Updated October 28 at 12:45 pm: A revised fleet plan appears on the Supplementary Agenda for the TTC meeting on October 29 as an appendix to a report regarding the purchase of new buses for 2011 and 2012 delivery. This version differs from its predecessors mainly in the removal of vehicles for the Transit City Bus Plan, offset by the additional vehicles required due to deferral of the Transit Signal Priority project for the bus network. Accounting for maintenance spares and contingency buses has also changed.
The net effect is that bus purchases originally planned have been scaled back by 50 and the remainder are rescheduled:
- from 40 to 35 in 2011,
- from 105 to 60 in 2012,
- from 35 to 60 in 2013,
- from 85 to 40 in 2014,
- from 55 to 75 in 2015
An order already placed for 120 buses for 2010 is not affected.
I will comment on this in detail after the Capital Budget Update report also on the October 29 agenda is available.
Updated October 24 at 10:00 pm: A postscript has been added with notes about other known or possible events affecting the bus fleet.
Updated October 24 at 3:45 pm: Provision for bus route changes triggered by the Spadina Subway Extension have been added to the projection.
The TTC’s proposed 2010-19 Capital Budget includes an ongoing plan to rejuvenate and expand the bus fleet. While these may seem to be laudable goals, the actual plans leave much to be desired.
The Bus Fleet Plan is a marvellous document that changes in every iteration. Barely is the ink dry on one version when it is revised again. There are three different versions of this plan within the Capital Budget documents alone, and these are a substantial revision from the version shown in the 2009 Capital Budget.
Bus Fleet Plan [From Appendix E of TTC Capital Budget Report, September 24, 2009]
However, two different sets of numbers appear in the version of the plan in the Capital Budget “Blue Books” (the detailed report of all capital projects). One is in the project covering purchase of new buses, and another in a project for temporary accommodation of an enlarged bus fleet (about which more later).
A major change in the TTC’s fleet planning came earlier in 2009 when, with little fanfare, the TTC decided to get out of the Hybrid Bus business for new purchases starting in 2010. The special subsidies available to “encourage” hybrid purchases are no longer available, and at the time of the decision, the hybrids were problem children in the fleet. A project to replace the original lead-acid batteries with lithium-ion batteries will complete within the next half year, but TTC staff have not yet reported on the improved reliability and performance, if any, of vehicles with the new batteries.
Rather than paring the capital cost of future purchases down, the Capital Budget now uses this money to purchase more buses than originally planned. This can be seen in comparing the projected fleet size in 2018 for different versions of the fleet plan.
- 2009 plan: 1549
- 2010 plan (as seen in the Commission Report, Appendix E): 1796
- 2010 plan (as seen in the project description for bus purchases, Blue Books Page 954): 1793
- 2010 plan (as seen in the project description for temporary bus storage, Page 927): 1748
In short, the TTC now aims for its 2018 fleet to be roughly 250 buses larger than what it projected only a year ago. What generates this additional requirement?
The Transit City Bus Plan has been cited as one driver for fleet growth. In fact, its proposals include:
- 10-Minute Network — a grid of routes on which service is maintained at 10 minute headways or better all day (planned fall 2010). This primarily affects off-peak operations and adds only 4 peak buses.
- 20-Minute Network — all bus services to operate at 20 minute headways except for the Blue Night network (planned 2011/12, but likely to be deferred due to budget constraints). This adds only 10 peak buses.
- Pre-Transit City LRT Express Services for Jane, Don Mills and Morningside (planned fall 2011). This requires 17 additional peak buses until such time as these proposed LRT lines are in operation.
- Enhanced Express Services (planned 2014 following decline in bus requirements due to Transit City LRT operations). This requires 56 additional peak buses relative to original plans.
- Grand total TCBP requirements: 87 peak buses.
However, this will be offset by savings due to operational improvements:
- Traffic Signal Priority schemes are projected to save the equivalent of 46 AM peak buses by 2013, although for planning purposes, TTC staff assume that only half of this will show up in reduced fleet requirements. In any event, that is a saving of 23 buses.
This brings us to a net requirement of 64 new peak buses compared with the 2009 projections, or 74 when spares at 15% are included.
The peak vehicle requirement in October 2009 is 1503. By 2018, the Sheppard East, Finch West and Eglinton LRT lines should be operating. This will replace bus service on a number of routes. (The list here is not definitive and is intended only to indicate an order-of-magnitude effect for planning purposes. I have not included all possible routes that would be affected, only those whose replacement or likely route change contributes substantially to reduced bus requirements.)
