The agenda for the TTC meeting on May 24 contains a few items of interest, but also a troubling sign that matters of public interest are being debated behind closed doors.
Items included in this preview:
- New Streetcar Implementation Plan
- Five Year Plan
- CEO’s Report (Updated)
- Financial Statements for 2012
- Traffic Violations and Mitigation for Transit
- Gateway News Stand Lease (New)
- The Big Move and Funding Tools (New)
Updated May 23 at 12:10 am:
Links to the TTC construction pages for the York Street, Ossington Avenue and Kingston Road reconstruction projects have been added.
A reference to a statement about the New Streetcar Implementation Plan attributed to Andy Byford at the April Commission meeting has been corrected to reflect that it was made by Chris Upfold, Chief Customer Officer, who was standing in for Byford at that meeting. TTC’s Brad Ross has confirmed that this plan will be presented in the public session of the June Commission meeting.
Updated May 23 at 9:15 pm:
The Kingston Road construction project info has been updated to reflect the early replacement of streetcars by buses effective June 3.
Updated May 25 at 1:30 pm:
This article has been updated to reflect events at the Commission meeting.
New Streetcar Implementation Plan
At the April Commission meeting, CEO Andy Byford Chief Customer Officer Chris Upfold stated that a report on the new fleet’s implementation (including a consolidated report on various projects related to updating the system’s infrastructure) would come forward to the May meeting. This report is on the agenda, but in the private session under the guise of an “education session” for the Commission.
Questions about the service levels that will be triggered by the rollout and more generally of the total implementation cost have been a matter of concern for members of Council and transit riders. The TTC’s own fleet plans, which I reviewed as part of the 2013 Capital Budget, imply varying degrees of service improvement on the streetcar lines, but there has been no public commitment to this plan.
For over a decade, the TTC has responded to requests for improved streetcar service by saying that they have no spare cars, but that this would be fixed with the rollout of a new fleet. By contrast, some TTC statements have implied that putting more cars on the street is a waste of money because they will just become mired in traffic and/or that there is no room left for additional service.
Both explanations are hogwash, especially the latter, which in any event would only apply to King and to Spadina where very frequent service already operates. As to traffic, there are fundamental problems both with TTC line management, and with City traffic bylaws and enforcement that constrain road capacity. The latter is the subject of a report elsewhere on the agenda.
The TTC needs to be open with its riders about the future of service and capacity on the streetcar lines. Hiding the report in the private session does not fit with the new transparency we are supposed to have in TTC affairs, and suggests that whatever policy might be in the pipeline, it might not survive critical public debate.
The report should be moved to the public session.
Update: TTC’s Brad Ross has confirmed that this report will be on the June meeting’s public agenda.
Five Year Plan
Like the streetcar plan, the five year corporate plan appears on the private session’s agenda. CEO Andy Byford has already spoken in general about this plan at public meetings, and the document is supposed to go public on the TTC’s website on May 29.
It may be useful for Byford to brief the Commission on an “educational” basis, but the report should be on the public agenda. An item of this importance deserves more than a press release announcing the availability of a new web page.
If the plan does not include something beyond the “business as usual” projections seen in past TTC management responses for “long range plans”, it will be a failure. A five year plan must show how the TTC can grow and improve, and must present policy options for the manner and speed with which this can occur. Options for future year budgets — both capital and operating — are essential even if the most aggressive are too rich for today’s political climate.
The worst possible outcome would be for a tepid plan to receive the Commission’s blessing and then be used to forestall any future debate because “we already have a plan”.
Riding for period 3 (roughly the month of March 2013), was up 1.6m or 3% over the comparable period in 2012. For reasons not explained in the report, the TTC expects demand to soften in period 4 (for which they should already have preliminary data). For the full year, the TTC feels it will be at or close to the budget target of 528m rides.
On a moving annual average basis, ridership is up 2% over the previous year. This compares April-March 2011/12 with the corresponding period in 2012/13. Although riding was below budget in the first part of 2013 due to winter weather, this will be compensated for with growth later in the year.
(Although it is not included in the CEO’s report, the budgeted vehicle mileage for fall 2013 schedule periods is approximately 3% higher than in fall 2012 in anticipation of the higher ridership expected this year.)
Sales of monthly passes continue to grow, and this is reducing the average fare paid per trip. The result could be a slight reduction from projected revenue unless ridership overshoots the target to make up the difference. This has been a common effect in past years.
Reliability on the Yonge-University-Spadina line remains below target, and the report notes that off-peak and weekend periods are dragging down the average. The method used by the TTC to calculate reliability has an inherent flaw for routes that run frequent service, and especially for the subway where it is physically impossible for trains to bunch to the degree seen on surface routes.
These combine to make it very difficult for a large proportion of service to be reported as “unreliable” with headways varying by more than 3 minutes from schedule. Overall, an index of less than 90% is extremely difficult to achieve on the subway routes, but this may not reflect passenger experiences.
On surface routes, headways are generally wider than on the subway, and bunching can occur to the level of multiple vehicles within one minute. This is reflected in lower reliability numbers for surface routes.
Major shutdowns/diversions planned:
- Streetcar service to Spadina and Queens Quay will continue to be operated with buses until mid-December 2013.
