Toronto Was Once A Global Leader In Transit

[doady]

I always though Toronto was behind the times in transit. Isn't that basically why the streetcars survived after all?

I think Toronto could at least look to the 905 and adopt time-based fares. As for zone fares: Toronto is not a regional system, so why should it have zone fares? Integrate with 905, and then we can talk about zone fares.

And I can't believe that someone would call the Spadina line a "white elephant". How much more crowded would the Yonge Line be without it? Why is there DRL proposed?

What is the ridership of University-Spadina line anyways? According the station ridership statistics, the University-Spadina section accounts for 35.7% of ridership of the YUS line (not including Union), so around 260,000 riders per weekday.

No wonder Toronto is behind the times. A subway line with 260,000 riders per weekday providing relief to another line is a "white elephant", so nothing gets done, because nothing is good enough for Toronto's high standards. kEiThZ's post is representative of everything that wrong with transit in Toronto today.

 

[W. K. Lis]

When the Toronto Transit Commission was born out of the Toronto Transportation Commission and suburban bus lines, the core was streetcars. It also was lucky in that the new TTC was able to purchase slightly used PCC streetcars at prices below that of buses. Outside the central city, it was still mostly farmland. There were fare zones where passengers had to pay a new fare each time they crossed the zone boundary.

Because of pressure from Toronto's suburban townships/boroughs/cities, those zones were eliminated, but at a cost. Instead of creating new streetcar lines into the suburbs, they used buses. Even some of the core streetcar routes were converted to buses.

When the TTC replaced routes with streetcars with heavy rail subways, they were successful. However, when they started to replace bus routes with subways, they were not, as we saw with the Sheppard.

To me, the future for the TTC is with rail, but starting with light rail replacing bus routes.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

When was this?

Toronto was once a global leader in transit

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/comm...-needs-to-heed-global-lessons-on-transit.html

1955 to 1995

 

[lead82]

I always though Toronto was behind the times in transit. Isn't that basically why the streetcars survived after all?

I think Toronto could at least look to the 905 and adopt time-based fares. As for zone fares: Toronto is not a regional system, so why should it have zone fares? Integrate with 905, and then we can talk about zone fares.

And I can't believe that someone would call the Spadina line a "white elephant". How much more crowded would the Yonge Line be without it? Why is there DRL proposed?

What is the ridership of University-Spadina line anyways? According the station ridership statistics, the University-Spadina section accounts for 35.7% of ridership of the YUS line (not including Union), so around 260,000 riders per weekday.

No wonder Toronto is behind the times. A subway line with 260,000 riders per weekday providing relief to another line is a "white elephant", so nothing gets done, because nothing is good enough for Toronto's high standards. kEiThZ's post is representative of everything that wrong with transit in Toronto today.

I agree on your point about time based fares. That would be a huge improvement over the complex transfer system we have today. I stand by my comment about the Spadina line but the meaning was misunderstood. When I said it was a 'white elephant' what I meant was that the money spent to build it could have had a much bigger impact had it not gone up Allen Road, but a much denser area such as Bathurst (very busy bus route) or Dufferin ( another busy route). Imagine how much less busy Yonge would be if the Spadina line went up Bathurst Street or even Dufferin Street would have been more useful a route. Right now the Spadina line is only ever busy during peak periods. The rest of the time north of Eglinton W, the trains are almost empty. Meanwhile, the buses on Bathurst and Dufferin are busy all the time. The extension to Vaughan will also be under-utilized for decades to come. Instead of building small stations with TOD nearby and heavy incentives for builders near stations, instead we get more airport style stations with little to no development but expensive operational costs to maintain down the road. The only development happening is at the last stop. The rest of the stations will have zero or near zero development happening and very few plans from the city to attract development. Steeles West is surrounded by industrial lands. York U and Finch West will get decent ridership. Downsview park will be a ghost town station with ridership on par with Bessarian (perhaps more GO frequency may boost ridership somewhat, but I doubt it much). My point was that for the $3B spent on this line, we could have started to build a DRL to relief some of the major problems in subway congestion downtown. My point is about using public dollars wisely.

Similarly the Sheppard line was a colossal waste of money. $1B on a 5KM line that draws little ridership. We're repeating it again with a $3B extension of BD to Scarborough. Another area of low-density. I'm not saying Scarborough shouldn't have better transit, but I resent the waste. $3B could buy Scarborough 3-5 LRT lines crossing this part of the city and being a lot more useful to residents. Not that many Scarborough residents work downtown and a lot of them commute to other parts of the city. The current solution will do nothing for them. It will do nothing for students commuting to Centennial college or UofT Scarborough, or residents of Malvern who are far away from any rapid transit. Imagine instead we used $3B to complete the Sheppard LRT all the way to the zoo, the TC Scarborough LRT from Kennedy to UoFT campus and Centennial college with extension north to Markham. We would even have had enough money to rebuild the RT and extend it past Centennial college and into Malvern. That would have given Scarborough a super useful network of lines that connected residents to major travel nodes.

