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link — Comments Off on Tiny magic unicorns set to finance city’s subway extension
16
Feb 11

Tiny magic unicorns set to finance city’s subway extension

Following on the Globe story below, the Toronto Star’s Tess Kalinowski and Robert Benzie have a few more details:

Under the mayor’s plan, Sheppard would be paid for using a combination of development charges and tax increment financing, an innovative tool former finance minister and key Spadina subway extension proponent Greg Sorbara introduced in 2006.

It enables municipalities to borrow against the future property tax revenue of land that is improved by having a subway nearby.

The key is you have to designate the land as such before any infrastructure is built.

via City eyes private partnership to extend Sheppard subway – thestar.com.

If – big if – land around subway stations is such a cash cow, we can only assume that the city is literally foregoing hundreds of millions of dollars a year because of underdeveloped areas surrounding existing stations.

I’m not saying that this is a plan doomed to failure, but I’m very skeptical that Sheppard stations will have ridership that offer the kind of return-on-investment that justifies huge infrastructure costs.

For reference, approximate daily ridership on mid-line Sheppard stations is 7,780, 5,600 and 2,330, for Bayview, Leslie – despite the IKEA! -, and Bessarion, respectively. (2008-2009 figures)

link — Comments Off on For sale: Sheppard Subway extension, lightly used
16
Feb 11

For sale: Sheppard Subway extension, lightly used

The Globe & Mail’s Kelly Grant has the scoop on upcoming transit announcements:

[Interim Chief of Staff Mark Towhey] said the city intends to seek a private-sector partner who would build, design and finance an extension of the Sheppard subway east to the Scarborough Town Centre and west to Downsview station.

If the plan is approved by the province and city council, the city would continue to own the longer Sheppard line. The city would pay back the private consortiums initial investment using tax-increment financing and an increased transit-oriented development fee in a narrow band along the Sheppard line.

via Rob Ford pitches private financing plan for Toronto subway extension – The Globe and Mail.

So many questions: is the city even allowed to hide debt this way? How do you structure this kind of deal so that it would appeal to a private company? Does this mean the rest of the Transit City funding stays in place? How surreal and scary is it that Mark “Cut all bus routes and let people car pool!” Towhey is speaking about transit matters?

This isn’t necessarily a bad outcome. It seemingly would allow the province and Metrolinx to focus their money and energy on more important routes like Eglinton while the Mayor’s Office screws around with the private sector for the next few years getting a deal done. Could be a lot of worse.

link — Comments Off on New Toronto streetcars to add significant capacity to downtown routes
14
Feb 11

New Toronto streetcars to add significant capacity to downtown routes

One of the things city watchers were worried about upon Ford’s ascension was the existing contract with Bombardier to provide 204 new low floor light rail vehicles to replace the aging fleet of streetcars that operate on Dundas, Queen, King, Spadina and several other routes.  So far, the contract seems safe. It hasn’t really been mentioned since Ford took office, though while campaigning he expressed a desire to cancel the contract and remove streetcars, but said he wouldn’t do it if it cost an “arm and a leg.”

Hopefully this order stays under the radar and happens as scheduled. If you need convincing of the importance of these new vehicles, Steve Munro has published some information regarding the planned roll-out. While Munro has some well-founded concerns about the specifics of the TTC plan, the numbers are particularly striking. The new LRVs will increase capacity on Spadina by 49%. Dundas and Bathurst will see an increase of a crazy 91% and 62%. The beleaguered 501 Queen will increase by 34%. Couple these percentages with all-door boarding and a proof-of-payment system (no more paying the driver while boarding) and the impact on service will be even stronger.

These are significant improvements and will have real impact on the day-to-day lives of thousands of Toronto transit riders. It’s vitally important that they are delivered on schedule.

link — Comments Off on Bus route cuts are a customer service issue
02
Feb 11

Bus route cuts are a customer service issue

There’s a marathon TTC meeting going on today with a zillion deputations. Concurrent with this, Councillor Josh Matlow has published an open letter to the TTC Chair and Commissioners, questioning their ridership numbers and asking for a more in-depth study before routes are cut in his ward.

