Hard Infrastructure (Including, streets, water and wastewater, sidewalks, green infrastrucutre and more)
Over the past several years, Council has put a great deal of emphasis on renewing the City’s “hard infrastructure” such as TTC, bridges, roads and sewers. Through federal and provincial stimulus money, and new municipal revenues, we have started to make a dent in the backlog of repairs to our hard infrastructure. There is still considerable work to be done to bring the City’s infrastructure up to standard and to build for residents and economies of the future. This discussion string is meant to address the infrastructure challenges that remain for Toronto, how to address them, and what types of new infrastructure is needed for the Toronto of the future (i.e., new transit, pedestrian, cycling infrastructure, environmental infrastructure, etc.). As noted in the introduction, I will create new threads for discussion as they are needed.
November 17, 2009 at 12:11 pm |
The biggest problem with infrastructure renewal in Toronto as I see it is that there is not enough coordination of related activities. For example, on my Lansdowne Avenue I have seen construction crews ripping up and re-doing construction much too often: fixing sewers, laying cables, etc all this after a MAJOR renovation of the street. It seems that money is wasted by poor planning and prioritzing/merging activities.
November 23, 2009 at 3:20 pm |
More than agree on co-ordination. I have worked construction in Toronto for 30 years and have seen some huge delays and cost inflation during projects because of bureaucratic infighting between all the ABC’s in the City, the TTC being the worst. On a downtown project you can be dealing with the conflict between Toronto Hyro, Toronto Water, TTC, City works, Parking Authority. There should be a super Building Committee with no Politicians dedicated to project planning, co-ordination and efficiency that has the right to over rule all other parties. Right now delays and buried costs are a blame fest that just serves to piss of the public. i.e. St. Clair and drive up costs.
November 23, 2009 at 5:19 pm |
I’m not the least bit surprised. You mention St. Clair – an economic and logistical disaster. The sheer waste of extremely valuable throughput space is stupendous, not to mention the length of the disruptions and the uncoordinated and ill-considered implementation arrangements, especially in respect of parking. Again, I would like to see the study of alternatives – if it was ever undertaken – leading to the current project.
November 17, 2009 at 12:15 pm |
Transit needs to be an ONGOING development: a few miles of subway every year, upgrading bus routes, etc. Streetcars are the main mode of transport in the city, but gradually need to be moved to be completely separate from auto traffic. Road tolls for city central areas are a MUST! This should be done in conjunction with satellite parking areas connected to subways.
November 17, 2009 at 12:17 pm |
Traffic congestion: Need road tolls, but also need to redefine how products are delivered within the city. Futuristic view, but banning transports under a certain size, coupled with cross country rail delivery combined with satellite warehousing transfer stations (like the food terminal, but placde on the outskirts)
November 17, 2009 at 12:33 pm |
As anyone who has attended an Extermination Music Night knows, this city is full of unused and under-used spaces that can contribute to the cultural vitality of the city. The Downsview Park hangars are a great example. I’d love to see a Mayor’s Task Force on refurbished lands that could identify areas of decay which, for little money, could be turned into areas of renewal.
November 17, 2009 at 12:44 pm |
Picking up on addhum’s lead (which I agree with), I see far too many abandoned and deteriorated properties that stay that way for years, while we have homelessness. On College street just a few blocks east of the city councillor (Adam Giambrone) in ward 18, there is a boarded up building that I estimate could house about a dozen people minimum and in comfort. Yet it sits as a blight, When I asked about city expropriation of such sites, I was told it was ‘too complicated’. I do not believe that.
November 17, 2009 at 12:53 pm |
We need road/ congestion tolls coupled with investment in regional transit. Look around any day during rush hour and you see a lot of single occupant vehicles. These folks need to bear a larger proportion of the cost that they impose on the rest of us. But some of them also need practical alternatives to driving, which would be provided by ongoing investment in TTC and other regional transit.
November 17, 2009 at 1:04 pm |
Transit City needs to be safe above all. We need a mayor that commits to making Toronto the most sustainable city in North America.
November 17, 2009 at 1:54 pm |
Why, unlike most successful transit systems in the world, is the TTC one fair price regardless of how far you travel? Most transit system work on zones. Someone one who lives downtown and only travels on transit within the downtown core should not have to pay the same rate as someone who lives in North York and takes the subway from Finch (side note I don’t live downtown and this would mean I would have to pay more, but I am willing to do that because it is fair).
Furthermore, there needs to be greater cooperation between the various transit providers (i.e. the Go, TTC, Viva, etc..). This could be a straight forward as being able to transfer from one system to the next with 1 ticket (maybe not as hard as it seems if a zone system were implemented).
