The Toronto City Summit Alliance held a roundtable event last Wednesday to discuss revenue tools that could reliably fund Metrolinx’s The Big Move regional transit plan. Among the 12 sources discussed in the TCSA report were the usual hot-topic revenue sources: road tolls, parking taxes, congestion charges, and regional fuel taxes. But it was Metrolinx CEO Rob Prichard’s opening remarks that posed one of the most interesting questions of the day. He asked: "Should any new tool that increases taxes, require a referendum?" For many Canadians, the word "referendum" conjures up images of a very tense Provincial referendum in the fall of 1995 (as well as the spring of 1980), when Quebec’s sovereignty was being questioned. You may also remember a 2007 electoral reform referendum in Ontario. Referendums are common in the democratic process of many countries around the world, including the U.S., but have fallen out of common use in Canada. During the 2008 U.S. election, 32 referendums were held across the country asking voters to approve new revenue tools for funding transit. There was, however, a time when referendums were commonly used as a tool in Toronto for gauging public support of new infrastructure investment. Now, with large-scale infrastructure projects like Transit City up in the air, and problems in securing funding for The Big Move plan, perhaps it’s worth opening the discussion of whether or not infrastructure referendums could ever make a return to Toronto’s municipal election ballots.

Looking down from the 3rd floor. Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.

While ad creep has yet to make an appearance in the 2010 election, Joe Pantalone’s pastel hued Smart car (Daimler AG) gets the nod as the most visible example to date of politically conscious corporate branding (product placement?). The spiffy little vehicle is presumably meant to signal Pantalone’s environmental bona fides, and mesh with what his organizers promise will be a strategically upbeat, forward-looking campaign. So what’s with the grim, backward-looking rhetoric in his stump speeches, such as the one he delivered to a sparse Board of Trade crowd on Friday morning? Citing the decades of decline in three other Great Lakes cities — Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo — Pantalone implied that a vote for his opponents could imperil our future. “There’s nothing written in the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or whatever else that Toronto will be a great city forever.” Après Miller, le déluge? Oh, please. Toronto — socially, economically, and culturally — has precious little in common with U.S. rust belt cities. Virtually all of our challenges involve growth, not exodus. Toronto doesn’t have the donut disease, and Pantalone, who’s been involved in downtown redevelopment decisions for three decades, should surely know that.

Source: Statistics Canada By Emily Richardson — cross-posted from Spacing Atlantic Despite dramatic differences in population, density, infrastructure, and growth, there is remarkable consistency between commuting patterns in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Halifax, particularly when it comes to travelling by car. And incidentally, when it comes to getting us out of them, we seem to find buses and bike lanes unconvincing. A closer look at our most recent census data raises some surprising – and some predictable – findings about the way we get to work and how preferences change as our cities grow. First a few words on sources and statistics: All data in this article, with the exception of bike lane information, is based on the 2006 census of Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal's census metropolitan areas with trends from the 2001 census. I will be the first to concede two important shortcomings in the data. First, neither the number of cities nor the number of data points within each city is sufficient for any analysis to be statistically significant (in other words, proper analysis requires more, and more robust, data to hold up to scrutiny). Second, the data is a static snapshot in time, and it lacks any context that might explain why the upcoming 2011 census might paint a vastly different picture. But despite these drawbacks, the census data does highlight some consistencies between cities and concerns about the economic, social, and environmental implications of our commuting habits. It remains to be seen whether erratic fuel prices, transit-pass tax incentives, and growing bike-lane networks over the past four years will meaningfully influence our commuting habits by 2011. In the meantime, comments and observations are welcomed in response to this anecdotal food for thought.

Conversations about the architecture of Toronto’s streets tend to be terribly divisive. You’re either a cyclist or a driver. A transit user or a pedestrian. And don’t even think about trying to speak with the other side. No, no, in this town, we prefer to battle it out in the streets or during election campaigns. Or in the comment sections of blogs and media outlets. Thankfully, the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation (TCAT) is trying to change the tenor of this conversation. Back in late-April, TCAT hosted its inaugural Complete Streets Forum. The conference expanded the mandate and scope of previous bike summits to draw in movers and shakers of every description. There were pavement pounders, there were gung-ho cyclists, there were dyed-in-the-wool Metropass holders, and there were car commuters. There were even folks who do all four. In spite of their differences, participants in this year’s conference share the belief that streets are our most sacred public space and that we can make them work better. But what does better look like?

It’s no secret that there are drivers who simply refuse to share the road, and in turn endanger the life of cyclists’ everyday. This is why Cheri DiNovo, NDP MPP for Parkdale-High Park, and Eleanor McMahon of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition held a rally and press conference at Queens Park this morning to promote Canada’s first three-foot passing legislation. DiNovo, side-by-side with McMahon and Yvonne Bambrick of the Toronto Cyclists Union told a group of about 40 cyclists that this is a step in the right direction for cyclists in Toronto. “You are a testament to a new world, a world with better air, a world safer for people, both health-wise and environment-wise, and a world where we share the roads, we don’t hog the roads,” DiNovo said. The proposed bill requires that drivers respectfully share the road with cyclists and give them three feet of clearance when passing or overtaking a cyclist. “This is asking of drivers what good drivers already do, and… it's a chance to educate bad drivers,” DiNovo said in front of the Ontario Legislature. The Share the Road Coalition completed a survey of 1,100 Ontarians. When asked why they don’t cycle more often the response of about 60% was that they are too worried about their safety on the road.

