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 
“How did this idea of a low-floor streetcar subway on Eglinton even come about?”
Well let’s review what we’ve learned…
– Transit City had plans for a light rail network that included an extremely long line along Eglinton, the middle portion of which was to be tunnelled because there’s just no room on the surface through midtown. Due to economies of scale given the huge size of the planned light rail network, it makes sense for the Eglinton tunnel and the Scarborough RT to be part of the light rail network, and it is far more feasible for this network to use a different gauge.
– The entire notion that Transit City is supposed to be a network disappears when cost estimates creep upward and Queen’s Park says they won’t commit the money for the whole thing. We’re left with Eglinton + SRT + Finch (alone by itself in the corner somewhere).
– Toronto’s resident NIMBYs and zhlobs indirectly insist (by electing Rob Ford with his subway fixation) that all future transit expansion be underground. The Eglinton tunnel is kept as light rail, rolled together with the SRT as a single line, and an illogically huge surface portion of it is moved underground. Finch is killed in favour of vague promises of ‘enhanced bus service’.
– Metrolinx, because it’s not allowed to say that it’s protecting for surface expansion in the west end of the line (to avoid getting into a catfight with Ford), or because it just cares about giving lots of money to Bombardier for ATC-equipped light rail vehicles, makes up some corporate-weasel nonsense when David Gunn comes along and asks what is going on.
– David Gunn scratches his head and makes angry, bewildered noises.
Do I have the basic picture right?
Steve: More or less. The whole reason for keeping Eglinton plans as LRT is that if Ford is no longer Mayor in December, 2014, we could go back to a subway-surface plan for the Eglinton line. Nobody at Metrolinx or Queen’s Park has the balls to say that out loud because Ford would never have agreed to the MOU he signed if he thought a backout plan was possible.
Frankly a transit autocracy by David Gunn sounds more adequate to Toronto’s needs than some of the nonsense we’ve been having recently. Though if he suggests that the LFLRV order is a waste of time, he should be much more clear on what he would have done *instead* given the state of the aging CLRV fleet.
But who’s going to give it to him? There something in that article of his to upset *everyone*.
Steve: And some of his statements are flat out wrong, notably the comment about the scale of increase of the operating deficit. The big change there was not the service level, but the vanishing provincial subsidy.
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I agree with Mr. Gunn on some points but disagree with him on many others.
I agree that maintaining the current system should be the TTC’s top priority. Nobody wants a repeat of the Russell Hill accident that occurred in 1995. It is important that the TTC learns from its mistakes so they don’t repeat them. That being said, Toronto has the longest commute times in North America. Transit expansion/improvement is not “bells and whistles” as Gunn claims but absolutely necessary. If the option is to drive 45 minutes to work or spend 2 hours on a crowded bus, the car will win out every time for those who can afford to drive.
I agree with his comments on Sheppard being a drain on the rest of the system. The line is busy during rush hour but empty off-peak hours. The other day I was only one of two people on the subway car when it reached Don Mills. At Yonge, only five people boarded that particular car. However, on Spadina my opinion differs from Gunn’s. Since the Montreal Metro opened in 1966, they have built “grandiose” stations littered with public art. It didn’t lead the stations to being more expensive than they should have been. The new extension in Laval cost $143 million/km and those stations are beautiful.
There is no doubt that mixing track gauges will lead to an increase in maintenance costs. Building a low floor LRT underground doesn’t make much sense either. However, the Eglinton line is being through-routed with the Scarborough RT which causes an increase in ridership to maybe justify heavy rail. If you build Eglinton as heavy rail, you cannot through-route it with the SRT. The ridership drops and may no longer warrant HRT.
I strongly disagree with replacing streetcars with articulated buses. Articulated buses cannot match the capacity of streetcars. Running more buses would just add to congestion. Gunn is also overlooking the cost of removing streetcar infrastructure if the lines are replaced by buses. The TTC isn’t going to just leave the infrastructure in place to decay. Most of it has to be removed which costs money.
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Needless to say, I also disagree with his streetcar comments, which certainly don’t come at a great time for those of us who care about the renewal of the system. That the Fords’ crazed scheme to rip out existing lines has seemingly disappeared since the election is a stroke of great fortune, and I am wary of any “expert” commentary that could be used as ammunition to revive it.
That comment also makes me wonder just how well Gunn understands the reality of the modern-day TTC. The likes of the King, Spadina, and Harbourfront cars are currently the main form of transit for super-dense communities that literally did not exist when he ran the TTC, and the blithe suggestion that a daily ridership equal to that of the entire GO system could simply be packed onto a few buses is ludicrous.
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I’m not quite sure, though, I understand Gunn’s comments about safety issues with regards to Eglinton. Has this been a major oversight in the plans for the line?
Steve: I don’t understand that part either. Later today, I will be seeing Stephen Wickens and will try to get a clarification from him on Gunn’s remarks.
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On Eglinton… “Low-floor streetcars in a tunnel will cost you more than a subway while delivering less. … low-floor light-rail vehicles cost twice as much as subway cars and have less capacity.”
Double the price? Really? (I agree with lower capacity, but it’s not that much lower, maybe 5%?)
