Category: Transit

The terminus of the Hurontario LRT: an opportunity for something better

Downtown Brampton, the logical terminus of the Hurontario~~-Main~~ LRT

I’ve written several times about the Hurontario-Main light rail transit (LRT) project on this blog. Last summer, I led a walk along Main Street, discussing Downtown Brampton’s wonderful built heritage, the potential for Main Street, and explaining why alternative routes, proposed by councillors and private interests, weren’t feasible. Floodplains aren’t great places to build higher-order transit lines.

Needless to say, I was very disappointed that Brampton City Council voted 6-5 last October against building the LRT between Steeles Avenue and Downtown Brampton. A vocal and wealthy minority, including a former premier of Ontario, opposed the project; it didn’t help that Mayor Linda Jeffrey found herself in constant opposition with several city councillors who backed other candidates for mayor in the 2014 municipal election. A Toronto Star reporter, assigned to the western GTA beat, wasn’t reporting fairly on this issue either.

Since that unfortunate vote, I resigned myself to a truncated Hurontario~~-Main~~ LRT corridor that will still serve three or four stops in Brampton, but will stop short of its logical terminus.

I recently made a trip out to the intersection of Steeles Avenue and Main and Hurontario Streets, the new northern terminus of the planned LRT. Construction of the 20-kilometre line, between Port Credit and Steeles Avenue, is scheduled to begin in 2018.

The Hurontario~~-Main~~ LRT, after Brampton City Council’s vote in October 2015.

The corner of Steeles Avenue and Main Street is already a major transit hub. Eleven Brampton Transit bus routes (including two Züm routes), a Miway express bus, and GO Transit buses serve the corner; the Brampton Gateway Terminal is the city’s second-busiest transfer point. The new Gateway Terminal, which opened in 2014, was built to accommodate ridership growth and facilitate transfers with the proposed LRT, which will stop in the median of Main Street.

As far as Toronto’s suburbs go, this corner of Brampton is relatively dense. There are several rental towers within a short walking distance; there are also three nearby townhouse complexes. Shoppers World, on the northeast corner, is a large regional shopping centre, albeit a mall that has fallen on hard times. On the southwest corner, there is still an old farmfield, surrounded by subdivisions, apartment towers and retail. There are many opportunities for transit-oriented development.

A fallow farm field, south of Shoppers World. The area is zoned for medium and high density housing developments, including townhouses and apartment buildings.

If Downtown Brampton, Brampton’s busiest bus route (501 Queen) and a GO Transit and VIA Rail station weren’t just 3 kilometres away, this would actually be an ideal terminus for a suburban light rail transit line.

The corner of Steeles and Hurontario/Main, looking northwest. The Brampton Gateway Terminal is on the opposite corner.

One of the greatest opportunities for new transit-oriented development is Shoppers World Brampton. First opened in 1969 by Peel Elder Limited (who also developed Shoppers World Danforth), the mall went through several additions over the years; by the 1980s, it boasted over 200 stores, including a Simpson’s, K-Mart, Pascal Hardware, cinemas, and two supermarkets. At one time, Shoppers World even had indoor waterslides. By 2000, Simpsons became The Bay, and K-Mart became Zellers.

Growing up only a 15-minute walk away, Shoppers World was my local mall. Pizza Hut was a favourite place to meet up with friends, I fondly remember the free popcorn at Jumbo Video, and the bus terminal made it easy to get to better malls, particularly Square One. My first paying gig was returning abandoned shopping carts to K-Mart for $5 each.

By the 1990s, the mall’s owners neglected the property, while Bramalea City Centre and Square One renovated and expanded. There were persistent rumours that the mall would be closed and re-developed with highrise towers.

A mostly empty Shoppers World parking lot on a Saturday afternoon.

RioCan REIT took over Shoppers World Brampton in 2000, renovated the property, and added new big-box retailers such as Canadian Tire. But The Bay closed in 2007, and Target, which took over Zellers’ lease, shut down last year. The final indignity came when the shuttered Bay store was torn down and replaced by Lastman’s Bad Boy.

Shoppers World isn’t yet a dead mall – while many national chains left in the last two decades, small businesses have moved in. However, there are still plenty of vacancies, especially in the north end of the mall, near where The Bay used to be. The new Bad Boy and Beer Store are accessed only from outside the mall, making it harder to draw customers in.

The former mall entrance to Target, showing the floor tiles installed in the 2000-2002 renovations.

The answer, I think, is to partially redevelop Shoppers World into a mixed-use, transit-oriented development, retaining a majority of the retail space, but including new residential, office and community uses. Shops at Don Mills, at Don Mills Road and Lawrence Avenue in Toronto, isn’t a bad model to follow, but better residential integration and a proper link with the transit hub would be necessary. Humbertown, a smaller, but controversial development proposed for Etobicoke, has the right mix of retail and residential intensification.

