Gridlocked: how incompetence, pandering and baffling inertia have kept Toronto stuck in traffic
Getting around the city, by public transit or by car, has become a perpetual nightmare of sardine-tin crowds, endless queues and construction bottlenecks. Gridlock is the lightning-rod issue of this mayoral race, with candidates sparring over which transportation fix—underground subways, surface subways, LRT, more buses, more bike lanes, no bike lanes, more speed bumps, no speed bumps—is best. But to voters, who’ve endured a generation-long succession of false starts, bad decisions and political interference, it’s all empty promises. Toronto’s epic infrastructure fail has put commuters in a fury and brought the city to a halt. Here’s a list of the most egregious scandals in recent memory—and who’s to blame.
In 2007, the city announced it would oversee a massive revitalization of Union Station—the most important gateway to the city, and a hub for more than 65 million passengers per year, a figure that’s expected to double by 2031. The project is one of the most complicated ever undertaken in Toronto, involving the preservation and modernization of the grand, historic building, and multiple private companies and government agencies, including the City of Toronto, the TTC (which would build an additional subway platform, mostly with money provided by Waterfront Toronto) and Metrolinx, the provincial agency that runs GO Transit. The total cost of the overhaul was budgeted at just under $1 billion, and it was scheduled to be largely completed in time for the Pan Am Games in 2015.
Seven years later, Union Station is shrouded in scaffolding and tarps, and the construction job has been infernally botched. At least four parts of the project have gone over budget so far, by a whopping combined total of $345 million. The price for renovating the building’s train shed, which includes a new glass roof designed by the architect Eb Zeidler, has jumped $60 million, in part because of complicated work not anticipated in the original contract. The cost of the TTC’s improvements is now nearly double the initial estimate, partly due to the need for structural rehabilitation and additional fire ventilation. Rail switch work will cost twice as much as originally expected. And the price tag for the station’s facelift, which included building an additional underground concourse, has jumped by $156 million and counting. There’s lots of blame to go around, but the buck ultimately stops at the top of the organizations involved, with TTC CEO Andy Byford, city manager Joe Pennachetti and Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig. And while the project was David Miller’s baby, many of the budget busts happened under Rob Ford, who until recently continued to promise that he’d protect taxpayer dollars despite mounting evidence he was failing.
City hall should never manage another infrastructure job of this size and scope. Under its watch, new walls were built then torn down after it was discovered other work hadn’t been completed, crucial deadlines were missed (at one point, only two of an expected 12 structural columns had been built), and certain improvements, like a planned PATH connection, were forgotten altogether. The city’s department of facilities, design and construction was so overwhelmed by the job of monitoring Carillion, the main supervising contractor, it called upon three consulting companies to help rein in costs and attempt to get the project back on track.
By the end of 2013, the extra costs had burned through the $91 million in contingency funds initially set aside for cost overruns. Council injected an additional $80 million on top of that. At this point, we’re so far into this that Toronto can’t afford not to spend the money.
For decades, Montreal’s Olympic stadium was considered the ultimate symbol of budget ineptitude, earning it the nickname the Big Owe. The total cost of the Olympic complex ultimately reached $1.4 billion. Union Station’s renovation, already at $1.33 billion and counting, may yet inherit the mantle.
Glenn de Baeremaeker, the left-leaning Scarborough councillor for Ward 38, has been the most unlikely proponent of the Scarborough subway. As a member of former mayor David Miller’s executive committee, and more recently as vice-chair of the TTC, De Baeremaeker has been a long-time advocate of light rail transit in general and Miller’s Transit City vision in particular. But two years ago, mere months after he helped spark the council revolt to dump Rob Ford’s subway vision and reinstate Transit City, he changed his tune.
In October 2012, the board of the TTC, at De Baeremaeker’s urging, asked staff to study the feasibility of a subway for Scarborough. His motion set off a storm of protest from other councillors who were desperate to stop dithering and get shovels in the ground for light rail transit to replace the Scarborough RT. Metrolinx had already spent some $85 million on design and environmental assessment, and that money could never be recovered if plans switched to a subway. De Baeremaeker’s motion passed nonetheless, and while his political motives went unsaid, they seemed obvious. The provincial Liberal government was in a minority position; there could be an election within a year; and the provincial parties could decide to buy votes in Scarborough by promising a subway, along with the money to pay for it. And championing a successful drive to build a Scarborough subway would enhance De Baeremaeker’s re-election prospects.
Many other councillors saw the political calculus at work and played it to their advantage. Mayor Rob Ford had until then failed miserably in his promise to build subways. Karen Stintz, the midtown conservative who was trying to set the stage for a mayoral run of her own, saw an opportunity to build a following in Scarborough.
The staff report came back saying that a Scarborough subway was indeed feasible, in the same way that TTC rocketship service to the moon is feasible: it can be done, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. A subway would be far more expensive—at least $1 billion in additional costs, double De Baeremaeker’s initial $500 million estimate. And it would never have enough riders: Metrolinx’s projections for 2031 showed a maximum of 11,000 passengers per hour, less than half the 25,000-passenger capacity of a subway. But the feasibility pronouncement was all Ford, Stintz and De Baeremaeker needed. It didn’t matter if the subway was a good idea or not; it only mattered that Queen’s Park might throw money at it, and that the city ought to be ready to catch the bag of cash when it came.
In April 2013, the recently elected premier Kathleen Wynne promised to create new revenue tools to fund transit improvements. Then she began distancing herself from her position when it proved unpopular. With a summer by-election looming in Scarborough-Guildwood and her party performing poorly in the polls, Wynne and transportation minister Glen Murray appeared to take the city’s bait: they promised to convert the Scarborough RT into a subway. In making that promise they ignored their own spate of expensive expert studies and reports and warnings from Metrolinx, as well as the $85 million already spent on the LRT option.
But on the matter of money, Wynne and Murray made dupes of the entire city council: they coaxed Toronto to pick up the extra billion dollars in costs by raising property taxes. In the Machiavellian sense it was genius, but in every other sense it was a grossly cynical political exercise that’s left everyone in limbo. We still don’t know what’s getting built, and we won’t until after the election.
Toronto already has a subway route that costs a fortune and lacks riders: the Sheppard line. When Mike Harris set about nixing the expansion of Toronto’s subway network in 1995 (a portion of the Eglinton subway’s tunnel had already been dug; Harris had it filled back in), then–North York mayor Mel Lastman saved the Sheppard line from the chopping block. It opened in 2002 and, while ridership is growing, it’s still falling short of capacity. The TTC refuses to divulge the Sheppard line’s operating shortfall—they insist they’ve never calculated it. But journalist and transit advocate Steve Munro estimates that operating the Sheppard subway results in a net loss of roughly $14 million annually.
We will soon have yet another subway line of dubious merit when the Spadina subway extension enters into service in 2016. It was Greg Sorbara, the former Ontario Liberal finance minister in the McGuinty government, who pushed the plan to extend the Spadina subway north past York University to his home riding of Vaughan. The idea wasn’t on anyone’s priority list in Toronto—not council’s, not the TTC’s, not then-mayor David Miller’s. But the city still ended up paying more than half a billion dollars in construction costs, putting more urgent priorities on the back burner for half a decade.
Lastman went on to serve two terms as mayor of amalgamated Toronto, finishing his time in office just as the Sheppard line opened. Sorbara is now the Chancellor of York University, one of the main beneficiaries of his subway line. The promise of a Scarborough subway should be enough to get De Baeremaeker re-elected in his Scarborough ward.
