March 9, 2009

IS THIS THE LEGACY THAT DAVID MILLER WANTS TO LEAVE TO TORONTO?

Posted in Political Feedback at 1:24 AM by Mark State

Dear Fellow Bloggers:

 

When posting a blog-site like this, it’s very difficult to not be seen as someone with an axe to grind or some kind of political extremist.  I’m neither of these. 

 

I perceive myself to be a level-headed thinker. 

 

Please take my word for it that in my initial postings, the 2009 City Budget items I have chosen to criticize place Toronto in grave danger of not only messing up the entire city for years to come, but also of misplaced spending of our scarce resources.  I’m taking a side against the concepts an unthinking City Hall is trying to build… bringing some degree of real thoughtfulness and consideration into a discussion with you, my fellow citizen and reader of this blog, before the city rushes into serious, irremediable, and expensive mistakes.

 

At the end of each blog, I will post my own suggestion for a thoughtful, forward-looking solution.  The purpose of this website is also to invite feedback, and yours is invited, both to me and to your city government.

 

I have witnessed some departments in City Hall to be agenda-driven with a self-serving purpose…not interested in an overall approach to coherent planning, and willing to steamroller over the rights of citizens of this beautiful city in order to achieve their insular goals with no regard to their negative impacts.  

 

One such department is the TTC. 

 

Originally formed to serve us with public transit, it now has the temerity to attempt to assume charge over our everyday roadways as though it has authority to do so.  It calls its authority “greater emphasis on using available road space more efficiently to move people, rather than vehicles…”

 

The roadways it plans to take over it has given the glorified title of “Higher Order Transit Corridors”, as though public transit is a “higher order” of transportation than any other.  Since public transit pollutes like other forms of transportation, travels the same routes as other forms, and is as costly for the city to run as private cars are for their owners, it’s difficult to determine how the descriptor “higher order “ was arrived at.  Perhaps they mean that TTC vehicles carry more passengers.  That would make automobiles a higher order of transport than bicycles, and minivans and SUVs a higher order of transport than automobiles. 

I think it is just organizational self-aggrandizement.

 

The authority it is claiming is its own invention.  The TTC has no right over any part of the roadway except streetcar tracks, so it has figured out that if it wants to build tracks up the middle of a roadway, it can just claim ownership of the road and proceed.  

But the TTC in this case is not just being ‘power-hungry’.  It has an openly-stated evil purpose in mind.  By claiming authority over our roadways, it plans to deliberately frustrate and inhibit the flow of normal traffic by restricting and choking normal rush hour traffic flow.  The TTC wants to remove two lanes from the centers of every one of the following streets to run a curbed-off access rail line up them:

JANE STREET (Bloor to Steeles), STEELES AVENUE EAST OF JANE STREET

EGLINTON AVENUE EAST  BETWEEN KENNEDY STATION AND LAIRD DRIVE, (UNDERGROUND BETWEEN LAIRD DRIVE AND KEELE STREET), AND EGLINTON AVENUE WEST FROM KEELE STREET TO MISSISSAUGA AND THE AIRPORT

KINGSTON ROAD, MCLEVIN, SEWELL, NEILSON, ELLESMERE, AND MILITARY TRAIL.

FINCH AVE WEST FROM JUST WEST OF 27, AROUND THE ALBION CENTER AND EAST TO YONGE STREET AT FINCH STATION

SHEPPARD AVENUE EAST FROM DON MILLS STATION UNDERGROUND TO CONSUMERS ROAD, AND EAST TO MEADOWVALE WITH A SHORT CONNECTOR EN ROUTE TO SCARBOROUGH TOWN CENTER

LAKESHORE BLVD WEST FROM LONGBRANCH GO STATION TO HUMBER LOOP, QUEENSWAY WEST TO RONCESVALLES ALONG THE EXISTING STREETCAR RESERVED LANES, ACROSS THE GARDINER AND EITHER ALONG THE BOULEVARDS  BETWEEN THE GARDINER AND LAKESHORE BLVD WEST, OR THROUGH THE BEACHES PARKLAND TO QUEENS QUAY WEST, THEN CURVING NORTH COMMENCING AT BATHURST STREET TO UNION STATION OR COMMENCING AT DUFFERIN STREET AND ALONG A FRONT STREET EXTENSION TO UNION STATION.

