In previous articles, I wrote about the decline in transit service thanks to the budget cutbacks of the Ford/Stintz regime, and about the potential for short term improvements.
This article looks at improvements in more detail in light of a recent policy announcement by Mayoral candidate Olivia Chow that she would increase service by 10% to reduce crowding.
What would a service increase look like “on the ground”, and what resources would it require?
What Happened in 2012?
First, a review of what Toronto lost in 2012. Crowding standards were rolled back by undoing the Miller-era Ridership Growth Strategy as an alternative to continued expansion of the transit fleet and service to match.
2012.02_RGS_Vehicle_Hour_Delta
This table shows the service change between January and February 2012 when the crowding standards were revised.
- The number of vehicles in service is shown for each of 15 scheduling periods as reported in the TTC Scheduled Service Summaries.
- The number of hours assigned to each period is an estimate intended to average values over the system and provide a “back of the envelope” level of calculation. The actual length of time each route has an “AM Peak”, for example, will vary from route to route.
- Statutory Holidays are counted as Sundays for the purpose of calculating service operated on an annual basis.
The bus service, on an annualized basis, declined by 2.8% with varying levels of cuts for different periods of operation. Some periods saw little decline, while others took the brunt of the cuts. It is important to remember that the off-peak crowding standards for “frequent services” (every 10 minutes of better) changed by 25% while peak standards changed by only 10%.
However, system ridership for 2012 was up 2.8% over 2011. The compound effect with reductions in service were almost 5.5% presuming that the increase occurred proportionately across the network.
The streetcar service, on an annualized basis, declined by 4.0%. Because peak period standards under RGS had not been increased as there were no spare streetcars, they did not decline when RGS was rolled back. However, the off peak standard changed by 25% as on the bus network, and it was the off-peak that took the cuts. The compound effect with riding growth was just over 6.5%.
For both surface modes, what is noteworthy is that the overall reduction in quantity of service was less than the reduction in the standard implying that then-existing service was already operating well beyond the standards then in place. To put it another way, the TTC “accommodated” riding that exceeded the RGS standard by changing the standard rather than by operating more service.
The net saving of this change was shown in the 2012 Operating Budget as $14-million.
What Does More Service Look Like?
The first problem here is what do we mean by “more”. Should we only be considering peak period service, or should we also include at least some of the off-peak periods? More TTC riding actually occurs outside the peak, but this is spread over more service hours.
Bus crowding standards for frequent routes during the off-peak are only slightly more generous than during the peak. For example, on 38-seat low-floor buses, the peak standard is 53 and the off-peak standard is 48. These values refer to the average load on a bus during the peak hour within the period in question. Actual experience will vary depending on service reliability and the effect of “surge” loads from transfer connections and time-sensitive events such as school traffic.
One criterion advanced for improvements is that this be done on the “busy” routes. What would a list of such routes look like?
Bus Routes
The first page of this table shows all bus routes that operate at headways of 5 minutes of less during the AM peak together with their vehicle requirements for weekdays through the early evening period. The total for the AM peak is 1,004 buses, and so an across-the-board 10% service increase would require 100 more buses on the street. To this must be added a further 20 for maintenance spares.
It is worth noting that 2/3 of the peak bus fleet provides the service for about 1/3 of the routes, the ones that would be targeted for improvements to “frequent” services.
The short term problem is where to get the resources for the larger fleet. Buses are available because, as I wrote in an earlier article, over 200 are scheduled for retirement this year and these could be kept active for a short term. However, the problem will be where to store them as the “replacement” 135 articulated buses are delivered over this year and before any new garage capacity is available. There will also be a need for more drivers to operate more buses.
On a previous occasion when the TTC faced a potential excess of buses versus available space due to fleet growth before Transit City LRT lines would begin to reduce bus requirements, there was a scheme to lease space for the extra fleet. This begs the question of what space is available and how the system would be operated under those conditions.
If I were to be particularly peevish, I might point to the substantial amount of parking space the TTC operates at major subway stations, an obviously convenient place to stash extra buses. Give up parking in order to run more service for riders? I can hear the screams from TTC management (not to mention certain Councillors) now.
In the medium term, the TTC needs to get on with a planned new bus garage in northern Scarborough that is not yet fully funded “above the line” in the Capital Budget.
