Bixi Bikes comes to Toronto

BIXI Toronto launched May 3rd with 1000 bikes in over 80 locations. They can currently only be found within the downtown core (from Bathurst east to Jarvis and Queens Quay north to Bloor) but Bixi is hoping to expand. If you live and/or work in the downtown area Bixi might be for you, especially when it’s only $95/year for a well tuned bike whenever you need it. If you’re only in Toronto visiting BIXI has both day rates ($5/day) and 3-day rates ($12). I was hoping to use BIXI when I go to one of my favourite restaurants this week, Pizza Libretto. But there are no BIXI stations near by and it could be up to an extra $12+ if I don’t return the bike within 90 mins!

Toronto Bike lanes

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford recently announced that he is removing the bike lanes on Jarvis Street. Traffic engineers at the city of Toronto claim that commuters are faced with much longer commuting times and only 600 cyclists are using the Jarvis Street Bike lanes. This may have been more digestible to city cyclists if Ford had offered up some alternative. There is a cycling culture in downtown Toronto and Ford could have proactively offered up another street for bike lanes. Cyclists could instead be offered north routes on one-way Bleecker Street and southbound access on another adjacent route to Jarvis.

For an urban, supposedly active city Toronto’s bike lanes are disconnected, random and usually dangerous to say the least. Biking Toronto has a great website where cyclists can interact and they offer up a map of the existing bike lanes. I try and ride my bike in the city, but it’s usually not on bike lanes (mostly because there aren’t many in the area I live in). Driver behaviours vary day to day; you never know when someone is going to try and cut it close. My suggestions for safe city riding:

1. Wear a helmet (duh!)
2. Ride about 0.5 to a full meter from the curb or parked cars. As a cyclist you have the right to be in the right hand lane (as a slower moving vehicle). If you leave yourself some ‘wiggle’ room by the curb you can save yourself from falling over. It also indicates to drivers to move almost over into the left hand lane to get around you.
3. Do NOT ride on the sidewalk (it’s for pedestrians)
4. Wear bright colours. The more visible you are, the more likely other cars and cyclists will see you.
5. Carry ID, a mobile phone and have money for a cab.

The Sidewalks are for Pedestrians

Suggestion #3 is to not ride on the sidewalk. One it is illegal. And two it frightens pedestrians.

One of my favourite ways to stay active and healthy is to run track workouts down at Varsity Stadium with the University of Toronto. For my warm-up and cool-down I usually go and adventure through Queens Park and campus, seeing old buildings I used to attend classes in and getting my legs ready for something blisteringly fast (well fast for old lady legs!). Recently my fear factor has gone up significantly; there are so many cyclists jumping on and off sidewalks or just steadily riding on sidewalks. I am very afraid that one of them is going to plow into me one day. While it wouldn’t be as devastating as being hit by a car, I think the damage could still be quite significant.

Cycling friends please leave the sidewalks to those of walking and running.

With summer here I’m going to try and get in as much time on my bike as possible. I may even start waking up and ridiculously early hours just to get in a long road ride before I go to work. My goal is try and ride my bike to work once my competitive track season is over, but we’ll see given how dangerous it may be.

Enjoy your summer.  Why not enjoy your summer on your bike?

Different government agencies are developing individual green manuals for their jurisdictions, since each jurisdiction faces unique climate and construction constraints. These manuals are much like the LEED manual; the points system for constructing sustainable buildings. Buildings are a simpler than highways, while the foundation may change the general construction as the building goes up remains the same. It’s why each road jurisdiction necessitates its own individual manual.

What can we expect on the greener roads?

• Reduced raw material: recycled pavements, long life pavements, life cycle assessments of the road structure, etc
• Improved Human Health and Safety: intelligent transportation systems, pedestrian and cycle friendly road and highway intersections, etc
• Water: reduced water use during construction, proper storm water management, etc
• Optimized land  and habitat use: crossings for wildlife, minimize the width of roads and clear zones, protect streams and wetlands, etc

Greener roads will continue to evolve. Our traditional way of road construction cannot continue, not just due to the environmental hazards, but the cost to build and maintain our current infrastructure is not possible.

Much has been written and commented on in the news recently. Although as the time passes from the disaster we hear less and less about Fukushima. But there is still much we can learn from the recent tragedy.