One day, I believe a new Brampton City Council will come to its senses and get the LRT extended to Downtown Brampton as proposed. This is what happened in Mesa, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb that originally opposed a light rail corridor from Downtown Phoenix, Tempe, and Arizona State University, to its downtown. After the first phase of the Valley Metro LRT opened in December 2008, political opposition to a light rail extension along Main Street faded. The LRT through Downtown Mesa opened to great fanfare in August, 2015.

But until that time comes, there are some opportunities to capitalize on the approved plan. Steeles Avenue isn’t the ideal place to end the Hurontario LRT, but it’s a good place to start planning something better.

February 5, 2016
A new, improved TTC system map
Last week, the Toronto Transit Commission quietly introduced a new system map on its website. The map, a 3.8 MB PDF file, can be directly accessed here.

This new system map, which includes all scheduled routes including the limited-service community buses and the Blue Night network, is very different than previous editions of the TTC’s “Ride Guide,” but I think it is the best edition yet. That said, there are a few tweaks that I would like to see.

Below is a screenshot of the new 2016 map, showing York University, Downsview Station, and North York Centre.

Unlike previous editions, the new Ride Guide is not to scale; subtle curves and bends in the road network are dispensed with in favour of a diagrammatic style, which shows transfer points very well. (It reminds me of the Los Angeles Metro system map.) Like the 2012 edition, shown below, only the streets served by surface routes are illustrated, but landmarks (such as hospitals, post-secondary education institutions, and major parks) are given more prominence than in previous maps. GO Transit rail lines are more prominent (with the same colours used on GO Transit maps and schedules), and there’s an effort to show connections with other transit systems, such as GO buses, and suburban agencies such as York Region Transit, Miway, and Brampton Transit.

Screenshot of the 2014-2015 edition of the TTC Ride Guide, showing the same area as the 2016 map.

From 1994 to 2012, the TTC’s official system map included the routes of adjoining transit systems (see screenshot below). Note the YRT, GO Transit and Brampton Transit Züm routes converging on a very crowded York University. Depicting the connecting networks was certainly useful, but it added to a very cluttered map (which included the entire street network); it also relied on every other agency to provide timely updates. Removing the other transit agencies’ bus routes in 2014 allowed the TTC design team and cartographers to concentrate on their own system.

In 2014, the system map was stripped of almost all features apart from the TTC’s own routes, a decision I criticized in a previous post. All landmarks were removed, as were all connections, apart from faint lines showing GO Transit rail corridors. It was easier to read, but went too far in removing important and use information. But it had a few improvements, such as highlighting the “frequent service network” – surface routes that operated every ten minutes or better at most times of the day. Express bus routes were better depicted.

The 2016 edition restores these features lost in 2014. In a few places, the logos of the suburban transit agencies are once again shown, such as York University (where Brampton Transit, GO Transit and York Region Transit connect) and Pearson Airport (where Brampton, Miway and GO also operate). The contact information for the five neighboring systems is also included on the map. The addition of the frequent service category remains.

November 2012 Ride Guide

Overall, I think the new map looks great. Surface routes are clearer, GO Transit rail lines are more prominent, and more points of interest are shown. Not only does downtown Toronto get a new inset, so does a complex section in north Scarborough, where the 102 Markham Road, the 53 Steeles East, and the 42A Cummer routes converge. The TTC design team has done a fine job.

But I did find a few things about the new 2016 edition that I would like to see improved:
- Hospitals are labelled inconsistently. Humber River, Sunnybrook, and Scarborough Centenary are, but North York General, Etobicoke General, Scarborough General, St. Joseph’s, East Toronto General, and the downtown hospitals are not.
- Some suburban connections are shown, most are not. Pearson Airport shows GO, Brampton, and Miway logos, and York U shows GO, Zum, and YRT logos, but they are missing from Humber College, a major terminal for Brampton Transit (511, 11, 50) and Miway (22, 107), it’s a terminus for a YRT route as well. Rouge Hill GO shows a DRT logo, even though this is a very limited service, but there isn’t one for Miway at Long Branch, where two major routes, 5 and 23, terminate.
- I’m not sure I like how branches are labeled now; I miss the use of the “+” that denoted a section of a route on which all branches operated on.
Hopefully, we will see these relatively minor issues corrected in the next edition of the Ride Guide, which will likely be issued later in 2016.

If you’re interested in the history of TTC maps, Transit Toronto has a fine archive of old system and subway maps dating back to the 1930s. It’s worth a look.
February 2, 2016
The challenge of getting to the bus stop
It’s time for a rant on suburban transit, and how unnecessarily difficult it can be to get to the nearest bus stop.

Transit has a harder time in the suburbs. Population densities are lower than in neighbourhoods developed before the Second World War. Suburbs are not only built for the car, but they’re laid out with crescents, cul-de-sacs and winding street systems meant to discourage through traffic in residential areas. Backyard fences line arterial roads, safe pedestrian crossings might be a ten or fifteen minute walk down the road. These factors can make it difficult for people living in subdivisions and near busy streets to easily access a nearby bus stop.

