Updated June 20 at 2:45 pm: The York Quay Neighbourhood Association issued a press release detailing a meeting between many interested parties and a representative of Mayor Ford’s office. There is very strong support among residents and businesses on Queen’s Quay to get this project underway without it being entangled in political or bureaucratic bungling.
LRT Projects
Think About Transit on Finch and Sheppard, But Not Yet
On May 30, I sat through a bizarre debate at Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee. Two motions proposed at Council were referred off to this Committee for action, one regarding Sheppard and the other for Finch. The intent of these motions was to provoke a discussion of and request detailed information about the status of transit on the now-abandoned parts of the Transit City routes beyond the scope of the proposed subway extension project.
First up was Sheppard. Councillor Raymond Cho, whose ward encompasses the northeastern part of Scarborough, is very disappointed that plans to improve transit to his constituents, and to the outer part of Scarborough generally, have been cancelled. He asked that, at a minimum, consideration be given to taking the rebuilt SRT (now the Eglinton Crosstown line) further north to Sheppard as this would bring the rapid transit network across the 401 and much closer to Malvern.
Councillor Karen Stintz (also chair of the TTC) proposed that discussion of the issue be deferred “until such time as the Toronto Transit Commission’s plans for improved public transit on Sheppard Avenue are known”.
This is an odd stance to take given that there is no indication the TTC is working on any plans for improved public transit beyond the scope of the proposed Sheppard Subway to Scarborough Town Centre (STC). Cho asked that at least a time limit for such a report be included in the motion, but this idea was not acceptable as an amendment by Stintz.
Councillor Joe Mihevc (former TTC Vice-Chair) argued that avoiding discussion now would lead to a finished product being presented for an up-or-down decision with no time for debate or public input. He argued that people affected by the cancellation of Transit City want input into alternative plans now. Stintz replied that Metrolinx is running a series of meetings regarding the Eglinton line, but what these have to do with service on Sheppard and Finch is hard to fathom.
Councillor Anthony Perruzza (another former TTC Commissioner) asked about the cost to the city of the cancelled Transit City projects. Stintz went into a convoluted explanation claiming that Transit City was put together before Metrolinx existed, that it was worked out as input to The Big Move, and that since Metrolinx decided to change its plan, there was no cost to the City. Stintz claimed that since Transit City was never funded, there could not have been any costs.
This is simply not true on a few counts. Metrolinx was created as the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority in 2006, and changed to its current name in 2007. At the beginning of David Miller’s second term as Mayor in December 2006, it was already known that Queen’s Park was working on a comprehensive new transit plan in anticipation of the fall election. Whatever Toronto had on the table would likely become part of it. Transit City was announced early in 2007, and in June 2007, Premier McGuinty announced MoveOntario2020. Metrolinx was charged with sorting through all of the projects in a long shopping list from the GTA regions and this, eventually, became The Big Move.
The TTC, with the approval of City Council, undertook a number of Transit City studies, and carried their costs on its own books. Once the projects were officially funded, Queen’s Park reimbursed Toronto for the costs to date. Some projects, such as Jane and Don Mills, never reached funded status, and the sunk costs on those projects remain on the City and TTC books.
The Memorandum of Understanding between Mayor Ford and Queen’s Park explicitly states that Toronto is on the hook to repay any subsidy already paid on Transit City projects (such as preliminary engineering and Environmental Assessments) that are no longer part of the overall plan. This affects the Finch and Sheppard LRT projects, and probably the SRT extension.
As for Metrolinx changing its plans, it was no secret that Mayor Ford was immovable on the elimination of surface LRT from the plans, and that Queen’s Park needed to salvage the Eglinton Crosstown line by making it an LRT subway. The decision to cut Finch and Sheppard East out of the plan was simply a way to placate Ford, to free up additional funding for Eglinton, and to get out of the way of Ford’s Sheppard Subway. This was not a unilateral Metrolinx decision.