They’ve said it in writing, and plans are now underway to buy over 200 Light Rail Vehicles to run on your street. 

In pushing through their anti-car, rush-hour route-narrowing agenda, the TTC has also said that they asked you if their plans to narrow major rush hour routes through the city by two lanes each with reserved rail line routes up their centers were OK with you, and they say you said, “Yes, it’s OK with me”.  If you live on Jane Street or any other of the above four lane streets, you told the TTC that it’s OK to narrow your street to two one-way lanes in either direction with left turns available only at selected traffic lights.  If you live on a six-lane street, you told the TTC that it’s OK with you if they narrow it to four lanes with no parking lane, and run a reserved rail line up the other two lanes in the middle. 

 

If you didn’t know about seven major rush hour traffic routes getting narrowed by two lanes each, you must be out of touch, because the TTC says you told them it’s OK with you for them to assume ownership of those roadways and deliberately make the traffic flow on them difficult and frustrating.

 “Sneaking it past you” 

 

City Council’s right to make certain recent decisions without your knowledge about serious changes you will have to live with after they are made sometimes leaves you wondering how much attention they are paying to the consequences of their actions. Is it possible that Councilors with too many issues on their work schedule to be able to pay detailed attention to them all have been hoodwinked into approving them by being informed that they are only a part of the “official plan”, without checking in detail to find out what the “official plan” actually is?  Are councilors being told that certain budget items they should pass will be inexpensive and sound to their constituents –you– like progress being made ‘in spite of economic hard times’? 

After some key budget items are passed by Council, and because they are the result of shallow thinking, you will be unhappy about them, count on it.  The only remedy available is to convince the city to put those items back on the table for reconsideration and a re-vote in the light of new or more in-depth information.

 

Here’s the first and most important of them…the subject of this first blog:

 

2009 City Of Toronto Budget Item:  •Purchase of 204 low floor accessible Light Rail Vehicles to replace existing streetcar fleet plus 21 growth cars with delivery to start in 2010 (2009 $81.261 M, 2009 –2013 $656.025 M) 

The plan to establish the LRT as it now exists has been designed specifically not to relieve, but strangely to congest our in-town automotive rush hour routes so that commuters will be forced to take transit.  In my view, Toronto’s Light Rail Transit Plan (Transit City) must be reconsidered so as to keep space open for uncongested automobile commuting! 

 

Here are the hard facts.  700,000-plus people commute over 40 kilometers to Toronto for work every year via train, bus, and automobile.  Probably close to twice that many commute from areas closer than 40 km.  This translates to well over 2,000,000 X 2 = 4,000,000 commutes per year, with the numbers growing by tens of thousands annually; and fewer than half of those take public transit.[extrapolated from StatsCan]

Add to this number an additional approximately one million more commutes in each direction annually by people working outside of the city, more than 90% by automobile. _{[http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-613-m/2006010/c-g/4054704-eng.htm ]}

The TTC has the unrealistic expectation that the number of commuters and travelers in the downtown core using automobiles can just be made to go up in a puff of smoke by changing the rules to make it difficult for them to get around town!   That’s insular thinking, with no basis in reality.

 

The TTC’s decisions regarding the LRT being run up the middle of inadequately-sized city routes places its own ambitions ahead of the public’s interests. There is simply not enough street width on the streets for which it is planned to contain boththe LRTs and automobile traffic.  Every one of the planned routes will become the traffic mess that now characterizes St. Clair Avenue West as altered by two reserve streetcar lanes up its center.  Some will be even worse, restricted to one traffic lane on either side of the LRT reserved lanes for a considerable part of their lengths.

 

IS LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT A BAD THING?

 

In concept, Light Rail Transit systems (LRT’s) are a good idea.

