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By John Lorinc from the Globe:
Life in the not-so-fast lanes
35 years later, Sam Cass still mourns the death of the Spadina expressway
JOHN LORINC
Special to The Globe and Mail
'Before we start," Sam Cass said, a hint of mischief glinting in his eyes, "what do you think of today's traffic conditions? Are they good, excellent . . . super-excellent . . . ?"
The sarcasm in the old road warrior's tone was unmistakable.
Cass, the long-serving Metro Toronto roads and traffic commissioner, is one of those rare bureaucrats whose name passed into public consciousness, thanks to his role as the author of Metro's notorious expressway strategy.
That plan went up in flames 35 years ago this week, when then Ontario premier Bill Davis killed the Spadina Expressway, a superhighway proposed to run south from the 401, through the Cedarvale and Nordheimer ravines and on into the core. Bulldozers had already commenced work when the decision came down from Queen's Park.
Even now, Mr. Cass remains "very disappointed" about that reversal. Like many planners of his generation, he believed the car, not mass transit, would come to dominate city travel; he felt the majority of transit riders used it only because they couldn't yet afford to drive. And Mr. Cass thought Metro needed a matrix of cross-town expressways -- plus one-way streets and a car-free downtown -- to avoid the evil of traffic congestion.
Sitting in his North York condominium this week, the spry 83-year-old could have been forgiven for expressing a sense of vindication. The smog was terrible and construction on the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way clogged traffic.
"From what I hear, congestion is getting worse. Accidents are increasing. Everything seems to be going downhill. These," he stated firmly, "are all fallouts from stopping Spadina."
Eighteen years after he retired from his post at Metro, Mr. Cass has not rearranged his thinking about downtown highways, nor has he sought repentance before the judgment of history.
Many still disagree passionately with Mr. Cass, marshalling compelling arguments that Greater Toronto's traffic and air-quality problems are the result of inadequate transit investment and uncontrolled, car-oriented sprawl.
Yet from his perch in a cozy one-bedroom filled with the souvenirs of an influential career in public service, Cass still firmly believes that he was right and the late Jane Jacobs, who led the campaign against the Spadina Expressway, was wrong.
The two never met, although Ms. Jacobs's low opinion of the discipline of traffic engineering was probably informed by her explosive political confrontations with Mr. Cass.
When Tory dealmaker Fred Gardiner set up Metro in 1954, he selected Mr. Cass, then a 31-year-old engineer in Toronto's roads department, to manage what would become a huge transportation department.
Mr. Cass was very much a product of a hardy generation that had endured nearly two decades of economic stagnation and war, and were eager for more comfort. In the postwar boom, consequently, many politicians and bureaucrats eagerly bought into a modernist, technocratic approach to urban development as they planned new subdivisions, shopping malls and arterials. The future, they reckoned, lay in the suburbs: "People opted for better homes with a front yard, a backyard and a picket fence."
In the mid-1950s, Metro officials were developing a new official plan and decided to conduct an extensive "home" survey, asking residents how they moved around the city. Mr. Cass and his colleagues concluded that people wanted to be able to travel "unhindered" between homes and jobs, and that they didn't want non-local traffic in their neighbourhoods. "The planners were instructed to satisfy both desires," he said.
As Metro sought solutions, Mr. Cass travelled to cities in the U.S. and Europe in order to better "understand what was going well, what was going poorly." In the end, the Metro expressway plan -- envisioned to accommodate 25 years of future growth -- called for a super-grid of highways, at intervals of about four kilometres.
Besides Spadina, the strategy included the Scarborough expressway, along the Kingston Road corridor. Also on the books was a major highway along Eglinton West. (Both projects were started but never completed.) The grid, he explains, was to provide homeowners with easy access to on-ramps while protecting neighbourhoods from what planners considered disruptive through traffic. "That system would have prevented the decimation of communities."
The reality is that in cities like New York, many neighbourhoods -- especially working-class communities -- were bulldozed and bifurcated by highway construction.
While Metro's expressway plan won the approval of the Ontario Municipal Board, Mr. Davis blocked it in the face of mounting opposition. Mr. Cass still views Mr. Davis's stance -- as well as his decision to sharply increase provincial support for municipal transit service -- as an act of political opportunism.
Meantime, word of Ms. Jacobs's highway-busting skills rapidly spread to Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax, where emboldened citizens' groups rose up to successfully oppose expressway schemes. (Only Montreal aggressively promoted the construction of a network of downtown highways such as the Autoroute Decarie, but the city remains mired in congestion problems.)
During the three decades since the demise of Spadina, inner-city expressways in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco have been buried, moved or destroyed by earthquake.
Nevertheless, traffic continues to worsen, and that reality has prompted many governments to continue to plan and build urban highway projects.
The Ontario government is in the midst of a long-term $500-million project to repair and widen the Toronto stretch of the 401, which now has the dubious distinction of being North America's busiest highway. In east Hamilton, residents and environmentalists were unsuccessful in their bid to block the Red Hill Valley highway. Until last year, the City of Toronto was still promoting one of Mr. Cass's last expressway schemes: the Front Street Extension.
