[TJ O'Pootertoot]

IMHO, as long as mayoral candidates are in a position to draw up their own personal transit plans (and as long as the upper levels fund transit on a piecemeal basis, based on political opportunism) you're never going to dig that region out of the hole it's in. Same goes for a system that throws up a wall well before its riders finish getting home. TTC doesn't care about 905 because it doesn't have to and vice versa. Not a recipe for success.

Council isn't knowledgeable enough and TTC is slave to their whims.

That said, interesting point about the shifting responsibilities. I wonder how they will evolve.

 

[kEiThZ]

This agency that never considered Toronto's needs yet we need to give it control over local transit? Oky doky guess I was so wrong

15 minute service is fine for Toronto if your mandate was regional transport. And that's my point. Metrolinx should be thinking about how to maximise utility of those corridors. Not just worrying about regional transit.

Change their mandate. And they'll reach different conclusions.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

And your distaste for uploading flowing from Harris is kind of counter-intuitive. Most of the problems he created are as a result of the province DOWNLOADING onto municipalities. Downloading is less of an issue with adequate legislative/taxation tools but his reign did the opposite of proving why municipalities should be in charge of more. I doubt there's anyone at the TTC looks back at 1995 and thinks, "Gee - we used to be so dependent on the province. Remember how terrible that was?")

Downloading is only an issue because revenue tools to pay for the infrastructure also wasn't downloaded.

The ideal situation is to have all the infrastructure downloaded, along with the revenue tools to pay for it. Thay way we can pay for maintaining and expansion, and never again have to deal with the province standing in our way of achieving our goals.

 

[BurlOak]

The Harris government is one of the primary reasons why I vehemently oppose uploading municipal infrastructure to the province. We've all seen how openly hostile the Province can be to the City, so I never again want Toronto to be in the position where it has to depend on the support of the Province for our future success.

Download the transportation (excluding 400 series) and poverty infrastructure onto the city, give the City the revenue tools to pay for it. If the Province wants to support us that's great, and if not, well, we'll be fine on our own.

If the Harris downloading was so bad, you would have thought that the Liberals would have reversed it sometime in the past 13 years.

In the mid 1990's, the federal government downloaded onto the provinces (by cutting money), while the province downloaded onto the municipalities. Since then, Harper and Martin restored the money to the provinces, but the province never restored the balance to the municipalities.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Downloading is only an issue because revenue tools to pay for the infrastructure also wasn't downloaded.

The ideal situation is to have all the infrastructure downloaded, along with the revenue tools to pay for it. Thay way we can pay for maintaining and expansion, and never again have to deal with the province standing in our way of achieving our goals.

In theory, perhaps. But whose goals? Toronto's or the larger region's? you want municipalities to have more say, but how do you ensure that Toronto and York Region (to use an obvious example) are working toward the same goals?
How do you ensure co-operation? Whatever the framework is, the province has to create it. It's hard to imagine them creating it and then simple letting the municipalities run it.

If the Harris downloading was so bad, you would have thought that the Liberals would have reversed it sometime in the past 13 years.

In the mid 1990's, the federal government downloaded onto the provinces (by cutting money), while the province downloaded onto the municipalities. Since then, Harper and Martin restored the money to the provinces, but the province never restored the balance to the municipalities.

totally true. But I don't know how that proves the downloading wasn't bad. First, while the Liberals left the vast majority of it in place, it's also true they reversed lots of bits and pieces of downloading.

Moreover, instead of giving Toronto a fish every year, they taught Toronto to fish, by giving it the City of Toronto Act. I could flip your question and ask, if downloading actually adversely affected Toronto's finances, how come they're so reluctant to use the full breadth of their powers to remedy it? (My answer: political immaturity.) We'll see what happens as Tory talks more about revenue tools but the election of Ford based on his "transit financing" agenda suggests there has been an awful lot of reluctance to go that route in Toronto.

At the end the day you can't solve "gridlock" with a Toronto plan. It's a regional problem requiring a regional solution (ergo, Places to Grow, Greenbelt, The Big Move) .

 

[W. K. Lis]

What is the real difference between GO's RER and John Tory's SmartTrack?

According to Metrolinx, see link,

Electric trains running every 15 minutes or better, all day and in both directions, within the most heavily travelled sections of our network

According to John Tory, we'll have 15 minute service initially.

I think the real only difference is that with RER, we'll be using GO fares, while with SmartTrack we'll be using TTC fares. I really think John Tory is trying to have RER stations within Toronto, but be able to use TTC fares and transfers. It's the fares that will define if we have service within the TTC or within GO.

Personally, would like to use TTC fares and transfers on GO's RER TTC's SmartTrack. Or whatever name the politicians will be calling it in the end.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

What is the real difference between GO's RER and John Tory's SmartTrack?

According to Metrolinx, see link,

According to John Tory, we'll have 15 minute service initially.

I think the real only difference is that with RER, we'll be using GO fares, while with SmartTrack we'll be using TTC fares. I really think John Tory is trying to have RER stations within Toronto, but be able to use TTC fares and transfers. It's the fares that will define if we have service within the TTC or within GO.

