Vast scope of coming transit plan eludes councillors
Most are focused on narrow issues when what's needed is statesmanship and transcendent vision.

thestar.com
Feb. 24, 2016
By Royson James

Do you think city councillors “get it?” The transit puzzle, I mean.

Do they understand that in months they will be asked to get their heads around this country’s most costly, comprehensive and transformative transit-building initiative?

Hell, no. They don’t - not one of them.

I’m a big Jennifer Keesmaat fan. The city’s chief planner had the gumption to tell the mayor that his SmartTrack plan as proposed didn’t cut the mustard. Neither did the three-stop Scarborough subway right next to SmartTrack stations.

Most city bureaucrats would have capitulated to the extraordinary political pressure. But instead of caving to the mayor’s designs, Keesmaat and her staff improved the mayor’s plan - and with it, transit potential in Scarborough.

At least, that’s the theory. I don’t know for sure.

I can’t point to ridership numbers that Keesmaat has seen. I can’t cite studies that planning staff have considered. I can’t peer-review assumptions around development potential, population density and job location along the transit corridor from Kennedy Station to the Scarborough Town Centre.

I don’t know if all those good folks who work at Scarborough General Hospital at McCowan and Lawrence are justified in saying Keesmaat’s political compromise, which saves the mayor’s plan, dooms them to worse transit service.

I can’t, because ridership numbers for the corridor are still secret - waiting for Keesmaat to analyze them and define them in a way that best suits someone’s designs. It’s either her designs, or her boss’s, or the politicians’. None of the three is acceptable.

From the day John Tory announced SmartTrack, those in the know groused that the use of GO lines for more frequent local TTC-like service is a great idea - just not necessarily where the mayor located the service.

Obviously the planning department agreed. They looked at the ridership numbers and whatever they saw compelled them to re-do the plan. But the public has not seen those numbers. And we want to, for good reason.

The corridor from Kennedy subway station to Scarborough Town Centre was once supposed to have a new LRT. Ridership numbers for a subway suggested 9,500 passengers per peak period, short of the minimum. Then somebody in the planning department applied different assumptions and, voila! Ridership figures jumped to 14,000, just enough to grease the path to a subway.

A new day arrived. Keesmaat and her staff have modern ridership forecasting tools and have seen the corridor’s ridership numbers - with and without SmartTrack nearby, with a three-stop subway that has since become a one-stop subway. Keesmaat made her decision, based on those numbers. Release them, already, please.

We appreciate the city’s transportation planning staff are busy out of their minds juggling the numerous options and data and projects that self-appointed transportation experts throw at them. That explains why Keesmaat calls the numerous reports to council this spring a “motherlode.”

But to get public approval and acceptance and funding, Keesmaat needs the, er, public. We need all the information all the time. We don’t need to guess, speculate, wonder and rumour-monger.

Secondly, the public discussion and consultation must be credible and informed by facts and data, nothing held back, even at the risk of exploding myths and dearly held untruths.

Remember Transit City, that wonderful and comprehensive transit plan from Mayor David Miller that followed a network approach that would have transformed this city? It was easily toppled by Mayor Rob Ford because few of us really knew what it was about.

The people didn’t wrestle with the options, weren’t forced to pick between difficult options and were not invested in the projects. So, even though it seemed grand, perfect, superbly laid out and was paid for by the provincial government, it had too few supporters.

Keesmaat is attempting something of an even grander scale. At the leading edge of a massive and unprecedented transit build-out, she’s trying to get us all to think of the NETWORK of lines and projects that will best serve our grandchildren and their offspring.

But we are not nearly prepared.

There is not a single city councillor - not one - who has his/her mind wrapped around the scope and scale, the challenges and opportunities, the sheer enormity and critical import of what’s being contemplated.

TTC chair Josh Colle busies himself at news conferences, with a mayor constantly at news conferences. Besides, the transit file has been yanked from the TTC.

The mayor’s priority is SmartTrack, not what’s best for commuters.

Gord Perks still wants LRT everywhere. Josh Matlow’s eyes are fixed mainly on what affects the Relief Line. Glen DeBaeremaeker is singularly focused on the Scarborough subway, lest his colleagues steal it out from under him. James Pasternak supports anything, so long as it doesn’t wipe out the option of one day taking the Sheppard subway west to link up with the Spadina line.

From them you get parochial palaver when statesmanship and transcendent vision is imperative.

This is the most critical decision this council will ever consider - not to mention the most costly, at well north of $50 billion. And I challenge even one of the 44, make that 45 including the mayor, to show me they “get it.”

If I find one, you’ll read about it.