debate on alternatives.  Some of those same experts would now foist a regional plan on us for unquestioned acceptance.

Politicians will always be in charge of large-scale infrastructure decisions whether they are officially on boards or not.  They control the funding.  There is no way an agency with a published appetite for almost $8-billion a year will be allowed to operate without political oversight.

The challenge is for both the board and staff to have the public’s trust, to bring forward plans and projects that demonstrably improve our transportation network.  Self-perpetuating cliques, be they friends of government of the day or an old boy’s club of experts, are throwbacks to past failures, not models for our future.

Updated July 22

A comment yesterday evening from “POS” triggered a lengthy response from me, and the argument is important enough to move it here into the main part of the post.

“Steve, do I sense a hint of sour grape bitterness in your post? Who would be better suited to plan and operate this complex job?”

My point is that that any organization performing this function needs to be open and accountable, and that inevitably brings us to politicians of some flavour. Many agencies, not just those in the transit business, yearn for the simplicity of just getting a potload of money out of thin air and going forth with their allegedly good works unburdened by public oversight. A benign rule of experts.

There are three big problems. First, there is rarely enough money available for the taking without debate. The right wing spent the better part of three decades convincing everyone they are overtaxed, and the word “toll” is guaranteed to get you tarred and feathered in many quarters.

Second, the experts are not necessarily in sync with the larger public about what should or should not be done. For example, we would have a lovely highway network and no downtown if the “experts” in charge of transportation planning through the 50s and 60s had not run headlong into public opposition and, yes, another set of “experts” whose view of the world consisted of neighbourhoods and urban civility.

Third, some experts have agendas of their own born out of personal prejudice (I may like streetcars, you may like subways) or blatant conflicts of interest (property development, technology vendors).

The idea that the correct set of experts will be in power at any time is no more credible than the concept that any one political party has an ideal program and the divine right to govern without benefit of public review. The premise that we can escape the sins of decades of bad planning simply by handing our cities over to a technocracy is laughable.

“Making the trains run on time” sounds like a laudable goal until you are forced to leave your car at home by an environmental dictatorship, or my house is demolished by a road czar to make room for a wider thoroughfare. Both would protest that they’re just doing their “expert” job, but at what cost?

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Blue 22: A Scheme That Just Won’t Die

Last week, both the Globe and the Sun reported that the Blue 22 airport service is back on the rails, so to speak.  On Sunday, the Sun editorialized on the subject with support, sort of, propvided that the line doesn’t turn into another boondoggle like the Sheppard Subway.

The fascinating part about this is the sudden love affair between Dalton McGuinty and David Miller for a transit proposal that was dubious when first proposed (by the Liberals in Ottawa, remember them?), and has been on life support for years.  Indeed, many of us, including some local politicians, hoped that the scheme would just die from lack of interest.

No such luck.  We’re in an era where Queen’s Park is hungry to see some real progress on transit, but nothing’s happening.   Or at least nothing with low-cost ribbon cutting between now and the next election.  In support of faster projects, Queen’s Park has all but eliminated the Environmental Assessment as a mechanism for proper review of transit proposals.  Blue 22 and its impact on neighbourhoods along the line have been the subject of a long-running EA with the Weston Community Coalition painted as ogres for expecting the route to be sensitive to their town and to provide local service.

Now, out of clear blue sky, Blue 22 re-appears.  “This is an important priority for us” says Premier McGuinty.  Mayor Miller says “we just need it to happen”, and goes on to compare Toronto with other cities that have airport rail links to downtown.

Somehow, we are stuck with this proposal.  For years, former Transport Minister David Collenette lobbied for this scheme, and finally, just before he left cabinet, announced that SNC Lavalin would build and operate it.  The idea has been around for a long time.  However, this is no spiffy, 21st century line, but rather a service to be operated with refurbished 50-year old RDCs.  These rail diesel cars once operated on some of Via’s routes including the lines to Niagara Falls, London via Stratford and Peterborough.

Imagine if Transit City had been announced along with a plan to buy up and refurbish 50-year old PCCs for the fleet.  Mayor Miller would have been laughed off the stage.

SNC Lavalin is obviously hedging its bets with a recycled fleet.  Who knows?  Even if Blue 22 doesn’t fly, they might be able to sell the cars to Via.

Meanwhile, the Transit City plans already include a hub at Terminal One with a possible LRT station in the basement.  This station could be shared by LRT services from many parts of the GTA.  Imagine links east on Eglinton, northeast to Finch, southwest into Mississauga and even down to Union along the Weston corridor.  But no.  Instead we will get a premium fare ($20 or more) service for a minority of the airport’s customers.

