FOR
JERAD GALLINGER
We need cars. That can be hard to admit sometimes, especially for the environmentalists, cycling advocates, and municipal politicians tirelessly campaigning to scale back the presence of automobiles in our city. Those who fight for a car-reduced society do so with good reason: inefficient gas-guzzlers are a blight on the environment, and careless drivers can be a danger to cyclists and pedestrians.
Idealistic sentiments aside, however, the truth remains that cars aren't going to disappear anytime soon. And as long as they're here, it's in the city's best interests to ensure that infrastructure is in place to allow autos to move quickly and easily, in order to avoid the economic and environmental damage caused by traffic congestion.
The typical response to this surprisingly controversial position is that there are enough ways to get around the city without driving—namely via public transit—giving car owners no excuse for keeping up their nature-harming ways. But that claim is based on a utopian TTC that has yet to, and may never, come to fruition.
While Toronto has lofty goals for improving access to public transportation, projects like Transit City and the subterranean Downtown Relief Line require huge sums of cash to get off the ground—money City Hall simply doesn't have. And although local officials seem confident that the needed billions are forthcoming from the federal and provincial governments, the ailing economy and competing priorities outside of Toronto mean that such support is far from a done deal. In the meantime, residents have to get around somehow, and for most that means driving.
Even if Toronto were to become a public transit Shangri-La, it would still need transport trucks—and lots of them—to move goods across town (that is, unless TTC Chair Adam Giambrone has hatched a secret plan to attach freight trailers to the backs of buses and streetcars, which would be one hell of a cargo coup). A bike can't move a twenty-tonne shipping container from a west-end factory to an east-end retailer; a tractor-trailer can. Even trains can't do the job alone: while moving cargo from city to city by rail is easily accomplished, trucks are needed to get goods from the train station to their final destination elsewhere in the city. In other words, roads go where rails don't.
So here's the crux of the argument: while reducing Torontonians' dependence on automobiles is a laudable goal, many residents' transportation needs are simply not being met by the remaining options, namely cycling and the TTC. City Hall's plan for reducing traffic congestion needs to be more than fervently hoping that public transit money will come down from on high. A concerted effort needs to be made to address issues relevant to drivers. Because while cars may not be in our distant future, they are critical to our here and now.
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| AGAINST
CHRISTOPHER BIRD
The Sun's article is singularly witless, and not just because it's little more than an extended rant against everything that pisses drivers off ("cyclists don't get tickets like they should! I hate waiting at traffic lights! Transit boosters are Nazis who wanna take away my wheels! WAHHHHHHH") or because when an environmental professor compares the love of driving to the love of smoking, they miss the point and start talking about emissions.
It's witless because it's written by people who complain that the city doesn't spend enough money on making driving in the city better, but don't have any idea how to make it better. The Sun and Denzil Minnan-Wong might complain that city policy is anti-car, but if you want less congestion—and presumably we all do—then you need less traffic. There are two basic ways to get less traffic: fewer cars and more roads.
The Minnan-Wongs of the world complain that we've abandoned "more roads," but let's be realistic for a second here: without major city reconstruction, we can't fit any more roads into Toronto or even widen the major arteries we've already got. You simply can't make the Allen or the Gardiner or the 401 any wider: there are buildings right up to the edges of those roads. Expanding them would either require massive property purchasing on the part of the government or some of the largest uses of eminent domain powers in Canadian history. Maybe you can potentially expand the DVP. Experts aren't sure if that's safe, though, and even if it is it would be immensely expensive.
If you can't get more roads, then we need fewer cars. Here's the thing: although the Sun might not be happy about the tactics City Hall is using to attempt to give drivers an alternative to driving, it's worth noting that thus far the city has mostly used the carrot rather than the stick. It's only tried to make transit more attractive rather than creating policies designed to be punitive towards driving, so as to discourage unnecessary motoring.
