Host: Toronto's traffic problems are well known. Made movies in Toronto. And I visited Toronto and friends in Toronto. What's up with the traffic in Toronto?

Host: I don't know. You probably recognize that guy. It's Tom Cruise a couple of years ago talking about one of the things Toronto is famous for, but not in a good way. We've been talking about it, complaining about it, sometimes yelling about it for what feels like forever. How hard is it to get anywhere, how long it takes to get anywhere, how congested the streets are. And we know it's not just the frustration that's bad. Gridlock also takes a huge economic toll. So how much does it cost us and our leaders finally shifting into high gear to do something about it? Then one way to get more cars off the road. Good public transit. Don't take my word for it. Here's Metrolinx.

Host: Expanding public transit will ease congestion by getting cars off the road. With 700,000 more rush hour trips on transit each day throughout the region, and we do have expanded GO service. The Ontario line is on the horizon, and word is the long, long anticipated Eglinton Crosstown LRT is supposed to open in February. We'll see about that. But how much of a difference will that make? We look at whether transit users can look forward to a smoother ride in 2026 and beyond. This is The Rundown. Traffic congestion isn't just a massive headache for commuters, it also comes with a hefty price tag. Research suggests it could be costing the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area 44.7 billion a year in economic and social value. I talked to Giles Gershon, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, about the financial stakes and what route he thinks we should take to get out of this mess.

Host: Let's talk about that price tag. Pretty hefty when we talk about $40 billion. But help us understand what does that actually mean for cities when we talk about economic and social value.

Shoshana Sachs: A whole bunch of things. So it and it's kind of as you described it, but you've really got two factors here. You've got the economy and you've got quality of life. And the two kind of come together for a city to be prosperous and grow and be vibrant. Mobility is at the heart of that. Or connectivity, if you want to use that word. And when you've got the congestion crisis that we have, it really impedes that connectivity. So it means that if I'm delivering a product or service around the city or across the city or out of the city or into the city, that's taking me a lot longer. That's cost, right? If I'm a plumber or an electrician, I'm doing service calls. I'm going to do far fewer calls. That's going to reduce my income or I'm going to charge more. So it becomes a cost of living problem, right? You're seeing costs rise because of the difficulty of getting around the city.

Shoshana Sachs: At another level, it's companies coming to expand here, to grow here, to invest here or not, or leave the city because they find it too hard to get employees here because they can't get around, or that it's just to get back to the delivery of goods and services is too difficult. Move to another place. So so we know as a board of Trade that there are a number of large international companies that, you know, that put Toronto on their short list for an expansion for, you know, and they didn't come because of because of congestion. And it's kind of well known around the world that Toronto has an acute congestion problem. And it's one of, you know, we're in the top ten globally of, you know, of congestion problem. And it shouldn't be.

Host: Something we should be proud of, of course. All right. I want to talk. We are at the corner of Yonge and Eglinton. Lots of attention on the Eglinton Crosstown. Still don't have an exact date. We don't need to get into that. But do you see the crosstown helping alleviate some of these costs that you just talked about?

Shoshana Sachs: Absolutely. I mean, I think the crosstown will be I'm not going to say a game changer. I think the Ontario line plus Eglinton, you know, but also when you look at commuter rail, the massive expansion that's coming to go and electrification of go, which will speed up service, you know, all day, two way go, regional rail, these projects coming together over the next 8 or 9 years. That's a bit of a wait, but that will be those will be a game changer altogether. But even the crosstown itself will, you know, in the northern part of the northern part of the core, that will be that will be a significant improvement. But I will say this, if it is going to make the kind of difference that it needs to make, it can't have the same problems that Finch West has, which is just opened.

Shoshana Sachs: I was in Paris before Christmas, at a conference, and I had to take a kind of almost like Eglinton or Sinclair. There's an LRT running down the centre of a street called Berthier Boulevard. Berthier looks very similar. We stopped to let people on and off, and then we whizzed through traffic lights and we got to speeds of about. Probably seems like faster than it probably was, but it was maybe 40 to 50 km an hour. Oh, wow. So we actually got from A to B very quickly. I took that because I had a cousin living there, but I went back and forth quite a lot and it was amazing. And I kind of thought back to Saint Clair and I wondered about the, you know, I thought about Finch and, and of course, Eglinton and are we going to have signal signalling priority, for example, that will take you through traffic lights and get you A to B much more quickly? Then people will take it, right? Right. Reliability and speed are core to to transit.