It was in 2002, a full dozen years ago, that Queen’s Park, in conjunction with GO Transit and GTA municipalities, first studied the idea of an integrated public transit fare card. Are we there yet? No. In 2003, London launched the electronic Oyster Card, which instantly had seven million users. It took Ontario three years of discussion just to make a decision. In October 2006, Queen’s Park signed a 10-year, $231-million contract with the technology company Accenture to develop a unique, only-for-Ontario system, which became Presto—a card that commuters would buy for $6 and pre-load with credit to pay for fares on public transit throughout the GTHA.
The card’s success depended upon its adoption by all the transit authorities in the region, especially the TTC given its volume of ridership—but the TTC never agreed to install it across the system. Under former chair Adam Giambrone, who’s best known for conducting an affair with a 20-year-old woman on his city hall office couch, the TTC decided to pursue its own system that would allow people to tap their debit or credit cards to pay their fare. When Kathleen Wynne, then Ontario’s transportation minister, threatened to withhold funds if the TTC refused to implement Presto, Giambrone reluctantly dropped his plans. But the city still refused to sign a formal agreement to adopt Presto. It would take more than two years for their successors, Bob Chiarelli and Karen Stintz, to arrive at a deal.
This turf war has done nothing to make commutes easier. The TTC installed its first green Presto card reader at Union Station in 2009—tap your card and the fare is automatically deducted. Five years later, the system is used by only 40,000 TTC riders a month. Seven 905 transit agencies using Presto had a litany of complaints about it: low rates of adoption by commuters who didn’t want to pay the $6 price for the card (or the $10 minimum credit they had to load onto it) and high repair costs for the readers.
In Toronto, Presto card readers are located in only 14 of the TTC’s 69 subway stations. The equipment was slated to be installed on all the city’s new streetcars when they began entering into service on August 31, but it turns out they won’t be ready until November—the TTC wants to test the card readers first to make sure they are working properly.
The development of the next generation of Presto was never put to tender: instead, Metrolinx, under transport minister Bob Chiarelli’s watch, extended the contract with Accenture by an estimated $650 million. The provincial auditor general’s report called Presto “among the more expensive fare-card systems in the world.”
Where the Allen ends at Eglinton is surely the worst intersection in Toronto, the original place where the city’s transportation planning went wrong, and from which it has never recovered. Cars are perpetually lined up along Eglinton trying to access the Allen and queued up at a halt across all its southbound lanes, often as far back as Lawrence Avenue, trying to get off. The Allen is bisected by the Spadina subway line, which, as most planners will tell you, was the worst place to put that route. Subways are best situated beneath densely used urban spaces, where they do the most good in helping people get around. The stations that serve the Allen Road corridor are among the most uninviting, unwalkable places in the city.
These problems have only been exacerbated by the Eglinton Crosstown project. As the tunnel-boring machines make their way east toward Yonge, the dump trucks will line up at Eglinton and Allen to haul away the dirt that’s being dug out. Once the job is finally done, the Eglinton Crosstown will do nothing to solve the intersection’s gridlock.
Blame Jane Jacobs. When she led the drive to halt the construction of the Spadina Expressway in the 1960s, she helped save countless homes and whole neighbourhoods from the wrecking ball. But she didn’t save them all: much of the expressway’s northernmost roadbed had already been excavated. That ditch became the Allen Road, the forgotten part of Jane Jacobs’s legacy.
It’s not the Spadina Expressway’s death that haunts the city—it’s the way the decision was made. Jacobs helped convince then-premier Bill Davis to cancel cabinet’s support for the project, setting in motion a trend that has yet to abate: politicians overruling the painstaking work of urban and transportation planners. That’s not what Jacobs would have wanted—she wanted to reform the profession and make it responsive to people, not make it eternally subservient to elected officials—but our legacies are never entirely what we intend. Virtually every politician since Davis has felt free to wave off the advice of experts, ignore any amount of already-spent money, and just do whatever suits his or her purposes.
It hasn’t mattered what the planners’ advice has been, or whether it’s been good or bad. Planners recommend a Spadina expressway; politicians cancel the project at the halfway mark after tens of millions have been spent. They tell us subways along Sheppard or up to Vaughan or out to Scarborough aren’t high priorities, that different modes and other projects would be better at helping people move around in the city; politicians ignore their advice and build them anyway. And once they’re built, we’re stuck with them.
At this point, when it comes to key decisions like the future of transit for Scarborough, the fate of the Gardiner or the plan for a subway relief line, cynicism rules. How can Torontonians trust that any of the options on the table have been proposed for the good of the city? The best laid plans will be abandoned the minute they no longer advance the narrow interests of the politicians who back them, leaving everyone else paying more than they should. The current mayor, for all his talk about helping ordinary people, is as bad as they come: Rob Ford’s determination to kill the Transit City light rail plan was an act of spite against his predecessor, and despite his claims of standing sentry for taxpayers, he was happy to approve a billion-dollar tax hike for an ill-advised Scarborough subway. But he’s hardly a lone culprit.
What Toronto needs now is not a visionary leader but a tactical mayor who can make a half-dozen projects in a row go right: a handful of road and transit improvements completed on time and on budget (or at least without needless delays or gargantuan cost overruns), which would renew people’s faith in the possibility of progress by making the city easier to navigate. These are brutally low expectations. They shouldn’t be too much to ask.
The city’s suffocating congestion has caused many Torontonians to take up cycling—their numbers have roughly doubled in the last decade, making bikes the fastest-growing option for commuters. The people who ride to work are doing the city a multitude of favours: they help relieve crowding on the transit system, their bikes take up less space on city streets than cars, and they’re adding zero emissions to the air we breathe. They keep the city moving in an era of peak gridlock and lost productivity. We should be rewarding them with a network of safe commuter bike lanes that are physically separated from cars by curbs or bollards. Instead we try to funnel them through the thin crack between one lane of speeding cars and another of parked ones, leaving them with a choice of getting either run down from behind or doored.
In 2001, during Mel Lastman’s final term as mayor, the city adopted the Toronto Bike Plan, a commitment to create 495 kilometres of on-road bike lanes by 2011. By 2013, two years past deadline, the city had a mere 114 kilometres of bike lanes, up from 111.6 the year before. Only this year did the city finally get around to installing a pilot project bike lane on Adelaide. It would be easy to blame the lack of progress on car-loving mayor Rob Ford, who famously killed the Jarvis Street bike lanes, and even more famously told cyclists it was their fault if they got killed because roads are for cars, but the administration of David Miller shares at least seven years’ worth of the blame.
The new subway cars are such a pleasant upgrade from the TTC’s old rolling stock, it’s easy to forget the fiasco of their procurement. In 2006, David Miller and his administration decided to sole-source the contract for 232 subway cars to Bombardier, which would build them in Thunder Bay at a cost of $710 million. But German manufacturer Siemens said it could make the trains for at least $100 million cheaper at its plant in China.