 

There are cities in the world that have beautiful LRT’s.   A small train of rail cars moves quietly and smoothly between easily accessible stations.  The last car is often specifically set up for cyclists, shoppers, and baby carriages with an access ramp, interior bike racks, and spacious seating, and is boldly labeled so it can be spotted by those users.  The tracks are attractively cobbled with red brick, the cars are modern-looking, many are Canadian-Made, and they are not unpleasant to look at.  They serve great areas of their cities.  [view them on page 19 at http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/malvern_lrt/pdf/2008-07_display_boards.pdf ]

It’s no wonder that Toronto, already running an LRT line between the Bloor Subway system and McCowan station, [for an article on the Scarborough LRT, visit http://transit.toronto.on.ca/subway/5107.shtml ] would like to have such a fine addition to its currently inadequate transit facility.  So a great deal of money (+/- 16 Billion dollars, but we know from experience it will probably eventually double its estimate) has been earmarked for an overall “new” system, and LRT cars are about to be –and may already have been– placed on order.  One can see from the map below that a great number of people will be served by the overall “Metrolinx” proposal that will in large part be funding the new LRT lines because it feeds into them. 

 

So far, so good.

 

 

So if an LRT system would be good, why is Toronto’s proposed LRT system a very, very  bad plan?

 

 The idea is good, but the plan for implementing it on Toronto streets missed a very important lesson that was not missed by those lovely LRTs in foreign cities.  It wasn’t missed by the Scarborough LRT.  But it has been missed by the current TTC authority, and now we’re in deep trouble.

What important point did Metrolinx and (the TTC’s new moniker) “Transit City” miss?

 

Those existing overseas LRT lines do not interfere with normal automobile traffic lanes, and they enhance, rather than limit, traffic flow.   They are

·         off-road,

·         in the air, (as a monorail or maglev train system)

·         underground.

·         where they share a road, its either down the center of an 8-lane roadway corridor (a minimum requirement  if Transit City is to live up to their commercials of non-interference using reserved lanes… and Toronto has no 8-lane corridors), or off to the side of an LRT access connecting point roadway designed so that cars can meet the train at its stops

 

The proposed system directly interferes with the efficient flow of traffic on every street on which it will travel because it has been planned –where it is not taking up parkland as a travel route– to run up the center of those streets.  Check those pictures I referred to earlier again.   Those LRTs, including the Scarborough LRT, travel in their own routes.  None of the planned roadways in the city of Toronto is large enough to accommodate the proposed system without severely inhibiting existing traffic patterns.

 

 

Is efficient automobile traffic flow important? 

 

Yes.

 

Why is efficient automobile traffic flow important in the city?  

·         First, large cities like Toronto are enabled by a commuter class; in fact the commuter’s ability to travel from the outskirts to work via automobile was the sole cause that enabled large cities to develop and exist all over North America and in most of the rest of the world.   Modern large cities, in a sense, were the result of and continue to exist because of the invention of the automobile in its various forms, including public transit.   City traffic lanes were designed for automobile traffic to access individual addresses anywhere in the city. 

 

Our transit system provides large parking lots at the terminus of each subway line as well as at interim stations, since there is just not enough room in the downtown working areas to park every commuter’s car.  Those parking lots are a silent recognition of the fact that automobiles move Toronto’s citizenry.  

 

·         Secondly, although automobiles are expensive to own, insure, and run, the people who have them are comforted by their sense of immediacy with their connections and support systems.  In suburbia, it’s not often possible to walk to the supermarket or household needs vendors.  Urban life is often hurried, and the automobile is an indispensible tool in supporting that lifestyle.  In an automotive tradeoff between dollars and convenience, it seems, convenience wins. 

·         Thirdly, the automobile industry is developing pollution-less engines to ensure the longevity of their businesses (and their sub-businesses, such as parts manufacturers, aftermarket industry, traffic control industry, the steel industry…the list is daunting), which employ millions of workers…so many that Federal governments will give billions of dollars to them in unsecured loans based upon deals of payback and continued employment. 