Aren’t we supposed to be building a regional transportation plan?  Shouldn’t we figure out how the airport fits into a transit network, not one ill-considered scheme that elbows better alternatives out of the way?

Yes, we need good rail transit to the airport, but Blue 22 isn’t the way to provide it.  Can Miller and McGuinty find the will, the energy to promote something better, or are we doomed to ride an ex-politician’s pet project?

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How Much Will It Cost To MoveOntario? (Updated)

Updated July 8:  Metrolinx has announced that the draft Regional Transportation Plan and Investment Strategy have been delayed until September.  You can read about this in The Star and in the official Metrolinx press release.

[The original post follows below.]

Those of you who have been following the proposals and plans from Metrolinx will know that there’s been a tiny bit of inflation in the projected cost of transit improvements for the GTAH.

About one year ago, Premier McGuinty announced MoveOntario2020, a plan to invest $17.5-billion (2/3 from Queen’s Park, the rest from Ottawa) in over 50 projects for the region.  For the moment, leave aside the fact that this was less of a plan than a grab bag of every proposal that was sitting on the table in every municipality.  At least it was a starting point to talk about investment in transit.

One big chunk of MoveOntario2020 is Transit City, and it accounted for about 1/3 of the total.

Many hurrahs!  Horns blared!  Gongs clanged!  Visions of a transit future danced through our heads.

Over the past year, the picture has changed quite a bit.  The most aggressive of Metrolinx plans, as described in their Preliminary Directions White Paper, requires an annual outlay of $3.8-billion for capital and another $3.8-billion for additional operating costs.  (Table E-1, page 63)  The least aggressive isn’t far behind.

That’s a huge jump from the investment that would take us out to 2020, and sticker shock may derail the whole thing.  It wouldn’t be the first time. Continue reading →

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A Tale of Two Maps

Two days ago, Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee approved both the Environmental Assessment Report for the Sheppard East LRT and an Official Plan Amendment extending the scope of the transit corridor east on Sheppard to match the LRT line.

Scarborough Councillors popped the Champagne corks, or at least sparkling water, and I got an invitation to talk about the significance of the occasion on Metro Morning.

This should be a big event — approval of the first leg in a suburban LRT network.  Back in 1972, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee fought to save what we now call the “legacy” system as a base for suburban expansion, and I have waited a very, very long time for this day.

Over the decades, a combination of Provincial meddling in transit and local subway megalomania  stymied transit’s ability to keep up with, let alone form suburban growth.  All the planning mantras about leading development with transit from the sixties and seventies are little more than quaint memories.

Finally, early in 2007, the TTC and City announced the Transit City plan for a network of seven new LRT lines.  Work began immediately on detailed studies, and three EAs are already underway with the Sheppard Line’s being the first to come up for approval.  The Don Mills study recently had a round of public meetings, and the Eglinton study will roll out in the fall.  Add to these the non-TC projects in the eastern waterfront and the Kingston Road study, not to mention proposals outside of Toronto, and there’s a lot of LRT on the table. Continue reading →

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A Few Questions For Metrolinx

Last Friday, I spent the day at a Metrolinx public consultation session, a meeting of “Stakeholders” who have more than a passing interest in transportation issues.  This was the fourth of six gatherings around the GTAH.

Metrolinx has got to recognize a basic fact:  Activists and community representatives are not consultants, they don’t represent companies for whom attendance at this type of function is part of their job.  Metronauts had the sense to be a Saturday event, and, frankly, it was a lot more productive.  If Metrolinx had to actually pay even half of the crowd who attended last Friday at reasonable consulting rates, they would have blown a bundle. 

The moderator started off by thanking us all for taking time out of our busy schedules to provide “value added feedback”.  Argghhh!  Yes, we added value, and in many cases this represented a day taken off work (vacation, in my case).  At least the food was good. Continue reading →

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SRT Extension Open House

The display panels from the SRT Extension Open House are available on the project website.  My comments below follow the sequence of the presentation.

First up, we have a chart purporting to explain why we must use RT technology for this corridor.  The chart on page 7 shows the following future projected demands on the line:

  • North of Kennedy Station 10,000/hour
  • West of McCowan Station about 4,000/hour
  • North of Sheppard about 2,000/hour

As a point of reference, the current line capacity at Kennedy is about 3,800/hour. Continue reading →