In the July 5th Globe and Mail, Stephen Wickens has a full-page article in which David Gunn slams the TTC, Metrolinx, and just about anyone else in sight for the looming disaster that passes for transit planning in Toronto. I agree with much he says, although we will obviously differ on the future of the streetcar system which Gunn would replace with a fleet of articulated buses.
What most interests me about this article will be the fallout, the debate, if any, at City Hall, and the degree to which Gunn’s advice is cherry-picked to support whatever argument anyone wants to make.
It’s also rather sad that this much-needed broadside against the state of planning in the GTA has taken so long to appear. Many of the issues have been debated on this blog and others, whatever our opinions on individual topics, while critical coverage in the mainstream press is hard to find.
Updated July 10, 2011 a 8:00 am:
While I concur with some of David Gunn’s comments, there are issues where he misses the mark, sometimes quite badly. Many have already weighed in through the comments thread, and here’s my take.
State of Good Repair
This phrase was added to the TTC’s lexicon by Gunn after a disastrous subway accident revealed how maintenance had been allowed to slip during a period of austerity in TTC budgets. It’s easy to pretend you can get by on less for a short period, but that always sets a new, lower base budget from which more cuts are inevitable. In time, organizational rot sets in and the sense of doing a job well is replaced by doing it cheaply, if at all.
The TTC has a huge 10-year capital budget containing billions in basic maintenance. While it’s fashionable to say TTC spending is out of control, one fact is inescapable. The subway isn’t brand new any more, and as it ages, major subsystems and even some structures need replacing. As Gunn says, this isn’t as sexy as announcing expansion projects. To this, I would add that maintenance does not afford the same opportunity for “stimulus” as new construction.
Over the years, the TTC budget has come to lump over 90% of its projects under the “SOGR” heading even though some of these are related to system expansion. The term is no longer meaningful, and the TTC needs to both correct its project categorization and develop a more finely-grained breakdown. This is not to say the money shouldn’t be spent, but the TTC risks having “SOGR” lose its urgency when an expensive pet project like station platform doors is lumped into this category.
Cost Recovery
Here I part company with Gunn. He decries the fall in farebox cost recovery from 84 to 70 percent (that’s only on operations, and almost none of the capital costs are recovered from fares). “You had a 350% rise in the deficit while ridership rose 15%”, says Gunn.
He’s wrong, and what’s worse he plays right to that block of Council who feel the TTC is a bloated organization ripe for cutbacks.
Back in 1990, when riding peaked at 460.4-million, the Commission was operating with a cost recovery of 67.8%. The total budget was $625.9-million, of which $100.9m was covered by Queen’s Park and $103.6m by Metro Toronto. The TTC was chaired by Lois Griffin, a Councillor from Etobicoke, and the Chief General Manager was Al Leach. Neither of these can be described as pinkos out to bankrupt the TTC and City with unwarranted service improvements.
The 1991 budget proposal had as its major objective “Provide better product to attract more riders” with initiatives in service quality and reliability, safety and security, accessibility and cleanliness. Sound familiar?
The preliminary estimate of budget growth for 1991 was expected to be $76.6m (12.2%) of which $44.0m came from inflation and $32.6m from improvements. This was trimmed back to about $60m to get down below a 10% overall increase. Subsidies would rise by about 9%, fares would rise 1.8% above inflation and some revenue from the Transit Improvement Fund (a nest egg from the 1990 sale, for $30m, of Gray Coach Lines) would combine to finance the 1991 budget.
It was not to be. In 1991, Ontario’s economy and TTC ridership fell off a cliff, and the losses didn’t stop for six years until riding bottomed out after more than 20% of that 1990 peak vanished. Over the past 15 years thanks to both economic recovery and an active investment in better service, the TTC surpassed its 1990 peak, but now serves a greater population and has a lower market share. It may be only 15% above the 1990 level, but ridership since the mid-90’s has grown by about one third.
Meanwhile, Queen’s Park walked away from fully sharing the operating subsidy, and the amount allocated to operations from the gas tax in 2010 was less than the subsidy paid 20 years ago. The City is forced to carry much of the subsidy, and that’s where the “350%” increase in the deficit comes from.
There is no “correct” level of subsidy, and the recovery factor varies immensely across Canada and North America. The level cannot be discussed without also considering service quality and market share. If a transit system operates only as a social service, the customer base is captive, headways will be wide and voters will overwhelmingly demand more facilities for roads and commuter rail, not for local transit.
Budget hawks will demand that cost recoveries rise, while advocates of lower fares will demand that they fall to finance fare freezes. Either way, once a system reaches a new “target” level, the same pressures of inflation and growing demand for service will remain, and we will be back at the debate over whether this should be financed from subsidies or fares. Political and economic fortunes change often enough that this process never stabilizes.
When I read my notes from the November 14, 1990 Commission meeting, it was amused that Chair Griffin spoke of the need for a five-year operational plan. Two decades later, the TTC still does not plan on this basis, and there is no strategy looking ahead beyond the most rudimentary projections of inflationary cost pressures.
Sheppard
David Gunn and I both have little but scorn for the Sheppard subway, a bauble thrown to Mel Lastman by Premier Mike Harris to pay off Mel for supporting the Megacity amalgamation. The extension of this subway proposed by Rob Ford is an even greater waste of money and focus in the transit system. I won’t belabour the point here.
Gunn says “North-south capacity on Yonge is the TTC’s big problem. So what are they doing? They’re planning extensions to feed the Yonge line.” I have already written about the follies in TTC subway planning whose premise is that vast, untapped capacity lies in the Yonge-University route if only we can spend a few billion on new signals, trains and station upgrades. They are betting the store that all of this will actually work, but that much-hyped new capacity cannot actually operate for at least a decade given the lead times on the work needed to make this possible. Meanwhile, the TTC continues to treat the “Downtown Relief Line” as a unwanted guest who won’t leave the party. This is deeply irresponsible, but TTC management and the political urge to build east-west lines in the suburbs trumps the needs downtown.
Spadina
The Spadina extension certainly has grandiose stations, and Gunn blames this on former chair Adam Giambrone. I hate to say this, but the desire for architectural innovation was born in the era when the streets were paved with gold, and politicians throughout the Spadina corridor didn’t want the “bathroom” stations of a basic subway. This was to be a showcase, and it was designed accordingly. Sadly, some of the innovation fell victim to cost cutting as design changes and “ooops” such as discoveries that water tables and other local geography had not been adequately explored in the preliminary design work of the Environmental Assessment.
