Referendum on Transit City needed

[The Mad Navigator]

This may be of interest:


Dear Residents;

Over the past week, I have received thousands of emails in support of Transit City. I am in the process of replying to each of those letters, but in the meantime I wanted to be sure that you know where I stand on this important programme.

I have always supported Transit City and continue to believe that it is the best opportunity to provide a mass transit network to the City of Toronto. It is not simply the best we can do under the circumstances; it’s the right thing to do period.

As a municipal project, much more than just transportation needs are addressed by Transit City. The programme delivers train service to virtually every corner of the city while providing opportunities for economic, social and cultural renewal to some of Toronto's most distressed neighbourhoods.

Transit City provides cheap, efficient and environmentally sound transportation to the city’s priority neighbourhoods. These are communities that are struggling under the weight of poor housing, social isolation and diminished economic opportunity. Transit City delivers connectivity and affluence to these areas. With the introduction of Transit City, land values go up and create platforms for revitalization of the housing stock which will bring jobs and economic opportunity to the commercial properties in the area. New tax revenue flows from this investment. City-owned lands increase in value and public investments in local social infrastructure like schools, libraries, community health centres and recreation centres suddenly become more sustainable.

The innovative Tower Renewal Project relies on land values being inflated by proximity to transit. Open fields and abandoned industrial land, like the properties around the Woodbine racetrack, are brought to market with an investment and service like Transit City. Other city projects like the revitalization of the Yonge-Eglinton bus bays also benefit by becoming major transit nodes. Without the additional lines that Transit City provides, these projects will fail to deliver the economic and social benefits first predicted. The city will be left poorer as a result.

Cancelling Transit City will also cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and unneeded studies and Environmental Assessments. Additionally, despite the expenditures the city is left with the status quo. The status quo is a woefully deficient transportation system. According to the Board of Trade gridlock is currently costing Toronto’s economy billions in lost productivity.

Replacing the transit part of the city’s approach to fighting gridlock from Light Rapid Transit (LRT) to subways will cost billions more and actually deliver less service, or at best, the same amount of transit capacity. The only thing that changes is the length of a bus ride and the station you arrive at.

Financing

The incoming Mayor has said development charges can pay for the change in strategy. Intensification was already a controversial part of the Transit City costing estimates. Suburban neighbourhoods are on record as being opposed to doubling the as-of-right heights on streets with proposed LRTs. If jumping from 3 stories to 6 stories is currently unacceptable, what will these communities say when 40 storey towers are proposed along subway routes? To pay for the increased costs for subway lines through development charges, hundreds of buildings in this scale would need to be built. Putting aside whether the residents in these areas could stomach this kind of intensification, can the market absorb this kind of massive infusion of new units along suburban thoroughfares?

Setting Priorities & Planning

Then there is the issue of which line to build first. Do we extend Sheppard? Do we replace the Scarborough LRT? Is it the Finch Loop? After that decision is made, there is the cost and time involved in designing a new line, re-structuring a vehicle purchase to add subways and then the timelines for acquiring property, realigning underground infrastructure, switching the tunnelling contracts and building the one or two extra stations to meet the goals of subway first and subways only as a priority. None of this includes the legal fees attached to changing the plans.

Collateral Costs

Surface transportation also offers other opportunities. Once you build a subway, adding additional stops is virtually impossible. History also shows that while surface rapid transit stretches out intensification and distributes economic benefits along routes, subways tend to generate nodal developments with little impact between stations. Additionally, the new LRTs ordered for Transit City are not a good fit for our existing downtown streetcar lines. We may well end up with massive inner city streetcars that propel service cuts to operate.

Subways also need to be fed. In the suburbs massive bus bays will need to be constructed to deliver passengers to the subway. Local density is not enough. This too will cost money or underperforming lines will drive up costs or force service cuts elsewhere.

