Elections

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Why I Voted For Gil Penalosa for Mayor

In the Toronto Mayoral race for 2022, there is only one person I could vote for: Gil Penalosa.

His many policy planks cover a wide variety of topics, some more thoroughly than others, but they share a common goal of making Toronto a better city.

After nearly three years of pandemic, and many more of fiscal austerity before them, Toronto needs to think beyond this to ask what should the city be? What could it be?

Too often we begin with the premise that we cannot afford anything, and plan on that basis.

In John Tory’s Toronto, we see the cumulative effect of spending, when it happens, focused on pet projects like SmartTrack (itself a shadow of the original promise), misplaced priorities (the Gardiner rebuild), and credit taken for programs by others (Ontario’s transit plan). On other areas talk demonstrably exceeds action. The big ticket items are capital works, projects that will not show results for years, while day-to-day services crumble.

I have no illusions that in a Gil Penalosa Toronto all would be perfection. I have already written about shortcomings in the FastLane proposal for a Bus Rapid Transit network. To his credit, Penalosa has released a second policy regarding transit priority, the FastLane Quick Fixes that proposes extensive priority changes for streetcars, especially those already on reserved lanes.

More is needed, including a commitment to much improved service, but my sense is that Penalosa is not stuck on one map as the master solution to transit problems. Too many elections are fought on grand plans, on maps with great promise for the 2030s, but with nothing for today’s transit riders. Steak tomorrow, but gruel today.

Penalosa also proposes reducing fares to $1 for low income riders. This would be a substantial cut below the “Fair Pass” that now gives approximately the same discount as Seniors’ and Students’ fares and therefore offers no benefit to low-income riders in these groups.

The challenge for any new Mayor will be how to pay for everything, and what programs will take priority.

From John Tory, we know that a tax increase below inflation is his target, although the current economic figures give him far more leeway than in past years. However property taxes are only about one third of Toronto’s total revenues, and money from other sources is not a sure thing, notably from the Land Transfer Tax. After a covid-era fare freeze, there is no word on what might happen to TTC fares which accounted for over $1 billion in City revenue in pre-pandemic times.

What we do know is that there will not be new money for anything without offsets elsewhere. The TTC’s 2023 Draft Service Plan includes restructured routes and new services, but they are all on a no-net-cost basis. If you want something new, you have to sacrifice something that’s already there. The TTC will be lucky to achieve even that unless it receives funding to replace covid supports from Ontario and Canada. (Details of the 2023 plan have been shared via consultations with various groups, and they will appear on the TTC’s website soon.)

The same problem applies across the city. We face the combined effect of revenues that do not rise to cover even inflationary costs, let alone new services, and the cutback of pandemic-related subsidies that will dwindle or vanish in 2023 and beyond.

Penalosa would face the same fiscal problems. The next few years will not be easy for Toronto no matter who is in the Mayor’s office. The difference would be the direction, the aim, the choice of top priorities for real change and improvement.

I voted for Gil Penalosa even though the polls show an almost certain Tory win because Toronto’s body politic must see that there is support for an alternative, for a better city. The debate about our future must continue even after the election as Toronto looks ahead to better economic times and to new regimes at both City Hall and Queen’s Park.

For the record: I was not asked for advice on nor did I contribute to any of Penalosa’s policy development.

Election day is Monday October 24, but I have already voted by mail. If you’re thinking of getting my vote, it’s too late.

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Gil Penalosa Embraces Bus Rapid Transit

Updated Sept 29/22 at 7pm: A link to and short commentary on the TTCRiders mayoral candidate poll has been added at the end of the article.

Gil Penalosa, the primary challenger to Mayor John Tory’s re-election bid, released a transit platform this week. In place of Light Rapid Transit such as the Finch West line now under construction, Penalosa advocates a network of Bus Rapid Transit under the moniker FastLane.

My reaction, quite simply, was “is that all there is?”

This map ignores large parts of Toronto, and the platform is silent on Penalosa’s view on what might happen with the transit system as a whole. There is an unhappy echo of John Tory’s SmartTrack scheme eight years ago in the amount of empty space on that map.

Notable by their absence are several projects in various states of planning and engineering including many RapidTO corridors, both bus and streetcar, and the Waterfront LRT extensions. These may not figure in Penalosa’s transit view, but any candidate should at least explain where they stand on current planning proposals. Are they deferred? Replaced by an alternative? Dropped? Also missing are planned BRT corridors on Ellesmere and on Dundas West.

Continue reading →
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John Tory Has (Another) Transit Plan

On September 20, 2022, Mayor John Tory announced his transit platform as part of his re-election campaign. It contains little new but rests mainly on completing works already in progress.

He pledges to be “laser-focused” on four key projects that just happen to be provincial undertakings. How exactly Tory, or any other municipal politician can advance these, other than standing out of Premier Ford’s way, is something of a mystery.

The projects are, of course, the Scarborough Subway extension, the Ontario line, the Eglinton Crosstown extension “towards” the airport and the Yonge North extension to Richmond Hill. Collectively they represent a $28 billion provincial commitment that will keep the construction industry humming along for the next decade, but an unknown call on future city budgets to aid in their operation.

They also represent “investments” that will crowd other projects off of the table when Toronto calls on provincial and federal governments for more transit support. Toronto and Mayor Tory are thrilled to get such a huge transit investment, but whether this is the right investment is quite another matter.

The remainder of his platform focuses more on past achievements than new programs, and is silent on the question of how we will actually pay for much of this.

In the following text, the quoted items come from John Tory’s campaign website linked above. The order has been slightly changed to group related items.

  • Moving forward with the Crosstown LRT and Finch LRT, both of which will open soon.
  • Securing funding for the expansion of Bloor-Yonge station to meet current and future ridership demand.
  • Planning underway for the Eglinton East and Waterfront transit lines.
  • Investing in 60 new streetcars for the TTC through a $568 million funding commitment from all three levels of government.

Notable by their absence are the Eglinton East and Waterfront LRT lines for which the only mention is that planning is underway. I spoke with candidate Tory at the TTC’s August 20 open house, and he replied forcefully about his support for the Waterfront LRT and desire to see it built. Strange, then, that actual construction does not appear in his platform.

Many other items are works in progress or nearly completed including the original section of Eglinton Crosstown and the Finch LRT both expected to open fairly soon. Others include securing funding for Bloor-Yonge station’s expansion (a second platform in Yonge Station plus expanded circulation space between the Yonge and Bloor lines) and funding for 60 additional streetcars.

  • Introducing the City’s first-ever RapidTO corridor – a priority bus-only lane – on Eglinton East.
  • Creating the King Street Transit Priority Corridor to ensure more reliable and efficient streetcar service along the busiest surface transit route in the city.

The King Street transitway is a fait acompli as are the RapidTO bus lanes in Scarborough. The much greater challenge, on which Tory’s platform is silent, will be wresting transit’s priority back on King Street from the “wild west” that has evolved since the scheme was introduced. This is only one aspect of the need for much more aggressive enforcement of traffic laws and regulations so badly needed in Toronto.

