A Bit More Detail

Tess Kalinowski’s Toronto Star article seems–to my mind–to gush overmuch about the new light rail scheduled to be constructed along Toronto’s midtown/west-to-east Eglinton Avenue. It is interesting to be in town to see the process start, but the sheer geographic scope of the process could potentially allow for plenty of flaws to be manifested.

When MPP Mike Colle takes a mental stroll down Eglinton Ave., he sees pokey one- and two-storey buildings, gas stations, parking lots. In his mind it boils down to a whole lot of potential.

Now, after decades of neglect, the Liberal MPP for Eglinton-Lawrence says the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT, still eight years from completion, is already transforming the neighbourhood he loves to boost.

“We need more people living on Eglinton. It’s the forgotten middle of Toronto. For decades nobody ever paid attention to it. Now this gives us a chance to pay attention. This is a chance to give it some light and some investment. The transportation is really the catalyst. And it’s already happening,” said Colle, who cites the redevelopment of the 50-year-old China House restaurant at Bathurst St. into a condo that sold out in a couple of weeks.

How Eglinton looks once the Crosstown is running will depend on a two-year city planning exercise called an avenue study that begins community consultations Thursday at the Fairbank Memorial Community Centre on Dufferin St.

The $1.3 million study, which will eventually go before city council, is the first step in envisioning what Eglinton will look like after the Crosstown is built, how it will be zoned, what kind of buildings and public spaces will be encouraged.

Avenue studies typically focus on one or two kilometers of a street. But this one, like the ambitious 26-kilometre, $6 billion Crosstown line itself, will be unprecedented. It will traverse 14 wards through the tunnelled west and central portions starting at Black Creek Dr. and at street level from Laird Rd. to Kennedy Station in the east, said Toronto director of Transportation Planning Rod McPhail.

It will look at all kinds of potential development — from retail and residential to public realm issues such as what to do with the bus lanes that will no longer be required in the Dufferin-Keele area.

The titles of the three articles are diagnostic. I’d add that the incident described in the third article, the collision of the bus on the 191 Highway 27 Rocket southbound, has been described on the radio by bus passengers as the consequence of the actions of the TTC driver, a pattern of poor driving ending in the collision of the moving bus with the stationary truck in front of it.

A video of a TTC driver using a cellphone while driving a subway train that surfaced on YouTube (see video below) has prompted an investigation by the transit authority.

The video, posted Friday, shows an employee in the driver’s cab at the front of a subway train, one hand on the controls and the other using a phone down at seat level.

“All I can really say about that is that we’re aware of the situation and it is being investigated,” said TTC representative Danny Nicholson. “Obviously our operators, whether they’re driving any of our vehicles, they’re not permitted to use a cellphone while driving a vehicle.”

According to the description, the video was taken between Eglinton and Bloor subway stations as the train was travelling southbound around 5:30 p.m.

A TTC streetcar driver was caught on camera reading a newspaper while manning the controls Wednesday morning, TTC spokesman Brad Ross confirmed.

The female driver, who has not yet been identified, was operating a southbound 510 Spadina streetcar around 9 a.m. when a passenger photographed the activity.

“We take an extremely dim view of anyone who violates safety,” Ross said. “The public should be assured that we do take these matters extremely seriously and we do take action.”

He said disciplinary measures will be taken once the driver is known.

Toronto police say 12 people were transported to hospital with minor injuries after a TTC bus collided with a tractor trailer early Wednesday morning.

Police said the passengers were brought to hospital as a precautionary measure after the crash, which happened shortly before 7:30 a.m. in the southbound collector lanes of Highway 427, near Bloor Street.

Two lanes remained blocked after 8:30 a.m. as police continued to investigated the circumstances of the crash.

The accident involved the 191 Highway 27 Rocket, a TTC spokeswoman said. Southbound TTC buses on that route are being diverted via Eringate, Wellesworth, Westmall and Dundas.

Oh, for …

A vote by provincial transit agency Metrolinx in favour of the construction of four light rail lines across Toronto by 2020 is the latest instance of a “war on the car” in the city, says Coun. Doug Ford.