Why there will should never be a Nuclear disaster to that scale in Ontario

With the events that unfolded in Japan it was understandable that residents living at or in the vicinity of a nuclear plant were afraid. Some of the plants, including Ontario’s Pickering nuclear plant, were the same vintage as the Fukushima Dai-Chi Complex. Unlike Japan, Southern Ontario is more insulated from a meltdown resulting from a natural disaster.

For one thing Ontario is not located along a fault line, Japan is located on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire.’ The Pacific Ring of Fire represents an area where many of the world’s tectonic plates diverge and move through subduction (in contrast mountains are created by collisions and convergence). Ontario is located in the middle of a continental (tectonic) plate and while it is generally a stable area sometimes small earthquakes occur in regional stress areas. In simple terms the ground in Ontario rebounds or moves up and down. These movements are no where as severe as the horizontal movements along fault lines; the regional stress zones cannot hold as much energy as the fault lines.

Ontario will also not see a tsunami because there is no body of water big enough to create a wave that large. A tsunami is a great sea wave produced especially by submarine earth movement or volcanic eruption. Since it is unlikely that there will be a massive disturbance in the Ontario bodies of water, and their volumes are too small, Ontario is insulated from the effects of a tsunami.

Transport of Nuclear seems like suicide

Today the G&M published an article on ‘The Right Size of Nuclear‘ but the article raised a more important issue, where Canada is planning to store its nuclear waste. Currently the nuclear plants house their waste on site, but the Federal Government, under the leadership of Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is trying to create a national dump site. Some potential sites have been selected in Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Ontario.

While the notion of a central dump site is logical, transportation of nuclear waste is unreasonable. Would you want to be sitting alongside a truck carrying nuclear waste? I certainly would not.It’s not the threat of leaked radiation from the truck that frightens me but the impending disaster if one of those trucks gets into an accident.

Possible solutions to be tabled should include a direct rail line to a long-term waste facility. Or storing the nuclear waste at the site where it is created. All the social, economic and an environmental factors should play a role when deciding where to store the nuclear waste.

I do not want to debate the necessity of nuclear power or whether it should be considered ‘green’ power; currently governments (worldwide) view it as a viable way to power our future. But as we proceed to plan, design, build and decommission these nuclear plants the life cycle of the plant should be considered in greater detail. It’s not just about powering today, it’s about powering long term, dealing with the ramifications (from any type of power) long-term, dealing with waste, managing growth and managing people’s expectations.

The two presenters were PAULA HAMMOND – Secretary of Washington State DOT & Chair of AASHTO Climate Change Steering Committee & CINDY BURBANK – Vice President Climate Change Practice Leader, Parsons Brinckerhoff

If there was one thing I really took away from this presentation to combat climate change in the Transportation is to go with the ‘low hanging fruit,’ the things that are easy to achieve. Here were Cindy’s suggestions for starter initiatives for GHG strategies:

• Eco-driving programs
• Carpool/Vanpool Programs: provide them with priority parking in our lots
• Telework promotion
• Traffic Signal Synchronization
• Adaptive Signalization
• LED traffic lights
• Lower Carbon Pavements
• Reduced roadside mowing
• Partnering with local governments to better coordinate land use/transportation planning
• Truck stop electrification
• Roundabouts

Hammond was the first presenter she is the Chair of the Climate Change Steering Committee, which includes 17 state DOTS. The group is diverse and includes members from environmental planning, highway engineering, rail transportation, aviation, public transportation and the Centre for Environmental Excellence. Known as Climate Change Technical Assistance Program, Their Goal:

To Supply AASHTO members with timely information, tools and technical assistance to help them meet the difficult challenges that arise related to climate change

Along with her colleagues in Washington this was the approach Paula and her team used for GHG Mitigation

• Increasing travel option to reduce vehicle miles traveled per capita
• Supporting improved vehicle technology
• Lowering the carbon content of fuel
• Improving the efficiency of the transportation system
• Adding capacity to complete critical corridors and support concentrated growth and transit oriented development

Although they are just entering into their climate change mitigation strategy Paula and her team had these Lessons Learned to offer up:

• Have a plan up front – being proactive instead of reactive
• Structure your program using defined priorities
• Don’t recreate the wheel
• Take some credit – get the word out about good and innovative work

.. tomorrow Part 2…

According to the 2009 Quality of Life Index that includes 194 countries Canada ranks 19th. The ranking is based on weighted factors that includes cost of living, leisure and culture, the economy, the environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, risk & safety and climate. A full list of all the countries can be found here, including how they categories are weighted and calculated.