As for RapidTO, many proposed bus lanes have encountered political headwinds because they would be on streets where space is much less easily set aside for transit. The Scarborough project was low hanging fruit.

  • Increasing subway service on Line 1 and 2 during peak periods to support return to office plans.
  • Increasing investment on 17 bus and streetcar routes this year, and increasing service on 29 bus routes and two streetcar routes beginning in September as riders return to work.

John Tory takes credit for recent service improvements in response to riding growth. What his platform does not mention is that service is still below pre-pandemic levels especially on the subway. Running more service, both to get back to January 2020 levels and to grow in the future will require money, and it is not clear where this will come from as provincial and federal governments are expected to reduce or cease their Covid budget supplements to cities in the fiscal year beginning April 1, 2023. The issue is not what the TTC managed to achieve for Fall 2022, but how long this can be sustained.

  • Rolling out the Automated Train Control signalling system on all of Line 1 and expansion of the Wi-Fi on buses pilot program this fall.

The rollout of ATC on Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina will be substantially complete on the weekend of September 24, 2022, when the final segment from Eglinton to Finch switches over. There will be a clean-up phase to deal with changes identified since the project went live, but the main work is at last finished. It should be remembered that this project had a checkered life with a botched original implementation plan that was rescued by former CEO Andy Byford. The status of ATC for Line 2 Bloor-Danforth is not yet known, but is essential as part of the Scarborough Subway extension plans. (More about LIne 2 overall below.)

  • Bringing in the Fair Pass, a first-ever TTC discount for low-income residents, as well as free two-hour transfers on the TTC.

Worth remembering is that the Fair Pass and the Two-Hour Transfer were both products of community activism, not proposals that originated in the Mayor’s office. Both were hard-won in the face of budget hawks who saw them as added rider subsidies, not as investments in a better city.

The Fair Pass is still not fully implemented because the cost of extending it to the full projected market is not funded in the City’s budget. John Tory’s platform is silent on this.

  • Ensuring that the TTC continues to have the largest fleet of electric buses in all of North America. 

The City of Toronto has a Net Zero plan which sounds impressive, but only a portion of it has been endorsed by Council. Even the planned purchase of 300 battery-electric buses is not yet a fully funded project even though the TTC has been through a vendor evaluation and was expected to award contracts in September 2022.

The TTC will also require at least one more bus garage to handle the growing bus fleet assuming that plans to continue service expansion are not sandbagged. This type of change requires co-ordination of vehicle, plant and staffing many years in advance.

  • Implementing the SmartTrack program, with an agreement signed between all three levels of government and with Metrolinx now hiring builders for five new urban rapid transit stations.

SmartTrack, announced two elections ago when John Tory was first staking his claim to having a transit program, is a shadow of the original proposal. It is now a handful of new GO stations that will be built at the City’s cost, and marginal improvements in GO service that Metrolinx planned to operate whether SmartTrack existed or not.

Still to be settled is the question of GO and TTC fare integration.

SmartTrack was announced in 2014 as a plan that would solve every transit problem. In the intervening years, the program shrank, and Mayor rather than candidate Tory learned that there is more to transit than one commuter rail / surface rapid transit corridor including simple things like more buses for better service.

Ironically, the SmartTracker website telling us how much time we will all save in our travels is still active with the full proposed network for all to see.

  • Significantly upgrading the TTC system as part of the five and 10-year plan to improve customer experience and accommodate expected growth in ridership.

To say that this is a key investment made, as if it were a done deal, is a real stretch. The TTC has a huge backlog of capital projects many of which are not funded. A substantial collection of these are part of a Line 2 renewal plan that was first proposed, but not published, while Andy Byford was still CEO. It was pushed to the back burner because of the substantial cost. The plan includes:

  • New trains for Line 2 including vehicles for service improvements and the Scarborough extension
  • Automatic Train Control implementation
  • Station upgrades
  • A new storage and maintenance facility west of Kipling Station

The TTC plans to publish an updated Line 2 plan in 2023. There is no sense of how we will pay for it, nor how strong a commitment we will see from City Hall and other governments for special funding beyond their regular contributions.

Vital to any plan that will improve the TTC and handle growing ridership is a recognition that carrying more riders on a more attractive service requires more operating subsidies. These are not small scale investments in a demonstration project here or there, but a system-wide effort that will be invisible without significant new resources. Moreover, TTC management must be held accountable for operating and maintaining their system well rather than the lacklustre operation that passes for transit service on many routes today.

I am not convinced that Mayor Tory is even aware of the calls on City funding that the transit improvements he touts will require. If he is, then he owes voters an explanation of what we can actually afford to do and when. If he is in the dark, just spouting feel-good slogans like “SmartTrack”, then Toronto will wait a long time for substantially better transit.

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A Buck’s Worth of Blarney

Today the Liberal Party of Ontario announced that it would cut all, yes, all transit fares in Ontario to just $1 if they are elected. The cut would apply through to 2023-24 (the provincial fiscal year end is March 31), and is sold as a way to get 400,000 cars off of the road every day.

This is a plan so simplistic, so poorly-thought-out, that even Doug Ford could have authored it, possibly after a few of his short-lived one dollar beers from the last campaign.

Regular readers here will know that I view across-the-board fare reductions as little better than snake oil because they benefit people who do not require more subsidy while doing nothing to improve what they actually use, transit service. The Liberal plan goes even further by giving massive fare reductions to regional transit riders who now pay double-digits for a one-way ticket.

They show the monthly saving for a commuter from Barrie’s Allendale GO station as $434.30. In other words, this plan would see a Barrie commuter subsidized by over $5,000/year.

In a separate pledge, the Liberals promise $375 million in annual transit funding to support existing systems, more service and “more intercity connections”.

Let’s check the math:

Assuming that:

  • Each car represents at least two trips (fares) for a round trip (single occupancy)
  • The saving/trip is at least $2 based on local transit fares
  • The trip only uses one transit system (e.g. TTC, YRT)
  • There are 250 commuting days per year

This gets us up to $400 million per year.

But don’t forget that we’re giving a break to all of the existing riders, and just for the TTC that would be around 300 million rides per year, or another $600 million and change.

We have not even talked about other transit systems, or the much larger savings GO Transit riders would see.

The big problem, however, is that all this money will not buy one more bus trip’s worth of service. That forlorn display in transit’s shop window will not improve one bit even with a big sign “Sale, Only $1!”.

Buck-a-ride will not deal with the last mile problem of getting people who now drive to their transit trip be it a local bus stop or a parking lot.

Already, the TTC reports that it is increasing service on some routes because of crowding. Where will it put a large influx of new riders, assuming that they appear?

In the short term covered by this proposal, the TTC has some surplus vehicles (albeit no operators to drive them) because they are not yet back to full service across the system. Even at full pre-pandemic service, they had a generous number of spare buses.

Systems elsewhere in Ontario do not have the robust demand we see in Toronto and could have more headroom for growth within existing operations, but the ability to carry all of those new riders without extra operating costs should not be assumed.