 

Pollution-less engines join the automobile to the list of so-called sustainable transportation, or “green” vehicles.  The aggregate number of automobiles continuing to be built and sold in this country each year is staggering…in the millions.  The evolution of the automobile as envisioned by 1950’s science fiction paperback covers sees us all eventually flying around in our own vehicles, supported by anti-gravity, and controlled by satellite traffic systems.  We’ll be able to get to a destination at hundreds of kilometers per hour while enjoying a game of scrabble over lunch in a little mobile lounge called the family car just by programming in our destinations.  This is fantasy, but the point being made is not.  The car is not going away. 

 

That means people will continue to use theirs even if their roadways are made impassable, either by sitting angrily in traffic jams (witness the destruction of St. Clair Avenue West by the reserved streetcar lanes foolishly having been built down the center of that six-lane roadway), and/or finding other routes to drive to their destinations.

·         The roads we currently enjoy were initially designed and are paid for by a population greatly invested in cars.  In a sense, the car has paid for our roads by its very existence and our tax dollars in support of it.  To assume somehow that cars are secondary in importance to the institution of a rapid transit system down their centers, and that the smooth flow of traffic is of no consequence or a negative burden on our city streets is just bad judgement.

 

If efficient automobile traffic is important, why does the city want to remove it from its downtown core?

Some politicians were told in the 1970’s that removing automobile traffic from the downtown core

·         will make it more environmentally friendly with less automotive exhaust pollution,

·         will open the spaces that are formerly major city streets to become outdoor pedestrian commercial malls, and

·         will allow at first only taxis and public transit to operate amongst its limited traffic lanes, and eventually only public transit.

Now, 40 years later, there are more automobiles in the downtown core than ever, which would seem to support the idea that people want to use them and there is thus a need for unclogged city streets.   Automobiles are being designed to have less and less exhaust pollution (and will soon have none at all); and when Yonge Street is closed off for street fairs once or twice a year, even though it is not an extra- heavily trafficked corridor, congestion havoc ensues in the other nearby traffic corridors.

If one considers current traffic jams in the city core caused by rush hour or by several events getting out of the attraction-crowded downtown area simultaneously, unnecessarily restrictive signage at traffic lights, and traffic lights that are by and large uncoordinated for the provision of smooth traffic flow, then the pattern of attempting to remove traffic from the downtown core by making it as inconvenient as possible becomes clear.  The fact that the traffic is still there, more than ever, is also abundantly clear. The city’s current traffic planning department is actually the ‘anti-traffic’ planning department.  If you own a car, they are deliberately working against your ability to make full use of it; and worse, they are increasing exhaust emissions into the atmosphere by deliberately inhibiting traffic’s smooth flow.

Now that air pollution is definitely being eliminated from vehicles operated formerly by mainly fossil fuel internal combustion engines, a sensible alternative would be to make traffic in the downtown core operate smoothly and efficiently by simply using currently available technology designed for that purpose.  By comparison to today’s traffic flows, the downtown core could be made to look almost empty using efficient, smooth, and pleasant traffic management.  But that’s a topic for a future blog. 

THE TTC PLAN TO UNDERMINE TRAFFIC FLOW BY INSTALLING LRTs

Meanwhile, from the city’s own internet site regarding the planned Eglinton LRT route, here’s the story in their own words.  This set of paragraphs is repeated in every area planned for the new LRT.  The only words changed are the street names.

“CITY PLANNING POLICIES

City of Toronto’s Official Plan

The City’s Official Plan supports continued growth in Toronto, but places greater emphasis on using available road space more efficiently to move people, rather than vehicles. Transit, walking and bicycle lanes in conjunction with providing a better variety and density of transit-oriented development are major cornerstones of the Official Plan.

The [LRT] project is consistent with the policies and the objectives of the City of Toronto:

The Official Plan’s Map 4 – Higher Order (sic)Transit Corridors, and Map 5 – Surface Transit Priority Network, identifies Eglinton Avenue as part of the future transit network.

The City’s transportation network will be developed to support increased transit priority over vehicles on selected corridors, including those identified on Map 5. Transit priority measures may include: reserved or dedicated lanes for transit; and, limiting or removing on-street parking during part or all of the day (Policy – 2.2 3h).

