Where a hijacked transit process is taking us

Metrolinx letter to Toronto highlights the folly of a political ‘solution’ like SmartTrack, saying essentially that it duplicates GO.

Thestar.com
Oct. 17. 2015
By Royson James

In launching a comprehensive review of how Toronto’s transportation needs stack up against current and future plans, Toronto city planners had the right idea in 2013.

Barely two years in, politicians have hijacked the process. Without the benefit of independent studies, they saddle up to back proposals that deliver votes, where they should deliver rides.

Some 25 rapid transit projects already on the books remain unfunded. Meanwhile, political friends and would-be allies of Toronto’s mayor have promised more than $5 billion for a so-called SmartTrack project bumped to top priority without the backing of a single feasibility study from city planners.

The studies have just started - city staff filed a preliminary update Thursday - but we might as well put the tunnel-boring machines in the ground because, y’know, elections are in the air, and in this round, transit funding is a huge vote-getter.

Each federal party has promised SmartTrack funding; so have the provincial Liberals. And all this comes before anyone even knows if the proposal delivers on the promise.

The city planning exercise - called “Feeling Congested?” - was supposed to look at the more than 30 rapid-transit projects on the city’s books and ask: What problems are we trying to solve, and is this the most efficient way to address them?

Then ask: What transit technology (special buses, LRT, subway, heavy rail) would best provide the most suitable service, given the current and future demand?

The approach is eminently reasonable if the goal is to deliver a sustainable, sensible, non-politicized vision to advance the region’s transit needs at a rapid pace.

Now, all hope is almost gone that our politicians will do the right thing. They will do something.

Citizen demands and frustration over inaction ensure this. But what will we get? At what cost?

“Feeling Congested” promised to evaluate each project from a network perspective. How does a particular project close a gap, provide a link, open a corridor, complete the grid or network of rapid transit options needed to get people moving to jobs across the GTA?

The key question is not whether a particular proposal is good - we’d love them all - but, considering the alternatives, and limited funds and future demands, is this what we should build now?

Think of that when you read the preliminary report going to the executive committee next week.

Caveats include:

SmartTrack does not pass through “significant areas of population not already served by high frequency and high capacity rapid transit.” Neither does it serve many areas planned for residential growth that are not already served by rapid transit.

In other words, SmartTrack is potentially a duplication of service.

In case you missed that message, Metrolinx highlights it in a letter to the city: Do not suggest SmartTrack is a parallel service to the $13.5-billion expanded GO service (Regional Express Rail or RER) that’s coming, warns Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig.

SmartTrack would use GO tracks, GO technology and several GO stations, but with more frequent service - essentially a shared service. The commuter doesn’t care about that; riders just want to get to work. But Mayor John Tory does. He has sold it as a separate service, delivering passengers where the current system and plans are lacking.

But an independent and parallel service would be “unaffordable and unworkable,” McCuaig writes. Instead, promote it as an “incremental increase in RER service.” To do otherwise is to run a great “risk of creating unmet expectation.”

To be clear, the new RER plan will use up track and corridor capacity on the GO lines. Additional capacity comes at a significant cost.

There is the entirely untested matter of the western leg of Tory’s SmartTrack vision, out to the airport corporate centre. Then there is the eastern section that runs so close to the planned Scarborough subway that city staff have been doing spaghetti turns attempting to find a route that moves the subway to the east far enough from the subway, and then back to McCowan Rd., without anyone noticing the gerrymandering.

And there is the tiny matter of how Toronto is to pay its share - $2.6 billion that surely will grow beyond $3 billion when studies are done.

Then this: If Metrolinx, funded by provincial tax dollars all Torontonians pay, is ramping up service in those very SmartTrack corridors, if the SmartTrack stops inside Toronto offer service largely available today, and if the stops outside the city borders are for passengers in York and Peel regions, why are Toronto property owners being asked to contribute an extra $3 billion for something the mayor’s campaign team cooked up?

Worse, why would the federal political parties earmark money for such a plan when projects quadruple the scope and cost go begging?

Pardon commuters who fall ill riding into work Monday.