Personally, would like to use TTC fares and transfers on GO's RER TTC's SmartTrack. Or whatever name the politicians will be calling it in the end.

Steve Munro's article covers this: http://stevemunro.ca/2016/03/09/is-anything-left-of-smarttrack/

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Moreover, instead of giving Toronto a fish every year, they taught Toronto to fish, by giving it the City of Toronto Act. I could flip your question and ask, if downloading actually adversely affected Toronto's finances, how come they're so reluctant to use the full breadth of their powers to remedy it? (My answer: political immaturity.) We'll see what happens as Tory talks more about revenue tools but the election of Ford based on his "transit financing" agenda suggests there has been an awful lot of reluctance to go that route in Toronto.

The tool in the City of Toronto act are intentionally ineffective at raising revenue. They're among the least politically palatable tools, and each of the tools would individually raise a very small amount of money. We could implement every one of the remaining taxes in the City of Toronto Act, and they'd raise only $200 Million/year, nowhere near the amount the city needs to address its capital needs.

If the province really wanted Toronto to have the tools to address capital needs, they would've allowed the city to implement sales taxes, like every other major city our size has, and perhaps a payroll tax.

Notably, the City did implement the most effective tool in the CoTA: The land transfer tax

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Here's an article that covers the issues with the CoTA tools: http://www.thestar.com/bigideas/2014/03/02/the_law_said_we_could_think_big_so_why_didnt_we.html

Among the revenue-generating tools the city asked for but did not receive is the ability to impose income tax and sales tax — the latter of which Carroll believes is “the one big, glaring omission from the City of Toronto Act.”

“Cities hit a wall where you should not be relying on property tax for half of your operating budget,” she said. “You should have a more diversified stream.”

Instead, the Act gave the city a package of smaller fiscal tools, in addition to the land-transfer tax and vehicle registration tax, as well as so-called “sin” taxes on alcohol and tobacco, neither of which have been introduced.

The reason: the relatively high cost of collection. Estimates indicated that each tax would have cost the city $10 million a year, while generating about $12 million, according to Carroll.

 

[Palma]

Bingo!

The issue boils down to something quite simple: Metro worked because when it was building out the TTC network, the vast vast majority of growth was within the city and the number of people commuting from what is today the 905 was relatively insignificant.
If your transit system covers the commutershed, you're golden. And we were. And people studied the TTC and Metro.

Now it doesn't, and the transit system is a borderline joke.

In the meantime, Metrolinx probably considers Toronto's needs 10X as much as TTC cares about the needs of a rider who transfers to their system from Mississauga or Thornhill. The limit of their vision is astounding.



You're totally right there's a lot of ways to do it and, as I said, it's not entirely clear something like the MTA could exist here, simply because of the difference in our political systems.

The reason I mention New York (aside from being relatively familiar with it) is that....well, first it doesn't really operate at the same level as the TTC. OK, the geography of our cities is pretty different but quite simply, translating it to our terms, the MTA covers the 416 and 905. Right? It covers Long Island and it covers parts of Connecticut and Westchester County too. Not NJ, but that's like if TTC went up to Richmond Hill (the horror!) and out to Pickering but maybe not Oakville - or whatever. It also covers boats and trains and subways and buses but that's all beside the point; what's relevant is that one agency is responsible for the vast majority of the commutershed, regardless of municipal boundaries. For all the concerns here about TTC just disappearing, it could continue to be run as a division of Metrolinx, just like GO. Then maybe YRT is a division and then the Peel systems are amalgamated. The specifics don't matter, just the principles of a single co-coordinating agency with divisions.

The MTA also has dedicated funding and independent authority over all its operations etc. and lots of other things I think we can learn from but I certainly agree the model just can't imported wholesale. I'm sure Translink can't either; we need a GTA-specific solution.

the idea that TTC should keep its fiefdom because Metrolinx is so mean and doesn't understand the city or because the Leaside bus will get cancelled or whatever is crazy. Toronto council has proven, beyond doubt, it interferes too much in transit decisions. It upended citywide plans THREE times in five years, it's repeatedly ignored, postponed, delayed, de-prioritized the line all professional planners consider most crucial to the future of the system and all the mayoral candidates were running insane, unworkable, back-of-a-napkin plans as the backbones of their campaigns. that benefits no one. not TTC, not riders, not taxpayers.

(I mean, I don't want to belabour the point but go on Youtube and watch that Matlow-Ford exchange on Scarborough again. The idea that this was how transit decisions get made is sickening. it was sickening to watch. They did this for like 2 days AND made the wrong decision. Remember Gary Webster getting fired? Need I go on?)

A properly constituted form of Metrolinx would have significant Toronto presence, at the political and staff level. All these other concerns are just parochialism and insanity to which you've become inured.

The TTC without councillor interfering should run the TTC. They are not elected and so are not beholden to anyone. They know where the priority areas of transit should be, which lines, routes are the busiest, and what is the best mode - bus, LRT, subway, etc. Its true councillors interfer too much for political reasons and Metrolinx will also and will cater to 905. The fact that they are using routes that run thorough Toronto and get to decide where stops should be or make it really expensive for someone in Toronto to use GO shows how much they care for Toronto. The TTC should play the bigger role and be completely in charge

 

[TheTigerMaster]

The TTC is far more independent than Metrolinx. This is why you regularly see TTC and City Planning staff speak out against the wishes of the Mayor and Council. You never see this at Metrolinx.