Mr. Cass pointed out that despite the billions of dollars in transit investment initiated by Mr. Davis in the early 1970s, the lion's share of the growth in "person-trips" around the Greater Toronto Area has been on the roads. "Transit," he maintained, "is not an alternative to the car."
Yet he admitted that when he travels downtown these days, he often jumps on a bus for a quick trip down to the Don Mills subway station on the Sheppard line and proceeds from there.
The crush of traffic during this week's Toronto Transit Commission strike suggests that thousands of commuters don't share Mr. Cass's view of transit. Moreover, inner-city neighbourhoods have experienced a sustained period of revival since the late 1970s in spite of the planning attention lavished on the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s.
Asked to explain the boom in real-estate values in parts of downtown Toronto considered to be in decline in the 1950s, Mr. Cass argued that many neighbourhoods have "fortified" themselves using mazes of one-way streets, speed bumps and proliferating stop signs.
True enough, but many downtown residents now take the opportunity to walk, ride or use transit around the core, and see traffic-calming measures as the price of not having to live near the noise and divisiveness of an expressway.
"I really do believe in the democratic process and that people get what they deserve," said Mr. Cass, who thinks that the city missed an opportunity to create a truly efficient transportation system.
"The activists got exactly what they asked for."
On this one -- and only -- point, Mr. Cass and the surviving Stop Spadina types may be in agreement.
If not expressways, then what?
With or without downtown expressways, cities around the world are grappling to find solutions to traffic congestion, both on the highways and in core areas. Some solutions:
Bus-only lanes on city streets. Since 2002, Paris has been gradually carving out high-occupancy vehicle corridors on its main downtown thoroughfares, setting aside dedicated lanes for buses and taxis while limiting lane capacity for cars.
User fees. To ensure high transit ridership, Singapore has imposed severe permit and user surcharges on the purchase of passenger vehicles, with fees exceeding $100,000.
Jitneys. In parts of Greater Vancouver, community shuttle mini-buses have begun to offer service to low-density residential neighbourhoods.
Congestion charges. London and Stockholm have both implemented electronic congestion-charge systems for vehicles entering the core.
Phased traffic lights. In Manhattan, city officials have improved traffic flow by staggering signal lights: red, green and pedestrian priority. The system works by providing both pedestrians and right-turning vehicles with separate intervals for crossing and turning.
AoD
Life in the not-so-fast lanes
35 years later, Sam Cass still mourns the death of the Spadina expressway
JOHN LORINC
Special to The Globe and Mail
'Before we start," Sam Cass said, a hint of mischief glinting in his eyes, "what do you think of today's traffic conditions? Are they good, excellent . . . super-excellent . . . ?"
The sarcasm in the old road warrior's tone was unmistakable.
Cass, the long-serving Metro Toronto roads and traffic commissioner, is one of those rare bureaucrats whose name passed into public consciousness, thanks to his role as the author of Metro's notorious expressway strategy.
That plan went up in flames 35 years ago this week, when then Ontario premier Bill Davis killed the Spadina Expressway, a superhighway proposed to run south from the 401, through the Cedarvale and Nordheimer ravines and on into the core. Bulldozers had already commenced work when the decision came down from Queen's Park.
Even now, Mr. Cass remains "very disappointed" about that reversal. Like many planners of his generation, he believed the car, not mass transit, would come to dominate city travel; he felt the majority of transit riders used it only because they couldn't yet afford to drive. And Mr. Cass thought Metro needed a matrix of cross-town expressways -- plus one-way streets and a car-free downtown -- to avoid the evil of traffic congestion.
Sitting in his North York condominium this week, the spry 83-year-old could have been forgiven for expressing a sense of vindication. The smog was terrible and construction on the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way clogged traffic.
"From what I hear, congestion is getting worse. Accidents are increasing. Everything seems to be going downhill. These," he stated firmly, "are all fallouts from stopping Spadina."
Eighteen years after he retired from his post at Metro, Mr. Cass has not rearranged his thinking about downtown highways, nor has he sought repentance before the judgment of history.
Many still disagree passionately with Mr. Cass, marshalling compelling arguments that Greater Toronto's traffic and air-quality problems are the result of inadequate transit investment and uncontrolled, car-oriented sprawl.
Yet from his perch in a cozy one-bedroom filled with the souvenirs of an influential career in public service, Cass still firmly believes that he was right and the late Jane Jacobs, who led the campaign against the Spadina Expressway, was wrong.
The two never met, although Ms. Jacobs's low opinion of the discipline of traffic engineering was probably informed by her explosive political confrontations with Mr. Cass.
When Tory dealmaker Fred Gardiner set up Metro in 1954, he selected Mr. Cass, then a 31-year-old engineer in Toronto's roads department, to manage what would become a huge transportation department.
