Dear Dalton McGuinty: Show us the Money!!

Posted on September 5, 2008 at 10:09 am by jamesbow

TTC Santa 3, by Word Freak

(This post has been crossposted to Transit Toronto and Bow. James Bow)

It’s strange how the prospect of a plan to significantly improve and expand public transportation infrastructure in the Greater Toronto Area leaves me more discouraged than hopeful. But that’s the tone of the little voice that’s starting to speak at the back of my mind as I hear that Metrolinx, the regional agency set up by the McGuinty government to study the future transit needs of the GTA, is set to release a $55 billion plan chalk full of ambitious transit expansion proposals.

The problem is, this is the second grand plan to be released by the provincial player in two years. In July 2007, McGuinty shifted the political landscape with his ambitious MoveOntario 2020 proposal. This plan called for $17 billion in spending between 2008 and 2020 to build LRT lines, busways and subway extensions across the Greater Toronto Area and in Kitchener-Waterloo. The great advantage of the plan is that it implemented proposals that various cities had had on their books for a while. McGuinty promised that Queen’s Park would cover the municipal third of the capital cost, and it promised to fasttrack various environmental assessments to get shovels in the ground as soon as 2009.

MoveOntario 2020 promised to implement Toronto’s Transit City proposal whole-hog, to put LRT lines on — and, in some cases, beneath — Finch, Sheppard, Don Mills, Jane and Eglinton Avenues at a cost of at least $6 billion. The centrepiece of this plan was an LRT mini-subway on Eglinton Avenue between roughly Jane and Leslie. Featuring 90 metre platforms set between 500-800 metres apart, such a line could carry near subway loads, and certainly had the capacity to handle Eglinton’s projected crowds.

Along comes Metrolinx, whose draft $55 billion proposal argues that an underground LRT has insufficient capacity (an assertion I disagree with), and that a subway might be a better choice (an assertion I’m willing to entertain). There’s an odd proposal that the line could be a western extension of the Scarborough RT, but that’s simply ludicrous to my mind, since the Scarborough RT combines LRT capacity limitations with the high costs of subway construction. Either way, the result is a bit of a car-crash. The Eglinton LRT and subway proposals have met head on in the middle of a tight alleyway, and the drivers are now shouting at each other over who should have the right-of-way.

The debate over whether a subway or an LRT should go beneath Eglinton Avenue is a distraction to me. Either would be fine. Eglinton can support a subway, but an LRT can support Eglinton for less money. The questions we should be asking are, what can we afford to build, and what are we more likely to find funding to build? And, most importantly, what can we start building within the next two years?

The sum total of Metrolinx’s proposals are certainly tasty. If implemented, we get rapid transit of some form beneath Eglinton, we get an east-west subway through the downtown core. We get substantially improved GO train service, and even an extension of proposed Transit City LRT lines up Jane and Don Mills into York Region. We get light rail and bus rapid transit projects in York Region, Mississauga, Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo. We get a new network that makes it much easier to get around the Greater Toronto Area without driving. That’s worth spending money on, in my opinion.

But the plan also costs $55 billion — a number that’s sure to inflate in the coming years. If we hope to build these things by, say, 2030, that’s an investment of $2.5 billion per year. Compare that to the less ambitious MoveOntario 2020, which called for $17 billion in total spending by 2020, or roughly $1 billion per year (although that number has also increased through inflation and the fact that the time frame has compressed). Worse, in both cases, bread-and-butter issues such as funding for replacement streetcars and buses remain unaddressed.

So while I would be delighted if we could implement Metrolinx’s draft proposals, I have to turn to the McGuinty government and the people behind Metrolinx and say, “show me the money.” Indeed, McGuinty needs to start showing us the money to prove that he has a commitment even to the projects of the less ambitious MoveOntario 2020 plan. And the clock is ticking.

The delight I took over the original MoveOntario proposal was on the assurance that these projects would be fasttracked — that the environmental assessments were largely done or could be quickly done, and the province only had to sign its chequebook to get shovels in the ground. Provincial and municipal politicians looked me in the eye and told me that we would see construction begin on certain projects before the next municipal elections in 2010. In 2007, my great hope was not that the next big development after the release of the MoveOntario 2020 study would be yet another study. Whatever plan we choose, I feel that we need to have shovels in the ground by 2010, or nothing will happen.

Proposals to increase public transit infrastructure in southern Ontario has, for the past twenty years, been little more than vapourware. In this period, politicians have come forward again and again to propose great and ambitious plans before elections, only to find themselves too short of money to implement those grand plans after they are elected. Instead, the plans are studied to death. Network 2011, Let’s Move — they’ve all been consigned to the dustbins of history, and unless concrete work is underway by the time politicians are running for re-election, then the promise to build these new lines simply becomes a recycled election promise, of something the politicians will do before the next time they face re-election. Or the time after that. Or the time after that.

And Ontarians simply cannot wait any longer.

Photo source: Roger Cullman.

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12 Comments

  1. I think the difference on Eglinton comes from whether you see it as a local or regional corridor. Local = LRT, Regional = subway. The line would be a bit too long as LRT end-to-end.

    As for ICTS, I believe the system can reach subway capacity with 9-car Mark II trains, although that would require a massive reconfig of the existing SRT. If that were required, it would make more sense to convert the SRT to subway technology and have the Eglinton and BD lines merge in a Y to STC. This would allow for alternating trains — crosstown Eglinton and crosstown Bloor-Danforth, heading west from Malvern.

    With the pissing contest that’s now going on with Giambrone and Miller, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and Mississauga got LRT lines before Toronto. I would do that just out of spite. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and if Metrolinx wants a subway on Eglinton, why should we challenge it if they’re paying for it?

