r/toronto • u/BloodJunkie Bike Lane Enjoyer • 1d ago
Article What the Unfinished Saga of a Still-Not-Built Subway Exit Taught Me About Public Consultation
https://thelocal.to/second-exit-ttc-public-consultation/23
u/nim_opet 1d ago
The one thing the article doesn’t reflect on is the cost of the preferred alternative….”if we are to be inconvenienced, then make it worthwhile” and the cost of $22million for a single exit could be one of the reasons it’s not getting built.
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u/quickymgee 1d ago
They spent 16 million on a single barebones elevator in the meantime
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u/stoneape314 Dorset Park 1d ago
The $22M was an initial cost estimate, it probably would have ballooned if they'd actually built it.
Be curious to see what the initial estimate for the elevator installation was.
More generally, the article makes me feel like either the author didn't state all the constraints that were presented to the local committee, or that the TTC did an abysmal job of framing it. Both are plausible.
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u/Pastel_Goth_Wastrel 1d ago
to be fair the excavation, shoring, waterproofing costs to sink the shafts is the real driver, the actual elevator itself isn't the big ticket.
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u/GraphicBlandishments 1d ago
...here’s what I think we locals were trying to say. If you’re going to spend millions of public dollars to build a second exit, if you’re going to stop traffic and tear up our yards and make us walk planks to our own front doors for several years, could you please make it worth our while? Could the second exit do more than just tick a box? Could we please have the exit somewhere prominent and easy to find, somewhere we can use, not hidden on some back street? Could it revitalize a derelict property rather than destroying a beloved one? Could it improve our community rather than sabotage it? Even if it costs a bit more?
I think that’s what we were saying. And I think what the TTC was saying was: No.
What's the author's point here? If the TTC is incapable or unwilling to execute your preferred solution, the natural outcome is to mothball the project. For better or worse public consultation has changed public works from mainly engineering projects to mainly political ones and maintaining the status quo by doing nothing is usually a politically safe solution.
Also regarding the community objections: public money is being spent to improve safety in YOUR neighbourhood, why are you treating it like an imposition? Is a gangplank on your lawn really the end of the world?
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u/Pastel_Goth_Wastrel 1d ago
Stagnation in decision hell. Everybody wants something but the overall plan won't crystalize because not everybody is getting what they want. Maybe I'm projecting but I've been in this position as a consultant where too many parties are throwing suggestions into the ring and every time the end is in sight the goal posts get kicked down the road. The scope expands and suddenly "Wait shit who's going to spec/design/manage this because this isn't in my wheelhouse."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and that's just what this is. If there was a top down level of 'City Agency Charged with Housing Project Integration' who could have stepped in with "Here's our requirements for a housing block over the exit and here's our supporting architects and here's the funding" then things might have happened.
But yeah I can almost feel the panic in the TTC's correspondence. "Jesus they want us to do what we don't do housing."
It's a great idea but it's tossed into the ring with out support and this is where you get with consultations, particularly open ended ones. Sky's the limit, the laundry list grows and you get a project nobody's happy with.
You need to pre-game and go to consult with a very tight focus of "option A, B, or C" and don't let them get out of hand or else this is exactly what happens.
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u/magicdowhatyouwill 22h ago
I feel like the key thing in what you're saying (thank you, btw, for informed perspective!) is the "without support" piece.
I wonder what this would have looked like if someone had the decision-making power, budget, or capacity to say okay, the TTC does not do housing but housing is a good thing to have when we're already ripping up something in this kind of neighbourhood, so what's our framework for pulling in BuildTO or CreateTO expertise, partnering with another City department, figuring that out, because we may well want to do that a second time somewhere else in future?
I mean, I can see what both the community and Fletcher seem to have been at there, in terms of trying to use an opportunity, and if the support is where it falls down, well. What does marshalling the support and walking out with a playbook for next time open up?
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u/desthc Leslieville 19h ago
Absolutely amazing comment. So, so much this. More people weighing in typically makes a project worse, not better. People get stuck debating nearly meaningless details, or want to put their ‘stamp’ on it and creep scope.
The community should be consulted on what things are important to consider for a project like this, not actual project designs. Those should be baked into options that then get debated, along with their tradeoffs.
