Cars are not the answer

Cars were a great invention as they expanded the mobility options in many ways.

They transformed the way we live, work and play. We could move goods and provide services as never before.

Unfortunately cars no longer fit onto our streets, as there is just not enough physical space to accommodate cars for our rapidly growing population.

Free roads? Why not free transit?

A recent Star editorial concerning road pricing generated the predictable response from the anti-toll crowd: we paid for the roads so we have a right to use them at no cost.

What if we all agreed that road use be free of charge, with one concession: public transit become free of charge as well? Consider this: we already pay close to 50 per cent of transit operating costs through taxes, why not go all the way and pay the full cost – it could be the cheapest way to give everyone equal access to transportation, and for those lucky enough to already own a private automobile it would be the most affordable second car they could ever buy.

Free-of-charge public transit is by no means a novel idea and even a number of municipal candidates across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) have mused about offering free transit to seniors during the middle of the day. Something that may not be widely known is that a number of cities around the world have been providing their residents with free of charge public transit for many years. Visit www.freepublictransit.org for more information and click on various communities listed in the box on the left-hand side of the Home Page.

While fare-free transit may not make sense for big cities with well-established transit systems it might be worth consideration for smaller communities that are struggling to grow transit ridership. The regions of Durham, York, Peel and Halton, the 905 belt, are grappling with record-breaking population growth and along with the new jobs and residents there’s ever-increasing traffic congestion and bad air that "auto-matically" come with more cars.

Fortunately municipal decision makers and the land development industry are attempting to turn the corner on urban sprawl and there are some notable examples in the GTHA such as Markham Centre and Cornell in York, and Oak Park in Halton. These communities have been planned with people walking, cycling and using public transit for the majority of their travel needs, and there’s a growing awareness that we won’t be able to accommodate projected population growth and densities using the same transportation approaches from an era when the car was king.

In the future, if we rely too heavily on private automobiles for the majority of our travel needs, studies and transportation models predict our communities will become choked by traffic and quality of life eroded by the associated negative environmental and social impacts.

All 905 communities have a desire and plans to increase transit use from an estimated 10 per cent today up to 30 per cent in 20 to 30 years. These targets are ambitious at best and others suggest they can’t be achieved without innovative policies and practices, and strategic investments that position shared and active modes of travel ahead of the private automobile.

According to the 2010 York Region business plan and budget, their transit system (YRT – Viva) has experienced the highest ridership growth rate in the GTHA in the past few years and one of the highest in Canada (as per Canadian Urban Transit Association statistics). Recently ridership growth has slowed down from double digit increases to approximately 3 per cent in 2008 and 2 per cent in 2009.

While this growth is impressive, and the introduction of Viva bus rapid transit and subway extensions have positioned York and its member municipalities as transit leaders in the GTHA, achieving their stated ridership goals may benefit from pioneering tactics like free of charge transit.

Today in York Region there are about 312,000 households and the transit department there expects to raise $50,499,500 from the fare box this year. Using some simple math - revenue divided by total homes – the investment required to provide each and every household in York Region with free of charge public transit for a year might be as low as $161.86.

This number is compelling considering the Canadian Automobile Association estimates it costs close to $9,000 a year to own and operate a motor vehicle in Ontario, and communities that have implemented free transit policies have seen huge transit growth plus reduced expenditures for road repair and construction.

Removing public transit fares in other urban areas appears to have paid off big time in terms of healthier ridership and improved quality of life. Could not this fall's municipal election campaigns (in which road tolls akin to political suicide have been mentioned) provide a forum in which fare-free transit is given a fair hearing?

About Lorenzo Mele

Bike riding: If they can do it right, why can't we?

I have a confession to make.

I have yet to ride a bike on the streets of downtown Toronto. But I make this admission with no shame – at least on my part. Rather, it's the city that should be embarrassed at the sorry state of Toronto's (lack of adequate) bike lanes.

As mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson said last week, “Toronto streets are not safe for cyclists.” And I agree. It's time to stop the foot-dragging; City Hall needs to pick up the pace, and build new bike lanes while revamping old ones.