That's a shame, because more punitive measures work. Congestion charges (as introduced in London, Singapore, and Stockholm) might be considered political suicide, but they invariably reduce traffic flow in downtown corridors and make the city less congested—which in turn means that those who still choose to drive gain a less stressful, higher-quality driving experience. They also raise funds for transit construction and operation, which is something else we need rather badly.
And that brings me to my final point: we need transit construction really, really badly. It's become a cliche for transit boosters to say we don't spend enough on improving our transit infrastructure, but that's because we don't. The successful cities of the twenty-first century will be those where people can get around once the price of gasoline skyrockets, and whether that point is five years from now or twenty-five, it's coming. We can either spend transportation dollars on strategies to help us get past that, or we can spend them on more roads, which are a short-term solution at best.
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Toronto is not a driving city, and it's poor urban development has made it that way and it's not going to get better without a huge overhaul. Making it more pedestrian and cyclist friendly is easier to do, and will improve both sides. Sure you need trucks, but without proper lanes and areas for cyclists their job is going to be just as hard as it's always been. Less clutter, less aggression, fewer accidents.
BTW, when I go downtown I drive only when absolutely necessary... and I f'ing hate it!
London's experience with congestion charges has apparently not been so successful. Analysis in the years following the CCZ's implementation in 2003 have shown that traffic was not dramatically reduced and in fact, while the number of chargeable (consumer) vehicles was reduced, the number of delivery vans, taxis and (yes) bicycles increased to the point that the net effect on traffic was only a 7% reduction on average, with some reports saying traffic had returned to pre-CCZ levels by 2007.
... but your analysis misses the counterfactual. If London hadn't implemented the CCZ in 2003, and even if we accept your statistics, traffic would probably have grown far worse than 93% or even 100% of 2003 volumes by 2007. The years 2003-2007 saw massive economic and population growth for London.
That the CCZ was able to maintain or even decrease traffic speaks to its success, such that no mainstream London politician now talks about abolishing it in the places where it works, namely the City and the West End. The westward extension into K&C is another matter.
This reminds me of Colbert's Formidable Opponent, where one side is ridiculously debating a point that makes no sense. Or perhaps and FOX News show...
Nobody's talking about eliminating cars or roads in the city, which is the extreme stance Jerad is taking here. They're talking about increasing public transit and making driving less appealing. Transport trucks will still have the same roads to drive on, and those who NEED to drive (which, in reality, is far less than those who DO drive) will still be able to.
If you add more roads, then you're inviting MORE traffic. If people think it will be easier to drive, then they'll drive. If you expand the DVP, I guarantee it will STILL be jammed, except now you'll have even more cars trying to squeeze into the same end point. So congestion will worsen.
If you increase public transit and restrict driving, then you'll see a drop in congestion and increase in either public transit use or local development and use.
A utopian TTC isn't what anybody is asking for. We want a TTC that reaches all points of the city with relative ease and speed. If more people use it, because it's more accessible and less aggravating than driving, then their revenue will rise and maybe they can one day be self-sufficient again.
The real argument is that a 1 or 2 minute slowdown is unacceptable for motorists. The first paragraph talks about moving away from cars, but the rest of the essay is about a car free society.
I am surprised that this is being cast as a debate, since reducing Torontonians' reliance on automobiles also helps drivers get around the city. The need for what we transportation planners call a 'multi-modal' transportation system is practically planning cannon these days, as it is cleaner, more efficient, more reliable, and more human than a purely auto-oriented system.
This debate is practically moot in Toronto, as the city is almost completely built-out (no more space to add roads). This debate would be a lot more heated were this site Mississaugaist or perhaps Bramptonist. Car-use is even more prevalent in the subburbs; in fact it's nigh-impossible to get around without a car (or two, or three). It will be even more difficult to make places like Mississauga less auto-oriented, both politically and planning-wise, than Toronto.
You should rename this feature "Chris Bird schools a guy."
This is easily the funniest comment I've read all week. (If only it weren't at my expense...)
