From a service delivery point of view, the key pages are the 25 Key Performance Indicators and the Daily Customer Service Report.

The “KPIs” are intended to give ongoing information about ridership, service quality and station conditions including availability of escalators and elevators.

Strangely enough, the daily report is not available to the public, only a snapshot from March 19 on which — surprise! — everything is just fine, thank you very much.  This is precisely what has been wrong with the TTC for so many years — they are addicted to hearing good news.

Three changes are badly needed.

1.  Put real time data online

It’s all very well to know service ran so well two months ago, but I want to know how these indices are tracking today and over recent weeks.  Riders who waited while full buses zoomed past their stops, or were thrown off of short-turning streetcars, need to see what’s happening now and whether the TTC’s stats reflect their actual experience.

2.  Put more detail online

While the system as a whole may meet its targets, that does not reflect actual rider experience at a route-by-route level or at various times of the day.  The public information should be subdivided by route so that riders (and members of Council) can check against their local services rather than system averages, and the stats should be subdivided by time of day to distinguish busy peak periods from quiet evenings or weekends.

3.  Collect meaningful statistics

The statistics and targets now reported by the TTC have been with us in one form or another in places like the Chief General Manager’s Report (now the CEO’s Report) for some time.  Everything looks rosy until one thinks about what data drives the KPIs and whether it is really meaningful.

Subway and surface operations are measured by the proportion of trips that operate within three minutes of the scheduled headway.  It’s good to see the TTC moving away from “on time” as a measure of service quality because in most cases customers only care that vehicles/trains are regularly and reliably spaced.  They couldn’t care less if they are “on time” except in cases of wide headways.

However, if a service is scheduled to run every 4 minutes, this means that any headway from 1 minute to 7 minutes is acceptable for the statistics.  Even worse, a parade of vehicles each 1 minute apart meets the target except for the first in the queue where, presumably, there is a large gap.  A parade of 10 cars would be 90% “on time” because 9 of the 10 would be within 3 minutes of their scheduled headway.

With uneven headways more passengers accumulate in the wider gaps.  What most riders see is the train, bus or streetcar that arrives with a heavy load after a long wait, and they may not even be able to board.

The KPI needs to be revised so that vehicle bunching cannot produce statistics showing an acceptable quality of service.  As things stand, it would be easy to achieve a target of 2/3 of trips within an acceptable headway and still have quite ragged service especially on “frequent” routes.

Where headways are wider (some off-peak services and especially those with branches), on time performance is much more important.  Riders would like to plan their travel based on when a bus is supposed to appear rather than having to face waits of 20 minutes or more.

At a route level, an index is required to track service quality not  just at the route’s peak point, but at termini and common short-turn points.  Some routes have multiple peak points, and reporting only on one of them can misrepresent what many riders actually experience.

A sad commentary on the reliability of the SRT is that its service target is to operate 80% of scheduled trips.  Whether this will happen in a snowy winter remains to be seen.

Elevators and escalators are supposed to be 97% available.  However, I understand that this status is of about 9am and does not reflect whatever outages may occur through the day.  Moreover, devices that are out of service for maintenance don’t count against the target.  Unfortunately, a rider who cannot use stairs only cares that they cannot use their station.

As of May 16, 2012, there are seven escalators listed as out of service by the TTC not including devices at Union Station affected by the second platform project.  From a rider’s point of view, these are just as unavailable as a bus or streetcar that shows up after a long gap or hopelessly late.  They are a service that is expected but not available.

Outages for planned maintenance should be included in the stats, even if as a separate category.  Availability stats should be based on all-day operations, not once-a-day surveys.  (Note that it is not necessary to physically visit every station, but simply to log trouble calls that come in.)

When I spoke with the TTC about the fundamental problems in their statistics and goals, they freely admit that these just are not good enough.  However, management and Commissioners are now trumpeting a scorecard of success just at a time when they really need to set the standards higher.  All those green checkmarks will change at least to yellow if not red when the bar is raised.  TTC management and staff must be ready to accept the need for improvement against goals and measurements that reflect what passengers actually see day-to-day.

The right-of-way for streetcars will be constructed as part of the Cherry Street project now underway, and this notice confirms that streetcar track will be included in the original construction even though streetcars won’t likely run here until after the Pan Am Games in 2015.

The track assembly is taking place near Cherry and Polson near T&T Supermarket and far from the existing streetcar system.  The last time streetcars were in this neighbourhood, they were on a boat heading for Egypt.  Who knows when we might see track installed on this part of Cherry in the Port Lands.

Updated Tuesday, May 15

The eastbound traffic diversion will remain at Connaught until May 21 when the road closure will shift west to Greenwood.  A one-week closure of the Queen/Connaught intersection is planned.

Monday, May 14 observations

New sidewalk construction is underway on the south side east from Woodfield and has progressed almost one block to Woodward.  Sidewalks in this stretch are generally in bad shape from past years’ construction projects.

The track from west of Connaught to west of Coxwell has been cut into sections in the roadway to simplify digging up the trackbed.

The rate of work does not appear to give any sense of urgency.

Some riders report that buses signed “Parliament” are actually kicking off passengers westbound at Broadview.  Many Queen cars are short-turning at Broadview making the overlap between services less than originally planned.  A Queen car that short turns does not serve the westbound stop where buses drop their passengers.

Tuesday, May 8 observations

Overhead power cut from the east gate of the “trailer yard” at Russell to just west of Coxwell.  Cars can access the carhouse only by running through the yard from the northwest entrance and then turning south on Connaught.

Congestion may occur on Connaught when there are many streetcars as well as diverting road traffic using Connaught to reach (and turn left at) Eastern Avenue.

Streetcar and bus service is erratic.  Buses are looping west via Parliament rather than via River as originally planned because Carroll Street, originally conceived as the southbound leg of the loop, has been closed for one block for a new park.  This was approved by Council some time ago.

Construction will continue in many parts of the city notably affecting the streetcar system.

Waterfront / Spadina

The separate operation of 509 Harbourfront and 510 Spadina will continue into June, but the Spadina streetcar service will be replaced with buses running in mixed traffic to permit construction.  This includes both track repairs and changes to the safety islands in anticipation of the new LFLRVs and the implementation of the Presto fare card.

Service on 511 Bathurst will be increased to absorb some of the traffic that might otherwise attempt to use the 510 Spadina service.

Whether this arrangement, with buses stuck in the often-jammed traffic lanes of Spadina, will work at all remains to be seen.  I cannot help wondering why the work is not staged in such a way that buses could use the right-of-way for at least part of the distance with police assistance at merge points.

Welding of new rail for the reconstruction of track on Queen’s Quay is now in progress in front of the Redpath’s Sugar site.  Tentative plans have streetcar service coming off of the 509 Harbourfront car at the end of July for the beginning of construction.

Queen Street East / McCaul Street

Work will continue on Queen near Russell Carhouse, but the reconstruction of McCaul Street will close McCaul Loop.  During this period, the branch of the 501 operating from Russell to McCaul will be extended to Wolseley Loop at Bathurst Street.  Whether it will actually reach this destination in the time allowed is quite another matter, and I expect to see a lot of cars short-turning.

Dufferin Street

Dufferin Street will be closed to transit between King and Queen for track and water main work.  The branches of 29 Dufferin which normally operate to Dufferin Loop will be short-turned at Queen via Gladstone.  The branches which operate to the Princes’ Gate will divert via Queen, Shaw and King around the construction zone.

2012.06.18 Service Changes

Major items included:

• a status report on the LRT projects,
• proposed changes to the Richmond Hill extension of the Yonge Subway,
• the Framework Agreement with Metrolinx for implementation of the Presto farecard,
• the Customer Satisfaction Survey, and
• the CEO’s report.

LRT Project Status Report

With both Metrolinx and City Council approvals in hand for the four previously-approved LRT projects, work on the network is ramping up again although formally this still awaits Cabinet approval at Queen’s Park.  For reasons best known to the provincial government, this is unlikely to appear on their agenda until the summer, possibly July.

Eglinton

Construction continues at the tunnel launch site at Black Creek.  The tunnel boring machines will be delivered and begin work in fall 2012.  Early thoughts on tunneling strategy presumed concurrent work east from Black Creek and west from Brentcliffe to a common extraction point at Chaplin Station.  This appears to have changed due to issues with tunneling under Eglinton West and Eglinton stations.

It is not safe to tunnel close to an existing structure because there  must be enough headroom between the tunneling equipment and any structure above for the earth to provide support.  However, the Eglinton line’s stations must be close to the subway structure for easy of pedestrian connections between the two.  At Eglinton West station, the TBMs will be extracted west of the station, a new launch site will be built to the east, and tunneling to Yonge will resume from that point.

This will require an extended shutdown of the south end of the Allen Road, a prospect that I am sure will cause much anti-LRT sentiment even though the same process would have been required for a subway line.

The tunnel east of Yonge will be built under a separate contract.

For a short time after the meeting, there was some confusion about the effect of station construction on local neighbourhoods.  Erroneously, Karen Stintz remarked at one point that there would be no concern as the TBMs would just dig through the station area.  Of course this is not true because the station structures require cut-and-cover construction.  Some, but not all, of this can take placed under a decked road.  Stintz corrected herself, but the remark set off a media discussion about the effect of construction at station sites.

Although Oakwood station still appears on TTC maps of the Eglinton line, and Metrolinx (according to the TTC report) awarded a design contract for it in February, there have been no public meetings for this site.  TTC staff advised the Commission that Metrolinx may drop this station from the plan due to low projected use.  Commissioner Josh Colle commented that he has received inquiries from developers about the station, and there is some confusion about who, if anyone, is co-ordinating the LRT project and potential development activity.

Metrolinx purchased the Kodak lands near Eglinton and Weston Road in February 2012 for the Eglinton line’s Maintenance and Storage Facility (MSF).  Preliminary work for an EA for this site is underway, and public consultation should occur in fall 2012.

Kennedy Station

Recently Metrolinx confirmed that the scheme to through-route Scarborough and Eglinton trains had been dropped from their plans due to an inbalance in projected demand for the two lines and concerns about service reliability.  Aside from what this may say about the TTC’s hopes for operating surface LRT in street medians, this also triggers a change in the operation of the revised Kennedy Station.

A new design will be presented for public comment in fall 2012.

Scarborough RT

Although the Scarborough line will use the new yard at Conlins Road as its primary carhouse, the TTC and Metrolinx are still reviewing the land at the existing McCowan carhouse and yard.  This might be recycled as a storage yard to increase east-end capacity for the fleet and better balance the process of loading service onto the Eglinton line from both ends of the route.

TTC staff advised the Commission that Metrolinx may drop the lightly-used Ellesmere Station from the route.

Finch

Although the Finch route will not begin construction for several years, a section of the underground station at Keele (Finch West Station on the Spadina subway extension) will be pre-built as part of the subway work to reduce costs and avoid the need to tear up the intersection again for the LRT line.

The underground segment is short, just long enough to contain the station platforms.  Its design is a good example of the minimum requirements for the space needed to dip under an intersection, a scheme often proposed as a way of reducing traffic effects at major intersections.  Although the station box structure shown here is only 60m long, the gradient of the line is kept at 0.3% for a longer stretch in case an expansion to handle 90m trains were necessary.

Finch West Station EPR Drawings

The turnback tracks for Finch West will be located on the surface east of Keele.  The TTC has not yet decided whether to include the stop east of Keele in the project, or simply to end the line with the turnback tracks east of the station portal.

Land for a Finch MSF west of Jane Street was purchase by Metrolinx in 2011.

Vehicles

A mock-up of the Metrolinx LRV may be available according to the TTC report this summer.

The Effect of Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP)

Metrolinx’ desire (and provincial policy) to route all major projects through Infrastructure Ontario and an AFP process has triggered a debate about unnecessary delay to the affected projects.  TTC staff advised that under AFP, the entire process of taking a project to completed design and construction is bundled as one piece of work for a private sector consortium.  This means that preliminary design (typically to 30%) must be complete for an entire project before it can be farmed out via AFP, and work that might otherwise have taken place in parallel with construction must happen up front.  This will typically add one to two years to the projects.

TTC staff will report back further on questions relating to AFP and overall project management at the May 30, 2012 meeting.

At the Metrolinx meeting last week, there were veiled references to potential problems with AFP and project delivery, and I had the sense of an “AFP if necessary, but not necessarily AFP” sentiment among some present.  The question, of course, is whether the up-front delay will be offset by a robust, cheaper and possibly faster design and construction process.

Originally, AFP was to be used only for the Conlins Road MSF and for the Scarborough project, but now all parts of the LRT plan are subject to this methodology and this has contributed to the extended project timelines.

Yonge Subway Extension Amendments

The TTC will launch an amendment to the Transit Project Assessment for the Richmond Hill subway extension for the following changes:

• modifying Cummer station to add a substation, and to eliminate a conflict between a ventillation shaft and an existing sewer;
• reducing the size of the underground bus loop at Steeles station and eliminating one of its access ramps;
• adding a bus loop at Clark station to remove some traffic from Steeles;
• removing Royal Orchard station from the project as there is minimal development potential at this site;
• adding a storage and maintenance area for 14 trainsets north of Richmond Hill station and adjacent to the CN rail corridor.

The proposed storage and light maintenance area will be three tracks wide and over 800m long.  An earlier scheme that had been mentioned at TTC meetings involving a new carhouse on property to be acquired in York Region appears to have been dropped.

The report includes a history of this proposed extension and the text of City Council’s conditional approval in January 2009.  The “Downtown Relief Line” figures prominently in this approval, but the TTC has so far been silent on options for this project.

Presto Framework

The primary function of this report is to recommend that the Commission delegate authority to CEO Andy Byford to negotiate and execute agreements with Metrolinx for the implementation of Presto according to a previously approved framework.  The report includes a recitation of the history of this project and a description of the division of responsibility for various aspects of the design, implementation and operation of the system.

Although there is a reference to functional requirements including the “fare policies and products” to be supported, we have still not seen any public discussion of what these might be.  We do not know what fare models the TTC is contemplating, or if any options have been “designed out” of the system.  I have sent a query to the TTC for further information about this.

In its negotiations with Metrolinx, the TTC has been quite firm about capping its portion of the system implementation costs at $47-million.  This is based on an original estimate of $140m total for a new fare collection system, an amount that is at least a decade out of date.  Metrolinx will finance anything beyond the level of available funding and will, in theory, recoup the investment out of efficiencies in their part of the operation and fees (at a rate of 5.25% of Presto revenues).  To what degree this actually happens will almost certainly be buried in Metrolinx general financial statements.

Customer Satisfaction Survey

The presentation made by Chris Upfold at the meeting is not available online.  The information in it is guardedly optimistic about customer attitudes, although there are some noticeable areas such as service quality where riders are less than pleased.

The survey is conducted on a rolling basis so that it is not subject to the distortion of a large point-in-time sample that might be skewed by a single major event, and to allow for tracking of evolving attitudes.  As the collection of data expands, the information will also give reliable indications of differences between various populations such as suburban/downtown residents, time-of-day effects, and the sex and age of riders.

I hope to get more information about this survey in the near future, and will publish a separate article when this is available.

CEO’s Report

The new format of the CEO’s Report (formerly the Chief General Manager’s Report) was introduced at the March TTC meeting.  This is the second report in this format, and the first covering operations for 2012.

When I first learned that the new CEO, Andy Byford, planned to introduce KPIs (“Key Performance Indicators) as a reporting tool, I cringed.  In my previous professional life at another large public sector agency, this type of reporting occurred at so consolidated and averaged a level that meaningful information was hidden within broad averages.  Indeed, management reporting tools can turn into an exercise in “gaming the system” to produce results that reflect well in the metrics.

The current set of KPIs and the information in the CEO’s report is intended as a work in progress to evolve with more detail and a better understanding of the system’s operation.  That, in turn, will bring the ability to track performance at a detailed level.  We shall see.

Ridership

Ridership for 2012 is running ahead of 2011 by 4% and above budget by 2.3%.  This, coupled with changes to the loading standards that eliminated some of the spare capacity used to absorb growth, creates a need for more service beyond what was originally planned.   The projected ridership for 2012 is now 512-million up from the budgeted 503-million, a number that was not credible when the budget was passed as it was only marginally higher than the 2011 actual.

A report detailing these requirements was intended to be presented as a companion to the CEO’s report, but it was not completed in time.  This report is expected to be on the May 30th meeting’s agenda.

Thanks to the machinations of the Ford-dominated Commission and actions taken by Council, we have been through two budgets where sacrifice took precedence over service.  Any report on expanding system capacity must not simply address the effect of ridership growth, but also the question of whether a return to the Miller-era standards should be considered to give better resiliency to the service.  Crowded buses and streetcars load more slowly, and passengers are not happy being left at stops.  Among the topics I hope to see in a report on future service requirements are:

• A realistic review and projection of riding growth showing where (routes, network segments) and when (peak, offpeak, weekend) this is expected, and the effects this will have on service requirements.  Too many TTC budgets have low-balled riding projections resulting in budgeted service levels that cannot address actual demand.  Past efforts to improve service have been hamstrung by constraints on fleet size, garage space and operator workforce.  All of these need to be addressed in any co-ordinated program of service expansion.
• Codification of the ad hoc Service Standards that were implemented as part of the 2011 and 2012 budget processes, and a discussion of the effect of rolling back to the 2010 standard on service quality, attractiveness and budgets.
• Review of services actually operated to ensure that they meet whatever standards are in place, especially as this relates to maximum headways and walking distances.
• Review of the process for adding or reintroducing services.  Under the Ridership Growth Strategy, the need to consider extending services to additional periods (e.g. providing evening or weekend service on a route) was not an issue because the standard called for full service.  In an era of budget cuts, the thought of actually adding back some service has not been on the table.
• Review of the proposed Transit City Bus Plan and other schemes for an enhanced network of major surface routes.

Once again, Toronto has a political environment ripe for a discussion of service quality, and the TTC should provide a detailed menu of options, benefits and costs for Council’s consideration in budget for 2013 and future years.

Service Quality

In this area, the KPIs are very much a reflection of what the TTC has managed to achieve historically rather than a demonstration of ongoing improvement.  I understand from TTC staff that the intent is to refine the measures and revise the targets upward so that merely doing as well as could be hoped is no longer the standard of service quality.

Subway reliability is defined relative to schedule, not to headway, but despite this measure, the reliability numbers are in the mid to high 90 percent range.  Yonge underperforms Bloor, and this is put down to problems with the new TR trains including a misuse/misunderstanding by passengers of the appropriate use of the new assistance alarms.  However, the data for 2011 shows that the YUS has consistently underperformed the BD and Sheppard subways (albeit by a few percent), and this explanation does not really hold water.

The TTC has a long history of blaming its problems on external factors, and while there may be some problem with passenger alarms and door delays (no doubt caused by overcrowding), the TTC’s tendency to blame the customer runs counter to a supposedly new, friendlier approach to service.

On the SRT, reliability is measured as percentage pf scheduled trips operated, with a target of 80%.  This is an astonishing situation and speaks to the unreliability of the fleet and control system on the line.  How it will survive until late 2015 when rebuilding will finally start is a mystery.  It is worth noting that the past winter was quite mild, and the SRT was generally not affected by snow-related problems that have plagued its operation in other years.

The measure of bus and streetcar reliability is stated in two different ways depending on which chart one reads.  In the summary on  page 2, the measure is “headway ±3 minutes” while in the detail charts on page 8, the measure is “on time”.  These are two quite different values, and this discrepancy should be resolved.

Although the details are not published in this report, this type of measure is provided internally at the division and route level so that problem areas can be identified.  Commissioner Cho asked whether local breakdowns are available for review, and he was told that these are available online.  Presumably this is only within the TTC’s Intranet, although this sort of information would be useful if published externally as well.  (Council members, City staff and members of the public do not have access to the internal network and websites at the TTC.)

Elevators and Escalators

The target availability for both elevators and escalators is 97%.  Although numbers are up from 2011 very slightly, the goal is not quite met for escalators.

However, the larger problem is with the metric itself.  I have been told that the numbers represent the status of the devices at 9:00 am each day, and breakdowns over the course of a day do not show up in the stats.  Unfortunately, riders use these machines at all hours, and a common problem is that they go out of service and await repair (or simply an inspection and manual restart).

This is an example of how a “KPI” can look good because it reports on a snapshot that may not be representative of the day’s operation as a whole.

Complaints

Discourtesy is the largest single category of complaints, and it is one area that shows a marked improvement (a reduction of about 20%) over 2011.  However, there is a category of “other complaints” responsible for over one third of the total even though each of the constituent categories (over 70) represents a small number.  This begs the question of whether there are too many categories and if there are collections of those “small” ones that should be addressed and reported on as a group.

Major Planned Closures

This is a useful report, although it is incomplete.  Moreover, this sort of information belongs on the public website as a summary of upcoming disruptions.

The BD line will be closed between Warden and Kennedy on May 12/13 for trackwork, and the third stage of the King Crossover installation will occur on the weekend of May 26/27.

Track replacement on the streetcar system is scheduled for:

• Queen from Greenwood to Coxwell: May 7 to October 8
• Dufferin from Queen to Dufferin Loop: May 14 to Nov 17
• Queen & Spadina intersection: June 23 to 30
• Adelaide & Spadina intersection: July 1 to 7

Platform upgrades are planned at various locations on Spadina from June 17 to Nov 17.  What is not mentioned here is that the Spadina streetcar will be replaced by buses running in mixed traffic for at least part of this time.

There is no mention of track replacement on Queen’s Quay nor on Spadina, both of which have been in the long-term plans for some years, nor is pending work on McCaul and on York streets listed.

This section of the report will be more useful if it includes track and road construction projects affecting transit service, and if the list is complete.

Financial Data

Fare revenue is up for 2012 relative to budget due to strong ridership numbers, although the percentage increase for revenue is lower than the absolute number of rides.  The reason for this is a continuing trend of passengers shifting to Metropasses and pass holders increasing their monthly trip count.  Sadly, the TTC does not publish detailed information about this, nor about the breakdown in time of day or type of fare used.

Expenses for 2012 are running  below budget because of lower than expected fuel costs and the warm winter.

In the short term, the subsidy requirements are running well below budget, but the TTC plans to increase service in response to ridership growth.  The projected year-end expenses are $5.5-million above the budgeted level.  Oddly enough, this is roughly the amount of extra subsidy Council tried to give the TTC, but the funds were diverted to Wheel Trans.  Unbudgeted service improvements will come from the farebox and will be less than might have been possible had Council’s funding been used for regular operations as intended.

There is a broader issue of Wheel Trans funding to address because its farebox recovery rate is so low.  Council and the Commission must decide what its goal for Wheel Trans actually is, and provide funding appropriate to that goal.  If there is a funding problem for this service, we should know what the pressures and options are, not hide the problem by raiding the regular operating budget for a  cross-subsidy.

Back in the 1980s, the Network 2011 plan included a line from Union Station to Don Mills and Eglinton by way of the rail corridor, Eastern Avenue, Pape, a bridge across the Don Valley, and Don Mills Road.  This scheme was turned down in favour of the Sheppard Subway as part of a misguided idea that if we simply stopped building new lines into downtown, growth would stop.  In fact, GO Transit did a fine job of providing extra capacity, and more recently the new downtown condos have raised short commutes by streetcar, cycling and foot to levels nobody expected thirty years ago.

The Yonge subway filled up, for a time,but the pressure fell off thanks to the 1990s recession and the general drop in transit use.  That’s no longer the case, and suddenly everyone wants to “do something” about transit capacity downtown.  The TTC, shamefully, downplayed anything beyond its own mad scheme to stuff thousands more riders onto the Yonge line, a project requiring major changes in signalling, reconstruction of Bloor-Yonge station (and possibly others) for extra capacity, a much larger subway fleet (and yards to hold it) and possibly even the addition of platform doors at all stations.

Council asked the TTC to look at a DRL, and there is even supposed to be a study.  However, its web page is the only sign that anything is going on.

Meanwhile, every would-be transit planner in town is busy drawing maps, to the point where a credible plan can be found simply by dropping a piece of spaghetti on a map of the city and declaring this a route.  (Post-graduate degrees are available to those who can determine the ideal height from which to drop the pasta and cooking time needed to produce the best results.)  What’s missing in a lot of this discussion is a view of how a DRL might fit into a wider network, not to mention a few basics about how a new rapid transit line will, or will not, fit in some of the proposed alignments.

One of the better proposals is on Phil Orr’s DRL Now site.  It’s not perfect (no proposal is, including those I have floated from time to time), but at least this is a place to start with sufficient detail to understand what is going on.  Drawing a swoosh across a map is easy (politicians do it all the time), but designing something that might actually work is a lot harder.

A major challenge with some versions of this line is that proponents try to do too much.  Playing “connect the dots” with a transit route has its limitations, and trying to hit too many of them causes the line to wander out of its way.  This ties back to a fundamental question:  what is a DRL supposed to do?

If we believe some of the simpler plans (notably one in last week’s Star proposed by Councillor Pasternak), the DRL’s sole function is to get people from the Danforth subway to Union Station.  This is far too simplistic and guarantees the line will not be well used except as a peak period relief valve.

Other schemes take the route south of the rail corridor to serve the Port Lands and eastern waterfront.  Aside from the problems of building such a line in landfill beside Lake Ontario, the route would not provide the fine-grained transit access possible with a surface LRT, and would vastly overservice an area whose expected demand is lower than the existing Sheppard subway.  Connection to Union Station from the south would also be a big challenge.

From time to time, I am asked “what would you do”, but to start that discussion, a few first principles:

• A”DRL” should not exist solely to relieve the Yonge line’s peak traffic problem, but should provide new links within the transit network giving rapid transit to areas of the city that do not have it today.  Indeed, the regional function within the network may well be as important as the “relief” function at Bloor-Yonge.
• Any proposed route through downtown must respect the actual built form of the streets and buildings.  Diagonal routes through built-up areas should be avoided as they are difficult if not impossible to build.
• Stations must be located where it is physically possible to build them.  Some routes use rail corridors without considering how either a surface or underground station might fit or be built.
• A “DRL” is not the complete solution to capacity problems on the subway.  These problems originate north of Steeles Avenue, and a major role in trimming peak demand falls to GO Transit which has several north-south routes that could drain traffic otherwise headed for the Yonge line.

The proposed route on DRL Now (click on “Interactive Map” under the “Station Information” pulldown) includes four phases:

• Don Mills and Eglinton to City Place
• City Place to Dundas West
• Don Mills from Eglinton to Sheppard
• Dundas West to Pearson Airport

I have concerns with a few details of this plan, but the basics are good.  Another view of the route is available via Google Maps.  This has the advantage of showing the detailed alignment rather than a “route map” graphic.

Eglinton to Railway Lands West

A route from Eglinton and Don Mills to downtown will intercept traffic that now flows via three separate bus routes (Don Mills, Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park) to the Danforth subway, not to mention future traffic from the Eglinton LRT (which will have an underground station connection at Don Mills).  Because the subway will not terminate at the Danforth, the volume of transfer traffic (as opposed to through rides on the new line) should be lower and the station less congested.

Some plans have aimed for different connection points on the Danforth line, although they have not necessarily considered the problems of continuing north from the connection point.  These options are best viewed by zooming in on the Google Maps representation of the line.

• Donlands Station:  Donlands is an alternative north-south route except for the fact that the street ends at Danforth and some neighbourhood upheaval will be required to reach the rail corridor.  However, this route is closer to Greenwood Yard, and there is the general question of how a DRL might be connected into the existing subway system for maintenance purposes.
• Greenwood Station:  Like Donlands, Greenwood is another alternative route, although it goes through a completely residential neighbourhood.  A connection to Greenwood Yard should be possible on the east side.
• Coxwell Station:  Coxwell is directly south of the line of Don Mills Road and is the easternmost point where a connection is even vaguely reasonable.
• Woodbine Station:  Woodbine is well east of Don Mills Road, and a connection there more or less rules out extending the line north to Eglinton.

A related question for those who propose easterly locations for a connection is the function of a “DRL” in the Beach and whether its purpose is to somehow serve traffic from that region (which is not exactly overrun with high density development) to downtown.  A westerly connection point like Pape has the advantage that the route cuts diagonally through Thorncliffe Park and across the valley and gets to downtown faster than a route further east.  The Thorncliffe Park stop would not be included in any route crossing Danforth east of Greenwood because it would be out of the way for a Coxwell or Woodbine alignment.

South of Danforth, the next major segment takes the line to the Don River.  Regardless of which crossing is chosen, the two options are either to go straight south to Eastern (or possibly Queen), then west into downtown, or to follow the rail corridor from (say) Pape southwest.  Going under the rail corridor has its challenges, although from a jurisdictional viewpoint, the fact that Metrolinx now owns this line eliminates one possible source of opposition.

The challenge will be to tunnel under a busy rail corridor and to include stations at a few intermediate points.  A surface alignment is not practical given the constraints of what is there today and planned for GO’s future expansion.  Stations will be tricky unless the tunnel veers away from the rail corridor to adjacent lands.  Orr’s proposal sites both the Gerrard and Queen Stations on the south-east side of the corridor where land is available.

Orr’s proposed path through the core is, for me, unattractive because it wanders in attempting to pick up many sites and ignores potential problems with building foundations.

A simpler route into downtown would be to follow Front and Wellington Streets to Peter where (at least today) there is vacant land for a diagonal crossing to Spadina and Front, the site of the proposed Metrolinx “Union Station West” for services in the Weston corridor.  Connections at Yonge (to King Station) and University (to St. Andrew Station) would be fairly easy to build given the physical locations of existing stations.  This route will not be a simple project, but at least it stays under one street for the distance across downtown.

Any route west of the Don River will have to deal with the built form of the West Don Lands project now under construction.

Eglinton to Sheppard

A few schemes have been proposed for a “Don Mills” line north of Eglinton including:

• The Don Mills LRT to Steeles (Transit City)
• A line running north to the CPR rail corridor just north of Eglinton and thence northeast through Agincourt
• Continuation of the “DRL” north to Sheppard (Orr’s Plan)

I have never been happy with the TTC’s proposals for a Don Mills LRT running on the surface through East York.  This always had the feel of a project jammed into the available space with no regard for the effect on the community, and this approach was one of many ways the Transit City team alienated people from their plan.  It was always clear that the line would require a lot of infrastructure (bridge, tunnel) south of Flemingdon/Thorncliffe and given the projected demand for a DRL, putting a subway in such infrastructure makes a lot more sense than an LRT line.

The problem arises of where the subway should end and something else should take over.  Should this be at Eglinton or at Sheppard?  I’m not convinced either way, and would like to see better info on travel patterns and population in the Don Mills corridor.  Orr proposes stations only at the concession roads: Lawrence, York Mills and Sheppard.  Like other “express” subway lines, this leaves many sites and potential riders at the mercy of local bus service, should the TTC deign to operate it.  Is this the appropriate way to serve Don Mills Road, or would a surface route with more stops be better?

The Weston Rail Corridor

This corridor is a monument to the blinkered view Metrolinx has of planning for transportation within the City of Toronto.  Although massive capacity expansion is underway, it is intended almost exclusively to provide room for many more trains on the Brampton/Kitchener, Milton and Airport lines.

The “Air Rail Link”, a doomed project inherited from the Federal Government and SNC Lavalin, sits in Metrolinx’ lap as a business-class express service from Pearson Airport to Union.  One or two stops enroute will connect to the Bloor and (future) Eglinton rapid transit lines.  The real need in this corridor is for local service — “local” not in the sense of stopping at every lamp post, but of service that addresses day-to-day demand between many points on the route as part of the regular transit system.

The rail corridor has been proposed as a “DRL West” and appears as such in Orr’s proposal.  The real problem here is how we would build it given that the corridor has already been (or soon will be) reconfigured for expanded GO services.

A vital question for any proposal is “what is it supposed to do”.  This will affect many aspects of route design including station location and size, fleet requirements, interoperation with other rail services, and the capacity of interchange points such as Dundas West Station on the Bloor Subway.

If we were starting from a blank slate about 30 years ago, the situation could have been very different, and the Weston corridor might have been configured with a rapid transit line on or under it.  Doing this today is not as simple.

At this point, I have to declare my preference that a northwest line not automatically be an extension of the DRL subway.  We have yet to see that there would actually be sufficient demand for full subway trains (there is no question of this on the eastern leg), and the use of subway technology imposes constraints on right-of-way and stations.  At the very least, we should know what the alternative — an electrified frequent service on GO’s ARL trackage — would require and what it could do.

The Downtown Streetcar Lines

The DRL is cited by some as a way of solving the problem with the Queen and King streetcars.  I do not agree.  This is an unfortunate example of trying to make the DRL do more than it reasonably can.

Condo developments are thick on King Street, and the new buildings are moving north to Queen both west and east of downtown.  These cannot be served by a single route, especially one with the wider station spacing typical of subway lines.

These are two separate networks — a rapid transit line coming into downtown, and a streetcar network serving not just Queen or King, but Dundas and College as well.  The problem we have with the streetcars is that there is not enough service, and what we do have is not well-managed.  Some of this is traffic congestion which, in turn, begs questions of enforcement.  Spend billions on a subway, or much much less on better service and a fleet of tow trucks?  That’s an oversimplification, but it’s a debate we avoid.

GO North

In every discussion of Yonge subway capacity, the potential for additional service on GO tends to be ignored even though it is part of the Metrolinx “Big Move”.  GO management seems content to run a few new trains here and there, but their comments about major service increases and electrification are tempered by years of underfunding.  The word “if” is more common than “when” in remarks about GO expansion.

There are big challenges, not the least of which are track and station capacities downtown.  Electrification is essential for frequent service, but funding is a mystery and has not been integrated in the Metrolinx long-term plans.

GO could be handling more riders into downtown Toronto and, thereby, shaving the peak off of demand on the subway system on several existing and future routes.  What is needed is the will to fund and operate these services.

Fares and subsidies will be a big issue as GO grows.  More service, especially in the counterpeak and offpeak, will drag down the farebox recovery for GO.

Similarly, the fare structure’s penalties against short-haul riding discourage travellers who should be on GO but chooses instead to put up with the TTC (or drive).

What do we want?  A profitable system, or one that provides service?  Discussions of new funding schemes must address fare levels, not  just the cost of building new infrastructure.

Conclusion

Expansion of Toronto’s rapid transit system involves more than “just one more” subway line and must be done with a view to how the network will carry riders, not just that one line.

Toronto and the regions beyond need to understand how that network might work, how the contribution of many routes will make something valuable for everyone even though they will not ride every route or visit every station.

Metrolinx and the TTC owe us a much more public, informed debate about the options and how we might spend the billions new taxes or tolls will bring.

The “Downtown Relief Line” is important, but it is only part of a much larger regional plan, and we must not try to make it solve every problem of our overburdened transit system.

Once upon a time, the Metrolinx Board actually contained politicians, the very people who would undertake this sort of debate and who, when the going got rough, would have to stand up at public meetings defending the plan and dodging the rotten tomatoes.  Nobody on the current Metrolinx Board has to get elected even as dog catcher, much less as a mayor, and the staff are even further insulated by the fact that almost all of Metrolinx’ business takes place in the refined, quiet space of private meetings.

This is no way to build public support for anything.

The term “Investment Strategy” has a comforting feeling that plays to those who like to wrap public works in the mantle of private enterprise.  We will “invest” in the future of transit and of our region.  That’s fine as far as it goes, but “investment” implies capital, something notoriously absent from government accounts in part due to the economy, but in part to the fact we are loathe to tax ourselves for the services we want.  (Or slightly more accurately, we don’t want to pay taxes for services somebody else wants, but we think we will never use.)

One way or another, somebody has to pay to expand and improve transit service given decades of disinvestment in that field.  Toronto likes to think of itself as a “Transit City”, but in fact stopped investing at a rate needed to keep up with population and travel growth decades ago.

The Investment Strategy is often portrayed as something we have to study, to examine, to fathom the depths of public financial options, but, no, the numbers have been available for everyone to see for years.  Metrolinx produced its first report (one without the word “Draft” stamped on it) in June 2008.  It contained the following table showing the types of revenue stream that Metrolinx might tap.

This was back in the days when we were only looking for $2-billion annually over 25 years for a $50-billion Big Move.  Since then, the actual budget has grown thanks to inflation, the recognition that some project estimates were low, the need to factor in operating costs and the likely demands to fund local transit agencies as part of the grand scheme.  We now hear numbers in the $75-100b range, and that will take a lot of tolls or taxes to pay off.

A more recent version of this table was produced in 2011 for the Civic Action Summit, but the changes lie mainly in the size of the numbers, not in the types of revenue.

The important work Metrolinx must perform is to produce the menu of projects and spending options for which any new revenue streams might be imposed.  To that end, the publication of an updated “Big Move” (not expected until late 2012) and the incorportation of spending options to support local transit are essential.

Moreover, Metrolinx must address jurisdictional issues between GO Transit and the TTC to reconcile demand and capacity problems for the core area.  If we are to collect billions in new taxes, they should not be wasted trying to stuff every available passenger into the Yonge Subway.  Some belong on a Downtown Relief Line (and a real relief line, one that goes north at least to Eglinton, not just to the Danforth subway), and many more belong on the many existing and potential GO rail corridors leading north out of downtown.

The GTA must understand what the real cost of bringing transit up to a competitive level where it will actually make inroads into car traffic in the 905, the sources of funding which might be used, and the limitations (financial and operational) on what can be done.  This type of integrated planning is glaringly absent from Metrolinx work over the past years.

The question of new taxes (by whatever name) is on the table, and the discussion must move into the political arena.  This is not a job for anonymous bureaucrats or a board of unknowns meeting in secret.  Indeed, any decision on the provincial side will be taken at Queen’s Park by the Cabinet and the Premier’s Office with Metrolinx providing a comforting rubber stamp and a patina of independence.

Toronto Council should take this debate not just to its own voters, but to the 905 regions so that we can all have an informed debate and build political support for improving transit.

Notes from the Board Meeting and Press Scrum:

Chair Rob Prichard asked about the status of unrecoverable losses due to the diversion of Metrolinx effort from the original Transit City plan to the Ford transit Memorandum of Understanding.  Less that $10-million has been spent on preliminary engineering for the Eglinton tunnel east from Laird Station.  Potential extra costs from Bombardier for the vehicle supply contract are not yet known.  If these were simply inflationary increases, then the Metrolinx funding (which includes inflation) should cover this.  However, Bombardier may also claim additional expenses related to the delay.  Prichard urged staff to “negotiate” away as much of such claims as possible.

This issue came up again in the press scrum.  Metrolinx has always said that “others” must bear any extra costs due to the Ford delay, but the identity of this party is unclear.  Elizabeth Church from the Globe noted that Karen Stintz has pointed out that since the Ford MOU was never approved by City Council, the city can hardly be held responsible for the delay.

Both Rob Prichard and CEO Bruce McCuaig dodged around this and other questions related to Metrolinx’ role in pursuing the Ford plan in the absence of Council support, especially considering that Metrolinx hangs its return to LRT on Council’s clear vote for the original Transit City plan as the City’s definitive policy statement.  The Star’s Royson James described Prichard as being good at “ragging the puck”, but never managed to pin him down to an answer.

Prichard hopes that the value of the “extra cost” will be reduced to zero making this a moot point, or at least one small enough to fit under any nearby rug without most people noticing the lump.

Director Lee Parsons asked about the possible funding from P3 Canada and what this might enable.  Bruce McCuaig suggested that it might be possible to add to the scope of work with the additional money available through this federal program, but the dollar value is not large and Metrolinx must still pitch their projects to the P3C board.

Director Richard Koroscil asked what the differences were between the plan proposed here and the previously approved 5-in-10 scheme.

Jack Collins (Vice President, Rapid Transit Implementation) replied that these are mainly the slippage of Sheppard’s completion out to 2018 and the shift of the SRT completion back from 2020 to 2019.  The design team and project manager for the Sheppard project were disbanded when work stopped just over a year ago and a new team must be assembled.  Moreover, the project will now be delivered through Infrastructure Ontario (IO) as an Alternate Finance and Procurement (AFP) scheme, and this adds time for production of the contracts related to managing this process.

