It’s been quite a while since I wrote the first part of this post, so I figure it’s good time to bring out the second part now. The timing seems good, now that GTA transit has just got its first significant injection of funding in a long while.

Without further a due, here’s my second list of ideas on how to improve public transit in Toronto:

1. Repair the old equipment
While bigger projects wait for funding and approval for years, sometimes decades, you would think that Toronto would at least take care of the existing equipment and infrastructure. What was once, many decades ago, a fairly efficient, progressively growing transit system, is now grinding to a halt. Of the existing streetcar fleet, around 30% have no heat at all. This in a city that gets snow and freezing cold for months every year. And now because there are not enough operational streetcars left to run all services, the TTC is considering temporarily (?) replacing streetcar service with buses on Bathurst Street and Kingston Road.

It could be easy to say that the TTC’s current streetcar fleet, dating back to 1977 – 1988, is just too old and there’s nothing that can be done until Toronto gets brand new cars (possibly) in 2011. But there are other cities, like Helsinki, Finland, and Zürich, Switzerland, where several streetcars built in the 1970′s and early 80′s are still in active use, fixed and retrofitted with improved A/C and other things like free Wi-Fi.

Since the coming of the new streetcars seems to take its sweet time in Toronto, meanwhile the city could look into buying used streetcars from another city, like Helsinki did in a similar situation, to ease things. Or at least fix issues like heating on all the old streetcars currently in use. A streetcar with a factory-installed heating system that doesn’t work is simply broken and shouldn’t be on the road until it’s fixed.

2. Build a new subway line through downtown
Luckily this idea has suddenly gathered momentum recently, after a few decades of neglect. Extending the existing two subway lines north, east or west is as good as any service extension, but it won’t solve the transportation needs of the city’s downtown core. The Transit City LRT plan won’t help the downtown either. Toronto won’t be able to truthfully call itself a “world class city” without an adequate public transit system in its downtown area, and a new subway line through the core is the only really powerful solution.

3. Build right of way lanes for buses and streetcars
Cars can be great for some purposes, especially as they get more fuel efficient. Cars are good for some long distance travel, for fun road trips, for occasions when you need to move something bigger than your everyday groceries and a couple bottles of wine. But cars are not good for everyday transport in big cities. Period. That’s not a matter of opinion, it’s not a a matter of political views or ideology. It’s just a simple fact that there are limits to how many cars you can fit on a city street, and you can’t constantly keep expanding and widening highways as the city’s population grows. For a big city, you need efficient mass transit instead of private cars. Not because it’s “green”, though that comes with it too, but because it improves the quality and efficiency of life in the city.

That is something that North Americans, by and large, have not understood. Car companies were let to lobby public transit down and tear away existing streetcar networks at the early stages of wide-scale urban development on this continent. Now only one city in North America, New York, matches up to the levels of ridership and the extent of the urban public transit networks in Europe.

More right of way lanes would make things easier and safer not just for public transit, but for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. While European cities have built their streetcar systems largely along right of way lanes already a long time ago, Toronto has let drivers and business owners hamper the development of its own streetcar network. The result is that now everybody – transit users and drivers alike – complains.

4. Find a permanent solution to the funding of Toronto’s transit system
The TTC is the largest transit operator in Anglo-America not to receive provincial/state funding. As I stated in the previous point, it’s a simple fact that big cities need efficient, well-funded and well planned public transit systems. The system needs to be funded not just from the fare box, but from the public budget.

5 – 9. Build more lines, lower fares, increase efficiency, add more frequency, modernize services
Below is a chart that shows how Toronto compares to several other big cities and urban areas in the world. Surely, a lot needs to be done to bring Toronto up to the European standard, or to match up with New York and Tokyo. Surely, the longer Toronto waits, the more expensive it becomes to fix things.

Take a look at cities like Helsinki and Stockholm in particular. Both have much smaller populations than Toronto, but run public transit networks that are not only bigger but also cheaper to use. Or have a look at Berlin, which is very close to the size of Toronto, but the size of the public transit system there is far greater. 30-day passes in Berlin aren’t particularly cheap, but the system there offers way more bang for the buck than TTC. For example, commuter trains in Berlin (S-Bahn) and in Helsinki (lähijuna) use electric rail and typically run every 5 minutes at rush hour, whereas GO trains in Toronto use diesel engines and run only about every 20 – 30 minutes at rush hour. Only the two Lakeshore GO lines operate throughout the day – the rest operate only during the morning and evening peaks, whereas in Berlin and Helsinki there is extensive all day service and night trains.

10. Free public transit on smog days
Smog is a real problem in Toronto – some 1,700 people die every year from smog-related illnesses in Toronto. Many cities in Europe have special smog-fighting measures that can very significantly limit the use of private cars on the worst days. A significant amount of air pollution in Toronto is said to be from coal power plants and heavy industry from across the border, but about 50% of it is said to be from local traffic. Currently the TTC doesn’t offer anything extra on smog days – probably because there is not enough capacity to move everybody even on normal days – but that should change. In Toronto, only about 23% of commuters take public transit. In New York, the number is 60%, and in cities like Stockholm and Helsinki it’s between 70 – 75%. If the public transit network in Toronto can’t move even one quarter of commuters in the city efficiently, while other cities transport 75%, how can the public transit network in Toronto be adequate enough to help clean up the air in the city?

11. Connect the Toronto Island ferry to the TTC fare system

12. Plan transit first
It’s unbelievable how whole new areas of condos and houses go up in Toronto without any access to transit. It makes me wonder who, if anyone, actually really plans and controls development in this city. Transit should be planned and built as the city expands to new areas, not just added maybe decades later.

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The list could go on, but I’ll leave it here now. Many in Toronto are saying that there have been great improvements since Adam Giambrone and Brad Ross started working at TTC, and mayor David Miller does seem to have a commitment to developing public transit. Right now it looks like things are starting to move ahead. But how long will it last? Will it change again with the next government, or are Canadian leaders finally starting to consistently realize that public transit is a necessity? From my own, European perspective, Toronto seems desperately backwards in the development of public transit, as does the rest of this country. Like Michael Warren, former chief general manager of the TTC, puts it in this recent article in The Toronto Star: “Neither the province nor the area municipalities have made major investments in the GTHA’s transportation system for over a generation. They have tried to accommodate rapid population and economic growth by relying on a decades-old transportation network, one that is collapsing under the weight of endless political rhetoric and inaction.”