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The Challenge of the Eastern Waterfront

Redevelopment of Toronto’s eastern waterfront, notably the “Port Lands” area southeast of Lake Shore and Parliament, was the first of many issues on which the Ford brothers’ vision for our future ran headlong into voters and Councillors.  A fantasy of malls, Ferris wheels and a monorail did not fit with previous schemes for a naturalized river mouth at the Don and a well-designed residential/commercial neighbourhood.  That battle ended with Council voting to send the whole design question off for review, a process now nearing its completion.

Waterfront Toronto has a separate website for the public consultation process behind this review.

From a transit perspective, plans for the eastern waterfront are a mess.

Continue reading →

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Senior College Symposium at the University of Toronto

On April 12, 2012, I spoke as part of a panel at the seventh annual Senior College Symposium.  The topic for 2012 was “Toronto, A World City:  Meeting the Challenges”.

For the benefit of attendees, my speaking notes (somewhat elaborated and including references to some comments made by other speakers) are available here.  Much of this is in point form as I find that making a completely “fair copy” with sentences and paragraphs has its limits — one always changes a presentation on the fly anyhow.

For those readers (most of you) who were not at the symposium, this gives an overview of my feelings on the role of transit and the many unanswered questions we face in the GTA.

2012.04.12 UofT Senior College Symposium Notes

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Service Changes for May 2012 (Updated)

Updated April 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm:

The TTC has announced that the track east of Spadina on Queen’s Quay will be shut down for repairs starting Monday, April 16 until Monday, May 7.  During this time:

  • 509 Harbourfront cars will operate between Exhibition Loop and Spadina Loop (at Queen’s Quay)
  • 510 Spadina cars will operate between Spadina Station and Spadina Loop

From May 6 onward, the 510 service is scheduled to only operate as far south as Queen’s Quay, and the 509 service will be the only route running through to Union.  This effectively means that the last day for 510 Union service is Sunday, April 15.

Preliminary information from Waterfront Toronto about the Queen’s Quay West project indicates that early utility work will start in May, and major construction in July.  WFT expects to hold a public briefing with details of the construction staging in early May.  Until now, the problem with nailing down the schedule has rested with utilities that were unwilling to commit to specific work dates.  (This is not unlike the situation we encountered on St. Clair.)

There is no information yet on how TTC service will operate during the construction period.

Original post from April 5, 2012 follows below:

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A Look Back: Rail Grinder W28

There was a time when the TTC had a fleet of surface work cars:  rail grinders, flat cars, cranes, a sand car, snow ploughs and sweepers.  They’re all gone (a few survive in museums), and maintenance of the surface system uses much more prosaic vehicles.

My favourite was W28, originally Toronto Civic Railway 57, that operated as a rail grinder from 1955 until it was replaced with a PCC rail-grinding train in 1976.

As an early Easter gift to readers, here is a photo gallery of W28 from 1967-8.

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The Sheppard LRT Report (Part IV)

Now we come to what I must call “The Chong Dissent”, the reports prepared under the company “Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited” (TTIL), a dormant TTC corporation resurrected for the purpose because it had $160k sitting in its bank account.  All this and more was spent to argue the case for a Sheppard Subway.

Council has already opted for an LRT line on Sheppard, but arguments originating from the TTIL reports continue to haunt the debate.  It’s time to expose their threadbare, self-serving nature.

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The Sheppard LRT Report (Part III)

Many background presentations informed the Expert Panel’s review of options for the Sheppard corridor.  This article is the first of two summarizing and commenting on this information.

There are six groups of documents:

  • Professor Eric Miller’s comments
  • Metrolinx presentations and reports
  • TTC presentations and reports
  • Toronto Transit Infrsatructure Ltd. (TTIL) presentations and reports
  • City of Toronto presentations and reports
  • Third Party reports

TTIL is the TTC subsidiary through which Dr. Chong’s pro-subway work reported.  Given the amount of material, I will deal with reports from TTIL, the City and Third Parties in the fourth and final article in this series.

Continue reading →

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Toronto Council Approves Sheppard East LRT

Toronto Council, after over a day and a half’s debate, has approved the construction of a Sheppard East LRT from Don Mills to Morningside by a vote of 24-19.  This completes the rout of Mayor Ford’s subway plan and returns transit plans more or less to their position when he was elected.  The Mayor vows to fight on, but now sees this as a future campaign issue.

Today’s debate was, for the most part, more civil and organized than what we heard yesterday, except for an outburst from the Mayor and a speech showing his passionate hatred for streetcars.

Now the ball is in Metrolinx’ court to come up with a construction staging plan allowing for the year-plus delay.  During the debate, some members of the pro-subway faction claimed that, according to private conversations with Metrolinx, work would not start on the Sheppard LRT until 2016.  My own sources tell me that this is not true, but we must await a definitive word from the Provincial agency.

The Sheppard LRT decision also ensures that the Scarborough RT extension will be part of the plan with the new LRT line running, initially, to Sheppard Avenue and using Conlins Road carhouse as a base.  A motion by Councillor Cho, which passed as part of the package, seeks funding for extending the SRT/LRT northeast to Malvern Centre and the Sheppard LRT south via Morningside to UTSC campus.  “Streetcars” might reach Malvern only five decades or so after the TTC’s original proposal.

A number of additional motions related to long range planning and funding of transit expansion.  These were referred to the City Manager for future reports.  Strangely absent in the discussion was any mention of the role Metrolinx and  its “Big Move 2.0” might take in these discussions.

The details of the decision are available online.

This is an important day for Toronto.  We are on track for an LRT-based plan and for a more detailed evaluation of our transit future than we have seen for decades.  Talking about one line at once, about fundraising for one project at once, is no longer an accepted way of building the city.  Leaving the debate to a secretive Provincial agency is no longer acceptable, and the City is clearly setting out on its own review.  Co-operation is essential given the funding arrangements, but Queen’s Park must stop hiding from the transit planning and financing files.

Finally, a personal note.  Throughout this debate, I have been gratified by the broad understanding of transit issues displayed by many Councillors, advocates and media.  This blog and my own advocacy have helped, but there is the compound effect of so many people working with an informed sense of the topic.  Congratulations to everyone who had a hand in this victory.

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Sheppard East Vote Delayed to March 22, 2012

Council did not finish its debate by 8pm on March 21, and a motion to extend time failed, barely, on a vote of 28-15 (a 2/3 majority was needed because this would be a procedural change).

The pro-subway forces are running the clock, but they are simply wasting everyone’s time.  On a simple majority basis, the LRT option will pass.

Come back at 9:30 am on March 22.

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The Sheppard LRT Report (Part II)

In the previous article, I reviewed the three main options under study for Sheppard East as well as the comments of the City Planning and Finance departments on various related issues.

In this article, I turn to the Expert Panel’s evaluation of the options, their scoring system, and the question of bias in the process.

The analysis and scoring begins on page 39 of the Expert Panel Report.  The panel chose three broad areas for analysis, and subdivided each of these into three subcategories.

  • Funding & Economic Development
  • Transit Service
  • Sustainability and Social Impact

In each of the 9 subcategories, the highest possible score is 5 points for an overall raw total of 45.  However, the weights assigned to each group are different with Funding & Economic Development getting a weight of 3x, Transit Service 2x, and Sustainability and Social Impact 1.5x. Once the weights are applied, the total potential score is 95 points.  These values are normalized up to a “perfect” score of 100.

Table 15 on page 41 summarizes these scores.  In order that readers can see how the weights affect the outcome, I have recast these data to show the buildup of the weighted scores to a 100-scale. Continue reading →