Updated July 3, 2012 at 5:00 pm: The TTC has clarified the issue of the number of locations for debit card facilities. “60” refers to the number of locations to be done in 2012, with a further 23 in 2013. The count refers to booths, not to stations, and the project will result in all regularly staffed booths accepting non-cash payments. Thanks to Chris Upfold for this info.
Original post of July 1, 2012 follows:
The TTC met on June 29 to consider an agenda that didn’t have much of great importance. The “elephant in the room” was the OneCity plan announced earlier in the week by the Chair and Vice-Chair, and supported by most of the other Commissioners, but this item was not on the agenda. Concurrently with the meeting, Bob Chiarelli, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure was announcing Cabinet approval of the four LRT lines approved by Council in March, and pouring cold water on One City. It was rather strange sitting in a calm TTC meeting while Twitter went crazy with reaction to events up the road at Queen’s Park.
The CEO’s report nominally covered the month of April 2012 with trend data going back 24 months before, and with some info into May. Ridership continues to run ahead of budget projections. To the end of May, riding stands at 4% over 2011 actuals and 2% over budget. Additional service, recently approved by Council, will be provided starting in September to respond, in part, to the strong demand.
Financially, even with the extra service planned for the fall, the TTC is running ahead of budget. Revenue for 2012 is projected to be $6.7m over budget with expenses up only $3.4m.
The TTC continues to provide service reliability information on an inconsistent basis. The monthly scorecard on page 2 shows the subway targets as ±3 minutes of schedule, while for surface modes, the target is shown as ±3 minutes of headway. Anyone who rides the subway knows that the trains are often not on schedule, but they maintain their headways while operators swap trains to stay more or less on time for their crews. Surface route punctuality is graphed on pages 8 and 9 relative to on time performance, not headway.
The streetcar chart shows a downward trend and this is ascribed in the text as being the fault of low reliability on the aging fleet. However, in his verbal remarks, CEA Andy Byford talked about problems with construction interference with service. The TTC really needs to subdivide its stats. Vehicle is an issue, but as anyone who watches the Service Alerts knows, it is far from the only reason for delay to surface routes. The new streetcar fleet should improve reliability, but it won’t deal with a host of other problems affecting service quality.
Looking at the trend line and the monthly figures, something happened in mid-2011 that sent streetcar punctuality into the basement relative to the year before. There is no indication of the cause(s) because the events are not subdivided by cause.
The need to dis-aggregate stats shows up in the measures of escalator and elevator availability. Some failures, notably due to the flood at Union Station, are caused by external events while others are a mixture of planned and unplanned outages. Without knowing the relative magnitude of the causes or their trend over time, it is impossible to know how much availability and reliability might be affected by TTC practices or the general condition of their equipment.
Several major capital projects are running late. Delivery of Toronto Rockets was held up by “commissioning issues”, but the TTC plans to get back on track by the end of 2012. Two trainsets are expected to be accepted each month, and 17 are already in service.
The first of the LRV prototypes will be delivered in September 2012 with the remaining two coming later this year. They will not operate in revenue service, but will be used for extensive testing to identify any changes needed in production vehicles which will begin to ship in fall 2013.
Although the Ashbridges Bay carhouse has been delayed for various reasons including design issues and resolution of local issues, the construction contract has been issued and the work is expected to be largely complete by June 2014. The Leslie Street connection has been the subject of extensive discussions due to effects on utilities and streetscape changes requested by the neighbourhood. Construction of the link is planned to complete by fall 2014. There is no word yet on staging of the utility relocations that must occur before track installation can begin.
The Spadina subway extension to Vaughan is described as “largely on schedule” although various portions of the project are running late, notably north of Steeles. The word “largely” seems rather optimistic. In any event, the line will not be open in time for the Pan Am Games. There has been no discussion of opening from Steeles West Station as a first stage, and this may not be physically possible because of the way various supply contracts (notably signals) are timed for the entire project.