- Streetcar service to Union Station will not resume until early 2014. The issue (not mentioned in the report) is with the completion of TTC work on the Union Station second platform that conflicts with reopening the Union Station Loop.
- Kingston Road will see extensive road, water and track repair starting in late June and running to December 2013. Streetcar service will be replaced by buses east of Woodbine Loop effective June 3 to permit welding and storage of strings of track for this project. See also the City of Toronto notice.
- York Street trackage will be replaced starting in late June (with the intersection at Queen causing a 501 diversion from June 29 to July 10). Work is being co-ordinated with other projects on this street, and it will not be completed until November.
- The intersection of King & Spadina will be replaced during August 2013. There is no date yet announced for Dundas & Spadina which was also included in the 2013 capital budget.
- Track over the Sterling Road bridge will be rebuilt in September with all streetcar service ending at Lansdowne and a shuttle bus to Dundas West and High Park.
- Track on Ossington from College to Dundas will be rebuilt in September-October with the Ossington bus diverting via Bathurst.
Problems with noise and vibration in the vicinity of Jane and Old Mill Stations have been addressed by various repairs over several months, and most of these have been completed according to the report. However, there is no information about the perceived or measured improvement in affected homes to indicate whether this work was successful in resolving complaints.
Delivery of the production run of new streetcars is still planned for fall 2013. Without the streetcar rollout plan (see above), it is unclear when the TTC expects to convert its first route to LFLRV operation. One major shutdown of the Spadina route remains for 2014 (the intersection at College), and my guess is that we will not see full LFLRV operation on this route until the fall at best.
Updated: Andy Byford noted that the Customer Satisfaction index had risen in 1Q13 to 75% from the 72% shown in the CEO’s report for 4Q12.
The financial statements for 2012 have been issued. They are sleep-inducing for all but the most diehard among us who follow TTC affairs.
One item of note is the depletion of reserves created by past government programs to subsidize capital projects. Capital subsidies are discussed in footnote 12 beginning on page 31 of the report. The corresponding reserves are discussed in footnote 15 beginning on page 36. Block payments were made to Toronto in 2007 by Queen’s Park when times were good, and burning up “surplus” provincial money by shifting it to reserves was the order of the day.
- CSIF (Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund): Originally $275.6m, all but $18m of this has been spent, and the remainder will likely disappear in the next two years.
- ORSIF (Ontario Rolling Stock Infrastructure Fund): Originally $150m, this fund was exhausted in 2012.
- TTIP (Transit Technology Infrastructure Program): Originally $31.1m, this fund was exhausted in 2012.
The largest remaining reserve is the Move Ontario 2020 fund at $191m to fund Metrolinx Quick Win projects that the TTC is implementing.
With the move of the Transit City LRT projects to Metrolinx, no funding or assets for them appear in the TTC’s accounts.
The Spadina subway extension is funded jointly by four governments through a trust administered by the City of Toronto. Ontario’s share was paid up front and is drawn on as needed. Ottawa pays on an ongoing basis as expenses are incurred and approved.
This illustrates the nature of past subsidy programs that are time and value limited, and earmarked for specific projects or types of work. As the reserves wind down, responsibility for continuing programs (e.g. vehicle purchases) shifts to the City of Toronto unless there are new special subsidies (as in the case of the 1/3 share paid by Queen’s Park for the new streetcars).
Traffic Violations and Mitigation for Transit
Once again the TTC launches into the debate about traffic congestion, enforcement activities and potential changes to the use of space on transit streets. This runs in parallel with the City’s Downtown Traffic Operations Study, but the scope of the TTC’s concern is much wider than that of the DTOS.
The most common problems include:
- Vehicles blocking intersections.
- Illegal parking and stopping.
- Legal parking or standing (e.g. taxis and tour buses).
In the first two instances, the real issue is the enforcement of city bylaws including towing powers and much higher fines as deterents.
In the case of legal parking, the problem rests with City Council where anguished cries from residents and businesses take precedence over street capacity. One of the most flagrant of these is the presence of taxis massed on King Street from Bay to York where, in theory, there is a reserved transit lane for the streetcars. How other traffic is supposed to use the curb lane is a mystery.
Many locations have peak-only restrictions although it may difficult to discern which direction that actually might be.
The peak period itself is too short, and should be extended by at least an hour, possibly more, to reflect actual traffic conditions. Looking again at King Street downtown, the traffic seizes up at 6:00pm when parking becomes legal.
This will be a political battle for Council and we are sure to hear lots about the “war on the car”. I doubt we will see any resolution with the current administration.
The supplementary agenda included three reports about the Gateway News Stand issue. This has been discussed on previous occasions, and the debate turns on a staff proposal to give a considerable extension of the current least to the incumbent, Gateway, rather than tendering anew.
Two of the reports listed are from previous meetings, but there was one new report with a compromise proposal. Current leases will be extended to April 30, 2018, and a new Request for Proposals (RFP) will be issued in 2016. This will allow other prospective operators to bid against Gateway, but will leave the current arrangements intact through the Pan Am Games in 2015.
(As an aside, I must say that Toronto will be better off when the Games are no longer part of the planning calendar around which so much has been gerrymandered.)
