{"id":30446,"date":"2012-05-28T08:45:15","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T12:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=30446"},"modified":"2012-05-28T13:08:15","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T17:08:15","slug":"lorinc-the-infrastructure-that-dare-not-speak-its-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/05\/28\/lorinc-the-infrastructure-that-dare-not-speak-its-name\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: The Infrastructure That Dare Not Speak its Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Could there be a more telling detail about the Ford administration\u2019s pathologically perverse position on transit than the revelation, in Friday\u2019s Globe and Mail<\/a>, that Waterfront Toronto has started building a streetcar spur meant to serve the West Donlands on the q-t?<\/p>\n

As my colleague Adrian Morrow<\/a> noted in a tweet, Mayor Rob Ford refused to comment on the project, which appears to have been assigned a top-secret classification in case Mr. Subway Subway Subway emerges from his bunker to inveigh about the imminent \u201cSt. Clairization\u201d (sic) of the waterfront.<\/p>\n

However, Ford, though increasingly reclusive<\/a>, didn\u2019t hesitate to drop by a photo-op to demonstrate that the City\u2019s works department is hard at work, trying to stop the Gardiner\u2019s nether regions from flaking off like chunks of canned tuna.<\/p>\n

But tout an almost absurdly modest improvement to the city\u2019s downtown\/waterfront streetcar service? Not going there.<\/p>\n

Literally.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So allow me: a mayor who can see past the end of his nose would say something like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cThese few metres of the Cherry Street line represent what I hope will be just the first leg of a fully integrated surface transit network meant to service the tens of thousands of people we expect to move into the new communities now being built in the East Bayfront, the West Donlands and, soon, the Portlands itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis part of the city represents its future and the tracks to be laid on this street provide yet another example of how the City, Waterfront Toronto and the other orders of government are engaged in the collaborative work of city-building. While the line won\u2019t go into service before the 2015 PanAm Games, the future residents of the West Donlands will find their new homes connected to Toronto\u2019s transit network.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, we\u2019re committed to these improvements because the developers who are creating these vibrant new waterfront communities have chosen to invest in the area on the explicit understanding that we will provide quality transit service. This project shows the City is listening closely to its private sector partners.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it\u2019s tough to articulate such sentiments if you happen to be wearing the icky face, or, as is more likely, are still fantasizing about a Jetson-style monorail choo-choo for the Portlands.<\/p>\n

In any event, the mayor\u2019s unwillingness to line up public support for the waterfront lines merely underscores an even more serious failing on the transit file, which is his infuriating absence from a positive discussion about the downtown relief line (DRL) at precisely the moment when Metrolinx and Queen\u2019s Park are gearing up to make the case for more revenue sources for transit infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Anyone with even a cursory understanding of the city\u2019s transportation problems knows that the DRL is, or should be, Toronto\u2019s single most important infrastructure investment in the next half century. The peak-period crowding at Union Station and at the Yonge-Bloor interchanges has become increasingly untenable, and even the Union subway platform expansion will be over-capacity within a few decades.<\/p>\n

The question lurking around the edges of the DRL debate is this: what happens to the office sector in the downtown core \u2014 and all those thousands of well-paying jobs \u2014 if the subway system can no longer accommodate peak-period demand? This is not an impossibly remote problem. And yet the city and the region continue to make transit investments that pour traffic onto the Yonge-University-Spadina line. Metrolinx, while acknowledging the need to relieve crowding at Union Station within the next two decades, also wants to someday extend the Yonge line up into York Region. Does that happen before or after the DRL?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The DRL, in some ways, is like Toronto\u2019s version of Manhattan\u2019s Second Avenue subway<\/a>, as veteran transportation planner Ed Levy demonstrates<\/a> [ pdf, 4.3 MB<\/em> ] \u2013 a tough, expensive but nonetheless essential project that has been perennially on the horizon for generations.<\/p>\n

