Bordeaux's transit ideas worth uncorking here
Oct 22, 2007 04:30 AM
Christopher Hume
Adam Giambrone has seen the future of the TTC – in France.
The Toronto Transit Commission chair recently spent a week looking at what the French have done to bring public transportation into the 21st century, and to put it simply, he was impressed, very impressed.
Bordeaux, for example, has already constructed 48 kilometres of a 60-kilometre tram system that opened in 2003.
"It's not theoretical," Giambrone says enviously. "It's actually being built."
For the beleaguered TTC chair, by contrast, it's mostly hurry up and wait. These days, the commission's bold expansion plans are on hold until the province comes through with some of the $12 billion it has promised. So far, the TTC has yet to see a penny.
In other words, although Premier Dalton McGuinty talks endlessly about his commitment to public transit, he has yet to sit down and write a cheque. Until he does, his brave words are just that, words.
"The trams in Bordeaux are packed," Giambrone reports. "They have huge ridership. The city is also reclaiming its 18th-century squares that were turned into parking lots back in the 1950s and '60s.
"Transit's not an ideological issue in Bordeaux; they didn't say, `The car is evil, we have to get rid of it.' They said, `The car is causing a lot of problems so we're going to have to give people alternatives.'"
Giambrone was also impressed that the Bordeaux trams run on a third rail that shuts off once the vehicle has passed. This provides safety and avoids the need for a Toronto-style clutter of overhead wires.
Here, the chair points out, transit has always been viewed as strictly "utilitarian." Overhead wires may mess up the city, but because they're cheap they're good enough for us.
More important, Giambrone argues, is how the French fund public transit. Some systems are privately run, others public, but in either case, the operators have a contractual arrangement that allows them to borrow money in anticipation of future funding and growth.
Meanwhile, the TTC must essentially start from scratch every year when it goes before city council to beg for funding.
"This means getting anything new is incredibly difficult," Giambrone explains. "You need government to lock in. It's hard to change things when every year you have to re-debate what you're going to do."
As he also points out, there's huge resistance to change among Torontonians; every time a proposal comes up for a pedestrian-only area, a streetcar right-of-way, or anything in between, the public screams bloody murder.
According to Giambrone, the same thing happened in Bordeaux when its transit plans were announced. But, he says, the French city, with a population of nearly 700,000 including suburbs, held no less than 2,000 public meetings in advance of construction, by which time there was general acceptance of the scheme.
"The next two years will be critical for the TTC," Giambrone says. "The most important aspect of public transit isn't cost but the quality of service."
As he points out, that's where Toronto's falling behind. The Queen streetcar, for instance, which once carried 60,000 to 70,000 passengers daily, can now handle only 40,000. And the vehicles themselves, 25 years old, have been surpassed by a new generation that has yet to arrive here.
Mostly though, Toronto has yet to have a debate about the role of the car in the city. Communities around the world have recognized the crucial importance of public transit, but here we still insist on the primacy of the single-occupancy vehicle. Like our neighbours to the south, whom we resemble more closely than ever, we prefer the comfort of the past to the rigours of the future.
Christopher Hume can be reached at
chume@thestar.ca
That's a pretty ridiculous jab about how McGuinty hasn't written a cheque yet. His government hasn't even been sworn in yet.
I hope that Giambrone also looked at the signal priority that they use in France that allows streetcars to actually be competitive with walking, let alone the car.