On streetcars / articulated buses: “You could buy 200 articulated buses for less than $200-million.” – no you couldn’t. That’s 100k per bus, and the TTC pays more than that for non-articulated buses (do you know an exact figure).
Steve: No, that’s $1-million per bus. Current 40′ diesel bus pricing based on the capital budget is around $650-700k.
(Seperate question: how much do the new streetcars cost per seat compared with an articulated bus?)
On the other hand he makes good points about stupid projects, absenteeism, and the need for better relability with the new subway cars.
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Hi Steve.
Gunn’s comments about articulated buses leaves me scratching my head. He must know that the capacity of one of the new cars would equal a minimum of four buses so why saddle yourself with all of the extra costs of running buses plus adding them into our already congested streets. He does have a good point about potential teething problems with these cars but mechanically they have cousins all over Europe. You should not have to go through the same level of debugging that the CLRV’s were subject to.
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David Cavlovic said: “I’m not quite sure, though, I understand Gunn’s comments about safety issues with regards to Eglinton. Has this been a major oversight in the plans for the line?”
The only thing that I can reasonably come up with is the platform height which he might think that people will walk out onto the tracks far more often due to it being closer to track level. The problem is, if true, why is that not a safety issue with the surface bus routes or Go Transit?
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Just to be clear, I’m sure Gunn is far more intelligent than these quotes make him out to be. However, he also seems to be an exceedingly impatient man, not willing take on its own terms the tangled nest of weirdness that has arisen from the endless back-and-forth on transit between different interests in Toronto, not all of whom had their heads screwed on right in the first place. His conclusions all make sense from the point of view of “$X amount of money is given in total, if I had so little money but with absolute control over it I wouldn’t be making these decisions.” (e.g.: putting the east end of Eglinton underground just ate $2 billion of the proposed expansion budget. If the complicated process of earmarking and kowtowing that led to this could just be ignored, we would have $2 billion that could be spent that much more effectively on small, effective improvements to the existing system, something that Gunn happens to know how to do.)
I’m growing slightly afraid that this will simply end with Gunn making fresh enemies of both Ford and Metrolinx, then packing up for a different consulting gig at a transit agency that actually wants to listen to him.
And I’m certain he’d be the first to point out to you that all of these different ideas of ‘streetcar abandonment’ are completely different:
– Abandoning the outer, badly served portions of the system, namely Kingston Road and the Lakeshore portion of the 501, in favour of bus service. (We are already halfway to doing this on Kingston with the Coxwell bus replacing that line outside peak hours.)
– Abandoning the entire streetcar system, but leave bits of rotting infrastructure in place for many years while we try to come up with the money to get rid of it. Do not bother to design any coherent plan to replace the capacity. Watch and cackle as downtown burns. (Also known as the “Rob Ford was going to do this but then was forced to admit it was too monumentally stupid even for him” plan).
– Leaving Spadina, St. Clair and Harbourfront in place. Abandoning the remaining on-street part of the streetcar system, while trying to come up with an actual coherent bus system that might work in downtown. (Ironically, this would probably involve compensating for the reduced vehicle capacity with things like bus lanes and aggressive, actually working transit signal priority which would completely destroy any perceived benefit to the car boosters who came up with this idea of the abandonment in the first place.)
– Abandoning all of the above plus Spadina, St. Clair, and Harbourfront, triggering a massive and pointless capital project to get rid of the ROWs and mothball the underground platforms.
In short “streetcar abandonment” in the context of Toronto is one of those ill-defined notions like “privatization” that should be erased from the English language so people are actually forced to explain what they’re talking about. (e.g. Far too frequently in the recent subway debates we got Mike Harris-style privatization trying to masquerade as Hong Kong-style privatization. Which latter looks attractive, but is politically impossible here for a variety of reasons.)
Also, to point out a mistake in my earlier post: when I mentioned withdrawn funding for the Transit City network I also missed the fact that the Sheppard LRT was still being funded and in fact undergoing preliminary work. And of course “that article of his” was rather cruel of me; Gunn didn’t write the article, these are just remarks selected by a journalist from an allegedly “closed-door session”. (How is it a closed-door session if journalists are standing by to take quotes? This seems like yet another confusing abuse of language.)
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It looks like Mr. Gunn focuses on the obvious capital costs of obtaining a streetcar fleet, but totally ignores the less known savings, such as longer-lifespan than buses, lower operator costs compared to buses for heavy demand routes, lower maintenance and operating costs to subways for lower demand routes, etc.
Gunn really surprised me when he said that Eglinton should be built as a subway, assuming that it would be all underground anyways. But that would contradict his concern about the Yonge Line being fed to over capacity!
I wonder what he thinks of surface LRT, versus subways?
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“The TTC isn’t going to just leave the infrastructure in place to decay. Most of it has to be removed which costs money.”
How much did TTC pay to remove the infrastructure on Richmond and Adelaide? There’s still 2-way tracks in places – unused for near half-a-century.
And look at Danforth … every time they scrape the asphalt off a section for repaving, it exposed the streetcar rails that are still there.
I 100% agree that getting rid of streetcars would only make transit even worse. However, using the cost to remove the infrastructure doesn’t support the point.
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Reading David Gunn’s comments was refreshing.
