Transit problems getting out of hand across the country.

[cfloryan]

Cost, both for the municipality to collect and enforce collection for sales tax (going over business books isn't something they do today) and for the business which could now be audited and has to perform paperwork with an additional government.

It's far cheaper, both for the business and municipality, to have the federal government do it and send down the funds.

Smaller areas would find it essentially impossible to collect a sales tax. The amount collected would be eliminated by hiring a single collections agent and the overhead of doing that job correctly. $30,000 a year to some of these places would make a huge difference in whether that old bridge gets fixed this decade, or not.

Exactly. It's very bureaucratic and inefficient to fund transit with new forms of municipal taxation.

The correct way to fund this is for the feds to match any dollars spent by the municipality on infrastructure. This was an immensely effective method used in the US in the late 70's to get massive subway systems built in short amounts of time. Washington's and the Bay area BART came about thanks to this funding regime.

The current HSRs (high speed rails) in the US are being funded the same way and (unless America goes bankrupt) you'll see a very high rate of HSR construction in the coming decade.

 

[Hipster Duck]

There are two questions that need to be asked here, and I think one is more important than the other. The first is "who pays?" and the second is "who plans?" Right now, the "city" plans transit improvements, meaning that the TTC or Metrolinx has a wish list, plans it and then comes to the provincial government for money. Under this arrangement, plans can be sunk in two ways: 1. the provincial government can withhold funding, as was the case when Mike Harris came to power, and, 2. the "city" can have a change of heart about the plan itself, even if provincial funding is secured, as was the case when Rob Ford trashed Transit City.

If the level of government that foots the bill is the same as the one that does the planning (ie. has a clear stake in having the plan get fulfilled), I think you will see more transportation projects getting off the ground. Ultimately, I think that some arm of the provincial government has to be responsible for planning major transportation projects, even if those projects fall entirely within the City of Toronto. It's next to impossible to change the power balance between the city and the province, given that nobody who has power will ever want to cede it, so you have to make sure that the government that holds the greater power and which ultimately calls the shots is also the one that's responsible for project planning.

 

[Dan416]

We need a National Transportation/Transit Strategy asap. Every other civilized western country has one except us.

 

[ssiguy2]

Just because Central Canada has done nothing for it's rapid transit systems in the last 20 years doesn't mean Canada as a whole hasn't.
Vancouver's SkyTrain , Calgary's CTrain, and, to a lesser extent, Edmonton's LRT are proof of that. Neither Calgary nor Vancouver had any rapid transit before 1980 but they have made up for lost time. By 2014 Vancouver will have 81km of SkyTrain and Calgary will have 55km of CTrain. More importantly both cities have seen a huge increase in the per capita transit ridership levels unlike Toronto. All cities in the country need stable transit funding but BC and Alberta have both shown that they can provide expanding mass transit even when funds are scarce.
Also I totally DISAGREE with funding transit based on population but rather on usuage. Why should London get less transit dollars than KWC when London manages with a smaller population to get 40% more riders? The more riders you have the more money you should get. That way you are encouraging transit use and providing more funds for cities that place it as a priority.

 

[Hipster Duck]

You know what, ssiguy? You're right. Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary built their systems from scratch after Toronto really stopped expanding its subway system, which was after the Spadina line opened in 1978. Greater Toronto has doubled its population since 1978 (adding, coincidentally, the population of Vancouver and Calgary combined), but the backbone of its transportation system remains essentially unchanged, whether it's road or rail.

Toronto is also the only city I know where they drew up plans, passed the EA and got the shovels rolling only to have some politician pull the plug on it - twice.

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

"...but the backbone of its transportation system remains essentially unchanged, whether it's road or rail."

I'd argue that GO's expansion during this period, for better or for worse, has been something of a "stealth" transit expansion, its signficance only seen in retrospect. I mean, how many GO lines and routes didn't even exist in 1978?

 

[gweed123]

Also I totally DISAGREE with funding transit based on population but rather on usuage. Why should London get less transit dollars than KWC when London manages with a smaller population to get 40% more riders? The more riders you have the more money you should get. That way you are encouraging transit use and providing more funds for cities that place it as a priority.

This sounds a lot to me like the No Child Left Behind Act passed by Bush. "If you do well, we'll give you money. If you don't, you get next to none".

How can a city make transit a priority if the cities that have already made it a priority are getting all the funding?

 

[Platform 27]

"...but the backbone of its transportation system remains essentially unchanged, whether it's road or rail."

I'd argue that GO's expansion during this period, for better or for worse, has been something of a "stealth" transit expansion, its signficance only seen in retrospect. I mean, how many GO lines and routes didn't even exist in 1978?

Good question. Per Wikipedia, in 1978 on the rail side GO just had Lakeshore E/W and Georgetown and was just beginning to switch from single-deck trains to BiLevels. They added Richmond Hill that year, then Milton, Stouffville and Bradford (Barrie) in 1981 and 1982. Most of those lines would have started with just 1 or 2 short trains per direction per day, so much of the capacity growth was spread over the following 20 years (unlike subway expansions where the large majority of the capacity bangs into existence on day 1, GO's capacity has tended to scale up more gradually as trains get lengthened and trips get added). GO's bus side was especially puny in 1978 and a whole new rail line's worth of ridership has probably been added there, too.