Siemens’ gambit set off a summer-long civic theatre of the absurd. TTC chair Howard Moscoe insisted an earlier deal between Queen’s Park and Bombardier compelled the city to give the contract to the Thunder Bay plant; the province publicly said the deal was no longer in force. The TTC’s general manager at the time, Rick Ducharme, opposed the sole sourcing of the contract; he resigned in frustration in the midst of the ordeal, citing Moscoe’s meddling in the affair. Moscoe and Miller argued Bombardier should get the job in order to protect jobs in Canada rather than China; Siemens countered with a proposal to build a subway facility in Ontario. In August, Bombardier disclosed that its bid for the subway cars alone totalled $499 million; still, there was no open tender of the contract, so Siemens never had the chance to make a real bid. The TTC meeting on the contract was closed to the public; by the time the contract was approved by council in late September, the price tag had re-inflated to $710 million, which included additional costs such as testing the trains.
Delivery of the new trains was behind schedule by six months, thanks largely to the bankruptcy of a New York state firm that made door components. The first new subways came into service in July 2011. Since the point of all the contortions was to keep Siemens from ever making a formal bid, Torontonians will never know how much they overspent, whether they got good value for their money, or which projects the savings might have helped fund.
Since 2012, at least nine large chunks of concrete have fallen from the Gardiner’s elevated underside, mercifully sparing humans but damaging a few cars. From 2006 to 2012—David Miller’s second term as mayor, and the first half of Rob Ford’s—the city allocated roughly $95 million for the Gardiner’s maintenance yet only spent $50 million over those seven years.
The city had been limiting the work to emergency repairs due to an ongoing environmental assessment into the possibility of tearing down the Gardiner east of Jarvis. But in the meantime it was the city’s job to keep the road safe. Today, as a result of lax maintenance, the entire elevated section of the Gardiner is one big emergency repair. In 2013, the city developed a new maintenance plan that will cost $50 million per year, every year, for the next seven years. Repairs are now underway to three bridges and to the elevated deck between the CNE grounds and Grand Magazine Street, which has slowed traffic to a crawl at all hours.
The Gardiner is not an anomaly: the city is just as neglectful when it comes to maintaining the other 5,600 kilometres of roadways within its borders. The annual budget for all road repairs, excluding the Gardiner, is in the area of $140 million—far short of what’s required. City hall long ago abandoned the idea that it could ever catch up on the backlog of roads that need fixing. Like lazy hands on a leaky ship, the strategy has been to bail only as much water as needed to keep the vessel afloat. When Miller took office, the road repair backlog had been holding steady at $230 million for three years. By 2005, it had grown to $300 million. Today, it stands at $338 million, and despite all the roadwork on city streets these days it’s not about go down anytime soon. The surfaces on most of the city’s arterial roads, built in the 1960s and ’70s, will meet the end of their lifespan in the decade ahead—if they haven’t already, like gravelly, pothole-laden Dufferin Street, the most poorly maintained road in Ontario for the last three years in a row according to the CAA.
In 2013, city hall beefed up the annual repair budget by an additional $30 million in order to keep the backlog from getting out of hand—which would be great if we could trust that the projects were competently managed. Last year, Toronto Auditor General Jeffrey Griffiths, as part of his annual audits, reviewed road resurfacing contracts across the city. He found a comedy of omissions by city staff: incomplete field records, missing measurements and poor cost tracking, including coding errors that led to incorrect payments.
When Griffiths looked in detail at two road contracts, he found the materials costs were off by as much as nine per cent. Contractors were bidding on inflated job orders, and the errors led to more than $70,000 in overpayments. One disturbingly picayune source of the problem: “Inspectors are using a low-cost measuring wheel that is prone to failure.” The plastic measuring wheel is attached to the end of a rod, with an odometer; inspectors walk the wheel, like a dog, along streets to measure their length and width. They provided exaggerated measurements, and Griffiths believes the problem was widespread. (Staff in one city district replaced all the cheap wheels with new $200 steel units before his report became public.) If these problems are as common as Griffiths suspects, the money frittered away could tally into the millions.
When Vancouver’s SkyTrain came into service just prior to Expo 86, it featured the cutting-edge technology of its time: driverless trains. Thanks to automatic train control, or ATC, the SkyTrain drove itself, stopping at exactly the same spot in every station every time, the trains always appropriately spaced. The system’s technological reliability meant that more trains could flow at shorter intervals than if they were controlled by human drivers. That was 30 years ago.
Since then such cities as Paris, Copenhagen, Barcelona and Milan have adopted driverless trains and the signalling system required to make them work. Even Scarborough, when it was a city unto itself, opted for automated controls: the existing Scarborough RT (soon to be replaced with either a subway or LRT), operates on an ATC system, though the trains still have one attendant on them. Toronto, meanwhile, steadfastly resisted the technology, due to a combination of budget constraints and union resistance. When former TTC chair Howard Moscoe proposed the idea in 2006, transit union chief Bob Kinnear made it sound like a waste of money. “Now he’s got this wonderful idea that we want to invest three quarters of a billion dollars? Where’s this money coming from?” Kinnear asked.
Under Moscoe’s successors, Adam Giambrone and Karen Stintz, the installation of the ATC signalling system on the Yonge-University-Spadina line began in 2009 and continues to this day—it’s the reason the line has been shut down on many weekends. It will be completed in 2020 at a total estimated cost of $800 million, just for the single line (there are no plans for Bloor-Danforth), and even then the TTC won’t take full advantage of efficiencies. CEO Andy Byford plans to keep each train staffed with a single attendant who, as with the Scarborough RT, will presumably check the track ahead and make sure the doors are safely closed, even though the system can handle those tasks itself. Union chief Bob Kinnear has said he still wants two staffers on every train.
Meanwhile, in Paris, the plan to automate Line 1 of that city’s Métro—the oldest line in its network, originally opened in 1900—was first approved in 2005. The driverless trains began rolling on the tracks in 2011, and the line was fully converted to ATC by Christmas 2012.
Well, when you build condos and stack Toronto 100 times in the air with people on the same transit system from 1965 you are bound to have gridlock and you will never find a solution because the situation is hopeless, and that’s the name of that tune.
It’s not just condos, although people love to blame condos. The issue is as much urban sprawl, if not more so. We needed to be investing in our transportation network, and we did not.
Great article!!
condos are not only the cause but also a consequence to the miserable transit system. People want easy access to downtown, nothing wrong with that. It’s just, when you approve condos, city also supposed to think about stuff like that. But then there was jolly bunch of substance fun, so no one cared.
Agreed. Cars backed upon the Gardiner, the Allen, and the 401 trying to get downtown aren’t condo dwellers in the core.
Former Premier Mike Harris not cancel the Eglinton West Subway Line.
He can be added to the rogues gallery of miscreants.
Cost overruns are expected in construction. With the bidding process, contractors bid low so they in fact would lose money in the bid and expect to make it back when engineers perform changes to what was originally planned. This is understood on both the owner side and the contractor side during the beginning stages of the project.
Blame everyone else except those who actually cause gridlock, single occupant cars. Where is their villain bubble?
Distractions. McCaig, Pennachetti, and Byford would have been able to concentrate on their real work if Rob Ford and his twin-mayor brother weren’t “playing well with others”.
Add Al Leach to that list too.
Bruce McCuaig is a proxy for Dalton McGuinty.
