Transportation in Toronto: Week 10/14

Being new to Ithaca and more familiar with issues of transportation in Toronto, Canada, I chose to look for strategies in Beatley’s Green Urbanism and Register’s Ecocities that I could apply to Toronto. I am also highly critical of Toronto’s past and most of its current public transit initiatives, so I thought it would be helpful for me to look for ways in which Toronto transit could be improved. Having lived in many other major cities besides Toronto, I can confidently say that, considering the population, Toronto has one of the worst public transit systems. Toronto has been developing into a super-sprawl city where residents are virtually forced into using automobiles because of poor planning and a strong predisposition toward car-scale development. Toronto needs help, and it had better be fast! I was grateful to learn of some concrete transit policies that Toronto could look at implementing over the next 10 years in order to help curb its reliance on the automobile. Because of the structure of this assignment, I chose to weave my synthesis into each section instead of putting it at the end.

1. Systematic Transit Priority
In chapter 4 of Green Urbanism, Timothy Beatley outlines how Zurich’s transit system gives priority to public transit vehicles. When dedicated lanes can’t be used, then all buses and trams use special transmitters to allow traffic signals to change in their favor. There is even a “zero waiting time” goal for all public transit at intersections.(p.117) Such a policy favors public transit travel and provides an extra disincentive to travel by car. All cities who are serious about increasing public transit and reducing automobile traffic should consider this tactic. Toronto streetcars and buses are constantly fighting with car traffic. The public transit vehicles are now given almost no priority over cars and it thus takes at least twice as long to get anywhere by surface public transit as it does by car. It used to take me three times as long to get to work by public transit as it would by car, so guess which choice I would usually make! I wanted desperately to take public transit to work, but when I could pass at least 6 buses on my way to work in my car, there is little to no incentive to travel by bus or streetcar.

2. Disincentives for Car Travel
In addition to giving public transit vehicles priority at traffic signals, Toronto needs to do even more to reduce the population’s love for car travel. Zurich and Freiburg have incorporated even more disincentives for car travel by reducing the city speed limits and manipulating traffic lights to reduce transit congestion. It is also deliberately very difficult to find parking in many European cities. In essence, these cities have made it very difficult to travel quickly and efficiently by car. The reduction of auto traffic, combined with increases in the efficiency and service of public transport means that the vast majority of people in Zurich and Freiburg, rich and poor, choose to take public transit. These strategies could work very well, over a 10 year period, in a city like Toronto where the vast majority own several cars and use them much more than public transit. If you make it less desirable to travel by car, then people will think twice before they use them.

3. Very Slow Automobile Speed Limits
Beatley gives several examples of European cities that have made 30km/hr (or less) the speed limit within their urban zones. With Beatley, I got the impression that this reduction of speed limits made the streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists and also made public transit systems seem more attractive. While slowing down car traffic to under 30 km/hr may help to deter people from using their cars in cities, Richard Register made slow speed limits also seem attractive to the car driver. He implies that speeds over 15 miles/hr not only damage the outside environment, but also prevent drivers from properly seeing and appreciating their surroundings. In Toronto, there are hundreds of fatalities due to automobiles. In fact, from 2000-2006, exactly 220 of the 440 total traffic fatalities were of pedestrians.(www.andrewspicer.com/article723.html) Given that 220 of the deaths were pure pedestrians, this still doesn’t account for the number of deaths for people on bikes who were struck by cars. This means that more than half the people who were killed weren’t even using cars at all, but were killed by them anyway. These sorts of scary statistics are part of what kept me from using a bicycle to get to work in Toronto. I would be no match for the 60-80 km/hr traffic that I would have to face on the way there and back. Only with radical reduction of car speeds would most major Toronto roads be made safe for bicyclists and pedestrians.

4. Referenda & Public Input
I was very impressed by the amount of input that Amsterdam and many other European cities have been granting to their citizens when it comes to facilitating public transit. In chapter 4 and 5 of Green Urbanism, Zurich, Bologna and Amsterdam are listed as examples of cities using referenda to directly involve the citizens in all major public infrastructure projects. In fact, these cities actually attribute many of the successful car-curbing transit initiatives to the public impetus, and not just good city planning. The idea of letting the citizens choose their transit options and have input in public capital expenditures is quite foreign to municipal planning in North America. When possible, Toronto and other North American cities should try to involve the public in more large transit projects. This would allow for more accountability and overall public support for public transit projects. It was interesting to read that surveys indicate that the public is generally much more supportive of public transit initiatives than municipal decision-makers, but in our current municipal structure, it is often only those few people who have the time and money to lobby for what they want who get their voices heard at town council meetings. It was also suggested that the municipal decision-makers are predominantly white, between the age of 20-60 and therefore the demographic group most predisposed to travel frequently by car. Considering this, Ernst Joos, deputy director of the Zurich transit authority, points out that municipal decision-makers are often the least likely to vote in favor of public transit over car transit planning.(p.119) Instead of municipal officials having almost total control over public transit, Toronto should let the public have a say in planning and prioritizing transit initiatives. Anyone who has sat through a municipal council meeting to try to voice an opinion or effect a change in a public policy knows that, aside from voting for representatives, our current system does not really provide a true forum for public input nor accountability in decision-making.