Also, a lot of transit systems have done away with toll collectors. I realize that the TTC Union would fight this tooth and nail, but once the new smart cards come into effect (if ever) the collectors will be done away with….one would hope.
November 17, 2009 at 3:24 pm |
TTC talk is now on the “Transit Future” page.
November 17, 2009 at 4:24 pm |
A commitment to complete street design and the bike plan are very important. We have (relatively) great vision in our planning documents, and yet it’s difficult to actually get individual projects done!
Programs like lead pipe and cast iron watermain replacement, and installation of water meters need to be accelerated.
And how about a commitment to bury hydro lines during road reconstruction?
November 17, 2009 at 4:30 pm |
Bike lanes. I want more bike lanes, and I really want to see some protected bike lanes. Far too much space for transportation is given over to cars. We need to start a Complete Streets initiative.
November 17, 2009 at 5:03 pm |
Toronto is a city of great neighbourhoods. I would love to see a mayor come along with a vision to on how to connect these (but very different) neighbourhoods. My first thoughts are on bike lanes but walking tours, pedestrian bridges, trees, lighting are all a part of this.
November 17, 2009 at 5:24 pm |
Pedestrian Thoughts:
Complete what we have, it has long been official City policy with money in the budget to complete the sidewalk network, yet many transit routes still lack sidewalks, sections of Parklawn, Leslie, Guildwood, Morningside, Bermondsey and more. First order of business we need to commit to a timeline to finish getting a basic sidewalk network built.
Second, we need to improve pedestrian conditions. Particularly around highways, we need a discussion of putting par-clo highway on-ramps out of their misery in favour of T-intersections that are much safer to walk across (think cars turning right onto a highway ramp from stop or slow instead of whipping on at 85km/ph). We also need beautified interchanges and bridges so that freeways don’t act as barriers between communities.
Cycling Thoughts: Again, we need to finish what we start. The Toronto Bike Plan is written, let’s get it done. But let’s also get at least 1 really useful addition complete, bike lanes on Bloor/Danforth.
Transit Thoughts: Largely there is already a fulsome list of projects. However, we need to settle on what to do w/Bloor/Yonge station which is brutally overcrowded; and we need to get on w/making sure every single transit stop in the City has shelters. There are roads in the burbs and some downtown routes as well, where there are few or no shelters at all.
November 17, 2009 at 7:13 pm |
All parking requirements should be eliminated from the building code and planning guidelines. Mandatory parking is a subsidy to the automobile and makes development and city infrastructure more expensive. Any parking provided in a new development should come with an annual tax directly linked to the cost the parking spot imposes on the city’s expenses.
November 17, 2009 at 8:30 pm |
Amalgamation did alot of bad things to Toronto and one of the worst was the expansion of the City of Toronto Building Trade union monopoly tendering practices from old City only to monopoly in all other municipalities and School Boards. Over a thousand contractors and their employes were disqualified from bidding and working in their own City on projects they pay for. Not only the human cost but the financial cost of building and maintaining infrastructure are huge with a 2007 Hamilton study indicating that the elimination of competition and open tendering inflates prices by 20 to 40%. No other GTA City has these restrictions and Toronto has both at an ethical and financial deficit that needs changing. Toronto should join all other GTA municipalities and request that the Province close a loophole in the Labour Relations Act that allows a municipal Government to be defined as a private sector Construction Business. Toronto is not a business it is a Government.
November 17, 2009 at 10:59 pm |
Toronto should take a page from New York’s recent playbook and implement more pilot projects.
Example: Adelaide & Richmond. Take a lane from each street. Use some semi-permanent infrastructure (could be concrete barriers or planters or something else) to form bidirectional bike lanes on each street. Leave them there for at least 6 months and decide whether the change was beneficial. This needs to come with a firm commitment to keep the lanes free of debris, and especially snow and ice once winter comes around.
This could also be done on Bloor – pick a busy section of 2km or so, and take over the parking lane for a bike path.
November 18, 2009 at 12:16 am |
The City of Toronto has sunk into a traffic morass which places it in league with cities such as Lagos, Cairo, New York and Paris when it comes to congestion and the overall disfunctionality of traffic arrangements. Every conceivable blockage is put in place here to PREVENT cars from moving from Point A to Point B efficiently. Too much street parking is allowed on vital arteries, streetcars compete with cars for road space, whether it is disorganized chaos such as Queen street or highly organized inefficiency (at a great waste of money and valuable real-estate) such as St. Clair avenue West. Unreasonable speed limits, speed bumps, excessive stop signs, non-synchronized traffic lights – the list goes on and on, insures that it takes forever to get to anywhere here, and the environmental toll is stupendous. By my calculation based on my experience, excess gasoline usgae in this city relative to automobile fuel usage test standards for urban areas could be in the range of 35-40%.
