Updated January 12, 2011 at 5:30 pm: Today the TTC decided to defer the matter of the proposed service cuts to its meeting on February 2. I will comment in more detail on both the Operating and Capital budget presentations that were made today (they are not available online).
Meanwhile, details of the service cuts are available. A few notes about this table (which comes from the TTC):
- Vehicle reductions: This is the TTC’s estimate of how many vehicles will be saved, and these numbers won’t always be the same as in the table I produced because of assumptions about interlining.
- Customers affected: These are the people who now use the service. Equivalent to “boardings” used in a calculation below.
- Customers lost: This is the TTC’s estimate of the riders who will be lost. Generally this is much less than the number affected because the TTC assumes people will walk to another route rather than abandoning the system.
- Boardings/service hour: For some reason, this appears only for a subset of the cases shown, although you can calculate the values. If the proposed cut is 2 vehicles for 3 hours, then this is 6 service hours. Divide that into the number of people affected to get the boardings/hour. The screenline for cuts is 15 (not 12 as previously reported) boardings/service hour.
The TTC has already noticed one “oops” — the Downsview Park bus on early Saturday evenings carries 267 riders in the three hours between 7 and 10 pm, or almost 90/hour. Saturday daytime, it carries 176 in the 13 hours from 6 am to 7 pm, or 13.5/hour. However, it is likely that a good deal of this riding is concentrated later in the day, and it will be easy to get over the screenline by taking this into account.
I will digest this chart with additional calculations in a post tomorrow.
The methodology has a certain prejudice depending on the type of route. For example, very short routes tend to have a lot of turnover and rack up boardings quickly. Long routes handle longer trips, and the resources used per boarding are proportionately greater. This means that a long route has to have a higher average load to meet the boardings/hour criterion and escape cuts.
For routes that don’t do well, this is something of a moot point because they are never going to the cut, but this sort of systemic error in analysis becomes important if, in 2012, the bar is raised to cut more “unproductive” services.
Updated January 11, 2011 at 8:40 pm: The budget reports for tomorrow’s TTC meeting are now available on the TTC’s website. The Operating Budget is a scanned version of the originally proposed report with manual changes to reflect the absence of a fare increase.
It is worth noting that the original text projected 4 million fewer riders (483m vs 487m), and so the TTC had allowed for the possibility of ridership loss in the face of the fare increase. If those riders are retained, let alone if ridership goes up more than expected, the “unspecified” revenue or cost saving within the TTC’s budget will come from riders just as, in 2010, the TTC generated a large surplus.
Within the budget itself, an $8m saving comes from halving the workforce assigned to Customer Service initiatives (see page 8 of the linked pdf).
For those who wonder about the components of rising TTC costs, these are broken out in detail in the body of the budget report.
Although the budget recommends cuts to free up $7m for demand-related service improvements, there is no hint of where this might be applied or how much service will result. Given that this is about half of one percent of the total budget, this is really not a lot of added service spread over the entire system.
The Capital Budget gives more details of the major projects and funding problems faced by the TTC. The budget contains a long discussion of the problems of adding capacity to the Yonge-University-Spadina subway, and it is clear that the TTC still feels it can get 50% more out of the existing infrastructure. “Existing” may be a misnomer considering the changes needed to achieve this, and we are still waiting for a proper evaluation of the Downtown Relief Line as an alternative to massive spending on the YUS.
The budget discusses the shortfall in available funding in detail, and urges improved support from senior governments. To that end, the TTC proposes “packages” of projects that could be presented for funding support. These include:
- the “legacy” streetcar system ($490m),
- subway capacity ($1.4b),
- bus fleet ($607m),
- accessibility ($356m) and
- fare collection ($87m).
The budget notes that a key reason for the long term shortfall in available vs required funding is the windup of various federal and provincial funding schemes. While it is true, to a point, that the gas tax revenue does not fully cover many projects, there is also the basic fact that the TTC’s need for capital investment is growing much faster than inflation due to the concurrent requirements of so much of the system for reconstruction and expansion.
“Subway capacity” in the list above includes only $1m for the Bloor-Yonge expansion project for a study to evaluate whether and how throughput at this station can be increase. Although this is a small amount, it is a critical part of the overall scheme because if the BY bottleneck is not eliminated, many other expenditures will not be necessary or possible on YUS, and the money will have to be diverted to another project such as the DRL. The long list of YUS improvements ends with the note:
All of these improvements are needed to address subway capacity requirements before the alternative of building a Downtown Relief Line would be warranted.
This presumes, of course, that the many improvements are (a) feasible and (b) cost effective, issues that have not yet been addressed by TTC management.
The full Capital Budget is a huge document, and I will report in more detail on it after I have a chance to review it.
The Wheel Trans Budget includes a subsidy increase of about 10% over 2010 reflecting a quickly growing level of demand.
Updated January 11, 2011 at 4:15 pm: Karen Stintz, Chair of the TTC, has confirmed that the proposed fare increase will not go forward. The $24-million it would have raised be will be funded with $16m from the City of Toronto and $8m of internal TTC efficiencies.
This raises the question of whether the $7m worth of service cuts were really needed given that there was an equivalent amount available to help offset the fare hike.
All of this has the feeling of smoke and mirrors, a manufactured crisis, and an avoidance of real decisions about the future of TTC funding and service.
