LRT in Waterloo Park

This used to be a line of mature trees alongside a pretty railway line. Now there is a hideous raised rail bed of gravel, structures every 50 feet that look like power pylons, and a long impassable chain link fence dividing our once-lovely park in two. Why oh why have our elected officials allowed this to happen?



It didn't have to be like that. LRTs don't have to be godawful ugly eyesores.

Berlin Wall in Waterloo Park

Back in 2011, the Record asked me to write an op-ed about the LRT (link). I outlined my major problems with the LRT proposal, including: "Waterloo Park will be sliced in two by trains. It seems likely a fence will be required, especially since the tracks border a children’s zoo. This will leave the park looking like postwar Berlin."

That reference to the Berlin Wall caused a big kerfuffle. LRT supporters claimed I was being hysterical: there would be no fence; in fact, the tracks would roll through grass in an attractive way and enhance the park setting.

This week it was announced that there needs to be a fence along the tracks in Waterloo Park and that it must be at least 6 feet high. This completely cuts the park in two. Add to this Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic's concerns about unsightly substations that will line the route to power the transit system, and postwar Berlin is starting to look pretty accurate. I wish I had been wrong.

It just breaks my heart what the LRT is doing to Waterloo Region. In the first place, it's too expensive - so expensive that it will suck all the air out of any other initiative for decades. (Just look what RIM Park did to our budgets, and it's a drop in the bucket of what LRT will end up costing residents of Waterloo.)

The route is ridiculous - going through Waterloo Park and the UW campus instead of heading straight down King Street North where a huge density area has developed. I am absolutely certain that the only reason the Powers That Be chose the campus route is that they need students to up their ridership numbers - even though student riders don't add one dime to revenues. Students are young; they can take the bus. The aging population - and the growing problem of impoverished seniors - is totally a non-issue for the people who forced the LRT on us.

During the LRT discussions I met with many politicians and staff members. It was beyond frustrating to be constantly met by lies, obfuscation and stonewalling, especially by Waterloo Region staff. They totally poo-pooed my concerns about traffic on Park Street, but now Thomas Schmidt is casually quoted in the Chronicle as saying that traffic police may be required at Park and Green after the LRT is built.

I went to just about every public forum on the LRT, and witnessed first hand that the public was lied to. In surveys, about half of local people supported the LRT; few people showed up at the anti-LRT rallies I helped organize. But people are going to be mighty unhappy once they see what they were tricked into.

Oh, one more thing. There's a perfectly reasonable solution to the fence problem. For the short distance that the train passes through the park, have it go slow. Presto-besto: no fence is needed. Freight trains have gone through the park for as long as it has been a park, and we never needed a fence BECAUSE THEY GO SLOW. I wrote Waterloo's mayor about this and he said he'd pass on my email to the LRT planners, but I know from sorrowful experience that they won't listen, not even to the Mayor of Waterloo - these outsiders who aren't elected and don't even live here want to save two seconds by running fast trains through "the Jewel of Waterloo", so we'll just have to live with a Berlin Wall that slices our park in two.

[Not] Solving Traffic Problems in Uptown Waterloo

I attended the Uptown Traffic summit last week. It was a success - over 120 people, lots of careful consideration of the problems that were posed.

In the promo for the summit, Ward 1 Councillor Melissa Durrell said, "When I was going door to door campaigning during the election, traffic was the Number One concern." Kudos to Melissa for holding the summit.

But. Big but.

The summit started with city and regional employees giving some presentations about the context. They described the Waterloo city Official Plan, city and regional Master Transportation Plans, the Complete Streets initiative (that's what is causing all our "roads on diets"), and the provincial Places to Grow plan that legislates intensification in Uptown Waterloo (among other areas). Everything they said emphasized that cars are not the priority; bikes and public transit are the priority.

Then we got into the summit, which consisted of four questions:

1. How might we support Waterloo's desire to become a bike, pedestrian and public transit-friendly city while recognizing the significance of the car?
   
2. How might we handle the increase in traffic while maintaining a neighborhood feel?
   
3. How might we reduce the number of parking spots available while maintaining a strong, vibrant economy?
   
4. How might we create safe streets while still enabling access for traffic?

Good questions all. But nowhere in there is a question that addresses what all those voters were talking about on the doorstep. Nowhere was there a question that would lead to solutions for how hard it is to turn left off of Alexandra onto Caroline in the morning; or the backup of cars on Bridgeport heading towards the Erb intersection in the evening; or the huge amount of traffic cutting through the Uptown on Erb, heading from the west side subdivisions to the expressway because there is no west side expressway.

There were no questions about how we're going to cope with the new traffic generated by the thousands of new residents who will move into the condos that are currently being built, many in a small area around King and Allen.

There were no questions about how we will cope with the huge impact LRT will have on Uptown traffic. John Shortreed estimates that the LRT will cause King Street to lose 60% of its capacity. He estimates that Weber can only take part of the load. Where will the other cars go? (Sidestreets.) I don't know if John has estimated the loss of capacity caused by the LRT on Caroline, but I do know that rush hour traffic is already heavy heading north on Park, jogging along William and continuing down Caroline. The Bridgeport-Caroline intersection is already very busy at rush hour, and the LRT will make it a total mess.

It seems that there is no awareness of the real traffic issues in Uptown, and no desire to fix them. What really slays me is that all these politicians and city employees who are fixated on "walking, biking and rollerblading" and who hate providing infrastructure for cars - they all have cars.