I share with him a passionate belief in my ideas and a high level of confidence in expressing them. That doesn’t mean that I am not wrong sometimes, though others have been known to wilt under the bombast and refrain from commenting or “standing up to me”. That is not my desire at all, and as in all matters there are numerous points of view.
David Gunn obviously passionately cares for the TTC and speaks in a similar committed and perhaps bombastic manner. I don’t think that means that his discussion is not open to opposing ideas, though probably not open to ideologically driven nonsense that is not backed up by any facts. While his comments may come across as “this is the bottom line – no discussion”, I assume what he really means is that these are his honestly held beliefs based on his experience, but that other contributions are welcome.
In that spirit, I would like to offer some reactions to Mr. Gunn’s comments. Obviously he is 100% correct in his emphasis on “State of Good Repair”. We can’t have crashes and the current unreliability and dirtiness of the system is depressing. However, I think he is off the mark when he uses the emphasis on state of good repair as an argument against expansion and the corresponding increase in subsidy (drop in cost recovery). The “world famous” TTC of old served an entirely different built form very well. (And, actually when it was truly in it’s “world famous” state cost recovery was more like 66%. The 83% recovery was obtained by resting on the laurels of past service and patron loyalty while severely restricting spending.) Toronto was a much smaller city when it was well served by transit. In the ensuing years the city has grown by leaps and bounds and the “world famous” TTC has been neglected so that it is dirty and unreliable. The latter issues can be fixed – possibly even through an emphasis on “State of Good Repair”. However, the fact that nothing has been done to provide effective transit for the growth has precipitated a state of crisis. Now with a non-transit friendly built form, providing future effective transit across the GTA is a huge and expensive challenge. That challenge will never be met by looking for 80%+ recovery from the farebox. Once – or if – we build an effective GTA wide transit system the farebox recovery will more likely be in the 50% range.
On the topic of streetcars I passionately love the fact that we still have them. There may be times when I cannot see the transit forest for all the streetcar trees, but I am absolutely sure that the current downtown loads could not be handled effectively by any bus plan – including one using articulated buses. I have never seen any convincing evidence that this is wrong.
However, having disagreed, It is still great to read about Mr. Gunns views – fueled by a lifetime commitment to transit and not, as I fear is often currently the case, by a shortsighted hidden agenda.
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David Cavlovic said “I’m not quite sure, though, I understand Gunn’s comments about safety issues with regards to Eglinton. Has this been a major oversight in the plans for the line?”
I imagine this comment regarding possible safety issues with the LF-LRT in the tunnel relates to passenger separation from the tracks. In a subway, there is a rather large “drop” if you get too close to the edge. Suitably tactile edge of platform warning tiles can be used. For LF-LRT, a waiting passenger could walk right up and lean over the tracks to see if the next car is coming. If side platforms are used like at the ferry docks, people might even try to walk across both sets of tracks as a shortcut (I’ve never seen anything about platform edge doors for the proposed Eglinton line) Thus, I assume the LRT will not be able to enter a station at anywhere near the same speed as the current subway lines or even a highfloor LRT. Presumably this is taken into account in the average speeds and minimum headways numbers used for the line capacity.
Steve: Dare I mention the central subway in Boston where streetcars have run through tunnels with low platform stations for over a century?
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Gunn makes the same comment about TR train reliability that I have made previously — i.e., that a problem with one “car” takes the entire train out of service rather than just one married pair. But more interestingly, he argues that the ability of passengers to travel between cars may have the unintended consequence of chewing away any benefits gained by being able to store passengers in the articulations, because passengers will learn to migrate within the train so that they’re at the closest door to their exit. This would make door usage less balanced, which would then increase dwell times and decrease speed (and capacity as well, if it happens at key stations like Bloor).
We see this happening with the Orion 7s when passengers exit at the end of the line. Depending on where the staircase is on the bus platform, anywhere from 65 to 75% of the bus can chooses to exit via the rear door, which now only handles a single stream of passengers, rather than two as on the high-floor buses and the streetcars. This adds to the time it takes to unload the bus (and for the last half the front doors are unused). It will be interesting to see if a similar effect ends up materializing on the TRs.
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My understanding is that if Eglinton was to be converted to full heavy rail, it would mean redoing several studies and planning processes, hence more money spent and more delays on construction – neither of which we can afford. Also, in many systems not all subway trains can work on all the lines. If not for the track gauge, other factors such as power supply and source, train size, technology, etc. play factors instead. So the different gauge sizes doesn’t seem to me as much of a big deal as he makes it out to be.
I was also surprised he didn’t mention smart cards and payment in his report. Seeing as many of the systems he looked over now have some kind of smart card payment, I wondered what his position is on Presto vs. open payment. If anything, I’m sure he would be bewildered as to why in a nation where the majority of transactions are completed on debit and credit cards, why you cannot use such methods to purchase fares at collector booths.
On the streetcar front, he criticized the new trains’ accessibility claims. Could you debunk or confirm this? I took my younger brother to a concert at the Molson Amphitheatre last week, and the only reason we drove instead of taking transit was because he has reduced mobility and uses a wheelchair.