Updated January 11, 2011 at 1:35 pm: The Star reports that the proposed fare increase has been cancelled, and money will be found elsewhere in the City budget to cover the cost. It appears that the optics of a fare increase that matched the annual value of the just-ended vehicle registration fee were less than palatable to the pols at City Hall. Mayor Ford was much displeased by the proposal when he spoke to the press yesterday.
Updated January 11, 2011 at 1:10 pm: The Star’s Google Map of the routes affected by service cuts is available here.
Updated January 10, 2011 at 9:30 pm: I have added a table showing in detail the service cuts proposed for March 27, 2011 together with a comparison of the service levels on the affected routes in April 2008 before the Ridership Growth Strategy improvements were implemented.
I will be expanding this article with more information later today (January 10) and as events unfold over the coming week.
[Original article below]
The TTC has announced a proposed fare increase of 10 cents in the adult fare with comparable changes to some other fare classes to be effective February 1, 2011. Together with this increase, a large number of service cuts to lightly-used periods of operation on many routes will be implemented at the end of March.
Oddly enough, the TTC says that it will take several months to identify routes requiring additional service, but had no trouble finding a three-page list of routes for cutbacks. We have often heard how the TTC could not improve peak period service due to its vehicle shortage, and it will be interesting to see which routes and periods actually benefit from these cuts.
The fare proposal table linked above shows the proposed fares, the percentage increases for each class of fare, and the fare multiple for each class of pass.
The TTC will meet on Wednesday, January 12 at 9:00 am in Committee Room 2 at City Hall to consider staff presentations on the Operating and Capital budgets. These budgets, together with any amendments by the Commission, will be forwarded to the City’s Budget Committee for its meeting of Friday, January 14.
City 2011 Operating Budget Presentation
City 2011 Capital Budget Presentation
I will comment on these in more detail in updates, but a few points are worth noting.
Operating budget (see presentation at page 31):
- TTC’s “conventional system” operating subsidy will fall from about $430-million in the 2010 budget to about $413m in 2011.
- TTC’s Wheeltrans operating subsidy will rise from $82.7m in the 2010 budget to $91.0m in 2011.
- Considering that the TTC actually underspent its 2010 allocation by $59m, this is a net increase relative to 2010 actual.
Capital budget (see presentation at pages 37-41):
- Funding for the new streetcars and associated works (notably the new and renovated carhouses) remains in the TTC’s budget because of commitments already made. However, it is no secret that Mayor Ford is opposed to continued use of streetcars and spoke during his campaign of phasing them out. Current budget pressures coupled with a desire to explore possibilities for better capital subsidies at the provincial and federal level may delay and thereby threaten this.
- There is a $2.3-billion shortfall between the TTC’s currently identified list of capital projects and the known funding available for them. Which projects will be “in” and which “out”, at least in the short term, should be clarified by the TTC’s budget presentation on January 12.
- The budget contains no money for Transit City as this is now part of the Metrolinx project portfolio.
At a press statement before today’s budget launch, Mayor Ford spoke strongly about the need for all city departments and agencies to reign in their spending in line with his priorities.
“If they’re unable to manage effectively in the best interest of the taxpayers, then we will have to find new managers that can.”
The full text of the Mayor’s remarks is not yet online.
Ford is unhappy with the proposed fare increase, and was quite clear that he wishes to avoid it. This puts his Transit Commissioners in an intriguing position. Do they approve the staff recommendation and go against the Mayor, leaving any dirty work to the Budget Committee and Council, or do they find other cuts to avoid a fare increase?
At a media briefing, City Manager Joseph Pennachetti, was clear that staff at the City and TTC would prefer a clear, multi-year plan for fares so that the TTC would know what revenue they should expect.
If adult fares rise by 10 cents, a typical rider will face $40-50 in additional costs per year. Oddly enough, this is a good chunk of the saving just extended to motorists who no longer bear the vehicle registration tax of $60 abolished on January 1.
Updated January 10, 2011 at 9:30 pm:
The table linked here details the service cuts to be implemented effective March 27, 2011. For each affected route and time period, the table shows the level of service as it was in April 2008 before the Ridership Growth Strategy kicked in as well as the service now operating. Where the 2008 headway is blank, this is a service that was added with RGS. Otherwise, the service already existed, although in some cases at pitiful headways up to 60 minutes.
Note that in some cases I have estimated the number of vehicles saved because only part of a route or a branch is eliminated, and I had to make an educated guess at what would remain. When the official service change notice is issued by the TTC, I will publish a condensed version of it in my usual manner.
Now that the TTC is abandoning the premise that service is operated at all hours on all routes, we will return to the “service standards” methodology for evaluating whether routes should have additional operating periods. This methodology purports to establish the customers gained per dollar expended and balances this value between competing service change proposals.
The TTC claims that the value is dimensionless and, therefore, not subject to inflation even though it is self-evident that the amount of service provided per dollar goes down every year and, therefore, the cost of a given addition goes up while the passengers attracted stay the same. There is a flaw in their methodology that has not yet been publicly acknowledged, and the supposed lack of variation in the screening value is caused by changes in the way it has been calculated. This will become a major issue in future service planning as the “formula” purports to show what we should do with service.
