Urban Affairs

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A Wakeup Call for Chairman Adam

Ed Drass has an excellent column in Metro for Thursday, December 21 (here) in which he describes a recent visit with Adam Giambrone, TTC Chair, to Finch Station.  The site is a catalog of what many TTC stations look like and the lacklustre attitude the organization takes to passenger information and convenience.

Like so many TTC stations, Finch seems as if under a permanent state of construction.  Ceiling slats are missing everywhere.  Temporary and handwritten signs adorn walls, windows and collector booths.  Wooden hoarding closes off a major portion of a corridor heading to the buses, but there are no signs describing what is going on.

I have a blunt message for Chairman Adam:  This state of affairs has nothing to do with traffic congestion.  It has little to do with whether or not additional funds come from Queen’s Park or Ottawa.  It is an indictment of sloppy project management and an inability to see beyond the limits of each job to how it affects the passengers’ experience.

That’s the sort of message we send to customers.  It doesn’t take a complicated traffic study or an EA or millions of dollars worth of consultants to fix this.  Even Howard Moscoe’s proposed “Station Managers” would be ineffective if they are little more than glorified greeters with no power to change a well-entrenched corporate culture.

It’s astounding that we have a system paying millions for an automated stop announcement system, but they can’t put up and properly maintain signs telling people what’s going on in a construction zone, or take down signs announcing service diversions that finished months ago.  

I’ve seen occasional annoncements about subway service problems running along the bottom of the subway advertising monitors.  Great if you’re on the platform near a sign.  Useless otherwise.

Maybe if we figured out a way to build a multi-million-dollar automated station signage project, the TTC might be interested, but only if Ottawa would pay for it.  Meanwhile, let’s get out those magic markers and practice really neat printing. 

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The World’s Fair, the Gardiner and the Front Street Extension

[This item was originally posted last Saturday morning, and it has been recreated here following the recent system crash.  The comments submitted by various folks have vanished into the ether.]

Three would-be projects tell us so much about how screwed up Toronto’s priorities are. The proposed World’s fair is one of a long line of mega-events that would rocket Toronto to its place in the stars, a great city shining out for the world. Once upon a time, people came from all over North America to see “The City That Works” not for its one-time fairs, but for its neighbourhoods, for its commitment to a liveable city. We were renowned for that, and we managed to bring thousands of tourists here on the strength of that reputation. We really had something world-class to show off.That was 30 years ago. Continue reading →

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A Rose By Any Other Name (Updated)

Profound thanks to the many readers who commented on this item!  Based on all this feedback, not to mention my own preferences, the list of new station names is almost complete.  Here’s what it looks like now:

Bloor-Danforth East:

Scarborough Junction, Massey Creek, Dentonia Park, East Toronto, North Beach, East York, Linsmore, [Donlands], Ελλας, Riverdale, Playter, [Castle Frank, Sherbourne]

Bloor-Danforth West: 

Roy’s Square, Yorkville, Rochdale, Lowther, The Annex, Willowvale, [Ossington], Brockton, [Lansdowne], West Toronto, Parkside, [High Park], Swansea, Baby Point, [Old Mill], Kingsway, Montgomery, Six Points

Yonge:

Finch’s, Willowdale, Lansing, Hogg’s Hollow, Muir Gardens, Rebellion, Belt Line, Avoca, North Toronto, Crescent, Roy’s Square, Rainbow, Carlton, O’Keefe’s Lane, City Hall, Melinda, Royal York

University/Spadina: 

[St. Andrew], Osgoode Hall, [St. Patrick], Taddle Creek, Planetarium, Rochdale, Lowther, Casa Loma, Wells Hill, York, Viewmount, [Lawrence West], Arc en Ciel, Downsview, Wilson Heights.

I am amused that we have two “rainbows” one in each official language.  Moreover, the one formerly known as Wellesley has the most boring decor on the system.  Just imagine what a few inspired decorators could do! 

The original post and comments follow below. Continue reading →

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Riding the Rails

Today took me out on a ramble around the west end of the city on a three-car streetcar charter organized by the Toronto Transportation Society.  The cars used were PCC 4500 (one of the two remaining PCCs in Toronto), Peter Witt 2766 and CLRV 4041 (the one with air conditioning, although this wasn’t a day for it since we’re under the last clouds of the leftovers from hurricane Ernesto).

