National Post

Get TIFF’s red carpets out of street cars’ way

- Chris selley Comment National Post cselley@nationalpo­st.com Twitter: cselley

On Monday, Toronto City Council voted to take the provincial government to court over its sudden decision, in the middle of an election campaign, to reduce council’s complement from 47 members to 25 — one for each federal and provincial riding in the city.

The vote was 27-15, and if that strikes you as lessthan-resounding opposition to political meddling by a score-settling premier in the economic capital of a G7 country, you should know the vote was only 24-17 even to politely convey city council’s displeasur­e.

The take-away: Even a lot of people who run this city don’t take this city very seriously. And on Tuesday, yet more compelling evidence arrived: notice King Street between Spadina and University avenues will yet again be closed to all but pedestrian traffic for four days, Sept. 6-9, for the Toronto Internatio­nal Film Festival.

TIFF calls the sealed off area “Festival Street.” It “promises four jam-packed days of free activities and a new rooftop party.” It is, we are to believe, incompatib­le with King Street streetcars which, as of June, carry 80,000 people a day.

This annual spectacle has always been rather mortifying. What kind of jerkwater berg shuts down its thirdbusie­st transit line because a bunch of movie stars are in town? A year ago, Mayor John Tory said he did not expect it to be repeated this year. But Tuesday, he told reporters he and city staff thought a total shutdown was better than risking multiple “unplanned closures” resulting from mobs of fans spilling on to King Street.

I find this more mortifying. We’re shutting down the city’s third-busiest transit line because people can’t help staggering into traffic — in general, or specifical­ly if Ryan Gosling is about? I don’t doubt a jam-packed King Street could present safety issues with streetcars. But if TIFF and King streetcars cannot in fact coexist, then I’m not sure it’s streetcars that must give way.

“I think most of the (streetcar) riders are people who understand the fundamenta­l importance of TIFF,” Tory averred. Maybe. The most recent economic impact study I’m aware of, which was commission­ed by TIFF — funnily enough! — suggests the festival provides $200 million in net benefit to the city. Mind you, in 2016, city staff pegged Toronto’s GDP at near $200 billion. This year, city taxpayers will actually subsidize this gilded shmooz-fest — with adult ticket prices ranging from $18 to $82 — to the tune of $1.2 million, and for their trouble they get two weekdays of nightmare commutes.

How exactly does that add up to a fait accompli in TIFF’s favour? There are places other than King Street to lay down red carpets into TIFF’s theatres. There are other, far less important streets in downtown Toronto that might be renamed Festival Street for four days.

Indeed, it’s all the more mortifying now that the King Street Pilot Project has proven a success: reducing streetcar travel times, increasing wait time reliabilit­y, and pushing ridership up 11 per cent, as of June, from the baseline. You wouldn’t necessaril­y know it from watching Torontonia­ns go about their days, but time is worth money. If 80,000 people are saving 60 or 70 or 80 seconds every day thanks to the pilot project, that very quickly adds up to big bucks. And they will lose many multiples of that fighting their way to work on Sept. 6 and 7.

Moreover, the pilot project has included reclaiming curb lanes from traffic to install sidewalk cafes, art installati­ons, pop-up stages — that is, precisely the sort of thing Festival Street provides patrons. There is no logical reason streetcars couldn’t run down the middle of that. It happens every weekend evening in lots of European cities.

But if it can’t happen here, let’s finally make that TIFF’s problem, not just everybody else’s.

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