In other words after billions of new dollars, years of delay and construction and hundreds of other impacts what we end up with is a slightly more convenient subway line for a very few people and the status quo if we are lucky for the rest.

Respect for Taxpayers?

All of this has been decided without a public debate or comprehensive analysis of the impact of a decision made by one person, alone in an office at City Hall. This is not only no way to run a rail road, it’s no way to run a city.

Some of the leadership of City Hall may have changed, but the values, needs and expectations of Toronto residents have not. I am heartened by your willingness to speak up for the kind of City you want to build with us here at City Hall. We need to work together to ensure that residents across our City understand the importance of delivering Transit City and that they join with us in this fight.

Please encourage your networks to send letters and make calls to the Mayor, Executive Committee members, TTC Commissioners and Councillors.

In the meantime I will fight to save Transit City, as a councillor, as a citizen and as a Toronto transit rider.

Sincerely,

Adam Vaughan

I also got this email from Mr. Vaughan.

I got an email response from Councillor Grimes and Stintz as well.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

A friend of mine did some analysis. To support a subway, all other things being equal:

(1) with (50%+) significant subsidy you need at least 4000 people per square kilometre to support regular service.

(2) with less subsidy (33%+) you need at least 7000 people per square kilometre to support regular service (Singapore density).

(3) without subsidy/recover costs entirely from the fare box, you need at least 25,000 people per square kilometre.

I can provide spreadsheets with the amount of population and housing increase each ward would need to get to these levels. Meanwhile, Denver has made LRT work with federal funding for less than 300 people per square kilometre, which is like Detroit wasteland density.

With permanent gas tax/50%+ subsidy, it might be possible to make subway work all over the city by 2036, ignoring the actual capital cost, or mobility issues of an aging population.

With lesser subsidy, we’d need at least 4.5 million people in the current Toronto to make it work, which is at least a million extra people than any population projection envisions – and all the work he's been doing here suggests the government projections are way too fucking optimistic already.

With no subsidy we’d need about 16 million+ people within the current Toronto, which I can’t even begin to imagine.

This is all going into a letter for city councillors. Particularly those undecided and openly against Transit City.

It’s great they want subways. Who doesn’t? But the development they need to allow to make sure it can fund itself is astronomical. Plus, with an aging population, each and every inch of all the subway stations better be 110% accessible or people will be trapped in their homes because they’ll all have their driver's licenses pulled/and or can’t afford gasoline on their pensions.

Your friend with density figures is like a mule with a spinning wheel: no one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it.

The analysis makes absolutely no sense. It makes gloriously dumb assumptions such as:
1 - zero government support (okay, fine for a thought experiment, but silly in reality)
2 - the complete removal of all surface/feeder/connecting routes, kiss'n'rides, parking lots (100% of people must walk to subway stations to "support" them)
3a - subway line alignments are chosen at random (Toronto's residents are perfectly redistributed, hence the need to house like 200,000 people in the Rouge Park for a subway in Toronto to be viable - just in case the dart on the map lands there)
3b - or, subways are built everywhere, under every street (yes, Martin Grove and McNicoll, you're getting subways!)
4 - employment, shopping, leisure, school, etc., trips *and* locations do not matter (100% of people must be employed as door to door salesmen)

Do the numbers magically drop in half for a tunneled LRT line? What about a tunneled monorail?

The density map seems to disagree with that.

And the map CDL posted later on in that thread that shows both residential and employment density makes the comparison fuzzier. Offices, malls, schools...those don't show up on a population density map. Also, the *entire* Sheppard corridor, the area around or near literally every single proposed station, is seeing redevelopment. Check back in a few years and many of the census tracts along Sheppard will have substantially deepened in colour on population density maps. Yes, even Progress Station...large projects have been proposed for sites west of Brimley.

Of course, if population density was all that mattered, Bathurst & Steeles would need a subway, as would McCowan & Steeles, while the Yonge subway would have been halted at Lawrence, the Bloor line at about Jane, etc.