The Metrolinx board voted unanimously Wednesday to move ahead with a modified version of the Transit City plan that Mayor Rob Ford has campaigned against.

Doug Ford, the mayor’s brother and a key council ally, was quick to denounce the move.

“Some councillors down here, and obviously the province, are ignoring the people,” Ford told reporters after the vote. “Once again, the people want subways and they’re totally ignoring them. So let’s wait until the election.”

[. . .]

Ford said the combination of the construction of new light rail, talk of implementing road tolls from some councillors and recommendations by the city’s chief medical officer of health to reduce speed limits amounts to a renewed assault on drivers.

“It’s definitely a war on the car,” he said. “When you want to St. Clairize the whole city, turn Sheppard into the disaster on St. Clair, turn Eglinton into the disaster on St. Clair, that’s a war on the car,” he said, referencing the right-of-way streetcar that runs along St. Clair Avenue West.

Torontoist’s Steve Kupferman shares the news.

Metrolinx staff are recommending that the provincially-controlled regional transit agency move ahead with construction on all three street-level light rail lines endorsed by city council over Mayor Rob Ford’s objections earlier this year, according to a report released earlier today ahead of an April 25th meeting of the Metrolinx board. Under the proposed timeline, Eglinton Avenue, Sheppard Avenue East, and Finch Avenue West would all have functioning light-rail lines by 2020.

This is yet another chapter in a long saga of transit strife triggered by the election of Mayor Ford, who on his first day in office declared a Metrolinx-approved light-rail plan very similar to this one “dead.” (Back then, it was known as Transit City.)

Metrolinx’s endorsement means that, provided the agency’s board approves everything at tomorrow’s meeting, there will be one less political obstacle to building street-level light rail in Toronto. City council endorsed the plan at special meetings in February and March, and the province, on the hook for an $8.4 billion contribution that is expected to cover most of the cost of building the new rail infrastructure, has been decidedly hands-off.

The proposed timeline would see the Eglinton Avenue LRT, which will run underground for a little more than half its length (whereas Ford would have had it entirely underground), completed by 2020. The Scarborough RT would be upgraded to new light-rail technology by 2019. Sheppard East, the street for which Mayor Ford vociferously promoted a subway extension, would be up and running with street-level light rail by 2018. And Finch West, whose fate under the Ford proposal was uncertain, would have LRT by 2019. This is a little different than the projected completion schedule that existed prior to Rob Ford’s mayoralty. Then, Sheppard was expected to have light rail by 2014, Finch in 2019, and Sheppard and the Scarborough RT by 2020.

More from the Globe and Mail.

Restarting the plan will have different effects on the four light rail lines, Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig said Tuesday. Work on the Eglinton Crosstown was never stopped, he noted, but the loss of two construction seasons and new requirements by the province that will see Infrastructure Ontario managing the project have pushed back the schedule for Sheppard by close to four years. The new plan will also see work begin earlier on replacing the Scarborough RT.

“We now have a council resolution and we are moving ahead with the project,” Mr. McCuaig said. “Yes, the projects that we have are ambitious for 2020, but, at the same time, I think people are impatient. They want to see outcomes and we want to get on with delivering good, solid outcomes for people so they can see what good transit does for the city.”

Any extra costs associated with the delay will be linked to the purchase of the light rail cars and have yet to be negotiated with Bombardier, the supplier, Mr. McCuaig said.

Toronto transit writer Steve Munro compares mass transit in Toronto and area to what’s going on in Los Angeles, and finds Toronto lacking Los Angeles’ coherent vision of the future.

Thoughts, people? Is this a real contrast/compare, or is Munro just summoning a Los Angeles into existence to contrast to an actually existing Toronto?

Back in early April, John Lorinc wrote in the Globe about the LA transit plan and the funding — a dedicated regional half-percent sales tax — that underpins the whole scheme. Two weeks later, Richard Katz was in Toronto talking about transit funding. Katz is an advisor to Mayor Villaraigosa, chair of the regional commuter rail system, Metrolink, and a member of the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.

[. . .]