Mixing Track Gauges
This has been discussed at great length before. I can argue both sides of the question of whether the Transit City routes should be TTC gauge or Standard gauge, and it’s not going to change anything.
The “Transit City” shops will be at Black Creek, while the “Legacy System” shops will be at Ashbridges Bay. The two networks would not have been connected, even in the most optimistic days of Transit City until long after both shops had been running for a decade or more (the link hinged on an unlikely extension of St. Clair 512 to meet the Jane LRT).
Eglinton
The question of an “LRT subway” on Eglinton is the subject of a separate thread on this site. I’m not thrilled with taking $2-billion from other projects and using it to buy Mayor Ford’s agreement to let Metrolinx build and bury the Eglinton line when it does not all need to be underground.
The quality of provincial planning shows clearly in the Weston Mt. Dennis segment where, as part of Transit City, underground construction simply wasn’t an option due to budget pressure. Now, it’s an integral part of the project.
Streetcars
My understanding of Gunn’s position (from conversations with Stephen Wickens) is that he is not opposed to streetcars per se but to the manner in which the fleet is being renewed. There is an assumption that the new cars will have bugs galore and that they will be susceptible to collision damage. However, the Bombardier Flexity model is already running in many cities, and it’s not as if we are getting car number 1 off the line. For the first time in decades, Toronto is getting a new fleet based on international experience, not on fantasies of economic development for an Ontario-centric car building industry. The CLRV may be a robust car, but Ontario managed only one small sale.
As for accessibility, it would not matter whether we were buying 100% low floor, or 70% cars (such as the Minneapolis model whose mockup was displayed at Dundas Square). “Low floor” does not mean that there is no step, and any vehicle that loads away from the curb will always need a ramp. In places, most of the height difference can be addressed with “bump outs” from the sidewalk as on Roncesvalles Avenue, or with safety islands, but in others, the ramp will be essential.
As to streetcar service versus buses, Gunn proposes a one for one replacement of the new LRVs with articulated buses while ignoring comparisons of capacity, and the fact that buses cannot manoeuvre through traffic as well as streetcars. He does not address existing capacity shortfalls on the streetcar routes, or the growing demand that new development and higher residential densities downtown will bring.
Rockets
The introduction of the Toronto Rocket unit trains has triggered many added costs on the TTC system including carhouse modifications and a need to buy more cars than would have been needed (and were planned) in a fleet based on the standard married pair design. Claims for reliability of the new fleet have yet to be tested, but one factor is already clear. The TTC has not lowered the spare ratio for TR trains compared to the T1’s that preceded them and there is no capital saving from supposed higher reliability.
Signals
The TTC is working on projects to replace and improve signalling on the Yonge-University line as discussed elsewhere on this site. There are overlapping projects, and the need to maintain a basic block signal system for trains that do not have Automatic Train Control adds to the complexity and cost. Claims that the subway will eventually get down to 90 second headways are wildly optimistic, and such operation depends on many factors and a lot more money. See previous discussion of the Downtown Relief Line.
Gunn’s complaint is that the TTC does not have the expertise to manage the signal system implementation, and he worries that other necessary maintenance on the line will be pushed aside to allow the signal installation top priority. My concern lies more with the unreasonably rosy expectations of the eventual benefits and of the budget pressures that all of the add-ons (more trains, more storage space, station expansions, spin-off effects on Bloor-Danforth) will have within the larger context of TTC system funding.
Fragmentation
The fragmentation of authority (or direction) between the TTC itself, the Mayor’s Office and Metrolinx is a big problem. Take a transit system demoralized by accusations (some deserved) of incompetence, stir in a doctrinaire Mayor whose idea of consultation and planning is a “mandate” that grows more and more stale by the day, and a Metrolinx that meets rarely in public, and you have a foul brew. Lots of finger pointing. Lots of grand schemes that bear little resemblance to existing plans or to each other. No actual progress.
Meanwhile, the day-to-day problems of providing service and maintaining the system go unwatched.
Gunn is right when he talks about partial uploading of the TTC, such as taking only the subway system. Aside from the jurisdictional problems and fare management issues, we have the basic fact that Queen’s Park does not want even greater problems with its own budget. The subway may be “profitable” depending on how you allocate the fare revenue and gerrymander the books, but it has billions in outstanding requirements for capital maintenance, and expansions will never have the cost recovery of the old, downtown part of the network.
Meanwhile, higher subsidy costs would stay with the City for the surface network, and there would be no incentive to run good service feeding into a subway system the City could no longer profit from.
Labour Costs
Gunn talks about absenteeism, and the need for 400 to 500 extra staff to cover for those who call in sick. This is an irresponsible statement. First off, all organizations have absentees, but one whose product simply doesn’t hit the streets without someone to drive it cannot simply absorb an absence into the workload. Second, the very nature of the front line jobs makes “getting by” through sickness less possible than with a quiet desk job in an office. Is TTC absence out of control? Maybe, but let’s have some numbers comparing it to other industries with comparable working conditions.
Cleanliness
Yes, platforms and trains do not get cleaned as frequently as they did when Gunn was CGM. Janitorial staff are always the first to go when organizations look for cutbacks that don’t affect front line service, and they’re one of the hardest groups to replenish.
TTC’s new “Station Manager” program has a few people in place who should be wandering around checking up on problems, but their work is complicated by the glacial pace of repairs where stations are under maintenance. Repair projects run months over their advertised deadlines, and advertised completion dates are routinely updated to the point they have no credibility. A Station Manager can’t make that work complete any sooner if this type of delay is routinely tolerated.
As for the trains, the simple fact is that two of the TTC’s car washers have been out of service for over a year while expansion projects at Greenwood and Wilson got in the way. Some trains are filthy, and they get washed only when they are cycled to a wash track that actually works.
This situation is an example not just of lousy planning, but of an acceptance of a far less than adequate standard of maintenance. What other work just doesn’t get done that we can’t see? Why does nobody care that if wash track “A” is out of service, a new task to shuffle trains regularly and frequently to location “B” should be part of the project plan?
Recently, TTC Chair Karen Stintz reported on her daughter’s reaction to the new TR train on display at Davisville for Doors Open Toronto. “They’re so clean!”.
The wash tracks are supposed to return to service imminently. Let’s hope that they actually get used, and that the grime on the fleet will actually come off.
Fiddling While Rome Burns
Gunn was quoted as saying that his presentation to TTC staff, Chair Stintz and Vice-Chair Peter Milczyn provoked no response: “There was no reaction, no questions. … I think they’re headed for a cliff, while people talk about new uniforms.”
