What's the solution to Toronto's traffic problems? - University of ...

Transforming the GO Transit rail network into an all-day service in all directions is “the future of GO,”
says Metrolinx chair Rob Prichard. “The whole issue is, ‘how fast can we do it’”
fight this spring – over whether to build subways or LRT lines
with $8.4 billion from the province – did more to shine a
spotlight on the agency’s long-term strategy than anything
else it has undertaken.
As he followed the overheated debate, Amer Shalaby, a
professor of civil engineering and the chair of U of T’s Urban
Transportation Research and Advancement Centre, was
struck by the glaring absence of a key piece of the puzzle:
how the proposed LRT lines would fit into the big picture.
“We need to look at the network perspective,” he says. In an
emotionally charged fight rife with misinformation, there
was scant analysis of how or if these new transit routes would
ease the GTA’s congestion woes or mesh with Metrolinx’s
other long-term plans. City-regions with more integrated
transit systems, Shalaby points out, tend to use a combination
of commuter rail, subway, light-rail or bus rapid transit, and
surface transit operating in mixed traffic. Toronto’s transit
grid, for historic reasons, is built around a small subway
system and extensive bus and streetcar routes tied closely to
subway stops. The city needs to have intermediate level
service (LRT or bus rapid transit routes) for corridors with
medium demand, says Shalaby. “In the GTA, we don’t really
have this hierarchy.”
Nor, he adds, has Metrolinx subjected its Big Move plan to
the sort of detailed computer modelling that would have
tested the viability of its transit network against other alternatives
using current and projected population and economic
and other data. The agency, he says, “didn’t come to us.
When you look at the final product, the scenarios they came
up with were . . . not very thorough.” (Metrolinx is currently
refining the Big Move strategy, and will release version 2.0 at
some point in the next year.)
This kind of due diligence seems relevant, given that
employment projections, prepared by Metro Toronto planners
in the 1980s to justify the construction of subways on Eglinton
West and Sheppard East, proved to be wildly off the mark. Why
Sorensen cites three reasons: the exodus of manufacturing
jobs in the wake of the 1989 free trade agreement; changes to
the planning process that permitted more companies to set
up shop in the outer suburbs; and the fact that gas was so cheap
employers didn’t think twice about locating further afield.
He also points to research by Danish economist Bent Flyvbjerg,
who has documented how government agencies promoting
large infrastructure projects routinely overestimate revenues
and lowball costs.
Metro’s flawed 1980s projections figured largely in the 2012
subway-versus-LRT debate, as critics of the mayor pointed
out that even with significant intensification along Sheppard,
the line won’t attract enough riders to justify the cost. “What’s
the point of putting in a subway and exhausting all our
resources on a single line,” Shalaby says. “Put in the subway
where it’s warranted.”
Indeed, in the run-up to the final decision, council asked
an expert panel – involving Eric Miller, a professor of civil
engineering and director of U of T’s Cities Centre – to look at
the relative merits of an LRT line and a subway for Sheppard.
An expert in transit demand and transportation modelling,
Miller, along with the panel, devised a scoring system to
objectively evaluate three possible options for Sheppard: an
LRT line, a subway, or a combination of the two. The panel
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