I am not an enormous proponent of the car. I never had a car when I lived in Toronto, and didn't buy a car till I was 40 (and even then, only because it was required for work). I wish Waterloo was designed in such a way that one could live conveniently without the hassle of owning a car. But it ain't. And I want my government to be based on reality, not ideology. This isn't a trivial issue. The health of the every aspect of the Uptown depends on getting this right.

Conflicts of Interest, or: Be Careful What You Wish For

There were a lot of raised eyebrows over conflicts of interest claimed by local politicians in the LRT decision. For example:

• The driving force behind LRT, Regional Chair Ken Seiling, spent nearly a decade ramming LRT down our throats and then claimed a conflict just before the final debate. His children own property near the route, and they owned that property back when he was instrumental in choosing the route.
  
• Regional Councillor Tom Galloway, who had seemed to be opposed to LRT but was reportedly under a lot of pressure from Seiling & co to support it, claimed a rather dodgy-sounding conflict: he works for the University of Waterloo, which has the proposed LRT running through it. After the main vote, Galloway decided that his conflict no longer applies.
  
• Waterloo City Councillor Jeff Henry, an LRT supporter, decided to call conflict because he too works at UW - even though the decisions he could vote on were about the route through the uptown. Other councillors who work for UW didn't call a conflict. The uptown route was decided by just three Waterloo city councillors, with the rest in declared conflicts.

Despite our frustration about the councillors who called conflicts seemingly without needing to, I don't see how we can really complain. Regional and city council is a part time job paying barely $30,000 a year. Councillors have to pay their own fees just to get a legal opinion about conflict of interest, and in an iffy situation they would probably need at least two legal opinions to stay in the game. Imagine the legal fees if a councillor was charged with conflict of interest.

Several Ontario communities are adopting LRT, and every one has had such a lot of declared conflicts of interest that a subset of politicians is voting on the biggest expenditure of all time for their communities. The province has now decided to review its conflict of interest legislation.

Easing the conflict of interest rules is not the way to go. The Seiling example shows how easily even the current legislation can be abused - not that I have any evidence that he did abuse them, but the appearance is there. I did a little research about conflicts of interest during last year's LRT debate, and talked to a lawyer about it: it seems that even the current legislation is barely enforceable.

We don't want to hamstring politicians with legal fees or put them in situations where they could be penalized just for doing their job. At the same time, we don't want to open the door to shady characters who gain office for self-enrichment. The current legislation seems to strike a good balance.

The bigger issue is around how monumental decisions such as billion dollar LRT projects are decided. This was not the way to do it. We should have had a referendum. We should have had votes at city councils as well as regional council. We should have had real public education and a dialog about alternatives, rather than a shoddy and expensive PR job by regional staff. This sham didn't just happen in Waterloo Region: it happened all over the province. And it isn't just about the monumental burden it's putting on tax payers: it's about a fundamental change to our urban landscape.

###

The Future of King Street

I spent the weekend in Toronto, and this morning I needed to head cross town in my car. I decided to take St Clair, thinking it would be quicker. Those days are gone...

The recently-completed St. Clair LRT, like other Toronto LRTs, is very different from Waterloo Region's proposed LRT: in Toronto an LRT is a streetcar that stops every two blocks, while in Waterloo the proposed LRT is a train that stops every 1.5 kilometers. But the tracks will be similar. Here's a picture I took on St. Clair today:


The LRT tracks run on a wide, raised platform in the middle of the street. Cars can't cross it, so if they want to access a parking spot, driveway, or even small street on the other side of the LRT tracks, they have to go to the next intersection and make a U-turn. The U-turns require special U-turn lights, and that means that the green lights for going straight are briefer than they would otherwise be. Today on St. Clair it was Sunday and traffic was very light, but it was painfully slow because I got stopped by a red light at every intersection.


In Waterloo region, the long distance between LRT stops means that we'll need buses to run the same route. That will compound the problem - and the current thinking is that we shouldn't have bus bays.

As this snippet of the region's map shows, the LRT prevents left turns at certain intersections, such as John and King. Cars wanting to make a left turn there will have to proceed to the next intersection and make a U-turn.




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More concerns about LRT

Four skilled individuals (planning, Engineering, and legal), all of whom live locally, put together this list of comments about the proposed LRT.

1. K-W is a city of 350,000, not a city of 729,000, the number that is always quoted regarding the Regional population of 2031. The next largest city where a significant LRT investment has been made is three times our current size. In 25 years, based on the cities' potential growth, it will still be two times our size. There is no urgency to get this passed.
   
2. The purpose of building the LRT has nothing to do with transit, where there currently simply is no problem. It is to promote reurbanization of the core area.
   
3. The outcome regarding the LRT choice has been predetermined by Regional staff from the beginning. The cart has been put before the horse on so many issues related to planning and development prior to a decision being rendered by Council on the LRT. This forces Council with only one alternative and that is to approve.
   
4. The public has not been formally engaged in the decision. The conclusions of staff from a few public open houses do not reflect the experiences of a number of the members of Regional Council who are sharing a far different view of the acceptance of the proposal from last fall's municipal election. The only effective way to determine public support is through a referendum.
   
5. No one honestly thinks the proposal before Council will come in even remotely close to the current cost estimates. On average, from recent past experience LRT’s built in North America were 40% over budget.
   