As the debate continued, it was clear that Stintz was being too clever for her own good by trying to treat work-to-date as not part of “Transit City”. This is an example of the gyrations through which Mayor Ford’s team will go to warp history to fit their agenda.
Councillor Adam Vaughan grilled Stintz on the issue of tolls, a subject recently raised by Gordon Chong who is running Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited (TTIL), a TTC subsidiary. Stintz attempted to claim that she has no reporting relationship with Chong even though she Chairs TTIL’s parent body. Isolated by the TTIL board on which she does not sit, Stintz claims she has no responsibility for what Chong might say. The irony here is that Chong, as a Ford crony, really doesn’t report to Stintz who is more and more only a figurehead at the TTC where major financial decisions are concerned.
Vaughan continued with questions about funding of the Sheppard line and the amount of development needed to generate revenues that would finance its construction. He proposed that the Chief Planner report on development sites along the corridor and the potential effect of large-scale redevelopment at densities much higher than have been contemplated as part of Transit City. Councillor Peter Milczyn (chair of the P&GM committee and vice-chair of the TTC), punted that idea off the table by suggesting that this be done as part of the quinquennial review of the Official Plan that will get underway later this year. Vaughan and others responded that people should know now, not in the indefinite future, the implications of Ford’s financing schemes for development in their neighbourhoods.
Councillor Ana Bailão spoke laughingly to Vaughan as if Transportation City were already a done deal when in fact neither it nor the Ford MOU has ever been to Council, unlike Transit City which required both funding approvals and Official Plan Amendments.
The entire debate took on a surreal tone with the Ford faction (who control both the committee and the TTC) weaving a fable about how discussion now would be premature, and that the new “Transportation City” plan was getting the same level of debate and consideration as “Transit City”. In fact, it is getting almost no debate, the very issue this faction complains about every time they talk about Miller’s exclusion of the right in the Transit City planning.
The Ford team spends far too much time justifying its actions, its lack of consultation and transparency, by reference to the Miller years. That was a weak excuse months ago, and now it’s positively laughable. A city is not governed on resentment for a man, for a regime no longer in power, but on a coherent, believable vision for the city.
In the end, the same fate met the requests for additional reports on both Sheppard and Finch — the issues, even a request for information, are deferred until the TTC gets around to proposing something specific for each of the corridors. We already know what the Finch report looks like complete with its confusion of a golf course for a college in the route planning. Nothing has been presented to the TTC on the Sheppard east corridor.
“Transparency” is not a word I would use to describe transit planning in Toronto under Mayor Ford. In time we may see what, if anything, the TTC comes up with for the two corridors.
Meanwhile, the 2012 operating budget, almost certain to bring service cuts and fare increases, is expected to surface at the June 8 TTC meeting. The city’s huge deficit going into the budget process will make any talk of new service on Finch, Sheppard or any other corridor seem like a distant memory.
Is BRT The Chosen Way?
The Globe and Mail included a full page article by Jonathan Yazer on Victoria day on the subject of Bus Rapid Transit. [In the interest of full disclosure, I was interviewed for but not quoted in the article.]
The online version includes one photo — a BRT operation in Seoul — but the print version includes two more — New Delhi and Soweto.
Common to all three examples is the provision of dedicated space for buses, and this echoes comments throughout the article. The streets in question have generous proportions with the Seoul example having at least three traffic lanes in each direction, plus four lanes for the BRT (this provides space for platforms and a passing lane at stations). The New Delhi example looks like two traffic lanes each way between stations, although the peak direction has a rather chaotic triple row of cars in it. In Soweto, the example is on an expressway and the photo does not show a station layout.
There are really three questions any BRT advocate must address:
- Are you prepared to take road space away from cars, or to widen the road so that non-transit capacity is maintained? Apples-and-oranges comparisons with reserved lane LRT and mixed traffic BRT (aka BRT-lite) give the impression we can have something for nothing. No, we would get little more than a road lane, a bit of paint, a few signs and no enforcement. This is Toronto, and we should be honest about how traffic laws actually work here.
