Quotulatiousness

April 11, 2019

Ontario government unveils massive subway and light rail expansion for the GTA

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Railways — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Doug Ford has always been a fan of subways, but now that he’s the Premier of Ontario, he’s getting to indulge his subway fetish in a vast expansion to heavy and light rail transit in and around Toronto:

Click map to embiggenate

The plans include:

  • An expanded downtown relief line, now to be called the Ontario line, running from Ontario Place on the lakeshore through downtown along Queen Street then crossing the Bloor-Danforth subway line at Pape station and running north to the Ontario Science Centre on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line. This line is optimistically to be ready for opening by 2027.
  • The existing Sheppard Line will be extended east from Don Mills to McCowan, where it will intersect with the planned Scarborough subway extension (now to include three stops, not just the one originally announced, and to be completed by 2030).
  • The Yonge-University line will be extended north from current terminus at Finch to the Richmond Hill Centre with a hoped-for completion date soon after the Ontario line.
  • The Eglinton Crosstown line will be extended west to Pearson airport, with a target completion date of 2031.
  • New light rail lines will be created between Finch West on the Yonge-University subway to Humber College, and along Hurontario Street in Mississauga from Port Credit on the lakeshore to Steeles Avenue in Brampton.

To accomplish all of this will require financial contributions from the City of Toronto, York Region, and the federal government, as the province is only funding just over one third ($11.2 billion) of the estimated $28 billion price tag.

Of course, it’s a Doug Ford plan, so none of the usual suspects in Toronto are happy about any of it.

February 27, 2019

Toronto’s transit cheat epidemic

Filed under: Business, Cancon — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I knew the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) had an issue with fare evasion, but I had no idea it was as prevalent as this:

Anyone who has ever sat through a Toronto Transportation Commission meeting has likely heard anecdotal evidence that fare evasion on the transit system is utterly rampant, if not a mockery of Western civilization itself. Traditionally, such people tended to be treated as harmless cranks. TTC staff would placate them with various internal audits conducted over the years that found roughly two-per-cent fare loss. As recently as 2017, the TTC was claiming just 1.8 per cent of passengers on streetcars — where it’s easiest not to pay — weren’t ponying up.

Well, so much for that. In a convincing report issued last week based on 136 hours of in-person observation and 38 hours of security footage, city auditor-general Beverly Romeo-Beehler estimates fare evasion rates at 15.2 per cent on streetcars, 5.1 per cent on buses and 3.7 per cent on subways, for a total weighted average of 5.4 per cent— around $61 million a year, plus roughly $3.4 million thanks to malfunctioning Presto card equipment owned by Metrolinx.

To put that in perspective, last year’s average 3.2-per-cent fare increase was projected to add $17 million to TTC coffers. If the AG is right, commuters are paying something like 12 cents per trip to subsidize free riders. And the problems underlying the issue are nothing short of jaw-dropping. For one thing, the auditor-general’s team observed scores of adults — and precisely zero children — using child Presto cards to ride for free.

January 8, 2019

A typical commute

Filed under: Cancon, Personal, Railways — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I had to go into Toronto on Monday, and the address was near Queen and Yonge, so I could take the GO train most of the way (which means I could at least get some reading done during the train trip). Getting there wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, as the traffic on the 401 was slow-to-stopped as I got on, but the sliproad to the next exit was moving even slower than the main highway. Once we got past the turnoff, the speed increased up to slow-but-steady for a few kilometres. Up ahead, there were flashing red and blue lights. I figured there was an accident, so I switched lanes away from what appeared to be the accident site. But it wasn’t an accident, at least not by most definitions. In the eastbound lanes, there were what appeared to be a full dozen police vehicles, surrounding a black car that looked like it’d pinballed against the concrete lane dividers a few times before coming to a stop. Just as I was passing the epicentre, I saw a police officer escorting a handcuffed man from the vehicle toward one of the police cars.

With that delay, we’d pretty much missed the chance to catch the original GO train we’d planned on, but there was another scheduled to arrive about fifteen minutes later which we could still catch.