- 85 Sheppard East: 20 buses
- 36 Finch West: 30 buses
- 32 Eglinton West: 40 buses
- 34 Eglinton East: 20 buses
- 54 Lawrence East: 8 buses
- Total: About 118 buses
This will be partly offset by residual service especially on the part of Eglinton where the LRT is underground. For the sake of argument, I will use a total of 100 buses as the net number replaced by LRT service.
The Spadina/York Subway extension will replace service on some routes including:
- 196 York U Express: 26 buses (route replaced by subway)
- 107 Keele North: 6 buses (assume some demand redirected to subway)
- 60 Steeles West: 10 buses (assume some demand redirected to Finch LRT and subway)
- Total: About 42 buses
(I have omitted 41 Keele, 106 York University and 35 Jane on the basis that their peak demand is probably not much affected by the subway opening.)
This brings the current fleet requirement down to 1,361 for the routes that will survive the first round of the LRT rollout and the Spadina subway opening.
If ridership grows at 1% per year, the compound growth is 9.4% to fall 2018, and this would raise the service requirement to 1,489. If ridership grows at 2% per year, the compound growth is 19.5% to fall 2018, and the service requirement would rise to 1,627. Both calculations assume that fleet and ridership numbers grow in sync, but that is not always true due to distribution of growth among routes and times of day. However, this will do for the purpose of estimates.
When spares at 15% are added to the numbers above, the fleet size would be 1,712 (1% growth) or 1,870 (2% growth) before the 74 buses for the Transit City Bus Plan are included.
Although we are discussing the Capital Budget here, any increase in service triggers the need for more operators and maintenance personnel. Budget hawks at Council are always quick to quote growth in the level of TTC staffing, but a great deal of this is to provide additional service on the street. However, the mainstream media regularly quote this growth as if it were symptomatic of runaway hiring in the civil service. That will be an issue for the Operating Budget debates.
The TTC also has a “contingency” included in its fleet plans that typically has been used to account for the difference between service needs plus spares and the actual fleet size. In the fleet plan, they propose to stabilize this at 25.
Although I have used a spare factor of 15%, the current spare factor is about 14.5%, and the TTC aims to get this down to 12% in the out years of its plan. This will partly be accomplished by reducing the average age of the fleet and retiring problematic older buses by 2012. However, to maintain this lower spare level, the TTC must deal with a large number of now-new buses that will come due for major overhauls that are not currently included in the budget.
The net effect of these many considerations is that the TTC requirements for buses may well grow beyond even the current fleet plans. Indeed, if it were not for the technology change back to diesel from hybrid, and the larger bus orders this allows (assuming spending at the level originally proposed), the TTC would have been badly short of vehicles.
In a “best case” scenario, with only 1% growth and a 12% spare factor, the fleet would grow to about 1,760 buses by 2018. In a “worst case” scenario, with 2% growth and a 15% spare factor, the fleet would grow to about 1,970 buses. (These numbers are subject to any adjustments in the assumptions I made above.)
A major shortcoming in the plans, such as they exist in a public format, is that we don’t see the past and future changes broken down into components as I have done here. This makes direct comparison of old and new versions of the plan rather difficult and hides the effect of specific initiatives in summary information.
Earlier, I mentioned the issue of a temporary bus storage project. This arose because the original 2009 fleet plan showed the fleet ramping up to a high of about 1,850 buses by 2012, and then falling back to about 1,550 by 2018 following implementation of Transit City Lines and the Spadina Subway extension. That’s a big drop compared to the 100 or so the new lines will release (see above) and is hard to understand even in the context of the full rollout of the Transit City network. In other words, the 2009 plan appears to underestimate future fleet requirements.
In that context, the TTC felt it would not require an additional bus garage to accommodate a growing fleet, and dropped this project from their long-range plans. However, the capacity of existing garages is only 1,630 buses, with a less-than-ideal “crush” capacity of 1,835. The TTC fleet plan shows a requirement well above 1,630 for the coming decade, and the fleet size I calculate above, allowing for new initiatives, will keep the number well above the capacity of existing garages permanently. This could require the TTC to reinstate plans for at least one new bus garage just at a time when they are attempting to contain capital expenditures.
Fleet and service planning are tedious as the discussion here demonstrates because factors that could have large effects a decade away must be tracked and projected. However, budget plans must be based on realistic numbers lest the TTC be trapped by claims that “surprise” changes were not included in their projections.
The coming decade will be a difficult one for transit, despite the best intentions of many politicians. Credible, reliable, consistent budgets and project estimates are essential.
Postscript:
In addition to the possible changes in fleet requirements shown above, the following events will free up buses in the medium term.
- Dundas 505 return of streetcars. Whenever the watermain construction on Dundas completes, about half a dozen buses will be released for service elsewhere. The exact number is uncertain as this shuttle does not appear as part of the official schedules, and it was supposed to end in September.