No. That money can be streched further to help more people in the form of LRT. Simply consider: how many people would be served by a single Sheppard extension to Scarborough? How many people would be served by multiple LRT lines all over the city?

Even the DRL would serve many more people than a Sheppard extension. I don't understand why you're so hung up on Sheppard.

Why do people think we can build multiple LRT lines all over the city for the same cost as a short subway extension? It's not even remotely true. It's fantasy. As if we're not already spending a billion dollars or more on them.

For the cost of a single LRT line, we can build a fantastic 190-style Rocket bus network on basically every single major route in the city, helping at least half a million people a day, resulting in vast cumulative travel time benefits and massive overall ridership growth. But we all know none of this has anything to do with stretching money.

The DRL is obviously more important, but people get caught up in the debate over Sheppard. It's mainly a downtown vs suburbs thing...Miller, Ford, Lastman, Scarborough, Mike Harris, left, right, Eglinton vs Sheppard round 2, etc.

You can't really put Sheppard East higher than 4th in terms of subway priorities - and that's just subway priorities, not transit priorities in general. DRL, Danforth to STC, Yonge...all have more urgent needs. Those are the three to focus on. Even Sheppard West has more short term strategic value. Still, an incremental extension of Sheppard east of Don Mills is the only thing that makes any sense in the medium to long term. Too bad any hope of logical incrementalism went out the window with multi-billion dollar schemes to dole out streetcar ROWs to priority neighbourhoods.

If Rob Ford somehow manages to get nothing built but a Sheppard subway extension eastward, well, that'd be kinda lousy. If Ford has subway blinders on, we need to get a different set on him and get him to focus on projects that are the most urgent, not just the ones that will bother downtowners the most - which is what Sheppard is.

 

[grey]

Thanks for the comments, snarkykhatru. A pleasure as always!

I'll try to respond to these soon, but in the meantime, I've brought the discussion over to this thread.

 

[nfitz]

And the map CDL posted later on in that thread that shows both residential and employment density makes the comparison fuzzier. Offices, malls, schools...those don't show up on a population density map.

Very true. Further down the same thread CDL made one that showed People and Jobs within 500m per square kilometre


Full size

While there will always be limitations with historic data, this is pretty good. Now if it only showed students over a certain age.

 

[GenerationW]

If the election was indeed a referendum on Transit City, and Ford was against it, and everyone else left was for it ... then surely subway lost, as more than 50% of the electorate voted against Ford.

As opposed to 2006 when Miller ran on LRT and Pitfield ran on Subway, and Miller got more than 50% of the vote.

Or to look at it another way, since only one prominent candidate fully supported Transit City (and I still can't believe I voted for him), then TC was decisively buried. The further away a candidate was from TC, the better they did.

Polls showed that transit was the #2 issue of this election. It barely made a dent in 2006, and Miller's somewhat vague LRT proposal aside, most people just assumed that after the Spadina extension, the next huge transit announcement after the election would also be a subway. Poor "strategery" here by Miller -- it doesn't look good giving people coach after having just given them first class.

That's a great map. What most jumps out at me is why the heck a subway to Vaughan is taking priority over so many more needed projects.

Ford probably had Luca Brazzi hold a gun to Miller's head.

As for a referendum, I asked Giambrone at an Eglinton LRT open house if Transit City should be subjected to a referendum since it was such a departure from previous long-range transit plans. He said there was no need for one.

The opinion of Toronto's greatest couch defiler is good enough for me -- close the thread please!

 

[nfitz]

Or to look at it another way, since only one prominent candidate fully supported Transit City (and I still can't believe I voted for him), then TC was decisively buried. The further away a candidate was from TC, the better they did.

Oh come on ... the election wasn't over Transit City. That was a side issue. And the two other leading candidates both fully supported the Eglinton, Sheppard East, and Finch LRTs. The only funded line that both other candidates didn't support was the fully-grade separated SRT extension, where no digging is expected for another 5 years.

