A Grand Plan

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A Grand Plan Revisited

Sean Marshall pointed out that I started a thread here just over two years ago under the title of A Grand Plan. The first post in that series included a long paper detailing what a regional transit plan for Toronto might look like as well as a technical discussion of transit modes.

In the process of writing my series on Transit City as an LRT network, many of the ideas from that paper were recycled, tempered by a few years of debate on this blog and other venues.  It’s worthwhile for serious readers (and especially those who haven’t been regulars here long enough to have seen posts two years ago) to go back to that original, and to follow the discussion thread that follows.

As a quick refresher, here’s what was in it.  Note that some of these proposals were mined from work by others and I claim no special right to them other than putting them all in one place.  Queen’s Park did roughly the same thing with MoveOntario2020, and Metrolinx stirred the pot with its three scenarios in the Transit Green Paper.

GO Transit

  • Several updates to services, but particularly all-day service so that GO is a real alternative regardless of when one makes a trip.
  • Various grade separations (some now in progress)
  • Service to Barrie (well, they got as far as a parking lot and may go further)
  • Service through Agincourt to Peterborough (I swear I am not a shill for the Finance Minister)

TTC Surface Transit

  • More vehicles and garages
  • Improved policy headways (this might show up in the fall, or in 2009, depending on budget)
  • Improved service standards and deliberate overservicing of routes relative to demand to encourage ridership growth (some work has begun in this area by TTC, but more is needed)
  • A new low-floor streetcar fleet
  • Retention of a mixed fleet of new cars and CLRVs/ALRVs to ensure that the fleet is big enough to absorb ridership growth until we can fully provision a low-floor fleet

LRT

  • Eglinton with an underground section from Leaside to somewhere around Keele including access to Pearson Airport
  • Don Mills to downtown via Waterfront east
  • An LRT replacement for the SRT extended north into Malvern
  • Sheppard east from Don Mills
  • Waterfront West connecting into The Queensway
  • Weston corridor from Union north connecting with Eglinton and turning into a Jane line (replacing Blue 22)
  • Kipling Station west into Mississauga
  • Downsview Station to York U and beyond into the 905
  • Finch West
  • Yonge north from an extended subway at Steeles

I hate to say “I told you so” as this doesn’t fit with the modest (yes, me, modest) way I publicize my own activities and opinions.  However, I think it’s worth reiterating than a lot of these ideas have been around one way or another for some time, but interagency rivalry, intergovernmental sloth, and the inability to let go of old, worn-out plans prevented a lot of this from being discussed.

Metrolinx is now trying to build a regional plan, and I worry that this will be held hostage to many of the same preconceptions about what is acceptable.  I hope to be proven wrong.

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The Downtown Relief Line Gets On The Map

In what has to be record time for a transit proposal to get from a blog discussion to publicly debated policy, the Downtown Relief Line (DRL) is now barely a decade away.

Yesterday, Sean Marshall’s post at spacing generated a blizzard of comments, and today, the National Post reports comments by Adam Giambrone and Rob MacIsaac.  Giambrone will start looking at the line in 2018.  That is far too late, and the TTC needs to start looking at it today if it’s going to be open, as he suggests, by 2020.

A few comments raised my eyebrows, however:

As the city core becomes more dense, passengers are choking the Bloor-Yonge and St. George transfer points, as well as the King and Queen streetcars. The Bloor-Danforth line will soon be congested, too, Mr. Giambrone said.

Rob MacIsaac said:

“There’s so much demand that you’re exceeding what a streetcar line can carry. I had a discussion with [former TTC general manager] David Gunn once and he said, ‘Don’t build a subway until you can jump from the top of one streetcar to the next,’ which is probably a circumstance that you’re getting close to on Queen Street.”

I don’t know who has the idea that streetcar service on King and Queen are anywhere near capacity, and the only streetcars someone can jump roofs on are in Russell and Roncesvalles Carhouses.  Service on both streets has operated at twice the current capacity, and there’s lots of room for more streetcars if only the TTC had a large enough fleet.

