G
green22
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I ran across this article and thought people might want to see what was going on back then. Especially interesting to look at for those that didn't live in Toronto at the time.
TORONTO: BACK ON TRACK? (MASS TRANSIT CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM FOR THE GREATER TORONTO AREA)
1 May 1990 Railway Age
Copyright Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp. 1990
A $5 billion capital improvement program unveiled last month could put the Greater Toronto Area in position to claim a in the title of mass transit showcase of the world.
In the opinion of the Government of Ontario, it is going to take $5 billion (Canadian) to keep North America's most transit dependent metropolitan center that way. That's how much the province has announced it will spend on transportation infrastructure in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) over the next decade. The GTA includes the Regions of Durham, York, Peel, Halton, and Metro Toronto. Metro includes the City of Toronto and five other cities and boroughs. Within the various regions are strong towns and cities such as Mississauga, Brampton, Pickering and Oshawa. The GTA stretches more than 70 miles along the shore of Lake Ontario, from Hamilton in the west to Oshawa in the east, although the commuter watershed continues to spread out even beyond those points.
The announcement was made by provincial transport minister William Wrye at a ceremony in the GO Transit concourse of Toronto's historic Union Station on April 5.
Wrye used a graphic example to explain the province's commitment to a massive expansion of the Toronto Transit Commission's (TTC) rapid transit system and the rail commuter operations of GO Transit. He pointed out that it would take "six Don Valley Parkways to carry into downtown Toronto the same number of people as the Yonge Subway. "
Of the total package-which is above and beyond the funds already committed for other infrastructure programs and on-going operating subsidies to the TTC, GO and other transit systems within the GTA-only $690 million, or less than one-seventh, will go for highway expansion and construction. The remaining $4.31 billion will go to rapid expansion and further integration of transit services throughout a region where population growth has averaged 50,000 per year for the last 20 years.
* TTC 10-year plan. The major beneficiary is the TTC, a system long regarded as North America's best urban transit operation, but one that has embarked on relatively few capital projects in the past 15 years. Among the projects the TTC will undertake over the next 10 years are:
Construction of a subway loop line along the Finch/Steeles corridor in Metro Toronto's far north end to close the gap between the north-south Yonge and Spadina lines.
-Extension of the Bloor-Danforth Subway southwest to the Sherway Gardens shopping center, a hub of commercial activity on the far west side of Metro Toronto.
-Extension of the controversial Scarborough RT, which uses UTDC'S Intermediate Capacity Transit System, to the northeast comer of Metro.
Construction of a Spadina streetcar line, in a reserved median strip, in the city's downtown core, restoring a rail service that was abandoned in favor of buses in the late 1940s.
Construction of a rapid transit line, using still unspecified technology, west from the Eglinton West subway station on the Spadina line to connect with a busway that will link Toronto with the center of Mississauga, the burgeoning community on Metro's western boundary.
-Extension of the Harbourfront streetcar line, slated to open later this year, west along the city's lakefront to a connection with the Bathurst streetcar line and into grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition, and east to the Greenwood Racetrack.
Also under consideration is the construction of a north-end subway line along Sheppard Avenue. Private developers have been pushing hard for this line and have said they will financially assist in its construction in exchange for increased density rights. The province estimates it will cost $2 billion and Wrye said its construction hinges on the outcome of negotiations between the province, developers, the TTC and the City of North York.
* What's on for GO. A less costly list of construction and expansion was announced for provincially-operated GO Transit. Though smaller by comparison, it will expand the rail and bus system dramatically. Wrye called for:
The addition of extra rush hour trains on the Whitby-union Station segment of the Lakeshore rail line before the end of April, adding 3,200 extra seats in the morning and 1,600 in the evening,
-Rush hour extension of the Lakeshore service east to the Oshawa station of federally-operated VIA Rail Canada by the fall, taking up the slack caused by the axing of some service on the busy TorontoMontreal line in the January cutbacks imposed on the intercity carrier by the Conservative government's budget slashers.
-A fast-track program for the establishment of full all-day, bi-directional service to Oshawa with extensions beyond, also designed to serve communities on the extreme eastern end of the GTA that were adversely affected by the VIA cuts.
-Extension of the rush-hour-only service on the Richmond Hill line further into the northern limits of the GTA.
-Construction of additional trackage east of the throat tracks of Union Station to Scarborough to allow for extra trains on the Lakeshore East lines.
-Shifting Lakeshore West rush-hour only trains from the Canadian National/ VIA Hamilton station to the unused downtown station of the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway, now wholly owned by CP Rail.