5. Car-Free Developments & Acess by Proximity
One of the worst aspects of many of Toronto’s car-centric residential developments is the fact that tract housing goes on for miles and miles with hardly no amenities that are walkable or even accessible by bicycle. In Chapter 5, Beatley looks at how the GWL-terrein project has been built to de-emphasize cars and has placed schools, shops, and cultural centers very close to the residential areas. While we were touring the Ithaca Ecovillage, I was likewise struck by how nice it was to be in a residential neighborhood where cars are not welcome. By having amenities close to housing, the need to use cars can be greatly reduced. Even if Toronto’s bedroom communities could allow the strategic placement of corner stores at key crossroads, this slight shift away from mono-zoning could reduce the need for people to drive to far-off shopping centers to pick up basic staples. Register also summarized this point well when he said “[i]nside the city, the best transportation is the least: access by proximity should be the objective.”(p139)

6. Increasing Public Transit to Popular Recreation Sites
One of the seminal duties of all Canadians is to love the great outdoors. One of the most standard consequences of our love of nature is a prerequisite ownership or frequent visitation to a cottage. Cottages range from modest timber shacks in the woods to opulent multi-million dollar lake-side properties, but around Toronto, they almost all require driving 2-3 hours (often in an S.U.V.) to get there. Freiburg is given credit for integrating its long-distance train system with its urban transit system to allow people to get to recreation zones outside the city. Toronto must also drastically increase its public transit options to its cottage and recreation areas. As it stands now, the cottage traffic is just as bad if not worse than standard commuting traffic, and the auto traffic is exerting huge pressures on wildlife and the environment. It is ironic that by seeking out the natural areas that we love and crave to much, we are also destroying them! Only by increasing train and other public transit options can Toronto ensure that its areas of wilderness remain for future generations.

7. Car Sharing
To date, two car sharing companies, Autoshare and Zipcar, already exist in Toronto, but there is room for significant expansion of both these companies and for more car share companies to operate. It is encouraging to see that membership in similar car share organizations has taken off in many European cities. Indeed, I have heard nothing but positive comments from Torontonians that already use a car share service, and I know many more that would eliminate their cars if a car share service was available in their neighborhood. It is my understanding that the car share systems work best when members use them rather infrequently. Another limitation to the car share systems currently being used in Toronto is that they don’t function well for trips outside the city or for one-way trips. Perhaps when the car share groups expand, it will make it easier to use them for longer trips. Of course, having the option to use a car share service is only viable in conjunction with an efficient public transit system that can enable you to get around on a daily basis and then use the car share for special trips.

8. Creative Marketing by Public Transit Authorities
In chapter 4 of Green Urbanism, Beatley shows how many European cities are cosponsoring events so that price of public transit is included in the price of admission.(118) This is a great idea that can be easily applied in Toronto. Everyone knows that the traffic becomes deplorable when there are major baseball, concert and exhibition events at the Skydome stadium. It would be very easy for the TTC (Toronto Transit Authority), Via Rail (Canada’s heavy rail system) and the Go Train (commuter rail system) to sponsor large events because the main downtown station that links all three systems is connected to the stadium. The three main public transit systems that I mentioned could try to connect into a single-fare system, and once this is done it would make it even easier to have the price of public transit be built right into the admission price for large events. I think that the price of transit should be automatically (with no opting out!) included in the price of admission in order to encourage as many people as possible to use public transit. Of course, the price for parking at the events should also be prohibitive in order to further discourage car usage, and the transit systems must add extra trains and streetcars to accommodate extra people at special times.

9. Make Public Transit More Attractive
In chapter 6 of Ecocities, Register makes a great point about how trains and ferries used to be aesthetically attractive both from the inside and the outside. He waxed poetically about his boyhood train journeys when there were large viewing platforms and classy train interiors. People used to be proud to take the train because the trains looked good and felt civilized. Today’s trains and public transit vehicles could gain a lot from an increase in attractive features. The modernist move toward utilitarian design has left behind good old fashioned beauty. Toronto and all transit stakeholders should realize that beauty can be a great marketing tool. If we could travel in trains and streetcars that were perceived to be as good looking as our cars, then we might just be proud to take the train or streetcar again. The perception that public transit is ugly also feeds into the perception that public transit is for the lower classes. Perhaps attention to aesthetic details might be a crucial step in eliminating the public transit stigma and creating a socially just transit system.

10. Promote Bicycle Travel
While Beatley briefly touched on the inclusion of bicycles into many European city transit plans, Register looks more deeply into the benefits of bicycle travel. Bikes take up minimal space, travel at much lower speeds than cars, require only human energy inputs and do not pollute the environment. Register thinks that bikes will be around long after gas-powered cars have gone extinct, and thus cities like Toronto should start planning for the future and built more bike-oriented roads. There is a serious lack of bike-friendly zones in Toronto. While there are some nice bike paths along the lake and in many of the ravines, these almost never lead to anywhere I need to go. Toronto must convert many of its main corridors to make them more bicycle-friendly. There is talk that Queen Street, one of the oldest and most widely used shopping streets in Toronto, could be closed down to cars and made exclusively for pedestrians, streetcars and bikes. This forward-thinking scheme would be a great way to showcase the city’s exciting new de-emphasis of cars and support for sustainable public transit.