I have noticed that the average parking space for an automobile is LARGER than the typical office cubicle. Even the driving lane between the parking spaces is larger than the aisle between cubicles. Maybe the supervisor has the same size, but why give the automobile more space than your desk?
It is easier to ride your bicycle in the inner city than the suburbs. The sprawl puts places far apart, making commuting in the suburbs very time consuming. In the inner city, because of the higher density and mixed use buildings, it is easier to bicycles. Building bicycles lanes and paths would make it even better.
For longer distances, we need more pubic transit. Not cars or sprawl.
We have lots more room to build highways if we look back to our traditions. We could easily turn the Don or Humber underground, tear down inefficient homes in the Annex that don't help the city move, build another deck on the 401 and Gardiner to double its capacity.
What about flying vehicles and sky pods for parking? There's a real missed opportunity, Toronto could be the city of the future!
It's very simple.
Time to take TTC to work: 1 hour
Time to drive to work: 15-20 minutes
So it's not only faster, but more comfortable (I always get a seat) and I don't have to smell anyone else.
If that ever changes, like a subway stop at Queen and Pape, then I might consider switching.
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/images/subway-5113-01.gif ?
Elsewhere on the site to which you link (all emphasis mine):
"TTC Chairman Adam Giambrone speculated that a Downtown Relief Line might become a necessity, although he didn't foresee it being built until after 2018"
"Metrolinx ... placed the Downtown Relief Line (or a Queen subway) in its most optimistic proposals, with construction to take place in 25 years"
Since the DRL has been at the proposal stage (off and on) for 25 years already, don't hold your breath for it.
Time to drive to work if everyone now taking TTC also drives to work: 45-50 minutes
For me it is very simple;
TTC to work - 45 minutes (on a good day)
Motorcycle to work - 25 minutes + any time spent looking for parking + frustration of traffic
Bicycle to work - 25 minutes, no parking woes, no insurance, feel great, heart is healthier, no fat, strong legs, better sex life.
I always get a seat on my bike but I do have to smell everyone else's exhaust which is worse than B.O.
Ah, I love the "but the delivery trucks!" argument. If only those automobiles that need to be on the roads were on the roads, two lanes would be sufficient for most of the arterials.
Sometimes I think we're trying to do too much with our streetscape on too few streets. On St. Clair for instance, we're trying to accommodate transit and cars and pedestrians and cyclists and basically annoying all of them. I think it might be a better idea to identify streets without high order surface transit as cycling arteries (which is why a Bloor-Danforth bikelane makes sense to me - no streetcar ROW).
I suggest revisiting St Clair. The city is not trying to accomodate bicyclists on St Clair at all. They are having enough problems with pedestrians, ttc and cars as it stands.
I do agree with you sentiment. Davenport is an example of a of a good street for bikes. There are bike lanes, no street cars and limited bus service.
As other commenters have noted, Toronto is not fighting a "war on cars" so much as it is failing to build efficient transit.
A well-known result of traffic planning is that the speed of traffic is limited by the average door-to-door trip times on public transit, and is not really a function of available road space (the Downs-Thompson paradox). This is because as transit speed increases, drivers will abandon their cars for transit, which is cheaper.
The lesson is therefore that speed is paramount in public transit. However, this lesson has been ignored by Toronto's transit planners -- there is no serious plan for new rapid transit south of Eglinton, where traffic is worst. I don't count the DRL as a serious plan, as all the TTC has promised is to "look at it" after Transit City, a decade from now; neither do I count Transit City surface lines, which are projected to run about as fast as the buses they replace.
So regardless of bike lanes and wider sidewalks, Torontonians will be condemned to traffic hell until intelligent transit planning takes over.
Since the Spadina Expressway was halted in 1969, no expressways or roads have been built within the city of Toronto, but at the same time, transit development slowed dramatically.