Steve Munro 
The meeting has been called with a whole two days notice. Aside from the proposed fare increase, the route cuts are staggering.
See also spacing Toronto.
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Steve I thought I would mention that Karen Stintz has confirmed that staff have recommended a 10 cent fare hike if the TTC cannot meet their budgetary requirements. Citynews has a piece about it.
What is the TTC thinking!? Ridership is up but there is a theoretical maximum as to what people will pay in order to ride the TTC. Its $3.00 now, I doubt people will pay very much more to ride the TTC. I mean if the TTC starts raising fares again ridership will inevitably go down. People are not going to pay more than 3 dollars for service that is lackluster at best and not only that but its becoming increasingly expensive to the point where low income people may not even be able to afford to ride it. I wonder though, if they do raise cash fares by 10 cents what will they do with passes? Any idea Steve? Should we expect a ten dollar rate hike in the price of metropasses?
Did the TTC not post a surplus this year, was that not intended to be used in order to balance the books?
With that in mind, what are your thoughts on the matter of a potential fare hike?
Steve: Note to readers — this comment was left before I wrote the post to which it is now attached.
The cash fare is not going up. I support now, and have always supported in the past, small regular fare increases to avoid the shock effect of big jumps like last year’s 25-cent jump.
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I live next to a supermarket, movie theater, and a whole bunch of restaurants. I don’t need to worry about that stuff. But my position sometimes requires me to stay late at the office so if I do need to leave late, I always plan ahead on when I’m leaving. Sure, service after 7pm is not that great (every 30 minutes) but it is reliable and fast, and there is very good ridership on this route. The bus ride from my office (427 and Highway 7) to my home (close to Highway 7 and Weston Road) takes only 15 minutes. I’d say that it is pretty good service. Not frequent, but pretty reliable and well used. There are other services in the area too but they usually cut out at either 7pm or 10pm as there simply isn’t anybody who takes these buses past that time.
Face it, having service at all periods of the day is nice, but when most buses are spending their service completely empty, something has got to give. But I do expect some service to be retained on several routes as there has been significant improvements on some routes. One of my friends who takes the 78 St Andrews bus says that there is good ridership during the weekday evening and weekends, he expects weekend late evening service to be cut as he claims he is the only person who takes this bus at those times. If anything, RGS was a decent experiment on which routes need additional service outside of its normal hours.
On a side note, Steve, I have issues with the new layout of the postings, which now appear to be in a tree format rather than the linear format previously. It gets annoying trying to track down new posts related to this subject. Sure, you want to keep the discussion and topics organized but I find it to be a bit of a headache inducing exercise. My 2 cents, of course.
Steve: I enabled threading by request of readers who complained about following multiple interleaved conversations. Are you just browing, or using an RSS reader? I suspect RSS will make your life easier if you are not already using that.
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I’ve found the page detailing the proposed fare increase (yuck) as well as a list of routes proposed to be cut in September 2011. For the most part, most of the routes which benefited from RGS will also maintain most of the service increases except some routes which actually lose service compared to before RGS took effect:
5 Avenue Road – Loses All Weekend Service
61 Avenue Road North – Loses Sunday Late Evening service.
135 Gerrard – Loses weekday late evening service.
30 Lambton – Loses weekend late evening service.
162 Lawrence Donway – Loses midday service
56 Leaside – Loses service on Eglinton on Sundays
167 Pharmacy North – Loses all off peak service, rush hours only.
80 Queensway – No service east of Humber Loop (no connection to Keele Station)
86 Scarborough – 86D branch has no Midday service.
60 Steeles West – 60D branch only has rush hour service.
94 Wellesley – West of Yonge Street loses Sunday Late Evening service.
98 Willowdale-Senlac – Loses service on Willowdale on Weekends
For the most part, most of the improvements seem to be kept. For example, the 78 St Andrews service loses only Sunday Late Evening service. The 169 Huntingwood service is still retaining a good portion of its off peak service except for Sunday Service. A shocker is the 55 Warren Park route, formerly rush hours only, now only losing Sunday late evening service (is it that busy??!!?). Some routes like the 134 Progress, 71B Runnymede to Industry, the 53A to Staines Road (with its extension to Morningside Heights), and 11 Bayview to Steeles don’t seem to be affected at all.
The worst casualties appear to be 5 Avenue Road (essentially no weekend service), 80 Queensway (I think the connection to Keele Station is critical, unless they interline with 66 Prince Edward again at all times), and 94 Wellesley west of Yonge (ok, only Sunday Late Evenings but this bus used to be quite busy during those times, given U-of-T was my alma mater). But the TTC has all of the numbers and it sees something we cannot quite see ourselves.
It does appear that the TTC is maintaining its minimum 30-minute headway standard so we are in the right direction on that. Still, I maintain that a large chunk of RGS still survives and therefore this is a decent pruning and not a massive cut. Also, as long as the resources saved from these cuts are recycled back into the system then I believe that these cuts are worthwhile. If the resources saved simply disappear then it now becomes a broken promise to maintain service.
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The TTC is proposing a $5 increase on all monthly passes, including student passes. That works out to… let’s see… $60 a year. Apparently TTC riders have more money lying around than drivers do.
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I am not a fan of the fare increase.