As for where we will be in 2010? It’s unknown right now but it will likely be falling even further behind. It’s no secret that Canada is starting to lag, we are becoming known as the country of polite polluters.

Canada the only country that agreed to the Kyoto Protocol backs away from the ratification

The Kyoto Protocol asked for all nations involved to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by a certain percentage below 1990 levels by 2012. Canada agreed to cut emissions by 6% below 1990 levels, formally ratified the Kyoto Accord at the end of 2002 and in 2006 the Canadian government announced it was abandoning the Kyoto targets. Even wore Canada is currently 26% above 1990 emission levels.

Why are we backing away from the Kyoto protocol? Why can’t we meet our environmental targets? According to George Monbiot it is because of all the potential economic benefits of exploiting the oil of the Alberta Tar Sands. But as Monbiot explains it’s not really oil and that’s why it might be so environmentally destructive. In his article The Urgent Threat to World Peace is … Canada, Manbiot sums up the tar sands …

“It’s actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals… To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailing ponds, some of which are so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface(10). Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers… Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes”

Canada might become known as a corrupt petrostate. According to Environmental|Defence Canada has The Most Destructive Project on Earth, the Alberta Tar Sands. The open-pit mines needed to extract the tar sands will be the size of the UK; our pristine landscape will be destroyed and that not directly destroyed by the open-pit mines will be indirectly ruined by all the leaching chemicals.

Could Canada to be expelled from the Commonwealth?

Copenhagen, a place where the commonwealth leaders have congregated to find common ground for the future of the global environment. As Kyoto is about to expire the goal is to have a legally binding agreement in place. But Canada will only participate if meets our economic objectives.

Yesterday I wrote about the triple bottom line accounting principle, people, planet, profit. Harger is regressing, he’s moving away from people and planet and purely exploiting profit. As Europe invests in green infrastructure Canada is investing in ‘dirty’ infrastructure. Globally, Harper and our Federal government our tarnishing our Canadian image.

Worse still the leaders of the Commonwealth are growing frustrated. As they implement policies and laws to meet ambitious emissions goals, Canada is seriously lagging behind. Other leaders of the Commonwealth are commenting on the divide between Harper and the other leaders.

Harper is waiting, waiting until his big brother to south takes a stand and tables proposals. According to Harper we are too connected to the US to table any proposals.

Our environmental and economic future lie in the hands of Steven Harper. If he chooses to ignore the ambitious goals being tabled in Copenhagen and solely looks out for the oil interests in Canada, than Canada will lose much of it’s good-faith with global leaders. Worse if Harper permits the complete extraction of the Tar Sands, Canada will be labeled as one of the world’s worst polluters; we’ll be chastised by the rest of the world.

Reading the LEED manual really gets you thinking out all the small things one can do to have a more energy efficient home and office. Simple things like living or working near a grocery store and restaurants. Changing old lightbulbs to more energy conscious ones. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Bringing your own coffee mug instead of the non-recyclable, non-compostable cafeteria/Starbucks one.

The LEED manual also showed me that it is not enough. Have 5% recycled material. Reduce water consumption by 20%. Use pervious materials on 50%. What? That’s it? At a conference about a year ago a someone said that being sustainable isn’t enough, that we need to regenerative; meaning our buildings have to be carbon-neutral or better yet carbon-negative (meaning that they absorb more carbon than they produce).

LEED Canada is changing in the beginning of 2010 and I believe that the US is already there. More stringent, real changes should be part of the manuals; hopefully we are moving toward sustainable, regenerative buildings.

A friend of mine passed me an article at work, The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks: Efficiency and Optimality Control. It is a little technical and ‘mathy’ but I was surprised at how easy it was to follow.

The abstract really captures the essence of the article:

Uncoordinated individuals in human society pursuing their personally optimal strategies do not always achieve the social optimum, the most beneficial state to the society as a whole. Instead, strategies form Nash equilibria which are often socially suboptimal. Society, therefore, has to pay a price of anarchy for the lack of coordination among its members. Here we assess this price of anarchy by analyzing the travel times in road networks of several major cities. Our simulation shows that uncoordinated drivers possibly waste a considerable amount of their travel time. Counter-intuitively, simply blocking certain streets can partially improve the traffic conditions. We analyze various complex networks and discuss the possibility of similar paradoxes in physics.