I liked this part a lot:

I recognize the importance of being thoughtful about how we dedicate tax dollars and am acutely aware of the very real budget constraints we have as a City today. However, I am also cognizant that the TTC is a public service. These local bus routes are the only transportation option for many seniors, students and workers.

via Councillor Matlow’s letter to the TTC re: Proposed reductions to bus service – Josh Matlow, Toronto City Councillor for Ward 22, St. Paul’s.

As I write this, Councillor Peter Milczyn has taken to his Twitter account to lament the delays to this “server reallocation” because it means fewer routes will see improved service in the spring. He’s also accusing the left of being ideological in their opposition to this move.

I have two points in response to this.

First, to pretend this isn’t a service cut is crazy. The TTC does have capacity issues on other routes that necessitate service improvements, yes, but the responsible thing to do would be to find a way to fund those necessary service improvements without removing service in other places. If the 10-cent fare increase had been presented as necessary to do this — and not presented instead as some kind of weird political game of peekaboo designed to make the mayor look like a hero — I would support the move.

Second, if all you’re doing is reallocating service, take some time to do a proper study of both routes losing service and routes gaining service. Present that data to the people. Let them see where the trade-offs are. This government continually hammers on about the importance of “customer service,” so let’s speak that language: it is crappy customer service to take away someone’s bus route and not even tell them what they’re getting in return.

link — Comments Off on A great deal of effort to accomplish little
01
Feb 11

A great deal of effort to accomplish little

Steve Munro, whose great blog turned five years old yesterday, on yesterday’s story that the bus route cuts were being scaled back:

There’s some budget hocus-pocus going on with the TTC’s original claim of a $7m saving from the cuts.  That was a 9-month figure assuming the change went into effect on March 27.  About $1m in savings were given up by deferring the change until May 8, and a few million more have already been dedicated to service improvements in January 2011.  This doesn’t leave a lot for additional service in fall 2011, let alone for those changes to roll out for a full year in 2012.

While “efficiency” is worth looking for, we seem to have spent a great deal of effort to accomplish very little.

via Not Quite So Many Service Cuts | Steve Munro.

“A great deal of effort to accomplish very little” is a good way to describe much of the budget process this year.

link — Comments Off on TTC to announce that some bus routes will be spared cuts
31
Jan 11

TTC to announce that some bus routes will be spared cuts

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/kellygrant1/status/32139846659088384″]

From Globe reporter Kelly Grant on Twitter comes word that a number of the proposed bus routes, who were just a few weeks ago deemed so underused as to be entirely disposable, have been ‘saved’ thanks to a ‘compromise.’ Good news, sure, but it will be interesting to see if the compromise amounts to anything more than unspecified savings to the operating budget.

Either way, it seems being a hard-line budget slasher who never wants to disappoint anyone ever sure leads to a lot of flip-flops.

link — Comments Off on Local councillor knows little of existing transit plans for his ward
31
Jan 11

Local councillor knows little of existing transit plans for his ward

Over at Torontoist, Desmond Cole hits a home run with a piece on Finch West’s transit troubles. Notably, he gets Councillor James Pasternak on the record as having no idea about the specifics of the proposed Finch West LRT line. A project that was, until the Transit City plan was famously threatened, slated to run through his ward:

Councillor James Pasternak (Ward 10, York Centre) […] spoke at length about his opposition to an LRT on Finch, saying repeatedly that the plan would “remove [traffic] lanes from system roadways.” Pasternak seemed genuinely surprised when we insisted that the environmental assesment for the Finch LRT contains no lane reductions, as the roadway would be widened to accommodate the rail line while preserving the existing number of traffic lanes.

via The Transit Crunch on Finch West – Torontoist

Nice one. Pasternak goes on to argue instead for a Sheppard West subway extension for some reason.

link — Comments Off on TTC Chair Stintz not involved with new transit plan negotiations
28
Jan 11

TTC Chair Stintz not involved with new transit plan negotiations

John Lorinc, writing for the Globe, gets an interview with new TTC Chair Karen Stintz and midway through she drops this bomb:

In any case, her fingerprints won’t be on the final deal. The mayor’s office has left her out of the high-stakes negotiations with Metrolinx and the province over Mr. Ford’s subway plan. Ms. Stintz gamely insists the talks “are taking place at the right level” and denies that she’s trapped between the competing political agendas of the mayor and Premier Dalton McGuinty.

via Karen Stintz, new TTC chair – The Globe and Mail.