In Ford’s defence however, I can mention that the monies gathered from the vehicle registration tax were not earmarked for transit or road construction, but rather the city’s own bottom line, whereas the TTC fare increase goes to the TTC alone. I can also mention that a vehicle registration tax, combined with the fare increase (face it, there are residents who both take the TTC and have a car) would disproportionally hit a significant number of users. And imagine those who require two cars AND taking transit.
However, levying the fare increase AND removing the vehicle registration would appear to disproportionally hit transit users. If Ford and Stinz is so unhappy about the fare increase he should fight harder to make sure the increase does not take place. Maybe increase cash fares but don’t increase the cost of tokens or metropasses.
We’ll see what happens but there is already a stench of a broken promise looming on the horizon.
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Totally unrelated to the topic so feel free to delete it once you’ve read it but: did we lose the link to be able to subscribe to a specific entry’s comments again? I can’t find it.
I can manually create these links but it’s really annoying.
Steve: Ooops. There was a Word Press update.
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“Ford is unhappy with the proposed fare increase, and was quite clear that he wishes to avoid it.”
Presumably Ford is fine with service cuts.
It’s an interesting question: whether people are willing to pay more to get better service, or whether they prefer increasingly-useless service at the same price?
The optics of fare increase plus service cuts is bad enough for the Mayor to recognize that it’s bad.
Steve: These cuts are being sold as services that are used by so few they won’t be missed. The problem, of course, is that you can only make these “easy” cuts once. Will your service be next?
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What hypocrisy. Rob Ford said “No service cuts”, but it turns out service will be cut on many routes, on some routes quite severely. He said “No tax increases” but TTC fares are going up. And this is just the start – in 2012, after a year of no revenue increases (thanks to his property tax freeze and other tax cuts) and increasing costs (fuel, inflation, negotiated wage increases), there will be even deeper cuts to come. This is what an “essential service” looks like?
Even more disturbing was Stintz’ comment (I’m paraphrasing) that “uneconomical” routes are the first to go. How does an essential service still have to make an economic case for itself? Do we hold things like garbage collection or policing or ambulance service to such a standard? This sounds more like Mark Towhey (Rob Ford’s strategist)’s vision of cutting all subsidized routes and paring down the TTC strictly to a small, profitable inner shell.
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I had a grin when I read this on the Star’s website:
“Toronto-Danforth Councillor Paula Fletcher said she would not have voted to eliminate the car registration fee if she had known transit riders would be paying more.”
“In my ward, 50 per cent of people use transit,” she said. “It looks like public transit is coming up short.”
Steve: All those Councillors who chose not to rock the boat early in the Mayor’s term have a lot to answer for, and they can start by fighting his budget.
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The whole tenor of the current discussion seems backwards to me.
Just today I saw in Metro a snide comment about the TTC because some city in China opening up more subways in one day then the whole TTC system. The tenor of many discussions about how others are doing stuff and the TTC can’t seems to come from the idea that the whole blame for nothing being done is on the TTC itself. But if the government pays for it all, its simple. Here, spending like that would be seen as being disrespectful to the taxpayers.
What I find most worrying is the Mayor equating a fare increase with a crisis. Although most people will initially be happy he doesn’t like a fare increase, what will be cut to not have a fare increase? It all looks a bit manufactured to me. First thing Monday morning, announce you can’t stand a proposed fare increase. Then ride in with solutions to the crisis, solutions that maybe arn’t being thought through completely by riders because they fear a fare increase.
What else is on the chopping block?
The new streetcars?
It reminds me of the manufactured education crisis under the Harris regime.
Meanwhile, the subsidy from the city has fallen. Regardless of the spin involved, that means the city is paying less into TTC operation now then it wanted to last year. With that decrease, there is less operating budget to spend….no ifs or buts. Who cares if it was spent last year. Put it in now and there is less of a need for cuts or a fare increase. But, that would be “disrespectful to the taxpayers.”
And as much as some would like to spin those service cuts as minimal, just exactly how are those people who work until 11, because much of our service industry wants things until then, supposed to get home now? We can’t all live near a blue line or the subway. That is a service cut. And Ford said, there would be no service cuts.
Even the left wing discussion of the fare increase being about the same as the vehicle registration tax misses the point. The TTC has to be payed for by somebody and the costs are going up. So, either we have a fare increase, or we have an increase in what government (ie. all of us combined) put into the budget, or there are cuts. As there is going to be no tax increase in this city again, where home owners pay less tax then other people for the equivalent home, there is no hope of an increased % of the operating budgets coming from the city. So either there are cuts or a fare increase. Nice little squeeze play – choose to pay more or choose to cut something, all the while not increasing the 3rd option, the one that every other major transit system uses and thus looks like they are doing something.
There are days when I despair of how we can’t even seem to connect the simplest of dots in a picture.
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Service on my TTC-operated YRT route (105 Dufferin North) is being cut. How much say does YRT have in this? No other YRT routes have been cut this year.
Steve: The service cut is only on Sunday late evenings when there is no service north of Steeles already.
