Jarrett Walker, the author of the book Human Transit and the blog of the same name, will be in Toronto on June 19, 2013. He will be speaking at the UofT downtown campus at 7:00 pm.
For further details and to reserve a ticket, please see the post on Spacing Toronto’s site.
Updated June 17, 2013 at 6:15 pm:
In the comment thread for this article, there has been substantial discussion about a “south side option” for the Eglinton LRT between the portal at Brentcliffe and Don Mills Road. I have after several requests obtained an answer from Metrolinx about whether this had ever been considered. Here is their reply sent by Jamie Robinson today.
Placing the LRT on the south side of Eglinton Avenue East in the vicinity of the West Don River/Leslie Street was included in three of five options compared to the at-that-time base case (which was underground throughout the corridor) in the Don Mills River Crossing Study prepared in February 2012 by HMM. However, the LRT would have been in a completely separate right-of-way on a new bridge across the West Don River in order to maintain current vehicle capacity of Eglinton Avenue East (i.e., no conversion of travel lanes to LRT tracks).
That report recommended one of the options that included a continuation of the bored tunnel from the west to pass under the West Don River and portal east of the Don Valley Parkway. That option was selected because the cost differential with the at-grade options was minimal, provided that a station at Leslie Street was not required. If a Leslie Station would be required, then one of the at-grade south side options was the preferred option. MX decided to proceed with the first option, and further refined that option with a launch at Don Mills Road and continuing eastward with the EA alignment, which led to the preparation of the Eastern EPR Addendum.
The at-grade south side option was not compared to the EA Option.
Generally, however, It is very difficult (if not impossible) to relocate the portal from the centre of Eglinton (as proposed in the current design) and shift it to the south side of the right-of-way and continue to use the existing bridge. The “viaduct” option that HMM reviewed, was suggested by the public and was presented during the recent consultations for the changes in the East, was more expensive and required an EA amendment. Due to project implementation timelines the project is proceeding with the EA option.
In brief, yes they looked at it, although not in the context of the original EA. Shifting to the south presents problems for the river crossing and the tunnel launch shaft, but might have survived as an option if Metrolinx had not decided to go all-underground to Don Mills. Now that they’re back on the surface, they are sticking with the original plan.
Updated June 16, 2013 at 10:15pm: An epilogue comparing system statistics for 1989 has been added.
The TTC publishes statistics on its surface routes showing the most recent all-day riding count, the resources (vehicles, vehicle hours and vehicle mileage) consumed by a day’s operation, and the estimated cost of one day’s service.
For many years, this information was included in the annual “Service Plan”, but the last one of those was published for 2008. The TTC’s Transit Planning page includes the 2008 plan, as well as the 2011 and 2012 figures as free-standing tables.
(In earlier years, the tables included a “revenue” for each route based on the ridership, although the method of calculating this varied over the years. This was eventually dropped because there is no way to allocate fare revenue in a system like the TTC’s without producing distortions in the resulting “profitability” of routes. Fares, especially passes which make up the bulk of adult system use, are collected on a flat basis for an entire trip or for a period of time, not for distance travelled nor number of vehicles used in a trip.)
This information becomes more interesting when viewed over time to see the evolution of ridership, service and allocated costs.
Updated June 15, 2013 at 4:20 pm:
The shortest streetcar line in the world exists, albeit without service, as the first piece of new surface track appeared on the 509 Harbourfront route at the Peter Street slip.
On June 11, the eight expansion joints for the future bridge crossing were set more or less in place on the new bridge deck.
By June 13, the tangent rails had been added, although the expansion joints at the west end of the bridge (below) …
… had not yet been attached.
Note that, like subway track, the rails are mounted directly on the bridge deck, not on ties. This approach is needed because the bridge design does not include the depth needed for the layer of ties normally found in TTC streetcar track.
The view below shows a close up of a test section of track built just west of the corner of Bay and Queens Quay. The use of the rubber sleeve to mechanically isolate the track is quite clear. Under the plastic covers (with duct tape on them) are Pandrol clips holding the track to steel plates in the slab below. The slab containing the track is separate from the base slab so that only excavation of the top layer is needed for track replacement.
The original Harbourfront track did not have the rubber layer and was quite noisy because the whole trackbed vibrated as cars passed. This is one of the last pieces of mainline “thunder track” to be replaced on the TTC network, a process begun 20 years ago.
