Urban Affairs

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Forged in Steel

Over the past week, CBC’s Metro Morning looked at the relationship between Toronto and its streetcars, its transit system and the Provincial GO/Metrolinx system.

On Monday, Nov. 22, Matt Galloway spoke with a retired streetcar operator about the problems of sharing the road.

Mary Wiens’ series began on Nov. 23:

  1. Should we get rid of streetcars?
  2. What will the new streetcar fleet bring us?
  3. Crusty old engineer Ed Levy talks about a city that’s great at doing studies, but not so good at building.
  4. Leslie Woo talks about the relationship between Metrolinx and the TTC, briefly mentioning Transit City, but says nothing definitive (this episode will be available sometime on Nov. 26)

Little in these pieces will be new to regular readers here, but I wanted to alert those who don’t listen to Metro Morning (or are outside of its territory) of how Toronto’s top-rated morning show is handling this issue.

Streetcar routes are on the front line of a much bigger problem of improving transit service.  At a time when the political winds are shifting behind those who drive, and for whom transit is a necessary but expensive service used by others, the evolution of support for real transit improvements will be interesting to watch.

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Rejigging Transit City

The entire purpose of this post is to hold comments dealing with possible alternate transit plans that were originally left in the thread “Why I’m Voting For George”.  That thread is becoming polluted with issues that are far from the mayoral campaign, and I will move all related comments to this new stub.

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Why I’m Voting For George

On September 25, 2009, David Miller announced that he would not seek a third term in office leaving many, including me, in a state of shock and mourning for the incomplete work of his Mayoralty.

TTC Chair Adam Giambrone picked up the torch, but his campaign flickered out a few months later thanks to a personal scandal.  At issue was not his love life, but how he handled the revelations.  His apparent treatment of his public partner as an election prop raised serious questions about integrity and trust.  The final blow was his incomplete withdrawal speech where page two, the vital end of the statement, had to be read by his aide Kevin Beaulieu.

Enter Joe Pantalone, Deputy Mayor and 30-year Council veteran, as the man who would carry on the Miller legacy.  More about Joe later.

Miller’s departure opened the race to many hopefuls who wouldn’t run against “his blondness”, but were happy to contest an election against others.  Fairly quickly, the frontrunners emerged.

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Vital Signs 2010

Today the Toronto Community Foundation released its “Vital Signs” report for 2010.

The report reviews many aspects of Toronto’s economy using that word broadly — hard services like transportation, the benefits of environmental and cultural initiatives, the challenges faced by a community diverse in origins and income.  This report will be the framework for a Mayoral candidates’ debate tonight (October 5) at the Glenn Gould Studio in the CBC Broadcasting Centre on Front Street.  This will go live-to-air on Radio 1 at 7:30 pm.

The debate will have three major themes: incorporating newcomers to the city, a vision for transit and the need for a Mayor with a global view.

Vital Signs includes observations about transit and transportation:

  • Weekday vehicle traffic entering Toronto has grown by 56% from 1985 to 2006.  This is measured at the city boundary (the outer edge of the 416).  However, from similar sources we know that there has been almost no change in the number of vehicles entering the core area.  All of the growth is in the suburbs where land use favours car trips and transit has not kept up with the growth in demand.  This is precisely the area where a substantial number of lower-paid jobs are located and where poorer families live.
  • Toronto “ranks last” in congestion with the longest average commute time of major cities.  This statement has been challenged before on the grounds that the methodology and information are inconsistent from city to city, but without question Toronto’s sprawl and low transit share (on a regional level) are major problems.
  • Although several revenue sources have been proposed to generate the billions of dollars needed annually to construct and operate an extensive transit network, the commitment from Queen’s Park is lukewarm.  “… the current level of funding requires postponing (perhaps indefinitely) a planned 22.5 km of track and 25 stations that would serve some of Toronto’s poorest neighbourhoods, and delays construction of four other major projects by several years.”
  • Transit fares are very high in Toronto relative to other cities because of the comparatively low rate of subsidy.
  • Growth in the transit system has been almost nil while population and potential demand for transit soared.