That said, it's worth remembering that GO's annual ridership of 57 million is still pretty small potatoes in the overall regional picture---far bigger than any of the 905 systems, yes, but still less than the TTC's streetcar network alone. As the above makes pretty easy to infer (as far as I know, hard numbers aren't available online) a very large proportion of that 57 million represents growth compared to 1978. Absolutely nothing to sneeze at, and certainly "stealth expansion" that the downtown core as it stands today simply couldn't survive without, but not enough to get the whole GTA region off the hook for stalling so badly.

 

[gweed123]

I think the reason GO has been able to expand in this way is because of one thing: infrastructure (or the lack thereof). Much of GO's expansion has been using existing infrastucture, be it road or rail. Unlike municipal transit, they didn't have to build their own lines in order to run trains on them. Their stations were initially asphalt pads with a few shelters put up on them, hardly a large expense.

The biggest delay in getting new transit online is the timeline, and therefore the political reality, of actually building the damn things. Because GO used existing infrastructure, this was largely by-passed. It's a lot easier to get a few asphalt stations built, and a few trainsets bought than it is to dig a massive new subway. Politically, it's more able to fly under the radar, much in the same way that low-impact BRT projects have been able to succeed.

Realistically, the revamp of Union Station and the electrification process will be GO's largest infrastructure projects ever. It will be the first time that GO is really stepping into the infrastructure arena (aside from building some new tracks along existing rail ROWs, which realistically is the commuter train equivalent of building a few HOV lanes on a roadway). It will be interesting to see if GO will be able to continue to fly under the political radar, or if it will be subject to the same political wranglings as the municipal projects.

 

[Platform 27]

I think I remember reading that the pricetag for all GO's work on the Georgetown South expansion is in the billion-dollar ballpark. (Not that it disproves your point---that project certainly hasn't flown under the political radar and has been wrangled fairly thoroughly.)

 

[TrickyRicky]

I had a thought the other day. Is Toronto's crap transportation infrastruture ironically driving up urban densities? When I say transporation infrastructure I don't just mean public transit, I mean the entire network including highways?

Many would agree that the lack of highway infrastructure has "saved" urban neighbourhoods and generally had a positive impact on densities. If we think about it objectively is this also true of public transit? Is Toronto's slow-coach approach to transit investment and skeletal mass transit network actually sowing the seed for a more dense, more vibrant urban environment of the future?

 

[Hipster Duck]

Well, yes, but the means don't justify the ends.

Sure, we can have a dense and "vibrant" core city because our region is so congested and under-infrastructured that our downtown core - the only part of town where accessibility to a plethora of services is relatively easy and there are viable transportation choices - commands such a price premium that builders have no choice but to build there and build up. Of course, what that really means is that if you're rich or belong to a certain demographic type (like a young, professional single) you can enjoy that 5% of the city, but the rest of us will have to live in the remaining 95% of the region that gets worse with every passing year.

On the whole, however, everybody suffers, because the fate of the region still has an enormous influence on the performance of downtown.

 

[TrickyRicky]

Hipster, but if transit infrastructure such as mass rail promotes equality in the region don't we also have to admit that highway infrastructure does as well? Shouldn't both London UK and Detroit be models of socio-economic equality? The one for it's extensive transit infrastructure, the other for it's extensive highway network? It strikes me that our assumption that good transit infrastructure promotes socio-economic equality does not necessarily correlate with conditions in cities where they are present.

Also, I don't think densification of the core is the only story here. We are also experiencing densification of suburban land uses and growth in nodal centres as well.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Hipster, but if transit infrastructure such as mass rail promotes equality in the region don't we also have to admit that highway infrastructure does as well? Shouldn't both London UK and Detroit be models of socio-economic equality? The one for it's extensive transit infrastructure, the other for it's extensive highway network? It strikes me that our assumption that good transit infrastructure promotes socio-economic equality does not necessarily correlate with conditions in cities where they are present.

Well, it depends on how narrowly you define "equity". People like Wendell Cox tend to think that a city like Phoenix or Houston is pretty equitable because housing prices are rather low, but it's not uncommon to find households in either city who spend 50% of their discretionary income on a car. That's pretty awful. At least poorer Londoners have access to jobs through a relatively inexpensive public transit system. I also don't think that the main causes of social inequality in London - and there are many - are really the fault of its public transit system.


Your original point - that Toronto has such spectacular downtown real estate growth because we can't get our regional transportation system in order - has a grain of truth to it, but why should this trend be commendable? When I lived in Toronto, I lived carless in a downtown condo, but I felt there were still enough job opportunities and cultural goings-on in the 90% of the region that is mostly car-dependent suburbia that I was somehow missing out on something, and accessing those places became more distant and more difficult every year.

Also, I don't think densification of the core is the only story here. We are also experiencing densification of suburban land uses and growth in nodal centres as well.

We are, but none of those places are becoming more urban or accessible. They're just becoming more dense.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Click on this link for a website that displays rapid transit maps to scale.

Toronto

Montreal

Hong Kong

Tokyo

London

New York

Berlin

Vancouver

That's rapid transit, not just metros or subways.