<br />subway's Last Hurrah

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http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-10-14/news_feature.php

Subway's last hurrah

Council's transit advocates say subway expansion is dead and cheaper light-rail transit is the wave of the future

BY Don Wanagas

When the Toronto Environmental Alliance issued the city's 2004 Smog Report Card this week, it was full of congratulatory remarks about the many "clean air initiatives" Mayor David Miller and his left-leaning council have adopted.

There were kudos for a new energy efficiency program, the purchase of bio-fuels and hybrid vehicles for the municipal fleet, the political rejection of an expanded island airport, the recent adoption of a harmonized tree bylaw and the approval of a dedicated streetcar right-of-way along St. Clair West.

"Toronto has become a real leader in fighting smog," Keith Stewart, TEA's lead climate change campaigner, told a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday, October 12.

In just 12 short months, the city managed to improve its grade from a dismal C- to a respectable B+. And the mark would have been even higher (an A) had the powers that be at 100 Queen West gotten around to implementing the TTC ridership growth strategy the previous council approved in March 2003.

"Better transit is the missing piece," said Gord Perks, TEA's transportation guru. "We need to stop talking about ridership growth and start doing it."

TTC commissioner Joe Mihevc couldn't agree more.

"The status quo is not acceptable," the Ward 21 (St. Paul's) councillor says. "We have seen automobile traffic increase by 3 or 4 per cent since about 1970, and we have a lot of lost ground to make up. If we really are interested in improving the economy, cleaning the air and developing our official plan, then we have to get into an expansion mode and put some resources into transit-oriented development. That's the new biblical text that has to govern City Hall for the next while."

To Mihevc, the recently approved St. Clair streetcar right-of-way "shook some people up" and may spark an important debate about the overall future of transit.

"We're at the beginning of asking the question: 'Is this the rebirth of streetcars in Toronto?' We had a very sophisticated light rail transit (LRT) network before we fell in love with buses and subways, and I believe the time for rethinking that is now. What we need is an LRT master plan."

Mihevc spent three days in Atlanta this week at the American Public Transit Association conference with TTC chair Howard Moscoe and came away convinced that light rail transit is making a comeback in the United States.

"The Americans are getting it," he says.

What makes streetcars travelling on dedicated right-of-ways so attractive is their relative low cost compared to the construction of new subway lines.

Laying a kilometre of LRT track costs $10 million compared to $100 million for an equal length of subterranean steel. Add on the expense of building underground subway stations and the costs really start to snowball.

As the mayor, himself a TTC commissioner, is quick to point out in an interview this week, it would cost between $4 billion and $6 billion to complete a subway beneath St. Clair from Yonge to Keele. The bill for the new streetcar line along that route