Next comes the policy question of whether only peak services are improved or if off-peak crowding standards should be changed as well. This would make a bigger difference for many riders even on “frequent” routes because headways are wider in the off-peak. There are roughly half as many buses serving the 45 bus routes listed here during off-peak periods. Hiring more drivers only for peak operations is an expensive way to do business because of low productivity, and better off-peak service can come at comparatively lower marginal cost. Any proposal to improve service must look at this issue, not just peak periods.
Streetcar Routes
The second page in the table shows the streetcar routes subdivided by the principal type of vehicle they use. (CLRVs are the standard streetcars, while ALRVs are the longer articulated variety found primarily on Queen.)
For years Toronto has seen little improvement in peak service on the streetcar network because replacement of the older cars has been such a dragged-out affair. Even the new low floor cars are arriving later than expected, and the delivery date keeps receding into the future. Current plans call for 3 cars/month to start arriving in April 2014 with 510 Spadina cutting over to low-floor operation at the end of August.
The TTC plans to start retiring older cars as soon as possible, but this is extremely short-sighted on two counts.
First, there is a long-standing demand for better service, and telling people on major routes that they must still wait years more to see it is, quite bluntly, a disaster of “customer service” which has been the TTC’s focus of late in the absence of actually running more vehicles. Second, the fleet plans do not take into account the fact that larger ALRVs will be retired first even though the routes they serve won’t be getting new cars right away.
The TTC’s most recently published plan for the streetcar network was presented in June 2013. According to this plan, we should have had 9 new cars on the property by the end of 2013 and a further 34 in 2014. We will actually do well to have 27 (3/month for 9 months), down from the originally anticipated 43, although the TTC says that Bombardier can make up the pace in the contract. How soon this might actually happen is another matter.
The fleet plan called for conversion of 510 Spadina, 511 Bathurst and 509 Harbourfront, plus partial conversion of 505 Dundas, by the end of 2014. In practice, at best Spadina and Bathurst will be completed in 2014. Riders on 501 Queen will have to wait until late 2015 or early 2016 to see the new cars, and 504 King won’t likely get them until 2017.
Meanwhile, the TTC will begin retiring the ALRV fleet used on Queen and King in 2014/15, but has shown no plans for how they will replace the capacity of these cars on the affected routes, let alone make any service improvements generally. This is a recipe for making riders even more disenchanted with streetcar service, an issue that was raised by the Customer Satisfaction Survey for 4Q2013.
The TTC argues that keeping the ALRVs in service is challenging due to their low reliability (they were particularly affected by the cold winter of 2013/14), but they will not be in any position to retire this fleet for the 2014/15 winter because (a) enough new cars won’t yet be on the property and (b) the number of CLRVs that will be released by early conversions to low floor cars will be inadequate to replace the capacity of the ALRVs.
To put this in context, the TTC requires 38 ALRVs on the road for AM peak service on King and Queen. If the same capacity were provided by CLRVs, they would need 57 cars. However, only 25 cars will be available from conversion of Spadina and Bathurst.
I have repeatedly raised this concern with the TTC, and nothing has been done to change the fleet plan even though this problem was evident in earlier versions.
The TTC really needs to build a new fleet plan reflecting, at a minimum, preservation of service quality on routes that will not get the new low-floor cars for several years, and as an add-on, improving service as older cars are displaced. This is not rocket science, but what is needed is the will to actually improve service, not tell us to wait, and wait, and wait.
How Much Will This Cost?
As always with TTC budget work, this is a tricky question and much depends on the assumptions.
The TTC publishes a summary of daily ridership and operating costs for most of its surface routes (2012 is the most recent year available). Adding up the cost of all routes gives a total of about $1.6-million for one day’s operation. Pro-rating this to a full year gives a value of $480m (treating weekends as one day for budget purposes gives a 300-day year). However, the total TTC operating budget is $1.6-billion.
The difference will come from the rapid transit system (not included in published route-by-route figures), from fixed costs that do not vary with the amount of service, and from overhead costs not allocated to specific routes. Little of this would be affected by improved service on surface routes. (It is also possible that the formula used to allocate costs to routes is inaccurate and understates their cost, but if so, the TTC is publishing misleading data.)
An across the board 10% service improvement should, therefore, cost at about $50m, and the value would be lower if the goal is to reduce crowding on selected routes and times, not simply to improve service everywhere all day long.