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The Toronto Star has a Google Map up with pins indicating the subway stations where each of the affected routes feed into. There are an awful lot of clusters at places like Scarborough Town Centre, Kennedy, Don Mills, York Mills, Royal York, etc. I wonder if the pro-Ford members of council in those areas are going to give any push back on the service cuts, or if they accept it meekly because they want access to power, or simply don’t care because their voters don’t ride buses like losers downtown. Ah well, the voters in those areas have spoken, so now they face the consequences. I feel sorry for the people who voted against Ford, but now there should be no doubt how he feels about the poor who must take the TTC in outer 416.
It also presents an interesting dilemma for Ford: how can he justify a subway through Scarborough if it can’t even support so many bus routes on evenings and weekends? I notice none of the streetcar routes have service cuts, which is surprising given how unpopular they supposedly are.
I liked your comments on CityNews at 6 about how this doesn’t translate to better service during rush hour because the vehicles just aren’t there. I think Ford just blew a whole bunch of goodwill out the door with this move. How he can justify cuts to 48 route as “not major” is going to be fun to watch. I can only imagine what we have in store for 2012.
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To be honest… I really could care less about the fare increase. I think we just need to schedule them so that the element of surprise is eliminated.. but regardless, it’s happened before and it’ll happen again.
It’s the route cuts that really bug me. It’s kind of funny that 94 Wellesley is to lose service when it was to be a part of the 10 minute network.
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Personally, I do not believe any service cuts are worthwhile. If you want to build a transit system that people will use on a consistent basis you need to provide service that is convenient for them.
Cutting certain routes to rush hour only further marginalizes the working class, poor, racialized groups, women and young people. Not everyone works 9 to 5 and those who currently rely on off peak hour service on routes that have been reduced to rush hour only will find it difficult to get to work, school, doctors appointments or to shop for groceries. Public transit is not just dollars and cents but it effects people ability to participate in society. Dismantling the mediocre transit network we have further marginalizes marginalized groups and makes it difficult for them to do basic things that are necessary to function in modern day society. So no, these service cuts are not worthwhile.
To add insult to injury fares are going up. We have to pay more for even more worthless service. Those who can afford to drive will do so. What about those who cannot afford to drive? What are they supposed to do?
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I have operated Warren Park several times as soon as and about 8 months after the service increases and ridership was fervent right up to the end of service. The 55 should have had full service years ago.
Ridership on Forest Hill easily justifies weekday service to 10pm, and weekend service to at least 9pm. This is again from my own observations while operating the route.
If Mr. Ford is keen on making the TTC essential, than it should be essential to provide service within x metres of all households and businesses in the city for 19-20 hours every day, regardless of how many or how few people use it. You would never see the fire dep’t stop serving one particular area after 10pm on weekdays and after 7pm on weekends because there aren’t enough fires. I know this is apples and oranges, but maybe we should start looking at transit service with the same respect as fire, police, and EMS.
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I agree 100%. The majority of us who use TTC also pay Toronto property taxes & fees, which means we are not only paying our share of taxes to use a fraction of public roads compared to the average motorist’s footprint, but we are also making the roads more efficient for motorists by taking ourselves out of the roads and into the subway, or decreasing our footprint by getting into a bus or streetcar. We also pay more than our fair share in increased healthcare costs due to smog. On top of that, we pay a fee to use TTC infrastructure while motorists get to clog up the roads at the transit user’s expense.
I’m sick of policies that fail to recognize the subsidies afforded to people who choose to commute alone in a car by transit users. So much for respect.
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I asked Vice-Chair Peter Milczyn during the afternoon budget committee in Committee Room 1 (when he stepped out) and he played it like it was an increase that hasn’t been done in years and only metropasses and no raises to cash fares. His attitude seemed like he thought it was nothing (the fare hike), I didn’t ask him about the service cuts.
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Remember that the TTC gets a subsidy. If there is a fare increase, the subsidy is potentially less. (I say potentially because it is a little more complicated. There also may be fewer riders which might affect the fare/subsidy balance.) However, to the extent that the subsidy can be reduced, the fare increase, like the vehicle registration fee, does go into general revenues. A fare increase that maintained all service levels would meet your argument, but the current situation most likely does not.
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It’s still potentially less than the increase for families who have no car and use metropasses. A family of 4 with two teenagers will see a $240/year increase. A family that has a car and a pass probably shares the pass, or uses the car when everyone needs to go somewhere. I’m also not sure how many families have a car *and* use metropasses. In many cases it’s cheaper to use tokens.
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Steve — how much would the proposed service cuts translate to in terms of its contribution to the operating subsidy? Would be great to understand what the ‘costs’ are that would be incurred to maintain service.
Barring social and financial need for reasonable transit fares (which arguably could be offset with a ‘personal’ taxation subsidy), what could a fare structure look like if we maintained service as-is? We collectively pay indirectly through other forms of taxation for the service we get now. We should have line of sight to the ‘real’ costs of what service we demand — especially as we’ve stated service improvements as a key criterion for enticing public transit modal choice. If keeping the service meant a $0.25, $0.50 or $1.00 increase (accounting for reduced ridership), what service levels would we riders really demand to match our preference for the ‘right’ fares?
The approach proposed above is built on the premise any increase in marginal costs for transit _should_ be matched with proportional cost increases for other mode choices (read: personal vehicle registration tax) to maintain a modal choice-neutral decision….. despite previous decisions by this Council to take the opposite approach.
