Urban Affairs

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A War on Parking?

Toronto’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee plans to wrestle with the problem of congestion and illegal parking/stopping on downtown streets over the coming months.  Although there is a separate study of the core area, a more general problem is the occupancy of curb lanes by vehicles that should not be there:  parked cars and delivery vehicles.

That blocked curb lane is capacity free for the taking, but the “right to park” seems has been sacrosanct for decades.  A ticket here, a ticket there, but through infrequent enforcement and low fines, motorists, especially commercial ones, shrug off the cost.

In a report to be considered on January 4, 2012, city staff recommend a variety of actions that could fundamentally change the way Toronto uses its road space.

  1. Create new offences for parking, standing or stopping in prohibited areas during rush hour periods defined as 6:00 to 10:00 am and 3:00 to 7:00 pm.  The fine for these offences would be $150, and the amount would not be negotiable in court.  (This is in keeping with a new proposed city practice that establishes set fines a judge must impose for various municipal offences.)
  2. Increase the fine for stopping in a bike lane at any time to $150.
  3. Work with the Toronto Police Service to develop a co-ordinated enforcement strategy.

Current parking fines are $40, and for standing/stopping they are $60.

City staff argue that the problem is not a lack of regulation, but a lack of respect for traffic rules already in place.  Some locations could benefit from extending the “rush hour” beyond its current two-hour window, but scofflaws will still park where they should not and stronger incentives are required to deter them.

In the context of Toronto’s budget constraints, improved enforcement of existing laws is viewed as a potential financial drain.  Rigourous ticketing or, even better, towing, might reduce fine revenue to the point where city loses more money than it gains.  I am not making this up — that is actually the argument put forward by staff.  In effect, if we can’t make money by enforcing the laws, we shouldn’t try.  The benefit of freeing up road capacity is not considered at all.

Higher fines are attractive because they would be both a stronger deterrent and a better revenue source.  However, poor enforcement has always been a problem with Toronto’s traffic policing.  It is easier to send the parking squad out to ticket cars in the Entertainment District or in residential neighbourhoods than to enforce parking and stopping rules when and where traffic effects are severe.  If this attitude does not change, the higher fines will be of little benefit.

The report claims that:

Patrol of rush hour routes on all major arterial roads is standard practice through a highly visible uniform presence, and no statistical evidence suggests that the current level of enforcement is not appropriate.  However, an integrated approach in which current enforcement protocols are augmented with directed patrols including towing and public awareness campaigns to complement the new set fine establishment is a viable option to increase compliance.

Anyone who has seen major streets fouled by vehicles illegally occupying curb lanes knows well that the “current level of enforcement” is far from appropriate.  Indeed, if the current level were working, we would not be reading this report.  On one hand, the report appears to claim that everything is just fine today, but maybe we should try harder tomorrow.  This is hardly a call to action.

The report goes on to say that towing is “common practice”, but again routine observations suggest that the amount falls well below the level needed to strike fear into the hearts of motorists.

The biggest problem, of course, is with commercial vehicles.  A companion report proposes the creation of a new licence for commercial vehicles that would allow them to use some locations not otherwise available.  In effect, this would create a new class of loading space on streets for use only by commercial vehicles.  This class of space would not exist on any streets with bike lanes, and it would be available only outside of the rush hour periods.

That’s the gigantic loophole in the whole scheme.  Unless Toronto is prepared to go after the commercial users during rush hours with frequent ticketing and towing, the burden of this new scheme will fall on only a minority of drivers.  What will the average motorist think of being towed away and heavily fined when a Fedex truck blocks a major intersection with impunity?

The ban on loading areas where bike lanes exist creates two problems.  First, it will become a powerful new argument against the creation of such lanes in any areas with commercial uses that don’t have off-street parking.  Second, in locations explicitly designed to accommodate both loading and bike lanes (such as Roncesvalles Avenue), the ban would be nonsensical.

One option that was rejected was the use of a “Denver Boot” to lock a car in place.  Toronto Police take the position that “booting” would simply lock the traffic obstruction in place without achieving the goal of opening up the curb lane.  This is an odd stance considering the marginal effect that placing a ticket under the windshield wiper will have.  In either case, the goal is to deter people from parking illegally in the first place, and the stronger the penalty, the better the deterrent.  Either by booting or by towing, those who now regard tickets as part of their business expenses must face a much more severe penalty — the loss of their vehicle and its contents for a period of time.

Later in 2012, the Downtown Traffic Operational Study will begin to report on possible ways to improve traffic in the core including schemes such as one/two way options, longer periods for rush hour bans, turn restrictions and traffic signal changes.  This study does not have a webpage yet, and there is no information on its plans nor its public consultation efforts.

Enforcement of any new legal framework is essential, but the tone of the city’s report gives little hope that we would actually see a major change.  The debate at a very car-friendly Public Works Committee will be fascinating because the real issue here is between two sets of motorists.  Transit may benefit, but the larger question is to decide how roads will be used.

There is only so much road space.  We can use it to store vehicles or to move them.  If storage takes priority politically and economically, then congestion is an inevitable result.