Opportunities for Improved Bus Service on Finch Avenue — Follow-up Report #2
This report examined the possibility of installing queue jump lanes at various locations on Finch Avenue. Although various locations on Finch might benefit, the need for such lanes is even greater at other locations. TTC staff recommended that if Council decides to make funding available for this, the work be done in places of most need, not just on Finch. Staff noted that City Transportation Services and City Planning are opposed to queue-jump lanes in areas of intensification.
… because of their detrimental impact on the pedestrian environment and public realm. Queue-jump lanes increase the roadway width at intersections, this increasing pedestrian crossing distances across the intersection. Queue-jump lanes also reduce or eliminate the public boulevard beside the sidewalk for considerable distances in proximity to intersections. Current City policies and guidelines allocate this space to street trees, landscaping and other streetscape elements that provide amenity and quality to all users.
The City’s letter [pages 11 and 12 of the linked pdf] goes on to note that the TTC has not established specific benefits to transit and effects on other street users of their proposals, and concludes:
… the City will not support the provision of queue-jump lanes unless there is a demonstrated justification to their benefit, with consideration of all modes.
The Commissions’ discussion made it clear this report would have to be referred to Council for direction on the relative priority of queue-jump lanes over other uses of space at intersections. The report was “received” meaning that the issue will not be considered further.
Debit Cards in Subway Stations
The TTC now provides debit and credit card service at 8 of its stations (12 booths). The service charge on a Metropass sale (to the TTC) is $2.39 for a credit card (1.9%) and $0.07 (flat fee) for a debit card.
The Commission has approved extension of debit card service to 60 additional stations locations in 2012, with 23 more to follow in 2013. All regularly staffed locations will be able to handle debit or credit cards at the end of this project.
An important side-effect of this rollout will be that the amount of cash kept by Collectors will drop.
Eventually this service will be redundant with the rollout of Presto across the system. The report suggests that the ability to handle debit cards in stations might be used for “other products” without being specific as to their nature.
Steve Munro 
Steve you said that 8 stations currently do debit and credit with approval for extension to another 60 stations. If I am not mistaken there is 69 stations. Which station is not getting debit and credit?
Steve: Aha! You noticed that. I used the figures in the TTC’s report, and it is entirely possible that they can’t count, or more likely were just rounding.
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Out of curiosity; is there anything stopping the TTC from putting the LRV prototypes into limited service towards the end of the testing period to gain customer input for the production cars? By that, I mean issues with the cars themselves rather than a lack of trained drivers.
Steve: This depends on where they might run the cars and whether all of the infrastructure on the affected route (and carhouse routings) has been fully adapted. One obvious issue will be fare collection which, for the new fleet, must change over to full proof of payment.
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Why was the ALRV prototype (4900) allowed to be put in revenue service?
Steve: I have no idea about 4900, but its physical differences with the existing fleet amounted only to it’s being 1.5 CLRVs, not a completely new car.
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I gather that Spadina is the first route to be converted, is the idea that one day they will just switch from old vehicles to all new vehicles….or is it going to be mixed service for a while…how will the old vehicles be converted to proof of payment? I assume there really are only two ways to have POP on the new vehicles (either all stops have presto, or all vehicles have presto (and optionally some stops))…so that means either we are waiting for a critical mass of vehicles or we are waiting for all stops to be converted or some number of old vehicles will need to be converted….if the latter is the case, then only those vehicles will be able to run on the converted lines…which could cause some interesting issues….(and it will be interesting to see how transfers work if you used presto to get on a route and then want to switch to some other one…)…also, how will paper transfers from other routes be checked? It’s going to be confusing for a while, that’s for sure…
Steve: Part of the work of rebuilding the Spadina line involves putting fare machines on the platforms. The TTC is still working on how the legacy fare system and Presto are going to co-exist. This also begs the question of whether we will see a move to time based transfers sooner rather than later.
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While I appreciate that the first reason to have LRV prototypes is for the TTC engineers to be sure they will actually work as planned and are technically OK, I suggest that another very good reason ought to be to ensure that they meet the needs of passengers in real life situations. It makes no sense to me to start receiving the bulk of the order without having made any necessary tweaks to suit customers.