Wow. Our brave cost cutting mayor who now proposes his brother to continue this stupidity. we are now looking at 38 story condos on residential streets not designed for this crap and inadequate transit, sewers and everything?. So what transit do we have or need? I suspect since it should have started 20 years ago we have a huge problem. combination subways, LRT, streetcars and buses, the mayor hates streetcars obviously has never been to Europe also hates LRT for same reason. These things work?? relatively cheap . Sorry almost forgot must include all the local areas around since the harris conservatives made them part of a city
And don’t forget the outer suburbs of Toronto. Roads leading into the city from outlying dormitory townships are now packed, mornings coming into town and afternoons going out, thanks to the rapid expansion of housing outside of Toronto. Previous Mayor Miller taxed Torontonians for keeping their cars in Toronto while allowing our streets to be flooded with cars from the non-taxed outer areas. A complete reversal of the London UK congestion tax. Small wonder we voted for Rob Ford.
Cannot agree about York subway. Busses are jammed all the time from Downsview.
Its not just condo residents but tractor-trailer transport trucks delivering necessary goods to the stores for the residents and various industries of the gta as well. further to that is the transportation corridor of the 401. transport trucks do not accelerate nearly as fast as cars, necessitate a larger following distance for safety, creating an accordion effect. the only easy solution to the problem would be to restrict tractor trailer transportation to night time only.
one might wonder if our politicians are on drugs
Good point. A result of the City procurement process that likely requires staff to select the lowest bidder, so the bid is artificially low to win the contract in the first place.
However, acknowledging that would involve a nuanced understanding of how things work that the author of this article doesn’t seem to have.
I think up to York is probably justified by ridership, the question is whether going further north into Vaughan makes any sense. The area the subway will terminate is a big-box store nowhereland.
Ugh-who wants to listen to those trucks all night?
The extension into Vaughan owes its existence to one Gregory Sam Sorbara, former provincial treasurer, former president of the Liberal Party of Ontario, and former Liberal Party campaign chair. Oh, and his family property-development business owns a bit of land along the route.
There’s some real irony in all these complaints. On one hand we chastise those who put forward the Vaughan subway, which will presumably create a very transit-oriented community from the start. On the other hand, we complain about insufficient transit and the cost to build in existing areas.
And yet if that line was built, no doubt, we’d be wondering about another Sheppard “stubway”.
With the LRT, Eglinton is getting the right solution. The Sheppard Subway should actually be converted to LRT to avoid the whole transfer fiasco that’s now there at Kennedy station, compelling the construction of a subway in Scarborough.
The idea should be to make the best of it. I would hope that Vaughan would take this opportunity to focus all sorts of high density development around the subway corridor.
I think there is also the ‘urban sprawl’ as a villain. People living further and further away yet working in the core. Very expensive to support.
It’s very easy to say the politicians are pandering. Who would you expect the politicians to listen to? There is a lot of distrust of the ivory tower that is represented by the planners who tell us what we have to do. It often appears that the planning is simply done by map, without any concern for the surrounding residents. I am certain that if we built super-convenient expressways to the burbs, the inner city would be in decline. Instead, the core is active and thriving. You only have to look at the example of Detroit. The suburbs are thriving and affluent but the area outside the tiny downtown is dirt poor with large stretches of vacant land.
A couple of things further: if we did not have traffic, then that would be an indication of decline; instead we have traffic – people want to get there; secondly, we have to give up the entitlement that we can have super-convenient and fast drving when the city is very big and active. I can’t forget how one time Hazel McCallion was driven to Queen’s Park by limo and she complained the traffic was slow. She could have gone by GO and TTC and been there in half the time.
Do you think that would save money in the operation too?
I hope so too! But when there are so many more pressing transit priorities, I can’t help regret the money being spent on this. We could have put that money towards a downtown relief line. Even if York Region wanted to get a subway, the Yonge subway extension would have made so much more sense.
As a contractor, I love these projects. The number one reason why all of these projects are over budget is bad design. Metrolinx, TCC, City of Toronto, etc. will all have multiple paper pushers on the payroll, unique to each project; however their budget for contract administrators, inspectors, and designers is kept bare bones.
If designers were given a larger budget, mandated to have more designers, and more supervision during projects, we could easily reduce cost overruns.
Also, there is horrible pandering, and bad aid solutions to satisfy the public in the name of community relations.
It’s not just cars and transit. Riding bikes, jogging or even walking is now hampered by the constantly changing construction zones, closures and detours.
Funny, as someone from the 905, the region Torontonians love to hate I prefer taking GO Transit for my visits to downtown Toronto. I see my time as wasted if I’m sitting on the Gardiner in endless gridlocked when I can get some reading done on the train. In fact I can make a sound argument the blame for this mess should be placed on Toronto voters continually re-electing the jokers, I mean your esteemed councillors and mayors over the decades.
One of the best articles I’ve seen in a while.
How about keeping the designs simple and effective. We don’t need every building project to be a piece of art. Simple, well-costed, and well-budgeted to avoid cost-overruns and construction delays. And what about targeting these 70+ storey buildings: they take longer to sell, longer to build, longer to develop… more construction, more delays.
Also – a project that closes the Yonge subway from Eglinton to Finch early started in 2007, and they had signs up at the time saying it would be done in 2008. It’s 2014 and still it closes early.
While I agree some single occupant cars can contribute to gridlock, you cannot blame all single occupant cars. Some people tend to forget that some of us work in fields that REQUIRE a vehicle and driving in and out of Toronto. For example, engineers/architects/designers (constantly having to visit the building department at City Hall), couriers/delivery services, Realtors to name a few. I would rather blame the city for offering FREE parking to city employees (why not make them take public transit?), taxis, office workers, to name a few.
That was both a pleasure and a horror to read.
“a Scarborough subway was indeed feasible, in the same way that TTC rocketship service to the moon is feasible: it can be done, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.”
Beautiful. I agree.
One thing that LRT supporters always neglect is that road traffic is not only caused by Scarborough traffic, North York traffic or Etobicoke traffic; it’s coming in from other areas of the GTA as well. Unless the LRT extends beyond the borders of the 416 (of which there are no plans to do so), it will certainly not lure people out of their cars to waste time getting to and from work in a transit system with cumbersome interchanges to get across the city; Yonge Street splits our city in half and the bus network is not radial. If the Scarborough subway, Eglinton subway (not LRT) were built along with a downtown relief line with free commuter parking at well-placed magnet stations, would give commuters at least three more options downtown and would give people moving through the city a fast corridor (subway) through the city while bypassing traffic. The GTA is still growing and LRTs take up space on roads and will only add to congestion if they are not a more attractive option than cars; LRTs are not fast, they have to move with traffic and stop at all the lights. LRTs do not take any passenger load off of the Yonge Line, especially if they are designed to increase (partial) east-west ridership. I personally think we should stop seeing any other district that not Old Toronto as merely suburbs and focus on building subways (such a taboo word) to bypass traffic and keep the ENTIRE city well-connected, so that when there is a feasible plan to improve our road network *above* ground, the city will not be caught in deadlock and can move on with our day *under* ground. Just sayin’
Ideals like yours that include the blaming of single occupant vehicles for gridlock and not much else has no sensible basis in reality and only lends credence to the stereotype of myopic urbanites who can’t see past their own neighbourhood. Not everyone does, wants to or can live in high density urban cores that require no vehicle for commuting and not everyone who drives can travel to work in groups. To suggest and expect otherwise is ridiculous and severely degrades your position. Had city planners and politicians been doing their jobs over the decades then we wouldn’t be in this mess and single occupancy vehicles would hardly be an issue. Clearly you missed the point of the article so you can stop pointlessly blaming the by-product of transit and infrastructure mismanagement.
Oh yes let’s place blame on individual drivers. Not on the systems and “experts” who are paid to plan and implement systems that make transportation better. Neo-liberal bullshit.
