Chris Selley: Get TIFF's red carpets out of the way of Toronto's commuters
We're shutting down the city's third-busiest transit line because people can't help staggering into traffic if Ryan Gosling is about?
Ryan Gosling poses for a photo with a fan on the red carpet for the film "La La Land" during the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
On Monday, Toronto City Council voted to take the provincial government to court over its sudden decision, in the middle of an election campaign, to reduce council's complement from 47 members to 25 — one for each federal and provincial riding in the city.
The vote was 27-15, and if that strikes you as less-than-resounding opposition to unprecedented political meddling by a score-settling premier in the economic capital of a G7 country, you should know the vote was only 24-17 even to politely convey city council's displeasure.
The takeaway: Even a lot of people who run this city don't take this city very seriously. And on Tuesday, yet more compelling evidence arrived: official notice that King Street between Spadina and University avenues will yet again be closed to all but pedestrian traffic for four days, Sept. 6-9, for the Toronto International Film Festival.
TIFF calls the sealed off area "Festival Street." It "promises four jam-packed days of free activities and a new rooftop party." It is, we are to believe, incompatible with King Street streetcars which, as of June, carry 80,000 people a day.
This annual spectacle has always been rather mortifying. What kind of jerkwater berg shuts down its third-busiest transit line because a bunch of movie stars are in town? A year ago, Mayor John Tory said he did not expect it to be repeated this year. But Tuesday, he told reporters he and city staff thought a total shutdown was better than risking multiple "unplanned closures" resulting from mobs of fans spilling on to King Street.
A TTC street car parked near King St. W. and Spadina Ave. in Toronto, Ont. on Thursday November 9, 2017. Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network
Upon reflection, I think I find this more mortifying. We're shutting down the city's third-busiest transit line because people can't help staggering into traffic — in general, or specifically if Ryan Gosling is about? I don't doubt a jam-packed King Street could present safety issues with streetcars. But if TIFF and King streetcars cannot in fact coexist, then I'm not sure it's dead-obvious it's the streetcars that must give way.
"I think most of the (streetcar) riders are people who understand the fundamental importance of TIFF," Tory averred. Maybe. The most recent economic impact study I'm aware of, which was commissioned by TIFF — funnily enough! — suggests the festival provides $200 million in net benefit to the city. That's boffo. Mind you, in 2016, city staff pegged Toronto's GDP at near $200 billion. This year, city taxpayers will actually subsidize this gilded blockbuster shmooz-fest — with adult ticket prices ranging from $18 to $82 — to the tune of $1.2 million, and for their trouble they get two weekdays of nightmare commutes during the first week of school.
How exactly does that add up to a fait accompli in TIFF's favour? There are places other than King Street to lay down red carpets into TIFF's theatres. There are other, far less important streets in downtown Toronto that might be renamed Festival Street for four days.
Indeed, it's all the more mortifying now that the King Street Pilot Project has proven a success: reducing streetcar travel times, increasing wait time reliability, and pushing ridership up 11 per cent, as of June, from the baseline. You wouldn't necessarily know it from watching Torontonians go about their days, but time is worth money. If 80,000 people are saving 60 or 70 or 80 seconds every day thanks to the pilot project, that very quickly adds up to big bucks. And they will lose many multiples of that fighting their way to work on Sept. 6 and 7.
Moreover, the pilot project has included reclaiming curb lanes from traffic to install sidewalk cafes, art installations, pop-up stages — that is, precisely the sort of thing Festival Street provides patrons. There is no logical reason streetcars couldn't run down the middle of that. It happens every weekend evening in lots of European cities.
But if it can't happen here, let's finally make that TIFF's problem, not just everybody else's.