- St. Clair 512 return of streetcars. Effective with the return of streetcars between St. Clair West and Lansdowne, the number of shuttle buses will be reduced from 21 to 8. Those remaining buses will be replaced by streetcars when the line opens to Gunn’s Loop in 2010.
- King 504 return of streetcars. Effective with the return of streetcar operation on Roncesvalles Avenue, the 8 peak shuttle buses will no longer be required.
This will be offset by the planned reconstruction of the Harbourfront and Spadina lines. This is now planned almost entirely within 2012, but I suspect it may be split over two seasons given the size of the project.
Also in the mid 20-teens, the SRT will be shut down for some period for conversion to LRT. We can only hope that the TTC will simply implement a direct shuttle running via a north-south street like Midland without attempting to serve the existing stations at McCowan, Ellesmere and Lawrence East. Buses, as we often hear, are flexible and do not have to slavishly follow the rail lines they replace.
All in all, I suspect that these changes will balance each other out and the fleet requirement, at least until after the SLRT opens, will follow roughly the trend I described earlier.
Steve Munro 
Steve,
What is the impact on buses from the opening of the Spadina Extension?
I am also curious to hear your assessment about bus needs during the SRT upgrade, and post-upgrade (does the shuttle go away?)
Steve: There is no explicit reference in the TTC fleet plans to the effect of the Spadina extension. Thanks for pointing this out. I will amend the post (later, not now) to reflect this once I figure out how many buses may be saved. By the way, even with those savings, the TTC expects the Spadina Subway extension to add $14.2-million (plus inflation) to the operating losses of the system. This is net of new revenue from riding growth.
The SRT is an interesting problem, although it is converted to bus so often that the “contingency” more or less covers it. A great euphemism for “buses we have to maintain because the RT is such an unreliable technology”.
LikeLike
The only real saving in the Spadina extension is the elimination of 196 service which is 26 buses in a.m. rush and 22 in p.m. rush. Any other saving will depend on what they do with the other routes that currently operate in the area.
The following routes operate in the area:
35 – will hopefully be replaced by LRT by that time or soon there after
36 – will hopefully be replaced by LRT by that time or soon there after
41 – no change except in routing through university, will likely be changed to terminate at Steeles West Station
60 – will be realigned to enter Steeles West Station, should lead to minimal changes in bus requirements. I would change this route to operate two separate services one from Finch to Steeles West Station and the other west of the Station, with buses every 15 minutes or so going straight through the station.
84 – 84D and potentially 84A branches could be extended to Steeles West Station
101 – no change
104 – no change
105 – no change
106 – most likely slight routing change through university, maybe changed to terminate at Steeles West Station – minimal changes to bus requirements
107 – this one may uindergo drastic changes as the north of Steeles service will likely be changed to terminate at Steeles West Station (and be taken over by YRT). The portion south of Finch maybe arranged into some sort of small rush hour circular route; currently uses 13 buses at rush hour
108 – maybe extended to Steeles West Station, may need a few more buses.
117 – no changes
165 – portion north of Steeles may be chaged to operate to Steeles West Station (and be taken over by YRT), same for the south of Steeles portion.
196 – will be eliminated
I think we may get 25-30 buses saved at rush hour from the reorganization of routes along the Spadina extension.
LikeLike
I thought the TTC had maintained that they intend to keep the rocket running on its busway even after the subway opens.
Steve: Part of the busway, the piece that is actually inside York U, is only temporary. The whole purpose of this road is to get people from Downsview to York U quickly pending the subway opening, and York was very concerned that the road not be permanent. It goes through the site of a building they are planning.
LikeLike
Doesn’t the TTC still own the property for Davenport Garage? Would re-opening that not help a little bit? I suppose re-opening old Eglinton is definitely out of the question because no one seems to know if the current temporary bus terminal is just that: temporary.
Steve: Yes they do, but no it wouldn’t. Davenport is a very small garage designed for 30-foot buses, and it was always tricky for 40-footers. Some of the land used for outdoor storage has been reassigned to other uses at Hillcrest.
LikeLike
Steve: » 60 Steeles West: 10 buses (assume some demand redirected to Finch LRT and subway)
Why would demand on Steeles be reduced because of LRT on Finch? Likewise, the subway at Jane isn’t going to reduce demand on Steeles, it might redirect some riders from Finch Station to Steeles West Station. Those riders will still need the 60 bus to get home, though.
There is a lot of ridership on the 60 between Dufferin and Yonge. These riders will not be effected by the Finch LRT since it is too far to be useful. There is also no easy way to get to Steeles from Finch between Bathurst and Dufferin. The Spadina extension might redirect some riders who would ordinarily go to Finch, but that will simply shift direction of travel and make buses less full, it won’t get rid of the demand altogether. 10 buses like you suggest means you are cutting service on the route by about 30 percent which would mean crushloaded buses every 10 minutes instead of the current crushloaded buses every 3 minutes.
