Sean Marshall has a good article over at spacing about the planned changes at Kipling and Islington Stations. There’s a good thread of comments too.
One other item of note, in next week’s TTC agenda, is the planned transfer of responsibility for building the new terminal from TTC to GO Transit.
On Wednesday, November 14, the City of Toronto will host an open house at Union Station to display plans for the station from 12:30 to 6:30 pm. Further information on the Union Station project is available on the City’s website.
Please note that although I am a member of the Union Station Revitalization Public Advisory Group for this project, the following comments reflect my personal opinion, not that of the USRPAG.
Today, the National Post reported GO Transit’s Gary McNeil as saying that GO should buy the station to take it out of the hands of “dithering politicians”. McNeil, along with others who mused recently about taking over the TTC, should stick to running their own businesses before they weigh in on City matters.
Union Station’s future was mired for years in a failed scheme to have it managed on a long-term contract by a private company, and there was good reason to believe both that the selection process for a private partner and the financial situation for the City were less than ideal. Much time was wasted in this exercise.
Although the detailed report is not yet public, some indication of the short-term spending requirements has already appeared in the Budget Analyst’s notes for the City’s Capital Budget. Some Council members will groan about the high cost of owning this heritage station, and McNeil’s proposal that GO would happily take the building on will have an eager audience. They should think twice.
GO has been starved for funding for well over a decade, and the last thing it needs is the expense of bringing an aging and poorly-maintained station up to first class condition. Moreover, GO’s operations will soon fall under the GTTA which may have its own spending priorities.
Meanwhile, some members of Council mused recently about shops and markets in Union Station. This is a nice idea, but why couldn’t they wait for the staff report on the station to come out?
A fish market at Union, if nothing else, will lend a distinct aroma to Gary McNeil’s trains. For those long winter nights when trains languish miles from Union Station, McNeil might add a self-serve grill to the GO concourse so hungry passengers can eat their catch-of-the-day while it’s still fresh.
Union Station needs a lot of work to handle the expected growth in demand over the coming decades. Many agencies need to work together with each other, with the politicians and with the public to make Union Station the great hub it can be for downtown’s transportation systems.
Those who take off in their own directions wanting only to read their name in the National Post as often as possible do nothing to aid this vital project.
Later today, we can expect our friends in Ottawa to announce that indeed the GST will be reduced from six to five percent. Once the dancing in the streets winds down, we need to focus attention on Queen’s Park.
The idea that one cent of the GST should be redirected to municipalities was first raised by Mayor Miller of Toronto and gradually attracted support from other “big city” mayors across the land. Even outgoing Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara endorsed the idea about a week ago. Alas, Stephen Harper’s government wants nothing to do with this scheme. That’s their prerogative.
However, if Queen’s Park were really serious about funding local governments, they would move into the space vacated by Ottawa and raise the PST by one percent. This money would be dedicated to Ontario municipalities.
Of course, Dalton McGuinty would have to actually defend this position saying that cities and towns really need the money, and if that nasty Mr. Harper won’t give it to them, our Dalton will simply do the taxing at the provincial level. It’s easy to blame Ottawa for problems, much harder to take action locally.
The marginal cost to Ontario taxpayers would be zero — one percent is one percent regardless of who collects it. The cost to Queen’s Park would be zero because this would be new revenue simply passed through to local governments.
This approach would undermine the campaign to get Ottawa at the table for transit funding. However, we will wait a very, very long time before a federal government of any stripe makes real commitments to transit that don’t come with severe time and eligibility constraints. (Even the Liberals would only fund new hybrid buses and other projects that could be construed as a contribution to the Kyoto protocol goals. Replacement and rebuilding to maintain what we already have wasn’t on the table.)
We really need to start funding transit infrastructure and operations with local provincial and municipal revenues. Transit should not be hostage to Ottawa’s hatred for the municipal sector and for Toronto in particular.
Is anyone at Queen’s Park listening?
