Gridlock in Transit Planning
By Hans Modlich | Municipal Socialist Alliance
Sitting on a Goldmine!
“You're sitting on a goldmine!” David Quarmby told a Toronto Region Board of Trade meeting barely a year after the Lac Megantic (Quebec) rail disaster. It gave the federal government a perfectly good reason to kick Canadian Pacific rail off their midtown Toronto freight-only corridor. As the head of Transport for London, Quarmby was referring to all the abandoned or underused GTA railway tracks. It was he who inspired the interconnection of commuter rail and subways into Cross-Rail, one of the most successful public transit integrations in the world.
Electrified high-speed commuter trains on these CP tracks could link fastest growing Markham to Mississauga, and give a car-free alternative to the commuter on gridlocked Hwy 401. Interconnecting transfer hubs at Agincourt, Don Mills, Summerville, DuPont, Weston and Kipling could link up, and off-load riders on existing (and much slower) subway lines.
For any serious action on climate change in the GTHA this project is the lowest hanging fruit in the domain of transportation.
To implement it a 7-kilometer link between CP and CN freight tracks is required between Streetsville and Bramalea. Called the “Missing Link” by MTO planners, it has been on the books, shelved by Premier Davis.
Constitutional gridlock also stands in the way. Federal, provincial and municipal levels of government would have to come together -- something that David Quarmby managed to do in Greater London.
The Line 3 Fiasco
Instead, “North America's 1972 Transportation Man-of-the-Year” Ontario Premier Bill Davis bestowed upon us magnetic levitation -- in the form of the PRT, a wheel-less Personal Rapid Transit cabin floating on a futuristic magnetic cushion. Thankfully, the 1973 oil crisis put a quick end to this pipedream. However, newly equipped with Canadair designed wheel bogies, Ontario’s Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC) succeeded in selling this Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS) to Vancouver for opening in time for Expo 1985. The deal hinged on a nearly half billion-dollar performance bond, plus an operational demonstration system. Thus, the Toronto Transit Commission’s RT came about, the now mothballed Line 3.
The TTC fought this imposition at every turn. Its too-tight turns guideway closed the door on upgrading with a later released Bombardier vehicle, built for Vancouver. TTC’s abandoning of Automatic Train Controls (ATC’s) eliminated the option of de-icing the third rail during freezing rain off-hours. The half-inch tiny gap between the reaction [third] rail and the consists linear induction motor probably is the undisclosed cause of the near-fatal accident during the July 24th unprecedented heatwave.
The total cost of the Bill Davis fiasco was close to $7 billion in 1980 dollars. But UTDC was sold (privatized) to Bombardier for a token $17 million. However, before UTDC’s glory days ended, TTC had tasked it to manufacture its first articulated type streetcar. By the time TTC’s design specs were met, those streetcars ended up weighing twice that of the Zürich prototype. They now have all been taken out of service.
The Crosstown Boondoggle
Neither fully subway nor streetcar, this Metrolinx Private Public Partnership concoction has transit planners all over the world shaking their heads in disbelief? The level crossing streetcar sections at both ends of the 10 km inner city tunnel promises Crosstown to become an operational nightmare -- never mind the end-to-end unprecedented 30 km length for a single streetcar line. Is this operational boondoggle one of the undisclosed reasons for the two-year plus delay in its opening?
Given the high cost of tunnelling, this investment alone should have warranted using a full-sized subway type vehicle. That would have yielded the extra carrying capacity needed for the busy inner-city centred traffic section. Still, the same tunneling costs were incurred only to run an articulated streetcar type vehicle through it. Its throughput capacity is obstructed by wheel wells and flex-sections instead of providing more doors. The unidirectional front-only operator design requires turn arounds at end stations. Also resulting from this fundamental design flaw, station platforms will be lower and narrower, again impeding rapid egress of passengers.
[Ironically, construction of a full-sized Eglinton subway had been started by the Bob Rae NDP government, only to be sabotaged by Mike Harris’ “Common Sense” counterrevolution.]
But once the articulated vehicle design was chosen, no attempt was made to link up with (and to modify) the pre-existing Line 3 stations. Instead, an already overextended Line 2 will now be tunneled at great expense all the way to the Scarborough Town Centre, the same terminus of Line 3. Cost overruns and implementation delays be damned.
Neither were there any plans made for a future transfer hub at the Don Mills intersection with the much-needed CP Midtown Express Commuter Rail line backbone described above.
Downtown Relief…
Abandoned rail tracks parallel the DVP at the lower Don. When branched to the Midtown [CP] Express Commuter Rail at the very same Don Mills multi-modal hub [omitted in the Crosstown planning], an express commuter rail corridor to Union Station could be provided for next to no cost. There is relief, plus it offers a transfer hub to Broadview Station to offload the congested Yonge-Bloor intersection.
…Or More Ontario Line Grief?
Instead, the same Metrolinx consortium that has brought us a repeatedly delayed and unproven Crosstown Line is now barging ahead with the Ontario Line. Much more costly tunneling, deep under high-rise downtown, is required. Still, the vehicle design appears to be more like the Crosstown streetcar. Station access will require climbing long stairways. While hubs are provided at Carlaw, Union and the CNE with Lakeshore GO, again no terminus is planned for the future Midtown Express Rail hub at Don Mills.
Transit planning has been gridlocked for the past 50 years!
CP tanker trains still carry explosive dilbit-laced tar-sand oil through the heart of Toronto. Gridlocked cars pollute yet more while standing still. Traffic congestion costs the GTA economy an estimated $6 billion annually. Not to mention the countless hours of family-time lost. All too patient Canadians remain the planet’s highest per-capita emitters of GHG.