6. Ridership numbers are fantasy. Currently there are 9,000 riders on the spine, and that is projected to go to 27,000 the day LRT opens and 56,000 by 2031, more than currently use the system in Houston, Baltimore, San Jose, Minneapolis, etc.
   
7. The Region is asking the provincial government to amend the current development charge legislation to allow charges to be collected for the LRT. This is a clear sign that there are significant concerns among Regional staff about cost overruns and that the best way to reduce tax impacts is to have available the D/C option.
   
8. The Conestoga Parkway is a common argument used in support of the LRT. In the 1960’s many were opposed because “I will never use it.” Looking back, those who built it were visionaries. There are two main differences. First, currently 3% use transit and 98% use cars, likely the same as it was in the 1960’s. Secondly, the Conestoga Parkway was built solely for one purpose, moving people in their cars, which over time it has done. The current LRT proposal has very little to do with dealing with transit needs or moving people. Its primary purpose is for reurbanization. This is a recipe for failure.
   
9. The Region claims that the review and approval of the LRT by a 3rd party “Peer Review Panel” validates that this is a sound proposal. Recently the Chair along with several other members of Council have declared a conflict because of a potential benefit received by them or their families if the system gets built. It should be noted that several members of the “3rd Party Peer Review Panel” are also in conflict as they have done work for the Region as consultants, assisting in developing the current policies towards growth and transit. It would be difficult to suggest that the opinion of this group is valid based on the obvious conflict of several of its members by doing work for the Region and by being paid by the Region to do this work.
   
10. The Region is backtracking on having the required “feeder” buses in place with the opening of the LRT. In last Friday’s Record it was reported that the LRT cost is putting pressure on the Region being able to provide buses before 2017-2018 - which will significantly limit the ability to get people to the LRT route to use it. This in turn will reduce ridership and directly affect revenues.
    
11. The Region is only showing one financial impact summary, and it is based on unrealistically low capital costs ($810M) and overly optimistic ridership targets (27K on opening day). They need to show what the impact will be for every $50M of cost overrun and every 5K of ridership reduction in a matrix which shows a range of potential likely costs. Council and more importantly the public needs to understand the risk prior to any decision being rendered. I asked this question as recently as last week and the answer I received from Thomas Schmidt was that the Region is confident with their budgeting and we need not worry.
    
12. The Region has no idea if their proposed routing will in fact be buildable. As recently as a few weeks ago Caroline Street routing was changed from one side of the street to the other because of concerns about access to underground utilities. These kinds of changes have cost impacts and draw concern as to the overall level of detail used to determine budgets to date.
    
13. Have the Cities determined that they have sufficient capacity to allow for development in the core areas?
    
14. The Region talks about increasing property values along the route as a result of LRT. Higher property values, relative to the basket of values in the overall community, simply means higher taxes for those currently living near the route. So much for a 2% tax increase if your are fortunate enough to have your property go up in value by 20%. How about a 20% tax increase? Generally when property values increase significantly over a short period of time this is referred to as inflation. I am curious as to how this phenomenon, inflation, is view by the Region as being a good thing.
    

They also have some questions:

• Has there been a full independent study of the need and justification for the LRT?
  
• Will Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge really have that much core growth that it will support an LRT??
  
• The current proposed route doesn’t connect employment areas to residential areas – how will that be useful??
  
• With the Region Planning industrial growth in the Townships (like around the airport and other places) how are these areas going to be connected to the LRT and won’t the time it takes to get to a destination far exceed the time by car??
  
• Most of the population will still be far removed from the LRT Route as densities in other areas of the Cities are being planned – how will the LRT be utilized by those people??
  
• Isn’t a fixed hard built route a real risk – what if development doesn’t occur the way Region thinks it will – isn’t a rubber tire and perhaps electric battery driven), flexible road based system (which can easily be expanded (or contracted) with dedicated lanes be much cheaper, more flexible and much less risky??
  
• What is the breakdown of proposed costs of the LRT? – that is – how much for 1) land acquisition; 2) design and final plan; 3) route preparation (,costs of moving roads, services, etc.); 4) Construction; 5) administration... and are these just estimates?? –
  
• Most Region projects end up costing far more than projected. Take the Fairway Road bridge over the Grand: it started at $10M and will now be $50M plus. Won’t the same thing happen to the LRT??
  
• What are the annual operating costs? Is there an operations budget? Are shortfalls picked up by the tax payers and what will it add to our tax bills??
  
• Where will the projected ridership come from?? Has a fully independent study been performed??
  
• What contribution have the feds and province 100% committed to the LRT? Is that commitment still there in light of the upcoming election(s) and what if it changes due to the fiscal constraints?
  
• The LRT is focused and predicated on high density along its route – what if this doesn’t materialize because of other building forms, slow growth or alternate transportation systems??
  
• The Region has essentially eliminated greenfield growth and attempted to focus high density growth along the LRT. Is our community aware of the implications? – doesn’t this just make K-W another mini Toronto? Is that what we want??
  
• Isn’t a much better road network much cheaper than a fixed LRT? Won’t we need the roads anyway for truck routes and general commerce?
  
• What are the real costs to putting increased density along the core? New water mains and sewer mains have to replace the old – who is paying for that??
  

Lack of credibility, the Region, and LRT reports

Chair Jim Wideman and Members of Planning and Works Committee have released the long-awaited LRT report, titled Preliminary Preferred Rapid Transit Implementation Option and dated April 12, 2011.