Incorrect. The problem with planning in this city is the opposite, that politicans ignore experts and planners and choose instead to play politics with transit and traffic by pandering to what voters want rather than what’s been determined to be genuinely needed.
You really need to stop spreading this inane myth that LRTs run on roads. They’re just smaller trains that can run elevated, at-grade, or below ground, just like subways. The LRT in Seattle is a prime example, it runs elevated from the airport, to at-grade outside the core, to underground within city limits. The Vancouver skytrain is an LRT and it runs elevated and below ground.
Get your facts straight.
new York city has three times the population of Toronto and doesn’t have problems like this, I wonder why?
Us ‘single use’ car drivers are paying road tax/fuel tax to fund you and other dangerous bike riders who never stop at a sign, red light or streetcar stop. Dimwit leftard beard gnome.
There is actually but one real villain here, and that is neo-liberal economic policy that demands that corporate taxes be cut, something that starves government revenue sources needed to engage big infrastructure projects, and leaves them with few options but making shady deals with shady contractors, or through P3s that defer payment now by guaranteeing profit later.
Hence the whole cast of characters. No one has the money to build big infrastructure projects anymore.
Consider that Moscow’s popular mayor is investing in parks, cultural facilities and transit, while Toronto wallows. Moscow has a budget that is 20% higher than Toronto per capita.
What is the difference between Toronto and Paris and Moscow? The federal government invests in infrastructure. End of story. Any management with no money is going to fail.
Remember. If Toronto doesn’t actually do anything, then gridlock / transit / active transportation is always an election issue to be played around with.
Yes but single car drivers also fuel the canadian economy and provide direct money to the government for drive clean tests, registration, plates, parking permits, and parking.
But the public – who are footing the bill – do not understand that, and this info is kept from them. Dodgy as f*ck.
The sheep keep following the previous ones over the cliff on Allen Road, for example. What was 3 lanes was narrowed to 2 and one by High Rise Buildings and TTC right of ways. Everyone sits in their car for 30 minutes to go down from Steeles to Finch – the silence of the lambs!
To be fair, I believe Vaughn is paying for the stations that are in Vaughn.
Little things like eliminating one exit lane from the Allen South at Lawrence plus adding a pedestrian crosswalk where none existed – these are the evil intent things being perpetrated on our motorists. Ann Khan at City traffic just enjoys laughing at me when I asked her to eliminate eastbound turn restrictions from Marlee north to Lawrence – she was busy she said – and that was 3 years ago!!. So all are sitting on Marlee north longer so as to amuse her.
Actually the real big blame (if we are playing that game) goes to Harris and amalgamating the GTA. I’m sorry, but that was the boon that originally created this never ending cycle of nothing ever getting done.
But the problem is that the provincial and federal governments contributed the same share to the subway above Steeles as they did below Steeles. And that’s a waste of all of our taxpayer money, which could have been spent better on another project.
It is not practical to convert the Sheppard subway to LRT. The tunnels are not tall enough to accommodate the LRT’s overhead pantograph that picks up power. The power supply (voltage and current) for heavy rail is not suitable for LRT vehicles, so that infrastructure would have to be completely rebuilt. All the stations are built with high platforms for heavy rail, but LRT vehicles are low-floor and load at track level, so all the station platforms (and stairs, elevators, and escalators) would have to be rebuilt. Physically possible to convert, but impossibly expensive.
Preville forgets to include St. Jack Layton in the Villains box. He blocked the 80s proposal for a DRL because a few nice houses in Riverdale were going to get knocked down,
The GTA isn’t amalgamated, but the old Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto is.
“Pooing” bike lanes all over Toronto as it was done for Jarvis street, was horrible mistake.Jarvis south is “city superhighway” that helps people from MT.Pleasant to safely and in timely manner merge into Jarvis street.I do support bike lines, but there are other SEPARATED BIKE LANES STREETS THAT FLOW SOUTHBOUND that cyclist need to take.Bikes you are not cars.Get used to it that fact.You will not have all what cars have…
So depressing…After recently travelling to Barcelona and seeing what they did to the transportation system there for the olympics, and the previous year to Rome, where the transit is very crowded but is very good, it makes Toronto look like a back-water. Looks like it’s not going to get much better for at least another decade; And even then only if the various transit scenarios proposed by the City, Province and Federal Governments go ahead, by no means a sure thing given the track record of the last 25 years!
Condos, condos, condos and Condo Construction(closing street lanes) and water pipes infrastructure replacement, and destroying sidewalk for new street cars…etc etc.You can not PLAN URBAN SPRAWL WITHOUT ADDRESSING INFRASTRUCTURE…first.
Toronto is upside down city.And also,for example, you moved in into condo and than they told you you have to drive 15 km to get your kid into the school, since city did not took into account that people will HAVE KIDS in condos! Urban planing on the first come first served bases (meaning big construction companies first). And that when we do not invest 500 million bucks allocated for FIXING the Gardiner, 5 years later we conduct environmental assessment worth 250 000$, so we can tear it down!!! I hate peoples mindset (lack off). This goes for everything in this country…we start thinking about solutions when it is too late.Imagine you are going to doctor and complaining to him about your pain in your chest, he told to you take aspirin, 2 years later your doctor finally takes some action and order a further testing and than you realized you have class 4 cancer in your lungs…this is how everything works in every pore of this society.Mediocre idiots runs our lives and we pay with our taxes…There should be some jail term for politicians.For all of them.
Single or double occupancy, has nothing to do with gridlock.Toronto is 10 YEARS behind a properly synchronized traffic light system.Now go back to your bicycle and continue to break a law.(running red lights and stop signs).
As long as takes me 15 min to get to work with a car, 1:40 min with a bicycle and 1:05 hour with TTC what do you think I will take?
What was person forgot to mention in this article that is Ontario provincial government approves all building and contracting licenses.So do not blame the City 100%. City can NOT veto any building or construction approved.
So according to you, we need to blame drivers again not the incompetent politicians?
Barcelona is 6 billion dollars in debt, since 1992 Olympic games…
“Us ‘single use’ car drivers are paying road tax/fuel tax to fund you”
Don’t be a moron. Toronto roads are paid for through property taxes, and you drivers aren’t paying anywhere near your share of the costs.
Try again. Evidence shows cars are very heavily subsidized – they get a thousand times more of our tax dollars in terms of roads, highways, parking, than any other form of transportation, be it transit, foot or cycle. Cars cost a lot to both society at large and to individuals. And they cause more gridlock. The only thing that will alleviate transit for all is to build a lot more transit and cycling infrastructure. A lot more than we are currently even wishing for – a relief line to Pape and Bloor on top of current plans isn’t enough. We need a western leg off the relief line, a Don Mills LRT line to Sheppard or Steeles, a Malvern LRT that goes to UofT Scarborough, a streetcar along the eastern waterfront between Union and Cherry Beach, something that goes north into Etobicoke from Bloor West, perhaps along Jane, Eglinton LRT to the airport and another LRT along the waterfront to Mimico, and a northern LRT that connects the planned Finch west to Sheppard subway-LRT.
As opposed what you push bike losers pay? ZERO $. Go take your knome beard and mangina eBike to Olivia’s next gathering.
Sorry zero, I drive a car during the week and a bike on weekends. God forbid we have more abusive ‘tards on bikes in TO who can’t be bothered to glance over their shoulders when overtaking, don’t stop for signs, TTC etc and get bitchy when a rider calls them on their poor driving habits.