Blocking Streets Improves Traffic Conditions

Imagine in Toronto we blocked several of the east-west streets in the central business district and forced traffic to pick a major north-south route and stick with it? Imagine all cities with more efficient major arteriole roads. The theory from the authors is that overall travel times would improve. Inevitably some individuals would suffer a delay from this new transportation grid, but the overall effect would be a decrease in traffic times.

Traffic would be forced to stick with a route. It would minimize the number of right and left turns, which cause traffic to slow. Traffic patterns would be improved. Fewer people would be on the residential streets, making them safer. And you would arrive to your final destination faster.

But given the nature of Toronto, and some other similar cities, there would need to be some access to east-west streets to access the neighbourhoods. It would be about finding a balance; it must still be attractive to live in the city with safe streets and efficient road networks.

It would be interesting to see this in action. I would like to see them try this on Avenue Road, Yonge Street or Mount Pleasant Boulevard in Toronto; three major north-south routes that always seem jammed because there are not many dedicated left- and right-turn lanes. Perhaps with improved travel times, surface route public transit would also become more attractive allowing more people to choose to leave their car at home.

Multimodal Highways are the Future

I recently finished and wrote a book review of Alphabet City’s book Fuel, which had a great section on the post-carbon highway specifically evaluating Highway 401. The existing highway at it’s widest is 18-lanes with a core-collector system and goes down to 4-lanes in the more rural sections. The future highway will have rail, cycle, transfer stations – it will be the ultimate people mover. With Ontario’s Places to Grow plan and the ever increasing population there is no denying that there needs to be a shift in the way people use the 401.

The 401 is already congested now imagine how gridlocked it would be with a 30% increase in population

A few facts about the 401

• Total length = 820 km (509.6 miles)
• $1.2 Trillion worth of goods travel the highway each year or $3.3 Billion per day
• Annual Average Daily Traffic = 420,000 vehicles
• Peak Average Daily Traffic = 500,000 vehicles
• 71,000 tonnes of salt (NaCl) used annually to combat ice and snow

There is no denying that highways will always play a huge role in moving people to places and things to people in North America. The goal of reducing the carbon footprint on the highways is to incorporate ‘green’ initiatives; wind turbines, pervious pavements, electric vehicles, carpooling, trees along right-of-ways …

The strategy institute set out the following mandate to achieve the following through the variety of presentations:

1. Capitalize on infrastructure spending
2. Stimulate economic recovery
3. Enhance environmental sustainability
4. Assure accountability and transparency
5. Manage your risk
6. Attain greener energy
7. Build strategic partnerships
8. Measure performance of suppliers and vendors

The conference was a good balance of case studies and the creative science behind projects including, the necessity of public engagement, how to make a project successful, what climate change is doing to our infrastructure and how to effectively manage existing infrastructure.

The Keynote Address: Setting Priorities for the Improvement of National Infrastructure

The keynote address by Graeme Purves was brilliant and highlighted how climate change was affecting global infrastructure and then delved into some Scottish and UK examples. To set the priorities the Scottish government began with a framework, combining public perceptions with government priorities. In the end the government produced the National Planning Framework that highlighted the 14 essential projects that would benefit all Scottish residents; but Purves did state that at the at the municipal level the federal government was willing to engage in discussion about improving the local infrastructure, but that there would need to be a cost-sharing agreement. I think globally that is true that nationally infrastructure projects should be selected that benefit the country and at the regional and municipal level there can be cost-sharing agreements but that the entire infrastructure cost will not be borne by the national governments.

The Necessity of Public Engagement

My bf works in the digital marketing world so I get to learn a lot about the benefits from social media and public engagement from him. I believe that the engineering/public sector world is lagging in this area, but finally the trends of social media are catching on. From twitter to facebook to building a website that engages people to using mobile phones and including traditional public information sessions, all of these are essentials are key to capturing the greater audience for any infrastructure project. Three speakers discussed the importance of public engagement and social media.

