Transportation planning in Toronto: dead end the divide

[nfitz]

I don't know if I would consider that a slum. But maybe it didn't turn into the downtown many people expect a subway to bring to an area.

I wouldn't describe anywhere in Toronto as a slum.

 

[leopetr]

1. Politicians are not going to take notice of a forum thread on an infrastructure nerd website.

2. It's not that stark. There are choice riders in the suburbs too. As you note, most of them travel downtown because suburb-to-suburb commutes are unpleasant.

3. What's your reference point for people not being dropped off at at-grade LRT stops? There's no LRT in Toronto right now. The closest thing is Scarborough RT.

People do get dropped off at bus terminals (e.g Richmond Hill Centre, Promenade Mall, York University). I've seen people get dropped off at random Viva stops, and that's mixed traffic pre-BRT. There's no reason why they wouldn't be dropped off next to a properly built at-grade LRT line.

4. Ten bucks says Transit City will get heated shelters. Viva's getting them already.

5. Don't worship engineers overmuch. #1 project for TTC engineers is to rebuild Bloor-Yonge with more platforms. Moving a skyscraper is the most fun you can have, engineering-wise.

 

[gweed123]

5. Don't worship engineers overmuch. #1 project for TTC engineers is to rebuild Bloor-Yonge with more platforms. Moving a skyscraper is the most fun you can have, engineering-wise.

And almost any planner you talk to will tell you that's a dumb idea. Rebuilding Bloor-Yonge amounts to spending $1 billion on a band-aid. That's a pretty expensive band-aid.

 

[GraphicMatt]

Open question: is a more authoritarian, less consultative model towards transportation planning part of the solution? When you look at the golden age of transit building (and, admittedly, highway building) there seemed to be far less dithering and more damn-the-consequences building.

 

[gweed123]

Open question: is a more authoritarian, less consultative model towards transportation planning part of the solution? When you look at the golden age of transit building (and, admittedly, highway building) there seemed to be far less dithering and more damn-the-consequences building.

I think the key is differentiating between valid community criticism, and NIMBYism. In the "golden age", the public was not really consulted. This cuts down on NIMBYism, but it also cuts down on legitimate criticism. Now we have the opposite: NIMBYism is still heard, no matter how uninformed or how baseless the opinion is. We shouldn't silence public critiques and criticism, we should just filter it out to make sure that the critiques and criticisms coming through are actually based in reality and not in fantasy land.

One thing I think leads to NIMBYism is the fact that the city (and the planners who work for the city) don't do a very good job of selling why this idea is a good idea. If the proposal is clearly explained, and explained why it's good for the area, NIMBYism will have less room to rear it's uninformed head. We don't need more public consultation, we need more public education. Explain why project A is good, and you'll get much less hearsay and false statements popping up saying that it's bad.

 

[leopetr]

Open question: is a more authoritarian, less consultative model towards transportation planning part of the solution? When you look at the golden age of transit building (and, admittedly, highway building) there seemed to be far less dithering and more damn-the-consequences building.

Was there? The 1913 proposal for a Toronto subway went nowhere for 41 years. We never did get a Queen subway despite it being in Phase 2 of the 1954 plan. I think the only reason it seems that there was less dithering is because history tends to be compressed into highlights in our memories.

One thing that made things easier in the 1960s and 70s were the low land values downtown and in the old streetcar suburbs. Those have since gone way, way up. The city can't afford to demolish 10 km of homes in a tidy row anymore, whether for a highway or a subway trench.

 

[rfid]

1. Politicians are not going to take notice of a forum thread on an infrastructure nerd website.

My hope is that the real people doing work behind the scenes take notice of the viewpoints being expressed so that we come up with well thought out solutions. Don't be surprised, forums are monitored more than you think.

2. It's not that stark. There are choice riders in the suburbs too. As you note, most of them travel downtown because suburb-to-suburb commutes are unpleasant.

Smart growth seems to be the way to go, the way we are headed, and hopefully the right choice. Rather than star topology (suburbs to downtown), smart growth nodes should be connected in a mesh network (with star topology at the edges), just to illustrate abstractly. In a hierarchy of transit modes, much like any network, you have large trunk lines and feeder lines spread out evenly, considerate of the planned density for an area.