The platform at Oshawa GO station. The parking situation is insane at Oshawa, so I usually drive one stop west and park at Whitby GO instead.
Photo by Anthony Easton via Wikimedia Commons

Nearing the end of our journey, the lights in the car went out and the train coasted to a stop right in the yard throat of Toronto’s Union Station. For several minutes, there was no information from the conductor — sorry, the “Customer Service Ambassador” — but then he announced that we all needed to move along the train “in the opposite direction the train is travelling” to car number 2xxx. We all got up and shuffled through the train passing through several bilevel cars until we started to smell smoke … the conductor had sent us in the wrong direction and we’d been walking toward the fire, not away from it. We could also see some grey smoke being blown toward us from the locomotive end of the train, so it didn’t take much to persuade everyone that we needed to walk to the front of the train instead.

There seemed to be a lot of sirens approaching the train, as the emergency services were dispatched, and no other trains could get into or out of the east end of Union Station for over an hour while we sat in the slowly cooling control car at the west end of the train. Eventually, they were able to get a crew to bring out another train for us to transfer into and they took us the kilometer or so into Union, ninety minutes late.

blogTO had a few photos of the end of the train we couldn’t see:

Image of locomotive fire posted by blogTO.

After those two incidents, I was wondering if the universe was trying to tell us we shouldn’t have gone into Toronto after all…

September 3, 2018

Planes, Trains, and… Actually, just Trains

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Knowing Better
Published on 18 Sep 2016

The railroad has affected your life more than you may have realized. From starting the mail order business to creating some of America’s greatest landmarks, see how this simple transportation system shaped the country we live in today.

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—

Why Trains Suck in America – Wendover Productions – https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ

Photo Credits –
American Waterways/Canals are edits of images I used to teach in 2011 – The originals were from Wikicommons and have long since been removed or updated. No Copyright Information can be found.
The Three Proposed Railroad Routes are edits of images I used to teach in 2013 – The originals were from Wikicommons and have long since been removed or updated. No Copyright Information can be found.

I don’t normally add comments about the daily 2:00am videos, but there are a couple of things in this video that I think needed to be addressed. First, he rather casually skips over the vast increase in American railway building even before the enabling legislation for the transcontinental lines, and misses a great opportunity to explain how important they were in determining the outcome of the American Civil War. Second, and rather more irritatingly, he blithely asserts the common myth about the “Big Oil” conspiracy to buy up and shut down municipal light rail (streetcars, interurban railways, and radials). The various streetcar systems had almost all been economically shaky since the Great Depression (many had to be taken over by the municipalities involved to keep them out of bankruptcy), and the huge increase in private car ownership after World War 2 was the coup de grâce that finished off most of the rest. During the same time, bus routes were encroaching on the streetcar’s territory and had the huge advantage of not being tied to rails (allowing relatively easy re-routing without huge construction costs).

I’ve posted about High Speed Railways a few times before.

May 7, 2018

Study: climate change skeptics behave in a more environmentally friendly manner than believers

Filed under: Environment — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In common with some similar observed phenomena, people who like to signal their climate change beliefs are actually less likely to act in environmentally beneficial ways than declared climate skeptics. At Pacific Standard, Tom Jacobs details the findings of a recent study:

Do our behaviors really reflect our beliefs? New research suggests that, when it comes to climate change, the answer is no. And that goes for both skeptics and believers.

Participants in a year-long study who doubted the scientific consensus on the issue “opposed policy solutions,” but at the same time, they “were most likely to report engaging in individual-level, pro-environmental behaviors,” writes a research team led by University of Michigan psychologist Michael Hall.

Conversely, those who expressed the greatest belief in, and concern about, the warming environment “were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions.”

Sorry, I didn’t have time to recycle — I was busy watching a documentary about the crumbling Antarctic ice shelf.

The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, followed more than 400 Americans for a full year. On seven occasions — roughly once every eight weeks — participants revealed their climate change beliefs, and their level of support for policies such as gasoline taxes and fuel economy standards.

They also noted how frequently they engaged in four environmentally friendly behaviors: recycling, using public transportation, buying “green” products, and using reusable shopping bags.

The researchers found participants broke down into three groups, which they labeled “skeptical,” “cautiously worried,” and “highly concerned.” While policy preferences of group members tracked with their beliefs, their behaviors largely did not: Skeptics reported using public transportation, buying eco-friendly products, and using reusable bags more often than those in the other two categories.

April 22, 2018

How to begin solving the common problems of big cities

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Vladimir “Zeev” Vinokurov is writing about Australian cities in particular, but the same general analysis applies to many Canadian, American, and British urban areas as well:

… our economy and population are growing, and the resulting congestion is costing us thousands of dollars per year individually, and billions to the economy. It isolates us from family, friends and work. But cities can still grow without getting us stuck in traffic, missing increasingly overcrowded and delayed trains, or left unable to afford property. All this is happening because workplaces are too far from residents living in the suburbs, which effectively funnels residents into the inner city for work. It must change.