There is no nice way to say this. The report is another example of flagrantly biased and inaccurate public relations hooey from the Region.

The report says, "In evaluating the rapid transit implementation options and considering the recent public input, staff have identified that: Rapid transit is preferred over business-as-usual." "10 per cent [of respondents] prefer business-as-usual."

This is based on public comment sheets that asked residents to choose one of 11 options, where the only non-rapid transit option was described as "not considered feasible."

I used to work as a market research analyst and I have heard a lot of wild stories about biased surveys, but this one takes the cake.

You do a survey in which you instruct people not to choose one of the options, and then you claim the survey proves that they don't want that option.

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The Region's LRT ridership estimates: pie in the sky

The figures for other cities are from Wikipedia.

This analysis was done by Dave Ramsey. Dave's conclusions:

1. The estimated daily boardings of 56,000 in 2031 are overstated by at least 40,000.
   
2. Just like every city in North America with a population of less than 1M, KW will not need the LRT or BRT to cope with its public transit needs now or when the population reaches 462,000 in 2031.
   
3. If LRT is installed, the numbers show it will be a financial disaster. With 15,000 daily boardings rather than the estimated 57,000, subsidies will skyrocket over those forecast. In 2002, after 24 years Edmonton’s LRT had 36,000 boardings with an annual subsidy of $13.7M (see “ETS Light Rail Transit” bulletin). With less than half the boarders, the region’s subsidy will be about $21.7M instead of the $3.8M forecast (see ‘Connecting to the Future’ Summer 2009).
   

Negative impact of LRT on the City of Waterloo

I wrote a little report on some concerns I have about what LRT will do to the city of Waterloo. You can download it here. (Click the file name LRT_impact_on_Waterloo.pdf at the top.)

Upate: I expanded the report so that the Waterloo city impacts are just part of it.

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Support for light rail trains gets a boost

During the recent public consultations, the Region distributed a survey that could be filled out on paper or online. It listed 11 options: nine were forms of LRT, one was BRT on dedicated lanes, and one was no rapid transit.

The Region has released the results of the survey, causing the Record to trumpet that 78% of respondents voted for rapid transit, proving that the public wants LRT. But let's look at the survey.

The only option that was not rapid transit was phrased like this in the survey:

"BU11 - Business as usual - no rapid transit (not considered feasible, especially because of its quality of life impacts, disruptive road expansion and because it does not align with the Council-approved Regional Official Plan and Regional Transportation Master Plan)."

Who ever heard of a survey that describes one of the options as "not feasible"? This wording is so slanted that the survey is utterly worthless.

That "not feasible" option is not only feasible; it is clearly the best. It is the option that includes aBRT.

aBRT, or adapted bus rapid transit, is a much cheaper option that BRT in that it doesn't require dedicated lanes for the entirety of the route. It does employ signal priority, queue jumping, and bus-bypassing shoulders, so it is approximately the same speed as BRT (and it's quicker than LRT for the whole route because riders don't have to transfer in the middle). It is much more flexible than LRT or BRT in that the route can easily be changed. It is also much more flexible in that it can be converted to rail in future at little cost if the ridership rises. (BRT, with fixed curbs along the whole route, is very expensive to convert to rail.)

Not only does aBRT make sense, but it is the option currently preferred by Cambridge City Council.

Other questions abound about the survey.

It appears that the Region has counted only the printed surveys, and has ignored the online submissions. The only explanation I can think of for this is that the online surveys must have been against LRT.

The Record article trumpeting the survey results pulls out all stops in slanted reporting. (Support for light rail trains gets a boost) The reporter interviewed me yesterday and I explained the problems with the survye, but he neglected to report them. The article gives the erroneous impression that high tech emloyees are clamoring for LRT, which is utter hogwash. And while the pro-LRT organization is named in full, T4ST is not mentioned. To add insult to injury, they spelled my name wrong. I am referred to as "Ruth Howarth, the spokesperson for a group opposed to the light-rail plans."

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World of debt

In last month's "State of the City" address, Waterloo Mayor Brenda Halloran said that "finances remain the city's biggest challenge, with a $5-million dollar debt over RIM Park still to pay off", according to local news sources.

Not long ago, five million dollars seemed like an awful lot of money... after all, that $5M debt has restricted city spending across the board for many years and it will restrict spending for many years to come. Sports, arts, community programs, children's programs, parks... everything has taken a hit because of that RIM Park debt.

But now that LRT is on the table, a $5M debt is laughable. When the Region builds a rail route through Waterloo, the city of Waterloo is going to have to pay many times more than $5M just for downloaded capital costs. The Region expects the municipalities to pony up for:

• Building parking garages next to LRT stations
  
• Resurfacing roads torn up by LRT construction
  
• Moving hydro vaults, utility poles, lamp posts, fire plugs as needed for LRT
  
• Rebuilding curbs and sidewalks torn up by LRT
  
• And who knows what else...
  

But wait, there's more! Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig has estimated that LRT will cost $23M per year in operating costs, all of which will be paid by regional taxpayers. Yes, that's right: that crippling RIM Park debt that it's taking Waterloo decades to pay off - Waterloo taxpayers' portion of LRT operating costs will be more than that every year... forever!

All that is in addition to increased regional taxes to pay the roughly $500M that will be the Region's portion of LRT construction costs.

Then there's the rest of the region's Master Transportation Plan, which staff estimate will cost $3.75B (yes, that's billion) over 20 years.