In the case of the SRT, the section of the route north of McCowan Station will be built while the existing SRT is still operating and this allows work to start sooner than planned on that line.

Director Rahul Bhardwaj asked about the requirement that the TTC implement the Presto smart card as a precondition of having these projects funded by Queen’s Park.  Bruce McCuaig replied that a proposal from TTC staff for an agreement with Metrolinx and the rollout of Presto will be going to the TTC board at its meeting of May 1.

Director Joe Halstead asked about the roles of three agencies — Metrolinx, the TTC and IO — in these projects.  Metrolinx will be the project owner.  IO will be the procurement agency.  The TTC will provide the design criteria, manage the design consultants and technical details of the projects, and will eventually operate the lines.

Halstead also asked about lessons learned from the St. Clair project.  Collins replied that Metrolinx will maintain a presence in communities to keep them informed as the projects evolve, and noted that the neighbourhood office for the Sheppard LRT that had been closed because of the Ford MOU would have to be reopened.

Director Doug Turnbull asked where Metrolinx stands on the role of subways.  Bruce McCuaig replied that Metrolinx supports subways such as the Spadina extension now under construction, and noted that “The Big Move 2.0″ includes both the Richmond Hill extension of the Yonge line and the Downtown Relief Line.  Metrolinx will continue to support subways in this context.  Rob Prichard noted that Toronto Council had asked city planning staff for studies of a Sheppard West connection to Downsview and a Bloor West extension to Sherway.

Turnbull asked whether TBM 2.0 affects any of the four LRT lines up for approval.  Bruce McCuaig replied that the 2.0 document will review progress to date and incorporate new initiatives such as the GO electrification.

During the press scrum, Metrolinx clarified that The Big Move 2.0 will be published at the end of 2012.

Director Stephen Smith asked for a clarification of the AFP bidding process and the meaning of the term “Financial Close” in the project chart.  Jack Collins explained that the procurement would have several stages.  First, bidders would be invited to qualify to bid on the work.  Based on this, three would be chosen, and they would be given funding to prepare a more detailed proposal.  From that work, IO would make its evaluation and select a winner.  At that point, the overall contract and financing details would have to be nailed down, and this would be the “financial close”.  IO will rely on Metrolinx, the TTC and technical consultants for evaluation of the proposals.

Smith asked whether pricing would be affected by the level of activity in the construction market.  Collins replied that preliminary indications from the international market are good because work is drying up overseas.  Also, experienced resources now committed to the Spadina extension will be freed up starting in late 2015.

The report was approved by the Board, and most of us adjourned to the press scrum which was attended by Rob Prichard, Bruce McCuaig, Jack Collins and the usual bevy of Metrolinx communications staff.

After the discussion about “extra costs” noted above, questions turned to the location of the Eglinton tunnel.  It will definitely not go under the Don River because this would involve tunneling through bedrock.  The tunnel boring machines are designed for softer conditions (soil, clay, etc), not for hard rock, and this work would be very expensive.  The line will go under Don Mills Road and will provide for a future connection to a north-south route.

Questions returned to the role of Metrolinx and “the need for a clear and supportive partner” as they put it.  Elizabeth Church asked about the Mayor’s opposition to the LRT scheme.  Bruce McCuaig noted that Council had voted, and had delegated authority to the City Manager to execute contracts for these projects.  Rob Prichard observed that the Mayor and his brother speak for themselves, and that there is a broad consensus for the LRT plan.  Metrolinx won’t stand in the way of debate, but they have lots of room for working with the city.

John Lorinc asked whether Metrolinx is concerned about being “the meat in the sandwich” in the 2014 election?  Prichard replied “no”.  He observed that political actors have strong ideas, and we shouldn’t try to take politics out of transit.  However, we should keep our eyes on the main goal of better transit and less congestion rather than just fixating on four projects.  There will be a contract with the city for these four, and other projects may come.  Metrolinx should be steady in its execution of the projects and although there will be elections along the way, the recommendation is that these projects should be completed.

A few questions on the vehicle contract came up.

Would other cities outside the Metrolinx planning area be able to procure LRVs through the Metrolinx contract?  Jack Collins replied that this decision would be up to the local municipality (e.g. Kitchener-Waterloo or Ottawa).

Given the extended period between vehicle delivery and start of service on the first line (Sheppard), what will Metrolinx do about the warranty that could expire before the cars begin revenue operations?  Bruce McCuaig replied that this would form part of the discussions with Bombardier and final approval of the terms would come from Queen’s Park.  There will be two pilot cars built for Metrolinx but no dates are set yet for their delivery.

Royson James asked about Metrolinx’ role — are they simply following the political path of least resistance, or can we “take their recommendations to the bank”?  Bruce McCuaig replied that Metrolinx would give its best advice regarding regional transportation systems, and that they are the keeper of the long term view.

James asked why Metrolinx keeps changing its mind.  McCuaig replied that there are choices between technologies, and it’s not always a black and white decision.

Rob Prichard chimed in saying that there had also been changes in preference on the City’s side for Eglinton’s technology.  The Ford MOU had tradeoffs — a longer Eglinton tunnel was a gain at the expense of losing the Finch LRT (and the eastern part of a Sheppard line).  Metrolinx need to build projects that make sense, and they are “respecting democracy”.

Elizabeth Church noted that Metrolinx has changed its “expert opinion” especially on Eglinton, and this is frustrating to those who seek technical advice.  Prichard replied that between 2006-08, the original vision for Eglinton was all underground, a faster line attracting more riders.  However, the tradeoffs between costs and benefits led to a subway-surface arrangement.

This exchange led me to write for clarification because at no time did the City of Toronto endorse an all-underground Eglinton line, particularly not once Transit City was announced.  Even before, Eglinton was flagged as a corridor for improved transit and surface priority treatment, but not for a subway.  Prichard is mixing the Metrolinx planners’ fantasies of an all-underground Eglinton with official city and TTC policy decisions, and Metrolinx can hardly claim to be following the City’s changes in policy when in fact the drive for an Eglinton subway came from Metrolinx itself.

I wrote to Metrolinx:

At the media scrum, Rob Prichard talked about the to-and-fro of the city’s position on an Eglinton all-underground line.

It’s worth noting that several reports dating from 2005-6 including the City’s Official Plan and the TTC’s “Building a Transit City” showed Eglinton as a potential transit corridor, but talked much more of surface transit priority than of a subway. ‪

Yes, there was an older proposal for a subway west from Mt. Dennis to Renforth, but the projected demand was quite low and it was not taken seriously.

Therefore to suggest that there was any serious support for an Eglinton line completely underground … is stretching the point.

Metrolinx replied:

As The Big Move was being developed between 2006 and 2008, a variety of transit lines and technologies were modeled and considered in developing the full integrated GTHA system of the future, including Eglinton as a fully-separated rapid transit corridor. The Big Move does not specify whether sections are below ground or above ground.

Also, as Metrolinx worked with the City of Toronto and the Toronto Transit Commission, and a more detailed Benefits Case Analysis was undertaken, Eglinton was confirmed as grade-separated through the central section, and at surface, east of Laird Ave.

It should be noted that the benefits of a totally grade-separated Eglinton were weighed against all other rapid transit projects across the GTHA on a range of issues, including future land use, location of employment, integration with local transit, GHG reductions, the ability to serve communities of higher social need, and travel time.

You can judge for yourself whether there was a city position on the vertical alignment of Eglinton that would support Metrolinx’ claim.

John Lorinc got in a good last word with the question “Will you still support this plan in 2014?”

To assist readers in keeping track of the shifting completion dates for the projects, here is a consolidated chart of the original plans, the revised “5-in-10″ plan, and the new 2012 version.

2012.04.25_Project Staging Chart

The original article from April 24 follows below.  Note that some route-specific information has been updated on April 26.

At its meeting of April 25, 2012, the Metrolinx Board will consider a recommendation from staff that sets out how work will proceed with Toronto’s rapid transit projects in light of recent decisions by Toronto Council.  Once this receives formal approval from Queen’s Park, we will be back more or less to the position just before the election of Mayor Rob Ford, but with projects needlessly delayed.

When Ford declared that Transit City was dead, Metrolinx couldn’t wait to negotiate a new transit plan even though Ford had no legal authority to replace an agreement by the previous Council without authorization from the new one.  Now that Council spoke so forcefully in support of the LRT plans for Eglinton, Finch, Sheppard and Scarborough, Metrolinx is ever so eager to fall in line with Council’s wishes.  With luck, the new plans may last long enough that we will actually build something.

A media briefing today (April 24) covered the main issues in the staff report and accompanying presentation.

Although the phrase “Transit City” has officially vanished from Toronto’s lexicon, Metrolinx conceded that, yes, we are more or less back to the Transit City plan with a few minor adjustments.

Eglinton LRT

This line will be built from an indeterminate point at or west of Black Creek to Kennedy Station and will open in 2020.  The western terminus and the alignment of the segment from Black Creek to Jane (or wherever) has not yet been decided.  This will be the subject of a report to the Metrolinx Board in June.

Although a line of this length cries out for a staged opening, this will not actually happen.  This is bound up in the procurement strategy and probably some of the cash flow planning.  The main tunnel project will be a conventional job of tendering for a specified job, letting the contractor build the tunnel, and then taking it over.  However, the stations will be separate jobs to be parceled out possibly as AFP (Alternate Financing and Procurement) with more of the design and project management left to the winning bidder.  Finally, major system contracts such as signalling will be let for the entire line fairly late in the project and, therefore, they won’t be available for a partial opening as far east as the Spadina or Yonge subway.

The line will open in late 2020.

Updated April 26:  Metrolinx has confirmed that the original plan for through service from the SRT to the Eglinton line has been dropped.  Here is their statement on the subject:

The previous plan for a totally grade-separated Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown was a seamless 25 km one-seat ride from Scarborough City Centre all the way to the Weston/Jane area. With the change back to an 8 km surface section east of Laird Station to Kennedy, TTC Service Planning are concerned that they will no longer be able to balance the headways between the heavier passenger loads on the Scarborough Rapid Transit with the non-grade separated portion and the lower loading on the Eglinton Crosstown.

The TTC operating preference is to revert back to the old plan by separating the two lines at Kennedy station. The SRT will remain automated, and the Eglinton Crosstown LRT will have an operator. There will be a non-revenue connection at Kennedy, but its purpose is more for shuttling trains between heavy and light maintenance facilities and the maintenance-of-way.

Scarborough RT

Construction will begin on the northern part of the LRT project (McCowan Station to Sheppard) in mid 2014 while the SRT is still in operation.  Following the Pan Am Games in 2015, the SRT will close for reconstruction as an LRT line with reopening targeted for late 2019.  I asked why this is a four-year window even though the shutdown is planned for only three.  Metrolinx replied that the shutdown is only three years, but they are not certain exactly when it might occur.  Also, they hope that through the AFP process they will encourage the bidders to find ways to shave time off of the process.  However, it is too soon to make detailed projections and they are leaving room in the overall plan.

Conlins Road Maintenance Facility

The joint carhouse for the Sheppard and Scarborough lines will be at Conlins Road east of Morningside and Sheppard.  Some site preparation work has already been done here, but actual construction was put on hold pending the resolution of Toronto’s preferred plans for Sheppard.  This will be an AFP project with the builder responsible for maintenance of the building, at least for the initial decades of its existence.  It is unclear how we will get a 100-year structure out of a company whose responsibility will run barely a third of this, presuming they don’t sell that part of the contract after the building is up and running.

Corrected April 26:  Because the new Metrolinx LRVs will begin to arrive in 2013 2015, this project will be done in two stages so that preliminary facilities are available to receive and test the equipment before there is actually a line to run it on.  An eastern section of the Sheppard line will probably be built before the main project so that there will be some test track outside of the limits of the yard for the early cars.

Sheppard LRT

Construction of the Sheppard line will not get underway until mid 2014, although the pre-award period for this AFP will begin in early 2013.  Metrolinx acknowledges that there is a longer up-front period for the AFP process, but hopes that this will pay off in a faster project.  The fact that the opening date for Sheppard has now stretched out to late 2018 suggests that these hopes may be misplaced, and shows just how badly our first surface LRT project has been sandbagged by Ford’s opposition and Metrolinx foot-dragging.

The report includes no mention of a possible extension to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

Updated April 26:  At the Metrolinx Board meeting, chair Rob Prichard (who has strong connections to UofT) encouraged staff to find a way to include the “Morningside Hook” taking the Sheppard line south to UofT Scarborough campus if project savings free up any more for extras.  UofT should hope that Prichard stays at Metrolinx long enough to ensure that this actually happens.

The Toronto Star included an article about this line complete with a drawing showing an across-the-platform transfer between an LRT train and a subway train at Don Mills Station.  This is different from the nose-to-nose connection commonly discussed where passengers would make the connection by walking east-west along a common platform.  In response to my query about which design they actually planned to use, Metrolinx responded:

The slide is a rendering of a side-by-side transfer, as you indicated. The presentation from the TTC open house in 2010 … had an end-to-end transfer arrangement. We will need to re-start the design process with the design consultants and finalize the transfer arrangement.

In other words, they have not made up their minds yet.

Finch LRT

The Finch line’s construction will start in mid-2015, not quite a year before the Spadina subway extension opens.  As on Sheppard, there is an extended advance period for bidder qualification and selection, and an four-year construction period.

Infrastructure Ontario and the Mysteries of Provincial Financial Reporting

Ontario policy dictates that all large projects funded from Queen’s Park be run through Infrastructure Ontario allegedly

“to maximize value and increase certainty of on-time, on-budget delivery and a cooperative design process”.

This doesn’t give the TTC or any of the existing project management handled by many private companies who have worked on transit in Toronto much credit.  Whether IO (as the agency is known) will actually achieve its goals remains to be seen.

The financial side has a particular twist in that the actual, as spent budget for the lines is an unknown quantity.  There is an overall budget of $8.4-billion, but these are 2010 dollars and already two years of inflation have pushed up the number.  The actual dollars will continue to rise from now to 2020, but there is no projection of what the final number will be, or reference information someone outside of the government might use to track whether “on budget” performance is really achieved.  (By contrast, TTC and city projects must show their spending projections including escalation factors out to completion, and authorized spending levels must be adjusted to deal with unexpected overages.)

In effect, simple inflation does not count as being “over budget” although it is well known that the cost of some items will rise faster than overall price indices.

One variant on this scheme is the vehicle contract.  It is possible that Bombardier may claim costs beyond inflation due to the delay in starting production.  If so, that’s a potential “cost of delay” which might be to the City’s account.  However, one might point out that the decision to delay was not taken or authorized by City Council.  This is an area where Metrolinx would do well not to encourage a debate about their complicity in whatever delay and associated cost the projects face.

Finally, Ontario hopes to obtain some funding from the Federal “3P” fund which is used to encourage AFP projects.  At this point, the amount they hope to receive is under $100-million, not a big contribution to the $8.4b, but every bit helps.

Election Complications

With so much of the work planned to start in 2014 or beyond, the effect of the next municipal election cannot be ignored.

If we presume that the left-centre political groups can agree on one candidate, then there is a reasonable chance that Mayor Ford will be dispatched from the scene.  However, if the opposition is split, and Ford manages to win re-election, we will be back to the question of his “mandate”, and strong opposition at both Council and Queen’s Park will be needed to counter his anti-LRT-streetcar bias.

In a few years, I hope that Toronto will not just be debating the fine points of these LRT projects, but of a wider menu through Metrolinx’ “Big Move 2.0″ which has yet to make its appearance, and through financing options that will move us away from dependence on either the generosity of provincial budgets or the mystical powers of “private sector” investment in transit.

The latest installment comes thanks to Los Angeles of all places, a city-region with the political will and leadership to actually build rather than to whine endlessly about how they can’t afford to do anything unless some other government picks up the tab.

Back in early April, John Lorinc wrote in the Globe about the LA transit plan and the funding — a dedicated regional half-percent sales tax — that underpins the whole scheme.  Two weeks later, Richard Katz was in Toronto talking about transit funding.  Katz is an advisor to Mayor Villaraigosa, chair of the regional commuter rail system, Metrolink, and a member of the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.

Katz is an entertaining speaker, and his background as a California legislator responsible for important measures addressing transportation problems gives him a depth of experience with no equivalent in Toronto.  His presentation covered a lot of ground, although it ran into swampland toward the end trying to explain how the financing schemes would work.

A few key issues need to be mentioned up front:

• Political leadership, transparency and inclusiveness are essential.  Without a major figure like Mayor Villaraigosa championing the program, transportation improvements and funding for them would never get the broad political support needed.  Plans have to be public and their benefits to a wide variety of communities well-understood.
• Los Angeles didn’t start to focus on transit yesterday, but started its rapid transit program in the 1990s.  At that point, the work was ridiculed in some quarters as a waste of money, but it built the foundation for a broader network.
• LA’s half-cent sales tax, the subject of much recent comment in Toronto, is only one of several revenue sources for both capital and operating dollars.  Indeed, there were two other half-cent taxes (for a total of 1½%) already in place, and the mechanism is familiar to voters.

Los Angeles County is a huge region of just over 4,000 square miles of which two-thirds is unincorporated even though there are 88 cities within the county.  The largest of these is the City of Los Angeles (503 square miles) home to about 40% of the county’s population.  By contrast, the City of Toronto is a mere 240 square miles.  The City of Toronto’s population density is about 25% higher than the City of Los Angeles, but beyond these boundaries comparisons get tricky depending on what areas one includes as part of the “metropolitan” region.

From a transit planning point of view, both regions contain large areas whose populations and travel patterns are unlikely to be well-served by transit, but which contribute to overall regional demand especially if their population grows.

Los Angeles has been a large city-region for much longer than Toronto and its famous “sprawl” was made possible by a network of steam and electric rail lines, not to mention a large streetcar system.  Privately-owned transit lines existed to support real estate development, a model that declined as personal transport became more common.

As the city’s transportation orientation shifted to cars (with some notorious help from anti-rail-transit practices by the automotive industry), the local and regional lines disappeared in the early 1960s.  Some rights-of-way remained as the foundation for transit’s renaissance decades later.

Richard Katz’ presentation begins with an overview of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  Daily ridership is roughly equal to the TTC (which has a much smaller service area and population), although it is more concentrated to peak periods (less than half of TTC riding occurs during the peak).  This translates to very different service levels and patterns in LA than we see in Toronto.

The most recent half-percent sales tax came through “Measure R”, a ballot initiative (we would call it a plebiscite or referendum) in the fall 2008 election that was approved by just over 67% of voters (a two-thirds majority was needed to implement a new tax).  This tax is expected to generate $36.1-billion from 2010 to 2040 when the tax will expire.  Only 35% of the revenue will be dedicated to rail expansion projects, 25% will go to operations and 20% to highway projects.  This is an important distinction compared with Toronto where all debate has turned on the funding of transit capital at a time when local municipalities are cutting back on transit operating funding and service.  As for highway funding, that’s part of the political reality in LA as the highway network is so important a part of local travel.  A transit-only tax would simply not generate enough voter support.

A map of the Los Angeles transit system shows the many proposed extensions.  For those unfamiliar with this network, the major routes are identified by colour, but three separate technologies are used:

• Subway:  Red and Purple lines
• LRT:  Blue, Gold and Green lines
• BRT:  Silver and Orange lines

Overlaid on this is the regional rail system (roughly the equivalent of GO Transit) operated by Metrolink, the agency Katz heads.

Originally, five major projects (highlighted on the map) were to form the bulk of work in the first ten years of Measure R.  However, Mayor Villaraigosa now seeks to accelerate the entire 30 year project into a 10 year window by borrowing the necessary capital up front, secured by the future Measure R revenues.  This is intended not just as a shot in the arm for transit, but also for employment in the LA region that has fallen off greatly in recent years.  This is a notable difference from Toronto where even the scale of the original Transit City scheme was criticized as being beyond the capability of the overheated local construction industry (strangely, this criticism has evaporated now that Queen’s Park wants to spend $10-billion on local transit over the coming decade).

I could not help feeling a sense of monument-building in the desire to accelerate projects by a mayor whose time in office faces term limits this year.  The spike in spending the compression of a 30-year program into 10 will create is shown on page 11 of the presentation.  Presuming that this can be funded, what was not explored is the “after” situation where the pace of construction falls off and revenues for 20 years into the future are tied up paying down the debt.  The Mayor and his staff have invited investment from a Chinese state agency who, amusingly, accuse LA of being too “socialist” because they seek to generate employment and development with public money.

Both the transit and highway construction work are expected to generate huge numbers of jobs and spinoff economic activity including taxes that will be collected at various levels of government.  This is not unlike the argument advanced by Metrolinx as part of their benefits analyses for transit projects.  The underlying debate, however, must always remain whether spending is done wisely and on projects that will prove useful in the long run.

Like our Metrolinx, LA’s MTA argues that the new transit lines will take many cars off the road, reduce congestion, lower fuel consumption and eliminate some pollution.  This is true only if that represents a real reduction in traffic levels.  On that score, it is not clear, especially in Toronto, that traffic (and all the effects it brings) will get any better, particularly as the built-up area of the GTA reaches further out into low-density development and diffuse origin-destination patterns.

Population in the City of Los Angeles grew by under 10% from 1990 to 2010 at a rate of about 15,000 annually (3.49m to 3.79m).  The County of Los Angeles grew from 8.86m to 9.81m over the same period, and is projected to grow to almost 14m by 2040.  Whether this growth will actually be achieved and where it will occur relative to transit and road networks was not explored in Katz’ presentation.  By comparison, the GTA expects to see 100k more residents per year for the indefinite future, and many of these may locate beyond easy reach of transit.

Looked at over a 30-year window (page 9 of the presentation), there will be $269-billion in transportation spending.  However, comparisons with the GTA require that this be adjusted to put things on an equal footing.  About 35% of the spending will be on rail and bus operations and another 33% will go to roads.  About 9% will go to debt service (about which more below).  Only 20% of the total goes to bus and rail capital requirements.

Measure R will fund about 13.4% of the total, and a further 30.9% will come from state and federal governments.  The remainder, 55.5%, shows up as “local”, but this is actually a combination of other sales tax revenues and fare income.

More details are available in a second presentation on Measure R.  This was not included in Katz’ talk, but it gives a better understanding of what is going on.

Page 5 includes a graph of LA County’s population from 1990 to 2011.  Although there was strong growth from 1996 to 2004, this flattened out.

Page 7 shows the revenue history from the first of the half-percent sales taxes, Proposition “A” starting in 1984.  The effect of economic fallout starting in 2008 is quite clear, and it is noteworthy that the 30-year forward projections for increasing tax revenue assume that the rate of increase will decline in the out years.  However, as with any economic projections, a severe slump could hobble growth and throw the whole scheme out of whack.

Conservative projections for future revenue growth are essential especially for any debt that will be funded from this stream.  The ratio between expected revenue and debt service (page 9) has been kept high to ensure good bond ratings.

Page 12 lists several constraints on the repurposing of Measure R revenues noting that transfers between subfunds can only be done between the transit and highway capital funds, that this can only be done once per decade starting in 2019, and that approval of both the Metro board and voters is required.  Contrast this level of open distrust that governments will keep their word with the situation in Ontario where money and “commitments” shuffle around like leaves in the wind.

Page 15 shows that each subfund has its own targets for current and debt financing.  None of the operating funding can incur debt, but must be paid out of current tax revenues.

What appears to be happening, however, is that the ratio of Measure R income to the debt it must service will be considerably lower than for the earlier tax measures.  This implies that most of the Measure R money devoted to transit capital is already spoken for and anything beyond already announced projects (including some that do not yet have full funding) will require new revenue sources.

Translating all of this to a GTA context takes some doing, and would have been helped by a comparative overview of the economies, geography and politics of the Los Angeles and Toronto regions.  The LA experience shows that if there is a will to take on new revenue sources, then capital and operating investments can follow.

What Toronto lacks is leadership at the municipal and provincial levels.  I will turn to the general problem of funding transit and the required scale of investment in my next article.

Postscript

Thanks to Bart Reed, Executive Director of the LA Transit Coalition for a few corrections (including a howler where I had the Red Line opening a decade early), and for the following comment.

LA hasn’t built new roads in decades. Yes, segments were finished around the Southern CA region, but in the Los Angeles regional basin, the bulk of the highways were completed decades ago. Some projects like the carpool lane system are still being built today, but that is road widening.

You can absolutely live a lifestyle in Los Angeles without a car, unlike the misstatements of some of the commentators.

My 10 Tiger Team interns are looking at bus rail connectivity at Metrolink Stations. Forcing changes to make the bus system work with the trains will also be a paradigm shift. One project at a time.

Ah yes … making buses and trains work together seems to be a problem not confined to the GTA.

Waterfront Toronto has a separate website for the public consultation process behind this review.

From a transit perspective, plans for the eastern waterfront are a mess.

East Bayfront

Development of Queen’s Quay east is well underway and the area’s population is just starting to grow.

South of Queen’s Quay along the water’s edge:

• The Corus Quay building east of Jarvis is now occupied.  It begins a strip of develoment reaching east to the Don.
• George Brown College sits in the next block over to Lower Sherbourne Street.  It will open for students in fall 2012, and the TTC plans improved service on 6 Bay and, to a lesser extent, 75 Sherbourne to handle demand to this site.  (Scroll down to the end of this article for details.)
• Next to the east lies Sherbourne Common park.
• East of the Common stretching to Parliament is the Bayside development now in design.

North of Queen’s Quay:

• A very large block of land from Yonge to Jarvis is now in the preliminary stages of planning.  The parking lot north of the Toronto Star building (east side of Yonge) will be redeveloped, and the large block of land owned by the LCBO will become available when they move their warehouse out of this prime downtown property.  The Loblaws site at Jarvis makes a logical completion of the block.  Given the densities approved west of Yonge, this superblock is likely to see very tall buildings at least on its western side.
• The Monde condominium project lies east of Sherbourne Common.
• Additional developments are likely in the future replacing older low-rise buildings.

This just gets us to Parliament Street where a first leg of a proposed Waterfront east LRT line would have its temporary terminal.  The line is beset by problems notably a lack of funding and a complete absence of any sense of urgency to provide “transit first” to a rapidly developing area.  “Transit” will be little more than a bus, although with luck it will have its own right-of-way, one that should be built for easy conversion to LRT in the future.

The estimated cost of this LRT is $250-million, small change beside the billions in rapid transit projects elsewhere, but the line is snarled in the politics of waterfront funding — a tangle of federal, provincial, city and private sector income.  Work should be underway to expand Union Station Loop as part of the overall station expansion program, but instead this will be done as a separate future project thanks to a lack of co-ordination and no sense of the work’s importance.  The situation long precedes the Ford era at City Hall, although the current anti-transit climate offers little improvement.

West Don Lands and Lower Don Lands

Construction in the West Don Lands (Parliament to the Don, south of King to the rail corridor) is well underway with many private and public sector projects.  A large segment of this is the Athletes’ Village for the 2015 Pan Am Games.  These buildings will convert to residential use after the games.

On Cherry Street, we will eventually see a spur line off of the King streetcar running in its own transit lanes on the east side of the street.  However, this will not begin operation until after the games.  Physical construction is already underway, and the transit way should start taking shape later in 2012, at least south from Eastern Avenue to the temporary terminal loop north of the rail corridor.  When the segment from Eastern north connecting into King Street will be built is unclear.

Connecting the Cherry and East Bayfront lines together looks simple on a map (they are only short blocks apart), but this is tangled in the future of the mouth of the Don River and funding for the Port Lands redevelopment.  The original plan for the Lower Don Lands include a realignment of the streets at Cherry, Queen’s Quay and Lake Shore, but as this is to be funded out of the Port Lands scheme, when the two LRT lines might hook up is anyone’s guess.

Despite the barrier formed by the rail and road corridors, this is one big neighbourhood, not two, and good transit service to the rest of the city is essential.  A good analogy would be to remember how remote the western waterfront community felt until the Spadina and Harbourfront services began operating.

The Port Lands

The Port Lands cover a huge site (400 hectares, 988 acres) that is not even part of most Torontonians’ mental maps of their city.  Stretching south from Lake Shore Boulevard from the eastern harbour to Ashbridges Bay (Leslie Street), it covers the equivalent of a block bounded by Yonge, Queen, Bathurst and Bloor.

Much of the Ford vs Council debate last fall (and the rejigging of Waterfront Toronto’s plans this spring) turned on the premise that the Port Lands should be developed quickly to maximize revenue to the City of Toronto which owns, one way or another, much of the land.  This tactic follows the Ford style of selling off whatever assets may be available for short-term gain rather than investing in the site for long-term benefit to the City.

A revised design for the mouth of the Don replaces a large chunk of parkland with development parcels.  The tradeoff is to reduce the cost of realigning the river through a simplified design while also freeing up more prime land for sale.  Community reaction to this has not been positive, but the real question for Council will be how to finance the larger scale of parkland in the original plan.

From a transit point of view, the important issues are the location and rate of build-out of development.  At least three types of neighbourhood — residential, commercial and entertainment — are likely, but these each will generate different types of transit demand.  If the Port Lands are developed piecemeal and transit is not in place before people move in, the transit habit will be harder to develop after the fact.  This is not a place for the typical TTC approach of providing barely enough service as and when a would-be rider shows up.

The contrast between the waterfront and hopes for and development of the Sheppard subway corridor could not be more striking.  On Sheppard, many are prepared to invest billions on a “build it and they will come” premise, while on the waterfront, Toronto cannot find a few hundred millions to serve a real and massive new development already underway.

An analysis by Waterfront Toronto of the size, scope and timing for development of the Port Lands gives a good overview of the situation at this site.  (The consultation website contains other presentations worth reviewing for background on various aspects of the Port Lands history and future development.)

The analysis begins with various maps showing the relative size of major development areas in Toronto and other cities.  It is important to understand that this is not a small site on an international scale.  This affects both the timeframe for development and the complexity of transportation requirements.

Broadly speaking, the proposed land use places the residential component on the west side of the Port Lands taking advantage of the inner harbour and using a realigned Cherry Street as the main north-south road and transit spine.  To the northeast, the land use would be primarily commercial and would reinforce the Film Studio district already in place.  The lands to the south would be primarily parkland and recreational uses.

From a transit point of view, concentrating residential development around Cherry Street will support the proposed LRT line, provided that the TTC actually builds and operates it in anticipation of the development rather than as an afterthought.  However, this brings transit only to the northwest portion of the site, and begs the question of how service will be provided to commercial and recreational lands far from the Cherry Street LRT.

The TTC may be coaxed into building trackage east along Commissioners from Cherry to serve the commercial developments and, as a convenient add on, provide an alternate route to Ashbridge Carhouse at Leslie Street.  However, a line running down to, say, the existing Hearn Generating Station site is quite another matter.  The best this can hope for in the short to medium term is a bus service.

Overall, the likely demand for new development (based on absorption rates into the Toronto real estate market) would at best consume 1/5 of the Port Lands area over the next two decades.

Almost two thirds (60%) of the residential demand can be handled by parcels north of the Keating Channel at the extreme northwest corner of the site.  The corresponding percentages for other land uses are 50% for commercial space and 150% for retail space.  These lands are not even formally part of the Port Lands.

Similarly, development of the lands closest to the eastern harbour would satisfy more than 100% of the residential and retail demand for 20 years.  The next blocks to the east (still west of the Don River itself) would add to the excess.  At this point, the scale of development would still be below 25% of the total Port Lands site.

A related question is whether all of the lands shown as residential blocks in the most recent plan should, in fact, remain in that state.  Originally, a more complex Don River mouth and an extensive park system occupied some of this land.  Given that the Port Lands are huge, why are we giving away the best sites to condos rather than public space on the waterfront?  Any transit plans will have to adjust to the land use scheme Council adopts later this year.

Missing from the Waterfront Toronto analysis is any sense of the demand buildup on transit (and roads) that will be triggered by various stages of development on Queen’s Quay East and in the Port Lands.  We know the end-state requirements, but not the timing for each phase of the  build-out.  What infrastructure should be built today, in advance of development, for transit rather than appearing as an afterthought?  Will the TTC plan for enough buses and streetcars?  What are the limitations on buses and streetcars to handle demand from the eastern waterfront and deliver riders to the core area and the subway system?

Already, developers on Queen’s Quay who expected an LRT to be in place for their new buildings are complaining that the City and Waterfront Toronto have short-changed them.  People buy condos on the premise of living close to downtown with good transit, but that’s not what they can see simply by looking at the street and the ongoing debates between various agencies on transit and traffic operations.

For far too long, waterfront transit has escaped being part of the mainstream of debate at Council and the TTC.  Both Toronto’s Transit City and Metrolinx’ The Big Move ignored the eastern waterfront.  The “subways vs LRT” battle focused on suburban routes and neighbourhoods.

Recent experience shows us that Toronto Council can have mature, well-informed debates about transit.  This quality and detail must now turn to the long-ignored problems of waterfront development.

For the benefit of attendees, my speaking notes (somewhat elaborated and including references to some comments made by other speakers) are available here.  Much of this is in point form as I find that making a completely “fair copy” with sentences and paragraphs has its limits — one always changes a presentation on the fly anyhow.

For those readers (most of you) who were not at the symposium, this gives an overview of my feelings on the role of transit and the many unanswered questions we face in the GTA.

2012.04.12 UofT Senior College Symposium Notes

The TTC has announced that the track east of Spadina on Queen’s Quay will be shut down for repairs starting Monday, April 16 until Monday, May 7.  During this time:

• 509 Harbourfront cars will operate between Exhibition Loop and Spadina Loop (at Queen’s Quay)
• 510 Spadina cars will operate between Spadina Station and Spadina Loop

From May 6 onward, the 510 service is scheduled to only operate as far south as Queen’s Quay, and the 509 service will be the only route running through to Union.  This effectively means that the last day for 510 Union service is Sunday, April 15.

Preliminary information from Waterfront Toronto about the Queen’s Quay West project indicates that early utility work will start in May, and major construction in July.  WFT expects to hold a public briefing with details of the construction staging in early May.  Until now, the problem with nailing down the schedule has rested with utilities that were unwilling to commit to specific work dates.  (This is not unlike the situation we encountered on St. Clair.)

There is no information yet on how TTC service will operate during the construction period.

Original post from April 5, 2012 follows below:

The TTC will implement several service changes effective Sunday, May 6, 2012.  These are subdivided into various groups:

• Seasonal changes
• Road and track construction projects
• Subway construction projects
• Adjustments for ridership

Still notable by its absence from the list is a startup date for the Queen’s Quay project.  I have re-iterated my request to Waterfront Toronto for details on this.  Meanwhile, the TTC will be splitting the Spadina and Harbourfront routes apart (details later in this article) because of the declining state of track on Queen’s Quay and its effect on service reliability.

Seasonal Changes

All of the seasonal changes are detailed in the list linked below.

2012.05.06 Seasonal Service Changes

Service Adjustments

A small number of changes deal with scheduling or demand issues.

2012.05.06 Miscellaneous Service Changes

Scarborough Town Centre Construction

The east bus access to Scarborough Town Centre Station will be closed for bridge work on weekends during the May schedule period.  This will require diversions of many routes to access the station from the west.

• 9 Bellamy
• 199 Finch Rocket
• 38 Highland Creek
• 169 Huntingwood
• 16 McCowan
• 129 McCowan North
• 131 Middlefield
• 132 Milner
• 133 Neilson
• 131 Nugget
• 134 Progress

Queen Street and Russell Carhouse Track Construction

Trackwork on Queen between Coxwell and Vancouver (not quite the west end of Russell Carhouse) will cause a major reorganization of services in this area.

306/506 Carlton

The normal route for cars entering and leaving service is via Queen and Coxwell, but this route will not be available.  All cars will enter and leave the yard via the western tracks and will reach their route via Queen and Broadview.

31B Greenwood

Service to Eastern Avenue will operate west from Queen & Greenwood to Leslie, then south and east via Leslie, Eastern, Coxwell and Queen returning via the same route.

301/501 Queen, 502 Downtowner, 503 Kingston Road, 535 Standby

During track construction, streetcar service will operate between Russell Carhouse in the east, and McCaul, Humber and Long Branch in the west.

Bus service is planned operate from Neville Loop to Broadview looping via King, River, Dundas, Carroll and Queen.  (Note that this is physically impossible because of the reconstruction of River and I suspect buses will turn north on River from Queen.)

Night bus service will operate from Neville Loop to University looping via University, Adelaide and York.  A timed transfer is planned at Broadview with the 301 streetcars.

Streetcar services on Kingston Road will be replaced with a single bus route operating to Broadview and looping via the same route as the Queen buses.  This replacement also ties in with watermain work on Kingston Road.  Evening and weekend service will continue to be provided by 22A Coxwell.

Buses will divert around the construction zone via Leslie, Eastern and Coxwell.

From the arrangement of the streetcar services, it appears that the western entrance to Russell Yard will be kept open until the work further east is completed.  The section from Vancouver to Greenwood would, logically, be handled over a long weekend like many intersection projects, but no details have been announced yet.

Queen’s Quay Service

Because the track continues to deteriorate on Queen’s Quay in anticipation of the much-delayed reconstruction project, the Spadina and Harbourfront services will be split off from each other.  Harbourfront cars will operate from Union to Exhibition with a short turn service to Spadina.  Spadina cars will operate from Bloor to Queen’s Quay.

The scheduled headways on the two branches of the Harbourfront line do not blend, and this will almost certainly produce erratic service by design.  On Spadina, the substantial demand “around the corner” from stops between Front and Queen’s Quay bound for points east and Union Station will be interrupted by the split operation.

Spadina Subway Construction

Schedules on 41 Keele and 107 Keele North have been changed to allow extra running time through the congested construction area.

Metrolinx Construction

Schedules on 73 Royal York and 89 Weston have been changed to allow extra running time through the construction area where the Weston rail corridor crosses Weston Road at St. Phillips Road.

2012.05.06 Service Changes for Construction

My favourite was W28, originally Toronto Civic Railway 57, that operated as a rail grinder from 1955 until it was replaced with a PCC rail-grinding train in 1976.

As an early Easter gift to readers, here is a photo gallery of W28 from 1967-8.

W28 southbound on Broadview passes ex-Birmingham car 4738.  The station only has a single track loop (a runaround track and, later, two loading platforms were years in the future).  “Streetcars Curve Here”, not “Turn”, is the admonition to wayward motorists.  The northbound track, used at this time as a tail track, was formerly the lead to Erindale Loop, one block north, which had already been replaced by a new building in this photo.

W28 northbound on Broadview at Montcrest.  Not much has changed in this neighbourhood, although the houses are a lot more expensive, and most of the block behind where I was standing has been bought up and converted to the Montcrest School.

Southbound at Broadview and Langley.  The gingerbread house on the corner was torn down for a low-rise condo years ago.

Northbound on Broadview crossing Withrow.  A far less functional passenger shelter now graces the southbound stop thanks to the City’s standard street furniture program.

Southbound at Don Jail Roadway.  The old jail, now under renovation as part of a new Bridgepoint Hospital (formerly Riverdale) complex, was still in use in the 1960s.

At Bathurst Station Loop.  W28 was the only car the TTC owned that would fit on the run-around track between the sidewalk and the platform.

At Exhibition Loop.  A great transit site was lost when this loop was moved north under the Gardiner Expressway to make room for the new Trade Centre.  There might have been a large underground loop as part of the complex, but nobody wanted to spend the money.  Transit was relegated to the north edge of the CNE grounds where it will serve, with difficulty, any new developments on that land, let alone Ontario Place to the south.  And why, you ask, was there no streetcar to Ontario Place?  They didn’t want to give up their parking lot.  That’s what passes for “planning” in what could have been the largest entertainment centre of Toronto.

W28 sits in Hillcrest Yard.  The track here was dual gauge so that freight cars delivering materials (notably rail and related hardware) could be switched off of the CPR freight line into the yard.