3. What's your reference point for people not being dropped off at at-grade LRT stops? There's no LRT in Toronto right now. The closest thing is Scarborough RT.

People do get dropped off at bus terminals (e.g Richmond Hill Centre, Promenade Mall, York University). I've seen people get dropped off at random Viva stops, and that's mixed traffic pre-BRT. There's no reason why they wouldn't be dropped off next to a properly built at-grade LRT line.

Scarborough RT is a grade separated LRT (a pretty good one somehow done wrong). My argument is that people gravitate towards stations rather than stops on the street. It is far more pallatable to be dropped off at a station where you can then quickly get to another point in the city through strategically positioned trunk lines of higher order transit, then egress and complete the trip.

4. Ten bucks says Transit City will get heated shelters. Viva's getting them already.

We'll see...

5. Don't worship engineers overmuch. #1 project for TTC engineers is to rebuild Bloor-Yonge with more platforms. Moving a skyscraper is the most fun you can have, engineering-wise.

Engineers (should) rule the world, don't you know

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Open question: is a more authoritarian, less consultative model towards transportation planning part of the solution? When you look at the golden age of transit building (and, admittedly, highway building) there seemed to be far less dithering and more damn-the-consequences building.

Echoing Gweed:

I think it's less authoritarian planning and more Jane Jacobs is my hero and I will protest anything the government plans that will change my neighbourhood in honour of her spirit. The St. Clair LRT plan was a good plan, until the S.O.S group ran interference on it and delayed it for nearly 5 years (Without S.O.S it would have been nothing more than poor coordination between differing city departments). Subways get built and people complain about the resulting increased density that's required to support subways, and that's if they aren't protested from the planning stage. LRT's get proposed and it's the same thing. Hell we've had posters here suggest that gentrification is a bad thing and that we should preserve communities (usually poorer communities) in their original state, whatever that arbitrary original state they choose it to be.

Look now at the dozen or so houses that will be affected by the Georgetown rial corridor construction and how the Star painted it as some sort of human rights tragedy. I mean are we really putting the property rights of these few homeowners over the 1000's of commuters that use the rail corridor, a corridor that isn't as easy to move as moving someone to a new house.

As Gweed said public consultation is a good thing but at a certain point we should be able to say "here is the best plan (or best in current circumstances), unfortunately a few eggs will be broken but in the end it will benefit far more people than those few that were affected".

 

[Electrify]

First, whenever I drop someone off at a transit stop, it tends to be where the least number of transfers occur. Usually I'll drop someone off at York Mills or Yorkdale rather than Don Mills, since on the highway it is usually a couple of extra minutes, yet it can save the person I'm dropping off 20-30 minutes in commute time. So if someone's destination was midtown Toronto, it is very likely that one would be dropped off at Eglinton to catch the LRT to their destination.

Now on back on topic, we do need to address the transportation divide in Toronto and the GTA. This also means putting aside some of the smug views towards transit which appear both here and on other forums. Everyone is not going to give up their cars. Not everyone can pack up and move into downtown, and your inner-city neighbourhood was probably suburbia once upon a time. And if we aren't going to invest in more auto infrastructure, then we do need to invest in higher order transit throughout the metro area. The one thing that really put me off of Miller was that he seemed anti-car for the sake of being anti-car. Vehicle registration fees and cutting Metropass parking, all while talking of tearing down highways and removing traffic lanes for bikes with little thought or planning. His solution for suburban commuters: tramways with stop spacing that would be tight for downtown, let alone the post-war environments they would run through.

So what can we do to fix this divide? First, we need to plan our rapid transit system from a network perspective, rather than a 'this goes there' like some want. Unfortunately, this means dealing with the hand that we've been given. The Sheppard line should be first extended to Downsview to create a solid northern loop, and then to Scarborough Town Center. One good thing about the Sheppard "LRT" being geared towards local service is that you can have it run above a Sheppard subway without a duplication of rapid transit service, since it is arguably beyond the point of no return.

