The connected city is a vision in motion
Toronto transit at a glance: glowing past, bumpy present and a brighter future
When the late, great urbanist Jane Jacobs moved to Toronto from her native New York City in 1968, she arrived in a thriving city with a population of about 700,000, propelled by a relatively new and capable network of highways that helped move people across and around her adopted city, one that was poised for expansion and development.
Jacobs would become one of the 20th Century’s most important urban thinkers, years ahead of her time. And decades of living and working in Toronto, until her death in 2006, helped her make what she believed to be her most important contribution to urban thought.
“Expansion and development are two different things,” she said. “Development is differentiation of what already existed. Practically every new thing that happens is a differentiation of a previous thing. Expansion is an actual growth in size or volume of activity. That is a different thing.”
Ask any commuter about the city’s transit network and they’ll say infrastructure has not kept pace with the city itself. We’ve expanded but not developed.
Why is that? Experts say there are several factors at play, most notably a lack of investment and the unchecked growth of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), which comprises two major cities and the regions of Durham, Peel, York and Halton. But there is new hope in the form of concerted infrastructure investment. Earlier this year, the government of Ontario announced $16 billion for expansion of GO Transit and new rapid transit projects in Brampton, Mississauga and Hamilton. This builds on the $16 billion previously invested over the past couple of years.
If the funds are spent properly, a belief has arisen that an integrated transit system could go beyond solving gridlock and into the realm of enhancing our way of life.
Somewhere, Jane Jacobs just might be taking note.
Looking back “Certainly in the developed world, Toronto is probably the fastestgrowing city,” says Joe Berridge, a partner at Urban Strategies, a global urban design and planning firm that works on transit-related projects in Hong Kong, Sydney and London. “We are adding something in the order of 125,000 new people a year. This is an extraordinary level for a city of our size. Even to stay in the same place, you’ve got to run like hell.”
While “hell” might be the term that rings true with most GTHA drivers, it’s seldom connected with “run.”
But if GTHA residents are all too familiar with scenes of gridlock, there are also a growing number of sights that should offer hope. From the Finch, Hurontario, Hamilton, and Eglinton Light Rail Transit corridors to the Mississauga Transitway and Viva Rapidways, the cityscape is abuzz with about 200 transit-related projects that planners are hailing as not only long-term solutions to transit woes, but also enrichment to the quality of life in the region.
These initiatives are moving the GTHA’s transit into the future and the planners holding the keys, namely Metrolinx, the region’s transit authority, are placing their trust primarily in rail.
“In the 1960s, you have the emergence of Don Mills and widespread suburbanization, basically 40 years of highway building,” says Michael Sutherland, director of economic analysis and investment strategy at Metrolinx. “We’re now at almost seven million people, growing to more than 12 million when you include the Greater Golden Horseshoe. No city-- region grows to that size with any real success or quality of life without a proper, integrated, regional rail and transit system. It just doesn’t happen.”
The current infrastructure momentum is part of a plan that launched a decade ago when the province created the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority (GTTA), now known as Metrolinx, to plan and deliver an integrated regional transportation network. It was as unprecedented as it was robust. Today there are more than $16 billion in projects already completed or underway across the region.
What’s the plan? The primary goal of Metrolinx is to develop and implement its Regional Transportation Plan. It’s a long-term plan that introduces a new way of moving around the GTHA.
In 2009, Metrolinx merged with GO Transit, the regional public transit service, and, in the following years, added two more operating divisions: the now-complete Union Pearson Express and PRESTO, the electronic fare-card system that now has more than 1.5 million card holders and is available on eight of the region’s nine transit agencies, GO and the Union Pearson Express, with a plan for full Toronto Transit Commission deployment by next year.
The linchpin to the Regional Transportation Plan is the construction of a Regional Express Rail (RER), which, according to Metrolinx, will literally transform the ability to move around the region.
“Just like the 400-series highway network really set up the last generation of growth, RER and supporting rapid transit projects will set up the next generation of growth,” says Sutherland.
A successful GTHA region of the future, Sutherland says, will hinge on great housing options and economic activity that cluster around mobility hubs. The biggest hub of all will be the impressive revitalization of Union Station, with its phased-in construction that director of Union Station Infrastructure’s Mike Wolczyk compared to “doing surgery on a patient while they’re running a marathon.”
Despite the visible signs of progress, some urban watchers feel there is a need for a transit plan with tighter focus.
“We’re certainly headed in the right direction,” says Matthew Blackett, publisher and creative director at Spacing Magazine, noting the importance of the crosstown LRTs in particular. “(But) do we build new transit projects where the demand is, where we know transit is at a high use or where we want it to grow? I think there has to be potentially a greater focus.”
Looking forward For Antoine Belaieff, director of innovation at Metrolinx, one focus is planning that’s flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse groups of individuals — people who needn’t sacrifice their schedules, plans or dreams for lack of an automobile. Quite the opposite: transit choices that expand their options.
“There are a lot of people who are very happy to carpool. So we offer and continue to develop matching services,” says Belaieff, noting Toronto and Hamilton already boast thriving bike-sharing programs.
Metrolinx, which has also introduced a partnership with Zipcar at GO stations, is doubling the size of the city’s bike-sharing system, with $4.9 million aimed primarily at making more bikes available near and within cycling distance of transit stations.
These innovations are welcome news for residents and urban planners such as Berridge, who have witnessed cities the world over accomplishing much more in far less time.
“It’s frustrating,” he says of the stilted pace of transit development in his own community. “We ought to be not taking our cues from what is, but from what ought to be.”
What challenges do Belaieff and his colleagues face in creating effective transit in the region?
“Governments will be expected to better work together, to better leverage technology, to better leverage data, the data that we have about customers, the data that we have about congestion, and to provide services that really meet people’s needs and are easy to use.”
“Just like the 400-series highway network really set up the last generation of growth, RER and supporting rapid transit projects will set up the next generation.” MICHAEL SUTHERLAND METROLINX
Sutherland agrees. “Sharing ideas, collaborating, working with others, coming together as a team,” he says. “That’s the transportation system of the future.” Somewhere, Jane Jacobs, who championed cities that are built by people with people in mind, just might be smiling.