The recommendations in the report were adopted with one amendment. Clause 4(g) requires that Gateway issue a separate RFP for the distribution of free newspapers. This was amended to require that this occur no later than January 2015.
In the grand scheme of transit affairs, the operation of the news stands is small potatoes, but this issue became controversial because of the appearance that there was a sweetheart deal between TTC management and the incumbent operator locking out competitors for an extended period.
The Big Move and Funding Tools
At the April Commission meeting, in anticipation that the City Manager’s funding tools report might be sandbagged at the Ford-dominated Executive Committee, the Commission decided that this report should be placed on its May agenda to ensure some debate would occur.
In the interim, Mayor Ford did attempt to block the report at Exec, but this was overruled by Council. A long and extremely badly-managed debate ensued with the result that Council endorsed no tools, nor any of the City Manager’s report, but added various pet projects to the mix.
At its May meeting, some Commissioners were not willing to just let things lie. Commissioner Colle moved that the Commission (1) support The Big Move and the provision of dedicated revenue streams to fund it, and (2) support the recommendations in the City Manager’s report.
As written, this motion would have resulted in the Commission contradicting the Council vote (which completely discarded the City Manager’s position). Commissioner De Baeremaeker, in his continuing fight to save the Scarborough Subway, wanted to amend the motion to include specific reference to that project. What eventually happened was that the Commission voted to support both the City Manager’s report and the Council motion. This puts the Commission simultaneously in the position of:
- Supporting The Big Move
- Supporting specific revenue tools recommended by the City Manager
- Supporting the Council motion which:
- Explicitly rejects almost all revenue tools and endorses none of them.
- Supports various subway expansion programs that conflict with or are in addition to The Big Move. These have been referred to the Chief Planner for reports as part of the Official Plan Review now in progress.
In effect, the TTC has gone on the record as favouring several subway lines without any substantive analysis of their merit or how they might be paid for.
Three Commissioners had the good sense to see this for what it is — a meaningless and contradictory motion that Queen’s Park can and will ignore, and that shows no sense of responsible transit planning by the Commission. They were out-voted by six others (two were absent).
Steve Munro 
This makes me wonder if the TTC will consider running streetcars to Dufferin loop this year during the CNE instead of buses given all the bus replacement going on for various streetcar work during the CNE. There is precedent, namely in 1995 when there was a question of when the subway would reopen after Russell Hill.
They rebuilt the trackage at and around the loop this past year so you never know.
LikeLike
Steve,
Doesn’t their excuse that more streetcars are a waste since they would be “mired in traffic” have some validity considering they seem incapable of resolving the bunching issue?
What good is an extra streetcar if bunching occurs as often as it does now? The only thing that would make someone angrier than seeing 3 coming at the same time is seeing 4.
Why aren’t they working to resolve the bunching/short turn issues which seems to be the real underlying problem?
Steve: This is a catch 22. The TTC has a long history of blaming all its problems on external causes of which “traffic congestion” has to be the holy-of-holies. They probably have a small shrine somewhere to the god of traffic jams.
Definitely they need to improve line management and this will buy they some capacity, but there is also a question of service adequacy. This is particularly notable in the am peak (which is the higher of the two) when congestion levels are comparatively low because commercial and shopping traffic is not yet out on the main streets.
It is a common complaint, for example, that riders cannot board King cars eastbound through Liberty Village and points east, and the problem here is capacity. This is an issue on other lines too.
Now that Andy Byford has declared that improved line management is part of his five year plan, I am looking forward to what he will achieve, but we must not lose sight of the fact that for a decade or more the TTC has acknowledged that service capacity was inadequate, they have allowed for improvements in their fleet plan, and now it’s time to deliver.
LikeLike
C’mon Steve, you can’t blame the ‘current’ administration. Everybody from Miller to Lastman and before have all had their chance to extend the rush hour periods and they have all failed or not tried at all. The business’s whine and cry about going to make them go broke every time some councillor brings this up. They all cringe similar to in the beach, try to get someones attention about leashed dog areas and not … no councillor or mayor will ever enforce this because it would be political suicide. I do not foresee any future mayor tacking this either.
Steve: Yes, past administrations did nothing, but the current one has a particularly ferocious opposition to anything that would delay the progress of auto traffic. With a new mayor, and a renewed interest in making roads work better, we at least have a chance for a fresh start on the issue.
As far as taxis on King..why not? They serve a need, they are always busy and the people that use them would never take transit anyways so I don’t have a problem with that.
Steve: I agree, but having said that, the City should dispense with the fiction that there is a reserved streetcar lane. Either the curb lane is for storing taxis, or it is for moving traffic. It cannot be both. This condition applies in other locations notably places where tour buses congregate. What is the point of studying how to improve the King Street transit lane if there are so many exceptions?
Re: new streetcar headways – I know you would like a streetcar to come by every 3 minutes on all routes at all times of day but it’s not necessary. I can see the value of having one nearly full car rather than 4 cars with 3 people in them. At some point you really do have to look at the financial side.
