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Public Consultations on Long-Term Transit Plans May Begin Later This Year

If council approves City staff's plan, we'll be talking a lot more about transit before year's end.

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Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tapesonthefloor/6932860471/"}tapesonthefloor{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Back in July, after several months of controversial debates, emergency meetings, and the upending of Rob Ford’s subway dreams, city council voted to explore adding a robust, long-term transit vision to the City’s Official Plan, which is currently under review.

In order to help facilitate the development of that vision—a successor to the short-lived OneCity plan floated by TTC Chair Karen Stintz and vice-chair Glenn De Baeremaeker earlier this year—public consultations will be held to help get a sense of what Torontonians most want from their transit system. Today, the Planning and Growth Management Committee endorsed a proposal for those consultations [PDF], which may begin quite soon. The current proposal calls for:

  • A first round of consultations to take place by the end of this year. For this initial stage the city will “present background information, establish the range of transit options to be considered, and present proposed decision making criteria for selected preferred transit options.”
  • A second round of consultations to take place in the first quarter of 2013, which will actually identify recommended transit options.

Importantly, the consultations will also discuss which elements of any transit plan should get priority, in an attempt to build some consensus not just about what a built-out system might look like, but what our most urgent needs are.

The proposal passed without much debate, and will now move on to Ford’s cabinet-like Executive Committee and city council as a whole for consideration. (Perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, Karen Stintz—who came into the room soon after this issue was discussed—wasn’t present for the vote itself.)

And while many councillors hope to build momentum for these big-picture, long-term transit goals, Toronto’s outgoing director of transportation planning, Rod McPhail, had these parting words for the committee today:

“There’ve been a lot of really good plans over the years…but what’s always happened is that the funding evaporates and disappears. I think that our very very first priority has to be to ensure that that $8.4 billion that has been committed is spent.”

That’s the $8.4 billion the province has said it will provide for the light rail lines council re-approved, in defiance of Ford, a few months ago. Where funding for this long-term strategy may come from remains, as always, an open question.

Comments

  • http://paul.kishimoto.name Paul Kishimoto

    Hells yes.

    Reading the actual proposal, however, there’s much more in scope than just transit—they suggest “also all of the [Official] Plan’s other transportation policies, including those pertaining to auto travel, surface transit priority, active transportation (walking and cycling), travel demand management, the identification of planned transportation infrastructure (road and transit) and the protection of transportation rights-of-way.”

    Without exaggeration, it’s time for everyone from Cycle Toronto to the Clean Train Coalition to the Toronto Board of Trade to get together and mobilize the War on the (above-capacity) Car that’s so far been only a straw man in mind of the mayor. I think there are significant points of high-level agreement across most grassroots groups, and unless they can focus on the big picture and common gains to be made (and then educate the public about these), small-minded bickering will lead to low-quality public input and eventually stasis.

    • Guest

      Purposefully inflammatory transit activists such as yourself are precisely why we’re in the transit mess we’re in.
      The proposal was, in my opinion, a well-balanced and sorely needed big picture view of transportation planning. Focusing, for the first time ever in my memory, on “an attempt to build some consensus not just about what a built-out system might look like, but what our most urgent needs are” is a not a stroke of genious (because it’s obvious that’s what we should have been doing all along), but is a very courageous stand to take, because THAT step has been circumvented &/or ignored in Toronto transit planning for decades. Bravo! for whomever added this in to the mix.
      Cars and vehicles are absolutely needed in this and any city. There are many things that transit is neither designed nor funded to do – such as carry large, bulky objects such as groceries, building supplies, multiple children in large strollers, etc….