The Scarborough RT should become an extension of the Danforth line, since having it end in the middle of nowhere is ridiculous. At the very least, convert it to a busway so you can have buses from all over Scarborough and the east GTA funnel into the subway - potentially removing a needless transfer for many commuters. If the subway is extended, then you can run a LRT or BRT north through Malvern and into Markham. Or if the subway still ends at Kennedy, then extend the busway from STC north to Malvern and Markham. At least this way, it will feel that the higher order connection actually goes somewhere.

Eglinton should be a REAL LRT. This not only means the tunneled section, but in the west it runs through the hydro corridor with protected crossings at cross streets. In the east, same, but through the middle of the road. OR for those of you who want subways, in the west make Eglinton grade separated through the hydro corridor, and run the subway through the middle (like Allen Rd). In the east, run it as an El.

Both Yonge and Spadina subway extension should reach the 407, so they can meet GO's 407 BRT service. Eglinton and Bloor should also be extended to meet this busway at Pearson and Square One.

Finally, GO trains should run frequently through Toronto. Where this is not possible, restore bus service to GO stations within Toronto on these routes.

 

[GraphicMatt]

The 'divide' this thread is about isn't going to be fixed by building specific projects. The divide is what is keeping us from building ANYTHING. We're stuck in a perpetual state of network planning which leads to finger pointing and the continual scrapping of established transit plans in favour of new stuff.

My approach has always been to lean toward the pragmatic side. I generally support whatever transit projects look like they might actually have a chance of getting built. I would have supported Network 2011 and I support Transit City. I believe strongly that adjustments should be made to various elements of the Transit City plan, but I'm not going to do like some have and argue for what essentially amounts to a return to square one with a whole new plan. We've been caught in that cycle for far too long.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Interesting article in the Star, Public transit: No place for politics? Reflects on the discussion in this thread.

As Mayor-elect Rob Ford considers which city councillors to appoint to the TTC board, a respected transportation expert is saying it’s time to take the politicians out of public transit altogether.

If transit agencies want to get customer service right, they must be run by boards with the necessary skills, according to the latest report by Richard Soberman, who earlier this year wrote a damning appraisal of the TTC’s management of the St. Clair streetcar project.

Politicians usually lack objectivity and transit expertise, and they are prone to micro-managing transit staff, says the former chair of civil engineering at the University of Toronto.

His report recommends transit boards be composed of business and community leaders nominated by professional associations, and by citizens who would apply for the job.

“You have to create a culture in an organization that actually says, ‘Serving customers is our priority.’ In other words, it is demand-oriented. Typically all transit organizations are supply-oriented,†Soberman told reporters.

If the Toronto area is going to more than double transit ridership in the next 25 years to avoid choking on gridlock, it has to attract riders who could drive their cars but choose transit because it is a better option.

That kind of customer service has to come from the top of the organization, and that will only happen if the agency has neutral oversight, said the report.

He cites as examples of transit mismanagement by politicians the Scarborough RT, which he says should have been designed so that it could be converted to a subway, and the Sheppard subway, which has growing ridership but represents an investment that would have been better spent on Eglinton.

Soberman, who does consulting for the TTC, would not talk about the TTC’s specific customer service issues, saying only that all companies have customer problems and that public transit agencies have to balance service against resources.

He noted that the TTC’s public service panel was also appointed by the politicians on the TTC, not the management.

“If you’ve got a problem with customer service, then it should be the management that says: ‘We’re going to deal with this.’ The people who run the organization know what the problems are. They know where the complaints come from,†he said.

“The TTC is the second highest recipient of (city) taxpayer dollars after the police. Having direct oversight of the people who distribute those dollars is very important,†said outgoing TTC chair Adam Giambrone.

Some people who advocate for political boards say private-sector appointees tend to have limited knowledge of public transit and often come with their own political affiliations.

During the municipal election campaign, Ford’s campaign supported the idea of putting private-sector leaders on the TTC board as well as “fiscally responsible and experienced city councillors.â€

Soberman’s report, published Tuesday by the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario, also calls for guaranteed, ongoing funding from senior governments, rather than the one-off project funding that is the norm.

Governments will also have to consider new sources of revenue to build transit — most likely a gas surcharge or road tolls via GPS-based metering.

“We are very supportive of anything that gets infrastructure off the grond,†said RCCAO executive director Andy Manahan.