Steve: Alas, my concern is for the people who find themselves waiting for 15 minutes or more for those three cars to show up with the first packed, and the other two short turning. There is a fiction that the streetcar lines are overserved, but I ride too many cars with lots of standees outside of the rush hour to believe this. During the peak period, the folks who cannot even get on might take issue with your remarks about finances. Meanwhile, we run trains almost empty on the Sheppard subway until 2 am as a matter of policy. If you want fiscal responsibility, you might start there. Conversely, you might think of transit service as something that should be available at a certain maximum frequency as a matter of municipal service and mobility.
And, no, I don’t want 3 minute headways everywhere all day. Setting up a straw man like that undermines your argument. It’s always ironic when someone tells me to look at the financial side — when I say that in the context of subway construction and operations, I am accused of false economy.
LikeLike
The shift towards closed-doors meeting items is disturbing; but of course this follows in Metrolinx’ footsteps.
The only items that should be discussed behind closed doors are business negotiations that require confidentiality (such as pending real estate transactions) and personnel issues. Is this part of bringing in “private sector best practices”? Or is there anything sensitive that needs to be kept hushed up with regards to fleet planning or strategic plans?
Steve: I don’t know what is going on, but the Stintz era has been marked by a pronounced reduction in the amount of public policy discussion. Lots of smiles and good news, but that doesn’t run a railroad.
LikeLike
Any idea about a timeline for redoing the Union Station loop itself? It is, after all, a separate project which means the Harbourfront Line will have to shutdown (or cut back to Spadina and Front … assuming the tracks allow it) for a while. I’m interested in knowing what the TTC plans to do.
Steve: There is no timeline for this work thanks to the lack of budget allocation for it. The whole waterfront transit file has been dropped by successive politicians starting with Miller (it was omitted from Transit City because it was supposed to be a Waterfront Toronto project), accentuated by Ford (no streetcars) and reinforced by Metrolinx (who only do “regional” services despite the presence of several local projects in their plan). Obviously, it should have been at least started during the Queen’s Quay shutdown and in concert with the work on the subway and railway station. The situation was also harmed by TTC’s lack of enthusiasm for the waterfront east project, and a sense by other agencies that the TTC’s cost estimates were running out of control.
This is one of those things that should have been resolved, easily and ages ago. One has to wonder why relocating the taxis to Adelaide and Wellington is so hard to do given that the curb lanes can be used for taxi stands and one way streets would let taxis get out of the financial district more quickly.
It suggests that either the city does not care or there is some sort of influential personality that prefers having taxis at the front door.
Cheers, Moaz
LikeLike
That report on traffic mitigations is pretty short … and not really the sort of thing that is going to get any visibility or make any changes …
I would like to see something much more detailed and comprehensive …
I would start with an analysis of how much time could be recovered, how much money saved and how best to enforce all the different strategies. Where are the primary chokepoints, what do other cities do … and what are the top 10 things that the city could do.
It’s stunning that surface route delays are the primary complaint month after month, and we just got a one page review that says essentially we are going to send this to someone else to deal with.
The TTC needs to be very vocal about the fact that the primary thing people complain about is surface delays, and there are about 100 things that could be done tomorrow that would improve that situation …
I think a Surface Transit Timeliness and Reliability study — maybe call it the “TTC – Anti-Bunching and Gaps Study”, with an output of a package of improvements with a specific cost and rollout plan would be the way to go.
It would be way easier to roll-out a package of laws (extending rush-hour, increased fines, taxi stoppage) with a package of transit improvements (changes to crew management, improved driver data, more vehicles) and a package of vehicle improvements (find free parking spots via smartphone, bixi).
Another question I would have for the TTC is whether the city forwards complaints about surface traffic delays to Transportation Services…I am sure they use some report to determine what their priorities are, I wonder if it has a section for TTC Surface Delays on it? There is a complaint system for TS — I can’t find any reports on what types of complaints they get.
LikeLike
Kevin’s comment:
Because the arrival of winter came as a surprise to whoever drew up the budget?
I do not recall any horrific storm that shut the city down for weeks. Indeed, every snowfall we got last winter seems to have been followed by a major thaw. I file this under “excuses,” just like traffic congestion.
Steve: You may recall that little storm in February that more or less shut down the city. We have not seen that sort of event for some years thanks to milder winters. By the way, this was not a TTC “excuse” but my interpretation of the reported data.
LikeLike
I arrived in Toronto in 1997 and lived near Roncesvalles and Queen (St. Joseph’s Health Centre area) and was dependent on public transit to get to my job up in the Downsview neighbourhood. Day after day, around 8 or 8:15 a.m., I would consistently watch full King St. streetcars trundle on by towards Dundas West station while I and sometimes a dozen other (potential) passengers would be left standing, hands in pockets. Or they would be turning off just to the south to enter the Roncesvalles streetcar yard and go out of service or be short turned.
Sometimes the problem was that passengers on the vehicle would be crowded in the middle of the car, leaving seats at the back or the space towards the rear doors open forcing one to become a diehard push-your-way-through-to-the-space rider or depend on the equally frustrated drivers who would not move the vehicle until people in the streetcar grudgingly shuffled along down the line to free up enough space. Other times the vehicle was filled to the rafters and it would only stop if passengers were needing to disembark. Many a day it was faster for me to walk the 20 minutes up Roncesvalles to the station, being passed by up to 6 full or middle-section-empty “full” streetcars, or even being passed by a taxi that one of the others who had been waiting with me had flagged down to make sure that THEY got up to the station to get to work on time.
