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rfmcdonaldSpacing Toronto's John Lorinc is decidedly skeptical about plans to make Toronto Pearson and the Portlands into regional transit hubs. Better planning is desperately needed.
Way up in the north-west corner of the city, we have the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA) fearlessly shilling, with the help of top provincial Liberal strategists, for a “multi-modal transportation hub” on its lands. Said hub would connect the Pearson/Mississauga area with regional transit (MiWay, Smart Track, various bus services, UP Express, etc.) and points west, especially Waterloo Region.
Way down in the south-east corner, near the Portlands, we have City officials quietly testing out a variation on the standard Downtown Relief Line configuration that includes a slight southward jog to allow for a new subway stop on the former Lever Brothers/Unilever site, which could someday become a second major office cluster. It’s not difficult to imagine that such a station would itself become something of a multi-modal operation, given planned links to the re-built Gardiner (think buses), Smart Track/GO, and the Queen’s Quay East LRT.
So what to make of this looming hub-of-war?
Let’s start with the airport. In recent weeks, an intriguing data point from a November, 2015, Neptis study has found its way into the policy dialogue about land use and transportation planning in the region. According to her review of the ten-year-old Places to Grow Act, veteran planner Pamela Blais has identified three employment “megazones” in the GTA. These distant constellations are not merely ill served by transit; Blais says they scarcely figure in Metrolinx’s long-term plans to link the region’s 25 urban growth centres. Two extend along the Vaughan/Markham/Richmond Hill axis, and the third, which is about two-thirds the size of the entire City of Toronto, centres on Pearson.
With almost 300,000 jobs, the latter is Canada’s second largest employment cluster, trailing only downtown. According to the GTAA, other global airports have multi-modal transportation hubs that serve multiple purposes, including, as the report notes, connecting “employees to jobs at the airport and to those in the surrounding employment zone.” (We have to keep up with the Joneses.)
I’ve been hearing rumblings about the GTAA’s transit ambitions for almost half a year, and it’s still not at all clear to me which tail is wagging which dog. The GTAA, blessed with debenturing authority and land, has the tools to borrow mega-bucks, which will be paid down by jacking the already outrageous user fees paid by airport customers. (Pearson, in case you missed the memo, has the dubious distinction of levying North America’s steepest airport fees, and is not even modestly competitive in global rankings of airport efficiency/productivity, according to a 2014 study done at the University of British Columbia.)
Way down in the south-east corner, near the Portlands, we have City officials quietly testing out a variation on the standard Downtown Relief Line configuration that includes a slight southward jog to allow for a new subway stop on the former Lever Brothers/Unilever site, which could someday become a second major office cluster. It’s not difficult to imagine that such a station would itself become something of a multi-modal operation, given planned links to the re-built Gardiner (think buses), Smart Track/GO, and the Queen’s Quay East LRT.
So what to make of this looming hub-of-war?
Let’s start with the airport. In recent weeks, an intriguing data point from a November, 2015, Neptis study has found its way into the policy dialogue about land use and transportation planning in the region. According to her review of the ten-year-old Places to Grow Act, veteran planner Pamela Blais has identified three employment “megazones” in the GTA. These distant constellations are not merely ill served by transit; Blais says they scarcely figure in Metrolinx’s long-term plans to link the region’s 25 urban growth centres. Two extend along the Vaughan/Markham/Richmond Hill axis, and the third, which is about two-thirds the size of the entire City of Toronto, centres on Pearson.
With almost 300,000 jobs, the latter is Canada’s second largest employment cluster, trailing only downtown. According to the GTAA, other global airports have multi-modal transportation hubs that serve multiple purposes, including, as the report notes, connecting “employees to jobs at the airport and to those in the surrounding employment zone.” (We have to keep up with the Joneses.)
I’ve been hearing rumblings about the GTAA’s transit ambitions for almost half a year, and it’s still not at all clear to me which tail is wagging which dog. The GTAA, blessed with debenturing authority and land, has the tools to borrow mega-bucks, which will be paid down by jacking the already outrageous user fees paid by airport customers. (Pearson, in case you missed the memo, has the dubious distinction of levying North America’s steepest airport fees, and is not even modestly competitive in global rankings of airport efficiency/productivity, according to a 2014 study done at the University of British Columbia.)