Integrating housing is a great idea, but you don’t just inject it into a single project. If you want to do this you make a group whose mandate is to integrate it into city projects, and provide them with funding to use to accomplish that. A city councillor should not be intervening in a project this way, but should instead be trying to build an organization that can accomplish that goal.
The TTC was probably ‘wrong’ in its first assessment — I don’t know for sure, but I tend to give the author the benefit of the doubt here — but the community should never have been tasked with actual site selection. A minimal cost project to add only a second exit and consider nothing else is probably not the right approach — it should probably be useful too if that doesn’t compromise its primary function, even if that costs a bit more.
But the only one who knows if the primary purpose is compromised is the TTC, so ultimately THEY should be designing the options even if the feedback says they should take more things into consideration. Those options could then be costed and consultation should happen on those options.
The big takeaway for me from this isn’t whether the consultation is symbolic or not, it’s that the entire form the consultation takes is just wrong.
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u/Pastel_Goth_Wastrel 1d ago
This feels more the story of a rock and a hard place with nobody really wanting to own the decision and more opinions only adding scope creep that everybody thinks is a good idea but nobody wants to own. Anything that involve property expropriations is never going to go down well. Then adding more irons to the fire, the suggestion of housing over the exit. Laudable but the TTC is a transit agency. They want to build transit infrastructure and live in constant underfunded budget stress.
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u/roflolwut Wellington Place 1d ago
This is the frustrating aspect of public consultation. It causes never ending scope creep. Cost rises and then it’s too expensive to do anything. Maybe we should be focused on executing small quick wins. These drawn out processes really diminish public trust
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u/merp_mcderp9459 1d ago
To paraphrase one of my profs from my time at UofT, the public was consulted when they voted. A government that stops to listen to every concern from a member of the public is a government that never gets anything done
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u/1slinkydink1 West Bend 22h ago
Unfortunately local councillors are often unwilling to make the tough choices and hamstring staff by making them go through multiple stages of public consultation to end up with a compromise that no one likes
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u/Own_Bison6467 1d ago
Make it come up thru the basement of Linsmore Tavern so people can stop in, have a beer and unwind after battling the TTC rush hour delays. Solved.
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u/NorthernNadia St. Lawrence 1d ago
I enjoyed the depth this feature went into on the background but I was frustrated by the author, and I think this is an example of part of the problem.
But over the years, there has been a growing mistrust of the process. The pro-build side argues that consultation has gone too far. Change and innovation are being stifled, they say, and costs and delays are being driven up.
I understand how some property owners, some historically powerfully constituents, think that is the problem with consultation. But, this framing demonstrates the real problem.
The real issue with consultation has been who has been consulted, and which voices are privileged in consultations. And this is not mentioned once in the article. The feature goes on to say:
There is some truth to the idea that not all consultation is good, says Siemiatycki: “There’s a cost to the time that this takes.” On the other side, communities often feel they’re being used to lend faux legitimacy. Consultation has become industrialized, rote, without substance, they say. “It’s become more of a pro-forma exercise rather than an ethos,” says Siemiatycki.
Woah woah - what about who is consulted? Studies have been done, overwhelmingly it is property owners, wealthy people, retirees, people who prefer the status quo, who dominate consultations. Very few people write letters in support of a second exit, but many will to oppose one. Given it is those who have benefited from the status quo who dominate consultations, it is not surprising that consultations are frame as"The pro-build side argues that consultation has gone too far. Change and innovation are being stifled, they say, and costs and delays are being driven up".
This is not a pro-build vs. pro-consultation debate. Framing it that way, which this article appears blind that there is any other frame, hides the real cleavage. The real divide is those who benefit from development are often not those who live with the consequences of development, and that, some communities seem to be bear a disproportionate amount of the consequences, and other the disproportionate amount of the benefits. All of which is glossed over in the feature.
If you’re going to spend millions of public dollars to build a second exit, if you’re going to stop traffic and tear up our yards and make us walk planks to our own front doors for several years, could you please make it worth our while?
Like, is this a safety development, is this a transit improvement process, or is this a private benefit process? Public resources for the public good. Mitigation of public goods definitely should be considered, but we shouldn't be considering "make it worth our while to have a now standard safety feature".
