The question of population density has come up in comment threads here in relation to various competing transit proposals.
As part of a planning course at Ryerson, Anthony J. Smith reviewed the SmartTrack and Downtown Relief Lines together with detailed data on population density, income and other measures. His paper Toronto Transit Choices: Evaluation of the Downtown Relief Line + SmartTrack Options including maps is available online at the Healthy City Maps website.
The City of Toronto will hold its first public consultations on the proposed Scarborough Subway Extension (SSE) starting on the coming weekend:
Date: Saturday, January 31, 2015
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Location: Jean Vanier Catholic
Secondary School, 959 Midland
Avenue, ScarboroughDate: Monday, February 2, 2015
Time: 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Location: Scarborough Civic
Centre, 150 Borough Drive,
Scarborough
The primary function of initial meetings such as these is to make sure that what the staff proposes to do actually meets public expectations. In the old days of traditional Environmental Assessments, this was the most tedious part — establishing the Terms of Reference — in effect a study to define a study. That’s no longer part of the official scheme, but some prep work is required to validate the work plan. For the SSE, this is complicated by the desire to get everything done quickly and in parallel with other related studies.
When the SSE was approved by Council as an alternative to the LRT plan then on the table (and still, officially, the signed deal with Queen’s Park), the subway was the only game in town. Talk of significant improvements to GO Transit service in Markham, let alone frequent “SmartTrack” service at TTC fares in the Stouffville GO corridor, had not yet been added to the conversation.
In some ways, the study now getting underway reflects that isolated view of the project — so typical of much rapid transit planning — in that the focus is on one project. However, a parallel study by Metrolinx, the City and TTC will review a wider range of options including how the presence of GO corridor services might affect demand and travel patterns for the SSE. (See Planning for SmartTrack) Necessarily these studies will interact because the selection of a route and stations for the SSE will interact with plans for other rapid transit services.
Everyone knows that the Scarborough Subway will run east from Kennedy Station, veer north at Danforth Road, and then go straight up McCowan to Sheppard. Right?
At Toronto’s Executive Committee today (Jan. 22), a major item of discussion was the study plan for SmartTrack. As previously reported, this will include a review of the effect of SmartTrack and the companion Metrolinx RER plans on other projects including the Yonge Relief Study and the Scarborough Subway.
As things turn out, there is now a worry that SmartTrack will draw so much riding from the nearby subway line that it will no longer be viable. Whatever can we do?
The answer, believe it or not, is to extend the study area further east looking for a new home for the subway far enough from SmartTrack that the subway has a chance of surviving on its own. Markham Road, 1.7km further east, could raise the attractiveness of the subway to some parts of Scarborough, but it would also move the line well away from Scarborough Town Centre and development plans for the lands around STC.
With an extra roughly 2km of line to reach Markham Road, the project may never reach across the 401 to Sheppard Avenue unless a very generous angel adds to the City’s share of the project cost.
Does this make sense? Yet another route would be included in the subway study in the hope that it will eke out enough ridership if it lies further east. What does this say about any claims the McCowan route is best because of the areas it serves?
This is what passes for planning in Scarborough, and it shows that the subway advocates are far from certain that their project has lasting, solid support.
According to the Globe and Mail, the CPR plans to redevelop surplus lands in many cities. Among the land that is up for grabs is the Obico Yard near Kipling Station in Etobicoke.
Why does the TTC need more yard capacity?
For starters, they have more trains than will fit within existing yards and the problem will only get worse with the construction of any new lines such as the Scarborough extension or the Downtown Relief Line. The yard at Keele Station has been pressed back into service to hold the overflow from Greenwood Yard that was triggered, in turn, by the T1 car fleet at Wilson Yard being pushed out by the new TR fleet.
The Scarborough project includes budget room for a new yard, but exactly where the TTC would put this in Scarborough is a bit of a mystery.