The Second Avenue Subway, however, is now under construction. As for the DRL saga, it reminds me of the fable about the frog in hot water. You keep raising the temperature bit by bit until it\u2019s too late and the frog explodes. As Levy writes, \u201cTrack and platform capacity [at Union Station] is, it must be said, finite and could not accommodate long term growth in the absence of massively costly and disruptive reconstruction involving a second track and platform level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metrolinx last fall began considering a pair of options<\/a> [ pdf<\/em> ]: first, an additional tunnels for the GO trains to accommodate the very high volume rail traffic that may run through the Union Station post electrification; and second, a variation on the DRL concept known as \u201cOption 4B.\u201d It combines a subway running between Pape and Queen stations along Queen East, but then ducks south from Queen West and terminates at a new GO\/TTC\/Air Rail Link interchange near Bathurst and Front.<\/p>\n

To build a truly regional network that relieves crowding in the core, Levy argues compellingly<\/a> [ pdf, text-only version<\/em> ] that Metrolinx should pursue Option 4B and also oversee the transformation of the ARL into an ordinary (as opposed to premium) transit service. And, he says, it\u2019s less important for the proposed DRL line to slavishly follow Queen Street than it is to create efficient inter-connections to the GO\/ARL system.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all well and good that experts like Ed Levy and Metrolinx\u2019s planners are actively mulling over these (and other) scenarios. But they will never be more than scenarios unless our political leaders build a broad-based consensus in favour of funding the DRL as a critical piece of infrastructure for the entire GTA.<\/p>\n

Yet we live in a weird time when the transit advocates on city council feel they must re-brand the DRL so it won\u2019t be vulnerable to the sorts of AM radio\/culture-war attacks that greeted the LRT lines. Meanwhile, the region\u2019s single most visible municipal leader, Rob Ford, can\u2019t bring himself to tout the construction of a few hundred metres of streetcar track, has an aversion to new funding tools for transit, and seems disinclined to try to figure out why the DRL will provide relief to the very suburban commuters whose interests he professes to defend.<\/p>\n

Having arrived at a bone fide<\/em> fork in the road, our incurious chief magistrate is fixated on the rubble lying on the pavement, but seems tragically incapable of reading the map.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could there be a more telling detail about the Ford administration\u2019s pathologically perverse position on transit than the revelation, in Friday\u2019s Globe and Mail, that Waterfront Toronto has started building a streetcar spur meant to serve the West Donlands on the q-t? As my colleague Adrian Morrow noted in a tweet, Mayor Rob Ford refusedContinue reading “LORINC: The Infrastructure That Dare Not Speak its Name”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[20145,20148,243,3771,1174,16543,313,20146,20152,2345,20151,426,8533,20149,416,316,227,20150,20153,19,4447,5092,849,3856,647,20147],"class_list":["post-30446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-transit","tag-adrian-morrow","tag-air-rail-link-interchange","tag-downtown-relief-line","tag-ed-levy","tag-ford","tag-ford-administration","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-incurious-chief-magistrate","tag-integrated-surface-transit-network","tag-leader","tag-manhattans-second-avenue-subway","tag-mayor","tag-metrolinx","tag-mr-subway-subway-subway","tag-pdf","tag-queen","tag-rob-ford","tag-second-avenue-subway","tag-the-union-station-post","tag-toronto","tag-transit-infrastructure","tag-transit-network","tag-transportation","tag-transportation-problems","tag-union-station","tag-veteran-transportation-planner"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: The Infrastructure That Dare Not Speak its Name - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/05\/28\/lorinc-the-infrastructure-that-dare-not-speak-its-name\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: The Infrastructure That Dare Not Speak its Name - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Could there be a more telling detail about the Ford administration\u2019s pathologically perverse position on transit than the revelation, in Friday\u2019s Globe and Mail, that Waterfront Toronto has started building a streetcar spur meant to serve the West Donlands on the q-t? 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