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A Look Back: July 1967

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Danforth and Woodbine looking west.

No, it’s not an experimental train of air-electric multiple unit cars, and these are certainly not Bloor streetcars given that the subway had been open for over a year when this was taken.

Russell Carhouse had a pool of old PCCs it used, but there were more in the pool than would fit at Russell and the extras were stored at Danforth Carhouse.  From time to time, cars would be swapped from one location to another, and in this view the front car, 4270, is pulling a stored car along the Danforth enroute to Russell.  (The shorter connection via Coxwell was no longer available.  Cars took the long way around via Danforth, Main, Gerrard and Coxwell to get down to Queen.)

Note the old yellow and blue “Night” stop.

This corner and the vista to the west make an interesting comparison to the present day view on Google Street View.  Even today, the buildings are low rise all the way west, an excellent example of how a subway does not necessarily trigger or require high rise development.

The Royal Bank is still on the northwest corner, but Scotiabank has moved across the street to a new building where National Trust and Kresge’s used to be.  Everything else has changed hands, although the buildings are mostly the same.  Bowling alleys were common in the 60s, but they gradually disappeared.  Billiard halls were not the sort of place respectable teens could hang out.

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A Look Back: February 1966

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Bloor and Bathurst looking east.

The brand new subway will open in about one week, and the Bloor streetcar is about to vanish into history.  Much else in this photo would disappear as well.  The buildings are still there, but their use has completely changed.  The TD bank is now a coffee shop, Danforth Radio is no more, and the Midtown cinema is now the Bloor.

Street signs have changed a lot since the 60s.  Toronto outlawed the overhanging signs decades ago, and the few that remain are grandfathered.  Traffic regulations are spelled out rather than shown as graphics.  A demure “TTC Subway” sign with a small arrow directs passengers who might be looking for the Bloor car to the subway station just up Bathurst Street.

The hydro wiring is still in overhead box structures, and the classic Toronto acorn luminaires had yet to be replaced by sodium vapour lighting on higher poles.  There’s a phone booth on the sidewalk and a pre-Astral garbage bin.

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Whither the Port Lands? Waterfront Toronto Public Meeting

With all the brouhaha over the Port Lands, and the Fords’ failed coup d’état on the Waterfront, attention now shifts to actually “getting something done”.

The Port Lands cover a large area south and east of the mouth of the Don River that is comparable in size to downtown Toronto.  This is a huge opportunity for redevelopment, but also a huge chance to screw things up pretty much forever.

Do we want a boring, car-oriented suburb complete with megamall, or do we want a new neighbourhood that brings a 21st century twist on downtown living?

Will we redevelop the river mouth as a striking park, a signature piece for Toronto’s waterfront, or will it simply become Exhibition Place East complete with Ferris Wheel and monorail?

How will we move people to and from this area?  Will transit be an afterthought or, for once, will we actually invest in capacity and service before the new buildings go up?

Waterfront Toronto begins its public consultations on the future of the Port Lands on Monday December 12 between 6:30 and 9:00pm at the Toronto Central Library (Yonge north of Bloor) in the Bram & Bluma Appel Salon on the second floor.

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Moving People: Responses to Congestion (Updated)

Updated November 3, 2011:  Video, audio and the presentation materials from this event are now available.  I have added a few written comments to expand on my presentation deck.

On Tuesday evening, October 25, 2011, I gave a talk with Eric Miller as part of the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre series “Toronto In Question”.

Please visit the event page on the Cities Centre’s site for video, audio and powerpoints.

For those who want a smaller version, here is a pdf of my slide deck.

As a quick overview, and to expand on a few points that were left out of the talk, a quick runthrough of the slides follows the break below.

Continue reading →

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Three Platforms, Little Promise (Update 4)

Updated September 30, 2011 at 5:40pm:  Urban Toronto’s interview with Conservative transportation critic Frank Klees has now been posted.

Updated September 29, 2011 at 2:35pm:  Urban Toronto’s interview with NDP transportation critic Cheri DiNovo has now been posted.

Updated September 28, 2011 at 12:00nn: Urban Toronto will be posting interviews with the three parties about their transportation platforms.  The interview with Liberal Kathleen Wynne is now online.  I will link to the others as they appear.

The NDP has announced that they would commit to electrifying the Air Rail Link from opening day rather than implementing it as a diesel operation and converting later.  This is an ambitious plan, but it has the advantage of forcing GO Transit’s hand.  We hear a lot from Metrolinx about “if” they will electrify, but “when” is a target somewhere in the mists of the future.

Updated September 20, 2011 at 10:45pm:  The calculation of the effect of the NDP proposal has been revised to take into account additional revenue from new transit riding, presuming that this actually materializes in the face of constraints on service.

The original post from September 11 follows below.

Election time in Ontario brings out a fresh batch of promises from political parties, promises they hope will lure our support on voting day, promises that will inevitably be broken no matter who is elected.