She also restates her support for the Eglinton line, but seems resigned to having no real influence as to whether it happens or not.

It’s mind-bending to me that the mayor’s office has left the TTC chair out of all major transit decisions. If Stintz isn’t involved, and Ford self-admittedly doesn’t know much about the TTC, who the hell is leading the charge in the Metrolinx negotiations?

As a postscript, as the news unfurls over the next few weeks and Stintz spins whatever new plan we end up getting as the right thing for this city, keep this quote in mind. It’s from just this past April in an article by (yet again) John Lorinc:

Stintz says she supports the Metrolinx “Big Move” plan, which includes the LRT network. “We came together,” she told me on Friday, “because it’s not a partisan issue, it’s a city building issue.”

I understand adapting to the winds of political change, but some consistency sure would be nice.

link — Comments Off on Mayor touts elimination of proposed fare increase in rare sit-down interview
28
Jan 11

Mayor touts elimination of proposed fare increase in rare sit-down interview

Making professional media outlets (especially the Star) all kinds of jealous, Excalibur — York University’s student newspaper — has posted video of their exclusive sit-down interview with Mayor Ford.

via YouTube – Excalibur interviews Rob Ford.

There’s nothing surprising here, but I do always enjoy hearing from our mayor. He admits he doesn’t know a lot about the TTC but he sure knows people want subways. He goes on about how he ‘turned around’ the Rexdale neighbourhood in his Ward, and how he will do the same for the entire city. (Presumably through high school football.) He notes, as I did below, that student groups pressured him to eliminate the vehicle registration tax.

The most interesting bit was the couple of references he makes to the proposed TTC fare increase that was famously eliminated twenty-four hours after it was announced. It’s been clear for a while that they were hoping they could play that incident of an example of Ford standing up to a city bureaucracy that doesn’t care about people. The Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy, who has long acted as a de facto extension of Ford’s communication team, confirmed as much in her post-budget column, where she wrote, “I couldn’t believe TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster’s chutzpah in proposing a 10-cent fare hike while doing virtually nothing to improve customer service in the past year.”

It was a rare misstep from a communications team that has, on the whole, been pretty damn good. Nobody bought the story that staff proposed a surprise fare increase that was, incredibly, eliminated after less than a day of budget talks. But it’s interesting to see Ford still plying the narrative that he, against all odds, was the hero.

link — Comments Off on TTC to 250,000 riders: sorry about your bus route
26
Jan 11

TTC to 250,000 riders: sorry about your bus route

Gary Webster visited Matt Galloway on CBC Radio this morning, and dropped a bomb of a number relating to the TTC’s proposed route cuts:

Speaking to CBC’s Metro Morning on Wednesday, TTC general manager Gary Webster said he estimates “there are about 250,000 people that will be affected” by the changes.

via CBC News – Toronto – Bus cuts will affect a quarter million: TTC manager.

It hasn’t been a good week for the TTC. In addition to Webster plainly stating that a quarter of a million people are (at best) going to be inconvenienced by the proposed route cuts, the TTC’s public consultations regarding the route cuts have been very poorly received.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/LesterBrown/status/29698468146577408″]

To be fair, I guess, who could have known that throwing a bunch of signs up in a room and calling it a ‘consultation’ wouldn’t go over well?

Laurence Lui has a great post today outlining a potential compromise solution, establishing a new service standard that still might save some money. But as Joe Fiorito at The Star points out, trying to have conversations about ridership, service levels and transit-as-a-public-good is fruitless in the face of cuts that are 100% political.

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