Gridlock isn’t the issue. The issue is lack of a provincial public transportation network. People live in the suburbs because it’s cheap, they have more space and can afford bigger homes.

Isn’t that the tradeoff? One trades the freedom of space for the freedom of time?

But the fault doesn’t lie entirely with the commuters. They are forced to drive their cars to and from work since there is no viable transportation network in and around the cities. By downloading public transit infrastructure to the municipalities the result is a disjointed  system. Transit systems should be uploaded to the provincial governments and a costsharing agreement should be worked out between the provinces and the municipalities, based on ridership demographics.

While I endorse gridlock as an election issue, it should not be a standalone issue. It should be raised with public transit and land use plans; it should be a part of the connectivity issue.

On October 25th all of Ontario goes to vote their municipal leaders. Here in Toronto the race for mayor seems to be cooling down. While candidates continue to campaign, Rob Ford seems to be storming ahead with the lead.

What? Rob Ford? The man who has insulted at least half of the city’s population; he announced he was opposed to gay marriage and does not support immigrants coming to Toronto. He’s been arrested for impaired driving. But this blog is not meant to be about bashing Ford (I’ll save that for another day).

When we go to the polls on October 25th we will all be voting for the future of our cities and towns. Toronto is at a cross-roads. With construction having started on the Spadina Subway extension and the current transit system somewhat in limbo the city needs a mayor that will revitalize transit and make it a priority of their term.

What does the city need for Transit?

Last week I vented about Rossi’s proposal to tunnel the Allen expressway down to the Gardiner. My theme with transit is similar; Toronto needs to work with what it has before unrolling expensive, ostentatious, impossible transit.

Currently Toronto is serviced by 3 subways, a Rapid Transit line (an extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway line), 11 streetcars and (≈) 144 daily bus routes. Wow, sounds pretty robust. But it’s still inefficient and people opt for their car over transit.

In addition each of the suburban communities has a transit system, Mississauga, Brampton, Viva (servicing York Region), as well as, GO Transit and VIA Rail (servicing a variety of communities). And while the transit operations are starting to ‘work’ together (under PRESTO) there is no seamless system for transit riders to move between the systems (something else to take into consideration when voting).

What can we do better?

1. Work with what we’ve got: When you look at the system map it’s clear that Toronto has the means to have a great transit system, it just needs some tweaks (see suggestions below). London, UK drastically improved reliability when it introduced a congestion charging scheme. First people chose transit over cars due to the cost savings. With fewer cars on the road and dedicated bus lanes, transit was more efficient, even faster than your personal automobile so people switched to transit for efficiency.
2. Dedicated streetcar and bus lanes: Not only do they improve transit times, they also improve transit reliability
3. Signal Priority: As a bus approaches an intersection the lights change in favour for the bus. This is necessary with dedicated lanes to keep transit vehicles moving on schedule
4. Add to the system: Not new routes, just more vehicles on the routes. People opt for their personal vehicle in off-peak hours because their bus runs every 30mins to hour. Reduce that to ten minutes and more people will choose transit over their vehicles.
5. Permit bicycles on subways during peak hours: The new buses and street cars are equipped with bicycle racks, but you’re still not permitted to bring on the subway during peak hours. People would be much more inclined to switch out of their cars given the means to travel efficiently through the city, which means bringing your bike on the subway any time of the day.

Aside from suggestion 4 all of these examples are very low cost to implement and can improve the reliability of the TTC. But what would cost more having more buses in a dedicated transit lane with signal priority or constructing dedicated streetcar and subway lines?

What are the Candidates Saying

Rob Ford: Ford wants to see more streetcar lines, but as the Transit Toronto blog argues this will only increase congestion. He also wants to see an additional 12km of subway lines along Sheppard Avenue. His final comittment was to for 100km of bike trails (rumour has it these are not to be on Toronto roads). His transit plan was released on youtube and just like the quality of the video, his plan is lackluster.

George Smitherman: Smitherman’s plan is called the Integrated Transit Plan. At the heart of the plan is customer service; including free service for seniors between 1oam and 2pm, a transit charter, and a promise to keep vehicles clean and maintained. Looking at a longer term horizon (10- and 20-years out) Smitherman is committed to extending subway lines and adding more LRT lines.

Rocco Rossi: Rossi has a 5 priorities for improving transit in Toronto, #1 being to build more subways. He also recognizes that Toronto cannot continue to operate as a silo, under priority #2 Rossi recommends a stronger partnership with Metrolinx. While this will improve regional transportation, Rossi ignores a massive part of our current local system, buses.

Sarah Thomson: Again she sees subways as queen bee. She’s going all-out, stating that the city needs another 58km of subway lines (the current system is 70km so she’s trying to almost double it). Thomson does have the most aggressive cycling plan with more than 1000km on-road and 40km off-road through utility corridors.

None of them look to our existing system and how to make it better. Instead they’re promising unrealistic, expensive systems. Smitherman’s plan seems best, work on the small things before tackling the big ones, create a better sense of ‘community’ our transit system and while he spells out big ticket plans, he understands that Toronto needs to keep moving – ‘faster, better, easier and safer’.

Over the next few weeks I’ll look at some of the other relevant issues for Toronto’s Mayoral campaign including municipal taxes, city roads and anything else relevant to sustainable cities and transportation.

Through the month of January Toronto was plagued by a string of tragic pedestrian deaths. In total there were 14 deaths in Toronto, some of them quite tragic. Between transport trucks, streetcars and busses the pedestrians stood no chance.

Who was to Blame?

The debate as to who was at fault in these accidents has been a topic of discussion in the media. Whether it is the cars or the pedestrians who are not paying attention is the question. But either way isn’t it both parties faults?

As a pedestrian I don’t think I’m would want to play chicken with a transport truck. Even a SmartCar!