The Ford/Stintz Legacy
What we see here is the effect of a classic attitude to public service that not only can we make do with less, but that future attempts to reverse such changes are hamstrung by the ancien regime’s decisions about system resources. We could be suffering for years into a post-Ford era for the short-sighted planning foisted on the TTC.
Do we want a better transit system, or will “less is more” prevail as the guiding principle? Do we even care about surface transit routes which provide vital service to a majority of riders, or do we only care about promises of new subways in decades to come?
TTC management and the Board have a duty to undo this damage as quickly as possible. This will not be easy, and both staffing and fleet arrangements in the short term will have to be changed. Saying “this cannot be done” is not an acceptable policy, and I would happily boot anyone out the door – politician or management – with this as their debating position.
Steve Munro 
Moaz:
I’m thinking that could be done at Kipling Station … 3 massive parking lots plus the Westwood lands available for storage with the Queensway facilities just down the road.
Not much is happening at Parc Downsview Park these days … perhaps buses could be stored there in a secure facility until the planned bus garage is actually built.
And not to belabour the point but Mississauga Transit has a large fleet of 12m buses reaching their 12th/13th year (retirement age in the Mississauga Transit fleet as compared to 18 years … moving to 15 … for TTC buses).
If TTC is keeping their buses for 3/6 more years than other agencies, can Metrolinx set up a leasing program where retired buses from other agencies are passed over to the TTC for further use, either as in service buses or for parts? I know it’s not the best solution beyond the short term but if it is possible it would let the TTC add buses to their fleet while offloading the major costs to Metrolinx and the 905 agencies.
If I recall correctly the last time that TTC received old buses was the old Edmonton Trolley buses … was it a big problem for the TTC to accept these buses?
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: The Edmonton TB’s operated here with few problems, but then they were in reasonably good condition, from a city that is too cold to use salt that rots out bus bodies, and a known propulsion technology.
The issue with taking used buses from other GTA systems is the state they will be in having been maintained on the presumption of a shorter service life.
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Well, if using commuter parking lots will have management pulling their hair out, why not use other existing TTC property as a satellite garage, like Danforth Garage at Danforth.Ave and Coxwell? You don’t need to do any maintenance for the buses there, maybe just cleaning. I went past there and notice they have a few Wheel-trans buses, and garbage trucks on site. Or the old Landsowne Garage for the same reasons, just park a temporary trailer that has a washroom for the employees.
Apparently the older buses TTC has right now will not last long anyways, so their probably better off leasing buses at least. I’ve seen Orion Vs with rust dripping down the side of the bus, some with paint covering it up, which is a bandage solution.
Is TTC really that confident in the new streetcars that they will quickly retire some of the ALRVs as soon as the new LRVs are placed in service? We’ve all seen some of the teething issues new vehicles have, I don’t think TTC should be that confident in the new LRVs. I’m not saying their bad vehicles, I’m saying give your self some cushion just in case.
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The Streetcar Plan is certainly in need of an update – apart from the delays in getting the new streetcars they seem to have changed the years for making curb-cuts. The “plan” says King will be done in 2015 but it is now on the City list (TO In-View) for 2014, along with Queen, Dundas and Wellington. It is also interesting that the discussion on getting rid of stops is now coming to the Board in April, though the cut-program is already planned. Will they start getting rid of stops whose cut are already made?
As you say, they also urgently need to address the problem of how they will actually provide streetcar service on all routes if they retire cars as planned last summer and they seem to have no major routes being shut-down for track replacement in the next few years so will need to have enough cars for all routes.
In short, the Streetcar document you reference from June 2013 (yes, only 9 months ago) REALLY needs a complete updating!
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Reversing the three to four years under the Ford cult could take another three to four years. The TTC is only one out of the many parts of the city that were told to cut, cut, cut. All of them will now be facing budget shortfalls because of that. Unfortunately, to make it up, there will have to be increases in revenue for the city.
I can now see the screams of “gravy” coming because of the shortsighted of the cult currently previously and currently in control. We need to start the deprogramming this year.
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Kevin’s comment:
On an operating budget of $1.6 billion. All this pain for less than 1% savings. Truly insane policy.
I like Olivia Chow’s use of the word “Overground.” Nice branding.
