Sean Marshall

Marshall’s Musings

  • Toronto’s new rapid transit plan

    Yesterday, City Council decided, by a vote of 27-16, to go ahead with the $3.1 billion one-stop extension of the Bloor-Danforth Subway to Scarborough Centre, rejecting Councillor Josh Matlow’s last-ditch attempt to resurrect the LRT replacement and extension of the ageing Scarborough LRT line. Council — Mayor Tory included — also voted to spend resources studying three more suburban subway extensions and a re-alignment of the proposed Relief Line subway backed by the local councillor.

    Unfortunately, the chance of going back to the less-expensive, yet longer seven-stop light rail line is slim-to-nil at this point. In my view, it’s time for transit advocates that backed the LRT to focus their energies elsewhere. Like Metrolinx’s fare integration strategy, and the plans for other LRT lines, such as the eastern and western extensions of the Eglinton-Crosstown.

    TT - Scarborough VoteHow council voted on Councillor Matlow’s motion to resurrect the LRT option for Scarborough

    In order to ensure that he had enough votes, John Tory entertained Ward 39 Councillor Jim Karygiannis’ motion for a study on an extension of the Sheppard Line from Don Mills Station to Scarborough Centre. (There’s a LRT proposed for Sheppard East, but no matter.) Karygiannis’ motion passed, as well as several other councillors’ pet subway projects. Ward 10 Councillor James Pasternak has long pushed for a Sheppard Subway extension west between Sheppard-Yonge and Downsview Stations, and he successfully got that included as well. Finally, Justin Di Ciano (Ward 5) got a study approved for a subway extension in his ward as well, resurrecting a long-dormant proposal for a subway extension from Kipling Station to Sherway Gardens.

    It’s worth noting that all three right-leaning councillors are reliable votes for John Tory.

    Downtown, Paula Fletcher (Ward 30) moved that staff re-examine the Relief Line, moving the recommended alignment from under Pape Avenue to Carlaw Avenue between Gerrard and Queen Streets. This would shift the planned — yet unfunded — subway line two blocks west. The Pape alignment was chosen for ease of construction and operation (the line must curve from north to west just south of Queen Street), and is only two blocks away. That study will cost $520,000 and staff time.

    All these new studies are illustrated below. For clarity’s sake, the Sheppard East LRT, the Scarborough LRT proposal, and the existing Scarborough RT (Line 3) are removed. You can read more about how the votes went down on Steve Munro’s site.

    Transit Plan July 2016The map of planned, approved and existing rapid transit lines, and those extensions and re-alignments approved for study

    The “subways, subways, subways” sentiment is alive and well at City Hall, even if Rob Ford has passed on. And despite the thirst for expensive new subway lines,  Mayor Tory is still backing an austerity agenda at City Hall. Apart from the decorum, not much has changed in the mayor’s office.

  • The difference between the Fords’ Subway Plan and John Tory’s Subway Plan

    201493-rob-ford-subway
    The Rob Ford/Doug Ford Subway Plan, circa 2014

    The above is the subway plan promoted by Rob Ford, and later Doug Ford, in the 2014 municipal election. Thanks to today’s pandering to suburban councillors demanding their own subway lines, below is the John Tory-backed subway plan.

    tory-subway
    The John Tory Subway Plan, circa 2016

  • The Truth About SmartTrack

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    This article originally appeared on June 27, 2016 in Torontoist

    In 2014, then-mayoral candidate John Tory ran on a campaign of sound fiscal management, returning decorum to City Hall, and a curious new transit plan called SmartTrack, which promised “London-style” rapid transit from Mississauga to Markham. During the election campaign Tory claimed that the new rail service—53 kilometres long, costing $8 billion—would provide needed transit relief in just seven years, all on a TTC fare.

    During campaign speeches, Tory called the plan “bold.” He also promised to build the Rob Ford-backed subway extension to Scarborough Centre, rather than return to the cheaper, funded light rail alternative that candidates Olivia Chow and David Soknacki were backing.

    Of course, Tory won the election, and many Torontonians were looking forward to an era of competent governance, if not visionary leadership. But two years in, the costs of the Scarborough subway keep mounting, even if the number of stations kept shrinking (from three stations to one stop), and the scope of John Tory’s “bold” SmartTrack plan kept getting watered down.