 

[Still Waters]

GraphicMatt makes some very good points. Drawing lines on a map is just that until shovels actually get into the ground. Implementation of network plans is inversely proportional to their size and cost. The bigger and costlier they are, the less likely they are to be completed, and that has nothing to do with the planners. We've seen this time and again, the public keeps changing their minds, votes in a new government that cancels the previous government's plans, we start again, the cycle repeats, and then one day, everyone looks around and wonders why we have fallen behind everyone else in the world.

The politics of transportation planning is rooted in the funding decisions. The only way to minimize the political influence is to set up an ongoing funding arrangement for transit that isn't going to change with every election. The best planners in the world can come up with the best technical plan in the world, but it'll never get implemented if there is no money. So far in Toronto, the politicians control the purse strings.

Not knowing where the next transit dollar is coming from leads to unnecessary and truly destructive politicization of the issues. For example, I find it truly appalling that the current public discussion about subways vs streetcars in Toronto has become so polarized that subways are now seen as the exclusive purview of the political right-wing while streetcars are linked to so-called left-wing socialist nutcases. When we should be talking about benefits, costs, capacities, ridership, alignments, urban design, and city building, we are instead bickering over who is the biggest victim of the latest proposal. The surburban/downtown divide is just another side of that same coin. Politics as a whole is dumbing down and becoming focused on convincing voters that they are victims of something. This negativity is creating this polarization and if we can't lift transit out of that swamp, then I fear that we will doom the city into irrelevance sooner rather than later.

 

[ssiguy2]

Open question: is a more authoritarian, less consultative model towards transportation planning part of the solution? When you look at the golden age of transit building (and, admittedly, highway building) there seemed to be far less dithering and more damn-the-consequences building.

This is what Klein did when he was mayor of Calgary.
The first section of the CTrain network was the south line to Anderson. Everyone said it was a waste of money and time. Many citizens and especially drivers didn't want it because it , unlike TC, put transit service first which means all grade crossings used real priority stopping traffic with lights and barriers so the train wouldn't be slowed down one bit.
Of those who wanted the CTrain they wanted a downtown tunnel like Edmonton's newly opened LRT but Klein refused stating it was more important to have a larger system than a short system with a tunnel.
Needless to say Klein was right and now Calgary has an ever growing mass/rapid transit system that is, by far, the most successful in NA with a whopping 300,000 passengers a day in a city of less than 1.1 million.
He just said damn the consequences and so called "experts" took the bull by the horn and built it.
Since then the CTrain expansion has never stopped and has provided Calgarians with a transit system that is envied by outsiders and happily used by it's citizens.
He did it right the first time by making sure that is was, unlike TC, a true mass and rapid transit system.

 

[W. K. Lis]

This is what Klein did when he was mayor of Calgary.
The first section of the CTrain network was the south line to Anderson. Everyone said it was a waste of money and time. Many citizens and especially drivers didn't want it because it , unlike TC, put transit service first which means all grade crossings used real priority stopping traffic with lights and barriers so the train wouldn't be slowed down one bit.
Of those who wanted the CTrain they wanted a downtown tunnel like Edmonton's newly opened LRT but Klein refused stating it was more important to have a larger system than a short system with a tunnel.
Needless to say Klein was right and now Calgary has an ever growing mass/rapid transit system that is, by far, the most successful in NA with a whopping 300,000 passengers a day in a city of less than 1.1 million.
He just said damn the consequences and so called "experts" took the bull by the horn and built it.
Since then the CTrain expansion has never stopped and has provided Calgarians with a transit system that is envied by outsiders and happily used by it's citizens.
He did it right the first time by making sure that is was, unlike TC, a true mass and rapid transit system.

Meanwhile Calgary is going ahead and building their LRT (might as well since they have the money from oil). See this link for their plans for expansion.

 

[Dan416]

Meanwhile Calgary is going ahead and building their LRT (might as well since they have the money from oil). See this link for their plans for expansion.

It doesn't look anything like TC. I'd call that more a "light metro" than LRT. If Transit City was like THAT then Torontonians would actually support it. But alas, TC is not like that.

Ugh that video makes me really wish they'd go back to the drawing board with Transit City if they really want to build an LRT network on appropriate corridors (i.e. corridors without rapid transit; i.e. corridors that don't already have subway on them).