[This item was updated at 10:30 pm on August 28. The additional material starts midway through the post.]
Today, the TTC launched a campaign to inform and survey Torontonians about the potential impact of budget cuts in 2008.
More information is available at the TTC’s website.
Until mid-July, when City Council voted to defer consideration of new taxes until after the Provincial election in October, everything we heard about the TTC was upbeat: service was to improve by leaps and bound, and a network of LRT lines criss-crossing Toronto would be built within 15 years. Even Queen’s Park sounded positive about transit with the Move Ontario 2020 plan providing 2/3 funding for every transit scheme on the GTA.
Everything changed with that deferral, and it wasn’t long until all of that positive news about transit was only a memory. The TTC is trying to turn this around with the “My TTC” campaign in the very brief time between the end of summer holidays (when both the voters and the media start taking issues seriously again) and a special TTC meeting to discuss possible cuts on September 12.
The most important paragraph reads:
We haven’t abandoned our vision for better transit, but riders have to choose. Will we support our transit system so that it is properly-funded and able to meet riders’ needs, or will we accept a TTC with less and less service? It’s a choice we have to make together.
Alas, this paragraph is on the inside of the brochure whose cover gives no hint of the severity of the cuts on the table. As the campaign builts with car cards and print advertising, more people should get the message.
Indeed, more people must get the message. The TTC needs to lay out clearly that there are three possible futures:
More and Better Service Everywhere
Between Transit City and Ridership Growth Strategy, the TTC had long and short term plans showing a bright future for transit. Mid-to-long term there is the LRT network along with, thanks to Queen’s Park, subway extensions to York Region on Spadina and Yonge. Short term, the RGS promissed better service on overcrowded routes, and new loading standards to ensure that more service was added before people were riding on the roof.
Both of these are essential to improving the attractiveness of transit and supporting the Official Plan’s view for the future of Toronto. On a regional level, Toronto needs to show what can be done. Transit in the 905 is a huge challenge, and if we in Toronto can’t make it work, what hope is there in the 905?
The Do Nothing Option
This option is what we will see for Fall 2007. The decision to cancel planned service improvements has already been made, and the 100 new buses poised to roll out on the streets will stay in the garage. (Strictly speaking, the new buses will operate, and 100 older buses will be set aside for better days, but the effect is the same.)
All work on designs and Environmental Assessments for new transit projects will likely grind to a halt. We know that we cannot afford to run the system we have, and there is no point on planning for new lines that would only increase the operating deficit.
The Sky Really Is Falling Option
If this really happens, we will see widespread cutbacks in marginal TTC services, and you can be sure that the list on the TTC’s site is not the end of them. Once we start hacking away at the network, the budget hawks will look for more savings year after year and we will quickly hollow out the system.
One big criticism I have of the TTC’s campaign is that there isn’t a map showing what the network will look like next year if the cuts go through. Readers need to see what the network looks like today, what it might have been next year (service additions) and what it will be if the cuts go through.
They also need to know which services are next on the chopping block. This year’s list contains perennial favourites in Forest Hill and Rosedale, but it also hollows out blocks of the network.
In the block bounded by St. Clair, Bathurst, Lawrence and Bayview, the following services would vanish:
- 5 Avenue Road
- 33 Forest Hill
- 14 Glencairn
- 162 Lawrence Donway
- 74 Mt. Pleasant
- 97 Yonge
- 61 Avenue Road North (evening and weekends)
- 11 Bayview north of Sunnybrook (after 10 pm weekdays, after 7 pm weekends)
- 103 Mt. Pleasant North (off peak service)
This means that there will be no north-south surface route between Bathurst and Bayview except on Mt. Pleasant north of Eglinton, and that only during peak periods.
In the block bounded by Danforth, Broadview, O’Connor and Coxwell, the Broadview bus (which also serves O’Connor) would vanish, and the Mortimer bus would be reduced to a peak only service. Only Cosburn would remain as an east-west link through East York.
[Updates at 10:30 pm on August 27 start here]
Both the Davenport and Dupont buses will be cancelled leaving no east-west service between the Bloor Subway and St. Clair.
The Sheppard Subway will not close, but the surface bus paralleling it will disappear. A wonderful advert for transit: build a subway, but if you don’t live at a stop, sorry, you can walk. That’s what’s happening on Yonge north of Eglinton and on Sheppard where stations are far apart.
Where Do We Go From Here?
There is little doubt that the TTC will vote to do something on September 12, but the question is what, exactly, is on their mind. My own advice is that if cuts must be voted, let them be (a) conditional on the outcome of the funding debate in October and (b) effective far enough in the future that they can be reversed if more money arrives one way or another.