A west end yard on the BD line would allow service to be split between both ends of the line, and it would free up space at Greenwood. The property is already a railway yard, and it sits in the middle of an industrial area.
Toronto talks a lot about preserving industrial lands, but if this property turns into a new subdivision, this will be a major failure by the TTC (or GO Transit) to grab an ideal spot for expanded system capacity.
At its meeting of January 22, 2015, Toronto’s Executive Committee will consider a report (SmartTrack Work Plan 2015-2016) recommending a work plan for the study of Mayor Tory’s SmartTrack proposal together with other related transit projects. This is intended to dovetail with Metrolinx’ work on their Regional Express Rail (RER) network, and will have spillover effects on studies of both the Downtown Relief Line (DRL) and the Scarborough Subway Extension.
The most important aspect of this report is that, at long last, a study is reviewing transit options for Toronto on a network basis rather than one line at a time. Factors such as alternative land use schemes, fare structures and service levels will be considered to determine which future scenarios best support investment in transit. Rather than starting with a “solution”, the studies are intended to evaluate alternatives.
If this outlook actually survives, and the studies are not gerrymandered before they can properly evaluate all strategies, then the process will be worthwhile and set the stage for decisions on what might actually be built. The challenge will be to avoid a scenario where every pet project on the map is untouchable rather than making the best of the network as a whole. The term “best” will be open to much debate.
A frequent part of debates about technology choices and network planning is the premise that to succeed, rapid transit must be surrounded by high density development. This is an odd claim given the counter-examples available on Toronto.
The situation is more subtle, and “demand” turns not just on density adjacent to the line, but on its ability to act as a corridor drawing on feeder services to concentrate demand. Whether such concentration is “good” is another matter. Higher demand requires more infrastructure in the corridor and in a worst-case scenario, a line can run out of room. Two good examples in Toronto are the Yonge subway and Highway 401.
Focus on a single corridor can also distort travel patterns and network design. As a non-driver, I have often been amused by motorists who will go miles out of their way to use an expressway, only to find themselve trapped in a traffic jam. For transit riders, the need to force-feed rapid transit can interfere with travel that is not oriented to the primary trip pattern. Try getting around Scarborough if you are not bound for Kennedy or STC stations.
Recently, I was scanning another batch of old phographs and they reminded me of an even older example of high demand in a low density area: the streetcar shuttles on Bloor-Danforth that operated between the opening of the original Keele-Woodbine service, and the extensions a few years later to Islington-Warden. Neither Bloor West nor the Danforth — particularly in the late 1960s — were forests of high rise apartments. All the same, the shuttles had service, capacity and demand beyond that we see on any streetcar line today.
The Bloor West shuttle from Keele Station to Jane Loop operated with 17 cars at peak over a distance of only 2.1km at a headway of 1’07”. That’s 53.7 cars/hour for a design capacity of about 4,000/hr (based on about 75 riders per car) with headroom for peaks at a higher level.
The Danforth shuttle from Woodbine Station to Luttrell Loop operated with 12 cars on a 1.6km line at a headway of 1’30”. At 40 cars/hour this gave a design capacity of about 3,000/hr.
An important point about these shuttles is that the lion’s share of their traffic was bound to or from the subway, and local traffic was comparatively light. Many riders boarded inbound at the Jane and Luttrell terminals, and the streetcars were not attempting to serve very heavy demand from on-street stops. That demand depended on feeder bus services from what we now call “the inner suburbs”.
Moreover, the level of service on the outer ends of the old Bloor-Danforth streetcar route shows how considerable the demand was for these segments, even allowing for some added demand due to the subway’s presence.
The moral of this short article is that a transit network and its routes cannot be thought of with a simplistic model of transit stations surrounded by development. The larger context includes the diversity or concentration of demand patterns and the degree to which the network serves them.
In the next article, a look at Bloor West and The Danforth as they once were.
