I'm fortunate that I don't have to enter or leave Toronto's downtown core during rush hour. My schedule takes me in and out of there in the mid-afternoon and the late evening. Most people, however, are not so lucky, and every day tens or hundreds of thousands of people make that journey on systems that are either rapidly approaching, or have already exceeded, capacity. It's particularly bad, from what I hear, on the subway. A friend of mine who commutes with the rush told me recently that he might get two rides every couple of weeks where he wasn't crammed like a sardine in a tin - and that they wouldn't necessarily both fall on the same day.
This can't go on forever. Overcrowding breeds resentment, and resentment breeds frustration with and the eventual abandonment of transit. The installation of automatic train control in the next few years will help with this, reducing the spacing between trains so more trains can be run in the system, but that won't address the underlying issues. This overcrowding is one of the major reasons why I believe the absolute most necessary goal for future TTC expansion is the Downtown Relief Line. If completed to its full extent, this line would funnel riders to the downtown core by branching off the Bloor-Danforth line at Pape in the east and Dundas West in the west. It would reduce the pressure on the southbound Yonge line, as well as the 504 King and 505 Dundas streetcar routes.
Today, considering the degree to which it's discussed in the media, the Downtown Relief Line is closer to realization than it's ever been - which, honestly, is saying a lot, considering that it's only lines on a map. The appropriate time to start building it was the late 1980s, after the Network 2011 plan was presented, but of course the governments at the time had no will to do it. So now we're left with an overcrowded system and vague promises that the DRL might be built in the future - but not before 2020.
We can't keep looking to the future with expectation, hoping that the money will shower down from somewhere and that all of a sudden we'll be able to make all our transit dreams reality. We can't just wait for the DRL to be built (or not built, as the case may very well end up being). We need alternatives, at least for the short term.
A LACMTA Metro Rapid bus waits at a traffic light on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, California
If the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority knows how to use anything to its advantage it's buses, because buses were its predecessors' only option from 1963 to 1990. The Metro Rapid system is the latest expression of this, and it's something the Toronto Transit Commission might well take a hint from. Metro Rapid is, essentially, light bus rapid transit, and while Metro Rapid buses run in mixed traffic like ordinary buses, they stop only at major intersections and are equipped with transponders to hold traffic lights green as they approach. They're not as fast as subways or dedicated light rail, but on congested roads they'd at least have a speed advantage over streetcars.
One thing I've not heard about the TTC investigating, but which it perhaps should, is the possibility of instituting Rapid-like service, on a temporary or permanent basis, along key rush hour corridors in Toronto. Imagine the current 97 Yonge route being supplemented by a rush hour only articulated express, or buses departing from Pape station and travelling south and west to downtown. The TTC would just have to get over its apparent conviction that articulated buses are just things that other transit agencies operate, and that Torontonian exceptionalism prevents their use here. I tell you what, articulated buses running on the 29 Dufferin route would probably spare a great deal of overcrowding and grief.
As far as I see it, when it comes to the current system we can no longer afford to coast. We've been coasting for decades, ever since the opening of Kipling and Kennedy stations in 1980 marked the effective end of significant subway construction in this city. We've run out of time to rest on our laurels, and though it'll take time for permanent solutions to solve the dawning transit crisis we're in, we've not got time to waste anymore.
One of the advantages the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Agency has, being an agency that's only existed for twenty years, is that it doesn't have as much historical inertia or preconceived notions to overcome as transit agencies in other cities. Case in point: its subway stations. I've recently heard grumbling over the TTC's preferred designs for the six stations of the Spadina extension into York Region - and they're eminently understandable. Take the plans for Highway 407 Transitway station, one of the two stations to be located outside Toronto. It will be huge, incorporating a surface bus terminal serving York Region Transit and GO Transit buses with plenty of space underground for passenger movements. What may end up drawing negative attention is that the costs for this station are estimated at $134-million, when the budget for construction is a mere $95-million.
Beyond that, have you ever been to the area where the station is going to be? I haven't, but if the map photos I've seen online are anything to go by, it's desolate. You would think a better plan would be to build a smaller station capable of being expanded to serve higher traffic volumes if/when necessary, but that's not how this is going.
Los Angeles has a better idea, I think. The only parts of Metro Rail subway stations that are on the surface are their entrances, and they don't look drab, either. Take today's photo, the main entrance to Vermont/Santa Monica station.