    With the recent provincial and municipal transit announcements on new GO Station locations, it’s now official: SmartTrack is nothing more than a brand name for transit projects that were already in the works. And the City of Toronto is stuck with some of the construction costs that would have been borne by the province.

    Mayor Tory and the provincial government held two separate transit announcements this week: one in Liberty Village, the other at the former Unilever lands that First Gulf is looking to redevelop as a major office and commercial centre. While Tory has been bullish about promoting First Gulf’s development, the East Gardiner replacement, SmartTrack Station, and even a Relief Line subway stop—projects he championed—will all serve this particular property.

    Those announcements coincide with a Metrolinx report [PDF] that recommends 12 new GO Transit stations: Breslau, St. Clair, and Liberty Village on the Kitchener Line; Innisfil, Mulock, Kirby, Davenport-Bloor, and Spadina on the Barrie Line; East Harbour (Unilever), Gerrard, Lawrence East, and Finch East on the Lakeshore East and Stouffville lines. Stations at Mount Dennis, Downsview Park, and Caledonia were already approved and will connect to the subway and Crosstown LRT. Seven of those stations—from Mount Dennis to Unionville—are along the SmartTrack corridor. Spadina Station, part of Tory’s SmartTrack map, will only be served by Barrie corridor trains.

    From the start, SmartTrack was a fantasy built on assumptions; the line was an idea conceived by a little-known organization called Strategic Regional Research Alliance. SRRA authored a report, “The Business Case for the Regional Rail Line,” discussing the potential of a 2009 concept for connecting suburban office parks with Downtown Toronto with rapid transit. That report became the basis for SmartTrack.

    Meanwhile, Metrolinx—the provincial transportation authority for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area—was involved in studying plans for converting much of its existing GO Transit rail network from a commuter rail system to an electrified, regional rail network known as Regional Express Rail. RER and SmartTrack (as well as VIA Rail and UP Express trains) would be sharing the same corridors.

    Since the election, the truth about SmartTrack has become clear. Previous plans for SmartTrack were simplistic, with maps created using out-of-date Google Maps imagery that ignored the fact that lands owned by the City of Toronto along Eglinton Avenue in Etobicoke—reserved for an unbuilt freeway—were largely sold off and redeveloped. There were serious engineering and financial complications of building the connection between the existing GO line at Mount Dennis and the Eglinton spur. The plan to use tax increment financing (TIFs) to build SmartTrack remains dubious. The Eglinton spur was removed, replaced by the revival of the approved yet unfunded western section of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Tory surrounded himself with experts, including a prominent University of Toronto transportation professor who gave the plan an “A+.” Critics who pointed out these flaws were ignored or insulted. There are few excuses that Tory can make for this failure.

    With the latest announcements, it is clear that SmartTrack has become nothing more than a moniker for an existing GO Transit RER. Rush-hour train frequencies will likely be every eight to 10 minutes; off peak, trains will arrive every 15 minutes (the TTC subway never operates at less than six-minute frequencies). We do not know what fares will be charged on GO RER/SmartTrack as Metrolinx continues to study regional fare integration. And it is very unlikely that we will be seeing frequent, electric trains offering relief by 2021.

    As the Globe and Mail‘s Marcus Gee points out, the City will now be expected to pick up much of the construction tab—similar to how the municipal government is stuck with cost overruns on the Scarborough subway extension after it rejected a provincially funded seven-stop light rail line to replace the ageing RT line.

    At best, SmartTrack represents the City of Toronto’s buy-in to GO RER, a worthwhile project to provide better rail service to suburban Toronto and the 905. There’s room to negotiate at least some fare integration between GO and the TTC. But at worst, SmartTrack is a failure to deliver on a key election promise, as flawed as it is. But in order for the Mayor to save face, the SmartTrack brand will likely never go away.

  • What do I know? I’m just a downtown elitist

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    I once described Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong as the city official that “knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing.” In 2014, Minnan-Wong complained about the costs of building new washrooms at the soccer fields at Cherry Beach, holding up a sign that simply said “$600,000.” That photo of Minnan-Wong, scowling for the cameras, trying to generate some outrage in an election year, was meme gold and so was parodied in the #TOpoli Twittersphere.

