[URBAN NOTE] "Feeling Congested: Does Toronto Suffer From “The Moscow Syndrome”?"

[rfmcdonald]

Just days after I compared Toronto to Moscow, inspired by a Windows on Eurasia post that suggested Moscow was a cosmopolitan place new to many of its inhabitants, Toronto transit blogger Steve Munro shares concerns voiced at a public meeting on transit yesterday that Toronto might suffer from the "Moscow syndrome". What is it?

Toronto has a very different transportation problem than other North American cities, one that is harder to cope with, and [former Vancouver transit planner Larry] Beasley calls this “the Moscow syndrome”. Beasley has worked in that city in its attempt to come to grips with rising transit demand and strangling congestion, but Moscow faces the result of 20 years during which nothing was invested in the system after the fall of the Soviet system. The transit network has very high daily ridership, the urban structure encourages walking and transit trips, but things are coming apart at the seams. A trip to the airport takes three hours in traffic, and crowd control measures are needed on the transit system. There is not enough money for any projects, and governments have been in a collective denial about the scope of the problem.

There are universal truths — transportation needs cannot be sustained just on automobiles. Auto investment leads to increased use, and in Moscow’s economic climate, to exponential growth. Failure to invest leads to a decline in transit’s attractiveness and falling riding, and the longer this persists, the harder it is to catch up. Moscow planners have no idea how to get control of the situation. The dysfunctional network makes the city less competitive and economic development incentives don’t work because they cannot overcome fundamental transportation problems.

Moscow offers a lesson to Toronto. We are not as far down this path, but the symptoms are there for anyone to see. Moscow’s experience confirms that this is not about choosing one funding source, but all that are available. The debate will be over timing and ordering of new revenues (some are easier to implement both organizationally and politically), what Beasley called a “choreography of spending”.

Munro's overview of the discussion, with a half-dozen informed people talking about transit in front of an audience of hundreds, is worth reading indeed.