Spacing's next issue will be hitting the newsstands in late June. It's only coincidental that our cover section will focus on the theme of "Public Spectacle" at the same time as the notorious G20 meetings will be held in Toronto. On June 26 and 27, a portion of downtown Toronto will become a pseudo-police state with Red Zones, Designated Free Speech Areas, and ID cards to come and go from your home if you live in the core of the city. But the inconveniences of the summit will have a ripple effect far outside the no-go zones. A quick scan of Google News aggregator gives us a good indication of what to expect: the Toronto FC match at BMO Field on the CNE grounds will create traffic chaos; protesters confined to Trinity Bellwoods Park will leave a mess and disrupt the park's weekend usage by residents; and practice hostage rescues are freaking out weekend workers in the Financial District. I'm starting to get the impression that Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave Toronto the G20 Summit as punishment to the urban voters who don't seem to like his party's policies.

I am fascinated by signs on our streets. This fascination, though, often leads me to frustration in Toronto. A case in point is the use of the sign Please Drive Slowly accompanied by an image of a turtle; it may be the most ridiculous piece of metal in use by the City's transportation department. It is often found around schools or in sleepy neighbourhoods where kids can be found playing near the street or where there is a hospital or retirement home. The example shown above — found at College and St. George on the edge of the University of Toronto's downtown campus — is a glaring example of Toronto's unflinching obsession with rules and signage (not to mention signage clutter, as seen by a second group of signs tucked in behind the turtle). The speed here drops to 30km/hr, which makes sense with all the pedestrian traffic flowing in and out of buildings of the St. George campus. But is this the best way to indicate to a driver that they should slow down? I'd say no. Can a single and much better designed sign do the trick instead of three? That would be an emphatic yes. The turtle sign, no matter how charming or cute, really has no place on our roads. A driver does not have time to examine the detailed image of the turtle to figure out what it is (if the sign-makers *really* needed to use a turtle a pictograph or silhouette would be more ideal). In a multicultural city like Toronto does a turtle represent slowness to most people? And with a warning sign that clearly states TRAFFIC CALMING ZONE, isn't the turtle image just redundant? And what about the typography? An italicized version of the font Cooper — or some knock-off version — can only be described as a very poor choice.

Mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson wants me to write about her campaign, so here goes: Let's start with a fact check of her plan to "complete" Toronto's subway system by building 58 kilometres of new lines (33 km along Eglinton, the Downtown Relief Line and an extension of Sheppard to Scarborough Town Centre). Claim: "Construction cost estimates, based on forming a public-private-partnership to help finance, build and maintain a subway line are approximately $200 million per kilometer." Fact: The 5.5 km Sheppard line cost $1 billion or $180 million/km (2002 figures). The 8.6 km Spadina extension to Vaughan will cost $2.6 billion (2009), or $300 million/km -- 50% more than her claim. Claim: A 33 km Eglinton line, from Lester B. Pearson to Kennedy, will cost $6.6 billion.

Could traffic lights get any uglier than on St. Clair? In the Infrastructure Fetish feature of the new issue of Spacing, I wrote a lament to Toronto's standard one-size-fits-all yellow traffic signal, called "Not so mellow on yellow". In that article, I argued that the design of the ubiquitous "12-8-8" signal (named for the diameter, in inches, of the signal lights)  in Toronto is ugly, and a determent to the urban streetscape. I also discuss some viable alternatives, such as revised colours and mountings for downtown areas, while maintaining high-visibility signals for higher-speed suburban areas. Here, as a supplement to that article, I wish to present some alternative traffic light designs in North America, some even here in Ontario, that should be used in Toronto where appropriate. Worldwide, traffic signals are found mostly in one of two basic colours: black, the most common standard; and yellow, the standard colour in about 20 US states, Ontario, Manitoba and increasingly in British Colombia, but uncommon elsewhere but for a handful of Latin American countries. The Ontario Traffic Manual provides for recommended colours, mounting, and backboard use. The OTM specifies the use of yellow backboards, but as with many aspects of the manual, allows for deviation from its guidelines. Despite this rulebook, there are many deviations  across Ontario. The downtowns of Richmond Hill, Kingston, Kincardine, and Kenora feature all-black signals, which dramatically improve the local streetscape. In downtown Brockville, the signals are coloured dark-green (the same colour as used across the river in New York State as well as in Louisiana), and match all the downtown street furniture.  The OTM specifically allows for non-yellow traffic light backings as well, particularly grey and black. Downtown Richmond Hill, where they play by their own rules.