 

[js97]

The density argument is rediculous, if that's the case, Eglinton East LRT should be cancelled - there is pretty much NOTHING between Laird to Birchmount/kennedy.

The 'lakeshore LRT? completely useless. Finch west? Nooth much going on eitheir.

Heck why even build a subway to York Univeristy, it's all farmland. Why did we extend it to Downsview?
Let's also close/bypass Warden, Victoria Park, the entire subway line north of Eglinton (west) to Downsview - there isn't enough density to support it.

It seems like Transit city has become the lightning rod of protest for the generally discontent electorate that now have to deal with RF for 4 years.

What's going to happen? Eglinton LRT will not get built. With the province's 19 B dollars in debt, you think they will extend it after the next election? And if a new government comes in, you think Hudak will fund it? Heck he might even cancel Shepperd LRTl The left will blame the right and the right will blame the left and Toronto will end up with NOTHING.

But hey, the partisan warrooms will be laughing and have ammo for the next election. Fun stuff!

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Thanks for the comments, snarkykhatru. A pleasure as always!

I'll try to respond to these soon, but in the meantime, I've brought the discussion over to this thread.

Yes, you can try to respond.

The same Rob Ford + Transit City argument is going on in 17 different threads so you might as well post that analysis in each of them and give people who may not have seen it a good laugh.

 

[SimonP]

Very true. Further down the same thread CDL made one that showed People and Jobs within 500m per square kilometre


Full size

While there will always be limitations with historic data, this is pretty good. Now if it only showed students over a certain age.

Here is a version of that map with all current subway stations, and their ridership added:

You can talk about connecting surface routes all you want, but station usage does correlate with density. The big exceptions are the terminal stations, that do have much larger feeder zones.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

You can talk about connecting surface routes all you want, but station usage does correlate with density. The big exceptions are the terminal stations, that do have much larger feeder zones.

Density of residents *and* jobs...that's the point. It's not residential density alone. Residential density alone is really only relevant to barebones local bus services looping through the suburbs, which tend to require minimum numbers of houses and high school kids within walking distance. And "employment" doesn't do a good job of showing shoppers, students, etc.

I don't know what map you're looking at but connecting routes, malls, schools, park'n'kiss'riders, etc., have an obvious impact on why station usage only occasionally correlates with density. There's many more exceptions than just the terminal stations. Warden or Yorkdale vs Museum, or how about Broadview vs Sherbourne or North York Centre. Lots of station 'pairs' like Queen vs Osgoode, Bathurst vs Dupont, and so on. York Mills vs Wellesley or Davisville. Wilson vs Eglinton West is interesting.

The map with TTC stations added might be more insightful if made with the first residents + jobs map CDL posted, the one that doesn't average out 500m of tracts. There's many spikes and valleys that get washed out in the averaging process.

 

[howl]

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This is an important point (one that I’ve tried to make in a number of TC threads and that Adam Vaughan quite elegantly makes in his email) – locating transit is not a simple game. It’s not just about connecting the areas of the city with the highest density or replacing the busiest bus routes with something more robust. In order to plan a transit system you have to know where the people who need transit are and where they want to go now, as well as where they will be in the future and where they will want to go at that time. It involves planning out where future growth will happen and how lines will connect up with existing and planned networks outside of the City. It involves finding right-of-ways that can handle a more robust system without having too big an effect on the vehicular efficiency of the street.

Transit City is a plan that maximizes future ridership for the given budget. Trying to explain that to people, who only care about how it affects them directly, is virtually futile and is exactly why a referendum on the issue is a terrible idea. Most people here on UT can’t grasp the complexity of transit network design, so I wouldn’t expect the general public to be any more informed and intelligent about the issue.