    At $600,000, yes the washrooms were expensive. But as they were built in an isolated part of the Portlands, they required a new connection to the nearest watermain; a sewage tank had to be constructed as well, being so far from existing lines. The city has a mandate to provide quality parks and recreational facilities. Minnan-Wong, along with the Fords, also complained about the costs of umbrellas at Sugar Beach, a popular new waterfront park.

    In 2016, under Mayor John Tory’s administration, we have a City that doesn’t know the cost of some things (like the Scarborough Subway) nor does it know the value of other, smaller things, like the Toronto sign.

    The Toronto sign, placed on Nathan Phillips Square ahead of last year’s Pan Am Games proved to be incredibly popular with residents and tourists alike. The LED backlighting allows the sign to be coloured at night to mark any holiday or any important current or special event. The $100,000 climbable sign (reminiscent of the successful “I amsterdam” signs) was supposed to be temporary, and will have to be replaced within three years. A staff report estimate the cost of major repairs to the existing sign, and a new mobile sign, would cost $421,700 over two years. This would be money well spent.

    But some councillors, including Etobicoke’s Stephen Holyday and Scarborough’s Raymond Cho, would rather privatize the sign, perhaps selling it off. At least Councillor David Shiner, a fiscal conservative, called it “a potent symbol of Toronto pride and unity” after amalgamation, but even he questioned the need for paying for city staff to maintain the sign. A strong argument could be made that the costs to maintain the sign should come from Tourism Toronto and the local tourism industry, but calls from some quarters to sell it off are ridiculous.

    Last Friday, we learned that the estimated cost of building the one-stop, six kilometre subway extension to Scarborough Centre jumped from $2.0 billion to $2.9 billion. But unlike cycling infrastructure or fully funding an effective Vision Zero program to protect vulnerable road users, the mayor, key council allies, and provincial MPPs remain hell-bent on building it.

    Scarborough Centre MPP Brad Duguid, a powerful cabinet minister in the provincial Liberal government, quoted in the Toronto Sun, said that critics of the subway plan “…have been yapping away on this project from Day 1 and the vast majority of those critics come from fairly elitist downtown views of the city. People in Scarborough and the suburbs of Toronto count as well.” Duguid claimed that “the area surrounding the new [Scarborough Centre] station is growing fast.” Never mind that population and employment densities are not very high along the subway route, even in Scarborough Centre, and no major commercial development has come to central Scarborough since the 1990s.

    On Metro Morning, Duguid, a former city councillor who endorsed John Tory’s mayoral bids in 2003 and 2014, doubled down on his previous rhetoric. He repeated false claims about Scarborough Centre’s growth, claimed Scarborough residents have paid for downtown subway expansions, he even stated that the Scarborough Subway “transcends politics” (which earned a guffaw from host Matt Galloway).

    I live downtown, and I don’t use the subway; like many who live here, I walk to work. Many others cycle, or take overcrowded streetcars on King and Queen Streets. The Yonge Subway is overcrowded from commuters from outside the downtown core. Most downtowners wouldn’t directly benefit from a Relief Line either, but it’s an essential part of the network. The last subway built in Downtown Toronto was in 1966. I’m hardly an “elitist” either; I rent my apartment. I don’t enjoy many luxuries, and I certainly don’t hold a position of power or influence. I simply want the best transit for the best price; the Scarborough LRT, along with GO Transit RER and the Eglinton-Crosstown and Scarborough-Malvern light rail corridors represent the right investment for the eastern half of Toronto.

    We’re content to keep up an underused section of the Gardiner at greater expense than an urban boulevard, at the cost of lost development opportunities on the eastern waterfront. We’re committed to a $2.9 billion, 6 kilometre one-stop extension when a 10 kilometre, 6-stop LRT would cost $1.8 billion, funded entirely by the province. But we’ll complain about umbrellas and washrooms, budget too little for road safety plans, and question the costs of maintaining a popular sign at City Hall. I love this city, but sometimes Toronto still gets me down.