The worst possible outcome is a massive cutback that must first be undone before we see any new services.
There will almost certainly be a fare increase, as any other action would be political suicide for the TTC. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 25 cents on the token rate with corresponding changes in other fares. Roughly speaking, this would bring in $85-million of the $100-million the TTC needs to balance its projected budget, assuming that we don’t drive away much ridership and improve service quality. By the way, the TTC’s projections are unclear about whether that budget includes the Ridership Growth Strategy. This needs to be stated explicitly so we know what the budget we are looking at will actually buy.
People will look at the routes to be cut back or eliminated, and they will say “oh they cost too much, or nobody much rides them”. Well, let’s put that in context.
The Rosedale bus, a route everyone assumes is a total waste of time, picks up almost 79 riders per hour on an all-day basis. This is three times the recently published standard for a local bus route in York Region (25 boardings per vehicle hour), and the minimum required for a YRT route is a paltry 8, about 1/10 of what the TTC’s Rosedale route pulls in today. But it must go. It’s a bus for the rich, or at least a bus for the rich children and their nannies, as many would have us believe. In case you are wondering, the TTC’s system average is only 71 boardings per hour, and so cancelling the Rosedale bus will actually lower the “efficiency” of the system. This is what passes for careful analysis.
Meanwhile, the blatantly political extension of the Dufferin bus to serve the Soccer Stadium at all hours of the day or night, whether anything is happening or not, will continue to operate. It requires two extra peak buses and carries almost nobody, but it’s a pet route of the Deputy Mayor. If we can cancel the office renovations at City Hall, we can cancel the pet bus too.
If you want to see a real money-loser, look at the Airport Rocket. It’s packed, but it recovers only 22% of its operating cost because the customers all get on at one end of the line and off at the other; during some periods the demand is unidirectional. This means that the route expends a lot of resources (bus hours) per rider. Is it on the block? No. Cutting a money-losing service to the airport would be far too embarrassing.
There is no question some TTC routes don’t do as well as others, no matter how you cook the books. We run them because we have policies about network coverage (the maximum distance to a transit stop) and hours of service. Imagine if we closed down all the little-used routes in the off-hours on the assumption that we could save on maintenance by keeping some traffic off them. That’s what networks are all about — there are busy parts, and not so busy parts, including the Sheppard Subway, but together they make a network that people can depend on no matter where or when they travel.
Council must stop hiding behind dreams of a bailout from Queen’s Park. It’s not coming, and it’s time Council woke up to the need for more revenue. We lived in a fool’s paradise through the Lastman and early Miller years with no new taxes and then minimal increases. We have mortgaged the future of the city by spending all of our reserves and now it’s time to pay.
Riders need to let their Councillors hear loud and clear that service improvements are what we need, not service cuts.
This afternoon I saw Adam Giambrone at Kennedy Station, he was himself activley handing out the surveys and talking with passengers about the whole situation. It did leave me a bit impressed to see him there and doing something personally.
Seeing him did make me feel a little bit better at the end of a long day, but that was until the driver of my 86E bus could not be bothered to kneel the bus for a rider struggleing to raise a large stroller, or push the “express mode” button on the newly operational Automatic stop announcement system.
192 Airport Rocket: I use this a lot, and it is often crowded. Part of the problem is that the airport has little or no signage pointing arriving passengers to the TTC bus stop. In Terminal 3, the TTC stop is the furthest possible walk, past the hotel buses, taxies, etc.. Why couldn’t TTC get better signage representation in it’s airport?
127 Davenport: I use this bus everyday; it is crowded during peak, and half-full at other times. This route is another good example of TTC pushing away use through cutbacks. In the past 5 years, they’ve cut service twice, where now it is 45 minutes between buses off-peak and no late evening or Sunday service. Without wallet sized schedules they they can post around their home, people will often make the 10 min walk to one of the N-S buses (Ossington, Dufferin, Bathurst). This is a good bus–it goes to two subway stations, and is the only bus to/from Spadina stn. Losing it would be a major downer. How many passengers per hour does it really take to break even? I would think a small loss would be preferable to cutting these routes and losing passengers for good.
Hello Steve,
Any comments on Sue-Ann Levy’s column in the Sun on Sunday? Specifically, and as per her modus operandi of beating up on the public sector workers, I wonder if you have a rebuttal of her questioning the lack of cuts to the workforce here:
For the full column, go to the Sun.
Ms. Levy shows her ignorance right off the top. The folks who stand on the street corner are non-union supervisory staff. We can argue about whether they serve a useful purpose (they could do a lot more with the right tools), but they are definitely not an example of unionized bloat.