As a non-rider, many of my friends are surprised whenever I express my desire for a better bicycle network, particularly in the downtown core. While attending the University of Toronto during undergrad, my main mode of transportation was the subway. But oftentimes – especially at the height of rush hour while being squished against the red TTC doors by hordes of commuters getting off work – I wish I rode a bike.

Still, whenever I took one look at the faded lines marking the virtually non-existent bicycle lanes, I recalled the near-collisions I frequently saw between bikes and cars (a.k.a. eternal foes) and would immediately wipe this silly little notion out of my mind.

For the longest time, I always thought that this was the way bicycle lanes were supposed to be. After all, I grew up in Toronto and these were pretty much the only lanes that I saw on a regular basis. That is, until I travelled to Northern Europe with my family three years ago, and saw the exceptional quality of bike lanes and programs that they had there - a quality that Toronto is capable of reaching and to which it should aspire.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, bold white lines and a bicycle symbol clearly demarcate the lanes for cyclists. In Helsinki, Finland, there are elevated paths – one for cyclists and another for pedestrians, each lane indicated by the appropriate symbols. In Stockholm, Sweden, there are metal barricades on both sides of the lanes, protecting cyclists and pedestrians from moving traffic.

And in all three of these cities, the lanes are wide enough to be safe and comfortable for one or two cyclists to travel side by side. Moreover, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm have had bicycle sharing programs for years – something City Hall only recently approved.

Toronto has the potential to have similar – that is, better – bike lanes and programs. But until we do, many people who want to get around on a bike, won't. Not only is that a shame for the health of Torontonians and for the environment, it's a shame on City Hall.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Helsinki, Finland

Stockholm, Sweden

About Anita Li

Can the TTC adopt a customer-service approach?

In March of this year the TTC formed a Customer Service Advisory Panel in response to increasing friction between the paying public and a transit commission that appeared at best indifferent to their customers needs. Not exactly a big surprise when you consider the TTC is a monopoly that serves a market referred to in industry parlance as "no choice riders."

The panel had a daunting task and was encouraged to review current plans and processes related to customer service, and front line (operator) employee hiring and training (initial and re-certification), including the possible introduction of a customer Bill of Rights that would address employee as well as customer expectations.

The panel consulted with the public as well as TTC employees, including meetings and focus groups. The result of this effort will be a public report (scheduled to be released sometime in 2010) that is intended to provide recommendations concerning expertise and resources needed to achieve success, which I hope means "happy customers."

The report may outline organizational changes that could include members of the Commission and management, as well as private citizens to address specific areas of interest. The findings and final recommendations of the panels’ review are sure to provide fodder for the mayoral candidates as they debate the intricacies of public transportation policy in the city.

It’s important that TTC management and their political masters recognized the urgency of the situation and struck the "blue ribbon" panel earlier this year. The chair of the panel works in the hospitality industry and seems a natural fit for the challenge at hand.

What remains to be seen is how well the initiatives and tactics used in a true customer service oriented industry will be received by TTC management used to customers held captive in a transportation market that offers little choice and increasingly less service.

About Lorenzo Mele

Toronto needs to revisit cycling licences

There’s a greater push to make Toronto more bike-friendly. Montreal’s BIXI has been brought in to create a bike-sharing program, the TTC offers bike racks and lockers to passengers and, much to the chagrin of all motorists, bike lanes are being implemented unilaterally across parts of the city.

After this year’s election the city should look into licensing cyclists, again.

It's attempted to do this in the past, with little success. I think if the city is planning to make Toronto more bike-friendly this must be the next logical step.

According to the city’s website, there are three reasons why licensing would never work:

1) The difficulty of retaining a complete and current database.
2) The difficulty in licensing children.
3) Licensing does not necessarily change the behaviour of cyclists.

Here’s how I see this program working to address these issues:

1) The city creates a department of cycling. If it wants to privatize this service, I would have no objections, as it may be more efficient.

