If you live on or west of Cambridge Avenue you’ll want to attend the next Metrolinx consultation meeting. Sign up here:
Should be interesting to hear them explain how loud the trains will be. The image below says pretty loud especially for those in the apartments at 50 – 70 Cambridge and Thorncliffe ave. Don’t worry though, Metrolinx did their study by placing their sound monitor at R07 – and have declared “nothing to worry about!” Except that’s not where the locomotives will be. Nor is there any barrier to stop the sound directly upwards to the apartments.
This is the only layover facility in the whole Metrolinx network that is this close to a residential area and to make it worse, it has to be dedicated to diesel.
On top of this mess, Metrolinx is now building a fence to separate the tracks from Bayview. These tracks will become electrified and used to store even more trains. Below shows you how much of the lower Don River Valley will be behind a Metrolinx fence.
Lots of people in the community are unaware of Metrolinx’s plan for the Don Valley. However that is starting to change with a story in the Globe and Mail on Saturday and another in BlogTO on Sunday.
Further, my request for a Federal Impact Assessment on the cumulative impact of all the transit plans in Toronto-Danforth is live on the Feds website.
Related to this, Moody’s investing service forecasts a permanent 20% drop in transit ridership due to work from home restructuring. This means that parts of Metrolinx’s plan is wildly unnecessary and an unsustainable financial and environmental cost.
“The shift to remote working, coupled with the increased use of online leisure and retail services, will lower demand and permanently reduce farebox revenues for mass transit systems in Europe and North America,” says Zoe Jankel, VP – Senior Analyst at Moody’s Investors Service.
Metrolinx is causing a lot of community reaction to their various plans. In Thorncliffe Park it’s their proposal to move a Mosque and Iqbal Supermarket. In Riverside it’s about the Ontario Line subway being above ground. There’s Save Jimmie Simpson park and also Small’s Creek Ravine. Over in Corktown, Metrolinx is expropriating City land for a subway station but that includes 30+ stories condos.
Metrolinx does an extremely poor job of community notice and consultation. Repeatedly they declare the community has been consulted, what they really mean is informed. This is the plan, we will update you on the plan with more details and that’s about it. Thing is, Metrolinx only answers to the Provincial Gov’t, not the City, not the TRCA, not even the Feds seem to have a lever to pull. Doug Ford’s government had a very poor showing at the municipal level across all Ontario cities and yet here they are implementing transit across all the largest cities in the Province by bullying every locality.
Unfortunately Metrolinx’s plans for transit are mediocre. In every single area of concern mentioned above there are alternatives which are better for transit but also are better in the overall picture of support business and jobs, conservation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
What does the future look like for GO Train traffic?
In our community meeting last week Metrolinx planners talked with missionary zeal about how each 10 car commuter trains is filled with 6000 people who would have been clogging highways and generating greenhouse gases that will burn the planet. Additionally these eco friendly trains will be running more often with off peak services that enable enormous pent up demand from East Gwillimbury to visit the tourist delights of King City. The certainty of Metrolinx planners and astrologists is to be admired.
Clearly I missed the logical connection that explains how expanding the number and frequency of diesel trains is eco-friendly. Nor was the explanation how using downtown green space when used as a parking lot for said diesel trains fights climate change. Plus I didn’t grasp how trains were both parking downtown and providing off-peak service in the wilds of the 905 at the same time. Surely the mysterious physics of Schrödinger’s Train is at work, the real question is – would you want to ride such a train which may or may not arrive/depart or even exist in time/space? But again never question the logic of Phrenologists of Regional Transit Planning.
Sadly facts need to be entertained, there are only 87 average daily riders on the Metrolinx’s Richmond Hill line. Thankfully nearly half (43!) of them rode to Richmond Hill but then a lonely 8 people carried on to Gormley. These are the latest stats published by Metrolinx and I guess that in month or two we will get updated numbers that no one will want to show the planners. Leave them to their full 6000 person trains. In reality, moving or parked, the trains are basically empty. Even if they were electric there are no greenhouse gases being mitigated, no cars being taken off the road, no traffic jam time saved. As long as this pandemic continues, Metrolinx competes with Teams and Zoom and loses badly.
At current service levels this is wasteful spending of the operational budget but it gets even worse when you add capital expenditure to expand capacity when demand is 7.6% of previous year. Not down by 7.6%, down to 7.6%. For this Metrolinx proposes turning a significant portion of the lower Don Valley into a parking lot and service facility for diesel trains. Should we be as certain as the Metrolinx planners are in their forecasts? Of course – in 2018 they foresaw the global pandemic, the rise of Zoom, the introduction of Microsoft Teams, it is all baked into the plan and hence the need for dramatically more service.
After all, it makes perfect sense to build another car centric suburb; the Orbit in Innisfil rather than figure out how to create more density in existing suburbs.
And then you being to wonder if some parts of the Big Move has become something closer to Highway 413, a publicly funded way to help developers bulldoze farmland into lawns to feed the geese. Metrolinx + MZOs, neither accountable to Ontario law, nor local communities, no oversight from TRCA or other conservation authorities and fully funded Provincially and Federally. What a wonderful fantasy land for a Metrolinx planner to live in.