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Richard White says:
July 1, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Isn’t the TTC considering not replacing Ellesmere when the redo the SRT as LRT? Perhaps they are already counting it as gone or perhaps the finally realized that Bessarion should never have been built, let alone the entire line, and aren’t worried about inconveniencing its few riders.
As a follow up is there any word if the TTC plans to keep the Scarborough LRT stations manned as they are now?
Steve: There is no word yet on the general issue of a post-Presto station attendant strategy. It’s lonely enough at Bessarion without even having the odd customer buying tokens.
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The big difference between 4900 and the rest of the CLRV/ALRV fleet was that it was a hand-controlled car and only a handful of operators were trained to operate it in revenue service on the 501/Queen route.
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City Transportation Services and City Planning are opposed to queue-jump lanes on Finch as they increase pedestrian crossing distances across the intersection and also reduce or eliminate the public boulevard beside the sidewalk for considerable distances.
Would not light rail on Finch cause the same objections?
Steve: Yes, the LRT will require a road widening that will take boulevard space. However, with the right-of-way in the middle of the road, there will now be a refuge half way across for pedestrians. They will only have to cross one direction’s traffic at a time.
The City’s position is that the tradeoffs have to be worth making, not just be for the TTC’s as-yet undocumented benefit. An LRT line represents a considerable upgrade to the transit service, much more than a queue jump lane.
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About the added width to roadways with queue-jump lanes, most traffic islands at wide intersections do not have a pedestrian activated button for their walk signals on them. We are “trapped” on those islands until someone activates a button.
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Re: Richard White,
Ellesmere! That must be the station that’s not “moving forward.”
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The TTC should accept debit card only, and refuse credit cards. The credit card fees are totally outrageous.
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Richard L wrote,
How many places are they considering installing a queue-jump lane where there is no bus bay/right turn lane already? In those cases it does increase the crossing distance, but where there already is a bus bay/right turn lane, extending it to become a queue-jump lane does not change the pedestrian crossing distance.
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Steve:
The “Island Of Refuge” that was used to justify putting the Eglinton LRT on the surface through Mt. Dennis. The main problem with taking 2 cycles to cross an intersection is that you can spend an extra 2 minutes crossing the street. It wouldn’t be so bad if these islands were in a tropical paradise but who wants to spend that extra time at anyone of many suburban intersection in January?
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Monarch is selling new townhomes near Ellesmere station, and people are buying there because of the station. Call me a purist, but I don’t think any working piece of transit infrastructure should be abandoned. Instead, access to Ellesmere should be improved.
I know I’m in the minority here, but given …
– the “astronomical” cost of converting the RT to LRT
– the alternative and even more expensive extension to BD
– the fact that Eglinton-SRT thru-routing has been kicked to the curb
– the Sheppard LRT has been suspiciously delayed again
… I think the idea of an ICTS upgrade needs to be revisited. The disadvantages of having a small Mark III orphan fleet and a separate carhouse can’t be worth all that.
Instead, the money saved could be better spent on taking the Eglinton LRT further west.
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Calvin Henry-Cotnam says:
July 2, 2012 at 2:52 pm
“How many places are they considering installing a queue-jump lane where there is no bus bay/right turn lane already? In those cases it does increase the crossing distance, but where there already is a bus bay/right turn lane, extending it to become a queue-jump lane does not change the pedestrian crossing distance.”
I don’t know about the outer 416 but in many spots in the 905 the right turn lanes leave a triangle of land with the through lanes on either of the straight sides and a curved turn lane behind them. The Queue jump lane would require a 3.6 m piece be cut off it. If you had to do this on both sides of the street it would increase the crossing distance be 7.2 m. If you only had to do this at the far side it would increase the width by 3.6m. In any case it would increase the width to be crossed.
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With these new cars, I know the demo car that was brought to Toronto had a hand control but does that necessarily mean that the production cars coming to Toronto will have that or is there by any chance a modification to foot controls since these cars are coming to a legacy system where operators are used to nothing but foot controls?
