Urban Affairs

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A Note to Would-Be Politicians

I have received a few comments from candidates for various offices.

Please note that I do not intend to post any of these unless they bear directly on the issue where they appear, and then are comments on the issue rather than advertisements for the candidate.

If you want to publish your candidacy to the world, get your own website, use Facebook and take your chances with whatever traffic you might achieve.

As and when major candidates publish transit policies, I will comment on them, but on my terms.

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The Challenge of Waterfront Geography

George Smitherman’s campaign has just released its platform for city services, including parks.  Buried in this document is the following:

George supports constructing the Waterfront LRT by 2015 which will enable Torontonians to get to Cherry/Clark beaches and enjoy themselves.

I hate to tell the campaign folks, but the Waterfront LRT ain’t going near Cherry Beach for a very, very long time.  The Cherry Street extension will run initially from King south to the rail corridor, and the Waterfront east line will go from Union to Parliament.  Both of these will be joined up as part of the Lower Don Lands revitalization that restructures many roads and improves connections under the railway.

Much, much later, the Port Lands service will come in, but it won’t likely make it to Cherry Beach for a few decades, if ever.

Meanwhile, the Waterfront West line is in Transit City limbo with no funding, and an implementation date off in the late 2020s.  The route will not, if the TTC has its way, serve the western beach, but will muscle its way through the Queen and Roncesvalles intersection, and proceed out via The Queensway.  The route along Lake Shore to Colbourne Lodge Road is so much better, but that’s a “Miller” plan and therefore not likely to be found in Smitherman’s platform.

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Rob Ford Campaign Disavows Policy Advisor’s Transit Blog

The Toronto Star reported today that an article (Only a Radical Approach Will Fix Toronto’s Transit Woes) written by Rob Ford’s Director of Policy, Mark Towhey, back in February does not represent the Ford campaign’s position on transit.

For the record, I attempted to get the campaign to react to this article by writing to the ever chatty candidate on June 17, but heard nothing in return.  The Star was a bit luckier.  Ford and Towhey don’t have much use for the media, or anyone whose political leanings could be described as left-leaning, and so I may not be one of the people who “count” in Ford’s political analysis.

Ford’s official position seems to consist of little more than scrapping anything that even vaguely resembles a streetcar, building subways, and having the TTC declared an essential service.

I will not do Towhey the honour of dismembering his drivel at length, and leave it to readers to peruse his attitudes.  They show a profound disrespect for people who use transit and for spending on anything other than the most obviously money-making ventures.  The idea that transit is a both a service and an investment in the city is utterly foreign.

Just a few points deserve mention:

In an election year, the exclusively left-wing political elite on the TTC board are [sic] ducking for cover.

If Towhey had done the most basic homework, he would know that the TTC board includes such flaming lefties as Peter Milczyn and Bill Saundercook.  They may be in a minority, but that’s also the makeup of Council.  An “exclusive left-wing” board it is not.  They argue strongly, and sometimes successfully, for their positions.

Apparently, there is a General Manager (a position that was high profile a number of years ago, but has since subsided into irrelevance,) however I can’t find anyone who knows who this person is, nor what he (or she?) does.

Gary Webster, who is frequently quoted in the media, will be surprised to learn that he is unknown.  He is hardly irrelevant.

In fact, 16 per cent of the $9.2 Billion (yes that’s Billion with a ‘B’) 2010 operating budget of the City of Toronto goes to keeping the TTC rolling.

Well, in fact, that number is the gross cost of running the TTC, not the net cost after you include the farebox revenue (which also shows up in the City’s books along with property taxes and all of the other fees, subsidies, contracts, what-have-you).  In fact the net cost of running the TTC is considerably lower than the cost of running the police force which gets almost no subsidies from anywhere.

This information is easily available in the City’s budget background information online, and one would hope a “director of policy” might be somewhat familiar with how the budget works even if his boss isn’t.

On the capital side, City Hall will spend $1.33 Billion this year alone to purchase new buses, streetcars and make other capital investments in TTC infrastructure. These are real dollars and they are driving out-of-control increases in property taxes that are forcing Toronto residents, and especially its small businesses, to begin planning an exodus to the outer suburbs.

Yes, the Capital Budget for TTC this year is $1.33-billion, but that’s the gross number.  Over half of this will come from Queen’s Park and Ottawa, some via the transit share of the gas tax, some via project-specific funding (such as the Spadina Subway), and some through a grab-bag of other funding schemes (see TTC Capital Budget for details).

Towhey proposes that all funding for the TTC be cut off on April 1, 2011.  I am not making up this date.  He would sell the TTC and use the proceeds to pay down various municipal debts.  The fact that these debts and liabilities include many related to the TTC itself seems to have escaped him.  Moreover, he forgets that large chunks of the TTC were paid for by other governments who might ask for a share of the proceeds.

