A discussion sprang up in another thread about the cost of commuting by auto. In order to keep this separate from the original article (on Spadina trackwork), this item has been created as a “stub” to own those off-topic comments.
Urban Affairs
Tim Hudak Has A Plan (Updated)
Updated October 16, 2012 at 8:30 pm:
The Toronto Star reports that Tim Hudak has pledged to redirect all of the money earmarked for a Toronto LRT network to subway construction if he is elected Premier. This is a truly bizarre stance for someone who claims to be trying to save Ontario money when we consider that almost none of the pledged $8-billion plus has actually been spent or committed, and this is all net new money, new borrowing Ontario will have to undertake.
Hudak was playing to his audience of Ford-friendly councillors who do not have control of Council on the transit file, but who seem to be attempting an end run around Council by having Queen’s Park support his position unilaterally. Anyone who thinks they will get a full-blown Eglinton subway, and a Sheppard line (STC to Downsview) and a BD extension to the Scarborough Town Centre for these funds is dreaming. Sadly, however, Toronto has a bad habit of wanting more than it can afford especially when someone else will foot the bill.
If I try to put myself in a conservative mindset (and that’s with a small “c”), I would be asking how much of that $8b actually needs to be spent at all, or spent on transit rather than some other portfolio. That would be a common sense thing to do, the kind of approach we might expect from Mike Harris. Alas, “common sense” also includes buying off local politicians by keeping their pet subway projects alive.
But no, Tim Hudak wants to spend $8b he doesn’t have on overbuilding a partial subway network apparently because he thinks this will play well to Ford’s base. He might want to think about the uproar over paltry hundreds of millions wasted on shifting power plants out of Liberal ridings and consider whether the lure of the megaprojects has clouded his vision.
Of course, all this depends on “affordability” which is tied to the end of the provincial deficit, and so Hudak will likely never have to borrow that $8b whatever he might spend it on. All he will achieve is even more delay in building any transit for Toronto.
Thanks to the Liberals’ tinkering with project schedules and love for P3 implementation, little work will actually be tendered by the time the government falls sometime in 2013. Cancelling the Finch and Sheppard LRT lines will be child’s play, and the SRT upgrade will probably morph into an unbuilt subway while the SRT lies at death’s door.
Toronto Council needs to wake up and remind Mr. Hudak that the Mayor does not speak for the City. Does Hudak even care, or is he just giving his pal a chance to say “screw you” to his opponents?
How Network Structure Matters — The Birth of the Grid in Toronto
Robert Wightman left an interesting comment that begins by linking to Jarrett Walker’s piece on Portland’s 30th anniversary of their grid-based transit network.
Toronto’s grid is almost a half-century old. With it we avoided having the 60’s growth turn into the rambling sort of suburban transit system found so often in the 905. Here is Robert’s comment:
Jarrett Walker has an interesting article on his web site about the 30th anniversary of the grid in Portland. Next September is the 50th anniversary of the TTC’s implementation of the suburban grid system in the then OUTER REACHES OF Toronto. Before that date if you wanted to go from Lawrence and Warden TO DON MILLS AND LAWRENCE you took a bus (Pharmacy IIRC) to Luttrell Loop, the Bloor car to Pape and the Don Mills Bus to Lawrence. After that date is was a straight 10 to 12 minute ride instead of a 90 minutes sightseeing tour of Scarborough, Toronto, Leaside and North York.
I will bet that are not many at the TTC who realize what a monumental effect that decision had on the growth of transit usage in Toronto, especially the suburbs. This anniversary should not be forgotten and the people who were responsible should be honoured, probably posthumously unfortunately. The foresight and courage of these people to take a major risk and change all the suburban bus routes to form a cross city grid is a major factor in the TTC’s current success.
I have PDF files of the early 1963 and late ’63 ride guides and the difference in coverage is amazing. What is also noticeable IIRC is that the Sheppard bus ran from Dufferin to Warden or Kennedy, the Finch bus from Dufferin to Leslie or Don Mills. Most of the outer 416 was still farmland.
Maybe Steve could start a new thread on this topic and anyone who has any relevant information could add to it. The TTC should also play up this anniversary as it was a major game changer in Toronto and the planning should be remembered.
The grid is, of course, absolute poison to those who believe a transit system’s job is to take them from their front door radially to the subway system. Even with our grid, the network is still very subway-centric looking at service quality for anyone who wants to travel around the suburbs.