When I write about LRT, I tend to focus on problems with the route, inconvenience, inaccurate ridership projections, inability to meet stated goals, and things along those lines.

But cost is also a vital element of all this.

Here's one scenario that's looking pretty realistic about now: Taxes are going to rise so much in Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge that, far from creating flourishing downtown cores, LRT will cause masses of people to move out to the townships (which won't pay into LRT and so will have much lower taxes) and commute long distances on area highways.

Having LRT tracks running through our commercial corridor, combined with the need to run buses on the same routes because LRT stops so infrequently, will result in so much congestion that everyone will avoid the core like the plague.

The LRT won't be empty though; it will be full of University of Waterloo students who use it as a student shuttle to zip past the empty storefronts.

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Questions about rail plan go beyond money

My article in the Record today:

Questions about rail plan go beyond money
In his April 1 community editorial board article, We’re More than a Collection of Taxpayers, Sean Geobey dismisses the community’s objections to light rail transit as a cynical knee-jerk reaction by people who don’t understand what community is all about. He claims all we care about is lower taxes.

Never mind that as the representative for Taxpayers for Sensible Transit (T4ST), I have written articles in this paper that express support for improved transit and detail why light rail is the wrong approach. Or that Taxpayers for Sensible Transit has made official submissions to regional council expressing our concerns about the effect of light rail on our transit system and community.

Never mind that this paper has published nearly 200 letters to the editor against light rail (all reproduced on www.t4st.com) that are proof of residents’ keen commitment to our community and deep understanding of the issues.

Had Geobey done any research into why so many citizens oppose light rail, he would have seen that this issue is about much more than cost.

Consider the devastating impact the tracks will have on Uptown Waterloo. Of all the downtowns in our region, Waterloo’s is clearly the most vibrant and functional. But the imposition of light rail on King Street and other Uptown streets will make driving chaotic, discourage shoppers and inevitably rob the area of its vitality.

Trains will run against traffic on the one-way portion of Erb Street at Albert Street. This is not only inconvenient, but also dangerous. The Erb/Bridgeport/Caroline intersection will come to a halt every 3.5 minutes for trains to cross. As a result, Erb Street will cease to be a useful east-west route. And it will be impossible to hold popular tourist events such as the Busker Festival on King Street.

More problems: Waterloo Park will be sliced in two by trains. It seems likely a fence will be required, especially since the tracks border a children’s zoo. This will leave the park looking like postwar Berlin.

As a replacement for the iXpress bus, light rail will provide service that is much less convenient. For example, the iXpress stops in the centre of the research and technology park and close to the entrances of Conestoga Mall and Fairview Mall; the light rail transit trains would stop much farther away, requiring long walks for transit riders.

Why is convenience so important? Because you won’t lure people out of their cars with inconvenient public transit.

The cost model of light rail transit assumes that we can afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a rail line because it will result in less money needed for road expansion. If light rail transit does not lure drivers out of their cars, then we are stuck with the unaffordable situation of paying for light rail transit and paying for road expansion.

Light rail transit is a great deal for students at the University of Waterloo, and that no doubt is why Geobey and other students are such vocal supporters. Every student gets a transit pass included in their fees (at a greatly reduced rate). Students are a major component of our transit ridership, and it is important to provide service for them. But we do not need to provide a $1-billion train so that they can live further from campus.

My point here is not to repeat every argument against light rail transit. It is important to lift the public dialogue on light rail transit out of the mindset of Geobey and some other light rail supporters who characterize the anti-rail side as backward-thinking old-timers who don’t know what’s good for the community.

The Region of Waterloo is voting on light rail in June, so we don’t have a lot of time to think through the effects of this megaproject — both financial and physical — on our community. Let’s keep the dialogue respectful.

Ruth Haworth is the spokesperson for Taxpayers for Sensible Transit. She writes the transit web site http://www.t4st.com.

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Unknown Costs of LRT

We don’t yet know the Region’s preferred option for LRT, so we don’t have final estimates of capital costs or the increases to property taxes. But we know it will result in hundreds of millions in costs to Regional taxpayers.

Recently, it has become apparent that there may be more costs that haven't been made public so far, and that there are other issues around costs that are much too unclear. In particular:

• Downloading – At a March 11, 2011 meeting of municipal Directors of Engineering, it supposedly came out that the Region intends for the municipalities to pay for a portion of capital costs related to LRT. These are costs related to moving hydro vaults and poles, resurfacing roads, rebuilding curbs and sidewalks, moving light posts, and so on. I have confirmed this information with two senior sources, but don’t know if it is completely settled yet.


• Tax increases – A recent article in the Waterloo Chronicle revealed that property tax increases that have been publicized have been a bit misleading. The increases are cumulative, so a $20 increase means $40 the second year, $60 the third year, and so on. See Confusion over tax impact of rapid transit, March 15.


• Land acquisition costs – Some local politicians have raised concerns about land acquisition costs, which could be much higher than expected because the Region will have to acquire a lot of land at one time. I have heard this issue described as "the big cloud hanging over LRT."


• Costs of alternatives not known – The Cambridge Economic Development Advisory Committee has advised Cambridge City Council that rapid transit should not proceed until comparison costs for aBRT are known. In the Region’s February 15 eleven-option report, the only bus option was a “Cadillac” version of BRT that went to St Jacob’s market. We need to be able to compare realistic options: LRT, BRT, aBRT/expanded iXpress. (Note: aBRT is like BRT but merges in with regular traffic most of the time.)