Last year, Streetsblog USA asked its readers to vote for the sorriest bus stop in America, and some of the submissions are truly awful. But in the Greater Toronto Area, there are many examples of poorly designed or located bus stops. Intersections like the one at Steeles Avenue West and McMurchy/Malta Avenue in Brampton, which, granted isn’t as bad as the StreetsblogUSA submissions, is just one example of how not to get people out of cars and onto public transit. Some thought into placing bus stops and improving access to local transit is necessary.

I like Brampton Transit and what they’ve been doing over the last decade in my hometown. In 2005, the suburban transit agency began to re-organize its routes into a grid system. There were some hiccups: additional transfers, combined with low frequencies made some trips more difficult, but as ridership improved, so did service levels on key corridors. Schedules were adjusted to improve transfers. Connections to Toronto and Mississauga were improved. My hometown’s bus system was no longer a joke.

Here’s what Brampton Transit looked like in 1980, marked with meandering routes and one-way loops. The 2015-2016 system map is here [PDF].

In September 2010, Brampton Transit introduced its first “Züm” route, 501 Queen, which connects Downtown Brampton with York University. Like the first phase of York Reigon’s Viva and Durham Region’s Pulse, Züm was developed as a specially-branded limited-stop bus service. Züm stops have special shelters, with real-time schedule information, winter heating. And on sections of Queen Street and Steeles Avenue, special “queue jump” lanes allow buses to by-pass cars and trucks waiting at intersections.

Services such as Zum and Viva, which operate mostly in mixed traffic should not be mistaken for “bus rapid transit” such as Ottawa’s Transitway or Bogota’s TransMillenio; “BRT-lite” or “quality bus” are more appropriate terms for these routes. Route 501 Queen operates every 15 minutes or better, seven days a week, into the late evenings. It’s proof that quality transit can be operated in Toronto’s suburbs, and be a success.

Since Route 501 was introduced, three more Züm routes were added: 502 Main, which follows Main and Hurontario Streets as far as the Mississauga City Centre Terminal at Square One, 511 Steeles, and 505 Bovaird. Each of these routes complements an existing local bus route, though the level of service on these other routes are not as high as on Queen Street; Züm service ends sooner in the evenings (though local bus service operates until after midnight) and frequencies are lower.

With the introduction of Züm, and combined with other service increases, Brampton Transit ridership increased by nearly 30 percent in the last five years (2011-2015). This increase is significantly higher than the rate of Brampton’s population growth over the same time period.

In September 2015, the 511 Steeles Züm bus was extended west from Shoppers World to Lisgar GO Station in Mississauga; standard Zum shelters were installed along the corridor, including the intersection of McMurchy/Malta Avenues and Steeles. This intersection is only a few hundred metres from where I grew up. The existing bus stops for local bus routes were relocated to the new shelters, like the one seen below.

Both bus stops were installed on the east side of the intersection. The trouble is that pedestrian crossings are prohibited on the east side, due to the priority given to motorists at this suburban intersection. Therefore, transit users may have to cross the intersection three times to get to and from their bus; with several rental apartment towers, townhouses, and compact single-family housing, this is not a low-density neighbourhood.

From a traffic engineering rationale, this traffic arrangement, which has existed for about a decade, makes sense. The majority of traffic is on busy, six-lane Steeles Avenue. From the north, most traffic on McMurchy Avenue turns east (left) onto Steeles, while Malta Avenue is a short stub, serving a small townhouse development on the south side of Steeles Avenue. Eventually, Malta Avenue will continue south, hooking up with another section of the same street. For now, a dormant farm field separates the two streets and awaits development.

To facilitate through traffic on Steeles, the cross streets, McMurchy and Malta, are given only green time equivalent to the minimum pedestrian crossing time. And to facilitate the left turns from McMurchy to Steeles, pedestrians are banned from crossing that side of the street. From the viewpoint of a traffic engineer, this makes sense, but it’s a mindset that ignores the needs of pedestrians and transit customers, and with the re-location of the bus stops, this has become more of a problem. This intersection is owned and maintained by the Region of Peel, not the City of Brampton, as Steeles is a regional road.

There are two options here, and at other places where people must give way to cars:
1. Allow pedestrians to cross at all four sides of the intersection, ignoring, for a minute, the desire for cars and trucks to move through with minimal disruption; or
2. Move the bus stops to the west side of the intersection, minimizing the inconvenience for transit riders.
Brampton Transit has done a fine job growing its ridership over the last decade, making it a bit easier to get around Toronto’s second-largest suburb without a car. But situations like these, where pedestrian access can be improved, are low-hanging fruit that would demonstrate that transit users are valued, even in the car-dependent suburbs. The current arrangement is unacceptable. Brampton and Peel Region should do better.

There are plenty of cases elsewhere where there are poorly-located transit stops. One example here in Toronto is the eastbound stop for the TTC’s 42A Cummer bus at McNicoll Avenue at Boxdene Avenue in north Scarborough. There’s no sidewalk on the south side of McNicoll, and Boxdene runs north. Anyone attempting to use this stop is at the mercy of traffic on this busy, four lane road.