Looking Back: Services to the CNE
With all the recent talk about Ontario Place, and with Exhibition season almost upon us, I thought this would be a good excuse for photos of streetcar services to the Ex. Decades ago, the CNE raised much bigger crowds and there was a time it really was a showcase, an “exhibition”. I remember when the “Better Living Centre” was brand new, and its intent was to give fairgoers a look at all that was new and exciting in household goods. The Internet didn’t exist yet, and the phenomenon of the shopping mall full of goods manufactured anywhere but here was in its infancy.
The TTC ran many streetcar services into the Ex over the years, and parades of cars would leave the grounds following the evening fireworks. (Transit Toronto has a short history of the CNE services on its website.)
The photos here have been chosen not just for the fact that cars might be operating on Exhibition routes, but also for interesting details about what is, or is not, still in the city today. Continue reading
So You Want To Be A Transit Commissioner (Update 2)
Updated June 21, 2012 at 7:15 pm
Two media reports indicate that the City Clerk has taken umbrage at comments in this article, and I feel compelled to reply. As a general note, my quarrel was primarily with the TTC’s representative, not with the Clerk’s staff.
From Inside Toronto:
Recent information sessions held for aspiring civilian TTC commissioners were always intended as informal drop-in sessions rather than organized meetings, said a spokesperson for the city on Wednesday.
Martin Herzog characterized the four sessions, two of which took place Tuesday in Scarborough and North York, as an opportunity for individuals interested in applying to join the TTC board to get further information about the application process.
Herzog was responding to criticism that emerged this week on how the sessions were run.
“The sessions were never designed to be meetings with formal presentations,” said Herzog, the city’s acting manager for governance structures and corporate performance. “There was no formula for this.”
And later:
Online criticism of the information sessions is completely inaccurate, said Herzog.
“There’s some stuff trickling around full of factual errors,” he said.
There are no “factual errors” in my article, and methinks the Clerk doth protest too much. Whether it was the original intent or not, Monday’s “drop in” turned into a 90-minute Q&A with the TTC’s Vince Rodo that had no prepared content, but lots of remarks that left a bad taste in my mouth particularly when coupled with earlier comments from a member of Council who sits on the Civic Appointments Committee.
As I reported, the Clerk’s Office had prepared a briefing package for those who attended and it contained a great deal of well-organized material culled from the City’s website.
From NOW:
Joe Borowiec of the city manager’s office dismisses the suggestion the external headhunting process has made outreach to the general public redundant. He says Munro misunderstood the intent of the public sessions, and that they were intended to be drop-in sessions rather than formal meetings.
Borowiec says that the city manager’s office is required to open the process to the public and insists that that all applications will be taken seriously.
“There’s no reason why someone who walks in off the street and picks up a form would not be a successful applicant,” Borowiec says. “We’re not looking to limit it to only corporate directors. We’re looking to reach out and communicate with anybody and everybody out there because we don’t know where those possible candidates are.”
That’s not what Rodo (the seeker of “Barons of industry”) said, and it’s not what the specifications for the job state. If Council actually intends director-level experience as a “nice to have”, not a “must have”, then they need to say that explicitly in the job ad.
Meanwhile, in answer to all who have asked, I will not be applying. Becoming a Commissioner would severely compromise my ability to comment independently and to interact with various agencies and my now-peers in the journalistic/blogging community. Much more can be achieved as an independent external voice.
Looking Back: Moving House on a Grand Scale
March 31, 1972, brought an unusual sight to downtown Toronto. An 1822 house, originally the home of Sir William Campbell, sixth Chief Justice of Upper Canada, moved from Adelaide and Frederick Streets in the old Town of York to its current site at Queen and University. It was the Town’s oldest remaining building. (Although The Grange behind the Art Gallery on Dundas Street dates from 1817, it was built out in the countryside, far from the few blocks of the original town.) Campbell House sat in an area now booming with condo development and rejuvenated warehouses, but then a run-down district where an old house just got in the way of a parking lot expansion.
As I write this, we are celebrating Victoria Day weekend. Victoria herself was only 3 when Campbell House was built.
Moving the house was quite a challenge as the following photographs show.
Looking back at these pictures, I was amazed at how close the crowd following the move was to the building. In these days of Health & Safety Officers (with liability lawyers in close pursuit), the crowd would be kept back for blocks.
A Look Back: Rail Grinder W28
There was a time when the TTC had a fleet of surface work cars: rail grinders, flat cars, cranes, a sand car, snow ploughs and sweepers. They’re all gone (a few survive in museums), and maintenance of the surface system uses much more prosaic vehicles.