Steve: The operators will not be handling fares, and so foot controls are not required to free up their hands. As far as I know, it’s hand controls on both the “legacy” and the “Metrolinx” fleets.
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M. Briganti said
I really don’t see the OneCity plan as proposed as causing any real abandonment of service on the SRT. The Scarborough Express, whatever form it takes, will presumably have additional stops at the existing SRT stations (as well as Finch) while common sense would extend the Ellesmere BRT to Ellesmere station bridging the Scarborough Subway/Scarborough Express gap. Net result is that while the infrastructure is abandoned no station loses higher order transit service.
As for not abandoning the line itself, I really can’t buy into the idea that the SRT is such a valuable piece of infrastructure that, given conversion or upgrade costs, we should be compromising the rest of the Scarborough network to maintain it given the rather low marginal cost between a subway and upgrade. To look at maintaining ICTS at this point really isn’t going to find any cost savings. Custom vehicles would by all accounts cost us as much as converting the line for Mk II or III cars, and the Sheppard LRT commits us to extending whatever is done with the SRT to Sheppard. Admittedly there isn’t much marginal difference between LRT and SRT on the extension to Sheppard, but the vehicles are more expensive, and the separate technology commits us to operating (and possibly building one depending on McCowan’s capacity) a yard separate from the LRT system. The difference in scope of the Mk II upgrade and LRT conversion is such you might find a slight overall capital saving, but it’s definitely going to be significantly more expensive to operate than either the subway or light rail versions.
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Nick L. wrote:
I think this is an excellent idea. If the Toronto Rocket test train had received some in service testing before the production fleet started arriving all kinds of things could have been identified and avoided on the production fleet. Items that come to mind immediately:
– All the delays related to the operation of the doors
– The lack of hand holds in the area around the doors underneath the air conditioning
– The painfully noisy strap handles
– The grab bars on either side of the doors that curve towards at the top, placing them out of reach for people nearby
– The glass that comes too close to those curved grab bars. If you’re standing between the doors and holding on, you crush your hand against the glass. Notice the larger open space on all of the older cars.
– Uncomfortably/excessively bright interior lighting, combined with tinted windows reducing visibility in darker stations.
I wonder if those shortcomings will be addressed on the two LRV orders or if they’ll be built exactly the same as the Toronto Rockets with no lessons learned.
David Aldinger wrote:
Ironically, in 1938, TTC drivers had to get used to pedal control after everything before the first PCC cars had hand controls. Foot controls wouldn’t be a problem for any manufacturer that’s worth their salt so most likely the TTC decided to go with hand controls. Making a change like that now that the design’s been frozen would be costly so it’s not likely to happen unless there are serious shortcomings identified with the hand controls during testing to merit it.
As for the aging CLRV electronics causing a downward trend in vehicle reliability, here’s a couple questions to ponder: Why is the TTC replacing them with streetcars that have even more electronics that are even more complicated? And what’s that going to do to fleet reliability as time goes on?
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If you compare the sort of electronics which would have been used in 1977 and the sort which would be used today, then the modern ones will be much more functional, but much less complex. A single FPGA or Microcontroller can replace dozens or even hundreds of discrete logic components, and they’re practical to use on short runs where making custom silicon would be too expensive.
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NCarlson said …
Those lines are a pipe dream. A Scarborough subway effectively says that our decision to go with light rail from Kennedy back in the late 70s (based on “intermediate capacity” ridership forecasts) was a mistake. I remember when the Scarborough (L)RT was planned and built and there was considerable debate at that time as to why we were simply not extending BD.
Of course the RT sucks, but the TTC’s refusal to extend and branch its northern end on the street (or partially thru-route it with Eglinton) virtually eliminates every advantage light rail has over ICTS. And from what I am hearing, the SRT LRT cars will have automated controls, whereas the Eglinton LRT cars will not. If this is true, then even the new SRT fleet will still be different from the rest of the network.
Steve: The Eglinton cars will have ATO for operation in the subway on Eglinton, unless Metrolinx has changed its mind about how to operate that portion of the line.