Steve: The accessibility issue is a “yes and no” situation. The TTC has plans to build sidewalks at stops out to meet the streetcar tracks and reduce the difference between floor height and the sidewalk. Roncesvalles is the first example of this. However, this scheme is not workable at all locations.
There will be a ramp that can be deployed from the second door on the car for use by wheelchairs. This feature has been redesigned at the request of the Advisory Committee on Accessible Transit (ACAT), and this is one reason for the delay in getting the mockup and prototypes to Toronto. I don’t know the details of the changes, but do know that they were concerned about the limited usefulness of the original scheme.
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“The TTC has plans to build sidewalks at stops out to meet the streetcar tracks and reduce the difference between floor height and the sidewalk.”
You mean on all streetcar routes? Won’t that reduce traffic to 1 lane/direction?
Steve: You weren’t supposed to notice. At stops where parking is already allowed nearby, the routes are 1 lane anyhow, but of course the really busy spots (say King and Bay) are quite another matter. Until we see how the new ramp works, we won’t really know.
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It’s hardly news that Gunn is not in any way shape or form a fan of the streetcars. He was musing about abandoning the system back while he was still with the TTC, and was GM at SEPTA just before they effectively abandoned three routes in the early 90s.
Steve: But to his credit, Gunn is responsible for the change in track construction techniques which, starting in the early 90s, rebuilt the streetcar system to a much higher standard.
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Hi Steve:-
You said:- “Dare I mention the central subway in Boston where streetcars have run through tunnels with low platform stations for over a century?”
Very true Steve, since 1898, and this is where our Mr. Gunn got his start in local transit. He should know it well. Not only has this streetcar subway, early description of LRT, been in use for over 100 years, there is constant pedestrian traffic across the tracks. Although it may not be promoted, it none the less occurs with some frequency. They are only streetcars for crying out loud, albeit allowed a higher speed while between stations than if on street.
And every one of the lines that feed this central system have some portion of their route on the surface, frequently on private right of way, but also as any streetcar route would be, running on track in pavement sharing the road.
Dennis Rankin
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I finally feel validated on the guage issue with it being the source of the “dumbest decision ever” quote used as the headline. Gunn agrees with me on this for exactly the same reasons I’ve stated previously. While the final choice of guage may not actually matter enormously as a service flexability issue, the justifications made for the choice by Metrolinx are completely bogus. Every transit vehicle order in the world is customized and we will get exactly what we want for the same price either way. If Bombardier charged more for a guage difference of 2-3/8″ it would be extortion. To say that the long-term costs of maintaining one line to different standards with unique servicing equipment and maintenance staff is a valid and sound financial decision is to suggest the same of the unique (and standard guage) SRT in its original form.
Steve: My understanding is that this came not from Bombardier, but from claims from a competitor that the extra cost of bidding on a “Toronto” car was caused by its unique requirements, notably the gauge. I agree that this is BS intended mainly to harrass Bombardier, but having said that, I am also not convinced that making what was to be the “Transit City” car standard gauge is of significant benefit given the size of the proposed network. Don’t forget that TC was going to have its own central maintenance shops (Black Creek), and Gunn’s comments about duplicate facilities only would make sense if we built every future system expansion as a full subway. Even then, at some point we would run out of capacity at Greenwood, and it should be noted that the main maintenance shops for the TR unit trainsets will be Wilson. Ashbridges Bay will eventually replace Hillcrest for most streetcar maintenance. We are already on our way to multiple shops.
I’m curious though – was the SRT always planned to be standard guage even with CLRVs or was that a change prompted solely by the switch to ICTS? If the SRT had been planned as a network would this have had any influence on the choice? Would the upper-level line from Kipling Station have shared these specifications? (Noting that changing this to a high-level platform likely would have been impossible.) Was there ever any consideration given to alternative standards when the original Sheppard Subway was constructed? Will the Sheppard stations be expanded to 6-car length when all the T1s are retired even if ridership doesn’t justify it?
Steve: The choice of standard gauge for the ICTS cars was a decision taken by the Ontario Transportation Development Corporation probably with a view to external markets. Also, the fact that they were designing a steerable axle truck would have meant that supporting multiple gauges would not have been as easy as with a fixed truck. Don’t forget that three CLRVs ran in Boston on the Riverside Line as a demonstration (I rode them), and they were regauged to standard gauge for the purpose, then changed back to TTC gauge.
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This is nonsense. Due to economies of scale, it is actually far more feasible to have both networks be the same gauge. Your own argument contradicts itself. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a single engineer outside of Metrolinx’s employ that disagrees with what David Gunn is saying here on track gauge.
I would forgive him for mixing up the two streetcar models’ prices. He’s bang-on with respect to the replacement fleet on the legacy network. Those puppies cost $5.9M a pop compared to around $3.1M a pop for the TRs. That’s extremely close to double. However, the vehicles for Transit City, cheaper because it was an option order on an existing contract that made economies of scale kick into effect for a lower unit price (I imagine Bombardier can use the same facilities to assemble both models), are $4.23M a pop. That’s still 36% more per vehicle while carrying less people per vehicle.
Steve: Actually the prices are a lot closer than the raw numbers would appear. When the TTC approved its contract, the numbers included inflation, spare parts, training and warranty, in other words the full cost of the contract. Metrolinx quotes the base price per car and the rest is extra. They get away with this because their purchasing and project budgeting don’t get the same level of public scrutiny as the TTC’s. I believe that the actual price difference when everything is corrected is roughly 10-15%.
