Community Meetings to Discuss Transit

Written by Shaun Cleaver, TTCriders External Affairs Committee member

On Tuesday March 26^th the Toronto Councillor for Ward 33, Shelley Carroll, hosted a public meeting to discuss public transit in the ward and in the city. Being a resident of Ward 33 (I live just south of Fairview Mall) I eagerly rode the #10 Van Horne to Pleasant View Community Centre to discuss plans to improve transit in our neighbourhood to increase our connectivity in the city and region. Surprising to me, the open dialogue portion of the meeting devolved into a repeat of the highly damaging “subway vs. light rail transit (LRT)” debate that unnecessarily delayed badly needed improvements to Toronto’s transit infrastructure.

To her credit, Councillor Carroll affirmed her support of Toronto’s planned LRT projects and justified the decision: a consideration of the city outside of our ward (particularly north-east Scarborough), the capacity to expand our network significantly through LRT construction, and the numerous aspects of the LRT lines’ design to keep private automobile traffic flowing.

TTCriders supports the building of modern, fast transit into all corners of the city as fast as possible

Toronto’s planned LRT projects are a step closer in that direction. Propositions to extend the city’s subway lines by a few stations here and there do not achieve that goal. For this reason, TTCriders supports the planned LRT lines.

In the face of these positive moves, it is apparent that there remains a significant and vocal number of Torontonians who see surface transit as a barrier to mobility instead of the tool of mobility that it is for the more than 1 million of us who ride a bus or streetcar each weekday. Relating this to the recent Ward 33 meeting, an out-of-town observer to that event would get the impression that a reliable and frequent transit line carrying thousands of riders would be a catastrophic detriment to the city because it limits a handful of left turns for automobiles.

I was pleased to connect with the meeting participants at Pleasantview Community Centre and shared how the planned Sheppard East LRT will improve my ability to travel east of Don Mills Station. My comments, along with those of two other participants, provided a mild disruption to the cacophony of speakers claiming the LRT projects were conspiracies that would recreate the supposed “disasters” of other recent transit infrastructure improvements that gave citizen mobility an equal consideration to automobile dominance.

Unfortunately, few of my neighbours from the Parkway Forest community were present to lend their voices to my account. Despite being located far from downtown, ours is a neighbourhood where rates of automobile ownership are low and most activities are completed on foot or on the TTC. Had the participation at the meeting more closely reflected the demographics of Ward 33 it would have been difficult for participants to insist that the ideal form of public transit is one that is “Out of the way of my car.”

Ward-level meetings of this nature are an opportunity for Torontonians who rely on public transit for more than their commute downtown, or the occasional trip to the theatre or hockey game, to remind our neighbours that it is anything but “common sense” to maintain the current dominance of automobiles to the detriment of other forms of transportation. A recent review of the websites of Toronto City Councillors shows that Janet Davis, Mike Del Grande, Giorgio Mammoliti, Mary-Margaret McMahon, and Joe Mihevc have all held transit-focused meetings in the first months of 2013. Since not all councillors have websites, there were undoubtedly more meetings than those that I could find. Although I did not see any notices of upcoming meetings, recent history suggests that they are on the horizon.

At TTCriders, we strive to support Torontonians who want to move discussions on transit away from limited or unrealistic plans that cater to voters who equate a trip out of the house with a trip to the driveway. We instead propose discussions about how resources can be mobilized fairly and used effectively to markedly increase the number of Torontonians who can access the network for their multiple travel needs. To achieve this goal we will be on the lookout for community meetings on transit to allow you to make your voice heard. We also want to hear from you.

Please send us a message through our website if you know of an upcoming meeting or would like support by way of strategies to speak out more effectively in the community. Better yet, join TTCriders so that we can strengthen our collective voice on these important issues.

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