First, we must unwind planning laws that prevent offices, homes and apartments from being constructed alongside each other and throughout the city. These laws also raise housing prices by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Second, instead of banning cars, charge commuters for using congested roads and trains. Third, stop supporting taxpayer funded ‘road to nowhere’ infrastructure projects. These reforms will cut congestion, grow the economy, cut living costs and reconnect us to family, friends and local communities.

Planning laws cause congestion and social isolation by preventing people from building apartments and commercial offices throughout our city. As a result, rents and property prices become dearer because not enough housing is built to accommodate demand from population growth. Indeed, Reserve Bank economists estimate that planning laws increase average property prices by hundreds of thousands of dollars. This drives residents into the outer suburbs to look for cheaper housing, even as they commute into the inner city for work. If more people lived close-by to their workplaces, commutes would be shorter.

We need multiple CBDs, not just one. Unwinding planning laws that prevent commercial growth outside the CBD will cut housing costs and rents, cut congestion and promote tightly knit, thriving urban communities.

Congestion also occurs because we pay for using roads and public transport with thousands of dollars of time every year, rather than money. Congested public roads or trains cost us no more money to use in peak times, and busier routes cost no more to use than empty ones. As a result, the Grattan Institute think tank estimates that the average Melbournian’s commute to the city is twice as long in peak time. By contrast, Sydney’s trains are less congested, but are used more widely compared to Melbourne’s because its tickets are dearer in rush hour. Congestion charges that reflect market demand for infrastructure will also encourage businesses to open in commercial districts outside the CBD. Reconnecting local commuters with local workplaces will save us time and money overall.

Congestion charges are also a fairer and cheaper way of funding infrastructure projects compared to taxes like fuel tax or stamp duty. Scrapping these two taxes could save property purchasers tens of thousands of dollars or more, and reduce petrol bills by at least a third. If we pay for congested roads and trains with money rather than time and taxes, we may end up paying less.

December 7, 2017

Lawrence Solomon makes his pitch for “most hated by the bike mafia”

Filed under: Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This was published last week, but I didn’t see it until it was linked from Instapundit:

Today the bicycle is a mixed bag, usually with more negatives than positives. In many cities, bike lanes now consume more road space than they free up, they add to pollution as well as reducing it, they hurt neighbourhoods and business districts alike, and they have become a drain on the public purse. The bicycle today — or rather the infrastructure that now supports it — exemplifies “inappropriate technology,” a good idea gone wrong through unsustainable, willy-nilly top-down planning.

London, where former mayor Boris Johnston began a “cycling revolution,” shows where the road to ruin can lead. Although criticism of biking remains largely taboo among the city’s elite, a bike backlash is underway, with many blaming the city’s worsening congestion on the proliferation of bike lanes. While bikes have the luxury of zipping through traffic using dedicated lanes that are vastly underused most of the day — these include what Transport for London (TfL) calls “cycle superhighways” — cars have been squeezed into narrowed spaces that slow traffic to a crawl.

As a City of London report acknowledged last year, “The most significant impact on the City’s road network in the last 12 months has been the construction and subsequent operation of TfL’s cycle super highway … areas of traffic congestion can frequently be found on those roads.” As Lord Nigel Lawson put it in a parliamentary debate on bicycles, cycle lanes have done more damage to London than “almost anything since the Blitz.”

As a consequence of the idling traffic, pollution levels have risen, contributing to what is now deemed a toxic stew. Ironically, cyclists are especially harmed, and not just because the bike lanes they speed upon are adjacent to tailpipes. According to a study by the London School of Medicine, cyclists have 2.3 times more inhaled soot than walkers because “cyclists breathe more deeply and at a quicker rate than pedestrians while in closer proximity to exhaust fumes … Our data strongly suggest that personal exposure to black carbon should be considered when planning cycling routes.” Cyclists have begun wearing facemasks as a consequence. A recent headline in The Independent helpfully featured “5 best anti-pollution masks for cycling.” Neighbourhoods endure extra pollution, too, with frustrated autos cutting through residential districts to avoid bike-bred congestion.