Vital Signs contains much other information reported previously, but consolidated here in one document.  Whether our mayors-to-be will address the information, or simply trot out their tired campaign speeches remains to be seen.

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Has Transit Short-Changed Toronto?

Toronto’s election campaign has produced two real stinkers in the Mayoralty race.  Rob Ford wants a few subway extensions, elimination of streetcars and everyone else left to buses.  Rocco Rossi would sell Toronto Hydro, use the supposed proceeds to build subways, and last but not least, extend the Spadina Expressway via a tunnel to downtown.

I will not waste space on critiques of these plans.  The proposition that subways will solve every problem has been discussed at length here and doesn’t need yet another round.  The idea of an expressway tunnel is so outlandish, so contrary to four decades of city planning, so much an attack on the City of Toronto, so unworthy of one who would be Mayor, that it deserves only contempt.

However, these ideas come from somewhere.  “Out there” the pollsters must say there is a gold mine of resentment by those who drive, and by those who would drive given half a chance.  That translates to support for anyone who wants all transit plans to take a back seat to right-thinking, road-oriented policies.  How, in a city that considers itself a progressive, pro-transit 21st century metropolis, is this possible?

The origins lie decades ago, even before the Spadina Expressway was stopped by then Premier Davis.

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Revisiting The Waterfront

Toronto’s election is now in full swing.  Testy candidates fling mud and announce what passes for platforms.

On the transit front, the three big debates seem to be how many subways can fit within a single announcement, and how much transit service will remain after a review of the so-called fiscal irresponsibility at the TTC.  And, o yes, what to do about our streetcars.

One big topic everyone has missed in all of the debates and counter-claims is transit to the waterfront.  Consider the land from east of the Don to the west end of Exhibition Place, not to mention the long-term potential of southern Etobicoke and Scarborough.  The room for development dwarfs what is now “downtown” Toronto.  What will we build there?  How will people move around?  Will we have downtown densities with suburban transit?  Will we invest in the waterfront and show that “Transit First” is more than a slogan?

Toronto is a “city of neighbourhoods”, a fine motto, and with luck the new waterfront communities will extend the fine-grained street life we see in the “old” city including its already redeveloped areas like the “two Kings” and the St. Lawrence.  Waterfront Toronto’s plans for the water’s edge and for a totally redesigned, transit, cyclist and pedestrian focussed Queen’s Quay will be wonderful if we pull it off, if the money doesn’t run out, if the will to build streets for people, not for cars, survives the coming election.

So far, there are few stirring speeches, visions for our future lakefront, commitments to see beyond individual developments to an overall design.  A review of the waterfront lands is a worthwhile topic for a new article and, no doubt, a robust discussion.

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Rob Ford Wants a Few Subways, But Mainly Buses (Updated)

Updated September 9, 2010 at 10:15pm: The Toronto Sun cites Rob Ford’s “transit policy guru” Mark Towhey in a followup article to the Ford transit platform.  Oddly enough, Towhey’s own blog post, an inaccurate rant about the TTC from February 2010, is still online even though Ford’s people disowned the article.

Toronto deserves an explanation of just what Rob Ford’s real agenda is, and to what extent it is driven by someone who has an even more radical view of what would happen to transit in this city than candidate Ford’s own official position.

The original post from September 8 at 4:00 pm follows here.

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Thoughts From Down Under

Jarrett Walker has a few good articles on his website, humantransit.org, that should be required reading for our friends at Metrolinx, among other places.

In What Does Transit Do About Traffic Congestion, he argues that the last claim that should be made for transit is that it will reduce congestion.  Instead, the benefits of a transit-oriented city show up in economic activity, mobility and other benefits.

There is, however, a caveat lurking here.  Dense cities with good transit (or even cities with a good potential for better transit) don’t appear out of thin air.  Once we build sprawl, then the benefits and effects of transit seen in the older, denser cities will not appear overnight even if we run the most intensive BRT, LRT or subway network through auto-oriented suburbs.  Transit can make things better, but it will not reverse the damage and inevitable congestion of decades of bad planning.