- Are you building a line for local traffic, or for long-haul travel? There is a big difference in the capacity of and the space required for a BRT line if the buses rarely have to stop. Moreover, if you can’t provide exclusive lanes over the entire route, you must address the design where buses move into mixed traffic. An example of such a problem who be at the Finch Hydro corridor and Keele Street if buses could not reach Finch West station without navigating through congestion on Keele. Some parts of a route may not have room for road widening, and yet they must provide the full capacity needed for buses using the reserved-lane portions.
- How do you expect riders to access your service? Buses running through ravines, down expressways and along (some) hydro corridors will not be easy for passengers to reach, and this constrains the demands a line can serve. This is not to say that such operations are a bad idea, but that they don’t answer every situation.
TTC Chair Karen Stintz remarks that “… BRT needs to be done properly, with its own right-of-ways, so that they’re convenient and effective means of moving people”. This seems to put to rest any thoughts of making do with reserved curb lane operation.
I have a few kvetches with the article.
- In the print edition (not online), there is a sub-title “Sayonara light-rail, au revoir subways. Across North America, express bus corridors are leaving pricier transit options in the dust.” This text is not supported by the article, and is a good example of poor headline writing (authors rarely get to write their own headings, except on personal blogs like this one).
- There is a reference to the Vancouver BRT having been upgraded to “LRT”. This repeats a statement in the TTC staff presentation on the Finch corridor. In fact, Vancouver replaced its Richmond BRT with the Canada Line which is technologically much closer to a subway (completely grade-separated, automatic operation) than to LRT. It’s closest cousin would be the planned Eglinton “LRT” which is a far cry from the original Transit City proposal.
- The article does not mention the error in the TTC scheme which takes the proposed Finch line to a golf course rather than Humber College and, therefore, gets the length, cost and local impacts of the BRT proposal wrong. I suspect that the article was completed and filed before this issue came to light.
Yazer’s article is a good overview, and it does not read as an airy endorsement of BRT in all circumstances. I agree that BRT has its place. Whether that place is as a replacement for Transit City is quite another matter.
We have many bus routes that will never get even this level of attention, and will do well to see the odd transit priority measure at intersections. The war on transit will affect the bus network throughout suburban Toronto if only because making more space for transit and providing more resources to operate better service are two items far from the agenda of the Ford administration.
If Finch had not been an active part of Transit City, it wouldn’t even be considered for BRT.
The Mythical Finch West BRT (Update 2)
In what has to be a major “oops” for the TTC, a keen-eyed reader, Michael Forest, noticed that according to the map of the proposed Hydro corridor alignment for a Finch BRT, the western terminus is the Humber Valley Golf Course, about 5km east and south of Humber College. This error occurs in both the background report and in the staff presentation.
The inability of the TTC to provide accurate maps now appears to have affected its ability to plan new routes.
It is unclear how a “Hydro” alignment would actually reach Humber College because the Hydro corridor turns southwest (past the golf course) to reach the Richview switching station. On Finch itself, there is no parallel Hydro corridor from a point just east of Weston Road to Humber College. How the TTC could cost such a route when none exists (unless there are many student golfers) is a mystery.
(One option might be to deploy a fleet of Swan Boats from the Golf Course via the Humber River to traverse the remaining distance to the College.)
Updated May 15 at 8:00 am:
The actual distance from Finch & Keele to Humber College as given by Google Maps is 10.9km, almost 2km more than the length cited by the TTC in its preliminary comparison of alternatives (9km). The route is longer if via the Hydro corridor because of access between the corridor and Finch. The distances cited by the TTC appear to be the length of a route to Humber Valley Golf Course which lies between Weston Road and Albion Road where Sheppard Avenue would be if the river valley were not in the way.
The corridor, as some have already observed in the comments, crosses Finch between Highway 400 and Weston Road, about 4km west of Keele. Any BRT to Humber College cannot avoid centre-of-the-road construction for the 7km west of this point.
Metrolinx Meeting Wrapup April 2011
The Metrolinx board met on Thursday, April 28 and there were a few items of note on the public agenda.