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You know, logic like that bugs me because it very quickly turns into “money is no object” planning resulting in black holes forming in an operating budget since the only way to avoid “mistakes” is to overbuild everything. The only mistake with the RT is that nothing was done with it for about thirty years which is something that no one could have foreseen when the line was being designed and constructed.
My knee-jerk response is to say Spadina due to the work currently underway and with it being one of the first routes to receive the new cars. As a result, it would probably be the route most ready to handle them towards the end of the testing period even if they don’t use Union loop.
Steve: For clarity, my reference to carhouse routings depends on whether the cars would operate with pantographs or trolley poles. The TTC will be testing both, where this is possible, but I doubt the system as a whole will be compatible by, say, next spring-summer.
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The RT was too expensive to extend and the Mark I vehicles were cost-prohibitive. They were even more expensive than subway cars — almost double what a H series car cost back then (if memory serves me right). That’s why the line never went anywhere and why additional cars were never purchased. In the late 80s, thought was given to extending the RT, but it simply wasn’t worth it.
Steve: Part of the extremely high per car cost was that the UTDC was trying to recover all its development costs from the TTC order while selling cars to Vancouver for a song. The difference in pricing cannot be explained just by the need for operator cabs and crash protection in Toronto. Indeed, nothing would have prevented them from building “B” units without cabs for the middle of trains, but they didn’t. Then of course there’s the small requirement for complete grade separation, something the original LRT proposal for the line to Malvern did not include.
The whole experience just “proved” that transit was too expensive and “low cost” alternatives didn’t exist. More self-fulfilling, buy-Ontario, empire building crap, and it’s been going on for decades. We have this fiction that we will build technology for the rest of the world while the rest of the world passed us by years ago.
The other problem that hindered the expansion of the RT was the TTC’s almost religious disdain for any kind of branched rapid transit service. If you’re going to build an integrated network in Scarborough, you have to fork the main line at some point, and not force people to transfer multiple times in awkward places. Just look at the way the DRL shows up in OneCity with an abrupt termination and Queen/Yonge — a complete joke. Have you ever seen a layout as disjointed and awkward as that in another city? Even as a line on a pretty map, the DRL looks like a dislocated shoulder.
Steve: To be fair to the TTC, OneCity is not their map, but the work of a few Councillors and their staff. The alignments are not supposed to be definitive, but to indicate what might be done. I had nothing to do with it, so nobody can blame me for the problems.
The TTC has an almost religious disdain for the DRL and has spent years shilling for schemes to increase capacity on the Yonge line at a cost of billions while always leaving out bits and pieces essential to make their plan work. Toronto has been extraordinarily badly served by the TTC’s blinkered view which seemed to be oriented most to “justifying” going ahead with an extension to Richmond Hill before building a new line downtown. The outlook has changed now, and we have a lot of catching up to do.
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Brampton uses time based transfers that are automatically issued from the presto machine. When transferring, a person shows their transfer rather than using the Presto machine. Use of a simular process on the TTC should be compatible with the current or time based transfer process.
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Those new score cards from the CEO’s report have now surfaced as daily numbers on the TTC website.
Steve: Yes, I was loathe to actually report on this because I believe that the information is entirely bogus. As I showed for the Finch West bus in an earlier article, the averages (bad though they are) actually mask much worse performance evenings and weekends. Moreover, the plus-or-minus three minute rule means that a parade of buses can be “on time” except for the first bus provided that the scheduled headway is 3 minutes or less. The second through nth buses are all running at, say, 30 to 60 second headways which are within the 3 minute rule.
The target for streetcars is only 70%? If I get my math right, and if someone needs two streetcars to get to work, then the chance of them not being delayed is only 49%? And that’s the TTC’s goal … that any given day most people are delayed?
Of course they have to come home too … and (again, if my math is correct), the odds of getting through a day without a delay are only 24% (or 49% if one is lucky enough to only need a single streetcar). That’s a 76% chance of being delayed on any given day. In the whole week, the odds are 99.9% of being delayed.
And 65% for buses? If you need 2 buses to get to work, you’ve got a 58% chance of being delayed. 82% on any given day, and 100.0% in a week.
