Wednesday’s headlines

16 comments

1. The reports are in: St. Clair’s construction was mismanaged, its finances were a disaster, and (worst of all) service on the completed track is poor.

   Given that this was a trial run for new LRT lines, it’s time to contemplate the cancellation of Transit City. The money would be far better used to fix the drastic overcrowding on the downtown transit system.

2. Dylan has an excellent article in today’s Star too:

   Car-friendly suburban streets can be deadly for pedestrians [ Toronto Star ]

3. Surprised not to see a link to Dylan Reid’s opinion piece for the Star (Car-friendly suburban streets can be deadly for pedestrians).

   Also, the pedestrian fatalities this week are racking up so quickly that the print editions have needed online updates almost immediately (Star: Pedestrian killed near Eglinton and Dufferin).

4. They’re going to mess up a number of things on Transit City. Those who don’t know history are bound to repeat it.

   The media should be doing more to critique transit expansion plans in the city and encourage more discussion among ordinary people.

5. Dylan’s article in the Star today makes a key point about traffic engineering that is certainly evident on the reconstructed portion of Lansdowne where I live. “The wide lanes of suburban arterials encourage drivers to go fast – and the chance of a pedestrian suffering serious injury or death in a collision increases rapidly the faster the car is going.” When the street was reconstructed, the travelling lanes were widened. Result is that when there is no congestion, vehicles are now going much faster than they ever did. (Not unusual to see vehicles, including buses booting it at 60k/hr.) Before they had to be much more cautious. This is of particular concern for pedestrians on the east side since there is NO buffer between the sidewalk and the travelling lane (since of course the lane of parked cars that used to be a buffer was taken out). Yeah, I realize I’ve made these commets on this board before and they tend to tick off people who like the Lansdowne reconstruction. But those who like the Lansdowne reconstruction probably don’t do much walking on this stretch of road. If they did, they’d notice the difference from a pedestrian perspective. (Yeah, I’m talking to you Mr. B)

6. How could anyone be surprised by Toronto’s dismal job market? The city treaded water during a world wide boom. During a worldwide downturn Toronto is there any surprise in Toronto’s performance?

   There is little use in expanding transit when there are no jobs to commute to.

7. On St. Clair, TTC and the City said “just trust us”

   The scary part is that Metrolinx is involved on Sheppard and their penchant for secrecy is known. Instead of a more open process which allows such errors to be highlighted, it might be harder to prevent wrong turns in these new projects.

   That, however, is not in itself an excuse to adopt Andrew’s “can’t win don’t try” attitude – just that citizens have to lean on their councillors to ride herd on the people spending our (borrowed) capital dollars.

8. Mark: according to the TTC’s Soberman report, one of the problems with St. Clair was TOO MUCH public input.

9. The season must also play a role in the number of pedestrian fatalities, with the darkness, clothing such as hats obstructing people’s sight and hearing, people being slower to react, etc. London Ontario has had three pedestrian fatalities in the past week. It would be interesting to see how the stats break down by month to see if the warm months where presumably there are a lot more pedestrians have more fatalities.

10. Thanks for the nice comments about my op-ed.

    Rob L. > Yes, you’re right, the season does play a role. Collisions between pedestrians and vehicles peak October-January. Darkness is the most probable explanation.

    The city, to its shame, does not have statistics on the number of pedestrians in the streets at different times of year, so we can’t break this down proportionally. My guess is the most pedestrians on the street are in Spring and Fall, when the weather is nice (not too hot), kids are still going to school, and there are not a significant number of people away on vacation (tourist will be here in the summer, but they’re concentrated downtown).

11. Have to agree with Andrew on this one regarding TC. Don’t get me wrong, I think LRT is a great alternative to heavy metro rail. But TC will have stops at every other block, thus the city will be spending billions of dollars to only improve local transit. It will not get people out of their cars like subways or light RAPID transit does, and it will not address the regional transit needs that Toronto’s lacking.

    Seeing that this is to improve local needs, they could have built center bus lanes on almost all major arterials, and purchased a fleet of articulated buses for the same money.

12. Andrew,
    Yes, Soberman’s St.Clair Review does seem to suggest that there was too much consultation. But that doesn’t mean this is a valid point. In his review of Soberman’s Review, one of the things Steve Munro seems to be quite critical of is its simplistic handling of consultation issues. Specifically, he seems to make the point that the report fails to acknowledge that all objections — whether of the project as a whole or those meant to strengthen the design — were treated as “nuisances to be ignored”.
    http://stevemunro.ca/?p=3191#more-3191

13. samg — Although I agree, you miss the point: the Soberman report contains the lessons the TTC is choosing to learn from St. Clair. Even Transit City’s advocates, like Steve Munro, agree that the TTC is learning the wrong lessons, like “public consultation is bad”. It’s obvious that the TTC still doesn’t have its act together, which is not an appropriate way to start a project worth $8 billion.

14. If you’re not listening, you’re not consulting. For too many government agencies, consulting is something you do because the courts made you do it or the law was changed, not because you have any intention of doing it differently.

    Look at the “consultations” over the land transfer tax and motor vehicle tax – huge public outrage at the “consultations”, virtually nothing changed because of it.

15. Andrew… I don’t think I missed the point but maybe I misread your comment of 5:04 (scanning it, I thought you were actaully supporting what the report was saying regarding too much public input)… I agree with the comments about the report you posted at 9:58 am

16. I like the idea of links to the other papers with stories but I don’t like being linked to a site where the comments are closed or you can’t leave a comment. Maybe that can be researched before you enable the link.
    I love leaving comments that’s why I like your site so much. Very good job so far, well done.

    Daniel ………. Toronto
    http://dandmb50.tumblr.com/