Cyclists would be required to test every two years. The system should borrow from motorist testing and make it graduated the first time through.

The city should also mandate that cycling stores and associations be brought into this plan and registered. Not only would these stores and associations help pay for the system, they can help educate and enforce the rules.

There would be a $200 licensing fee for cyclists and $500 registration fee for businesses and associations.

Some of the money would go towards addressing the first difficulty in retaining a complete and current database.

This department would hire a team of people located, for example, in city hall to administer and monitor the system, address any questions or concerns, and do the necessary follow-up and work associated with such a system.

A large part of the money should also go towards funding future bike lanes and projects in the city with input from those licensed and registered.

2) Children under the age of 16 would be exempt from licensing, which addresses the second difficulty, but it would be wise if local bike shops, associations, schools, after-school programs and summer camps could be persuaded to teach bike safety on an ongoing basis.

3) I will grant the city the benefit of the doubt that licensing may not change behaviours; it certainly doesn’t for some motorists.

But I think a functioning system, with input from those registered, plus greater enforcement will go a long way to changing current behaviour.

There would have to be stiffer fines and penalties. Maybe even introduce a points system that can affect registration and suspend licences. An enforcement unit could be created, in conjunction with police, to catch cyclists who don’t obey the rules and enforce the law.

I’m not proposing this to punish cyclists, rather, to make cycling safer and tie it in with the future plans of the city in making Toronto more bike-friendly.

This may even go a long way to bridging the divide between motorists and cyclists if cyclists are subjected to the same licensing, laws and rules motorists are.

By creating this system the city is tapping into a valuable resource by requiring cyclists, bike stores and associations to register, because, by default, they will have created their own group of experts to bounce ideas off of. This in turn will make the current cycling plan a more workable one.

I’m not a cyclist, but I know cars don’t rule the road exclusively. It’s time this petty argument between drivers and cyclists ends. There has to be mutual respect from both sides and the city.

Cyclists need to realize they need to respect the rules of the road just like drivers do.

Drivers need to realize they have to share the road and that people have made a choice to ride their bikes and leave their cars at home. Their commitment should be commended and not belittled out of jealousy and annoyance because your commute is now a few minutes longer.

The city needs to admit it's been fighting a “war on the car” and make its intentions clearer when it comes to making this city more bike-friendly.

My hope is that all mayoral candidates adopt bike licences as a plank to their individual transit plans. The time has come to implement this program.

About Robert Kirsic

Idle thoughts on red lights, traffic flow and pollution

While I applaud the city for recently making their anti-idling bylaw more stringent (decreased permitted idling time from three minutes to one minute) to help reduce pollution. I wonder if there are other ways that the city could make changes to help reduce pollution from cars.

I was driving down Bathurst St. last week at around 1 a.m. and somehow I had to stop at every traffic light from Steeles Ave.all the way down to south of Lawrence Ave.

As I was sitting there idling my car at each of the red lights I kept thinking about the amount of pollution that I was creating. I could understand having to stop and start if I was driving in rush hour traffic, however, I was coming down Bathurst at one in the morning!

There was no more than a handful of other cars on the road and I waited at a number of lights where no other cars or pedestrians crossed my path. I think if we could figure out some way to reduce the amount of unnecessary stopping and starting on major streets when traveling straight in one direction, we would be able to probably reduce our pollution by even more then the savings in emissions from reducing the amount of time one can idle their car.

I understand that if I'm driving along and making a number of turns and stops it will be inevitable that I will get some red lights, but when traveling down a major road with two lanes of traffic in each direction, there must be some way to set the traffic lights so that once you get a green light you can continue to get green lights after that if driving at a continuous speed.

I think the city, its councillors and civil servants should be looking at every way to reduce the amount of pollution we emit when driving as the way our city and region has developed often makes it necessary to drive places instead of walking or taking public transit, the ideal, less polluting alternatives.

