Cities in the News

It's that season again. Candidates, their egos in tow, are signing up to become Toronto's next mayor. What better time to let them know what it will take to bring the city's transportation system into the 21st century?

Moving people and goods around Toronto has been ignored by successive councils for over a generation. The result? A city mired in congestion and delays. It is wasting energy and causing pollution on an unprecedented scale because of a lack of modern transit infrastructure and adequate operational funding.

If Toronto is to reach its full potential, the next mayor must to be able to think and act on a broader, more strategic and creative scale. He or she will have to attract the support of councillors who are willing to be change agents rather than defenders of the status quo.

Here is what the next mayor's transportation platform should include:

First, ensure that Queen's Park and Ottawa do not renege on their recent multi-billion-dollar transit-funding promises.

Both Dalton McGuinty and Stephen Harper have run up record deficits that will plague us for years. Managing these deficits means cutting costs. It wouldn't be the first time that trimming transit spending was part of that process.

The next mayor has to keep the socio-economic "value case" for enhanced transit in front of all the stakeholders, and orchestrate effective opposition if the possibility of cuts begins to surface.

This city will experience prolonged unemployment and subpar growth without the thousands of green jobs and enhanced mobility that will flow from this massive federal-provincial infusion of transit capital.

Second, find ways to lower the cost of delivering the current level of transit services, which is among the highest in North America.

A recent study revealed that City of Toronto employees, including TTC and roads employees, are paid 11.6 per cent more on average than their private-sector counterparts. In addition, they have job security and guaranteed pensions rarely seen in the private sector. If their productivity were higher, that might help – but it isn't.

If consultation and reasoning with the TTC and other city unions doesn't work, then the next labour dispute has to produce more tangible results than the last one. The governing principle for the mayor over the next four years should be to pursue compensation parity between city and private-sector workers.

The city's current labour costs are indefensible. Moving to compensation parity is fair, and it would save hundreds of millions annually – money that could be invested elsewhere.

Third, find additional means of funding the city's share of the TTC's operating and capital costs. Relying as heavily as it does on the fare box is limiting ridership. It is also putting the future financial viability of the system in jeopardy.

Toronto needs to find new sources of funding that do not put as much of the burden on the rider and the property tax base.

"World class cities" around the globe are using congestion and climate tolls for drivers who insist on entering and using their cars in the city's inner cores. The technology to make these tolls works smoothly is already in place and fully tested. Cities like London, Milan, Stockholm and Singapore are using different forms of road pricing to cut inner-city pollution, and to help finance the expansion and operation of their mass transit systems.

Road pricing is a proven means of transferring the cost of car misuse into funding better transit. Yes, it will be vigorously opposed by some. But so has every other important public policy idea.

Fourth, the City of Toronto has the largest transit system of the nine operating in the GTA. It is, therefore, the city that needs to take the lead in encouraging the province to begin amalgamating, under Metrolinx, this operational patchwork of services into a single, streamlined, regional transit delivery agency.

There are significant long-term savings to be gained. Successful precedents and templates are readably available from leading U.S. and European urban areas.

The greatest beneficiaries will be the passengers. They don't care about local transit fiefdoms or municipal boundaries. Getting more people out of their cars and into transit requires a seamless, rapid and affordable means of moving around the GTA. This cannot be achieved with nine different transit systems struggling to service different parts of what has become one large, urban region.

The next mayor has to lead this move to operational amalgamation across the GTA. However, clear conditions should be set. The province must agree to return to providing a significant share of the operating costs for any new regional transit authority – and to keep its 25-year "Big Move" capital funding promises.

Finally, governments will never have enough money to finance the generational transit catch-up that Toronto is facing. This means that the next mayor will have to lead the council into the world of private-public partnerships, something that recent left-leaning councils have ideologically shunned and deemed unworkable.

Some elevated portions of the crumbling Gardiner Expressway offer opportunity. As the recession lifts, the next mayor should pursue the idea of encouraging developers to compete for the chance to bury functioning sections of the expressway. In return, they would receive valuable air-rights to build over the buried sections of this ugly obstacle to the waterfront.

Once again, there is nothing new about this idea. Years ago, a Canadian developer buried sections of the roads along the Seine in the centre of Paris. In return, he received ownership and the right to build on city land elsewhere. Toronto is decades behind other cities that have learned how to access private capital for public infrastructure.

Any candidate who is frightened by this transportation platform should consider dropping out of the race now.

Cities all over the world have implemented big pieces of this agenda. They are moving forward with creative new ways of making their cities more livable, efficient, environmentally friendly and economically competitive.