Overall, I would like to see more thought put into locating bus stops in general and making sure they’re easily accessible.
January 26, 2016
Armed with facts, the Toronto Relief Line Alliance is launched

The Relief Line is a subway route intended to reduce crowding and congestion in Toronto’s existing subway system. Planned for over a century, we may finally see work started in a few years. If Toronto finally puts shovels in the ground on this vital transit project, we will have a new grassroots advocacy group, armed with facts, to thank for that.

Even though a relief subway line is very old idea, one that goes back over 100 years, the only construction ever done were roughed-in streetcar subway platforms at Queen Station built in the 1950s. A Queen Street subway remained on the TTC’s books until approximately 1980, when attention was focused on building subways in Toronto’s growing suburbs. But a Downtown Relief Line (DRL) was included as part of Network 2011, a plan drafted in 1985. If implemented, Toronto would have also seen new subways below Eglinton and Sheppard Avenues. Changes in the provincial government, opposition from downtown and suburban councillors and declining TTC ridership saw only two sections of subway opened: Downsview Station in 1996, as well as a shortened Sheppard subway, completed in 2002.

With increasing TTC ridership, the continued employment growth in Downtown Toronto, and no new road capacity, we are again faced with the need for downtown transit relief. During rush hour, commuters often have to wait for two or three trains to pass before boarding. Bloor-Yonge Station is operating beyond its design capacity. While there may be some short-to-medium term opportunities for transit relief with the revised plans for SmartTrack, GO RER, and other capacity improvements, such as Automatic Train Control on Line 1, the Relief Line will need to be built soon.

Planners and advocates of the DRL have wisely dropped “Downtown” from the name of the proposed subway. Thanks to populists like the Fords, and opinions such as University of Toronto Professor Margaret Kohn’s, “Downtown” has become a dirty word. There’s a false, and frankly dangerous, opinion that wealthy downtown residents benefit from subway projects, while the needs of suburban residents are brushed aside by an “openly contemptuous” “downtown cognoscenti.” In reality, the Relief Line will benefit suburban commuters the most, especially if it continues north of Danforth Avenue along the Don Mills Corridor, serving low-income, high-density neighourhoods such as Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park.

As Metrolinx and City Planning redraw plans for SmartTrack, the Scarborough Subway, and suburban light rail projects, planning work continues for the Relief Line. But the initial plans are for a short section between the Financial District and Danforth Avenue, to be really effective, the line should continue north.

Our detailed work on the Relief Line has continued full throttle, alongside our network planning for SmartTrack and Scarborough. #TOpoli

— Jennifer Keesmaat (@jen_keesmaat) January 22, 2016

Happily, there’s a new advocacy group that just launched, the Toronto Relief Line Alliance. This new group will advocate for the subway, explaining its benefits and countering the myths about the project. Without the business connections or budget of of Friends and Allies of SmartTrack (FAST), a Bay Street group formed to advocate John Tory’s SmartTrack plan, the founders have developed a slick website and started a social media blitz. (Within days of launching, TRLA has more than twice the followers on Twitter as FAST.) All the data that the TRLA presents is sourced from Metrolinx and the City of Toronto. A map, embedded below, shows the estimated travel time reductions made possible by the new subway.

Map from TRLA’s website showing the travel time savings possible for various trips to downtown via the Relief Line.

As a long-time proponent of the subway line, I’m excited by TRLA’s launch. The Toronto Relief Line Alliance, made up of independent citizens, including business professionals and aspiring planners, is a genuine grassroots advocacy group. FAST, on the other hand, is a textbook example of an Astroturf organisation.

(Full disclosure: I know many of TRLA’s founders, and I was involved in some of the pre-launch discussions. But finding myself stretched too thin, I haven’t been active in TRLA.)

January 25, 2016
Yet another transit plan for Scarborough (Updated)

Updated with a link and discussion of the Scarborough Transit Planning Update, released earlier today.

It’s been an eventful few days for transit watchers. Late last week, we found out that John Tory’s SmartTrack plan will be clipped to an initial phase between Mount Dennis and Kennedy Station, and the Eglinton-Crosstown extended in the west to the Airport Corporate Centre and probably Pearson Airport itself. The section north from Kennedy Station to Unionville Station in Markham has been deferred to a later Phase II. And the announcement of a preferred alignment to the Gardiner East “Hybrid” was announced on Tuesday.

Back in December, 2014, I suggested that there was no need for the Scarborough Subway extension, and that a good transit plan had already been developed in the last ten years. A combination of the Scarborough RT replacement and extension to Malvern, the Transit City light rail plan, and GO Transit Regional Express Rail (RER) would have served the eastern part of Toronto quite well.

But then, in 2010, Toronto elected Rob Ford as mayor, who ran on a transportation platform of “subways, subways, subways” and ending the so-called “war on the car.” The Scarborough RT replacement was dropped in favour of a subway, planning and construction work on the Finch and Sheppard East LRT routes was suspended, and the TTC surface network was cut back. For a while, it looked like maybe the Scarborough LRT line would be resurrected. But then municipal and provincial politicians, looking for votes, pushed the more expensive and shorter subway option. Candidates in a by-election in Scarborough-Guildwood all claimed to be “subway champions,” even the NDP’s Adam Giambrone, the TTC Chair at the time Mayor David Miller put forward the seven-line Transit City LRT plan. The three-stop Scarborough Subway extension would cost over $3.5 billion.