Steve: The TTC claims that the savings from these cuts will amount to $7-million in 2011. Since that’s a 9-month saving, it’s probably an annualized value of around $10m. They also claim that they will plough back that saving into service elsewhere, so it’s not a “saving” from a budgetary point of view. Only a way to fund a small amount of new service by plucking the low-hanging fruit. It’s a small, one-time saving that cannot be repeated next year, but which perpetuates the idea that there is fat or “gravy” to be found everywhere.
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Everyone goes on how Toronto is a car city and car drivers got a good deal out of the new budget. But what I don’t get is how transit cuts don’t make bigger news than they do, considering Toronto is a transit city in many ways.
Even in the deep suburbs, yes Etobicoke, and Scar, well over 20% of commuters use transit to get to work. In fact in most areas it is closer to 30%. Even if a voter does not use transit, chances are their kids use it, etc.
In fact I would say most homes be it apartments or single family have members in them that use transit.
I know in Laval, Quebec something like 45% of households have someone who uses transit. I would bet Toronto is even higher.
So how does transit get a bad deal all the time and hatred from tax payers, when it probably is used by most residents in the city?
I remember the TTC posted stats one year that said something like 65% or 70% of Toronto residents use transit at least once a month.
Steve: The TTC suffers from hatred by those who do not use it, and resentment by those who do for what they regard as inferior service. Any political appeal to the idea that transit wastes money falls on fertile ground either way.
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Steve, are you going to make a table based summary of routes being cut? I am keen on doing this myself and am wondering if I should share it here when done, or, if you’ll have beat me to the punch.
Steve: Look at the end of the updated article.
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I am impressed at the amount of pre-RGS service that is being retained. It really shows the gains that can be made by proactively providing service.
Steve: I am not sure you are reading the table correctly. Everything listed there is a coming service cut. Where a 2008 headway is shown, this is a service that existed before RGS that is to be cut at the end of March 2011. I have not shown the services that remain in operation.
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Sounds like a tax off the motorists, paid for by courtesy of a new “hidden” tax imposed on the transit rider.
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People will pay more for improved service- that is, when fare increases go hand in hand with service improvements.
It sounds like the exact opposite scenario here- price up, service down.
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Not too often that I agree with Stephen, but I find the threading to be irritating as well. RSS is a mystery to me. Could you please explain how to set it up. Don’t get too confident Stephen. It probably won’t happen again
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You have to be a complete moron to not have seen this coming, if she had been paying attention in council she would have heard a number of questions regarding this exact possibility happening…of course Ford’s response was that the car tax was what was being discussed and that when they got to the budget they’d discuss the budget…and if she can compartamentalize that much – that discussing how much money is collected is not related to budget discussions…then Toronto-Danforth should count itself lucky that she has come to the realization now…it’ll be even more surprising when she realizes in 4 years that the reason everyone has left her ward because the transit sucks.
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Tell me something, why wont people pay more than $3? As far as i am concerned, 3$ is a steal to get around Toronto. Fuel and electricity has gone up considerably yet TTC fares barely move. TTC uses these resources to move people so transit riders should start paying $4 and then implement a 5 year fare freeze on fares. I take the TTC 3 times a week and drive the rest of the time. As I stated to you Steve before in other issues, I don’t mind paying a toll to use the DVP and Gardiner and I even support a parking tax of 100$ per spot a year, which in turn would raise $320 million a year for TO. These figures are legit. The loss of zone fares has hurt the TTC’s revenue stream and hence every year we talk about doom and gloom for our TTC. This revenue is needed for future capital costs regardless and nickel and diming TO businesses and property taxpayers all the time just doesn’t cut it anymore. I am willing to Pay $4 to ride the TTC. I am not rich by the way but if it improves our infrastructure and transit with this extra revenue than I am prepared to pay.
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Out of curiosity, if the TTC is made an “essential service” does that have any other standing in law as far as fairness of service etc. Just thinking about what has been done with the handicapped/stop announcement/elevator side of things in the legal system.
I’m thinking specifically about previous court cases about providing services (fire, water, police, health) – and certain service levels. I would assume there is some american case law with regards to access to vehicles based on race…I guess the question is could a case be made that tax payers are being discriminated based on where they live? Could the city be forced by the courts to mandate a certain service level for all citizens? Either time and/or distance based.
Steve: Being “essential” has nothing to do with being “available” or “accessible”. This is as much about union bashing as it is about service.
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I have been doing some number crunching with your list. Am I correct in interpreting “evening” as meaning the same cut applies during both the early and late evenings?
Steve: Yes. “Evening” includes both early (from 7 pm) and late (from 10 pm) periods.
If so, I come up with the following numbers (vehicles removed vs. % of the Feb 2011 buses in service at that time of day):
M-F Midday: 12.5 buses (1.5%) removed
M-F Early Evening: 2.5 buses (1.5%) removed
M-F Late Evening: 49.5 buses (10%) removed
Sat. afternoon: 21.5 buses (2.7%) removed
Sat. early evening: 30.5 buses (5.2%) removed
Sat. late evening: 61 buses (15.6%) removed
Sun. afternoon: 26 buses (4.0%) removed
Sun. evening: 41.5 buses (8.8%) removed
Sun. late evening: 73.5 (20.1%) removed
(This includes the two summer-only routes, but doesn’t include early evening service reductions on the 43B route where the effect was unclear.)