Transportation is not at the top of anyone’s priority list in an era of bad economies.  The big ticket items (both for votes and for dollars) are health care, education and jobs.  Transit gets the leftovers if it is mentioned at all.  For many ridings, transit isn’t even an issue, if transit has any presence.

What would the three major parties bring us after October 6?

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No, We’re Not There Yet

Many recent reports and proposals talk about the problems of long commuting trips, of the futility of attempting to move quickly around our increasingly congested city.

Back on August 24, Statistics Canada published their commuting study based on 2010 data.  The study reviews not only comparative commuting times by mode, but also the attitudes of motorists to the transit alternative.

The average commuting time for all of Canada was 26 minutes, but this rises to 30 minutes for CMAs (“Census Metropolitan Areas” which are generally larger than actual municipalities) of 1-million or more population.  Toronto and Montreal average 33 and 31 minutes, but this doesn’t tell the entire story as any Toronto commuter will tell.  27% of Toronto commutes take over 45 minutes, and 29% are caught in traffic jams.

When the data are subdivided by car and transit, the transit trips take longer, and this difference is heightened in lower density areas.  That’s no surprise because low density areas tend to have poor transit service as a direct result of lower demand.  Waiting times are an important part of transit trips when service is poor, and this is compounded by any need to change between routes that may not directly serve all travel patterns.  The average transit commute in large CMAs is 44 minutes while the average car trip is 27 minutes.  The figures are even worse for Toronto.  Missing from this is any discussion of the length of the trip or the differences caused by trip location and density of demand.

Neither transit nor car users like traffic congestion, but the presence of rapid transit  networks means that some trips are congestion-free (even though they may be subject to transit delays that were not part of this study).  The proportion of commuters who were satisfied with their commute times is understandably high where these times are short and congestion is comparatively rare.  Transit riders put up with longer commute times better than car drivers, but those with short trips tended to be less happy with transit than motorists were with their cars.  This is easy to understand when one considers that a short transit trip is more likely to have a relatively large proportion of wait time, while at least some of the longer trips (notably commuter rail) allow the commuter to relax enroute.

The vast majority of motorists view public transit unfavourably, but this statistic is not broken down by region, let alone by sub-region where variations might be seen due to the availability and quality of the public transit option.

Media reaction to this report was quite predictable with stories about how bad Toronto’s commuting times are.  Less clear is the question of what, if anything, can be done about the situation.  Indeed, the most simplistic analysis might suggest that car trips are inherently faster and “better” than transit trips based on their average length.  This would completely mask the effect of averaging together trips over a wide variety of roads and transit lines and the cost, broadly speaking, of increasing capacity for either mode.

Continue reading →

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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”?

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Liberty Village Planning Studies

The City of Toronto has three planning studies underway that will affect Liberty Village, and they will hold a combined open house on March 1 for the next stage of the public consultation.

Dufferin Street Bridges

The south end of Dufferin Street has two bridges — one over the rail corridor, and one over the Gardiner Expressway.  Both are in need of replacement, and future plans require a new design.  This project had its first meeting last year, and now the City is back to discuss alternative schemes.

Projects related to this include expansion of the GO Lake Shore corridor, provision of clearance for electrification and connection of the streetcar system from Exhibition (East) Loop west to Dufferin.  The streetcar extension is part of the proposed Waterfront West LRT line, although it is far from clear whether any of the alignments shown on the drawings for the bridge project would actually be built.  The WWLRT is not exactly at the top of anyone’s list of transit projects, but whatever is decided for the new Dufferin bridges may preclude some of the WWLRT options.

New King-Liberty Pedestrian/Cyclist Link

The Georgetown rail corridor creates a long barrier between Strachan Avenue and the west end of the King Street underpass at Atlantic Avenue.  With the redevelopment of lands to the north, current and future plans for lands to the south, this barrier isolates the two neighbourhoods from each other.  Some crossings are now made illegally, but plans to increase the number of active tracks and the frequency of GO service will make this much more dangerous.

At the first open house last year, various alternatives were presented, and two of these were carried forward for detailed study.  The results will presented at the March 1 open house.

Liberty Village New Street

A new street is proposed along the south edge of Liberty Village from just west of Strachan Avenue to Dufferin Street.  This road would occupy what was originally planned to be the Front Street Extension, but as a purely local street.

The March 1 meeting will launch this project for comment.

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Let Them Ride Buses

In case anyone missed the latest word from City Hall, here is Mayor Ford talking about transit to Rexdale in today’s Globe:

“Eventually, I’m sure we can build the subways. It’s more expensive, but that’s what the people want. People in North York and Scarborough, they want that line connected to the Scarborough Town Centre. If I heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times.”

Even if that means cancelling or postponing indefinitely rapid transit in his own former ward of Etobicoke North?

“They have transit,” he laughed. “It sounds like we’re – we have transit. People get to the slots, they get to Woodbine racetrack, people get to Humber College. There are buses that run up there.

“Eventually, I’d like to have subways running through the whole city. But what we can afford realistically, right now, is just Sheppard, right?

People will wait a long time for their pet transit lines, and all those fine words about the importance of transit to Toronto’s economy are just so much hot air.

Cake, anyone?