John Tory, who won the 2014 mayoral election, ran on a platform that included “SmartTrack,” a single-line regional rail concept that he claimed would provide relief to the Yonge Subway, completed by 2021. Tory’s campaign claimed that SmartTrack would carry 200,000 riders a day, and be fully integrated with the TTC, including fares. Tory also promised not to re-open the Scarborough LRT vs. subway debate, committing himself to the three-stop subway. Tory never showed much commitment to the Finch West and Sheppard East LRTs, which were funded by the province, but left dormant.

The trouble with committing to SmartTrack and the Scarborough Subway was having two new parallel transit lines three kilometres from each other between Eglinton and Sheppard Avenues, as depicted in the map below. The Eglinton-Crosstown LRT, currently under construction, the Bloor-Danforth Subway and the SmartTrack line would intersect at Kennedy Station.

Active rail transit proposals in Scarborough, as of 2015

But on Wednesday, January 20, Oliver Moore and Marcus Gee at the Globe and Mail and Tess Kalinowski at the Toronto Star broke news on a City of Toronto planning report that would re-allocate part of that $3.5 billion from the subway to extending the Eglinton-Crosstown line to the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus (UTSC), and reducing the number of stops on the subway from three (excluding Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker’s proposal for a fourth) to one. The subway, therefore, would run five or six kilometres, non-stop, between Scarborough Centre and Kennedy. The 12-kilometre, 17-stop extension of the Eglinton-Crosstown line resurrects most of the proposed, but unfunded Scarborough-Malvern LRT.

Today, on January 21, the Scarborough Transit Planning Update staff report was released, with more details.

I created this map below based on a map tweeted by the Star’s Tess Kalinowski on Wednesday afternoon:
https://twitter.com/TessKalinowski/status/689890493409300484

The Latest plan for Scarborough, including the one-stop subway extension and the additional 17 stops planned for the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT, as well as SmartTrack Phases I and II, as recommended in a separate study.

It’s worth noting that the Sheppard East LRT, which won’t start construction until 2021 (essentially leaving it in limbo) is marked on the staff report map as “rapid transit to be determined.” Maybe it will connect to the subway at Scarborough Town Centre. Maybe it will connect to the Eglinton-Crosstown. Maybe it will remain a bus route. In the original Transit City plan, Sheppard East was to be started first; indeed construction did start on the Sheppard Avenue rail underpass at Agincourt GO Station; an empty median is where the LRT tracks are planned to go. The Scarborough-Malvern LRT was supposed to continue north of UTSC to Sheppard Avenue (and potentially further north along Morningside), but this isn’t part of this latest study.

Transit City planned for a LRT maintenance and storage facility (MSF) on Sheppard East at Conlins Road, near Morningside Avenue. The Conlins MSF would have served three routes: the Sheppard East LRT, the Scarborough RT replacement, and the Scarborough-Malvern LRT. The MSF has been scaled back due to the deferral or cancellation of the other two lines, but will be essential if this latest plan goes through. So the ECLRT is built to UTSC, a rail connection from Sheppard will probably be necessary, and maybe the Sheppard and Crosstown lines were converge here.

What makes the least sense for me is the long, non-stop section of the subway between Kennedy and Scarborough Centre. There was clearly a problem of having two prioritized high-capacity rail proposals serving similar markets: SmartTrack, and the Scarborough subway extension both championed by the mayor. Cutting out the Sheppard and Lawrence stops delivers passengers to SmartTrack. That is, of course, SmartTrack makes it north of Kennedy Station.

A separate study by Metrolinx staff, recommending a shorter SmartTrack line between Mount Dennis and Kennedy, along with a western extension of the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT, was reported in the Globe and Mail last Friday, with the Unionville-Markham section part of a later Phase II. It appears that the City-led Scarborough Transit Planning Study is assuming a full build-out of SmartTrack, at least on the east end.

I’m happy, though, to see LRT seriously considered as a solution for intermediate transit needs. What I find somewhat ironic, though, is that the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT is becoming what SmartTrack was eighteen months ago: a single line that solves all transit planning problems. Of course, my wish is to go back to building the Scarborough LRT extension, the original Scarborough-Malvern line, and letting Metrolinx and GO Transit do their thing with implementing RER.

The city planning report notes that “…of the 206,000 transit trips that begin in Scarborough, 99,000 or 48% end in Scarborough. This means that only 14% of all trips that begin and end in Scarborough use transit (99,000 of 692,000).” (Pages 14-15.)

This is why improving the local transit network – be it streetcars or buses – is so important. We’re often fixated on moving commuters long distances, but we never pay enough attention to short-distance commuters as well. For all the “subways, subways, subways” hot air we’re still hearing from some Scarborough councillors, most of their transit-riding constituents rely on buses. As a friend pointed out, since most of those local trips are by car, we need to ask whether this new plan will make transit more competitive for trips within Scarborough.