Steve: One correction:
M-F Early Evening: 16 buses (2.2%) removed
I think some of those percentage reductions are low enough that you could argue they’re fairly marginal (though obviously not to those riders that would be impacted). But the percentage impact on the late evening service surprised me — 10% M-F, 15% Sat., and 20% Sun.
I find it interesting that we are only seeing route eliminations in this list. Normally we would see a mixture of total removals of service and headway reductions. It makes me wonder whether this is political (more outcry over the removal of service than more subtle increased headways) or technical (no fat to cut on other routes without making service so unattractive it would result in a de facto elimination). Or, is it simply that the Mayor’s office told TTC staff that they needed to find $xx-million of “savings” somewhere “by next Monday”, so, pressed for time, staff went straight to a performance list and chopped from the bottom until reaching the magic number?
Also interesting that (likely because of the reliance on outright cuts rather than more surgical service reductions) the streetcar network is untouched (and of course the subway network).
Steve: The headways on routes that are being cut are generally already 30 minutes. Going to wider headways in effect is abandonment of service because most people will not wait for a vehicle that runs infrequently.
As for service cutbacks on busier routes, that won’t work because the political agenda is to talk about “underutilised routes” that don’t have much service. If we start trying to find all the periods when route-by-route a vehicle can be cut here and there, it doesn’t fit the spin. Also, the TTC has so much trouble running reliable headways, trimming “around the edges” will produce even worse service than they run today. Stats about average vehicle utilization mask many problems with bunching and short turns.
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TTC fares in 1986 were about $1. Inflation would put that at about $1.60 today, a 60 percent rise. cash fare is now $3, a 200 percent rise since 1986. So the rate of increase of price outpaced the rate of inflation by a factor of 3 and 1/3. Meanwhile service levels – measurable by ridership – has gone up by less than 10 % (~480 million from ~440 million. Still seem like a good deal?
Steve: The token fare in 1986 was 80 cents. This doubled to $1.60 by 1996 and spent the next 14 years getting up to $2.50. The biggest rate of increase corresponded with the cutbacks in transit funding of the early 1990s that have never been reversed. As for ridership, there was a huge drop in ridership in the 1990s from which the system has finally recovered.
It is worth noting that the cost of providing service will go up with inflation and other cost pressures somewhat independently of the amount of service. Fuel costs more whether you are running 500 buses or 1500. When riding falls, even if the system cuts back on service levels, it will be much harder to reduce the cost per unit of service provided. If anything, the cost per rider may go up if service is maintained at policy levels.
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See transitstop.net for the numbers.
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I am part of one such family. We own one vehicle and also get a monthly Metropass. For the most part, I use the Metropass to get to and from work, while my wife walks or takes the car to get around with the kids. There are at least ten other people at my work who also have both a car and a Metropass, so it’s probably more common that you think. For my family, the Metropass is the urban equivalent of the suburban family’s second car (except that the pass is much, much cheaper than actually owning and operating that second car).
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The transit news lately has been exceptionally disheartening. Is there any way at all to fight these changes or are we just doomed to four years of this?
Steve: Much depends on mobilizing politicians, media and citizenry to be well-informed and fight for better transit. We have been spoiled by several years of a pro-transit environment.
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Steve,
Is there a way to get counts soon of the evening ridership of these routes being listed to cut? Or would I have to wait for the TTC to provide the information.
Steve: Only the TTC has this info. Although it has been cited in some press commentary, I do not know if a detailed list will be included in the TTC’s budget presentation on Jan. 12.
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Instead of service cuts, why not more interlining of 2-3 shorter routes into one continuous longer route guaranteed to have justifiable numbers of commuters to serve? 56 Leaside and 51 Leslie come to mind; as does 5 Avenue Rd and 61 Avenue Rd North; 74 Mt Pleasant and 103 Mt Pleasant North – a single run from Lawrence Stn to Union Stn via Jarvis St would be nice; 117 Alness and 105 Dufferin North; 120 Calvington and 108 Downsview (Arleta branch); 10 Van Horne, 169 Huntingwood and 130 Middlefield; and especially 78 St Andrews, 115 Silver Hills and 122 Graydon Hall. I’d also consider permanently replacing 503 Kingston Rd with the 22A Coxwell since the latter seems to run more often and reliably anyhow. Anything’s better than having two near empty buses show up at the subway terminals during off-peak hours.
I echo what was said here earlier about keeping the 55 Warren Pk bus, which is essentially a short-turn branch of the Jane bus. It’d be better to have all 30 Lambton buses route through the Warren Park loop during off-peak hours, since that bus never has full passenger loads anyway. Good way to make the TTC operate more efficiently, minimize transfers, minimize redundant overlapping of service, reduce smog, reduce number of drivers needed and thus create $avings.
Steve: You may have noticed that some of the vehicle savings include “.5”, and if you looked at the TTC Service Summary you would know that many routes are interlined already. These include Avenue Road & Leaside, Avenue Road North & Leslie, Graydon Hall & Silver Hills, Middlefield & Milner (there are others, but these are the ones you mentioned).