About Adam Zendel

City services: Something's gotta give

Recently I've been chatting with friends about how tax money is spent on city services. Torontonians expect the city to operate smoothly, and when glitches occur, we notice. Whether it's the efficiency of garbage pick-up, the quality of TTC service, the condition of our city streets, the presence of public libraries and public health services, or the cleanliness of our parks and attractions, we expect a lot from our city.

My husband and I own our home and the property taxes we pay are not insignificant. I understand the principles of give and take - living in the city is expensive, but we have beautiful parks, many public services for children, families and the elderly, a world-class public library system, and decent roads. The city water I drink is clean and tastes good. The TTC, for all its recent troubles, gets me to where I need to go. Those of us who commute by bike are fortunate to be able to do so fairly safely.

But of course, there is never enough money for everything. Specifically, not enough tax money is generated to support the wide range of city services we want and expect. You can see at a glance what I mean when you take a look at this chart illustrating city expenses vs. city revenues provided by the City of Toronto web site.

So, what's a city to do? The answer is, we must compromise. But how, and on what?

In upcoming weeks and months, the mayoral candidates will be ramping up their campaigns. When listening to the positions and promises from the candidates, consider framing their arguments through a different lens: rather than focusing on what you want from your city, consider what you'd be willing to give up.

In a world of limited resources, where are you willing to compromise? Would you trade improved TTC service in exchange for reduced health resources for families and seniors? Would you pay more for public child care in exchange for more frequent garbage pick-up? How do you compare the need for affordable housing with the demand for clean water?

I certainly don't have the answers, but it's a different way of thinking about the candidates, and it's a perspective I'm going to try. At the very least, it will provide me with a new way of evaluating the campaigns as we get closer to Election Day on October 25.

About Kimberly Silk

Summer in the city

Summer is a time when suburbanites like myself wish they weren’t living in the ‘burbs.

Many say summer is when the city comes alive – but in my opinion, that statement applies mainly to the downtown core.

Toronto prides itself on being a city that offers a variety of events for a variety of people.

But for someone who was born, raised and remains a resident in Scarborough (during my summer break between grad school in Ottawa), it sure doesn’t feel like this is the case.

Understandably, major events like Caribana and Pride take place downtown, as there are better-equipped facilities to accommodate the high number of people attending these events.

But why should suburbanites be restricted to the metropolis for our entertainment? As a longtime rider of the TTC, I appreciate the rocket's ability to get me around the city. But commuting over two hours on a regular basis to attend an event takes the fun out of having fun.

In short, the city should organize more events of greater quantity and quality beyond Toronto's downtown core.

Do a quick search for ‘Scarborough’ on the City of Toronto’s events website, and you’ll find 10 events – give or take – at any given time in Toronto’s east end; and they're typically the same kinds of events week after week.

What's more, local residents are largely unaware of the few events that do take place in suburbia because the city doesn't take the time to advertise them like they do with large scale events that happen downtown.

I, for one, love to be out and about in the city. But as someone who actively seeks out activities to do – especially during the summertime – even I struggle to find interesting local events near my home.

So, inevitably – if I'm not downtown – I'm walking around Scarborough Town Centre for the one-hundredth time.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't the most pressing issue for municipal candidates to consider up to the election. But this is just a friendly reminder to the city that it would be nice for them to think of the millions of people up in the 'burbs when planning future events.

After all, we are part of Toronto too.

About Anita Li

Electric cars need to be rolled out wisely

Ready to plug into the electric car revolution? Having an electric vehicle parked in the driveway is one way to reduce climate pollution. And impress the neighbours. But really, we’d all be better off (and more impressive) if we took the bus or a bike.

Electric vehicles (including plug-in hybrids and all-electric) can definitely play a role in helping Toronto reduce greenhouse gas and air polluting emissions. Given Ontario’s current electricity mix, fully electric vehicles could cut emissions by 87 per cent compared to a conventional car, according to one estimate. As our electricity gets even greener -- as we phase out coal and bring on more renewable power -- this advantage will only grow.