Health and safety costs aside — per kilometre travelled, cyclist fatalities are eight times that of motorists — the direct economic burden associated with cycling megaprojects is staggering. Paris, which boasts of its plan to become the “cycling capital of the world,” is in the midst of a 150-million-euro cycling scheme. Melbourne has a $100-million plan. Amsterdam — a flat, compact city well suited to cycling — is spending 120 million euros on 9,000 new bicycle parking spots alone. Where cold weather reigns for much of the year, as is the case in many of Canada’s cities, the cost-benefit case for cycling infrastructure is eviscerated further.

An answer might be dedicated bicycle-only routes, but the usual problem arises: the cost of the land necessary to build and maintain the routes will almost always be far higher than municipalities can afford to pay, and the benefits accrue more to upper-income users while the costs fall on the whole population. That’s just what we need: another way to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.

September 25, 2017

London’s foolish Uber ban

Filed under: Britain, Business, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Iain Murray on the decision by London bureaucrats (backed by the Lord Mayor) to ban Uber in favour of established cab companies:

When I lived in London in the 1990s, I had to use pricey Black Cabs to get around the city at night. However, heaven help you if you wanted to go South of the Thames (as I did when I lived there) after midnight – Black Cabs would just refuse to take you. On one occasion I watched in horror as the cab driver got out and literally started a fight with a driver who had cut him off – and he kept the meter running throughout the fracas.

London’s days of high prices, uncertainty, and danger ended when Uber started operating there in 2012. It went on to dominate the London private hire car market. Today, that was all thrown out as Transport for London (TfL), an Uber competitor in that it runs the Tube and franchises bus services, revoked Uber’s license to operate.

Safety First?

The decision was ostensibly based on health and safety grounds. TfL said:

“TfL considers that Uber’s approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications. These include:

  • Its approach to reporting serious criminal offences.
  • Its approach to how medical certificates are obtained.
  • Its approach to how Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks are obtained.
  • Its approach to explaining the use of Greyball in London – software that could be used to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to the app and prevent officials from undertaking regulatory or law enforcement duties.”

These grounds are puzzling. Uber has a dedicated team responsible for working with the police regarding incidents with cars that use the Uber app – something London’s Black Cabs lack. Uber’s drivers go through exactly the same background checks and approval processes that Black Cab drivers do. And Uber denies that the Greyball feature has ever been used in London.

Moreover, accusations of violence, especially sexual violence, by Uber app drivers are overblown. As Reuters reports, “Of the 154 allegations of rape or sexual assault made to police in London between February 2015 and February 2016 in which the suspect was a taxi driver, 32 concerned Uber, according to the capital’s police force.” If Uber was uniquely bad in having drivers who attempted sexual assaults, that share should be much higher.

On Saturday night, Perry de Havilland reported on the petition to rescind the TfL decision:

The #SaveYourUber petition has, as of 10:45 pm in London, attracted 600,000+ names, and one of them is mine.

Of course the best way to save Uber is to get rid of Sadiq Khan and make the issue politically radioactive.

July 26, 2017

Sure-fire way to reduce the number of bugs reported – arrest the reporters

Filed under: Europe, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Budapest public transit authority has come up with a new technique to handle bug reports:

The tale started last week when an unnamed 18-year-old found that he was able to, when purchasing a ticket online, poke the BKK website in a particular way to modify the ticket’s price and buy it at that new price.

Rather than take advantage of virtually free travel in the country’s capital, however, he did the right thing and reported the security hole to the BKK, complete with a demo in which he was able to buy a $35 ticket for just 20 cents.

The response was not what he expected. Four detectives turned up at his door at 7:00am on Friday, photographed him and questioned him extensively over his actions. The BKK then held a press conference at which its CEO Kálmán Dabóczi proudly announced they had caught a hacker and had filed an official complaint against him. Dabóczi assured everyone that the website was now perfectly safe.

That version of events was immediately questioned by the teenager himself however, in a Facebook post.

“I am an 18-year-old, now middle school graduate,” he wrote in a message that has since been posted hundreds of times to the BKK’s Facebook page. “I trust that I can help solve a mistake.”

In the message, he says he informed the BKK “about two minutes” after he discovered the flaw. “I did not use the ticket, I do not even live near Budapest, I never traveled on a BKK route. My goal was just to signal the error to the BKK in order to solve it, and not to use it.”

He continued: “The BKK has not been able to answer me for four days, but in their press conference today they said it was a cyber attack and was reported. I found an amateur bug that could be exploited by many people – no one seriously thinks an 18-year-old kid would have played a serious security system and wanted to commit a crime by promptly telling the authorities.”

