Doug Ford might hold up Toronto’s transportation plans
The automobile is the only Dougie-approved surface transport
On June 7, 2018, the people of Ontario cast their ballots in a provincial election where the ruling Liberal Party, which had been in power for 15 years, was decimated, while voters flocked to the centre-left New Democrats (NDP) and the right-wing Progressive Conservative Party (PC) led by Doug Ford — both promising voters change.
However, even though a majority of voters cast ballots for centre and centre-left parties — the Liberals, NDP, and Greens — the PCs won a majority of seats in the legislature with just over 40 percent of the votes because of the distorting effect of Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system — thanks for that, Britain — thus making Ford — a man who’s been compared to Donald Trump for his off-the-cuff remarks, lack of policy knowledge, and backward social views — Ontario’s 26th premier.
Ford has previous political experience as a Toronto city councillor, where, at the side of his late brother Rob Ford — better know as the crack-smoking mayor — he made his view that the streets were for cars, and cars alone, abundantly clear. And now, with a majority mandate granted to his party by the province’s outdated electoral system, not by the voters, he has a lot of power to make that conviction a reality, imperiling the shift away from automobile dominance that has slowly, and belatedly, been taking hold in Canada’s largest city.
Toronto’s transportation preferences are changing
The 2016 census showed that vehicle use declined by 7 percent over the previous ten years in Toronto and by 1.8 percent in the Greater Toronto Area, while transit use increased 7.7 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively. Those trends are expected to continue as the city grows, densifies, and as improvements are made to the transit system and cycling infrastructure — unless Ford gets in the way.
There are a ton of transit projects in various stages of construction and planning in Toronto. The extension of Line 1 of the subway to Vaughan Metropolitan Centre opened in December 2017, and the federal and provincial governments committed C$9 billion for five major transit projects in March 2018: the much-needed Relief Line, the pointless Scarborough subway, the mayor’s proposed SmartTrack system, the Eglington East LRT, and improvements to transit on the waterfront.
The city is also in the middle of a one-year pilot project which severely limits car traffic on King Street in downtown Toronto to give priority to streetcars, and even though Ford and some of his small-business supporters have decried it as part of a wider war on cars, the pilot has increased streetcar ridership and reliability, while causing little change to vehicle commute times on nearby streets.
Ford’s election calls into question whether the city can still rely on that funding and whether his government will still back those transit projects in their current form. He has very strong opinions on what transportation should look like in Toronto, and will likely want to make his mark, as the Fords did during their time at City Hall.
Ford’s car-first take on transportation
Doug Ford hates bike lanes. He hates streetcars. He hates light rail. He loves cars, wide streets, and subways — because they hide transit underground instead of having it take up space on the surface. These convictions will drive his transportation agenda — not necessarily for the better.
During the election, Ford pledged to add another C$5 billion in subway funding and to take control of Toronto’s subway infrastructure, while leaving its day-to-day operations in the hands of the city. He also said he would prioritize the Relief Line, the extension of the Yonge Line to Richmond Centre, revert to a previous (and more expensive) plan for the Scarborough Subway, and build future crosstown light-rail expansions underground.
In abstract, this could be a decent plan. The uploading of subway infrastructure is unnecessary and is leading to fears it could eventually be privatized, and the Scarborough Subway continues to be a boondoggle, but the promise of more funding and prioritization of the Relief Line could be positive. However, this doesn’t consider the context of a Ford premiership.
Ford is promising tax cuts paired with massive spending reductions, even though he hasn’t identified where they’ll come from. He didn’t bother to release a costed platform at the election, imploring voters to trust him that everything would work out once he takes office. This makes it hard to see where the additional transit money will come from, let alone the cost of taking over and maintaining subway infrastructure.
Further, since taking power, Ford has talked about building even more subways to low-density suburban areas that would cost billions of dollars and would require large, ongoing operating subsidies — just one of these subway lines was estimated to cost more than $10 billion. This is what happens when you believe transit should only to built underground — the suitable solutions are sidelined for expensive, unworkable projects. It’s a repeat of what the Fords did with the previous plan for Scarborough.
A repeat of the past?
Before Rob Ford became mayor, the plan was to connect Scarborough with a new light-rail line, as part of the Crosstown project. However, Rob Ford wanted a three-stop subway extension instead, and finally got the backing of city council three years into his first term. The current mayor, John Tory, reduced the subway to a single stop to save money on what is a hugely expensive project that will have extremely low ridership to avoid alienating voters, even though transportation experts have called for its cancellation.
Doug Ford’s election could see a similar scrapping of above-ground rail plans in favour of subway lines that will be far more expensive to build and maintain while serving relatively small numbers of people. He could also challenge the city’s King Street pilot project and interfere with plans to add more bike lanes which could take road space from vehicles.
Cities across North America are increasingly following the examples of their European counterparts to make it easier for residents to get around without a car. While Ford’s premiership might be good for subway construction — even that remains to be seen — he could put up obstacles as the council tries to transform surface transportation and implement its Vision Zero plan to reduce deaths by vehicles on Toronto’s streets.
There’s no question that Toronto needs to overhaul its transportation system. As Canada’s largest city, with a growing population, it needs to make it easier for people to use more efficient means of transportation that don’t require people to have personal vehicles which take up a ton of space, pollute the air, and are killing more pedestrians every year.
That goal will require more than simply building more subways; making transportation safer and more efficient will require a comprehensive plan that reduces space for cars to make it more enticing for people to walk, bike, and use transit. Such a plan goes against the Ford’s convinctions and, based on his personality, it wouldn’t be out-of-character for him to interfere in the city’s plans if he doesn’t like them, making transportation even more congested, inefficient, and frustrating in the long-term.
One thing can almost be guaranteed: the relationship between city hall and the provincial government is about to get a lot more contentious, and how bad it gets will largely depend on how much Ford decides to interfere in the city’s development plans — which means you might want to expect the worst.