• Total transit costs not known – LRT is part of a transit solution that includes a lot of other transit enhancements. The cost of the Transportation Master Plan over 20 years is estimated to be $3.75B, according to Regional staff. It is disingenuous at best to tell us the tax effect of LRT without telling us the tax effect of the total transit solution.


• The effect of cost overruns – A couple of years into construction, what will the Region do if there are large cost overruns? Will it ask the townships to pitch in? Will it ask the municipalities to kick in more? If all of the overrun is paid for by the regional tax base, how much might regional taxes rise?

We need objective analysis of all these issues – not more PR.

LRT should be deferred until all these cost issues are resolved.
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Downloading LRT Capital Costs

I have heard that the Regional LRT plan includes a lot of downloaded costs to the municipalities where LRT goes - Waterloo and Kitchener. Apparently this came out at a recent meeting of Regional Council. It was one of those situations where staff made a presentation and councillors, realizing that something wasn't adding up, probed until some unexpected truths came out. Or so I hear.

If true, then Kitchener and Waterloo city councils are going to have to come up with tens of millions of dollars to pay to repair the infrastructure damaged by LRT construction: moving hydro polls and lamp posts, replacing curbs and sidewalks, repaving torn-up sections of road.

Just to be clear: this is a bombshell. If true, it means that severely strained municipal budgets will be stretched past the limit.

In addition, there is a second possible set of costs to the municipalities (and this might affect Cambridge as well): What will the Region do if there are cost overruns? The provincial and regional governments have agreed to pay 2/3 the cost of LRT to a limit. We pay the other third of the budgeted cost and we pay all cost overruns. If LRT goes a few hundred million dollars over-budget (which is not uncommon), where will the region get the extra money from? Will they guarantee that they won't demand more from lower tier governments?

When people talk of the cost of LRT, they mostly talk about tax increases. It goes beyond that. It also means cuts to lots of other municipal services: the libraries, arts funding, parks maintenance, road repair, snow removal, on and on and on. We in Waterloo are already cut to the bone because of RIM Park.

I'm throwing this out there, and if anyone has evidence one way or the other, I'd like to hear it. It is not responsible to proceed with LRT if there are any uncertainties of this magnitude.

Update: I have received confirmation that this downloading of capital costs is indeed the plan. And there's more - apparently the region also intends for Kitchener and Waterloo to build parking garages for some of the stations.

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Cambridge: Getting Screwed and Dodging a Bullet

On her blog, Regional councillor Jane Mitchell completely poo-poos any concerns of Cambridge residents that LRT won't extend to their city. She describes Cambridge as a bunch of whiners who had terrible transit when it was their responsibility, who don't have the ridership to justify being in on Phase 1 of the LRT, and who make a habit of complaining falsely of unfair treatment by the Region.

I was embarrassed by the post and thought it was shockingly undiplomatic, especially as it was written by someone who's making decisions for the entire region. But in addition, it's wrong. This is not about being unkind to Cambridge; it's about materially disadvantaging them.

First - The LRT is not going to be much faster than the iXpress in travelling from Conestoga Mall to Fairview Mall. But for people going on to Cambridge, the LRT requires that people get off the train and wait for a bus - which means that for people going from Cambridge to anywhere in K-W, the trip will be slower and less convenient than iXpress. They are expected to contribute over a hundred million dollars - possibly several hundred million with expected cost overruns - for a transit system that is worse than what they have now.

Second - Imagine five years from now, when a company or individual is considering relocating to Waterloo Region. What signal do they get from the region's second-largest city not being on the main transit route? This isn't just about disadvantaging transit riders: it's about disadvantaging Cambridge real estate and property values and businesses. An LRT that doesn't go to Cambridge is far worse for Cambridge than no LRT at all.

In my research I have been talking to Cambridge residents, politicians and city staff, and what I hear is that they are well aware that they both have been screwed and dodged a bullet. Screwed in the ways I mention above, but dodged a bullet in other important ways. LRT would have messed up Water Street and the lovely, growing core of Galt. In addition, it looks like the municipalities are going to have to foot the bill for a lot of LRT capital costs: for replacing pavement, sidewalks and curbs that are torn up; for moving hydro polls and street lights; and so on. This was wholly unknown until Nancy Button was asked a question about it at the last Regional Council meeting. This could be tens of millions for each of Waterloo and Kitchener: I heard that Cambridge recently had to pay $2M for such capital costs when the Region built a roundabout.

Note: I like Jane Mitchell's blog a lot. I read it regularly, and I think she does us a service by being so candid in her writing. I wish I'd written a positive post about it before writing this negative one.

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Rail transit will not solve urban congestion

I have another guest column in the Record today: Public will never give up their cars. It is printed along with an article by Tim Mollison of Tri-Tag: Rail transit an answer to urban congestion.

While I thank the Record for airing the debate, I'm not thrilled with the way they broke up my paragraphs in the print edition, which messed it up somewhat (the online version is the way I wrote it). Also, I object to the headline they put on my piece, as I neither say nor intend to say that the public will never give up their cars. I myself bought my first car at 40 and would prefer not to own one. A better headline for my piece would have been "Rail transit will not solve urban congestion."

However, reading my column again, it would have been better to put the last four paragraphs first, which would have clarified where I stand on transit. I want better transit; I want density; and I want a city that makes it easy to get around on transit - but from my analysis of the proposal, I think LRT will not only fail at achieving those goals, but will take us backwards.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. If anyone is interested in the Jane Jacobs reference, I thought I'd supply it. She has a lot more to say about why LRT became a fad and why it's wrong. Luckily, parts of the book are available on Google books, here.

