Ontario Budget Cut and Transit Expansion

[SlickFranky]

EU transfers to less prosperous member states.

Exactly. So unless Alberta wants to finance the DRL we're not in the same situation as Madrid.

 

[SlickFranky]

Exactly how many people do you think work in downtown Calgary and how much parking do you think they have?

A lot, and proportionately very little. It's a fairly well established fact that their employment is highly centralized.

 

[TOareaFan]

A lot, and proportionately very little. It's a fairly well established fact that their employment is highly centralized.

Parking in downtown Calgary is severly restricted. Prior to the recession hitting, it had caused two fairly significant trends...the development of a fairly significant suburban office market (developers outside of the core were allowed to build more parking per s.f. of building) and surging parking rates.

While the growth of suburban office has slowed/stopped.....the growth in parking rates has not.

Here is a press release that speaks to that point....


http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2009/24/c9589.html

Downtown Calgary has the most expensive monthly-unreserved spaces in Canada and is second only to New York (US$500 Downtown, US$550 Midtown) in all of North America with a median monthly rate of US$460. Calgary is followed by Toronto ($305), which is the second most expensive Canadian city to rent a space by the month, with Montreal ($280), Edmonton ($275) and Vancouver ($224) closing the top five destinations.

 

[EnviroTO]

Calgary's LRT which is almost entirely at grade isn't that much different from Transit City. Transit City's Eglinton Line is more substantial than any of the C-Train lines and the other Transit City lines, apart from station spacing on the other two Transit City lines, the general concern that the TTC can't get transit priority to work, and the elements of C-Train which cannot possibly work in an urban environment, are roughly equivalent to the C-Train in scale. Metrolinx has mentioned a long term process where grade separations are built at bottlenecks. Calgary hasn't built anything as substantial as the Sheppard subway or the University Line extention to Vaughan and some C-Train projects were accelerated for the Olympics.

 

[MisterF]

Well through federal funding Alberta does pay for transit projects. Spain may get EU transfers, but how much of the cost of the metros in Madrid and Barcelona is paid for by the EU? I suspect that our higher per capita wealth makes up the difference.

I was just using Madrid as an example because I was there recently. EU transfers and the Olympics can't explain subway systems in cities like Frankfurt, Munich, Washington DC, etc. Even Philadelphia has more downtown subway lines, as do smaller cities like Prague and poorer cities in Asia. Bottom line is Toronto should have a much larger mass transit system, Olympics or not.

 

[taal]

Not really sure about Philadelphia, it may have a few more lines that go through downtown but in terms of total length / # stops it's smaller.

Also, we should compare passenger use a little here! The Yonge line blows a lot of the lines mentioned out of the water ... in North America and some parts of Europe.

But I guess that's all the more incentive for more.

 

[Mapleson]

Well through federal funding Alberta does pay for transit projects. Spain may get EU transfers, but how much of the cost of the metros in Madrid and Barcelona is paid for by the EU? I suspect that our higher per capita wealth makes up the difference.

I was just using Madrid as an example because I was there recently. EU transfers and the Olympics can't explain subway systems in cities like Frankfurt, Munich, Washington DC, etc. Even Philadelphia has more downtown subway lines, as do smaller cities like Prague and poorer cities in Asia. Bottom line is Toronto should have a much larger mass transit system, Olympics or not.

Munich - Olympics (Accelerated for 1972)
Frankfurt - Olympics (Accelerated for 1972)
Washington - Capital
Prague - Capital

That leaves Philadelphia, who built their transit off the backs of Reading Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad (remember Monopoly?). The biggest restriction we've had on our system is that we are operating in mixed-traffic on freight owned corridors (speaking regionally as GO was created around the same time as SEPTA).

I think part of the trouble with the Yonge ridership numbers is that there isn't an alternative N-S subway line, so regardless of where you want to go, if you want/need to go N-S by subway it's on Yonge.

 

[Rainforest]

So how do we effectively address the neglect of public transit in this province? How do we change the culture?

I think that dedicated funding sources are needed to really address the public transit deficit. Reliance on the general tax base won't get us very far, since transit will always lose to higher-priority portfolios such as health care, education, and policing.

Road tolls is one option, and I like Sarah Thomson suggesting to impose tolls on the expressways leading into the downtown core. This may not be a comprehensive solution, but is something to start with, and can be implemented by the City Council alone.

Another possibility is a gas surtax levied on gas purchases within Toronto, Mississauga, York Region, and Ottawa, but exempting less dence parts of Ontario where no viable public transit exists. Obviously, this scheme can be implemented by the provincial government only.

 

[Mapleson]

How about a transit lottery or scratch card? A winning ticket pays equally to an individual winner and a transit project (winner picks). The remaining funds can go into a capital pool and gets drawn upon for any gap funding when a project exceeds 50% funding levels. The interest from such a fund could be rolled over or fed into interest payments on existing infrastructure debt.