I have posted this before, and David Gunn would appear to agree based on his published comments in The Globe, that operating costs for a 100%-grade-separated HRT line are cheaper than a 100%-grade-separated LRT line because you have fewer vehicles to look after and fewer staff to drive said fewer vehicles with HRT (especially since not only are there fewer vehicles overall, but there are more cars per consist with HRT, further reducing staff demands), and the capital costs between the two, especially if designed for a 4-car HRT (which has about 2/3rds more capacity than a 3-car LRT), are a wash.
Some have suggested “Oh, but if you aren’t through-routing the SRT you don’t get the HRT-level ridership.” There’s more than one way to do everything. You can save a ton of money on Kennedy station in the process: Revert to terminating the Danforth line at Warden, like they did in the 70s, and use the existing Kennedy subway station for the new Eglinton HRT. That gives you HRT-level ridership on Eglinton without through-routing. That also ensures future room for continued growth on the Danforth line long-term without ATO schemes and PEDs (i.e. T1s or similar model cars would continue to be able to meet demand and ATO-related or PED-related capital and maintenance costs would need not be incurred). The tunnel between Warden and Kennedy would still serve a role for non-revenue vehicles in action overnight. Of course, the problem then turns to Yonge (which can only be permanently solved by the DRL), which nobody appears to have any interest in discussing despite its critical and urgent imminency.
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Brent says:
Gunn makes the same comment about TR train reliability that I have made previously — i.e., that a problem with one “car” takes the entire train out of service rather than just one married pair.
I say: I don’t know about Gunn’s argument that a full-6 car train is more of a challenge than a married-pair because I do not know how often TTC has to quickly take a married-pair out of service and replace it with another married-pair. It’s not as if TTC has taken a married pair off the end of a subway train during service, leaving a 4-car train running, or that they have spare married pairs sitting in tail-tracks & pocket tracks just in case they are needed.
I recall Steve’s assessment of the spare ratio for the TR trains and did not see a significant difference as compared to the T1’s – meaning that either TTC is unaware of the possibility of more trains being unavailable (which is unlikely) or they are aware of the possibility of a full train breakdown and doesn’t see this as an issue (which may or may not be a problem in itself).
Brent says:
But more interestingly, he argues that the ability of passengers to travel between cars may have the unintended consequence of chewing away any benefits gained by being able to store passengers in the articulations, because passengers will learn to migrate within the train so that they’re at the closest door to their exit. This would make door usage less balanced, which would then increase dwell times and decrease speed (and capacity as well, if it happens at key stations like Bloor).
I say: Personally, I do not think that passenger movements between cars is going to be as significant a problem as David Gunn thinks.
If you are stuck in a crowded subway train the last thing you want to do is push yourself further into the train and further away from the doors. And if you are going to get out of a crowded train you want to get out quickly, by the nearest set of doors. This suggests to me that we will still see what we see today – too much crowding at the platform entrances (the TR is not going to change this) and not enough movement of passengers down the platform. The issue of crowding at subway doors will still remain (though the doorways will be wider).
The only way passengers will be able to travel between cars is if there is enough room for them to walk through. This is unlikely to happen at peak hours (too many passengers to push through, including some who will stand at the gangways) and therefore, is not likely to cause the delays that Gunn is predicting.
Brent says:
We see this happening with the Orion 7s when passengers exit at the end of the line. Depending on where the staircase is on the bus platform, anywhere from 65 to 75% of the bus can chooses to exit via the rear door, which now only handles a single stream of passengers, rather than two as on the high-floor buses and the streetcars. This adds to the time it takes to unload the bus (and for the last half the front doors are unused). It will be interesting to see if a similar effect ends up materializing on the TRs.
I say: I think that the issue with the Orion buses (and other low-floor buses) is their narrow rear exit doors and rear stairs – not to mention the time it takes for the sweep doors to open & close. However, I think the TTC has already built this extra time into their route scheduling.
The subway trains have wide doorways and a lot of open space around the doorways. I still think the main issue will be crowding around the doors (especially since, aside from the doors and the gangways, there are no other few vertical stanchions for people to hang on to). As I said, I don’t see a lot of people moving in between cars except during off peak hours, and only if they have to.
And frankly I’m surprised that Gunn mentioned articulated buses as a solution over streetcars. Aside from the capacity problems, and the safety problems (most of our Canadian artic buses are “push” buses (rear wheels do the driving) and are likely to fishtail in snow (remember that famous picture of the OCTranspo buses).
Then there are the seats in the articulation joint of the Flyer D60LF – which helps prevent people from moving back into the rear section of the bus.
As for the floor height being 1 foot above street level (or is it platform level), I see no reason why the passenger sections of the low-floor streetcar cannot have a floor height of mere inches above the street. The streetcars will need full axles because of the single point switches, but why should that affect the passenger segments (in between the wheels)?
Regards, Moaz Yusuf Ahmad
Steve: I have not seen the most recent version of the ramp/door design, but even the original scheme had the floor sloping down toward the door to shave a bit off of the height that the ramp had to cover. As for going “inches” above the pavement, that’s a non starter because of sundry obstacles, and the inevitable accumulation of ice and snow.
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While the comments on Eglinton are sure to get the headlines, I hope that someone (anyone) listens to his comments on the Yonge line being overcrowded and that the TTC starts to take this issue seriously.
Steve: The TTC would rather throw vast amounts of money at the Yonge line in the name of maximizing its capacity, rather than talk about the Downtown Relief Line. It’s the sort of situation where there is so much staff credibility tied up in the existing plans for Yonge that they cannot contemplate the possibility of an alternative.
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I agree that we are going to end up with multiple maintenance shops anyway because the scale of the fleet and geography call for it. However there really is much potential benefit to be had in the interoperability of gauge-specific maintenance equipment/vehicles and common training for maintenance staff and flexibility in which shop they can work out of at any time.
On the flip-side, now that we’re not getting a network anymore it may have made more sense (stop spacing aside) to revert to subway on Eglinton for the central section with the originally planned non-revenue junction to the Spadina line and a possible similar connection down to Davisville on the Yonge line. The majority of interest in the Sheppard West subway extension seems to be about this sort of use both for maintenance vehicles, for getting trains into service without having to go all the way around the ‘U’, and possibly for reducing the potential size of a new yard on the Yonge Line in the event of a northern extension.
Steve: A connection to Davisville is just about impossible because of the building foundations that are in the way.
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Steve said: In due course, I may extend this article with comments on Gunn’s remarks. Meanwhile, I’m sure the comments thread will make interesting reading.
From what I’ve read of the comments there are a few themes – “Ford bad,” “Miller bad,” Giambrone bad,” “TTC is the worst”, “Gunn is the plain-speaking, straight-talking sheriff hero” (the phrase “Have Gunn, will travel” comes up again and again) and more of the same.
Gunn’s comment about the different track gauges really caught the attention of many commentators and they seized on that as an example of the TTC/Metrolinx/both being “dumb”.
The most interesting comment is a recent one from “Hacksalian” who suggests that this is all part of Ford’s plan to get the provincial government to pony up the money for Eglinton which will be used to pay for Sheppard – but he seems to suggest that Sheppard, Scarborough and Eglinton will be interlined and ICTS, rather than separate subway & LRT. He even quotes Steve saying that Metrolinx may be planning to change LRT to ICTS – but I think that Steve said that in the context of Eglinton-Scarborough, not Eglinton + Scarborough + Sheppard.
Steve: Yes, that is correct. Only Eglinton+Scarborough.
What is unclear to me is what David Gunn actually thinks of Eglinton-Scarborough-Crosstown. He obviously doesn’t like the idea of an LRT subway, but does he think it should be a “standard” subway (which will require buses at the ends), or a full LRT system with a tunneled portion in central Toronto (which was the original Transit City proposal)?
To me, LRT on Eglinton, Scarborough, and Sheppard (including conversion of the subway) would be the wisest of options because you would get two cross-town LRT lines out of it.
Then we could add a Downtown Relief Line and more density along the Spadina line to take pressure of Yonge, and introduce more GO service coming in from the suburbs.
By the way, Gunn says nothing about GO – it would be nice to hear what he thinks about GO expansion as part of the solution.
Steve: The absence of any reference to GO suggests that this was a very TTC-centric presentation. GO doesn’t help the situation by being so hostile to the ideal of carrying “local” traffic within the 416, although they are more than happy to talk about “mobility hubs” at TTC stations.
Regards, Moaz Yusuf Ahmad
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On a related note, the otherwise impossible plot to centralize the subway maintenance fleet into one home base at Davisville is a testament to the benefits of our whole subway system sharing compatible standards and being interconnected. Just imagine if our system had been constucted as three or four lines in isolation with duplicate and non-transferrable equipment and personnel. The SRT gives a glimpse of that nightmare scenario.
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I thought that most of downtown streets ban parking during rush hour, creating a two-lane/direction.
I wonder if the TTC would design the ramps to allow cars to drive over it. The only difficulty I can think of is that really wide vehicles may fall off the kerb.
Steve: One option is a “bump up” where the road rises above the tracks for the length of a carstop, but this brings both the problem of “falling off” as you mention, plus the need for streetcars to stop right at the raised section rather than nearby. This would require that busy stops be able to accommodate more than one car at a time, although at 30m each, that’s quite a challenge.
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@Karl Junkin
My argument does not contradict itself since regauging 200 Metrolinx LRVs to TTC gauge does not make them compatible with either the existing subway or streetcar network, and thus doesn’t provide additional economy of scale. The former doesn’t even use the same power supply (third rail vs. overhead), platform height, or tunnel dimensions. The latter requires custom engineering work on the LRVs *beyond* just swapping in different gauge trucks. Transit City & the Metrolinx order was planned separately from the custom-designed LFLRV order, and the lines were designed to admit Bombardier’s standard LRVs which are somewhat more picky about track grade and won’t run on the existing TTC network.