Shoshana Sachs: Speaking of speed, you had talked about sort of it's kind of like commuters in transit. Riders just know that they're going to have to wait. When we talk about the Eglinton Crosstown 15 years to construct, six years later than when it was originally supposed to open Finch West, approximately four years. Our construction delays in these types of projects just par for the course. Are we supposed to know when we talk about, you know, transit or kind of you lay out the go and you lay out Ontario line. There's a lot of promise there. There's a lot of excitement there. But it comes with this, this large, long, long wait.

Shoshana Sachs: You know, I think par for the course here or has been par for the course here. I don't think past is prologue. When you talk to the folks who are on the Ontario working on the Ontario Line or on the go electrification expansion, they're using very different techniques. We did a report out of the Board of Trade about a year and a bit ago called The Price of Progress. And what we found was this massive, massive gap in the cost of building transit in Toronto per kilometre, like nearly $800 million versus Europe, European cities, Milan, Paris, London, Barcelona, Istanbul, where it's between 100 and $300 million. Why? The way they plan their project? It's all about planning. You got to plan very carefully, you know? And so every thing kind of emanates from planning. Our new projects are being much better planned than I think the current ones that we're kind of still addressing the governance of the project. Look at Eglinton, the disputes right there, legion between the various parties, other countries.

Shoshana Sachs: And now we are moving to an alliance model where you pull all the parties together and who does what exactly? Who's responsible for what exactly? How are we going to collaborate exactly? So you don't end up with these disputes? That's a huge factor in the delays. And then it's the use of technology. We haven't been using technology nearly as well as the Europeans digital twin technology, for example, when in the planning process we're using it now. The Europeans have been using it for a while. We haven't used it in the past. A standardization of tunnels and and stations new to us, but they've been doing that in Europe. And then probably another key factor is in Toronto and in Ontario we've typically done episodic projects. You start a project, you finish it with that team, you collapse it, start another one some other time, a whole new team, whole new way of working. That takes a lot of time in Europe. It's a flow of projects, continuous flow. You learn from the past projects, you apply those learnings to the next project on you go. And that has a big difference. We're doing that in nuclear in Ontario, right? Huge results. Right. And so those are some of the things that we are now doing that we didn't do before. That should make a big difference in speeding up the projects.

Host: On top of that, is there a role for business when we talk about funding transit?

Marco D'Angelo: Well, I mean, I mean business, obviously, you know, we business has employees, employees use transit, they pay for transit. You know, I don't think there should be any special levy, if that's what you're saying. I think transit is something that I mean, property taxes pay in Toronto, 60% of property taxes go to transit. And who pays the commercial property tax. But we have higher rates here for industrial and and commercial property than other places in North America. So business is paying for transit. Having said that, it is woefully underfunded and it's woefully underbuilt. But that's not a role for business.

Marco D'Angelo: I think there are ways that the TTC, for example, could be restructured financially to have a better capital base and to and to fund its operations. Right now, it's got a huge problem with funding its operations. In fact, when Eglinton comes on stream, that's going to lift the operating cost of the TTC substantially. Maintenance, repair, everything else. I'm not sure they have the funds for it. Oh, okay.

Host: Something we'll have to to watch for in terms of in the last couple of minutes that we have recommendations when we talk about not just transit here but congestion, our gridlock problem, what do you have?

Shoshana Sachs: Well, we put out a report called an action plan. Actually last year was adopted by the city. We were very pleased with that. The mayor adopted it and so did council. One of our recommendations was have a traffic commissioner, a congestion commissioner. They've just appointed a congestion commissioner. But we really thought that was we needed a point person at a very senior level at City Hall who would be able to work across the departments and focus on how do I solve this big problem. That person has to have significant authority because, you know, everything is a trade off. And in the past we make multiple trade offs and congestion does not get resolved.

Shoshana Sachs: So you're going to have to make trade offs in favour of traffic flow. But those are things like putting in place smart signalling like AI enabled signalling, which other cities are using in abundance. We've been very slow to adopt. We have pilot projects now that you can that would move traffic freely where there is no cross traffic coming, you don't sit there at a red light and nobody's coming. Why you know, so you've got that, then you've got things like we've got major art. We have relatively few major arteries as a big city. We need to get back to two lanes of traffic, right? Which we had in the past. But often now they're reduced by on street parking. Maybe, maybe LRT or streetcars, track, cafe and bike lanes.