Gunn’s comments (and there were far more than could fit in Stephen Wickens’ article) deserve debate whether we agree with them or not. In coming budget debates, we will hear calls for TTC cutbacks, and the effect on service in 2012 and beyond will be grim.
The combined effect of a 10% cut in City funding, no additional money from Queen’s Park, a pending labour settlement, and rising diesel fuel prices will require at least $100-million, probably more, in new revenue. The TTC is considering both a fare increase and cuts to the service standards, not to mention a rollback of the Ridership Growth Strategy improvements. This is outrageous, but almost inevitable in the fantasy world of budget planning under the Ford administration.
Steve Munro 
Roman outlined a number of advantages LRVs have over artic buses. After his eight points, he mentions something that is not a numbered point that really should be: there is a significant number of people out there who will NEVER take a bus but will take a rail-based mode of transit.
I will add some numbers. LRVs have a higher capital cost, but their savings comes in lower operating and maintenance costs. Never forget that federal and provincial funding help tends to be available for the one-time capital cost, but is RARELY available for the year-after-year operating costs.
To compare the new LFLRVs (I will use the rounded $5 million per car) with the recent YRT/VIVA purchase of Novabus LFS Artics for VIVA operations…
Capacity numbers for LRVs can vary, but one Bombardier source for Flexities states 176 passengers (sitting and standing), while Novabus quotes 112. The YRT/VIVA purchase cost about $1 million per bus ($985 million with GST, but now there is the full HST if these were to be ordered today).
To compare apples to apples, one must multiply the bus cost by the capacity ratio (the LRV holds 57% more passengers) and also by the life expectancy ratio (LRVs are expected to last 30 years compared to 15 years for the bus). This brings the comparison of capital cost to $3.14 million for the buses compared to $5 million for LRVs.
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The decision to carry on with LRT technology for Eglinton on the basis that Team Ford MAY be voted out of office in 2014 so the line can then be reverted to a partial surface alignment seems to be an irresponsible gamble to me. When Rob Ford announced he would run for mayor there were many people who predicted his candidacy would be a distant long shot … but look where we are today. To try to predict the outcome of the 2014 mayoral race today is like predicting the weather on the day of the election in 2014. It just can’t be done. George W. Bush won two terms of office and Rob Ford could too (or his brother could run in his stead). What happens if he wins again? Or his replacement is just as keen on ‘subways?’ We’re stuck with an underground line built to a capacity below HRT at essentially the cost of an HRT line.
I think that David Gunn is right. If the plan is for Eglinton to run in a completely grade-separated alignment, it should use some kind of heavy rail technology. Betting the technology choice on a change of alignment midway through the project secondary to a shift in the political winds that is uncertain at best does not seem like much of a plan.
Steve: To be clear, I don’t think that the “change it back” strategy is one that has been actively embraced by Metrolinx, but it’s certainly an approach I would take considering that construction of the outer part of the line won’t occur until after the next election. Unfortunately, changes at Queen’s Park may make the entire question moot if transit funding generally suffers the same fate as it did under our last Tory administration.
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Mr. Gunn is a penny-pinching pragmatist and he served Toronto well during the Harris years. However, that same short-term improvement outlook has costed the TTC the ability to modernize as their needs continue to be outstripped by their funding. Improved cost recovery does nothing for the system unless it is at 100% or greater. If it were not for political pressure to keep fares down, I believe the TTC could raise prices by a quarter a year for the next 12 years to bring a cash fare to $5.00 in 2023. So long as cost pressures are kept below 5%, this would increase the farebox cost recovery, while reducing the need for an operational subsidy.
He correctly identified that “North-south capacity on Yonge is the TTC’s big problem.” But he by-passed the point that the TTC seems to have been trying to overload the Yonge line in order to gain funding for a DRL as critical to the nation’s economy. The more people that complain about overcrowding on Yonge means the more people willing to accept tax dollars being spent on a project that’s expected to have minimal new revenue generated.
On the Spadina extension it seems like the “visions of grandeur” statement relates to the near $200 million for the Vaughn City Centre Station.
I am one engineer outside the employ of Metrolinx that thinks a shift to standard gauge would benefit Toronto in the long run. Standard gauge opens the possibility to surface interlining with GO’s network and more importantly the Air-Rail Link. As we rebuild our surface LRT system, we could retool it to standard gauge until only the existing subways are Toronto gauge. Carhouses could also be rebuilt by moving 1 rail 60mm as the fleet composition changes. This Sept 11, marks 150 years since the Toronto Street Railway started using Toronto gauge. We could get rid of it over the next 50 years without the large capital outlays by standardizing with each incremental update. This would increase the resale value of Toronto streetcars and subway trains, as other municipalities would not require retooling for the cars to fit their network.
Steve: No, you could not “retool” the streetcar system. Vehicles need to be able to run over any route both for carhouse access, diversions and short-turns. Also, we don’t rebuild track one route at a time, but in sections. It has taken years to complete King, and Queen still has a few spots that are not to the current standard. The intersections will take at least 15 years to finish the changeover to modern standards because we started that process later. A gauge change is not going to happen.
Replacing streetcars with artics is very disingenuous, as he adds the cost of new storage and maintenance to the streetcar tab while looking only at the vehicle cost for buses. Of course buses are cheaper, but they aren’t cheaper to run.
Steve: He also proposes to replace vehicles 1:1 when the streetcars are close to 50% longer than the buses that would replace them. The TTC tried the same flawed analysis when it was looking at replacing streetcars in 1972.
On the Toronto Rockets, I think his fear will prove to be unfounded as people tend to seek alternative exits if the other is clogged. It also reduces people’s clustering for entry doors, as they can get on at any point on the platform and then move along the train to where they prefer.
Regarding signalling, it’s interesting that Mr. Gunn thinks “they don’t have a general superintendent knowledgeable in this area”. There are very few signal engineers out there, so I can believe it, but it would seem like this would have been a good piece of Contract Administration work to tender out.
I agree with the fragmentation statement that the TTC is a whole and shouldn’t be parcelled off into separate segments. I’d go farther and say uploading the TTC would solve many of the funding issues that Toronto has faced needing to use property taxes and user fees to cover everything beyond what the province or feds feel like handing out. There are lots of bumps in the process, but if handled right it could be a net gain for everyone.
Steve: Except for Queen’s Park who would now have a multi-billion dollar agency to fund, and a lineup of other local transit systems demanding that the province relieve them of transit costs too.