At the GTTA Board meeting yesterday (see previous post for additional information on this), GO Transit presented an overview of its plans for additional parking on the network. I won’t go into the fine details here, but broadly this contained two important directions:
GO currenly operates 48,500 parking spaces, and the park-and-ride sector now account for 67% of ridership. Other modal shares are kiss-and-ride (15%), walking (9%), local transit (8%) and cycling (.5% to 1%).
In the long run, parking is not sustainable at its current modal share. Assuming a 20-year growth rate in the middle of GO’s cited range (1,750), this would give 35,000 more spaces. However, GO expects its riding to double over the next 20 years, and external factors such as a stepp rise in oil prices could accelerate this. Clearly, parking will handle a lower, even if still important, proportion of total ridership. A further problem is that a route such as Lakeshore with plans for large increases in capacity through electrification and extension is not necessarily where the additional parking capacity can be easily located. Rapid growth in ridership may outstrip parking growth on this line.
This puts a considerable additional demand on local transit service to the GO stations both in quantity and in hours of service. This will be a challenge for local transit operators and, by extension for the GTTA.
As the GTTA contemplates the future role of transit, it must adapt from provision of downtown-oriented, peak Monday to Friday communting service (including the local transit component) to service that makes travel by transit within and among the regions easy. After all, much of the GTA gridlock comes not from commuters to downtown, but from travel between the regions including phenomena such as the lunch-hour traffic jams.
This is one of several cases the GTTA must not adopt a “more of the same” approach to transit.
Yesterday (October 26), the GTTA Board met in Toronto and unveiled its planning and timetable for the creation of a Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). There is a report outlining the work plan for the next year, and an accompanying chart on the GTTA’s site. Related to this is the Communications Framework containing a chart of the public participation process.
This is a very aggressive timetable compared with studies we have seen in the GTA, and the intent is to have a completed plan by fall 2008. Much work needs to be done producing position papers and analyses to convert the shopping list of schemes like MoveOntario 2020 into a prioritized, coherent plan. One refreshing change is that work will not stop for the summer doldrums. Indeed the final feedback and approval processes are scheduled for summer 2008.
A number of interesting comments came out during discussion of these items.
The GTTA is looking forward to the new, streamlined Class Environmental Assessment process that came into effect for most transit projects in September, but recognizes that this is only one part of a larger legislative scheme. For example, federal funding of transit will trigger the Canadian EA process, and this is comparably onerous to the old Ontario one. Other legislation triggers the need for other types of review.
The GTTA hopes to consolidate as much work of these various studies as possible into one process, and is working with the federal environmental officials to ensure that this can be done.
Mayor Miller raised the issue that the structure of the EA fights the consultative process by spending undue time on the choice of technology when the issues that most exercise the public are matters of design and neighbourhood impact. There is hope that with the new streamlined Class EA, more time can be devoted to the subjects that engage people, the “what will it do to me” question.
Funding and prioritization of projects are important parts of the GTTA’s work. On the funding side, the GTTA will co-ordinate its efforts with those of other large regional agencies in Montreal and Vancouver, as well as with the “big city mayors” caucus and its lobby for federal infrastructure funding.
As for prioritization, the short-term focus is on “quick win” projects that can get shovels in the ground and visible improvements as soon as possible (two years or less from project start). As things now stand, only $100-million has been allocated by Queen’s Park for these projects, and an important issue later this fall will be to see whether additional funds will be available in the upcoming fiscal year starting April 1, 2008.
The hard debates will come in 2008 as the project list grows with items missed by MoveOntario 2020 notably much of the day-to-day capital cost of infrastructure and fleet renewal.
Mayors Miller and McCallion made comments that show some, at least, of the GTTA board members are seeing transit on the large scale necessary.
Miller noted that the idea of consulting with “commuters” was inappropriate because these are only a subset of the total transit-using population. Indeed, many issues related to needs for extra household cars and of transit captives in the suburbs come back to transit service designs that only serve downtown-bound commuters.
