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From the Post:
St. Clair: Our new midtown highway
Howard Levine, National Post
Published: Friday, December 01, 2006
When the Streetcars for Toronto Committee convinced our civic leaders to retain the city's streetcar system in November, 1972, we who formed that group were filled with pride and optimism. It was a citizen-inspired vote in favour of modern, clean and neighbourhood-friendly transit.
Today, sadly, I must say that I'm ashamed by what is happening to our streetcar system, especially on St. Clair Avenue West.
The dedicated streetcar right-of-way project is a mess that will satisfy no one and falls far short of its potential. The concept is valid and even overdue, but the design now under construction between Yonge Street and Vaughan Road -- to be extended west to Keele Street -- is symptomatic of myopia, Toronto-centrism and a refusal to learn from experience in other cities.
Such an important project should have been submitted to an international proposal call.
The urban design consultants hired for St. Clair publicly acknowledged their firm had no experience with a similar project. Nonetheless, they concluded the existing streetlighting levels along St. Clair were below standard, although the retired Toronto Hydro chief engineer who designed the system in 1992 strongly disagreed. This arbitrary choice for new streetlights on fewer and higher masts and with higher intensity leads directly to the necessity for a new system of centre poles for the TTC overhead. Centre poles result in a significantly wider transit median because of the clearance required for emergency vehicles. Bad choice.
Raising the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way 18 centimetres above the road surface means the tracks dip down wherever cross-streets intersect them. The track will undulate along the entire route, resulting in increased track and wheel wear.
There are no plans to update or even improve the archaic traffic control system; the existing traffic controls are supposedly timed to reflect conditions manually observed once or twice a year.
State-of-the-art traffic controls have been perfected and successfully installed throughout the world. These react to constantly changing traffic patterns and flows, vastly improving traffic movement. But not on St. Clair. Just as on Spadina and Queens Quay, streetcars will not be given any priority at intersections.
Our quaint pay-as-you-enter fare collection system will continue - just as it was when the TTC was established in 1921. Infinitely faster and more efficient automated fare systems will not be used on St. Clair or anywhere else on the TTC, despite the operational and cost advantages proved on every other major transit system in the world.
Perhaps worst of all, accessible, low-floor and air-conditioned light rail vehicles will not be used. Our 27-year-old streetcar fleet is past its useful life and needs to be replaced citywide with the type of modern equipment that has transformed streetcar systems worldwide into the accessible, comfortable and high-capacity transit services they can and must be.
And then there's this: The new traffic lane widths on St. Clair are equivalent to the standard required by the U.S. Interstate Highway System for 110 km/h.
A slight case of overkill?
Although the TTC initiated the project ostensibly to improve the reliability of the St. Clair streetcar, the City's Transportation Department quickly hijacked the scheme to divert criticism and detailed analysis of its real goal, namely to severely rebuild the street into a city highway slashing through the very heart of midtown.
One only has to examine the construction now under way west from Yonge -- right-of-way expansion to eight lanes at major intersections, wider turning curves at cross streets, two through lanes of consistent width in each direction, and narrowed sidewalks in many spots made even more dangerous where they are sloped into the curves.
Most of the project's cost is really for the road, the streetcar having being used as a guise to impose upon St. Clair Avenue the Transportation Department's template for suburban roads, a template frozen in the 1960s and oblivious to decades of innovation and rethinking about cities.
A situation as disheartening as this one was never imagined by the members of the Streetcars for Toronto Committee when we fought to keep the system. How ironic that Toronto made such a bold decision 34 years ago, but totally screwed up on St. Clair.
Howard Levine is a former Toronto city councillor and a transportation and urban planner.
© National Post 2006
AoD
St. Clair: Our new midtown highway
Howard Levine, National Post
Published: Friday, December 01, 2006
When the Streetcars for Toronto Committee convinced our civic leaders to retain the city's streetcar system in November, 1972, we who formed that group were filled with pride and optimism. It was a citizen-inspired vote in favour of modern, clean and neighbourhood-friendly transit.
Today, sadly, I must say that I'm ashamed by what is happening to our streetcar system, especially on St. Clair Avenue West.
The dedicated streetcar right-of-way project is a mess that will satisfy no one and falls far short of its potential. The concept is valid and even overdue, but the design now under construction between Yonge Street and Vaughan Road -- to be extended west to Keele Street -- is symptomatic of myopia, Toronto-centrism and a refusal to learn from experience in other cities.
Such an important project should have been submitted to an international proposal call.
The urban design consultants hired for St. Clair publicly acknowledged their firm had no experience with a similar project. Nonetheless, they concluded the existing streetlighting levels along St. Clair were below standard, although the retired Toronto Hydro chief engineer who designed the system in 1992 strongly disagreed. This arbitrary choice for new streetlights on fewer and higher masts and with higher intensity leads directly to the necessity for a new system of centre poles for the TTC overhead. Centre poles result in a significantly wider transit median because of the clearance required for emergency vehicles. Bad choice.
Raising the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way 18 centimetres above the road surface means the tracks dip down wherever cross-streets intersect them. The track will undulate along the entire route, resulting in increased track and wheel wear.
There are no plans to update or even improve the archaic traffic control system; the existing traffic controls are supposedly timed to reflect conditions manually observed once or twice a year.
State-of-the-art traffic controls have been perfected and successfully installed throughout the world. These react to constantly changing traffic patterns and flows, vastly improving traffic movement. But not on St. Clair. Just as on Spadina and Queens Quay, streetcars will not be given any priority at intersections.
Our quaint pay-as-you-enter fare collection system will continue - just as it was when the TTC was established in 1921. Infinitely faster and more efficient automated fare systems will not be used on St. Clair or anywhere else on the TTC, despite the operational and cost advantages proved on every other major transit system in the world.
Perhaps worst of all, accessible, low-floor and air-conditioned light rail vehicles will not be used. Our 27-year-old streetcar fleet is past its useful life and needs to be replaced citywide with the type of modern equipment that has transformed streetcar systems worldwide into the accessible, comfortable and high-capacity transit services they can and must be.
And then there's this: The new traffic lane widths on St. Clair are equivalent to the standard required by the U.S. Interstate Highway System for 110 km/h.
A slight case of overkill?
Although the TTC initiated the project ostensibly to improve the reliability of the St. Clair streetcar, the City's Transportation Department quickly hijacked the scheme to divert criticism and detailed analysis of its real goal, namely to severely rebuild the street into a city highway slashing through the very heart of midtown.
One only has to examine the construction now under way west from Yonge -- right-of-way expansion to eight lanes at major intersections, wider turning curves at cross streets, two through lanes of consistent width in each direction, and narrowed sidewalks in many spots made even more dangerous where they are sloped into the curves.
Most of the project's cost is really for the road, the streetcar having being used as a guise to impose upon St. Clair Avenue the Transportation Department's template for suburban roads, a template frozen in the 1960s and oblivious to decades of innovation and rethinking about cities.
A situation as disheartening as this one was never imagined by the members of the Streetcars for Toronto Committee when we fought to keep the system. How ironic that Toronto made such a bold decision 34 years ago, but totally screwed up on St. Clair.
Howard Levine is a former Toronto city councillor and a transportation and urban planner.
© National Post 2006
AoD