A complete overhaul of traffic patterns, traffic lights and traffic regulations needs to be undertak to unravel this mess.
In particular, public transit plans need to be reviewed by external expertise who have no vested interest in the status-quo here, and re-oriented to a more functional concept of grade-separated public and private transport arrangements, along with financial reform to make possible the implementation of these expensive, but more efficient solutions. Toronto has a huge transportation infrastructure deficit to close before it can claim to be a leading city of this century.
November 18, 2009 at 3:17 am |
Toronto needs real bike lanes.
The fact is that people die in our city because of the lack of a proper cycling infrastructure. The white paint on our roads that sit in as bike lanes are not adequate; they’re not actually bike lanes.
A real (=safe and adequate) bike lane is essentially a sidewalk: it is raised from the road by about 1-2 inches, paved, and separated from (placed between) the car road and the pedestrian sidewalk.
Toronto needs bike lanes like these and the Jarvis St reconstruction is the place to build the first one.
If the plans require the row of trees (what is this fixation with rows of trees by the way?) then the tree buffer goes in between the cars and the cyclists, not the cyclists and the pedestrians.
Raised and separated bike lanes are safe for everyone on the roads: cyclists who are rightly afraid of competing with cars for road space don’t have to ride on pedestrian sidewalks and are able to enjoy their commute in their own lanes.
I am currently living in Copenhagen, Denmark and the bike infrastructure here is so far ahead of Toronto, providing Toronto with an excellent example of what is possible and what is necessary.
People here from all walks of life bike. Men and women, children and senior citizens, school kids, professionals on their way to work, doesn’t matter your race, religion, or class; rain or shine: cycling in the city has been made accessible to everyone. There are raised and separated lanes here on every major street in the city; Green Wave traffic light systems on major cycling routes that provide non-stop green lights if you cycle at 20km/h; bike specific traffic lights; etc. etc.
Cycling is a safe, healthy, and clean mode of transportation. It is about time Toronto takes it seriously and invests in building a proper cycling infrastructure.
November 19, 2009 at 11:12 pm |
So true! I’m a diehard cyclist but it is more and more a nightmare in Toronto. Countless people say to me that they would love to cycle to work but that they are afraid.
A major improvement would be educate drivers and cyclists about their rights and responsibilities.
Adopt Holland’s legal approach to bike vs car accident making the car at fault always.
November 18, 2009 at 5:14 am |
For more information on Copenhagen bike infrastructure design see this link for a PDF presentation: http://presentations.thecyclistwebhouse.com/The_Third_Wave_of_Cyclists/Presentation%20-%20Third%20Wave%20of%20Cycling%20-%20BCCC/BCCC%20Presentation%20-%20Copenhagen%20-%20Cycling%20Facilities%20Design%20Approaches%20-%20Version%20Condensed.pdf
November 18, 2009 at 7:12 am |
Discussion of Cycling Infrastructure is now at the “Cycling Infrastructure” Page
November 18, 2009 at 7:16 am |
Discussion of planning and development issues (exclusive of those related to transportation infrastructure) is now located on the “Planning and Development” page.
November 18, 2009 at 7:32 am |
Phase out front yard parking:
Start by issuing short-term, non-transferable permits for front yard parking. Ultimately, eliminate front yard parking.
Front yard parking privatizes the space at the curb for public/general parking. It also makes sidewalks much less safe for pedestrians from the slope and traffic.
November 18, 2009 at 9:32 am |
Front Yard Parking should NOT be phased out. It eliminates street parking, which allows snow plows to clear our roads more effeciently and traffic flow.
Makes no difference if we park at the curb or ‘Private Front Yard parking’ we’re still taking up a spot AND paying a fee, actually paying more for FYP, an advantage for the City.
As far as the ‘less safe’ …let’s all practice a little more caution – drivers & pedestrians – and we’ll all be safe.
November 18, 2009 at 7:36 am |
Green garage roofs.
Shingles only last about 15 years. If the City were to act to facilitate the replacement of garage roofs with green roofs, we could have a much greener city within just 20 years. Facilitation could include training to roofers, public education, by-laws, and grants to homeowners.
November 19, 2009 at 11:16 pm |
Great idea – the city could along with front yard tree planting offer up access to plantings for the garage roofs and flat roofs in houses – not to fund them (except through tax credits) but to gather all the resources, plans and permit applications at the website making it easier to do and tying that in with an incentive.
November 20, 2009 at 1:10 am |
Mary
I am in construction and am sorry that your idea that has no merit. The first thing is that green roofs are a fad and their long term cost and benefits are completely unknown. To support the weight of a green roof on a residential garage would double the price of the building and quadruple the price of the roof. Environmentally the money is much better spent elsewhere on simpler things like good trees in backyards that will shade the roof and the environment for 100 years.