    GravatarComment by M. Briganti — September 5, 2008 @ 1:45 pm

  2. I,d be happy with simply some stable transit funding.

    GravatarComment by Justin Bernard — September 5, 2008 @ 2:25 pm

  3. This article is very premature. The Metrolinx plan will not cost $55 billion. That number comes from a leaked draft. I suspect it will be much less.

    Secondly, the MoveOntario funding was never supposed to come out of the province’s current account. It will be funded in a sort of mortgage-style scheme to be paid off over the long long (long) term.

    The idea was it’s better to have a mortgage than an infrastructure deficit.

    GravatarComment by Triceratops — September 5, 2008 @ 4:20 pm

  4. Sorry, meant to say 8-car trainsets, not 9.

    GravatarComment by M. Briganti — September 5, 2008 @ 8:51 pm

  5. Metrolinx started out with the MoveOntario plan, but this quickly balooned into a much larger scheme for a network of transit lines. “Be Bold!” was the watchword, and the cost of the proposed network reflected this. That sort of money was not on the table, and Metrolinx had to cut back to a more modest $55-million proposal in the leaked version.

    That’s the ballpark where the total still sits, and it does not include money for highway construction, increased operating costs or local services.

    The biggest gap is the presumption of a 1/3 federal contribution. If this doesn’t materialize, either Queen’s Park and the municipalities cough up more, or the plan isn’t viable.

    GravatarComment by Steve Munro — September 6, 2008 @ 7:02 am

  6. Sorry, that is of course “ballooned” before someone accuses me of poor spelling among my other sins.

    GravatarComment by Steve Munro — September 6, 2008 @ 7:04 am

  7. I don’t think it’s viable even as it is now. Transit City has already ballooned to $10 billion (from $6 bill), so you may see pressure to convert that to a bus rapid transit scheme to get the cost back to $6 bill.

    GravatarComment by M. Briganti — September 6, 2008 @ 1:16 pm

  8. Dare I point out that part of that increase is due to the Eglinton LRT/Subway that our friends at Metrolinx would like to make even more expensive as an RT line?

    There are other ways to get the TC costs down without a wholesale conversion to BRT, and there are several TC lines that BRT is simply unable to handle. High capacity BRT demands corridors much wider than the available space.

    Both BRT and LRT have limits, but BRT advocates have a bad habit of pointing out only those applicable to the system they don’t favour.

    GravatarComment by Steve Munro — September 7, 2008 @ 2:19 am

  9. If a subway line nearly doubled in price like that, you’d be screaming murder, but since it’s LRT, it’s OK.

    Diluting $10B and spending it on local routes (that won’t act as trunk lines and draw riders away from adjacent bus routes) is not money well spent. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. I wouldn’t even call TC a network, because, for example, nobody but passengers on Jane are going to use the Jane LRT.

    We’re better off taking that money and concentrating it on a downtown relief line. Spending hundreds of millions on Finch and Jane LRTs is complete nonsense. The buses are nowhere near capacity on those routes.

    GravatarComment by M. Briganti — September 7, 2008 @ 2:31 pm

  10. I can see Eglinton as a good candidate to act as an artery (arterial I guess is the term you boys would use). The central part is planned to be tunnelled per Giambrone’s plan – and the west end has plenty of spare space where some expressway had been planned.

    Making its a true artery might cost more – but it would do more.

    GravatarComment by N Clawson — September 7, 2008 @ 10:26 pm

  11. Transit City is becoming very expensive proposition not only to build but to operate. The TTC’S obcession with 100% low floor streetcars is a recipe for disaster. A 70% low floor would work on our system with little or no modifications. With 10 billion dollars you can complete Sheppard from Downsview to Scarborough town ( 2.8 Billion) Then I would connect Danforth to it at Scarborough town (1.2 Billion) A busway to malvern from there (300 million). A downtown relief line from Eglinton and Don mills to queen and Dufferin, via under Queen or Richmond street. My cost comparisons for Sheppard and Danforth extensions are from the EA sources on those lines, also Richard Soberman’s estimates. The Busway was a rough estimate to Malvern. Even still if the Downtown relief line costs 3 billion, give or take we would still be below the 10 billion for transit city. 2.7 billion would be left for subway fleet purchases, buses, heck even to re-establish a trolley bus fleet of 400 articulated buses with two yards would be about 600 Million give or take based on Vancouver’s purchases of these articulates. These buses last longer, are proven faster with better comfort. Our Hybrid buses are presently burning out batteries like there is no Tommorow. Adding that many buses with subway and some LRT expansion would improve our city. Routes Like Dufferin which carry more passengers than Don mills and Jane was not addressed with Transit city. A trolley bus conversion for Dufferin, Jane, Don mills, Finch east and west, Ossington and Harbord routes with Lrt extensions of St. clair to Scarlett rd, fill the missing link between ex east and west, run the new cherry route up church street to Bathurst, then north to St.clair west station, sort of like a belt line. As for Eglinton, let Metro linx look after it, but in the mean time, add at least 20 buses to each segment of it, east and west and that should help a bit.

    GravatarComment by R Bal — September 8, 2008 @ 5:22 am

  12. I am writing to correct an assertion that busses are not nearly at capacity on the Jane Line.  Indeed they are.   I have taken the TTC every day for the past 12 years, and at least 85% of the time busses are so full in the mornings that they simply pass by our stops altogether.  Quite often 2 or 3 busses go by before one has sufficient capacity to pick me up.  To say that this is frustrating is an understatement.  In this residents opinion, Jane Street definitely needs the LRT.

    GravatarComment by Anthony Pauk — April 20, 2009 @ 1:55 pm

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