Will we see yet another proposal for Scarborough? I bet we will. Maybe SmartTrack could be routed to a spur to Scarborough Centre (has anyone looked at that?). But at some point, fatigue will set in, and we’ll have to pick something – anything – and build it in order to avoid looking indecisive. But I believe that these planned revisions to SmartTrack, LRT, and the Scarborough subway are steps in the right direction.

January 21, 2016
A vision for King Street

In today’s Toronto Star, city columnist Ed Keenan reports on the “King Street Visioning Study,” a city planning project that will soon be available for public feedback. The study proposes improving streetcar operations along the King Street Corridor between Dufferin and Parliament Streets as well improving the public realm, making it a more pleasant place to walk. The 504 King Streetcar is the busiest surface route in the TTC’s system, and as I, and many others, have said before, the streetcar needs to be able to move more people more efficiently. But now City Planning is leading the study, not the TTC, making this a more holistic vision for King Street.

Chief City Planner Jennifer Keesmaat says that it’s “reasonable” that the initial pilot projects could be started in early 2017. Work has already been contracted to some of the same firms that were responsible for transforming Queen’s Quay (which despite some construction delays, and conflicts in a few places between pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists, is a fantastic project).

Keesmaat echoes previous attempts at creating a King Street Transit Mall, suggesting a similar system of alternating one-way sections that would provide for taxis, deliveries and passenger drop-offs and pick-ups, but forcing through traffic onto parallel streets. Extending transit priority all the way from Dufferin to Parliament could do a lot to streetcar improve operations, especially as the TTC is planning a new 514 route on King between Dufferin and Cherry Streets to supplement the overburdened 504 line and better serve the West Donlands, Distillery District, and Liberty Village.

Yes, King Street improvements would start off as pilot projects, much like the bicycle lanes on nearby Richmond and Adelaide Streets, or the decade-old 2-hour transfer on St. Clair Avenue, or the Toronto Hydro ALAMP street lighting trials that should have concluded years ago. (Toronto seems to like permanent pilot projects.) That said, previous plans for a King Street transit mall never even got to the “pilot project” phase.

But hearing that pedestrians and transit will be getting priority is music to my ears. Knowing that City Planning, and not just the TTC, is looking at this gives me optimism that this could finally go ahead. There will be opposition from businesses along the corridor, taxi drivers, suburban politicians concerned about a non-existent “war on the car.” And it’s not clear if Mayor John Tory is in favour, or a majority of city councillors.

An improved public realm is especially appropriate on King Street, especially through historic Old York on the east and the cultural and tourist draws of the Entertainment District on the west. Sidewalks are often crowded, especially as the theatres get out in the evening, but with such diverse uses along the corridor, from bank towers to night clubs, King is one of Toronto’s most vibrant streets. Toronto often has trouble with attractive streetscaping (thanks to ugly wooden poles and overhead wires, cheap, grey street furniture, and ugly traffic signals), but it has recently managed to get Queen’s Quay (mostly) right.

As for design, I’m hoping for something interesting and something different. I’d do away with the Muskoka chairs mentioned in Keenan’s article. They’re wonderful on Toronto’s waterfront, but I’d like to see some imagination on King Street. What about seating shaped like director’s chairs in front of the TIFF Lightbox? (Oh, and on the subject of TIFF, could we tell film festival organizers to stuff it when they want to wreck the King Streetcar again in 2016?)

After years of talk about fixing King Street, there’s a very serious proposal to do something about it. Maybe the third time’s the charm.

January 18, 2016
A smarter SmartTrack

John Tory’s original SmartTrack plan, shown with the existing TTC Subway and GO Rail networks.

In Friday’s Globe and Mail, we were treated to a scoop by Oliver Moore, that newspaper’s excellent transportation reporter, on behind-the-scenes revisions to Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack rail transit platform, a topic that I discussed several times in this blog.

Tory’s SmartTrack plan, dreamed up by a private-sector planning firm, was intended to connect office parks in Mississauga and Markham to Downtown Toronto, as well as serve the proposed First Gulf development at the Unilever site near the mouth of the Don River. Tory promised that it would provide relief to Toronto’s overburdened subway system, but that was never the main objective.

I have been aware of rumours that Tory’s SmartTrack plan was going to be walked back due to mounting costs and technical issues of implementing the mayor’s campaign promise. The team that came up with the idea of a U-shaped rail network intended to connect several suburban employment centres with Downtown Toronto overlooked some important details, such as the availability of land along the former Richview Expressway corridor along Eglinton Avenue West. SRRA, the private-sector planning organization that came up with SmartTrack, assumed that the Richview lands were available and owned by the province, but the city owned the land, and sold much of it off for development in 2011 and 2012.

The cost of building the western spur between Mount Dennis and the Airport Corporate Centre was, in all likelihood, found to be prohibitive, though we have yet to find out what the estimated costs for a tunnel along that section. The eastern section, north of Kennedy Station, would have closely paralleled both the Scarborough RT and the proposed extension of the Bloor-Danforth Subway to McCowan Road, a project that Tory also backed.