With this announcement, the Liberals have side-stepped commenting on the really big issues like the scope of transit expansion they would fund and their vision for planning that doesn’t start and end with subway tunnels.

When they get around to publishing a platform, we might see how transit fits in their wider scheme of spending and priorities across the many government portfolios. For the moment, this is a cheap, ill-conceived piece of campaigning from the man who turned Metrolinx into his own photo-op generator, the Minister for Kirby Station.

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Drifting Timelines on Metrolinx Projects (Updated)

Updated June 23, 2020 at 1:50 pm: The table of projects has been updated to include anticipated events, notably “financial close” dates, that were included in various project announcements by Infrastructure Ontario. Also Union Station Platform Expansion was described in the original version of this article as closing sooner than originally projected. This has been corrected to show a delay of roughly nine months.

Infrastructure Ontario recently released its Spring 2020 Update for P3 projects under its control including several Metrolinx projects. To date there have been three of these updates:

These updates include information on the project status, the type of procurement model, and the expected progress of each project through the procurement process. This provides “one stop shopping” compared to Metrolinx’ own site. As a convenience to readers, I have consolidated the three updates as they relate to transit projects to allow easy comparison between versions.

Some projects have evolved since the first version, and in particular the delivery dates for a few projects have moved further into the future. The “financial close” dates for some projects, in effect the point at which a contract is signed and real work can begin, has moved beyond the date of the next Provincial election. Whatever government is in power after summer 2022 will have a final say on whether these projects go ahead.

Subway Projects

Ontario Line

The Ontario Line was previously reported as a single project with a price tag of over $10 billion. In the Fall 2019 update, the intent was to have the financial close in Winter/Spring 2022 ahead of the election. In the Winter 2020 update, this changed to Spring 2022.

In the Spring 2020 update, the project has been split into separate parts to reflect industry feedback about the original scope.

  1. GO Corridor from Don River to Gerrard
  2. South Tunnels, Civil Works and Stations CNE to Don River
  3. Rolling Stock, System Operations & Maintenance
  4. North Tunnels, Civil Works and Stations

The GO corridor work will be done as a conventional procurement by Metrolinx and will be bundled with upgrades to GO Transit trackage.

The financial close for items 2 and 3 above is now Fall 2022, and for item 4 it is Fall 2023.

This means that an actual sign-on-the-dotted-line commitment to the project will not be within the current government’s mandate. Even the so-called “early works” comprising the southern portion of the route from Exhibition to the Don River is not scheduled to close until Fall 2022. The northern portion, from Gerrard to Eglinton will close in Fall 2023. This contract is being held back pending results for the south contract to determine the industry’s appetite for the work.

The southern portion, with a long tunnel through downtown and stations in congested street locations would start first. However, the line cannot actually open without the northern portion because this provides the link to the maintenance facility which is included as part of item 3 above although the actual access connection would be built as part of item 4.

An issue linking all of these projects is the choice of technology which, in turn drives decisions such as tunnel and station sizes, power supply, signalling and maintenance facility design. When the Ontario Line was a single project, Metrolinx could say that this choice was up to the bidders, but now there must be some co-ordination to ensure that what is built can actually be used to operate the selected technology. It is hardly a secret that Metrolinx is promoting a SkyTrain like technology, although which propulsion scheme (LIM vs rotary motors) is not clear. There are well-known problems with LIMs and the power pickup technology used on the SRT, and this would also be a consideration for the outdoor portions of the Ontario Line.

Scarborough Subway Extension

Like the Ontario Line, the Scarborough Extension has been split into two pieces. The first will be the tunnel contract from Kennedy Station to McCowan. This is now in the  procurement phase, and financial close is projected for Spring 2021.

The remainder of the project previously had a projected closing date of “Winter/Spring 2023”, but this is now just “2023”. With the tunnel hived off into a separate contract, it is reasonable that the remainder would have a later start date because the tunnel is a key component that must be in place first.

Metrolinx recently published a Preliminary Business Case for this extension. It includes the following text:

Kennedy Station Pocket Track/Transition Section

The Kennedy transition section extends roughly 550 metres from the east side of the GO Transit Stouffville rail corridor to Commonwealth Avenue and will include special track work and a pocket track to enable every second subway train to short turn to suit ridership demand and minimize fleet requirements, as well as lower operating costs. [p 24]

This turnback has been an on-again, off-again part of the project but it is now clearly included as a cost saving measure. With only every second train running to Sheppard/McCowan, the fleet required (as well as storage) would be within the system’s current capacity. This ties in with the timing of the T1 fleet replacement on Line 2 as there are enough T1s to run alternate, but not full service to Sheppard. This would be similar to the arrangement now used on the TYSSE where only half of the AM peak service runs north of Glencairn Station to Vaughan.

Richmond Hill Subway Extension

The Ontario government recently signed an agreement with York Region for the extension of the Yonge line from Finch to Richmond Hill. The status of this project is unchanged with an RFQ to be issued in Fall 2021, an RFP in Spring 2022 and financial close in Fall 2023.

Sheppard East Subway Extension

This project remains in the planning phase.

Continue reading →

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So You Want To Own A Subway (2018 Edition)

Among the many promises made by the Progressive Conservative Party in the run-up to the June 7 election is a scheme to upload the Toronto subway system to the province with the intention of relieving Toronto of this ongoing cost. This was also part of their 2014 campaign, and it is born no doubt from the Ford brothers’ assumption that (a) this could be done cheaply and (b) Toronto would save money overall. The pot is sweetened this time around with the guarantee that Toronto would keep the fare revenue and operate the system. The overall tradeoffs in operating and capital costs are not entirely nailed down.

Oliver Moore in the Globe has written about this proposal wondering whether it is actually workable. The quotes below are taken from his article.

The Tories are framing the upload largely as an accounting exercise, making it easier to find funding and thus facilitating transit construction. The province would pay an estimated $160-million annually for major capital maintenance on the subway network, taking an obligation off city books.

Under the proposal, the Toronto Transit Commission would keep operating the subway, with its board setting fares and the city retaining revenues. Expansion planning would be controlled by the province, although Toronto and Ottawa would be asked to help fund construction.

Note that the proposal is silent on the operating cost of the subway. There is something of a myth that the subway “breaks even”, but this is not true, especially for the more-recently opened segments. It is a matter of record that the Sheppard Line loses money, and the TTC estimated that the operating impact, net of new fares, of the Vaughan extension would be $30 million per year.

If the province builds a new subway line, would Toronto, through the TTC, still be on the hook for paying its operating cost?

Any concept of “breaking even” requires that fares be allocated between surface and subway routes and this is an impossible task. One can propose many schemes, but they all have built-in biases because a “trip” and a “fare” are such different things. The situation is even more complex as an increasing number of riders pay through some form of pass all the way from the yearly Metropass (formerly called the “monthly discount program”) down to the two-hour transfer.

How Much Does The Subway Cost?