So issues of appropriate numbers of cars and scheduling have been and are still an ongoing issue that should be relatively easy (!) to assess and perhaps even address by the management – but when there is less than useful support from the elected officials of the city (how many councillors actually USE public transit on a day-to-day basis?) with regards to ensuring adequate funding for the almost 300,000 daily rides, it makes it more difficult and passengers just end up frustrated, spinning their wheels.
LikeLike
Passengers contribute 80% of the operating TTC budgets. For a measly 20% subsidy, we allow transportation to become politicized. Transit should be view as a business decision and not a political decision. If 100000 people per day wants to use the tram on King Street, a business will find a way to serve those people. The TTC excuse of lack of equipment and traffic congestion does not really work.
Someone should privatize the TTC. As a corporation, they can borrow and set any price they want. If the TTC cannot have profits, how can it pour concrete? Even if the TTC wants to run a better service, they cannot because running extra vehicles (that is not packed like sardines) are a waste of money in the eyes of city hall. It can also attract better talent too as a private organization. We need someone like the CEO of Porter Airlines at the TTC. Someone who is willing to take risks and care about fare paying customers.
For those businesses that cry a loss of parking would be a kiss of death for them, they just do not understand math. A parking spot at most can hold about 7 people. A Bombardier Flexity tram can hold at least 150 people (depending on the configuration), as a businessman, which would one prefer? 150 people descending in the area or 7? Look at the Holt Renfrew and the Louis Vuitton store on Bloor Street. There are zero on street parking and their customers probably drive, are they going out of business? It is funny that all the William Sonoma stores in Toronto are located close to transit.
Steve: Porter as an example? An airline that withdrew a public share offering, possibly because of poor financial results, and that is ordering, on spec, new jets conditional on Council approving changes to the island airport? Sounds like a business that runs on air and a lot of full page newspaper ads keeping its brand in the public eye.
If we’re going to talk about passengers contributing 80% of the operating subsidy and of handing this over to the private sector, don’t forget the capital costs. Would Porter (or anyone else) be prepared to buy the TTC assets from the City? Would they factor the cost of capital, now carried as a general public expense through various tax sources, into the fare revenue base absent access to other public funds? How much of a tax writeoff would they expect through depreciation allowances?
The private sector is not a magical solution to all of our problems.
LikeLike
Porter’s fame came from creating something out of nothing. Based on surveys, people who have used Porter are satisfied with their service. Can the same be said about the TTC? Before Porter, a businessman wanting to head to Montreal would have to drive to Pearson for a flight or take VIA rail. Now, he can hop on to a shuttle bus in front of the Royal York and be flying in about half an hour. When the CSeries planes are deployed, they may even be able to fly passengers to London City Airport. This allows businessmen to bypass the congested and far away airports of LHR and YYZ.
For transportation, private sector has proven to do a better job over the long run. When Lewis and Clark traveled to the west coast, it took them one year. Union Pacific’s network allowed farm boys from Nebraska to travel to New York in about two weeks to fight Kaiser Wilhelm II. Pan American Airways brought the travel time down to less than a day when they started flying Boeing 707. Going by history, private companies have been able to make travel more speedy and more accessible (in terms of price).
As the Highway 407 proved, there is an investor appetite to purchase large public assets. If the TTC is a private corporation, it will not have access to public money and tax exemptions. It will have access to the following:
1. Export subsidies . (i.e. Buying Kawasaki Heavy Industry metros and getting 0% financing and free simulation software)
2. Ability to borrow in the debt market
3. Freedom to set routes and prices
4. Ability to sell air rights over stations and transit ways
5. Enter agreements with real estate developers to put more retail in stations (look at Osaka Station City to see where it can lead to)
6. Ability to cross promote with other brands. (i.e. Joint marketing with hotels)
7. Enter into revenue sharing agreements with other transport companies
8. Use existing assets to carry freight at off peak time.
9. Use of profits to expand or upgrade system
Of course, profit motives may mean certain routes will reduced. This can be solved by the city paying a subsidy. At least we will not have people yelling antics like “Subways, subways, subways” and “no fare increases” at city hall. Wars should be fought by generals and similarly transit should be left out of the political realm.
LikeLike
Porter is no paragon of virtue. Some people might even call Rob Deluce a snake based on the way he is pushing his airport agenda (in bad faith).
LikeLike
Re: Benny Cheung’s comment about privatizing the TTC. I would sooner suggest selling off roads and public parking lots, ie, the vast network that actually carries and stores “private” automobile transport.
It’s always more complicated than public-vs-private. Airlines are hardly a stellar example since all airports in Canada are essentially government-run as is NAV Canada. Then there’s that minor piece of legislation, the “Air Canada Act”, which specifies bilingual cabin crew and headquarters in Montreal. In exchange Transport Canada protects lucrative routes and keeps foreign carriers out.
The Economist has this to say about airline profitability:
Perhaps not the best role model for successfully run private transportation. And in most places there is an implicit state-backing in the form of bailouts or friendly legislation and regulators.
