[URBAN NOTE] "The TTC subway report Mayor Rob Ford doesn’t want you to read"

[rfmcdonald]

Toronto Star city columnist Royson James broke the news of a Toronto Transit Commission report, completed last year and submitted to the mayor yet never publicized, which made the case for light rail in outlying areas of Toronto over subway. Why? Judging in part by the experience of the Sheppard line, an east-west line extending four stops east of Yonge into the former suburban community of North York, there just wouldn't be enough people. If anything, structural changes in urban growth may have made the picture worse.

Mayor Rob Ford has been sitting on a TTC report that shows job growth projections are so far off target in North York and Scarborough that it’s not advisable to build a subway linking the two centres.

Sources say Ford was given the analysis almost a year ago, after he demanded to know why the TTC wanted to build a light rail transit line along Sheppard, and not the subway it favoured 25 years ago.

The 11-page report, obtained by the Toronto Star, concludes it is ill-advised to build subways when job numbers, office development and transit ridership are so low.

“The world changed,” a source told the Star. “The mayor got the report,” but it has not gone public because “they don’t like the answer they got. The information is important because it explains why the TTC’s opinion is different today than in 1986.”

For example, planners projected 64,000 added jobs would come to the North York Centre, near Yonge and Sheppard, between 1986 and 2011. In fact, as of 2006, employment had grown by only 800 jobs over the two decades, the report says.

Scarborough Centre, at McCowan and Highway 401, was forecast to grow by 50,000 jobs. Figures for 2006 reveal a net loss of 700 jobs and a total of 13,700.

The job picture reflects a less than stellar performance all across the city. The 1986 forecast estimated that by 2011 Toronto’s job numbers would increase by 670,000. Not so. Job figures from 2006 show a city-wide growth of just 70,000 jobs over the 20 years.

Latest figures (2010) show that instead of topping 1.9 million jobs, Toronto barely crept up to 1.3 million. Figures for 2010 show North York Centre numbers at 38,800 and Scarborough Centre at 14,700 total.

The numbers are a warning sign for those who would build a large-capacity subway to link the North York and Scarborough centres when the ridership is not there, the report concludes.

But the mayor’s brother, Councillor Doug Ford, would have none of it when contacted by the Star.

“Build a subway and people will come,” he said, refusing to consider TTC figures that show the opposite has happened along Sheppard.

“The TTC? Please, give me a break. They are just justifying union jobs. LRTs destroy neighbourhoods,” he said.

The Sheppard line, the report continues to say, carries only a quarter of the number of passengers at the busiest point in the day than was predicted. Even if it was extended into the heart of Scarborough, the numbers wouldn't improve. Besides, patterns of urban growth which favour extensive growth over intense growth--sprawl rather than towers--along with the disappearance of the office building market and the failure of private developers to take advantage of real estate near stops to build mixed-use developments, also suggests that the costs for subway construction would be significantly elevated.

Times changed.

One transit planner, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation from the mayor, said:

“The world has changed. It’s not the way people thought it would evolve back in 1986. Employment — the biggest generator of transit riders — has not materialized in a big way. There are more than 30 per cent fewer jobs than envisioned.”

Ford has said he will continue to push for subway construction on Sheppard and elsewhere. He says the public want subways, not light rail, which he derisively dismisses as trolleys.

And subway supporters like Gordon Chong, whose pro-subway report is being debated at city hall, says the TTC was strongly in favour of subways when it approved the environmental assessment on the Sheppard subway in 1986.

But the secret TTC report, dated just after Ford convinced the province to give him time to find money for the Sheppard subway extension, says that 25 years ago the subway was the “dominant form of rapid transit. Only four modern light rail lines existed in North America. Light rail was not fully understood and vehicle design was not fully evolved.”

Since then, new light-rail lines have opened in more than 115 cities around the world; it has emerged as the transit mode of choice for routes too busy for a bus but not near the 15,000 per hour needed to warrant a subway.

Two more points.

1. None of this speaks to subways as a status symbol, specifically as a status symbol for people in outlying areas of Toronto like North York and Scarborough who want subway lines in their neighbourhoods to demonstrate that they're Torontonians, too.

2. Not releasing a report that directly contradicts his public statements--a report that may have been produced in response to his public statements--doesn't speak well of mayor Ford's integrity as a politician.