But having commuters simply switch en masse from gasoline powered to electric powered vehicles won’t solve our climate woes. For starters, despite rapid advancements in electric vehicle technology, it will be a decade or two before a wholesale switchover to all-electric cars and trucks could even happen. We need emission reductions now – the ice caps are melting!

Second, in a city with worse traffic congestion than L.A., bumper-to-bumper electric vehicles aren’t going to add anything to our economic efficiency or quality of life. Our love affair with the private car is costly in terms of resources consumed, green spaces paved over and the energy-intensive sprawling development that it encourages.

Electric vehicles do have an important role to play in where there are fewer options for shifting to transit, telecommuting or using other transportation modes (walking, bicycling). Ramping up the use of electric vehicles in fleets -- including corporate service fleets, public works fleets, taxis and car sharing fleets -- is a good way to reduce lots of emissions since these cars get driven a lot, and often locally.

Fleets can also drive the development of supporting infrastructure, like plug-in points and two-way grid capacity because they create a concentrated demand. Toronto Atmospheric Fund has launched EV300 to accelerate uptake of electric vehicles by public and private fleets in the GTA; more information at www.FleetWise.ca

For the rest of us, getting out of our cars is the true solution to climate change, and a key to improving Toronto’s prosperity and quality of life. Cities, provinces and the federal government need to do their part by dramatically increasing support for rapid, frequent and convenient transit -- both capital and operating costs.

We need to do our part by leaving the car at home as much as possible and by encouraging the development of flexible workplaces that support telecommuting, flex hours, and other solutions that take the stress and pollution out of starting and ending the workday.

About Julia Langer

No simple, single cure for transportation woes

For our mayoral candidates the "red rocket" seems to have become their "silver bullet" in the endless pursuit to find a solution to our transportation challenges.

The electorate are looking to politicians and decision-makers to ease commuter woes, and no one seems to have the heart to tell them that common wisdom and professional opinion suggest there really isn’t a single answer for something as complex as the way the citizens of Greater Toronto choose to move around the region each day.

Rocco Rossi is the latest mayoral candidate to position himself as a transit "super-hero" by promising to build two kilometres of track every year, over the next decade. Rossi says the city can afford the $4.5 billion price tag if it sells Toronto Hydro and other assets, and then uses that cash to clear the $2.5 billion debt. It seems that once someone dons the Captain Transit cape nothing can get in the way of their mission.

Mr. Rossi’s financial plan to fund his transit quest isn’t entirely apparent to me, however, in his words, The City of Toronto is rich in assets and together we own a lot of stuff’, and it seems that he and the Toronto Board of Trade don’t consider Toronto Hydro to be central to the operation and mission of the city.

That's beginning to sound like the same pretzel logic and voodoo economics the Mike Harris "common-sense revolutionaries" proffered up in the mid-1990s to clear a provincial deficit prior to an election. In that boondoggle we saw a prized public transportation asset sold to the highest bidder. Considering the tolls collected each year by the ETR 407 total a half a billon dollars a year it’s no wonder taxpayers continue to lament that decision.

What’s encouraging is that all of the candidates support transit expansion in some form or another, and some of the financing schemes being offered up are also on the mark. The challenge is that regardless whether we choose subways, buses or light rail transit (LRT) these systems once built require on going operation, maintenance and ultimately replacement. If, as Rossi suggests, we sell assets to pay for capital expansion how will we afford the other on-going (operational) expenses?

People move around the city in a variety of ways, at all times of day and for many different reasons. How we use the transportation system is based on many considerations – where we live and work, our disposable income, our age, our health, our recreational interests, our diet, and more. The notion that a "single fix" approach is out there, if only we could find it, is preposterous, and the search itself stymies creativity, collaboration and partnership. Humans are complex beings and our mobility needs and the transportation challenges they present demand sophisticated solutions.

With the run up to the municipal elections candidates across the GTA will form an opinion regarding "how they would solve the traffic problems in their community." What remains to be seen is whether someone emerges that has the acumen to fully understand the problem, the humility to admit they don’t have all the answers and the courage to deliver solutions they know will be unpopular.

About Lorenzo Mele