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Music has been an elemental touchstone of humanity for tens of thousands of years, a cultural force that helps bind us all together. Before there was such a thing as literature, and when art was nothing more than stylized animal paintings within cave, humans made music. The concept is something special, practically something sacred. That's why I'm so dismayed at the recent news to come out of Australia.
Back in 1981, the band Men at Work found they had a hit on their hands with the song "Down Under," an intensely Australian piece that's since become a patriotic song. Incorporated within it is a short but memorable flute riff, and it's that riff that has been causing problems now. On Thursday, an Australian court ruled that Men at Work plagiarized this riff from "Kookaburra," an Australian folk tune written by Marion Sinclar and which was the winner of a 1934 Girl Guides competition. Today, of course, it's owned by a corporation, Larrikin Music, and corporations aren't too shy to release the legal hounds.
I'll admit that, on the face of it, it's understandable. I've listened to "Down Under" and "Kookaburra" both, and the flute riff does significantly echo the opening of the earlier song. The problem in this case, though, is that there seems to have been no thought by the ruling judge about the implications of this. I've thought about them, and I certainly don't like them.
I suppose that the charge of plagiarism gains its energy from the fact that "Kookaburra" seems to be shorter than "Down Under," and so a comparatively large portion of it was incorporated into the song as the flute riff - though due to its age and nature as a frequent choir song, it's not particularly easy to get an official running time. "Down Under," for its part, is three minutes and forty-one seconds long. I listened carefully to the song, and I heard the flute riff at four separate points: 0:13 - 0:15, 0:54 - 0:56, 1:56 - 1:58, and 2:01 - 2:03. Eight seconds. By my reckoning, this amounts to four percent of the song.
What's ridiculous is that the Star article where I learned about this references Larrikin's lawyer as saying that the company "might seek up to 60 per cent of the royalties 'Down Under' earned since its release." I find this offensive for two reasons - first, as I said, the "Kookaburra" flute riff occupies a tiny fraction of the song. Second, in what I think is a far more damning turn of events, Larrikin Music did not acquire the rights to "Kookaburra" until 1990, following the death of Marion Sinclair in 1988. To me, this is yet another example of a corporation overreaching common bounds and common decency because it's picked up the scent of money in the water. If anyone other than Men at Work should be getting royalties for this, it's the estate of Marion Sinclair or the Girl Guides, the two entities that actually owned the rights to "Kookaburra" when "Down Under" was written.
Beyond that, though, what this really comes down to is yet another assault on the perceived public domain. The average person has always had a different view of copyright than the law does. Even a song as basic and fundamental as "Happy Birthday" is thought to be under copyright - not, of course, that anyone actually cares, and any serious attempt by a claimed copyright holder to assert rights would practically fire off a revolution. Songs like these are held by people as part of the culture and the common trust, something that is owned by everyone and no one, regardless of what corporations might think.
Creativity has always been about incorporation and remixing. It's not possible, after tens of thousands of years of human culture, to create something truly original anymore. Memes migrate through minds and are installed as patchwork into new creations. When I see cases like this, I see corporations trying to build paddock fences around these concepts and keep them out of the common. It's a concept that can't be allowed to continue, or our culture will inevitably be the poorer for it. Copyright is a means to help ensure that artists can make a living on their work - it was never meant to be a method to keep essential cultural memes under lock and key.
It's been an anomalously snowless winter for Toronto so far. While Washington, DC is groaning under thirty to fifty-three centimeters (12-21 inches) of snow, to such an extent that parts of the Washington Metro have been completely shut down and hundreds of thousands of people are without power, Toronto has only seen a handful of flakes since November. Considering that last year's snowfall was one of the biggest on record, that may ultimately be for the better. But, dammit, it doesn't feel like winter with just cold and concrete.
On one of the few occasions when it actually was snowing, I was out on the Queensway.
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I've written previously about the advantages afforded by a large, integrated transit network - the more connections there are, the more opportunities there are to deliver better service without needing to invest in infrastructure. The Toronto streetcar system can deliver those kind of opportunities. Even though it's not as expansive as it was sixty years ago, the connections in the network are such that we don't necessarily have to limit ourselves to the eleven routes that are currently run.