- Toronto Transit Plan Update
- PRESTO Update
- 2011-12 Operating and Capital Budgets
- GO Quarterly Report for 1Q11
- Union Station Update
Eglinton-Crosstown Public Meeting (Updated)
Updated April 27, 2011 at 4:10pm: The presentation from the April 26 public meeting is now available on the Metrolinx website.
Original post from April 21:
There will be a public meeting about the Eglinton-Crosstown project on Tuesday, April 26 from 7:00 to 8:30 pm in the auditorium of St. Clement’s School, 21 St. Clement’s Avenue.
For those who don’t know the area, this is roughly a 3/4 km walk north from Eglinton Station, or you can transfer to the 97 Yonge at Davisville (indoors) or Eglinton (on-street) Stations. The service runs roughly every 15 minutes, at least on paper.
All the attendees will arrive by transit, won’t they?
This meeting is a joint presentation of several Councillors along the Eglinton line.
One can only hope that the public will actually get a chance to speak, a rare event in our fine city these days.
The Vanishing Eglinton Right-of-Way
Serious policy geeks like me spend our time delving into the more arcane reports on various agendas. This can be tedious work, but every so often, something interesting turns up.
On the May 2, 2011, agenda for the Government Management Committee, there is an item regarding the transfer of various city properties to Build Toronto, the agency charged with making money off of surplus City lands.
Among the properties to be transferred are three strips of land along the north side of Eglinton Avenue:
- West of Widdicombe Hill Blvd
- East of Widdicombe Hill to Kipling
- East from Kipling to Wincott Drive
These lands form part of the original reserve for the Richview Expressway for which plans were abandoned decades ago. A strip of land will be kept along the south edge of these properties for road widening should an Eglinton LRT project (or similar work needing more road space) ever proceed.
Disposal of this land by the City effectively blocks any scheme for using the expressway lands for a transit line either on the surface on in a ditch.
Another block of land to be transferred lies on the northeast corner of Don Mills and Eglinton. The report notes that this is the planned location for a bus terminal connecting with the Eglinton LRT line at Don Mills, and this would certainly be a good place for an integrated development.
Elsewhere in the list of surplus properties, one can see remnants of the Scarborough transportation corridor and the Front Street extension. It is ironic that an administration so bent on auto transportation is giving up lands that once might have been part of an extensive highway network.
Appendices including detailed property descriptions
Are We Losing the Eastern Waterfront?
Most Torontonians know we have a lake and its better-known attractions such as Harbourfront, the stadium, Exhibition Place, and of course the wall of condos stretching from Yonge to beyond Bathurst. However, the Eastern Waterfront isn’t part of the “mental map” many people in Toronto carry around.
For the past century, the lands east of Yonge, and particularly those south of Lake Shore and east of the Don River, have been industrial properties known only to those who work there, the neighbouring communities, intrepid explorers, and visitors to a few clubs and supermarkets. The size and potential of the space — as big as the existing downtown — simply don’t register as part of “Toronto”.
Waterfront Toronto has plans to change all of that and, in the process, to undo some of the disastrous choices of the past century. Developments proceed along Queen’s Quay, and there is much more to come, but even these get us only to the Don River. The big prize is the Don River mouth and the port lands to the southeast.
Plans to redesign Queen’s Quay, reducing it to a two-lane road with cycling and pedestrians replacing cars where the eastbound roadway now lies, are threatened. Mayor Ford’s desire to maximize capacity for road users may sabotage a scheme many years in the making.
There was a time when “transit first” was the defining call for waterfront development, and the eastern branch of the Harbourfront streetcar was planned as an integral element in the build-out east from downtown. As with so many great schemes, this has run aground on funding limitations at Waterfront Toronto and substantial growth in TTC cost estimates.
The proposed line on Cherry Street that was to serve development in the West Don Lands, may not be built for several years because of concern that it might impede Pan Am Games related development, the very development it was intended to serve.