Of course, they only made 62% on July 4th. So a 62% chance of being delayed heading to work (assuming 2 buses), 85% chance over the day.
It’s no wonder everyone wants subways. Yesterday, if one used the BD and Yonge subways (2 subways to get to work), one had only a 6% chance of being delayed heading to work, and only 11.5% over the day.
Though somehow I doubt the statistics take into account actually being able to squeeze onto the first YUS subway … or the first bus or streetcar.
Steve: I don’t believe the subway numbers either, although for different reasons because they measure service a different way. Privately, the TTC knows that these numbers have serious problems, but they will fix the methodology eventually. Those of us who have watched the TTC for years find this incredible to the point of hilarity. Crap numbers are crap numbers, and they have no business publishing them and giving the impression that things are not too bad. Riders who actually try to use the service know better.
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I concur with nfitz calculations. If anyone wants to play with the figures, a good online calculator is here.
Fill in your desired probability into the first box (Probability), and the number of buses into the next two boxes, (number of trials and successes). The “Cumulative Probability: P(X < 4)" is the chances that one or more vehicle will be delayed. You can also play with the chances that more than one vehicle is delayed, by changing the number of successes.
To my mind a reasonable standard to aim for would be that a Metropass user with 48 single leg trips a month has a 50% chance of getting all their trips on time. That means a target of 98.6% reliability, and if each trip is composed of two legs you still get 25% chance of being totally on time, which is still reasonable.
Of course that would depend on the figures actually being useful, and as Steve says, I don't think they are. They are trying to stuff too much into a single number, and even when they meet their standard, it's still capable of giving awful actual performance to the customers.
Steve: It’s amazing how many people do not understand that for a customer to receive, say, a 50% cumulative probability that nothing goes wrong, a much, much higher level of reliability is required for each of the component trips.
An easy example is a throw of a die. If you do it once, the odds are 1/6 that it comes up “six”, and 5/6 that it will come up something else. If you do it twice, the odds that you won’t get a six on either throw is 25/36. On the third throw it’s down to 125/216. If you throw four times, the odds of not getting a six are under 50%. 5/6 (or 83.3%) sounds like a respectable level of reliability until the cumulative effects are taken into account. The TTC isn’t aiming even that high.
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“the plus-or-minus three minute rule”
It may be worse then you think. Using TransSee to see how late a vehicle is compared schedule when it arrives it appears that the CIS display is rounded towards 0, so when it shows 3 minutes late, it could be as late as 3 minutes and 59 seconds.
Steve: I run in this sort of thing in my analyses of CIS data. The sampling interval is 20 seconds, and so there’s already some margin of error built into the data.
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Steve, I see your point very clearly about the new cars likely having handle controls but at the same time, there’s still going to have to be reorientation for drivers. That could possibly be a strike against hand controls but I readily concede that hand controls are going to be it now.
Steve: As I understand things, the operators have been involved in the cab design all along. I have not heard any negative feedback about hand controls, much less any suggestion of a strike. Considering that they are commonly used all over the world (not to mention on our subway), this should be a non-issue. The real question is the responsiveness of the car to directions from the manual control stick.
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Steve commented
I went to the display of the prototype display at Hillcrest last November, and the people in charge were quite definite that the hand control was to be used. I was particularly interested because there did not seem to be a ‘dead-man’ function (i.e. you did not have to hold it down) and was informed that it was a capacitance function built into the control; you need to have a human hand on the control (although thin gloves will be acceptable).
Several drivers were there and, while some seemed a little nonplussed at the idea of a hand control, none seemed too upset at the idea of using a hand control per se. However, there was at least one complaint that the position of the control could not be adjusted, making it uncomfortable for those with either longer or short arms. Also, there were complaints that it is on the left side of the chair, requiring it be manipulated by the left hand.
There is a reasonable picture of the inside of the cab on BlogTO which shows the control (the round knob just at the front of the left armrest).
Note: I formerly posted here as DavidH but am trying to unite my internet presence under a single ID, so I have switched to this one, at that one is in use on several sites.
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