Mr. Cass was very much a product of a hardy generation that had endured nearly two decades of economic stagnation and war, and were eager for more comfort. In the postwar boom, consequently, many politicians and bureaucrats eagerly bought into a modernist, technocratic approach to urban development as they planned new subdivisions, shopping malls and arterials. The future, they reckoned, lay in the suburbs: "People opted for better homes with a front yard, a backyard and a picket fence."
In the mid-1950s, Metro officials were developing a new official plan and decided to conduct an extensive "home" survey, asking residents how they moved around the city. Mr. Cass and his colleagues concluded that people wanted to be able to travel "unhindered" between homes and jobs, and that they didn't want non-local traffic in their neighbourhoods. "The planners were instructed to satisfy both desires," he said.
As Metro sought solutions, Mr. Cass travelled to cities in the U.S. and Europe in order to better "understand what was going well, what was going poorly." In the end, the Metro expressway plan -- envisioned to accommodate 25 years of future growth -- called for a super-grid of highways, at intervals of about four kilometres.
Besides Spadina, the strategy included the Scarborough expressway, along the Kingston Road corridor. Also on the books was a major highway along Eglinton West. (Both projects were started but never completed.) The grid, he explains, was to provide homeowners with easy access to on-ramps while protecting neighbourhoods from what planners considered disruptive through traffic. "That system would have prevented the decimation of communities."
The reality is that in cities like New York, many neighbourhoods -- especially working-class communities -- were bulldozed and bifurcated by highway construction.
While Metro's expressway plan won the approval of the Ontario Municipal Board, Mr. Davis blocked it in the face of mounting opposition. Mr. Cass still views Mr. Davis's stance -- as well as his decision to sharply increase provincial support for municipal transit service -- as an act of political opportunism.
Meantime, word of Ms. Jacobs's highway-busting skills rapidly spread to Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax, where emboldened citizens' groups rose up to successfully oppose expressway schemes. (Only Montreal aggressively promoted the construction of a network of downtown highways such as the Autoroute Decarie, but the city remains mired in congestion problems.)
During the three decades since the demise of Spadina, inner-city expressways in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco have been buried, moved or destroyed by earthquake.
Nevertheless, traffic continues to worsen, and that reality has prompted many governments to continue to plan and build urban highway projects.
The Ontario government is in the midst of a long-term $500-million project to repair and widen the Toronto stretch of the 401, which now has the dubious distinction of being North America's busiest highway. In east Hamilton, residents and environmentalists were unsuccessful in their bid to block the Red Hill Valley highway. Until last year, the City of Toronto was still promoting one of Mr. Cass's last expressway schemes: the Front Street Extension.
Mr. Cass pointed out that despite the billions of dollars in transit investment initiated by Mr. Davis in the early 1970s, the lion's share of the growth in "person-trips" around the Greater Toronto Area has been on the roads. "Transit," he maintained, "is not an alternative to the car."
Yet he admitted that when he travels downtown these days, he often jumps on a bus for a quick trip down to the Don Mills subway station on the Sheppard line and proceeds from there.
The crush of traffic during this week's Toronto Transit Commission strike suggests that thousands of commuters don't share Mr. Cass's view of transit. Moreover, inner-city neighbourhoods have experienced a sustained period of revival since the late 1970s in spite of the planning attention lavished on the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s.
Asked to explain the boom in real-estate values in parts of downtown Toronto considered to be in decline in the 1950s, Mr. Cass argued that many neighbourhoods have "fortified" themselves using mazes of one-way streets, speed bumps and proliferating stop signs.
True enough, but many downtown residents now take the opportunity to walk, ride or use transit around the core, and see traffic-calming measures as the price of not having to live near the noise and divisiveness of an expressway.
"I really do believe in the democratic process and that people get what they deserve," said Mr. Cass, who thinks that the city missed an opportunity to create a truly efficient transportation system.
"The activists got exactly what they asked for."
On this one -- and only -- point, Mr. Cass and the surviving Stop Spadina types may be in agreement.
If not expressways, then what?
With or without downtown expressways, cities around the world are grappling to find solutions to traffic congestion, both on the highways and in core areas. Some solutions:
Bus-only lanes on city streets. Since 2002, Paris has been gradually carving out high-occupancy vehicle corridors on its main downtown thoroughfares, setting aside dedicated lanes for buses and taxis while limiting lane capacity for cars.
User fees. To ensure high transit ridership, Singapore has imposed severe permit and user surcharges on the purchase of passenger vehicles, with fees exceeding $100,000.
Jitneys. In parts of Greater Vancouver, community shuttle mini-buses have begun to offer service to low-density residential neighbourhoods.
Congestion charges. London and Stockholm have both implemented electronic congestion-charge systems for vehicles entering the core.
Phased traffic lights. In Manhattan, city officials have improved traffic flow by staggering signal lights: red, green and pedestrian priority. The system works by providing both pedestrians and right-turning vehicles with separate intervals for crossing and turning.
AoD