LikeLike
The private sector is unlikely to ever want to purchase the TTC – the Mayor provided this to us when he couldn’t get the private sector to pay for new subways. If public transit made money, you’d have loads of companies running out there to buy the TTC and increase transit.
What I do think the TTC requires is better route management, something that it could learn from the private sector. Articulated buses, and longer streetcars (i.e the ARLV) are great on busy routes that already have high demand. But generally ‘regular’ buses, and the CLRV/PCC sized streetcars do the best overall – you need frequent service and capacity, not just one or the other. Also, some routes (like the 501) suffer from long routes and should be cut down in size to improve service.
Also, the TTC needs to listen more to their customers – they people who ultimately pay the TTC’s bills (through fares.) Remember, there would be no point in having a transit system, so even the subsidies would not be required if it were not for the TTC’s customers.
LikeLike
In relation to the streetcar implementation plan, is there any news about Presto implementation on the system, switching to a new fare system compatible with the new streetcars, or any new contracts related to those?
The lack of talk about a new fare system has me a bit worried considering the new LRVs are supposed to be in revenue service in a year.
Steve: The intent is to implement Presto on the new streetcars as they come into service, but a transitional ability to handle regular fares is also required. The TTC has not provided details of exactly how they will handle the situation. As I have written elsewhere, Presto is useless for frequent users (who now likely are Metropass holders) because it won’t be able to pay fares on vehicles and in stations where Presto isn’t yet implemented. The TTC has to provide a mechanism for accepting tokens and cash fares and providing a fare receipt to riders on “Presto” routes. I don’t have the faintest idea of how they will handle discounted tickets.
The absence of a public discussion on this matter is troubling, to say the least.
LikeLike
I checked the TTC website for The York Street construction and they will be doing Watermain utility work just like what is happening on Queens Quay.
That is why it is taking up until October for it to be completed.
Steve: Thanks for picking up this page. It did not exist when I wrote the article, but I will add it now.
LikeLike
I’m pretty sure that other airlines flew out of the Island Airport during the B.P.E. (Before Porter Era). Just because Porter has a great marketing plan that doesn’t change the fact that its load factors are in the range of 60%. Why they would be looking to take a huge risk on an untried jet in an environment hostile to jets … and increase their costs with a new series of aircraft to maintain (to say nothing of their issues with ground staff) … and new destinations to serve … and new markets (leisure travelers) … instead of tackling their load factor problem is beyond me.
On the other hand, VIA has apparently adopted airline pricing (since last year) and it is helping their bottom line (somewhat).
Cheers, Moaz
LikeLike
In the Kingston Rd early modal change, the TTC notice doesn’t give it justice. Non-board period buses will be run starting June 3 meaning that buses will be filled more or less on an ad hoc system of overtime and spareboard. This early closure was at the direction of the City as the rail storage could not occupy curbside-too many lanes and side streets. There will be two rail welding locations in the track allowance area; just west of Dixon, and Waverly. Buses will be going from Bingham Loop to turn back via Kingston/Eastern/Coxwell to connect with the 502/503 streetcars. This will be for 3 weeks and then at the next board change the buses will do the entire route(s).
With the water and other utility work plus the track replacement on Kingston Road this summer, customers are going to see further delays and experience poorer service. The fragmented service of 3 weeks is something that the city should have seen well before the board scheduling and should have notified the TTC much earlier. Now the rider pays the price.
Steve: Actually, the bus service will continue to connect with streetcars at Woodbine Loop for the duration of the project, not just for the next three weeks before the scheduled cutover. The 502/503 will remain streetcar operations.
Links to the TTC and City notice pages.
LikeLike
From 1984-1991, City Express flew from the island airport to Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, Newark, and Detroit, among others. It went out of business.
Full-scale privatization of public transit is a non-starter given that no major city in the world does this. (Hong Kong is perhaps the only example of profitable public transit, but that’s thanks to major landholdings that essentially act as an endowment fund.) It is infrastructure provided for the common good, so common ownership and support through government makes sense.
LikeLike
For those wondering why riders in Liberty Village are seeing fewer 504 King eastbound cars, especially in the morning rush period, a lot of westbound 504 cars are short turning at Bathurst. Those cars go to Fleet loop and travel back eastbound. One King operator mentioned that some riders in the Bathurst/Lakeshore area like the option of going to the YUS subway via Bathurst and King instead of taking the 509 bus and getting stuck in traffic on Lakeshore Blvd. Come this September, I wonder if the TTC should implement a revised 509 streetcar service that runs bewtween Exhibition loop and King/Church St via Fleet, Queens Quay, Spadina (if’ the tracks are ready) and King. For those riders east of Spadina, have 509 buses operate from King/Union Stn to Queens Quay/Spadina via Bay and Queens Quay/Lakeshore Blvd.
LikeLike
Porter Airlines is scarcely an example of private sector enterprise. The obscene subsidies that company receives put it squarely into the category of “Corporate Welfare Bum.”
Among other things, is pays almost nothing for some of the most valuable real estate in Toronto.