      I live on a streetcar route. To get most places downtown it takes between 20-30 minutes to drive (15 minutes on weekends). However, to get there via streetcar I have to plan at least 60-80 minutes. But if I drive 20 minutes to a subway station and take subway to my destination I shave at least 20 minutes off my commute time, and the padding time for the ‘unknown’ issues is almost nil. If you want to get me out of my car, then I’d suggest that you advocate to improve the horrible transit we have now.
      The way to get car commuters out of their cars and onto transit is not to “mobilize the War on the (above-capacity) Car”, but to do as the proposal states and identify and satisfy our most urgent transit needs. I’ve yet to hear a single down-town transit advocate ask any of those car commuters: WHY they continue to drive their cars; whether they’d actually PREFER to take transit (you’ll find should you think to ask that most would); or WHAT kind/condition of transit they need but currently aren’t getting. Downtown transit advocates seem to think nothing of asking (actually peevishly demanding) that THOSE people endure two to three hour transit commutes to satisfy some ideological need to make “war on the car”, without ever bothering to ask what conditions need to be met so that we are actually wisely investing our tax-dollars by creating useful transit that satifisfies ACTUAL transit needs.
      So here’s to building GOOD QUALITY transit, not just any transit so that we can say we built something.
      And how about we advocate for all radical transit advocates to put down their “war on {insert hated transit object of choice here}” weapons, and everyone start looking for common ground and being respectful of ALL transportation needs, riders, commuters, workers, etc…

      • http://paul.kishimoto.name Paul Kishimoto

        That’s a lot of boxes you put me in, Anonymous—”inflammatory”, “radical”, “transit activist”—but I’m not the straw man you’re looking for.

        I’ll apologize for neglecting to use sarcasm tags and scare quotes, but if you reread my comment you’ll see that we agree. The article here focuses on ‘[public] transit’; I pointed out that the proposal/consultation covers ‘transportation’ writ broadly.

        You quote me NOT denying that cars have a role. It’s equally undeniable that there are too many of them on our roads. You claim to define THE way of getting commuters out of cars, but focus only on one facet of the supply side: better transit (oddly, despite cheering the holistic approach, you don’t mention active transport).

        That will surely be part of the solution, but so will demand-side measures: congestion charges, tolls, reserved lanes, adjusted parking rates or availability, vehicle licensing fees and gas taxes. These mechanisms address a simple ‘why’: too-cheap driving motivates more people to drive than is optimal. By reducing congestion they would improve traffic flow, reduce commute times, raise revenue for other transport projects, etc.

        Some people who actually DO claim to be “transit advocates” have tried to take these off the table, as a way of avoiding knee-jerk “War on the Car” outcry that might damage their other proposals. That’s a choice of political expediency. I’m suggesting that a big-picture consultation offers the opportunity to seriously look at all policy measures without making that kind of pre-emptive and self-defeating concessions. I said it tongue-in-cheek; obviously that was misleading. Sorry.

        Charging a bit to induce on-the-fence drivers to switch modes, and then reusing that revenue to fund other transport improvements, offers a double win that could be a “[wiser investment of] our tax-dollars” than merely building better transit with other tax revenue. Labelling certain policy measures as “weapons” in an effort to preclude reasoned discussion seems pretty ideological to me.

    • John Duncan

      On one hand, I’m glad they’re looking at all the Official Plan’s transportation policies, per your comment. On the other hand, they’re still not really taking the holistic approach that is necessary. Transportation and land use are tightly linked, and I worry that we’re still not thinking that way. Everyone in this City should live within (pleasant) walking distance of their daily needs; that’s recreation, shopping and potential places of employment. While the Avenues in the OP are great, we’re still living in a place that rigidly separates land uses (look at the massive Employment Districts in Scarborough and Northern Etobicoke that noone can walk or cycle to), rather than appreciating that a lot of employment and residential uses are compatible.

      NB: I’m not saying everyone needs to live down the street from their job; I’m saying that it should be an option that’s open to them.

  • anonymousblogger

    The reason why we are not seeing any transit expansion, is that City Hall councillors and especially queens park politicians are just to stupid and too corrupt to do anything. Years ago, I left Toronto for East Asia, and boy I’m am glad I made that decision. There, especially in Korea, there is No bs. no sympathy for those who can’t make up there mind.

  • sam

    Instead of more consulting – when will rapid building start?