Subways

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Can We Redecorate the Toronto Subway?

The post about artists decorating a New York Subway car reminded me of a conversation earlier this week at a gathering of the Jane Jacobs Prize winners.  A few of us were talking about ideas for getting stories of the transit system’s history out where people could easily find them, and I brought up the issue of subway station decor.

Decor is not quite the word I would use when describing the TTC, but the mathemeticians among you will understand the concept of the null set.  Even the total absence of decor is a form of decor itself, minimalism taken to the extreme.

This brings me back to a topic discussed here in the early days of the site, subway station beautification.

Why can we only have subway station makeovers when someone wants to drop millions of dollars, and a lot of capital-D Design on a few stations? The current proposals for Museum, St. Patrick and Osgoode involve complete makeovers with a high ratio of design and construction effort to finished product. Will they stay relevant in five, ten, twenty years, or will they fizzle out from staleness of content and indifferent maintenance like Arc en ciel at Yorkdale Station?

Why must decor take on the character of a station domination advertising campaign?  Indeed, could future proposals run aground for fear that they would compromise the TTC’s ability to sell entire stations to advertisers?  Imagine Union Station bereft of advertising and full of imagery of transportation!

The Poetry on the Way program is a tiny, occasionally heartwarming touch in the sterile subway environment, but it’s far too little.

Toronto is in the midst of considering a complete makeover of its street furniture, a scheme designed to sell every square inch of the city for advertising revenue.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there were places in the subway, prominent places, not just out of the way corners in stations like Bessarion or Ellesmere, where we could see images of the nearby city past and present?  With a bit of thought, the design of such presentations could even fit in with the character of each station.

An even more aggressive scheme would involve actually changing these displays from time to time.  Yes, panels cost money to fabricate and install, but think of it as part of the cost of making the system attractive.  “Hey, look, that picture wasn’t there yesterday!”

I throw this out as a challenge to all those would-be benefactors of arts and urban life.  Instead of building up funds for mega-construction projects, think small, but on a big scale.  Don’t try to put the same cookie-cutter generic Toronto photo in every station, don’t just slap a cheap piece of cardboard or plastic in an advertising frame as filler during the off-season, put in something that will last.  And do it everywhere so that art, decor, a bit of warm feeling about our city, aren’t just the preserve of a few stations dedicated to grand construction on the University line.

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Spadina Subway? What Spadina Subway?

For three years, we have pretended that the Spadina Subway extension was a worthwhile project.  We hoped that  lobbyists from York University and their pals at Queen’s Park would look kindly on poor little Toronto.  Maybe they would give us more powers in a City of Toronto Act.  Maybe they would actually start paying for social services that are really a provincial responsibility.  Maybe they would give us better, ongoing funding for transit.

Three years of tugging our forelocks and saying “please, sir, we want some more” were a total waste of time.  All of the transit spending and social services budget relief go to the 905 and Toronto gets nothing.

Toronto has new taxing powers, and it should use them.  Build the city with the “revenue tools” we have and stop being so dependent on other governments.

We have been duped into an unworkable formula of 1/3 shares by the federal, provincial and municipal governments.  This makes every project, every funding request, hostage to federal and provincial whims most of which avoid spending on Toronto.  Yes, it’s outrageous that we get less transit funding than cities in any other major country, but we should stop holding our breath for this to change.

Now Toronto needs to make its spending priorities fit a Toronto agenda, not one for Queen’s Park.

The Spadina Subway extension exists for two reasons:

  • The combined force of York University’s lobbying and the Finance Minister’s desire to see a subway into his riding.
  • The long-standing resistance of the TTC to examine and promote any alternatives to subway extensions.

Any realistic examination of “value for money” would have killed this line, and especially the extension into Vaughan, long ago.  Any proper examination of alternatives would have examined an extensive network of LRT, busways and commuter rail to serve this sector.  That debate hides in back corridors because nobody in power wants to challenge the inevitability of a subway to York University and beyond, nobody wants to support a fair analysis of alternatives.

Toronto should withdraw support for the Spadina Subway immediately.

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Some Day My Parts Will Come

Long time readers here will remember my survey of escalator status, and will also have noticed that I didn’t publish anything on the subject for quite a while.  Why?  I was keeping track, but the problem of escalators being out of service seemed to have faded to a tolerable level.

Maybe it’s a statistical blip, maybe the bad old days are back, but last week, I hit something of a “home run” for out-of-service elevating devices. Continue reading →

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Who Will Ride?

Now that shovels are poised to start digging north into York Region, we need to take a hard look at just who this line is going to serve.  The information is this post is taken from:

The TTC’s own Environmental Assessment report of the line to Steeles at this link, and

The York Region Environmental Assessment report on its plans for Highway 7 and the Vaughan North-South Link at this link.

First we have the TTC study which assumes the line will end at Steeles Avenue.  In Appendix M, starting at page 13 in the PDF (page 22 of the source document), we have the travel forecasts, and the summary appears on page 15 (25).

Assuming that the land use assumptions are met, the extension is expected to carry about 17,000 AM peak passengers  southbound into Downsview Station.  No peak hour figure is given, but typically about half of the 3-hour peak load travels in the peak hour.  This translates to about 8,500 in the peak hour.