A few key issues need to be mentioned up front:

Political leadership, transparency and inclusiveness are essential. Without a major figure like Mayor Villaraigosa championing the program, transportation improvements and funding for them would never get the broad political support needed. Plans have to be public and their benefits to a wide variety of communities well-understood.
Los Angeles didn’t start to focus on transit yesterday, but started its rapid transit program in the 1990s. At that point, the work was ridiculed in some quarters as a waste of money, but it built the foundation for a broader network.
LA’s half-cent sales tax, the subject of much recent comment in Toronto, is only one of several revenue sources for both capital and operating dollars. Indeed, there were two other half-cent taxes (for a total of 1½%) already in place, and the mechanism is familiar to voters.

Los Angeles County is a huge region of just over 4,000 square miles of which two-thirds is unincorporated even though there are 88 cities within the county. The largest of these is the City of Los Angeles (503 square miles) home to about 40% of the county’s population. By contrast, the City of Toronto is a mere 240 square miles. The City of Toronto’s population density is about 25% higher than the City of Los Angeles, but beyond these boundaries comparisons get tricky depending on what areas one includes as part of the “metropolitan” region.

From a transit planning point of view, both regions contain large areas whose populations and travel patterns are unlikely to be well-served by transit, but which contribute to overall regional demand especially if their population grows.

Los Angeles has been a large city-region for much longer than Toronto and its famous “sprawl” was made possible by a network of steam and electric rail lines, not to mention a large streetcar system. Privately-owned transit lines existed to support real estate development, a model that declined as personal transport became more common.

[. . .]

Richard Katz’ presentation begins with an overview of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Daily ridership is roughly equal to the TTC (which has a much smaller service area and population), although it is more concentrated to peak periods (less than half of TTC riding occurs during the peak). This translates to very different service levels and patterns in LA than we see in Toronto.

The most recent half-percent sales tax came through “Measure R”, a ballot initiative (we would call it a plebiscite or referendum) in the fall 2008 election that was approved by just over 67% of voters (a two-thirds majority was needed to implement a new tax). This tax is expected to generate $36.1-billion from 2010 to 2040 when the tax will expire. Only 35% of the revenue will be dedicated to rail expansion projects, 25% will go to operations and 20% to highway projects. This is an important distinction compared with Toronto where all debate has turned on the funding of transit capital at a time when local municipalities are cutting back on transit operating funding and service. As for highway funding, that’s part of the political reality in LA as the highway network is so important a part of local travel. A transit-only tax would simply not generate enough voter support.

[. . .]

Translating all of this to a GTA context takes some doing, and would have been helped by a comparative overview of the economies, geography and politics of the Los Angeles and Toronto regions. The LA experience shows that if there is a will to take on new revenue sources, then capital and operating investments can follow.

What Toronto lacks is leadership at the municipal and provincial levels. I will turn to the general problem of funding transit and the required scale of investment in my next article.

Hamutal Dotan’s Torontoist post summarizing recent research on the health effects of walkable neighbourhoods isn’t that surprising. Neighbourhoods designed for walkability–neighbourhoods where it’s easy to get around on foot to accomplish quotidian things–tend to have healthier populations than neighbourhoods that don’t, but neighbourhoods that are walkable tend by virtue of their living costs not to be open to people on relatively low incomes, who in turn experience significant health issues that–presumably–are only aggravated by the lack of walkable neighbourhoods open to people on low incomes. The circularity of this situation is apparent, and worrying. I’m willing to bet that walkable neighbourhoods also aren’t neighbourhoods that are particularly well-suited for cycling, either. And, I’m willing to bet that the low density associated with non-walkability doesn’t do much to make subways viable, either.

Toronto is broken. Saying, as suggested in the interview Dotan posts with Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health David McKeown, that urban planning needs to be much better is only a restatement of the problem. What prospects are there for this all to change? Torontoist’s questions are in bold.

One of the study’s findings is that people who don’t currently live in walkable neighbourhoods often wish they did. Another finding is that there is significant overlap between neighbourhoods with low walkability scores and those with low-income residents. Could you describe the correlation between walkability and affordability, and is there some sort of necessary connection between the two?