But how will people get to and from work, shopping, school, etc? Good question. I imagine more people may drive — so some of the billions the city saves should go to improving its roads. Others will be forced to use bicycles, hire more taxis, join car pools, etc. Apparently, that’s good for the environment, even. Bonus.

What is utterly missed is that the idea that transit might be a general benefit like water, or a fire department, or even roads.  Taxis are a prohibitively expensive way to get around, especially for long trips.  Car pooling has its limitations, especially for non-commuting trips, and we all know what Ford’s attitude to cyclists is — put them anywhere but on a road that might go someplace useful.

Towhey has a vision for transit:

I want a fast, convenient and affordable way of getting from the door of my home to the doorway of my workplace, shopping centre, school, theatre, friends’ houses, etc. That’s what the TTC should be providing: door to door solutions. The subway has value only when it’s delivering this. Ditto buses. Ditto streetcars.

Door-to-door service will not be provided by transit, ever.  If Towhey had wanted this, he might have at least advocated for land use controls that would make it possible, or at least cheaper.  Of course, in his world, all of this will be provided by the private sector.

Many bus routes, however, would be abandoned. They’re not profitable. Such is life. The TTC should have dumped these routes long ago. But what about the people who need them? Well, life’s tough. Instead of being the only three people on a 60 passenger bus, perhaps these people will have to introduce themselves, get to know their neighbours and share a taxi.

Yes, life is tough, and it my profound hope that the citizens of Toronto dump Rob Ford and his Director of Policy for whom large chunks of the population don’t warrant their attention or public spending.

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The Spaces In Between

As the Mayoral campaigns of various candidates meander toward October 25, I can’t help noticing a common thread in the transit platforms of the major candidates.  Actually, a missing thread.

Everyone loves to draw a map.  Pull out a magic marker and a map of the city, cross out a few “David Miller” lines to show you’re an independent thinker, draw in a few of your own, and Voila!  You have a transit platform.

Some candidates talk about quality and reliability of transit service without saying exactly what they mean.  One would give seniors a free ride for four hours a day.  One would integrate TTC and GO fare structures and operations.  But the real debates, as I saw just this morning at yet another joust for three would-be Mayors, turn on maps and funding.

Large swaths of Toronto will never see rapid transit, whether we use that name for full-scale subways, or LRT, or BRT, or jet-propelled Swan Boats.  Riders living there will put up with local bus and streetcar services forever.  There may be a new subway or LRT down the street, closer than today, but not in walking distance.

What we don’t hear in the debates is a sense of that much-hated word “vision”.  What role does transit play in the city, not just today but in decades to come?  What does “good service” mean?  How much are we willing to pay for a bus every 10 minutes or better at midnight?  How much of the cost should be paid by governments as an investment in mobility and enabling transit lifestyles, and how much should be paid by riders?

Drawing lines on a map looks good, at least to people who live near the projected routes, but unless there’s a lot of them, and a mechanism to pay for their construction, they’re just doodles to most transit riders.  Doodles, moreover, of lines that may not open until the would-be Mayor has been driven from office by a newer municipal saviour.

My question to those who would be Mayor is simple:  what will you do to improve transit today?

Be honest about fares.  Will you raise them?  Will you charge by distance?   Will you get rid of the TTC’s arcane transfer restrictions?  Will you truly integrate GO and TTC fare schemes in a way that is attractive to riders?  Don’t tell me about Smart Cards, whether it’s Queen’s Park’s Presto or a new Open Payment system.  Tell me what your philosophy of charging for transit really is.  Once we know how you want to price transit, we can work out how to collect the fares.

Be honest about service.  People love subways.  They run until almost 2am with trains every five minutes.  There’s even a big three-way meet of last trains at Bloor-Yonge.  No wonder people want us to build subways — they guarantee the TTC will run vastly more service than, were it a bus or streetcar route, the corridor would see.  If you’re a suburban bus rider, don’t count on frequent service or protected connections.

What is “acceptable” service in frequency, crowding and reliability?  How long should someone wait for a bus to show up?  Should they be guaranteed a seat outside of the peak period?  Should reliable schedules be enforced for infrequent routes, and should frequent services provide a reliable headway between vehicles?

What does “transit priority” mean to you?  Will you take capacity away from other road users to speed transit operations, especially in locations that are already congested and transit service is often delayed?  Are streets more important for parking and deliveries, or for moving vehicles?

What is your attitude to pedestrians?  Transit users make their trips as pedestrians walking to and from stops and transferring between routes.  Should access to transit be easy and comfortable?  Are pedestrian spaces important for you, or do they get the leftovers?

The next time you hold a press conference, go to a corner that doesn’t have a subway or an LRT today, or on any map, not even on yours.  Explain what you will do to make transit better for that community.