Steve: What you are saying is that the primary function of the Steeles West bus is to take people from Steeles Ave. well east of York U to the Yonge Subway (or to points enroute), not to York University. If so, then, yes, the Finch LRT and Spadina Subway will have no effect. How much demand originates west of York U and is headed downtown (and would, therefore, be intercepted at Steeles West Station rather than continuing to Finch Station) will determine the degree to which service on the 60 can be reduced, if at all.
Indeed, some who now travel east to Finch Station may prefer to travel to Steeles West instead.
LikeLike
Steve: What you are saying is that the primary function of the Steeles West bus is to take people from Steeles Ave. well east of York U to the Yonge Subway (or to points enroute), not to York University. If so, then, yes, the Finch LRT and Spadina Subway will have no effect. How much demand originates west of York U and is headed downtown (and would, therefore, be intercepted at Steeles West Station rather than continuing to Finch Station) will determine the degree to which service on the 60 can be reduced, if at all.
I take the 60 everyday from Bathurst to Finch, but I used to use it from Bathurst to Dufferin when I went to University of Toronto. The eastbound demand to Finch starts roughly at Dufferin, all buses would arrive nearly empty at New Westminster and be packed by Hilda. The westbound buses were usually packed with York students.
I’ve been on a few westbound buses all the way to west of Weston road in a.m. rush and it seems like the bus would empty out by Keele and then refill west of Jane.
As far as the demand to York University goes, the subway will help but not as much as people think since some of those people come from eastern locations via 39/53 and so they wouldn’t use the subway extension. It wouldn’t surprise me to find equally full buses on the 60C when the Spadina extension opens.
Steve: Thanks for this description.
LikeLike
Steve, do you know how many buses are allocated for shuttle bus service? It seems strange that whenever a metro section goes down, shuttle buses with drivers just appear to carry passengers. Is this why we need such a large reserve ratio of buses?
Steve: During peak periods, these buses are generally taken from other routes because they need not just vehicles but also operators.
LikeLike
Mike Vanichtein’s points about YRT taking over some routes does bear some considering. Their 5-year service plan up to 2015 includes some pretty lengthy extensions both of (current) TTC routes into southern York Region and YRT routes coming south to the Finch West LRT, Spadina extension and Don Mills LRT.
Hopefully YRT is in a position to take over some of the routes from the TTC rather than continue to pay them to operate into the Region. I don’t know how aggressively they’re trying to grow their fleet. The 17, 21 and 130 look like they’ll be making runs into Markham’s new Town Centre by the Unionville GO station. On the other hand they appear to want to take over both the 107 and 35 routes, combine them and run from Finch and Keele up to Teston and then back down on Jane to the York U/Steeles West station.
LikeLike
The opening of both Transit City lines and the Spadina subway extension is going to result in a substantial increase in ridership on feeder bus routes to those new lines, which these projections ignore. Any buses reallocated from routes replaced by TC and the Spadina allocation will most likely be reallocated to either increased service on these feeder routes, or the Transit City Bus Plan. Thus, there will probably be much less of a drop in bus demand after 2015 than is anticipated by the TTC’s projections.
This may be offset to some extent by reduced ridership on lines parallel to new Transit City/subway lines, as riders decide to instead take a shorter feeder bus to the new line. For example, on Finch East, some passengers will decide to take a north-south feeder bus to the Sheppard East LRT and then transfer instead of taking the Finch East bus to Finch subway station.
Buying more buses is a step in the right direction, but additional funding to hire additional bus drivers and build a new bus garage are essential to accommodate increased bus ridership resulting from rapid transit and LRT expansion.
LikeLike
I don’t think this is true. The subway extension may attract some local demand, but the bulk of the feeder demand would be the Finch West LRT, since the cluster of routes serving Sheppard already have a subway connection. Jane and Keele really only connect to the subway out of geographical convenience.
LikeLike
Theoretically, we will only need a certain number of additional buses. Perhaps 100, 200 or 300. After this, we will start seeing lines open. The Subway, various LRT lines, the DRL (hopefully). With luck by the time those are done, we are building lines we cannot think of today. It would seem, to me at least, that the number of buses we have in 2012 should be equal to the number of buses we have in 2022, despite the fact that we now provide more service, due to the fact that bus routes are being replaced with LRT routes.
The 10 minute network should not require many more buses, as many of these routes wont need extra buses in peak, but outside of peak, where there are more buses available.
