[URBAN NOTE] Three lines on the new TTC studies

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Hamutal Dotan "TTC Backs Downtown Relief Line, Reopens Sheppard and Scarborough Subway Debates" provided a good critical overview of the matter.

Plans for a new subway in Toronto are—as they ever were—still just lines on paper, but a renewed push to realize them is gaining steam at City Hall. Last week TTC staff released a report on what is being called (to the frustration of many) the Downtown Relief Line, a new subway loop that could, in its most ambitious version, start at Eglinton Avenue East, go down through Pape station and south to Queen or King and the financial district, and then extend west as far as Roncesvalles. That report recommends the TTC proceed with detailed studies of what it would take to get such a subway line built, and that both Toronto and Metrolinx make constructing it a high priority.

Today, the TTC board endorsed that report, which will now go to city council for further debate.

The subway line in question has a troubled history: generations of residents and planners have said it’s a good idea, but nobody has managed to come up with a plan to pay for it—at least, not one politicians are willing to stake their reelection chances on. It’s further complicated by current political divides at City Hall, where the downtown vs. suburbs rhetoric continues to rage. This is why the proposed line’s name bothers some: “Downtown Relief Line” implies a nice cushy ride for those latte-sipping denizens south of Bloor, while the rest of the city suffers, without relief, in slow-moving buses.

As was made clear by TTC staff today, nothing could be further from the truth. Subways are the busiest south of Bloor, but that’s not because downtown residents are riding them—it’s the population from outside the core which needs higher order transit, to get to work and school and to entertainment destinations downtown. The TTC’s manager of service planning, Bill Dawson, summarized it this way: by 2031 staff are projecting that there will be a 51 per cent growth of travel to downtown and 83 per cent of that increase will be from outside Toronto. GO Rail-originating journeys, which currently make up 34 per cent of inbound TTC trips, are expected to increase to 49 per cent. The Yonge line is nearing its maximum capacity, and the DRL is meant to target our most urgent transit infrastructure needs, as determined by projected growth in density, ridership, and employment patterns.

[. . .]

Complicating all this—or at least the public’s perception thereof—is the fact that immediately after endorsing this report and declaring the DRL a priority that needs our urgent attention, the TTC board also green lit two feasibility studies that would reopen the debates about whether or not to extend the Sheppard subway—a campaign promise by Mayor Rob Ford and moved today by Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore)—and whether to convert the Scarborough RT to a subway rather than to an LRT, moved by Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough-Centre). Council fought bitterly about similar proposals less than a year ago, and decided after heated debated to restore the original light rail plans. The TTC is close to signing a master agreement governing those light rail plans with the provincial government (which is picking up the tab) and once those agreements are signed—which might be as soon as the next few days, TTC CEO Andy Byford told reporters today—we are legally locked into the LRT plans.

Essentially, commissioners voted to study something there’s no reasonable prospect they’ll build, and which council as a whole rejected just a few months ago. (“Stupid, stupid” declared councillor and TTC commissioner John Parker, who was out of the room for the vote.) This is sure to suck up headlines, and to reinforce the concerns that Toronto city councillors are unable to summon the fortitude to make a transit plan based on evidence (rather than political interests) and stick to it for more than ten minutes at a time.

The title of Steve Munro's post, "TTC Madness: A Subway for Everyone", caught my attention.

Today’s meeting of the transit commission was expected to be a modest affair with approval of the Downtown Relief Line study’s recommendations, and a few other housekeeping items. What happened was a complete upending of the transit expansion policies we thought were put in place by the Karen Stintz coup d’état that bounced Rob Ford’s crew off of the TTC board back in the spring. Stintz herself didn’t even have the nerve to stand up to the runaway proposals from her fellow members preferring to keep peace, for now at least.

[. . .]

As if all this isn’t bad enough, the Commission has asked for these analyses to be available for its January 2013 meeting even though staff will be pre-occupied with major work on the 2013 budget for the next few months. The date may slip, but what is clearly going on is that somebody wants information for use in a coming provincial election campaign.

What we see here is a Commission that claims to understand the limits of spending, that claims it should focus on subways where they are really needed, but which insists on revisiting LRT proposals over and over in the hope that they can be upgraded. Saying “no” is very hard for a politician to do, especially when constituents have been convinced that LRT is a distant second class option.

[. . .]

“Irresponsible” does not begin to describe my feeling about this vote, one which proved that the current Commission, given half a chance, will be just as irresponsible about the subway/LRT debate as the Ford-friendly crew they replaced. It is not enough to say that we are getting more information for a better debate. We have had this debate, and only people with a distaste for the hard truths about subway costs can pretend that this option is viable.

At NOW Toronto, Ben Spurr's "Commission confusion" contained vivid descriptions of the reactions of individual councillors.

Councillor John Parker, who sits on the commission board, was livid after the meeting. He was out of the room when the votes took place, but as the meeting broke up he berated his colleagues for undermining the DRL decision by reviving the prospect of a Scarborough subway.

“You just diluted the impact of a good decision by – at the same meeting – passing a stupid decision. I don’t know how you could do it! I don’t know how you could do it!” Parker shouted at de Baeremaeker.

“It’s a stupid, stupid irresponsible [decision], and you shouldn’t have done it… You just undercut our credibility.”

But de Baeremaeker, who represents the Scarborough Centre ward where the proposed subway would run, said the project is worth looking into because it would only cost $500 million more than the LRT that Metrolinx has agreed to build on the route.

“I think it’s a subway system in Scarborough that we can afford,” he told reporters, adding that the extra $500 million could possibly be found by dipping into the city’s year-end surpluses.

De Baeremaeker denied the suggestion that he was pursuing an improbable transit project in order to appease voters in his ward.

“I think my voters in Scarborough are very happy with me, I work very hard,” he said. “Voters will decide in the next election, based on the subway and many other issues.”

Stintz played down the impact of the reports, saying that work for the LRT lines will go ahead, and “nothing that the commission did today changes that decision.”

She did predict that TTC staff would conclude that extending the Boor-Danforth subway east from Kennedy makes more sense than replacing the Scarborough RT with light rail. But she acknowledged it may not be financially feasible.

“Asking for a feasibility study is well within our rights and, I think, valuable information for the public,” she said.