-Extension of all-day, bi-directional service on the Lakeshore West line from Oakville to Burlington by 1992 and eventually into Hamilton following environmental assessment hearings, which must be conducted due to the need to greatly expand trackage in a sensitive area of Hamilton.
-Unspecified improvements to the Bradford rail line.
"Moving towards" all-day, bi-directional service on the Georgetown, Stouffville, Richmond Hill and Milton lines, but with no implementation dates given yet.
-Two back-to-back orders to UTDC/ Can-Car's Thunder Bay, Ont., plant for bilevel coaches and cab cars and two more orders to General Motors Diesel Division of London, Ont., for F59PH diesel-electric locomotives, the development of which was a joint effort between the builder and GO.
The Ontario government has little choice but to make this transit commitment to the GTA. Gardiner Church, the province's deputy minister responsible for the area, estimates that $30 billion will be needed for facilities of all types over the next 20 years. By 2011, the GTA will have a population of 5.4 million. Church says, The $30 billion is the price of admission to a civilized city. It's not an amount that we should choose not to spend. "
Church adds that the largest chunk of the $5 billion transportation package to be spent over the next decade must focus on transit because "there can be virtually no new expressway mileage built. Community resistance to construction of expressways is exceedingly high. "
It was just such resistance that pushed one previous provincial government to create the original GO Transit Lakeshore line in 1967, relieving the growing pressure on the Queen Elizabeth Way and Highway 401. Another government had to capitulate plans to build a Spadina Expressway, replacing that projected highway with the Spadina Subway in the 1970s.
* It's about time." The list is long and the price tag is high, but most Toronto politicians, planners and transit advocates reacted to the announcement with Well, it's about time" comments to the media. Although Toronto may have a reputation for excellence in transit and may boast of its highest-per-capita transit usage on the continent, transit investment in the area has been shrinking for the past decade-and-a-half. Following the 20-year subway boom that began in the early 1950s and the rapid expansion of GO Transit's rail service from one to six lines after its 1967 start-up, capital programs bogged down. The TTC and other municipal transit systems depend on the province for up to 100% of their capital expansion budgets. But the provincial ministry of transport, in the opinion of one independent transit planner, lost touch with the growing transit needs of the booming region. It didn't move on highway expansion either, leaving a stagnant system of transit and roads to cope with soaring demands that it could not meet.
Councillor Howard Levine, a transit planner, former researcher for the in-power provincial Liberal Party while they were the opposition and now a member of Toronto City Council, says, "The TTC lost its luster because they couldn't come to terms with running the system they had. The province had gotten them onto a high-priced diet of big capital projects in the 60s and 70s and they never learned to make do with and improve what they had. The highway boys were in control at the ministry, but they couldn't get their projects rolling either. Only GO Transit soldiered on, doing a fabulous job with what I consider meager resources."
GO has handled 70% of the increased travel into Toronto over the last 10 years.
The cracks in Toronto's transit armour have been readily apparent to residents and politicians. The Toronto City Council and the TTC have been at loggerheads over the slow and over-budget progress of the Harbourfront LRT line, the TTC'S push to replace its trolley coach network with unproven, Canadian-designed natural gas buses and TTC's failure to cooperate more fully with GO to promote the linking of rail lines with existing subway services. The TTC blames the council for being unnecessarily negative and the council blames the TTC for being conservative and overly defensive about its inability to get going on vital projects without provincial assistance. The province has been sitting quietly on the sidelines, staying out of the intense public and media push for improvements.
An earlier and lower-priced TTC plan, Network 201 1, received little attention from the province, and the commission finally unveiled its Back To Basics plan as a response to public pressure and provincial intransigence. The strategic plan, unveiled in May 1989, called for more attention to customer needs, to the small details that many transit riders felt were being ignored, and to the corporate values that made the system one of North America's best from the 1920s through to the 1970s.
Meanwhile, GO Transit had been swimming fast against the current of rising demand and inadequate capital funding. Incremental improvements were made to the existing rail services through additional frequencies, the lengthening of key rush hour consists, and the purchase of proven equipment such as the UTDC/CAN-CAR bi-level coaches and the development of new motive power.
* More than electioneering. This breaching of the capital spending dam is being chalked up to a number of factors. First and foremost is the belief that the Ontario Liberal government, cruising along nicely in public opinion polls after five years of power, is ready to call a fall election; a few transit goodies won't hurt, say the opposition parties. City of York Mayor Fergy Brown commented, "I'm impressed that they're doing this before the election. I'll be even more impressed if they do it after the election. "
Wrye denies this and says the program has nothing to do with an election and everything to do with sound planning and judgement regarding the transit future of the GTA.