Property taxes, you fool. That’s what I pay, and that’s what pays for Toronto roads.
Meanwhile I cause no pollution or gridlock, unlike you drivers who want everything and don’t pay for it. All you commuters who don’t even live in Toronto are the biggest freeloaders of all.
We already do, actually. If I need to be on Jarvis, that’s where I’ll be.
How much does congestion cost every year? Billions of dollars. Let’s not pretend that single-occupancy drivers are paying what their choice to drive actually costs.
because it does have problems like this!
What if you live in Toronto, pay for gas and bloody parking then what? And sir sorry my job requires me to carry 30 pounds boxes of liquids that gets you inebriated. Sorry but shit doesn’t fly yet so I am a single person car driver but my things have to get around. So sorry Im here donating to charity and helping sponsor countless events.
I love how single-occupancy drivers get so defensive about it, to the point of having to insult people who maanged to avoid the need for a car.
Garbage. Confirmation bias is wonderful but it’s the cars killing and injuring thousands a year.
Okay, so people don’t want to live where they don’t need a car.
They can damn well put on their big-boy pants and take responsibility for their choice to require a car.
Correction: ATC (Automatic Train Control) doesn’t actually drive the train. It’s a system that does away with trackside, fixed-block signals and uses in-cab signalling instead to tell the train driver how fast or slow to drive in order to maintain a safe distance to the train ahead of him/her. ATC-equipped subway systems still need human drivers.
What you meant was ATO (Automatic Train Operation), which actually drives the train automatically. ATO is in use on the London Underground’s Victoria Line, among other systems.
As an aside: When David Miller trumpeted the new Toronto Rocket trains, he hailed the ATC system as “state-of-the-art”. The Japanese have had ATC on their trains since 1964. >.>
Although the new TR cars on the YUS line may be bright and shiny, the roof-mounted air conditioning (a/c) units produce much noise. This is highly noticeable to those commuters waiting to board a train. Moreover, once the side doors open, those within the cars are then exposed to higher ambient noise levels. On the older T1 cars the noise created by the compressor-condensor units of the a/c system which were mounted on the underframe was muffled by the platform. Until such time as the TTC install acoustic awnings above the platforms to dampen the noise, commuters will continue suffer.
@Sarah_Arr… This is sadly what you actually think isnt it…
(not that I want to support drivers and the car culture, I hate car culture)… But drivers are most definitely paying their fair share – and then some.. In fact, drivers are the ones subsidizing transit. Revenue collected from car people (gas tax, permits, licenses, parking, etc) much more than offsets road infrastructure costs.
Dont believe me? Look it up. Its easy to find on Toronto financial statements.
But here is a Toronto Star article to simplify the numbers for you:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/10/17/drivers_already_paying_a_toll_for_ontario_roads_study.html
I read one estimate that put conversion at around $700 million. That sounds expensive…..until you get the North York equivalent of Kennedy station and you get tons of clamouring about how stupid that transfer is. Seems that we haven’t learned anything from the Scarborough experience.
Far cheaper in the long run to convert the subway. Also yields better service. Instead of one four-car subway every 5 minutes, you’d have just as long LRTs with the same regular frequency and no transfers. Indeed, frequencies could be higher off-peak.
Give it 20 years. Don Mills will be the Kennedy station of the next generation.
In the long run? Yes. Any westward extension would get LRT-type stations. Smaller, more compact. They’d be cheaper to operate.
Raise corporate taxes. In a province that’s already struggling economically? Good luck with that.
I have no issues paying higher personal income and consumption taxes. But I don’t see how driving away business will help us pay for infrastructure.
In reality though the subway was already going to go to York U. We aren’t talking the entire subway being wasted. We are talking something like 2 km of subway in a low cost construction area, just north of Steeles. It’s rather unfair to slag York Region for the entire cost of the subway when Toronto was always going to build a subway to the university. And we were always going to go to Steeles, because York U would never have allowed a terminus with a giant bus depot on its campus.
I guess you missed the three times more people part!
Of course the terminus would never have working in the middle of campus – but, as you write, it could have worked at Steeles (which is just by the edge of the York campus anyways). And if you read what I wrote above, I said that a subway to York (I was assuming a terminus at the city limit) was a good idea. What was not a good idea was putting provincial and federal money into continuing the subway further (we all pay for it, not just York Region!). 2 km of subway is definitely *not* insignificant, considering that 1 km of subway costs about $200 million to build, and this doesn’t include the cost of running it, which is higher than the cost of running buses or LRTs. That money could definitely have been used elsewhere, to build the Finch or Jane LRT or begin environmental assessments on the downtown relief line or Yonge subway extension.
A transit video series has been released which backs up the examples
provided by Mr. Preville. The four-part series, which can be accessed at
http://www.rccao.com, says
that politicians have been ignoring the advice of transit experts for
too long. This has cost this region billions of dollars. Facts and
evidence need to be at the forefront of transit delivery to get this
region back on track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc2N1pJqC0M&list=PLgiGp52farbbcUsGI9PEtiigt_82Ur5AM
$200 million per km sounds a like a lot. Except that it’s not, in the world of transit. It would not have delivered another transit line anywhere. And given that this was provincial money, it would not have delivered the DRL or Yonge North Environmental Assessements either (which cost an order of magnitude less than $200 million).
The extra $400 million spent does guarantee that Vaughan will now be substantially transit oriented and focus development around the Vaughan Metro Centre subway station.
As for the cost of running it, the subway network is largely profitable. And given the volume of 905 buses I see at Finch and Downsview everyday, I don’t doubt that the marginal operating cost of extra 2km and 2 stations will either be covered by revenues or be a rather minimal subsidy.
More broadly, this speaks to how transit is organized in the region. Here in Toronto, we use the subway network to subsidize our bus networks. This is why a customer going a few stops on the subway pays a ridiculously high $3 fare, while a commuter going across the city (like me) pays a ridiculously low $3 fare. Regional management of the long haul network would completely sort this out.
Merge the subway network with GO. Implement fare by distance for the subway. And let the city be responsible for buses, streetcars and LRTs. This is similar to what’s done in London, UK with TfL (with London Underground, London overground and London buses under the TfL umbrella). Under this concept, you pay a flat fare (say $2) to take any overground non-long haul service (bus, streetcar, LRT), and then you pay an incremental fare, by distance, to use the subway or the GO Train or GO bus. If you start on the subway or GO, your base fare ($2) goes to that agency. Some kinks in the idea to work out, but the only way we move forward is to drop the archaic idea that service should stop at some artificial boundary (municipal border) that can be changed or cost mitigated.
We should be building in areas that need transit already, before we aim to create new transit-oriented areas. The area, for example, where the downtown relief line will be build, and the area on Yonge that it is meant to relieve, are already a transit oriented area – they just doesn’t get enough transit to serve them.