The estimated value of an upload to Queen’s Park of $160 million/year is woefully inadequate because the TTC’s capital budget for ongoing maintenance is much, much larger. There is much more to owning a subway than collecting billions in construction subsidies. Despite the frequent claim that “subways last 100 years”, they require a lot of ongoing maintenance and replacement of subsystems. With the exception of the physical tunnel and station structures, a large proportion of the older subway lines has been completely replaced or undergone major overhaul at least once since they opened. Line 1 YUS is on its third generation of trains, for example.

I wrote about this four years ago, and this article is an update of my earlier review.

A big problem arises for anyone taking a superficial look at the TTC’s books because so many projects are not funded, or are not even part of the approved “base budget”. They are “below the line” or, even worse, they are merely “proposals” of future works that might find their way into the official list. Looking only at current, approved funded projects ignores a large and growing list of projects that, for political convenience, are out of sight, the iceberg below the water line.

Slogging through the TTC’s Capital Budget is no fun, but somebody has to do it. You, dear readers, get the digested version of hundreds of pages of reports. Thank you in advance.

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Why I’m Supporting the NDP and Andrea Horwath

The Ontario election on June 7, 2018, is vital for the future of Ontario and of its principal city, Toronto. We have a choice between a party well past it’s sell-by date, a collection of buffoons and crooks unfit to hold public office, and a party and leader growing into prominence just when Ontario needs them.

I am in the enviable position of being able to vote for the candidate and party I believe in without having to hold my nose and make a strategic vote. Many people are not that lucky, and a vote for their favourite can sometimes be a matter of showing the flag, and sometimes can actively help the “wrong” candidate to a win. Such are the joys of multi-party elections.

In my own riding, Toronto-Danforth, the choice is easy. Peter Tabuns has been the sitting NDP member since 2006, and served on the pre-amalgamation Toronto Council from 1990 to 1997. I have known Peter for a long time, and even when I despaired of the NDP as a party, I continued to trust and support him. He will easily get my vote again, and with that vote, my support for the NDP which has not wavered for many decades.

For all that the Liberals have done some good things, they have fouled up a great deal, especially on the transit file. Their embrace of dubious schemes like the Scarborough Subway, SmartTrack and now High Speed Rail to London and beyond, shows a “policy” driven by vote-getting, not by well-considered principles.

In the energy sector, the sale of Hydro One is only part of a larger set of decisions including high-cost “alternative” sources, the continued propping up of nuclear technology, and a failure to restructure the transmission system to permit expanded power imports from Québec. Ontario is paying a lot for its power, and this affects many decisions including transit schemes which once could count on cheap power as a selling point.

There is an even greater irony that, if a Metrolinx electrification background study is to be believed, the so-called “cheap” base generation power that could recharge energy storage systems does not have the capacity to meet future demand.

I first met Kathleen Wynne through mutual friends before she turned to politics. Her time as a school trustee rarely crossed my path in my work career at TDSB, but when she became the Minister of Transportation under McGuinty, there were occasional contacts, and she seemed to be making good work of her position. We chatted occasionally, but I was in no way an “insider”.

A few years after Wynne became Premier, she appointed Glen Murray to her old Ministry, and the style changed to claims over substance. Murray’s successor, Steven Del Duca, raised self-promotion to the point where Metrolinx existed as much to create endless photos ops as to do any real planning. Making the government, and especially the Minister, look good was their job even if they had to cook the books on a “business case analysis”.

Wynne’s star has faded, even with a strong performance in the recent leaders’ debate, but being in command of the issues is not the same as executing the programs needed to make a better province.

Many Liberal promises of 2018 should have been undertaken over a year ago, even at the risk of missing the balanced budget target, so that voters could see real change, real improvement. Near the end of its mandate, the Liberal government has rediscovered the need for programs that actually produce benefits people can see, but this comes far too late from a party whose promises cannot be trusted.

As for the Tories, the “Progressive” Conservatives, they and their leader don’t understand the meaning of the word. That once-moderate party has been hijacked by right-wing scum, racists, homophobes and criminals who advocate simplistic “solutions” to every problem without really saying what they will do or how they would pay the bills.

Doug Ford, when he is forced to make public statements, bumbles his way through standard lines, the same trick his late brother Rob pulled throughout his mayoral campaign. Don’t answer the question, just push those talking points.

I have seen Ford in action at City Council, and was in the chamber on that infamous day when he harangued the public gallery claiming we were there as paid agitators. That’s rich coming from someone whose own campaign used paid actors as “supporters” at a TV debate.

On the transit file, the Fords are notorious for their love of subways, subways, subways whether the city can afford to build and operate them or not. They played on the concept that every part of the city “deserves” a subway to the point that advocating anything else is now painted as a plot by privileged, white downtown elites. The same game is played by Doug at a provincial level blaming Toronto for everyone’s woes as long as he is safely outside of the city.

He is a bully and a liar, and does not deserve to be in public office, let along be Premier of Canada’s most important province. A Ford-PC government would set Ontario back years through rampant tax giveaways, spending cuts, and a vindictive, socially-conservative mindset that treats critics as enemies.

For their part, the NDP is not perfect – no party is – but they are on a better footing this time out.

The transit platform includes a 50% share of net costs of municipal transit operations, a return to a scheme initiated under that paragon of the PCs, Bill Davis. Unlike the previous NDP election platform, the 2018 version actually includes money to fund this promise, money that was conspicuously absent in the 2014 platform.

As to capital funding, there is some confusion as to whether the NDP would actively direct or oppose specific transit projects, or leave these decisions to local councils. That is a tricky problem for any party wishing to stay out of the morass of local transit politics, but some decisions, especially on priorities, will be needed. Simply handing money to each city and hoping for the best is no guarantee. Moreover, regional transportation requirements do not necessarily align with where people live and vote. That applies as much to the question of financing and building capacity into Toronto as an economic centre as it does to the need for much better transit in and between cities outside of the central GTA.

In many other sectors, the NDP starts from the premise that more services are needed – better housing, education, health care, energy – and they do not start by assuming that a private sector arrangement, complete with the off-book accounting favoured by the Liberals, is the answer to every problem.

As to labour relations, the NDP’s Achilles Heel, I find myself landing between the parties. No union, no company nor public agency should be able to hold a city or the province hostage as part of its negotiations. The problem, then, is to determine when an impasse really exists and should be legislated away, if only by arbitration.

Four years ago, Andrea Horwath did not impress me as a leader. She seemed insecure, evasive, and did not inspire my support. I voted for my local candidate, not for her. The Liberals under Kathleen Wynne looked like they would accomplish at least part of a decent program, while the NDP was more about slogans.

Things have changed. Horwath is more confident and has evolved into a leader who talks to all of Ontario, not just to her home town Hamilton. She has the advantage of two opponents whose records are of wasted opportunity in one case, and of simple-minded boosterism and appeals to the lowest of motives among voters in the other.

As I write this, the battle of the pollsters shows the NDP on the rise, but more is needed to overtake the PCs, even for a minority government with Liberal support. On June 7, I hope that Ontario will prove that it cares about decency and integrity in politics, and puts Andrea Horwath in the Premier’s Office.