Steve: As you may have noticed in the article, in needs only 4 more. As for LRT and subway replacements of buses, there are other factors involved including overall system growth that will affect the many lines not replaced by rail services. That’s the whole point of the article — to point out the complexity in fleet planning, and how it is possible to have significant effects in future budgets (e.g. the need for another bus garage, or not) depending on the underlying assumptions.
LikeLike
Andrew: This may be offset to some extent by reduced ridership on lines parallel to new Transit City/subway lines, as riders decide to instead take a shorter feeder bus to the new line. For example, on Finch East, some passengers will decide to take a north-south feeder bus to the Sheppard East LRT and then transfer instead of taking the Finch East bus to Finch subway station.
I don’t think that this is really going to happen because why wait for 3 diferent vehichles (feeder bus, LRT, Sheppard Subway) when you can get on the Finch bus and be at the subway on just one vehicle. There is a reason why the TTC in its planning documents evaluates each transfer at 10 times the weight of in-vehicle travel time. In addition on the Yonge line you are far more likely to get a seat at Finch rather than at Sheppard. Considering how many people I see riding 1 stop north to Finch only to go back south just so they would have a seat for their southbound journey, I am certain that this will play quite a big factor in the decision to take 1 vehicle to Finch rather than 3 to Sheppard.
LikeLike
Gil: On the other hand they appear to want to take over both the 107 and 35 routes, combine them and run from Finch and Keele up to Teston and then back down on Jane to the York U/Steeles West station.
Looking at the map it looks like it is routes 35 and 165 that they want to combine. Run it from Weston/Finch to Teston then to York U via Jane.
LikeLike
It is Sunday. On Saturday, Sunday, and holidays the 501 service will not be changed! We should be able to travel today on the 501 without transferring.
Steve: And how exactly do you expect to avoid the dreaded short turn? You may see 501 Shaw or 501 Parliament even on the weekend. As for holidays, there is no stat holiday within the trial period.
LikeLike
As I have too much time on my hands now that I have retired, again, I spend a lot of it listening to the TTC on my scanner. From it you can learn how screwed up the service really is. The last day I was in town was Oct. 21, a dull and rainy day and the service on Queen was totally screwed because of traffic and construction. In the two hours I listened, 4 streetcars broke down and had to be pushed back to the division. This was interesting for a westbound Dundas car just west of Bathurst. This took 8 cars out of service, the 4 dead ones and the 4 pushers. There were also a lot of other complaints such as broken wind shield wiper, no defrost fan, no heat, dirty car etc. There were also runs cancelled because of a lack of operators. The buses had runs cancelled because of lack of equipment.
If the TTC has trouble getting enough operating streetcars in service now what are they going to do when King and St. Clair are back in service. I know, close down parts Spadina, Queen’s Quay, Downtowner and Kingston Rd for track jobs. I believe that the reason for all these track jobs and their slow pace is to hide the fact that they cannot run all the scheduled service with streetcars. They will drag out the work until there are enough new cars to provide the service then all the construction will be finished.
LikeLike
I might as well say this, seeing as it fits in this discussion:
The 107 Keele North route is an interesting one, in that the only time the TTC wishes to operate is Monday to Friday, 6am to 10 pm from Downsview STN to York U, and M-F rush hours for 107B to York U via Chesswood.
Quoting the October 18, 2009 TTC Service Summary, pg. 27 (pg. 29 in the PDF): “Service outside Toronto north of Steeles Avenue, all late evening and weekend service in Toronto, and all midday service in Toronto on the 107B branch is provided under contract to York Region”.
LikeLike
Gil says:
October 25, 2009 at 12:46 am
“Mike Vanichtein’s points about YRT taking over some routes does bear some considering. Their 5-year service plan up to 2015 includes some pretty lengthy extensions both of (current) TTC routes into southern York Region and YRT routes coming south to the Finch West LRT, Spadina extension and Don Mills LRT.
“Hopefully YRT is in a position to take over some of the routes from the TTC rather than continue to pay them to operate into the Region. I don’t know how aggressively they’re trying to grow their fleet. The 17, 21 and 130 look like they’ll be making runs into Markham’s new Town Centre by the Unionville GO station. On the other hand they appear to want to take over both the 107 and 35 routes, combine them and run from Finch and Keele up to Teston and then back down on Jane to the York U/Steeles West station.”
My bet is that local 113 of the ATU will not allow YRT or any other service pick up passengers in Toronto as it will take away jobs from 113 union members. I cannot say that I blame 113 as its operators make more money that others and it would be to the TTC’s economic advantage to farm out service to YRT, Mississauga Transit and Brampton Transit. It won’t happen unless there is some other trade off to protect 113 jobs and I side with the ATU local 113 on this unless there ae job protecting trade offs. Yes I am a Union person.
