Time for Torontonians and their governments to get serious about streetcars

nationalpost.com
July 23, 2015
By Chris Selley

If the Great Pyramid of Giza had come in three inches taller than its intended height, its reputed architect, Hemon, might reasonably have petitioned pharaoh for mercy. None is owed the contractor who somehow managed to lay concrete foundations for new streetcar tracks on Leslie Street, between Queen Street and Eastern Avenue, that were three inches too tall, which necessitated tearing them up and starting again, subjecting that poor neighbourhood to yet more dust, noise, stress and loss of business.

It was a mind-boggling screw-up that will come at no cost to taxpayers, we are assured, but at some excess cost to Leslievillians’ collective sanity.

It’s been nearly 17 months since they started tearing up Leslie Street. We learned this week of another delay: it will be mid-August before Leslie is open to traffic, and the end of September before streetcars will be rolling from Queen Street south into the gargantuan new Leslie Barns. That will put the project - dead simple, on its face; a few hundred metres of streetcar track on flat terrain - nearly a year behind schedule and wildly over budget. To be fair, much of the cost overrun involves replacing water mains. In no defensible budgeting process should water mains come as a surprise, however.

Toronto Transit Commission spokesman Brad Ross says the agency is bound and determined to learn lessons from this and every other project. But at root, he says, “we are a transit operator. We deliver transit to the City of Toronto...There has been discussion amongst some that perhaps there’s going to come a point where the TTC’s focus should remain solely on operations, and perhaps others should be delivering these projects in the future.”

“That’s a political decision,” he observes. Indeed. It’s one well worth considering.

That said, the TTC’s bad project management reputation is not entirely its own fault. It serves a peculiar clientele, by which I mean Torontonians, and operates under governments for which speed and efficiency are by no means priorities. On St. Clair, it faced downright unhinged opposition from residents and businesses, and a bizarre court injunction ordering it to down tools; on the Spadina subway extension, an Ontario Ministry of Labour investigation saw work stop for an utterly preposterous four months. City council can’t stick to a decision to save its life and we cheer them on: a Toronto Star editorial this week called for returning to the Scarborough LRT plan. Rotating subway closures are finally addressing years of underfunding and neglect, and we complain like mad.

And when it comes to streetcars, we haven’t given ourselves the tools to succeed. Caught between those who love streetcars and those who despise them, we’ve bashed out a compromise-infected network that doesn’t run nearly as smoothly as it could. The TTC has gradually expanded signal priority for streetcars - i.e., operators can extend green lights and in some cases advanced greens, allowing left-turning cars to clear the way. But it’s absurd to hold up a public transit vehicle so private vehicles can turn left in the first place. It’s equally absurd to allow parking along routes where streetcars compete with traffic. A child could do the math.

Other progress has been made: rear-door boarding, towing illegally parked cars during rush hour. (What a concept!) Others sit on the shelf. There are nine stops on King Street between Bathurst and Yonge. Nine! In two kilometres! For decades we’ve talked about closing King Street downtown to traffic, at least at rush hour - a fine idea, in my view, but goodness knows there are easier, less politically radioactive improvements available in the meantime. (I say that now. Just wait until the first teary deputation from Save the Simcoe Streetcar Stop.)

None of these are my own ideas; they’re out there in the wild, just waiting to be adopted. The single best argument for streetcars over buses is that they carry far more people from A to B. Well, not when they’re stuck in traffic, they don’t. In honour of the long-suffering residents of Leslie Street, let’s finally get serious. Hate streetcars? Bully for you; they’re not going away. It helps no one not to make the best of them.