We certainly do see a pattern. We know that people who live with a low income have poorer health—lots of previous work has documented that. It’s apparent that in addition to all of the other impacts that having a low income has, it also means you are more likely to be living in a neighbourhood which is not very walkable. I would mention previous work by the United Way looking at the prevalence of poverty in high rise buildings in the inner suburbs as an example of places where a lot of low-income people are living, particularly newcomers to the city, which are not very walkable at all. They’re not walkable in terms of the proximity of services that people would need to get to; they’re not walkable in terms of street patterns—all of the features that make a neighbourhood walkable.

Is there a necessary connection? I don’t think there is a necessary connection, but there is an unhealthy correlation between low income and low walkability urban form.

I suppose that leads to what I’ll call the gentrification question. Features that make a neighbourhood walkable also tend to make it more attractive, and neighbourhoods that are more attractive also tend to become more expensive. How do we enhance neighbourhood features that increase walkability without pricing lower-income residents out of those neighbourhoods?

Clearly affordability is a clear issue—in fact, respondents said that affordability was one of the key issues in their choices of where they were able to and wanted to live. But when we asked people about trade-offs—we asked “for the same price, would you prefer to live in a neighbourhood with larger lots and larger houses and quieter streets or would you prefer to live in a neighbourhood in which all of the things you do every day are closer, so that you can walk to them, even if it means that you have a smaller house, or maybe not a house but an apartment, and less property?”—in a way the differences in affordability were factored into the way in which we asked people about their preferences. Even taking into account the impact of less affordability, people still had a strong preference for more walkability.

There’s been a recent upsurge of downtown vs. suburbs rhetoric in Toronto politics. The study shows that while Torontonians in every part of the city value walkability, it ranks higher the closer you get to the urban core. How do you avoid the charge that this is yet another case of urbanites telling suburban residents how to live?

I think what you’re seeing is a preference for walkability in neighbourhoods that are more walkable. Really that’s just an expression of people living where they want to live, and actually the majority of people living in low-walkability neighbourhoods, the majority were quite happy, and they valued different things: they valued larger homes and quieter streets and that’s fine. But what the study shows is that it does have an impact on their health—there is a health impact of urban form despite preferences.

This study is not trying to tell anyone what to think, but it is trying to point out that there is a relationship between the kind of neighbourhood you live in and certain important aspects of your health that affect chronic disease—and that’s something that we should think about not only as we plan neighbourhoods but as we choose neighbourhoods.

• 80 Beats reports that NASA’s Mercury probe Messenger has determined that the innermost planet in our solar system is almost entirely solid iron, with a much thinner mantle and crust than had been believed before.
• Centauri Dreams describes how self-replicating probes might set up–might already have set up?–an interstellar communications network, slowly spreading out from a point.
• Daniel Drezner makes the point that books claiming to trace the origins of economic prosperity in certain policies can’t be overly reductive–how did North Korea keep up economically with South Korea until the mid-1970s, for instance?
• Extraordinary Observation’s Rob Pitingolo is unimpressed by playwright/performer Mike Daisey’s claims that, notwithstanding actual errors of facts and near-certain lies on his part in his piece on workers issues at an Apple manufacturer’s plant in China, he speaks to a deeper truth.
• Geocurrents reports on conflicted responses to immigrant childrearing practices in Norway and Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego electronics manufacturing industry.
• Language Hat reports that defenders of Chomsky’s theory of language are responding to anthropologist Dan Everett’s apparent disproof of Chomsky’s thesis with the language of the Piraha by getting him banned and calling him a racist. Not cool.
• Steve Munro links to and summarizes a recent city report making the case for light rail in Scarborough, as opposed to subway extension.
• Torontoist points out that Rob Ford’s call for a referendum on subway construction was legally ill-founded and near-pointless.
• Towleroad links to a neat video on life on the isolated South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha.

Waiting for the 29 Dufferin northbound at 1 in the morning, this is what you can see.

Geocurrents’ Martin Lewis has a post up that takes a look at population density in the San Francisco Bay Area and its intersections with mass transit. I thought it worthwhile to highlight it given the critical importance of population density in debates on transit in the Greater Toronto Area.