The whole ‘standard gauge’ thing began as a questionable but essentially aesthetic decision in the design of the Transit City Lines. (There was some vague notion of eventual interlining with standard-gauge LRT lines in the 905, but since we can’t even plan 5 years ahead it’s probably not a good enough reason.) Since Transit City the network was large enough to require completely new maintenance facilities for everything, and barely even intersects with the streetcar network (outside of a single planned transfer at Jane & St. Clair) there was no particular savings in making it compatible with the existing network, only a lot of hassle since just changing everything to TTC gauge is not a sufficient condition for compatibility.
However, now that Transit City has evaporated and we just have one line with an incompatible technology, the decision has now become fiscally dangerous and absurd. This does not make the exact same decision any less understandable in its original context of building an entire network which is different from both the streetcar network and the subway network in physical specifications and design philosophy. It is only absurd if we only contemplate building a single line which is identical in its design philosophy to the existing subway (i.e. completely grade separated, mostly underground).
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It is clear that David Gunn is past his due date. He was good for the TTC at the time he was boss.
But things change, and his views on not expanding and building a system that attracts people, but rather just tries to make due with decreased funding, is not the way to build a viable TTC.
There has to be restraint, but also expansion. And things like taking the fare recovery down a little is not a big deal.
I for one do not want to return to the TTC of Mr. Gunn, where I had to stand on buses at midnight that were more crowded than rush hour.
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David Gunn was just interviewed on CBC Radio (Here and Now) – I assume the audio will eventually get onto their site. He was almost apoplectic at the general foolishness he saw!
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No, it isn’t. (We’ve been through this before, BTW.)
Old buses (e.g., the Fishbowls) have two discrete channels out the back door separated by a banister and the inside border between the folding doors. That produces two discrete channels for entrance and exit.
New buses have a single ostensibly “better” channel that is just marginally too narrow for two people to pass easily. They bump shoulders and this causes problems, particularly in a city where nobody talks to each other and we maintain the illusion we are alone in public. Brushing your shoulders against the doorway on a Fishbowl, if it even happens, involves contact with an inanimate object and isn’t objectionable.
It doesn’t particularly matter how much wider or narrower low-floor buses’ back doors are. They are treated as too narrow for two people to pass through at once.
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So far no mention of the potential massive increase in air and noise pollution that would be generated by a substitute fleet of articulated buses. I’m not even going to bother getting into the cost of the diesel fuel. Perhaps Gunn meant articulated trolley buses?
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Karl Junkin says:
“Revert to terminating the Danforth line at Warden, like they did in the 70s, and use the existing Kennedy subway station for the new Eglinton HRT. That gives you HRT-level ridership on Eglinton without through-routing.”
That’s an interesting idea. If they were to do that, I hope renovating the existing Kennedy station would be part of the deal. At the very least, replace the missing orange wall panels.
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Since streetcars are supposed to carry more than the existing CLRV’s and ALRV’s, we should expect that each streetcar station/stop needs to accommodate only one LRV at a time. But then again, that would require that each line be managed so well that bunching would not be a problem.
Is this envisioned for every stop, or just stops at main intersections only?
Steve: This is unclear, and I suspect the TTC hasn’t gotten very far into their design on this yet.
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Having said that new LRV streetcars are more expensive than articulated buses, we assume that both modes of transport are equal to each other. But it is not the case due to the number of reasons which make the Gunn’s simplified math not working.
1. Light rail vehicles have higher capacity than articulated buses. I couldn’t find the figures for Toronto LRV, however, here are its comparables:
From Bombardier:
184 passengers in Frankfurt
177 in Cologne
208 in London
248 in Porto
270 in Rotterdam
184 in Stockholm
243 in Saarbrucken
All numbers are based on 4 passengers per square meter count.
Now the figures for articulated buses:
Maximum capacity of New Flyer Xcelsior 60′ bus is 116 passengers. So for every 100 LRV cars TTC would have to purchase from 153 to 233 articulated buses.
2. Normally, LRVs can be coupled into multiple unit trains serving the busiest routes. Articulated buses (AB) cannot. I don’t know though if new Toronto streetcars would have this option. Again, some of the existing streetcar routes might be converted into ROW routes in the future (say, 511 in 2020). That’s where they might be needed. This is just not right to limit your possibilities today as nobody knows what is going to happen 5-10 years down the road.
3. Ecology, environment, no emissions.
4. Higher comfort inside…
LRVs have way lower vibrations, better compartment, move quietly and smoothly. AB’s comfort depends primarily on the road surface and the noise is much higher anyway.
5. .. and out. As long as they are quite they fit better into residential areas.
6. Streetcars and light rail vehicles have longer life span. They can be operated as long as they maintained properly or transit company decides they are simply too old. I have plenty of examples when streetcars were in operation up to 50-80 years. That’s not the case with buses.
7. Less operators => lower operating costs.
8. Once they fitted into the existing network, LRVs handle all turns and curves. For AB that might be a problem (in downtown when the cars are not parked properly). If this happens in only 1% of all turns this may affect badly the operation of the whole route. In Moscow they removed articulated buses from the city center due to that reason.
And finally, conservatives may say it doesn’t matter how transport looks like and what technologies it is based on unless it serves passengers. But both design and technologies matter. Car owners are more likely to transfer some trips to rail-based public transport but not to buses. We may argue with that but this happens all the time across Europe and North America.