Correction January 6, 2015: In the original version of this article, I cited the number of cars/hour as the actual assignment of vehicles to each route. Thanks to John F. Bromley for catching this howling error.
At the risk of re-igniting the Scarborough subway debate, I am moving some comments that are becoming a thread in their own right out of the “Stop Spacing” article over here to keep the two conversations separated.
In response to the most recent entry in the thread, I wrote:
Steve: Probably the most annoying feature of “pro Scarborough subway” (as opposed to “pro Scarborough”) pitches is the disconnect with the travel demands within Scarborough. These are known from the every five year detailed survey of travel in the GTHA, and a point that sticks out is that many people, a sizeable minority if not a majority, of those who live in Scarborough are not commuting to downtown. Instead they are travelling within Scarborough, to York Region or to locations along the 401. Many of these trips, even internal to Scarborough, are badly served by transit. One might argue that the lower proportion of downtown trips is a chicken-and-egg situation — it is the absence of a fast route to downtown combined with the impracticality of driving that discourages travel there. That’s a fair point, but one I have often argued would be better served with the express services possible on the rail corridors were it not for the GO fare structure that penalizes inside-416 travel.
We now have three subways — one to Vaughan, one to Richmond Hill and one to Scarborough — in various stages of planning and construction in part because GO (and by extension Queen’s Park) did not recognize the benefit of providing much better service to the core from the outer 416 and near 905 at a fare that riders would consider “reasonable” relative to what they pay today. I would love to see service on the CPR line that runs diagonally through Scarborough, out through Malvern into North Pickering. This route has been fouled up in debates for years about restitution of service to Peterborough, a much grander, more expensive and less likely proposition with added layers of rivalry between federal Tory and provincial Liberal interests. Fitting something like that into the CPR is tricky enough without politicians scoring points off of each other.
The most common rejoinder I hear to proposals that GO could be a form of “subway relief” is that the service is too infrequent and too expensive. What is the capital cost of subway construction into the 905 plus the ongoing operating cost once lines open versus the cost of better service and lower fares on a much improved GO network? Nobody has ever worked this out because GO and subway advocates within the planning community work in silos, and the two options are never presented as one package.
With the RER studies, this may finally change, and thanks to the issues with the Yonge corridor, we may finally see numbers comparing the effects of improved service in all available corridors and modes serving traffic from York Region to the core. I would love to see a comparable study for Scarborough.
Meanwhile, we need to know more about “inside Scarborough” demand including to major centres such as academic sites that are not touched by the subway plan.
I will promote comments here that contribute to the conversation in a civil manner. As for the trolls (and you know who you are), don’t bother. Your “contributions” only make the Scarborough position much less palatable, and I won’t subject my readers to your drivel.
On Wednesday morning, November 5, 2014, the TTC suffered two major delays on the subway system. One was a complete shutdown of service between St. Clair West and Union Stations, and the other was a period of very slow operation approaching Broadview Station westbound.
Updated November 10, 2014 at 5:00pm: The TTC has now provided an explanation for the delay on the University subway. See the body of this article for details.
The morning commute was painfully difficult for everyone on the subway, and these incidents inevitably raise calls for “someone to do something” so that they won’t happen again. That’s an easy political call, but one requiring a deeper understanding of the underlying problems. This is not just about the physical state of the signal system, or the TTC’s ability to respond to major events, or the long-standing question of subway capacity, but a mixture of all of these. Quick fixes would be nice, but if they were available, Toronto would not be in the transportation mess it faces after years of inaction, denial and pandering for votes to the detriment of transit everywhere.
Late in May, John Tory launched his “SmartTrack” transit line, the centrepiece of his “One Toronto” plan. Media reps gathered for a preview at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and the launch was handled almost entirely by Tory’s staff. All of the background papers are on the One Toronto website, and little has been added since that event.