  • Shortsighted short-turns at Bramalea GO

    IMG_2321-001Bramalea GO Station

    Earlier this week, I took a train from Union Station to Bramalea, as I was preparing for a walk that I will hosting on Sunday exploring Canada’s first satellite city.

    Bramalea Station opened in 1973 when the Georgetown GO train service — GO Transit’s second commuter rail line — was inaugurated. The station is located at the southwest corner of Steeles Avenue and Bramalea Road, surrounded by factories, warehouses and busy roads and highways.

    There’s little to fault GO Transit for locating its station where it is. In 1973, GO was still in its infancy, launching its first rail services along the Lakeshore Line in 1967. It wasn’t anything more than a commuter rail service, offering downtown-bound commuters an alternative to driving all the way in; free and ample parking was part of that successful model. In 1967, GO Transit was created to reduce the need to upgrade provincial highways; it allowed Downtown Toronto to become a bustling global financial centre without needing huge parking lots and garages and more freeways feeding into it; .

    The GO station is located in Bramalea’s south end, next to the CN mainline, surrounded by land designated for industrial development since 1959, when work began on that new suburb. The station is located near a waste-to-energy plant (an incinerator), and is located under Pearson Airport’s flight paths. Since GO insists on providing free parking to its customers, Bramalea (unlike, say, Downtown Brampton) isn’t a bad place to put lots of parking spots; in total, Bramalea has 2,377 parking spots. And since Bramalea Station is adjacent to Highway 407, it’s a major transfer point for GO bus routes to York University, Hamilton, Guelph and Kitchener.

    But like too many GO stations, Bramalea is needlessly hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, and is even hostile for many local transit users. As Metrolinx, the agency responsible for GO Transit, pursues Regional Express Rail (RER), it has a responsibility to improve Bramalea Station. As it exists right now, Bramalea is a terrible transit terminal.

    (more…)

  • Exploring the downtown federal election races: Part III

    Last year, I posted maps showing how each poll voted in the 2011 and 2013/2014 by-elections in two key Downtown Toronto federal constituencies: Trinity-Spadina, and Toronto Centre. I also provided some thoughts about the races and the candidates. Now, over six months since the October 2015 election, I took some time to look at what happened.

    (Elections Canada was also slow to release poll-by-poll data; in comparison, the City of Toronto was very fast — I was making poll-by-poll maps of ward races weeks after the 2014 election.)

    In the 2015 federal election, these two ridings were split into three: University-Rosedale, Spadina-Fort York, and a much smaller Toronto Centre. In 2015, all three ridings were ones to watch; all three had high profile Liberal and New Democratic candidates vying to a seat in Parliament.  (more…)

  • A good, a bad, and an ugly week for Toronto transit

    There was some good transit news for Torontonians today, as the provincial government announced $150 million in funding for detailed study and engineering for the planned Relief Line subway. The preferred route and station locations for the first phase of the new subway line was also released this week, with eight stops from Pape to Osgoode Stations.

    Happily, the Relief Line, an idea that’s over one hundred years old, Toronto’s answer to New York’s Second Avenue Subway, is closer to being built than ever before. As Steve Munro reports, the study will focus initially on the portion from Pape to downtown, but will shift to the northern and western extensions.

    But there were also some ugly truths concerning that other subway project, the proposed one-stop extension of Subway Line 2 to Scarborough Centre. Last week, homeowners in the Ellesmere/McCowan neighbourhood received notices of possible expropriation, ahead of a public information session in which the preferred alignment of the one-stop subway was revealed. I can understand the residents’ anger; major projects will always be disruptive to some properties and some families and businesses are sometimes forced to re-locate. There’s an argument to be made that subway backers don’t realize the extent of the disruption that even bored-tunnel subways can cause. Stations have to be dug, utilities have to be moved, buildings demolished, and roads closed.

    But most importantly, the Scarborough subway extension remains a bad policy.

