299 bloor call control

Reality Check: Rocco and his 250,000 new jobs

Wed, 19 May 2010 20:46:00 -0400

Today, mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi made yet another fantastical and magical promise on the campaign trail: to create 250,000 jobs within the City of Toronto in his first four years in office, in response to what he thinks is a “too high” unemployment rate in Toronto of 9.5%. Continuing my role as the voice of reality on the Rossi campaign, here is a list of reasons why Rossi’s newest promise is pure nonsense.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, 2009 RECESSION VS. 1992 RECESSION

First of all, Rossi claimed the 9.5% unemployment rate was “too high”. I certainly agree that a high unemployment rate is not a good thing for a city. However, Toronto’s rate of 9.5% on the heels of the worst economic armageddon in the history of the world is really not that bad. During the recession of 1992-93, City of Toronto unemployment reached 12.7%, (source: City of Toronto Labour Force Data [xls]). For the balance of David Miller’s tenure as mayor, the unemployment rate has averaged around 8%, which is not fantastic, but it is not bad either, considering the City’s high level of immigration.

250,000 JOBS.

Rossi did not explain the formula he used, based on these initiatives, to come up with the 250,000 figure.

There clearly was no formula used, other than the world of magic, or whatever number his communications people thought would be a number that would resonate amongst gullible voters. It is one of those numbers where he can say, “a QUARTER MILLION!”, when more realistic figures of “ONE TENTH A MILLION” or “ONE TWENTIETH OF A MILLION” are far harder to capture in a soundbite. To put into perspective, Downtown Toronto currently has 420,500 jobs. Yonge and Eglinton is home to 30,800 jobs. (source: Toronto Employment Survey, 2009) Through this campaign promise, Rocco Rossi is basically promising over half of a Downtown Toronto or eight Yonge and Eglintons worth of new jobs. In four years. Or, based upon the current total employment in Toronto of 1,291,000, that would be an increase of 19.3%. In four years. That type of growth has never been experienced in Canadian history. Calgary, undeniably the fastest growing economy in the country over the past decade, saw only a 28% increase in employment over ten years.

Finally, what is 250,000 jobs in the perspective of the Province’s employment forecasts developed as part of Places to Grow? This is where it becomes hilarious. The current forecast models being used predicts that under the most optimistic and compact forecasts, Toronto’s employment will grow by 550,000……. over TWENTY FIVE YEARS (2006-2031). The Greater Golden Horseshoe is expected to create 2.8-million jobs by 2031. To even think that the City of Toronto will not only attract 9% of this growth, but in just four short years?

299BloorStore Now Open with TTC Rollsigns!

Thu, 06 May 2010 22:59:00 -0400

Apparently, being a transit geek super chic now, at least according to Apartment Therapy, which describes it as “the new ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’”. Well, here’s your chance to get some Toronto rollsigns onto your walls. I have made up two featuring vintage subway rollsigns, and one featuring the current streetcar routes. You can check them out, and pick them up, here:

http://www.zazzle.ca/laurencelui

Today, Toronto Mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi announced his...

Tue, 04 May 2010 16:07:00 -0400

Today, Toronto Mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi announced his “Transit City Plus” plan, where he would scrap existing plans to build over 170km of LRT across the City of Toronto in favour of a sustained subway construction program. The program would build 2 kilometres of subway annually.

This video compares how Toronto’s rapid transit system will grow over the next 10 years under the existing, approved Transit City program versus a new, unplanned subway extension program.

Citytv gets testy with caps

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:23:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, Torontoist revealed the folks behind the Twitter accounts of various Toronto media outlets and left out @CityNews, which at the time was nothing more than an automated headline account. Since then they have come out of their shell and have started tweeting more actively, and for that, I commend them. Earlier today, they tweeted the above, which is hilarious because it is true. Is it Citytv? CityTV? City TV? CITY TV? Well now that they made it clear, perhaps they should look within and see that it is not a mistake isolated at other media outlets and the blogsphere. In just five minutes I found three violations of the standard capitalization of Citytv:

First and foremost, the alternative text for their logo on their masthead refers to one “City TV”, and virtually all their HTML tags refer to CityTv.

This blog post on the CityLine blog uses “City TV”.

The page title here uses a third variation without the space: “CityTV”.

UPDATE:

And while we’re at it, it’s “Yonge”, not “Younge”, “Yong”, or “Young”

And finally, it’s “Eglinton”, not “Eglington”

Great video from the City of Portland, showing how their pilot...

