Getting out of our own way

Cheap, fast transit lanes would make Toronto better

When you have the same number of cars on the road as people, it takes up a lot more space.

What if travel were fun? What if it were easy? What if it were reliable? We Torontonians spend a lot of time travelling (our average commute time is almost an hour). And so much of that is spent stuck in traffic whether you’re in a bus or in a car. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Toronto could have subway like transit service everywhere in this city. We did it with the Spadina streetcar. We did it with the St. Clair streetcar right of way. Then we did it better, cheaper and faster with King Street (at least for a few blocks). We can improve even more by seeing what works and doesn’t work in those projects, and then give transit priority around this city.

The first step is to gather the political will to do so. The next step is to design the lane, quickly and efficiently, directly with the public and business communities that will be affected by it, including the riders themselves. Our current public consultations waste time (three fractious years with the St. Clair streetcar) and aren’t meaningful. Genuinely looking to the communites for cheap and easy design solutions would be much more helpful. Once the design is done, paint the lanes, throw up a few planters, install a few obstacles to corral everyone at key points, and call it done.

It always amazes me that our so-called fiscally minded politicians would rather spend billions and subject the city to endless construction than use our existing and extensive road network to move people around. Is it because they want to transfer wealth from the public purse to private construction companies? That’s not a good reason. Is it because they want to create jobs? We can do that other ways. Or is it because they think every available street lane must be used by cars or disaster will occur? That I think is an underlying belief many of us have, so I want to reassure us all that it’s not true.

There is a rule called induced demand, that has been proven time and time again, which is basically that we people adjust to whatever car space you give us. Give us lots of traffic lanes, we cram our cars into them. Give us fewer, we make other arrangements - everything from switching travel methods (taking the bus) to switching travel times (avoiding rush hour) to switching travel locations (remote work or moving closer to our destination). Humans are an eminently adaptable species.

If we weren’t able to adapt to changes in the road network, we couldn’t ever close a traffic lane for construction, repair a highway, cope with a road closure due to a crash. But we do those things all the time. Giving a traffic lane to transit is just a road change that moves more people rather than less, and that actually gives us benefits rather than headaches.

If we actually want fewer cars in this city, we need people to want to use transit. So we have to find ways of making our system better. Giving it the reliability, speed and frequency that transit priority would provide is a big way of increasing transit’s attractiveness. And if we care about our budget, and our environment, choosing to reuse our existing road network, rather than starting new and costly massive construction projects, is a much better option that delivers better transit almost immediately.

A city with transit priority everywhere is a city where more people get around more quickly. It’s a city that’s quieter, cleaner, and fair to those of all income levels. So let’s put away our public wallets, raise our expectations, and give our public transit the express network that is staring us in the face every time we walk down the street. We just have to get out of our own way for it to happen.