    Fullscreen capture 01062016 72046 PM
    2031 ridership projections for terminal subway stations

    In 2031, the projected ridership between Scarborough Centre and Kennedy Station will be 31,000 a day, or 7,200 in the AM Peak. This is lower than previous estimates; a 2013 study estimated the AM peak ridership for the subway extension to be between 9,500 and 14,000. The reduction by nearly half is because the 2013 plan had three stations — at Lawrence, at Scarborough Centre, and at Sheppard — but the new plan has only one station. Passengers on the 54 Lawrence East bus and on the Sheppard corridor would either be gerrymandered to the SmartTrack line, or forced to transfer to get to the subway at Kennedy or Scarborough Centre. $2 billion will be spent for this one-stop extension, while the Islington to Kipling section of Line 1, opened in 1980, cost a small fraction of that amount, even in 2016 dollars.

    On one hand, 7,200 is a respectable peak hour ridership between the two final stations on a long subway line, and subway trains shouldn’t be full at this part of any route. The ridership between Islington and Kipling stations on the other end of Line 2 will be 1,200 less during the same time. Fed by multiple bus routes, Scarborough Centre will be a busy station, one of the top ten for train boardings, if not the top five, in the TTC system.

    But in order to justify John Tory’s SmartTrack, a useful station at Lawrence and McCowan is being dispensed with. Planners, working under the direction council and the mayor’s office, euphemistically call it an “express subway.”

    Scarborough - 2015Scarborough transit plan, 2015

    Scarborough - 2016Scarborough transit plan, 2016

    Previous proposals, backed by former mayor David Miller and 2014 candidates Olivia Chow and David Soknacki, would have seen a light rail line replace the failing Scarborough RT route; the province even promised to cover the capital costs of the retrofit and extension to Centennial College and Sheppard Avenue. In 2011, in a report published by the Pembina Institute, the AM peak ridership of the LRT line between Kennedy and Sheppard was estimated to be 6,400 in 2031, far below the design capacity of a subway extension. An LRT line, with seven stops and many more surface transit connections, would directly serve many more passengers than a one-stop subway.

    Under the failed mayoralty of Rob Ford, the province agreed to build a subway instead, but the city was required to pay up. A property tax levy of 1.6% is currently collected to help pay the city’s share.

    The LRT ship has probably sailed. But thanks to two weak mayors, myopic councillors eager to show they’re fighting for their little fiefdoms, and an obliging provincial government determined not to lose seats in the next election, we’re stuck. At least we’re making progress on the Relief Line.

    Meanwhile, John Tory continues — inadvertently or not — to sow the seeds of confusion over what SmartTrack is all about. After the Downtown Relief Line funding announcement, the mayor put out this tweet:

    This is incorrect. The work on the GO Stouffville Line (not the “Unionville Line”) is a project undertaken by Metrolinx that will allow for two-way service on the existing GO corridor, work that started in 2015. Apart from the SRRA report written before John Tory ran for mayor in 2014, and some initial studies by the City of Toronto and Metrolinx, no work has been carried out on the still-vague proposal.

    Council’s stubborn support of the Scarborough Subway and Tory’s continued SmartTrack fantasies is are just a few reasons why it’s so easy to be frustrated with municipal politics.

  • Open the streetcar doors, TTC

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    4401: A Space Odyssey

    As part of Doors Open Toronto, the Toronto Transit Commission opened up the Leslie Barns for public tours. The new streetcar facility was built to house and maintain the new fleet of Bombardier-built low-floor streetcars. Of course, the streetcar delivery schedule has been disrupted by Bombardier’s incompetence; while there are only eighteen new streetcars currently in revenue service, there should have been 70 in service by the end of last month. Now the Bombardier problems have affected the Region of Waterloo’s light rail project, ION, which was to open in late 2017.

    27309171006_5c7cb17a50_oView from the yard at Leslie Barns west toward the Toronto skyline

    In any case, the TTC always puts on a great public event. Visitors to Leslie Barns were welcomed to tour the vintage streetcars — a 1923 Peter Witt, and a 1951 PCC streetcar. A new streetcar gave visitors a tour through the barns and around the (mostly empty) yard. Employees held a charity barbecue, there were giveaways for children and lots of friendly staff eager to answer questions. These public open houses are where you’ll find the TTC at its very best.