My favourite was W28, originally Toronto Civic Railway 57, that operated as a rail grinder from 1955 until it was replaced with a PCC rail-grinding train in 1976.
As an early Easter gift to readers, here is a photo gallery of W28 from 1967-8.
Where Should We Go From Here?
Toronto Council’s vote to reconstitute the Toronto Transit Commission may give the new board a better political balance and break Mayor Ford’s stranglehold on transit policy, but that is only the beginning of the work facing our city.
First up will be the March 21 vote on the Sheppard East subway-vs-LRT issue. Already, the Ford camp claims that it almost has the votes needed to spike the LRT scheme and forge ahead with subway plans. Even if LRT prevails, a close margin could provide incentive for attempts to derail the project. The “new” TTC will be in a tenuous position if the momentum of the governance vote does not continue through to the choice of technology.
The future of the TTC, its board and of transit in Toronto is much bigger than the Sheppard decision. We have a “new” board, and later in 2012 it will grow by the addition of four “citizen” members. What should this board be doing?
44 Mandates Count For More Than 1
Updated March 10, 2012 at 11:30pm: The motions and votes by Council on this matter are now available on the City’s website. The linked report first shows the consolidated effect of the motions. This is followed by all of the detail of what various Councillors proposed and the votes on each item.
The original article from March 6, 2012 follows the break.
TTC Coup Planned for March 5 Council Meeting (Updated)
Updated Mar. 2, 2012 at 8:45pm: It now appears that rather than proposing a slate of potential new Commissioners, the process will be to have open nominations from the floor and an election.
The Globe and Mail’s Kelly Grant reports that there will be a move by TTC Chair Karen Stintz and her supporters to unseat the Gang of Five responsible for the firing of Gary Webster at next week’s Council Meeting.
Updated: Tess Kalinowski and Paul Maloney from the Star weigh in on the story.
The original “compromise” allegedly worked out with Mayor Ford for an updated TTC had been for an 11-member board with 5 “citizen” members and 6 Councillors, one of whom would be appointed as Chair by Council. Any upheaval would wait until June after the choice of citizen members was completed.
Recent news from the Mayor, his brother Doug, and other supporters shows that “compromise” is the last word on their mind when it comes to transit planning. In quick succession, recent days brought us proposals for new taxes and fees, development charges, a casino, a lottery and even a new set of toll expressways to allow Doug to get downtown without congestion. Each of these schemes has been more outrageous, ill-considered, hare-brained and short-lived as its predecessor.
Clearly, the Fords’ policy brains-trust is spinning out of control in a desperate attempt to find any way to bring credibility to a Sheppard Subway funding plan. A few Councillors are gullible enough (or still afraid enough of the Mayor) to go along with this charade, but we will see how all that works out at a special Council meeting of March 21.
Meanwhile, housecleaning now, not in June, is absolutely essential at the TTC to prevent the Commission from highjacking Council’s transit priorities.
Stintz now proposes to dissolve the existing Commission and replace it on an interim basis with seven Councillors. Four citizen members with transit expertise (not, I fervently hope, the political hacks such as Gordon Chong who once graced that board with the dubious value of their presence) will be added in June once the search process completes.
The proposed new Commission would include current Chair Stintz, former Vice-Chair Mihevc, current Vice-Chair Milczyn, current Commissioners Augimeri and Parker, plus Councillors de Baeremaeker and Colle. Only one of these, Milczyn, hails from the former Ford camp, and his position has been wavering.
Updated: Although the procedure now appears to be nominations and votes from the floor, we can expect that Council will divide into two camps, and that serious lobbying will occur for the handful of swing votes in the “mushy middle”.
Procedurally, this is possible because a report discussing the makeup of the Commission is on the March 5 agenda. Its original intent was to help Ford bolster his control of the board, but the timing has blown that scheme up in his face. If the left-centre group on Council succeeds in ripping the TTC from Ford’s control, we can be sure to see more moves to box in the Mayor and strip him of powers granted by Council.
A vote to replace the Commission will also be a straw vote on the future of the Sheppard LRT and of LRT plans in general because to lose the TTC will be a major political and strategic blow to Mayor Ford with more to come.
Some may argue that this will give him exactly the platform he needs for re-election (“they won’t let me fulfill the mandate you voters gave me”), but that argument will only play to Ford’s dwindling base. What Toronto, and any potential challenger to Ford, needs is a demonstration that Ford’s way is not the only option, and that the city can be a better place if run with a more progressive and collegial outlook at Council.
