The Star reports today that the GO Transit Board rejected a call for fare rebates in compensation for poor service. This is no surprise, but that’s not my topic.
What fascinated me in the article was this:
[Pat] Eales was initially given five minutes to make her case to the board but GO Transit chairman Peter Smith said he would allow her to talk as long as she wanted.
Her presentation, along with questions and answers, went on for more than half an hour.
Meanwhile, over at the TTC, deputations have taken on a surreal air thanks to the Draconian new rules of procedure. We get five minutes, as always, but questions are rare and motions to extend speaking time are non-existent. I was used to being cut off back in the Lastman era, but Admiral Adam runs a tight ship and I’d better finish my speech in 5 minutes.
This reached an absurb height at the last meeting when John Cartwright of the Labour Council wanted to present information about shortcomings in the Buy Canadian study done for the current streetcar tender. Because the request to speak came in late, Chair Giambrone had to ask for the Commission’s indulgence just to get Cartwright on the agenda.
When the time to hear the material came up, they got five minutes. Full stop.
Meanwhile, TTC management gets to drone on at excruciating length about whatever project they have dropped onto the agenda often with little advance notice to those who might want to comment on it.
I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Metrolinx has yet to discover deputations and favours instead a complex process of public feedback through their website. No opportunity for irate members of the public to call politicians or management to task for their incompetence. Just remember this as and when they take over GO or even the TTC.
You won’t be able to complain about the Queen car because nobody will want to hear you.
Somehow the golden age of transit is looking a lot like the bad old days when pensioners got cigars, the Commissioners drank from bone china cups, and the public knew their place.
Steve Munro 
It was an interesting GO Board meeting to say the least.
Ms. Eales deputation was reasonably brief (5-10 minutes)… I didn’t time it but she had the certainly had the attention of the Directors; as it’s only the second deputation I’ve seen over the 4 years I’ve attended GO Board meetings.
What was amazing was the media horde present. I haven’t seen such a swarm before as is typical of any contentious TTC Commission meetings. I actually can’t remember any broadcast media (save occasional radio reporter) attending and this was the full media blanket… TV, RADIO, Print.
In the media scrum after the press finished with Ms. Eales, Ed Drass asked Chair Peter Smith pointed questions in a loud booming voice: Why if GO was running a $4M surplus was it necessary to increase fares? Could the surplus be used to offer a “late” rebate or moderate the fare increase?…. and Chair Smith answered fairly testily that “As You KNOW… the money goes back to the Province… so we get less subsidy” Ed persisted with a couple follow-ups prompting similar annoyed answers from the Chair. I was surprised, I’ve never seen him lose his cool like that before… clearly under a lot of pressure about service reliability.
Ms. Eales deputation the questions from Directors, her answers, her redirect questions to Directors, their discussion and Chair Smith’s summary last until 11:00 a.m. when the GO Board Meeting public session usually concludes… imagine that one deputation taking up the time of the normal public agenda.
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And so what’s your take on Admiral Adam? If I had to write a 100 word essay on how the TTC has improved since he became chair, I’d write “not much” fifty times.
Steve: I would not go anywhere as high as fifty. I think that Adam Giambrone is doing a better job as chair than Howard Moscoe, and this is in part due to a more receptive environment at Council and the Mayor’s office. Contrast this with the open warfare between Moscoe and Lastman.
Having said that, things are improving slowly, but frustratingly. Another big improvement is the presence of Gary Webster as Chief General Manager. His style is much less confrontational than his predecessors, and it’s really on his shoulders than any major change in the TTC’s culture will fall.
For years, the whole organization has been struggling just to keep the system running, and in that sort of environment it’s easy for drift and lack of dedication to set in. Turning that around will take time and a political climate that doesn’t look to transit budgets as a first source for cuts.
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Chair Smith answered fairly testily that “As You KNOW… the money goes back to the Province… so we get less subsidy”
Hopefully that will be picked up on by members of the press horde.
