The TTC and the Economic Mission of France in Toronto will host a presentation Building LRT in a City of Subways on Friday, September 5 at 6:30 pm in Committee Room 2 of City Hall.
Urban Affairs
Commuter Parking for Metropass Users (Update 1)
Update 1, August 27, 10:00 pm:
After a lengthy debate regarding the fairness of charging for parking and various alternatives, the Commission voted 5-3 this evening to implement the staff recommendations.
Original post:
Today, the TTC will consider a proposal to eliminate free parking for Metropass users at its lots. When I first heard of this, my reaction was supportive because, as a non-driver, I don’t benefit from whatever subsidy the parking lots represent. Some media comments have placed this subsidy as high as $7 per user per day, an unconscionable amount of subsidy that would be intolerable if “parking” were a proposed new route.
However, looking closely at the figures reveals a different story.
The TTC loses $3.6-million annually on parking operations on a total budget of $6.3-million. In other words, the cost recovery is about 43 percent. Things don’t look too good yet.
However, there are 14,000 parking spaces and this means that the loss per space is about $250 per year, or about $1 per weekday. This is nowhere near the figure cited above, and is much more in line with a reasonable incentive to use transit.
By analogy to bus and streetcar routes, the subsidies vary from route to route, but the network is most important. At $1/space/day, this subsidy is higher than the average for many bus routes, but not completely off the map.
Conversely, if the TTC were able to fill its lots even with a parking charge of $2 or more, they would make far more than is needed to offset the operating cost. Bluntly, the TTC’s numbers don’t add up.
Lest you think that I am an advocate for commuter parking, that’s quite another matter. Parking lots have many undesirable characteristics including the poisoning of land for community use — buildings generating lots of pedestrian activity and a sense of neighbourhood. New parking lots have property and construction costs, and if structures are involved, those costs will be substantial.
Even existing lots can represent lost opportunities. When the outer stations on the Bloor-Danforth line were built, land was cheap and a lot of it was already in the public sector. Parking was an obvious land use. Only now, 40 years after the lines opened, are we starting to see development at some locations that should have appeared years ago if the common myths about subway stations creating development could be believed. In effect, the TTC strangled development right where it would be most desirable by dedicating so much land for parking.
As an aside, I should note that some lots such as Finch are on land that cannot be developed, and this at least puts the Hydro corridor to some use. However, there is a limit to how far east and west from Finch Station parking can be built, and sites like this are an exception in the system overall.
On GO Transit, the lots at stations are full by 7 am, and massive parking expansion is really not in the cards. GO has more stations in industrial areas where high density residential development is less likely, but the problem remains that there’s a limit to how much land the transit system can dedicate to parking.
The real problem is that feeder services to GO and TTC stations leave a lot to be desired especially as demand on both systems grows, bidirectional travel becomes common, and frequent all-day GO service is finally getting serious discussion in transit plans.
As for the existing TTC lots, my position is this: if they can be redeveloped both to liberate the capital value of the land and to provide more transit riders while converting sterile transit terminals to community centres, so be it. In those odd cases like the Hydro corridor where redevelopment is not practical, let people park, but recognize that there are limits to this and that parking is not a panacea for attracting riders to transit.
As always, good service is the key.
Metronauts Launches a New Site
The folks at Metronauts who brought us Transit Camp and the Metrolinx un-conferences have now launched their new website.
From the posts so far, they will be covering a broad range of transit issues from transit users’ and advocates’ points of view and I wish them well. My own site will remain for the more nuts and bolts stuff, although I suspect there will be a lot of cross-fertilization between our sites.
A Scourge of Scratchitti
My daily commute gives me a chance to look at the SRT in all its glory. Lately, I have noticed that there is either an explosive growth in scratchitti on SRT cars, or that the TTC has simply stopped replacing the glass.
I can’t remember the last time I was on a car that had none at all, and things have now developed to the point where there are layers with one tagger overwriting another. This problem is also starting to show up on the subway and in some stations.
The TTC embarked on a station cleanliness program last year and it has shown some results (with notable exceptions), but my sense is that scratchitti is getting out of hand.
I would be interested in hearing reports from other parts of the system. This sort of problem is symptomatic of an organization that may have given up trying, and the real worry is what other invisible maintenance is also left for another day.
Waterfront West LRT and Fort York (Updated)
Updated July 5: I have added new links to the list at the start of the post, and commentary on them down at the end.
A few posts back, I wrote about the two main options proposed by the TTC for the Waterfront West LRT (WWLRT) route between Bathurst Street and Exhibition Loop. This post stirred up a good deal of email as the implications of the plans for Fort York became apparent.