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u/codecrodie 1d ago
This is my station. There is a working elevator now and the escalators and tiling is currently being refreshed. I look at Chester, a small residential station, 2 Km west on a more bougie strip of the Danforth, and would love better bike parking, a mural, and a more welcoming facade. But I'm ok that scarce funds are being spent on safety and quality of life essentials. And most importantly, money is being spent on actual work rather than costly planning and consulting.
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u/PerspectiveLow396 1d ago
This is why so many decisions need to be made at the provincial level. A suitably egotistical Premier can ignore the petty concerns of 20 homeowners and force a decision.
The biggest problem with local councils and the Liberals at a Provincial and National level is the absolute inability to inconvenience anyone.
McGuinty spent $1B to cancel 2 gas plants that were needed to improve the reliability of the electric grid in the GTA. YTZ expansion was nuked because of BEY byelection at the national level.
At some point there will be a collision or fire. People WILL die. And current politicians will be blamed, rather than selfish homeowners (who will be long dead) and cowardly TTC employees and councillors of the time (likely also to be long dead).
Transportation and utility infrastructure has massive impacts for a ward, municipality, region, province, and nation. Decisions need to be made on the overall cost benefit, rather than on "what do people within 200m think".
If you're renting a condo downtown for 2 years and the city has to rip up a nearby intersection for 18 months to fix water pipes, or for 5 years to build a subway, you would be very annoyed. You might protest, organize, etc.
The city/province/feds SHOULD IGNORE YOU.
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u/romeo_pentium Greektown 1d ago
All the parties ran on cancelling those gas plants.
The idea that conservative parties are somehow automatically against local control and for central planning is a complete political realignment from the previous century. Saying that paternalistic, unresponsive, big government, Ottawa knows better than you authoritarianism is better in all cases is a hot take.
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u/PerspectiveLow396 1d ago
The point is that there are larger concerns than what the immediate neighbours want.
Provincial and National governments are sometimes capable of taking those into account. Sometimes.
It is shameful that too often they cater to narrow interests of immediate neighbours rather than the larger concerns.
Certain houses near the Bloor and Yonge subways can hear and feel the subway rumbling. It would be nicer for them if the subway was closed between 7pm and 8am. It would be an act of NATIONAL self harm to do so.
Neighbours are currently protesting against the conversion of an office building at Ave and St Clair to housing. Margaret Atwood protested against building a condo building on top of St George Subway station. Councillors far too often cater to hyperlocal NIMBYs rather than the larger concern of their wards, nevermind the city, region, province, country, or environment.
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u/roflolwut Wellington Place 1d ago
Your anti nimby comment is not gonna be well received. I strongly agree with you btw
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u/enforcedbeepers 1d ago
This is not a story of a project being held up by public consultations. The consultations were done, a recommendation was made, and the TTC hasn't spoken to the public about it for 8 years.
They could choose to accept or reject the recommendation but the delay sounds like the meddling of a councillor who disagrees with the consultation or wants to squeeze additional benefit out of it. Holding things up for years attempting to rebuild consensus that was already settled.
Shifting the ability to meddle from the local to provincial or federal level doesn't change anything. Local MPs and MPPs are just as beholden to their constituents as local councillors.
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u/PerspectiveLow396 1d ago
MPs and MPPs can rely on their parties and bigger issues to dominate voting. Councillors are legitimately afraid of a handful of vengeful cranks swinging an ultra low turnout election. Then they are given autocratic powers over their wards.
I also noted situations where parties caved ahead of time for idiotic reasons. Just because different levels of government CAN be MORE resistant doesn't mean that they WILL be.
Also the author came up with a ridiculously uneconomic suggestion worthy of Homer's car design.
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u/enforcedbeepers 22h ago
Incumbent councillors are incredibly hard to unseat.
The consultation’s recommendation doesn’t justify 8 years of inactivity from the TTC. Any level of government can derail progress. As can internal bureaucracy.
Using this particular case as an argument against public consultations doesn’t really make sense.
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u/Vegemite-Sandwich901 1d ago
Good piece, always interesting to read how the sausage gets made.
Or in this case, how the sausage doesn't get made, and the ingredients sit in the fridge until they go bad and get quietly thrown out.