W28 in front of what we now call Harvey Shops with a Gray Coach Lines bus in the background.  At this time, GO Transit had barely started to operate a limited service on the Lake Shore corridor, and GCL was a major carrier in southern Ontario.

At a still-active St. Clair Carhouse, years before Artscape got its hands on the property.  A Rogers car peeks out of the open door.

Northbound on Wychwood toward St. Clair.

In this view, looking across the Nordheimer Ravine, W28 is roughly at the current location of the east portal of St. Clair West Station.

Westbound at St. Clair and Inglewood, the east end of the bridge over the Avoca Ravine.

Westbound crossing the bridge over the Avoca Ravine.

And, finally, back at Hillcrest.

CEO’s Report

The TTC’s new CEO, Andy Byford, has revamped the old Chief General Manager’s Report with the intent of making it more informative and timely.  The old version had gradually been stripped of most meaningful data, and generally reported on activities several months after they occurred.  The new version attempts to report on more recent events and plans, but achieves mixed results.

Those of us who have spent any time in management usually cringe when the term “KPI” makes an appearance.  It stands for “Key Performance Indicator”, and it usually means a number that looks good on paper, but does not  necessarily drill down to the level needed to understand what’s really going on.  Even worse, a standard way of “gaming” KPIs is to set targets for them that are trivially easy to hit.

(If your job is to make the sun come up every day, you’ve got it pretty easy; making it come up in a clear blue sky with birds singing in the trees and a moderate temperature just right for coffee and croissants on the patio, now that’s a bit more of a challenge.  If the TTC were responsible for this, we would hear a lot about how traffic congestion held up the fresh croissants, and how cutbacks limited blue sky painting to alternate Thursdays.  Birds were cut from the budget so long ago nobody can remember what they sound like, let alone why we might want them.)

The first and most obvious KPI is “Customer Linked Trips” — that’s “Ridership” for the rest of us, and it’s a shame we start off with a needless renaming of a long-used and clearly understood term.  This is not a good omen.  In any event, riding for Period 2 (the TTC divides the calendar into equal blocks to avoid problems with month lengths and the shifting location of weekends) is up slightly over “target”.  One hopes that this target is the budgeted ridership, and that is in fact the case as described later in the report (in section 2.3).  Two charts track ridership for 2011 versus 2010, and for 2012 actual versus 2012 budget.  However, what is not immediately obvious is how 2012 actuals compare to previous years.

A problem that can arise with this measure is that the ridership targets are sometimes changed midyear in order to bump the projected revenue and create headroom for more service or some other spending requirement.  Which “target” should the ridership be measured against — the original budget, or the updated one

Performance of the rapid transit lines is tracked relative to on-time values with a 3 minute leeway either way.  The reported values are quite high, and I really have to question the validity of these numbers.  Regular riders know that there are many routine subway delays, and the TTC frequently uses mid-trip crew changes to get crews back on time, if not the trains.  In any event, subway riders don’t care if the train is on time, but if it is reasonably loaded and not carrying a gap.  Relative to the scheduled headways, a window of six minutes can lead to some very overcrowded trains.

On the surface lines, the target is a headway within three minutes of schedule.  That’s an interesting idea, but it begs the question of, if headway, not schedule, determines the KPI, what is the purpose of short turns?

In either case, the problem with these metrics is that they lump all service, all day long (and for surface routes for all routes of one mode) into a huge pot.  Much more fine-grained reporting is needed, and this should done on an exception basis to flag routes and periods when the TTC does not  meet its targets.

A truly astounding metric is the number of scheduled trips operated on the RT.  The target value is only 80%, and the TTC manages to hit this, but only barely.

Both lost time injuries and employee absences are on the rise, although it is unclear what relationship may exist between the two  measures.

The “Financials” section reports on the year ended December 2011, and a fast reader might erroneously miss the distinction.  Revenue for the year was $19m above target (good, a “green” indicator) while expenses were $4m over (bad, a “red” indicator).  Oddly enough, the really important number — how much subsidy was required, a value that tracked “good” because the extra revenue was higher than the extra expense — isn’t mentioned.

Capital expenditures are very much below the budgeted level, but this is not explained in detail.  Some of this is a true “saving” — projects that came in under budget.  Some of it is through cancellations (although one must always be careful that projects do not reappear a year or two later), and some if it may simply be deferrals.  The meaning of the underspending is different for each case, and lumping everything together eliminates any relevance from the metric.

Having said all of this, I find that some statements in the detailed explanations offer hope for improvement down the line.  For example:

Clearly, some of the current targets will need to be stretched over time. For example, a bus reliability target of 65% is not nearly satisfactory in the long run. While buses in mixed traffic are always subject to the vagaries of busy streets, the TTC needs to have a much higher target than 65% of the time meeting scheduled headway within 3 minutes.

[...] Staff will also be reviewing performance in this area with other major North America transit systems to ensure best practices are applied and to have a measure that is similar to others. The threshold for this measure will also be looked at.

For measures where the current target is viewed as satisfactory, those targets will be tightened over time to work towards continuous incremental improvement. For those that are not challenging enough in the long run, the Commission will examine all contributing elements to that performance to establish short, medium and long term improvement plans.

In the details, we learn that performance of the Yonge-University line has been affected both by the supposed misuse of Passenger Assistance Alarms, and by reliability problems with the new TR trains.  This is a rather odd claim considering that the same alarm strips exist on BD trains, and there is no reason to think that passengers on the YUS need special education.  Is the real reason that irregular and overcrowded service leads to more cases of fainting on YUS trains?  Similarly are “passenger incurred door delays” a function of crowding, not of passenger error?  The TTC really has to get away from the idea that if only those pesky passengers would just behave, things would run so much better.

For some  unknown reason, Customer Injuries are reported relative to unlinked trips (each transfer generates a new “trip”), while Offences Against Customer are reported relative to “journeys” (yet another name for “ridership”).  If there is a reason for this type of inconsistency (e.g. compatibility of statistics with other transit systems), then this should be explained.

Elevator and escalator availability are both reported to be running close to high target levels.  However, it is unclear whether planned outages are counted in this metric.  As a customer, I don’t want to be told my elevator was available 100% of the time when, in fact, it was lying in pieces undergoing planned maintenance.  The TTC needs to build metrics that see the system from a customer’s point of view.  A stopped escalator is stopped, no matter if an army of mechanics is working on it or not.

Station Cleanliness managed to creep over a target index of “70″, whatever that means, in late 2011.  However, we have no sense of the scatter of the data between truly appalling conditions and pristine, almost-good-as-new.  The average is meaningless without data showing the distribution of the components and identification of the worst of the worst.

Customer Complaints are broken down into the Top Ten reasons, but oddly enough “Other” outranks them all at about 1/3 of the total.  This sounds as if somebody isn’t making a careful choice of complaint categories.

Next we come to a list of planned route closures and diversions (see section 3.5).  These include the two remaining weekends for completion of King crossover, major work around Russell Carhouse, and reconstruction of major parts of the Spadina route.  Oddly enough, there is no mention of planned work on Queen’s Quay.

Part 5 of the report gives details of various “critical projects” including:

• increased capacity for train storage on the BD line including at Kipling, Keele and Greenwood;
• ongoing delivery of the TR fleet which is now at 13 trainsets and growing at 2 per week;
• new LFLRV prototype deliveries (1 in September, 2 more by yearend, production cars in fall 2013)
• Ashbridges Bay LFLRV maintenance facility and connection track to Queen (running behind schedule for various design and approval issues);
• the Spadina extension is on budget but is seriously behind schedule.

My overall reaction?  A tolerably good first try, probably limited in places by available data. The TTC has far more information available internally judging by other reports, and this needs to be published for easy online access.

The challenge will be to report useful information that politicians and riders alike can interpret in the context of their own routes and travel experiences.

Finch Avenue Bus Service Improvements

This report discusses possibly physical changes to Finch Avenue West and bus operations on that street to speed up service.  The major proposals are:

• queue jump lanes for buses where there is a large volume of right-turning trafic
• shifting major stops from nearside to farside
• implementing more transit priority signalling.

All of these are expected to benefit both transit and road operations, but there is a significant caveat.  The work would cost $25-30m, and would, given a likely start date for the Finch LRT project of 2016, be a throwaway project.  TTC staff recommend that the work be done only east of Keele Street albeit with no cost estimate attached.  The report notes that Metrolinx plans see an LRT from Keele to Yonge at least 15 years in the future and there would be ample time to reap the benefit of the changes.

Also noted is the fact that the TTC will being operating articulated buses on Finch West in 2013.  This will permit an increase in capacity (presuming that the TTC adjusts its Service Standards to actually leave space for riders) and may reduce loading times at major stops (with the assistance of ground crews to permit all-door loading).

Signal System for the Yonge-University-Subway and Extension

The TTC will award a contract to Ansaldo for phases 2-4 of the Yonge Subway resignalling project and for the signal system on the Spadina Extension.  The automatic train control portion of the Spadina work will not be completed in time for the line to open with ATO.  (A related question will be the service design for the extended line and whether the TR fleet is actually large enough to serve it.)

The system will remain with two sets of signals — conventional block signals for trains that do not have ATO gear, notably work trains, but also the T1 fleet — and automatic, moving block signalling for the TR fleet.

Service to George Brown College’s Campus on Queen’s Quay East

George Brown’s Queen’s Quay campus will open in the fall of 2012, and there is no LRT service east of Bay yet.  When this project will be funded, let alone built, is a matter for conjecture given the focus on rapid transit to suburbs far from this location.

Effective at the end of July, the TTC proposes to revise 6 Bay services as follows:

• The route will be extended to loop at GBC and this will end operation around the loop via Freeland, Lake Shore and Jarvis.
• The short-turn operation at Dundas will be discontinued, and all Bay buses will run to the south end of the route.
• A new branch of the route will be created to run between Union Station and GBC.  The loop will be via Yonge, Front and Bay.

Effective September 4, service on 75 Sherbourne will be modified as follows:

• Service will operate every 7 to 12 minutes during the daytime weekdays, and every 11 to 30 minutes at other times.  For reference, the current service is every 9-10 minutes peak, and every 12 minute midday.  Headways at other times range from 15-30 minutes.  At this point, it is not clear which periods are receiving no additional service.

There is no planned increase on 65 Parliament at this time, but the TTC will review this as construction builds out on Queen’s Quay and as the state of the road network in the area evolves (major reconstruction is now underway for the Pan Am Games and for new housing in the area).

Council has already opted for an LRT line on Sheppard, but arguments originating from the TTIL reports continue to haunt the debate.  It’s time to expose their threadbare, self-serving nature.

Summary of The Subway Option, March 12, 2012

This is the allegedly omitted chapter in the Miller report.  In fact, it appears in the appendices.  We can argue forever about where it should have been and the slight, perceived or real, against the subway option this choice made.  What is important is the content.  If there were a strong case here for subways, the material would stand on its own.

The report begins with an argument for P3 financing as an alternative to the commitment by Queen’s Park of $8.4b to “street level transit”.  Let me first observe that if the cost of the underground portion of the Eglinton line and the SRT replacement (which will be entirely grade separated) is removed, the amount is barely $3b.  This is still a lot of money, but to claim that the province will spend the entire $8.4b on surface transit is simply wrong.  That’s in the first paragraph, and it sets the tone for what will follow.

A few paragraphs later, we hear again the claim that the TTC’s cost structure is out of line with international experience.  This is not true as demonstrated in other reports.  Madrid, to which the TTC is so often compared, is an outlier in the data relative to everyone, not just Toronto.

LRT construction is claimed to hurt local businesses, but this appears to be based on the St. Clair model where streets are lined with shops, construction is botched and gerrymandered, and the degree of upheaval considerably more than what shop owners bargained for.  A similar situation happened in Vancouver on the Canada Line where the private builder, after bidding on the basis of deep bore tunnel construction, elected to go cut-and-cover with considerable effect on local businesses.  This is a question of project design and management, not of the specific technology used for the route.

BC is praised for “leveraging” a local investment of only $250m for the Canada line.  What Chong neglects to mention is that this line received special funding as part of the federal contribution to the Olympics, a level of funding that is not generally available to transit projects in Canada.

Alberta is praised for funding transit by redirection of the education property tax.  Bully for Alberta that they are so flush they can afford to give away education dollars like that.  The situation in Ontario is much different.  Indeed, part of the education taxes collected in Toronto and the larger cities goes to subsidize Boards in less urban communities who do not have the tax base to fund their local systems.  Education tax revenue is not just “sitting there” waiting to be used for transit simply because another province has found a way to make this work.

LRT is claimed to have a higher cost per passenger mile than subway according to APTA (American Public Transit Association).  This statement is doubtless true on a superficial level, but does not stand up to detailed review.  Most subways in the USA have been around for a long time, and they serve very dense corridors.  A low cost per passenger mile is inevitable from the high utilization of the infrastructure and of the manpower needed to keep it all running.  LRT lines by their nature have less infrastructure, but generally carry more riders than bus lines.  Their operating cost per passenger mile may be higher than on subways, but they are not burdened either by the high initial capital cost nor by the ongoing capital cost of major system repairs.

This is the very reason why cities build LRT lines — they trade off the much lower capital cost, the speed of implementation and the relatively low level of construction disruption.  Indeed, most cities do not have corridors where a subway would achieve the average cost per passenger mile for the USA as a whole.  The situation is the same on Sheppard — very low utilization of the existing subway generates a very high cost per passenger, and this would only be diluted, not eliminated, with the extension proposed to STC.

A blanket statement using average costs across all systems rather than a proper set of operating cost estimates for specific LRT and subway plans is a flagrantly unprofessional way to compare modes for a these proposals.  Driving a car, on average, may be cheap, but I cannot expect to pay “average” costs if I go out and buy a fleet of SUVs.

Chong claims that there will be life cycle costs from attracted development around a subway option, and he uses the Spadina extension now under construction as an example.  It is worth noting that the original Spadina line is remarkable for the lack of development around its stations.  “Build it and they will come” has not worked in that corridor, and the major effect of the extension to Vaughan is to support an already-planned new development.  It is unclear what portion of this development would occur even if there were no subway and, indeed, to what extent the public sector is “investing” in this development by funding a rapid transit line to it.

Now we come to a series of claims about the superiority of subway technology.  Most of these are distorted or outright wrong.

• Vehicle costs.  Subway cars cost $2.8m each while LRVs cost $5.3m.  Subway cars cost less because they are built in trainsets where many subsystems are shared over the train.  LRVs are intended for individual operation and have a higher unit cost.  The offsetting saving is that one does not have to build dedicated infrastructure to use them.  The LRV cost cited is higher than the value claimed by Metrolinx for the cars they are buying (roughly $4.4m each).  This may arise from different bases of the quotations used.  Chong’s claim is misleading.
• Design life.  Chong claims that the design life of a subway car is 40-45 years while for LRVs it is 25-30.  In fact, the typical life cycle for subway cars in Toronto and many other places is 30 years.  The Yonge subway is now receiving its third completely new fleet a bit under 60 years after the line opened.  The BD line is on its second fleet, and is not due for another until the mid 2020s.  Chong’s claim is false.
• Travel time.  The subway is claimed to save 10 minutes in travel versus 4 for LRT.  However, we don’t know the basis of comparison.  Just to reach the subway from eastern Scarborough will require a bus trip either to STC or to Kennedy North station on the subway line.  If to STC, how much time is consumed going out of the way to reach STC?
• Ridership.  The subway is claimed to carry more people, but these are (a) riders who will materialize only if the expected development around STC actually happens and (b) not the riders who have been waiting for better service in eastern Scarborough.  The subway proposal is an investment in upgrading the value of existing industrial lands near STC, not in serving the wider community in Scarborough north of the 401.
• Reliability & Collision.  The subway will not have to deal with traffic at intersections or with events such as collisions that could block service.  Point taken.  Again, as with all LRT vs subway debates, this is a question of tradeoffs versus cost and overall benefit.
• Auto savings.  With more riders on the subway, this takes more cars off roads and generates a better environmental return.  Yes, but at what cost?  Should we build the most expensive mode in the hope of capturing more riders at a high marginal cost, or should we spread the available funding around.

The list goes on, but I won’t because it is all a rehash of the claim that with a subway we will have more transit riders and, by implication fewer auto trips.  Note that the “higher” ridership of the subway option only applies if we ignore the potential ridership on a Finch corridor that would be affordable in an all-LRT network.

Next up is a list of collisions in Calgary.  The heading states that five vehicles were retired, when the list below clearly shows that two of these were later repaired for service.  There is no info on the age of the vehicles involved.  Vehicles nearing the end of their lives would not be repaired, but would be used as a source of spare parts.

Dare I mention the fact that buses and subway trains have collisions too?  Quite recently, a bus was involved in a fatal collision on Lawrence East, and there is an infamous collision at Russell Hill in the Spadina Subway which killed three people and, by the way, exposed the shoddy state of TTC maintenance and training.  Buses have killed people who fell under them at stops, and subways have a regular problem with suicides.  Would I suggest that subway advocates are causing suicides by expanding the system?  Of course not, and yet that is the level of cause-and-effect “analysis” we are offered by this report.

A quote from the Edmonton Journal talks about problems with the Edmonton LRT system.  This is a controversy over design and alignment of an extension to a network that began in 1978 inspired, in part, by Toronto’s decision to keep its streetcar system.  The debate in Edmonton is not whether to have LRT, but how to best co-ordinate it with the City’s plans and existing neighbourhoods.

Chong claims that LRT will have lower or even negative environmental effects as compared with a subway.  First off, as I mentioned earlier, the population and location to be served by the LRT are different from those that would be served by the subway.  Sheppard Avenue itself east of Kennedy North Station would receive little “environmental” benefit from a subway that ran along the other side of the 401 in the Progress / Highland Creek corridor.

LRT is supposed to be noisier, but it is unclear what reference Chong is using.  We do know that the “old” style of track, notably still in operation on Spadina south of King and on Queen’s Quay, is very noisy because of how it was built, but this is not typical of modern streetcar track.  The new LFLRVs have additional sound deadening features which will make them even quieter than the CLRVs we now have operating on the streetcar system.

Chong claims that LRT will reduce vehicle lanes, and this does not accord with the actual proposed designs.  Yes, there will be changes in circulation for some left turns, but this is not forced out to the 1km spacing of major north-south intersections in Scarborough because of the mid-block LRT stops.

Chong claims that the LRT will displace 502 residential homes during construction.  This is blantly untrue.  Sheppard is not a street with houses built to the lot line, and in any event, the public road allowance is wide enough to accommodate planned expansion to hold the LRT right-of-way.  Chong claims that 308 properties will have to be acquired in full for the LRT, and that is simply not credible given the actual built form on Sheppard. In a related claim, 200 jobs will be displaced during construction, but it is unclear how many of these are near the Agincourt grade separation project which is independent of the LRT scheme.

Let us assume that the average residential frontage on Sheppard is 35 feet.  If we have to acquire 308 of these, that’s over 3 km worth of properties “fully acquired”.  What would the TTC possibly do with all of this land?

The subway plan is touted as optimizing urban amenities through intensification.  Unfortunately, it won’t do this on much of Sheppard Avenue.

At this point I am going to skip over much of the remainder of the document.  There is such a pervasive air of misrepresentation and selective use of information that a point comes where the whole is discredited.  One final section does need comment, however.

In the discussion of possible funding, the presumed cost of the Sheppard subway is $2.783b.  We already know that this number is low-balled because of the way the estimate was done — it omits costs that are legitimately part of the TTC estimate including the net sales tax and understates the cost of storage for the additional subway car fleet.

Revenue from property sales as well as future TIF revenues that would finance various types of borrowing are drawn from a much wider geographic area than just the Sheppard subway (all of the Eglinton and SRT lines are included as well).  The private sector is on tap for $914m in financing, but it is unclear how this will be paid back.

Also unclear is the actual agency through which the line would be built, not to mention how and with whom the “risk” of bringing it in on budget would be shared.

When we look under the covers, this is a project that would be largely financed with public dollars whether this be direct subsidy (the roughly $1b already in the pot for Sheppard from Queen’s Park and Ottawa), land sales (a municipal one-time resource), or borrowing (no matter how financed).  The “private” opportunity is to develop land and, possibly, make money on a fixed price construction contract.

Some readers will view my writeup of this report as superficial and biased.  I only wish there were some real meat in the report, something I could engage with as a debate about alternatives, rather than so much politically inspired bilge.

Advocates of subways, and more generally of “alternative procurement” schemes, do themselves no favours with superficial, blatantly biased reports.  There may be a case to make for new ways of building transit, but this report fails miserably in its task.

There are six groups of documents:

• Professor Eric Miller’s comments
• Metrolinx presentations and reports
• TTC presentations and reports
• Toronto Transit Infrsatructure Ltd. (TTIL) presentations and reports
• City of Toronto presentations and reports
• Third Party reports

TTIL is the TTC subsidiary through which Dr. Chong’s pro-subway work reported.  Given the amount of material, I will deal with reports from TTIL, the City and Third Parties in the fourth and final article in this series.

Eric Miller’s Comments

Professor Miller begins by observing that the technology choice for Sheppard does not fix forever and for all possible corridors the choice between subway and LRT.  In the context of this study, that is true because there is already a planned LRT network to which the Sheppard route would be added just as there is already an existing subway which could be extended.  The panel’s decision would have been much more complex without the earlier vote by Council confirming LRT for Eglinton, Finch and the SRT conversion.

Demand projections by both the TTC and by Metrolinx do not support the investment required to sustain a subway extension.  These projections rest on current land use plus reasonable projections of future growth in the GTA.  It is worth noting that growth is non-uniform and some areas actually lose population and/or jobs rather than growing.  This is demonstrated in maps later in the presentation.

We hear a lot about travel speed from subway advocates, but this misses a basic fact.  There are many components to a trip including:

• Access time to and from a line
• Access time to and from a station
• Wait time
• In vehicle time

For a subway, access time to the line may be greater than for LRT because the stops are further apart.  This depends on implementation details for specific proposals.  It could also be affected by LRT and subway proposals taking different routes.

For a subway (or an underground LRT), access time at the station is a function of station design.  Some of Toronto’s subway stations have a fairly short path from the surface entrance (or bus/streetcar loop) down to the platform while others are notoriously roundabout.  This component can particularly affect those with mobility challenges because escalators/elevators may not be placed in ideal locations or may be out of service.

Wait time is a function of the level of service (headway).  In Toronto, people love subways because there is a policy headway of about 5 minutes on most routes whether the demand justifies it or not.  This is not the case in many other cities where headways well over 10 minutes during off-peak periods may be encountered.  If the TTC had a maximum policy headway for key surface routes, it is unlikely that this would be as short as 5 minutes (10 was proposed in the “Transit City Bus Plan”).  Riders in the York University area will benefit from the subway-based headway standard once the Spadina extension opens, but they would never have enjoyed this level of service on any form of surface transit unless the demand justified it.

Passengers typically “feel” access time as more onerous than time spend riding because it is less productive.  A rider is not really “on the way” until they board a vehicle.

In vehicle time is a function of acceleration and speed.  During the AM peak, the SRT operates on a higher performance setting than at other times so that trains can make slightly faster round trips and squeeze more capacity out of the available fleet.  This contributes to the SRT’s ranking as the fastest of the rapid transit lines.  The TTC could operate the subway at a higher performance rate, but chooses not to for a variety of technical, maintenance and institutional reasons.  An LRT line will not operate at the same speed as a subway unless it has comparable characteristics — more widely spaced stations and unimpeded running between them — and the most likely sources of delay will be intersection design (including signals) and stop dwell time.

Toronto streetcars mostly use pay-as-you-enter fare collection and this forces all loading to take place through one set of doors (unless the operator uses the rear doors with or without the assistance of a TTC loader) .  Moreover, the streetcars are high-floor cars and the need for passengers to climb into the cars adds to boarding time.  Subways run with level platforms and all-door loading, an arrangement that will apply eventually to the streetcar system and to all of the new LRT lines as these will use low-floor cars with platforms matched to floor height.

Miller concludes this section with a basic observation:

… people use transit when it is accessible (within easy walking distance), frequent and reliable, and takes them where and when they need to go in reasonable time.

The section on connectivity draws on information from the travel database maintained by UofT on behalf of many planning and operating agencies in the GTA.  The overwhelming majority of travel in Scarborough is not oriented westward across Victoria Park, but is local either within Scarborough or headed to points north and east.  Of those who do travel to the west, the majority are headed downtown, not to Yonge-Eglinton or Yonge-Sheppard.  This is easy to understand given the relative numbers of jobs downtown compared to other locations.  Places like Yonge-Eglinton will always be nodes surrounded by residential neighbourhoods unlike downtown with block after block of office towers and a local toleration for high density development.  The LRT proposal, by providing a spine across Scarborough, is much better suited to the actual demand patterns and the need to link with north-south routes than the subway proposal.

To illustrate the concept of an integrated network, Miller includes the diagrammatic map of Munich’s transit rail system.  This map does not include the tram or bus services.  Although services in Munich may be provided by multiple agencies, they are operated as one network with an integrated fare system.

In a series of population density maps, Miller shows how different Scarborough (and for that matter all of the suburbs) is from downtown.  This is not just a question of density around a few stations, but along entire corridors.  Population gains and losses are interesting because they show that this is not a uniform pattern across the city.  There are small pockets of population loss between 2006-2011 (the demolition of parts of Regent Park shows up particularly strongly), and a major area of growth lies in northeastern Scarborough, the last undeveloped suburban land in the City.  This area is completely ignored by the subway proposal.

Metrolinx Presentations & Reports

February 17, 2012

This presentation begins with a statement of the”five principles” imposed by Queen’s Park on any plan that Toronto might come up with.

• Projects must support regional planning goals.  By implication, vanity projects do not qualify, but I suspect this depends on who is primping in the mirror.
• The total cost must remain within the Provincial commitment of $8.4b (2010), be spread out to match (unspecified) cash flow requirements to 2020, and produce assets that the Province can own and depreciate (this is an accounting dodge to make the related Provincial debt vanish off of the books).
• Any penalties from changes in previous plans are at the City’s cost.  As we are now back to the point we left off at in late 2010, this point is now moot.
• Any cost due to further delay will be charged to the City.
• “Any plan should minimize adverse impacts on traffic to the extent reasonably
  possible”.  That could mean just about anything.

Metrolinx goes on to review the Sheppard line’s design in the regional plan, The Big Move, and notes that it was intended to operate largely on the surface.

Next we come to the Benefits Case Analysis of options for the Sheppard corridor of which a version with a continuous Finch-Don Mills-Sheppard line ranked highest.  This happens because there is a high demand on existing bus service on Finch west of Don Mills that would be subsumed into a Finch East LRT, but the proposal ignores the difficulty of LRT construction on the narrow, low-density residential portion of Finch east from Yonge Street.  This scheme never got off the ground, but remains in the plans as a future extension.

The original 5-in-10 plan is summarized both as to cost and schedule.

• York Viva BRT:  $1.4b  2009-2019
• Sheppard East LRT:  $1.0b  2009-2014
• Finch LRT:  $0.94b  2015-2019
• Scarborough RT:  $1.8b  2015-2020
• Eglinton-Crosstown LRT:  $5.0b  2010-2020

The Toronto projects here total $8.74b.  Net of the Federal commitment of $333m to Sheppard East, this gives a Provincial total of $8.4b.

Work is already underway on the underpass at Agincourt Station, and some site preparation as been completed at the proposed Conlins Road yard.

Also included in the Metrolinx documents are a May 2010 report on the 5-in-10 plan, The Big Move itself, and a report on a January 2008 study tour to Madrid.

The study tour report goes into some detail about the differences between the Madrid and Toronto environments for planning, design and construction of a rapid transit system.  Ongoing, large-scale commitments allow for efficiencies of scale in construction, even without taking account of factors such as favourable soil conditions.  Those who argue that Toronto can’t build anything without wasting a fortune would do well to consider the scale of transit commitment needed to achieve a comparable level of cost effectiveness.

One cannot help noticing that Madrid had a powerful, popular Mayor who pushed through a large-scale transit program with massive funding support from senior governments.  When the same thing happened in Toronto, this was decried as an example of high-handedness.  One clear difference is that the transit program in all its detail was an integral part of the Mayoral campaign platform in Madrid, and there was no doubt of the “mandate” to proceed with its construction.

(Additional information comparing Madrid and Toronto experiences appears in one of the TTC reports below.)

TTC Presentations

February 8, 2012

This presentation was prepared for the earlier Council meeting where the Rob Ford “MOU” with Queen’s Park was dismissed by Council and replaced with an endorsement of the original 5-in-10 plan except for the Sheppard corridor.  This meeting also created the Expert Panel.

The presentation contrasts the original agreement Council had approved with Metrolinx to the MOU version of March 2011 and concludes that the 5-in-10 version is the better plan.

Projected passenger volumes through Kennedy Station in 2031  are shown with and without  a through-routed service from the SRT to Eglinton.  Where in past (and largely unpublished) reports, Metrolinx had trumpeted the higher volume possible on Eglinton as a reason to put that line entirely underground, the TTC points out that the riding is simply shifted from the BD subway which is then underutilized.

A series of maps shows the gradually disappearing Transit City LRT network as parts are hacked off thanks to funding constraints and political deal-making, and the presentation concludes with a table we have seen elsewhere showing the additional network coverage possible if the $2b that would put Eglinton underground goes instead to the Sheppard and Finch LRT lines.

February 17, 2012

begins with a set of maps building up from the TTC rapid transit network (the subject of so much current debate) to the full regional network, and puts the Sheppard question in a broader context — what exactly does it do for the region?

An overview of transit rider demographics follows together with maps showing targets for service improvements and accessibility under the Miller regime.

Next we have a short lecture in planning followed by maps of various older plans.  Much of what is on these maps is not new, and there are only limited places for new rapid transit lines.  “Intermediate Capacity Transit” in the 1975 refers to the Skytrain technology known here on the SRT.  Very little of that proposed network was actually built.

By the time we reach Network 2011 (1986), much has falled off of the map leaving only the Sheppard subway, the DRL and Eglinton West.  Note that the Downsview and STC extensions of a Sheppard line are priority 4 behind the DRL and part of Eglinton.

One important point to remember is that the idea of a Sheppard connection to Downsview goes back to a scheme to loop the Yonge and Spadina subways and, thereby, avoid terminal congestion problems that limit headways on this route.  However, what was once low-density North York quickly filled with new development, and by 1990 the “loop” had been pushed out to Steeles Avenue at which point the “loop” ceased to have credibility.

An historic footnote:  Many years ago I asked the TTC why the Spadina extension’s EA did not consider LRT as an alternative as a jumping off point for a northern LRT network.  The TTC used the “loop” scheme as a demonstration of why LRT could not work — it would interrupt the loop — even though this scheme was impractical from the day it was proposed.  The TTC’s hands are not clean in the suppression of debate about LRT much as they would have us believe “modern” LRT is a recent, widely accepted transit mode.

Next we see a rather sad set of maps showing the minimal growth of rapid transit in Toronto and the large areas still remove from the subway network.

A graph on page 31 shows the transit modal share and density at all stations in the network.  This is arranged from lowest to highest density.  This chart continues the old TTC myth that density = demand when so many of their stations, especially in the suburbs, depend on bus feeders for their customers.  Kennedy has a low transit share for trips originating near the station, but we would hardly call this stop a failure.  Conversely Dupont has a higher modal share even though its density sits right next to Kennedy and its usage (a variable not included in the chart) is unquestionably much lower.  This is a nice chart, but it only tells part of the story.

Next we turn to the policy shifts of the Miller era and the new Official Plan.  Although there were designated centres at North York and Scarborough, these were not the great successes planners in the 1980s had hoped for.  Sadly, it was a bit early to write about the emperor’s new clothes, and planning continued on the myth that somehow these centres would become major hubs within the city.

The chart on page 37 claims that Light Rail Technology was “unproven” when the earlier plans were done.  I am not sure how I and many others managed to ride on LRT systems elsewhere in the world (including Canada’s first in Edmonton) so long ago if this technology was “unproven”.  This is either an outright lie, or a very creative retelling of history just as the TTC takes credit for “saving” its streetcar system, a feat achieved by citizen activism and Council direction, not by enlightened policy at the TTC.

By 2003, the TTC was looking at surface transit improvements, mainly bus-based, although including the St. Clair line from Yonge to Lansdowne.  Almost none of this proposal was implemented.

Then came Transit City’s LRT and Bus plans.  The latter never got off of the ground due to budget wrangling between the TTC and City (this in the Miller/Giambrone era), but the idea was to guarantee 10-minute service on a grid of bus routes.  There are some odd exceptions notably all of the future LRT corridors even though they might not see LRT service for a decade.  The streetcars were assumed to already be at 10-minutes or better although there are a few exceptions.  The plan is a good idea, but poorly drafted and it needs revision if it surface again in a more enlightened Commission.

In a table of daily ridership figures, we see that several bus routes compete with the streetcar  network for supremacy.  This is not the way such stats should be presented because it assumes that demand characteristics are uniform across all routes.  This is not true.  One simple example — the length of a route will affect how many people it carries presuming similar spatial and temporary patterns of demand.  One simply cannot compare numbers for the short 510 Spadina with the much longer 504 King or the combined 32/34 Eglinton West/East services spanning much of the city.

Page 45 shows a breakdown of riding on the Sheppard subway, the bus service on Sheppard East and the 190 Rocket to STC.  Note the comparatively high ratio of all day demand on the subway to peak hour demand, although neither number is impressive, as against figures on the bus routes.  A great deal of the bus demand does not show up in the peak hour, peak point counts because it does not fit the core-oriented commuter pattern underlying this type of analysis.  Clearly, large numbers of riders use the Sheppard bus, but they don’t do so at times and places caught by core-oriented planning.

This is a fundamental issue with the Transit City network — it considers a variety of demands, not just the most obvious one flowing into a subway terminal.  Whether Rob Ford likes it or not, “Transit City” is very much alive.

The next section traces the evolution of the Sheppard proposals in the context of the last decades evolving plans.  Ridership for a Sheppard LRT is lower than for the proposed subway, but this does not address the underlying questions of which land use and demand pattern will actually evolve over the decades.  Much of the new “subway” riding comes from proposed intensification around STC, and the subway itself does not serve many of the riders who might otherwise be on the LRT line.

The Sheppard Subway, even at its peak point, barely reaches 8k/hour just east of Yonge Street by 2031.  This lies within LRT’s capability, but I am not sure that a retrofit would be cost-effective (I will turn to that question in a separate article).

Page 68 compares the 510 Spadina car with the proposed Sheppard LRT.  It’s worth noting that the TTC claims the Spadina car has signal priority when, in fact, this exists at only a few locations on the route, and the “priority” can do as much to slow transit as it helps with the service.  It would actually make more sense in this context for the TTC so say there is “no” or “little” priority to reinforce known problems with running speeds.

February 24, 2012

This presentation begins with a series of photos of LRT in major cities.  Although many of the shots are attractive, they do not appear to have been selected to illustrate comparable conditions to what would be built on Sheppard.  However, the photos do illustrate that LRT is alive and well in many “world class” cities.

Next comes a discussion of subway construction in Madrid and specifically of the MetroSur.  A chart plots results from a US Federal Transportation Administration study of construction.  The points are arrange from lowest to highest cost/km.  Many, notably the MetroSur, fall below the average while others lie above it including projects in Hong Kong and London (the Jubilee Line extension).  TTC projects at an average of $290m/km lie slightly above the international average of $275m/km (2010).  The most expensive of the TTC’s projects is the Yonge Subway extension from Eglinton to Finch that came in at over $350m/km in 2010$.  The “Finch LRT” is included in this chart at about $300m/km, but I must assume that this would be for a subway alternative as the estimated cost of the LRT itself is only $1b.

The TTC lists several cost drivers affecting underground construction costs including:

• the frequency/km and length of stations
• the number of major interchange stations
• the rate of advance of tunneling depending on conditions
• the effect of a high water table especially as it may affect settlement of properties above the tunnel work
• the complexity of underground utilities
• international competition for tunneling expertise and construction crews

The TTC presents a chart of construction times for projects and claims to be faster than the international average.  However, the values do not appear to be scaled to the length of the projects, and a few outliers from Washington DC skew the average above that of TTC.  This chart is not a meaningful presentation of the information because it tells us nothing about the characteristics of each project nor the source of major delays (or unusually fast construction) that might affect each project.

This is not to say that the TTC is bad at what it does, and peer reviews through the American Public Transit Association (APTA) have validated TTC processes.  One important point the TTC does not mention is that a project’s timing can be affected by non-technical factors some of which apply to the Transit City network:

• To minimize disruption over a wide area, construction schedules may be extended.  This applies to the Eglinton line where Metrolinx does not want to have every station under construction more or less simultaneously with the resulting massive disruption across the corridor.
• To manage financing requirements, projects may be artificially stretched out so that spending does not peak in certain years.
• Projects may be ready to build, but not have committed funding.

Next, the TTC turns to the MetroSur  in Madrid and contrasts it with the Sheppard subway, the most recent large, completed project in Toronto.

Aside from the advantage of being a larger project with economies of scale, the MetroSur was part of an ongoing construction program pursued by the Mayor of Madrid over many years.  The administrative environment including aspects of design (no “EA” process or site permit requirements), ease of property acquisition (the city has strata ownership of land 10 metres below grade), and a simpler project change management environment all contributed to lower costs.

Construction of the MetroSur took place in a very different corridor from Sheppard Avenue:

• A great deal of the corridor was greenfield with little or no utilities or traffic disruption to worry about.
• 30% of the line was cut-and-cover as compared to almost 100% tunnel for Sheppard between stations.
• Soil conditions allowed the tunnel boring to progress in Madrid at over twice the rate on Sheppard.
• Greenfield construction meant that surface settlement above the tunnel work in Madrid could be accepted.
• Fire code for Madrid is less restrictive than in North America allowing the use of a single tunnel without escape shafts between stations.
• Stations on the MetroSur are 130m long versus 200m for Sheppard.
• Track construction in the tunnel in Madrid does not include the vibration isolation used on all newer Toronto projects beginning with the Spadina subway.

When these factors are taken into account, the cost of the Sheppard subway is still 17% higher than the MetroSur, but not as wildly different as portrayed in other reports, notably those by Dr. Chong and TTIL.

The TTC concludes with a review of changes in conditions since the “Network 2011″ plan of 1986.  This covers much of the same ground as in other reports, but wraps up with a major change in the TTC’s outlook — subways do not always generate development contrary to the standard wisdom of past decades.  Any new line is proposed in a complex environment of the GTA development industry and competes with many other locations as an attractive market for new buildings.

Today’s debate was, for the most part, more civil and organized than what we heard yesterday, except for an outburst from the Mayor and a speech showing his passionate hatred for streetcars.

Now the ball is in Metrolinx’ court to come up with a construction staging plan allowing for the year-plus delay.  During the debate, some members of the pro-subway faction claimed that, according to private conversations with Metrolinx, work would not start on the Sheppard LRT until 2016.  My own sources tell me that this is not true, but we must await a definitive word from the Provincial agency.

The Sheppard LRT decision also ensures that the Scarborough RT extension will be part of the plan with the new LRT line running, initially, to Sheppard Avenue and using Conlins Road carhouse as a base.  A motion by Councillor Cho, which passed as part of the package, seeks funding for extending the SRT/LRT northeast to Malvern Centre and the Sheppard LRT south via Morningside to UTSC campus.  “Streetcars” might reach Malvern only five decades or so after the TTC’s original proposal.

A number of additional motions related to long range planning and funding of transit expansion.  These were referred to the City Manager for future reports.  Strangely absent in the discussion was any mention of the role Metrolinx and  its “Big Move 2.0″ might take in these discussions.

The details of the decision are available online.

This is an important day for Toronto.  We are on track for an LRT-based plan and for a more detailed evaluation of our transit future than we have seen for decades.  Talking about one line at once, about fundraising for one project at once, is no longer an accepted way of building the city.  Leaving the debate to a secretive Provincial agency is no longer acceptable, and the City is clearly setting out on its own review.  Co-operation is essential given the funding arrangements, but Queen’s Park must stop hiding from the transit planning and financing files.

Finally, a personal note.  Throughout this debate, I have been gratified by the broad understanding of transit issues displayed by many Councillors, advocates and media.  This blog and my own advocacy have helped, but there is the compound effect of so many people working with an informed sense of the topic.  Congratulations to everyone who had a hand in this victory.

The pro-subway forces are running the clock, but they are simply wasting everyone’s time.  On a simple majority basis, the LRT option will pass.

Come back at 9:30 am on March 22.

In this article, I turn to the Expert Panel’s evaluation of the options, their scoring system, and the question of bias in the process.

The analysis and scoring begins on page 39 of the Expert Panel Report.  The panel chose three broad areas for analysis, and subdivided each of these into three subcategories.

• Funding & Economic Development
• Transit Service
• Sustainability and Social Impact

In each of the 9 subcategories, the highest possible score is 5 points for an overall raw total of 45.  However, the weights assigned to each group are different with Funding & Economic Development getting a weight of 3x, Transit Service 2x, and Sustainability and Social Impact 1.5x. Once the weights are applied, the total potential score is 95 points.  These values are normalized up to a “perfect” score of 100.

Table 15 on page 41 summarizes these scores.  In order that readers can see how the weights affect the outcome, I have recast these data to show the buildup of the weighted scores to a 100-scale.

Funding & Economic Development

Economic Development

The subway option will require “significant concentrated employment growth at North York, and Scarborough Centres, Consumers Business Park and Agincourt Secondary Plan Area beyond the 2031 forecast levels”.  Whether this growth will actually materialize is a matter of conjecture especially given the past three decades’ history of low growth.

Any new transit service will produce an economic uplift.  This has two components:  the scope of the effect (how far from a corridor the uplift is felt depending on mode) and the scale (how much a given mode adds).  These values are summarized in Table 16 on Page 42.  An important issue here is that the LRT is much longer than the subway option.  Therefore, its potential effect is greater even though both the scope and scale are smaller than with a subway line.

One effect buried under the covers is that “economic development” in the Benefits Case Analysis methodology used by the Metrolinx contractor, SDG, is that the cost of building a line counts as “economic development”.  In other words, if we spend $2-billion, this will produce twice the effect of spending $1b.  The problem is that a BCA looks at a single line, not at the best way to spend a fixed pool of capital.  If we have $8.4b overall, a combined view of the situation would yield the same spinoff benefits from construction.  However, the methodology skews this to favour subways which are more expensive than anything else.

The raw scores for Economic Development for each option are 3.71, 4.14 and 3.57.  It is impossible to determine the contribution of each element to these scores, but the fact that the hybrid ranks lowest suggests that the greater development benefit of a subway to Victoria Park is outweighed by the loss of the “economic impact” of a cheaper construction project.

Cost Effectiveness and Fiscal Sustainability

This item is built from three components:  cost per new rider, attracting new riders, and equity in transit investment.

Although the subway option generates more rides, the cost is much higher and so the cost per new rider is worst for this option.  On the remaining components, the scoring looks at the effect of spending on the Finch LRT and benefits in that corridor.  The total new ridership for Sheppard and Finch together would be higher than for a Sheppard subway alone.  While this is interesting and a useful way of looking at network benefits, not simply those local to Sheppard, this is a ranking criterion that should have been broken out consistently through the analysis.

Again, it is impossible to dis-aggregate the contributions of the three components.  The scores for the options are 4.43 (LRT), 2.14 and 2.57.  This reflects the availability of funding for another project (Finch) if the LRT option is taken.

Timeframe

The LRT option is ready-to-go both from a funding and design viewpoint and therefore gets full marks for this component.  The subway and hybrid components score much lower because they do not have funding in place.  The scores are 5, 1.86 and 2.29 respectively.

Summary:  Funding & Economic Development

The scores as percentages of the possible maxima for the three options are 88% (LRT), 54% (subway) and 56% (hybrid).

Transit Service

Ridership

This criterion measures the ability of each option to handle projected 2031 ridership.   It builds on and partly duplicates the measure of Cost Effectiveness above.  The LRT option rates highest because it provides sufficient capacity for the likely demand i n the corridor and frees up funds for a Finch LRT.  The scores are 4.57, 2.29 and 2.71 for the three options.

Network Connectivity

This score addresses the ability of each option to meet overall movements in the transit network for affected riders.  Figure 10 on Page 47 shows the destination of peak period flows out of the section of Scarborough north of the 401.  One third of the demand is local to the area, and a further quarter is oriented north to Markham or south across the 401.  About one tenth heads west beyond Victoria Park, and the remainder goes to midtown and downtown.

The LRT best supports this pattern because it supports the local travel and provides connectivity with other routes.

A subway east to STC connecting with the SRT would improve network links in western Scarborough, but would do little for Scarborough from Kennedy eastward.  The LRT option provides access to STC through a connection with the extended SRT, an extension that according to Metrolinx will not be built under the subway scenario.

The scores assigned to each option are 4.71, 3.14 and 3.29.  It is unclear why the hybrid option scores so low here unless there is an assumption about the presence or absence of an SRT extension north to Sheppard.

Level of Service

This component considers the overall travel times for riders under each option including stop access (out of vehicle) and on board times.  Part of the overall impression of alternates in travel includes the experience of getting to transit including the pedestrian environment, not a notable part of Sheppard as it stands today.  The LRT option brings access closer to more riders (because it goes all the way to Morningside and because the stops are spaced more closely than a subway would be), and the reconstruction of Sheppard will give an opportunity to improve the pedestrian realm.

Sadly, on a topic which gets much discussion, the raw data leading to these scores is not presented in the report.  The LRT option gets a score of 4.14, while the subway option gets 3.57 and the hybrid 3.29.

Transit Service Summary

The scores as percentages of the possible maxima for the three options are 89% (LRT), 60% (subway) and 62% (hybrid).

At this point, the LRT option has an overwhelming lead given the relatively low weighting (1.5X) assigned to the three remaining components.

Sustainability and Social Impact

Equity and Accessibility

This component measures various factors including

“social cohesion social cohesion and access to opportunity; transit safety and mobility; end user affordability (e.g. fares); equity in access to rapid transit across the City.”

These are difficult to measure and depend on assumptions about the network beyond Sheppard Avenue itself.  The issue of affordability is not germane to the technology choice unless Toronto eventually sees a change in fare structures making express routes like subways a premium fare service.

The panel ranks the LRT options higher than subway because they provide service to far more neighbourhoods (particularly to existing neighbourhoods).  Moreover, under the subway plan, the SRT would not be extended north of the 401 and, eventually, to Malvern.  An additional pro-LRT consideration is the potential improvement of safety for pedestrians through better streetscaping under the LRT plans.

Both of these considerations duplicate issues covered by earlier points and reinforce the relative rankings of the options.  The scores are 4.57 (LRT), and 3.14 for the other options.  It is unclear why the hybrid option ranks so low here.

Environmental Sustainability

This component considers

“Mixed-use, higher density, more walkable and bikeable neighbourhoods are an essential component in promoting healthier less auto-dependant lifestyles. Moving towards this type of urban form in Scarborough will be difficult under any option being considered.”

As with earlier components, the availability of funding for Finch under the LRT scheme expands the scope of environmental savings within the available funding.  The urban form of Sheppard East with an LRT to Morningside may evolve into a more walkable neighbourhood.  Both of these points have been made before.

Scores assigned for the options are 4.14, 3.57 and 3.43.

Community Impacts

This component looks at the effects of construction, but more importantly the community effects of intensification, housing affordability and the redesign of neighbourhoods (e.g. “placemaking” effects on businesses and community hubs).

The scores for this component are 3.86, 3.57 and 2.86.  It is unclear why the hybrid option ranks so much lower than either of the single-mode solutions.

Sustainability and Social Impact Summary

The scores as percentages of the possible maxima for the three options are 84% (LRT), 69% (subway) and 63% (hybrid).

Overall Summary

The weighted scores have a maximum possible value of 95 points, and they are factored up to obtain values out of 100.  The adjusted scores for each option are:

• LRT 87.3
• Subway 59.3
• Hybrid 59.5

My feeling is that the ranking is fair, although there are cases where the hybrid version is oddly penalized with no obvious explanation.  Publication of the component scores might have clear up some of these issues.

Many components of the total score turn on related matters and there is a compounding effect including:

• The LRT option serves more of Scarborough.  Any component that depends on maximising the number of people, particularly in existing neighbourhoods, with access to improve transit will benefit from the scope of the LRT.
• The LRT option leaves funding available for Finch Avenue.  Any component that considers spending on a network basis, rather than a line basis, benefits from the larger reach of two LRT lines and their potential for rider, connectivity and environmental benefits.

If anything, I would expect the hybrid option to rank second, and the reason this did not happen is unclear.  If it is the LRT component that performs more strongly than the subway, then the LRT-based options should generally rank higher than a subway-based one.

In the next article, I will turn to the background papers for the SRT report.

There is a main report and many background documents, including an alternative subway proposal, what might be called the “Chong Dissent” from the otherwise pro-LRT conclusions of the panel.  This article provides a summary of material from many sources.  For the definitive word, please refer to the originals as I am not going to attempt to cover every detail here.

As a general observation, the materials present a review of the situation in considerably more detail than we see for many transit planning decisions, notably those surrounding recent budget debates.  With luck, and with a less transit-hostile TTC board, we might see the same level of interest turned to basic questions like “where’s my bus and why can’t I get on when it shows up”.

The pro-subway folks claim that the report is biased, that it is hogwash, and advance their own dissent purporting to show the superiority of a subway option.  The misinformation and factual errors in this dissent are disconcerting, putting it mildly, considering that billions in provincial spending and the future development of our transit network might have depended on such twaddle.  I will turn to this in detail later in a future article.

The Expert Advisory Panel’s Report

The panel’s report evaluated three options for the Sheppard corridor:

• Option A:  LRT from Don Mills to Morningside
• Option B:  Subway from Don Mills to Scarborough Town Centre
• Option C:  Subway from Don Mills to Victoria Park, and LRT from there to Morningside

This evaluation used input from the TTC, Metrolinx, City Planning, Toronto Transit Infrastructure Ltd. (Dr. Chong’s home pro tem), and material from other sources.  Each of the options was rated against various criteria to develop a score showing its relative benefit on each point, and the scores were summed to produce an overall ranking.  This sort of scheme is always open to misuse both by biased scoring and by inappropriate weighting of components.  I will discuss each of the component scores as I come to them in the report.

The panel recommends Option A, but also urges the City Manager to develop a communication plan about the significance of transit, and of the Sheppard corridor in particular, in Toronto.  The panel also urges Queen’s Park to accelerate work on the Metrolinx Investment Strategy which will be critical for funding projects beyond the 5-in-10 plan.

The panel also wants to see the City Manager bring forward a comprehensive transit plan that would be integrated with the Official Plan.  The lack of such a plan goes back to a period when the TTC jealously guarded its role in transit, and the current OP does not contain a full transit component.  Oddly enough, this situation prevented a subway-oriented plan, then the TTC’s pride and joy, from acquiring the imprint of Official Plan status.  Indeed, the OP contains a few well-hidden references to LRT (including an illustration of an LRT right-of-way at a redeveloped Eglinton East and Kingston Road).  This is a chance to finally bring Toronto’s plans in line with each other after many decades of drift.

The financial context of the deliberations was quite simple:  Queen’s Park is prepared to pay up to $8.4-billion (2010) for a set of rapid transit lines in Toronto, and Ottawa has a further $333-million on the table.  To date, there is no municipal commitment to supplement this spending.  Queen’s Park wants whatever is built to make sense in a regional context and, by implication, not simply be a vanity project to suit political or personal aims.  If the City wants a plan different from the one Metrolinx was working on, then it must absorb the cost of any work that cannot be used as part of the revised project.  Still unclear is the question of who will pay for the work on the Eglinton all-underground option given that Council never approved this scheme, and Queen’s Park foolishly went ahead on the strength of a deal Mayor Ford could not deliver.  Queen’s Park is also not prepared to tolerate any further delays.

Much of the $8.4b is already spoken for on projects that have Council’s blessing:  the Eglinton-Crosstown LRT (including the SRT conversion and extension) and the Finch LRT.  All that remains is to decide what should be done on Sheppard.

Option A is a 13km LRT line starting at Don Mills Station and running east to Morningside with a GO connection at Agincourt.  The underpass for this is already under construction and would have been required for GO whether or not the LRT was built.  Possible add-ons include an extension east on Sheppard to Meadowvale and/or south via Morningside to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC).  Presuming that the SRT is extended up to or beyond Sheppard, there would be a link between the two routes.  This option has 25 stations and a capital cost of $1b.

Option B is an 8km subway extension from Don Mills to Scarborough Town Centre.  The line leaves Sheppard Avenue east of Kennedy to swerve south and into STC.  To maintain a connection with the GO service, Agincourt Station would be shifted south.  There would be a station at Progress between Kennedy North and STC, but all riders from eastern and northern Scarborough would access rapid transit via bus feeders.  This option has 7 stations and a capital cost of $2.7-3.7b depending on some underlying assumptions in the design.

Option C is also 13km long, but runs as a subway extension to Victoria Park where there would be a link with an LRT line east to Morningside.  The link with GO at Agincourt would be the same as with Option A.  This option does not include a major bus terminal at Victoria Park, only basic facilities for an LRT interchange, nor does it assume the need for additional subway train storage.  Most of the routes now serving Don Mills Station would remain there to avoid the extra cost of duplicating that terminal a few km to the east.  This option has 26 stations (Victoria Park counts as 2) and a capital cost of $1.5-1.8b.  About $900m of this is attributable to the subway extension.

City Planning and the Official Plan

[This section originated with the City Planning department and statements in it do not necessarily reflect the views of the panel.]

The planning department argues that several criteria should apply to evaluation of the options:

• Sustainability
• Access and mobility
• Connectivity
• Community impact
• Ridership
• Cost

Several of these have multiple dimensions.  For example, “community impact” can be seen from the viewpoint of disruption of what is there now, as well as from the outlook that a new transit line will stimulate positive changes.  “Cost” involves not only the actual cost of a line in the Sheppard corridor, but the alternate spending elsewhere that might be precluded for a more expensive option.

Potential growth in the Sheppard corridor would be higher with a subway line, although there are two important caveats.  First, much of the growth would be concentrated at the west side of Scarborough where the subway actually provides service, and there is no guarantee that the level of growth would actually occur given competing sites elsewhere in the GTA.  Second, the subway projections run out to 2061 while the LRT-scenario projections go only to 2031.

Although the 2061 numbers are higher, they are not generally proportionately higher given the longer period involved.  For example (see Table 2 on Page 16), population growth to 2061 is projected as 24k on a base of 43.9k (55%), but employment growth is only 10k on a base of 28.9k (33%) in the area between the 404 and Agincourt.  Population and employment growth is much more robust in the Progress-STC corridor for the subway option, and this implies that the modellers foresee very substantial redevelopment of these lands.  Oddly enough, the larger effect of a “Sheppard subway” is to stimulate growth around STC, not along Sheppard itself.

(Table 2 contains long footnotes qualifying the values shown there, and I urge readers to digest this information before using the numbers in their raw form.)

Because the major source of projected growth is in the STC corridor, this causes major differences in effect of various options.  A line staying entirely on Sheppard will benefit riders north of the 401, but it will do nothing to stimulate the redevelopment of vacant and light-industrial lands around STC.  Is the function of a Sheppard subway to serve Sheppard, or to facilitate the long-held dream of a dense Town Centre and the development aims of current landowners?

Ridership forecasts for the 2061 model are not available because this would be the complex product of actual development patterns over half a century and the evolution of the transit and road network in the area.  For example, if a frequent and financially attractive service were provided on both GO’s Uxbridge line and on the CPR corridor through Agincourt to North Pickering, a great deal of traffic that might otherwise be modelled onto a local transit system of any flavour might shift to the regional commuter rail system.  The absence of such foresight was a major flaw in the transit plans of the 1980s which loaded all population and riding growth onto the TTC system at a time when it was clear GO would evolve into a much more important part of the overall network.

In the 2008 EA for the Sheppard LRT (Table 3, Page 17), the TTC projected that an LRT from Don Mills to Morningside would yield a peak hour/direction demand of 3k in 2031 westbound approaching the Consumers Road area, while a subway to STC would yield 4.2k.  Demands at Yonge on the existing subway would rise from 4.5k to 6k (LRT) and 7.8k (subway).  These forecasts were based on the much smaller actual growth achieved in the Sheppard corridor as compared with the very optimistic values used in the 1992 subway EA.

The projected ridership, as we shall see in more detail later, is also related to the actual travel pattern of people living in Scarborough.  Contrary to opinion that sees most of Scarborough desperate for a subway to take residents anywhere else, there is a very large amount of local traffic within Scarborough in both the east-west and north-south directions.  Neither of these is particularly well-served by a subway line whose primary benefit is to enhance the development potential of lands around STC.

On page 18, planning staff state:

In the end, City Planning staff concluded that in the absence of reliable long-term ridership forecasts, support for a subway at this juncture would be based on a long-term city-building vision.

They go on to cite a considerable number of preconditions, and conclude:

Unless these conditions can be met, a subway is not warranted, and the LRT would be a viable option to meet transit needs in the corridor over the next 20 – 30 years, and may be sufficient beyond that. City staff is concerned, however, that the LRT would under-perform as a City-building option if it doesn’t link to the Scarborough Centre.

Again we see that the goal of “city building” focuses on STC, not on Sheppard itself.  Moreover, it is unclear how attempts to force STC to become a major development node would fare in a regional context over the long haul given the singular failure of such efforts here and at North York Centre for past decades.  Indeed, the very incentives needed to seduce developers away from their preferred sites may work contrary to other financial tools which seek to capture added value from the new development.

When we look at the actual travel patterns in Scarborough (for example on page 47 of the report), we see that one third of all trips in the planning district north of the 401 are local to that area, and a further 25% flow north into Markham and south across the 401. The remainder goes to downtown, midtown and various parts of North York.  The subway option does not address this distribution of trips well in part because the line ends at STC and in part because it does little to serve local demand.  (This topic is explored in background papers to which I will return in a future post.)

Financial Considerations

[This section originated with the City Finance department and statements in it do not necessarily reflect the views of the panel.]

This is a long section of the report examining various options for financing transit expansion and, specifically, the cost of the subway options beyond the funding already committed by Queen’s Park and Ottawa.  Three main sets of funding streams are examined for their potential and for the complexity of their implementation, if any.

• Conventional funding which requires no legislative changes (grants from senior governments, municipal debt)
• Private sector funding through an investment tied to future revenue growth triggered by transit construction (provincial approvals required)
• New funding sources (e.g. taxes, most of which require provincial approval)

Table 4 on Page 20 summarizes the cost of the options and the sources of funding currently available.  Note that this table includes projects already approved by Council (Eglinton-Crosstown LRT, Scarborough RT conversion and possible extension, Finch LRT).

• For the all-LRT plan, there is no requirement for a City capital contribution.
• For the Sheppard subway option, there is a shortfall of $1.7-2.7b that would fall to the City, possibly offset by $0.5b saved in terminating the SRT at McCowan rather than Sheppard.
• For the subway-LRT option, there is a shortfall of $0.5-0.8b that would fall to the City.

In all cases, the estimated cost of the Eglinton line may rise depending on options selected west of Black Creek and the cost of widening Eglinton in Scarborough to retain the HOV lane that would have been traded off to the LRT right-of-way.  Known “sunk costs” for work on options that would not be pursued in a subway or hybrid option amount to $45.9m and these have not been included in the City’s share.

In a conventional funding scenario, the City would debenture any costs not covered by subsidies already committed to the project.  Allowing for a likely staging of construction and timing of the borrowing, this leads to a total tax increase over a seven-year construction period of 4.2-6.5% for the subway option.  Translated to annual increases, this would require an additional 0.6-0.9% property tax hike for seven years to fund the debt for the subway option.  The hybrid option requires much less City financing with annual tax increases of 0.2-0.3%.

For the subway option, the difference lies in the two estimates for the subway’s construction.  As I have already written, there is good reason to doubt that the (lower) Chong estimate for the subway (mistakenly called the “Metrolinx” estimate) was prepared on a consistent basis with the TTC’s estimate.  Much of the difference is a question of underlying assumptions.

Council imposes on itself a debt ceiling so that the percentage of tax revenue devoted to debt service does not exceed 15%.  Obviously, if taxes go up, the total borrowing can go up too, but there is a limit to how much additional property tax is politically tolerable, and whether all of the headroom available should be devoted to a Sheppard project.

In the private sector funding scenario, the City would commit future revenues from subway-related developments to pay down private sector investment in the line.  This is little different from borrowing the money on the open market and hoping that revenue growth will offset the extra cost, but there is the precept that a private investor might have the incentive to build cheaper (presuming they were actually the builder, not just a bondholder) than might otherwise occur.  There are three sources of funding that could be used:

• Tax Increment Financing (TIF)
• Development Charges (DCs)
• Sale of municipal properties in the corridor

TIF depends on the assumption that new development will actually occur along a subway line, and as we already know, most of this is projected for the lands around STC, not on Sheppard.  With all those new buildings will come incremental tax revenue that would pay down the debt for the subway construction.  However, there is no guarantee that the development will occur up front, if at all, and the City could be left responsible for debts whose TIF-based revenue might not show up for decades.

DCs assess a premium onto a new development (typically a per-suite surcharge for condos).  Developers don’t like them because the cost is passed on to the buyer who may choose to look elsewhere rather than buying a condo on Progress Avenue.

Municipal property sales are one-time revenue sources, and the City may or may not have land available in the corridor and marketable for sale.

KPMG looked at the TIF option for the Sheppard subway, but the scope of their TIF Zone (the area subject to dedication of incremental taxes) stretched along the entire Sheppard and Eglinton-Crosstown-SRT corridors for the next 50 years.  This would yield $5.3b in new taxes, but much of this money would go to pay down the Sheppard debt, not to build or maintain other infrastructure or to provide municipal services to the growing population and employment centres in these corridors.  It is hard to credit the taking of substantial funds for one comparatively small project (Sheppard) from such a wide swath of the City over such a long time.

DCs could raise $2.2b over 50 years based on roughly $2k extra per 2-bedroom condo, but it is unclear what the scope of this charge would be — how far afield would the affected properties lie, and how much future revenue would this sequester for the Sheppard financing.  Getting $2b at $2k a crack is going to take a lot of condos.

In practice, the amount of money that could be actually raised in the short term (5 years) would be about $651m.  This number is much lower than figures cited above because it takes into account what would likely happen, the risks to investors and the fact that current investors would be betting on a future, uncertain return.

Available municipal property in the Sheppard and Eglinton-Crosstown-SRT corridors is valued at $227m.  Again, this figure is inflated by the inclusion of areas that have nothing to do with Sheppard in fundraising for that project, and the value of the properties — that might be needed to fund other civic projects — would be lost to pay for one subway.

Even with all of these revenue streams included, there remains a 26% shortfall in the City’s ability to finance its share of the Sheppard subway.  This number is based on the lower “Metrolinx” estimate for the subway’s cost, and any increase beyond that figure would add to the shortfall in available City funding.

A further problem lies in the diversion of tax revenue that would otherwise flow to the general coffers, and the distortion of development patterns through incentives to build along the subway corridor.  If development along Sheppard and Eglinton replaces development elsewhere, this means that tax revenue that would otherwise come to the City is bundled into the TIF/DC net.  For example, a condo might not be built in the waterfront, but on Sheppard, and its taxes would be earmarked for the subway debt.  This reduces the actual net revenue from TIF/DC sources to 59% of projected  levels.

None of the additional servicing costs (roads, utilities, etc) caused by the new development would be offset by new taxes as these would be dedicated to paying for the subway.

There is a potential effect on the City’s credit rating, and hence on its cost of borrowing, because any subway-related debt is, eventually, backstopped by the City.  If the expected revenues do not materialize, the City will be on the hook to pay the costs through other revenue streams.

The potential revenue from land sales is considerably smaller than might be thought because the most valuable parcels have already been earmarked for sale through Build Toronto, the City’s real estate development agency.  This revenue has already been “counted” in future budgets as anticipated dividends from Build Toronto.  It cannot be counted again as subway-specific financing.

Finally, Alternative Funding Streams (e.g. new taxes) could provide revenue to fund the City’s share of the subway project.  Table 8 on Page 29 details these, and by far the single largest in the list is a toll on vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT).  It is unclear whether it would be practical to implement all of the options cited here (for example, a toll scheme might run headlong into problems co-existing with a general tax on kilometres travelled).  Large amounts of money are available over a 50-year timeframe if only Toronto (and Queen’s Park) has the will to levy the new taxes.  Once again, however, one must ask whether the political effort to implement any of them could be saleable for only one project — the Sheppard subway — which is not high on most travellers’ priority lists.

A final consideration for any new revenue tools is that, to date, this entire discussion has focussed on one comparatively small expansion of the subway network, and proposed taxes would take money from a large part, in some cases all, of Toronto to finance that one project.  There are many others, and these too need to be financed including:

• Pearson extension of Eglinton line ($1b)
• Finch West extension to Yonge ($.5b)
• Downtown Relief Line East ($3b) and West ($2.9b)
• Yonge subway to Richmond Hill ($3.1b)
• Don Mills LRT ($1.8b)
• Jane LRT ($1.5b)
• Scarborough-Malvern LRT (1.4b)
• Waterfront LRT (west) ($.5b)

This list does not include the Waterfront east projects, nor a number of GO Transit improvements.  Although these may have funding in part or whole from Queen’s Park or Ottawa, the same set of revenue tools now eyed for Sheppard are in the list for the Metrolinx “Investment Strategy”.  There is only so much money to go around, and we have to spend whatever we raise wisely.

Evaluation of the Options

At this point, I am going to close off part I of this article.  Due to website interruptions today and other business, I have not had time to complete as much as I would prefer, but will return to the main report and its conclusions soon.

First up will be the March 21 vote on the Sheppard East subway-vs-LRT issue.  Already, the Ford camp claims that it almost has the votes needed to spike the LRT scheme and forge ahead with subway plans.  Even if LRT prevails, a close margin could provide incentive for attempts to derail the project.  The “new” TTC will be in a tenuous position if the momentum of the governance vote does not continue through to the choice of technology.

The future of the TTC, its board and of transit in Toronto is much bigger than the Sheppard decision.  We have a “new” board, and later in 2012 it will grow by the addition of four “citizen” members.  What should this board be doing?

LRT Design and Advocacy

Land use and Toronto’s Official Plan are integral parts of an LRT network rollout.  We know that 1980s-era dreams of suburban development have not been matched by the reality of 2011, but are the proposed mid-rise corridors integral to Transit City any more likely?  How do we get from today to the planned tomorrow where the ridership anticipated for the LRT lines will materialize?

For the city’s LRT plans, the TTC must take a hard look at the details.  One telling criticism of Transit City was that it papered over annoyances and fudged issues during the public consultation process.  For example:

• Even without the incendiary comments by journalists and politicians in the subway camp, there are legitimate concerns that road operations and post-LRT capacity have not been fully addressed.  We know from the history of the Ford/Metrolinx Memorandum of Understanding that Queen’s Park was prepared to include widening of Eglinton through western Scarborough to replace the HOV lane displaced by the LRT, but this was rejected by the Mayor.  Why isn’t this option still on the table?
• The route between Black Creek and Jane on Eglinton faces difficult choices in alignment and the resulting effect on the Mount Dennis neighbourhood.  These choices are complicated by design requirements forced on the project by the TTC which may be excessive.  During the EA process, the project’s watchword was to save money on this section of the line, and the “debate” was strongly coloured by financial considerations rather than push-back on the design elements.
• Schemes to handle turning traffic at some locations required roundabout moves with U-turns either across the transit right-of-way or on intersecting streets, and these were not credible both for transit operations and for the manoeuvres required of large vehicles.

LRT can work in Toronto, but the worst possible outcome would be an implementation that builds in problems that could have been avoided.  We keep talking about showing Toronto what LRT can do, but if we confirm opponents’ worst fears, their disaster scenarios, we will seal the fate of LRT forever to Toronto’s loss.

LRT advocacy requires more than beauty shots of Paris trams gliding down grassy rights-of-way.  TTC and Metrolinx must show examples from various cities of LRT used in ways comparable to what is proposed for Toronto.  A great benefit of LRT is that it has so many different implementations, but this very flexibility makes it easy to show inappropriate examples that invite ridicule from subway advocates.

LRT shouldn’t be portrayed as a second-class option, something we are doing only because we’re broke.  If that really were the case, Scarborough would never see more than the occasional bus for the next century.  What is really needed is an outlook that LRT is good, and that Toronto and its transit system will be much better for the addition of an LRT network.

[For further thoughts on LRT advocacy, see this article on my site.]

Undoing the Damage of an Anti-Transit Ethos

This is no time to waffle, to attempt to make everyone look good on recent transit history.  The Ford crew’s interest in transit is, at best, superficial, tied to what might get votes to pull brother Rob through the next election, not to build a transit network people will love to use.  On one hand, we (or more accurately, Queen’s Park) have billions to build new transit lines, but on the other we nickle-and-dime transit for service, pack more people on buses, and tell people who live on less-productive routes to find another way home.

The “Core Services Review”, conducted by KPMG in the best manner of consultants telling a client just what they wanted to hear, looked at the TTC and picked the easiest targets for review — improvements from the Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS) during the Miller era.  Want to save money?  Just undo Miller’s work and — Presto! — all your troubles will vanish.  Meanwhile, debate every issue in a “war on the car” context and justify forcing transit to take high-cost options (or nothing at all) rather than looking at co-existence with road users.

Turning back the tide is not simply a matter of reverting to the Miller days, but we must get away from a knee-jerk attitude that if Miller did it, it must be bad.

What do we expect of our transit system?  What is “good” service?  Should we return to RGS, or find something more subtle that reflects a desire for less crowding, but avoids the most uneconomic (and easily criticized) of operations?  How much do we actually save with service cuts, and do we risk strangling growth by undersizing the transit fleet?  What would service and subsidies look like if we planned for the riding that is actually on the street, increasing at a rate faster than provided for in the TTC’s budget?  “Customer service” is not just about clean stations and trains.  Service quality attracts riders, or it drives them away at their first chance to motor, cycle or walk.  How much will this cost and what are our options?

The TTC faces a big challenge in its capital budget for system maintenance and renewal.  As we have seen in recent subway/LRT debates, the cost of owning an aging infrastructure is poorly understood.  “Subways last forever” some claim in obvious ignorance of the many projects to repair tunnels, replace signals and track, upgrade power systems and a myriad of other problems of a 50-year old subway system.

The TTC capital budget is tailored to the City’s self-imposed debt ceiling and the low level of provincial funding.  Accounting tricks push items beyond a 10-year horizon so their value does not show up in long-range projections, but this does not make the issues go away.  That financial fakery has been around since well before Rob Ford’s tenure.  If we must debate new funding schemes for transit, we must actually know the scale of spending required.

Just raising funds to build a few kilometres of subway is useless if the network to which it will connect is still falling apart.  Capital needs of the transit system must be well-understood by Council so that everyone knows our current options and future exposures to higher costs or disintegrating infrastructure.

How much necessary, or at least highly desirable work, is sitting in limbo because we don’t have the money to pay for it?  How bad is the pressure for better service and how much new riding could we encourage if only service were operated at a level commensurate with potential demand?  Council cannot simply issue spending edicts and implement cuts without informed debate.

Whether we agree with the specifics of RGS, the premise was sound — provide a menu of options and costs, and let Council decide whether to fund a better system.  Understand the implications of not funding that system.  Ensure that capital plans and the effects of deferrals are well-understood.

Accessibility

Council must recognize and deal with the financial plight of Wheel-Trans.  The very low cost recovery on WT has huge effects when there is an edict to cut budgets, or if annual increases do not keep pace with demand.  The portion of Toronto’s population needing accessible transit is growing thanks to the cohort of aging baby-boomers, and that cannot be wished away with exhortations to make do with less or dismissed as “gravy” we should not fund.  Improvements to base system may, eventually, allow more riders to stay there rather than needing Wheel-Trans, but demand for this specialized service won’t go away.

Funding should not be diverted from regular transit service to prop up Wheel-Trans, and riders waiting for their bus to appear should not be told that it was cancelled to pay for W-T operations.  That’s a resentment we do not need and should not encourage.

Council and the TTC should not create artificial distinctions in eligibility that create rivalries between groups.  Recent events with the TTC’s budget and the diversion of funding from regular service to handling dialysis patients on Wheel-Trans show that these riders are considered deserving on W-T service, but they may not be quite deserving enough in 2013.  This is a ludicrous situation.  Options for service levels and eligibility, as well as the cost of each option, must be before Council as part of the budget debates so that the effects of cuts or improvements are clearly understood and acknowledged.

Rapid Transit Within Toronto

Over 25 years ago, the Downtown Relief Line was pushed onto the back burner to focus political and funding support on a suburban network and on growth that never materialized.  How will we address the shortfall in capacity for the core area?  GO Transit took up most of the slack for a few decades, and more recently this was supplemented by short-hop trips by people living near downtown.  Growth is not stopping, and we have capacity problems in many parts of the network.

What are the realistic projections for the outer 416 (the area known as the “inner suburbs”)?  Where do people living there actually want to travel?  What new lines do we need to support the potential demand for transit?  How can we ensure that plans and projections are regularly updated to reflect actual developments and prevent the tyranny of aging plans that were dubious when written and worthless now?

Toronto must plan for a network of routes and focus on widespread improvements to transit, not just one or two megaprojects.  The transit file will not go away after we tinker for a few months and pronounce ourselves satisfied for this generation.

What about LRT beyond the Metrolinx “5-in-10 Plan”?  Why should Toronto wait for Metrolinx to publish “The Big Move 2.0″ before debating what else we will need?  What are Toronto’s priorities especially for lines whose function will be mainly local?  Should we keep other Transit City lines as a starting point (Jane, Don Mills, Scarborough/Malvern) or should we look at some alternative network?  Are we serious about providing good transit to the waterfront?  What about the improvements proposed in the Transit City Bus Plan?

Is there a role for GO Transit within the 416, or must be provide all capacity for new riding within Toronto on TTC routes?

Planning can tell us what we might have under various scenarios, policy will chose among these and direct the actual implementation, and regular review should ensure that the plans we make today are actually working and relevant a decade in the future.

Revenue Tools and the Role of Queen’s Park

Astute readers will, by now, have asked “what about more money from Queen’s Park”.  The question is valid, although a supply of tin cups and training courses for street-corner beggars are all we are likely to see from that quarter.

That we need new revenue to invest in transit is no secret at either the provincial or municipal level.  Some hope for an eventual federal presence, but that’s unlikely with the crew now in charge and the need for any program to be national in scope.  We must plan to raise the needed cash locally rather than making any progress contingent on a federal share.

The menu of revenue options has been cited many times by Metrolinx (in backgrounders for its “Investment Strategy” due in 2013), by Gordon Chong (in his Sheppard subway proposal) and by groups such as the Board of Trade.  We know that there is only a handful of “big ticket” sources such as a regional sales tax, a levy on commercial parking lots, tolls or fuel taxes.  Calculating how much each would-be source might provide is easy.  What is hard is making the decision to collect the money from voters who trust no politician to spend wisely.

Toronto and Queen’s Park will be fishing in the same pond for revenues, and the amounts both will require are not small.  The original “Big Move” was pegged at $50-billion over 25 years, but that was in 2008 dollars and didn’t allow for basics like actually operating the network once it was built or beefing up local transit systems to be feeder-distributors to regional services.  The number today is more like $75-billion and growing.  Toronto’s need for properly funding the TTC is outside of this pot, but is running at over $1-billion annually separate from expansion projects for both operating and capital subsidies.

Getting people in the GTA to agree to new taxes or fees will not be easy, and this will require a demonstration that something is actually happening to improve transit.  The glacial pace on just about everything, coupled with the recent political deadlock in Toronto, has not helped one bit.  We hear lots about gridlock, but have little hope that it will change for most travellers in the near future.

Going after new revenues really must be a joint municipal-provincial project.  Whether this is possible with an anti-tax Mayor in Toronto and a provincial government afraid to mention new revenues is quite another matter.  Somebody has to start this discussion on a broad public scale, not just in workshops preaching to the converted.

TTC and Metrolinx

The TTC must engage much more publicly in debates over regional planning and the role of transit.  Metrolinx gets a bye on this vital topic because so much interest focuses on Toronto politics rather than on what transit should do on a wider scale.  How do local and regional systems interact?  How do fares and service structures distort riding choices?  How do we eliminate barriers to cross-border riding — not just with one smart card to collect two fares, but with real service and fare integration?

Torontonians must have confidence that the TTC and City Council can be trusted with the transit file.  Some call for shifting responsibility for transit to Queen’s Park — hand it all to Metrolinx.  Someone, anyone else must be able to do better job.  There is a naïve faith that Metrolinx would rise to a TTC-sized challenge and a demand for service far beyond the comparative simplicity of GO Transit.

The TTC and Metrolinx should work together, but “togetherness” does not mean that the TTC meekly stays out of the debate.  If Metrolinx won’t discuss transit issues, the TTC and Toronto should.  Toronto could a lead regional discussion of where transit is going and reassert the political dimension of input to transit planning lost when the political Metrolinx board was disbanded.  That will be a challenge under Mayor Ford who seems uninterested in regional efforts, but Toronto must make common cause with 905.

There is a need for advocacy at the TTC — we may not have the money today, but we need to know what we would build, what service we would provide, what we want our transit system to be when and if the money is available.  This is independent of whether transit is financed through new revenues or expenditure efficiencies.

Our city used to be “Toronto the Good Enough”, but now that must be styled as “Almost Good Enough”.  We (or the mythical taxpayers on whose behalf politicians act) don’t really want to pay for what the city needs.  If that is our goal for transit, it will never be a credible alternative.  Transit will continue to be a service for a city and region far smaller than what Toronto is today.  That will guarantee eroding political support, and the irrelevance of transit as a choice outside of the core.

Although I don’t have time to address the entire list, I wanted it to be “out there” as food for thought among all those who wonder just why those folks in Scarborough (and elsewhere) think so badly of LRT.

To put this into context, I quote the author:

My most important points address Scarborough’s mistrust and resentment.  Why are we saying “yes subways are better but we can only afford to give you light rail” when we could say “light rail is better overall than a subway”?  Why aren’t we proving our promises that LRT is going to be better than SRT?

As I have written at length elsewhere, this is all about advocacy, about making transit truly attractive and desirable, not merely good enough to get by.

In the following text, my responses if any are shown as indented quotes.

THOUGHTS ABOUT MARKETING THE LRT PLAN

Toronto’s LRT proponents are struggling to get their message across, especially to people who distrust the TTC (purveyor of late & crowded buses, a dinky, unreliable train in Scarborough, and ridership forecasts that did not come to fruition).

Torontonians are used to thinking of the “subway” as the only reasonably-fast transit option.  We don’t have any good examples of light rail here.  (The TTC damages their own arguments by using the term “light rail” for streetcar vehicles and the Spadina & St. Clair rights-of-way. )

The debate would be easier if people talked about the following choices separately:

• bus, light rail, or heavy rail
• separate right-of-way, or mixed with car traffic
• waiting at intersections, signal priority, or uninterrupted right-of-way
• underground, at-grade or elevated

But these are technical factors.  We should instead be talking about the user experience:

• fast
• frequent
• few transfers
• not crowded
• reliable
• smooth, stable & quiet ride (even when turning corners)
• see the neighbourhood we’re travelling through
• walk reasonable distances to the stop
• get from street to vehicle quickly (even with strollers, shopping carts and wheelchairs)
• built quickly
• minimal disruption to business and traffic during building
• lower traffic after building transit

Personally I think the LRT could be a better user experience than the subway, not just better than buses!

However, I suspect people are wondering if the new LRT will really be better than the buses, streetcars and Scarborough RT. These are some unanswered questions underlying the current debate.

QUESTIONS

Could LRT be as fast as a subway? (Does speed depend on the vehicle technology, the exclusive right of way, distance between stops, or what?)

Steve: Yes, LRT could be as fast as a subway if it were operating in a comparable environment — stops a similar distance apart, no grade crossings or pedestrians wandering across the tracks, etc. Subway cars, streetcars and “LRVs” are all the same technology, just presented in a different package. Some flavours of these cars may be engineered for higher speed or faster acceleration depending on the way that they will be used, but under the covers they are all essentially the same.

How many transit users need closely-spaced stops, compared with how many need faster travel?

Steve: I understand from a contact at the UofT’s Cities Centre that about 2/3 of the travel in Scarborough north of the 401 is internal to Scarborough and only 1/3 goes somewhere else. However, I don’t know the breakdown on time of day or directional effects. Other areas of the city behave this way with much more local demand, especially in the off-peak, than regional demand.

Will the LRT be as crowded as the buses? the SRT?

Steve: This all depends on how much service the TTC operates and what arrangements exist by the time a line opens in 2020 for operating subsidies and, if needed, a bigger fleet. Don’t forget that crowding is mainly a function of the political will to operate more or less service except in cases where one hits the physical limits of a route. TTC has always tended to provide better service relative to demand on its “rapid transit” network than on the bus routes. As for the SRT, it is stuck with a too-small fleet thanks to very high cost for the original vehicles.

How frequently would the LRT run? (As often as a subway?)

Steve: As often as the TTC or Metrolinx feels like paying for. People love subways because they have 5-minute headways at 1:00 am even though the trains may be half-empty. That’s a policy decision, and a recognition that the cost of a subway line is only partly due to the crews on the trains.

Would the LRT trains get bunched up like buses, or stay separated like subway trains?

Steve: This all depends on how the lines are managed. The TTC loves to claim that bunching is caused by traffic congestion, but the primary cause, especially during off-peak periods, is that vehicles leave terminals in twos and threes and stay that way across their route without intervention by Transit Control. This is clearly visible in just about every set of vehicle monitoring data I have ever seen from TTC going back about five years.

Having said that, an LRT line should have more reliable service. It’s worth noting that even the subway has bunching effects caused by minor delays along the way including crew changes. The signal system will space out trains that are early, but trains that are late, even in a bunch, will run through without being held unless Transit Control intervenes.

How many minutes would a transit user save (daily/annually) by alighting LRT at street level, instead of going down to subway level?

Steve: This gets tricky because we need to know whether both ends of the trip are at a surface station or only one, how deep the stations are and how circuitous the path is to the platform. Don Mills is a good example of a place where the transfer is roundabout, while Kipling is just about as simple as it can be.

Compare the time required for a subway or LRT trip, door-to-door. (Depends on distance to stop + depth to descend + speed of train + delays).

Steve: Again this depends on the details of the trip and the design of the segment of a route that the trip will cover.

How much more vitamin D and mental health benefits do transit users get by travelling above-ground?

How much will local businesses benefit by transit riders seeing their storefronts and alighting to visit the store?

Steve: For the new lines on Eglinton, Sheppard and Finch (assuming they are all built), this really does not apply because none of them has sidewalks lined with shops where the routes run at grade.

How is LRT different from ICTS (the Scarborough RT technology)?

Steve: The ICTS technology must run on a grade-separated right-of-way because it uses 3rd (and 4th) rails for power pickup, and the propulsion depends on a reaction rail (the plate you see between the running rails) which is actually part of the linear induction motors on the cars. This plate must be closely and accurately spaced to the train, and have no debris or snow/ice buildup. LRT uses rotary motors that drive the train’s wheels just like on a streetcar or subway car. Note that a linear motor is not a prerequisite for an “ICTS” type car, and indeed the new Canada line in Vancouver uses rotary motors. It is really a mini-subway.

ICTS is an automated train, although the command to start from a station is given by the operator. LRT is driven by the operator (although the TTC plans to use automated operation within the Eglinton tunnel and on the converted SRT). This allows LRT to run in areas where there may be conflicting pedestrian or vehicle movements that an automated system cannot detect.

The original ICTS cars were small because in the early days of linear induction motors, there was a limit on the weight of the vehicle. That’s also why they are so noisy inside — not much sound insulation.

How long has LRT technology been in use world-wide?

Steve: This is tricky because it depends on how we define “LRT”. The only real difference between a streetcar and an LRV is how the vehicle is used. For example, Boston has had streetcars running on private rights-of-way and underground since the 1890s and built its last major line (D Riverside) in the 1950s on an old rail corridor that was linked into the existing streetcar tunnels. That was LRT even though it ran with PCCs (the style of car we had in Toronto in great numbers in the 1960s and 70s).

Toronto had a line to Lake Simcoe until the early 1930s. Although I am not sure we would call it “LRT” today, it had its own right-of-way, ran cross-country in places and made roughly the same schedule as the GO bus to Sutton does today. The speed was as much a function of stop spacing and track condition. I have ridden cars (in Philadelphia) that were built in the early 1900s that were capable of 85mph operation.

This technology has been around for a very, very long time. The term “LRT” is more recent and evolved from the need for a sexier name than “tram” or “streetcar” during an era when those modes were considered outdated. In brief, LRT is streetcar technology used in a rapid transit context, but with a minimum of the trappings of a subway line.

Which is more reliable (fewer delays): light or heavy rail? Aboveground or below?

Steve: This depends on the nature of the line and the maintenance of the equipment. Many subway delays come from fires, from ill passengers, equipment breakdowns and suicides. Surface routes tend to have more problems with conflicting traffic and some weather. Equipment reliability of streetcars is a function of age and maintenance — our current fleet is over 30 years old, and some aspects of it were problematic when the vehicles first arrived, let alone now that they are aging. Without question, streetcars in mixed traffic will have more delays from sharing their rights-of-way, but they are easier to divert around delays (although not as easy as a bus).

How does an LRT deal with snow & ice on the road?

Steve: Generally by driving through it. For heavy snowfalls, and assuming that the LRT right-of-way is paved, then the snow must be ploughed just as would be the case for a bus. If the track is open (as on the subway and on The Queensway where streetcars run on their own right-of-way), then more snow can accumulate without blocking service. We have had cases where the subway is blocked by snow, usually from ice forming on the third rail. This is also a problem for the SRT. Ice can form on streetcar overhead, and this is usually broken off by passing transit vehicles. Modern LRVs use pantographs which are better for power pickup and stronger at cutting through ice.

Streetcar/LRT systems have run in hostile climates for over a century in northern Europe and Asia. Think Russia.

How long can an LRT line be maintained before replacement? How long do the LRT vehicles last? Compare to subway cars, streetcars and buses.

Steve: The answer depends on which component one is talking about. The track structure tends to have two components — a base and the layer that holds the rails. The base lasts for a long time, at least two, if not three cycles of the replacement of the tracks sitting on top. Toronto’s streetcar track is nearing the end of a decades-long reconstruction to a modern standard that allows for this type of incremental replacement. The track layer should last 20-25 years depending on the level of service operated on it. Signal systems (if any) are good for about 50 years, and the problem is usually technical obsolescence and the availability of spare parts. Power systems are equally long-lived. In preparation for new streetcars, the TTC is replacing overhead systems some of which date back over 60 years. Substations also tend to last a very long time.

The same holds true for subway infrastructure. Things that wear out get replaced every 25 years or so like track, although places where there is greater wear (curves, stations) see more frequent maintenance. Escalators don’t last forever, nor do many other components of the stations and tunnels. The TTC’s capital budget now has a long list of replacement projects for equipment going back to the building of the Yonge and Bloor subway lines.

Claims that subways last 100 years are flat out lies. The tunnel and station structures may survive that long, but not without maintenance, and everything else will have been replaced a two, three, maybe four times over the century.

Rail vehicles last about 30 years regardless of whether they are subway cars, streetcars or LRVs. With enough TLC, a vehicle can be kept running for much longer, although these tend to be heritage cars for special occasions. The biggest problem is the lack of spare parts, and this is a very serious issue for vehicles from the mid-70s onward when control systems switched from mechanical to solid state, computerized gear.

Buses used to last about 18 years, although this tends to happen now only when an operator like the TTC invests money in major rebuilds at the half-life. Many systems throw away buses at around their 10th birthday, or cannibalize them for spare parts.

If demand on a route increases beyond LRT’s planned capacity, how can the transit be upgraded? (e.g. higher frequency, longer trains, convert to heavy rail, dig a tunnel…)

Steve: It depends. Longer trains, more trains are an option up to the point where the amount of LRT traffic and the pedestrian activity it generates at stops reaches a point where other road users are severely affected. If the demand is not entirely in the corridor where the LRT runs, a second route nearby may be a better alternative than increasing capacity. This presumes that some demand would migrate to the other route. If push really comes to shove, put some or all of the line underground either as an LRT subway for the busy part, or as a conventional subway.

Could we convert the Sheppard subway to light rail, to save money or reduce transfers?

Steve: It has been claimed by some that this is possible, although I have concerns about the stations and the fact that the subway platforms (and stairs, escalators and elevator landings) are not at the correct height for typical surface-running LRVs. I am not sure that we would “save money” given that the big expense is simply having the tunnels and stations, not the trains running through them. Reducing transfers is a question of good station design of which Kennedy and Don Mills are singularly bad examples.

(The Eglinton LRT could loop through Scarborough, back to Yonge & Sheppard, and potentially northwest to the Finch West LRT).

Steve: It would not make sense to have one big route operating as a single service. Operationally this is a nightmare because the demand is unequal on various parts of the route, and everything would have to be engineered to handle the largest train operated on any segment. For example, Eglinton and the SRT might run with 3-car trains, while Finch might only need 2-car trains. Then there’s the question of service frequency and overlapped services to boost capacity on busy sections.

Could the Bloor-Danforth subway be extended to replace the Scarborough RT? (I read that there are technical barriers to using the existing track, but maybe the alignment could be changed.)

Steve: In brief, no. Parts of the existing right-of-way are too narrow, and the curve at Ellesmere is too tight for subway cars. All of the stations will have to be rebuilt for the LRT, but the changes needed to handle 6-car subway trains (450 feet long) are much more extensive. An alternate alignment would affect the residential communities through which it passed. There is a hydro corridor running northeast but (a) I’m not sure it is available as a subway corridor and (b) getting to it would require the complete realignment of the subway at Kennedy to point north rather than east (i.e. a new Kennedy Station). I also understand that threading a north-south route through the Scarborough Town Centre area is tricky given existing building locations.

Why doesn’t the LRT plan do anything about crowding on the Yonge subway? Could an LRT meet the demand from Pape to downtown, or are we waiting for subway funding to build a Downtown Relief Line?

Steve: The Transit City plan was not intended to address problems with the subway. That’s what the Downtown Relief Line is for. The projected demand for the DRL is at the upper end of LRT capacity. Most of this route would have to be grade separated as there are no streets or corridors where it could run at grade. If we’re going to build a tunnel, it might as well have subway trains in it from the outset given the projected demand. The DRL should most definitely not start at Danforth, but should continue north to Eglinton as was planned in the 1980s. This would intercept traffic on the Eglinton line and provide much better service to Flemingdon/Thorncliffe. Where the line might travel downtown is a conundrum as there are many competing visions for that part of the route.

Which is more disruptive to build: light or heavy rail? Elevated, at-grade or underground?

Steve: Heavy rail must, by definition, be completely grade separated, and it tends to have a large footprint at stations. This leads to high disruption from construction. Light rail can be on the surface where space permits, and this is the least intrusive method notwithstanding the cock-ups on St. Clair which had little to do with the streetcar project itself. Had that been a subway, the effects would have been vastly more severe.

Elevated construction brings a need for support piers and for the vertical access elements at stations. The days of a simple narrow stairway up to “the el” are long gone with accessibility requirements. A station structure would cover the equivalent of four traffic lanes for running track and platforms, and the support columns would consume about 1.5 lanes’ worth of space at ground level.

In areas where a lane of road will be replaced by LRT right of way will the better transit take at least one lane of cars off the road, in rush hour? Or will the traffic get worse?

Steve: There is far more demand for road space everywhere in Toronto than there is road capacity. As soon as we get some traffic off of a street, it will backfill with whatever latent demand was there (possibly using other routes). The rate of growth in the GTA is such that Metrolinx estimates that, at best, a full buildout of “The Big Move” will only stop congestion from getting worse. This effect will not be uniformly distributed as the benefits of the new network are uneven from a motorist’s point of view. Traffic tends to fill up road space to the point where using a street isn’t advantageous to a driver.

How accurate have the TTC’s ridership predictions been, during previous planning exercises? Have the prediction methods improved over time? How many years out can we rely on a prediction?

Steve: This is a chicken-and-egg problem. All projections depend on assumptions about future land use — residential populations and job locations. There can also be political interference to produce “demands” justifying a particular project.

We know that the mid-80′s demand projections for Sheppard were wildly inaccurate because the model assumed growth at North York and Scarborough Centres much larger than what actually was built. In turn, that disparity came from optimistic views of the destinies of shining suburbs which would rival downtown as new metropolitan centres. Sound familiar?

More recently, Metrolinx demand model tended to make an all-underground Eglinton line look very good because it assigned a high value to fast trips across the city. There are questions, however, about just how wide the catchment area might be for a rapid transit line (as opposed to a highway), and there is reason to believe that a totally grade-separated Eglinton was eyed as possible change for a P3 implementation with proprietary technology. People have been “juicing” demand models forever, and they are complex enough that shortcomings in their methodology are difficult to find as a member of the general public.

In transit planning world-wide, is it considered best to wait until current demand merits a rail transit line? Or does future demand merit building rail? How far in the future can that demand be, to merit building rail?

Steve: This depends. If you are in a city or country that believes in directing growth and investing in infrastructure to support that growth, then build now develop later can work because there is a long-term commitment. Locations for development have to make sense in the larger scale of a city and its region. Building expensive infrastructure to a field that happens to be owned by a developer is no guarantee of success. The developer may get cold feet, or his project may languish in isolation for decades while the rest of your new line starves for customers.

Coming back to the LRT option, this allows cities to reduce their up-front costs while providing service at a capacity and speed better than what they might achieve with buses.

It is worth noting that our subways to Yorkdale and to Scarborough Centre do serve malls and, to some extent, offices, where once there were fields, but that the lion’s share of demand on these lines come from bus feeders that extend the reach of the rapid transit line well beyond any development adjacent to the stations.

Work at Union Station has progressed to the point where the existing link between the railway and subway stations is affected by construction.

The westernmost door leading onto the moat outside of the GO Bay Street Concourse from the subway has been closed, and space in the subway west mezzanine formerly occupied by rather tired shops has been walled off.  There is a narrow passage from the fare barrier to the westernmost stairway down to the subway platform.  (The escalator to the same space was out of service today, March 11, for repairs, but it should be back in operation for Monday, March 12.)

Of the two stairways leading from the south side of Front Street down to the subway, the western one is now closed.

These arrangements will allow for construction of the western part of the new fare control area under Front Street.

The moat looking west.  The hot dog vendor is still doing business surrounded by construction, but the westmost exit from the subway mezzanine is fenced off.

The moat looking east.

The excavation directly in front of the main doors of Union Railway Station. The large concrete box on the left side of the photo is the subway station, and the deep trench will be the space for the new northbound-to-Yonge platform.

King Station and Crossover

On the weekend of March 23 to 26 starting at midnight on Friday the TTC will close the Yonge subway between Bloor and Union for the first stage of installation of the new crossover at King Station.  Preliminary work is already underway, and there is a slow order through this area.  If past experiences at College and St. Clair are any indication, we can expect two more shutdowns in coming months.

Activation of the three new crossovers will not occur until the signal system replacement project finishes in a few years.  The original crossovers at these locations were never electrified and there is no provision in the existing signal system to manage them.

Also, the power feeds on either side of the crossovers are not set up to allow isolation of the crossover territory as a terminal.  When Bloor crossover was done many years ago, new section gaps were added at the south end of the station and midway north to Rosedale so that power could be maintained on both sides of a crossover even if there were a shutdown further north or south of Bloor.  Changes to the power feeds will be done concurrently with the signal work.

A short version of his thoughts appears in today’s National Post in an interview with Peter Kuitenbrouwer.

The full bullet-point version of Bedford’s notes is available here.

Bedford urges the board to be bold and speak publicly about major issues.  We are not going to get public and political buy-in to difficult decisions is we pretend the problems don’t exist.  I will return to this topic in another article later today.

The original article from March 6, 2012 follows the break.

In a stunning defeat for Mayor Rob Ford, Council restructured the Toronto Transit Commission by replacing most of Ford’s loyal followers with a new slate much more representative of the overall views of Council on transit matters.

The question was on Council’s agenda by way of a proposed Commission reorganization to shift the balance of power from an all-Councillor body to one with a mix of “citizen” members holding the majority of seats.  Recent events (Ford’s reaction to the pro-LRT transit vote on February 8 as “irrelevant, and the sacking of former Chief General Manager Gary Webster by Ford’s TTC cronies) drove a wedge between the Mayor and Council.  What Ford had expected to be a chance to banish his enemies from the TTC turned into a rout of Ford’s supporters.

The process used was straightforward — move amendments to the Ford-friendly proposal with the intent of completely changing the effect.  Three different schemes were proposed, but only one really mattered.  TTC Chair Karen Stintz proposed that the existing Commission be dissolved immediately (thereby ending terms that would have otherwise run to late 2012), and that a new board be constituted initially with 7 Councillors as members.  When this passed by a vote of 29-15, the alternate proposals became moot, and all hope of a Ford victory, even bragging rights from a tight loss, evaporated.

The Councillors appointed to the Commission are:

• Karen Stintz (reappointed, and subsequently reconfirmed as Chair)
• Peter Milczyn (Vice-Chair of the immediately preceding Commission)
• Maria Augimeri and John Parker (members of the immediately preceding Commission)
• Glenn de Baeremaeker (member of the Miller-era Commission)
• Raymond Cho and Josh Colle

A further four “citizen” members will be named in October 2012, and of these, one will become Vice-Chair.  (An interim Vice-Chair will be chosen from among the seven Councillors by the interim version of the Commission.)

The new Commission and Toronto Council have much work to get TTC and City policies back on track after the upheaval of the Ford era.  I will turn to this and the future of transit in Toronto in another article.

Postscript:  The election of TTC members and Chair were carried out through a little-used balloting procedure of Council.  The detailed results are available online for the Commission and Chair votes.  The full set of motions and votes appears on the City’s website.

The Globe and Mail’s Kelly Grant reports that there will be a move by TTC Chair Karen Stintz and her supporters to unseat the Gang of Five responsible for the firing of Gary Webster at next week’s Council Meeting.

Updated:  Tess Kalinowski and Paul Maloney from the Star weigh in on the story.

The original “compromise” allegedly worked out with Mayor Ford for an updated TTC had been for an 11-member board with 5 “citizen” members and 6 Councillors, one of whom would be appointed as Chair by Council.  Any upheaval would wait until June after the choice of citizen members was completed.

Recent news from the Mayor, his brother Doug, and other supporters shows that “compromise” is the last word on their mind when it comes to transit planning.  In quick succession, recent days brought us proposals for new taxes and fees, development charges, a casino, a lottery and even a new set of toll expressways to allow Doug to get downtown without congestion.  Each of these schemes has been more outrageous, ill-considered, hare-brained and short-lived as its predecessor.

Clearly, the Fords’ policy brains-trust is spinning out of control in a desperate attempt to find any way to bring credibility to a Sheppard Subway funding plan.  A few Councillors are gullible enough (or still afraid enough of the Mayor) to go along with this charade, but we will see how all that works out at a special Council meeting of March 21.

Meanwhile, housecleaning now, not in June, is absolutely essential at the TTC to prevent the Commission from highjacking Council’s transit priorities.

Stintz now proposes to dissolve the existing Commission and replace it on an interim basis with seven Councillors.  Four citizen members with transit expertise (not, I fervently hope, the political hacks such as Gordon Chong who once graced that board with the dubious value of their presence) will be added in June once the search process completes.

The proposed new Commission would include current Chair Stintz, former Vice-Chair Mihevc, current Vice-Chair Milczyn, current Commissioners Augimeri and Parker, plus Councillors de Baeremaeker and Colle.  Only one of these, Milczyn, hails from the former Ford camp, and his position has been wavering.

Updated:  Although the procedure now appears to be nominations and votes from the floor, we can expect that Council will divide into two camps, and that serious lobbying will occur for the handful of swing votes in the “mushy middle”.

Procedurally, this is possible because a report discussing the makeup of the Commission is on the March 5 agenda.  Its original intent was to help Ford bolster his control of the board, but the timing has blown that scheme up in his face.  If the left-centre group on Council succeeds in ripping the TTC from Ford’s control, we can be sure to see more moves to box in the Mayor and strip him of powers granted by Council.

A vote to replace the Commission will also be a straw vote on the future of the Sheppard LRT and of LRT plans in general because to lose the TTC will be a major political and strategic blow to Mayor Ford with more to come.

Some may argue that this will give him exactly the platform he needs for re-election (“they won’t let me fulfill the mandate you voters gave me”), but that argument will only play to Ford’s dwindling base.  What Toronto, and any potential challenger to Ford, needs is a demonstration that Ford’s way is not the only option, and that the city can be a better place if run with a more progressive and collegial outlook at Council.

Accessible Transit Services Plan: 2011 Status Report

This generally upbeat report was approved without debate.

Notable by its absence is any mention of the operating budget challenges faced thanks to cutbacks in funding by the City of Toronto.  Recently, the Commission diverted $5-million intended to support regular bus service quality into the Wheel Trans budget.  For the long term, Council must address the fact that cutbacks to the Wheel Trans subsidy have much more severe effects, proportionately, than cuts to the regular system.

The TTC may be improving its accessibility, slowly, but basic questions about whether the service is adequate to meet demand receive little public debate.  This is not just a question of Wheel Trans for those who cannot use the conventional system, but of recognition that mobility affects many who are ambulatory, but whose neighbourhoods and destinations may not be well served by surface routes.

What’s In A Name?  Stations on the Spadina Extension in Vaughan

The Commission adopted “Highway 407″ and “Vaughan Metropolitan Centre” as the names for the two stations north of Steeles on the Spadina subway extension on a 5-2 vote.

For some time, staff and some Commissioners have pressed for the simpler “Vaughan Centre”, but the City of Vaughan Council prefers the longer (and somewhat more pretentious) name.  Sadly, the opposition to the long version came from Commissioners whose credibility leaves much to be desired, although their comments might in other circumstances be cogent.

Norm Kelly mentioned the “conceit” of former cities within Metropolitan Toronto which created “town centres” such as in Scarborough, Kelly’s home turf.  This is deeply ironic considering that it is the failure of Scarborough Town Centre to attract employment that is part of the argument against the Sheppard Subway extension which Kelly supports.  Frank Di Giorgio worried that everyone will make a case for special consideration on station names.  Di Giorgio, it should be remembered, is the advocate for total obedience to Mayoral fiats by city staff, and if Rob Ford had a position on station names, it would take precedence over everything.

Meanwhile Maria Augimeri had hopes her “Black Creek” would get equal consideration when it comes to formally naming “Steeles West” station.

After the meeting, a group of my colleages agreed that one of my local stations, Chester, should be renamed as “Riverdale Metropolitan Centre”, although I might add the word “Organic” in deference to the neighbourhood.

It is unclear how the TTC will handle placing the long version of “VMC Station” on its maps and other signage.

St. Clair at Keele/Weston

Commissioner Palacio asked for a report on improving traffic conditions at the St. Clair and Keele intersection where, because of the rail underpass just to the east, traffic is constrained to a single lane by the streetcar right-of-way.

Restructuring the Commission

In a scrum after the meeting, Chair Karen Stintz announced that she had reached a compromise for the proposed change in the makeup of the TTC.  A report coming to Council on March 5 (whose origin lies in the machinations of the Ford camp to enhance control of all agencies by the Mayor) recommends a nine-member Commission (as at present) with five citizen members and four Councillors.  The Chair and Vice-Chair would be a Councillor and Citizen member respectively.

The new proposal would see an 11-member Commission with six Councillors.

After the firing of Gary Webster by Ford’s Gang of Five, many Councillors have talked about restructuring the Commission to be more representative of Council as soon as possible, including at the March 5 meeting.  Stintz feels that she has the votes for the compromise arrangement, and that a major shuffle of the Commission would not occur until June when the citizen appointments are confirmed by Council.

The next move is up to Council itself on March 5.

Subways and only Subways

While the TTC was meeting, across on the other side of City Hall Mayor Ford was hosting a bevy of developers for a luncheon discussion of subway funding.  After the TTC meeting completed, there was a scrum outside of the Mayor’s office (with Chair Stintz nowhere in sight) in which the Mayor and his circle claimed that there was broad support in the development industry for subways.  When pressed about funding, Mayor Ford didn’t want to get into the details beyond pointing to the Chong report, but claimed that the development community was totally onside.  Onside maybe, but the developers all slipped out the side door and avoided the media lest they have to go on record supporting or, worse, opposing the Mayor.

Of course developers love subways because they offer an opportunity to squeeze higher densities out of the city than they would get otherwise.  We have been down this path before with the Sheppard Subway.  However, don’t ask the developers to pay for subways, certainly not through development levies that would make their brand new condos uncompetitive with buildings downtown, the really hot part of the condo market.

See Robyn Doolittle and Royson James in the Star (the photo suggests Ford is less than engaged in the event), and Elizabeth Church and Kelly Grant in the Globe.

The strangest part of the whole scheme is that funding the subway depends on new revenue sources many of which Ford is on record as hating, and one (the vehicle registration tax) which he killed early in his term as a swipe at Toronto’s alleged appetite for higher revenues rather than reduced expenses.  Even the normally supportive Toronto Sun cannot believe what their hero is up to.

All of this leads up to a March 15 21 special Council meeting where the “expert panel” convened to look at Sheppard options will report that LRT is the preferred option.  Will Mayor Ford have a credible financing scheme in place, or will this be more smoke and mirrors, more claims that the money is there without any commitment to actually raising the levies needed to build the project?

• Now Magazine
• Toronto Star
• The Globe & Mail

To the amazement of many, Mayor Rob Ford appears to be trying for a compromise, but given his history, that word probably has a different meaning for the Mayor and his circle than for the rest of us.  The essential problem is to decide whether the subway will end somewhere west of Scarborough Town Centre (Don Mills?  Victoria Park?) or if the “compromise” plan would presume getting to STC some day.  If that’s the “compromise”, them building an LRT to meet the subway would come under fire as a waste of money, and we would be back, essentially, to Ford’s all-subway plan for Sheppard.

Meanwhile, TTC Chair Karen Stintz and Councillor Josh Matlow held a packed meeting in North Toronto to explain and advocate for the LRT option endorsed by Council.  Although there is good support for LRT, an uphill battle remains to counter the Ford camp’s pro-subway spin.

• Now Toronto
• The Globe & Mail

City Council will meet in March 15, 2012 to consider the panel’s report which, if the agenda process runs true to form, should be available in advance of the meeting.

Actual average loads for current service and the projected values following the changes are no longer included in the memoranda issued by TTC Service Planning.  This means that we cannot see how close to the line ridership is, or to what degree it already exceeds service standards.

Correction:  The average load information has been moved to a completely separate section of the service change memorandum, and I did not catch this.

Updated:  The table of service changes linked here has been updated with the loading information.

Although many services will improve, the amount of service to be operated falls within the currently-approved budget.  Looking further out, the budget includes the usual summer reduction in service levels, but there is provision for increases in the fall.  By November, the TTC will be back at a service level slightly better than in January, just before the most recent round of cutbacks.  That is on an overall basis with cuts in some services and loading standards going to pay for improvements elsewhere.

2012.03.25 Service Changes

Royson James graciously provided me with a copy of the document, and it is available here for those who want to see the whole thing.  I suspect that it is only part of an even larger report because this material only covers one big question:  why are the assumptions from the Network 2011 study done back in 1986 no longer valid?  There is no discussion of construction costs, project financing, or any comparison of alternative schemes.

2011.03 Transit Technology Summary and Background

2011.03 Transit Technology Table

Note:  These files were prepared by scanning the copy I received, which itself was a previous generation copy including a lot of marginalia.  The text was imported into and formatted as a new Word document with approximately the same layout (and typography) as the original.  This allowed it to be “printed” in PDF format (the files linked above) rather than a much larger set of images of the scanned sheets.

The report contains a few rather intriguing comments that won’t sound new to regular readers of this site, but which raise questions about the planning assumptions underneath decades of work by the TTC, City Planning and other agencies.

Planners and politicians make grand statements about how policies, official plans and zoning will focus development in locations and patterns of their choice.  In practice, this does not actually happen because the best intentions are inevitably diluted by political reality.  Developers build where there is a real market, not where a plan tells them they should build.  Jobs move around in complete ignorance of city, regional and provincial goals.  Do you own some land that doesn’t fit the plan?  Just sit on it until a friendly government comes to power and get a brand new, as-of-right zoning upgrade.

The idea that transit will shape development is demonstrably false because so many parts of the city with subway stations have not, in fact, developed at all.  This may be due to neighbourhood pressure, or to a policy of preserving the “old” parts of the city because that character has a value greater than massive redevelopment.  A neighbourhood may simply not be ready for development, or may have the wrong character.

This is particularly striking for residential development where local amenities and the “feel” of a neighbourhood are more important than with an industrial/commercial/office development.  People may work in office towers surrounded by pedestrian-hostile roads and parking, but they want to go home to something friendlier.

Because the market for commercial real estate and the jobs it brings has shifted to the 905, much of the development in nodes originally intended for employment has been residential.  This completely changes the transit demand pattern.  Instead of many commuters travelling “in” to a few nodes, we have residential areas that spawn outward trips all over the GTAH.  Subway plans presumed the concentrated trip making that nodes full of employees would create, and these have not materialized.

We are now seeing this pattern even in downtown Toronto with the growth of the condo market.  Many residents live and work downtown, but a considerable number are “reverse commutes” out to the 905, trips for which both the local and regional systems are very badly equipped.

The idea of “downtown North York” or “downtown Scarborough” has simply not materialized in the form expected three decades ago.  Actual employment levels at these two centres are about 1/3 (North York) or 1/5 (Scarborough) of the 1986 projections.  This should be a lesson for today’s planners and politicians who think they can forecast and direct future growth patterns with the aid of a few maps and regulations.

The employment growth projected back in 1986 for “Metropolitan Toronto” (now the City of Toronto) was a rise from 1.23-million to 1.9m.  In fact, employment grew only to 1.30m by 2011 with the lion’s share of the jobs going instead to the 905.  With the absence of strong nodes for new jobs, there was little chance of improving the modal split to whatever commercial development did occur.  Combining lower than predicted growth and a failure to achieve the projected transit modal split leaves us with demand projections that are completely meaningless.

Far too often, there is a political imperative to make the future look better than it might be, or at least to do a proper sensitivity analysis, a “what if” scenario for conditions that don’t match what we would like to see.  Any subway financing scheme that depends on future ridership must answer basic questions:  will those riders actually arrive, and will land development occur in a manner that will generate trips the subway will serve?

We have already seen development in the Sheppard corridor, but it is unclear whether this attracts buyers because it is near the 401 and DVP (and thus to a wide set of GTA destinations), or because it is near the subway.  That development is generating many car trips because, for most destinations, auto travel is the only real option.  The market share for transit at the North York and Scarborough centres is barely half what was projected in 1986, and the compound effect of much lower employment means that transit demand to these centres is a trivial fraction of what Network 2011 was intended to serve.

One item caught my eye in the section of “Public’s travel patterns and behaviour”.  Not only were the employment and mode share values used to model demand considerably above what actually happened, assumptions were  made about the way the Sheppard subway would get its passengers.  Regional and local bus services would be gerrymandered to force riders onto the Sheppard line (at least in the model), but riders actually preferred to go to Finch Station where there was a chance of getting a comfortable spot on a train.

Another assumption in the demand model was that the cost of driving would rise substantially both through higher gas prices and the cost of parking.  Neither of these materialized, although based on typical motoring behaviour, without a very  good network of transit alternatives, the pricing of auto trips does not discourage much travel.

This begs a vital question for all regional planning — can we trust the models?  What assumptions went into the model for our new transit  network, and have these been tested against actual patterns of development and of the regional economy?

The projected demands on new transit lines made back in 1986 were substantially higher than today’s expectations:

• The Sheppard subway was expected to have 15,400 peak riders by 2011, but the actual number on the existing line is 4,500.  The projected peak demand for the full line in 2011 is now 6-10,000.
• The Eglinton subway was expected to have 17,600 peak riders by 2011, but the LRT projection is now reduced to 5,200 (based on having the central section underground).
• The Downtown Relief line was projected to have 11,700 peak riders by 2011, and the demand projection today is 12,000.  This is no surprise given that the DRL would serve a demand that actually existed 25 years ago, rather than a notional demand in a regional plan.

In previous articles, I have discussed the matter of the TTC’s Capital Budget and the mounting cost of simply keeping the subway system running.  Nothing lasts forever, and many systems are wearing out.  We are now on the third major generation of vehicles, there are problems everywhere with station finishes and equipment, water penetration and damage is an ongoing headache, and the signal system must be completely replaced.  Contrary to statements by some subway advocates, subways do not last for 100 years without major investments in rehabilitation.

Back in 1986, the TTC had not yet reached the point where the subway had started to wear out.  The oldest line (Yonge from Eglinton to Union) was only 32 years old, and much of its first generation equipment was still functional.  The TTC now knows that the subway system has an ongoing cost of $230m operating (routine maintenance) and $275m capital (major systems replacement) every year.  Looked at another way, simply maintaining the subway system consumes about 1/6 of the annual operating budget, and a substantial slice of the non-expansion related capital budget.

There is a large backlog of needed capital repairs with a shortfall of $2.3-billion in the 10-year capital budget thanks to provincial cutbacks in capital funding.  Building more subway lines will only add to this set of maintenance costs a few decades in the future.

Finally, we have a bit of creative history writing.  Why, the TTC asks, was LRT not embraced as an option back in 1986?  They claim that at the time it was a poorly understood mode with only limited use, particularly in North America.  What we now think of as “modern” LRT had not yet evolved.  This statement ignores the LRT renaissance in Europe and suggests that despite new LRT systems in North America (notably Edmonton’s and Calgary’s), it was too soon for the TTC to embrace the mode.

I will not dwell on the fact that the Scarborough ICTS system was brand new, and the idea that an “intermediate capacity” system between buses and subways already might exist was simply not in accord with provincial policy.

In fact, the TTC’s love for LRT is a very recent phenomenon.  When the Ridership Growth Strategy was first proposed in 2003 for “short term” service improvements, TTC subway planners were terrified that their pet projects had fallen off of the map.  The RGS was hastily amended to include a commitment to the Spadina and Sheppard extensions, and this move has been cited ever since as “proof” that the TTC supports the Sheppard line.  It would be another four years before the Transit City scheme was launched.

LRT was well-established around the world before the Transit City plan was announced, but it took a major rethink of Toronto’s transit network at the political level, combined with the economic constraints against subway building, for LRT to get the consideration it deserved.  Transit City was not perfect, but it got Toronto thinking about what might be built.

This report is a year old, and its existence shows that the pro-subway forces in Toronto, notably in the Mayor’s office, did not want an informed, public discussion of subway plans to occur.  Observations about the changing growth patterns in Toronto raise important questions about the future role of transit, indeed of the ability of transit to serve the region as we have actually built it.  Far too much effort is concentrated on the subway-vs-LRT battle in a few corridors when the real challenge lies “out there” in the growing and very car-oriented 905.

After three hours in private session, the Commissioners emerged to confirm what had been decided, that Webster’s contract would be terminated in accordance with its “without cause” section.  Although we don’t know the details, this almost certainly means that Webster will earn not only his pay for the remainder of the contract, but a penalty payment for early termination.

The recently recruited Chief Operating Officer, Andy Byford, takes over as interim CGM, an utterly thankless task in the poisonous environment of City Hall.  Whether he will be chosen to replace Webster, or would even want to, remains to be seen.

The TTC will launch into a search for a new CGM, but no sane, let alone respectable senior manager from another transit agency will want a position whose primary role is to kiss the mayor’s ass.

Before the vote, some of the Commissioners spoke to the issue.  Maria Augimeri spoke passionately about the role of the Commission asking “who do you serve”.  Does the Commission exist as puppets of the mayor, or as a responsible body serving the citizens of Toronto?  John Parker spoke extremely briefly merely noting the words “without just cause”.  Both Augimeri and Parker would join Chair Karen Stintz and Vice-Chair Peter Milczyn in voting against the termination.

Ford’s minions — Frank Di Giorgio, Denzil Minnan-Wong, Norm Kelly, Vince Crisanti and Cesar Palacio — could have kept their mouths shut, but no politician can resist a chance for a sanctimonious speech.

Di Giorgio talked about the relationship between previous mayors and CGMs noting that both David Gunn and Rick Ducharme had left under strained relationships with past administrations.  What he neglected to mention was that Webster was threatened not by a professional disagreement, but by Mayor Ford’s mistaken belief that staff owe him a personal allegiance supporting whatever position he might take.  Di Giorgio actually said that excellence in a CGM means the ability to perform tasks set by the leader of the city, by the Mayor.

That’s not how professional staffs work in Canada, and indeed this concept violates both Council’s code of ethics (which provides that staff work for all members of Council without favour) and the Professional Engineer’s code that regards tailoring advice to suit the opinion of the hearer, rather than facts and the professional opinion of the engineer, as a form of misconduct.

Norm Kelly praised Webster, but tempered this by saying that his good deeds lay in the past, while the TTC needs someone to “lead us into the future”.  That will be a very dark future if this decision stands without a change in TTC governance.

In the best tradition of stories with black-hatted villains, there were boos, hissing and calls of “shame” from the public.  This is the most disgusting example of political manipulation, of abuse of power, that I have seen in 40 years of TTC and Council-watching.  Toronto is soiled by this action.

Council now faces the task of bringing Mayor Ford and his lackeys to heel, of driving home the basic fact that power rests with Council, not the Mayor no matter how delusional he or his toadies may be in thinking him Rob the First, The Great and Powerful.

The next opportunity will come at the Council Meeting of March 5-6 when a proposed change in the makeup of the Transit Commission, recently passed by the Ford-dominated Executive Committee, comes to Council for discussion.  The outcome may not be to Ford’s liking.  His actions, the moves of a spoiled child, a bully who cannot stand losing a fight, will only harden opposition to his reign.  Council can and should act to strip the TTC of Ford allies, especially the five responsible for Webster’s dismissal.  There will be no transit progress in Toronto while a tinpot potentate interferes with the execution of Council’s will, strangles the transit system for funding and service, while promising subways he and the City cannot possibly afford to build.

[The title of this article is from Marc Antony's speech from Julius Ceasar, Act III, Scene 2, in which he mocks Caesar's assassins and their dubious self-justification.]

In a clear retaliation against the block of Council who endorsed an LRT plan for Toronto, the block of Commissioners dominated by Mayor Ford have called for this special meeting using a procedure similar to the one used by Karen Stintz and her allies to call a special Council meeting on the LRT plans.

If correct, this will be a clear retaliation against TTC’s Chief General Manager Gary Webster who has spoken against proposals for expansion of the subway network, and by extension against Stintz who has defended Webster from previous attacks by the Ford administration.

From the viewpoint of political strategy, now is the time for Council to hold yet another special meeting to seize control of the Transit Commission.  This could be done either by prematurely ending the terms of sitting members, or by increasing the size of the Commission and diluting Ford’s influence with enough extra members to ensure a majority that represented the broader view of Council rather than of the Mayor.

Will Council make such a move, or will they sit on their hands?  This is the first challenge, but certainly not the last, in taming Mayor Ford’s control of the City’s agencies.

The Metrolinx Board will meet on Thursday, February 16.  Among items on the agenda is a “Toronto Update”, but there is no published report.  Given recent events, I suspect this report won’t get beyond the draft stage much before the meeting.

Updated:  The Toronto report and discussion on it are covered in a separate article.

Other items include:

GO Transit Update

This report begins with a review of 2011 operations and updates on ridership to the end of November.

• On the rail system, weekday riding is up by almost 6%.
• On the bus system, weekday riding is up by over 6%, and weekend riding is up by 18%.
• Total weekday ridership is now 243,600, up 13,600 from November 2010.

Looking ahead, GO expects rail ridership to grow by 22% over the next five years while bus riding will go up by 30%.

Although the presentation does not say this explicitly, one constraint on rail growth is the limit on peak capacity GO can provide.  This shows up in GO’s continuing inability to meet its target for passenger comfort with 80% or more of rush hour passengers getting seats on trains.  The number today is 64%, and there is little hope of this improving with demand growing faster than GO can provide capacity.

Updated:  Director Lee Parsons asked where there were capacity constraints in the network.  GO President Gary McNeil replied that demand was high on all corridors, but that Barrie has the strongest growth.  Milton is running at 110-120% of capacity.  GO will put additional trains wherever there is an opening in network schedules because there is strong demand everywhere.

Director Richard Koroscil asked what problems are at the top of GO’s “worry list”.  McNeil replied that the greatest need is for Federal and Provincial support for infrastructure.  Demand for GO service is there whether governments provide funding or not.  Planning where to spend is complicated by the need to keep activity going in many areas at the same time lest riders feel that their part of the network is being ignored.

Director Rahul Bhardwaj worried that people might feel that transit growth has stalled, and asked how GO could get more positive stories out.  McNeil replied that the magnitude of the Toronto debate has overshadowed GO even though they have good news in the 905.  Chair Rob Prichard noted that Metrolinx has to make the same progress in Toronto as they do elsewhere in the GTHA.

I could not help thinking back to the departing remarks of just-retired Director Paul Bedford who, among other parting comments, noted the relative size of the TTC and GO’s operations.  What is big news in the 905 and for GO itself would be small change on the scale of the TTC because GO is, comparatively, such a small operation.  Simply publishing sunny press releases (something GO is very good at) will not make up for the lower presence and mode share that transit generally has in the 905 compared to the 416.

Changes to Ticket Cancelling on the GO System

The title of this report is somewhat misleading as this is actually a report on the phase-out of paper 10-ride and 2-ride tickets and completion of the system’s conversion to Presto.

After May 31, 2012, the 10-ride and 2-ride tickets will no longer be sold.  Those remaining in circulation will be valid up to July 31, 2012 after which they will be refunded or converted to Presto.

Monthly, daily and group passes are not affected by this change.

Presto Update

Presto continues to gain users with a 22% growth in the number of cards issued over the November-December 2011 period.  About $14.4-million in fares were paid using the fare cards during the same period.  What has not been reported is how this lines up against overall fare revenue on GO and on participating regional transit systems.

A major new market for Presto will arrive in June 2012 with the rollout in Ottawa with the “Presto Next Generation” (or “PNG”) card.  PNG will become available in the GTHA in late fall 2012.

Concurrent with the rollout of PNG, the Presto website will be revised with added functionality and an improved layout, according to the report.

Meanwhile on the TTC, Metrolinx expects the Commission to grant authority for a contract with Presto at its March meeting.  Notable among the features to be included will be “Open Payments” allowing cards other than Presto and mobile devices to be used.  However, the exact details are not explained and it is unclear whether this will simply provide the ability to pay a fare with a credit card, or whether that card can be used as an alternative to Presto and receive discounts such as multi-trip incentives or equivalent-to-pass functionality.

A long section originally this article related to questions about Presto arising from the January Board Meeting.  This has been moved to a separate article.

Updated:  Director Rahul Bhardwaj asked how many “free rides” are taken thanks to the discounting system of Presto.  Staff pointed out that there are “free” rides on passes by design, but they are not counted or reported as there is no mechanism to capture pass use comparable to the Presto readers.

Director Lee Parsons noted that a commuter line in New York City saw a jump in counterpeak and weekend demand when it moved to all day service, and a fare tariff that allows for extra trips at little or no cost helps drive this demand. 

A view of transit riding as “free” and somehow undesirable is troubling because it implies that encouraging use through lower “frequent flyer” fares may not be a good idea.  This is the basic philosophical problem of fare structures:  do we purport to charge people for what they use, or do we encourage higher utilization through fares that reward frequent travel.  Is transit a service we wish to make as attractive as possible through the perception that it has a low marginal cost just as autos are thought to be “cheap” until one pulls into a gas station or receives an insurance bill.

After the meeting, I sent questions to Metrolinx asking how the two generations of Presto cards and supporting systems will interoperate.  For example, what will happen if an Ottawa user with a “PNG” card comes to Toronto and attempts to ride GO Transit?  I await answers to my questions.

In the original article, I reported a series of questions posed to Metrolinx about its Presto card and fare structure.  I have now received responses, and these have been interpolated into the text.

On January 9, 2012, following the last Metrolinx Board meeting, I posed a number of questions to clarify some of the statements and discussions.  These were answered during the week of February 13.  In the text below, the Metrolinx response is given “as is” as a quoted block.

Question:  How will the fare increase be administered for passholders? Will they pay for February at the old rate including the current, higher discount?

Monthly pass holders will still have the opportunity to buy their February monthly passes at the old discount rate. Starting February 18, however, monthly pass holders will continue to receive a discount, but at a lower rate –15% off the cost of 40 single-ride adult tickets and 30% off the cost of 40 single-ride student tickets.

Question:  If someone prepaid for a pass, they would get the entire month at the “old” rate. However, the way Presto works is that it deducts full fares from your account balance until you get to the maximum for the month.  Will a Presto rider will pay fares at the old rate up to the cutover date, then at the new rate until they hit the maximum fares for the month where the free loyalty bonus trips cut in? Will the cost for February will be a blended value of the old and new rates.

Yes. PRESTO customers will pay their fares at the old rate until February 17. Starting February 18, PRESTO customers will pay their fares at the new rate for each ride.

Question:  How long will old multi-ride tickets will continue to be accepted?  This was answered in a report on the February agenda — July 31, 2012.

Question:  The entire discussion of the rationale for or against a tiered fare increase and, if so, how it should be structured, was, at the very least, confusing and at times almost evasive. Some of the statements made during the Board meeting and information in the presentation/report simply did not line up.  For example, it was clear that the question of true fare by distance uncovered a lack of full understanding of your cost base and how it would vary depending on service level and/or ridership.

In reply to a question, Bruce McCuaig stated that the majority of costs are fixed in nature and not related to the distance travelled. From the presentation, we know that diesel fuel is a high area of cost pressure and from the financial statements, we know that it’s about 1/3 of total costs.

Some of our costs, such as the cost of diesel fuel, do vary based on the distance travelled. As a result, we have implemented a three-tiered fare increase starting February 18.

Comment:  The increases are proportionally lower for long trips than for short ones, although not quite as blatantly as in some previous increases.  This continues a pattern whereby “equity” in fares based on distance travelled declines, and GO is favouring the long-haul commuter over those closer to the 416.  This has implications for a future world in which GO becomes a regional rapid transit system, but may not be appropriately priced as an alternative to local systems.

Question:  The fact that a train is there at all is as much a policy decision as it is one driven by ridership. The Kitchener-Waterloo trains are not full when they leave Guelph, and the KW passengers could be served by a shorter train.

GO Transit determines the train length for train trips on a corridor by the maximum load along that corridor, rather than ridership numbers at a particular station.

Question:  The problem then becomes how much of the cost of running 12-car trains all the way to KW should really be borne by riders coming from that far out?

This fare increase is about ensuring a fair and balanced payment system. Introducing three different increments of increase means that passengers who travel shorter distances will pay less of an increase than passengers who travel longer distances. These rates support the fare-by-distance system that GO’s fares are based on.

Comment:  But fares are not entirely based on distance travelled, and as GO itself acknowledges, many of its costs are not a function of trip length.  “Distance” is one measure that can be used to apportion fares, but it is not the only one, and no method will produce a “fair” result especially when service exists to support a policy (minimum frequency of trains, availability of service as an incentive not to drive, etc.)

If we regard the existence of a train in the schedule as a fixed cost, then there is little difference in carrying a passenger from KW or from Weston because you have to operate the capacity for the Weston passenger all the way to KW, at least on the trains that travel that far.

I will be the first to admit that this is a rather nasty line of questioning because it delves into the whole underpinning of GO’s fare and cost structure.  Fare-by-distance is a superficially “fair” way of charging for service, but the cost of providing that service on either a marginal or fully-allocated basis does not necessarily translate to a uniform value for each unit of “service” consumed.  A simple example is that the cost of a train is shared by fewer and fewer riders the further out one goes, and therefore the cost per rider goes up quite steeply as the occupancy of the train declines.

Question:  If for policy/political reasons, GO starts running all-day service to, say, Georgetown, should the marginal losses of this be borne by riders on that line, by the GO riders in general through fares, or by increased subsidy? In particular, should the government/agency get kudos for service improvements that have lower cost recovery only to tell riders that they must pay for these through higher fares?

GO Transit sets fares based on the distance travelled by a customer and to cover the cost of operations across the system, rather than for a particular service. These costs include bus and rail operations, corridor operations, and peak/off-peak service.

Comment:  Running trains all day both ways will inevitably result in lower utilization of capacity and an increased cost per trip.  There is a cost to the policy of running better service (as we have seen on the TTC).  Will riders face increased fares to maintain GO’s farebox recovery ratio when less-productive services are introduced?

Another issue in cost allocation is that since GO contracts out a lot of work, the cost drivers at the contract level may be different from those one might see if the functions were in house.  These factors may not be linked to variables directly affected by passenger volumes or distances travelled, but rather to equipment usage.  These values are almost certainly confidential and dis-aggregating them in a public report could prove troublesome.

Question:  In the meeting, it was claimed that the cost per passenger is $10, with a $2 (20%) subsidy per passenger. However, the fare presentation pegs the average fare at roughly $6.50 (two different numbers are cited, one in the report, another in the presentation foils). Where does the other $1.50 come from? That’s a lot of “other revenue”.

GO Transit has two major sources of operating revenue – customer fares, which made up about 82 per cent of our operating costs for fiscal year 2010-2011, and a Provincial subsidy. Our cost-recovery ratio – one of the best in the world at 82 percent – helps us to minimize subsidy requirements from the Provincial government, something that benefits the Province and taxpayers as well.

It should be noted that the sundry revenues also helps us to keep down the average passenger fare, which is about $6.50. These sundry revenues include advertising, track fees on rights-of-way owned by Metrolinx, rental fees, and proceeds from the divestment of assets, such as the sale of old locomotives.

Comment: This answer perpetuates the same inconsistencies that we heard at the meeting.  First off, if fares are 82% of operating costs, and the cost per passenger is $10, then the average fare must be $8.20.  If sundry revenues contribute, then they would bridge the difference between the average fare and the average revenue per passenger (which are not the same thing).

For example, on the TTC, sundry revenues account for a few percent of total revenue, and this leads to ongoing confusion between their 70% cost recovery rate for the system and the fact that riders only pay about two-thirds of the cost of running the system.  Moreover, sale of used equipment is cited as operating revenue, but it is a non-recurring item that should be booked against capital accounts, not operations.

In the covering report for the Metrolinx financial statements for 2009-2010, the non-fare revenues are described as 3.8% of total revenue, and they have a value of about $11.5-million.  This has been declining since a high of about $13.5m in 2007-2008.  It is worth noting that the chart correctly does not include gains or losses related to the sale of capital assets.  It is still unclear how we get from a reported average fare of $6.50 to a cost per passenger of $10 and a farebox recovery rate of 82%.

Metrolinx reports its finances on a consolidated basis and it is not possible to see the contribution of each component (GO, etc) to the overall picture, nor the cross-subsidization, if any, between divisions.  When GO was a separate agency, its financial statements did not break out sundry revenue as a separate item, and so there is no basis for historical comparison.

Any model of cost allocation and fares should not treat occasional revenues as part of the ongoing base.  This is especially dangerous if the amounts involved are more than a few percent of total revenues because the disappearance of one-time revenue could have a significant effect on subsidy requirements, fares or the ability to operate service.

What is troubling is that an obvious inconsistency in revenue and cost reporting was not caught by staff or by the Board, or why it has taken a month (and counting) to get an answer to what should be a straightforward question.

The basic problem here, as we saw quite clearly during the January Board meeting, is that Metrolinx staff either do not understand how their costs and revenues work, and how these interact with the fare structure, or they are deliberately obtuse in answering questions.  There is no perfect way to allocate costs and to set fares relative to service consumption, but Metrolinx clouds the issue with what appear to be policy-based fares (artificially low costs for long trips).

Question:  In the original comment thread, the matter arose of how Presto discounts would apply for riders who do not travel between one set of stations on the system.  On the GO website, the operation of discounts is described thus:

With the built-in loyalty program, adults will receive fare discounts similar to the discounts currently offered with GO adult 10-ride tickets and monthly passes.

If you take the same GO trip each time you travel within a calendar month, your GO fare* will be:

• Rides 1 – 35, 7.5%** off the single adult GO fare
• Rides 36 – 40, 87.5%** off the single adult GO fare
• Rides 41+, 100% off the single adult GO fare

If you do not take the exact same trip each time you travel on GO within a calendar month, your first 35 rides on GO will be 7.5% off the single adult GO fare. For rides 36 and onwards, your discount will be based on the value of the rides you’ve taken that month.

What is not clear is the way in which the discount is calculated for someone who has a primary trip pattern, but who also make occasional trips elsewhere. This would be roughly the equivalent of a monthly pass holder (primary trip) plus occasional riding on the rest of the system. How does the calculation work?

1. For Rides 1 to 35 in a month, a customer will always receive a 7.5% discount for each ride regardless of the origin and destination travelled.

2. For Rides 36 to 40 in a month, the discount will depend on the cumulative amount that the customer spent in the first 35 rides. If the customer spent more (as in travelled occasionally farther than his/her predominant origin and destination), he/she will receive a higher discount that will vary marginally from the posted 87.5% for each ride, depending on travel usage. If the customer spent less, he/she will receive a lower discount that will vary marginally from the posted 87.5% for each ride, depending on travel usage.

3. For Rides 41+ in a month, the same logic as #2 will apply but with a deeper discount, which is based on the cumulative amount the customer spent in Rides 1 to 40.

Comment: This does not clearly answer the question, but appears to say that the discount is calculated against the primary trip pair and then applied to all riding.  A worked example would have been helpful.

As GO moves to serve more than just the weekday in-out commuter pattern, those extra trips will be important, and people need to know how they will be charged for them. No doubt GO is wrestling with this as part of figuring out how to get rid of monthly passes as we now know them.  Once the need to sell a pass for a specific trip (say from Brampton to Union) disappears, and the network becomes an all-day system to enable trips between many points, the concept of counting trips between specific locations and linking discounts to this falls apart.

On the TTC it will be even more challenging because of the question of what constitutes one “trip” for the purpose of charging a fare and counting up to the threshold where the price falls off, eventually to zero.  How will a heavy TTC user be charged for regular or occasional trips on GO or on one of the other 905 local systems?

Once GO figures out a tariff for cross-system fares and frequent usage between a variety of points on its network, it must then turn to how the revenue will be allocated to the participating systems.

The map of the 5-in-10 plan (the version of Transit City agreed to by Toronto Council in 2009 and disavowed by Mayor Ford) appears in both documents.  This map includes:

• The Eglinton line from Jane to Kennedy with an underground section from Keele station to Laird station.  In the press scrum following the meeting, I asked about the possibility of redesign of the section through Mount Dennis (Weston Road) and near Don Mills and the DVP.  Metrolinx confirmed that details of these areas are still being worked out.  (See below)
• The SRT rebuilt as LRT from Kennedy Station to Sheppard.
• The Sheppard LRT from Don Mills Station to Morningside including a new carhouse at Conlins Road.
• The Finch West LRT from Finch West Station to Humber College.

A note I received from Rick Ciccarelli (long active in transit affairs in Weston) gave further information from a public meeting on February 15 in Weston:

In speaking with Jack Collins [Metrolinx Vice-President, Rapid Transit Implementation] last night at Councillor di Giorgio’s Kodak Town Hall, he said underground [is] still in play and indicated the loading and unloading of trains at the start and end of service will be a problem for at-grade, and he also expects an interconnecting GO/TTC station to work better. He is not sure if it will go underground past this station. They are also looking at a bridge across Black Creek Drive to service the yards, plus bus connections for both TTC and regional service. The Kodak building could become a bus terminal. He said there are multiple issues to sort through before the design can be finalized including whether they are designing for 3 car LRT or full subway vehicles, and the relationship with the GO rail corridor track expansion project and the new station.

Collins confirmed at the Metrolinx meeting that the purchase of the Kodak site was concluded at about the beginning of February.  The remark about possibly designing the carhouse for full subway vehicles dates, I suspect, from a period when the actual technology to be used for the line had not been settled by Council.  Changing to full subway requires far more extensive design modifications than simply at the carhouse.

During the Board’s discussion, the question arose of interference in Council’s decision by the Ford brothers and their “Save Our Subways” scheme.  CEO and President Bruce McCuaig replied that Queen’s Park has indicated that they will listen to Council.  Chair Rob Prichard said that Metrolinx’ job was to be respectful of the Council process, and that it was not for Metrolinx to take sides with individual Councillors, but to wait for Council’s decision-making process to complete.

Director Lee Parsons asked what risk there might be that the Council debate will not be resolved by the end of March.  McCuaig replied that Metrolinx needs “certainty and clarity” from Council.  Prichard said that the “end game” is an agreement with the City, a binding agreement, and that McCuaig and his staff would move forward to a full master agreement as quickly as possible.  In the press scrum, Prichard hopes that Council will take a position endorsing a new master agreement, and referred to comments by individual members as “noise on the side”.

Director Douglas Turnbull worried that the longer the LRT versus subway debate continues — a false one he believed because LRT is the only reasonable option — that a window of opportunity for transit expansion may be lost.

Director Peter Smith noted that both Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario are strong supporters of arrangements where the entire provision of a line would be outsourced.  Bruce McCuaig replied that the province is committed to AFP (alternative financing and procurement) models, but various types of “package” may be appropriate.  Smith wondered whether the TTC was in any position to dictate an alternative arrangement for a facility that was not their own, and thought that the public did not understand the situation well (blaming the media for this state of affairs).

On the status of penalties for cancelled projects, Rob Prichard stated that Metrolinx would provide the City’s “expert panel” reviewing options for Sheppard with information about these and the effect of various possible options on which sunk costs could be reinstated as part of active projects.  Jack Collins said that Metrolinx has now broken down the costs per project and that the amount of sunk (unrecoverable) costs will go down as original route designs come back into the plan.  There will be some loss from the work done on tunnel design for the eastern section of Eglinton, although to whose cost this might be is an interesting point considering that Council never requested the change.

The vehicle delivery schedule must be revisited now that Finch and possibly Sheppard are  back in the mix.  Delivery dates can now move back to something close to the original contract based on the 5-in-10 plan.

Director Joe Halstead asked what differences there were between the Council motion of February 8 and the Transit City 5-in-10 plan.  Collins replied that the big issue is the status of Sheppard East although this also would have an effect on the SRT/LRT project.  If there is no Sheppard LRT and carhouse, then extension of the SRT beyond McCowan Station is unlikely.  Rob Prichard noted that the sequencing of projects may be changed depending on what is planned for Sheppard to accommodate constraints on the cash flow acceptable to Queen’s Park.

During the press scrum, the Star’s Tess Kalinowski asked at what point is Council’s position considered to have “coalesced”.  Bruce McCuaig replied that there are two points:

• What position will Council take after the report of the Expert Panel on Sheppard?
• How much power will they delegate to staff to negotiate the Master Agreement with Metrolinx, and will the agreement have to come back to Council for ratification?

McCuaig noted that a lot of work on the language of an agreement already existed from previous work on the 5-in-10 plan.

I asked about press reports that the Presto implementation in Toronto might be held hostage now that the Ford MoU which purported to commit Toronto to Presto was of no force.  Bruce McCuaig replied that work on Presto is still moving forward, and that implementation of the fare card is linked to other funding agreements including the streetcar purchase and the provincial gas tax share.  Metrolinx expects that an agreement for Presto implementation will go to the TTC Commission at its March 2012 meeting.

[I will report on other issues from the Metrolinx meeting as an update to my "preview" article.]

Original post from February 13 below:

TTC’s Russell Carhouse at Queen and Connaught will see major track reconstruction this year.

A project to rebuild track Queen Street and Connaught Avenue was deferred from 2011 at the Mayor’s request, but the work is now out for tender.  This will include the replacement of all of the special work on the north side of the carhouse including the yard accesses and the intersection at Connaught.  On Connaught itself, the track layout will be changed by the removal of the existing crossover between the northbound and southbound tracks.

At Eastern Avenue, the roadway will be rebuilt to isolate the streetcar ladder tracks from the rest of the pavement and raise their level.  This change will reduce the effect of the combined curve and grade between Eastern Avenue and the yard tracks which is especially pronounced at the carhouse itself.  A report on the recommended layout for the street is on the Public Works agenda for February 15, 2012.

This work is part of the overall preparation of the streetcar system for the arrival of the new LFLRVs.

TTC Chair Karen Stintz, the last person the progressive wing of Council would have expected, filed a petition with the City Clerk on February 6 for the meeting with the support of 23 of her colleagues.  Two days later, Council would be in open revolt against the Mayor.  The public gallery filled quickly, with overflow viewing by video in the rotunda of City Hall, and the Press Gallery had more reporters and camera crews than I have seen at Council in years.  They stayed all day — this was not a story to cover in an hour or so.

Stepping back from the political drama, this was an astounding day for me as a lifelong advocate for Light Rail Transit.  Here was Toronto Council spending an entire day debating transit planning, technology and funding with a level of detailed knowledge of the issues advocates could only have dreamed of years ago.  At stake was not just $8.4-billion of provincial money, but the future direction of transit development.

The results are reported elsewhere.  This article presents the flavour of the questions and speeches that filled the day together with a strong sense that LRT, forty years after the Streetcars for Toronto Committee’s victory, will finally have a fair chance in Toronto.  I have included details of the questions asked by most Councillors in the interest of showing the range of the debate and the growing understanding, or lack of it, by various members of the details of the issues.

Mayor Ford is not known as a gracious loser, and long before the votes were actually counted, it was clear which way the issue would turn.  The lowest point of the day came just after lunch when the Mayor’s team attempted to sabotage the meeting by breaking quorum.  Council cannot meet without a majority of members present (23), and the Mayor’s folks actually seemed to think that by staying away, they could halt the meeting.

This shows the desperation of the anti-LRT side, and puts Ford’s later comment that Council’s vote was “irrelevant” in a different light.  So relevant was that vote that he attempted to ensure it never took place.  He failed.

[In the following text, I have generally placed my own observations in square brackets to distinguish them from statements by Councillors.]

The day began with presentations of petitions, 24,000 signatures strong, in favour of the “Metrolinx LRT Plan” by several Councillors representing either their own wards, or neighbouring ones with Ford-friendly representatives.  The Mayor’s team managed a few hundred petitions, and even these were divided on the preferred outcome.  Councillor Michael Thompson (Scarborough Centre), one of Ford’s loyalists, noted that there was confusion in what the public knew and wanted.  His petitions were divided 50-50.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (York West) sits to the right of Mayor Ford.  He is best known for his thumb (used to signal Council followers on how to vote for each motion) and for his utter lack of good sense and taste.  Once a union supporter and member of Mayor David Miller’s circle, “Mammo” turned hard right to join Ford’s gravy train.  He is Chair of the Community Development & Recreation Committee, and thus a member of Ford’s Executive.

Mammoliti was very abusive of TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster on the topic of a Finch West subway, a scheme that exists only in a few fevered and vote-hungry Councillors’ imaginations.  Webster held his own on the lack of demand to justify a subway.  When Mammoliti asked “what would you say to people who want a subway on Finch”, Webster replied that “LRT is appropriate”.

Frank Di Giorgio (York South Weston), another Ford ally, asked about the status of the Eglinton project, a bizarre request considering that his ward straddles Eglinton from the CN rail corridor at Caledonia to the CN/CP corridor at Weston.  He should know the status without having to ask.  Webster replied that the Black Creek launch shaft for the tunnel boring equipment was  under construction, and that a two-year tunneling contract to bore east to the Allen Road would be let soon.  A separate contract would handle the next section to the east.

Di Giorgio asked why a decision on burying Eglinton east from Laird and west from Black Creek needed a decision today.  Webster replied that designers must know the mode and alignment they are working on.  Is the TTC costing the alignments, and what will they do if the actual pricetag turns out to be $12b rather than $8b?  Webster replied that the TTC knows the cost differences and has done enough work to be confident that the estimates are reasonable.  As to the question of LRT being adequate for future demand, the TTC and Metrolinx believe that the corridor’s needs will be met out to 2050.

[This sequence was the first hint of the Mayor's strategy to come -- establish that further study is needed and that a decision is not pressing, all in aid of delaying the decision.]

Councillor Vince Crisanti (Etobicoke North) asked what would work best for speed on Finch including a subway.  He spoke of a report on Finch options that was in preparation by TTC staff in which bus queue jump lanes would work almost as well as an LRT line.  Webster contested the claim of comparable speed, and noted that the final report had been delayed by illness of its principal author.  Crisanti continued by asking whether a subway or LRT would take more cars off of the road.  Webster agreed that a subway would do more than an LRT, but that this was also a more expensive option.

[The Mayor's strategy is becoming even clearer -- suddenly a new subway on Finch West is the distraction from a Finch LRT, and of course we will have to study anything that hasn't been through the mill already.]

Cesar Palacio (Davenport) spoke about the St. Clair streetcar project whose western end lies in his ward.  What was its budget?  Webster replied that the TTC work was pretty much on budget at $69m, and challenged “apples to oranges” comparisons.  Palacio attempted to interrupt when the answer was not to his liking, and alleged that some of the cost overrun was the fault of Councillor Joe Mihevc (St. Paul’s), former TTC Vice-Chair.  That brought a point of personal privilege by Mihevc who noted that extra work for Hydro undergrounding had been added to the project at Palacio’s request.  Palacio continued with claims about the effects on businesses and homeowners saying that “hundreds” had been driven out of business.  Webster pushed back acknowledging the problems the project caused and that the project itself ran out of control, but noting that delays included the effect of an unsuccessful legal suit to halt the project after it was underway.

Palacio asked whether the St. Clair line was intended as a prototype for the City’s LRT network even though it was a total failure.  Webster replied that he considered the line a success given increased riding and reliability.  The new LRTs will have higher scheduled speeds than St. Clair.

[St. Clair comes up regularly in Ford's catalogue of TTC sins with words like "disaster" thrown around.  Every LRT line in town will be a repeat of St. Clair according to Ford's camp despite changes to overall project management (consolidating responsibility in one manager to co-ordinate work and requirements of all agencies), new contracting practices (awarding work only to companies with the resources to adapt to unexpected schedule changes), and a clear recognition that interference for political expediency has a price.]

Councillor Shelley Carroll (Don Valley East) noted that the Yonge subway once ended at Eglinton where the buildings were only two storeys high.  Later with the extension to North York, the presence of a subway was used at the Ontario Municipal Board to justify approval of new developments, although the build-out of North York Centre has taken 25-30 years.  She wondered how a neighbourhood would respond if, when we asked about new transit lines we also asked where we should put the 40 storey buildings.  On TTC operating costs, Carroll wondered about the extra cost of subway versus surface lines including the extra security required to monitor the stations.

Councillor Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina) asked the Chief Financial Officer Cam Weldon about the projected funding shortfall for the Sheppard subway in KPMG’s report.  Vaughan asked him to confirm that development charges would have to rise by 40%, extra taxes would be needed in the Sheppard corridor with a 20% bump to business tax and 8% to residences depending on how close to transit they were.  Weldon replied that, no, this would only apply to TIF (Tax Increment Financing) charges that apply to new construction triggered by the subway.  Vaughan asked, rhetorically, if all development charges out to 2062 would be needed for Sheppard with no money available for Finch.  Staff replied that it would only be for 30 years.  Vaughn pointed out that the level of funding proposed by KPMG would require 1,600 new condo units annually, or 1/10 of the GTA market.

Councillor James Pasternak (York Centre) asked what extra ridership is expected with the opening of Vaughan Centre station in 2015.  Webster did not know the number offhand, and oddly neither did Pasternak.  The argument he could have tried to make was that demand at Vaughan will be well below “subway” levels and, if so, why is it OK to extend the Spadina line but not to build subways on Finch or Sheppard.  The answer, had this question been asked would be that Vaughan is out at the end of a line, while the numbers cited for the east-west routes north of the 401 are peak point values.

Pasternak asked how a Sheppard extension to Downsview would help travellers going from Vaughan to Scarborough.  Webster replied that this particular flow was small and the demand could be handled by ensuring convenient transfers.  He pointed out that there were other routes to STC that did not involve using a Sheppard West subway (including the proposed second phase of the Finch West LRT to Yonge Street)  and concluded saying that investment in the Sheppard corridor was not warranted.

Councillor Jaye Robinson (Don Valley West) appeared confused about the options under study for the Eglinton line even though it runs through her ward.  Webster replied that details of the subway and surface options are not yet final beyond the section from Keele to Laird station.  There are two perspectives to consider — engineering challenges and cost — including the choice of bridges or underground construction.  Robinson asked about the Don River crossings, and Webster replied that that the east branch will likely be at grade.  The west branch is still under study.  Robinson asked whether it would be a “nominal cost” to extend the tunnel from Don Mills Station all the way to the east side of the DVP.  Webster asked that Council not dictate the manner of construction.

Robinson asked about the comparative environmental impacts of LRT versus subways.  Webster replied that either mode has its effects and one needs to weigh the factors.  Robinson asked if there had ever been a cost-benefit analysis of Transit City versus the MoU network.  Webster replied that, no, there had not been, but that it was always more expensive to maintain a subway than a surface LRT.  This line of questioning follows directly from some of the claims put about by Mayor Ford regarding the supposed additional costs and side effects of the LRT option.

Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Scarborough Centre) asked about the frame of reference for the two schemes, the 2009 Memorandum of Agreement and the 2011 MoU.  If we don’t tunnel, do we save $2b?  Webster replied that the number is $1.9b, but yes.  How many more riders would the MoA scheme yield?  130k.  Does this network have the best cost-benefit?  Yes.  Does the MoA plan get more cars off of the road?  Webster replied that the Metrolinx 5-in-10 plan from the MoA would get 11 million more per year, and “we say” (the TTC) that the plan is the better value for money.

[By now, it is clear that Gary Webster is going to be quite forceful in supporting the LRT plan.  It is no secret that the Fords are out for his blood, and he has nothing to lose by supporting the scheme advanced by TTC Chair Stintz.]

Councillor Raymond Cho (Scarborough-Rouge River) noted that there are limits on how much the City can build.  He asked about the penalty for sunk costs, and Webster replied that it was $65m, possibly more, according to Metrolinx.  Cho wondered how we would pay this bill, would we pass it on to the taxpayers?  He asked how many more riders an SRT extension to Malvern (which is in his ward) would yield.  Webster replied that ridership would go up, but he didn’t have the number.

Councillor Maria Augimeri (York Centre) asked whether Council would be able to get any new technical information if this item were deferred today.  Webster replied that all the issues are understood now and not much would come from further review.  Augimeri asked when work first started on the Eglinton Subway.  Webster replied that this was in the 93/94 era, but the project never reached the point of  buying tunnel boring machines.  All that was built was a launch shaft and some utility work at a cost of $80m including project close up.  Augimeri asked jokingly if the subway now under construction (Spadina) is the same one she voted for years ago.

Councillor John Parker asked CFO Weldon about the financing of the Sheppard project and the proposal to use most TIF and Development Charge revenue for this.  Weldon replied that the TIF zone is 800m either side of the Eglinton, SRT and Sheppard corridors.  [Note that the benefits from provincial spending on Eglinton and the SRT would be used to finance the Sheppard line.]  Parker asked how long these charges would apply given that KPMG proposed 50 years.  Weldon corrected one point by saying that the Development Charges would apply city-wide, not just to the TIF zone.

Parker asked what kind of development would be required to generate the projected returns.  Staff replied that this would take about 1,700 residential units per year, plus 250k square metres of office space plus 60k of retail.  Even after this, there would be a gap of $800m to $1b in project funding.

Parker asked the TTC what their preferred vehicle would be for a route that was all in tunnel.  Webster replied that they would not recommend an underground, low-floor LRT because of the lower vehicle capacity and extra cost for crashworthiness in surface operation.  If the line is to be fully grade separated, it should be a subway or a “mini subway” (e.g. ICTS).  LRT would be the more expensive option in this case.

Parker spoke about the binding MoA from 2009 and its effect on TTC bus requirements as Sheppard and Finch routes would have been replaced by LRT.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong (Don Valley East) asked about the cost of a subway option.  Webster replied that the actual cost to build and maintain a subway is higher than LRT.  Minnan-Wong asked for comments about numbers in the 1992 Environmental Assessment done by the City for the Sheppard project, but Webster passed on the question because it is not his report and he doesn’t know them off hand.  Minnan-Wong asked if the 2009 plan fits with Metrolinx needs for the accounting treatment with provincial ownership.  Webster replied that yes, it did, although there is some discussion about how rights-of-way in city streets would be handled.  Minnan-Wong asked about the cost of bus lanes on Finch.  Webster replied that this would be $48-50m, but that LRT is needed to handle projected demand and queue jump lanes for buses would not.

Councillor Peter Milczyn (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, also TTC Vice-Chair) asked how much money will be left over from the Eglinton surface option.  Gary Webster replied that it could be as much as $1.9b, but discussions are still underway with Metrolinx.  The number could be somewhere from $1.0 to $1.5b.  A Finch West LRT would be about $900m, Sheppard LRT would be $1b, the SRT extension to Sheppard $300m, to Malvern another $300m, Finch carhouse $250m, Sheppard carhouse $300m.  Milczyn asked what the TTC’s priority would be among these, and Webster replied Sheppard.

Councillor Anthony Perruzza (York West) asked what the sunk costs, spending on lines that won’t be built, would be if Council approves the MoU plan.  Webster replied that this would be $48m to $65m plus whatever penalties there might be on the vehicle contract.  The TTC is acting as an agent for Metrolinx, and spending on the MoU plan is running $1.5m to $2.0m per month.  [Part of this relates to the tunnelled portion of Eglinton which is common to both plans.]

Councillor Mary Fragedakis (Toronto-Danforth) asked CFO Weldon who paid for the KPMG report on the Sheppard Subway?  Weldon replied that the City paid for it, and it cost $150k.  Does the City have TIF authority under current legislation?  No.  Would the City get the increased education tax from new development?  No.  Does the legislation enabling development charges allow the City to finance bonds?  No.  What about other tools such as tolls?  Alternate revenue tools do not have legislative authority.  All the City did was to have a study of tools used in other jurisdictions.

Councillor Michael Thompson (Scarborough Centre) asked what the daily vehicle counts were between Brentcliffe and Birchmount or Kennedy (the section of Eglinton that would run on the surface).  Staff replied that at the Don Valley Parkway there are 40k per day, with 49-50k west of Don Mills Road.  Hourly peak counts at Brentcliffe are 3,900 in the am and 3,700 in the pm.  Thompson asked where the $8.4b will come from.  Webster replied that Ontario would borrow the money using the long-term asset (the LRT line) as backing.  Thompson felt that there was confusion about what exactly would be built.  Webster replied that the issue to be understood is the difference between the 2011 MoU scheme (mostly underground) and the 2009 Metrolinx 5-in-10 plan (subway-surface).

Councillor Mike Layton (Trinity-Spadina) asked about the development implications.  Chief Planner Gary Wright replied that on Eglinton, the City plans to bring in as-of-right zoning for higher densities.  This will be affected by station locations.  Layton asked about the difference in zoning with subways (high density at station nodes, midrise between) and LRT.  Wright replied that LRT would give a more spread-out development pattern.  Layton asked how this fit with the Official Plan and the Avenues Plan [a city policy to concentrate development on certain key main streets], and Wright replied that subways increase the density at nodes.

Layton asked Gary Webster about the density needed for subways.  Webster replied that in the range of 15-30k passengers per hour, subways are appropriate, but below that LRT would be used.  The LRT plan can handle demand out to 2050, and that we would be spending on demand that isn’t there if we overbuild.  Layton noted that every year the system operates without the needed density, it runs a deficit.  Webster noted that the SRT has the highest density around the line and it has its own dedicated corridor.

Councillor Josh Matlow (St. Paul’s) asked whether Sheppard meets the test for a full subway.  Webster replied “no”.  Eglinton east of Brentcliffe?  No.  Does it make sense t bury the line?  No it does not.  Has the TTC given advice on this to the administration?  No.  [This last question refers to the report on technology choice and alignment that the transit commission voted not to seek from staff at its recent meeting.]

Councillor Michelle Bernardinetti (Scarborough Southwest) asked where the Eglinton line would come above ground.  Webster replied that it would be east of Brentcliffe in the 5-in-10 plan.  There could be a bridge or underground construction in selected locations.  If underground, there would be no station at Leslie.  Don Mills would have an  underground station no  matter which option is chosen.  If bridges are used over the valleys, this will affect the vertical and horizontal alignments.  Bernardinetti asked about the $1.9b and the money originally allocated to the Sheppard and Finch routes.  Does the TTC have assurance from the Queen’s Park that savings on Eglinton would be available for reallocation?  Webster replied that Metrolinx has not indicated any other plan.  [Bernardinetti is suggesting that the money might go elsewhere despite repeated assurances from the Province to the contrary.  This is a common theme among Ford supporters.]

Councillor Doug Holyday (Etobicoke Centre, also Deputy Mayor) asked about the traffic effects of new road layouts on Eglinton, especially the use of hook turns, and the effect of future growth in demand.  Staff replied that growth is tending to spread out the peak period, not the peak volume.  Holyday asked if we are just imagining the growth in congestion?  Staff replied that this varies by corridor but the main effect is a longer peak.   There is no new road capacity and so transit  must do the work.  If transit takes road space this will further limit growth.

Holyday asked Webster why we would change from older subway plans to LRT on Eglinton.  Webster replied that in 1986, the primary mode for the Network 2011 plan was subway.  Now the projected demand is lower, and LRT is the predominant mode world-wide to handle middle capacity demands.  With a semi-exclusive right-of-way, LRT can handle 8-12k capacities.  This was not recognized in the mid 1980s, but it is today.

[I cannot help noting that it may not have been recognized by the TTC who were still fighting against LRT tooth-and-nail, but the move toward LRT was already well-established.  The TTC concentrated on subway plans to the exclusion of all else.]

Councillor Mark Grimes (Etobicoke Lakeshore) asked about subways and development.  He felt that the major developments would happen in areas served by subways and asked how far ahead Toronto should look.  Webster replied that the regional plan looks out to 2031, and that the TTC and Metrolinx have looked to 2051.  The LRT plan still works out in 2051.  Subway assets (tunnels) last 75 to 100 years, but vehicles and many other components only last 30 years.  Grimes asked if we would talk about LRT if we had double the funding available.  Webster replied that extra funding should be directed first to state of good repair, and that building subways everywhere is not a good idea.  Grimes asked about subway shuttles or express lines [thinking of New York's 42nd Street line, but on a scale connecting more distant points in Toronto].  Webster replied that Toronto’s subway does not have the capacity for this.   [I would add that point-to-point shuttles only work with significant demand between nearby locations lest we spend a fortune trying to link everyone's pet origin-destination pairs.]

