🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Ana Bailão’s Improving Access to the Toronto Islands plan

🔗 LINK: anabailao.ca/latest-news/improving-acce…

🔧 DOABLE? Likely.

💰 COSTED? Nope.

✨ OVERALL: ⭐️⭐️ (2 out of five)

Let’s give a couple of stars to Ana Bailão for putting the notion of improving access to Toronto Island on this allegorical table on which mayoral policy proposals sit.

The islands are such an underused gem in this city. This campaign spent the first several weeks preoccupied with what should happen to 155-acre Ontario Place — should it be a park? A spa? A Science Centre?

Meanwhile, Toronto has a waterfront attraction that, at 820 acres, is more than five times bigger. It’s got some of the best public green spaces and beaches in the city. And it’s totally car-free.

But the number of people who visit is way smaller than it should be. I’ve talked to longtime residents who haven’t been since they were kids, and just think of it as a place with a dinky amusement park. It’s way more than that, but getting there via the ferries is such a hassle that it’s not really just a place you think about popping by for an hour or two. It’s a real commitment, involving checking schedules and buying tickets.

So, yes, let’s improve access, but this plan offers marginal — not substantial — improvement. Bailão proposes making ferry tickets free for kids under 12 when accompanied by an adult. Those tickets currently cost $4.30, so that’s a decent savings for larger families, but my bet is that for a lot of people the barrier to the island is not the cost, but dealing with the crowds around the ferries. It does not feel like there’s a lot of extra capacity on busy summer days, and trying to push more people through an already overburdened ferry probably won’t improve things.

There’s also no mention of what it’d cost to eliminate this fare revenue, and where the operational funding would come from to replace it.

Bailão’s other ideas include adding Bike Share to the Island, something which is already part of their expansion plans.

She also wants to let people tap their Presto card to get on the ferry, which is a reasonably good idea but probably won’t improve operation unless they change to a Proof-of-Payment type system similar to streetcars or GO Trains.

Bailão has done well to identify a problem, but the solution could be bolder. A pedestrian/cycle bridge over the eastern gap, or some sort of access via the airport tunnel, both offer genuine improvements that’ll actually get more people to the islands.

PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.