As for those crying for “any transit to be built, no matter what, just build it”, it would do well to remember the M25 London ring road that opened in 1986. Billions of pounds and decades of planning led to a 6-lane highway that increased congestion in the city from opening day. Poorly planned transit is worse than no transit for several reasons: (1) it precludes better service in that area; (2) it wastes billions that can’t be used elsewhere; (3) it creates the impression that transit is inefficient and not worthwhile;
I would completely disagree here. The halls of City Hall are littered with past transit plans that ran past elections. “Network 2011” was drawn up in 1985. After the Liberals’ fall, the NDP brought in the “Lets Move” plan. When the NDP fell to the Conservatives, and Mr. Harris chopped the plan down to the Sheppard and Mr. Gunn questioned the wisdom of funding a subway to nowhere when funds weren’t available for maintaining the current system. After that we had Transit City, which extended beyond the politician mandate. I would argue that we would be better served with 4 and 8 year plans that look to a future plan, but do not rely on creating a full system in one decade. That way we can build one or two elements needed for the system without getting into detailed design only to see the political spectrum shift and funding dry up. There has been no shortage in well intentioned plans, but they have not taken the political uncertainty into account and thus fallen. The new Transit EA process will help speed things up, but it also means more of a rubber stamp of public consultation rather than informed conversation with local people to build local transit solutions.
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So let’s summarize what we’ve got:
*LRT on the surface – bad (apparently causes congestion)
*LRT with combined underground and surface alignment – bad (apparently causes congestion)
*LRT with fully underground alignment – bad (not cost effective)
*LRT above ground/elevated – bad (noisy eyesore)
*Subway above ground/elevated – bad (noisy eyesore)
*Subway underground and at surface – bad (not really possible)
*Subway underground – bad (too expensive and projected demand in 30 years does not justify construction)
Buses on the surface – bad (causes congestion, some people won’t use buses, labour costs will be higher)
Do nothing option – bad (terrible gridlock)
So what are we left with?
Maybe Christopher Hume was right … He once wrote (perhaps 6 years ago, I’m not so sure) that the original proposal for an Eglinton West subway (from Allen to Black Creek) should have been from Dufferin to Bayview instead. Then we would be talking about extensions (to Jane and Don Mills, perhaps).
If we do build a subway under Eglinton today, the first phase would have to be at least from Black Creek to Don Mills.
The first phase of the Bloor-Danforth subway was built from Keele to Woodbine with the streetcars taking people the rest of the way. That was with provincial money and limited requirements (no need for elevators, 2nd exit, etc).
Despite what Gunn says about underground LRT I still think that the cost of underground subway construction would be higher. You still have to deal with longer and wider trains, therefore more excavation for larger station boxes, platform structures, two entrances, elevators, etc.
Regards, Moaz Yusuf Ahmad
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@Ray Lawlor, there is no need to predict the 2014 election to gain benefits from preserving the LRT techonology decision. If we look beyond the 2018 election, and the slim possibility of a third Ford term, there are two projects that would benefit from the LRT choice: West from Jane to Pearson and Northeast from Scarborough Civic Centre to Finch/Markham.
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@Peter Campbell
Um, Steve wasn’t the one who said anything about a ‘transit autocracy’, I did. Look carefully where the italics begin and where they end. I know with Steve’s style of inline responses I also sometimes need to look carefully to tell which text is from the commenter and which is a comment by Steve.
I wasn’t even proposing it realistically, just making a one-minute rhetorical point there: having the transit system being run by an endless catfight between Ford and Queen’s Park, makes handing unconditional authority over to Gunn (without even worrying about oversight, hence ‘autocracy’) look like a sane decision. I also wouldn’t mind having the people who run the streetcar system in Hiroshima come and run our system. Neither is actually going to happen.
The other issue with a ‘transit autocracy’ is that it would still have a large number of things that it needs to get other people to agree on. It is thus a mirage. Suppose Gunn decides to fix signal priority. Does he now need a ‘traffic autocracy’? What about a ‘zoning autocracy’ to stop developers from building neighborhoods that are impossible to serve efficiently by transit? Unless we run the entire city as a Singapore-style autocracy (unrealistic, so it’s useless to argue either for or against it) a very large number of people still have to agree on what to do. Nothing anywhere close to agreement is happening right now. The plan that’s on the table right now, exists simply due to the blind inertia of various bureaucratic and political forces. It is not an actual plan that a solitary human being might come up with, and everyone has serious objections to it of one sort or another.
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Steve: “No, that’s $1-million per bus”
Methinks I was being espeically stupid when I did my original sums…
Running with $1m for an articulated bus, capable of holding 90 people (based on HSR’s buses), that’s $11,000 per space. New streetcars: $417m for 204 vehicles, $2.04m per vehicle… each vehicle has capacity for ~200 (is this right??), making about $10,000 per space. Or roughly the same capacityal costs as a bus, but with higher operating costs.
Steve: The new streetcars are considerably longer than an articulated bus and have a greater capacity. The price of the 204 new streetcars is about $6-million each, although that includes a lot of extras (inflation, training, spare parts, warranty) that are added to the base price.
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Here is Karen Stintz’s reply in the Globe and Mail to David Gunn’s comments.
Apparently, he is also against modernizing the TTC’s fare payment system. He may just be against Presto and would rather go with an Open payment system. The article doesn’t specify.
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…and Steve is quoted in this Toronto Star article.
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I just got back from Ottawa, and if Gunn thinks replacing streetcars with articulated buses is a viable option in a crowded downtown core, I suggest he go visit and look for himself. Between the articulated and regular buses, the streets were constantly choked off. I can only imagine the chaos at Yonge and King/Queen/Dundas Streets as they try to weave in and out of traffic to pick up passengers. Of course, Ottawa does try to ameliorate that with dedicated bus lanes, but somehow I do not think that is in the cards with this administration.
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Ever since Transit City was unveiled, I’ve always tried my absolute damnest to be as pragmatic as humanly possible whaen it comes to Subways vs. Light Rail but now I just simply can’t help for the life of me to wonder if since the whole Eglinton LRT’s going to be underground that it might as well be a full subway. Gunn does make some good points on alot of things but he’s not 100 per cent right on everything. He did a lot of good things when he ran things in his various jobs during his career but when he was at Amtrak, he showed an inclination for throwing out the baby with the bathwater with regard to at least some train discontinuances that occured on his watch.
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Steve said … “To be clear, I don’t think that the “change it back” strategy is one that has been actively embraced by Metrolinx, but it’s certainly an approach I would take considering that construction of the outer part of the line won’t occur until after the next election “.
I think you’re wrong on this — tunneling will start this year and should be complete in three years — or so I heard.