The worst knot in the transit scheme lies at the tangle of roads where Cherry, Lake Shore, Queen’s Quay and Parliament all meet around the mouth of the Don. Sorting this out was to be part of the plan for creation of parkland and flood control at the Don, but this project has no funding, and no burning interest from any level of government.
From a transit perspective, it’s as if the Spadina car ended at King Street, and there were no Harbourfront car on Queen’s Quay. This is no way to develop a transit-oriented neighbourhood.
Waterfront Toronto is under attack from some in Mayor Ford’s circle. Yesterday, John Campbell, president and CEO, appeared on Metro Morning commenting on some criticisms. He was rather diplomatic in saying that the debate is simply a matter of a new government finding its legs and learning what’s really going on. The problem with this outlook is that many in Ford’s inner circle have been on Council for some time. Whether they actually paid attention to Waterfront Toronto, or saw it only as one more Miller legacy to be dismantled, is hard to say.
The real agenda becomes much clearer when one reads Councillor Doug Ford’s musings about waterfront development. That prize I mentioned earlier, a piece of land roughly equivalent to the block bounded by Yonge, Bathurst, Bloor and Queen, is lusted over by many public agencies and not a few developers. This is an ideal time, after all, to hope for a municipal fire sale. The city wants to liquidate its assets, and developers would love to get a free hand to build on the eastern lake shore in the same unfettered manner we have already seen west of Yonge Street.
Ford thinks the city should not be in the development business, but fails to understand that the whole Waterfront Toronto scheme was to provide the infrastructure and the overall design that would increase land values and build the foundation of a new downtown neighbourhood. That’s not something any private developer, concerned only for the land he develops and the immediate neighbourhood, cares about or will invest in. A beautiful park would make him money, but he wants the public sector to pay for it.
Another wrinkle comes from the competing agendas of agencies such as Infrastructure Ontario and the Port Lands corporation who would love to elbow Waterfront Toronto aside and develop their lands without the overburden of regional planning and design goals. The idea of a waterfront park, of wetlands, cycling and pedestrian realms, isn’t embraced by those who see only acreage and more development. Indeed, some would simply channel the river and build over it rather than exploit what it could be as the focus of public open space.
Worst of all is the City of Toronto’s appetite for money. Much of the improvement in the waterfront was to be funded from proceeds of development, but if this is scooped by the City to pay down debt, or to fund pet projects like the Sheppard Subway, the ugly, inaccessible waterfront will remain, and the land will be lost to public hands forever. If we sell quick and cheap, we gain a short term pile of cash, but leave the bulk of future appreciation in private hands. (I cannot help thinking of another cash-strapped, right-wing government that sold Highway 407 in similar circumstances, a sale many have regretted ever since.)
The waterfront is on the edge of the city, and to many it’s as out of sight as Malvern or Rexdale are to downtowners. Voters want slogans and quick fixes, and only care about the details when they are personally affected. Do we want a beautiful waterfront? Do people even care? Will we wake up in ten years asking “how did this happen”?
Subway City? (Update 3)
Updated April 2, 2011 at 6:30 am: Additional details about the plan have been provided by Metrolinx. The dialog below has been slightly edited from email exchanges, but preserves the sense of the conversation.
Q: The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) refers to both Black Creek and Jane as western terminals for the Eglinton line. However, these are over 1km apart. Where will the line actually end? How will the line connect with the GO corridor if it ends at Black Creek?
A: The exact terminus for the Eglinton line, which is in the Mt. Dennis area, will be determined through a future additional study due to the vertical and horizontal alignment (how steep the grades can be climbing out of the tunnel and which side of the road we will be on to approach the yard) between Black Creek Drive and Jane Street. The objective is to make the connection to the GO rail corridor.
Q: When does Metrolinx expect to have a preliminary design proposal for the section of the line east of Leaside that will now be substantially underground?
A: We are meeting with the TTC now to discuss the timing for the preliminary plans and profiles for the underground segment.