The TTC has looked at hookups of the Mt. Pleasant services before, and claims that riders from the north end of the route want to get to Yonge/Eglinton, not down to St. Clair. Also at some times, service north of Eglinton is better than south, and your scheme would require more buses. Service down Jarvis would be net new on the system, and would include a few km of mileage from St. Clair to Bloor through an area where there would be little demand.
Alness only runs M-F during the day, and on headways that don’t generally match with Dufferin North.
Calvington has much worse service than Downsview and interlining, even of only one branch of the 108, would require a net increase of vehicles.
Van Horne runs only in the peak period and service is otherwise provided by the Huntingwood bus.
As for the 503 and 22A services, you forget that the 503 is a peak only service. The real problem the TTC has is that once upon a time, there was frequent service on both the 502 Downtowner and 503 Kingston Road. Now both run infrequently and often have cars missing. They would be far better off to have one route with service that showed up regularly. Midday service on the 502 is a joke and is only half what Kingston Road sees evenings and weekends with the 22A. This is a problem of crappy service planning, not of interlining. In any event, I don’t see what this has to do with pairs of buses showing up at Coxwell Station.
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Though I think it’s a good idea to review passenger loads and adjust service levels (up or down), one needs to have some confidence in the figures and have very little in the TTC’s. If the TTC wants to (or is forced to?) make reductions in service they would get much more support if they told us the figures they were using and how they got them. The other problem is that if service is fairly frequent (at least every 10? minutes) it does not matter too much if the schedule is not adhered to; if it is every hour it certainly does and the TTC is extremely poor at maintaining schedules/headways.
In short, I think that schedules (or headways) can, even should, be adjusted but then the promised service must be delivered.
Steve: Even on frequent routes, the TTC could “manufacture” capacity simply by better managing the service on the street, but they seem more interesting in making excuses for not doing so. It will be interesting to see how this stance butts up against the concept of “customer service”.
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It is interesting to read about the “horrible service” provided by the TTC. I have been touring the US since August on my boat and have visited many cities on the Great Lakes and inland rivers of the US. I am now in St. Petersburg FL. Many of the systems have an hourly bus service, if any at all, that runs from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. Monday to Saturday. God help you if you have to get somewhere on Sunday or after 8:00 p.m.
In many areas the downtown service is provided by a “trolley” which is a 30 foot bus that looks like an old Brill car with clerestory roof and slatted wooden seat on steel frames. They make the back seat of a school bus seem smooth.
Cleveland’s Rapid line runs every 20 minutes to the airport in rush hours with 10 minutes on the inner end Base service is 20 minutes everywhere. A fantastic service.. The Shaker lines run every 12 minutes rush and every 30 base.
Chicago runs a better service with a grid system of buses upon which a radial system of rapid transit is placed. None of the rapid lines run better than every 11 minutes out side the rush hour though.
New Orleans is stilling recovering from Katrina and the economic fallout from the off shore oil spill. It has lost about 200,000 people and is hurting. Their transit system has 4 light rail lines but they operate with 40 foot long cars that were either built in 1933 or built to look like they were built in 1922. They are high floor with a wheel chair lift that looks like the ones on the GO buses. The 1922 Pearly-Thomas cars do not have wheel chair lifts as the these are designated historical vehicles so much for the ADA.
In most places the amount of real estate given over to the private auto is frightening. In downtown St. Petersburg I would estimate that half of the land that is not roads is given over to parking cars, $3.00 for the day. They at least know how to build attractive parking garages and they do have commercial space at street level.
Pinellas County which includes St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tarpon Springs and Dunedin has just under one million people and occupies 108 square miles. To get from Tarpon Springs to St. Petersburg takes 3 hours on two different buses and 2 fares, no transfers that I could find. GO’s bus service to many surrounding areas is more frequent and faster than this.
While you have to fight for better service you should also be thankful for what you have and keep Ford from reducing Toronto to the level of most US cities.
The other item that everyone should be fighting for is to get GO to start thinking about non-FRA, TC compatible equipment since they own so much of their rights of way. This is the only way that GO will be able to provide more service within the 416 area. They will also need the GO subway between King and Queen. I know the the study on electrifying GO said that it could not be done with 1500 or 3000 volts dc but I rode on and 11 car South shore train that uses simple single wire overhead on span wires through Michigan City and they used to run huge “Little Joe” electric locomotives along the same line. I think that they were given a requirement to find that only 25,000 volts ac would work.
Fight the fight and stop Ford’s idiotic policies.
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Steve said: “The TTC has announced a proposed fare increase of 10 cents in the adult fare with comparable changes to some other fare classes to be effective February 1, 2011. Together with this increase, a large number of service cuts to lightly-used periods of operation on many routes will be implemented at the end of March.
“Oddly enough, the TTC says that it will take several months to identify routes requiring additional service, but had no trouble finding a three-page list of routes for cutbacks. We have often heard how the TTC could not improve peak period service due to its vehicle shortage, and it will be interesting to see which routes and periods actually benefit from these cuts”
I was also wondering about the amount of savings as they will only be reducing marginal costs and will not reduce the need for equipment which is capital. Perhaps now that all the streetcar lines are running with street cars again they will be able to use the buses freed up for better service in the rush hour.
Steve: It is claimed that these cuts will only save $7-million. As this is for 9 months, the annual saving is probably somewhere around $10m.
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