Other critics have linked the program to the province's quick grasp of the power of environmentalism in Canada and the fear that the country is falling into pollution and congestion problems that could rival those of many U.S. regions. Indeed, Wrye called his plan "an important answer to some of our environmental concerns. It's going to reduce vehicle emissions and it's one of this government's contributions to solving the problem of global warming."
Another major concern is Toronto's bids for the 1996 Summer Olympics and Expo 2000. Both events are being pitched heavily on the basis of Toronto's safety, cleanliness, multi-cultural mix, and its transit facilities. The Olympic Games, in particular, will require substantial upgrading of those facilities due to the need to spread the events out to areas east, west, and north of the city's core.
GO Chairman Lou Parsons admits his system will have to run fast and hard to have all the improvements contained in the provincial expansion plan in place by 1996 to handle the anticipated surge in ridership. But he says it can be done if the GTA Transit Implementation Group gets off the mark quickly. The group is to deliver the details by the implementation of the fall. However, critics such as Levine were not pleased by the failure of the government to have the implementation plan and the full costs out in the open before making the announcement.
* Remaining gaps. Two gaps that remain concern the new town of Seaton and the on-going ground transportation chaos at Pearson International Airport, Canada's busiest air facility. Seaton is a development for 90,000 residents on 7,000 acres in Durham, on the east side of the GTA. It has been approved by the province and statements have been made that it will be a transit-oriented community. The Seaton site is served by CP Rail's Havelock Subdivision, which, until Jan. 14, handled VIA'S Toronto-PeterboroughHavelock intercity trains. GO has been pushed to pick up the abandoned passenger service and test trains have been seen on the line.
The Pearson Airport problem is more acute and immediate. It is currently served only by infrequent TTC urban buses and express buses operated by the transit company's intercity subsidiary, Gray Coach. A third terminal is slated to open later this year and there have been complaints for years over the lack of a rapid transit or commuter rail link with downtown. A recent survey indicated that the most negative aspect of Toronto as a convention center is the airport and its poor ground service. The true test of this ambitious program to keep the GTA transit dependent will be the speed with which funding appears. Municipal politicians at the unveiling of the plan welcomed the announcement, but wanted to see the cash and the action before they gave the province a gold star. Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton supported the move, but added, "This will catch up on a decade of deferred construction. Now, we've got to go further and move Toronto into the 21st century. We can't rest on any laurels."
TORONTO: BACK ON TRACK? (MASS TRANSIT CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM FOR THE GREATER TORONTO AREA)
1 May 1990 Railway Age
Copyright Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp. 1990
A $5 billion capital improvement program unveiled last month could put the Greater Toronto Area in position to claim a in the title of mass transit showcase of the world.
In the opinion of the Government of Ontario, it is going to take $5 billion (Canadian) to keep North America's most transit dependent metropolitan center that way. That's how much the province has announced it will spend on transportation infrastructure in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) over the next decade. The GTA includes the Regions of Durham, York, Peel, Halton, and Metro Toronto. Metro includes the City of Toronto and five other cities and boroughs. Within the various regions are strong towns and cities such as Mississauga, Brampton, Pickering and Oshawa. The GTA stretches more than 70 miles along the shore of Lake Ontario, from Hamilton in the west to Oshawa in the east, although the commuter watershed continues to spread out even beyond those points.
The announcement was made by provincial transport minister William Wrye at a ceremony in the GO Transit concourse of Toronto's historic Union Station on April 5.
Wrye used a graphic example to explain the province's commitment to a massive expansion of the Toronto Transit Commission's (TTC) rapid transit system and the rail commuter operations of GO Transit. He pointed out that it would take "six Don Valley Parkways to carry into downtown Toronto the same number of people as the Yonge Subway. "
Of the total package-which is above and beyond the funds already committed for other infrastructure programs and on-going operating subsidies to the TTC, GO and other transit systems within the GTA-only $690 million, or less than one-seventh, will go for highway expansion and construction. The remaining $4.31 billion will go to rapid expansion and further integration of transit services throughout a region where population growth has averaged 50,000 per year for the last 20 years.
* TTC 10-year plan. The major beneficiary is the TTC, a system long regarded as North America's best urban transit operation, but one that has embarked on relatively few capital projects in the past 15 years. Among the projects the TTC will undertake over the next 10 years are:
Construction of a subway loop line along the Finch/Steeles corridor in Metro Toronto's far north end to close the gap between the north-south Yonge and Spadina lines.
-Extension of the Bloor-Danforth Subway southwest to the Sherway Gardens shopping center, a hub of commercial activity on the far west side of Metro Toronto.