City of Toronto’s Bike Plan 

The City of Toronto’s Bike Plan is a 10 year strategy that includes the implementation of infrastructure to create a bicycle friendly environment that encourages the future use of bicycles for everyday transportation and enjoyment. Bike lanes will be considered for inclusion along or adjacent to the entire route. In many instances, bicycle routes currently exist parallel to Eglinton Avenue, and could potentially serve as the bicycle path along the corridor.”

If you live on or next to any of the following streets, you will soon see an LRT passing your home down the middle of that street between lanes of jammed-up traffic.  The Transit City folks feel assured that this is OK with you, because they have held hearings in your neighbourhood to check out whether you approve of this development or not.  They say you were there and you approved.

Keep in mind that the following are mainly 4 lane streets, and will be reduced to one lanein each direction with the LRT in a curbed-off two-lane section up the center.

The new LRT lines will build a two way train system up the centers of

·         Toronto’s Jane Street (currently 4 lanes),

·         Don Mills Avenue (combinations of 6 lanes and 4 lanes),

·         Sheppard Avenue (4 lanes),

·         Eglinton Avenue (combinations of 6 lanes and 4 lanes),

·         Malvern Avenue,

·         Neilson Road (4 lanes)

·         Kingston Road (4 and 6 lanes)

·         Lakeshore Avenue West (6 lanes),  and

·         Finch Avenue West (4 lanes)

All of these are important rush hour routes as well as bearing consistent traffic loads in off-rush hour times.  Each will be reduced in size by two lanes.

 

 The SOLUTION

It’s really simple logic.  Toronto’s new LRT needs to be removed from interfering with normal, efficient traffic flow. 

This means moving it up into an overhead-style system, (such as the Ontario government originally wanted to have (1983) with the Scarborough LRT, supporting it by magnetic lift on a silent rail system), or moving it underground, a very expensive alternative to the overhead idea, and not useful along the waterfront sections. 

It’s possible to build the new LRT system with no tracks on the road, no LRT vehicles to take up the roadways intended for automobile traffic, no interference with traffic by requiring it to turn only at specified turn intersections, no ugly wires overhead. 

Columns for an overhead LRT might also support a pair of exclusive-use cycling lanes in each direction.  Keep the LRT idea.  Scrap the destructive plan to have it take up the roadways. 

Raised LRT systems are being employed all over the world:

  If Toronto wanted to emulate the Sidney Monorail System, our overhead system could be built in a continuous loop so trains would not have to stop at one end and be switched back onto a track in the opposite direction.  Following is an idea for a Toronto continuous loop system with 4 loop trains, two of them having sub-loops.  Has the TTC considered this kind of system?  You’ll never know, because if you were one of the few people attending meetings with them and telling them that what they planned is OK with you, you were only presented with one form of LRT transit system as your list of choices: the one that the TTC had already decided for you.

The TTC planners need to be stopped in their current rush to do the job badly. 

This has become an urgent matter because LRT cars are either currently or imminently on order from the manufacturers at a price of millions of taxpayer dollars by way of an expense item already passed in the city’s 2009 budgetfor the purchase of 204 LRT cars designed for roadway-level travel.  It’s not too late to hold off on the order until an alternative LRT style has been determined.  Architects (including the fellow who designed the flying shoebox at the Ontario College of Art!) were invited to submit designs for the stations even before the budget for the cars was approved. 

[It might be interesting for some investigative journalist to determine whether the LRT station designs were invited before the public had met with LRT planners at those meetings they say you attended.  And it might also be interesting for a class action law firm to take on the stoppage of this unjust project on behalf of motorists who will be stuck in traffic or forced to find alternative transportation in a flagrant disregard for their human rights, cyclists who will not be able to use the planned routes without using the LRT cyclist cars, and homeowners who will have their immediate access blocked.  A ready clientele for combining with such a lawsuit already exists along St. Clair Avenue West in the form of business owners deprived of neighbourhood customers through lack of parking in front of their businesses.]

With the exception of the location of access points to the LRT cars (e.g. overhead or underground instead of at ground level), preliminary designs for LRT stations could still proceed.