Next we have the station collectors. Not all of them are doing their crosswords and many of them are quite helpful. With the growing use of passes, they have a lot less work to do selling tickets and tokens, but if they were not there, you would have even more expensive station security personnel. Many of the collectors are employees who have moved to that group from other work, typically operators, who can no longer drive for various reasons. They are not paid as much as the operators.
I have my own problems with the TTC’s survey because it is simplistic and could have been much better. Alas, well-meaning transit advocates like myself were not given a chance to have input into the design of the campaign. It’s like the TTC’s website — it’s perfect, isn’t it? There’s the alternate over on the Torontoist website, but it’s not going to have the reach of the “official” survey. To date, there are just over 1600 replies.
As for finding efficiencies, Adam Giambrone really needs to get on message. If he could find efficiencies on the scale we are talking about, and has any idea of doing this in the near future, there is (a) lots of fat and (b) a coming bloodbath in labour relations at the TTC. Giambrone really needs to think about what he is saying when he tries to placate the right-wing press with statements like that. Remember that there are lots of right-wingers on the TTC, and not one of them has stood up to say where the so-called efficiencies might be found in TTC operations.
Don’t forget, we’re not just talking about running the existing system “more efficiently”, we are also talking about substantial expansion in service both in the short and long term. The money to run that has to come from somewhere.
This battle is really not about the TTC, it is about embarrassing David Miller and his allies. The transit system and all of its riders are sideswiped by the knuckle-draggers’ desire to score points in advance of the Provincial election. If they can wound Miller badly enough through funding cuts, they will destroy the city with a Mike Harris budgetary straightjacket. The last thing the right wing wants is for the left wing to actually achieve something meaningful. That’s their agenda, and they don’t care what damage they do in the process.
“This battle is really not about the TTC, it is about embarrassing David Miller and his allies. The transit system and all of its riders are sideswiped by the knuckle-draggers’ desire to score points in advance of the Provincial election. If they can wound Miller badly enough through funding cuts, they will destroy the city with a Mike Harris budgetary straightjacket. The last thing the right wing wants is for the left wing to actually achieve something meaningful. That’s their agenda, and they don’t care what damage they do in the process. ”
Agreed. Given that the TTC commission is stacked with Miller Allies, if it is controlled by Miller Allies, then those opponents of City Council say it is controlled by Miller itself. One of the more reasons why the TTC has to be pried away as a political tool from a highly-partisan City Council. Hence my earlier comment on making the TTC fully independant (but you pointed out some issues with the idea, which is fine)
Despite my right-wing tendencies, I do try to read some left-wing rags from time to time. One that caught my eye was from the Eye magazine asking for council to be populated with some “civilian commissioners”. If I recall correctly, they understand that there would still be “council commissioners” but also mentioned that civilian commissioners would be a valuable tool. Some names were tossed up: James Bow, and I believe yours as well, Steve.
As for coming labour relations: the Union would be best to not publish newspaper ad after newspaper ad trying to inform the public why they deserve a raise. To me that’s bad taste (and it makes a lot of right-wingers very angry with an ad campaign that could be characterized as pig-headed, pardon the language). I won’t say if the union should be entitled to ask for such an increase but it would be better if the public were not sandblasted with it, I will bet my dimes that it would result in a PR backfire in the same way the wildcat strike did last year (even the left leaning Eye laid it on quite thick against the TTC union for that stunt).
Hi Steve,
I saw part of”The Agenda” last night. Dispite the 30 odd years, I was able to recognize you without too much effort.
I’m glad to see you’re well and still have an absolute grasp of TTC issues.
I’ve always wondered why above ground rail public transit has never been developed utilizing the various hydro high tension wires rights-of-way to add another network of longer distance transit to the golden horseshoe’s infrastructure. Don’t tell me it cannot be done by Queen’s Park!
Steve: Many of the hydro corridors are not as easily adapted for transit as one might think either because of the terrain (unlike trains, hydro corridors don’t worry much about valleys and steep grades), or because they are out of the way and don’t lend themselves to stations. Another more recent problem is that Hydro is very fussy about allowing any other use in their corridors that could conflict either with maintenance requirements or future infrastructure plans.
A parking lot or a bus roadway, for example, can be closed temporarily or moved, but a rail line is a totally different kind of installation. Even if it is underground, it must avoid conflict with Hydro’s own installations. In the design of the Spadina Subway extension, it was discovered that the originally planned location of Highway 7 Station caused a conflict between the tunnel south of the station and a Hydro pylon. This required the entire station to be shifted to a location where the effects on Black Creek were greater. Just crossing a Hydro corridor, let alone running in one, is not as simple as it might appear.