Recent events and actions by the TTC regarding the WWLRT and its proposed alignment are rather strange. This route has suddenly jumped from the bottom of the barrel among future Transit City routes, to a high priority project for which the TTC seeks funding. Have they finally discovered that there is a large and growing population living just west of downtown which threatens to become a car-oriented “suburb” without substantially improved transit? Better late than never, I suppose.
However, the process is leapfrogging ahead with a major new “preferred option” that has not been subject to public review. Indeed, the report itself appeared at the last minute on the Supplementary Agenda for the June TTC meeting. At least one Commissioner had not read it before the meeting, and there was only perfunctory debate. There were no deputations or critical voices because nobody expected the report.
Meanwhile, various aspects of the entire WWLRT EA are supposed to be on hold at the request of local Councillors pending integration of the EA with other planning work underway for waterfront districts.
If this is an indication of how the TTC plans to use or abuse the new, streamlined EA process for transit projects, then we are in for some major battles on Transit City and on Metrolinx’ Regional Plan. The more people distrust an agency’s intentions and expect that it will ignore their concerns, the more combative and obstructionist they will be. This is not the setting we need for widespread expansion of transit services, and the TTC would do well to be more sensitive to community input. Continue reading
The St. Clair Right-of-Way Debate (Updated)
Updated July 5: Christopher Hume wrote again in yesterday’s Star on the issue of giant fire trucks.
The St. Clair transit right-of-way issue surfaced again recently with the publication of a report by Toronto District Fire Chief Robert Leek claiming that the design was unsafe for emergency vehicles. Only a day later, the Fire Chief Bill Stewart walked the route with TTC Chief general Manager Gary Webster and concluded (also here) that with some minor adjustments, there was nothing wrong with the route.
Disagreements like this are nothing to scoff at, and they come in the context of rumours that various municipal agencies were forced to toe the line on approving the St. Clair design. We will never know how much truth lies there, and the issue remains clouded in politics. Continue reading
Where’s My Transit Shelter? (Updated)
Updated June 9, 2008: I have now received corrected counts of transit stops served by the TTC and have modified information in this post accordingly.
We’ve heard a lot recently about the amenities needed to attract riders to transit. These include convenience and services at stops such as next bus information and shelter from whatever the weather might bring.
The City of Toronto is about to roll out their new street furniture program, and this includes new transit shelters. Yes, those shelters, the ones we’ve all been waiting for all over the city.
We will continue to wait.
The contract for new shelters requires the advertising company to provide 5,000 new shelters, but they have until 2027 to finish the job. We will get 300 this year, then 400 a year from 2009 to 2018, and then 25 a year from 2019 to 2027. That doesn’t quite add up to 5,000, but who’s really counting anyhow?
Of the “new” shelters, most will go to replace existing shelters in 2008 and 2009, with only a paltry 30 and 40, respectively, in new locations. Thereafter, the percentage may rise, but nothing has been confirmed.
[Updated information] The TTC serves 8,540 bus stops and 715 streetcar stops within the City of Toronto for a total of 9,255. Of these, about 4,000 have shelters today. 3,000 of those need to be replaced, and so by 2027, we will have:
- 3,000 replacement shelters
- 1,000 existing shelters
- 2,000 net new shelters
This means that one third (just over 3,000 out of 9,000) stops on the system will still not have transit shelters.
The next problem is location. You can reasonably bet that top priority will be driven by advertising considerations. After all, we already know that the One Stop monitors in the subway reach over 80% of all riders (according to the company’s own rate card), so why bother going to the expense of putting monitors in lightly-used stations. (There is huge irony in the presence of old, working Metron units at Davisville which, obviously, is not considered worthy of new monitors.)
Stops that have good visibility for advertising also, likely, have good transit service because they are on busy streets. The next bus displays at such locations are of little use unless there is a major disruption because service is so frequent. On routes with wide headways, there are fewer eyeballs, and probably no transit shelter until sometime after 2027. Why tell someone when the next bus is coming, let alone advise of an unexpected delay or diversion, when there are not enough customers walking, riding or driving by to read the ads?
This is the folly at the heart of the TTC and City schemes for transit information facilities. Rather than building them where they are needed, they will be built where an advertiser thinks they can make a buck and everyone else can stand out in the rain gazing with despair toward the horizon.
[Thanks to Ed Drass for the source information on plans for the new shelters, and through him to Mike DeToma at the TTC for the corrected info.]