The Globe and Mail’s Oliver Moore reports that SmartTrack will cover a much shorter section than the map on John Tory’s 2014 campaign brochures. Frequent rail service will complement existing GO Transit Regional Express Rail (RER) services on the Kitchener and Stouffville Corridors, terminating at Mount Dennis and Kennedy Stations. The Eglinton West section will be covered by the “shovel-ready” Phase II of the Eglinton-Crosstown light rail transit line (ECLRT), which is already under construction east of Mount Dennis. (The provincial government deferred funding for this section of the ECLRT in 2010 for budgetary reasons.) The north-eastern section of SmartTrack, between Kennedy Station and Unionville Station in Markham, will be deferred.

This new plan, which is being finalized and will likely be officially announced later this year, will cost an additional $2-billion to $3.5-billion to the existing plans for RER, in order to facilitate more frequent, subway-like frequencies, as well as complete the western section of the ECLRT.

If Moore’s reporting is accurate (and I have seen maps and other materials that collaborate his report), then Tory will have to eat some crow. Spin doctors will have to figure out how to polish this turd as Tory seeks a second mandate in 2018. It’s also inevitable that the new additional service on this corridor will continue to be branded as “SmartTrack.” But this is the best solution, and maybe this is a sign that Tory is learning on the job.

At the end of the day, what Toronto gets is what Metrolinx’s “Big Move” plan envisioned: upgrades of most GO Transit corridors to RER, as well as Phase II of the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT line to Pearson Airport. (The Finch West and Sheppard East LRTs are also approved, but have yet to start construction.) The paired-down SmartTrack plan, if trains are frequent enough, and with attractive transfers with the subway and TTC surface routes, will draw some riders. It could help provide medium-term relief as the [Downtown] Relief Line Subway is studied and built.

The new SmartTrack plan, including Phase II of the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT

But where I find myself annoyed is when I realize that we wasted over a year on Tory’s campaign slogan without any progress on the Relief Line (which will offer real, long-term relief to the Yonge Subway), the Waterfront West LRT, or other transit priorities such as accessibility at all existing subway stations. I remember during the 2014 election campaign, critics of Tory’s simplistic and flawed SmartTrack plan were dismissed without acknowledging their objections. It’s also worth noting that Tory also adopted rival Olivia Chow’s bus plan, after belittling it during the campaign.

In order to provide fast and reliable transit to the Airport Corporate Centre and Pearson Airport itself, there are opportunities to refine the western section of the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT. The environmental assessment called for 15 stops between Mount Dennis and Pearson Airport, while SmartTrack would have had as few as three stops along the same section. If the ECLRT can be sped up at all, it would be worth considering. I would also be interested in whether the SmartTrack corridor could be integrated with the UP Express rail link, whose ridership started off quite low.

And maybe, just maybe, the high costs of constructing the Scarborough Subway extension will also prompt a rethink, going back to the original LRT replacement and extension plan. As the Spadina Subway extension to York University and Vaughan is now two years late (and yet another $400 million over-budget), maybe there’s an opportunity to get it right there as well. It’s also imperative that proponents of the Relief Line Subway strike now.

I could be giddy with the revelation that Mayor Tory’s signature campaign platform is coming undone, having foreseen the problems with his plan. But I’m not. However, I do take pleasure in knowing that we have a smarter plan in the works.

January 16, 2016
Metrolinx’s strange priorities

Map of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT showing the original working station names along the corridor

It’s too often that we hear from business leaders, planning experts, and pundits that politicians should be kept out of transit planning. To some degree, this makes sense. We saw what happened when politicians, pandering for votes from Scarborough, derailed a viable, ready-to-go transit plan in favour of a shiny, unfunded, subway line.

Metrolinx’s appointed board is made up of developers, business people, advisers, administrators, and two retired politicians. It seems like the kind of place where smart, level-headed, apolitical decisions could be made. That is, until board members start bickering about station names.

In December, Metrolinx rubber-stamped, with little debate, a problematic GO Transit fare increase. But it then spent four times as long debating the names of three stops on the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT corridor. And today, there will be a special teleconference meeting to decide – hopefully once and for all, these three names. Maybe then they can get on to serious business.

I discuss this further in Torontoist this morning.

January 14, 2016
Milton’s self-inflicted growing pains

There’s an interesting article in today’s Toronto Star about Milton’s growing pains. The Town of Milton, which has grown tremendously in the last 15 years, complains that the province has neglected to provide the growing municipality with transit and other infrastructure. In 2001, its population was only 31,471. But In 2006, after finally connected to “The Big Pipe” that brought treated lake water to the municipality, the population increased to 53,939, an increase of 71.4%. In 2011, the town’s population went up again to 84,362; by 2016, Milton’s population will be well over 100,000.