Updated June 15, 2013 at 4:10pm:
With the long-term closing of the Dufferin Street bridge at the entrance to Exhibition Place on June 12, all Dufferin bus service (as well as interlined night service with Ossington) through the park has ended. The new routing is described in the TTC’s Service Advisory.
Original post from June 5:
Service changes for August deal mainly with construction projects that require diversions and restructuring of routes. A few services have running time changes to suit actual conditions on the road.
Notable changes include:
Leslie Barns Project
83 Jones will be rerouted around construction on Leslie associated with the new access route to Leslie Barns. Buses will use Carlaw between Queen and Lake Shore.
York Street Reconstruction
The reconstruction of York Street will prevent 503 Kingston Road cars from using their normal loop via Church, Wellington and York. The route will be extended via King to use the Spadina/Charlotte loop.
Lawrence West Station Bus Loop Reconstruction
During the reconstruction at Lawrence West, all regular services that normally terminate there will be extended east to Lawrence Station at Yonge Street. Access to Lawrence West Station from these routes will require a paper transfer or pass.
The 400 Lawrence Manor bus will divert to a nearby shopping plaza.
King/Spadina Project
The intersection at King & Spadina, one of Toronto’s three grand unions, will be replaced during the month of August. 510 Spadina service will operate with buses and through service to Queen’s Quay will be provided.
Diversion plans for all affected services have not yet been announced.
The project to rebuild Dundas & Spadina, originally scheduled for 2013, has been postponed to a future year.
Night Services
One bus will be added to the Finch East/West night service (routes 308 and 309 are interlined) as the existing schedule cannot be operated reliably.
Running times on the 385 Sheppard East night bus will adjusted to provide more driving and less layover time.
The 353 Steeles East night bus will be extended to Markham Road, subject to formal Commission approval at its June 24, 2013 board meeting.
CNE Services
During the CNE period (mid August to Labour Day), normal services will be affected both by construction and by a shortage of buses as these are covering construction diversions elsewhere.
511 Bathurst service will be augmented with extra cars using both CLRVs and ALRVs. Express buses may be used on busy days.
329 Dufferin and 316 Ossington night services are interlined and normally run through Exhibition Place. This route will change during the CNE to run from Ossington and Queen via Queen, Shaw, King, Fraser and West Liberty to Dufferin both ways.
522 Exhibition West streetcar service will operate from Dundas West Station loop (using the 504 King loading platform) to Dufferin Loop. This replaces the 193 Exhibition Rocket.
521 Exhibition East streetcar service will operate from a loop at Richmond, Victoria, Queen and Church via King, Bathurst and Fleet to Exhibition Loop (using the 509 Harbourfront loading platform).
509 Harbourfront buses from King & Yonge will also provide service to the CNE.
Updated June 13, 2013:
Contrary to the originally announced plans, the 31 Greenwood bus will not divert to Donlands Station during reconstruction of the bus loop at its home station. Instead, the buses will loop via Greenwood, Strathmore, Linsmore and Danforth stopping outside of the station.
Major service changes for June 23, 2013 include:
The service budget for September 2013 will be about 3.4% higher than the budget for the corresponding period in 2012, and 1% higher than for March 2013.
Updated June 8, 2013 at 12:05pm:
Metrolinx has issued a correction via Twitter (where this discussion started) clarifying that, yes, it is person-years of employment, not jobs, that they are creating, and acknowledging that the graphics and tweets using them were “shortened”.
Anne Marie Aikins @femwriter
… Report explains “person yrs of construction & LT employment” pg 30. Graphs/tweets shortened. Good reminder. Thx
[Anne Marie Aikins is a Media Relations Manager at Metrolinx]
That’s putting it mildly. Someone did a calculation to figure out how many ACCs would be needed to hold all those people, and so clearly did not understand how the numbers should be used. Someone put that chart in the Metrolinx report. The report survived Board scrutiny without anyone, including their members from the banking sector, spotting the problem.
Ooops.
The original post from June 7 follows below.
Metrolinx recently published a graphic purporting to show the employment effect of the Next Wave’s spending over twenty years.
These numbers are a complete fabrication and show how an organization more concerned with puffery than with accuracy can screw up basic arithmetic.
The statement here is that “enough newly employed people” would fill the ACC 48 times. The official capacity of the ACC is 19,800, and so we’re talking about 950,400 newly employed people. That’s roughly 1/3 of the entire population of Toronto.