 

[taal]

Munich - Olympics (Accelerated for 1972)
Frankfurt - Olympics (Accelerated for 1972)
Washington - Capital
Prague - Capital

That leaves Philadelphia, who built their transit off the backs of Reading Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad (remember Monopoly?). The biggest restriction we've had on our system is that we are operating in mixed-traffic on freight owned corridors (speaking regionally as GO was created around the same time as SEPTA).

I think part of the trouble with the Yonge ridership numbers is that there isn't an alternative N-S subway line, so regardless of where you want to go, if you want/need to go N-S by subway it's on Yonge.

Sure but why would there be?

Both parts of the Yonge line cover N/S routes ... why is there a need for a thrid ... most other cities don't have that many lines close to each other outside of downtown - they tend to all go in different directions (think the axles of a bike)

Also, some of our other N/S bus routes probably come close to other subway lines! I'm thinking Dufferin / Don Mills ...

Ah, but I'm getting side tracked ... all I mean to say is transit is heavily used here compared to most North America cities.

And given that, yea, we can use more subway lines! A lot of subway lines in other cities would simply be met by 'that ridership' is not high enough here ...

 

[Mapleson]

I meant more spread out (such as a Don Mills or McCowan subway and Keele or Jane subway) which would distribute the load across the City rather than down the central spine. It's the same issue that the 401 has, there isn't a solid alternative route, so volume piles us. I believe a real subway network would see much lower volumes on the YUS line because people would have more convienent options to get to the network connection nodes.

 

[junctionist]

I think that dedicated funding sources are needed to really address the public transit deficit. Reliance on the general tax base won't get us very far, since transit will always lose to higher-priority portfolios such as health care, education, and policing.

Road tolls is one option, and I like Sarah Thomson suggesting to impose tolls on the expressways leading into the downtown core. This may not be a comprehensive solution, but is something to start with, and can be implemented by the City Council alone.

Another possibility is a gas surtax levied on gas purchases within Toronto, Mississauga, York Region, and Ottawa, but exempting less dence parts of Ontario where no viable public transit exists. Obviously, this scheme can be implemented by the provincial government only.

I agree; dedicated funding sources and a continuous expansion plan could be an effective way of cementing transit expansion. We need to mature and realize that any expansion plan without a dedicated funding strategy is not going to succeed and be built. Maybe it's not a cultural problem but a lack of maturity on the issue.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Metropolitan Toronto was incorporated in 1953. Three months later, Metro council approved the Lakeshore Expressway. Construction was approved in 1954. The Gardiner Expressway (a.k.a. Lakeshore Expressway) opened from the Humber River to Jameson Avenue by 1958. Five years from idea to reality.

Toronto first proposal for a streetcar subway under Yonge Street came in 1909. It took the 1946 referendum for a Yonge HRT and Queen LRT subways to be approved by voters. Construction began for the Yonge subway in 1948. Only the Yonge Street HRT subway opened by 1954. The Queen subway (or Downtown Relief Line) is still waiting, even though it was approved by voters in 1946.

It takes longer for any public transit project to become reality. Even though expressways are much more disruptive, and public transit is more beneficial, the results are more on the side of expressways than public transit. Just see how easy it is for the 905 areas to get their expressways, than the 416 and the GTA to get public transit projects.

 

[kettal]

Metropolitan Toronto was incorporated in 1953. Three months later, Metro council approved the Lakeshore Expressway. Construction was approved in 1954. The Gardiner Expressway (a.k.a. Lakeshore Expressway) opened from the Humber River to Jameson Avenue by 1958. Five years from idea to reality.

Toronto first proposal for a streetcar subway under Yonge Street came in 1909. It took the 1946 referendum for a Yonge HRT and Queen LRT subways to be approved by voters. Construction began for the Yonge subway in 1948. Only the Yonge Street HRT subway opened by 1954. The Queen subway (or Downtown Relief Line) is still waiting, even though it was approved by voters in 1946.

It takes longer for any public transit project to become reality. Even though expressways are much more disruptive, and public transit is more beneficial, the results are more on the side of expressways than public transit. Just see how easy it is for the 905 areas to get their expressways, than the 416 and the GTA to get public transit projects.

The purchasing of land and preliminary designs for expressways happen for many years before they are actually built. Just because it doesn't make the headlines doesn't mean it's not happening. As to the queen tunnel being cancelled, there are plenty of expressways which were cancelled too.

 

[kettal]

Well through federal funding Alberta does pay for transit projects. Spain may get EU transfers, but how much of the cost of the metros in Madrid and Barcelona is paid for by the EU? I suspect that our higher per capita wealth makes up the difference.

Higher per capita wealth makes construction more expensive, not less.