Day: July 22, 2007

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The Mythology of “Poor Performing Routes” (Updated)

[This article has been linked from torontoist.com where there is another thread of comments.] 

Whenever there is a budget crisis, the TTC trots out its annual report in which they claim to show the costs and revenues associated with each route in the system.  By implication, the routes at the bottom of the barrel are “poor performers” and candidates for service cuts if not outright extinction.  The calculations in this table can be charitably described as creative writing.

Why?

In a flat fare system, it is impossible to allocate fare revenue in any way that makes sense and produces meaningful comparisons between routes.  Continue reading →

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Details of the TTC Proposals

Several documents were discussed at the July 20 TTC meeting, and I have converted them to a format that will be easy to download even for people with relatively slow links.  The texts have been scanned as such, cleaned up in Word and then reformatted as PDFs.  In a few cases, I have clarified the meaning of some TTC texts for a wider readership.

The July 2007 report and the introduction to the March 2007 proposals make interesting reading as a pair.  Although the “crisis” came to light only this week with proposals such as closing the Sheppard Subway, the TTC has been thinking about this for a while.  Indeed, in March, they had a $100-million list of cuts ready to go if the City felt particularly stingy about its annual subsidy. Continue reading →