A sound urban system, environmentalists now argue, is characterized by mixed-use, dense, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods focused around transit stops. Unfortunately, many of the Bay Area’s more thickly inhabited suburbs are not situated near rail lines, increasing their dependence on automobiles. By the same token, neighborhoods around metro and commuter train stations are often marked by relatively low density. Although both market forces and environmental reason call for tightly packed housing in such areas, the anti-intensification, NIMBY (“Not In My Backyard”) movement has forestalled development of this kind.

To demonstrate what might seem to be counter-intuitive assertions, Stanford cartographer Jake Coolidge and I have been working on a visualization scheme to show the relationship between population density and public transportation in the Bay Area. Jake’s maps and graphs are now complete, and are posted here. They focus on the Yellow Line of BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), which runs from the San Francisco Airport through the city to the far eastern suburbs, and Caltrain, which goes from downtown San Francisco through “the Peninsula” and Silicon Valley to San Jose and beyond. For comparative purposes, paired maps show similar systems located elsewhere in the country, the Orange Line of the Washington D.C. Metro in the case of BART, and the SEPTA Main Line in metropolitan Philadelphia in the case of Caltrain. All four maps show population density in relation to the rail-lines and their stations. Paired graphs indicate the number of persons living within half a mile radius—a reasonable walking distance—of each station on all four lines. (For a complementary analysis of demographic patterns, see the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog).

Some interesting patterns are revealed by these maps and graphs. As the first set shows, downtown San Francisco stands out for its density. This pattern, of course, was established well before the construction of the BART line, which dates only to the 1960s. Outside of this restricted area, density in the Bay Area drops off sharply. Even Oakland, supposedly a highly urban area, is not particularly crowded. To the east of Oakland, BART runs through a highly elite, quasi-rural area around Orinda and Lafayette before it enters classical suburbia in Walnut Creek and Concord. Although a few moderately dense developments have sprouted around BART stations in this area, settlement remains relatively thin. Few people walk or even bike to these BART stations, as most are compelled to drive by the distances involved.

The Washington Metro presents some instructive contrasts. Note that much of downtown Washington has relatively few residents; although many people work in the Federal Triangle neighborhood, few live there. The highest density along the Metro’s Orange Line is found not in the District, but rather in “suburban” Arlington, Virginia, especially around the Courthouse station. The strip of land between Rosslyn and Balston presents a nice example of successful urban intensification. When the Metro line was originally opened, Arlington was sleepy, low-rise ‘burb. I lived in the Courthouse area in the late 1980s, and witnessed its rapid transformation into a vibrant urban pocket. A short stroll from the metro-line, Arlington remains as suburban as it ever was, but around each station a walkable urban neighborhood has emerged. The result is a kind of a “bead-city” stretching along the rail-line. Is it odd, I must ask, that northern Virginia has allowed such eco-friendly urban intensification, whereas the supposedly more environmentally aware Bay Area prevents it?

[. . .]

The Philadelphia pattern is quite different. Philadelphia’s high density areas are much more extensive than those of San Francisco, as can be seen on the maps. Density along the BART line in northern San Francisco, however, exceeds that of the inner stretch of the Main Line, as can be seen by comparing the two graphs. The suburban reaches of the Main Line also contrast sharply with the Caltrain Line. Whereas the density trend along the Caltrain corridor is virtually flat, that of the Main Line is steep. Over most of its extent, the Main Line passes through low-density communities characterized by “old wealth” estates. Similar neighborhoods are plentiful to the south of San Francisco, but they tend to be located away from the train tracks, towards the mountains. The one major exception is well-heeled Atherton, situated between Menlo Park and Redwood City. As Atherton’s Caltrain station operates only on weekends, it is not mapped here.

If the environmentalists’ call for a transition to a lower-carbon future is to be realized, population growth should be encouraged around transit stations. In actuality, it has been heavily discouraged in northern California. As this cartographic exercise shows, neighborhoods near the main rail lines of the San Francisco Bay Area have tremendous potential for intensification. Urbanization, in turn, would allow ailing lines, like Caltrain, to return to health.