    You could tell that some of the organizers had some fun. The CLRV on display (pictured below) was signed for Old Weston Road, a short turn point on the 512 St. Clair carline. Townsley Loop, once the terminus for Dovercourt and later Harbord Cars, was closed to streetcars in 2003 and the tracks removed during the St. Clair Avenue streetcar right-of-way construction. Streetcar 4401, parked in the paint shop was just asking for the title I gave it, an homage to the visuals in that great Stanley Kubrick film.

    IMG_7410Yeah, operating a streetcar was a childhood dream for a while. Note the rollsign.

    Also on Sunday (and every Sunday, from noon until 5PM until Labour Day Weekend), you can ride a PCC streetcar in active service along Queen’s Quay between Union Station and Fleet Loop, and rides are free. We did this yesterday between visiting several downtown Doors Open sites, before exploring Fort York. The two PCC streetcars retained by the TTC (the rest were sold to museums or sent to Kenosha, Wisconsin) were restored to their 1951 appearance and are used for special events, charters, and summer Sunday service on the Harbourfront.

    The TTC is often maligned, often unfairly, for poor customer service, service disruptions, and delays. But I think events like Doors Open and free rides on vintage streetcars are a great way for the public to feel good about our transit system.

    IMG_2138Streetcar 4500 on Queen’s Quay

    IMG_2142Interior, PCC streetcar

    PCC Streetcar 4500 at Fleet Loop
    Streetcar 4500 at Fleet Loop, passing the 1861 Queen’s Wharf Lighthouse

  • Leadership, John Tory style (updated)

    Updated May 29

    I was frustrated this week by Mayor John Tory’s pronouncement that he’s “not in favour of adding any more politicians here,” referring to the proposed new ward boundaries released last week that would increase the number of city councillors from 44 to 47. This is despite a rigorous and solid process, with plenty of public and stakeholder consultation sessions. But to Tory, “politician” is a dirty word. Never mind that the boundaries were created in 2000, from even older federal/provincial boundaries that based on the 1991 census, Tory doesn’t like the solution developed after three years of work.

    2014 Election - 2018 Ward Projections
    The discrepancy between each ward’s population and the city-wide average in 2018

    Instead, Mayor Tory wants staff to back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that he likes, following the fine tradition in municipal politics of ignoring the advice and hard work of staff and outside experts because you don’t like the answer they give. Tory’s hand-picked Executive Committee agreed with his motion to defer the debate until the fall. 

    This is a problem. It’s necessary for aspiring candidates to be organizing right now if they want even a slight chance of knocking off an incumbent councillor. For that reason, the boundaries need to be decided as soon as possible. And adding three new councillors really shouldn’t be a big ask — it would cost $870,000 a year, including the costs of hiring additional assistants.

    One reason why Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi is a great mayor is because he trusts his staff and praises their hard work. I was at a lecture in which Mayor Nenshi took very little credit for that city’s response to the 2013 floods. Instead, he spoke about how he. along with senior city staff responded in a coordinated manner, involving all city employees and citizen volunteers in the effort to minimize the flood’s impact and clean up the damage.

    John Tory, on the other hand, shames city staff and local councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam in a crass stunt for Jack Lakey, author of “The Fixer” column in the Toronto Star. This reminds me very much of Rob Ford’s modus operandi.

    In the article, Mayor Tory is photographed cleaning up a planter on Alexander Street, as he explained that he was frustrated by the city bureaucracy who couldn’t get the planter repaired and looking good. Rob Ford was famous for this kind of stunt — filling in potholes, attending to residents’ complaints — often going over the head of councillors or city staffers. Urban forestry manager Dean Hart is named and shamed, but that department does not have responsibility for planters — that’s Transportation Services, which Lakey glosses over. To quote a friend: “so a city division which gets annual budget reductions declines to do work that’s out of scope, and in turn gets this response?” That’s not leadership.

    Leadership means addressing the real problems. Perhaps there is a problem with buck-passing. Maybe there’s a way to improve communications between city departments. A good leader involves the parties responsible and encourages them to find a solution, not publicly shame them. Maybe a leader doesn’t demand annual budget cuts in all areas (except, of course, the police), then blames staff when the effects of the budget cuts become visible. Meanwhile, Ward 27 is the most populated in the city, and Councillor Wong-Tam one of the hardest-working on council. Yet Tory doesn’t want to implement a sensible ward boundary plan.

