Saturday, May 18, 2013 — Mostly Cloudy 16°C
City

No Streetcars on St. Clair... Again...

Posted by Tatiana / August 8, 2007

9 Comments

20070808_busstop.jpg
In February 2007, after many months of construction and horrendous traffic mess, the St. Clair Streetcar Right-of-Way was finally completed between St. Clair and St. Clair West subway stations... only to be shut down again yesterday! The reason? The tracks going into St. Clair West station need repairing. Which means good-bye streetcars and hello shuttle buses for the next six or so weeks.

Why weren't the tracks repaired when the ROW construction was going on? Good question! The TTC chair Adam Giambrone blames Save Our St. Clair, a local anti-ROW group, for messing up schedules by taking the city to court and delaying the ROW construction. Frankly, seems like a goofy excuse to me. Of course setbacks are a challenge, but surely there had to be a way to coordinate this in almost a year that passed between the final clearing of all legal hurdles and the end of construction on that stretch of St. Clair. It amazes me that a city as cash-strapped as ours could not be bothered to fix such inefficiencies. And even if it does not cost any more to break up projects like this, it's just so bloody inconsiderate of the users of the system.

But wait, there is more! Do you know that the ROW section scheduled to be built this year is under 1 km in length and the construction will only begin in the fall? Apparently that's due to lack of schedule coordination between the TTC's ROW construction and Toronto Hydro's burial of hydro lines. Despite these delays the TTC still plans to be done with the whole project in 2008. But what do you think then happens in 2009? The streetcar tracks on Bathurst are scheduled for an overhaul! And since streetcars get from the Roncesvalles Yard to St. Clair via Bathurst, you can guess what this means... Good luck, St. Clair commuters! You'll need it.

Discussion

9 Comments

Sort By Oldest First / Newest First

Subscribe

Hamish Grant / August 8, 2007 at 05:52 pm
user-pic
Suck it.? ?Repairs have got to be done.? As Giambrone indicated, schedules were fucked by democracy so this is what happens.? In a fair society, everyone gets screwed equally.? ?<div><br /></div><div>&quot;<span style="font-family: Lucida Grande" class="Apple-style-span">It amazes me that a city as cash-strapped as ours could not be bothered to fix such inefficiencies.&quot;</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande" class="Apple-style-span">Read that sentence again.? Cash strapped.? Could not... fix... inefficiencies...? Starting to make sense?? In this world of union labour and limited resources and financing, we have to make due with whatever we can afford.? If money was no object projects like the ROW would be finished quickly and with lots of bells and whistles to boot.? ?But we don&#39;t live in THAT world.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande" class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div>
Reply
Adam / August 8, 2007 at 08:00 pm
user-pic
<p>BlogTO is a tad late on this one. Buses started running some time last week because road work on St. Clair is taking up some of the streetcar&#39;s space in places (like at Christie today.)</p><p>Also, streetcars haven&#39;t been serving St. Clair West Station for well over a month. Until the buses started running in place of the streetcars, passengers wanting to access the subway would be let off at the stop before or after the station and then have to walk.</p><p>Giambrone&#39;s &quot;excuse&quot; may seem &quot;goofy&quot; but that&#39;s the reality of contracting out work. When you contract out you lose a great deal of control in the scheduling so when groups like SOS come along and screw things up, it can have serious consequences. (Conveniently the Denzil Minnan-Wongs of the world neglect this side of the contracting out story habitually.) </p><p>In the future, instead of just using an empty phrase like &quot;goofy&quot; I&#39;d suggest you do your homework. I know it&#39;s harder to do the research so you just add words like &quot;seems&quot; to make your statement conditional but doing the leg work could help you not give readers false impressions. I know I&#39;d appreciate that.</p>
Reply
John / August 8, 2007 at 09:26 pm
user-pic
<p>I saw the story on Global News last night.</p><p>They pointed out that&nbsp;the TTC also neglected to coordinate construction of the transit shelters with the ROW... meaning even MORE delays this fall, when the Shelters are finally finished and ready to install. </p><p>Story is online at <a href="http://www.canada.com/globaltv/ontario/video/index.html";><a href="http://www.canada.com/globaltv/ontario/video/index.html";>http://www.canada.com/globaltv/ontario/video/index.html<;/a></a>&nbsp;under TUESDAY.</p>
Reply
Brian / August 8, 2007 at 10:09 pm
user-pic
<p>I am going to agree with the above posters. The quality of this article is quite poor. The word choice and language is awfully poor. The article is obviously biased and does not take into account that coordinating projects (like ripping a road up) that require multiple agencies does take time and often scheduling conflicts occur. This article also does not account for what is being done to solve issues. Civil society groups like SOS are an important facet of civic life but they do not always have the best solution nor are they always in the right.

