Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you. I welcome the chance to share my comments about a national transit strategy to this all-party committee, because transit is an all-party issue across the country.
My presentation is mostly visual, so I'll run right through it as quickly as I can.
[Slide Presentation]
I want to start by looking at a map of Canada in terms of the major cities and the city regions across the country. If we look at Canada today, the population is about 34 million. As we know, in six short years we're going to celebrate the 150th birthday of the country. We'll probably be at about 36 million then, so we'll have added the equivalent of greater Vancouver. But I think the most important thing to focus on is where we're going to be in 2067, which is only 56 years away. We're going to add the equivalent of greater Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, the greater Toronto region, Ottawa, greater Montreal, Quebec City, and Halifax. That's what we're going to add to the country, and if we don't have a transit strategy for those additional 16 million people, we're in big trouble as a country.
Many of you know Jane Jacobs, who passed away several years ago. She was a wonderful lady. I had the pleasure of working with her. This was the last book she ever wrote, and in that book she, unfortunately, wasn't very optimistic. She looked at this dark age ahead. My position here is that we need to rise to the occasion and make sure that Canada's future is not in fact a dark age.
This is all too familiar to people in Toronto and most major cities across the country. This is the 401 at rush hour. It's basically a parking lot, notwithstanding that it has 16 lanes. The fact is that this is a very personal issue to Canadians in three areas.
First, over a 40-year working life--from 25 to 65--that we are all involved in, there are issues of lost time, lost money, and health, caused by sitting in gridlock. Very quickly, in terms of the time, if you commute one hour a day, it equals a loss of one entire calendar year over your 40-year working life. Two hours a day is a loss of two years. Three hours a day is a loss of three years.
Second, the average cost of owning a car in the greater Toronto area, according to the Canadian Automobile Association, is $12,000 a year all in. Over a working life you're spending half a million dollars on your Toyota. It's worth nothing at the end. If you have two cars, you're spending a million dollars; three is a million and a half dollars.
The third area, of course, is health. If you're stuck in gridlock, you're not doing much exercise.
So there are a lot of issues there. I don't know about you, but I can imagine being about to pass away one day when someone insists, “How would you like three more years of healthy life and a million bucks in your RRSP?” Who wouldn't say yes? So this is a very personal issue for Canadians.
This is a shot of gas prices around the world. It varies every week, but you can see, roughly speaking, that Canada is in the middle. I can guarantee that one day we will be at the level of the Netherlands. It's only a matter of time. That has huge implications for Canadians and how they move around their cities.
This is one of my favourite pictures. It's very important, and I always show it to my friends in Toronto. There's the exact same number of people in each of those three slides--40. The only difference is there's one per car, one per chair, and then everybody sitting on a streetcar with an empty street. What this says is we have to use the road space we have far more effectively than we do.
Here's another good one. This is Union Station in Toronto. For the number of people who go through that station every day, you'd have to build 72 lanes of expressway to equal the same number of people who go through that. The same numbers would apply for Montreal and other major cities. The point is that building more roads is not going to solve our problems. Transit has to be the answer. We do have a choice.
Unfortunately, across Canada many of our suburbs look the same. They look as the slide does in the top. There's a whole movement of smart growth in all the major cities of the country to intensify and concentrate and make development more viable to support public transit, as you see in the bottom slide.
These are some of the initial conclusions that I've been aware of in my career. What people are saying in Toronto and across the country is that they want more choice. A lot of people feel stuck because they only have one option now, and that is driving. They want smarter choices.
We have to look at moving people, not only cars, and land use and transportation go together like a hand in glove. We shouldn't forget that. We need to connect the dots, because as David Crombie has always told me, everything is connected to everything in any major city and any city region. All of these dots have something to do with a city, with a region, and we have to plan in its entirety. Everything is interconnected. These are some of the images that go with that.
Here's a very simple chart that we put together when we did the Toronto official plan. I thought it might be helpful for you. Everything you see on the top are the basic components of a transportation planner's strategy. Everything you see in green you can do for free. It simply means a policy decision. Everything in yellow costs some money and the red costs a fortune. Generally, what people focus on is only the red. The fact of the matter is, we have a huge scope federally, provincially, and locally to look at all these possibilities and all these levers to in fact achieve a transit strategy that we need for the country.
I will just move forward in terms of where we need to go in terms of 21st century challenges. The Don Valley Parkway and GO Transit are a very important part of the picture. One train equals 1,500 people. One lane of traffic is 1,500 people. The only difference is you can run a train every 15 minutes, whereas the traffic lane is 1,500 an hour. The new subway rocket cars in Toronto are very important for the system. I took the train coming up here today, and we just read that we had the highest number of passengers ever. In the last week 1.7 million people rode the subway in one day. We're almost at 500 million a year. So it's very critical for the larger centres of the country.