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:00:57 -0400

Great video from the City of Portland, showing how their pilot cycle track (separated bike lane) will work.

This is a somewhat crude analysis, since it is using generalized...

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:12:22 -0400

This is a somewhat crude analysis, since it is using generalized figures from the UK Highways Agency on road capacity, but the figures should not be that much off the the mark. The traffic volumes are based on real data from the City of Toronto. Note that the 3,300 vehicles per direction in the peak hour is based on a six-lane dual-carriageway, urban road, since there is insufficient data on eight-lane urban roads to create a generalized figure. However, six-lanes is actually what University Avenue becomes when bike lanes are in, so 3,300 can be used as what capacity will be during the pilot project.

In short: excess capacity, yes. “GRIDLCOK!”, no.

The Morning Commute on University

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:47:33 -0400

To be fair, I was riding down University Avenue around 9:15am at the tail end of rush hour, but there was little of this ‘GRIDLOCK!’ seen.

Few cars heading southbound at College Street

A queue at the pesky intersection at Gerrard Street just as the light turned green

Which cleared, as expected, within seconds.

So much GRIDLOCK!

Why University Avenue Bike Lanes will Work

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:36:21 -0400

First of all, I give Rocco Rossi a bit of credit - the Beverley and St. George bike lanes are indeed great. Little does he know, however, in applauding the great bike lane we have there, he is in fact endorsing reducing car lanes and bringing us to something he does not pay much attention to: the truth.

source: Transport Canada

Transport Canada cites St. George Street as a best practice example in road diets, a concept in road design where travel lanes are reduced and is rebalanced to provide more space for cyclists and pedestrians. St. George Street, despite losing one travel lane in each direction, still carries the same number of vehicles it did before the diet, the number of collisions decreased by 40%, and the number of cyclists increased by 10%. Most importantly, it’s created a place in the heart of the University of Toronto campus, and is often described as one of the most pleasant places to be in the city.

So onto Rossi’s assertion that adding a segregated bike facility on University, the first of its kind in the city, will cause GRIDLOCK! There are two things completely wrong with this assertion. First, University Avenue has excess road capacity, and operates at an above acceptable level of service throughout the day. And second, it may come as a complete surprise to Rossi, but my belief is that reducing University Avenue by one lane in each direction will actually improve vehicular flow.

UNIVERSITY AVENUE IS NOT AT RISK OF ‘GRIDLOCK!’

I ride my bike up and down University Avenue on a daily basis on my commute, and I have seldom encountered these ‘gridlock’ conditions Rocco Rossi is speaking about. In fact, it is quite the opposite. There is excess capacity even during rush hour. These photos taken on my bike ride home this afternoon between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m. prove this excess capacity.

University Avenue at Queen Street, looking north, at 5:45pm

What may appear as ‘GRIDLOCK!’ at Gerrard Street…

…cleared within 10 seconds of green time

The greatest irony is that in this location where I observed the greatest northbound delay in car travel, it was caused because of the advance southbound left turn signal. As a result, the northbound traffic is delayed by several additional seconds. So in this case, it is actually cars causing ‘GRIDLOCK!’, not cyclists.

Finally, a look at picturesque Queen’s Park. Check out all that ‘GRIDLOCK!’ blocking the view of this fine piece of architecture.

I will take similar shots during the morning rush hour tomorrow to document alleged ‘GRIDLOCK!’ conditions.

HOW UNIVERSITY AVENUE COULD IMPROVE WITH BIKE LANES

My theory, that similar to St. George Street, and with many successful road ‘diets’, reducing University Avenue by one lane in each direction, between Wellesley/Hoskin and Richmond Street will in fact improve traffic operation on the street. Why? University Avenue is inconsistently configured, leading to bottlenecks, constant lane changing, and confusion for unfamiliar drivers. Here is how the street is inconsistent:

North of Bloor Street, Avenue Road is a six-lane roadway
Between Bloor Street and College Street, Queen’s Park Circle is a couplet of two three-lane one-way roads
Between College and Richmond Streets, where the segregated bike lane is planned, is where University Avenue widens to an eight-lane roadway
South of Richmond, University Avenue squeezes down to six-lanes again, and finally, south of Wellington Street, squeezes to four-lanes.

It is at the Wellington Squeeze, as I will call it, that congestion becomes a problem, as impatient drivers try to cut around cars. Similar issues occur at Bloor Street and Richmond Street, where the street narrows. So when the segregated bike lane is placed into the eight-lane section of University, it will finally standardize the road configuration throughout its length.