1. Joseph Virgilio, a councillor in the Town of Markham spoke at length about social media and how the current mayor used it to capture the vote in Markham. Virgilio spoke about the successes of having an intuitive website and about creating social media campaigns; two of the most successful campaigns being the ‘Gridlock, Rapid Transit & You’ as well as the ‘Quest for the Best.’ Markham also successfully used an on-line voting system for the most recent mayoral election (will we see something like this in the next federal or provincial election?)
2. Kim Stephen’s the Program Director for the Water Sustainability Action Plan for BC weaved social media and public engagement through his presentation. Stephen’s didn’t mention specific social media programs in his presentation he did discuss the importance of them, including the website waterbalance.ca. Success did come from a ‘coffee table’ book, as Stephen’s described it, Living Water Smart that BC created to engage the public on the water crisis in BC.
3. Cathie O’Toole the CFO of The Halifax Regional Municipality also spoke to the benefits of social media. The infrastructure of Halifax, like many other Canadian cities, is aging and failing. Halifax is looking to find a balance between priority projects and what is important to the public.

How to Make a Project Successful

Several presentations pointed to the post-war through the 60’s build of Canadian cities, which means that we are in a second phase of rehabilitation and rebuilding. With all this construction it is important to set your project up for success from its initial conception. Three ideas were discussed regarding this, Public Private Partnerships (P3s), How to Pick the right consultant, and how important planning is.

1. P3’s are the standard now in BC says Sue Fimrite, Project Director of Partnerships BC, which is a subsidiary of the BC Ministry of Finance. From Design-Build all the way through including the management and operation BC has found was to mitigate construction and price risk through the use of P3s. The number of successes is immense but some of the hallmark projects include the Charles Jago Northern Sports Centre, The Sea-to-Sky Highway and the Abbotsford Regional Hospital and Cancer Centre.
2. John Haythorne presented on how to pick the right consultant to make your project a success. He is a partner with Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP and holds degrees in engineering and law, but more importantly has been involved in a variety of projects throughout his career. Briefly his strategies for effective selection for infrastructure project are:

• Align selection/evaluation criteria to goals for infrastructure
• Evaluate for value
• Use market competition to define scope
• Retain consultants early
• Use consultants to retain consultants
• Get meaningful references

3. Plan, Plan, Plan!! Jennifer Keesmaat a Partner of the Office for Urbanism gave a brilliant presentation on the necessity for planning. Perhaps I enjoyed this one most because of my love of engineering combined with all the knowledge I’ve gained from Phil about Marketing; presenting a plan for a major infrastructure project combines engineering with an effective presentation. Keesmaat drove home that projects are only successful with plans and the plans should be comprehensive, multi-disciplinary and collaborative. And the proof is in the case studies; all of the projects presented had success because they had well sought out plan.

How Climate Change is Affecting Our Infrastrucutre

More storms. More intense storms. More extreme weather. It is the reality of climate change. Gordon McBean the Director of Policy Studies of the Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction at the University of Western Ontario (my Alma matter) spoke extensively on climate change and how to prepare the existing and new infrastructure to cope with climate change. McBean’s key message, “The climate has changed, will continue to change and humans are the main cause.” From this we, engineers, scientists, planners, etc., must reduce the impact infrastructure has on climate and reduce the infrastructure’s vulnerability to a vulnerable, changing climate and its extremes. Climate change was a theme that ran through many of the presentations and is one of the key challenges facing many of Canada’s urban centres. Steve Dorey, VP of External Relations of Hydro One emphasized the critical role climate change will play and stated that “climate change is the key challenge of the developed world.”

Climate change is a reality and we are all being forced to deal with it. It simply is not just about changing what we are doing going forward but mitigating what we have done in the past.

Effective Management of Existing Infrastructure

“If you build it, they will come” – made famous by the Phil Alden Robinson movie Field of Dreams. But once you build it make sure you keep track of it. It was some what of a shock to hear that municipalities were catching up on tracking the construction of the post-war boom still. From initial construction through maintenance some of the projects had no organized records. However, some municipalities were the opposite, acting proactively to plan for how to build maintenance programs for their functional, existing infrastructure.