Shoshana Sachs: All of those things have now really shut down, essentially some of our major arteries making congestion a lot worse. The the congestion commissioner should have responsibility for a plan for easing congestion on those on those major arteries. One other thing, we've had a lot of construction, a lot of a lot of construction projects, building condos and so on. Often a lane is taken out of service, right? And you could go down a major artery and have 3 or 4 of those on your route into, into the city or out. Happens a lot. But but really, you know, when you think about it, the city has charged in the past relatively little to take a lane out of service. Other cities either ban it right or charge a lot. So you reduce the amount of time that that lane is taken out of service because it costs you a lot of money. And so we recommended that that the city massively increase the cost, particularly on major arteries, so that you reduce the frequency of those and you reduce the time taken. Those are things that the city has now adopted as policy, but now we have to see them implemented.

Host: All right. Seems like a bumpy road to to get us to where we need to. But there's a lot of promise there. So looking.

Shoshana Sachs: Forward to it. It's critical to the future of the city.

Host: We're going to leave it there. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Gio Petti: It's not just drivers who complain about getting from A to B. Transit users have been struggling long wait times, unreliable service, stressful commutes. But things could be starting to change in Ontario. They're beefing up regional GO service in Toronto, the Ontario Line, and at long last, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT are on their way. Ottawa, where the light rail system has had a bumpy ride, to say the least, is expanding its O-Train service. That's a pretty impressive list, and some pretty maps, but big plans and press releases don't always mean real changes on the way. So should transit users be feeling optimistic right now? I asked Shoshana Sachs, associate professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering Gio Petti, podcaster and producer of documentaries like A Train to Nowhere about Ottawa Transit and Marco D'Angelo, president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association. Thank you, too, for joining us in studio and Marco for joining us on the line. Shauna, I'm going to start with you. Based on yesterday's news, there's hope that the Eglinton Crosstown LRT will finally be operational. I'm not going to commit to a date because I know that's sort of up in the air. The TTC CEO, of course, won't commit to the February 8th date, but is there a lesson here for cities just about its history that we can take away from how this whole project started? 15 years of construction, six years later than when it was supposed to be delivered?

Shoshana Sachs: Oh, there's so many lessons that it's hard to pick one, but I think I'll go with that. You can't contract out responsibility. There was this idea at the beginning of the public private partnership that the way we made the contract would make it other people's problems to deliver for us. And when we really want something, we can't make it other people's problems. We have to stay involved. We have to keep responsibility. And so the fantasy that the OPP model was just going to make it other people's problems, we're going to get what we want. Nothing would ever be expensive again. We can't buy into those fantasies. Big things require hard work, commitment and follow through. And that's the only way we're going to get more transit done in our cities.

Host: All right, Marco, same question to you. Is there a lesson here for other cities about our history here with the Eglinton Crosstown?

Marco D'Angelo: Well, I mean, Canada is in the major transit build out over the last decade. And of course, Ontario is one of the the clearest examples. And, you know, it's it's it goes I think it needs to be noted. You know, the two LRT lines opened in the city of Ottawa last year as well. The the on time percentage improved through the year. Now, there have been challenges during the winter at TTC opening. Finch I think was a very good step. And certainly the advancement on other major projects across the province of Ontario and across the country as well, like the Broadway subway in Vancouver, the extensions of the Blue Line in Montreal, there's there's big projects that are happening across the country, each of which face unique challenges. But where they come together is that funding certainty is really what helps to ensure that these projects are able to move forward.

Host: All right. We'll talk about the money a little bit later. But I want to come to you as someone who uses the transit system as an advocate, what parallels do you see with sort of I'm sure you've heard, even though you're in Ottawa, you've heard about the Eglinton Crosstown, you heard about the Finch line, but what parallels do you see with the O-Train in Ottawa?

Gio Petti: Well, it's funny, I, I one of the, the biggest things is just the time of the projects. Ironically, if we go even further back in time to 2000 or actually the 90s, back when Mike Harris was Prime Minister of Ontario, Premier, Premier of Ontario, excuse me, his common sense revolution funding cuts were what stopped expansion of Ottawa's transitway and what originally filled in the tunnel that was being dug for the the LRT, the Eglinton LRT that was going to be built that we're finally getting now. And ironically, that's what led to Ottawa adopting a transit system. But it is really disappointing. This, this constant stream of, you know, delivery dates, you know, and what I would say, jobs not being done right the first time like we saw with the the the Finch line is slower than a bus. And that's insane for an independent transit line where it should be faster than a bus, you know. And with Ottawa, you know, very similar in a very similar vein, the line two line, which opened about a little more than a year ago now. Fantastic. But a lot of it was single tracked, so which means that the trains cannot run at the fastest speeds possible, and with a lot more capacity than it should.