What’s fascinating to me is that, finally, it is acceptable to talk about adding transit capacity into the core of the city.  For years the focus has been on the suburbs going  back to the deal-with-the-devil struck by then Councillor Jack Layton and Mayor Lastman.  Layton supported suburban subway expansion as a means of diverting intensification from downtown.  The DRL fell off the map because it did not fit with the goal of strangling core area development to benefit the suburbs. 

We all know how successful this was.  A good chunk of the office and commercial space in North York Centre is empty, while downtown fills up with condos and resurgent office development.

As for the DRL, the original proposal was simply for a line from Flemingdon/Thorncliffe to downtown.  Subway fitted with existing technology in the area, and nobody was taking LRT seriously as a “light subway”.  We have more options today including a through connection to a line in the Weston Subdivision (as described in the Post article) up to at least Dundas West Station.  It doesn’t take a genius to see how this fits into Transit City and a service to the airport.

Very frequent service can operate on the southerly parts of the Don Mills and Weston lines where they are completely on their own right-of-way, with less frequent trains continuing up Don Mills in the street median, up Jane and out Eglinton West.

When we look at the possibilities of both an Eglinton and a “DRL” built with LRT, but spanning almost the complete range of LRT implementations from street median up to near-subway, we see the real possibilities of this mode for our growing transit network.

(And yes, Hamish, the Waterfront West service can hop onto the same corridor at Queen and Dufferin.)

While we’re at it, as I mentioned in a previous comment, we must keep sight of the role for regional services on existing and future GO lines.  One source of subway overloading is long-haul riders for whom GO service (if any) is too infrequent.  Better GO service with a fare structure integrated with the TTC will give riders a fast, alternative way into downtown, at a much lower cost than expanding subways everywhere.

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Why Transit City is an LRT Plan (Part 3)

This post will be a lot shorter than the previous one, but it’s a necessary technical prelude to what will follow.

We hear a lot about the relative capacity of various transit modes, and the appropriateness of any mode depends both on its capacity and on the constraints of the alignment where it will operate.

I will start off with a familiar TTC chart (in the format presented at tonight’s public meeting) showing both the theoretical capacity ranges of various modes, and the projected demand on the extended SRT. Continue reading →

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Why Transit City is an LRT Plan (Part 2A)

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about the history of transit plans since the mid-1960s in Toronto and the evolution of planning goals into Toronto’s new Official Plan. That plan has a very different view of our city, and addresses the need to accommodate very large growth in population and transportation demands.

Much of that growth will come in the old suburbs where 50’s style developments are showing their age and opportunities for more effective land use are ripe.

Although the Official Plan didn’t exactly trumpet LRT as its mode of choice for a future transit network, the references are there for anyone who takes the time to find them. The vision for a new city includes:

  • vibrant neighbourhoods that are part of complete communuities;
  • attractive, tree-lined streets with shops and housing that are made for walking;
  • a comprehensive and high-quality transit system that lets people move around the city quickly and conveniently. [Toronto Official Plan, Page 2]

“Principles for a Successful Toronto” include:

  • public transit is universally accessible and buses and streetcars are an attractive choice for travel. [Ibid, Page 3]

In a background paper to the plan lies this key paragraph:

Increasing transit ridership within the City for trips originating in the City, as well as elsewhere in the GTA, can probably best be achieved by improving coverage in those areas not well served by transit (generally speaking, in the West, Northwest, and Northeast) and increasing connectivity of various elements of the system in ways that make it easier to use transit for more than just centrally oriented travel. Major areas designated for revitalization and new development, such as the waterfront and port lands, should also have improved transit coverage and better connectivity with the rest of the transit system. [A Transportation Vision for the City of Toronto Official Plan, April 2000, Page 43, italics are in the original text]

Moreover, in discussing rapid transit (subway) options then under study, we learn:

These proposals will undergo detailed evaluation, including benefit-cost analysis in which the benefits of more riders, travel time savings, and improved transit accessibility and connectivity will be balanced against the best available cost estimates. This evaluation may lead to the consideration of other rapid transit technology, such as exclusive busways and streetcar/LRT, which may prove more cost effective in certain travel corridors. Rapid transit expansion is a long-term, major capital investment that would have to justify the cost before being considered as an element of the new Official Plan. [Toronto at the Crossroads: Shaping Our Future, July 2000, Page 105]

