No end in sight to Toronto’s commuter pain: survey Drivers’ anger at long travel times worse than in New York, Los Angeles, says IBM

Adrian Morrow

Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:01PM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:42PM EDT

It's more aggravating to commute in Toronto than in New York, Los Angeles or Berlin – and it's only gotten worse over the past few years, according to a new survey.

IBM released the Commuter Pain Index, a study of more than 20 cities across the globe Wednesday. The report surveyed more than 8,000 commuters on a range of issues including commuting time, whether driving was hurting their health and if commuting caused them to be less productive.

While the top ranks were mostly filled by cities in the developing world (Beijing fared worst) and Toronto ranked 12th worst overall, 64 per cent of Torontonians surveyed said traffic had gotten worse in the past three years. Only commuters in Johannesburg were more likely to say things weren't improving.

Overall, 57 per cent of respondents around the world said traffic was affecting their health.

“It comes back to the trend towards more people living in urban centres,” said Pat Horgan, an IBM vice-president. “Urbanization happens faster than their infrastructure can catch up.”

The consequences are stark, Mr. Horgan said: poorer health, lost productivity and economic stagnation.

There's no easy fix. IBM advocates a wide range of solutions including better public transit, more information for commuters and flexible work hours to reduce bottlenecks on the roads at rush hours.

“We can't just afford to build more lanes of traffic,” Mr. Horgan said.

The cities doing the best job of managing traffic are the ones already implementing such multi-faceted strategies, Mr. Horgan said. Singapore, for instance, has been synchronizing traffic lights while Melbourne has rapidly expanded its light rail transit system.

Perhaps most tellingly, Mr. Horgan points out, commuters in cities with longer travel times than Toronto seem to be feeling less pain than Torontonians. The reason?

“In those cities, people can see that things are getting better,” he said.

Ranking of the emotional and economic toll of commuting in each city on a scale of one to 100, with 100 being the most onerous:

• Beijing: 99
• Mexico City: 99
• Johannesburg: 97
• Moscow: 84
• New Delhi: 81
• Sao Paolo: 75
• Milan: 52
• Buenos Aires: 50
• Madrid: 48
• London: 36
• Paris: 36
• Toronto: 32
• Amsterdam: 25
• Los Angeles: 25
• Berlin: 24
• Montreal: 23
• New York: 19
• Houston: 17
• Melbourne: 17
• Stockholm: 15

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/no-end-in-sight-to-torontos-commuter-pain-survey/article1624502/

TED talk on reversing suburbia

http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_suburbia.html

Well worth the 20 minutes. It can't happen soon enough...

cars top industry in air pollution

Air quality improving in Hamilton Cars biggest polluters TheSpec.com - Local - Air quality improving in Hamilton Cars biggest polluters

Emma Reilly
The Hamilton Spectator

(Jun 16, 2010) Breathe deeply. Hamilton's air is cleaner than you think.
Over the past 10 years, the city's air quality has improved dramatically, according to a report from Clean Air Hamilton presented to council members yesterday. In fact, it's been steadily getting better since monitoring began in the 1970s.
"There's no question we're better than we've ever been," said Brian McCarry, a McMaster University chemistry professor and chairperson of Clean Air Hamilton.
"Back in the 1960s -- 40, 50 years ago -- the air was much, much worse."
Major pollutants, like nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide, have all gone down 35 to 50 per cent in the past decade. Last year, the weather and recessionary business slowdowns also contributed to the overall decline in air pollution.
Though most people in Hamilton think the city's air pollution comes from industry, McCarry said, the majority of the problem is caused by cars and trucks.
Since cars have become much cleaner over the past few decades -- and residents are making increased efforts to get out of their cars more often -- decreased vehicle emissions are one of the main reasons Hamilton's air has gotten better.
"Industrial emissions are also going down, but they tend to go in jumps and starts," McCarry explained.
The air quality improvements are so significant that even the air quality around the Red Hill Valley Parkway -- initially expected to get much worse once the highway opened -- has improved from pre-construction levels.
"Frankly, this is a bit of a shocker," said Denis Corr, a consultant who prepared the city's Red Hill report.
The only two days the Red Hill Valley Parkway exceeded the province's air quality standards over a six-month stretch were during a region-wide smog alert on Aug. 17 last year, and during the fire at the Archmill House woodworking factory in Ancaster last Aug. 25.
ereilly@thespec.com
905-526-2452

We keep building infrastructure we can’t afford to fix

CATCH News – June 3, 2010

Massive underspending on infrastructure confirmed

A new study has confirmed that the city needs to spend at least $120 million more each and every year to fix roads and other infrastructure. The report has some politicians pushing for more federal and provincial government grants, but at least one councillor is suggesting it’s time to stop building things we can’t afford to repair.

The city’s first provincially-required Tangible Capital Assets Report was presented to yesterday’s audit and administration committee. It records under-spending in Hamilton of $120.3 million last year on items such as roads, bridges, underground pipes, and water and sewer pipes and facilities.