McCallion noted the importance of service. Subsidies to transit riders via tax rebates have their place, but, as she said, if it’s the middle of winter, and there is no bus to get on, the subsidy is worthless.
As the GTTA Board evolves from a club of regional mayors and chairs to a group that must consider hard questions of policy, planning and finance, their workload will go up and the decisions will not come as easily. Much will depend on funding promises from Queen’s Park and how much Ottawa is prepared to contribute. If the available funds won’t pay for what is really needed, the GTTA could descend into the sort of us-versus-them debates that paralyzed transit planning at the old Metro Toronto council.
The next year will prove whether we, as a region, can address our transportation problems and rise above me-first bickering.
Postscript: The public meeting began with a declaration by Chair Rob McIsaac to Mayor Miller that he had no intention of attempting a TTC takeover. That issue surface with a Toronto Star story, quickly denied by all concerned, that Queen’s Park would like to take over the TTC.
What I think is happing here is left-over manoeuvring about the new Toronto taxes. Some Councillors feel that if the TTC were uploaded, then the new taxes wouldn’t be needed. However, Queen’s Park really doesn’t want to have to worry about the Queen Car, and leaving the TTC (and other systems) in local hands has the benefit of offloading detailed decision-making and complaints about service and fares to the local politicians. Dalton gets the photo ops when construction begins on a new line while David gets to explain why people can’t get better service.
The video advertising screens in our subway stations prompted robust debate when they were first proposed. Many felt they were the thin edge of an invasion of our commuting space by relentless video ads especially on the vehicles.
Those who supported the video screens argued that they were a huge improvement over the old “Metron” displays, and touted the wondrous things this new advertising medium would bring us. As we all know, the video screens were installed in many stations, and then everything stopped cold.
Where are the rest of the signs? If this was such an important, profitable project, why haven’t all of the Metron units been replaced, indeed, why hasn’t there been a proposal to increase the number of screens?
Many stations, notably Davisville at TTC Head Office, still have Metron units, some of which are operating with ancient news items or commercials, not to mention clocks that are on time give or take a few hours. These were supposed to be long gone, but they linger on.
One important function claimed for the screens was the ability to broadcast system status information. How can you do this when many stations don’t even have them, and those that do have only one on each platform, and none in other areas?
Could it be that the advertising market is only lucrative for busy, high-activity locations such as Bloor-Yonge Station?
Is this an example of the shortcoming of expecting the private sector to provide an important piece of infrastructure that should be everywhere, but which is only where they have a hope of making money?
With the election only a week away, I have posted a consolidated view of transit funding issues and party positions on the spacing votes website.
Happy reading. Please leave comments on that site.
The Toronto Star reports that, despite bold promises from Prime Minister Harper, no money has flowed from Ottawa’s pledge to aid transit in the GTA. Everything appears to be mired in writing the details of contracts between the federal government and the recipients of their largesse.
Alas, this continues a pattern seen in previous federal hand-outs where Ottawa wants a complex arrangement to ensure that money is spent only in a way it approves.
Ottawa just doesn’t get it: a real national strategy needs to operate as a standing arrangement between governments with annual support flowing to provinces and cities. Project-by-project funding adds a huge level of negotiations and legal wrangling to a vital public service.
Imagine if every time Toronto wanted to fund a project it had to write a separate agreement with Queen’s Park. Project costs would go through the roof on contract negotiation and management, and the public sector would rightly be accused of wasting money on bureaucracy. Strange to see a “conservative” government entangled in this way.
If Ottawa really wants to be part of a transit strategy, it needs to decide on a general level of spending, set broad guidelines for the type of project that constitutes “transit” and then get out of the way. Transit programs are delivered at the local level, and decisions about details and priorities belong there. We have enough meddling from Queen’s Park without Ottawa adding another layer.
For a review of the leaders’ debate and the brief time devoted to transit issues, please see my post on the spacing votes site.
This item is a potpourri of news from the TTC meeting including:
