In its partnership with Waterfront Toronto to build a city “from the internet up” near downtown Toronto, Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs has a lot of great ideas, but how they will look in a working city is still a major question. Transportation is among the urban systems that Sidewalk promises to remake in Quayside — the 12-acre (4.9-hectare) site on Toronto’s waterfront that the company has a role in co-planning — but instead of promoting efficient transit, priority is given to ride hailing and driverless cars.

On page 133 of its Request for Proposal (RFP), Sidewalk lays out three scenarios for transportation mode share. One would be forgiven for thinking that the bar on the left represents Toronto’s current mode share, but that’s not the case. That’s the 2011 mode share of auto-dependent Ward 30, which contains much of the Eastern Waterfront where Sidewalk hopes to expand once it has proven itself in Quayside, and with 54 percent of all trips made by automobile and only 30 percent by transit, it does present a negative picture. But it would be misleading to think that represents the whole of Toronto.

Left to right: 2011 mode share of Wards 30 and 28, followed by Sidewalk’s mode share goal (RFP, p. 133)

The second bar is not the city either, but the more transit-reliant Ward 28, where Quayside is located, as of 2011. Sidewalk says that if “best practices” were followed, such as connecting Quayside to existing transit routes, the site would reflect the mode share of the rest of the ward. Finally, the third bar is what Quayside could achieve if Sidewalk is allowed to pursue its vision, and it’s here the company’s priorities become apparent. Transit use would only increase by a single percentage point, while automobile use would be reduced to 15 percent by a larger uptake of walking and cycling (35 percent) and the use of driverless vehicles, ride hailing, and car share services (10 percent).

Without a deeper read, this chart makes it look like Sidewalk’s plan would be a major improvement on the current mobility patterns in the city, but the picture is more mixed. The numbers show that transit use has increased over the past decade, along with walking and cycling, and it would be reasonable to believe that the same applies to Ward 28, meaning the small transit increase predicted by Sidewalk may already be the area’s reality.

Chart from Toronto Star. Data from Statistics Canada.

In 2016, the national census found that 51 percent of trips in Toronto were made by automobile, 37 percent by transit, 8.6 percent on foot, and 4.6 percent on bike. It’s to be expected that residents of Quayside — it being so close to downtown — would be able to have a higher than average rates of walking and cycling, and Sidewalk’s plans in this area are very positive. The company wants to build retractable canopies that will extend when there is inclement weather and heat bike lanes to melt snow.

However, the minimal improvement in the rate of transit use, paired with the large increase in shared automobility services is more concerning, and there are several aspects of Sidewalk’s plan which show how the company is trying to give priority to ride hailing and driverless vehicles, while potentially even hampering the efficiency of transit and the experience of walkers and cyclists. Given that Sidewalk’s sister-company Waymo is one of the leaders in the driverless vehicle space, and it states several times in the RFP that it wants to use those vehicles in Quayside, it is worrying that the company seems to be prioritizing its own technologies from which it will profit instead of transportation that can more efficiently move a greater number of people.

Extending Transit to Quayside

Let’s start with the positive. It’s important to remember that Quayside is a very small site, but Sidewalk hopes that its involvement will lead to a role in the planning of the larger 800-acre (325-hectare) Eastern Waterfront. Most of Sidewalk’s plans revolve not so much around Quayside, but that larger area, and sometimes even the City of Toronto as a whole.

Sidewalk wants the City to add or extend several transit routes to Quayside so it has a good connection to other parts of the city and key infrastructure. The diagram on page 139 of the RFP illustrates these connections.

Proposed transit expansions to Quayside (RFP, p. 139)

Streetcar line 514 would be extended to Quayside, connecting it to the Yonge-University subway line and King Street, where a one-year pilot project is underway giving streetcars and pedestrians priority by restricting vehicles. The company also wants streetcar line 510 Spadina — which it incorrectly labels 501 — to be extended to Quayside for a direct connection to the University of Toronto, and a new streetcar added to connect Quayside to Union Station. Bus 65 would be extended to connect Quayside with Parliament Street and the Bloor-Danforth subway line, and two ferry services would be added to Jack Layton Terminal and Billy Bishop Airport.

Aside from actual transit connections, Sidewalk also proposes working with the city to “apply transit-friendly technology and street management techniques,” referring to the streetlights it’s developing for Quayside which will use computer vision to detect vehicles, transit, cyclists, and pedestrians, making it easier to give priority to the latter three. This is just one example of how Sidewalk is trying to push its own technologies into the fabric of the city, not just in Quayside or the Eastern Waterfront. While its transit plans are not bad — even welcome — there are other changes directed toward promoting driverless vehicles that are worrying.

Complicated Street Layout

As part of its city “built from the internet up,” Sidewalk seeks to abandon the street grid system that has proven to be the best layout not only for transit services, but also for pedestrians and cyclists. Transportation consultant Jarrett Walker argues that cities with a grid pattern “have a huge structural advantage in evolving into a transit metropolis,” yet that’s exactly what Sidewalk wants to move away from.