By: Royson James City Columnist, Published on Tue Feb 11 2014
The messy, convoluted road to transit heaven is about to get murkier. Even before we emerge from the current fog, the municipal election looms, promising more cloudy days and bewildering nights.
So far, just two mainline candidates (three, if you consider former Councillor Norm Gardner as such) have declared for mayor of Toronto. Mayor Rob Ford wants to extend the Bloor-Danforth subway up to Sheppard and McCowan, but voted against the tax hike he proposed to build it. The challenger, David Soknacki, says he would jerk us back to an earlier city council decision that puts light rail transit in the corridor.
Imagine what John Tory might come up with. Or Olivia Chow.
Consider what wrinkle former TTC chair Karen Stintz might throw in when she faces the reality that the new northeastern subway extension terminus creates an odd break in the network: subway from Yonge to Don Mills and Sheppard . . . subway to McCowan and Sheppard . . . and an LRT in between?
Under the current approvals, supported by both Stintz and Ford, the new Eglinton Crosstown LRT would terminate at Kennedy . . . only to see the LRT re-start several kilometers north, along Sheppard. It’s almost as if someone set out to create a disconnected grid.
Ford has vowed to get rid of the LRT disconnected link and go subway all the way. But he can’t pay for it and can’t lead the council horses to the water, much less have them drink. Soknacki would make the whole thing LRT, except where the Sheppard LRT meets the Sheppard Subway at Don Mills.
Stintz? Tory? Jane Doe? We can’t wait on their ruminations.
It matters not that Torontonians are tired of the debate, the sudden detours, the political lurching from one transportation mode to the next; we are stuck in neutral because the way ahead is so unsure.
Most distressingly, the TTC and Metrolinx, the two transit agencies empowered to show us the way, are themselves either lost or jerked from one position to the next, too often supporting both, depending on the political wind. Practically, the train operator and the conductor can be seen groping around in the mist, unsure of the way forward.
Now, Toronto is overrun with transit experts who know exactly which way to go. It was one group of activist experts who brought us Transit City — numerous LRT lines intersecting the city.
Another group would have none of that, wanting transit tucked away underground so the roads can be left for cars. Would that one view had held sway instead of the damnable hybrid now on the books.
If you live in the extreme quadrants of the city, or the GTA for that matter, you need one direct link to the network; and then you need the network to move you quickly across the grid to the other side of town.
Instead, this is the current prospect:
From the east, you bus it to McCowan and change mode to an LRT heading west to Don Mills; then change to the Sheppard Subway before switching trains to go downtown; or hop a bus to go farther west, to hook into the subway at Downsview. Madness.
Making it all either subway or LRT seems to be a reasonable position. But there may be a middle ground, using the automated driverless technology popular in Vancouver’s SkyTrain, a bigger, improved, mainly elevated version of the Scarborough Rapid Transit system. The subway is expensive; the LRT as envisioned makes too many stops and is too slow to lure enough commuters out of their cars. And the SRT-SkyTrain system isn’t even being considered.
The Transit City people had it right with the extensive grid. Problem is, they opted for an internal, local-commute system when the greater city needs a regional solution.
What would have happened if they’d adopted the improved SRT technology and used that across the entire system — Eglinton, Sheppard and elsewhere. There’s an argument to be made that this would give us a better chance to attract new riders.
As it stands, most citizens are fed up with the talk. This weariness has created an atmosphere of desperation. In such an environment, the eyes and mind get closed to options and alternatives.
One nightmare outcome is that two or three decades hence we’ll wake up stuck in traffic, billions of dollars poorer. It’s never too late to consider the right solution — until it is.