A clear thread runs through the Official Plan of neighbourhoods with fine-grained, local services, a built form that encorages short pedestrian trips and developments that embrace the street rather than isolating their occupants in towers surrounded by parking. “Mixed use” means the co-existence of residential and commercial space as found in older cities, not alternating, kilometre-wide, single-use blocks isolated from each other. Trips within and among neighbourhoods need good surface transit that can be easily reached by a variety of riders — not just commuters to downtown, but people of all ages and interests moving around the city. Continue reading →

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Why Transit City is an LRT Plan (Part 1)

One year ago, with much fanfare, the TTC launched the Transit City plan.  Those who have followed the debates on my site will know we had a lot of discussions about whether lines were in the right place, what demands would be placed on the system, whether the cost estimates were reasonable and many fine details of individual route designs.  As I said here, it felt as if I was running a one-man Environmental Assessment for the whole plan.

The official EAs are now starting for some routes (Sheppard, Finch West and Eglinton), and Waterfront West is already underway.  Although not officially part of Transit City, we also have studies for the eastern waterfront and Kingston Road.

Notable by its absence in Transit City is one common part of every EA that has gone before:  an alternatives analysis.  Many here have debated the LRT-only premise, and even some of the professional planners are miffed that Transit City came out as a single-mode proposal.

I have little sympathy for this view.  In years past, studies for a variety of transit projects have gone through the motions of looking at alternatives, but the fix was in from the beginning.  Some current resentment is at least partly a question of sour grapes among those who have a brief for other schemes sidelined by the Transit City announcement.

This post will appear in several segments as I get a chance to write them, and I may do some polishing along the way, possibly even pulling the whole thing into a single paper in a few weeks.  I will open the posts to comments, but will concentrate on getting all of the material written and up first.  I’ve found that moderating the comments can take a lot of time, so please bear with me.

My current plans for this series are:

  • The origins of Transit City (this post)
  • Why LRT?
  • A comparative review of technologies
  • Expansion and extension options for Transit City

Public agencies wishing to pillage my work should feel free to do so provided credit is given.  This material is produced pro bono. Continue reading →

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What We Got For Five Million

One of my jobs here seems to be the curmudgeon whose view of the latest great thing isn’t quite as gentle and forgiving as other commentators.  This brings me to Museum Station.  You can see lots of photos over at The Torontoist where many (including me) have commented on various aspects of the station.

For me, one big issue is not just that it’s unfinished, but that in doing so, something is lost of the original design.  Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here is what we were supposed to get.

MuseumOriginalDesign

Note the curving ceiling that hides the plumbing and pulls the rows of columns together in a long gallery.  You won’t see that at Museum Station.  I suspect that the TTC didn’t want yet another specialized ceiling finish that would spend half its time disassembled while work went on above, but we’ve lost something important there.

Another issue is the large patches of painted concrete wall at intervals along the station.  Nothing is shown in the image of what might be there, and one wonders whether this was intended for advertising.

Speaking of advertising, there were ads present at the station until last weekend when their negative impact on the overall design was raised by some of us at Transit Camp to people who are in a position to get things changed.  They were.

The other change is that the old Metron, carefully preserved even though it didn’t work, was in the station right up to the weekend.  Odd how we’ve been told the problem is always with getting electrical work done for Onestop installations.  Funny how in a $5-million project they didn’t put in the conduits and wires for the new video screens.  They’re even shown in the drawing above, but that’s something else you won’t find at Museum.

I was kind of hoping the Metrons would stay as the beginning of a TTC museum of horology.  They could have relocated a few of the old analog clocks from Lower Bay to round out things.

Finally, there is an odd, unintended historic reference in the plaque describing each of the columns.  We learn that the red columns modelled on the Forbidden City would have held up yellow ceilings, a colour only the Emperor was allowed to use.  Yellow, of course, was the old colour of Museum Station, and it’s absent now at platform level.  No Emperors here I guess.