Since the stations haven’t even been designed yet, they could still change the line to 6-car ART 300s (Mark IIIs) with Bombardier’s conventional propulsion. Rip out the reaction rail and make minor changes on the SRT trackage in a few places and voila — you’ve got an ART subway that can handle 20k-30k per hour. That same technology could be used for an interlined DRL later on. And, if they had any vision, they would rough-in a grade-separated junction for that now.
As for Gunn’s views on streetcars vs. articulated buses, we’d have to order 400, not 200, for the equivalent capacity. Given the longevity of the cars over buses, capital costs on the vehicles would probably be roughly the same over the long haul. Where we get burned is on track construction/maintenance.
As for Gunn, if it were up to him, we wouldn’t have matches or lighters — we’d still be rubbing sticks together.
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The wider trains is totally irrelevant to capital construction costs – LRT requires the wider tunnel, not HRT. HRT would be almost 1m smaller in diameter (as Eglinton is straight, unlike TYSSE which requires a wider diameter for curved tunnels), and that means less liners, less spoil, and possibly even lesser-powered ventilation equipment as the cubic volume of air is to ventilate less. Toronto can’t get smaller TBMs at this stage, obviously, but had the idea been to do an 100%-grade-separated line from the outset, LRT would never have passed won in an objective comparison, particularly if compared against a 4-car HRT line which has a near-identical consist length (both 3-car-LRV and 4-car-HRV consist lengths are a little over 90m), and so would have the same excavation requirements.
Exit and elevator requirements are the same for both technologies – even the LRT stations require second exits for fire safety, if I’m not mistaken.
As I remarked earlier, the capital costs of LRVs are much higher than HRVs, and because the capacity is lower for LRVs, you require many more of them to provide the same capacity as would be needed with HRVs. There’s also a domino effect on the yard requirement – LRT requires a larger yard than HRT because it requires more vehicles per x capacity provided. All these costs, especially when combined with the additional labour and vehicular maintenance costs every year, make LRT more expensive as a subway than HRT.
When it comes to 100% grade-separated lines, especially with a peak hour demand of 8K or higher, the math is clear: HRT is cheaper.
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Is there going to a more detailed report from David Gunn? All the discussion is based on one newspaper article which no doubt butchered what actually he said, as the media usually does.
Perhaps Mr. Munro could try to get a guest post or an in depth interview from Mr. Gunn, from one old transit curmudgeon or another.
Steve: I am hoping to get a copy of Gunn’s presentation soon. Meanwhile, I take issue with some of his comments, and will be writing this up generally in the near future.
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i>Steve: No, you could not “retool” the streetcar system. Vehicles need to be able to run over any route both for carhouse access, diversions and short-turns. Also, we don’t rebuild track one route at a time, but in sections. It has taken years to complete King, and Queen still has a few spots that are not to the current standard. The intersections will take at least 15 years to finish the changeover to modern standards because we started that process later. A gauge change is not going to happen.I agree that a gauge change isn’t going to happen, but I still support the premise. There are variable gauge bogies that could be used if addition interlining was needed. Eastern Europe is making the change from Russian gauge to standard to be better connected to the rest of the continent. Retooling, while difficult, but still in the realm of possiblities, is merely a dream of mine.
Steve: Except for Queen’s Park who would now have a multi-billion dollar agency to fund, and a lineup of other local transit systems demanding that the province relieve them of transit costs too.I’m one of those whole-system guys that thinks I’m still paying for it no matter which branch of government is passing out the cheques. I don’t draw a line between transit and transportation, so I would apply the same taxpayer subsidies to transit lines as we do to public roads (I’m in favour of congestion tolls and gas tax). Queen’s Park used to pay 75% of the Capital Budget and 16% of the Operating Budget, until the Harris cuts. That’s left the City of Toronto haivng a multi-billion dollar agency to fund that’s helped double the City debt burden.
We need a rational discussion about how we want to shape our society and deliver our services. Right now many people tends to live in their own little bubbles, looking to their own issues to the exclusion of how those issues interact with everyone else, and reject any alternative view as being a “leftist pinko” or a “right-wing conman”.
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Karl — you’re missing the point. HRT cannot run on the SRT’s tracks, so it would have to have been ART (LIM or non-LIM) to avoid the expense of a new route to STC. Why does everyone keep forgetting this? Thru-running is very important to achieve those ridership numbers, and the Eglinton line can’t stop at Kennedy. If we were back in 1958, we wouldn’t even be building an Eglinton line without a DRL. When Bloor was built, it was obvious that it would overload Yonge without University, so University was built first. Why something similar isn’t happening now is stupidity beyond comment.
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What’s the diameter of the wheels on the new LFLRV’s, and how does that compare to the wheel size of the existing CLRV’s and ALRV’s?
I take it that the floor height has to be at least the radius of the new wheels? And according to Gunn, that amounts to 1 ft?
Steve: Not sure of the wheel radius, but the floor can be lower as the wheels don’t protrude into the passenger compartment except the outer edge and enough room for swing on curves.
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I have no doubt that Heavy-Rail Vehicles are cheaper than LRV’s in a 100% underground alignment. But an important question is whether the penalty of cancelling the LRV order for Eglinton is less than the marginal cost of LRV’s over HRV’s plus the cost of redesigns combined.
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Personally, I don’t think Gunn’s issue with the openness of the Rockets impacting unload times has that much substance. Here in Vancouver, the ART Mark II SkyTrain cars are similarly open, though of a considerably smaller scale than the Rockets; and in my experience, people just exit out of whatever set of doors are closest. What really impacts unload time in this case is simple numbers – with interior space at a premium, on busy trains people tend to stand right next to the doors regardless of whether they’re getting off at the next stop.
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Karl Junkin said: but had the idea been to do an 100%-grade-separated line from the outset, LRT would never have passed won in an objective comparison.
And yet, the idea was not to do that. The idea was to build an LRT line across the city with an underground portion in the centre of the city. It is the additional cost of the undergrounding from Laird to Kennedy that is the biggest problem here – in the here and now, a fully underground LRT line under Eglinton does not make sense – which is why it has to be interlined with the “new SRT” in order to justify Eglinton and maintain the possibility of the ART conversion.
M Briganti said: HRT cannot run on the SRT’s tracks, so it would have to have been ART (LIM or non-LIM) to avoid the expense of a new route to STC. Why does everyone keep forgetting this? Thru-running is very important to achieve those ridership numbers, and the Eglinton line can’t stop at Kennedy.
You know if the situation were ideal, we’d have an HRT under Eglinton all the way to Guildwood, and the Bloor-Danforth Line would extend from Kennedy to Sheppard via Danforth & McCowan to meet the extended Sheppard Line.