He then asks others to help out: “I ask you to help by sharing this entry with your acquaintances so that the BKK will come to a better understanding and see if my purpose is merely a helper intention, I have not harmed or wanted to harm them in any way. I hope that in this case the BKK will consider withdrawing the report.”

And so they have shared the entry – in their thousands – putting the BKK on the back foot.

July 22, 2017

The Bus Replacement Rail Service (yes, that’s the right way round)

Filed under: Britain, Railways — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 6 Jul 2016

This may be the most British video I’ve done in a while! But I saw the news story and immediately wanted to film it: the volunteer-run, narrow-gauge Leadhills and Wanlockhead Railway, in the south of Scotland, has stepped in to replace buses while a road is being resurfaced — avoiding a 45-mile diversion and meaning that local residents can still get to their neighbouring village. This isn’t the first bus replacement train in British history, but it’s pretty rare.

You can find out more about the Leadhills and Wanlockhead Railway here: http://www.leadhillsrailway.co.uk — thank you so much to all the volunteers there for the time they spent with me today!

July 15, 2017

The MOST DANGEROUS and EXTREME RAILWAYS in the World!! Compilation of Incredible Train Journeys!!

Filed under: Americas, Asia, Europe, India, Railways — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 31 Mar 2017

This list consists 12 of the most dangerous and extreme railways in the world!!From railways That deep gorges and near vertical descents, to a 100 year old railway bridge built on sea. These are some of the most amazing, unbelievable and incredible railway routes around the world. These Railways offer daring experience to those who ride them.The Trains needs to pass through the most dangerous railroads along their journey. However, one can enjoy the scenic beauty while travelling on them.
===================================================================

The Most Dangerous Railways featured in this list are :

Maeklong Railway, Thailand: This Railways passes through the congested maeklong market in Thailand.

Nariz del diablo, Ecuador : Considered most difficult train journey, the railway passed through tight cliffs and climbs steep altitudes.

Pamban Bridge, India : the trains has to pass through this breathtaking 100 year old sea bridge still operating.

Bangladesh Railways : Considered most overcrowded railways in the world where roof riding is a common sight.

Burma Railway : Constructed during world war II using forced labor, Many workers (prisoners of war) died due to rough conditions thus earning nickname ‘Death Railway’

Ferro carril Central Andino, Peru : Second Highest Railway in the World Running through the Andes.

Indian railways : World’s most busiest Railway, more than 25,000 people die annually on India’s railways

White pass & Yokon Route, Alaska : Built during Klondike Gold rush. This route boasts incredible sceneries.

Gokteik Viaduct, Myanmar : Highest railway trestle in the world.

Pilatus Railway, Switzerland : This Most steepest cogway railway offers incredible Sceneries.

Tren a las nubes, Argentina : The train Passes through dangerous curves and high bridges.

Gelmerbahn Funicular, Switzerland : Almost feels like a roller-coaster ride!

H/T to CT for the link.

July 6, 2017

British tram-train project is already 500% over budget and years late

Filed under: Britain, Government, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It was decided, at some point, to spend £15m to build a hybrid rail connection between Sheffield and Rotherham. It’s late (not too surprising) and over-budget (also not too surprising). What is surprising is just how far over-budget the project has gone: that initial £15m budget has now grown to an estimated £75m, and there may be no end in sight. Hannah Boland reports for the Telegraph:

Artist’s conception of the Sheffield-Rotherham tram-train. (Railway-Technology.com)

Transport company Stagecoach has won £2.5m in compensation from the Government after the completion date for the Sheffield to Rotherham tram-train project, for which it is supplying vehicles, was pushed back multiple times.

The National Audit Office (NAO), in a report released on Tuesday, said Stagecoach had claimed “prologation costs” and loss of revenue for the two-and-a-half-year delay of the government-sponsored project.

The scheme was approved in 2012, aimed at modifying train and tram infrastructure and buying vehicles capable of operating on both networks.

The Department for Transport had originally said it would be completed by December 2015, and would cut transport costs in the region.

However, Network Rail, which is undertaking the first stage of development, pushed back the deadline, first in 2014 and then in 2016, to May 2018.

The £15m budget originally agreed between the department and Network Rail has rocketed to £75.1m.