-Extension of the controversial Scarborough RT, which uses UTDC'S Intermediate Capacity Transit System, to the northeast comer of Metro.
Construction of a Spadina streetcar line, in a reserved median strip, in the city's downtown core, restoring a rail service that was abandoned in favor of buses in the late 1940s.
Construction of a rapid transit line, using still unspecified technology, west from the Eglinton West subway station on the Spadina line to connect with a busway that will link Toronto with the center of Mississauga, the burgeoning community on Metro's western boundary.
-Extension of the Harbourfront streetcar line, slated to open later this year, west along the city's lakefront to a connection with the Bathurst streetcar line and into grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition, and east to the Greenwood Racetrack.
Also under consideration is the construction of a north-end subway line along Sheppard Avenue. Private developers have been pushing hard for this line and have said they will financially assist in its construction in exchange for increased density rights. The province estimates it will cost $2 billion and Wrye said its construction hinges on the outcome of negotiations between the province, developers, the TTC and the City of North York.
* What's on for GO. A less costly list of construction and expansion was announced for provincially-operated GO Transit. Though smaller by comparison, it will expand the rail and bus system dramatically. Wrye called for:
The addition of extra rush hour trains on the Whitby-union Station segment of the Lakeshore rail line before the end of April, adding 3,200 extra seats in the morning and 1,600 in the evening,
-Rush hour extension of the Lakeshore service east to the Oshawa station of federally-operated VIA Rail Canada by the fall, taking up the slack caused by the axing of some service on the busy TorontoMontreal line in the January cutbacks imposed on the intercity carrier by the Conservative government's budget slashers.
-A fast-track program for the establishment of full all-day, bi-directional service to Oshawa with extensions beyond, also designed to serve communities on the extreme eastern end of the GTA that were adversely affected by the VIA cuts.
-Extension of the rush-hour-only service on the Richmond Hill line further into the northern limits of the GTA.
-Construction of additional trackage east of the throat tracks of Union Station to Scarborough to allow for extra trains on the Lakeshore East lines.
-Shifting Lakeshore West rush-hour only trains from the Canadian National/ VIA Hamilton station to the unused downtown station of the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway, now wholly owned by CP Rail.
-Extension of all-day, bi-directional service on the Lakeshore West line from Oakville to Burlington by 1992 and eventually into Hamilton following environmental assessment hearings, which must be conducted due to the need to greatly expand trackage in a sensitive area of Hamilton.
-Unspecified improvements to the Bradford rail line.
"Moving towards" all-day, bi-directional service on the Georgetown, Stouffville, Richmond Hill and Milton lines, but with no implementation dates given yet.
-Two back-to-back orders to UTDC/ Can-Car's Thunder Bay, Ont., plant for bilevel coaches and cab cars and two more orders to General Motors Diesel Division of London, Ont., for F59PH diesel-electric locomotives, the development of which was a joint effort between the builder and GO.
The Ontario government has little choice but to make this transit commitment to the GTA. Gardiner Church, the province's deputy minister responsible for the area, estimates that $30 billion will be needed for facilities of all types over the next 20 years. By 2011, the GTA will have a population of 5.4 million. Church says, The $30 billion is the price of admission to a civilized city. It's not an amount that we should choose not to spend. "
Church adds that the largest chunk of the $5 billion transportation package to be spent over the next decade must focus on transit because "there can be virtually no new expressway mileage built. Community resistance to construction of expressways is exceedingly high. "
It was just such resistance that pushed one previous provincial government to create the original GO Transit Lakeshore line in 1967, relieving the growing pressure on the Queen Elizabeth Way and Highway 401. Another government had to capitulate plans to build a Spadina Expressway, replacing that projected highway with the Spadina Subway in the 1970s.
* It's about time." The list is long and the price tag is high, but most Toronto politicians, planners and transit advocates reacted to the announcement with Well, it's about time" comments to the media. Although Toronto may have a reputation for excellence in transit and may boast of its highest-per-capita transit usage on the continent, transit investment in the area has been shrinking for the past decade-and-a-half. Following the 20-year subway boom that began in the early 1950s and the rapid expansion of GO Transit's rail service from one to six lines after its 1967 start-up, capital programs bogged down. The TTC and other municipal transit systems depend on the province for up to 100% of their capital expansion budgets. But the provincial ministry of transport, in the opinion of one independent transit planner, lost touch with the growing transit needs of the booming region. It didn't move on highway expansion either, leaving a stagnant system of transit and roads to cope with soaring demands that it could not meet.
