An Idea: Bay Bus BRT

A northbound Bay bus at Dundas, with a bunch of cars illegally using the lane behind it (source: Michael Chu / flickr)

The Bay bus has an enormous potential to reduce congestion on the Yonge and University Subways and the transfer points at St. George and Bloor-Yonge Stations. Once the downtown’s lone trolley route, it ran as frequent as every two minutes. The Bay Street Clearway was implemented in response to the high volumes of buses on Bay Street, to get cars out of its way. However, since the removal of the trolley wires in 1993, a number of things have occurred that have diminished the potential of the Bay bus for the downtown transit system:

• Service cuts in the mid-90s dramatically reduced ridership across the entire TTC network. Although ridership, in general, has now recovered, and gone to all-time highs, the Bay bus is not back at its old-time glory
• Zero enforcement of the clearway lanes: despite the ‘clearway’ status, there is seldom enforcement of motorists encroaching onto the lanes, other than the symbolic, and ineffective, blitzes once a year

The result is a slow, unreliable service - most TTC passengers would rather walk to Yonge or University to hop on the subway and brave the congested interchange stations.

So whereas all the major mayoral candidates, with the exception of Joe Pantalone, are proposing grand, unrealistic, far-off schemes for new subway lines across Toronto, how about an idea that is simple, effective, and achievable?

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Reality Check: Rocco and his 250,000 new jobs

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?

Ow.

Damn campains. 

(Dear Toronto Star: these typos are happening far too often. Probably shouldn’t have fired all those copy editors.)