“Based on the estimated replacement cost of $15.8 billion, an annual sustainable spending level to ensure that our assets are replaced and redeveloped in a timely manner would be approximately $333 million,” says the staff report accompanying the study. “Capital spending on asset replacement and redevelopments in 2009 amounted to $213.1 million, which resulted in a gap of $120 million.”

Similar shortfalls have gone on for years, and raising this amount from property taxes would require about a 25 percent increase in current rates or more. Last year’s deficit was actually lower than normal because the city received substantial stimulus funding from senior levels of government.

The biggest deficit ($91 million) in 2009 was in road spending, with water and wastewater facilities short $24.9 million and a deficit of $24.8 million for “underground and other networks”. The purchase of more than the average number of new buses last year meant that category had spending $15.6 million above the annual target.

Chad Collins and Terry Whitehead encouraged city staff to seek more funding from senior levels of government, with Collins proposing that road monies be the only requests made for any future infrastructure dollars. Council put road projects at the top of a long list submitted for stimulus funding, but the items actually supported were mainly for water projects and recreational facilities.

“When the programs come out at the provincial and federal level, does it make sense for us not to put anything else on the list, except for roads projects,” Collins suggested. “Maybe it’s a lesson learned for us, in light of what happened last time. I understand that we were trying to capture as much money as possible, but at the end of the day, making that list larger than maybe it should have been has probably cost us something as it relates to the infrastructure deficit related to roads and other projects like sidewalks and sort of water issues.”

Bob Bratina responded with a quite different approach.

“This looks to me like somebody’s got four clunker cars they can’t afford to fix, so he goes out and buys another car,” the ward two councillor observed. “And the comment that I hear at the table today is well the province didn’t give us enough money to fix these roads. I’m not very good at this accounting stuff, but this seems fairly simple to me. We keep building infrastructure we can’t afford to fix.”

City finance chief Rob Rossini responded that the report showed “how much stuff we actually own” and suggested that reduction is one of the objectives of the province in requiring the reports.

“Part of the rationale for the province doing this is for municipalities to look at their assets as to which ones do we still need, which ones can we surplus and rationalize on a going forward basis,” Rossini noted. “So I think that’s part of the underlying thing that the province wants us to do.”

Bratina pointed to the recent decision of well-known investor Warren Buffet who “just bought a railway” because he’s calculating its value will climb over the long haul.

“He said that the US highway system infrastructure is so broken down they can’t possibly fix it all to the level of sustaining the need for transportation. So he picked railroads. We’re not alone in this.”

Collins countered with a brief history of federal and provincial government cuts to transfers to municipalities over the last 15 years.

“While it’s all well and good that the books look a little better at the other levels of government, it’s come at the expense of municipalities, and all municipalities over the last decade have lobbied both levels of government for additional infrastructure funds to try and get back some of those historic traditional transfer payments that we were accustomed to utilizing over several decades,” he stated, urging staff to make more lobbying for increased payments a top priority.

Whitehead closed out the discussion by recounting Prime Minister Harper’s speech last weekend to the meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities where the federal leader warned the focus of his government is on deficit reduction, not more stimulus funding. He said the city should expect to continue to get federal gas tax monies, but not additional funds.

That grant totals nearly $32 million a year – two-thirds of which was allocated to roads with the remainder helping pay for city hall renovations.

Councillors were told in January that the city is adding an average of 50-70 kilometre lanes of roadway each year and that annual maintenance costs for each kilometre lane are roughly $10,000. That report estimated that the infrastructure spending deficit is about $150 million a year.

CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at www.hamiltoncatch.org. You can receive all CATCH free updates by sending an email to info@HamiltonCATCH.org.

The Unintended Consequences of Cul-de-sacs

Though suburban cul-de-sacs have long been attractive as quiet, safe places for families, their disadvantages are becoming clear. One of the biggest problems is interference with motor- and foot-traffic flow. Research by Lawrence Frank, Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, looks at neighborhoods in King County, Washington: Residents in areas with the most interconnected streets travel 26% fewer vehicle miles than those in areas with many cul-de-sacs. Recent studies by Frank and others show that as a neighborhood’s overall walkability increases, so does the amount of walking and biking—while, per capita, air pollution and body mass index decrease.

Last year, the Virginia legislature took action against the municipal costs of cul-de-sacs and passed a law limiting them in future developments; the new policy was highlighted in the New York Times Magazine’s “Ninth Annual Year in Ideas.” Along with such moves to more-accessible street systems will come an economy that rewards businesses’ proximity to customers and employees. —A.W.

About the Maps

These images compare a one-kilometer walk in the Seattle suburb of Woodinville with one in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. The former is limited by a disconnected street network and few destinations within walking distance, while the latter offers easy access to parks and shops.