Councillor Howard Levine, a transit planner, former researcher for the in-power provincial Liberal Party while they were the opposition and now a member of Toronto City Council, says, "The TTC lost its luster because they couldn't come to terms with running the system they had. The province had gotten them onto a high-priced diet of big capital projects in the 60s and 70s and they never learned to make do with and improve what they had. The highway boys were in control at the ministry, but they couldn't get their projects rolling either. Only GO Transit soldiered on, doing a fabulous job with what I consider meager resources."
GO has handled 70% of the increased travel into Toronto over the last 10 years.
The cracks in Toronto's transit armour have been readily apparent to residents and politicians. The Toronto City Council and the TTC have been at loggerheads over the slow and over-budget progress of the Harbourfront LRT line, the TTC'S push to replace its trolley coach network with unproven, Canadian-designed natural gas buses and TTC's failure to cooperate more fully with GO to promote the linking of rail lines with existing subway services. The TTC blames the council for being unnecessarily negative and the council blames the TTC for being conservative and overly defensive about its inability to get going on vital projects without provincial assistance. The province has been sitting quietly on the sidelines, staying out of the intense public and media push for improvements.
An earlier and lower-priced TTC plan, Network 201 1, received little attention from the province, and the commission finally unveiled its Back To Basics plan as a response to public pressure and provincial intransigence. The strategic plan, unveiled in May 1989, called for more attention to customer needs, to the small details that many transit riders felt were being ignored, and to the corporate values that made the system one of North America's best from the 1920s through to the 1970s.
Meanwhile, GO Transit had been swimming fast against the current of rising demand and inadequate capital funding. Incremental improvements were made to the existing rail services through additional frequencies, the lengthening of key rush hour consists, and the purchase of proven equipment such as the UTDC/CAN-CAR bi-level coaches and the development of new motive power.
* More than electioneering. This breaching of the capital spending dam is being chalked up to a number of factors. First and foremost is the belief that the Ontario Liberal government, cruising along nicely in public opinion polls after five years of power, is ready to call a fall election; a few transit goodies won't hurt, say the opposition parties. City of York Mayor Fergy Brown commented, "I'm impressed that they're doing this before the election. I'll be even more impressed if they do it after the election. "
Wrye denies this and says the program has nothing to do with an election and everything to do with sound planning and judgement regarding the transit future of the GTA.
Other critics have linked the program to the province's quick grasp of the power of environmentalism in Canada and the fear that the country is falling into pollution and congestion problems that could rival those of many U.S. regions. Indeed, Wrye called his plan "an important answer to some of our environmental concerns. It's going to reduce vehicle emissions and it's one of this government's contributions to solving the problem of global warming."
Another major concern is Toronto's bids for the 1996 Summer Olympics and Expo 2000. Both events are being pitched heavily on the basis of Toronto's safety, cleanliness, multi-cultural mix, and its transit facilities. The Olympic Games, in particular, will require substantial upgrading of those facilities due to the need to spread the events out to areas east, west, and north of the city's core.
GO Chairman Lou Parsons admits his system will have to run fast and hard to have all the improvements contained in the provincial expansion plan in place by 1996 to handle the anticipated surge in ridership. But he says it can be done if the GTA Transit Implementation Group gets off the mark quickly. The group is to deliver the details by the implementation of the fall. However, critics such as Levine were not pleased by the failure of the government to have the implementation plan and the full costs out in the open before making the announcement.
* Remaining gaps. Two gaps that remain concern the new town of Seaton and the on-going ground transportation chaos at Pearson International Airport, Canada's busiest air facility. Seaton is a development for 90,000 residents on 7,000 acres in Durham, on the east side of the GTA. It has been approved by the province and statements have been made that it will be a transit-oriented community. The Seaton site is served by CP Rail's Havelock Subdivision, which, until Jan. 14, handled VIA'S Toronto-PeterboroughHavelock intercity trains. GO has been pushed to pick up the abandoned passenger service and test trains have been seen on the line.
The Pearson Airport problem is more acute and immediate. It is currently served only by infrequent TTC urban buses and express buses operated by the transit company's intercity subsidiary, Gray Coach. A third terminal is slated to open later this year and there have been complaints for years over the lack of a rapid transit or commuter rail link with downtown. A recent survey indicated that the most negative aspect of Toronto as a convention center is the airport and its poor ground service. The true test of this ambitious program to keep the GTA transit dependent will be the speed with which funding appears. Municipal politicians at the unveiling of the plan welcomed the announcement, but wanted to see the cash and the action before they gave the province a gold star. Toronto Mayor Art Eggleton supported the move, but added, "This will catch up on a decade of deferred construction. Now, we've got to go further and move Toronto into the 21st century. We can't rest on any laurels."