If you think that it’s OK to remove cars from the city center and inhibit rush hour traffic routes along established corridors, do nothing about this situation.  (Perhaps you can apply for a lower property tax assessment due to poorer roadway access to your home after it’s built.) 

If you care, as I do, about the future of this city, and have decided that the currently planned LRT routes do not support that future, write eMails to your councillor at city hall immediately, begging him or her to stop the process in order to give deeper consideration of location elements of this poorly thought-through idea.  Hell, write to them all !

A typical eMail to a City Council member might read:  “I am a constituent in your riding, (or maybe “I am not a constituent in your riding, but I am writing to you as a councilor sworn to uphold the well being of this city”) and I oppose the establishment of the proposed LRT routes at ground level as they have been designed to deliberately impose unnecessary strain on the city’s automotive traffic flow.  Please stop the order of the new LRT cars until an overhead or underground alternative route has replaced the current plan.”

A typical eMail to the Mayor might read:  “As a citizen of the city you swore an oath to maintain in your care, I oppose the establishment of the proposed LRT routes at ground level as they have been designed to deliberately impose unnecessary strain on the city’s automotive traffic flow.  Please stop the order of the new LRT cars until an overhead or underground alternative route has replaced the current plan.”

Don’t forget to include your name and address in the email, or your opinion won’t be counted.

Some alternative constructs:

AND/OR

Cycle off-terminals using ramps and escalators, etc. at major intersections and LRT stations.  Six lane routes might use a combination of the arch with a column up the middle.

 

Enter your street address to find your City Council member or select a City Council member from the list below.
David Miller, City of Toronto Mayor
Paul Ainslie Ward 43 Scarborough East	Mark Grimes Ward 6 Etobicoke-Lakeshore
Brian Ashton Ward 36 Scarborough Southwest	Suzan Hall Ward 1 Etobicoke North
Maria Augimeri Ward 9 York Centre	A. A. Heaps Ward 35 Scarborough Southwest
Sandra Bussin Ward 32 Beaches-East York	Doug Holyday Ward 3 Etobicoke Centre
Shelley Carroll Ward 33 Don Valley East	Cliff Jenkins Ward 25 Don Valley West
Raymond Cho Ward 42 Scarborough-Rouge River	Norm Kelly Ward 40 Scarborough-Agincourt
Janet Davis Ward 31 Beaches-East York	Chin Lee Ward 41 Scarborough-Rouge River
Glenn De Baeremaeker Ward 38 Scarborough Centre	Gloria Lindsay Luby Ward 4 Etobicoke Centre
Mike Del Grande Ward 39 Scarborough-Agincourt	Giorgio Mammoliti Ward 7 York West
Frank Di Giorgio Ward 12 York South-Weston	Pam McConnell Ward 28 Toronto Centre-Rosedale
Mike Feldman Ward 10 York Centre	Joe Mihevc Ward 21 St. Paul’s
John Filion Ward 23 Willowdale	Peter Milczyn Ward 5 Etobicoke-Lakeshore
Paula Fletcher Ward 30 Toronto-Danforth	Denzil Minnan-Wong Ward 34 Don Valley East
Rob Ford Ward 2 Etobicoke North	Ron Moeser Ward 44 Scarborough East
Adam Giambrone Ward 18 Davenport	Howard Moscoe Ward 15 Eglinton-Lawrence

 

Frances Nunziata Ward 11 York South-Weston

Case Ootes Ward 29 Toronto-Danforth

Cesar Palacio Ward 17 Davenport

Joe Pantalone Ward 19 Trinity-Spadina

John Parker Ward 26 Don Valley West

Gord Perks Ward 14 Parkdale-High Park

Anthony Perruzza Ward 8 York West

Kyle Rae Ward 27 Toronto Centre-Rosedale

Bill Saundercook Ward 13 Parkdale-High Park

David Shiner Ward 24 Willowdale

Karen Stintz Ward 16 Eglinton-Lawrence

Michael Thompson Ward 37 Scarborough Centre

Adam Vaughan Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina

Michael Walker Ward 22 St. Paul’s

Yours for a saner and better Toronto,

Mark Mañuel State

See you in the next blog!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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