[URBAN NOTE] Two links on Mayor Ford being half-right about the TTC

[rfmcdonald]

Yes, you read the subject line correctly. As a commenter noted at my post wondering if any subway extension was better than no subway extension, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's plans are terribly flawed. He does get the picture, or something of it, two major Toronto bloggers argue; he's just working towards the wrong goal.

Spacing Toronto's Matthew Blackett suggests that there's actual some merit to Mayor Ford's idea of expanding the Sheppard subway line. Ford just wants to do it in the wrong direction.

[I]f you want to look at this extension from the angle of "running a business" — a phrase we've heard the mayor trot out at every possible opportunity — the data clearly supports there is no business case to be made. The ridership numbers at non-connecting stations on the Sheppard line — Bayview, Bessarion, and Leslie — all fall within the 10 most under-performing stations in the TTC (Bayview is 10th at 8,196 riders a day; Leslie is 6th at 5,614; Bessarion is the second worst station at 2,588 riders day). The best business option was building the affordable Transit City, but that idea is moot for the time being.

So, with a funding model that seems dead in the water and a business case that is next to non-existent, is there anyway that the mayor could convince me that building a Sheppard extension is a good idea? Maybe. But it wouldn't be the extension that the mayor has envisioned.

If Ford is hell-bent on using money to build a Sheppard subway it should be to go west, not east: connect the Yonge-Sheppard station to Downsview station. This stretch of 4.5km would connect the University line to the Yonge line, as well as the new University-Spadina extension that is currently being built up into Vaughan.

This kind of connection provides the TTC with all kinds of options. When southbound trains leave from the Vaughan Centre and reach Downsview, trains could alternate between going south or going east along the Sheppard line. This would transform the Sheppard line from being a 5.5km stubway into an integrated 20km east-west line. And it would finally give the Sheppard line a reason for its own existence.

The residents along Sheppard East were sold a bag of bad goods by Ford in the last election. Sadly, their votes were attached to a promise that cannot be delivered by the City, TTC, or the private sector, nor is there any real business or density justification for investing billions of dollars in this corridor.

Meanwhile, Steve Munro argues that the city has to be committed to spending more money, and that the provincial government has to contribute. The city, of course, has to pitch in.

If Mayor Ford had some respect for Toronto taxpayers as he so often claims, we would work on proposals to improve the balance sheet on Toronto’s operating budget. Ford’s Council is already on record asking that Queen’s Park return to funding half of the operating deficit, but this issue was not even on the table.

“Predictable funding” has been the rallying cry of transit advocates, politicians and management for decades. It is impossible to make long range plans about service quality, major system maintenance works and expansion without knowing that money will be available, and that funding programs will meet the challenge of a robust, growing transit system.

On the Operating Budget, Ontario dropped out of that game under the Harris Tories, and came back, fitfully, under the Liberals with various one-time bailouts. Gas tax revenues earmarked for Toronto are split between capital and operating with about $90-million going to operations, and the rest to capital. To put this in context, the TTC’s total operating subsidy is over $400-million, and the provincial contribution is nowhere near half.

[. . .]

Like Toronto, Queen’s Park faces the conundrum that actually supporting transit costs money because almost all new riders represent additional net costs. Going “green”, giving riders better options for travel without the need for multi-car families, isn’t free. Supporting the growth of employment in downtown Toronto through better regional transit isn’t free. Attacking congestion on roads in the 905 with good, attractive local transit certainly won’t be free because the transit habit falls off north of Bloor Street, never mind the 401 or Steeles Avenue.

[. . .]

Politicians who fear to state the obvious may play to their base, to the something-for-nothing crowd for whom “gravy trains” are the simplistic answer to all our problems. That’s not leadership, but pandering, and without even a modicum of real business sense about how city and regional finance work.