IN CONCLUSION…

I am absolutely certain that if there was a serious risk of ‘GRIDLOCK!’, the Transportation Department would not be proposing such a bold move without further study. You see, I trust the bureaucrats that run our City, who have dedicated their education and careers to their field. Should the public trust them? Or should they trust Rocco Rossi, whose only expertise is in divide and conquer politics, grandstanding, and manipulation of the truth.

The above figure was compiled using the 2003 and 2010 New York...

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:01:00 -0400

The above figure was compiled using the 2003 and 2010 New York Cycling Maps to show the growth in Manhattan’s cycling network in a very short period of time. I’ll see if I can pull up a comparison for Toronto over the same period.

Note the rapid expansion of both on-street bike lanes and segregated bike paths. Amazing.

It appears that the City will be initiating a pilot project for...

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:04:23 -0400

It appears that the City will be initiating a pilot project for segregated bike lanes on University Avenue this summer between Wellesley and Richmond Streets. This will be a big leap forward for the cycling network in Toronto, as until now, there have not been attempts to create physically separated bike facilities on our urban streets.

It is also a first for the City’s Transportation Department, which in the past has been criticized for studying things to death before implementation. Perhaps the speech by Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner of the New York DOT, last year at a CUI luncheon, where she stressed the power of just doing things, knocked some sense into the folks at City Hall.

Quoting Sadik-Khan on pilot projects:

“People are more willing to change if they know it’s not permanent,” she explains.

“The public needs to see things right away,” she says. “We have the vision in New York and we are able to implement that vision.”

source

Read:

Posted Toronto: Bike Lanes on University Avenue

City of Toronto: Bikeway Network Downtown 2010 Program

translinked: spoony: TransLink: Canada Line Posters, Airport |...

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:48:47 -0400

translinked:

spoony:

TransLink: Canada Line Posters, Airport | Ads of the World

If you click around, it says there are 3 ads in this series and they are posted to the site. I must be really good at mentally blocking out advertising, because I didn’t see any of these anywhere at ALL…

The design for new Ontario Highway Service Centres by Quadrangle...

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:44:18 -0400

The design for new Ontario Highway Service Centres by Quadrangle Architects

When the new Toronto Rocket trains come, it’ll be finally...

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:45:53 -0400

When the new Toronto Rocket trains come, it’ll be finally time to update the subway train pictograph

Inspired by this from Japan, an idea for signage at Bloor-Yonge...

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:10:05 -0400

Inspired by this from Japan, an idea for signage at Bloor-Yonge Station to improve customer experience and help people move down the platform

City of Regina logos: old and new. Definitely a step up, good...

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:47:49 -0400

City of Regina logos: old and new. Definitely a step up, good riddance to the 80s discoscript.

On March 30, 1954, the Yonge Subway opened between Union and...

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:22:08 -0400

On March 30, 1954, the Yonge Subway opened between Union and Eglinton Station, marking the opening of the first subway system in Canada and beginning a massive transformation in the City of Toronto.

Happy 56th Birthday, Yonge Subway!

photos from Toronto Archives, Fonds 1128, Series 381, File 298

The Toronto Board of Trade released “Toronto as a Global...

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:41:00 -0400

The Toronto Board of Trade released “Toronto as a Global City”, its annual scorecard on prosperity and the city’s competitive position compared to various cities/city-regions around the world. Of particular interest, especially in light of the Ontario government’s move to ~~slash~~ delay funding for rapid transit, are these two indicators: the proportion of commuters by non-auto modes and average commuting time. These are not surprising results, but highlights how our mobility challenges are hurting the economy and our quality of life.

Thanks @MKofsky for forwarding me the link to the report

Time to edit these bus ads from last year and put them back up,...

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:31:16 -0400

Time to edit these bus ads from last year and put them back up, dontcha think?

How are we supposed to plan and build a sustainable public...

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:11:03 -0400

How are we supposed to plan and build a sustainable public transit system when funding comes and goes at the whim of each provincial budget? It seems easy enough if you are in the business of building highways, on the other hand.

data source: Ontario Budgets 2005-2010

Over the next little while, inspired by Vision42, I’m...

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:41:00 -0400

Over the next little while, inspired by Vision42, I’m going to write a series of posts dealing with two very important mobility corridors that no one seems to want to talk about: King Street and Queen Street. Before I start, I’d like to know: what issues do you see on these two streets, so important to our great city, but yet so dysfunctional?