LikeLike
The 107 Keele North route is an interesting one, in that the only time the Grzegorz Radziwonowski wrote: TTC wishes to operate is Monday to Friday, 6am to 10 pm from Downsview STN to York U, and M-F rush hours for 107B to York U via Chesswood.
Quoting the October 18, 2009 TTC Service Summary, pg. 27 (pg. 29 in the PDF): “Service outside Toronto north of Steeles Avenue, all late evening and weekend service in Toronto, and all midday service in Toronto on the 107B branch is provided under contract to York Region”.
Actually according to the Service Improvements 2008 report Monday-Friday service from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. via St. Regis is severely underperforming the performance standard. The Chesswood service seems to be doing ok. So if YRT were to take over the 107 service north of Steeles, then the TTC may decide to run 107B rush hours only to York University or even Finch West Station and kill all service via St. Regis.
I would reorganize it as a cicular route that runs from Downsview via 107B to Keele/Finch and then back via the 107C routing to Downsview. My guess would be that 2 buses could provide 15-20 minute service with 1 bus operating in each direction (i.e. clockwise and counterclockwise).
LikeLike
I say TTC should terminate all current York Region contracted service at Steeles once the current contract expires and let Metrolinx and YRT worry about what happens next. I have no confidence that we are getting full cost-recovery including overheads, bus garages etc. from York given the Spadina Extension contract seems to be sticking Toronto with the overruns.
LikeLike
I read the report called the “Transit City Bus Plan” and I am wondering if some of these BRT routes are going to take away buses from the TTC fleet or add buses.
Steve: The detailed fleet plan shows buses being added to the fleet to accomodate the routes, offset by savings from Transit Signal Priority. However, both of these projects have been put on hold as part of the current budget deliberations.
What I mean by this I can explain on one of the planned BRT routes which is called the Kingston Road-Danforth Bus Rapid Transit. This planned route will leave the Modernized Victoria Park Station travel east on the Danforth and continue east on Kingston Rd to the Scarborough East LRT point at Eglinton and Kingston Rd. If this route becomes reality, and I hope it does, it will negate the need both branches of the #12 bus route from continuing east on Kingston Rd past where the Danforth merges to this Kingston Rd. That means the #12 buses will leave VP station and travel down Vic.Park and East on Kingston Road as far as the Danforth (Cliffside Village area). This also means that another route will have to be created to replace the #12B bus which goes east on Kingston Rd., then travels north on Brimley to Kennedy Station.
This area will still have to be served by transit and neither the Kingston Rd-Danforth bus route services this area or the #12 route which will now terminate at the Cliffside Village area. A new route, and more buses will have to be created and purchased to service this area. The new route could start at Warden Station (hopefully Modernized as well) then travel east on St. Clair then north on Brimley to Kennedy Station.
I think the new LRT routes and BRT routes are going to eliminate some longer bus routes but I think a lot of new shorter routes are going to be needed to make sure that the TTC still covers all of Toronto. The reason that I picked the Kingston Road-Danforth BRT route is because my wife and I live near Brimley/ St. Clair and this transit initiative directly impacts me as I am familiar with the area and routes, I am sure the other BRT routes are going to split up existing TTC bus routes as well.
With shorter more manageable routes the TTC might need even more buses and operators.
LikeLike
Are these buses still Orion, or has the TTC come to their senses and gone with New Flyer or another make? While they have had some hits (Orion I and Orion V), most of their models have been a farce. The Orion IV has scarred this city from articulated buses which we need now more than ever, Orion VI had a ludicrous interior design that could not support capacity, Orion VIIs have uncomfortable interiors, and Orion VII Hybrids are breaking down daily!
I rode a YRT D40LF for years and the buses reliable, decent seating arrangements, and had good capacity as well. I’ve never been in one, but I’ve looked inside a Mississauga D60LF and they look to have more comfortable seats than what the TTC and Orion offer passengers.
Steve: Yes, they are still Orions, a continuation of the present order. See the report for more info.
LikeLike
The reality is that the sum being slashed from the Capital budget is largely accounted for by the 1/3 of the streetcar contract that the City had to pick up when the higher orders of government would not. This additional amount was rammed through City Council against an artificial deadline claimed to have been set by Bombardier. There is no way – NO WAY – that BBD would have left “the largest single order for light rail cars in the world” go by for the sake of a couple of weeks to rework the order timetable, with the Commission filling the gap with a CLRV life extension to 2024.
What is needed now is for all existing capital equipment to be worked harder – the elimination of layovers using crewing changes, an absolute ban on mid-route stops for food by drivers and Proof of Purchase on all streetcar routes. A stopped and idling vehicle is one that could be carrying passengers. Some of these measures involve current expense but since we won’t be hiring drivers for buses that won’t be bought some of that will net out.