Thoughts on Taking Down The Gardiner East
On Friday, Waterfront Toronto announced a plan to relocate the Gardiner Expressway from Jarvis to the DVP into a surface road parallel to the rail corridor. For reasons that are unclear, the Environmental Assessment for this project will take four years — even longer that the infinitely tedious transit EAs for simple lines like Cherry Street through which many of us have suffered.
(The issues about how long or short an EA should be are complex in their own right and I won’t dwell on them here.)
In brief, the scheme replaces the elevated road with an at-grade eight-lane divided street, with University Avenue cited as the prototype. The new road would be north of the existing expressway structure allowing all of the land south of the rail corridor to be reconfigured and redeveloped.
Traffic projections indicate a slight rise in travel times for trips through this area. Not unexpectedly, the motoring lobby already predicts at least doom and gloom, if not fire and brimstone for good measure. I have no sympathy for them at all.
The eastern part of the Gardiner is lightly used. Even during the AM peak, the traffic flowing south on the DVP past my apartment (just north of Bloor) is rarely bumper-to-bumper because so many cars leave the road further north. Jammed traffic means there has been an accident, not that there is no capacity. Northbound backlogs on the DVP are inevitably caused by accidents much further north, by early closings downtown on long weekends, and by the end of major sporting events. The queue rarely reaches to Dundas Street. Lowering the capacity west of the Don will have little effect on overall travel times because the main areas of congestion lie elsewhere.
The new configuration will simplify the work on rearranging roads at the Don Mouth where a knot formed by Lake Shore, Cherry, Parliament, and Queen’s Quay (not to mention the Gardiner) is a very pedestrian-hostile environment. Moreover, with the new “Waterfront Boulevard” being a street, not an expressway, connections with local roads will not require ramp structures, only traffic lights.
Why we have to wait eight years for this wonderful new arrangement is a mystery, but I am sure that many consultants will retire, or at least buy a nice house in the country, on this project.
Mixed in with Friday’s announcement are two other items of more than passing interest.
The York Street Ramp
Although we don’t have any details, there is a plan to realign the York Street off ramp, the corkscrew that occupies much of the northeast corner of Queen’s Quay and York. When I can find out what exactly is involved, I will publish details here.
The neighbourhood groups along Queen’s Quay have been pushing for this for some time, but until we know the details, we won’t see whether all we get is a larger parkette but also a new off-ramp fouling up some other intersection.
The Front Street Extension
This road is now about as dead as it can be without the requisite wooden stake through its heart. Even Councillor Joe Pantalone, long an advocate for this road, says it is something for another generation, according to media reports. Meanwhile, former Councillor Dominelli, a landowner in the Liberty Village area long reputed to be pushing for the FSE, has actually stated he just wants a local road, thank you, so that he can get on with his redevelopment.
Considering how long many people have tried to get just that proposal on the table and been rebuffed at every turn, this is a very strange development. Finally, we can get on with properly designing and building roads to serve the community from Bathurst to Dufferin, rather than an off-ramp to the expressway serving commuters from Burlington.
In deference to his long battles on this front [you can groan here], I propose that the new road be called Hamish Boulevard.
Station Redesign for Pape and Islington
The TTC agenda for May 21 includes full PDF versions of the reports on the planned redesign of Pape and Islington stations.
The file for Pape Station is about 5.5MB, while the one for Islington Station is about 2.8MB. A notable change at Islington is the disappearance of the proposed SNC-Lavalin building on the former bus loop site, although this remains available for development.
Subway Entrance Identification (Update 2)
In an unusual move, the full version of a report (almost a 70MB PDF) of a design charrette on entrance identification is available on the TTC’s report website. If you want it, grab it while it’s still there as this situation may not be permanent.
I will add comments here after I have a chance to digest it.
Update 1: I got all the way down to the last page after the file downloaded, and there was a pair of photos of the existing sign at Osgoode Station and a proposed replacement. The “new” one looked terribly familiar.
A quick visit to the City Archives confirmed my worst fears:
You can see a sign that looks remarkably similar at the opening of the Yonge Subway in 1954, or at the opening of the University line in 1963.
Here is the original entrance on the south side of Bloor east of Yonge.
The old signs used the shape of the TTC flying keystone (the wings were added for the “Rapid Transit” image to the original 1921 design), and this was simplified to make the signs cheaper to build and maintain by the time the Bloor line opened in 1966. The main differences between the 1954 and the 2008 versions are the use of the “modern” TTC colours in 2008, and the absence of the word “SUBWAY” across the wings of the sign.
Update 2: As a public service, I have put a condensed version (1.3MB) of the TTC’s file on my site.
Steve Munro 