Read through this for a broad and important perspective on Toronto’s ravines from Jason Ramsay-Brown and illustrated by Kathleen Fu. Jason has a long history of volunteering to make the Ravines a better place for Toronto residents of all species.
Add your point of view to the Globe’s comments at the bottom of the article and share with your neighbours.
See those tracks to the left – that’s Metrolinx’s access to the layover
Metrolinx has posted this to explain why the Don Valley Layover must be situated where they propose.
Environmental benefits. The overall project “will reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality by getting more cars off the road“.
Unfortunately that is a temporary trade off. Major car manufacturers have declared they will be no longer designing and selling gas powered cars in about 15 years. GM says 2035. Metrolinx ignores this fact in their calculations of the benefits and also neglects to include the carbon emissions their construction will generate. Construction is a larger contributor to GHG than cars.
Further the urban planning that accompanies extension of commuter rail out of the city is single family homes often with multiple cars per household.
“Layovers – where surplus train sets can be stored between rush hours” – Metrolinx makes a lot of noise about the benefits of increases service during the day. “deliver more two-way, all-day, 15-minute service on more GO Train routes” says Metrolinx yet, here we are talking about trains sitting doing nothing, no revenue being generated, no service being provided.
The headline: “most environmentally-friendly location” these are diesel trains sitting in park land idling.
The 100 year flood plain. The TRCA met with Metrolinx and came to the conclusion that this layover must be high ground. Ignore the fact that the rails to this location are well within flood zones. When the TRCA and City built the berm to protect the West Don Lands – Metrolinx’s rails were left on the “wet side”. In other words – when floods happen, Metrolinx’s rails from the CN Bridge across the Don up to the vicinity of Brickworks will be underwater – as they have been in the past.
Been to the office lately? Not too many people have. Last stats provided by Metrolinx for the diesel trains on the Richmond Hill line is a daily average of 87 riders. That begs the question as to the validity of their traffic modelling going forward. Not everyone can work from home all the time, but precedence has been set and many of those former commuters now find themselves with comfortable home offices and extra 2 hours a day not sitting on a train.
The Honourable Julie Dabrusin has added an important letter to how our riding is being impacted by Metrolinx.
The cumulative and parallel impacts of projects need to seen and understood. Of course, the electrification of Metrolinx lines is a good thing both from a service and pollution reduction perspective. Yes the Ontario line will service more people especially in the Thornecliffe Park area. *But details matter*.
The Unilever Lands represent a massive opportunity for development in Toronto, the Downtown Relief Line spent significant dollars planning an underground line, the Don Valley should not be seen as dumping ground for diesel trains that service Richmond Hill (and other lines) and the potential for High Frequency Rail to Ottawa and Montreal are a strategic direction that go beyond Metrolinx’s mandate.
Metrolinx is not the organization tasked with seeing the big picture. This should not be seen exclusively as a transit project – it’s about jobs, conservation, Covid recovery, tourism while also respecting the issues that stem from the original Toronto Purchase of 1787.
This is the J D BROWN MAP OF 1851, showing Toronto. If you have ever wondered why some roads don’t follow the grid it’s because they are very very old.
The intersection of Rosedale Valley Rd and the Don River is particularly interesting because not only do we have the evidence of the Wendat Trail (arrow below) there is also the archaeological evidence at the Withrow Site (star below). If you ever feel weird running the track at Riverdale park maybe it’s because the ghosts of the past are jogging along with you.
A tourist to Toronto is given the option to visit one of the 10 historical museums. They include Spadina House, Todmorden Mills, Fort York etc – all of them assume that history began about 1790 or so. The City of Toronto – shamefully, has nothing that explains the 4000 years that came before. Sorry I lied, the City has provided this plaque at the back of Withrow School (sited on an Indigenous burial ground btw) and that’s all there is to explain that while the Egyptian pyramids were still fairly new, there was stuff going on here on this location.
The evidence is clear that Indigenous history in Toronto is not remembered let along celebrated. For a while when the City saw it fashionable to promote the Don River Valley Park it included returning the Don River to its original name the Wonscotonach. However the opportunity remains to rethink what an urban park in downtown Toronto should be and that must correct the past that saw Indigenous culture as something to build over.
The initial question was how long have people been working to restore the Don Valley?
I had to chop the very beginning and end to fit Youtube’s requirements but this explains the full context of what’s happening in the Don Valley, conservation efforts and some context around Metrolinx’s proposal to build a facility to service and store diesel trains near the Prince Edward Viaduct.
Some bandwidth issues here and there – it’s not you, it’s the Zoom recording – bear with it.
Put away the laptop and go for a walk – but where?
Alltrails.com has some great routes showing distance, change in elevation and also photos that people have shared along the route. However they don’t show all the trails on Alltrails for some reason.
This is a great way to see up close where Metrolinx plans to put their service facility and what will get lost in the process. You are unlikely to run into anybody in some parts so bring water and wear sturdy hiking boots. Sadly you get up to the southern end of the Half Mile Bridge and the other end looks tantalizingly close.
Like everything in the valley – it’s all so close to view but trying to get there means much longer walks around major obstacles like the DVP, limited bridges across the river and bike paths that favour the longest route possible.
Cambridge Gardens neighbourhood update 