And that stretch of Eglinton between Kennedy & Danforth would have two twisting HRT lines, to allow for the cross-platform interchanges they have in Hong Kong or Montreal.
And the SRT would be abandoned.
But this is not an ideal situation. Which is why the original proposal was to build LRT and to preserve the SRT alignment and build a “new SRT” to Malvern.
M. Briganti said: If we were back in 1958, we wouldn’t even be building an Eglinton line without a DRL. When Bloor was built, it was obvious that it would overload Yonge without University, so University was built first. Why something similar isn’t happening now is stupidity beyond comment.
What we need in Toronto are truly long term transit plans based on a combination of international best practices and our own local experience, which can survive beyond the whims of government and the tender mercies of economic cycles.
And in order to have that, we need stable, long-term funding and reasonably independent decision making for public transport.
Cheers, Moaz
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You both need to see the previous comment I made about saving a bundle by using the existing Kennedy for HRT on Eglinton and turning B-D back at Warden like in the old days. B-D currently leaves Kennedy with 9,500 an hour in the peak morning hour, which is almost identical to what’s projected for Eglinton’s all-underground model. As I said in that post, the question ultimately turns on the Yonge/DRL issue. Nonetheless, your assertions that you have to interline the SRT with Eglinton in order to get the projected ridership is patently false – as I said; there’s more than one way to do everything.
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Karl Junkin writes
“You both need to see the previous comment I made about saving a bundle by using the existing Kennedy for HRT on Eglinton and turning B-D back at Warden like in the old days. “
1. How does this plan “save a bundle”? The objection to extending Bloor-Danforth to STC is that the Kennedy subway platform is in the wrong direction to accomplish this easily. Same problem if you try to run Eglinton through.
2. Beyond the problem of 1. above, how much more money will be required to convert the SRT to HRT than LRT? That might more than offset the supposed savings of repurposing Kennedy.
3. Still gonna cost a bundle to put in the new track and switches, all the while maintaining Bloor-Danforth service to Kennedy. And that’s a bundle that’s not required with an LRT proposal.
4. This plan means riders who come from STC-wards now have to take a shuttle or something if they want to head on Bloor-Danforth. I’m sure some of those 9,500 pph are heading elsewhere than to the Yonge line.
5. In the meantime, this plan is not a net improvement for STC-Eglinton riders who will have a through trip whether LRT or HRT.
In short, I think this proposes a really bad idea (let’s shorten the Bloor-Danforth line!) to support a questionable idea (let’s make Eglinton/SRT a full subway).
Maybe I’m missing something, but it strikes me as more of a “fantasy transit” plan than anything serious. (Similar, for instance, to my musings elsewhere to make the Yonge line local and express by using Lower Bay.) If you really are serious about this, let’s hear more details than what you’ve provided about the savings you anticipate, and the transit needs that it meets.
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“the floor can be lower as the wheels don’t protrude into the passenger compartment except the outer edge and enough room for swing on curves.”
I thought that since there would be axles, the floor would have to sit at least above the axles, which are the wheels radius.
Steve: Generally speaking yes, provided that the car uses through axles rather than stubs. It’s also possible to cheat a bit by having slight variations in floor elevation. The doors are not on top of the axles.
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I imagine by the time this all happens much of the SRT infrastructure will be life-expired since the TTC will have had no impetus to keep it current, therefore the fact that track or signals may have to be replaced in a HRT or LRT deployment strikes me as neither here nor there.
I’m less interested in Gunn’s views on technology choice than on process. As long as we’re making choices on the right basis, we’ll get the right answers. Unfortunately choices here and now are long on politics and short on reason on all sides of the argument.
Steve: The argument about HRT on the SRT turns on the fact that HRT is much bigger and won’t fit the existing structures in many places.
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Be careful of what you wish for.
YouTube: Rob Ford wants David Gunn back
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Ed said …
(Similar, for instance, to my musings elsewhere to make the Yonge line local and express by using Lower Bay.)
That’s even worse than Karl’s plan to terminate BD at Warden! It reminds me of an idiotic proposal back in the late 60s (or was it the early 70s?) to somehow take Yonge trains heading south from Rosedale and route them on to University via Bay Lower. And it was a City councillor at the time who proposed it. Maybe Steve remembers who it was, but it was truly laughable.
Karl — really, the lesser of all evils here is to just use 6-car non-LIM ART 300 on Eglinton and thread it into the SRT (and change the one or two incompatible SRT curves and lengthen the stations that need it). That solves all of the winter problems with the reaction rail and gives the higher-than-LRT capacity that’s needed.
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Your stance here is overlooking the dimensions involved, and these matter a tremendous deal in the context of accessibility standards, narrow corridor space constraints, and civil engineering. Sidewalk bumpouts are not a solution on their own – the ones on Roncesvalles are actually a waste because they won’t work with the new LRVs for those in a mobility device – another planning screw-up where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
Gunn is absolutely correct when he spells out the differences of floor height of the vehicles. 12″ (~304mm) from top-of-rail in the 100%-low-floor model is a significant difference from the 8″ (~203mm) in the 70%-low-floor model when one thinks about the standard height of curbs (although it can’t always be uniform), at 6″ (~152mm). A 6″ difference is three times that of 2″ (50mm). The ramp, if by a bumpout, would have to almost 2 METRES long in the 100%-low-floor model, whereas if you went with a 70%-low-floor model, a much more manageable 0.6 metres will do. The slope cannot be steeper than 1:12. Raising the height of the bumpouts by an inch or two is something that can realistically be entertained, but raising it 6″? Not a chance, the step between sidewalk and asphalt should not exceed 200mm under any circumstances, the same maximum standard between steps on stairs – it’s safety. The 100%-low-floor decision is totaly inane, and was purely political without the slightest hint of any understanding of the technical ramifications and unreasonable if not unrealistic design challenges associated with it, including the prospect we are now facing that the 100%-low-floor design won’t be accessible at all while the 70% model would have been. David Gunn is absolutely right, and it matters.
Steve: I believe that the floor height at the door of the LFLRV dips down from the actual interior height, but am not sure of where they wound up on the final design. I know that it was changed at ACAT’s request, and that’s one big reason the mockup has been delayed. I will try to find out the details.
I agree that service quality and market share are important components, but so is the relative cost recovery of other modes. If roads weren’t subsidized, and the full cost was paid out of drivers’ pockets (gas tax doesn’t cover all costs), then we could have the higher fare that actually should be charged.
Steve: You presume that people who don’t drive would welcome your stiffing them for the “real” cost of motoring.
