A Bit More Detail

Compare this photo.

Looking south and west from Ossington Station‘s platform in the late evening, the backs of the low-slung and mainly commercial buildings lining Bloor Street West a couple dozen metres to the south of the platform are left exposed.

Bands of colour define this view.

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.

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.

Commuting southbound above Rosedale along the Yonge subway line on a Friday evening, we all sat or stood or hung in one of the new Bombardier subway cars.

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.