And reflecting on Transportation in Toronto

I have decided to start writing more frequent and shorter blog posts. I will see how that works in improving readership. So, no more “Odds and Ends” posts. However, I will still do a lot of long subjects.

One of the many fun things I do to make my life enjoyable is to occasionally rent a car and go driving. I do this about twice a year just to keep in practice. Driving in the city is often a pain, but I love the countryside beyond the Toronto suburbs.

I can inspect the dismal failures of Toronto’s attempts to build light rail transit. I think one of these projects has been going on for thirteen years now. I think it is the one I drove by last week along Finch avenue. It did not look like any work was being done at all but it really screws up car traffic.

When something is allowed to go on like that, and the cost keeps growing, and no one can say when it will finally be done, it is pretty clear what is going on. Someones have decided they have not made enough money out of it yet.

I have pretty much given up following the problems of transit construction in the GTA. It is obvious that the government is too corrupt and incompetent to be able to manage the system and build it out. We have had inappropriate projects like the Scarborough subway rammed down our throats.

It seems the two LRT projects we have going were part of the old ‘transit city’ plan, which would have been a great thing for Toronto. They were too far along for the Ford freakazoid bothers to kill when they got into office.

So the alternative has been to drag them out and make them very costly. Thus nothing else can be built. It will also discredit public transport, making it harder to get further developments going.

Transit city would have been the right solution for Toronto. What it needs is a grid of light rail lines. This would enable people to actually get around the city in a timely way.

Actually, the best plan for a city is radial, not a grid. However, getting an LRT at all, even one following roadways, was better than nothing. A circle and spoke plan would be incredibly hard to get done.

You have an elite in the city which does not want people to move around in it. They have the classic conservative mentality that the lower orders should be kept in their neighbourhoods. Their fascination with “subways, subways, subways” is that these will let their lackeys get into the downtown to work for them, but will not facilitate lateral movement.

To repeat, they do not want people moving laterally around the city. This is why they hate street cars and LRTs. However, for awhile there was a kind of crosstown revolt in Toronto and a few such routes were completed.

Some of this was driven by progressive minded people who saw public transit as a public good. A lot of it was pushed by jackass local politicians who just wanted a line on their own turf. This is why the Shepard subway got built, but in the wrong place.

Nobody really likes street cars. They are not the best solution. Subways are too expensive for all but very high volume routes. Light Rail Transit (LRT) is the optimal solution for most places.

I recall all the screaming from the car and subways lobby. LRTs mostly mess up their plan. So, they were made out to be just more “street cars” when everybody wants “subways, subways” because we told them they do.

I do not know why the LRT engineers did not simply show people a picture of what a fucking LRT actually is. I spent some of my life in Calgary and Vancouver, which built pretty good LRT systems. I know what they are and what a good solution they can be.

Actually, we did have an LRT in Toronto. It was a bit rinky dink, not the best example of what an LRT line could be. It ran from the end of the line two subway out to Scarborough Town Centre. It was always denigrated and poorly maintained.

The problem, from the car and subway mentality, was that it actually let people get in and out of Scarborough. The Scarborough subway will insure against that happening again. It will be from the Town Center mall out to Kennedy station with minimal stops, thus minimal connections, and thus minimal access deep into Scarberia.

Oh, no, under pressure they put in an extension out to a Shepard subway extension, again with minimal stops. This still fits with the car and subway brained elite’s scheme of things, along with the “Ontario Line”. That is, from suburbs into downtown with minimal stops, and minimal crosstown links.

I must say that Calgary and Vancouver did not get public transit right, either. They used LRT because subways were far too impractical, but they still had the car and downtown push mentality. I will discuss that further down.

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Since I am not interested in activist activity anymore, I have almost stopped using TTC Toronto Transit Commission. I have little need to go outside my cosy inner city neighbourhood. I only recently started driving in Toronto, and I am noticing things about road transportation.

A long time ago, back in the seventies, I drove taxis for a living in Calgary. I became a very good driver. I learned every alley in the city, even better than the back of my hand.

The road system in Calgary has a radial plan to it. This works well. Since the advent of the LRT, or the “C-train” as they call it, the roads have been remade to go around the downtown core.

This plan also works well from the car head’s perspective. Trying to get into downtown Calgary by car is a lost cause anyway. It is in a narrow valley, with narrow streets, surrounded by high ridges and minimal ways in and out.

So they built the C-train/LRT as a downtown express. People park their cars in the numerous stations surrounded by huge parkades, and ride in. There are no crosstown routes and people still get around outside of downtown by car.

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The bus system in Calgary was always pathetic. When I lived there I lived downtown. I have always been a downtown person.

When my health collapsed I gave up driving. Years later, long after moving to Toronto, I decided I should get a license again. Now I can compare driving in Calgary then, with Toronto now. Also, the two road systems.

Drivers are more polite in Toronto. They understand the concept of “merge”. When I drove in Calgary, many of the bastards would almost rather die than let you change lanes in front of them.

I think it is a Calgary thing. I recall when I drove in Vancouver, drivers were also fairly sane.

Toronto, like Vancouver, can be hard to drive around in. They both have grid, not radial, street plans. Areas of the city seem compartmentalized. Most main routes seem to end up nowhere.

Again, it seems the elite does not want people to move around too much. However, they do have the problem of getting not just people, but goods, around the city. Ultimately, cars and trucks just do not work as a system of transportation.

In places where government works to meet human needs, not serve hegemony, and cities are run and built properly, all these problems are solved. Their transit systems are so convenient that nobody wants to use cars. Some of the most advanced cities are learning to use publicly run rail systems to move freight around.

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In Toronto, we are not going to solve our transportation problems with the existing government system. I am very uninterested in all the clientelistic politics which goes on, to try to get trivial concessions from government. None of this will deal with the growing crisis.

When I tell people what the real solution is, I get various responses, but rarely positive ones. We need all transportation in the entire Greater Toronto Area to be brought under the control of one transportation authority. This must be independent of political interference, with its own funding sources, and run by people chosen for their qualifications.

We have always had weak and fragmented government at all levels in Canada. This is why Toronto is so badly laid out. There never seems to have been an overall plan. Everything has been done in an ad hoc and compartmentalized way.

To conclude, driving will always be frustrating in Toronto. It gets easier as you go further from the city centre. It is hard to find a place to park, or to take a piss.

It is bad when you really have to get somewhere. It is much better if, like me, you are just riding along in your automobile, with no particular place to go. And a piss bottle.

My apologies to Chuck Berry.