 

[Palma]

The TTC is far more independent than Metrolinx. This is why you regularly see TTC and City Planning staff speak out against the wishes of the Mayor and Council. You never see this at Metrolinx.

This is true. I know Webster was not in support of what Ford wanted and said so and got fired

 

[ssiguy2]

What is the real difference between GO's RER and John Tory's SmartTrack?

According to Metrolinx, see link,

According to John Tory, we'll have 15 minute service initially.

I think the real only difference is that with RER, we'll be using GO fares, while with SmartTrack we'll be using TTC fares. I really think John Tory is trying to have RER stations within Toronto, but be able to use TTC fares and transfers. It's the fares that will define if we have service within the TTC or within GO.

Personally, would like to use TTC fares and transfers on GO's RER TTC's SmartTrack. Or whatever name the politicians will be calling it in the end.

Exactly!

People couldn't care less what the technology is or who is running it, all they want is affordable and frequent transit.

I bet most Torontonians haven't even heard of RER and nobody {including Metrolinx, Queen's Park, City Hall and the TTC} really knows what it will turn out as. RER is a mystery............a transit plan without an actual plan. Smart Tracks is clear on what it is...............a surface subway with TTC fares. The TTC fare part is why it has support and why RER, despite being in the planning far before Smart Tracks, is greeted with a collective yawn.

Those who know anything about RER also know that it will be a Metrolinx baby and Metrolinx has zero credibility. That is a shame as the agency has been moving ahead with a lot of needed transit and much more is on the way but people are selective on what they remember. Metrolinx has only completed one completely new project since it's inception..........the UPX. UPX has been a transportation, financial, and public relations disaster of monumental proportions and has so tarnished Metrolinx's reputation that it may never get it back.

RER is associated with Metrolinx and that is nothing but bad news as, due to the UPX fiasco, is seen as just a bunch of policy wonks who live in Ivory Towers with no real concept of what Torontonians want in their transit system. Smart Tracks is seen as Tory's idea and he is still fairly well respected and has proven himself to be a fairly reasonable consensus builder who is willing to admit a mistake and change his mind if a better idea can be proposed.........a quality unknown to either Ford or Miller.

Smart Tracks is associated with TTC fares and a Tory idea while RER is seen as a Queen's Park idea with fares that Metrolinx will decide upon...................small wonder people can relate to ST and have little interest in RER.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

I think you are jumping to conclusions here @ssiguy2 , Torontonians know what GO is and can comprehend what upgrades to GO network in the form of RER might be.

The problem is that GO-RER has low frequency and requires some other form of transportation to reach. These two factors means that between waiting time and transfers, it takes just as long to reach destinations as with the TTC network (or at least will feel like it when waiting for 10 minutes at a station). Integration with the TTC is terrible with many obvious transfer interchange stations simply not existing resulting in the only destination really being Union Station, and you still have to pay a premium fare on top of that. Is it really any surprise that Torontonians don't consider GO as a transit option?

As far as I can tell, SmartTrack does not mitigate any of these concerns, aside from fare integration maybe (which might still be a premium TTC fare). In fact, the only real ostensible difference between GO-RER and SmartTrack seems to be the Unilever station.

I fail to see how SmartTrack will be an appealing service to people if Torontonians today already don't consider GO as a viable option.

 

[kEiThZ]

I fail to see how SmartTrack will be an appealing service to people if Torontonians today already don't consider GO as a viable option.

People need to ask why this is. It's utterly moronic for somebody to ride the TTC for 1.5 hrs from Scarborough when GO + a bus could get them there in under an hour. That's some serious under-utilization of existing infrastructure. Cash anybody here, say with ac straight face, that the Europeans or Asians would do this routinely across any of their cities?

And as long as this situation persists (where the subway is the predominant mode of transport), there will be lots of demand for extension at the fringes. We've just ended debate on Scarborough. Now we're seeing debate on Yonge North. And I can imagine a day when Mississauga might a subway extension. Or maybe even Markham (up McCowan).

If anybody wants to avoid the above the paradigm must be changed. Long haul needs to be largely the purview of GO. 416 and 905.

I also consider the idea of "independence" to be bunk. An independent transit agency doesn't expect another level of government to pay for its entire transit development program.

No revenue tools, you say? They can raise property taxes. Toronto has the lowest rates in the province. My parents pay less taxes on their house (worth 2.3x more and double the square footage) than I did on my condo in Ottawa. The idea that people with million dollar homes and half a million dollar condos can't afford $50 more a month on property taxes is absurd. That's what I saw in Ottawa on my tax bill to pay for the LRT. The province should have allowed income and/or sales taxes. But let's not pretend that Toronto is helpless. If the province is footing the bill, expect them to retain revenue authority. Those tools (if they happen) will go to Metrolinx before they come to the City of Toronto. Just watch. Queen's Park won't and shouldn't reward political cowardice with more authority.