In between rants about making City Hall more accountable and tightening our belts, explain just what this will mean to people who don’t live on your rapid transit network, who won’t benefit from all the capital spending you plan to squeeze out of Queen’s Park and maybe, just maybe, Ottawa.

When the new buses start running, when the service improves (even on the Queen car), then we’ll hold a photo op for you.  Think how many neighbourhoods you will visit with your better bus and streetcar service!  And you might even do it before the next election!!

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Furious George Has A Plan (Update 2)

Updated June 8, 2010 at 11:00 pm:

The Smitherman campaign has posted a backgrounder to his transportation plan which has been updated to reflect the funding of inflation by Queen’s Park.

In a previous update, I noted that there was a bit over $1-billion still unaccounted for.  This is explained in the backgrounder as follows:

Once the provincial government formally approves their contribution escalation the Smitherman construction cost increment is reduced to $3.87­billion, or $5-billion once financed to 2021. [Page 3]

Although this issue has been addressed, the method of paying for transit investments has not been changed.  Smitherman still depends on revenue from gas tax and dividends from City agencies, money that is already spoken for by existing budgets at the TTC and the City.  He also depends on new tax revenue from developments along the routes to be built.  However, those taxes traditionally have been at least partly spent to serve new residents and businesses these developments would bring.

While I applaud Smitherman for at least producing a detailed plan, I still do not agree with elements of it such as the Bloor-Danforth subway extensions or with his financing scheme.  (For the record, at Council today TTC staff responded to a question from Councillor Thompson about a subway extension and explained that any subway extension could not be built along the existing SRT corridor.)

The original content of this post follows the break.

Continue reading →

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Transit 101: Questions for Toronto’s Candidates (Updated)

Updated March 5 at 16:50:  An interview done in association with this article is now available.

Starting today, I will be publishing a series of articles both here and on The Mark, a public affairs blog.  There is a Toronto section of that site with issues specific to our city, and that’s where my pieces will appear.

Candidates for public office, especially the Mayor, should understand what they’re talking about when they prattle on about public transit.  It’s a big part of Toronto’s municipal budget, and easily the largest of our municipal agencies.

Politics by sound bite is no way to run a railway.  In the interest of educating would-be office holders and encouraging them to broaden their views of the subject, my own Transit 101.  The first article asks many questions, and in coming instalments I will address many of these topics.

No, I am not running for Mayor, or Council, or Traffic Warden, but could be tempted by a fleet of Swan Boats.

The article itself follows the break.

Continue reading →

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Au Revoir, Andy Barrie

Thursday, February 25th brought regular CBC listeners Andy Barrie’s last show as host of Metro Morning, a role Andy had for the past 15 years.  I met Andy by waking up to a new voice coming out of my radio, a new host on a show I’ve listened to, it seems, forever.  My bedroom radio is never tuned to any station but CBC Radio 1.

Later that Thursday morning, Andy Barrie talked on The Current (scroll down to “Listen to Part Two”) about his history in broadcasting, as a Canadian immigrant, and his relationship with the radio audience.  That friendship, that intimacy comes partly from the nature of morning radio, but also from radio itself, a medium where a good host is part of our daily lives, part of our family because they participate in so many of our routine moments.

I have had the privilege of sitting across the table from Andy or chatting on the phone over the years, as well as the dubious joy of a call from a story producer who would love to have me on at 5:50 am to help get the show rolling.  Guests show up at outrageous hours, something the Metro Morning team does every day, not just because the show has a good audience, but because everyone there cares about the importance of local radio and local issues.

Many people are studio guests for one story, and we never hear them again.  Others, like me, are repeat visitors.  We are all treated well, our stories given respect on air by a host who actually listens, who lets the story unfold even as he gently aims it through an arc to fit the time available.

The sense of family, the rapport between everyone that sounds so good on air is just as real in the studio.

Starting Monday, Andy will be “just down the hall and around the corner” from his old studio, still active at the CBC, but with the luxury of sleeping well after 4 am, of having a life after 9 pm.  He signed off with an “Au Revoir”, and I wish him the best of not-quite-retirements.

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Put Transit City On Ice: Rocco Rossi (Updated)

At the Empire Club today, Mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi proposed that all of Transit City, except for the Sheppard East line, be put on hold pending a financial review.

Rossi may not be familiar with local issues, but he should at least know that Queen’s Park (and, for Sheppard, Ottawa) is paying for these lines, not the City of Toronto.

There are issues with Transit City about which I will write in coming days, but stopping the projects is hardly the correct approach.  It smacks of simplistic anti-Miller campaigning — whatever David Miller did must be wrong and so we’ll stop, or at least slow down, the plan.