Tim Worstall offers some comments:

We hear ever louder cries, in both the UK and US, that government really must get on with spending billions, trillions even, on building out vital infrastructure — the problem with this being that government isn’t very good at building infrastructure. In fact, government is so bad at building infrastructure that there is a very strong argument to have it built by private economic actors. Yes, true, it’s entirely possible that the plutocrats will then profit from the public, even that only projects which make a profit get built, but we would have, given government’s record, more infrastructure for less money.

At least, that’s the lesson to take from this disaster with the Sheffield-Rotherham tram-train project. It is currently an alarming 5 times over budget and horribly late. Further, at this price it should never have been built. It is simply not possible that the value in use of this will exceed the costs of doing it — this is something which makes us all poorer […]

And here is in fact that cost benefit ratio [PDF]:

    1.0 the benefit–cost ratio for the programme when it was approved
    in May 2012. The business case was based on benefits to local
    transport users. The Department approved the project on the basis
    of the ‘strategic’ business case. Wider industry and economic
    benefits were considered ‘very uncertain’

    0.31 the Department’s estimated benefit–cost ratio – based on the
    local public transport case – as at October 2016

For any project, however funded and whatever it is, we need to have benefits higher than costs. This is simply because economic resources are scarce therefore we need to use them to add value. We have here a project where the benefits are one third of the costs — this is something which makes us all poorer. It should not be done therefore. And even after it was started once this fact became known it should have been stopped.

But it wasn’t stopped, of course:

It wasn’t cancelled for political reasons. It was felt that cancellation would lead to “reputational damage.” The way to read that being that once government has decided to do something not splurging the taxpayers’ money like a sailor on shore leave might call into question the right of government to splurge the taxpayers’ money like a sailor on shore leave.

April 27, 2017

“Richard Florida has a new book [that] advises cities on what to do about problems that result from advice he gave them in his previous books”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley hits this one out of the ballpark:

Gadabout urbanist Richard Florida has a new book: The New Urban Crisis. It advises cities on what to do about problems that result from advice he gave them in his previous books, notably The Rise of the Creative Class. Stuff your downtown core full of creative types and you shall prosper, the University of Toronto professor advised, and many cities listened. Now some face a “crisis of their own success,” he told a Toronto breakfast crowd at the Urban Land Institute’s Electric Cities Symposium: the blue-collar types who make the creative class’s artisanal baked goods and mind their children have been “pushed” ever further into the suburbs. Economic and geographic inequality results, and Rob Ford/Donald Trump/Brexit-style resentment can build.

Florida’s many critics have long warned this was a flaw in his vision. But now Florida says he finds it “terrifying,” so he’s off on another book tour.

If I sound a bit peevish, it’s because I find him rather insufferable. Critics have poked holes in much of his research, but much more of it strikes me as overly complex analysis and measurement of fairly basic, intuitive phenomena that are common to dynamic and not-so-dynamic cities. While the remarkable urban revivals in recent decades in New York and Pittsburgh, and nascent ones in Detroit and Newark, are all very interesting, I’ve never understood what they have to teach us about Canadian cities. Their cores never “hollowed out” in the first place, necessitating wholesale renewal. When I listen to Florida talk, I hear Lyle Lanley trying to sell Springfield a monorail.

In any event, his prescriptions for the GTA are not exactly visionary: more transit, more affordable housing, densification over NIMBYism and more decision-making autonomy for cities. “The key today is shifting power from provinces to cities,” Florida writes in a Canadian-focused paper linked to the new book. That made it all the more galling to watch his post-speech “fireside chat” with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose tires he pumped well beyond their recommended PSI.

“You know this. It’s in your blood,” Florida gushed of her urbanist bona fides.

Well, let’s see. Wynne can certainly claim to have committed many billions in taxpayer money to transit projects. But if there were awards for NIMBYism, Wynne would have one for the nine-figure cancellation of two unpopular gas-fired power plants, during an election campaign of which she was co-chair; and perhaps another for her party’s shameless politicking on transit in Scarborough.

December 17, 2016

These are TTC souvenirs I would buy

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:06

Amy Grief links to a fake Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) merchandise website:

How often do you get frustrated with the TTC? If you take it regularly, you probably have a love-hate relationship with the Toronto transit system. And two Torontonians captured that feeling perfectly with their new website NotInService.ca.

The site riffs on the TTC’s new online shop, but instead of celebrating the Red Rocket, the fake merch depicts all of our biggest transit woes. For instance, there’s a mug that says, “ongoing fire investigation at eastbound at Pape Station,” and a t-shirt that reads, “due to an earlier delay, you may experience longer than normal travel times.”

