Toronto in Transit

It’s not hard to defend Toronto as one of the best cities on the continent. Particularly relative to its size, it’s safe, clean, diverse, and its residents are largely open-minded, fair-minded, and on the right side of history, but there is one thing about it that’s hard to defend — its transit systems. The subway system is an embarrassment. International cities of similar size, like Singapore and Philadelphia, and even smaller cities closer to home, like Montreal, all make our subway map look like a child’s drawing. Our roads, sadly, are just as outgunned.

The Globe and Mail reports this week that city council will soon discuss a proposal to give the public access to information about the structural integrity of their intended drive routes. Yes, structural integrity. With the future of the Gardiner Expressway up in the air, so to speak, councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong has proposed offering online access to the state of our bridges and elevated roadways, including inspection schedules and results.

People don’t like to have construction blocking their paths and politicians don’t like doing things that the people don’t like. As the Globe article says, road repairs aren’t sexy, and Toronto’s long-time underspending on them is catching up with us. Repairs on the Gardiner alone are expected to hit about $500 million in the next 10 years, with officials warning last year that the eastern passage of the road (which is merely from Jarvis to about Leslie) could be unusable by that time without it.

I’m all for public safety, of course, but isn’t there a pretty big irony here? We didn’t do the work because we didn’t want to tick off the commuters (aka voters) who use the roads every day with construction delays, and now we’re not only facing massive construction delays, but considering putting out public messages about which roads might be unsafe on any given day, so that anyone who checks the reports plans an alternative route, and then those routes become congested. Just thinking about it makes me want to telecommute. From Manitoulin Island.

In the midst of it all, our inimitable mayor said Friday that downtown residents have “enough subways already”, and urged the city to focus its underground transit efforts on the suburbs. I’m inclined to agree with the suburban part and disagree with the “enough already” part. I can’t believe it’s 2013 and we haven’t made provisions for both. The idea that the suburbs, though, should get what’s due them because they’ve been ignored is silly. We need to give the city what it needs most to relieve congestion, to encourage ridership, and to serve those neighbourhoods whose residents rely on public transportation to get to their jobs.

All that, and here we are spending nearly a billion dollars on a Union Station refurb that’s largely about maintaining heritage features and supporting a new level with high-end shops and restaurants.

Maybe it’s time we talk about the elephant in the room — privatization. While civil servants are largely reluctant to even discuss it, it’s not that difficult to make an argument for it.

In a 2010 American study by the Cato Institute, a public policy think tank that advocates individual liberty and limited government, researchers said that since Congress started giving states and cities incentives to take over private transit systems in the mid-60s, worker productivity (that is, the number of transit riders carried per worker) went down 50%, the energy required to carry one bus rider one mile increased more than 75%, the inflation-adjusted cost of a trip on transit had tripled, and despite billions in subsidies, the number of trips per urban resident had gone from more than 60 trips a year in 1964 to 45 in 2008. Tax revenue declines continue to force cuts in transit support. Infrastructure continues to deteriorate.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but urban public transit is actually the most expensive way to move people. According to the report, airlines move people a mile for about 15 cents; cars for about 23, and urban transit about a dollar, with fares covering only about 21 cents!

In an article in the Globe this week on “why Union Station’s $800-million reno will be worth it,” they quote the late Canadian banker Byron Edmund Walker asking, “Do we really believe in the city of Toronto?” If yes, says the paper, we should swallow our irritation and cheer the big reno at Union Station. But I’m not irritated by the inconvenience — I’m irritated by the likelihood that we’ll just keep doing things in the same reactive, bass-ackwards way, propping up crumbling highways and patching up the transit system until it’s so far gone we just can’t do it anymore, all the while overpaying our public servants and not demanding results.

Yes, I believe in the city of the Toronto, which translates to believing in its people, some of whom are very savvy business experts who not only have a gift for making money, but for pleasing consumers as well. We’ve tried it one way. It’s time to try it another.