Canadian Railroads > Toronto: let's get real about transit

The Star has an opinion piece about the pull this way, pull that way mess that describes Toronto's transit operations. This leader kills a partly constructed subway. That leader abandons streetcar routes. Plans continue to build a subway in an area where GO Transit has plenty of capacity, and so one.

Each politician has a new approach. Create services at no cost. Or pick loonies off the trees where they're growing, etc.

>>Certainly, Toronto and the GTA suffer from lack of leadership. Without a shared vision, transit gets pushed in a different direction with each new regime. When elected, Ford killed Transit City, a fully planned and funded program. When Wynne loses, her successor could well decide to start from scratch. Let’s not forget, Hudak was a member of the Mike Harris cabinet when he killed the Eglinton subway in 1995 after construction had begun.

Clearly, transit needs as much distance as it can get from politics. The region has been poorly served by the sort of logic that leads officialdom to choose a Scarborough subway over the DRL, diesel over electrification, ridership over capacity, etc. In every case, the city, province and their agencies have made the wrong choice.<<

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/04/15/its_high_time_for_some_realism_about_transit_hume.html

Sounds just like Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Just about everybody thinks its a good idea but nobody wants to pay for it and no politician wants to commit any money to it...

Keith Robertson
Langley, BC

LKeithR Wrote:
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> Sounds just like Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.
> Just about everybody thinks its a good idea but
> nobody wants to pay for it and no politician wants
> to commit any money to it...

Ironically, the now beleaguered Port Authority of New York and New Jersey started with that wide moat of independence. The original US law and two state compact which formed it allowed the investment bankers who sold the bonds to build the bridge to also select the directors --until the bonds were paid off.

That led to a highly independent board which built bridges, bought an airport (Newark) and built laGuardia and Idlewild, a bus terminal, another tunnel, the port terminals, etc.

Curiously, the price for taking over the failing Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (now PATH) which benefited NJ, was the OK to build a pair of office buildings in Manhattan that became the World Trade Center. In a beat up, old, crappy section of town.

It also allowed the governors to replace the bankers with their own political hacks from both parties and politicize the agency.

Transit has been controversial in Toronto for over a hundred years.

William Mackenzie (of Canadian Northern fame) also owned the streetcar network of Toronto. He saw streetcars as tool for developing new suburbs, where he was a developer and realtor.

The civic governments in and around Toronto didn't like a developer determining where and how roads and streetcars would be located. They would be the agencies supplying sewers and other services to the new communities and wanted a say in the development of same. A classic private enterprise versus public debate which still happens in many places.

In the end, the City of Toronto took over the Toronto Tramways Company, with some rancour and public debate.

I think those communities where there is a lively and active public debate about transit options end up having better and more functional transit systems. Torontonians have always expressed their opinions, pro or con regarding transit. The subway system came about after extended debate on how to eliminate streetcar congestion on Yonge Street, the main North-South street in downtown Toronto.

While Montreal was tearing up old neighborhoods for freeway construction in the 1960's and 70's, Torontonians voted against inner city freeways, instead enhancing the transit systems. The new roads versus transit debate has carried on for decades in Toronto, resulting in some delays in building. When Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is not in the news regarding his alleged drug usage, he is an active participant in the Light Rail Transit versus Subway debate. His "largeness" doesn't ride transit, but gets annoyed by streetcars delaying his morning commute in his Cadillac Escalade SUV.

After being staid and conservative for many years, civic governance in Toronto swings left to right, in a manner similar to Vancouver. It makes city elections interesting.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/14 09:07 by eminence_grise.

eminence_grise Wrote:
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>
> William Mackenzie (of Canadian Northern fame) also
> owned the streetcar network of Toronto. He saw

And I am NOT one of his descendants ....

Will MacKenzie
Dundas, ON

eminence_grise Wrote:
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> I think those communities where there is a lively
> and active public debate about transit options end
> up having better and more functional transit
> systems. Torontonians have always expressed their
> opinions, pro or con regarding transit.

The current situation appears to me to be all about real estate development; I think the "average citizens"' input will not matter but they have to go through the sham process to make it seem otherwise. Look at Eglinton Ave. west of Yonge St. now. It is dumpy and poor. The area near Keele is noted for violent drug-related crime. In less than 20 years there will be pricey high rises at every new station; the developers are already working on their plans. The Sheppard subway extension is being presented more honestly, with Ford's plan to pay for it with real estate development fees.

The existing Sheppard subway was by no means implemented by the will of the people. One powerful man pushed that through.

Now it is true that both Eglinton and the Sheppard extension will help crowding on the existing subways by providing crosstown connections, but without the big bucks real estate oligarchs it's hard for me to see that anything would happen.

It helped that Jane Jacobs, who helped kill a trans-Greeenwich Village destruction scheme of Robert Moses, moved to Toronto.