As Edward Levy correctly pointed out in the April 30 “Inside the Planners Studio” presentation the Toronto Island Airport could be turned into a community of 50,000 people. The sale of this real estate would be vastly profitable and would result in a steady stream of property taxes that would be much, much higher than the cost of municipal services to this car-free community.
Forgoing this billion dollar sale and multi-million dollar per year income source is an immense subsidy to Porter Airlines.
Plus I really resent this Corporate Welfare Bum denying me and everyone else the opportunity to live in a car-free community. So far I have not had my name drawn in the lottery to get on the 15 year waiting list for one of the only 262 existing Toronto Island homes. That number is so small as to effectively deny housing choice to the people of Toronto.
LikeLike
Urban rail is a natural monopoly in most cities (high fixed costs and low variable costs), and private provider would probably have the pricing and customer service ethos of Rogers Cable, another natural monopoly. I don’t think that’s an improvement. (Urban bus can be a competitive business, with appropriate regulation on stops and transfers).
As for Porter, as a frequent user of Island airport for 20 years, I love them. Very few cities have an airport you can walk to. True car free living.
LikeLike
These cars may be the same ones that short-turn at the Church/Adelaide ‘loop’ when going eastbound which means that the ‘outer parts’ of the 504 at both ends get very poor morning service. No doubt the operators are on time!
LikeLike
I love it when the unscheduled short turns become so regular that people begin to wait for and use them. The other common one is people who wait for the King car up Parliament. Just keep those operators on time; that is so mucch more important than passengers being on time.
LikeLike
Urban rail is a natural monopoly in its field, but that does not mean competition does not exists. For example, if I wanted to go from U of T Scarborough to Humber College on Highway 27, TTC will take about two hours with multiple transfers. Taxis and private vehicles are other options available to most people for the same trip. Yes, the cost is higher and no one else can operate a bus service between those two points. But, if Tata Motors can sell a $5000 car in Toronto with say 60MPG, the market share of the TTC will not remain the same. A monopoly does not exists in a vacuum forever.
As a public entity, the TTC cannot really improve or have its own vision. For example, having retail spaces inside a station is seen as anti competitive to the retail stores around it. Hence, I cannot not even use a Green Machine to withdrawn some money. Another example, suppose the TTC proposes to run rapid transit with 3 km station spacing. Does one think the plan will survive the public hearing?
Private companies have always tried to make travel faster from one generation to the next. Has the running time on the metro improved since the 1980s? On most railways around the world, each new generation of locomotives are faster than the previous one. This is our duty to the next generation, to make travel faster. Can one imagine the disgrace of taking 34 hours to fly from New York to Paris today? It was a world record in 1927, but not now.
Large scale privatization can happen and has happed already. The Japan Railways group of companies are completely privatized. One can purchase a share of those companies by simply calling their broker. JR East has rail track stretching from Atami all the way to Aomori. To privatize the TTC, all one has to do is to make the management structure compatible with TSX listing requirements. Initially, the City of Toronto would own 100% of the corporation. Over time, it can be divested until 100% is in private hands. Goldman Sachs can underwrite these types of deals.
LikeLike
Kevin’s comment:
Always? There are numerous counterexamples to prove the falsehood of this statement. Usually because private companies are much more concerned to make private profits higher and, to quote one private owner of passenger services, “The public be damned.”
That was William Vanderbilt. He uttered those famous words when deliberately providing slower service to boost his profits. So much for “Always.”
Another good example is right here in Toronto. When the forerunner to today’s TTC was privately owned, speedy service was not exactly one of the priorities of the private owners. Profits certainly were.
We already tried private ownership in Toronto. It was a failure.
One of the major reasons for the failure of that private ownership was the lack of investment in improving the system to make the system faster. Or even keep up with city growth. Making a quick dollar was the priority of private owners and I believe that private owners today would have this same priority.
Let’s face it. Although modern PR firms tell private owners to zip the lip when it comes to saying how they really feel, they certainly tend to act in accordance with the precepts set down by Mr. Vanderbilt:
LikeLike
There was a TTC meeting on Friday? Even on Saturday, there were other articles that distracted us from keeping up with the latest transit news.
LikeLike
From page 6 of The CEO’s Report:
Kevin’s comment:
Although we are not given the margin of error of this survey, I strongly suspect that it is higher than 2%. Failure to even mention the margin of error in this analysis leads me to strongly question the judgement and/or competence of its author.
In other words, this 2% is probably a random fluctuation. Putting it forth as meaningful is poor analysis unless we have the margin of error for the survey and can see that this margin is less than 2%.
Steve: The long term trend is more important rather like the weather, and especially the degree (pardon the pun) to which today’s trend differs from historic norms and expectations.
The CEO’s report does not include a time sequence of survey response values, but these appeared in a presentation (not available online) that was given at the April meeting. For the four quarterly surveys in 2012, the values did show a trend. (Responses are on a scale of 1-10.)
Over 2012, a decline of 5% in “good” on a consistent basis is probably meaningful, but the 2% drop from Q3 to Q4 only makes sense in that wider context. Similarly, the return to 75% in 1Q13 won’t mean much if it is not continued through the year. If Byford has an Achilles Heel, it is his managerial fixation with indices and presentations that do not examine the underlying drivers affecting them. Service measures, as I have written elsewhere, are strongly affected by the interaction of methodology and each route’s characteristics. Having a number is not enough — one must also understand what it means.