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It seems counter-productive if any surplus GO Transit has at year end must be returned to the Province. This either leads to a mad rush to spend money (unwisely) at year-end – free rides for a week! – or a lack of proper long-term and multi-year planning. If it’s true, I would think that getting the Province to allow carry-overs might be a useful activity, and with the present government even maybe fruitful.
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When Presto is implemented with a rewards system, transit authorities could choose to offer “points” to all passengers in a delayed train. The discount would not amount to what some people may want, but it would build goodwill and encourage users to continue using the service.
I can’t wait to collect points when my streetcar is late.
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“I can’t wait to collect points when my streetcar is late.”
If you try to ride the Queen car, you’ll receive plenty of points but there will be no streetcar to spend them on.
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To David C’s comment on returning surpluses to the province. Most budget oriented organizations work this way. It seems to me that any government body I’ve ever worked for has. The flip side is, if the money is gone before the fiscal period is done spending is cut. Discretionary expenditures are the first to go.
Sadly it sounds George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” down at the TTC, some pigs are more equal than others. But I guess an unequal playing field is better than the MetroLynx ostrich approach with their heads in the sand!
Steve: The catch-22 in all this is that “surpluses” can occur both because revenue is higher than expected or because costs have been constrained. If GO decides to give people credits for screwed up trips, then that’s part of the fare structure and they should budget accordingly. If nothing else, they might get to show a nice surplus if they ever figure out how to make the trains run on time.
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“Adam Giambrone is doing a better job as chair than Howard Moscoe”
That is so true. Giambrone is a much more better chair. He should one day run for Mayor because we have to give him credit, he’s running a system where it has a lot of problems. I think it is not Giambrone’s fault. He knows what the system has and does not have. The fault in this case is The council we have now, and The mayor. They decide to make other “important” things in the council be #1, but we all know that transit is #1 and they need to get back to making it #1.
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Ed Drass has been a thorn in the side of TTC, GO, Mississauga and YRT for years, namely because he asks questions he already knows the answers to and writes columns to incite the public against the system(s) in question. I’m not surprised that Peter Smith was impatient with him … I wish that more transit systems were.
Steve: The job of a journalist is to ask difficult questions. The managements of far too many municipal and provincial agencies have had an easy ride for years, and they deserve something other than fawning adoration in the media. And a good journalist will know, or at least suspect, the answers before he asks the questions — that’s how you trap incompetent fools into revealing themselves.
I too have been a thorn in the side of the TTC, and at times people, even those inside the TTC who were sympathetic, asked why I wasn’t nicer to them. My response is that being nice to people who just want “business as usual” gets you absolutely nowhere.
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I’ve got this cartoon somewhere with the caption “preparing to consult with the public” – and I MUST dig it up to share it widely as officialdumb doesn’t want to hear criticisms of some pet projects – like the Waterfront Transport Follies (WTF!) of the FSE and the WWLRT – and where are the comparisons to plowing $200M into more GO, vs. $800/$900M into the WTF! – not that we’d want to save $600 or $700M for some new fleet or three of something…
There could be more, but yes, it was “interesting” being ruled out of order when I went beyond merely the Queen St. streetcar at one TTC meeting, though others did as well. My sin is a critical edge as above, and perhaps not having quite enough lunch, but that day inspired a new term: blindp.
Thanks Ms. Bussin
Steve: For the readers’ benefit, Sandra Bussin is a member of the Commission hailing from The Beach. She seems to have appropriated the Queen car issue without fully crediting the work done by others and the fact that there are problems on other parts of the line.
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>Bill,
I take exception to your comment that Ed Drass (a friend) writes “… columns to incite the public against the system(s) in question.”
If anything I think it’s the exact opposite. Ed listens to his readers input and feedback and uses it to tailor his columns subject matter for the greatest reader interest, and, hopefully system response.