What Toronto is forced to manage now is a city where public transit is at capacity and road expansion is not possible, even if it were, more roads just lead to more cars. So what needs to be done in order to avoid or mitigate road congestion is provide choices to citizens to take alternative modes of transport. Be they highly efficient public transit, highly flexible but highly inefficient automobiles, low carbon footprint cycling, or walking, the fact is that 70% of Torontonians don't think they have an option. They think that the only way they can move around their city is by car, and that has to be corrected because the automobile is a mode of transit that can only scale so far.
If you look at it from the perspective of a municipality trying to run on a tight budget, whenever you build a highway, you're inviting people to leave your city, which means that you're losing their tax dollars every time you build a road. On top of this, the hidden cost of bedroom suburbs lies in a hugely increased capital and maintenance cost to infrastructure per square foot. The more we sprawl, the harder it is for a municipality to maintain, service, or improve its infrastructure (water mains, hydro, roadways, transit).
From my point of view we have to look back at the twentieth century as a time when we used the automobile to colonize North America, and now that we've done that, and our municipalities have reached a breaking point in terms of an area to population ratio, we have start densifying our suburbs and reducing our dependence on private automobiles.
Hey hold on. The Spadina Expressway was canceled in 1971. There certainly have been expressways and roads built in Toronto since it was canceled. The 404 and Black Creek were extended for starters. The TTC growth dramatically slowed after the completion of the lions share of the University-Spadina line.
Well, I should have prefaced that with, "Jane Jacobs moved to Tronto in 1969, who lead the campaign to halt the Spadina Expressway."
Oh, and the City of Toronto doesn't build 400 series highways, the province does.
I think Toronto should consider a "personalized transit service" which would consist of 1000s of minivans. If you wanted to go from A-B, the nearest minivan with a seat going in your direction would be signalled from your GPS-enabled cell phone and you'd be picked up at your location and dropped off (perhaps after dropping off others along the way) at your destination. This system would be powered by the latest in load- and route-planning software, and would be attractive from the Fantasygoat's point of view (#10 above) and also from the transit user's perspective of not having to use higher-order transit (subways) to get from A-B. Often times taking the subway is not practical and who wants to transfer 3 times to get from say College-Dovercourt to St. Clair and Lansdowne? Can some smart U of T engineering student model such a system to see how effective it would be? What would wait times be like? How many minibuses would be needed? Would congestion on the YUS and Bloor subway lines be reduced because people could get from A-B directly instead of going south then east via subway? Those kinds of things. I think Denmark was contemplating such a system.
I wonder what Denzil Minnan-Wong thinks of road pricing for reducing congestion charges: the market-based solution should be every right-winger's dream! Maybe he can be persuaded to push this issue at City Council instead of coming up with ridiculous sound bites like the War on Cars.
They do this low-tech elsewhere.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeepney
*http://wikitravel.org/en/Mexico_City#By_bus_2
I'll leave it up to a smart transit planner to compare the benefits.
Second try at leaving this comment (grrrr):
With respect to the DRL, the single biggest problem is that there appears to be a fifth column working inside the TTC against this scheme and in favour of decades-old proposals to increase the capacity of the existing line. We have never seen a proper comparison of the relative cost of all the add-ons needed to jam more people on the Yonge (and Bloor) lines and the construction cost for the DRL east leg.
>We have never seen a proper comparison of the relative cost of all the add-ons needed to jam more people on the Yonge (and Bloor) lines and the construction cost for the DRL east leg.
Do you have any insight as to why? I mean the DLR proposal just seems (to me) to be one of those things that's like "duhhh, of course!"
The TTC has had a scheme for massive reconstruction of Bloor-Yonge for decades, as well as a desire to completely resignal the entire line to run trains much more closely together.
Both of these ignore the huge disruption of construction, not to mention the creation of severe bottlenecks in the subway network.
The DRL only came back onto the radar because of efforts from activists and Council support. For their trouble, Councillors have been branded obstructionist with respect to the RH line. Funny idea that ... the intent is to improve the network and we should at least know what the options and costs are.