Lastly, "cash strapped" cities often arent able to fix inefficiencies because they are just that, cash strapped making fixing what seems easy problems much more difficult. Poor article and poor insight all around.
Reply
wally / August 8, 2007 at 11:48 pm
user-pic
There are 2 seasons in Toronto - winter season when you can&#39;t do construction and construction season when you just can&#39;t do enough to catch up. Blame the SOS folks, too.
Reply
Mark Dowling / August 9, 2007 at 12:09 am
user-pic
TTC and TH&#39;s inability to coordinate was the reason the Fleet St track decayed to breaking point when it should have been replaced by then.&nbsp; Maybe if the City hadn&#39;t pillaged TH to fill budget holes they might be able to come when TTC needs them.
Reply
aidan / August 9, 2007 at 12:41 am
user-pic
It&#39;s a miracle the TTC runs at all, given the funding.&nbsp; What is it, 80% of operating costs from ticket/pass sales?&nbsp; That&#39;s unheard of.&nbsp; If the province gave the city the money it deserves, hell if they gave the money to match their legal obligations, this city would run as well as it did before amalgamation and downloading.&nbsp; That too, amalgamation and downloading, is democracy.&nbsp; A form of it anyway, since it was Tory MPPs from outside 416 who screwed us: isn&#39;t that &#39;taxation without representation&#39;?
Reply
DJ / August 9, 2007 at 01:58 am
user-pic
<p>Setbacks are a challenge, eh? Nothing like setbacks that delay construction for months. Heck, this project should be done or mostly done by now. </p><p>There&#39;s more than just the ramps at St. Clair West station that need to be done. In that PDF, one thing to be done is &quot;[c]ompleting streetcar platforms&quot; which probably means that shelters will be added to the new platforms. Also, there is currently some construction work being done on track east of Old Weston Road.</p><p>&nbsp;1 kilometre is one seventh of the route distance, and phase two deals with the section the Corso Italia BIA occupies, the loop at Lansdowne Avenue, and the intersection at Dufferin Street. I think it&#39;s pretty significant. </p>
Reply
Mark / August 9, 2007 at 02:26 pm
user-pic
<p>The ROW project has been a disaster and snowjob from the moment the so-called studies to justify it were undertaken. (For example, the traffic and commuter volume study that was used to supposedly justify this entire fiasco specifically chose the lowest commuter travel week in the year. When this was pointed out to him, Mihevc effectively said, &quot;don&#39;t worry, we&#39;re not going to use this data for anything important.&quot; And the community sessions were worse than a joke.)</p><p>&nbsp;But that&#39;s now all water under the Weston Road bridge. Beside the spotty use of streetcars throughout, and their current lack (which sounds more like sour grapes grousing to me), the design of the ROW from Vaughan to Bathurst is an accident waiting to happen. More than once, I have observed cars making left turns from Vaughan to go eastbound on St. Clair turning into the dedicated ROW, and then being stuck because there&#39;s no way to get back into the car driving lane. And, larger vehicles turning&nbsp; right to go eastbound on St. Clair often have trouble negotiating the tight turning circle created by the concrete wall blockade.&nbsp;</p><p>Once this is all done and finished, is anyone&nbsp; going to go back and verify the original justification of the scant minutes saved on the trip from Yonge to Gunn&#39;s Road? How about tallying up the net economic effects on businesses throughout the construction and thereafter with the changes in parking, loss of walk-in business, and so forth?</p><p>Although I agree with promoting non-car transportation alternatives throughout the city, a politically-motivated sledgehammer approach is clearly not the better way, as it precludes better ideas from emerging out of the defensive rhetoric.&nbsp;</p>
Reply

Add a Comment
Other Cities: Montreal