I spent the first half of the five-hour trip on 2766, an old friend I have not ridden for many years.  Aside from the nostalgia of riding an 84-year old car on city streets, it’s fun to see the car reflected in storefronts, and even more fun to watch the eyes of passersby light up to see the old car.  For the second half, I rode on 4500 and watched 2766 follow us at a distance. Continue reading →

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UK Tories, the BBC and Portland, Oregon

Mike Gordon sent me a link to a recent piece on BBC Newsnight called Where the car is not king.  It has a short print version and a 14-minute video extolling the virtues of transit and urban planning as practiced in Portland, Oregon.

The amazing part about this piece is the “reporter” — Sayeeda Warsi who is the vice-chair of the Conservative Party, those folks who will take over whenever Labour manages to lose an election in the UK.

One intriguing reference that isn’t fully explained deals with “public-private partnerships”.  Over here, the 3P approach usually means that the public pays for an asset, the private sector is subsidised to run it, and they may even get to keep it.  In Portland, the partnership works like this:  the public sector builds the transit infrastructure and expects the private sector to build development in a form that supports a transit-bike-pedestrian-skateboard lifestyle.  The public infrastructure creates the environment in which the private sector can build saleable developments.

The print version of the article is here and you can link from there to the video.  This was posted on August 15.

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Thunder Track and the Wonder of Queen’s Quay

Today’s jaunt to the St. Lawrence Market took me on a small detour to see the revamped Queen’s Quay complete with bicycle lanes, flowers and grass.  There are some great photos by Peter Hud here.

If we believe the prophets of doom who claim to be traffic engineers in these parts, those photos should be full of fire and brimstone as the wrathful traffic gods rain down on the lost roadspace.  At least there should be a lot of cars.  Strangely not.  A few errant tourists managed to drive east along the transit right-of-way while I was there, but otherwise the calm morning was broken only by sounds of people strolling by, bicycles whirring by and, oh yes, streetcars roaring by. Continue reading →

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Farewell to the Royal, the Paradise, the Kingsway and the Revue (Updated)

NOW magazine reports that the Royal will be taken over by the company now operating the Regent theatre up on Mt. Pleasant Road.  Read about it here.

Although the Kingsway will close, there are no plans to sell the building, and this leaves the theatre intact.  We will have to wait and see.

My original post from last Sunday, the 25th, follows below. Continue reading →

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hotdocs: Alimentation Générale

Those of you who know me as a transit advocate and policy critic don’t often get to see one of my other hats, that of an avid supporter, consumer and commentator on the performing arts.  In the Reviews section of this site, I have posted my Toronto Film Festival reviews going back to the dawn of time.  [Friends kept asking, and I tired of sending emails.] Continue reading →

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Jane Jacobs

Last night, Jane Jacobs died at Toronto Western Hospital.  There is a good, long article about her on the Star’s website.

I first met Jane in the early days of Streetcars for Toronto.  David Gurin, then a researcher working for the US Senate committee investigating the role of the auto industry in destroying American transit systems, came to Toronto to see how we had saved our streetcars.  He was a friend of Jane’s, and the three of us lunched near Bloor and Avenue Road.

Jane was a presence for decades in Toronto who kept popping up here and there (usually “there” — she always seemed to be off at some other meeting than the one I was at) with simple, clear words about what Toronto as a City could be despite the worst excesses of our so-called leaders.

Last April, I was privileged to receive the Jane Jacobs Prize in recognition of years of transit advocacy.  To be associated with such a luminary as Jane is a huge honour and it links my own work with that of many other people who make a difference in how our city has grown.  When the award winners gather and I hear stories of what others have done, somehow the battles to make the Queen car run properly don’t seem quite as heroic.

That’s what makes cities great:  people who care about the place they live, how it works, why it works, what makes a neighbourhood rather than a bunch of buildings.

Last year sitting on the podium during the award ceremony, I had the joy of watching as Jane skewered David Miller with a diatribe against his “North York Planning Department”.  Few people could get away with that, and it’s a measure of our city that we have a Mayor who would sit and listen to Jane.  It’s been a while.

Jane’s advice won’t be there in person any more to decry an over-large condo tower or a ludicrous road project or to talk about the role of communities.  Those of us who remain will carry Jane’s torch even if our comic timing and acid wit may not match hers.

Somewhere in the clouds, Robert Moses is trying to build an expressway network and he’s just discovered that Jane has arrived to defeat him, again.