Referendum on Transit City needed

[W. K. Lis]

A referendum on the future of public transit is needed in Toronto. The last city election had several points being discussed. People voted for a candidate based on their platforms which included item a, item b, item c, item d, etc.. We need a referendum for one item: Do you want Transit City along with heavy rail subway?

When to hold such a referendum? At the same time as the Ontario provincial election? At the same time whenever the next federal election is held? Or a special date just for the referendum?

Alternatively, we could have a poll survey done to save even more money. But would asking 1,000 or 2,000 people across Toronto, as the polls showed during the last election did, be the way to handle all such types of controversy matters. And would the politicians go along with the outcome.

 

[Eug]

Well, we already had the referendum, and it was the election.

 

[Irishmonk]

A better question: "Would you prefer the current democracy or a (transit-friendly) benign dictatorship?"

When it comes to infrastructure, democracy just doesn't work.

 

[GraphicMatt]

Well, we already had the referendum, and it was the election.

Yes, surely Ford voters were inspired by his transit plan that was discussed only a single YouTube video and then backed up with a few "People want subways, not streetcars" soundbytes at various debates.

I think a referendum on transit is tough because it's very difficult to get voters interested in the particulars of transit planning.

 

[Eug]

Yes, surely Ford voters were inspired by his transit plan that was discussed only a single YouTube video and then backed up with a few "People want subways, not streetcars" soundbytes at various debates.

Well, it seems they were more inspired by that than say TTC expert Adam Giambrone's shenanigans. Having a referendum isn't going to solve anything with regards to that.

I think a referendum on transit is tough because it's very difficult to get voters interested in the particulars of transit planning.

Exactly.

 

[lafard]

Well, we already had the referendum, and it was the election.

Yes, because this election was totally fought on a transit platform...

 

[Eug]

Yes, because this election was totally fought on a transit platform...

I think some people are missing the point, with that point being that people generally aren't as interested as some on this forum may be.

IOW, I think a referendum on this will simply be a further waste of money.

I also happen to think that a lot of people here are quite distressed about the election results, hence the sudden call for a referendum, despite the fact that essentially nobody else outside this forum has even mentioned that idea at all. Where was the call for the referendum when Miller was in power?

 

[Catapult]

Please no referendum. We elected our civic leaders to run the city. Let them do their job. They will be held acountable at the next election. Personally, I don't have the time or access to enough information and experts to come to any reasonably informed decision on this topic. I suspect people are in a similar situation (even if they think they know it all).

 

[BobBob]

Transit planning should be done by experts, who should propose expansion priorities based on cost/benefit studies, driven by the political mandate of our elected officials.

The way we do things, with populist politicians drawing lines on maps to placate some constituency, will continue to deliver what we've grown accustomed to: very little, and very misplaced.

 

[GraphicMatt]

The answer absolutely is an agency like Metrolinx that maintains a list of priority projects and allocates funding toward them. With a procedure that projects must go through to be added, and an amendment process that requires something like a super-majority vote at local council along with provincial assent.

You could theoretically even expand this kind of program nationally. It would allow things to still be democratic but prevent the current situation where everything seemingly hangs on the whim of politics.

 

[DSC]

Though referenda certainly have a place in a democracy they are not suited to a complex issue and transit planning is certainly complex. Transit City (or transit within Toronto) does not only concern citizens of Toronto (quite apart from the fact that the Province is paying most of the cost of TC) and this forum is filled with postings about regional links. Metrolinx is certainly not perfect but they are trying to create a seamless transit system for a whole region and you simply can't have one participant wanting to start all over again. (At least not if you ever want to have any new transit built before the next change order comes!)

Though I strongly supported (and support) Transit City it is a compromise and a way to offer as much "good transit" as possible for the funds available. There is a clear hierarchy, bus, LRT, subway. Some routes wil never have a ridership that will justify more than a bus, some will never justify a subway. A referendum that simply asked "Should we kill TC and build subways?" might well pass as many people prefer subways and they are clearly better if the load factor is there and if one wants to go far. If we were asked "Should we build 5km of subway or 50 km of LRT" you would get a different answer (unless you managed to convince everyone that 'their 5km" would be the subway that would be built!) It is extremely wasteful of scarce dollars (and it's OUR money) to overbuild and put subways everywhere now - in 50 years they might be justified but not today.

 

[Eug]

It is extremely wasteful of scarce dollars (and it's OUR money) to overbuild and put subways everywhere now - in 50 years they might be justified but not today.

If you build it, they will come.

Nah, I don't believe that either.

 

[nfitz]

If you build it, they will come.

You might be on to something there ... what we need is a mix of subway and LRT. But for some, this desire for all subway or all LRT does seem to be soem kind of fetish.

 

[grey]

A friend of mine did some analysis. To support a subway, all other things being equal:

(1) with (50%+) significant subsidy you need at least 4000 people per square kilometre to support regular service.

(2) with less subsidy (33%+) you need at least 7000 people per square kilometre to support regular service (Singapore density).

(3) without subsidy/recover costs entirely from the fare box, you need at least 25,000 people per square kilometre.


I can provide spreadsheets with the amount of population and housing increase each ward would need to get to these levels. Meanwhile, Denver has made LRT work with federal funding for less than 300 people per square kilometre, which is like Detroit wasteland density.

With permanent gas tax/50%+ subsidy, it might be possible to make subway work all over the city by 2036, ignoring the actual capital cost, or mobility issues of an aging population.

With lesser subsidy, we’d need at least 4.5 million people in the current Toronto to make it work, which is at least a million extra people than any population projection envisions – and all the work he's been doing here suggests the government projections are way too fucking optimistic already.

With no subsidy we’d need about 16 million+ people within the current Toronto, which I can’t even begin to imagine.

This is all going into a letter for city councillors. Particularly those undecided and openly against Transit City.



It’s great they want subways. Who doesn’t? But the development they need to allow to make sure it can fund itself is astronomical. Plus, with an aging population, each and every inch of all the subway stations better be 110% accessible or people will be trapped in their homes because they’ll all have their driver's licenses pulled/and or can’t afford gasoline on their pensions.

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

The history of transit and referenda/plebiscites in this city is not a good one. Lest we forget the Yonge line would have been built in the 1910s were it not for a failed vote on the matter.

Just be careful what you wish for is all I'm saying.