Ed tries to be scrupulously fair and even-handed in his coverage of issues, painting a picture for readers, often without judgment and ending with “what do you think about….”
Ed was the Chair of a Transit Forum in November 2006 at Metro Hall that he organized and along with his brother paid some of the out-of-pocket expenses~to promote GTA transit, before the heady days of the Transit City (March 2007) and Move Ontario 2020 (June 2007) announcements that delighted GTA Transit enthusiasts.
Ed was the Chair for the recent Fix the Queen Car forum also at Metro Hall in early Dec 2007. It was attended not only by Chair Giambrone but senior TTC Operations Staff and will likely result in the most profound change (even headways vs. blind schedule adherence) in TTC Operations~to the benefit of TTC riders not only Queen but eventually ALL surface routes.
Without the tireless efforts of transit enthusiasts like Ed, (pre-councillor) Gord Perks, James Bow, Steve Munro and their influence on not only Mayor Miller and Chair Giambrone but TTC Staff as well… we would not have the TTC’s Ridership Growth Strategy, Transit City or the ground-breaking CIS analysis Steve did that will soon have a dramatic impact on the reliability of all TTC Surface Operations.
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Well, GO does have problems that it cannot control (such as signalling, switch problems, etc.) which occur on the tracks owned by CN or CP. However, if a train is late because of GO’s direct fault (e.g. mechanical problems with their equipment) then GO should be paying some kind of a refund to passengers.
Steve: GO may not have direct control of the infrastructure, but their contract with the railways needs to include performance penalties. The balancing act is always between penalties that don’t bite hard enough to be effective (rather like fines that couriers pay for illegal parking), and penalties so harsh that the railways won’t sign the contract.
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Of course, Steve is right – there needs to be performance penalties. Also, I know GO has provided some funding for new switches, and extra tracks to help – but CN (and CP, but mainly CN) needs to be expected to live up to their “end of the bargain.”
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“Steve: GO may not have direct control of the infrastructure, but their contract with the railways needs to include performance penalties.”
Really? Wouldn’t the railways just build those penalty payments into the rates they charge GO? Its not like GO can take their business elsewhere.
Steve: That’s why I say it’s a balancing act. Assume that the railways build in a fudge factor in their rates to cover the penalties. It will at least be in their interest not to do worse than their estimated failure rate, and preferably better so that they get to keep more of the money. Assuming, of course that doing better costs less than just paying the penalty.
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Steve,
There is a very important point your posting about how the well Commission listens to the public through deputations doesn’t mention: the behaviour of the Commissioners and the TTC staff during the deputations.
I’ve attended several Commission meetings at City Hall at various times over the last nine years and observed that sometimes they listen to the people speaking but, on many occasions, the meeting degenerates into the Commissioners speaking among themselves or getting up and leaving the room. This not only extremely rude, but it is symptomatic of the TTC’s dismissive if not contemptuous attitude towards the riders. When the people in charge of the whole operation get up and leave or openly ignore the deputations and engage in other business, it is a clear indication that they simply don’t want to or don’t care to listen to feedback from the general public. If you consider how the rest of the TTC communicates with the general public is easily explained when it’s considered in this context. Simply put, the Commissioners should be on their best behaviour during the deputations when the public is given the opportunity to speak.
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There’s only so much cash to go around and Eales must be pretty naive to think a refund for her late or broken down train isn’t going to be taken away from her down the road in the form of a fare increase.
Whether the riders paid “x” or “0.5x” for their ride downtown that got there an hour late is significant to GO. After all, the train still ran at the same expense (fuel, crew, etc.) and now the trip would bring in less revenue because of the refund. How long would this go on before GO jacked up the fares to pay for all these delayed/canceled trips they’ve lost money on?
Should I expect the TTC to give me a rebate because the buses couldn’t get up the hill on York Mills in a snowstorm and I was late for work? It’s the city that didn’t get the roads cleared, so where’s my cash?
It’s a slippery slope, I believe the board is right in this case.
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