I will be generous and assume that the candidate may be badly advised, but this is the second gaffe of Rossi’s platform (the first is the proposal to sell Toronto Hydro), and I can’t help thinking he’s headed for an electoral graveyard.

Updated 11:30 pm:  I am advised that Rossi is aware of funding from other levels of government, but is concerned about future operating costs.  He might start by looking at the extension to Vaughan which is expected to increase net TTC operating costs after any incremental fare revenue by well over $10-million annually when it opens.  The projected riding north of Steeles Avenue is lower than on the Eglinton LRT.

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The TTC As An Arbiter of Morality and Good Taste

Much has been made in the press recently about a certain Internet dating service that encourages people to have affairs.  They managed to get lots of free publicity with a proposed total wrap of streetcars, but the TTC’s advertising review panel (a subset of the full Commission) turned them down claiming that encouraging adultery is just plain wrong.

Whether the TTC likes it or not, adultery is legal as is the provision of a “dating service” to hook up would-be partners.  This would not be the first such service to advertise on the TTC.  LavaLife ran ads in subway cars, and there are dating service posters in some subway stations.  Somehow, I doubt that everyone using these services tells their spouse/partner what they are doing.

Subway ads are running right now for the movie “It’s Complicated” whose plot involves a love triangle between a woman, her ex, and her new boyfriend.  The posters include a tasteful view of Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin in bed.  I don’t know whether their characters are married at the point in the film where this scene occurs, but that’s hardly the point.  If the TTC is going to start censoring ads based on behaviour that is legal, they will have to be consistent.

Many people feel that lottos and booze simply involve addictive, anti-social behaviour and encourage people to spend money they don’t have.  Should these ads be banned?

On the good taste front, anyone who has visited Bloor Station recently will know that the station identity is almost completely masked in large places by a campaign for Amex.  It’s an odd coincidence that the TTC will be considering a report about the proposed renaming of Dupont Station as “Casa Loma” which contains the following observation:

TTC subway stations are, first and foremost, transportation facilities, not advertising vehicles. As people travel through our system, they need to know where they are geographically, in the context of the roads and neighbourhoods within Toronto. The names of subway stations are selected to give the clearest possible information to customers as they travel on the TTC.

Someone at the TTC should tell their ad agency that disguising a subway station to the point it is unrecognizable is unacceptable.  Count this post as the first of five complaints needed to launch a review of Amex’s adverising.  Four more shouldn’t be hard to find, and mine might not even be the first.

Footnote:  If you are going to comment, do not use the words starting with “g” that refer to games of chance.  Your session will be blacklisted by the spam filter.

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The Effect of Rapid Transit on Local Shopping

A few weeks ago, Stephen Rees Blog in Vancouver ran an interesting piece on the effect of the new Canada Line (the one connecting Vancouver Airport and Richmond to downtown) on local shopping neighbourhoods.  Since bus service on the former surface routes has been cut, merchants are concerned that they get less walk-in trade from bus passengers.

The comment thread following the article requires some knowledge of Vancouver’s neighbourhoods and geography, but includes a variety of viewpoints on this phenomenon.  One point comes right at the end of the thread in a comment about the reconstruction of Cambie Street, under which the Canada Line runs:

Cambie Street between 16th and King Ed was completely rebuilt at great tax payer expense. What an opportunity to create a “Great Street” and boost neighborhood identity!

Instead, the streetscape design is the worst possible for enhancing the Cambie Village experience. Six lanes of traffic without separating medians, with curb side parking taking up the outer two.

My favourite symbol of the lack of capacity shown in this area of design practice is the introduction of “park benches” on the sidewalks facing parked cars.

We hear a lot about urban design in Toronto and the improvements possible as an offshoot of the Transit City projects, and the Cambie experience should be a warning of what can happen.

Rees’ article talks about the problems of merchant pressure for parking taking precedence over transit, and this effect can be seen on St. Clair where parking was one of the car-oriented street functions that forced an uncomfortable design onto the street overall.

He makes an important point about transit, namely that it is part of a pedestrian experience:

Every transit trip is an interrupted walk. Transit stops and stations ought to be seen as key to retailing. Far too often in Greater Vancouver bus passengers are banished to remote, sterile areas like Phibbs Exchange, or the Ladner bus loop. Always this is forced by local merchants who have only contempt for what they see as the low income bus passenger, and who regard buses as noisy, smelly nuisances. Of course, transit’s selection of large diesel buses only confirms that view. We do have to learn from our experiences, and acknowledge our mistakes. Far too often, transit advocates are expected to be cheer leaders for a system which, sadly, often lets us down, and seems incapable of learning from its past mistakes. Let’s all learn from this when we design our next system change.

As one who is often expected to cheer for transit plans and hope that we will fix the design problems “later”, I can only say that the time for believing planners when they say “trust me” is long over.