    Running for election, John Tory liked using the word “bold” a lot, especially when he was touting his signature transit plan, SmartTrack. He promised leadership, but has instead dithered on or deep-sixed important initiatives, like a city-wide cycling network (He won’t back crucial sections of a new city-wide cycling network, saying only that he supports “sensible” bike lanes.

    On police reform, Tory dithered on eliminating the racist practice of carding until forced to take a position when a group of prominent citizens spoke out against it.

    As for social programs and revenue tools to fund essential city services and infrastructure, Tory would rather keep property taxes below inflation, despite the warnings of top bureaucrats. As Desmond Cole points out, Tory is pretty much carrying out Rob Ford’s agenda of low taxes, weak leadership on issues like police reform, and ignoring the plight of Toronto’s poor and lower-income residents. Car owners and homeowners (particularly the owners of single-family dwellings) rule in John Tory’s Toronto.

    Yet, we’ll keep up a needless section of elevated highway. But, at the same time, we can’t build a new streetcar line in the East Waterfront.

    As one person on Twitter pointed out, had we given central Toronto the representation it deserved, Council might have decided to go with the least-expensive Boulevard Option for the eastern section of the Gardiner Expressway. And committees like Public Works and Infrastructure, which has control over items such as cycling infrastructure, are dominated by suburban councillors.

     

    Bike Routes and Wards
    Cycling infrastructure and Public Works and Infrastructure Committee membership by ward.

    Sure, John Tory won’t embarrass us. He won’t smoke crack, he won’t be caught uttering blatantly racist remarks and he’ll march in the Pride Parade. But he’ll continue the Ford agenda of low taxes and reduced city spending, except for things like the Gardiner East. And it now appears that he will continue Ford’s legacy of crass photo-ops, pretending to care about “customer service.”

    But the city will continue to grow, and we’ll see some progress on important issues, such as inclusionary zoning to build some new affordable housing. There are lots of good people — prominent advocates and people working behind the scenes, staffers and councillors at City Hall, community leaders and great organizations pushing for better — that desire a better city and continue to make Toronto great. There’s plenty of bold leadership for a city that needs it, but you’re not going to find it inside the mayor’s office.

  • Brampton’s Etobicoke Creek: floods, concrete, and new public spaces

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    Over at Spacing, I wrote about a recent Jane’s Walk that I led on Downtown Brampton and Etobicoke Creek.

    Until a concrete diversion channel was built in the 1950s, Downtown Brampton would regularly flood as it was built right on top of the creek. The concrete diversion, fenced off and cut off from both the downtown core and the rest of the Etobicoke Creek ravine to the north and south, is an eyesore.

    Happily, the City of Brampton is planning to revitalize the channel, which is nearing the end of its useful life and must be reconstructed. The proposed concept, pictured below, includes new public spaces and urban development.

    Etobicoke Creek
    Conceptual drawing of revitalized Etobicoke Creek 

    Of course, during the walk, there was a discussion of the Hurontario-Main LRT, a subject I’ve written about here several times before. Some local councillors and one local advocacy group, Citizens for a Better Brampton, opposed the Main Street surface alignment, and want to push for an Etobicoke Creek route into Downtown Brampton. It would not only wreck a lovely ravine (where one can spot plenty of wildlife), but it would be located in a floodplain, and near the backyards of less-wealthy residents. There’s now a petition to nix that route. Of course, the cheapest and most logical route is along Main Street itself, but a dysfunctional and misguided Council continues to refuse to accept that fact.

    It was a pleasure leading a Jane’s Walk, and I learned a lot myself from the conversations that we had along the way; a good Jane’s Walk is when local residents participate and share their knowledge. Leading a walk is a lot of fun, and something that’s quite easy to do. And it need not be on the “official” Jane’s Walk weekend (this year, it was May 6-8), but anytime of the year.

    I’ll be leading another walk on Sunday June 12 at 3PM, in Bramalea, meeting at the civic centre across from the mall. Bramalea , billed as “Canada’s first satellite city” when planned and constructed starting in the early 1960s. There’s an interesting diversity of housing types, and an effort to build great greenspaces and linear parks, with a civic centre and shopping mall anchoring the large development.