Big transit projects need to be better too
Big projects. Big ambitions. Big inscrutability. Big controversies.
Metrolinx is Ontario’s Robert Moses. Some people will read this comparison and cheer, others will shake their heads in horror.
Moses is infamous in political and civic circles. For 40 years, beginning in the 1920s, he held a variety of posts in New York, both city and state, where he created parks, pools, bridges, expressways, beaches, public housing and more. Stand on the Niagara River Parkway and gaze across the border at the massive Robert Moses Hydroelectric Power Station in Lewiston. Modern New York is very much a Moses creation.
The Moses comparison felt apt when I explored Finch Avenue West last weekend, checking on the progress of the light rail transit (LRT) project there, one of many transit schemes Metrolinx is undertaking. Not long ago, Finch was a mess of construction and fencing, but that’s all changed.
While there is still obvious work going on, it looks largely done, with finished platforms complete with names of stops installed and vehicles being tested. At the Humber College terminus there is a pavilion station as trains there are below ground.
The scale of the project is impressive, but with some critiques. It’s a shame heated indoor space wasn’t created on those platforms for blustery waits, and all larger transit stations should include housing on top.
Still, we are so used to infrastructure project delays, false starts — even false hopes — that seeing things happen can come as a surprise. Finch is exciting, even if the projected opening date at the end 2024 (for now) is a delay from the initial 2023 date. That delay is just a matter of months compared to the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, but put the delays aside for a moment and consider all that’s happening in the region.
Hurontario Street in Mississauga is currently the temporary chaos Finch recently was, as construction of its own LRT is well underway. Scarborough subway construction is striking to see at future station locations, remembering how long that project has been argued about.
On the east side and into downtown, it’s impossible to ignore progress on the Ontario Line, whether the expansion of the existing rail line or work on the stations. The pedestrian bridge between the Hudson Bay store and the Eaton Centre is the best place for amateur “sidewalk construction supervisors” to observe the work.
At the intersections of Queen and Spadina, as well as King and Bathurst, heritage buildings have been gutted to their facades in anticipation of the stations that will inhabit them. There are other projects in the works too, including expansion of GO services.
How we got here was politically fraught, of course, and whether or not “here” is where we should be is absolutely debatable, but things are indeed happening. That was often the same feeling around the projects Moses championed.
Over the pandemic I listened to all 66 audiobook hours of Robert Caro’s legendarily epic 1974 biography of Moses, “The Power Broker.” Reading it is a right of passage (or bravery) for urbanists, as its size and detail are daunting. The popular podcast, “99% Invisible,” is doing a yearlong reading of the book, all part of a wider reappraisal of Moses’s legacy.
“The Power Broker” lived up to the hype and lays out his legacy: good, bad and quite ugly. Moses was incredibly important, got big things done, but at great cost. New Yorkers of all kinds rely on Moses’ infrastructure today. Can we think and act big today, but do less damage in the process?
The Metrolinx and Moses comparison is not exact. Metrolinx doesn’t build beaches or housing, and Moses destroyed entire neighbourhoods, often lower income and not white, for his projects. Metrolinx is not that destructive, but they’ve shown some profound insensitivities to local areas, like planning a train maintenance facility in the Thorncliffe community, one that would threaten local businesses, or attempting to put a GO Train layover facility in the Don Valley, or the community centre at Jane and Finch that was promised, reneged on, then promised again.
Like Moses, Metrolinx doesn’t communicate openly with the public, exhibiting his condescending streak in recent — and quickly removed — ads that mocked people for questioning the Eglinton Crosstown delays. Moses answered to few people, especially the public and media, but also politicians. Metrolinx has some resemblance here.
An imperfect comparison, yes, but perhaps a useful frame through which the current Metrolinx troubles can be viewed. While Moses was able to command great power himself, in a recent profile in The Local of Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster, writer Nick Hune-Brown showed how the agency under him has been able to navigate provincial power and politics by being a sort of good soldier for whoever’s in charge.
We need Metrolinx’s big projects, but we need it to be much better too. Ultimately, the only power broker here is Doug Ford. Since no one else can or will, he must answer for all Metrolinx does, or doesn’t do.