But no one should be surprised by Milton’s growing pains. Milton’s population stagnated for years as its reliance on well water constrained residential and commercial growth. Once all that developer-owned land had access to water and waste water pipes, of course, tract housing, big box stores, and warehouses were going to follow. In recent years, Milton’s housing density has increased in accordance with the province’s Places to Grow Act; with more townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings and houses on smaller lots. But apart from higher densities, land use and planning is still based on automobile ownership and suburban zoning plans.

Milton is outside the continuous built-up Greater Toronto area. It doesn’t have great transit links, apart from the rush hour GO Trains. Apart from two interchanges off Highway 401, it doesn’t have great highway access. If it’s cheap housing you seek, and nothing else, Milton might be the right place to live. But if you want transit, parks, walkable neighborhoods, access to community services, and short drives, Milton isn’t the right place to buy.

Many of the concerns are valid. The local hospital hasn’t expanded to accommodate the growing population. Highway 401 hasn’t been expanded through Milton since the 1980s. And while GO Transit has increased the number of trains (from five to nine outbound and inbound trips in the last two decades) and buses, the parking lot has completely filled up.

But one of the main messages that I read in the article is that there isn’t enough parking. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, parking is the cause of – and solution to – all of Milton’s problems. Residents and councillors complain about parking at the GO station, such as resident Giles vanderHolt, who says, “there’s a huge need for more GO transit parking and better train service to Milton.”

GO Transit isn’t going to be adding more train service to Milton any time soon. The Milton Line also serves six stations in Mississauga, and is the busiest route outside the frequent Lakeshore corridor. But the Milton line is almost entirely owned by Canadian Pacific, and it’s a busy freight line. GO simply cannot add any more trains, and if it did, it wouldn’t solve Milton’s parking problem.

Surrounding the GO Station, there’s a retail plaza anchored by a Loblaws, and surrounding it, there are several industrial parks and single family houses. There is no transit-oriented development located there, nor is any planned.

Milton GO Station and surrounding areas

I have plenty to say about GO Transit’s reliance on free parking, and I wouldn’t be surprised if GO is drawing up plans for a parking garage at Milton. But to be fair, people don’t move to Milton that are planning to give up their cars. Milton Transit isn’t very good, but it does use the GO Station as its primary hub. Meanwhile, GO has been trying a new ride-booking system for commuters to use to get to and from Milton GO Station. That’s an interesting idea that could be expanded to other outer-suburban communities as a short-to-medium term solution. If GO ever implemented parking charges, it could prove to be a good alternative for commuters where transit links are spotty or non-existent. But Milton could do far more to encourage people to walk, bike and take transit to its station, and develop an urban core.

Milton has been lobbying for years for a university campus, at a site called “Milton Education Village.” But it wants to locate the campus in a greenfield site a 15-minute drive away from the GO Station, distant even from Highway 401. Students from outside Milton will either be dependent on cars to reach the site, or had better hope that transit connections from the west aren’t as bad as they are from the Milton Carpool Lot.

Oshawa made the mistake of building a major campus as far as possible from its downtown core and transit infrastructure. Why does Milton want to do the same thing?

On one hand, Milton is right to complain about poor infrastructure. People live there, by choice or by necessity, and they deserve a proper hospital and other provincial services. GO Transit is doing the right thing by trying out a ride-sharing service to and from the GO station. On the other hand, Milton is a “leap-frog” suburb, with poor urban planning and an auto-centric mentality that has helped to create a lot of its mess. Building some transit-oriented development around the GO station, and improving transit links would be a good place to start turning the page.

Screenshot from the classic Simpsons episode “Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment”

December 21, 2015
King Street: a mess of Uber proportions

One of the most frustrating things about living and working in central Toronto is having to rely on streetcars for east-west travel. This isn’t the fault of the streetcars; when free of traffic, they’re a smooth, fast and comfortable way to get around. But trapped in the quagmire that is downtown traffic, streetcars are painfully slow. They’re stuck behind left-turning cars and trucks. Cars plugging the curb lane, legally or not, force all traffic into the streetcars’ path. Replacing streetcars with buses isn’t a solution either; not only would more buses (and drivers) be required to match the each streetcar’s superior capacity, but buses would be forced to weave in and out of the curb lane around taxis, parked cars, delivery vans and other obstructions.

Rapid residential growth, both east and west of the downtown core, have overloaded the 504 King Streetcar. With 64,600 daily riders, it’s the busiest surface route in the system. The city has done little to facilitate this highrise boom in neighbbourhoods such as Corktown and the Distillery District in the east, and CityPlace, Liberty Village, Niagara, and Queen/Gladstone in the west. Further west, the highrise condos built at Humber Bay Shores must either rely on a painfully slow and unreliable ride on the 501 Queen Streetcar, take an infrequent double-fare express bus, or ride a bus up to the Bloor Subway.

No wonder then, Uber, the controversial firm that has delighted passengers with cheap transportation, but put the livelihoods of taxi drivers in jeopardy, launched UberHop, a variation of its “ride sharing” service that offers flat $5 rides between neighbourhoods along the King Streetcar and the downtown core. From a purely capitalist viewpoint, Uber is filling a need that’s been left unfulfilled.

(more…)

December 15, 2015