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October 13, 2005

Next stop, Ogdenville

From October 3, 1985's Globe and Mail:

A proposed $36-million street car line operating on an exclusive Spadina Avenue right-of-way was called a threat to the character and vitality of the downtown street by representatives of the garment industry, storekeepers and citizens.

At a meeting with Metro officials last night, delegations protested vehemently against the potential loss of one-third of the parking on the street, the possible reduction of sidewalks and restrictions on vehicular movement which might be necessary to accommodate the street car line.
…
Representatives of three ratepayer organizations claimed that a proposed 15-centimetre barrier in the centre of Spadina to protect the streetcars would slice the Kensington and Chinatown neighborhoods in half and divide the University of Toronto campus.

Well, sure enough, 20 years later, Spadina is a ghost town — nothing but derelict old Chinese groceries, abandoned furriers and a few rusted out streetcar carcasses littering the ill-fated right-of-way like the carriages of the North Haverbrook Monorail. Well, no, of course it isn't. Chinatown is still Chinatown, Kensington is still Kensington and U of T is still U of T, except now they're easier to get to. I'd wager that not a single merchant served by the 510 streetcar would advocate its removal.

But of course, with the St Clair streetcar right-of-way project, history is repeating itself. The maddeningly short-sighted clutch of residents and (incredibly) business owners calling itself SOS managed today to get some fool judge to stop the project on the eve of groundbreaking. Even if you were new to the issue, a rudimentary knowledge of Toronto's public transit history would tell you that something doesn't add up with these people after reading this:

In court, SOS lawyer Eric Gillespie argued the city violated Ontario's Planning Act by proceeding with the project without amending its Official Plan to permit a rapid transit route along St. Clair.

"St. Clair was simply never designated for this kind of treatment," Mr. Gillespie said.

City lawyers claimed an amendment was not needed because the St. Clair right-of-way was not a new rapid transit project but simply an improvement of existing services.

But Mr. Gillespie said amendments were passed for both the Spadina and Queen's Quay streetcar lines.

Nice one. Except both Spadina and Queen's Quay were brand new lines.

This issue has always been moronic, is still, and will remain so until it's finally built and everyone wonders how they did without it. It amazes me that business-owners, who are entrepreneurial by nature, are willing to put their names to many of Save Our St Clair's objections. Take this one, for instance:

How would the proposed right-of-way affect businesses?
The commercial district on or near St.Clair is dependent in large part on shoppers from outside the community, much like the city itself. Making the area less attractive discourages shoppers from travelling to this area. Local businesses cannot survive on the basis of local shoppers alone.

First of all, and this is admittedly my ignorance showing through, the only real "destinations" I'm aware of on St Clair Avenue are a small group of discount furniture stores just west of Christie and the up-and-coming but still somewhat ragtag Corso Italia (Toronto's real Little Italy) out Dufferin way. If the street were five solid kilometers of big-box retail I could understand the reduced parking argument — you don't want people hauling home their new flat screens on the streetcar — but personally, I don't ever recall buying anything on St Clair Avenue west of Bathurst bigger than a large gelato, and I suspect the same is true for most area shoppers. It's also true that most Torontonians simply never set foot in the area, in contrast, for instance, with the teeming Greektown on the Danforth, which is of course served by the Bloor subway line. In short: better streetcar line = more business.

As for the homeowners, it seems to me that they're shooting themselves in the foot from even closer range. My cousin and her husband bought a place a couple of years ago just east of Dufferin and just north of St Clair for the Toronto real estate equivalent of 50 bucks, but as a renter I am extremely reluctant to consider the area. The main reason is the public transit situation. Even if it doesn't do every little thing it's supposed to, the mere presence of that right of way, and the promise of expeditious delivery to the University subway line, is going to send housing prices through the roof. That's a lot of happy nonnos and nonnas.

I should note that even on Spadina, the TTC's most progressive, well thought out surface rail line, things don't work as smoothly as they should. When things go pear shaped you'd best hoist your bindle and start whistling a jaunty walking-paced tune, because these crises rarely resolve themselves quickly. That's mostly because the TTC won't insist on taking more power away from drivers — giving streetcar operators the ability to change traffic signals in their favour, for instance — which in turn is just a symptom of Toronto's unique (in my experience) obsession with mixing light rail with regular automobile traffic. The answer to that lies not in abandoning the St Clair right-of-way, but in the TTC continuing to explore better public transit solutions for Toronto and ignoring as much as possible the naysayers and their baffling objections.

Posted by Chris Selley at October 13, 2005 12:07 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Ruby at October 31, 2005 09:36 PM

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