Furthermore, the reluctance to buy 60ft buses has to be overcome, even if it means buying from non-Canadian suppliers. The argument of a subfleet is not persuasive when put in the context of the TTC’s size, and 60ft buses (with POP) would be far more appropriate to handle projects like the SRT replacement service or to carry passengers during maintenance on an LRT or subway line.
LikeLike
Steve are the current bus orders affected with the news of TTC’s recent budget cuts? I mean they don’t even have enough buses now and they are cancelling future bus orders. Looks like we may see the GM’s for another 5 years.
Steve: The difference in future orders is detailed in my update. On a net basis, there are 50 fewer buses. These were intended to handle expansion for the Transit City Bus Plan, part of which has been placed on hold. The remaining GM’s are supposed to be retired in 2009 (52), 2010 (58), 2011 (12) and 2012 (30). This is shown in the fleet plan in the TTC report linked to this item.
LikeLike
Mark Dowling writes:
“What is needed now is for all existing capital equipment to be worked harder – the elimination of layovers using crewing changes, an absolute ban on mid-route stops for food by drivers and Proof of Purchase on all streetcar routes. A stopped and idling vehicle is one that could be carrying passengers.”
And stop padding schedules. Whatever the notional operating speeds given in the detailed service info, the actual service speed riders get depends very much on the operator. At least that’s the experience a Queen car rider will see. Quicker operation requires fewer vehicles, while at the same time accomplishing what TTC rider want–a reasonably quick trip from A to B. (Bring back high-rate operation on the subway to cut down on the need for new subway cars!)
On the other hand, the TTC could go back to the “one packed bus ever 15 minutes is good” philosophy of the 1990s. Let’s hope not.
LikeLike
If you don’t like operators stopping for food mid route than advocate for scheduled breaks, currently many crews are straight shifts with no scheduled breaks or lunch periods. Some of these crews are 8,9 or 10+ hours long, expecting someone to work for that many hours straight and begrudging them a momentary stop for a coffee is nothing but selfish, not to mention that the vehicle will usually make it to the end of the line at or before the scheduled time anyway.
Think about it this way, the current situation it not ideal for either the operators or the passengers but it is cost effective, giving operators scheduled breaks would be very expensive and complex. It would be cheaper to install coffee makers and kettles on all the vehicles but that isn’t very practical, is it?
LikeLike
In all recent bus fleet documentation I’ve read, I haven’t seen any of the (much) older GM “fishbowl” buses mentioned, yet I still see them in use. I’m wondering how many there are, how many are in use, and when they’ll be retired? Don’t they have an effect on spares?
Steve: If you look at the last page of the report on this week’s supplementary agenda regarding new bus purchases, you will see the current bus fleet plan. For the GM’s, the fleet sizes are:
Pre 2008: 173
End 2008: 100
End 2010: 42
End 2011: 30
End 2012: 0
LikeLike
I bristled a little bit too at the post above about operators stopping for food.
I’ve never driven a bus or worked for the TTC but I am sympathetic to these kind of needs, as I am to the need for a bathroom break somewhere along the route.
And you can eliminate all the padding time you want out of the schedule … but by doing so you are just going to escalate the whole “p— on them” attitude that all humans have some degree of built into their personality. Those buses on York Mills will crawl along 5-10 k,/h slower than they did before, drivers will fiddle with their transfers until the light turns red, etc.
You can’t combat what those guys can do to you if they’re ticked off – there’s way more of them than management and you can’t just fire all of them. Your service would be worse and your costs higher.
LikeLike
Regarding the Fishbowls, because of the model years listed, I thought they were talking about GM’s RTSes or Classics. Got the years wrong. Mea Culpa. I thought they had stopped producing them in ’77. I guess the RTSes we have would be Novas, then.
Are these the same buses the TTC collected from all over creation in the 90’s under Gunn? If so, haven’t they been life-extended a few times already? Speaking of which, should that be on the table again? Are there any older low-floors or lift equipped buses we can pick up from other jurisdictions? My last few visits to the States I saw a lot of spanking new buses and crappy service.
And as for the GM’s, are they all really from 1980 to 1983? Some of them look far older, but it’s impossible to tell since the ‘New Look’ is from 1959.
LikeLike
To the posters above who claim I don’t want operators to eat or pee – I do. I just want them doing so in a breakroom and not with their vehicle in the middle of Dundas Street. This is what I referred to in respect of crewing changes – the various loops should have a designated facility for crews to change vehicles and take breaks. We don’t stop subway trains mid-route, so we know this can be done.
LikeLike
The oldest GMs are from 1980, i believe the 20xx GMs, but it is unlikely there are almost any of those left. The thing about the old buses, is that they don’t take so damn long to open and close the rear doors. It can be a pain, if only for 30 seconds though it adds up, to see one person open the doors and rush out, only for them to swing all the way out, stop, and go back in nice and slowly. Who thought that up?