Northbound AM peak travel to York University is estimated at 5,500.   This gives us about 2,750 northbound riders to York University in the morning peak hour. Continue reading →

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Half a Loaf

According to this morning’s Toronto Star, Ottawa is about to announce its support for the Spadina Subway extension to Vaughan along with a bunch of other goodies for the 905.  Notable by their complete absence is any transit support for the 416 other than the subway extension.

I’m not going to debate the merits of that line again as everyone reading this site knows my position, but I have a very important question for Stephen Harper, Dalton McGuinty and David Miller:

Where’s the money coming from for the projects we really need to serve the whole city?

Are we facing the same situation we had with Mike Harris when he agreed to fund the Sheppard line, gave us a pot full of money, and then said, in effect, “bugger off, that’s all you’re getting”?  Will the Harper crowd think that this announcement is all they will ever have to do for the greater Toronto area?

As my readers know, I have always warned about the Spadina line crowding every other project out of the room for the next 8 years.  Will Ottawa and Queen’s Park say “we gave you what you asked for, don’t ask for more”, or the City say “we have over-extended our ability to write new debt, so that new bus you thought was coming next year is on hold”.

To all three levels of government:  Please prove me wrong.  Soon.

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Why Scarborough Will Never Have a Rapid Transit Network

This post has been updated by correcting a bad link to the TTC’s site, and by enabling comments. 

The TTC has finally delivered up a report in reply to my deputation last August on the question of why the RT should not be converted to LRT in the context of (a) a larger Scarborough LRT network and (b) the request from the Scarborough Caucus to extend the line into Malvern.  No big surprise.  The TTC really doesn’t want to convert the line.

The report can be found at:

http://www.ttc.ca/postings/gso-comrpt/documents/report/f3085/_conv.htm

The argument in brief is that there is no customer benefit of a conversion, that it would require a prolonged closure of the line and that the Malvern extension cost would be equal no matter what technology was chosen. Continue reading →

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Spare Change for Etobicoke?

Two pieces of news caught my eye today, and somehow they seem to fit in the same post.

First up is a report in next week’s TTC agenda about the extension of the Bloor Subway.  At the January 31 meeting, there was a request that staff update information on the planned line in light of a proposed development near the East Mall.  The reply to this can be found on the TTC’s website here:

http://www.ttc.ca/postings/gso-comrpt/documents/report/f3087/_conv.htm

In this report, we learn that an Environmental Assessment was already approved for this back in 1994, although it is somewhat out of date.   Blowing the dust off of the EA would set us back about $3-million.

The intriguing information is that the estimated cost of the extension in 2007 dollars is roughly $1-billion for 3.7 km to Queensway and The West Mall, and a further $500-million for 1.5 km to get to a Dixie Station in Mississauga.  This translates to $270-million/km to get to West Mall, and a staggering $333-million/km to get to Dixie.  Underground alignments are assumed in both cases, and the report is silent on whether this cost is just for construction or also includes additional subway cars to operate the extended line.

In other news, the Canadian Mint has announced that it will produce a new 100 kilogram gold coin at a face value of $1-million, but with an actual gold content (and price to buy one) over twice that.  There is an article on the Globe & Mail’s website about it here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070222.wrmint22/BNStory/Business/

although this may not last forever as the Globe tends to archive things fairly quickly.

For all of you who are saving up to build your very own subway line, this might be just the thing you need.  Imagine if people saw a pile of million-dollar coins.  At $270-million/km, or $270,000/metre, each coin would buy (at face value) not quite four metres of subway, or eight metres if you melted it down.

Who needs new tokens?

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Crowding at Bloor Yonge Station

I received the following note from James McArthur:

I  was just curious to hear your take on the need to significantly expand the capacity of Bloor/Yonge Stn. particularly because of the bottlenecks in the mezzanine and stair/escalator areas (these are really bad even outside rush hour).

I saw that Adam Giambrone mentioned renovating the lower level (for aethetic reasons I gather), but has any consideration been given to this problem?  How can you solve it w/o spending hundred’s of millions?ill the TTC even try?   Can the system carry more riders if they don’t?

Steve:  Years ago, the TTC had a plan for expanding the capacity of Bloor Yonge that was breathtaking in its scope.  Fortunately, the only part they actually built was the widened platforms on the upper level and the removal of the central pillars.  The whole scheme involved moving the Yonge line tracks further apart and adding a centre platform.  Vertical access was a real problem, not to mention construction at the north end where the station is physically inside of the Bay.

The scheme also involved new platforms outside of the existing tracks on the Bloor level.  Access between all of the platforms was complex, and construction issues, were very, very difficult.  The station sits in an old stream bed and much work would have to be done by hand in a pressurized environment. 

Oh yes — the station would close for at least six months.  Trains would run through without stopping and bus shuttles would take people from Rosedale to Wellesley.

Adding capacity to the Bloor line’s platform is very difficult because the station is inside of the Bay building including some of the structural columns that hold it up.  This is a major issue in any move to increase capacity on the Yonge line through resignalling.  If the Bloor line cannot take passengers away as fast as the Yonge line delivers them, then congestion will be worse than it is today.

Headways, as we have discussed here before, are constrained on the Bloor line by turnaround times at terminals.  Even if we had more platforms, escalators and stairways, we would not be able to have more trains.

The real issue with Bloor-Yonge is the number of people coming through it who could be taken to the core via an alternate route be that GO Transit or a “downtown relief line” of some flavour.  It may be cheaper and provide better service in a network sense to look at new capacity into the core rather than trying to pack more people through the Bloor-Yonge interchange.