Gio Petti: And with both of these projects, we're seeing effects of things that should have been done when they were being built. But now it's being pushed to be a we're going to fix that later. One thing I do want to ask in your documentary, you kind of you, you take us through a journey of the politics behind it, the funding, but then at the end, you kind of get the the people who use transit, including yourself. And outside of the speed and the single track, what would you say are some of the issues with the O-Train?

Gio Petti: Well, I live in a suburb called Riverside South, which is basically on the edge of Ottawa. For years it has been badly served by transit. I've often been told that it's my fault for living in Riverside South, that it's like, oh, you can't live there and expect transit to be good. But with the addition of this train, we've seen that we can have good transit here, but it's still not at a level where it's perfect. The thing that I hear a lot from people and where I was trying to go with that, is because transit was so badly served. So many people were led to, you know, using cars to get around rather than using public transit. So what the O-Train had the perfect opportunity to do was to convert these car commuting people into using transit. But it hasn't been done very well. There's a lack of a park and ride. There's a lack of easy access to the station. So when people see the option to take the train, a lot of people have dismissed it or just thought, okay, this is nice, but it's still easier for me to drive. So there's a lot of things that could have been done, like addition of parking, ride more connections to the stations as far as buses go, and just more frequency on the train that so many people just get turned off from it. And it's unfortunate.

Shoshana Sachs: Shoshana, let's add on that OCTranspo is claiming that doubling the track will take about I think it's 2046 when it comes to transit users. I think we there's these great promise. There's a lot of excitement. And then we see the sort of I don't want to call it a price tag, but it's that little thing at the end that's just like, all right, we're going to have to wait, you know, several years. Help us understand why does it take so long for something as doubling a track that, you know, when Geo was on that train the first time, probably wanted to go a little bit faster. Lovely views, I'm sure.

Gio Petti: But, you know, why does it take so long to get that done? Well, so there's a bunch of things going on. The 2046 date isn't construction, right? There's no money committed to the doubling. There isn't a plan. It's not that there. We're going to be doing shovels really slowly for the next 20 years. When you have dates like that, it's saying fictionally in our plan to maybe one day have money. What they're saying is this isn't currently a priority for us. And when you look into the numbers, the decisions not to double the track were made based on predictions of ridership and how expensive it would be. And there are places where it can be very hard to double track, because you're on a bridge over the Rideau Canal that you would have to completely rebuild the bridge, or you're in quite a narrow trench. That would involve quite a lot of construction.

Gio Petti: And so basically it was a financial choice to say this would be expensive, and we don't think we have the money or the prediction of the future ridership to adjust for it. Something that comes up all the time in these discussions about transit is, of course, we all want our transit to be fast and convenient and super high quality and go everywhere all the time. But there's a question of, well, how do we pay for that? Who do we think should be paying? How expensive should we be? How subsidized should it be? How much money should the government commit to public transit? And one of the things that comes up, like in neighborhoods like Riverside, is are we willing to build the density that can serve higher order transit? Are we willing to prioritize how vehicles move on our street that prioritize moving the most number of people, which is always by transit? Are we willing to pay the taxes that are required to build transit places that have really excellent transit, really excellent mobility of any kind, including cars, walking, public transit? They say, yes, we do. We want to move around fast enough that we're willing to do the things that it takes. In Ontario, not so much.

Host: Well, let's talk about the money there, Marco. Why is it why is stable government funding so important? I know last year's federal budget had a change that removed a steady flow of about $3 billion per year for about ten years. That's changed to sort of a bigger pot of money that would go to a number of projects, but help us understand what that stable funding would go to.

Marco D'Angelo: Yeah, I mean, we had worked very closely with the federal government to secure $30 billion over ten years in a permanent transit fund that would provide $3 billion a year. And the November 4th budget did put that amount into into doubt. And that's an issue because projects are planned, they're technically ready. And what's missing is this stable, long term funding. And we know municipalities cannot fund projects of this magnitude on their own. And so these are national interests because they reduce commute times, they reduce congestion and they improve affordability and they connect housing. So it's really important that the federal government come back to the table, and we are working with them to ensure that that larger fund that covers more areas of municipal infrastructure, we want to ensure that that transit will continue to have a very dedicated stream that will deliver on the commitments of the federal government, and then those have flowed through the provinces and cities to make ten year plans around the certainty and the stability of that funding from Ottawa, the federal government in Ottawa.