Q: The SRT replacement is described as ending at STC. Does this mean that McCowan will be abandoned as a station? Will the proposed right-of-way beyond McCowan to Sheppard and Malvern be protected to allow for future extension of the route? Is there any plan for an eastern yard so that trains would not all have to be based at the Black Creek yard?
A: The Scarborough LRT would follow the same route as the existing SRT and will include McCowan Station. At this time, there are no plans to close McCowan Station. We do see value in potentially re-using the McCowan yard for at least a layover site and we will need to study this further.
Q: Although the MOU states the number of stations on the Toronto projects, it does not mention this with respect to Eglinton. The press release specifies 26 stations. When will Metrolinx produce a station plan for the new line?
A: The exact number and location of stations for the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT project will be finalized as part of the environmental assessment amendment process.
We expect the Eglinton project will have about 26 stations along a 25-kilometre stretch, and we’re pleased to provide this as a single-seat trip for residents from Scarborough to the Mount Dennis Area.
Since the new Eglinton project has changed from the previous concept, the working assumption now is that the station spacing across the route is approximately at 1 kilometre.
We want to make certain that residents get the best use from the Eglinton line, so we are taking more time to study the specifics of the project to determine the exact number and best locations for the stations along the Eglinton line.
The finalization of the Eglinton line and the locations of the station will be part of the preliminary engineering and Environmental Assessment, which is expected to be completed in the coming months.
Comment: The 26-station count includes not just Eglinton but also the SRT. There were 26 stops on the Transit City version of Eglinton, not including Kennedy, and 6 more on the SRT. The new combined route will have to go on a diet, and the roughly 1km average spacing implies that some stations will be dropped. Throughout the Transit City debates, Metrolinx consistently wanted fewer stations on Eglinton, although at the time the underground section was shorter.
Q: Although the MOU makes reference to “LRT”, for certainty does this mean “Light Rapid Transit” as in the Flexity cars recently ordered from Bombardier, or is Metrolinx contemplating a return to ICTS Mark II technology once proposed for this route? This is an important decision as it affects the ability of the line to be extended.
A: On June 14, 2010, Metrolinx announced a $770M purchase of Light Rail vehicles from Bombardier, which included vehicles for the SRT upgrading project. We expect that we will need about 130 LRTs for the adjusted plan, but we will have to sit down with Bombardier and discuss the details. At this time, we do not plan to change from LRT to ICTS MARK II technology.
Comment: “At this time” are three little words that could do a world of damage to future LRT expansion in Toronto. Metrolinx owes us a definitive answer in the context of their Big Move plan.
Q: The Sheppard East LRT’s costs to date are chargeable to Toronto, but one piece of work already underway is the Agincourt Station grade separation. Is this going to proceed independently of the LRT project as a GO improvement? If so, will it be built with room for a future LRT right of way if that scheme is resurrected?
A: At this time, there are no plans to change the current design for the Agincourt grade-separation. The grade separation construction work that is currently underway at the Agincourt GO Station to separate the GO tracks from Sheppard Avenue will proceed independently of the former LRT project.
It is important to note, though, that this grade separation construction work is an important safety improvement for GO commuters and drivers that use Sheppard Avenue. This grade separation is a project that has benefits to GO’s operations and traffic.
Understanding TTC Project Cost Creep
The recent TTC meeting saw Commissioner Minnan-Wong digging into questions about rising costs on two TTC projects, the design of Finch West Station and the resignalling of the south end of the Yonge subway.
Reports asking for increased spending authorization come through the Commission quite regularly, and Minnan-Wong has raised the question of “out of control spending” at Council on past occasions. Just to declare my political leanings, I have never been a fan of the Councillor, even though there are certainly legitimate questions to be asked when project costs rise unexpectedly.
Unfortunately, Minnan-Wong tends to approach these issues as if someone is trying to pull the wool over his eyes and implies outright incompetence as the starting point for discussion. This approach brings more confrontation than information. Let’s have a look at the two projects in question and consider how information about them (and their many kin in the overall budget) might be better presented.
Steve Munro 