 

[kEiThZ]

There was no referendum when Network 2011 was foisted on this city. There was no referendum when Transit City summarily replaced that vision. So why the need for a referendum now?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

^
^
^
This is an important point (one that I’ve tried to make in a number of TC threads and that Adam Vaughan quite elegantly makes in his email) – locating transit is not a simple game. It’s not just about connecting the areas of the city with the highest density or replacing the busiest bus routes with something more robust. In order to plan a transit system you have to know where the people who need transit are and where they want to go now, as well as where they will be in the future and where they will want to go at that time. It involves planning out where future growth will happen and how lines will connect up with existing and planned networks outside of the City. It involves finding right-of-ways that can handle a more robust system without having too big an effect on the vehicular efficiency of the street.

Transit City is a plan that maximizes future ridership for the given budget. Trying to explain that to people, who only care about how it affects them directly, is virtually futile and is exactly why a referendum on the issue is a terrible idea. Most people here on UT can’t grasp the complexity of transit network design, so I wouldn’t expect the general public to be any more informed and intelligent about the issue.

Hardly. Transit City completely ignored current and future growth patterns, including plenty of Avenues, which is why the official plan needs to be altered to fit lines like Sheppard & Morningside into it. Its explicit mission is to bring light rail to as some priority neighbourhoods. Adam Vaughan wants to deliver affluence to Jane & Finch, something streetcars couldn't bring to Regent Park and subways couldn't bring to Crescent Town. The given budget was blown so quickly that half the lines were ditched. It's a terrible plan.

 

[SimonP]

Density of residents *and* jobs...that's the point. It's not residential density alone. Residential density alone is really only relevant to barebones local bus services looping through the suburbs, which tend to require minimum numbers of houses and high school kids within walking distance. And "employment" doesn't do a good job of showing shoppers, students, etc.

I don't know what map you're looking at but connecting routes, malls, schools, park'n'kiss'riders, etc., have an obvious impact on why station usage only occasionally correlates with density. There's many more exceptions than just the terminal stations. Warden or Yorkdale vs Museum, or how about Broadview vs Sherbourne or North York Centre. Lots of station 'pairs' like Queen vs Osgoode, Bathurst vs Dupont, and so on. York Mills vs Wellesley or Davisville. Wilson vs Eglinton West is interesting.

The map with TTC stations added might be more insightful if made with the first residents + jobs map CDL posted, the one that doesn't average out 500m of tracts. There's many spikes and valleys that get washed out in the averaging process.

Factors like connecting routes can skew the numbers somewhat, but they mostly shift riders from one nearby station to another. Chester with no routes has a low ridership, but Pape next door has a much higher ridership than the other Danforth stations. A line averages out to match the density of its surroundings. For Danforth that average is about 20,000 daily riders per km. For Sheppard it's more like 5,000 riders per km. No amount of feeder route tweaking will do much to change those numbers.

It's also surprising how little effect trip generators seem to have. Consider Yorkdale. One of the largest malls with a GO Transit and Greyhound station, but look at the rider numbers for that stretch of the system:

Lawrence West - 20,560
Yorkdale - 24,930
Wilson - 21,680

There is nothing much of note at Lawrence West or Wilson, and while Yorkdale does get more riders it's only a few thousand.

 

[grey]

Thanks for pointing out those maps, Scarb and nfitz. I'll try to work with that data.

Hardly. Transit City completely ignored current and future growth patterns, including plenty of Avenues, which is why the official plan needs to be altered to fit lines like Sheppard & Morningside into it. Its explicit mission is to bring light rail to as some priority neighbourhoods. Adam Vaughan wants to deliver affluence to Jane & Finch, something streetcars couldn't bring to Regent Park and subways couldn't bring to Crescent Town. The given budget was blown so quickly that half the lines were ditched. It's a terrible plan.

That, for sure, is a genuine deep flaw with transit city. It’s not really tied up with the official plan for intensification in the city. But it’s the first money that’s been available in generations, so just take it and run and damn the consequences :|