Many people would surely disagree with me, but the TTC fare is too low; when higher ridership loses you money, you’ve got a ridiculous problem with sustainability. Obviously it is far worse for 905 systems. The average fare paid needs to be about a dollar higher than it is now to fix the sustainability issue, as TTC loses a dollar for each ride carried. This is not possible without an end to subsidies to the road network, however, otherwise the loss of ridership would negate any benefits of a higher fare.
While I am encouraged that at least one of the provincial parties has put forward restoring the Davis formula, I am saddened that it is being tied to a fare freeze for four years, which I think is dangerous and exacerbates the sustainability problem, instead of tying it to service standards.
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I am confused. I’m asking motorists be stiffed for the cost of motoring, not non-motorists, and at the same time asking riders be stiffed for the cost of riding. If you walk everywhere, you only pay property tax for sidewalk repairs – everyone uses the sidewalk at least some of the time. Treating everyone equally here by giving all the same onus of paying the full cost of their transit mode(s).
Steve: I got the impression that you meant we could raise transit fares because they would still be competitive with fully allocated motoring costs. As for paying the “full cost”, does that include capital? Or at some point do we decide that infrastructure is an “investment” in the city to be borne through taxes, not user fees? Imagine what fares on GO or the Sheppard subway would look like on a full cost recovery basis.
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“buses cannot manoeuvre through traffic as well as streetcars”
Pardon me? Next time I’m on a streetcar, stuck behind a left turner, an accident, or a disabled streetcar, I’ll just ask the driver to manoeuvre around the traffic even better than a bus.
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Instead of the Downtown Relief Line can we not integrate GO and the TTC as they do in say London or Paris ? At least then people would have options when the subway inevitably has issues.
Steve: GO Transit has long refused to address the issue of inside-416 demand because they want to keep their capacity for commuters in the 905. The fare system is set up to discourage short trips, and there is no free or low cost transfer to/from the TTC as there is on some bus systems in the 905. This is a Metrolinx policy problem, and it will be amusing to see whether The Big Move 2.0 acknowledges it. TBM 1 certainly didn’t.
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Karl Junkin said: You both need to see the previous comment I made about saving a bundle by using the existing Kennedy for HRT on Eglinton and turning B-D back at Warden like in the old days. B-D currently leaves Kennedy with 9,500 an hour in the peak morning hour, which is almost identical to what’s projected for Eglinton’s all-underground model. As I said in that post, the question ultimately turns on the Yonge/DRL issue. Nonetheless, your assertions that you have to interline the SRT with Eglinton in order to get the projected ridership is patently false – as I said; there’s more than one way to do everything.
I can see where you are going with the idea of shifting the demand that currently leaves Kennedy to the Eglinton Line – but that raises another huge set of questions…and not just the ones that Ed asked.
The obvious question is this: if the public thinks that the purchase of light rail vehicles on a different rail gauge (6cm shorter than TTC gauge) qualifies as the dumbest decision ever, what kind of PR nightmare would it be for TTC to build a new set of switches to prepare for a future Eglinton HRT then cut back Bloor-Danforth service to Warden?
Aside from upsetting the armchair critics and the getting passengers who use the Bloor-Danforth line between Warden & Kennedy (and anyone taking a short trip along the Danforth) up in arms, then you would also have people from Scarborough upset at being forced onto Eglinton, and you would still have to deal with the Yonge line’s capacity issues.
On the other hand, I suppose that since Bloor-Danforth would be carrying a significantly reduced number of passengers, then perhaps trains from Bloor-Danforth (ever third train?) could run through Lower Bay & Downtown, providing additional capacity along University & Yonge St. But we all know how unlikely it would be to see revenue service on the Yonge-University-Bloor-Danforth line ever again…
Really, if the plan were to have HRT subway under Eglinton, then digging a new platform at Kennedy (or finding a way to interline the two) would be the wisest course because it would allow both lines to continue east along Eglinton in the future, to diverge at Danforth, one bound for Sheppard & McCowan and one bound east to the GO station.
Regards, Moaz
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I don’t follow, why would it be a PR nightmare? The existing station remains in use, and would be perceived as efficient by the fiscal hawks. It would be served by a different line to take a huge chunk (40% of Danforth’s AM peak hour peak-point demand comes from Kennedy alone (9,500 / 23,500)) of the demand off Bloor-Danforth, alleviating both it and, to a lesser extent, Bloor-Yonge Station (this traffic is redistributed, of course, to Yonge-Eglinton, which is not without problems of its own). This results in both lines operating at high enough capacities to earn their worth without being too crowded for passengers’ comfort. A more comfortable ride by less crowding is a positive, not a negative. Considering that most are bound for Yonge anyway, what’s the nightmare therein you’re alluding to?
TWO subways between Kennedy and Brimley? Sorry, that’s crazy. I’m not opposed to one subway reaching to the Lakeshore East line – that’s fine and makes sound network building – but I am not convinced that Scarborough Centre would be served well by a subway when it could be by a network of LRT lines. Two in-street LRT lines can provide the capacity needed even without running GO service on Scarborough CP lines. If there were GO service on Scarborough CP lines (if Union can actually accommodate them), a single in-street LRT line, 3-cars long running every 3:30, would suffice. Scarborough streets are often wide enough for this (but admittedly not always).
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Moaz Yusuf Ahmad asked, “The obvious question is this: if the public thinks that the purchase of light rail vehicles on a different rail gauge (6cm shorter than TTC gauge) qualifies as the dumbest decision ever, what kind of PR nightmare would it be for TTC to build a new set of switches to prepare for a future Eglinton HRT then cut back Bloor-Danforth service to Warden?”
I agree that the public would generally think this is stupid, but probably because it involves abandoning a well-used piece of infrastructure.
The real reason this is stupid is that it defeats a major benefit of making Eglinton a full HRT line: network connectivity. Cutting back BD to Warden makes all those kilometres of Eglinton east of Yonge just another radial subway line. Creating a connection between two lines results in a network benefit that adds a benefit that is beyond simply looking at peak usage, such as alternative emergency routing.
I should add that by “alternative emergency routing,” I am referring to passengers taking alternative routing, not re-routing trains!
I can recall far too many times when I worked downtown and lived in Scarborough when the BD line had a problem. The decision of whether to travel further north and take a crosstown bus route or wait for the problem to clear was impeded by not having very much information on what the problem was to try and make an educated guess. Only if they were actually turning back trains somewhere was it safe to assume the problem would be around for some time. Having an alternative rail choice would have been nice.
