Bringing transit to your doorstep
Quality of life means quality of choice for housing, work and getting around town
Imagine if your dream home also had a dream commute. A leisurely walk or bike ride to a nearby rail or subway station, where you chat with friends at the café before taking your seat on a train, which is running on time, for the short trip to the office. It sounds like the stuff of dreams. But for the planners with a utopian vision for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), it’s a dream worth striving for. And beyond just a smoother daily commute, they say a livable, competitive and environmentally sustainable urban region will require fast, frequent and wellconnected means of transportation. Their aim is to bring transit to your doorstep — or closer to it.
For Paul Bedford, Toronto’s chief planner from 1996 to 2004, the crucial word in the quality-of-life equation is “choice” — whether it’s transit choice, housing choice or employment choice. And transit is the key that connects it all and makes it function, says Bedford, who strongly believes the GTHA needs investment in all forms of transit.
“The goal when I was chief planner was to see the city built in such a way that you would be able to live your entire life cycle, from birth to death, without owning a car and not having to feel deprived,” says Bedford, who claims to practice what he preaches, having not owned a vehicle in more than 20 years.
Bedford, who served under eight mayors in his 31-year career at the City of Toronto, understands that the TTC, Metrolinx and other agencies are working hard to play catch up to the region’s transit needs.
“I think we have a great transit system for a city of about a million,” he says. “The problem is we have a city of three million.”
And the population is only growing. By 2041, according to Ontario’s Ministry of Finance, the Greater Toronto Area population, approximately six million today, will be an estimated 9.5 million.
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 — part of the Ontario government’s $31-billion budget for province-wide infrastructure improvements for the next decade. Central to the long-term regional transit plan for the GTHA are 25 Urban Growth Centres (UGCs) across the regions, eight of which are designated as centrally connected mobility hubs that will provide access to regional transit and support higher density development.
At key intersections in the regional rapid transit network, the hubs are intended to be centres of activity. Planners hope they will attract opportunities to live, work and play, supported by information centres, cafés, restaurants and other services. Real estate professionals — with their mantra of “location, location, location” — are taking note.
“Proximity to transit has always been a huge factor when it comes to choosing where to live,” says Claudio Cerrito, a sales representative at RE/ MAX Hallmark Realty Ltd., who boasts three decades of real estate experience in Toronto and clients from Little Italy to Riverdale. “But today, it’s not just a desire to live close to existing subways or rail: Homebuyers in the GTHA are more aware of what’s coming in terms of future transit that will directly impact their value of their home, their quality of life and that’s informing their decisions.”
The decision to relocate within walking distance to transit may be desirable to gridlock-weary commuters, but that consideration doesn’t necessarily reflect a desire to be closer to Toronto’s downtown core.
“The property values have gone up a lot here, so at some point we’ll consider a move a bit farther out of the city,” says Martin Sloan, who has lived in his central Scarborough home for 13 years. “We’ll probably be off the TTC and more on the GO Train. But when we think about looking for somewhere to live, transit is going to be a big part of the decision.”
For Sloan, moving farther from the city’s core doesn’t mean being more isolated, provided he’s not farther from a transit line. And he has no intention of doing that. “If you could actually afford to be close to a stop, such that you could walk to it, I imagine you could save half an hour to 45 minutes one way just by not having to change a couple of buses.”
That time spent getting to transit and other amenities is now measurable, as popular resources such as Walk Score (see “Walking the walk”) are helping savvy homebuyers and renters choose where to live. “People want to know exactly how well they can get around,” says Cerrito. “It’s no longer measured in distance, but time.”
Net gain If choosing where to live can be driven by life stage, it’s believed that the next major cohort, millennials — many of whom are just beginning to enter the housing market — will significantly impact both housing and transit demand.
“For millennials, getting a driver’s licence doesn’t seem to be as important as it has been with previous generations,” says Don Campbell, senior analyst of the Real Estate Investment Network (REIN), who has been researching, analyzing and forecasting housing markets across Canada for 22 years.
“Their mobility in cities will be ‘driven’ by public transportation,” he says. This shift in commuter focus will add to an ever-increasing demand for housing within walking distance of a transit station, says Campbell, whose research shows that a “walk and rider” living close to transit can save approximately $1,200 per year.
For real estate investors, the net positive impact of transit projects on communities goes beyond accessibility. “It’s felt in lifestyle improvement, economic stimulus and property demand,” says Campbell. “A properly designed and located transit improvement project allows fam- ilies more time together (due to shorter commutes) and opens more affordable neighbourhoods or towns thus allowing families to still own their own home.”
Campbell points to the City of Hamilton, which has morphed into a vibrant beacon of arts and culture. The former industrial town enjoys one of the hottest real estate markets in the country due to affordability, businesses that incubate around local post-secondary institutions and transit.
“The accessibility to regular and increased transit has allowed families to find more affordable choices for housing in a region they would never have considered before,” says Campbell. “And Hamilton is about to double-down on their access to transit by building their own internal LRT system within the city, which will increase its favourability to the coming tidal wave of millennials.”
Construction is slated to start in 2019 on the $1-billion Light Rail Transit line from McMaster University to Queenston Circle in the city’s east end. The line is intended to connect directly to the West Harbour GO train station that opened this summer.
Finding the way How badly do Canada’s cities need transit solutions? Last week Statistics Canada released ridership numbers for the country’s large urban transit that show operating revenue (excluding subsidies) for 10 of Canada’s largest urban transit systems rose 2.1 per cent (to $273.8 million in July) from the same month in 2014. Over the same period, ridership increased 4.4 per cent to 130.7 million passenger trips.
“The only way a big city region like that works is through transit and through transportation choices,”
“I think we have a great transit system for a city of about a million. The problem is we have a city of three million.” PAUL BEDFORD FORMER TORONTO CHIEF PLANNER
says Bedford. “And that’s not just about getting from home to work . . . it’s the whole 24-hour life cycle.”
Ideally, he says, people could simply walk to the subway station. “But for now, an awful lot of people are taking two or three buses to get to work and back, or two or three hours a day in combination of GO, TTC and some other form of transit.”