Many people may not be aware of the 507 Long Branch streetcar route. It was in fact the last streetcar route to be abandoned by the TTC, making its last run in 1995. At that time it was the only remaining route that operated outside the old city of Toronto, and ran from Humber Loop just off the Queensway to Long Branch Loop a few minutes' walk from the Mississauga border. In 1995, it was folded into the 501 Queen route, and for the last fifteen years Queen streetcars have rolled from Neville Park to Long Branch, except when they're short turned, and that's hardly an uncommon situation.
I used to rely on the 501 Queen streetcar to take me downtown, but now I exclusively use the 504 King, even though it's a bit further of a walk to the stop. Why? Because the Queen streetcar is, sad but true, erratic and unreliable. There would be times where I would arrive at the stop and have to wait thirty seconds for the streetcar, and there would be times where I would arrive and wait twenty-five minutes. The Queen streetcar's utility as a crosstown route is severely compromised by a schedule I found that I just couldn't rely on. Last year's test splitting of the route into two didn't seem to have found the sort of results the TTC was looking for.
There's another way. Re-establishing 507 Long Branch service would, I think, improve the frequency and reliability of service along the entire line. Sure, the Queen line may be one of the longest in the world, but this is a transit service, not a competition. The line's biggest problem is that, since it operates almost exclusively in mixed traffic, minor delays echo down the line. The more kilometers the streetcars have to deal with, the more opportunity they have to get delayed or bunched by traffic or people stubbornly alighting at the front doors when they could use the back doors perfectly well.
Last July, while the logistics of the Queen split was still in the works at the TTC, Steve Munro suggested the re-establishment of 507 Long Branch service, but not along its historical route. Whereas the original 507 ran between Long Branch Loop and Humber Loop, Munro's proposed 507 would instead continue beyond Humber Loop, travelling north along Roncesvalles to Dundas West subway station. It's subsequently been mentioned by Spacing, considerably more recently, though I can't seem to find the link.
I agree with this idea. Short-haul riders - people travelling not particularly far - are important to the health of the system, and the 501 Queen route as it currently stands is not particularly welcoming to them. Decoupling the Queen streetcar from the trackage in Mimico, New Toronto, and Long Branch would improve frequency there as well as the remainder of the shortened Queen route. It would likewise provide another connection between southern Etobicoke and the subway system.
Building a strong transit network doesn't necessarily mean we just have to lay new rails. We also have to take advantage of the ones we already have.
POSTSCRIPT: The Spacing link has been added. Props to Jordan Teichmann in the comments.
The Toronto-Dominion Centre represents some of the first "modern" skyscraper development in downtown Toronto. The Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower was the tallest building in Canada when completed in 1967, and the complex was advertised as "a city within a city... conceived as a setting of space and beauty, of grass, trees, pedestrian walks, statues, and benches." Whether or not it's lived up to that over the last forty years is a matter of interpretation.
In this photo, the sun is caught between the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower on the left, and the Royal Trust Tower on the right.
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Recently I finished reading Melissa Scott's 1990 novel Mighty Good Road, set in an unspecified future where colonized space is linked together by a network of space warps around which are built titanic space stations known as the Exchange Points. They're tied together in a network called the Loop - which meant I had to make a lot of effort not to just think of it as Chicago IN SPACE! - and the railway metaphors are wholeheartedly indulged. What got my attention, and got me thinking, was that Scott didn't seem to just take inspiration from the great age of railways in terms of getting from point to point.
Victorian culture was notoriously modest and proper, and that's been carried into the culture of the setting. To quote an inquiry console in the latter half of the novel, "immodest language is not permitted within the Loop. Visitors are advised to remember local custom." What this means is that if anyone swears or curses within these stations, they're immediately assessed a fine. Unlike the 1993 film Demolition Man, where the similar Verbal Morality Statute is meant as yet another indicator of the tightly controlled nature of San Angeles, Mighty Good Road's use of it seems to be nothing more than background detail.
Nevertheless, it made me think. Space, like no other environment on Earth, is dangerous. Few mistakes are forgiven there, and while there are grand opportunities in its vastness it's not for the timid. Extended time in space, particularly beyond the low-orbit laboratories that have been the sole dominions of our astronauts for the last forty years, is stressful. Life on a space station would likewise test the body and mind. Things have to be done well and done right the first time. Does it really make sense to make a method of even mild stress relief into a legal infraction, just so some busybody's virgin ears don't have to be offended?