November 18, 2009 at 7:38 am |
Transportation/metro passes:
Instead of road tolls how about requiring drivers to purchase transportation passes which would pay for both road use and transit use. Imagine how inexpensive metropasses could be if most road users were also paying. The pass fees would go directly to transit coffers. The pass would encourage drivers to take the TTC when appropriate. It’s a win-win-win proposal.
November 18, 2009 at 9:54 am |
Please, no more speed bumps and built-out sidewalks with potted weeds to slow down traffic. We’ve done enough traffic calming-lets spend the money where it is really needed. Traffic calming is a frill at this point.
November 18, 2009 at 1:22 pm |
I’d have to disagree. These measures improve community safety a livability. Side streets shouldn’t be used for commuting and quicker travel; it increases noise and pollution in a residential area where people should have peace.
November 19, 2009 at 11:20 pm |
Yes – thanks to the new St. Clair highway our side streets have been a nightmare to walk and cycle down. My street is now one of the only turn locations for a few blocks and pissed off motorists scream through the side streets. It’s not just noise and pollution it’s personal safety.
November 18, 2009 at 10:04 am |
There is lots of talk about parking. Should front yard parking be banned? What should rates be in “Green P” spaces? How much should the city charge for residental on-street permits? DIscussion of these issues is now on the “Parking” page.
November 18, 2009 at 10:21 am |
on Front Yard Parking – it’s unfair that some residents are paying and some not. The City really needs to investigate and have everyone pay. All fair and more revenue for our city.
November 18, 2009 at 11:09 am |
Let’s make sure that transit and bike infrastructure is accomplished in a way that makes Toronto a car-friendly city.
November 18, 2009 at 11:35 am |
1. Transportation: I will use my bike daily when there are protected bike lanes. Now, I am terrified to ride on the main streets.
Investing in public transportation is the only salvation for overused roads by cars. Another tax, toll charges won’t help, it will only reduce our disposable income to spend in the city.
2. Front yard parking: Please don’t mess with what exists! Some of us actually need access to a car for work. Street parking is scarce enough and it is my front yard, isn’t it?
3. Taxes: Enough increases! Running Toronto more efficiently should more than make up for many of the budget deficits.
November 19, 2009 at 11:25 pm |
Front yard parking reduces the green space in the city and add’s more concrete which heats up the city which causes you to turn on your air conditioner which heats up the city, You can feel it on a hot summer day walking down the sidewalk. Ban front yard parking.
But if a person can prove a case for it (disabled) then they must plant a tree.
November 18, 2009 at 1:26 pm |
The city needs to more attention to aesthetics and functionality. Phase out overhead wires and the wooden poles, and use more compact traffic signals like you see in some parts of Montreal and Washington DC. Synchronize traffic signals systematically across the city. Give streetcars priority on Spadina and on Queen’s Quay.
November 20, 2009 at 1:21 am |
The biggest issue on infrastructure is the cost. The first step is to get rid of Building Trade only tendering of Construction projects that decreases competition, discriminates against contractor and workers and inflates prices. We need first restore fair and open competition before we can plan a good infrastructure strategy because we are now dealing with artificially inflated monopoly prices. Problem is that Joe Mihevc is a big supporter of a union monopoly because they are a big suppoter of him.
November 20, 2009 at 1:37 am |
There are many ways to reduce our environmental impact and cool our footprint. But the simplest and most cost efficient is Good Trees. We can’t really get rid of front yard parking that exists but we can limit it going foreward and my understanding is that it is pretty limited already. The standard for an application for front yard parking should be whether the spot will eliminate the space for a big tree.
I bought my house 15 years ago and part of why is that I own a magnificent front yard maple that towers over the house and provides air conditioning for more than half the day. My neighbours unfortunateley also have a tree planted at the same time as mine some 80 years ago. They have what the city arborist called a garbage tree, a Manitoba Maple that does not tower or provide air conditioning.
We need better regulation on the type of trees planted in the City and some sort of incentive to own a good tree and prevent garbage trees from being planted.
November 20, 2009 at 12:10 pm |
I agree. In my neighbourhood all the old oak trees are dying and not being replaced. I would suggest a city/provincial program where citizens who plant a “good tree” on their property get a $50 – $100 tax break that year. In return the land-owner must take care of the tree for life. The city chooses and plants the trees. Trees are known to help pollution, cutting down health costs down the road.
Some people may complain that they already have trees on their property and should get the break as well. My argument is — good for you, you already benefit from cheaper A/C and air quality improvements (and you’ll also benefit from a whole new whack of trees in your neighbourhood and city).
November 22, 2009 at 8:06 pm |
How about free transit in downtown, like Portland, Oregon, Seattle, WA etc?