The subway network is “largely” profitable – well, that hides sins. Sheppard is not profitable: it costs more to run it than is justified by the ridership, and the Vaughan area where the subway will end is even less dense. If Vaughan wanted to create a new transit oriented area, they could do so with light rail or bus lanes. The cost of the subway there is just not justified. And actually, my number is out of date. According to the Globe and Mail, the standard cost per km these days is $300 million (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/john-torys-transit-plan-a-new-smarttrack-and-tough-questions/article20923882/). The entire light rail on Jane Street was estimated to cost $630 million, so that is nothing to sneeze at, not that $400 million would have been anyways. In the world of limited public spending, both $400 and $600 million are a lot of money. They are not well used to perhaps create a transit oriented community that wouldn’t, even if people actually start living and working there, have enough density to support a subway for at least 50 years. The points about distance based fares are interesting, but not relevant here. The relevant question is whether a subway to Vaughan is a good use of taxpayer dollars, and it is not. When there are pressing transit priorities now, in places that already have density, we can’t afford to spend money on places that may one day become dense.
1) $630 million for Jane when Transit City was first launched. Since then we all know how woefully inadequate that estimate was. Just look at the Sheppard LRT or the Scarborough RT replacement. I’ve attended some of the Open Houses and have seen the costs increase. I would not estimate Jane at less than a billion.
2) That $300 million per km is an average. It’s much cheaper when it’s an open field and you don’t have to relocate utilities, etc. Likely $100 million per km. Ottawa is spending $400 million – $500 million on 3 km of tunnel in their downtown for LRT.
3) In an ideal world, funding would be by priority. In the real world, Toronto wouldn’t have the TYSSE without the extra 2km to Vaughan. As a Torontonian, I can live with it. It’s not Toronto paying the construction cost. And the operating cost of two extra stations is marginal. It’s not a whole other line like Sheppard. And that doesn’t account for savings, like cheaper land in Vaughan for transit yards and smaller stations inside the 416, without the need for terminals to accommodate Viva and Züm buses.
Which DRL alignment would that be? Queen, King or Front? And where does it go in the East and West?
True relief of Yonge can only come by shifting the massive amount of increase in ridership from York region at Finch station off the Yonge subway. That would mean prioritizing GO two way all day over the DRL. But most of the south of Bloor crowd wouldn’t like that, now would they?
It’s easy to talk about relief. Nobody wants to actually discuss reality. The so called Downtown Relief Line barely shifts some ridership from Scarborough heading to the core and does absolutely nothing to shift York region ridership crowding up the Yonge line today.
Downtown probably does need a subway though. It just shouldn’t be focused on relieving Yonge. GO electrification will do that. Once we get to that discussion, then we can discuss whether places like Liberty Village and Riverdale are better served by a suburban rail service (GO REX) that’s fully integrated with the TTC, or if they do need a subway.
From the article you posted:
“Across Ontario, drivers generate about $7.7 billion in revenue and the province and municipalities spend between $10 billion and $13 billion on roads, said Gill.”
Sounds like they are subsidized based on the article you posted to show that driving is not subsidized.. Unfortunately the study has been removed from the internet so no further information can be analyzed. Also the strangest line in that article is this:
“Commercial trucks and transit vehicles were separated out, as were different classes of roads, such as highways, arterials and local lanes.”
Not including highways in the cost of driving is quite odd (seems like that must be a mistake or something). The study was heavily skewed and still couldn’t show that driving revenues cover driving costs.
Articles backing up cars are subsidized:
– The one you posted
– This one, which discusses the study from the article you posted, which says cars are subsidized: https://www.raisethehammer.org/article/1994/conference_board_study:_drivers_do_not_pay_full_cost_of_ontario_roads
– This one: http://thecostofsprawl.com/report/the-costs-of-roads-and-highways.pdf
– Also interesting to check out is, which looks at the overall cost of sprawl, part of which is the cost of roads: http://thecostofsprawl.com/
Articles backing up drivers generate more revenue than cost to the public:
–
–
Still waiting on those.
I may use the Beard Gnome as my new moniker.
As has been proven over and over again cars are subsidized by general taxes. In Toronto it is property tax.
My point was that why is personal responsibility not important anymore? Just blame everyone else for our problems, just look at the above article, how many people will we blame before looking in the mirror. If we are sick of gridlock and we cause it aren’t we one of the villains too?
What have YOU done lately to reduce congestion?
I’m not really “blaming” single occupant vehicles for gridlock. Single occupant vehicles ARE gridlock, its not a blame thing.
My point was: why is personal responsibility not important anymore? Just blame everyone else for our problems, just look at the above article, how many people will we blame before looking in the mirror. If we are sick of gridlock and we cause it aren’t we one of the villains too?
I have commuted by car for years in the past, eventually I realized I am to blame for my frustrations and I got out of my car. That doesn’t mean I don’t also hold power brokers of infrastructure responsible for combating gridlock, but as a member of society I am also personally responsible for my contribution to gridlock.
What have you done to reduce gridlock lately?
I like what you’ve said. But it’s still important to reduce the bloor-yonge bottleneck, which the eastern alignment of the DRL will do. That’s what should be the top priority. Also GO electrification will increase Union station usage and these people need to get on a subway from there, so more utility from DRL. Union station will also be over capacity by 2031, so DRL would also have relief station for GO
LRT runs on old SRT alignment, so not on road. The Ford is strong in this one
The Jarvis reversible lane makes no sense. It makes the street confusing, dangerous and is under utilized outside of rush hour.
Rye-guy12: Please read this before any ridicule… Pay attention to the yellow line line signifying “at-grade” (not on a viaduct like the current Scarborough RT) http://www.thecrosstown.ca/sites/default/files/sheppard_fact_sheet.pdf
What about the Pedestrian Scrabbles along Bloor. These significantly slow traffic since they are not properly designed. Currently Cars and Pedestrians FIGHT when cars are allowed to move and turn right. This increases risks for pedestrians. By the City’s own admission the crosswalk at Bay and Bloor is a failure – their solution – leave it.
There should be 3 cycles – one for pedestrians only; a second for cars ONLY east/west and a third for cars only North/South. This is how these pedestrian scrabbles properly operate in the rest of the world.
This is a simple problem which has a simple solution which the city is not willing to entertain.
To you are a renter and you pay a rent, this means you are not paying property tax.Therefore not paying for the roads.Majority of low income cyclist are renters.I am not blaming them for being renters or low income, I am saying that that formula of how “cyclist are paying taxes too” is about maybe 10% of cycling riders.I am again not saying that renters do not drive cars but they pay this province money for a sticker and EVERY TIME we fill up gasoline tank THAT MONEY GOES FOR ROADS, not just property tax.
Good for you enjoy premature aging, and smog breathing…from a single occupancy cars.
I have been door-ed 2 times in TO while riding a bike.But 300 other times I have seen cyclist not stopping on a red light.Not stopping on a stop sign,not stopping when merging into intersection and making right turn, running in unmarked one way street in opposite direction, not dismounting when going from traffic light to pedestrian light…etc etc.
Um…information from a site like “raisethehammer” and/or “costofurbansprawl” must be amazingly accurate…(not).When you bring me Official Ontario Bookkeeping information, than I will believe…
I got another car so my wife and I can gridlock your bike route in downtown…
Toronto is ONLY CITY IN NORTH AMERICA that allow 16 wheelers to roam in the downtown area…
sorry, but when I drove long haul tractor trailers (18 & 20 wheels) i was in the downtown core of quite a number of cities- some pretty challenging and tight navigation- meaning going slower for safety.
Toronto is not so challenging to traverse in comparison.
Don’t blame all drivers, just the ones who can’t drive, which happens to be the majority.
Enjoy your transit as much I enjoy my car with heated seat.And I am not defensive about it just like brainwashed about being green you are.If I live in California I would re-think my driving habits.But on -25C waiting for a King st. streetcar, it is obvious choice to use a car.
