The TTC has made some decisions lately that, for lack of a better way of saying it, actually make sense. Many of you know that I was never really a fan of Transit City. It had some pretty serious flaws that in my mind were never really addressed. The lack of increased capacity heading into downtown, the transfer at Kennedy, the stupidity that is the Sheppard East LRT, etc. Been there, explained that, and I had accepted that, despite the seeming lack of rationality behind these lines, that they would in fact be built, so I better get used to them.
The TTC has made some announcements recently, however. Some that are pretty small, and one that’s really big. They do have one thing in common though: they make sense. Let me start with the small things.
Eglinton LRT: Keele to Jane
The TTC’s original design for this section of the LRT was, needless to say, dumb. It needlessly restricted the capacity of the Eglinton-Black Creek intersection by having an LRT run through the middle of it. It also created a very inconvenient future transfer location between the LRT and any future GO service running along the Georgetown corridor. Definitely not ideal.
So it was announced recently that the TTC was reconfiguring this portion of the line. It’s going elevated above the Eglinton-Black Creek intersection, and underground, with a new station location, around Weston Rd and the Georgetown Corridor. Traffic interference with the intersection is no longer an issue, and the potential for an easy transfer now exists.
Well, that was easy.
Eglinton LRT: West Extension
While at the meeting, one of my fellow transit enthusiasts asked the Planners a question about using the Richview corridor for the west extension. Normally, the answer to this was an outright “no”. Now however, they seem more inclined to examine it.
The Richview corridor, for those who don’t know, is the corridor immediately north of Eglinton Ave West. It was reserved in the 50s for a future expressway that was never built. I, and many others, believe it is perfectly suitable for LRT because a wide variety of configurations can exist within the corridor (elevated, at-grade, trenched), none of them requiring the complete dismantling of Eglinton West, which is what was proposed initially in Transit City.
Ottawa is having a similar debate right now over whether or not to use the Richmond-Byron corridor for its Western LRT extension (Richmond-Byron was a dedicated streetcar right-of-way until the 1960s). It’s there. Use it!
OneCity
This is a big one. Not going to lie, this one caught me completely by surprise. It’s not every day that a major city reveals it’s going to go with a completely new Transit Master Plan (well, not usually. It seemed during the transit debate in February that there was a new one popping up every couple of days).
OneCity, in my view, is Revolutionarily Evolutionary. Now, what the hell does that mean? Let me explain it. It’s evolutionary because it is very much the natural successor to Transit City. It addresses some of the major flaws that Transit City has, while at the same time taking the next step forward.
What is revolutionary about it, however, is it’s one of the few transit plans that Toronto has had that didn’t rip the old one to shreds in favour of the new one. When Transit City was introduced, the old Transit Master Plan was pretty much tossed on the trash heap. Sheppard Subway? Nah, we’ll do an LRT nearly out to the zoo that’ll take 40 minutes to ride instead, even though the corridor only really needs BRT east of Victoria Park.
Transit City, for better or for worse, is largely intact inside of this new plan. The one exception is the SRT refurbishment and extension, which is replaced with an extension of the Bloor-Danforth Subway to Sheppard, hitting STC along the way. This means that, while the debating, studying, and financing of this new plan is going on, work can continue on the Eglinton, Finch West, and Sheppard East LRTs. No reset button needed.
What this plan does though that all others before it (except Network 2011) failed to do is to address the capacity concerns heading into downtown. This plan does it, through a rebranded Downtown Relief Line, DRL, which in this plan is referred to as the Don Mills Subway (not keen on the name, but I can see why).
(Source: Toronto Star)
Overall, I do have some minor nitpicks with the plan:
-The DRL should go at least to University, not Yonge, in order to cut through the CBD, and take pressure off the Yonge line.
-The Scarborough and Etobicoke Express lines should be under the jurisdiction of GO, not the TTC.
-The Wilson BRT should run until at least Jane.
But, in the grand scheme of things, these are relatively minor things, that will hopefully be ironed out through more detailed studies and public consultations. The fact that the only faults that I can come up with for this plan (at least as far as the lines themselves go) are nitpicks, tells me that this is a very good plan.
The funding scheme for it is also very interesting. Basically, what they are going to do is ask the Province to change the rules to allow the City to capture 40% of the increase in the property values in yearly property tax assessments, amounting to $180 per year per household, generating $272 million/year.
It won’t cover the whole thing, but if the standard 1/3rd City/Province/Federal funding arrangements continue, it could very well cover most of the City’s portion. And if Metrolinx releases a good funding sources plan, that’ll leave only the Feds without a permanent funding arrangement.
Final Thoughts
Overall, OneCity is a good plan. It fixes a lot of the mistakes from Transit City, it takes the next step in terms of transit expansion, and more importantly it actually proposes a method to pay for some of it.
The political maneuvering over the next couple of months will definitely be interesting to watch. Either way, Rob Ford is going to look bad in this. He either votes for increased taxes, or he votes against subways. Unless he pulls of a very skilled political maneuver, it won’t be pretty for him.
The two most important parts of this plan that aren’t already underway are the Bloor-Danforth Subway Extension and the Don Mills Subway. If these two can rise to the top of the heap, we’ll be in a very good position going forward.
EDIT: For those of you who want even more detail, the presentation was just released: http://onecitytoronto.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/onecity-final-presentation-print2.pdf
EDIT: For those of you who want even more detail, the presentation was just released: http://onecitytoronto.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/onecity-final-presentation-print2.pdf