Here is the relevant excerpt:

[Paul Martin] told me that he intended to announce a program of federal grants enabling municipalities to install light-rail public transit. Now it was my turn to demur.

I told him that unfortunate experiences already showed that fixed transit routes were expensive failures when they were not preceded by evidence of sufficient demand. Underused routes not only are a drain on transit systems but are ill-suited as contributors to the needs and convenience of users. In the past, designers of transit systems had usually chosen to locate rail routes by observing which bus routes were most heavily used, a pragmatic method that worked well in Toronto and elsewhere. After it was apparently lost to transit engineers' memories in the 1960's, Toronto and a number of other cities, among them Atlanta, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago, tried rail routes justified by other goals and these have been unable to pull their weights, literally or figuratively. They don't have enough passengers.

I asserted that a prudent program to promote transit must be flexible enough to encourage experiments with routes, should that be what a city wanted to do, and possibly experiment with bus sizes, before settling on fixed rail routes. Why not specify grants for transit? I wondered aloud. Why specify from on high what form the transit must take?

... [Mr. Martin] pointed out that the mayors of every large city had asked for light-rail transit grants. I told him that I had attended the meetings where they arrived at this unanimity; they reasoned that asking for light-rail grants was politically more realistic than asking for other kinds of public transit equipment or more general transit help, such as grants for operating costs, the most desperate need in some municipalities.

Mr. Martin perfunctorily conceded that flexibility might be worth taking into consideration. Again I saw that our points of view were different. What he could contemplate as attractive bonanzas for clamoring cities and perhaps for complaining corporations producing rails and streetcars, I feared as foregone fiascoes.

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The "New" Rapid Transit Proposal, Part 2

The proposal is here: Region releases report on Rapid Transit Implementation Options.

A few weeks ago, Regional Council voted to instruct staff to consider a bus rapid transit (BRT) option. The report presents 11 options, nine of which are LRT and only one is BRT. That option is a Cadillac version of BRT. It goes all the way to the St Jacob's Farmer's Market, which is further than the original LRT proposed route went. The entire route is on dedicated lanes built up with curbs: no parts of the route merge with regular lanes of traffic or use cheaper means of creating a dedicated lane, such as painting a diamond on the road.

Why did they do this? It seems obvious that the plan is to make BRT seem more expensive so as to tilt regional councillors towards choosing LRT. In other words, this report is just more manipulation, more obfuscation, more nonsense.

We need a real debate on this issue, with numbers we can trust and honest realistic options. We are not going to get that from our Region. We need an outside arbiter or consultant or board to come in and take over transit planning.

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The "New" Rapid Transit Proposal

Only a few weeks after regional council voted to reconsider the BRT option, the Region has released its "new" transit proposal: Rapid transit implementation options.

Is it new? No. The report provides a dizzying array of 11 options, nine of which are LRT and one of which is "status quo" (AKA inflated estimates of the costs of not improving transit). Some of the options, such as the one to run LRT to St Jacobs' farmer's market, seem to be included just to set up easy targets and divert opposition from the main goal - to push through the original LRT proposal.

The report also sets up dates for new public consultation. If I had any expectation that the consultation would be any more honest than last time, when the region spent a fortune disguising a PR campaign as public consultation, I would make an effort to publicize these. As it is, what's the point.

But that, of course, is just the goal of this latest salvo in the war on Waterloo Region to force LRT on us against our wishes: confuse the issues, obfuscate the issues, wear us down. So, with a tired and heavy heart, I'll repeat a few of the reasons that the vast majority of citizens are against this crazed plan to put a train down our main streets:

LRT is a flawed transit plan that will be a costly white elephant that will bleed resources from useful transit routes, will provide inconvenient service, will create congestion on the roads, and will cause unnecessary increases in taxes.

As Jane Jacobs argues in her book Dark Age Ahead, "fixed transit routes were expensive failures when they were not preceded by evidence of sufficient demand." As John Shortreed recently showed, the demand forecast by the Region is wildly overstated. We do not have the demand sufficient to justify a fixed rail route. (I would provide a link for the Shortreed info but The Record is no longer posting certain anti-LRT articles on therecord.com, a devious tactic that should be stopped. I would be happy to discuss this with anyone interested in rectifying it.)

The report's claims that a BRT would quickly become overused are highly questionable. There are heavily used bus routes in Toronto that operate just fine with heavy use at rush hour. The report's overblown images of an endless line of bunched buses are just scare-mongering.

The LRT proposal is more about creating a flashy legacy project for departing politicians than it is about good city planning.

I am concerned that the ideology behind the LRT proposal is that the way to reduce car use is to artificially increase congestion by creating a route that disrupts traffic. That’s the only way I can think of to explain the route down King, the left turn across King at Erb Street, the disruption of intersections at Caroline-Erb and Caroline-William (in the latter case, the current map has the LRT running diagonally across the middle of the intersection).

In addition, the planned LRT would not be convenient. While the LRT will take away two lanes of traffic on our main arteries such as King Street between downtown and uptown, the stops are so infrequent that the area LRT serves will not be well-serviced. This type of infrequently stopping public transit is suitable for bringing people into downtown from the suburbs, but is not suitable for a transit line that is supposed to service the heart of the city.