By the way, be sure to read the comments.  If you think the threads on this site get out of hand, just try Walker’s blog.  You will see some very intelligent point-counterpoint discussion in some threads.

In If On-Time Performance is 96%, Why Am I Always Late?, Walker discusses the conundrum that transit agencies talk a great line for being on time, but the actual experience of users is much, much, much worse.  Both GO Transit and TTC have a love for patting themselves on the back (although rarely each other’s), and talking about their improvements in on-time performance.

So much of this is relative to the metrics used (how late can a train or streetcar be and still be “on time”) and the lack of weighting of the results to reflect the number of passengers affected by on time (or not) service.  Even in the off-peak, gaps of two scheduled headways or more are common on downtown routes and this drives riders away.  At least with NextBus, it is now possible to know with certainty that there is no car just around the bend out of sight, and if there is, it’s going in the opposite direction.

GO Transit now has schedules that reflect the real world in which they operate, but persists in reporting all-day on-time figures rather than breaking these out to show service quality when most people ride the system.

Finally, in Strasbourg:  You Can’t Take It Home With You, we get a loving overview of both the city and its tram system, part of the renaissance of LRT in France.  The real issues come at the end where we learn about the major changes in street space usage and restrictions on cars that accompanied the installation of tram lines in this very old city.  The moral, applicable to anyone comparing transit systems, is to look beyond just the technology and the scenery, and understand how and why the city streets work (or don’t) as they do.

Any moves to improve “congestion” in Toronto must start with a fundamental debate about what the streets are for, and which existing uses must be reduced (and how) in order to make room for what’s left over.  Ironically, we focus these debates on the heart of downtown, a comparatively small area, when the real problems of transit’s competitiveness and congestion lie out in the suburbs.

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Front Street Redesign Open House (Updated)

The display panels from the Front Street Redesign Project Open House are now available online at the project website.  Here is an overview together with my comments.

The introduction at page 4 shows the overall process and also reveals a major flaw.  We have reached the point of selecting a “preferred alternative” on which all future detailed design and discussion will be based, but I am not convinced that only a single option should be carried forward.  I am quite certain that feedback from many regular users of this area — pedestrians, businesses, transportation service operators, cyclists, even a few motorists — will suggest that more than one option has its advantages.  At this point, we don’t have enough information to pick one, and doing so risks compromising the project’s credibility when it comes before the new, 2011 Council for further approvals.

The objectives listed on page 6 include:

  • Accommodate increased development and passenger growth associated with Union Station, and …
  • Prioritize the role of pedestrian activity.

However, as we will see later, much analysis reflects the need to accommodate auto traffic even though pedestrian volumes will more than double in coming decades.  The premise should be turned on its head — what design is needed to handle the pedestrians, and what, if anything, is left over for other uses.  Some quite attractive pedestrian areas from other cities are shown on page 7, but these are notably devoid of traffic on anywhere near the level now on Front Street.

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Neighbourhood Maps Return! Riders Still Somewhat Mystified.

Last September, I reported on the travesty of new “area maps” for the streets around subway stations.  They were so hopelessly inaccurate that an excellent Toronto trivia contest could have been held to spot all of the errors.  In very short order, they vanished.  (It’s amazing how quickly the TTC can move when it’s embarrassed.)

Joe Clark reports that a new area map has just appeared at Christie Station and has posted photos on Flickr.

Have a look.  What is missing?  The TTC routes serving the area!  There’s a nice green line showing the subway, and the stations are marked, but no surface routes.  Yes, riders can look at the big map right next-door to see the local routes, but it wouldn’t hurt to have them on the area maps too.

Also missing-in-action is the alternate entrance at Bathurst/Markham.

The next question for trivia seekers is this:  will the TTC replace the even older generation of local maps which can be found in selected locations around the system?  These missed the first wave of really inaccurate updates, and were not removed in the great purge.  Does the TTC even know they exist, and will they update them with brand new maps?