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Heavy Rails
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Phillip Hong
August 5, 2013 |
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Waiting in the middle of an intersection in Richmond Hill one sunny afternoon, I observed a teenage
couple driving a Japanese sedan that was older than they were, guffawing at the idea there could
somehow be pedestrians waiting at their servitude. Still guffawing, they drove away, releasing
plumes of exhaust fumes. Ahh, the joys of getting used to having buses on the middle of the road,
widening it to the point where you have to wait for two signals in order to cross the damn street
safely. A little sacrifice for better transit, but it comes years too late and if you take credence
to that dangerously old car, another generation of youth has been lost to gridlock.
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It wasn't supposed to wind up like that. Construction on York Region's newest transitway was an
act of magnificent forward thinking that was conceived last decade, and the lanes were supposed to
be built and ready years ago if you believed the literature from that era. Politics was and still
is in the way - blame the recession, or the less than fantastic population growth, or (gasp)
budgetary constraints - and this whole boatload of excuses translates to a long time spent in
traffic, without realization that all levels of government have indirectly caused today's jams in
the first place.
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Once in a while, you'll find politicians slithering away to glam press conferences at local
government buildings, hotel ballrooms, or holes in the ground (include the words "shaft" and
"boring machine" in the press release and you've got yourself some fine double entendres). They're
places of stimulated joy with artificial glee from whoever represents the municipality, and
includes a heavy chequebook that is dragged around mercilessly, filled with our tax dollars no
matter which government level happens to play saviour that day. A dignified speech or two, a couple
of signatures and a new bus in the background complete the thirty seconds or so you would
eventually see in the evening news or in the next edition of the local paper. All we know is
something good is supposed to happen in half a decade or so, and we should consider the incumbents
on the next ballot.
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Toronto mayor Rob Ford and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have just done that entire spectacle for
the sake of higher order transit in Scarborough. On the face of it, politicians want us to think
that they're the people leading us away from the Egyptians, but they don't acknowledge the forty
years of wandering we have gone through to get practically nothing.
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Forty years ago, Scarborough was a borough and probably played host to another ceremony for what
is now their "rapid transit" line. It was the result of political intervention on the province's
part to try a new technology created by a provincial government owned corporation that is now part
of Bombardier. Like now, the province promised to fund a substantial share of that project since
it fit their ambitions (which at the time was to sell similar systems to Vancouver, Detroit and
Kuala Lumpur - a strange combination of interested cities).
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The original plan called for streetcars in Scarborough, which didn't sound appealing. But think
about this: Toronto is now getting new streetcars. Wouldn't there be more vehicles, and wouldn't we
have purchased them sooner if there was a substantial demand for fleet renewal? Research for the
axed Transit City plan revealed that light rail on protected corridors makes more sense when you
calculate actual passenger numbers and the density of neighbourhoods in Scaborough. But politics
is preventing us from making smart decisions, and uncomfortably large amounts of money will be
spent to fix mistakes made by guffawing politicians in the past.
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Ford is a visible example of how this shameless behaviour is repeating itself. Yes, Scarborough is
getting a subway. It'll be linked to new light rail on Sheppard Avenue, according to that glam
press conference. He gleefully wants us to forget the fact that he cancelled construction on that
line in the first place, and city council had to reinstate it to be on his precious map. Harper is
gleefully forgetting the fact that one of his core beliefs is to let "lower level governments" deal
with transit. Without this politicking, we'd be spared one less press conference in return for
better transit in Scarborough. Sheppard Avenue East would've had rapid transit now, instead of
2017. A Scarborough RT replacement also would have been constructed sooner if Ford wasn't
bickering about what kind of train would be used. We'd have better transit overall if Harper
helped fund more projects like this, instead of haughtily bickering like Hyacinth Bucket about the
federal government's role in our lives.
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We need professional transit planners who can put in the right transit, instead of promising too
much or too little. And politicians of all stripes need to stop holding us and our future hostage
over technological arguments they clearly don't have a handle on.
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Phillip Hong is a columnist with 148.ca.
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