Politics: Perks on Transit City

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I attended a community meeting put on by my local Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) last night. Interestingly, I learned more about what was going on at the federal level than at the provincial level. While I went primarily to find out what my MPP had to say, the event was effectively one for the riding's New Democratic Party (NDP) at all levels, with an aligned city councillor and candidate for federal Member of Parliament in attendance. It was the city councillor, Gord Perks, who I thought stole the show with his presentation on transit.

Perks, who represents Ward 14, which is not my ward but is part of the same provincial and federal riding, has been a supporter of Mayor David Miller's Transit City proposal to bring light rail to many parts of the city currently served by buses. I learned that, at least according to Perks, the areas served by Transit City were chosen in part by identifying the low-income areas that did not have government services (things like employment offices) in their areas. I had thought they were mostly chosen for the purpose of creating a effective grid system based on where demand for transit already exists.

Where Perks really excelled was in rhetorical devices. The proposal by some mayoral candidates to privatize bus service clearly has really rankled Perks. He held up a neck tie, pointing it out as an example of a private-market item that some might call a "frill", and then held up a glass of water, clearly a publicly-delivered service. He asked the question whether transit was more like a neck tie or more like a glass of water, calling for people to treat transit as a fundamental service like water.

The only problem is that, even if one agrees with Perks on that point as I do, there's not a whole lot the city can do about transit funding. The city doesn't have the money to fund transit completely on its own, nor does it have the power to create new taxes or modify tax rates so that it can. All the action is at the provincial level, and the province just halved the money set to be spent on Transit City. While Perks pointed out that if Toronto had the same per-rider subsidy as the VIVA bus system in the adjacent York region that transit here would be free to riders, this statistic is an apples-to-oranges comparison--the whole point of VIVA is to try to drag a transit-unfriendly region into having a more transit-friendly infrastructure, and that obviously requires a big subsidy for a smaller number of riders than a system serving a dense area. Perks himself likes to draw a diagram showing the cost per rider near the center of a city as smaller than in the periphery, which in this case includes the York Region.

Yet, since this problem has to be solved by the province, not the city, it's not hard to understand his frustration. It's the same frustration experienced by every Toronto subway rider who has watched as ridership has grown over the years and the city has had no money to improve service to handle the load. The heat has to be put on the province to either put up money, or allow the city to raise the money itself. The Public Transit Coalition has been founded to do just that. Will it be enough? Time will tell whether transit in Toronto comes to be treated more like a glass of water, or a neck tie.

Travel: The Fifty Cent Tour, For Real

"Transcending"--a monument to the labor movement by David Barr, was noted in Detroit's Hart Plaza from the People Mover on 27-July-2009. The buildings in the background are across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.

TORONTO, ONTARIO - It has become an idiom in the English language that "fifty cent tour" means a guided tour of something, usually a town or some other physical space. However, while inflation might have made the original phrase "nickel tour" turn into a "fifty cent tour," the phrase hasn't kept pace in the 20th century. I was not aware of any tour that could be had for just fifty cents in all of North America, until I passed through Detroit, Michigan today.


A Detroit People Mover train approached the Renaissance Center station on 27-July-2009. All Detroit People Movers wore advertising schemes.

Detroit has a People Mover system, an elevated transit system running throughout its downtown core that opened in 1987. The system is familiar to those from Vancouver, British Columbia or Toronto, Ontario, as it is extremely similar to Vancouver's Skytrain and Toronto's Scarborough Rapid Transit. The Urban Transportation Development Corporation-built vehicles operate as an automated system in an almost three-mile loop around Detroit.


The scoreboard at Comerica Park, home of the baseball Detroit Tigers, and Ford Field, the home of the football Detroit Lions, were visible in the same view from the People Mover on 27-July-2009

While the system has thirteen stations in an approximate circle around the downtown area, it isn't widely patronized. Probably the largest problem is a lack of connecting transit--why park somewhere downtown and take the People Mover when one could just park closer to one's actual destination in the first place? The system runs at somewhere around 3% of its capacity, more a tourist curiosity than a real transportation system.


The main branch of the Detroit Library System was viewed from the People Mover on 27-July-2009

Indeed, when I boarded the People Mover today, only four people were on the car I boarded, and as I made one complete loop of the system, I was alone in the car for most of the journey. Yet, for a fare of only fifty cents, the People Mover was a great opportunity to quickly see central Detroit. The route offers views of historic buildings like the Wayne County Center, central library, and Old Mariner Church, sports stadiums like Comerica Park, Ford Field and the Joe Louis Arena, and architecture like the Renaissance Center and Rosa Parks Transit Center. It even offers views of the Detroit River and Windsor, Ontario on the other side.


The Ambassador Bridge connecting the United States and Canada, Michigan and Ontario, Detroit and Windsor was noted from the Detroit People Mover on 27-July-2009

The Detroit People Mover may not have proved to be a very useful system, but it does offer about the only real fifty cent tour in existence.