1. Cathie O’Toole of Halifax admitted that the city was poor at keeping track of their infrastructure in the past but that the future held the prospects of an organized data base to best manage their existing infrastructure and allow for the planning of new, effective infrastructure. From here she tied the presentation in with planning and its necessity for maximum efficiency
2. Colin Prang the Manager of Infrastructure Preservation for the City of Saskatoon. Saskatoon has been proactive with their pavements and has captured the notion of spending $1 at the right time and it saves you millions of dollars in the end. The focus for Mr. Prang is roads and he has set up an extensive evaluation system that rates pavements from very good to poor and from this he developed an extensive rehabilitation system to match his evaluation system. Saskatoon employs an extensive array of rehabilitation techniques from rut filling, to overlays, to complete reconstruction. Again the success of this program is its ability to effectively manage the existing road infrastructure and to be proactive with the restoration.
3. Steve Dorey also spoke to effective management of existing infrastructure and how it relates to energy in Ontario. The Ontario government has committed to the elimination of coal fired plants by 2015. Dorey stated that this would be a success with a commitment to ‘green’ energy and nuclear (although given the most recent announcement about nuclear this seems impossible). In order to effectively make the switch it was necessary for an evaluation of the existing coal fired plants; how much energy are they producing, where is fed to but also what other energy infrastructure could Ontario rely on, local and foreign.

Case Studies

1. Portland, Oregon: Known as one of the best US cities to live, Portland sent Karl Lisle, Sr. Planner, to talk about the success of a well planned city. Their slogan really sums it up well, “…we planned. it worked…” Ultimately the goal for Portland is to have everything within a 20 minute walk or bike, aka twenty-minute neighbourhoods. As they continue with the city, Portland is expanding its cycling and public transportation routes. Lisle believes their strategy can be applied globally; Build a sustainable economy through job growth, prosperity and a sustainable way of life.
2. Yellowknife, Northwest Territories: The Deputy Mayor Mark Heyck came to present. Before he opened his presentation he asked the audience if and when a more sustainable way of presenting would happen; the projectors consume a disproportionate share of heat and electricity. Yellowknife was named the most sustainable small city in Canada for 2008-9 by the Corporate Knight’s Magazine. Much like the twenty-minute community of Portland with a city of only 20,000 people Yellowknife is promoting a similar theme, have a compact city with easy access to biking and walking trails. Unfortunately unlike Portland, Yellowknife faces very harsh winters where people become much more car dependant.
3. Windsor BIIG/DRIC: Dave Wresinski the Project Planning Division Administrator of the Michigan Department of transportation presented on the proposed new Detroit River crossing. This is trans-national project that links Detroit and Windsor. With the Ambassador bridge reaching the end of its useful life and the tunnel unable to manage the capacity; jointly both the Canadian and American governments are investigating a new crossing. Without getting into too many details Wresinski discussed the challenges with the project including budgeting issues since two countries are involved and the fact that the current Ambassador bridge is privately owned and operated. Likely funding for this project will come for the private sector making this one of the first P3’s for Ontario.

I’m hoping I can attend again next year but also hope to see more on some of the larger cities infrastructure projects. There is a lot of interesting work coming out of California and I think all the Canadian Metropolis’ can learn from it. Other great infrastructure ideas that should be included:

• Tunneling – such as the Chanel Tunnel and the new Vancouver rail link between the airport and Burnaby …
• ‘Green’ Infrastructure – topics such as GFRC (glass fibre reinforced concrete), blast furnace slag, recycling old concrete & aggregate, using renewable resources …
• Changing the Transportation Culture – promoting active transportation in cities, telecommuting, webinar hosting …

There was a lot of great information at the conference and over the coming weeks I’ll expand some of the information.

Thanks to my bf I was directed to the ‘ultimate’ TTC Map on torontoist.com. Dreamed up by Dieter Janssen, an architecture professor at the University of Toronto this map adds new lines, extends existing ones and tries to capture the GTA audience.

Below vs. Above Ground

Streetcar or Subway? Economically it just doesn’t make sense to build more subways. From what I’ve heard every subway kilometre costs $200million and every streetcar kilometre $70million. But with the harsh climate and rolling ravines in Toronto I don’t know that complete surface transit is the answer.

Fare Hikes to Fund New Transit

Either solution where are the funds going to come from to build on this infrastructure? With budgets stretched thin already and existing infrastructure already failing one suggestion has been to increase fares. Before the fare hikes come in, we need to have a zone system in place and a ‘pay-as-go’ card.

Paul Kashimoto made an interesting remark – why not follow the Hong Kong example and earn revenues from managing properties in the vicinity of the transit stations? From Design-Build to Design-Build-Operate.

Although Jansenn’s dream might seem far-fetched it is necessary to have a healthy, sustainable city. For too long Toronto has let its infrastructure be stagnant and we’re paying the price today.