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Queen’s Park’s Long Overdue Move on Fare Integration

The recently-announced Ontario Budget includes a lot of spending on transportation that transit riders in the GTHA can only hope to see delivered by whoever is in charge at Queen’s Park after the June 2018 election. Even though the budget is as much about vote-getting as about actual governance, it is worth looking at what the promised fare changes would bring if they are implemented.

From the press release:

  • Beginning in early 2019, the province is reducing the cost of GO Transit trips to just $3 for PRESTO users who are travelling under 10 kilometres anywhere on the GO network
  • All GO Transit and Union-Pearson Express trips anywhere within the City of Toronto will be reduced to $3
  • With proceeds from Ontario’s cap on pollution, the province will also provide fare integration discounts of up to $1.50 per ride for anyone who travels between the York, Durham, Brampton and Mississauga transit networks and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), saving regular commuters up to $720 every year
  • PRESTO card users travelling on GO Transit between Union Station and stations near Toronto, such as Port Credit, Malton, Pickering, Ajax or Markham will see fare reductions.

As with any announcement, “the devil is in the details”, and I fired off a series of questions to clarify how this might all work. Responses came back from Metrolinx.

Q1: Regular GO Transit riders now enjoy a monthly cap of 40 fares on their travel. The 36-40th trips are at a discount, and from 41 onward, they are free. Will this apply to the new $3 fare? In other words, is there an upper limit of 40 x $3 = $120 to a rider’s cost of using GO within the 416, or is it open ended like TTC fares where there is no cap unless one buys a pass?

A: Details on this will be worked out as part of our implementation planning and work.

Q2: There are now co-fare arrangements between the 905 systems and GO, as well as between GO and TTC. If someone makes, for example, a YRT-GO-TTC trip, what discounts apply? Are the cofares cumulative?

A: YRT-GO Co-Fare, GO-TTC DDF. Yes, cumulative.

Q3: By analogy to Q1, if a rider makes a three-legged trip regularly, thereby becoming entitled to free rides for the GO segment after 40 trips, what happens to the co-fares? Do they still apply, or does the rider pay full 905 plus TTC fare in this case? The potential savings are “up to $720 per year”. Is this simply a calculation based on 20 commutes for 12 months, or will it be a capped saving?

A: Details on this will be worked out as part of implementation planning and work.

Q4: If someone has a Metropass (or its Presto equivalent), they are not entitled to the TTC-GO co-fare. Is it correct to say that their monthly cost would be the cost of the pass plus $3 times the number of GO trips taken within Toronto?

A: For adults, yes.

Q5: For clarity, is the $3 fare a flat rate even if riders transfer from one GO service to another, such as from Lake Shore to UPX, but stays within Toronto for their trip?

A: Yes as long as [the] individual uses the GO readers for their UP Express trip.

Q5a: If part of their trip is inside Toronto, but a second leg goes outside, does the $3 apply to the “inside Toronto” portion? Example: Rough Hill to Union to Weston is all inside Toronto, but Rouge Hill to Union to Airport is not.

A: Fares for any trips to and from Toronto Pearson Airport remain unchanged.

Q6: The co-fare for GO-TTC is relative to an assumed $1.50 per full adult fare with lower co-fares for those getting discounts like Seniors. Will the same apply to the 905-416 co-fare?

A: Details on this will be worked out in conjunction with the transit agencies.

In brief, the only thing that is nailed down so far is that discounts between each leg of a trip are cumulative so that, for example, a Miway rider travelling to a station within the $3 GO tariff zone and thence to a TTC route will get the Miway co-fare discount, the new low GO transit fare and the GO-TTC discount. Also, transfers between GO services do not attract another fare provided that the trip stays within the city.

Every thing else is to be “worked out”.

There are a variety of scenarios one can construct including the combined effects of bulk fares (passes) on 905 systems, the existing GO Transit monthly fare caps, and whatever co-fare/discount arrangements will exist. Anyone trying to work out the permutations has my sympathy. From the Metrolinx point of view:

The reason these changes will only be introduced in early 2019, is because Metrolinx needs time to work with our transit partners to ensure the various scenarios and all fare rules are in place. This budget provided Metrolinx with direction to move forward on fare integration. [Metrolinx email]

Leaving aside the question of whether the government in place for the 2019-20 budget will support whatever fare scheme Metrolinx comes up with, there are also obvious questions about the implications for service crowding and for possible changes needed in local route networks, mainly on the TTC, to provide better connections with GO stations. The lower fares may look attractive, but actually using the service could be challenging within Toronto.

  • On Lakeshore West, most inbound trains run express from Clarkson to Union with local trains only every half hour in the AM peak. The same arrangement applies outbound on the PM peak.
  • On Lakeshore East, there is a similar pattern with express trains skipping all stops from Rouge Hill to Union, and local trains running roughly twice/hour in the peak, albeit on an irregular headway. Some additional service is provided at Danforth (Main) and Scarborough stations by the Stouffville line’s trains.
    • TTC services in southern Etobicoke and Scarborough focus on the Bloor-Danforth subway, and actually reaching the GO stations (or using the TTC as a connecting service from them) is not easy.
  • On the Milton corridor, trains operate only in the peak period, peak direction although for someone at Kipling Station, the all-local service now operated would actually be better than what is provided at, say, Mimico on the Lakeshore West corridor.
  • The Barrie corridor and the Vaughan subway extension are in direct competition with each other, although service is far more frequent, especially during the off-peak, on the subway than on the hourly GO train, and the GO stations within Toronto are not well-served by the TTC network (other than the connection point at Downsview Park station).
  • The Richmond Hill corridor, like Milton, has only peak service, and its stations within Toronto are poorly served by the TTC.
  • The Stouffville corridor has all-day service with stations that potentially could connect with TTC feeder routes at Steeles (Milliken), Sheppard (Agincourt) and Eglinton (Kennedy). As on Lakeshore, the tradeoff will be for a faster trip bypassing the subway.
  • The Weston corridor is a special case because it hosts not only the GO Kitchener service but also the Union Pearson Express (UPX) trains which provide the most frequent of GO services within Toronto.

The fare reductions for trips from the near-Toronto stations in the 905 could shift some travel away from the subway, although few of the stations are well-located for this purpose. The Richmond Hill corridor is the most obvious of these, but the limited service there does not offer a lot to diverting demand.

As a follow-up question, I asked Metrolinx whether they had any demand studies to show travel patterns with the new fares, to the degree that these are known. Their reply is pending, and I will update this article when I receive further info.

It is well-known that the demand models are sensitive to three factors: trip speed, service frequency and fare level. This came out quite clearly in the background studies for SmartTrack and the Scarborough Subway where ST would succeed in drawing significant riding only if it operated frequently and cheaply, as originally touted in John Tory’s campaign. Just how many riders the lower GO fares, by themselves, will attract remains to be seen. A related problem, of course, is the question of train capacity if many actually shift to GO.

Not to be forgotten in all of this are the cross-border travellers between the 905 and 416 (in both directions) for whom a discounted fare will be a benefit. However, if this is only available to riders paying the full adult fare in each jurisdiction, this could undo the benefit now enjoyed by pass users who will not get any further discount. This would be particularly important if a pass holder took many “local” trips on the TTC in addition to cross-border trips into the 905.