 

[crs1026]

We need to consider 'high points' as well as 'low points'

The "high point" in Toronto transit planning was the 1970's, while Toronto grappled with how to implement Bill Davis' decision not to build more expressways into Toronto. That single decision was probably the highest point in the city's transit history, but it took a couple of decades to deal with. The growth of GO is directly attributable to that decision - "no more freeways" created the need for so much transit to get people around.

Although GO was a regional and not a city managed service, it's definitely world class and has never wavered
- has had only one operational fatality, and that was to a railroad worker not a member of the public (I'm not counting grade crossing/pedestrian fatalities)
- has never been through a period where the trains were dirty, old, or in poor state of repair - compare that to Metra or NJ Transit or the LIRR - we hardly even see graffitti on Go Trains, it's cleaned up immediately
- has seen almost continual growth
- its equipment choices were consistently innovative and proved successful - no one ever complains about our bilevels!

The decision to renew the streetcar fleet when the PCC's wore out was also world class. Other North American cities would just have bought buses. The qualifier to that is, it was a case of the better solution being forced by a protest movement rather than TTC coming up with it internally.

The extensions to Line 1 were (until recently) good ones (You can argue against the Spadina line, but imagine what it would be like getting downtown from the Northwest if it wasn't there).

The downfall started when the Province imposed ICTS on Scarboro. That technology was just too "wierd" and a case of good in theory, but wait til the bugs are worked out. It was about provincial industry building, not the needs of the city. Sheppard was an abject disaster, and it set the tone that politics not professional transit planning trumps all. Since then, it has been stupid.

Meanwhile, the very fact that there were 'glory days' has meant that the TTC has rested on its laurels instead of continuing to advance and innovate.

- Paul

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

crs1026:

The leadup to the Russel Hill incident and the subsequent inquiry suggests a huge amount of rot in the org just got papered over even in the swinging days of the 80s when Toronto is "the city that works".

AoD

 

[crs1026]

crs1026:

The leadup to the Russel Hill incident and the subsequent inquiry suggests a huge amount of rot in the org just got papered over even in the swinging days of the 80s when Toronto is "the city that works".

AoD

Very true. I had forgotten about that one. That was probably the lowest point. I would say the system was in decline by 1980, and Russell Hill was mid-90's iirc. That incident gets used a a case study in Safety Management courses, as a good example of how all the big calamities (e.g. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the Caribbean Oil spill, the 2003 Northeastern power blackout, Lac Megantic) arise when there is layer upon layer of organizational rot - and not a single guy's screwup.

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

kEiThZ's post is representative of everything that wrong with transit in Toronto today.

I am curious why you say this. I've never suggested that Spadina was a "white elephant". Or even that the TTC is a regional system (though it clearly has implications for the region). Just that the TTC needs to show leadership in how it interacts with other systems. It's the largest system in the region. So by default, it needs to lead.

 

[kEiThZ]

I Imagine instead we used $3B to complete the Sheppard LRT all the way to the zoo, the TC Scarborough LRT from Kennedy to UoFT campus and Centennial college with extension north to Markham. We would even have had enough money to rebuild the RT and extend it past Centennial college and into Malvern. That would have given Scarborough a super useful network of lines that connected residents to major travel nodes.

This is the most frustrating part about the debate. More money only comes up when subways are proposed. Instead of that, they could have actually executed the lines properly. The gimping of the LRT lines (cutting the SLRT at Sheppard/Progress and Sheppard East at Morningside), makes these really hard to sell because that's just more people getting forced to transfer mid-route. The SLRT should go to Malvern Town Centre as planned. The SELRT should go to the zoo. And they should have planned to launch the SMLRT at the same time as well. But nobody is proposing this for the same amount of money. Instead, LRT proponents fight the subway as a money-saving measure. That changes the politics of it.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

I am curious why you say this. I've never suggested that Spadina was a "white elephant". Or even that the TTC is a regional system (though it clearly has implications for the region). Just that the TTC needs to show leadership in how it interacts with other systems. It's the largest system in the region. So by default, it needs to lead.

That's how I read it. And you're right. But some people read what they want to. Speaking of which...

He's about to complain about York Region not getting its fair share of subways...

He's about to offer valuable context and insight, such as requires permanent storage on the Internet.

Yep.

Alas, nope.
And I was making a macro point, not a micro one and didn't say anything about suburbs needing subways - I merely explained growth patterns - but your pithy commentary has rendered that distinction moot. I tip my hat to the Oscar Wilde of UrbanToronto!

Back to KeithZ's point, we're never going to get out of this rut or be a "leader" with the current governance system. Metrolinx was a step in the proper direction but a proper regional transit authority is needed. The TTC kind of served that function in the Metro era, when its outer edges were less developed and it didn't matter whether places like Vaughan and Brampton had their own little systems (which was the point I made earlier, Forgotten; we were a leader when transit planning was co-ordinated where growth was taking place. sorry for being so subtle!). But now their service and ridership are all intertwined while nothing else about them is.

Whether that specifically entails the subway being uploaded, I don't know but I also don't know of another major metropolis that shares our current "structure" and certainly no one starting from scratch would emulate it and certainly no one looking at best practices would see us as "leaders" in that regard.