Grimes asked whether Council could get more information if Metrolinx staff attended [this was another ploy to get the item deferred].  Webster replied that the TTC has done all of the work for Metrolinx and has all of the information.  Should a future meeting be arranged with Metrolinx?  No, the TTC has been working on this and has all the facts.

Councillor Pam McConnell (Toronto Centre — Rosedale) asked for a comparison of York University busway and the planned service to Queen’s Quay East.  Webster replied that the TTC went for the busway as an initial stage of improved service to York U for capacity and speed.  This was a case of the best of mode used for the need.  McConnell observed that money then dropped from the sky for the subway extension to Vaughan.  Webster replied that there was a lot of discussion on the business case for the busway, and that the TTC expected to get the benefit of BRT for several years making the spending worthwhile.  McConnell asked about the funding needs for the new line on Queen’s Quay.  Webster replied that more money is needed, but the current plan is bus based.  Is the TTC’s plan a step-by-step increment from one mode to another?  Yes, they will make do with a lower capacity mode as an interim service.

McConnell asked about comments from Scarborough that they would lose lanes on Eglinton with a surface option.  Webster replied that there will be a significant increase in transit capacity with some decrease to the road.  [This happens because an existing HOV lane on Eglinton that also sees some use by non-transit traffic would be replaced by the LRT right-of-way in Scarborough.]  Did the TTC look at its plan through a “connectivity lens”?  Yes, the original network plan had a network perspective on meeting travel plans.

Councillor Mike Del Grande (Scarborough-Agincourt) asked whether Metrolinx does due diligence on advice from the TTC, or do they just accept what the TTC says.  Webster replied that Metrolinx is accountable to the Province and has staff and consultants who can verify TTC work.  Did Metrolinx take a position on the underground version?  They agreed with TTC staff on the 5-in-10 plan [subway-surface option].  What about the MoU with Mayor Ford?  The TTC was not involved with the MoU.  Would someone at the Province do due diligence?  That was not the TTC’s role.  What about previous studies of the Sheppard Subway?  Webster replied that when the TTC chose to support the LRT network [Transit City], this trumped the subway plan.  Is there a plan to link from Don Mills Station to Scarborough Town Centre?  No, the demand is better for a line on Sheppard itself with the extended SRT providing the link between STC, Sheppard and Malvern.

Councillor Frances Nunziata (York South — Weston, also Speaker of Council) asked whether the proposed plan is really Transit City.  She was interrupted by Deputy Speaker Parker who noted that the proposal is not yet actually on the floor for debate.  Webster replied that the LRT lines are in the 5-in-10 plan, but with Transit City the scope was different.  5-in-10 is the first phase of four lines.  Nunziata replied that this is Transit City resurrected, and invoked the names of former Mayor Miller and former TTC Chair Giambrone.  Does the St. Clair right-of-way cause emergency vehicle delays?  Webster replied that emergency vehicles can and do use the r-o-w.

Councillor Gord Perks (Parkdale — High Park) asked the CFO whether using funds as suggested by the KPMG report for the Sheppard Subway could affect Toronto’s credit rating.  Yes, that needs to be investigated.  Would the need for $800m in new money plus taxes dedicated to one project affect other capital plans?  Yes.

To the Chief Planner: The Yonge and Bloor-Danforth subways grew out of what mode, streetcars, with the pre-existing surface demand leading to subways?  Yes, there was gradual growth plus the existence of fixed rail systems before the subway.

To the TTC:  Do the 40 to 45 largest cities in North America have or plan to implement LRT systems?  Yes.  When the Yonge subway opened, did it replace three streetcar corridors (Bay, Yonge, Church)?  Yes.  Is it typical to build up capacity through different transit modes?  Yes.  So that’s what the TTC would look at for Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough?  Yes.

Councillor David Shiner (Willowdale) asked what the 2009 MoA plus an interim funding agreement covered, was it only a design phase?  City Manager Joe Pennachetti replied that this was intended as an interim step leading to a master agreement that the City does not yet have.  What is Toronto’s rapid transit plan, did the former Metro government approve a new rapid transit system.  Staff replied that they approved Network 2011 including a subway link from North York Centre to Scarborough Town Centre.  An Environment Assessment was completed, and the line was built to Don Mills, all that could be afforded within the $1b funding available.

Councillor Doug Ford (Etobicoke North) asked about the speed of subways versus LRT.  Webster replied that the LRT will do better than streetcars.  Wouldn’t it be better to build a subway?  No, we will save on construction costs.  Ford spoke about short-term band-aid solutions and the greater economic benefit of subways.  Webster replied that LRT is an economical mode up to a capacity of 8k/hour, not a band-aid, and it would work out to the projected 2050 demand levels.  Ford spoke of the St. Clair “disaster” with cost overruns plus bad management.  Webster replied that this was a joint City and TTC project with both scope and management problems and challenges including interventions by politicians.  [Ford became abusive in his remarks at this point and was hissed by the gallery.]

The clock had reached 12:30 pm.  Time for the lunch break.

This article continues the discussion of City Council on the question of whether to approve the original Memorandum of Agreement between Toronto and Queen’s Park for the Metrolinx 5-in-10 plan of 2009, or the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Mayor Ford in 2011.

I have not included every speech by every member as some of them added nothing significant to the debate.  However, I wanted to give readers a sense of how each member wanted to get their oar in, and how it can take hours to reach a vote on issues.

When we returned for the announced 2:00 pm resumption of debate, a large block of Council was not present — Ford’s people — in an attempt to break quorum.  Deputy Speaker John Parker was in the chair, and the left were furiously counting heads and rounding up members to ensure that the meeting could continue.  It did, and the afternoon was taken up by speeches and motions.  This little charade chewed up 20 minutes.

Mayor Ford moved that the issue be referred to the City Manager for an expert panel to review options for Eglinton East.  Speaking in favour of his motion, Ford said that Council was here to see who sounds better [not, by implication, to learn who has the better argument].  He listed all the things people allegedly don’t want including “the St. Clair disaster”.

Subways get people where they want to go fast, and this is a perfect opportunity for subways.  “I campaigned on subways” and that’s what Council has to do.  This is not the time to play politics [laughter throughout the Council Chamber].  People do not want a streetcar city.  The Province and Metrolinx have clearly stated that “subways are the way to go”.   The Province is going to make the final call and Ford is confident that they will continue with subways.

[This statement was resoundingly refuted by both the Premier and the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure.  Their statements and the history of their attempts to discuss the matter with Ford show how out of touch he is with the opinions of people he does not control.]

Deputy Mayor Holyday said that a 30 day wait for expert assistance would not hurt, and talked about the history of a close vote for the Sheppard Subway years ago.  [The LRT vote would turn out to be not the squeaker Holyday described and evidently expected.]

Councillor Mammoliti asked that communities who don’t want LRT be considered and given more time so that maybe there would be a subway in their future.  [He still seems to think that Finch West would warrant a subway line where one has never been proposed.]

[After a few more speakers, the crowd in the gallery is getting restless, and Speaker Nunziata tries on her standard routine of threatening to recess Council.  This is another of the Ford crew's anti-democratic tactics, although it is rarely used.  A recess can be called by the Speaker without debate or challenge from Council.  She thinks better of her threat, and debate resumes.]

Councillor Stintz notes that her proposed deferral of a Sheppard decision [still not formally introduced] is in fairness to the Mayor, but that nothing is going to change in 30 days on Eglinton or Finch.

Councillor Thompson says that the Mayor still has a lot of control and cards he can play, but does not go into specifics.  This suggests that Ford intends to attempt to block any anti-subway move however he can regardless of Council’s vote.

After a few more speakers, Councillor Cho launches into an open attack on the Mayor.  Cho noted that the proposed chair of Ford’s panel would be a Ford supporter, and the panel itself would reflect Ford’s view.  Instead of a panel, we would have the voice of one man “acting like a dictator”.  [This sort of feeling is spoken regularly around City Hall, but this is the first time I have heard it on the floor of Council.  Cho later withdrew this remark and apologized to the Mayor.]

Councillor Doug Ford was annoyed by the choice of language, and spoke about the need for voters in suburban parts of the city to remember who voted against subways.  Mayor Ford has a clear mandate to build them, while LRT will guarantee traffic congestion and 15kph transit.

Councillor Parker commented that the remarks aimed at the Mayor were seriously unfair and uninformed.  The Mayor does not need political cover to buy time, and Parker would take his chances with the Mayor’s panel.  However, Parker did not feel he needed cover either — he does not need the advice of Ford’s group to make up his mind.  [It is clear at this point that Parker will support Stintz even though he was not one of the signatories on the petition calling this Special Meeting of Council.]

Councillor Pasternak felt that attacks on the Mayor are unfair, and thanked him for his focus on subways.

[At this point, Councillor Cho rose to apologize.  He has more class and dignity than members of Team Ford who routinely insult their opponents, especially members of the public who have no standing to challenge these remarks.]

Councillor Di Giorgio spoke about the fact that subways cannot be financed only with development charges and TIF (tax increment financing).  We need debt and more provincial revenue as well.  [This is an odd position for a Ford supporter as it shows at least one of them understands the limits of the City's ability to raise capital for very expensive projects.]

Councillor Lee noted that the Mayor’s motion only talks about Eglinton, but that travel is over an entire trip and not one short portion.  Time savings must be viewed from origin to destination, not just for one short section of a journey [the portion of Eglinton that would be underground in the Mayor's plan].

Councillor Shiner moves to amend the Mayor’s motion by adding in for study a series of other route proposals that are part of the Stintz motion.  [This appears to be an attempt to shore up support for the deferral and study scheme.]

Councillor Nunziata argued that if Council does not support the referral, they condemn York [specifically the part of the old City of York at Weston and Eglinton] to expropriations.  She claimed that was why the subway was cancelled [by Mike Harris?].  York is already to get the Maintenance Facility [spoken of as if it were some blight on the neighbourhood].  Council would be reinstating Transit City.

[The reference to expropriations is a leftover issue from the Eglinton Environmental Assessment, and is an example of how political and bureaucratic manipulation of an EA can lead to neighbourhood resentment and come back to bite proponents.  The whole question of an alignment for the Eglinton line between Black Creek and Jane remains unsettled.  During the EA, residents called for it to be underground so that, like the more affluent parts of Eglinton, Mount Dennis could be spared the effects of surface construction and the space requirements for Weston Station.

[The TTC and Metrolinx, desperately trying to contain project costs, did not want to pursue this option and fought strongly against it.  Weston Station is constrained by the tight fit between the rail corridor east of Weston Road, and particularly by the TTC's desire for a three-track section in a tunnel beyond Weston Station.  Both the surface and subway alignments would require demolition of a row of houses built right to the sidewalk line on the north side of Eglinton west of Weston Road.  This is a design challenge to be met regardless of the technology chosen for the line.]

After a few more speakers supporting the deferral, it was time to vote.  The motion by Councillor Shiner to amend the Mayor’s deferral with additional studies passed by 23 to 20.  However, the vote on the referral as amended failed on a vote of 19 to 24.  It is now just after 3:20 pm, and we have spent an hour on an attempt to delay the vote.

Councillor Stintz introduced her two motions — one to approve the MOA and the 5-in-10 plan for subway-surface LRT on Eglinton, conversion of the SRT to LRT with an extension to Sheppard and eventually to Malvern, and construction of a Finch West LRT from Keele to Humber College; the other motion would create an expert panel to review proposals for Sheppard East as well as a number of other transit schemes including the Downtown Relief Line.

Stintz argued that cities build subways and LRT and bus systems, and that what Toronto needs are plans that will survive election cycles.  This is not a Stintz plan, but a Council plan.  Toronto needs to get construction underway, and he motion will ensure that Eglinton and Finch get build, while giving Mayor Ford a chance to deal with his subway proposal.  Now is the time to get work completed.

Councillor Thompson spoke of his concerns about 50-foot tractor-trailers being forced to make tight turns.  [This is a reference to the proposed left turn schemes in the Eglinton EA that would require U-turns as part of left turn design.  This is one of the weakest parts of the "Transit City" scheme for surface operation, and yet another example of intransigent technical staff not listening to the concerns of affected neighbourhoods and businesses.]

Councillor De Baeremaeker’s speech was accompanied by illustrations mined from the Light Rail Transit Association’s website.  He spoke of how the Transit City plan was highjacked.  Everyone wants subways, but many people will not get better transit service with a subway-only plan.

Councillor Matlow talked about how the 14 new Councillors elected in 2010 came to City Hall thinking they had been elected to make decisions, but found they did not get to vote on the Transit City cancellation nor on the Mayor’s MOU.  He argued that Council needs to make evidence-based decisions and that transit should go underground where it needs to go, in the fiscal and technical senses.  The Left of Council has been advancing a conservative plan to build more with available funding.  Meanwhile transit service is overloaded and people want more now.  This is not about populism or what people in Tim Horton’s say — we have to listen to Starbucks and the Second Cup and Timothy’s too.  [This is a reference to Mayor Ford's "man in the coffee shop" view of the world, and to debates on the relative merits of Tim Hortons and libraries.]  The majority rules, but the minority should be heard in debate.  No matter what happens, transit wins and nobody should impede the progress of a resolution of Council.

Councillor Cho moved that Council write to Ottawa and Queen’s Park asking for funding of infrastructure, operations and maintenance.  When Mayor Ford campaigned on a subway for Sheppard, people thought it would come to Meadowvale and Malvern [not just to Scarborough Town Centre].  Cho complimented Karen Stintz and Gary Webster for their courage.  He talked about Malvern and its need for rapid transit.  Cho would be happy for Eglinton if it got an underground line, but we need “fancy service” for other areas too.  If we had enough support from other governments, we would be able to do everything, but without that support the Stintz motion is the best option.

Councillor Cho’s motion eventually passed.

Councillor Wong-Tam moved an amendment to include representatives from the Toronto Women’s City Alliance and from Social Planning Toronto on the expert panel.  She noted that public transit services have a gender bias.  Only two TTC Commissioners are women and any attempt to remove them would go against City policy [on equity].  Women make more trips and shorter trips, and their mobility needs are different.  Wong-Tam talked about “care work” and the need to take ferry children from place to place or to make household-based trips [shopping etc.], and argued that transit planning does not take these into account.

This amendment eventually passed.

Councillor Mammoliti spoke again of the Finch Subway, and moved to redirect available funds to it.  In a show of poor taste, he said that the only difference between the Stintz plan and the Giambrone [Transit City] plan was the absence of a leather couch.  [This refers to a scandal involving former Councillor Giambrone and a liaison said to have occurred in his Council office.  At Toronto Council, it appears that making sexual slurs against former members is OK, but calling the Mayor a "dictator" is not.]

Mammoliti’s motion was eventually ruled redundant given Council’s adoption of a motion favouring the Finch LRT.

Councillor Peruzza attempts to derail Mammoliti’s motion for a Finch Subway with an amendment changing it to LRT.  This was a spurious amendment and it never came to a vote.

Deputy Mayor Holyday Councillor Doug Ford bemoaned “short term thinkers” and praised “long term visionaries” speaking of band-aid solutions.  He attacked Councillor Lindsay-Luby (absent from debate as she was on a pre-arranged cruise) for misrepresenting her ward in central Etobicoke.  Personal agendas were at play, said Ford, and there is still a culture of entitlement at City Hall [by implication among those who already have subways].  If there were a referendum, every Councillor in the room would be defeated.  Ford attacked Premier McGuinty saying that he was listening to Councillors who don’t live in the suburbs where people don’t want “trolley cars” running down the middle of roads.

Councillor Crawford talked about how Scarborough residents love their city, but they need connections to other part of Toronto.  The SRT was an inefficient, ineffective system that needs to be replaced.  Subways encourage more riders and are effective over the long run.  Council support for LRT is not from Scarborough.  He spoke of the Queen streetcar versus a subway, argued that Council cannot waffle and adopt plans for the short term gains of “streetcars”.

Councillor Layton noted that the Mayor’s proposal does not serve much of Scarborough or North York either.  Alternative schemes don’t have funding.  Other cities use the flexibility of LRT, and Toronto needs to provide a plan for service to the most people.  Layton found attempts to pit neighbour against neighbour in this debate “disgusting”.

Councillor Kelly moved to amend Stintz’ motion by removal of the studies of additional lines in the interest of avoiding confusion.  He spoke of how “Scarborough has been screwed”, and conflated “LRT” (really ICTS, or the SRT) with a true LRT line.  Scarborough is going to be a “growth city” in coming decades.

Procedurally, this issue was handled in a very clumsy way, Kelly said.  If Chair Stintz had problems with the Mayor’s plan, she should have brought her concerns to the TTC and then to Council.  People will look back on Council’s lack of vision with immediate or short term or politically correct or personal issues taking precedence.  [All this is rich coming from one of the TTC Commissioners who voted against having staff bring more information about options for Eglinton forward at the last Commission meeting.]

Councillor Kelly’s motion eventually lost.

Councillor Peruzza moved that Council support an early implementation of the Finch West LRT, and that the City Manager and TTC Chief General Manager report back to Council on the future feasibility of a Finch subway, its cost and construction timing.

This motion eventually passed.

Councillor Mammoliti claimed that according to the TTC, buses (BRT) on Finch would be faster than LRT, and asked whether businesses on Finch will be happy about contruction of an LRT.  Peruzza replied that the businesses on Finch are malls, not storefronts as on St. Clair, and would not be disrupted in the same way.

Councillor Pasternak made two motions in the interest of improving Stintz’ proposal.  The first involved changes to wording so that the expert panel would “advise City Council” rather than “determine” the outcome for Sheppard East, and that the panel would consider “project funds” rather than “funds currently allocated”.  The second involved a long set of reports on financing of public transit.

The technical amendment passed, but the financing amendment was referred to the expert panel.

Councillor Lee moved that a representative from the Sheppard East Villiage BIA (Business Improvement Area) be added to the panel.  Lee supports the Stintz motion.  He noted that the press got the Gordon Chong report (on the Sheppard subway) almost a week before Council, and study is needed to see what it can do for us.  The lobby for subways via email is very strong with support running 50-50 for subways and LRT.  Lee wanted to be sure he made the best decision for all of Toronto.  The Mayor ran on a platform of subways, while Lee himself ran on LRT and won against pro-subway opponents.

This motion eventually passed.

Councillor Milczyn moved that alternate financing schemes be added to the Sheppard review.  He congratulated Karen Stintz and expressed respect for Gary Webster.  Staff do their jobs.  The problem of what to do with so much money is quite unusual.  We want “transformative” transit, and LRT isn’t transformative enough.  [At the end of his speech, Milczyn walks over to Stintz and gives her a big hug.]

[As the debate proceeds, Mayor Ford has been out of the room for an extended period, and many Councillors from the Left can be seen having chats sitting in Ford's chair and those around it.]

Councillor McMahon spoke of the need to build a transit system.  We have played the transit name game [to call a network "Transit City" or something else] long enough.  Her daily commute is more and more crowded, and she dreams of a DRL.

Councillor Palacio showed a video of congestion on St. Clair at Keele and at Old Weston Road.  Oddly enough, this is a very narrow stretch of St. Clair where the full right-of-way design could not be implemented.  Palacio hammered away at the mismanagement of the St. Clair project and the lack of attention to details.  Nobody wanted to listen to neighbourhood concerns during construction.

Councillor Carroll spoke as if she were directly addressing Premier McGuinty.  We need to work together, and sometimes we need to speak truth to citizens.  Sheppard needs to be a shared process.  Karen Stintz is not about parroting back what people may want to hear.  Speaking of the importance of transit, Carroll wants every route her daughter may have to take, and her grandchildren after her, to be possible on the TTC.

Councillor Colle noted that Toronto subway lines already come above ground.   What people want is for Council to decide.  It is time to get over transit modes Councillors may hate and to concentrate on what is appropriate.

Councillor Parker stated that we are not just trying to determine best way of moving people from A to B.  If we were, then subways make sense.  But a transit system does more — we are building a system, a city, and the kind of city you build with surface transit has more general development vs high density at nodes.  This is not a matter of LRT as second best, but as the better of two options.  The Mayor may feel honour bound to deliver on election commitments, although he has been sensitive to Parker’s having a different position.  Subway lines are not on offer.  Given the alternatives, Parker opts for Eglinton on the surface east of the Don.

Councillor Crisanti moved to amend Mammoliti’s motion by requesting a report on Finch bus lanes.   The previous administration tried to stretch the budget for “value”, but only achieved a poor option.  Stintz’  motion means that northern Etobicoke must wait 10 years for anything, it will cost $1b and will not do better than today’s service.  A TTC report says that queue jump lanes would be faster than LRT and cost only $45m.  Council should not be shortsighted.

Crisanti’s motion was eventually ruled redundant given the approval of a conflicting motion regarding the Finch LRT.

Councillor Vaughan noted that the many amendments proposed today show how everyone is pillaging the $8b.  He talked about the Spadina Subway, originally proposed to run along the waterfront and up Dufferin, then changed to Bathurst, and then over a dinner break at Metro Council changed to Spadina, an alignment chosen to protect the expressway plans.  Cities do not build transit to open fields, but to areas where demand already is.  Toronto would have done this if they had chosen the Dufferin route.  On Sheppard we hope to borrow against a line we cannot pay for while we are still trying to make Spadina profitable.

This is not a decision about where you live, it is about how Toronto gets transit to many neighbourhoods.  We can explore new revenue tools, but getting something built is most important.  There are long commutes everywhere, and this debate is about more than saving a few minutes on Eglinton.

Councillor Robinson came as a new member to City Hall, but still does not know where her parking space is.  The biggest complaint she hears is congestion and TTC overcrowding and delays.  We need to address TTC operations and get people where they are going quickly.  She would have appreciated another month to consider the matter, and felt she had heard a lot of misinformation.  There is only so much money and we have to work within this.  When the engineers start analyzing Eglinton, they may find reason to put a lot of it underground.  She will base her vote on feedback from her residents.  [Although this speech gave no indication of how Robinson was leaning, she wound up voting for Stintz' plan.]

Councillor Augimeri wants to give riders what they want — better service — and the “Metrolinx LRT plan” gives them this.  The Finch Subway won’t happen, and telling people it will come is a lie.  We need to fix the mistake made by building a subway on Sheppard.  Augimeri joked that today the subway in Torino froze, but the LRT kept working, and showed a video of crowding conditions on the Finch West bus.

Councillor Bernardinetti spoke of development coming to her ward near Eglinton and Victoria Park, and said that density is coming even without the LRT.  She read a letter from a former City Clerk into the record.  It contained many errors, but these went unchallenged as the debate was over and it was time to vote.

The Votes

Councillor Stintz’ first motion primarily involving approval of the Eglinton LRT, Scarborough LRT and Finch West LRT as contemplated in the 2009 MOA was approved by a vote of 26 to 17.  The item was reopened as Councillor Kelly wanted to change his recorded vote claiming to have voted in favour in error.  On a revote, the item again carried by 27 to 16.  Councillors Minnan-Wong and Nunziata had voted the wrong way, and the item was reopened again with a final vote of 25 to 18.  (Note that two of the 45 members were absent.)

Councillor Stintz’ second motion regarding the expert panel, Sheppard East and other matters for study passed by 28 to 15.

By 7:15 pm, everything was done except a few procedural matters and the press scrums.

For all of the gory details, please refer to the meeting minutes.

Light-rail transit (LRT) supporters may have partied into the night, but the question for the days ahead is: What now?

Read the rest of this article on the Torontoist website.

The description of the reporting mechanism and due date for Sheppard “expert panel” has been corrected to match what Council actually passed.  The information previously quoted here came from the original version of the motion.

Updated February 9, 2012 at 2:00 pm:

The minutes from the Special Meeting of Council are now available online.

Updated February 9, 2012 at noon:

On February 8, Toronto Council voted to seize control of the transit agenda from Mayor Ford and to support much of the original Transit City / Metrolinx 5-in-10 Plan that was approved in 2009.  I will publish a separate article on the debate and the motions later today.

Additional coverage is available from Torontoist, and a compendium of links to other media is available at Spacing Toronto.

The two most important motions were from TTC Chair Karen Stintz.

The first confirms Council’s support for the originally planned subway-surface alignment of the Eglinton LRT line, for the conversion of the Scarborough RT to LRT technology with an extension north to Sheppard (and eventually to Malvern), and for the Finch LRT west from Keele (the future Finch West station on the Spadina subway) to Humber College. Council also authorizes the TTC to discuss with Metrolinx the feasibility of several future projects:  a Sheppard West extension to Downsview, a Sheppard LRT to the Zoo, a Danforth subway extension to the Scarborough Town Centre, an Eglinton extension from Jane to Pearson Airport, and the Downtown Relief Line.

The second creates a special panel with broad enough representation to command political and technical respect.  This panel will advise Council on “the most effective means of delivering the greatest number of riders with the funds currently allocated for a public transportation project on Sheppard”.  The panel is to report back to a special meeting of Council no later than March 21, 2012.

Reaction from Mayor Ford and his faction was predictably hostile, but now extends to openly defying the will of Council.  Meanwhile, Ontario’s Minister of Transportation, Bob Chiarelli, issued a press release affirming the importance of support from “council, as a whole”.  Chiarelli has asked Metrolinx to report as quickly as possible on the effects of Council’s position.

Original post from February 6, 2012 follows the break.

The Globe and Mail and the Star report today that Karen Stintz, Chair of the TTC, will file a request with the City Clerk for a special meeting of City Council.  The business to be debated will be a reaffirmation of the 2009 Memorandum of Understanding for LRT lines on Eglinton, Sheppard and Finch, and the conversion of the SRT to LRT.  Unlike Mayor Ford’s agreement with Premier McGuinty, this MOU has been approved by Council.

A special meeting can be called at the request of a majority of Council (23 members) and must be held within 48 hours making Wednesday, February 8 the likely date for a showdown with the Mayor.

The Globe article suggests that this move will doom Stintz’ position as TTC Chair and will result in the swift removal of Gary Webster, who Stintz has supported against the open wishes of the Ford brothers, as Chief General Manager.  This begs the question of whether another special Council meeting will be required to replace the existing members of the TTC board with a more balanced group that will not attempt to thwart the will of Council on the rapid transit file and many other issues.

Original post from February 7 below:

On Monday February 6, Metrolinx held a press conference to outline its position on the current subway vs LRT controversy.  This article is a summary of the presentation (which is now available online) and a commentary on it.

I have taken a breather from the Chong report because of its size, the fact that it is now available online, and my desire to review Metrolinx position first.  That agency has somewhat more credibility than and “Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited”.

Purpose

The presentation is intended to “provide information” on the Eglinton line as outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Mayor Ford, and to restate the principles embraced by Queen’s Park and Metrolinx.

Principles

1. Sound Regional Transit Planning.  Any projects must “achieve sound transportation objectives for the City and the region” and be in tune with the regional plan, The Big Move.
2. Budget and Cost.  The maximum budget available from Queen’s Park remains $8.4-billion (2010$).  Any plan must remain within the overall total as well as projected yearly cash flows.  Additional costs must be paid by the City or some other partner.
3. Penalties.  Queen’s Park will not pay any penalties resulting from changes sought by the City, and the penalty costs and losses from the MOU (the Ford document) remain the City’s responsibility.
4. Cost of Delay.  Further delay is unacceptable to Metrolinx, and any costs this triggers must be paid by the City.
5. Traffic.  “Any plan should minimize adverse impacts on traffic to the extent reasonably possible.”

Point 3 begs an obvious question of how the Province can hold Toronto responsible for costs incurred because they were foolish enough to proceed on Mayor Ford’s say-so without ensuring Council’s approval.  As we know from the recent legal opinion, the Mayor cannot bind the City to a contract without Council’s consent.

Point 5 is unclear about whether this refers to traffic problems during construction or after a line has opened.  During construction is of interest because this affects both cost and elapsed times for big projects like Eglinton.  The TTC’s construction schedule for an all-underground version is extended out to 2022 because they don’t want to dig up every station location at the same time.  If this were allowed, say as part of a sweetened deal with a private partner, the cost would come down.

Status

The west/central portion of the Eglinton project is common to both versions of the plan, and it is “making good progress”.  Metrolinx and the TTC are working to allow an alternative procurement strategy (putting more responsibility in the hands of a private partner), but certainty is needed on what exactly will be built in the eastern portion.

Current Plan

This is shown as a map with the following components and costs:

• Metrolinx Crosstown Project:  $8.18-billion
• Sheppard East Subway Project:  $2.75b
• Sheppard West Subway Project:  $1.48b
• Sheppard Subway Yard:  $0.5b

It is worth noting that the total here for Sheppard is $4.73-billion.  This is the “TTC” estimate for Sheppard, not the lower so-called “Metrolinx” estimate cited in the Chong report.  Is there something about the cost of Sheppard Metrolinx knows that they did not share with Gordon Chong and KPMG (who wrote the section of Chong’s paper where this appears)?

Benefits of the Current Crosstown Plan

Just the title of this section is intriguing because, of course, Council has never approved this plan and strictly speaking, it’s not “current”.

Metrolinx claims that there will be a reduction of travel times from Kennedy to Black Creek by 25% as the line will operate at 30-32km/h overall.  Of course, the subway-surfrace variant would operate at this speed too, and the only question is the speed over the section from Leaside to Kennedy.  Part of this section will be grade separated (around Don Mills Station) although the extent is not yet confirmed.  The total distance from Brentcliffe to Kennedy is about 8km.  From Black Creek to Brentcliffe is a bit over 10km.  In other words, the section where any improvement in time can possibly occur is 8/18 or about 45% of the line.

To achieve a 25% increase overall, the speed improvement east of Brentcliffe would have to be 55%.  We know that the speed used for underground operation is 30-32, and this means that the presumed speed for surface operation would be only about 20km/h.  This is lower than the figure actually used by the TTC in the Eglinton line’s published description (22-25km/h) and it also ignores the change in access time to the more widely-spaced stations on an underground alignment.  The difference is between a 15 minute trip (at 32km/h) and a 24 minute trip (at 20km/h).  If the higher TTC speed (25km/h)  is used, the surface trip falls to 19 minutes.  Much will depend on the degree of surface transit priority afforded to the LRT.

Metrolinx cites reliability because an underground line would be completely separated from traffic.  Conversely, a surface line would have to interact with traffic and pedestrians at intersections, and there would be some effect on left turns and signal cycle times.

They also cite “convenience” because the Eglinton and SRT routes are linked.  Note that this arrangement is not peculiar to the underground proposal, and nothing prevents the TTC from doing this for a subway-surface version of the line.  The TTC’s concern is that demand north of Kennedy is higher than on Eglinton, and they don’t want to operate a very frequent “SRT” service with short turns at Kennedy to accommodate a smaller demand west on Eglinton.  This is an issue of operational convenience rather than necessity.

Metrolinx cites higher ridership, especially in the peak, on an underground Crosstown line as compared to the subway-surface route.  This is a direct effect of their demand model which is very sensitive to running times, and which redirects a considerable amount of traffic from the Danforth subway to the Eglinton line.  Whether this is desirable is quite another matter given concerns about the capacity at Eglinton/Yonge station.  A related question is the potential benefit of a Downtown Relief Line intercepting demand on Eglinton at Don Mills.

Overall, Metrolinx states that a fully grade-separated line doubles the capacity of the project.  This is true in the sense that more and longer trains can be operated if the line is all grade-separated, but it also begs the question of the effect on overall cost of providing a fleet and yard sufficient for that capacity and whether LRVs are appropriate for a route that never runs on the surface.  The presentation returns to this issue later.

Light Rail Vehicles

About $76m of $770m of the contract for 182 Bombardier LRVs has been spent to date.  The “current plan” reduced this number to 135 by the elimination of the Finch and Sheppard routes, but these vehicles are suitable for “other LRT applications around the region and province”.  The strongest endorsement of LRT comes here:

“Metrolinx remains confident that LRVs are a good choice given their flexibility to operate at surface, in tunnels and on elevated guideways, with a low floor and high capacity”

Metrolinx notes that the LRVs were intended to operate partly in tunnels in the original plan.  They cite other examples of Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco.  Closer to home, one can look at Edmonton, Philadelphia and Boston (where streetcars have run underground for over a century).  The important point about all of these is that the LRVs do not stay underground when there is no reason for them to do so.

LRVs are low floor vehicles which, in the Metrolinx implementation, will load level with the platform (unlike the surface streetcars which must use a ramp because they operate in mixed traffic).  The low floor aspect of the cars is a “small component” of the overall vehicle cost and project.

Metrolinx notes that:

“Having a low floor provides flexibility for the vehicle to be used in a surface application, when the line is extended west towards Pearson airport or north and east further into Scarborough”

Vehicle Capacity

Metrolinx cites capacities for three-car trainsets ranging from just under 10k/hour at a 3 minute headway (20 trains/hour) to just under 20k/hour at a 1.5 minute headway.  This can accommodate projected ridership beyond 2051.  Surface operations in a median are limited to 8-9k/hour because frequent trains and high pedestrian volumes would interfere too much with road traffic.

Results

What was once a $6.5b project is now an $8.2b project and limited funds are available for other routes.  There will be fewer stations because of their higher cost underground.  Metrolinx states that although this version costs more, it “delivers greater benefits”.  Whether this calculation is offset by the benefits lost through not building other routes is unclear.

Going Forward

Metrolinx and Queen’s Park seek a single position from the City.  They “remain committed” to partnering with Toronto, but “clarity is required”.  Any City position will be evaluated against the principles stated earlier.

I cannot help pointing out that there already is an accepted Memorandum of Agreement dating from 2009 between all of the parties and especially City Council.  It would be difficult for Metrolinx to claim now that the network the MOA contemplates (the 5-in-10 Metrolinx plan for Eglinton, SRT, Sheppard and Finch) would now fail this test.  Tinkering with the plan by Council could re-open the question of what is an “acceptable” request.

The next installment in this drama lies with Council, and political concerns will dominate although this will be disguised by concerns for technical matters.  We may learn again why Canadian winters are too cold for surface operation and other tidbits from Ford’s fountain of transit knowledge.

Original post from Feb 5 follows:

Gordon Chong’s report

Toronto Transit Back on Track
Sheppard Subway Development and Financing Study

will be released sometime this week, but a copy has already found its way to me.  This report was commissioned by Mayor Ford to explore the viability of his proposal, as stated in the purported Memorandum of Understanding with Queen’s Park, for the City to go it alone on the Sheppard Subway project.  The report is close to 200 pages long including its appendices, and I am not going to review it in a single article.

There is no question Chong’s mandate was to substantiate the need for and viability of the subway line, and to that end his report is coloured with sections intended to denigrate LRT alternatives and the political process that led to the Transit City proposal.  I will turn to this material in due course, but any decision on the subway project must stand on its own.  History is worth reviewing insofar as it provides technical background and shows the evolution of transit planning in Toronto.  Fighting old battles may score political points, but the subway must be justified on its own merits.

The cost and financing model are central to the thesis that the Sheppard line, and by extension a network of subways, is an appropriate goal, indeed the only goal, for Toronto.  The common wisdom is that “everybody wants subways”, but as with many aspects of public spending, what people want is not always what they will get.  Recent events in Toronto’s budget process are littered with lectures by Ford’s followers about fiscal responsibility and the need to make do with less.  We are told that the city and its taxpayers cannot afford to pay more.  We must, therefore, examine claims that major new public works are affordable with suspicion.

What is the estimated cost of any new project?  Are the numbers we are using credible?  Are subways actually cheaper than we have been told, and could a lower cost bring them within financial constraints of potential revenue?  Are public agencies the appropriate developers of such projects?  Are their costs (historical and projected) greater than might be achieved through another delivery mechanism?

While it may be a common Toronto sport to poke holes in TTC budgets, management practices and operations (a not uncommon thread on this blog), such criticism must be backed with a standard of accuracy and care.

How Much Will the Sheppard Subway Cost?

A central premise in this debate is that the TTC, and by implication the public sector generally, is unable to deliver this project at a reasonable cost.  An oft-quoted figure puts the TTC’s estimate of the project at $4.7-billion while an estimate from Metrolinx sits at $3.7-billion.  These numbers first appear in Table 2 in the Executive Summary, and they are routinely repeated as gospel.  One must read all the way down to page 147 and Table 38 to see the details. Here we see component costs that are generally higher for the TTC estimate than the Metrolinx one, but the details reveal that the billion dollar difference is not all that it seems.

Metrolinx estimates the cost of maintenance facilities at $138-million based on a per-car value of $2.66m.  A footnote on the table clearly states that the TTC estimate of $500-million is based on a new facility larger than is needed to hold just the fleet for Sheppard.  Why such a big difference?  Metrolinx assumes an expansion of the yard at Wilson and therefore a marginal increase in system capacity whereas the TTC makes provision for future fleet growth for demand and for system extension.

Wilson Yard has a looming problem with its size because there are limits on how fast trains can be pushed out for service buildup in the AM peak.  Already there is discussion of shortening the hours of subway service to retain an overnight maintenance window between the end of one day’s operations and the start-up of the next.  TTC plans include proposal for an underground storage yard north of Finch Station and, eventually, to a new carhouse somewhere in York Region.  We cannot simply keep stuffing more and more trains into Wilson.

This aspect of the cost difference cannot be counted as a penalty against the TTC because it addresses a completely different model of what would be built (and why), not some inherent flaw or inflation in TTC costing.

“Operating Systems” covers a range of items listed in the comparison.  For this, the TTC’s value is 4.5 times the Metrolinx value ($329m vs $73m).  This amount cannot be explained simply by claiming inefficiency at the TTC, and it is wildly out of scale with the differences in other items.  At the very least, anyone purporting to compare estimates would flag such a difference and explain it in their report rather than simply using the numbers without question.

“Contingency” is a catch-all allowance in any project budget to allow for unexpected events and costs during construction.  Both the TTC and Metrolinx estimates allow about 26% over and above the component costs, and with the TTC’s costs being higher, so is the contingency in their estimate.

Sales tax is included in the TTC estimates, but it is not in the Metrolinx version.  This shows up by virtue of an HST Rebate in the TTC section of the table which has no equivalent on the Metrolinx side.  The HST is included in the component costs including the contingency factor, and the TTC unit costs are not presented on an equal, untaxed footing with the Metrolinx costs.  Again, this sort of adjustment is a basic requirement of financial analysis, but it is absent from Table 38.

There are likely other areas where differences between Metrolinx and TTC figures would bear scrutiny, but as the TTC numbers are not detailed here, nor are the assumptions on which they are based, it is impossible to dig further.

Taking what we can see into account covers about three quarters of the difference between the Metrolinx and TTC estimates.  Before we can believe the Metrolinx $3.7b estimate, the inconsistencies with the TTC numbers must be explained.  Both values may be legitimate given the underlying assumptions used in each case, but these are demonstrably different.  Saying that there is a $1-billion spread between the two is an apples-to-oranges argument.

Here, it suits Gordon Chong’s thesis that the TTC is an inherently poor steward of public funds and that the project could be delivered at lower cost through another agency or mechanism.

A January 2008 Metrolinx report on a study tour to the United Kingdom and Spain is included as an appendix to the Chong report.  Even a cursory reading of this document shows that there are significant differences in the environment in which large-scale projects were undertaken in these jurisdictions compared with Toronto.  A major source of savings lies in the scale and continuity of construction projects, a general agreement that the projects should go forward (possibly with less up-front review such as our Environmental Assessments), and a regulatory environment that reduces contention between proponent agencies and the companies actually building their projects.  (Buried in the report, by the way, are references to “Tram” (LRT) components of the Madrid system which are considerably cheaper per kilometre than their subways.)

The degree to which each difference between the European cities and Toronto contributes to differences in costs is not explored, and yet this is essential to any comparison.  The scale of their projects and longevity of their construction plans are not directly transferable to a single Toronto subway extension.  It is not enough to say “look at how cheaply Madrid builds subways” without also understanding why they can do it.

In my next article I will turn to the question of how we will pay for this project.

The votes carried with only Chair Karen Stintz and Commissioners Maria Augimeri and John Parker voting against them.  Stintz has now effectively lost control of the Commission, and the true-blue Ford team has decided to run the show as they see fit.  How long she will stay as chair remains to be seen given the procedural manoeuvres required to unseat her.