Even then, in the early days of the campaign, there was good reason to distrust Tory’s grasp of his own proposal, let alone a willingness to engage in debate, when he made the briefest of appearances for a canned statement to give the media clips for the news broadcasts, but answered few questions.
I was modestly impressed that at least a Mayoral candidate was not just thinking at the ward level for a transit proposal, but felt the plan was rather threadbare — a single line to solve almost all of Toronto’s problems.
Wearing two hats that day – as both reporter and activist – I was scrummed by the media for comments, and the Tory campaign chose to lift one phrase out of context as an “endorsement” for SmartTrack that remains online.
Steve Munro, Toronto Transit Blogger, said, “This is very much a refocusing of what transit in Toronto should be.”
What I was talking about was the need to look at the region and at trips to points other than the corner of Bay & Front and times other than the traditional commuter peaks. As to the specifics of SmartTrack, I was rather less complimentary.
In brief, SmartTrack would see electric multiple unit (EMU) trains operating primarily on GO Transit corridors between Unionville on the Stouffville line and Mount Dennis on the Weston corridor (the Kitchener-Waterloo line). At Eglinton and Weston, the line would veer west along the former Richview Expressway lands to the Airport Corporate Centre, but not to the airport itself.
The route would charge regular TTC fares with free transfers to the existing system, and with frequent all-day service at peak levels of every 15 minutes. Over its 53km it would have 22 stations, and might, according to the campaign, carry over 200,000 passengers per day.
Updated Sept. 9, 2014 at 12:50 pm: NOW Magazine has published an article by Rob Salerno detailing the problems with the right-of-way on Eglinton West that John Tory’s SmartTrack plan assumes is available, as well as questions about the need for both a frequent service on the Stouffville GO corridor and the Scarborough Subway.
Toronto is beset by a love of drawing lines on maps. We have stacks of rapid transit studies going back to the horsecar era. We have competing views of regional and local transit. We have the pandering “I have a solution for YOU” approach tailored to whichever ballot box needs stuffing. Almost none of this gets built.
Fantasy maps abound. The difference between the scribblings of amateur transit geeks and professional/political proposals can be hard to find.
Common to both is the sense that “my plan” is not just better, it is the only plan any right-thinking person would embrace. Egos, both personal and governmental, are literally on the line. Once pen meets paper ideas acquire a permanence and commitment that are almost indelible.
If transit networks were cheap to build and operate relative to the resources we choose to spend on them, transit would be everywhere and blogs like this would be reduced to debating the colour scheme for this week’s newly-opened station. Transit is not cheap, and the debates turn on far more complex issues than which shade of red or green is appropriate for our two major networks.
Another election with competing views of what is best for Toronto brings a crop of proposals. I hesitate to say “a fresh crop” as some schemes are long past their sell-by dates. Candidates may strive to bring something new to the discussion, but these attempts can discard good ideas simply to appear innovative. Perish the thought that we might embrace something already on the table when we can wave a magic wand and – Presto! – the solution to every problem appears in a puff of smoke, a well-timed entrance and an overblown YouTube video.
Moving people with transit is not simply one problem with one solution. Nobody pretends that a single expressway could cure all the ails of Toronto and the region beyond. A single highway – say, a “401” in a Toronto that had only recently paved Sheppard Avenue – would be recognized for its limitations. But once a plan is committed to paper – even the dreaded coffee-stained napkin, let alone election literature – resistance is futile. At least until the next election.
This article reviews several dreams for new and upgraded transit, and tries to make sense out of what all these lines might achieve.
As I was reading through all of this, I felt that some of my critique will sound rather harsh, and inevitably I would be challenged with “so what would you do”. If you want to see my answer, jump to the end of the article, remembering that my scheme is not a definitive one.
Although some of my comments touch on proposals of various Mayoral candidates, I will leave a detailed review of those for a separate article. A good regional plan is more important than any one campaign, and the debate on what we should build should not be dictated by this week’s pet project, whatever it might be.
Steve Munro 