Can Metrolinx Get the GTA on Board for "The Big Move"?
On October 2nd 2009, the Ontario Crown agency Metrolinx received the Canadian Institute of Planners award for planning excellence at the CIP conference at Niagara Falls. I attended not only the award ceremony but the conference session offered by Leslie Woo, Vice President of Policy and Planning of Metrolinx.
The award was given to Metrolinx for its massive planning effort, dubbed appropriately, The Big Move. This effort is a $10 billion, 25-year strategy to completely retrofit the Greater Toronto Area with multiple, excellent layers of public transit and related infrastructure and urban development.
A number of things make this a remarkable step forward for public transportation in Canada. The first and most significant is that this entirely a provincially-funded and mandated plan. Authorized by the Metrolinx Act (2009), the Big Move is managed by a Crown agency which is in turn overseen by a non-elected Board of Directors.
As Woo explained at the Niagara conference, The Big Move is intended to redress a "lost generation of investment" -- two decades in which the public transit infrastructure and fleet were allowed to fall into disrepair and lag behind the growing needs of the region. The costs of congestion costs were becoming immense, with worse to come. The province calculated these losses at $6 billion in 2008 dollars and that business as usual in the GTA would run $15 billion annually by 2031.
The other highly significant factor underlying The Big Move was that there was already an existing and solid provincial foundation in terms of land use legislation – the Ontario Greenbelt and Places to Grow legislation. With these already existing plans in place, there was no need for The Big Move to engage in a debate about any growth and development issues.
The challenges are immense. There are 10 existing transit 0perators in the region, all of whom were needed to bring on board to cooperate on a seamless system with shared fare structures. What would be needed for such a network?
Their initial public consultation was revealing. The two decade "lost generation" had created such an interlocking series of problems that no mere tinkering could repair them. There was a significant public mandate for a revamped system, which would double regional transit service and tripling the number of routes. Even with such an investment, however, commuting times will not significantly drop. All this, just to maintain existing travel times in the face of a growing regional population.
What the provincial government did not have, however, was any public willingness to pay more for this improved transit. No new taxes, or significantly higher fares, would be tolerated. The system would need to be financed another way.
The planning foresaw 100 steps; yet was to be premised on what they call the system's "Nine transformative elements:"
- An expanded regional rapid transit network;
- Better and more transit connectivity to Pearson Airport from all direstions in the region;
- A dramatically renovated and expanded Union Station, at which the lines converged, so as to quadruple its capacity;
- Complete walking and cycling network with bike sharing;
- Information system for travellers -- adopting what Metrolinx calls a "travellers first" outlook;
- Region wide integrated transit fare system – supported by high tech pass cards;
- Mobility hubs – which are basically Transit Oriented Development on steroids, complete with multimodal operability residential developments, services, and employment, as well as embedded technology supporting the "travellers first" model;
- A comprehensive, multimodal strategy for goods movement through the region; and
- A sound financial strategy to make the whole thing sustainable over decades.
Their suggestions: Road pricing; parking fees; a gas tax; transit operating grants; transit capital grant; and a 1% sales tax. This would come to $2 billion a year...or as they reason, $1.35 per person per day -- the cost of a cup of coffee.
However, as Woo pointed out, Metrolinx has no authority to implement these fees and taxes. And there will be a huge public debate about this, as there is no appetite among the public to spend a penny more to improve transit. As well, public opposition is building over some of the system's elements. So part of the problem is building a constituency for transit -- which, she argues, a transit system can do by getting initial projects underway right away to make some initial major improvements.
These improvements include electrification of the diesel GO trains; although they are also open to future propulsion systems, including hydrogen.
The scale, elements, approaches and ambitions of The Big Move clearly warrant the CIP award for excellence in planning. It demonstrates a number of key elements for success in public transportation:
- a provincial legislative mandate;
- robust provincial funding premised on full-cost accounting, that recognizes the province's stake in urban mobility as well as the high cost of doing nothing;
- a regional approach;
- integration with existing land use planning;
- attention to excellence in urban design; and
- a multimodal approach that integrates walking, cycling and motor vehicles.
By Michael Dudley
posted by The Centre for Sustainable Transportation at
7:39 PM
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