If people find transit inconvenient they won’t take it, and then it will not reduce the need for roads at all.

The biggest convenience factors are frequency of arrival and total length of time of trips. Buses, which carry less people, run more frequently. Routes can be extended to require less transfers. And overall time on the iXpress route is similar between BRT and LRT. Meanwhile LRT, being an inflexible fixed route with large carriers, has less frequency and requires more transfers in the entire trip. It is much less convenient.

Buses can be short-turned (run in a loop over the busiest stops at rush hour). Buses can be moved between routes to suit demand. Buses can travel on different routes to avoid slowdowns when there are accidents or other disruptions on the road.

BRT could be an even cheaper option if the route was designated by painting diamonds on the road rather than building curbs around the BRT lanes. There could be a combination of the two techniques: buses could merge with regular traffic when going through Uptown Waterloo, for example (a proposal that was unanimously adopted by the Uptown Vision Committee).

Finally, the LRT route is overly favorable to the university of Waterloo. That helps the Region boost their ridership projections, but since university students essentially ride for free, it does little to help transit revenues. It does very little to meet the stated goals of the proposal, which is to lure commuters out of their cars and on to transit.

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Alarmist statement

Letter to the editor written by my dad in today's Record.

Alarmist statement

Re: Light rail: ‘A failure to move forward will doom us’ – Dec. 11

Waterloo regional Chair Ken Seiling says that “A failure to move forward (with the ‘light rail’ project) will doom us.” This is alarmist in the extreme.

Seiling knows as well as anyone that the alternatives are trains or rapid buses, not trains or doing nothing. It is an honest debate and sensible things have been said in support of both alternatives. Trains will certainly run faster. On the other hand, any sensible version of the rapid bus alternative will cost less and provide a more flexible transit system. For example, if the claim that trains will be underutilized proved true there would be nothing we could do other than watch empty trains racing up and down King Street. If a similar problem arose with rapid buses, assuming they were not running on rails, we could adapt without paying a huge price.

To suggest that adopting buses rather than trains will bring “doom” is ludicrous. Ordinarily, Seiling comes across as a very competent administrator. In this present debate we are not seeing him at his best.

Larry Haworth
St. Agatha

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Rally for Rails

Three local organizations held a rally for LRT today at the Waterloo public square. It was a well-attended event, especially given the temperature; one or two hundred people, I'd say, mostly students (not counting press and organizers). A number of people made (mercifully) brief remarks, including local politicians Ken Seiling, Carl Zehr, Angela Veith and Jean Haalboom.

I sat off to the side and listened, trying not to get in the way. I was struck by my agreement with almost everything that was said. The remarks mostly concerned what I would call motherhood issues, and I think there's broad public support for them: a cleaner environment, less congestion, less sprawl, and more efficient use of public funds.

That's all an argument for better public transit. The problem is that LRT is not better public transit.

You don't have to be a transit planner to know that good public transit is transit that people want to take: that goes to where people want to go and is convenient. In Waterloo, the LRT is convenient for people at the University of Waterloo and a couple of other groups (bedroom communities to the north, perhaps), but not so good for most residents. The proposed LRT doesn't stop frequently enough; the route does not benefit most of Waterloo; and taking it would involve too many transfers (unless you're going to UW).

LRT is not going to reduce congestion or create density nodes if people don't ride it; there are plenty of examples of expensive transit failures in North America, and the proposed LRT is likely to be another one. Insanely, some proponents want to create traffic jams in order to force people to take the LRT, but the carrot is a far more successful tool than the stick in transit planning, because if you make traffic impossible, people will just go somewhere else. Instead of working and shopping Uptown, they'll go to the industrial parks and big box stores on the outskirts of town.

LRT is poor transit planning in other ways, too. By running down our main street without stopping very often, it actually reduces our ability to get to places on our main artery. It disrupts car, bus and bike traffic while not providing alternative convenience.

The final nail in the coffin and biggest failure of the proposed LRT route is the left turn across King onto Erb that will cause traffic chaos in the Uptown - as well as the chaos it will cause at Erb-Bridgeport and Caroline-William in the Uptown.

The problem with the cost of LRT is not that it costs money: it's that it wastes money.

Students in support of LRT are quite cavalier about the cost to taxpayers. I'd like them to put their money where their mouth is and agree to the following. If this UW rail shuttle is to be foisted on the residents of Waterloo region, there should be:

• No more cheap transit passes for university and college students - they pay the full adult fare.
  
• Transit passes should be a compulsory ancillary fee for all students, guaranteeing revenue for the GRT/LRT.
  
• UW students should pay an extra fee of $10/month since the LRT services them more than any other group.
  

But better than all that, whether it's LRT, BRT, bus, streetcar or whatever technology, the route should be changed so that Uptown Waterloo is not so severely damaged. Bottom line: LRT cannot turn left across King in Uptown. Either it is circumvented to go two-way on Caroline, or - far better - we get a transit system that goes straight down King, creating density nodes at King-University, King-Columbia and King-Weber; and we get a route that has much more frequent stops.

And let me say again that not only do I live extremely close to the proposed Uptown LRT stop, but I work (and have worked for most of the past 11 years) near the proposed UW R+T Park stop. I am not only an alumni of UW but my parents were both profs there and I grew up on campus: I love UW. My opposition to LRT is not because of any personal inconvenience or dislikes: it is because LRT, as currently planned, is very, very bad for Waterloo.

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