Steve: According to the Service Summary for October, there are 142 “New Look” GMs in service dating from 1981-83. They operate from Mt. Dennis and Wilson garages. In a stroke of sheer genius, Bay (a Mt. Dennis route) runs right past City Hall and you can ride this heritage bus fleet right to the TTC monthly meetings. This morning, rode one of them down Bay to Albert, and later saw three of them all at the same corner. We will have to preserve this operation for posterity, somehow.
Those slow doors are a “safety” feature on “modern” buses thanks to the fact that treadle-activated doors are rare on many transit systems. So are passengers too.
LikeLike
I find it extra-funny that the oldest buses in the fleet are assigned to the newest garage in the company!
Those new-style doors are one of the worst inventions of all time. At least the cycle time has been reduced from the eternity experienced on the RTS buses. (Drivers eventually learned that flipping the manual switch quickly open-close would cancel the time delay and close the rear doors immediately.) I understand that they have to be slow-moving because they are wider and heavier than the narrower single-stream doors of the past. However this does nothing to prevent the routine slam-in-the-face action they generate because of the touch-bar triggering system. The treadle sensors always gave the door timer advance warning to keep the doors open while a long stream of passengers is exiting at once. Now they keep closing quite hard repeatedly on a string of exiting passengers at important transfer points. Extending your hand forward to try to trigger the touch bar while it is closing on you generally leads to a painful whack on the knuckles. I see this going on daily at Lansdowne Station. (It doesn’t help that there is an old TTC overhead line pole centred directly in the way of the exit door position of the newest buses at the southbound stop.) There needs to be some sort of earlier sensor, possibly an optical beam, to extend the timer, if only by a few seconds. That would eliminate the slamming.
While on the topic, I really hate the touch-bar system, and not just because they make a metallic rattling when the bus idles or shakes which almost sounds like a muted jackhammer. People don’t understand that you only have to lightly push the bar to activate the door – they often push so hard that the safety lockout kicks in and many buses have to have their engines shut off to reset the doors. This happens especially when the driver forgets to activate the touch-bar at a stop – nobody knows to watch for the green light that tells you to proceed and they just start ramming the doors before yelling about it not working. Unfortunately most humans are so stupid that any thought required on their part to operate a system renders the system impossible to use. You can actually push/pull the bar in any direction or even lift it by the slightest amount – if people can’t figure that out even by accident then they are truly bone-headed. Interestingly the touch-bars were actually removed from some of the high-floor Orions and treadle switches were installed instead. I don’t know what the problem was but the change made these roaring monsters a hell of a lot more tolerable.
LikeLike
I’ve got to agree that the touch bars are awful. Frankly even knowing about the supposed sensor setup I find the only way to get them to work reliably is with a pretty good shove.
My suggestion would be to go with the system Chicago (among others?) has, which has replaced the touch bars with strips like the alarm ones on the subway (and stop request on some GO coaches actually). Not only does it make it pretty clear these aren’t push doors, but the doors are actually responsive (as in actually open reliably, fully, and fairly quickly) when you touch them, which is, IMO, the biggest problem with our system.
LikeLike
To the person who commented on New Flyer buses. While most transit systems in North America (including all over Ontario) have decided to buy New Flyer buses, (even Mississauga, where ORIONs are built), TTC has put in every tender for buses a description which precludes other models of buses. In its simplest terms, the TTC might as well put in its tenders, “bus must be an Orion VII.” One of their reasons for this is wanting stainless steel buses, and New Flyer has moved to a longer lasting material. TTC believes the lowest possible grade of stainless steel (which Orion uses) is better than the carbon steel which New Flyer uses.
(New Flyer will build a stainless steel bus, but not guarantee it for 12 years. They will guarantee the carbon steel for 18 years. TTC junked the Orion VI buses after only 8 years, for other reasons, but still will only buy Orion).
With regard to the poorly performing Orion hybrids, they had a terrible hybrid system – not nearly as good as New Flyer’s Allison system. Still TTC decides that Orion is the best place to buy buses and refuses to consider any other models despite the high cost of maintenance and replacement. In my conversations with TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, he has only ever said that other buses don’t meet the specifications required by the TTC. A good, diplomatic, politician’s answer. Unfortunately, the result is that the ridership and taxpayers suffer.
Steve: And we may recall that Ontario Bus Industries was propped up by Queen’s Park who more or less directed the TTC to purchase vehicles from OBI. Now that the TTC is thinking about ditching its requirement a bus lasts forever because the cost of a rebuild may not be worth the effort, the whole question of TTC’s physical bus spec needs to be revisited.
LikeLike