In general, riders who already enjoy some sort of discount like seniors and students will benefit far less from the new tariff.

Whether any of this will come to pass is purely speculative at this point given the tenuous status of the current government and the well-known, vague bluster of their principal opposition.

Metrolinx (and by implication its political masters) have wasted years on pursuit of “fare integration” schemes that began with the premise of revenue neutrality to limit the government’s cost through added subsidies, and with the underlying view that distance-based fares were the end state at which they would aim. Had the option of added subsidy and reduction of short-haul GO fares been part of the mix a few years ago, the entire debate over fare integration could have taken a completely different path and a new tariff would already be in place.

Transit policy should arise from reasoned, open evaluation of alternatives, including those that may require an “investment” to make them work, not from a deathbed change of heart by an unpopular government facing defeat at the polls.

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The PC Ontario Transit Platform: Real Change or Smoke & Mirrors?

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario released its campaign platform that will take them into the 2018 election on November 25. This contains three pages on “Change that works for Transit Users”. How much of this voters will actually care about when the real headlines are tax breaks remains to be seen, but a review of these pledges is worthwhile to see what’s really involved and how it could affect transit in the GTHA.

The concept of “Change” is hard to grasp when, in many cases, the Tories simply claim that they will do what the Liberals have planned all along anyhow. The platform implies that the Libs really don’t mean to carry through, but that the new gang, given the chance, will make sure all of the promised chickens actually turn up on every pot.

Each of the bullets quoted below begins with the text “Patrick Brown and the Ontario PCs will …” as if Brown and his party were the government. L’état, c’est moi! This is precisely the sort of characterization for which the Liberals have been so rightly criticized.

Fulfill the existing commitments to two-way, all day GO train service and complete major transit projects already under construction, including those in Ottawa, Hamilton, and Kitchener-Waterloo. [p. 52]

Note that this is the “existing commitments”, not any new ones, nor is there any guarantee of service frequency. Many cities longing for full GO service will stay right where they are looking down the track and hoping for more trains to appear. The words “GO RER” do not appear in the platform, no doubt because that is a Liberal program, and it incites the same reaction in the PCPO that “Transit City” did for former Mayor Ford.

The text accompanying this bullet contains a few oddities:

  • The Finch West LRT project is among those the Tories will complete, although there is no mention of the extension to Pearson Airport. By analogy to other items in the platform, this should really be a city project, not a provincial one because it is not a subway.
  • The Hamilton LRT project is included, although some of the local Tories oppose it, and again this is not a subway.
  • The portion of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT now under construction is not mentioned, nor is the planned extension westward to the airport.
  • There is no mention of Waterfront transit which is mired in the “Reset” plan whose report has now been delayed to January 2018. Once upon a time, then Minister Murray “committed” that the sale of the LCBO lands on Queens Quay would go to transit, but that was long ago and commitments evaporate with a minister’s departure.

This point strikes me as avoidance of derailing works that are some ways “down the track” without making any commitments beyond them.

Commit an additional $5 billion to build new subways in the Greater Toronto Area. [p. 52]

This bullet follows a long section of text which trots out some of the usual complaints, and cites Mayor Tory’s desire to get on with actual building rather than endless debate. “Shovels in the ground” is the aim, although this is selectively applied to subway projects: Scarborough, Sheppard East (Don Mills to STC), the Relief Line (unclear as to the short, medium or long versions) and the Richmond Hill extension of the Yonge subway. These are cited as “prime candidates for development”, but to that end, the Tories ante up only “an additional $5 billion” and are quite clear that they expect matching money from Ottawa.

Ottawa already has an infrastructure program, although you would never know it from the Tories’ platform. The main questions here are how much of the national program is earmarked for Toronto, and will Ontario build new subways fast enough to qualify under that scheme.

This brings us to the obvious point that new subways, with the possible exception of Scarborough’s, could only barely be under construction before the 2022 election, and there is no guarantee of the Tories being around to deliver on their “commitment”. Meanwhile, there are Liberal spending plans, although these are equally vague thanks in part to the dereliction by Metrolinx in giving any sense of priorities for, benefits of or costs related to the new Regional Transportation Plan’s components.

The platform cites “the combination of insufficient capital, antiquated municipal accounting rules, and a lack of political leadership at the provincial level” for the long delays in provision of new transit. Physician heal thyself. Two decades ago, the Tories walked away from municipal transit, and the Liberals have been slow to return. Transit continues to be a contest among politicians that their one favoured project might be blessed rather than a collaborative effort to fund and build a network.

The choice of projects is geographically skewed and omits large areas from the catchment of new lines. How the list addresses needs in the GTA overall is a mystery. As for the $5 billion (or $10b if the feds come to the table), the first bite out of this will be consumed by the proposed provincial assumption of the Scarborough subway’s cost (see below), and whatever is left over will be used on other projects. That won’t get those tunnel borers very far, and certainly will not build all of the lines cited in the platform.

As for those “antiquated municipal accounting rules”, possibly the PCPO could enlighten us as to how they would change these rules to free up additional spending capacity for cities across Ontario, not just in Toronto. Those rules exist to require cities to use a more [ahem] conservative set of accounting rules to ensure that they don’t get too deeply in debt, a constraint by which parties of all stripes at Queen’s Park are not subject.

Provide help for commuters across the Greater Toronto Area by ensuring that the provincial government assumes responsibility for maintenance and investments in Toronto’s subway infrastructure. [p. 53]

This is a truly bizarre statement because commuters across the GTA depend on far more than the Toronto subway system to get them to work. Indeed, Toronto shells out considerable dollars through operating and capital subsidies to keep what is really a regional asset operating. The portion of the Vaughan extension north of Steeles will add about $10 million to Toronto’s annual costs with almost no return via new fare revenue or subsidy from York Region. Making Ontario responsible for “maintenance and investments” would certainly be welcome as an upload, but this would be a very large new cost for Queen’s Park.

As I discussed in a previous article, the subway system accounts for about a third of the TTC’s Operating Budget and about half of the Capital Budget. Net of provincial contributions Ontario already pays (gas tax), this would leave Queen’s Park with about $1 billion in new annual costs just to keep the existing system running, and no offsetting revenue because the platform commits to leaving all of the fares in Toronto.

Part of Queen’s Park’s new responsibility would involve the greater use of private sector design-build-finance-maintain contracts which, the platform claims, would accelerate the rate of construction on new lines. This would also, as the Provincial Auditor has complained, add to cost and create the need to manage contracts that would not exist if the assets were kept in house. This is part of the creative accounting we have seen under the Liberals and clearly favoured by the Conservatives which converts traditional debt to a long term lease arrangement with the physical property (i.e. a new subway line) as an offsetting asset. Presto! The provincial debt stays down, even though there is an unavoidable long term payment commitment.

The platform states that the government “will assume responsibility for the physical subway infrastructure – tracks, tunnels and stations”, although there is more to infrastructure (notably vehicles, yards and shops) than this list. The TTC would remain as the operator/maintainer under contract, and fare revenue would stay with Toronto. I will return to the issue of fares later.