For me, Museum has too much the feel of a half-baked project.  Nice columns, but lots left to be done and nobody stepping up to pay for it.  If all this decor cost us five million, we were ripped off.

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Metrolinx Green Papers: What to do about Transit (Part 2)

In the first post of this series, I discussed some of the philosophy behind the coming Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan.  Rather than getting into a lot of detail (that deserves a separate post), I want to talk about process.

[Oh no!  He’s going to go all policy wonk on us!  Let’s just go somewhere else for our evening’s entertainment!]

Sorry, folks, but how this process is going on is at least as important as the nitty gritty of all those reports and charts and maps.

Once upon a time, governments announced grand schemes, but nothing happened for quite a while.  Politicians fought over which line would be built first.  Then the engineers studied it, held public meetings, produced an Environmental Assessment, and waited for the money to flow.  Finally, a line was built (or not) and opened (or not), and the whole mess started over.

Then someone discovered that the Toronto way to build transit might be a tad short of world class, and that other cities just went out and did things.  It helped that the star attraction was in a European tourist haven, Madrid, rather than someplace with a lot of snow and a dour government.

Presto, chango!  Let’s get the EA process down from two years to one.  No sooner do we do that, than we want it down to 6 months!  We want results!  Now!  Today!  Before the next election! Continue reading →

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From Mars to Hamilton?

Saturday, April 5th was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, but over one hundred dedicated souls spent it in the basement of the MaRS Centre on College Street talking about transit. To my great delight, the crowd was not just the “usual suspects”, the transit afficionados who can be counted on to show up at every event, but a much broader group of people with strong interests in what can make the city and its transportation system work.

This was the second “Transit Camp” (last year’s dealt with the TTC’s website), and the first in a series of “un-conferences” about the Metrolinx Regional Transit Plan. Many folks from Metrolinx as well as the TTC and other agencies attended, but it was not a gathering of professionals where the general public sat meekly through hours of powerpoints. Indeed, this event generated far more wide-ranging discussions and feedback than we would normally see at a “formal” public participation event.

When this scheme first surfaced, I worried that the leap from a single topic Transit Camp to something as broad as a regional plan might founder through lack of focus and from the huge learning curve anyone new to the topic would have in absorbing work already done by Metrolinx. To my great delight, the event self-organized into roughly fifty discussions not one of which took the form of “let’s argue about Metrolinx Green Paper number 42”. Indeed, many of the topics lay in areas that Metrolinx studies only glance at.

This can be an opportunity for Metrolinx, but it can also be a dangerous rift between what matters to people about transportation and what Metrolinx is actually doing. Much of the official focus is on the maps, the proposals for various network options, and I expect we will see the usual tugs-of-war between regions each of which want at least three new subway lines to serve their town centres. But that’s not what a transportation network is all about, and many issues from the quality of space in which people travel to service and fare structures to the challenge of providing viable alternatives to auto trips fill the agenda.

Transit Camp was a useful reminder of this, and it underscores the need to look at the whole picture of transportation and travel experience, not just lines on a map.

The next event will be in early May, possibly somewhere to the west, maybe in Hamilton, with a third event somewhere in the east to follow. In the best tradition of unstructured events, things are still a bit vague.

By June, when the draft Regional Transportation Plan comes out, the discussions will inevitably change (printed maps always cause people to argue over the lines rather than the issues), and the tone of future Transit Camps may adjust accordingly.

Watch the Metronauts and Metrolinx pages for information on future events.

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Metrolinx Green Paper 7: What to do about Transit? (Part 1)

The Metrolinx consultation process leading to a new Regional Transportation Plan is in full swing complete with online feedbacks and a series of public meetings. Probably the most important of the seven “Green Papers” (documents for discussion) is the last, the one concerning transit.

You can read all 60+ pages or a very high level overview at Metrolinx site.

I am not going to attempt to boil all of this material (or the other 6 papers) down into posts here and leave it to readers to explore the Metrolinx site on their own. However, some aspects of the transit paper deserve comment as well as the process by which the new plan appears to be taking shape. Continue reading →