David Gunn’s experience proved to be useful at fixing the troublesome system. Nowadays, as Toronto grows rapidly each year, it is not enough. Fix-only approach would bring Toronto into ineffective transit system which is stuck in the increased traffic jams. Growing city requires the transit system to be developed.
With all that said, I’m afraid The Bros would gladly embrace the criticism over LRVs leaving everything else unchanged.
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I’ve always thought highly of Mr. Gunn. I have considered him to be knowledgeable and n0-nensense where transit in Toronto is concerned.
However, this article leaves me confused.
In particular, his remark that “running low-floor streetcars, which are more expensive than subways and serve fewer people, is a mistake”.
We all know that LRT has less capacity than a subway. Wasn’t that the whole point of the LRT vs subway discussion – that we don’t need a subway because the demand wasn’t there and would not be for some time ?
Furthermore, how does he come to the conclusion that low-floor streetcars are MORE expensive ? That was the other “benefit” – that it cost less.
Does anyone (besides Mr. Gunn) have any idea what he’s talking about ?
Steve: Earlier in the comment thread I talked about the price of the LFLRVs, and it depends on whether you take a base price at a base year, or include inflation, spare parts, training and warranty. Metrolinx leaves this out of their quoted price, but TTC includes it because they must get approval for the full spending amount in their budget. LRVs are more expensive than subway cars because you are duplicating cabs and control equipment on every car, and the cars don’t have the roomy, wide capacity of a subway car.
LRT made/makes sense if you are not staying underground all of the time, and if there’s a one-term Ford, we can revert to surface LRT designs before we build too much. The LRT advantage is in the total system cost allowing for simpler infrastructure, lower cost and lower maintenance over its lifespan.
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Just build the damned thing!! Like everything else in this city, so much time and money is wasted on blather and “special interests” nothing ever gets done. Or, if it is actually done, it becomes a bastardised version that no one likes.
Steve’s mention of an autocracy at the TTC has some merit. With one person making the proposals and then a final decision sounds great. But, please remember, this is Toronto and a position like this would lead to a “feeding frenzy” at City Hall that would be of outstanding proportions. It boggles the imagination.
The entire issue is resulting from trying to get the best of all worlds. Less congestion, less pollution, shorter commute times, cheaper commutes, less construction chaos, little or no expropriation and above all, someone else pays for it. Should we have LRT’s or subways or buses or street cars.
I couldn’t care less if we retrograded to New York City when they used horse drawn carriages underground. Please, that is sarcasm, don’t say a word to City Hall or someone will think it’s a great idea. I just want to see something done that is actually tangible.
The biggest issue we have regarding transit is that no plans will ever be made that run past the next election. This province specialises in dragged out planning by trying to please everyone and Toronto heads the list. I remember when Ottawa expanded from 6 bus routes to 10 and people were screaming the transit would die along with total grid lock resulting. I have no idea how many bus routes they have now and the city still stands and the world has not ended.
Toronto is so transit starved that I’m sure you could install transit on any set of streets and it will work. Of course, that would rely on sane management which is sorely lacking.
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Speaking of the new TR rolling stock, weren’t these things supposed to be in revenue service already? Why the constant delays?
Steve: Don’t know. The date keeps receding into the future.
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As for Eglinton: Build the thing already. Eglinton (between Weston Rd and Laird Dr) has horrible traffic congestion at all hours of the day so a tunneled rail line is badly needed yesterday. Arguing over technology accomplishes nothing.
As for streetcars: Replacing the downtown streetcars with buses accomplishes nothing. Neither will go very fast in congested traffic (try taking 32 Eglinton West to see what will happen if we start ripping up streetcar tracks). I think that the only long term solution here is Downtown Relief Line/better GO train service to provide a faster alternative to slow streetcar service and reduce congestion on the Yonge line and Gardiner/DVP. In the mean time, the new streetcars will provide some degree of increased capacity.
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Peter Campbell says:
“Just build the damned thing!! Like everything else in this city, so much time and money is wasted on blather and “special interests” nothing ever gets done.”
I couldn’t agree more.
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In general, I’m doubting the wisdom of bringing back someone who i) has definite opinions; and ii) was in charge a while back (like a dozen years ago). In these kinds of situations we’d expect to hear “This wasn’t how things were done back in my day! Look at the lot of you now. Careless, slovenly, and disappointing!”
Which is exactly what we got from Gunn. He was CGM during a time of declining ridership when deferred maintenance had to be taken care of. He’s not even thinking about improving ridership. Being a “railwayman’s railwayman” sounds in this case like being very attuned to the railway’s physical plant and operations, but being quite oblivious to the larger context beyond — what is the purpose of the physical plant and operations.
Steve: Yes, Gunn did a lot to turn maintenance around, but operations never really attracted his attention. Part of the problem was an environment of just keeping the wheels on in an era of budget cuts as opposed to actively trying to expand ridership through better service.
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Replacing streetcars with buses with result in a reduction in ridership in the route. One just has to look at what is now the 74 Mt. Pleasant bus route to see what happens when buses replace streetcars. Four streetcars are now replaced by one bus, 24 hour service is now replaced by no service after 7 PM every day, less ridership. However, for someone like Rob Ford, that would be fine.
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