This would be done “in partnership with the Mayor of Toronto”. It may have escaped the Tories that such agreements are made with the City of Toronto through Council, not the Mayor’s office.

The existing subway system is an asset of the city paid for with municipal, provincial and federal dollars. It is one thing to assume the cost of routine and capital maintenance and operations, but quite another to transfer the asset to the province merely to suit accounting trickery, or worse, to enable future resale.

All of this is intended to “create a structure that takes advantage of the province’s balance sheet to maximize provincial investments”. That goobledygook brings us back to provincial accounting rules and debt transformed into DBFM contracts. Would it be churlish of me to point out how often the PCPO has pilloried the Liberals for creative accounting?

This is all explained as a regional benefit through co-ordinated planning, ensuring that Toronto gets long-awaited subways, relieving commute times across the GTA and increasing economic growth while reducing red tape and arbitrary delays. This is pure doctrinaire BS. Commute times might improve, but mainly for riders in certain sections of Toronto and central York Region, not “across the GTA”. We do not suffer from an excess of red tape, but of the lack of will to spend region-wide on transit.

Enter into discussions with the City of Toronto about air rights over future subway stations that it builds. These air rights should be used to increase housing supply, which in turn promotes housing affordability, and increases economic activity. [p. 53]

In the middle of a discussion of new subway lines, this bullet appears. In that text “subway stations that it builds” actually refers to the province even though the text could imply that they are built by the city. This idea appears out of nowhere as if somehow the housing crisis will be solved by building over subway stations. In fact, only one future station, the one at Scarborough Town Centre, is even in the pipeline, and development around it is already planned. If the Tories were serious about this policy, they would turn their attention to existing stations throughout the network, including the GO stations now surrounded by parking lots.

Assume responsibility for the city’s share of the Scarborough Subway Extension, including the more than $200 million cost escalator that the province has refused to fund, provided that the city makes a significant financial investment in extending the Eglinton Crosstown project to Scarborough’s University of Toronto campus. [p. 53]

The eventual cost of the SSE is an unknown quantity today, and if anything is subject to increase beyond mere inflation as detailed design proceeds. It is standard practice for Queen’s Park and Ottawa to cap their contributions at a fixed value for municipal projects, although Ontario is happy to quote its own projects with a base price plus an unspecified allowance for inflation. This allows the province to low-ball its cost estimates by quoting 2020 work in 2010 dollars. Capping contributions is done specifically to avoid scope creep where municipal plans expand by spending “thirty-three cent dollars”. For example, all of the cost overrun on the Vaughan extension has been funded by Toronto and York Region under their cost sharing agreement with no extra money coming from other levels of government.

A provincial commitment to paying the city’s share of the SSE is like writing a blank cheque so that any design problem can be solved just by sending the bill to Uncle Patrick up at the Pink Palace.

As for the LRT line to UTSC, this was originally part of the consolidated “plan” for Scarborough transit, the deal that convinced subway opponents to buy in because the LRT sweetened the pot. All the money, of course, is now dedicated to the subway extension. It is unclear just what the platform means by a “significant contribution” from Toronto, nor where the remainder might come from for this project.

Call on the Federal Government to match the new provincial subway funding commitment. [p. 54]

Yes. Of course. It’s an Ontario program but someone else should help to pay. A nice 50-50 split to spread the load around just as some federal programs like PTIF assume that others will help to pick up the bill. Given that the Tories’ “commitment” is rather small (especially once the SSE takes its share), Ottawa should have little problem matching it. The real problem will be waiting to see whether any of the projects advances far enough to draw on funding from any government.

Make Ontario’s transit systems more customer friendly, starting with free, reliable, consistent WIFI on GO Trains. [p. 54]

The text accompanying this bullet states:

… customer service levels on the GO train lines are not up to par. The government should focus on getting transit built, but it should also focus on making commuting a better experience.

When I read “promises” like this, I have to wonder how they get into platforms, and whether every post-it note from policy conferences simply was swept up from the floor. Without question, there are customer service and friendliness issues at Ontario’s transit systems (plural), but WIFI on GO is hardly the place to begin addressing this. At no point does the platform address any increase in service beyond that already in the GO RER plans, nor is there any “commitment” to improved funding to encourage the buildup of local transit on which all of these new GO services will depend for “last mile” access.

Make Ontario’s transit systems more customer friendly, by harmonizing fares where possible, allowing for online ticket purchases for GO services, and by ensuring all facilities accept the same forms of payment. [p. 54]

More “customer friendliness” including fare “harmonization”, although there is no description of just what this might mean. Online ticket purchases are already possible with Presto, and that system is used in much of the GTHA thanks to the heavy hand of Queen’s Park. “Forms of payment” is a rather broad term that takes us all the way from the simplest of Smart cards up to bank cards and mobile apps. The real issue with “ticketing” is a harmonized back end system that can handle multiple ways a rider might identify themselves and charge rides to their account. This item has the feel of a platform written by someone who rarely uses transit.

Fulfill the existing commitments to complete the environmental assessment for the Southwestern Ontario High Speed Rail project. [p. 54]

That and a few billion will get you a somewhat faster train to London and beyond, but don’t hold your breath. The High Speed Rail project (and a kindred boondoggle, the Hydrogen Train) are great exercises in appearing to be doing something while “committing” to schemes that are either unaffordable or technologically immature. This “commitment” simply avoids the Tories looking like they oppose HSR without actually making any plans to built it.

A much more useful platform, from any party, would be a wider discussion of passenger rail and bus services, and not just in southern Ontario. However, the Tories have written off transit in all but a few markets.

The next section of the platform is entitled “Change that works for Drivers”, and it is a screed against the evils inflicted on motorists by the Wynne government. Oddly, it is less than half the length of the transit section, although clearly the Tories are playing to the idea that too much attention goes to transit riders and projects.

Overall, the PCPO platform share with all such documents a certain lack of editorial rigour having been pieced together from a variety of proposals originating in multiple policy conferences. Some were accepted, some were modified and some were rejected – the result has a stitched-together feel and an assumption that most people will only read the sections they care about. Such is political life. The “money” platform is always key and, as usual, voters will be bribed from their own pocketbooks.

How much of the transit platform will actually be implemented once the complexities and costs become evident? That is quite another question.

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Selective History Colours Transit Commentary

In a recent column in the Toronto Sun, Gordon Chong advances the argument that transit developments are too much about politics without enough professional planning.

The politics of transportation, published Saturday March 4, 2017

Up to that point, he and I agree, but our analysis of the situation quickly differs. Chong writes of decisions that were influenced by political considerations. He uses the Wynne flip-flop on support for tolls, and the ongoing question of how much the Scarborough Subway will cost, as jumping-off points, but then lists:

  • Cancellation of the Spadina Expressway by Bill Davis in 1971
  • The TTC/City decision to reverse plans to eliminate streetcars in 1972
  • The current emphasis of reimagining King Street rather then concentrating  on a Queen Street subway

Chong is acerbic, to put it mildly, in his remarks about Davis and the Spadina calling it

One of the most egregious examples of political self-interest and, some would say, spinelessness in transportation planning …

He goes on to say that stopping Spadina was important:

Holding the downtown riding, where the Spadina Expressway was deeply unpopular, with a tough, capable and popular Jewish cabinet minister was important to the Conservatives.