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If we paint the LRV’s green/white, people would associate the LRT lines closer to GO Transit and Metrolinx instead of the TTC and think “Having the gauge match the existing GO system doesn’t seem so silly after all”.
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Nothing is being abandoned. You’re not making any sense at all. No station gets discontinued, and I don’t see how you could have interpreted otherwise.
Having both Eglinton and Bloor-Danforth converge at Kennedy does not help network connectivity. The odds of people making trips from, say, Coxwell via Danforth subway to Kennedy and then transfer to Eglinton to go to, say, Victoria Park. are pretty slim – it’d be faster to take the 70 O’Connor bus, and that’s hardly the only example that would result in this kind of conclusion. In order for network connectivity to benefit, the lines can’t both be coming from the same direction. It makes sense for a subway to reach the Lakeshore East line, for example, because it continues much further east; the line only ran from Union to Eglinton GO, it wouldn’t do anything for network connectivity, because virtually nobody would be transferring from one line to the other.
Emergency alternative routing of trains would be possible, because nothing is being abandoned; the tunnel between Warden and Kennedy would still be required for maintenance vehicles. You claim this isn’t what you meant, but it actually is, because it achieves the exact identical end result. In the event that something goes wrong on Eglinton East, Danforth trains could operate to Kennedy while the emergency is in effect. So you still get the emergency alternative benefit you place such inflated importance on. The main point of providing service, however, contrary to your suggestion, is to accommodate peak usage.
The DRL makes sense as a so-called “emergency alternative” because the demand is high enough to warrant it even when there is no emergency. Not so at Kennedy Station.
It’s kind of like that outlandish idea that cropped up quite a while back here that suggested the CN Halton Subdivision between Halwest (Bramalea/Steeles) and Snider (Keele/Steeles) should be electrified so that Georgetown and Barrie trains could make emergency re-routings in the case of a problem on Toronto parts of the trackage for those corridors. That’s over-the-top and you don’t run a system like that (we’d have to electrify Canpa and other bypass points where they exist if that were how systems were run). Redundancy has important purposes, but there are reasonable limits.
Likewise, it is unreasonable to have two subways converge on a point that doesn’t warrant the demand, especially when one line is in need of alleviation. It’d be wasteful and possibly even counterproductive to have both run to Kennedy if doing so results in Danforth not getting the alleviation it needs (which would also have a domino-effect on Bloor-Yonge). Demand management matters, and you don’t seem to be giving any thought to that.
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Karl Junkin said, “Nothing is being abandoned. You’re not making any sense at all. No station gets discontinued, and I don’t see how you could have interpreted otherwise.”
When did I, or anyone else for that matter, suggest that a ‘station’ gets discontinued?!? How does the word ‘abandon’ have an automatic connection to a station?!?
I was talking about the infrastructure of the connection between Kennedy and Warden being abandoned for revenue service – the cutting back the BD service to Warden.
Karl opined, “The odds of people making trips from, say, Coxwell via Danforth subway to Kennedy and then transfer to Eglinton to go to, say, Victoria Park. are pretty slim – it’d be faster to take the 70 O’Connor bus, and that’s hardly the only example that would result in this kind of conclusion.”
I have to partially disagree. If one digs into schedules, I don’t doubt that the 70 O’Connor bus is probably the better option, but not everyone is either familiar with a particular route or is a transit wonk. A great many number of people will look at a rapid transit map without any consideration for bus routes unless there is no other option to get to a particular address. As much as a transit wonk I am myself, I find I have done this fairly often in other cities. Thinking quickly, I can recall doing this in Denver, San Diego, Oslo, and even London. For that matter, there are plenty of people in York Region who will only use the VIVA system without any consideration that YRT routes would be beneficial.
Connectivity between different lines is very important is it makes no sense whatsoever to build that connectivity and then not use it in revenue service.
Steve: Can we just cut off this conversation? We seem to have two threads going now — this one and the one about Union — which are dominated by fantasy plans for reconstructions of the network. We can debate their relative merits forever, but I don’t think this really adds anything to the quality of debate in the broader public, professional and political realms.
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@Calvin Henry-Cotnam
If I may weigh into this conversation, Calvin said:
I strongly disagree. One does not have to be a transit wonk or geek to realise a more convenient route, especially if they are regular users of the TTC (they’re not stupid). If we’re talking about tourists and visitors, then yes, they’d be more inclined to stick to Rapid Transit-only routes, but I can’t imagine tourists making up a significant portion of our ridership.
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Streetcars
I suspect that David Gunn is against streetcars. They cost more to operate than buses (even the conventional high-floor streetcars). They are not accessible. And they are unreliable in mixed traffic (e.g. traffic accidents). And for what? They have some minor benefits (e.g. sexier), but these benefits seem hard to justify given the costs.
When asked whether the Gardiner redevelopment in Toronto should include public transit, Gunn responded: “As long as it’s a bus.”
I believe that his opinion is borne out of experience as a transit manager. Because really… how much can you or I know without having access to the numbers and other data (e.g. I am sure that the TTC does internal studies comparing buses to streetcars) and without having to manage an entire transit system?
There is an assumption that the new cars will have bugs galore
I have a feeling that he will be right. Originally, Bombardier pitched its Flexity model as designed. This was rejected by the TTC as it can’t handle the tight turns and grades of the existing streetcar tracks.
Also, the streetcar is 100% low-floor and that will have its own complications.
I am sure that Gunn knows all about lemon models as his transit agencies have purchased many of them. There is a technological risk in purchasing a new model. His transit agencies have definitely seen that more than once (New York, WMATA, TTC, etc.).
and that they will be susceptible to collision damage.
They are not as heavy as the old streetcars.
Cost Recovery
I think what Gunn is saying is that there are too many routes where the cost/benefit does not make a lot of sense. I have taken late-night buses where they are only a few passengers. In a few cases, I was the ONLY passenger. The economics of that don’t really make sense.
Labour Costs
I think what he’s saying is that there are TTC employees taking sick days when they are not sick. e.g. the Star has an article that states that an employee took weeks off because somebody spit on his face (some in his mouth).
Fiddling While Rome Burns
As I understand it, David Gunn is pretty happy with the TTC system as it is. And he even compliments it as saying that it’s the most brilliant integrated system in the Western world.
From my experience, the current TTC system is pretty good. Better than Las Vegas (which has a huge white elephant in its bankrupt monorail, which competes with a cheaper bus that runs down the Strip). And in some ways better than New York (paint falling off the ceiling, ugly, not-so-friendly staff, no air conditioning in some subways). Not as good as Hong Kong.
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