In 2007 the City of Toronto did a study, The Pedestrian Collision Study. Here is a selection of the conclusions of the study:

• 83% of pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions resulted in either minimal or minor injuries
• 12% of pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions resulted in major injuries or fatalities
• 50% of fatalities in pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions were seniors (aged 65+).
• 72% of pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions involved male drivers versus 28% for female drivers.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions occurred most during the autumn and winter seasons.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions occurred more often in the downtown area.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions occurred more often along arterial roads.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions distributed as follow: at intersections (47%), at non-intersections (37%), and other/unknown (16%).

The City of Toronto did a similar bike-car collision study in 2006. The results can be found here.

What I was reminded of yesterday was does it really matter who is at fault? In the end the pedestrian ends up dead or seriously injured.

How Can we Prevent Future Deaths

1. Alertness: Most importantly both drivers and pedestrians need to be more aware – pedestrian’s in particular. Again as a pedestrian if you play chicken with an automobile the automobile always wins
2. Turning – Left or right, as drivers we should be more aware when turning. Right turns are often worse. On a red light drivers are only looking for on-coming traffic. When lights are green drivers often forget about pedestrians and rush to make the turn
3. Updating Our Intersections: The ‘Scramble’ intersections of downtown Toronto are great, but we can make them even safer. In New Zealand and Japan pedestrians are only allowed to cross when all lights are red. In this manner cars and pedestrians are not competing entities
4. Slow Down: the issue of decreasing speed limits in cities has been raised. Unofficially people in Toronto drive 15-20km/hr over the speed limit so decreasing the speed limit would give drivers more response time
5. Txt Msgs, Email and iPods: Pedestrian’s cannot just walk in oblivion. Be aware of your surroundings and focus on the busy road around you, instead of the latest gadget.

I was absolutely shocked by the traffic of the Toronto bedroom community. It wasn’t the predictable congestion of downtown Toronto, it was chaotic and random and looked like it would drive any commuter to insanity. With it’s 6 lane roads with dedicated double left turn lanes and right turn lanes at intersections, why wasn’t the traffic moving?

I was also surprisingly amazed at the number of people that used the Mississauga transit system – it is after all archaic, completely surface routes with no dedicated transit or carpool lanes, i.e. it moves at whatever speed the traffic is moving.

Why is the traffic so congested in these outlier cities?

Mississauga, and many of the other bedroom communities, is no longer just a commuter city. They have vibrant industry that result in many people commuting to these bedroom communities. But the reason it doesn’t function well is represented by the picture above, long blocks, empty sidewalks and a million people trying to get around.

This problem will only get worse. According to Smart Commute already more people commute into Mississauga than out of Mississauga every day. Over the next 30 years it is predicted that Mississauga’s population will grow by 22% and the number of people working here will grow by 31%. Overall that means even longer commute times, denser congestion resulting in increased pollution and stress levels. And this is only data for Mississauga other jurisdictions will face similar growth.

It will be a combination of city planners, traffic engineers and visionaries to improve this situation. Otherwise Southern Ontario will be plagued with the traffic congestion and pollution from all the single commuter cars.

…when you close a road you create mass congestion on the parallel routes.

On Friday I had one of those frustrating drives home at 2pm. Usually there is a little congestion at this time of the day on a Friday but last week it was unbearable. With Lakeshore Blvd closed, between British Columbia Drive and Strachan, people were forced on to the Gardiner Expressway, King Street, Queen Street and any other parallel route they could find. At the root of the congestion, street parking on these parallel routes.

Temporary parking limitations

In the future Toronto should consider eliminating the street parking on for the two week days leading up to the Indy event. For any major event that closes a major thoroughfare the city should consider limiting street parking on weekdays on these major routes. Given that these street parking closures are temporary businesses should be willing to cooperate; especially considering that there are usually additional revenues from the influx of people drawn to the event.

Events are a huge part of Toronto but more planning is always needed. With congestion due to out limited public transportation system and mass numbers of people commuting it is imperative to keep our roads from reaching those critical volumes.

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 …

Wordle.net what an awesome tool. Thanks to my bf for showing me this. It takes a group of words or a url and creates a canvas of words. It’s a great summary of my blog to date.

Earlier this week I wrote about the need for good infrastructure with respect to the trucking industry. The other part of the equation, about 70% of the road users, is commuters. For all the people that commute to work everyday on the highways, having a functioning highway system is paramount.

The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario publishes the Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) Values here. AADT is the total volume of vehicle traffic of a highway or road for a year divided by 365 days and is an easy measure to get an idea of the volumes of traffic a roadway faces. Here in Toronto we have one of the busiest highways in the world, the 401. In 2005 many sections across the city AADT is above 400,000 – that’s a lot of cars on the road everyday.

What that does mean is that it is impossible to close the roads for construction. Unfortunately the highways are aging. The highways of the GTA were built from the 1950′s through the 1970′s and not much repair work has been done to them.

What will we do in the future?

There are a handful of repair methods out there that we can use to rehabilitate our highways. But only repairing them at night likely means that we are not able to keep up with the demand of repair. I’m not quite sure what the solution of the future is, but if you have any ideas please share them…

Some drivers are now using the countdown as either a primary or secondary cues in their decision making process at intersections.

I’m guilty of it myself using the countdown as a measure of whether to speed up or slow down when approaching an intersection, but it is always a secondary source of information the traffic light is the primary factor in my decision making process.

Is it wrong that we combine both factors when determining what to do at a traffic light? Ultimately the traffic light governs what to do at the intersection but I wonder if these help to reduce the number of yellow and red light ‘runners’? Are there any studies on the impact of the countdown on the driver? What about for the pedestrian? Are there fewer pedestrians who get ‘caught’ in the intersection?