I suppose the real issue here is that people not only don't make sense and never have, but frequently impose rules that go against sense - or, at least, that is a general feeling. To my mind, forcing someone to constantly watch what they say under penalty of fining will only lead to mental stress, both from the effort needed to keep rogue words from slipping out and from anger when rogue words do slip out. Stress may be intrinsic to life in space - I think enough so that people don't need to go looking for other reasons to stress their fellows out.
After all, one of the best anaesthetics after walking full-speed into a closed door is a simple, hearty swear.
The Annex is a place where strange and unexpected things can happen. Therefore, it didn't surprise me much last October when, while waiting for the lights to change at Bloor and Bathurst, one of the cars backed up at the intersection was absolutely covered with insects. Plastic insects, mind you, but still insects. It was the sort of picture I could not possibly pass up.
I'd never seen it before, and I haven't seen it since. If not for this photographic evidence, I might not believe I'd seen it at all.
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If transit is going to be a major issue in the Toronto muncipal election, so be it. Good transit is one of the measures of a great city, and we should be focusing our attention on it. I can't speak for my fellow mayoral candidates, as I don't really know their attitudes or interests, but I myself am a dedicated transit user. I do not own a car. I do not want to own a car. I have a G1 driver's license that is used as identification while purchasing beer and entering bars. Transit is thus an important issue for me, as it is for many Torontonians, because it's how I get from one place to another when it's too far, too cold, or too much of a lazy day to walk.
So you can imagine how I reacted when Rocco Rossi, one of the present frontrunners in this embryonic race, revealed the first plank of his platform to be an opposition to transit initiatives. In fact, you don't have to imagine it, because I wrote about it when it happened. Since then, I've been thinking about it more and more.
A few days ago I read a story on the BBC dealing with the popular response to President Obama's health care proposals in the United States, with the author trying to determine why so many of the people who would be helped by the proposed program were so vehemently against it. One of the main conclusions, as I recall, was that the people in question resented being told what they needed by the government, rather than arriving at that conclusion themselves.
In much the same way, I resent Rossi's suggestion that transit is something that can, or should, be simply put on hold, his implication that the current state of transit is adequate for Toronto. It isn't. We are still coasting on projects that were begun in the 1970s. That we've waited decades to begin a new system expansion like Transit City is bad enough - to bury it because Rossi wants to score some emotional points with people who are fed up by the TTC is indicative of a perspective that looks backward, not forward. That's the kind of perspective this city cannot afford to have in power. It's the twenty-first century - we will get nowhere contemplating the twentieth.
Realistically, transit is absolutely essential to Toronto, full stop. Because that's exactly what would happen to the city if transit was unavailable. We saw it back in 2008, in the provincial government's lightning-quick response to the TTC strike - within forty-eight hours the union was legislated back to work. Contrast this to Ottawa's experience, where OC Transpo, the city's public transit operator, was on strike for fifty-one days before the situation was resolved. Toronto could not last fifty-one days with its transit stopped. I'd be surprised if it could last 5.1 days without things getting seriously squirrely.
Beyond that, I believe that limiting public transit options is an assault on freedom of choice. Every once in a while I see people fulminating about how public transit is a waste of money, how no one uses it, and it'd be better off gone, and it's hilarious. No one is herding people onto buses, subways, or streetcars at gunpoint. If anything, the opposite is true; the planning decisions that have been made over the last seventy years across North America amount to forcing people to use cars, as most North American cities are completely unsuited for transit.
In Toronto, we have an opportunity many cities lack - to have a city where transit is a comfortable, reliable alternative. To have the choice of not having to take the car. To throw that away would be to abandon the wisdom of those who refused to gut the TTC when every other city thought automobiles were the future, and of those who kept the Spadina Expressway on the planning maps where it belongs.
Whether it be called Metropolis, Toronto Life Square, 10 Dundas East, or something else entirely, that billboard-festooned concrete structure at the northeast corner of Yonge and Dundas has been there long enough now that it's hard to picture what used to occupy the space. Though, that has a lot to do with the site being an empty brownfield for a few years between demolition of the existing buildings and the commencement of construction.
This photo was taken on October 18, 2006 from Dundas Square, while construction was still ongoing. I would post a higher-quality one, but this is the only in-progress one I have - and it's not exactly as if I can just pop downtown and take another one.
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A LACMTA Metro Rapid bus waits at a traffic light on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, California
