Posts Tagged ‘Toronto Transit Commission’
Groundbreaking on Sheppard East LRT a Good Day for Scarborough
I have to say – I really like the Transit City proposal. I am hopeful the City, Province and Federal Government will come up with a way to fund it because it will have a profoundly positive impact on my community – and especially a number of low income communities that will be serviced with fast and frequent public transit.
The Scarborough Malvern and Sheppard East lines present a real opportunity to revitalize hurting communities that will see better transit service and easier access to Toronto employment zones. As someone who lives just west of Morningside and is currently working along Sheppard Avenue East I can tell you this morning during my one hour commute – taking the 116 Morningside to Sheppard, and the 85 Sheppard to Don Mills Subway and then the Sheppard Subway to my stop – having the Scarborough Malvern Line running up Morningside to Sheppard and the Sheppard Line to Don Mills would significantly cut this trip down.
Many lower income communities rely on service from the bus lines that will be replaced by these two LRTs and the ability to access employment in a more timely manner is someone no one should forget when determining the value of these projects. What’s more – public transit infrastructure encourages intensification along the new lines. This serves two purposes which are in the interest of everyone. 1) Higher density developments near transit lines encourage public transit use, which takes cars off the road. That leads to less congestion which is good for the environment and the economy. With how close Sheppard is to the 401 and considering they run mostly parallel – this is particularly good news considering the LRT will make connecting to downtown from the North and East parts of Scarborough easier.
I am happy to see the Sheppard East LRT is set to open in 2013 and look forward to the Scarborough Malvern line opening in 2015. My support for the Scarborough Malvern Line may be the only reason I bite my tongue on the total waste that is the 2015 Pan Am Games as my community will see an immense benefit from this infrastructure announcement, over the opposition of our local Councillor, who thankfully is being ignored by his colleagues in his bizarre opposition to this project.
While I strongly advocated for a Scarborough Subway as did many residents in 2006 when the idea had the support of all City Councillors in Scarborough and our five MPPs – seeing the proposed routes of the LRT lines I am confident that while a Subway would be a form of symbolic equity with the rest of the City, Scarborough will be best served by LRTs which meet the anticipated capacity requirements for Scarborough’s population better. It also has a price tag that may actually prove affordable.
I look forward to the day I can transfer trains at Kennedy Station to come home, instead of hopping on the 116 Morningside bus. Today that came closer to reality with a shovel going into the ground, committing the TTC to building Transit City – something all residents and politicians in Toronto need to get behind. Our next Council, to be elected this coming October will need to continue to find funding for these lines – something I sincerely hope they do and residents across Toronto pressure them to.
No Comments »Toronto’s Power Outage and the TTC
I don’t necessarily want to re-tell the story of what was a very likely unavoidable interruption in power to residents of Toronto’s west end, but it is important to look at some of the opportunities to learn from what happened to see what we as a City can do moving forward to minimize the impacts of power disruptions in the future.
First, it is important to recognize that as of 6:50 pm as I write this, some families have been without power for over twenty hours on what has been an extremely cold night and following day. For anyone with electric baseboard heating, it would be simply unbearably cold, even for those who have heat, there is no light and no one has the kind of batteries required to light a room for this length of time. Also, any food, particularly meat that is in a powerless fridge or freezer is probably unsafe to eat. This should serve as a lesson or at least a reminder to Toronto residents that we all need to be prepared for major power disruptions for any number of reasons. When Toronto lost power in 2003, we were fortunate that it was the summer.
We all can recognize how unprepared many residents were for an extended power outage. We all can appreciate that the City of Toronto and the Humane Society sprang into action to help citizens without power and their pets stay warm. The City also sent staff out to known elderly and disabled residents to check on them throughout the day. That being said, the TTC is woefully unprepared for power outages and frankly other challenges that face the subway system during peak times. Anyone who has ever needed to utilize a shuttle bus when the subway is down understands how bad that service is regardless of how many buses are out there. I am not faulting the TTC for providing poor service, because I don’t think they do. But, from my own experience and what I witnessed today is that the sheer number of passengers who rely on the TTC simply overwhelm any shuttle service the TTC attempts. It just doesn’t work effectively.
The main point I want to make relates to the subway infrastructure and the trains themselves. I recognize that the TTC runs on electric trains and presumably when electricity isn’t flowing in the area where the tracks are, the trains cannot run. I am not an electrical engineer so I don’t know, but it does seem reasonable to me that it would be possible to have some sort of electricity supply backup that would allow stations and the tracks themselves to receive electricity from parts of the grid in areas where electricity is still flowing. A backup system could allow for portions of the track in an affected area to receive power from other areas along the track that do have power. The idea is basically to “plug into” areas of the grid that have power and capacity that can serve the area that is without power until power can be restored. This would allow the city to keep moving even with power disruptions. Perhaps the TTC should also explore the viability of having some diesel electric trains within the system that would be able to continue to provide service during extended power interruptions.
From my perspective, the TTC is a critically important service to Toronto residents (I chose the words ‘critically important’ to dodge other words that stress importance but carry political meaning) and it is worth exploring how we can ensure even when there are challenges facing the city residents, particularly those who rely on transit to get around the city can still do so. It is simply put, just too important to allow huge chunks of the system to go down when there may be other ways to keep the system up.
I would like to close by saying I do believe Mayor Miller did a good job in handling the City response to this challenge. This position that contrasts my view of his response to the last major incident on his watch, the Sunrise Propane explosion last summer. My only criticism on this particular issue was the City decision to deny reporters access to the City run warming centres where residents in the area were heading. As a general principle, I do think reporters should have the opportunity to let residents speak about their experiences, particularly when those of us who were fortunate enough to go to bed last night with power are concerned about those without.
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