According to the site’s creators, who posted about it on Reddit, they were inspired by subway ads for real TTC merch and wondered who would actually buy it.

Update, 19 December: BlogTO is reporting that the fake merchandise store has miraculously turned into an actual merchandise store.

When the TTC parody shop launched on Friday, many regular transit users went nuts because the merch accurately captured their (not-so-pleasant) experience riding the Red Rocket.

NotInService.ca began as a joke, but after the founders shared their site on Reddit, it took on a life of its own.

That’s why the site’s now live and you can actually buy the alternative TTC merchandise. The site says it’s “open just in time to be late for the holidays,” which really reflects the whole spirit of this enterprise.

December 13, 2016

“Canadian National was using Metrolinx as an automated teller machine”

Filed under: Cancon, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The two big Canadian railway corporations have taken full advantage of the weak internal financial controls at Metrolinx:

For much of the past two decades Canadian National Railway Co. has been credited with revolutionizing the North American railroad industry.

The company’s former chief executive E. Hunter Harrison’s theory of “precision railroading” — a data-driven focus on charging customers a premium for superior on-time performance — made him an industry icon and his shareholders very happy.

But in railroading, as in life, how you get there matters.

Acting on a tip, the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation began investigating Canadian National in the fall of 2014. Here’s what our reporting uncovered:

  • For over 15 years Canadian National earned hundreds of millions of dollars in profit by marking up rail construction costs up more than 900 percent to a public-sector client.
  • Canadian National regularly engaged in questionable business practices like charging internal capital maintenance and expansion projects to the same taxpayer-funded client and billing millions of dollars for work that was never done.
  • A just-released auditor general investigation suggested a series of reforms that will reduce these profits.
  • For years, train yard personnel, under intense pressure from management, have intentionally misreported on-time performance, helping it boost revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars.

[…]

Long before the Ontario auditor general’s office began its investigation, Canadian National was using Metrolinx as an automated teller machine, albeit one with no deposits required. Over 15 years executive teams have come and gone at Canadian National but the one constant has been the river of profit that its Toronto construction unit has been able to reliably wring from Metrolinx.

Determining how much Canadian National has billed Metrolinx over the past two decades is difficult but since 2010, adding up four separate land sales, the Lakeshore West construction discussed below and ongoing maintenance contracts it’s at least $1.1 billion, the majority of which likely went straight to operating income. In other words, Metrolinx’s long-running failure to properly scrutinize Canadian National emboldened it to charge prices so high that many of the construction and maintenance contracts amounted to almost pure profit.

The most audacious episode occurred from 2004 to 2008 when Canadian National’s construction managers developed a billing scheme that reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in profits and benefits by wildly inflating the cost of construction, according to documents obtained by the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation and attached to ongoing litigation.

The project involved a track expansion project that Canadian National performed for Metrolinx’s Lakeshore West line, on a route that stretched about 40 miles from Hamilton, Ontario, to Toronto’s Union Station. The work was completed in 2012.

Windfall profits and bonus payouts weren’t the half of it. In numerous instances Canadian National billed Metrolinx for work that Canadian National did for its own capital maintenance and expansion projects, saving itself many millions of dollars in expenses.

From 2004 to 2008, Canadian National did track construction work for Metrolinx on a 4.5-mile stretch between the Burlington and Hamilton stations, referred to by Canadian National as Lakeshore West/West. On a separate stretch of the same track in late 2009, crews began adding track to the 9.1-mile stretch from the Port Credit station to Kerr Street, or the Lakeshore West/East line. (The Ontario auditor general’s annual report discussed an unnamed 9-mile track extension that cost $95 million to construct “on the Lakeshore West corridor” but did not identify the project’s location or its date of completion.)

The Lakeshore West/West project’s cost is unclear.

Based on this email, Metrolinx had originally approved a construction price tag of $45 million, but in short order the project’s chief engineer Daryl Barnett, in a bid to reduce costs, noted the price tag had quickly ballooned past $70 million. Metrolinx’s spokeswoman Aikins did not answer repeated questions on the matter but the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation obtained an April 2015 internal audit Metrolinx conducted at the auditor general’s request that put the final tab for Canadian National’s 2004 to 2008 work on that stretch at “over $200 million.”

GO Transit operates bus and rail service in the Greater Toronto Area as part of Metrolinx

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