Click here for a larger image of the graphic.

http://hbr.org/2010/05/back-to-the-city/sb1

Tolls, taxes, fees for transit? John Tory aims to lessen the stigma

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/tolls-taxes-fees-for-transit-john-tory-aims-to-lessen-the-stigma/article1549090/

John Tory, like the policy battle he’s about to join, has evolved since 2003.

In the mayoral race that year, he “rose up in great indignation” at David Miller’s suggestion that Toronto’s roads be tolled.

Now, seven years later, Mr. Tory intends to use his platform as chairman of the Toronto City Summit Alliance to ratchet down the public indignation that often greets five ideas for funding public transit: road tolls; a Greater Toronto sales tax; a parking tax; a gas-tax hike and a property-tax increase.

“The notion that it’s none of the above is not on,” Mr. Tory said. “This is a test of leadership because otherwise to say you’re going to build all this transit without saying how you’re going to pay for it is, to me, a meaningless promise.”

The Toronto City Summit Alliance, which Mr. Tory took over after the death of founder David Pecaut, has quietly formed a working group of about 25 top minds to pore over five options for funding transit, along with other issues of transportation and infrastructure in Greater Toronto. Members have been drawn from the Toronto Board of Trade, regional transportation agency Metrolinx, and the prominent planning firms Urban Strategies, Inc., and IBI Group, among other organizations.

The official goal will be to recommend ways to raise the approximately $2-billion a year Metrolinx has said it needs to crisscross the GTA and Hamilton with new rapid-transit projects over the next 25 years.

More important, the TCSA, the city-building organization that helped conjure Luminato from thin air, intends to make it possible for candidates to utter the words tolls and taxes without being crucified.

“What’s going on right now is a bit of denial in the populace at large,” said Joe Berridge, a partner at Urban Strategies, Inc. and member of the TCSA subcommittee. “They feel we should just build this transit and get on with it. But we’re looking at a very big build and governments that are not flush with the cash. In some way or another we’re going to have to tax ourselves in the region – whether that tax is in the form of a gas tax, sales tax or various kinds of road pricing.”

Beating congestion has so far dominated the race to replace David Miller. His light-rail plan, Transit City, has been temporarily derailed by the province, which postponed $4-billion in transit funding in its budget in March.

Although the delay made the transit-funding question more urgent, all but two major candidates have rejected road tolls as a means of raising new revenue. Women’s Post publisher Sarah Thomson has pitched a rush-hour toll on the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway to pay for more subways, while George Smitherman has said he’s open to discussing tolls.

“Any mayoral candidate who says you can have your cake and eat it too on transit is just not telling the truth,” Mr. Berridge said.

The TCSA group, which has met twice, intends to hold public roundtables this summer, Mr. Tory said. He said it was too early to say whether members would have firm recommendations in time for the Oct. 25 election. The TCSA’s next formal summit is not until February, 2011 – less than a year before provincial politicians face the electorate. Most of the funding options would need Queen’s Park’s approval.

The Toronto Board of Trade, meanwhile, intends to unveil separately its recommendations for funding transit in plenty of time for municipal voting day. “We may take it down to a short list [of funding options],” said Carol Wilding, president of the board. “We’ll ask the candidates to do the same thing, recognizing they may not want to go there. But we’ll be pushing.”

auto show stimulates violence? only in NYC?

http://thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/748284

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4 shot, 33 arrested in Times Square melee TheSpec.com - BreakingNews - 4 shot, 33 arrested in Times Square melee

NYPD blames auto show crowd

Colleen Long
NEW YORK — Hundreds of young men spilled into midtown Manhattan near Times Square early Monday, brawling and shooting guns after the New York International Auto Show in an annual night of mayhem the mayor called “wilding.”

Four people were shot and 33 were arrested, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct on the streets not far from the Jacob A. Javits Center, where the auto show is held.

Three men and a woman were arrested later Monday on gang assault charges related to one of the shootings, police said. It wasn’t clear whether anyone who fired shots was among those arrested. Another 21 were issued summons for disorderly conduct or were given juvenile reports and released.

Additional officers were on patrol over the night because similar problems have happened during past auto shows, dating at least to 2003, chief spokesman Paul J. Browne said. Last year, there were 27 arrests on the same night. In earlier years arrest numbers ran in the low 20s, Browne said. A teenager was stabbed in a similar ruckus in 2006, and in 2007, another teen was slashed in the arm.

Browne described those arrested Monday as “young men looking for trouble” after the auto show.

Most of the people arrested were men in their 20s from boroughs other than Manhattan. At least two were known gang members, Browne said; the four people arrested on gang assault charges — three men ages 17 to 23 and a teenage girl — were not believed to have fired any shots, police said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg described the night’s events as “wilding,” using a word created by the media during the notorious 1989 rape of the woman known as the Central Park jogger. Five men were charged with gang-raping her, but their convictions were thrown out in 2002.

“We loaded the area up with police, but they can’t be everywhere,” he said. “We’re not going to tolerate it. ... This is just a bunch of people who shouldn’t be on the streets if they behave this way, and we’re not going to stand for it.”