One of my passions is street cars. This is on Spadina Avenue. You can't forget street cars. I know there are very few of these left anywhere. We're lucky we have saved them in Toronto. But I want to tell you, if you add up the number of people who ride the street car lines in Toronto, it's more than the number of passengers who ride the entire GTA GO service every day. They're very, very important. They're urban work horses.
Calgary Transit, light rail in Edmonton.... Many other cities are moving in that direction.
And of course Yellowknife.... You can't forget the small communities. I was up there this summer because I always wanted to go there, so I did. This is my friendly bus driver in Yellowknife. There are two buses in Yellowknife. I had a great talk with him and with the administration there.
As we've heard earlier, small communities still need transit, but it's obviously got to be in the form of buses. So it runs the whole scope.
By looking to the future and moving forward, this is the kind of system that Metrolinx is looking at building over the next 20 to 25 years. The cost of this is $75 billion in terms of capital, operating, and maintenance, but it's going to serve a population of 10 million, and if we don't do it we're in huge trouble as an economic region.
Ottawa, as you well know, in terms of the light rail system, is tied to land use.
Vancouver is also very similar in terms of the various lines that have been built or that are proposed. I was out there last week and of course rode the line to the airport. They have an extensive transit plan as well.
Moving forward, the final piece here is in terms of where we are going to go in the future.
This is a shot of a little child. He is going to grow up one day to be a chief planner or a mayor or a member of Parliament, and the fact of the matter is I hope he has a full range of choice in terms of transportation.
If we look at international practices, without getting into any details, we are so far behind as a country it isn't funny. So many other cities and regions have all these other tools that you see listed across the top. We hardly have any, and we need to catch up.
Here are some of the tools that in fact are being looked at in the Metrolinx context in Toronto. Every single one of them is controversial, I'm going to be very blunt with you, but the fact is nothing's free. We have to have that kind of discussion, not only in Toronto but across the country, in terms of where the money comes from. Perhaps it comes from the federal government, from the province, from the locals, as well as from the community. All of these are important issues that we have to face.
I want to bring it down to a personal level, because the earlier deputant talked in questioning about road tolls and road pricing. That's one of the tools that we have to talk about. Here are some comparisons. People don't think anything about buying these commodities every day. In fact, lots of people have two Second Cup lattes, but as soon as you mention road pricing, people go crazy.
Here's another comparison. I just looked at a sample road toll price between Toronto and Oakville: 10¢ a kilometre would be $120 a month return. People are paying $121 now for a TTC metropass. They're already paying $215 return for GO Transit, and you see those other figures depending on the kind of plan you have. The point is we have to make sure that people get value for money if we're going to use some of these tools.
We did an extensive consultation around the GTA region on what was called “The Big Move” plan for Metrolinx, and this is the result. I went to every one of the public meetings in all the regions and I went by transit to every darn one of them, and the fact of the matter is, as you see in number 1, there is a huge degree of support. People say they want regional rapid transit and they're willing to pay for it, and they want it to be seamless and they want it to be integrated. But that's the message we got.
This is one of my favourite quotes: Again, nothing's free; you've got to pay for it and you've got to figure out how we're going to pay for it.
Here are some lessons I have learned in my 40-year career as a city planner: focus and simplify the message; respect public wisdom and political action; and develop and communicate strong beliefs. There's no point in doing something marginal. You've got to get things done.
To wrap up, in terms of what I call “future proofing Canada” between now and 2067, our cities and city regions are absolutely critical for the economic health of the country. About 80% of the people live in the city regions. That's where the economic wealth is. That's where the ideas come from. And that's where our economy will grow, if we have a great transportation system in those regions.
Ottawa, as you may know, is embarking on this exercise right now. In the current Canadian Geographic magazine, there's a feature on Ottawa, choosing our future: looking ahead a hundred years to build a capital region. Scientific American has a whole feature on smarter cities.
In terms of looking at how we're going to communicate this very important issue across the country, I think your committee could take the lead, frankly, and establish what I'll call tripartite forums in the city regions across the country. You have the elected representatives from the feds, the provinces, and the local areas, with the people in the transit agencies, urbanists, etc., to have that discussion about what this national transit strategy should look like and how it should be funded.
My message to you is that we can't go on with the status quo. We do want change. I beg you to take this very seriously, which I know you are, and to make no little plans. The future of the country is very much integrated into your work.
Thank you for your attention.