 

[ssiguy2]

Toronto was never a "global leader" in transit but it did make a lot of very good long term decisions at a crucial time which set it apart.

It kept it's streetcars when other cities around the world were tearing them up and it built most of it's subway between 1950 to 1970 which was unique as this was the ultimate time of road expansion and transit neglect for most cities as well as introducing GO in the 1960s.

 

[W. K. Lis]

I am curious why you say this. I've never suggested that Spadina was a "white elephant". Or even that the TTC is a regional system (though it clearly has implications for the region). Just that the TTC needs to show leadership in how it interacts with other systems. It's the largest system in the region. So by default, it needs to lead.

From 1969 to 1978, the University subway was the "white elephant". It was closed Mondays to Saturdays at 9:45 p.m. and all day Sundays and holidays. Took the "Spadina" extension to get a more reasonable hours of operation, except for the morning rush hour short-turns at St. Clair West Station.

 

[W. K. Lis]

1985 was the last year that the TTC was rated one of five agencies with Outstanding Public Transportation Systems

From link.

For 2015, the agencies that won were:

Connect Transit (Normal, IL)
Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) (Houston, TX)
​

(GO Transit did win in 2013.)

 

[MisterF]

Like others have said I doubt that Toronto was ever a world leader in transit, but I think that it has come to the current situation for a few reasons:

-All subways must be overcrowded. For some reason there's this attitude that every subway line must be packed to capacity for it to be successful. This has led to some considering the western half of Line 1 to be a white elephant. And it has led to very little expansion in the system, the focus being on squeezing a bit more capacity out of existing lines to solve all the subway's crowding problems. More lines are needed downtown but it doesn't seem to be a priority.

-Overprotective attitudes towards streetcars. While Toronto's decision to keep operating streetcars was the right decision, we're now left with people arguing against replacing any more streetcars with badly needed subways. Lines 1 and 2 replaced some of the busiest streetcar lines in the city, and the relief line could do the same with much of the King and/or Queen lines. But now people oppose the RL or argue that it should be designed in a way that renders it a glorified commuter rail line, which of course defeats much of its purpose.

-Reluctance to take away car space. The streetcars could be improved drastically by giving them their own lanes or, in the case of King and Queen, making them transit malls. This would be no substitute for a proper subway but it's still worth doing. But of course the Rob Ford types would go nuts if this were to ever happen. So this combined with the above two points has given us a bizarre system where nobody wants to replace any streetcars with a subway but at the same time nobody wants to fully unlock the potential of the streetcars.

-Everyone's in their own little silo. The TTC treats transit like a turf war between rival gangs while GO still has a mindset of serving suburban commuters and nobody else. Ultimately we need a single authority coordinating transit across the GTA. The current model is just going to result in every little gang protecting their turf and any meaningful changes having to be strong-armed by the province. This has given us flat fares where there should be zones, absurd rules with each system using streets in neighbouring municipalities, little to no coordination in routes, and routes duplicating each other. Hopefully when the GO lines are expanded to RER this will start to change.

This all seems to affect the downtown core more than anywhere else in the GTA. Replacing any streetcar with a subway is resisted. Improving any streetcar is resisted. Replacing automobile space with space for bikes, streetcars, or sidewalks is resisted. So while the suburbs are getting busways and LRT lines, the centre of the city is stuck in limbo, all the while experiencing the biggest building boom in the Western world.

From 1969 to 1978, the University subway was the "white elephant". It was closed Mondays to Saturdays at 9:45 p.m. and all day Sundays and holidays. Took the "Spadina" extension to get a more reasonable hours of operation, except for the morning rush hour short-turns at St. Clair West Station.

I think that a piece of infrastructure that takes less than a decade to become relevant is by definition not a white elephant.

 

[kEiThZ]

All subways must be overcrowded. For some reason there's this attitude that every subway line must be packed to capacity for it to be successful.

A very interesting point, given the debate about the Scarborough subway. To me the TTC's threshold for investing in subways, especially at the end of any line, all but ensures crowding downstream. If the train is leaving full from the terminus, clearly the line to be extended. And that's the case at virtually every terminus today. Especially Finch.

Don't know if that's a salient point, when it comes to leadership. Just evidence of a lack thereof, when we get policy failures like this.

The biggest issue I take with transit in Toronto is the lack of a cohesive vision which takes into account both the commuting reality and public's desires. So we end up with an LRT focused plan which aims to cut current bus travel times dramatically, when the public is focused on cutting their total commute time substantially (which only regional rail like GO RER or SmartTrack can do). The mayor to some extent gets this (hence SmartTrack). But he hasn't been able to pivot his SmartTrack pitch into something the public needs: better fare and service integration with GO RER.

It's ridiculous that most downtown bound commuters from Scarborough or Etobicoke ride the subway 20-30 stops to get to their final destinations. They should be on regional rail service if commuting that far. Lack of a real regional rail service, is also driving demands for subway expansion. If GO RER were in place, and integrated with the TTC, there would be very little demand for subway expansion into Scarborough and the LRTs would be a much, much easier sell, since they'd feed the RER network. Politicians have really mucked it up by pushing LRT first, not working towards integration with GO, and not really telling the public about GO RER.