The problem here is the confusion between employees and employee-years. Metrolinx plans to raise $2b annually for twenty years. Let’s assume that it will all be spent on job creation, not on getting more work from an existing pool of labour, nor on purchasing offshore technology such as rolling stock, control systems and managerial expertise. We’re talking about design, engineering and construction, not the cheapest of professions and trades, and a reasonable average fully-burdened (including benefits) cost per job would be at least $80k. (Governments have paid vastly more per new job on things like auto plants.)
The math is straightforward: $2b/year divided by $80k gives 25,000. If the entire amount goes to net new hires, then that’s 25k. Do this every year for 20 years, and you produce 500k person-years of employment, but not 500k new hires.
There will be some multiplier effects in that an employed person has money to spend and that will find its way into the local economy. How many new jobs will result is another matter.
We can look at this from the reverse angle: if there is $40b on the table, and it has to be shared among 800k new hires, then each of them will receive $50k.
In this, I have assumed that even the 25% of revenue dedicated to municipal projects creates jobs on the same basis as for the 75% allocated to the Next Wave.
Metrolinx has similar math challenges on commuting times when they routinely confuse avoided future congestion with actual savings. Moreover, the claimed “saving” only occurs if the entire Big Move is built, something that appears vanishingly likely. Because Metrolinx only ever discusses their fully-built scheme, we have no idea of how much “saving” will accrue for intermediate stages of the network, nor of the variation in benefits across the region. This most basic of business analyses is totally missing, at least in any published Metrolinx papers.
Metrolinx really needs some remedial work on economic analysis and basic arithmetic. Think about it: does it really take 1/3 of Toronto’s population to build a transit network? I have to repeat: the Metrolinx claim is not for job-years, but for newly employed people, nearly one million of them. That’s a basic reasonableness check anyone should be able to spot. How did such a claim even get out the door?
Howling errors like these job creation numbers undermine credibility not just of an incompetent agency but of the government who looks foolish for making claims they cannot possibly deliver.
An interesting article on the site Pedestrian Observations was recently linked on Twitter by Taras Grescoe (@grescoe), the author of Straphanger. In Comparative Subway Construction Costs, Alon Levy attempts to bring together projects worldwide, adjust for currencies, inflation and other factors to derive comparable US$ values for subway construction. The numbers are interesting in light of complaints about overpriced construction in Toronto.
The underlying problem, of course, is that no two projects are the same. Varying proportions of underground construction, different soil/rock/water conditions, variations in station numbers/size/depth, not to mention rolling stock procurement and yard/maintenance facilities all affect the total cost and hence the cost/km. Stir in political differences and the ease or difficulty with which projects are approved, and the number of variables is quite high.
All that said, Toronto’s costs are not wildly out of line. This is not to say that they may not be excessive, but the cause could be our extended design and approval process and a preference for deep bore tunneling that drives up construction costs compared to shallower cut-and-cover.
The argument for LRT has always turned on the availability of a surface option where it is practical. Whether we choose to exercise this in every possible case is another matter.
There are cases where underground construction is the only practical way to build a line, but that should not condemn Toronto to building only subways without looking at alternatives.
Updated June 7, 2013:
The TTC has announced that the 12-day shutdown has been deferred because the Terrazzo, Tile and Marble Guild of Ontario has been on strike since May 31. The work planned during the shutdown included a great deal of floor reconstruction for which these trades are essential.
The original post from May 21 follows the break.
TTC CEO Andy Byford was hired by former chief Gary Webster to modernize management practices and provide focus to an organization that had lost its way. Thanks to Webster’s ousting at the hands of the subway-loving, LRT-hating Mayor Ford, Byford unexpectedly found himself top dog. After a year in Toronto, Byford released his five year corporate plan on May 29, 2013.
Those of use who follow the TTC closely have heard a lot about this plan as a centrepiece for the future of our transit system. Byford’s talks at meetings around the city, most recently a Town Hall presented by Councillor Josh Matlow on the eve of the plan’s release, raised expectations for a major document, a fundamental shift in how the TTC would operate. If this were a summer movie release, Byford’s appearances would be the equivalent of ever more tantalizing trailers and “sneak peeks” at what would come.
The plan’s release was something of an anti-climax — a press release via web and email, no additional information, no political feedback to indicate support. The TTC board discussed the plan in its private session at their May 24 meeting, but made no public comment. Internally, the plan was launched at staff meetings that will continue over coming weeks to reach throughout the 12,000-strong company.
Media attention is, to be generous, muted with the story completely submerged under the Ford follies at City Hall and the Metrolinx Investment Strategy.