LikeLike
Or you might wait for 15 minutes to either get on said shuttle and a further 5-10 minutes to get to the airport (depending on traffic). Then, once at the airport, it may take upwards of 20 minutes just to go across on the damnable ferry. How much money is going into that tunnel they’re building by the way?
It’s nice to have another choice in Porter, but it’s worth mentioning that Air Canada now flies out of YTC too. Sometimes if I’m actually in some semblance of a rush, it’s easier (and faster!) to take the BD line west to Kipling and get right on the Airport Rocket. It takes 45 minutes or so (if coming from Yonge-Bloor), but considering all the “hidden time” involved in just getting to the Island Airport, the difference is much less dramatic than it appears. This will be even less relevant once Metrolinx’s vaunted Air-Rail Link (or Union-Pearson Express or whatever name is the flavour of the month) comes into operation.
LikeLike
Wait til those condos in Liberty Village start filling up. It is going to be a congestion nightmare with status quo, for both cars and streetcars/buses alike. I work there and from 5-6:30pm it is gridlock.
The Fords love to take credit (falsely) for all the cranes in the sky but they have no plan to actually provide infrastructure to support them.
LikeLike
US rail companies financed the construction of the transcontinental railways with GOVERNMENT land grants amounting to one-tenth of the US, an area larger than Texas, as well as GOVERNMENT-issued bonds. Similar arrangements were made in Canada.
LikeLike
That routing could be our first taste of the DRL … well, the downtown routing at least. Perhaps if that route were combined with a King St. ROW as part of the King Street transit mall we could get a real taste of ‘rapid(ish)-transit’ on King.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: Not by a long shot. “Relief” requires that a fast line with good capacity exist linking, at a minimum, the Danforth subway to downtown. A 509 via Spadina car does not begin to meet this need.
LikeLike
Agreed, but even in the greatest myths of transit creation, no successful rapid transit line has sprung forth, fully-formed from the heads of the transit gods.
Our only ‘runaway success’ subway (Yonge) is successful because of a long established pattern of travel along the corridor (dating back to 1793 if you want to go that far).
A Broadview-King-Spadina-Queen’s Quay-Exhibition streetcar won’t relieve Bloor-Yonge any time soon but it might get people interested by offering a 1 seat trip along a future transit route.
Steve: But you still have not explained why someone would want to get to the CNE area by such a roundabout route when they could just take the Bathurst car. You seem to be stitching pieces of routes together just because they’re handy.
If the transit mall was put in place on King (ideally helped by a simple act of shifting taxi stands to Adelaide and Wellington) … then the trip could be fast enough to take a few more people away from the subway & Yonge-Bloor.
Cheers, Moaz
LikeLike
In a recent Now magazine article Adam Giambrone said:
Was it cost-cutting that terminated the experimenting with different techniques? Or was it the TTC culture?
Steve: A combination of factors was at work. A challenge for any remote unit a supervisor will use is that it must be easily portable, not add to the burden of all the other stuff they must carry around. Ideally, it should replace, not be an addition to, the little notepad with the printed timetable and other notes the supervisor keeps. Also, I think TTC culture was at work because there was, and to some extent still is, too much of the “it’s not our problem” attitude. Supervision problems are compounded by service cuts because what might have been minor delays are magnified when a route has no slack to absorb events.
The folly of the Ford-Stintz cuts, coupled with Council’s lack of interest in real transit priority and clearing lanes for moving traffic rather than parking, make it easy for operators and supervisors to throw up their hands.
LikeLike
Why doesn’t the TTC convert the 504 to POP like Queen? The line always comes to a grinding halt at University WB in the morning because riders can’t enter in through the back doors and it’s a human traffic jam at the front street car doors. It often takes up to 3 traffic light changes for a single street car to approach, load, and pass through the intersection. The drivers start screaming when people enter the back with passes and transfers. There used to be a TTC employee on the corner to open the back doors and check passes and transfers but it seems they got rid of him a couple years ago and put a supervisor on the south west corner ( to monitor EB street cars).
Also the situation at King and Spadina is disgusting and TTC needs to work the city to control it. All the 510 streetcars turn down Charlotte to loop back up and have to merge with the 504. Add the cars who block the intersection in the evening and this intersection can take a single street car over 5 minutes to clear.
Steve: Yes! These are two examples of how the TTC fails at the “micro” level of system operations. Rear door loaders are vital for busy stops, and they should be scheduled pieces of work, not provisioned as and when spare staff are available.
Spadina and King has been a big mess for years thanks to all of the condo construction, and this compounds the absence of any transit priority or management at this location. Between right turning Spadina cars trapped at a signal with no priority phase, and left turning autos blocking westbound streetcars (turns are banned only on weekdays from 7-9 and 4-6). It’s ironic that there are white bars for north-south turns from Spadina that happen rarely, but not for the west-to-north turn that happens many times per hour.
Both of these show how “traffic congestion”, that catch-all TTC excuse for service problems, can be caused by failing to attack problems at key locations. Without question, King is congested, but the TTC makes the problem worse by not fixing things that are under their control.
LikeLike