Marco D'Angelo: Yep. Ten year plans and heavy projects are really important. We're going to need to keep doing that. But we also need practical one year, two year and three year plans, right? I don't want to wait until I'm in my 50s or 60s before I see transit improve, and there is a huge amount that we can do through how we use our existing streets to make our public transit better, as long as at the moment the provincial government will allow. The provincial government has made it potentially illegal over the last year to make public transit and just mobility for everybody really fast. So, for example, the fastest, most effective thing we could do to move many people quickly around our cities would be to make dedicated bus lanes and places where the buses are really busy. Toronto has five priority routes they want to do. You can tell me if Ottawa has routes that that they want to do.

Marco D'Angelo: We could do this in less than a year if we had the gumption to do it. It's very cheap. You don't need federal funding. It's the kind of thing that supports itself with more riders. It's good for businesses. On every metric. We could care about speed, money, air quality. These are win win win projects. But the provincial government made them illegal. But many of those many of those things are. Fixable under municipal jurisdiction. I mean, we saw, you know, Bus Lane dedicated on Bathurst that was controversial. That went ahead by City of Toronto. So there's also signal transit signal priority. I mean, there are a lot of tools that municipalities do have in their toolbox as well to to to prioritize transit over cars and cities across Ontario. You know, I have been have been innovative in doing that in the region of Waterloo in terms of making sure that the that the ion train is able to to have priority. There have been a number of things where cities on their own have been able to enhance, whether it's for, for, for bicycles or for active transportation, that that has been a priority. But it's true that that that senior levels of government need to be at the table to help fund that and also not to block efforts to to engage in that via legislation or other strings attached to project funds.

Marco D'Angelo: I know you want to move on, but it's not transit over cars. It's mobility for everybody. When more people move faster, it is better for transit riders and better for car drivers as well. This is really important because we have this false opinion that it's a fight, and actually we can make systems that are better for any road user, but we have to stop imagining that it's a zero sum game.

Host: Okay. I do want to get you in here. You know, as someone who uses transit on a regular, who is documented, who has spoken to people, kind of. If you were able to pick up on this conversation that's happening right now. But also advice for for frustrated transit users right now as well.

Gio Petti: Well, just on the discussion, I think that like as you were saying, I think short term plans and like one two year plans are important because if we've seen how OC Transpo recently, although they've opened these new train lines, they've had incredible difficulties over these past couple of weeks with buses. We had the new their new operator, Troy Charter, basically admit we are not delivering great service. We're cancelling way too many trips, and they've even implemented a plan to try to get more buses because their old fleets are breaking down and they've committed to electric buses, but the electric buses aren't shipping as fast as they should be. So they're in a rut right now. And I think having those short term solutions, as in what they're trying to do now, is getting in more refurbished buses, getting more mechanics to fix the broken buses, to make sure that they're accessible to commuters. I think that's that's, you know, really great to see that they're trying to improve. But as far as what commuters can do, I think we are in a very good position because Ottawa is having their 2026 mayoral election this year. So as a commuter, you have the power to say, I think, I think whether it be your city council or whether it be mayor, you can vote who you think is going to do the best job for transit.

Gio Petti: And I really implore a lot of people out there, look straight to the camera, like, go out and vote. If you live in Ottawa, this is a very important election and it could really dictate the quality of the transit system for the next couple of years. And transit will be an election. Issue across the province, but certainly recognizing the average age of a bus in 2019 was eight and a half years old. And today it's almost 11 years old. So think about that in terms of out of service and maintenance costs and being off the road. So really renewing the fleet, that was an excellent and excellent point. And that's something that, that, that, that federal funding is meant to, to do. And that's something that can happen within that 1 to 2 year time frame that was cited.

Host: All right, folks, unfortunately we are going to have to leave it there. Time goes by very quickly. Very passionate conversation. Love that. Marco. Gio, Shauna, thank you so much. Really appreciate your insights and your time.

Shoshana Sachs: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Host: We want our show to reflect you and what you care about. What issues would you like to see us cover? What makes you tune in? Let us know. Go to TVO.org/rundownfeedback or leave us a comment on YouTube. Until then, see you tomorrow.