It is amusing to think how readers would react if some other group were the target of Chong’s ire, especially considering the role of the Shiner family in fighting for the expressway. Regardless of how one feels about the issue, it is the planning merits that should be debated.

Citing former Transportation Commissioner Sam Cass, certainly the “black hat” of the expressway battles, Chong argues for “balanced” road and transit networks. Nobody has ever been able to define just what should measure this so-called balance, and cynics among us translate the term as “an expressway for me, transit for everyone else”. Toronto is about to spend $1 billion to maintain that sort of “balance” with the Gardiner East rebuild project.

Chong goes on to talk about how the Spadina would have provided relief from the northwest into downtown instead of the current status, a “virtual parking lot”. He ignores the effect the expressway would have had on the city. Unlike the DVP which was built through an unpopulated area, the Spadina would have torn through established neighbourhoods setting the stage for a Crosstown expressway parallel to the CPR tracks at Dupont, and an eventual extension south to the Gardiner. The renaissance of downtown’s west side could not have happened with an expressway in place.

Relief and the Queen Street subway? Yes, there was another transportation plan on the books in the 1960s, and it was a Queen Subway that would have turned north to Don Mills and Eglinton, what we now call the “Downtown Relief Line”. That didn’t get built either thanks to a shift in attention from the downtown to suburban rapid transit lines.

As for the streetcars:

Another misguided political decision occurred when the Toronto Transit Commission’s Streetcar Elimination Program was stopped in its tracks by an alliance of local citizens and aldermen (now councillors) delaying the sensible transition to subways and buses capable of maneuvering more easily in traffic.

Unfortunately, the streetcar lovers prevailed and motorists are now stuck behind slow moving and frequently disabled streetcars and LRTs in the downtown core.

Chong has been beating this drum for years, and he forgets that the subway to which streetcars might have “transitioned” has never been built. I was part of the group who fought to retain streetcars, and our argument then as now was that the routes streetcars serve require higher capacity that would be difficult to provide with buses. In the early 1970s, the TTC ran almost twice as much service on most streetcar routes as it does today, and the problem with a shortage of vehicles is not a recent one. Ever since the 1990s recession when ridership fell and the TTC was able to cut back on the size of the fleet, there have been almost no improvements in streetcar service. A fleet well beyond its design life limps along attempting to provide service.

Buying more cars is long, long overdue, especially now that the near-downtown areas served by these routes are starting to redevelop. King Street is the most pronounced example, but more residents and potential transit riders are coming to the other routes even though the TTC has no way of providing better service. Bombardier’s glacial delivery rate for new streetcars is only the latest of problems, but the TTC’s inaction on buying more streetcars predates that order.

Keeping the streetcars was not just a matter for the existing network, but for suburban expansion, something that would have been ruinously expensive with subways back in the 70s and 80s, let alone today. But Queen’s Park preferred its high tech trains (now known as the SRT), and the promise of inexpensive suburban expansion evaporated with them.

Suburban transit in Toronto has been badly served by a succession of administrations going back to pre-amalgamation days. In 1990, then Premier David Peterson announced a “network” of rapid transit lines amounting to “a chicken in every pot” planning. This included a Malvern extension of the SRT, a Sheppard Subway from Yonge to STC, a Yonge/Spadina loop subway via Steeles, an Eglinton West subway from the Spadina line out to the Airport, a Bloor subway extension to Sherway, and a Waterfront LRT to southern Etobicoke. The first the TTC heard of this plan was when the Premier announced it.

Peterson lost the election, but the Rae government, looking for make-work projects in the face of a recession, kept the Sheppard and Eglinton projects alive, although the latter didn’t get far, and was killed off by Mike Harris five years later. The only part of the Waterfront line built was the new connection via Spadina and Queen’s Quay into Union Station. (The Spadina streetcar and the Harbourfront connection to Bathurst came later.) The Sheppard line survived the Harris regime only because he needed Mel Lastman’s political support for amalgamation, and that subway was part of the deal.

By 2007, David Miller proposed the Transit City LRT network with the intention of bringing better transit to routes that were not all aimed at downtown Toronto. The lines served the city’s “priority neighbourhoods”, not necessarily locations where civic egos dictated prestige transit lines. That network was sabotaged first by Premier Dalton McGuinty’s cutbacks in transit support, and later by Rob Ford’s visceral hatred of any plan that had Miller’s name on it, not to mention his loathing for streetcars.

LRT (as streetcars on some degree of reserved right-of-way are known) is used in hundreds of cities around the world, and two substantial networks in Calgary and Edmonton are the core of their respective transit system. But none of that matters to the subway boosters in Toronto.

Chong argues for both a Queen subway and a Relief Line, but presents this as an alternative rather than as a complement to the streetcar service on King.

Now, city council is considering a King Street traffic mitigation plan giving priority to streetcars and pedestrians over cars, when it should be looking at Queen Street and how to complete the planned subway along it, linking it with the long-awaited downtown relief line.

They are two completely separate projects, especially considering we are unlikely to see a DRL until the early 2030s at best. Meanwhile, King needs substantially improved transit service with larger streetcars and priority for transit movements over cars.

The Relief Line suffers, as we have repeatedly seen, by its characterization as “Downtown” by those who would exploit suburban feelings of transit inequity. Politicians prefer to play to their voters with inaccuracies and slurs, always implying that “someone else” is getting what their voters deserve.

Finally, Chong puts in a plug for the Sheppard West subway connection.

There are many other examples of short-term thinking and aborted transit plans requiring a 50- to 100-year vision, such as completing the Sheppard subway.

The Sheppard connection from Yonge to Downsview was one of two options before Council, and it was in direct competition with the line to York University. That route, and the possible further extension to Vaughan, had better political connections, and a higher likely demand. The subway ends today at Downsview (soon to be renamed Sheppard West) because that was common to the two possible routes. It was the only extension Council could agree on. But now, integration of a Sheppard service with the Spadina line is impossible due to mixed train lengths and incompatible headways on the routes. At best there would be a transfer between the lines.

Political intervention in transit planning? Certainly, but this goes well beyond the few battles Chong trots out. Transit battles have led to the bizarre combination of paralysis, the inability to actually build, and intense pressure to build specific projects with high political profile, one that has been artificially inflated by populist rhetoric, not by good planning.

Why write an article about an opinion piece in the Sun by a has-been politician? Simple. Gordon Chong is a Tory, and he was both Vice-Chair of the TTC, and Chair of the predecessor agency to Metrolinx. He can be expected to lobby for some position of influence over Toronto’s transit plans if Patrick Brown’s PCs take control at Queen’s Park. His selective view of history is something we can do without.

Toronto and the GTHA have major transit and transportation issues for any government after the 2018 election. Fighting old battles on long-expired pretenses is no way to plan the city.