James Bow’s post makes an unfortunate play on Mayor Rob Ford’s excessive weight in the title of his post, but he’s otherwise quite right. Rob Ford is a man whose skills were those of the city councillor, of the man responding to the particular concerns of his cluster of neighbourhoods in a personal way. Managing a vaster city is beyond his ken.

Early in Ford’s term, I read a column from a columnist (I forget his name) who suggested that Rob Ford ran for the wrong job. Let’s pause a moment as the more left-leaning of my readers shout at their screen, “well, duh!!” But this is not what I meant. The columnist suggested that Ford’s strengths as a public figure, and his goals in pursuing public life tailored him for a job that had little to do with the day-to-day activities of the mayor’s office. As a councillor, Ford was a gadfly, but he was adept at connecting to people in his ward (people who agreed with him, anyway), and championing their causes, cutting through the bureaucratic red tape to fix a pot-hole that city workers seemed to ignore, dealing with noise complaints — small scale issues which nevertheless affect ordinary people where it matters the most: in their homes.

This assessment was reinforced by this article wherein Ford cordially told Star columnist “the Fixer” that Ford’s self-imposed ban on talking with the Toronto Star (for a controversial story that attacked the Ford family) did not extend to the Fixer himself. And, if you think about it, this is not a surprise. The Fixer’s modus operandi is to find these annoying and persistent problems in the city, find the people responsible for fixing these problems and getting the problems fixed. It’s everything that Ford loved doing while he was a councillor. And it’s what he loves doing now that he’s mayor.

But as a job, a mayor has an entirely different set of responsibilities than a simple councillor. It’s hard enough touring your ward, asking 56,000 constituents if their fridge is working or their sidewalks are in good condition. Imagine doing that for a city of 2.5 million. Also, as councillor, Ford was responsible to no one but himself. He was under no obligation to work with other councillors, and the people who were under him worked for him in a clearly defined employer-employee relationship. This does not carry over to the mayor’s office. Ford has said that he’s not a politician, he’s a businessman, but that’s not an accurate assessment of his problems here. A good mayor needs to negotiate and needs to delegate, and while a business the size of Ford’s Deco Labels & Tags (employing 250 people) may be successfully run by an energetic, tight-knit family, Ford may find that if Deco Labels & Tags increases in size substantially his inability to delegate may become more of a hinderance than a help.

Ford passed up an opportunity today to show real leadership on the subway vs light rail debate. If he had come forward with a credible plan to pay for new subways in exchange for using some of the province’s $8.4 Billion to extend the Sheppard subway to Victoria Park, many centrists (myself included) would have stood with him. Instead, he would only promise to “look at” revenue sources once “shovels were in the ground”. By that logic, Ford would go looking for a trampoline after he stepped off a cliff. Ford’s problem is that he appears to believe that true leadership is “giving the people what they want”. Unfortunately, that’s not what real leaders do, it’s what entertainers do. Ford has promised on the campaign trail that he could build the Sheppard subway and extend the Bloor-Danforth to the Scarborough Town Centre, have both lines opened by 2015, and not raise taxes in order to do it. He has stuck to variations on this plan because, as he says, “people want subways” and, as his brother says, “taxes are evil”.

[. . .]

For the past fifteen months, Ford has struggled mightily to come up with a workable funding plan for his subways, but he refuses to commit to anything that results in higher taxes. His lack of leadership on this issue has caused several Scarborough councillors to break ranks, and advocate for new subway development with new revenue tools (taxes). They’re the ones showing some real leadership on this issue. But such understanding appears to be a blindspot for Ford.

So, yes, Ford is in the wrong job, and I think that most individuals can see that this is the case. It doesn’t bode well for his political future, in spite of the bluster of his allies, either on council, or at the Toronto Sun. But the real losers are the people of Toronto who, regardless of who they voted for mayor, probably still voted for some real leadership on council. In the vacuum that the mayor’s office has established, council has little choice but to step forward to fill it, but it’s not a perfect fit. Council meetings will likely be more interesting than they should be for the next thirty months, until some sense of normalcy is restored to City Hall following the 2014 vote.