The situation is even more ironic because earlier at the same meeting, Stintz had fought the good Ford fight by championing using Council’s recent allocation of $5-million to supplement Wheel-Trans budgets and continue to service to dialysis patients.  This is the same Commission that only months earlier effectively told these riders that theirs was not a core service of the City, and they would have to find cabs.  This didn’t wash politically, and service was restored for six months pending availability of new funding.

However, the City’s money was not intended for Wheel-Trans.  Stintz, by a feat of sophistry that deeply undermines her credibility, argued that “service cuts” were generic and the money could be used for either regular bus service or for Wheel-Trans.  The Commission smiled sweetly,  but voted to ignore Council, cut service and spend the money on a motherhood issue.

Lest readers think I am a heartless bastard, I’m not suggesting Wheel-Trans shouldn’t be properly funded, but its problems are much bigger, and the $5m was not intended to let Queen’s Park off of the hook for what is really a health services cost, not transit.  Even bringing the dialysis folks into the discussion shows how unprincipled the Ford camp (then including Stintz) might be in trying to bypass their loss of control on Council.

Stintz did her bit and sandbagged a big piece of Council’s rescue motion by scoffing the $5m.  However, her role as a Team Ford insider was short-lived when it became clear that by advocating an Eglinton alternative, she was now consigned to Ford’s trash heap and the truly loyal boys would run the show.

All this happened on the same day as a letter from Metrolinx to Mayor Ford and Chair Stintz said, briefly, “get your crap together and decide what you really want us to build”.  Metrolinx finally understands that the Memorandum of Understanding signed with Mayor Ford last year is of little value without the Council approval essential to committing the City.  “Absent Council’s endorsement of the MoU, the City is not bound by the plan and itis increasingly difficult for Metrolinx to implement it.”

Council now must seize the initiative.  Everyone has been trying to be oh-so-conciliatory, saying things they hoped Mayor Ford and his team would take as overtures for compromise, but Ford wants none of it.  It’s subways all the way.

By his actions, Ford has shown he only knows how to fight for turf, and that’s a disappearing quantity.  Ford Nation is becoming Ford Island.

Councillors now talk openly of calling a special meeting using a procedure that requires only a simple majority to invoke.  The agenda is set by the call for the meeting, not throttled by the mayor’s cronies at Executive Committee.  This will allow discussion of transit alternatives, disposition of the MoU, and many other actions such as reconstituting the TTC with a better balanced group of Councillors.  Council could even amend its own bylaws to strip Ford of his power to control Standing Committees and the Executive.  These are powers Council granted, and Council can take them away.

In 40 years of Council watching, I have never seen such open contempt for Council as that shown by Mayor Ford.  He claims a “mandate”, but forgets that Council was elected too, and they answer to voters and their distress at Mayor Ford’s agenda.

One final note:  Like City Council, the TTC has never rescinded its approval of Transit City.  We may debate just what exactly constitutes “approval” at the City, but at the TTC it’s quite clear.  On March 21, 2007, the TTC endorsed Transit City as the centrepiece of its planning, and they have never voted for anything else.  Nobody bothered to think of such a nicety when they had a fighting chance of winning the vote, and now their inattention leaves an embarrassing reminder of details ignored.

Whether Karen Stintz will survive these events as Chair or even as a TTC member is hard to say.  She’s no longer one of Ford’s boys, but by trying to play both sides of the street, she’s not exactly a prime candidate for Ford’s opponents.  She will have to prove her new position, if it is new, with actions that benefit transit and the city, not just the Mayor.

One way or another, we will have a new transit policy probably by the end of March.

On January 29, the Star reported that a legal opinion obtained by Councillor Joe Mihevc, former Vice-Chair of the TTC in the Miller administration, states that Mayor Ford had no authority under the laws governing the City of Toronto to cancel Transit City.

[The report] says the mayor had no business entering into a non-binding memorandum of understanding with the province that authorized a new transit plan, including a Sheppard subway and a longer tunnel on the Eglinton light rail line. It says he further overstepped his powers when he told TTC chief general manager Gary Webster to stop work on Transit City.

Since the mayor had no legal authority to enter into the memorandum of understanding, it shouldn’t be acted upon until council approves it, say the lawyers. Until that happens, it is only an agreement in principle.

…

According to the report by lawyers Freya Kristjanson and Amanda Darrach, Ford “did not follow the proper procedure for obtaining City Council’s authorization to rescind Transit City and develop and approve an alternate plan.”

“Under the City of Toronto Act, the power of the city resides in City Council. The Mayor of Toronto has very little independent authority beyond his role as head of City Council. Unless specific power is delegated to him, the mayor does not have the authority to speak for the city independently,” wrote the lawyers, from Cavalluzzo, Hayes, Shilton, McIntyre & Cornish.

Ford’s bully-boy nature, his attitude that his “mandate” gives him the power to do anything he wants and ask Council’s blessing, eventually, maybe, has left him in a precarious position.  During the early months of his administration, Council was under his thumb with a then-weak and pliable batch of Councillors who chose not to challenge the Mayor’s office.  If his “Transportation City” plan had gone to Council for a vote, there would have been a big debate, but Ford probably would have won the day.  By taking the quick “I’m in charge” route, Ford left himself open to the challenge which has now surfaced, and at a time when his ability to win votes depends more on consensus building than on back-room, strong-arm tactics.

Queen’s Park, for its part, foolishly signed on to Ford’s plan and proceeded in the absence of Council support, a specific requirement of the Memorandum of Understanding Ford signed with Premier McGuinty.  Metrolinx gives tacit support for the plan citing the benefits of shorter travel times and better ridership without ever discussing the basics — is this an effective use of the money available to build transit, not just on Eglinton, but in the wider context of Toronto and the GTA.

Updated January 30:

The lead counsel on this opinion is Freya Kristjanson who has extensive experience in administrative and public law.

The opinion covers two areas in some detail.  First is the question of whether Council actually approved of Transit City, and then the issue of the powers of the Mayor to act unilaterally without Council’s endorsement.

In July 2007, Council as part of an overall environmental initiative directed that studies for Transit City begin.  Various motions over following years approved work on specific parts of the plan, and some of these were supported by then-Councillor Ford.

Mayor Ford came to office and, before Council had even had its inaugural meeting, announced the cancellation of Transit City and directed that the TTC shift its efforts to his own transportation plan.  In March 2011, Ford signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Metrolinx and the Government of Ontario which purported to be a commitment by Toronto to the new plan.  However, a requirement both of the MOU and the law governing Toronto was that Council must approve the new policy.  The MOU was never taken to Council for a vote.

At this point, I must point out that no amount of whining about whether or not Transit City ever had an up-or-down vote matters.  If as Ford supporters claim, Miller was wrong to proceed as he did, then Ford repeated the same mistake.  In fact, many aspects of Transit City, and especially spending on its projects, were approved by Council, something nobody can claim for Ford’s plan.

The opinion goes into some detail about the powers of the Mayor and Council as this is essential to the discussion of whether what Ford did exceeded his authority as Mayor.  It is quite clear that a good deal of the Mayor’s authority flows from Council, and that he cannot act on his own claiming to act for the City.  The Mayor has a bully pulpit from which he can advocate his positions and, if he does well, to sway Council and public support.  However, he must formally receive that support from Council to act.

During this morning’s press conference, the media asked whether the Mayor had “broken the law” in acting as he did.  To this, Ms. Kristjanson replied that it was not a matter of criminal law as that phrase is normally used.  Councillor Mihevc did, however, raise the question of city staff acting only for and with the direction of the Mayor and not for Council to whom, on paper, they report.  This matter will sort itself out as debate among Councillors evolves and the pro- and anti-Ford factions become clear.  The issue is not to punish the Mayor, but to re-establish the appropriate role for the Mayor and for Council.

In a bizarre sideshow to the press conference, Councillor Norm Kelly, also a TTC Commissioner, claimed that decisions on the fate of Eglinton and its design were really a matter for Metrolinx, not for Council, because Eglinton is a provincial project.  This ignores the fact that Council has been asked by Metrolinx to make up its mind on the preferred alignment and technology.

Kelly also claimed that an all-subway option would be cheaper, although this is based in part on the assumption of automated control.  The TTC is expected to produce a detailed review of the options in late February, and I will hold off on comments about this issue until there are actual figures and claims to discuss.  If, in fact, either Metrolinx or the TTC has information that would support this claim, it should be made public for scrutiny as soon as possible.

Kelly made the absurd claim that running at grade was more expensive than underground because of the extra cost of maintaining infrastructure out of doors.  He may not have noticed that parts of the subway, not to mention the Scarborough RT, run out of doors.  It is sad, in a way, that this is the best representative that could be mustered by the Ford camp to defend the Mayor’s position.

How will Transit City, or whatever transit plan might be proposed, come before Council?    Although it would technically be possible to introduce the item from the floor of a regular Council meeting, this would require a 2/3 majority vote, something of a challenge at this point.  Either the Mayor or the City Manager could put this on a Council agenda, or a special meeting of Council could be called at the request of at least 23 members (a simple majority).  Which path is taken will depend a great deal on Mayor Ford’s willingness to compromise, or at least to let the issue come for a vote and take his chances on the outcome.

Postscript

The Star errs in its description of the Mayor’s powers:

Although the mayor did receive some new powers under the City of Toronto Act that took effect in 2007, including the authority to appoint the deputy mayor and standing committee chairs, “Generally, executive and legislative powers rest with full council,” says the lawyer’s report.

In fact, the power to appoint the Deputy Mayor and standing committee chairs (and, therefore, to ensure Mayoral control of the Executive Committee) was conferred on the Mayor by Council through Chapter 27, Section 40 of the Municipal Code.  Council can amend this at any time (changes to the code happen so often that there is a long list of amendments on the City’s website that have not yet been folded into the consolidated online version).

What Council granted, Council can take away.

The TTC is a separate agency and the Chair is not appointed by the Mayor, but by the Commissioners from among themselves.  The Mayor has de facto control over this through the allegiance of his supporters on the Commission.  If Council chooses to reconstitute the Commission, the Mayor could lose control of the Chair’s appointment.

As that year evolved, embarrassment about the absolute stupidity, the crass insensitivity and the “we’re in charge so fuck you” attitude of the Ford administration made me wonder whether Toronto would ever recover.  But this is not a dictatorship, and Toronto voters seem remarkably able to recognize a fraud when they see one.  I had hoped for a great fall, but didn’t expect it would come so quickly.  Council took a year, but finally has its voice and knows that the real power lies in a working majority, not in the bullies clustered around the Mayor.

In these pages, we have talked about the merits of various transit plans, technologies, funding schemes and the fundamental question of what transit should do.  We don’t always agree, but there’s a robust discussion.  Among the public at large, there’s a better knowledge of transit issues, if only because they get so much press.  A debate can start from a moderately informed basis rather than going back to first principles and explaining the concept of a wheel.  That’s what it felt like at times, years ago when citizen activism was just finding its legs for transit and other aspects of city life.

As I write this, the transit file is in total upheaval.  Nobody is quite sure whether Transit City, Mayor Ford’s plan, or some hybrid scheme will win out.  At Queen’s Park, the real intentions of Metrolinx are never clear.  Whether they are dark lords piloting a death star toward the TTC, or brainy bumblers plotting to take over the world, is hard to say.

Over at the TTC, they’re just trying to keep the wheels on in the face of an administration that cries wolf over Toronto’s supposed poverty and strips funding without understanding the real cost of what they do.  Transit planning is a political poker game whose players are drunk with the vision of billions on the table, but who plead poor, unable to afford a taxi ride home.

This will pass, and Toronto may actually head off in a new direction that could even resemble what we were doing not so long ago.  At least now there is a debate.

My own output in these pages dropped off in 2011 thanks to the complete lack of anything to write about for weeks on end.  Transit policy consisted of little more than lectures on how the fat times were over and we would all have to sacrifice something for the common good.  That the common good might actually benefit from spending was an utterly foreign concept.

The article count went up from 1,152 to 1,277 (just under 11%), but you, the readers, kept up your end with the comment tally rising from 20,190 to 23,908 (18.4%).  This blog was not subject to an arbitrary 10% cut in service.

Where 2012 will take us is still a mystery.  At City Council, it’s early days for an alliance of members from diverse political viewpoints.  They know they can beat the Mayor on a vote where there’s enough common sense around the table to spur 23 voices, voices that listen to their constituents and to the mood of the city, not just to the sycophantic railings of the gutter press and populist radio hosts.  May that number grow, and may Council again be a place where citizens are not dismissed as special interests, layabouts and pinkos.

At Queen’s Park, the challenge is to find some backbone for the funding of transit.  The Metrolinx “investment strategy” process drags on and on.  The date for a report still lies over a year away, far enough that nothing beyond talk will happen before the next election.

Transit will cost a lot of money, but Queen’s Park refuses to accept responsibility for funding this portfolio at the local level.  A small dribble of gas tax is all that keeps transit systems alive, and that won’t pay for transit on the scale needed to make a real change in GTA travel habits.  Two trains a day to anywhere is not a transit revolution.

In Ottawa, the government pulls as far away from municipal issues as it can, and prepares to stiff the provinces in order to deal with its own problems.  This is not a new idea.  There is great irony that we had Paul Martin as Finance Minister turning the screws, while years later, as Prime Minister he had the beginnings of a sensitivity to cities (with the NDP’s encouragement).  Any transit funding strategy for the foreseeable future must not count on improved federal participation.  “Tripartite” schemes are a recipe for complete inaction, something Toronto has far too much of already.

Is Toronto — the city, the region and its provincial government — prepared to build what is needed to ensure transit actually plays an important role in the region’s future?  Will we tax ourselves, however the money might be collected, to built and operate the network of tomorrow, or will the mythology of the private sector and its supposed billions for transit investment win out?

2012 will be an interesting year.  I hope to have much more to write about, and to write about positively.  You, dear readers, will have your say too.  Quiet corners may be hard to find in this café.

(If you have five buses each with a seated load, and you cut the service to four buses (a 20% cut), then one quarter, or 25%, of the seated load from that fifth bus much be added to each of the remaining vehicles.)

Now the TTC proposes a standard of “seated plus 15%” saying that this will rescue many of the services that would have been cut.  Hello TTC.  If an existing service is already at seated plus 15%, then it is most certainly over the current standard of a seated load.  The same sort of calculation applies to the peak period bus routes that were already saved by an adjustment of the new standard.

The common point here and in the round of service cuts on lightly used routes last year is that the TTC’s riding counts are out of sync with the service they actually operate.  One one day, a revised standard may cause a service cut, but on another, amazingly, it turns out that there were more riders on those buses and streetcars than we had been led to believe.  Certainly many routes are operating beyond the “Ridership Growth Strategy” standard, and the amount of headroom to cut service is less than alleged by KPMG’s Core Services Review.  That document is a tangle of half-truths and bad research, but it was the underpinning of planned cuts to many City departments.

Why didn’t the TTC explain this during the budget reviews?

Updated January 27, 2012 at 11:25pm:  A “final budget” report on the TTC’s agenda for the January 31 meeting recommends spending the $5-million voted by Council either on restored service on the conventional system, or on avoiding a cutback in Wheel-Trans service.  The report includes a list of services that would be restored on March 25, 2012 reversing completely or partially the cuts pending for February 12, 2012.  There is no discussion of service restoration (which would require redoing the work sign-up for February on very short notice) for the period from February 12 to March 24.

While funding of Wheel-Trans will be advanced by some as a more humane way to use the $5m, the very clear intent of Council and of everyone who spoke in favour of this funding was to restore service on the regular bus system.  Wheel-Trans funding is a separate issue that even the TTC had agreed to leave until mid-year pending possible funding from another source.

At the meeting, we will see whether the Commission chooses to thwart the will of Council, and whether Councillors who voted the additional money will show up to read the riot act to those Commissioners who do not understand that Mayor Ford lost that vote, and the TTC should get on with restoring regular service.

Those who argue that the $5m is “not sustainable” because it is drawn from one-time funding conveniently ignore that it will have this status whether it is spent on regular routes or on Wheel-Trans.  Moreover, it is entirely likely that a good chunk of this money will appear in fare revenue from riding that is running ahead of budget predictions.

Updated January 23, 2012 at 10:55pm:  The option of using the extra subsidy voted by Council as part of the capital budget to pay for new streetcars has been ruled inappropriate by the City’s legal staff because this conflicts with the wording of Council’s motion.  However, because “restore service” could also be construed to refer to Wheel-Trans cuts (although that was not the intent), it is possible that the Commission might sneak through redirection of the funding anyhow.  How this will sit with Councillors who thought they were saving regular service remains to be seen.

The original article from January 18, 2012 follows:

In a surprise victory at City Council, progressive forces — an alliance of the left, the “mushy middle” and a few from the right wing — combined to restore funding in the 2012 budget in several areas including the TTC’s subsidy.  The vote on January 17 was as close as it could be with a 23-21 margin (one Councillor was off sick, and the vote would have been 23-22 if he were present).

The TTC will receive an additional $5-million for its operating subsidy in order to reverse some of the planned service cuts.  This is less than the full amount needed ($9m), and will likely result in a concentration on off-peak services.  Why only $5m?  The political compromise needed to pull together this vote involved a lot of horse trading, and many of the amounts involved for other budget areas were considerably lower — in the hundreds of thousands rather than millions — and the overall package had to stay within a scope the coalition could support.

The TTC must now consider how it will use the money, and the mechanics of unwinding cuts that have already been scheduled for mid-February.

As the TTC developed its 2012 budget, the first big challenge was to absorb a planned 10% cut in City funding (roughly $40m).  This was compounded by a large anticipated jump in diesel fuel prices and the need to provide service to a rapidly growing demand.  The original scheme to offset these and other limits on the budget was to cut service by reverting to the 2003 loading standards.  This would have increased crowding on many routes both during the peak and offpeak periods.

By December 2011, the Commission (a board drawn almost entirely from Ford’s loyal followers on Council) was feeling the heat, and they discovered a way to undo part of the planned cuts.  The cost of fuel was no longer forecast to be quite so stratospheric, and this freed up $5m that would be used to defer all cuts to mid-February, and to cancel the peak period cuts on about 20 very busy routes.  This approach clearly left open the possibility of additional funding coming from revisions to the City’s budget in January.

All the same, the normal operation of TTC scheduling and work selection required that the mid-February work be planned and posted for operators to select their crews.  This has already been in progress, and notices about service changes began to appear around the city at bus and streetcar stops late last week.  When the Commission reversed its original plans for January cuts back on December 14, the sign-up process was repeated for January with the old schedules.  If February’s cuts are to be backed out, a similar tactic will be needed now, but without enough money to undo all of the cuts, it won’t be as simple as just using the old schedules for another 6 weeks.

TTC management are now figuring out exactly what they will do, and I expect that there will be an announcement soon with the details.  One option is to run the February-March period as planned, service cuts and all, and then back out some of the cuts for the next set of schedules.  How this would sit with riders who, if they believe news stories, think that there will be no cuts at all, remains to be seen.

The longer term situation is more complex.  By cutting the Service Standards, the TTC reduced its need for new buses.  That changed future plans both for the total fleet size and provisions for garage space to handle growth that would push the TTC beyond its existing capacity.  This change contributed to a reduction in the TTC’s long-term capital plan, another of the demands made by the City to fit TTC’s needs within Toronto’s self-imposed cap on total borrowing for capital programs.

If peak Service Standards remain at their 2011 level, the TTC will run out of spare buses to increase service by the fall of 2013.  At this point, it is unclear whether they can resurrect their now-cancelled order, or if they must rejoin the queue for a later delivery.  Also, the Capital Budget must be updated to reflect both the added buses and some provision for their storage.

TTC’s capital needs very substantially exceed the money available to pay for them thanks to the gradual withdrawal of provincial and federal support.  Various stimulus programs have more or less wound down, and the vast majority of transit subsidy at both levels is targeted to specific projects (the Spadina subway extension, the Eglinton LRT/subway) rather than to general system needs.  Provincial gas tax funding is split roughly 60/40 between operating and capital, and this leaves almost nothing beside a much larger ongoing capital requirement.

During the budget debates at Council, the order for new streetcars became the scapegoat for the TTC’s capital problems.  This project has a total cost of about $1b just for the vehicles, not to mention the new carhouse at Ashbridges Bay and upgrades to the streetcar infrastructure (mainly the overhead power distribution system and retrofits at the two existing carhouses).  Queen’s Park will pick up 1/3 of the cost for the streetcars, but the rest is on the City’s tab.  (A hoped-for 1/3 from Ottawa never materialized, and the now-solidly Conservative political climate there is unlikely to improve chances for new federal subsidy programs.)

Over and over we heard how any spare money the City has in its budget should be directed to a reserve to pay for the new cars (the roughly $700m City share).  Aside from Mayor Ford’s openly confessed dislike of streetcars, more was going on here than meets the eye.

Throughout the 2012 budget process, Ford’s goal has been to cut off sources of revenue and, through this, to strangle programs he dislikes.  This was presented with the mantle of “fiscal responsibility” and of getting the City’s budget into a “sustainable” state.  The nub of the debate is the annual surplus in the Operating Budget.

Because municipalities are legally barred from running an operating deficit, their budgets tend to be drawn up conservatively so that they are not caught short.  Toronto has run a surplus for the past six years, and it is common for a good chunk of this to be rolled into the next year’s budget as revenue.  However, if times turn bad, so goes the argument, the “surplus” will vanish and Toronto will find itself short.

Meanwhile on the capital side, there is the problem of how to pay for a massive amount of transit spending of which the streetcars are only part.  Over $1b in planned projects has already been deferred beyond a 10-year horizon so that it does not officially appear in the budget projections.  However, that doesn’t make it vanish.

Ford’s proposal, one that only surfaced at a recent Executive Committee meeting, was that any operating surplus be dedicated to a reserve fund until the $700m needed for Toronto’s share of the streetcar purchase was fully-funded.  I might have more faith in this scheme if it had appeared as part of the original budget proposal last summer, but as a last-minute add-on it is suspect.  Ford’s real desire is to cut off the surplus as a fund available to allow last-minute budget changes by Council.  We hear endlessly about the horrible budget pressures the City faces in the most apocalyptic of descriptions.  Greece and the failing European Union are invoked as spectres of what Toronto might become.

In fact, part of the City’s financial pinch was self-inflicted by cancellation of the Vehicle Registration Tax and by a property tax freeze in 2011.  How was this funded?  With some of the 2010 operating surplus.

If the surplus, whatever its size, were dedicated to filling up a large transit reserve, this would scoop all of the available funding for four to five years and put it out of Council’s reach.  Councillors and “special interest groups” who complained would be painted as trying to deny downtown Toronto of its precious streetcars, vehicles that (Fordists claim) should never have been ordered in the first place without guaranteed funding.  That’s hogwash because “guaranteed funding” is available through taxes and debt provided one has the will to undertake it.

Paying for the streetcars with the surplus uses a supposedly unreliable source of funds and would probably do so in a shorter time period than the actual delivery and payment schedule for the cars.  If this purchase really is to be paid from current revenue, not from debt, the actual payments would stretch over a longer period assuming the surplus continues at roughly it current level.

Thus Ford’s hated streetcars would be used as a bludgeon both to sweep the surplus funds off of the table for the foreseeable future, and as a way to taunt his (mainly) downtown political enemies that the financial crunch was of their own making.  If the “surplus” actually became a standing part of the budget process, this could evolve into a de facto slush fund for other major projects such as the Sheppard Subway while doing nothing for overall transit capital needs.

Council didn’t go along with this, and reaffirmed its policy that any surplus not otherwise scooped as part of a following year’s budget would go into capital reserve funds.  TTC capital needs will be dealt with year-to-year as part of the overall capital plan.

The political history of this budget goes back to mid-2011 when Mayor Ford through the City Manager issued an edict that all departments must cut 10% from their budgets for 2012.  Things didn’t quite work out that way, notably with the largest single item in the City budget, the Police Service, where after much breast-beating by the Ford faction and  the Police Chief, the police actually wound up with a small increase for 2012.

Other line-by-line rescues were mounted at the Ford-dominated Budget and Executive Committees, ostensibly in response to last-minute discoveries of new revenue, but actually to a growing evidence of unrest among Toronto’s citizens.  Support for Ford’s slash-and-burn budgeting weakened the more Toronto learned how the seas of “gravy” supposedly washing across Nathan Phillips Square were actually puddles.  By the time the budget reached Council, a forum where Ford’s control has slipped away, there was a chance to wrest control of the process from the right wing, and that’s what happened.

The TTC now faces a challenge of policy and of planning for coming years, and the fact that the Commission is dominated by people who would rather preserve Mayor Ford’s fiscal view of the world does not bode well for the thorough discussion Toronto really needs about its transit system.

We already know that ridership is running ahead of projections for the 2012 budget, and that even with what funding Council has provided, the TTC will not be able to operate enough service to handle continued growth at the present rate (over 4%).  The uncertain future of major projects such as the Eglinton LRT/subway and the Sheppard line, the unknown status of Transit City or of any other transit improvements, and the on-again-off-again question of how the TTC will handle growing demand on the subway system — all these require a thorough, public review of transit’s status and options for the future.  We cannot afford to have budgets appear, assumptions and all, without the detailed background needed to understand the effect of what may seem to be short-term decisions.

Some Commissioners still don’t get the distinction between peak and offpeak service where the latter requires no new capital assets, only more operators, and where the marginal cost of service is lower.  TTC riding growth is strongest in the offpeak, and yet that is where the planned service cuts were concentrated.

If the Toronto had gone forward with the planned service cuts and with the associated downsizing of fleet and staff, we would inevitably hear excuses for years on end about the difficulty of restoring the system to what we had in 2011.  Although the Ridership Growth Strategy dates from 2003, the actual implementation took years to complete because other factors always seemed to get in the way.  There weren’t enough operators, or buses, or whatever.  Transit systems are large, and a decision to improve service quality cannot be implemented overnight.

February will probably bring an update on the Sheppard Subway project, and moves are already underway to force a vote at Council to undo the madness of the fully underground Eglinton LRT.  Rumours have Queen’s Park simply waiting for an official request to justify a return to their original plan while other rumours have some at the TTC pushing for a full-scale Eglinton subway.  Such is the state of transit “planning”.

Council gave the TTC $5m, a tiny sum beside a $1.5b budget.  What Council did not give was long-term direction on where the TTC should be going.  That decision cannot be left to the Commission itself without a full and honest public debate about the future of transit in Toronto.

The proposed disposition of an additional $5-million in subsidy is discussed in a separate article.

Eglinton Scarborough Crosstown Project Update

A long report giving an update on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT does not address any of the issues currently swirling in the media, and it gives only a basic sense of where various parts of the project sit.  The most important part comes in Recommendation 3 in which the TTC would ask the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure to hold off on any decision regarding overall project management and delivery until outstanding issues are resolved.

The critical paragraph (on page 7) reads:

Recently, Metrolinx has indicated that it is considering a different project delivery and governance arrangement for the Crosstown Project which could involve project management by another entity, rather than the TTC, a more extensive role for Infrastructure Ontario and one large alternative financing and procurement contract including final design and construction of all stations, the SRT, yards, and systems.

Infrastructure Ontario and Metrolinx have been trying to muscle into the Eglinton project for some time.  That’s no surprise considering the billions at stake and the desire by IO and Metrolinx to show that they can do a better job than what is perceived as the TTC’s historical ham-fisted project management and control.  How this attitude fits with current experience on the Spadina extension, and why we should believe another agency will do better, remains to be seen.

Moreover, the question of what, exactly, we are building on Eglinton has yet to be answered.  Queen’s Park and Metrolinx are dodging the question and claiming that they just want agreement between the TTC, Council and the Mayor.  Well, two out of three is likely, but unanimity is impossible after the highly misleading and misinformed post by Ford on his Facebook page.  The Pembina Institute (a somewhat left of Ford think tank) has responded to misrepresentations Ford makes about their position on their own site.

The meddling from Queen’s Park puts the Commission and Council in a position where a definitive policy for Toronto on the Eglinton corridor is needed soon.  Beyond that, the disposition of any leftover money (presuming that Queen’s Park would leave it on the table) needs informed debate by all concerned, and a compromise that won’t be worked out overnight.

Various factions argue for the Finch and Sheppard LRT lines, for some or all of the Sheppard subway extensions, and for the Finch BRT.  Everyone has a set of magic markers and their own map.  This is no way to plan a transit system.

Ashbridges Bay Carhouse and Shops

The Commission will award a contract for construction of the new yard, carhouse and shops at Ashbridges Bay in the amount of $237.4m.

Roncesvalles Carhouse

The Commission will award a contract for revisions to Roncesvalles Carhouse to accommodate the new LFLRV fleet in the amount of $9.9m.

Town Hall Update

There will be a presentation on the results of the recent “town hall” on TTC customer service and plans for future events.  This item is not yet available online.

Run 64 will leave Greenwood Yard eastbound at 7:27am to Kennedy, make a round trip to Kipling, and then run back to the yard at 9:44.

As more of the Toronto Rocket trains enter service on Yonge, they will replace the H5 and H6 fleets, and the BD line will become an all T1 route.  The last of the TRs now on order are for the Spadina/Vaughan extension opening in 2015.

Elizabeth Church reports in the Globe about a proposed compromise that would redistribute the funding for the proposed all-underground Eglinton LRT line.

Tess Kalinowski and David Rider in the Star cover the same story and include a map.

• Eglinton would stay on the surface east of Leaside with a dip underground at Don Mills to surface east of the DVP.  This is similar but not identical to the original Transit City scheme.
• Part of the money released from the Eglinton project would be used to extend the Sheppard Subway east to Victoria Park and include a stop at Consumers Road.
• A bus transit corridor would be provided on Finch West and East.

The article implies that there may be good support from various parts of Council for this scheme, and a clear endorsement by a motion would send Metrolinx the signal it claims to be waiting for of just what Toronto wants to build.

Updated January 25, 2012 at 10:45am:

Natalie Alcoba reports in the National Post that although there may be support growing on Council for this plan, the Mayor’s office appears unmoved.

But an official from the Mayor’s office suggested he is not interested in relinquishing ground on his LRT stance. “We’re happy with the Metrolinx plan that they’re working on now,” said Mark Towhey, the Mayor’s policy director. “Residents don’t want trains running down the middle of the street.”

…

On the radio on Tuesday, Mr. Ford seemed to distance himself from the Eglinton line, saying he doesn’t want to stick his nose in a provincial project.

“I’m concentrating on the Sheppard line, and building a subway up there. If Metrolinx or the province wants to do this… I’m not a fan of streetcars, I’m not a fan of LRTs. If they’re underground I am, that’s been my position all along.”

[End of update]

There are longer range issues here, but retention of a subway-surface alignment on Eglinton will permit future extensions to the west and northeast that would likely be unaffordable if an all-underground structure had been repurposed as a full subway line.  The difficult problems of an alignment from Black Creek to Jane have yet to be addressed.

Finch will see BRT at least initially, and it will be important that no design elements preclude future conversion to LRT when demand justifies this.  This would also avoid the cost of a carhouse on Finch West in the short term that was part of the Transit City scheme.

The unknown would be Sheppard and the terminal at Victoria Park.  Will this be a “temporary” end of the line, or will the design allow further extension by either subway or by LRT with a convenient transfer connection?  An argument now about the technology east of Victoria Park will only muddle the debate, but the option of either form of extension should be left open for a future decision.  Will a BRT on Finch stand in for the Sheppard East LRT?

Portions of the Ford subway scheme appear to have fallen off of the table.  We still need those debates about the role of subways, LRT and BRT (not to mention such lowly creatures as simple buses running in mixed traffic) in a suburban network.  Part of this will fall to Metrolinx’ “Big Move 2.0″ about which we know very little today and to the degree that solid transit funding actually shows up through new revenue sources such as tolls, sales taxes or maybe even a casino.

Meanwhile, we debate the disposition of billions in capital spending while proposing a few millions in savings by widespread service cuts.  Such is the madness of Toronto’s transit politics.

I can quibble about some aspects of this proposed compromise, but it is a good start.  Here is a sign that finally Council takes seriously the need to plan and make responsible decisions about our transit future.  For a year, by its inaction, Council gave de facto endorsement to a half-baked campaign promise that Metrolinx adopted as its working plan.  Now we can have a real debate.

Updated January 26, 2012 at 12:40am:

Robyn Doolittle in the Star reports that momentum is building for the compromise plan.

Elizabeth Church and Patrick White report in the Globe with more details about response from Queen’s Park and Metrolinx.

Natalie Alcoba in the Post suggests that Mayor Ford is still wedded to a subway plan, but that support for surface LRT is building.

One troubling point in all of this is a comment by Metrolinx chair Rob Prichard who wants to see Council, the Mayor and the TTC all onside.  Whether Rob Ford will actually endorse a new plan, or wind up as one of a few voting against it remains to be seen, but at some point Queen’s Park has to listen to the majority of the citizens’ representatives.

Updated January 26, 2012 at 12:50:

Royson James in the Star gives Metrolinx a well-deserved thrashing.  By its own admission, this agency proceeded with the all-underground Eglinton plan even without Council approval, a clear requirement of the Memorandum of Understanding between Queen’s Park and Mayor Ford.

Christopher Hume weighs in with a video commentary including a call for an all-surface Eglinton LRT.

From the Star:

Tess Kalinowski writes about support building for a new plan.  In this version, a surface-subway LRT on Eglinton frees up money for, possibly, a short extension on Sheppard to Victoria Park and something on Finch West.

It’s too early to tell which combination will win out, and there’s no reference to eastern Scarborough.

Martin Cohn writes about the imminent collapse of the McGuinty-Ford transit deal.  We learn that Queen’s Park was prepared to pay the extra cost of expropriating property to widen Eglinton to compensate for space lost to surface LRT, but this option was rejected by Ford.

A Star Editorial congratulates Karen Stintz for telling us the obvious and urges her to begin a campaign for a subway-surface line on Eglinton.  At this rate, they’ll be casting a bronze of Stintz arm-in-arm with David Miller.

From the Globe:

Marcus Gee writes favourably about a move to bring Eglinton back to the surface.

From the National Post:

Natalie Alcoba writes about the proposed change including comments from supportive Councillors.

Updated January 23 at 5:50 pm:  I recently spoke with Bruce McCuaig, President and CEO of Metrolinx, about this issue.  Notes from our conversation are at the end of this article.

Adrian Morrow reports in today’s Globe that TTC Chair Karen Stintz feels an all-underground Eglinton line should just be what it is, a subway, but that it belongs on the surface as LRT for its outer suburban section.

Karen Stintz argues it makes more sense to put the LRT underground only along the most congested part of the route, in midtown, while building it on the surface in the spacious suburbs.

“If the decision is to go with an LRT, it should be at-grade,” she said. “If there’s a decision to put it underground, it should be a subway.”

That’s an interesting position for someone in the Ford camp because it continues the anti-streetcar rhetoric of the Mayor’s office.  If Eglinton is built as a subway line, the option of converting it to LRT and resurrecting Transit City falls because a major link (and the proposed main shops for the LRT network) would vanish.

As Morrow points out in his article, other systems use a combination of surface and underground alignments (including Boston where downtown streetcars went underground over a century ago) so that a network of surface routes can share a common tunnel in the congested central area while switching to a simpler surface alignment elsewhere.

If Eglinton were to become a subway, the problem of valley crossings won’t disappear and Metrolinx will still face the problem of either going under several valleys, or bridging them with parallel structures.

The real question a subway option begs is the future of the SRT.  If Eglinton becomes a subway, it will not easily through-route to Scarborough Town Centre along the existing alignment, and this will reopen the debate over a Bloor-Danforth extension.

Morrow’s article implies that Stintz may be shifting into the pro-LRT camp, but I am not convinced.  If she were really shifting positions, there would be more talk about revival of some parts of Transit City, notably the Finch West line which, unlike Sheppard East, is completely independent of the Ford subway proposals.

The pending release of Gordon Chong’s report on financing the Sheppard Subway will trigger, finally, a debate on the future of Toronto’s transit technologies at Council.  We will see whether Stintz is truly an LRT supporter, or simply pitching Ford’s “no streetcars” view of the world.

Postscript

The Globe article in print is missing its final paragraphs that appear in the online version.  It’s a shame that truncation for space robbed the article of its original, stronger ending.

To set them up, I have included here the final paragraph in print.

Historically, the TTC has also confused people about light rail’s potential: Promotional material in the late 2000s mapped the slow-moving St. Clair and Spadina streetcars as LRTs, even though they stop frequently and have to wait at red lights. [Print article ends]  Suburban light rail is a different animal.

“It’s not like you have the stores and houses along Eglinton East to generate the demand for more frequent stops,” said transit blogger Steve Munro. “It’s not like the Spadina car.”

To Jarrett Walker, author of the blog Human Transit, burying the Eglinton line is an expensive exercise in road-improvement.

“Be clear: You’re not spending this money on a project to improve transit,” said Mr. Walker. “You’re spending it on a project to protect motorists from inconvenience.”

Jarrett Walker’s blog, Human Transit, is an excellent commentary on a wide variety of transit and planning topics.  He is now on tour promoting his book of the same name.

Updated on January 23, 2011 at noon:

The Star has an article by Tess Kalinowski covering the same story with exploration of related issues.  In this story we find:

Karen Stintz, who was named head of the TTC by Ford, says putting the suburban east and west stretches of the line in a tunnel is a waste of money because there is relatively little road traffic along those portions.

“It makes more sense not to bury it and use the money to build (the) Sheppard (subway),” said Stintz.

This begs two questions:  First off, why spend the money on the Sheppard subway which was supposed to be financed by the private sector.  Second, what’s the status of a Finch LRT and of LRT in general in Stintz’ world.

Updated on January 23, 2011 at 5:50pm:

A short time ago, I spoke with Bruce McCuaig of Metrolinx about their view of this discussion.  He began by recapping the statements he has been giving to the media all afternoon.  The following is a paraphrase.

Metrolinx has been getting mixed messages from the TTC and the City about Eglinton.  Metrolinx wants to build “smart and affordable” transit, but the City and Council need to settle on a position.  Metrolinx has been working with them already to provide a high quality system on time and on budget.

There is a Memorandum of Understanding with the City, and Metrolinx has proceeded on assumption of support for this.  It would be very difficult to build anything without certainty on the City’s part.  Metrolinx will build the project, whatever it is, but they need a partnership to achieve this.

Metrolinx wants to give the City a chance to clarify its position.  There are no ideas on the table from the City itself, only “musings of one Councillor”.

I noted that early comments attributed to Metrolinx implied that they had a preferred option (the all-underground one) and that they were unwilling to go back to the original subway-surface scheme.  This position appeared to evolve through the day to a more neutral one of waiting for the City to make up its mind.  I asked whether Metrolinx had any thoughts on where plans might go if money is freed up by returning to the subway-surface option.

Metrolinx feels that the new [all underground plan] can move more people faster, and we support what works for the region.  However, it is too early to discuss potential changes to the plan and the follow-on effects.  The only plan we have is what’s in the MOU.  If the City wants changes, it should say what these are, but it is premature to talk about outcomes after that.

I pointed out that the MOU has never been endorsed by Council and is not really a “City” position.

Metrolinx moved ahead based on the MOU, and we have not changed from this path.

I asked about the status of work leading to public meetings and amendments to the Environmental Assessment that has already been approved.  Moreover, will this information be available as background to any Council debate so that the real differences between the subway-surface and all-subway versions will be understood.

Preliminary engineering is underway for the amendments to the EA, and Metrolinx planned to go to the public in spring 2012 with details on the extended tunnel section, the maintenance facility, stations and the alignment for the western terminus.  Whether this information is available to Council will depend on the timing of debate there, and Metrolinx has no control over that.

McCuaig concluded by saying that Metrolinx wants to get on with the task of building transit.  I can only temper this by saying that we need to build the right plan.  What that will be remains to be seen.