Funny, I would have said that it’s an obvious choice to save $10,000 a year, minimum, by not having a car one doesn’t need.
Anyone who demands heated seats to drive around in a Toronto winter probably also demands a fainting couch and peeled grapes.
Right. Property owners who rent out their property, out of the goodness of their hearts pay the property taxes in full, and don’t build it into the rent they charge the renters. Is that how it works on your planet? Because it is certainly not how it works here on Earth.
In 1943, the City of Toronto Planning Board developed a plan for a network of criss-crossing expressways, and construction began. If that plan had been completed Toronto would not be the near-total disfunctional parking lot pollution factory that it is today. But in 1969 the red-blooded American patriot and socialist Jane Jacobs moved permanently to Toronto to save her sons from being drafted to fight in Vietnam for her beloved “America” and settled in Toronto’s “America-town” of fellow draft dodgers, after her arrest in New York City for inciting a riot, criminal mischief, and obstructing public administration in efforts to stop a major expressway there. In Greenwich Village NYC Jacobs, who’d also opposed the construction of the original World Trade Center, had worked a long time for Amerika, a Russian language magazine, was Pro-Union, and even investigated by the McCarthy Committee as a suspected Communist Spy. In Toronto Jacobs founded and led the anti-expressway campaign which by 1971 had forced then Ontario Premier Bill Davis to kill the expressway network plan. Jacobs and her team then set out to take over Toronto City Council with fellow socialists as Councillors and Public Works Managers who remain esconced and entrenched there to this very day, working their evil anti-car war on Toronto to disrupt and destroy all efforts to ever get vehicular transportation moving again. The resulting 24/7 gridlock of idling vehicles on city streets is consequently Toronto’s worst source of air pollution costing us all 10s if not 100s of billions of dollars annually from lost business productivity and health care. If the majority of people really want a properly functioning Toronto and GTA, then we first HAVE TO GET RID OF THOSE ANTI-CAR SOCIALISTS WHO ARE DESTROYING IT.
I blame American Jane Jacobs and her ‘merry’ band of Vietnam War draft dodging socialists who are still at City Hall to this day for gridlock and all the rest of Toronto’s dysfunctional corruption.
Bingo.
Everyone has it’s own priorities. On -30 Windchill I am not freezing on TTC station waiting for a streetcar for 20 min and when it arrive there will be 5 in a row. In Sweden (someone told me) public stations are HEATED.No “grapes” there but considerable more human way to wait. You can save time or money.I do not have enough time doing 2 jobs and after spending 15 hours outside of mu home, having enough energy to wait or travel in TTC. for a extra 3 hours of commuting. Time saved will be used for sleeping and recovery.As I said everyone has priorities.My health comes first.
And speaking of health, I was using a TTC 15 years ago…I was having a cold or a flu every year at least 3-4 times a year. That dramatically vent down with use of my car.So now once every 2-3 years I have a flu or cold.
18 wheelers, correction. :-)
My own health is priceless. If I can do anything in my power to preserve it, 10000 is small price to pay.
Sitting in a car in gridlock is one of the worst things for your health.
Whereas riding to work is one of the best and saves me $10K a year.
As I said before everyone has it’s own priorities, you will be old and sick with money saved from not driving the car, and I will be old and healthy and broke…
It’s odd that you think that sitting in a car getting fat is healthy, when it’s already proved to be one of the worst things you can do.
Gee, I would really like to see you give one example of how indulging cars made congestion better.
My original post answered your question. You will never believe, so there’s no point in trying again.
So, no examples, eh?
If you drive a car, which I doubt, you’d know what it’s like on the DVP from 3 pm, or 2 pm, or even 1 pm, onward to about 8 pm and later, as vehicles try to crawl up the DVP to the 401 and head east towards Oshawa and beyond, and how that backs up everything on the street roads downtown and including trying to get there up Kingston Rd instead. Which dumps god only knows how many times more vehicle pollution into the air from all those crawling vehicles. IF the 1950s expressway to link the east end of the Gardner northeast to the 401 following the Kingston Rd corridor, most of that congestion and pollution we now have would be humungously reduced, and immensely boost productivity of the entire city, and producing more tax dollars for safe bicycle routes, separated from motorized vehicles. But you probably are one of those bicycle riders who believes all the vehicle roads belong to bicycle riders like you who don’t obey bicycle riding regulations, don’t pay for the roads, nor are you tolled to pay for the stupid bicycle lanes either that put bicycles and vehicles together and create far more congestion, and who cause all kinds of accidents riding with the vehicles on those roads and blaming vehicle drivers for the accidents you cause, and if you get killed because of your stupidity the driver and his/her family have to live with that for the rest of their lives, just as your family will have to.
So many myopic comments from people defending their preferred means of transportation. Confirmation bias at its best (or worst). “Cars are awful. Bikes and bikers are jerkoffs.” The reality is we cannot do away with cars, they are in fact necessary to people’s lives for work, and are especially important if they live outside of the GTA, or far from any transit connection. Arguing against cars is inane. Bikes are doing the city (and environment) a tremendous favour. Likewise, arguing against bikes is inane. The problem here is poor planning, poor investment, and petty politics -which the article clearly elucidates, ya’know, if you actually read it BEFORE making up your mind. Priority must be given to building infrastructure that is desperately needed FIRST. I used to live in London and i’m literally drooling at a map of the London underground right now..
Breathing smog it is not healthy even if you are part of the problem…
Sometimes they do not…
LMAO “The Intersection From Hell” – this article coudln’t be more perfect!
yeah but there is always going to be that awkward hill up to St. Clair that no “cycling infrastructure” can fix lol
are you fucking retarded? it’s not the cars “killing and injuring thousands…” IT’S THE ABUNDANCE OF RETARDED FUCKS LIKE YOU IN OUR CITY THAT ARE KILLING AND INJURING THOUSANDS..grrrr i use caps to make it seem like im yelling grrrr
Breathing smog that derives from benzene and diesel destroys alveoli in the lungs.Yes lead was removed from gasoline but still air that l breathe in my car is cleaner than one outside…you save your money I will save my lungs for old age.
Because their police (try to see Toronto police on Lakeshore and Spadina in the rush hours?) regulate traffic and they have more one way streets…
He’s paying the person who own the property. Flawed argument. He’s also paying to live in the neighbourhood with transit. Just cause he doens’t directly pay for property tax doesn’t mean they’re not contributing. Cyclist require significantly less upkeep on the roads. Cars require a whole lot more infrastructure last time i check, a car is 3000> lbs. Bikes are only 20-40lbs at most. I can’t imagine roads degrading because a bike road over it. What you pay for in fuel they pay for in food. Its just a lot more efficient. The whole argument where cars pay for more is flawed.
You’re breathing the same air you’re driving in. And no the filter doesn’t catch everything
Yes but I do not overworked my lungs with cycling.Meaning I will land less pollutants into my lungs while calmly breathing in my car.
No but exercising increase oxygen intake into the lungs 2X, meaning running, cycling behind the tail pipe of the car, actually is making it worse for a cyclist than a driver of the car.Smog does lung damage…Why do you think Queen of England is living that long and healthy? No stress and only exercise, while being driven in the car is a hand greeting to the masses.I am 45 years old and since I am not riding bike on -24C + windchill, I do look like healthy 35 something. I will most likely live longer than a cyclist that is for sure.