Steve: It would be nice but for the fact that the term has a specific meaning in London UK where it refers to a surface network like GO but running very frequent service. Also, the explicit reference to Vancouver Skytrain and the map of cities with a mixed bag of technologies suggests a triumph of marketing over accuracy.
Kevin’s comment:
One unfortunate effect of increasing peak hours bus feeder capacity by 10% is to increase overcrowding on the subways. In particular, this could be a serious problem on bus routes feeding into places where the Yonge line is already at maximum sardine-jamming capacity and it is physically impossible to cram any more people in.
There is no point in delivering more people to a train that they cannot board.
Steve: Well, first off, many people are not travelling to the subway. Second, do we just stop adding capacity to the network for the next decade?
The website is inconsistent because the article, which you quote, says “rush hour capacity”, but the teaser simply says “boost capacity by 10 per cent” without limiting this by route or time of day.
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I’d imagine there is a lot of free parking spots at Ontario Place now that it’s shut down … and the ex … probably also lots of space and Downsview and the port lands … I doubt finding parking for buses would be a challenge … maybe outsource some basic maintenance to Vaughan and Mississauga if they have any excess capacity?
Steve: I could not resist a dig at the TTC and the virulence of the defense certain of their management exhibit regarding their parking lots. It is self-evident that space is available although operationally this is less than ideal. The challenge is to be a “can do” organization, not one that eternally finds excuses for inaction.
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Better service? That’s like wishful thinking in Toronto. Also why does Toronto continue to build single detached homes? That’s not transit oriented development!
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Kevin’s answer:
Priority should be given to adding capacity at bottlenecks.
Also, I could not resist taking a (undoubtedly far too subtle) dig at the argument that one of the downsides to proper Dutch-standard cycle infra on Bloor is that this would result in increasing crowding on the BD subway.
Obviously, increases to feeder capacity, whether by bus or bicycle, will increase subway demand. But once we get to crush loads so that it is impossible to fit any more people on the subway, an interesting thing happens. This thing is demand destruction so that a backlog of pent-up demand develops.
In other words, people choose to not subject themselves to the sardine experience, even though they want to make the trip. This can result in feeder routes, whether by bus or bicycle, having fairly long trips made on them. So Olivia Chow’s proposal still makes sense, even when the bus routes feed into subway locations that are currently at capacity.
It also means that small incremental increases in capacity, such as the TR introduction, will be immediately swamped by pent-up demand materializing.
Finally, building a transportation network provides for this pent-up demand to become actual demand when the DRL is finally built. Building a bus and cycle network now means that shortly after it is opened the DRL will carry a large amount of traffic.
And it helps provide the political pressure to build the DRL. Because many of those people on the bus and on bicycles who would like to feed into the subway will not be shy about expressing that opinion to their elected representatives.
So, long story short, I agree with Olivia Chow. The cost of her proposal is low and the benefit is high.
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You can’t seriously believe that you can make much of a difference to the TTC by adding more buses. There may be some low hanging fruit like running more buses on Mount Pleasant and Jarvis or adding buses to minor bus routes but you can’t seriously think that running buses every 90 seconds instead of every 2 minutes on Finch East or whatever is going to do anything other than cause there to be 4 buses in a row instead of 3 buses in a row. The only thing that can really be done to improve bus service is buying more articulated buses to replace regular buses with a 1:1 replacement ratio and selling surplus regular buses to 905 transit systems. Olivia Chow seems to be clueless when it comes to transportation, thinking that the downtown relief line is not needed (and being absolutely against any other subway expansion) and that Toronto’s traffic congestion crisis can be relieved by a few light rail lines and some buses. It seems like as we see in Europe, the left wing claims to be pro-transit, but the moderate right (e.g. John Tory) actually gets transit built.
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The issue with taking used buses from other GTA systems is the state they will be in having been maintained on the presumption of a shorter service life.
I also believe that transit companies can no longer buy non accessible vehicles, new or used. They can keep the own but cannot obtain any “new” to their fleet. I do not know if this would affect lease non accessible vehicles.
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Also, I would note that
1-they are talking about adding incremental capacity to the Yonge line,
2-Metrolinx has indicated that they are planning that DRL before building the Yonge extension (the one that requires massive capacity). This would mean that there should, at least in theory, be room for continued organic growth on the Yonge line (on the order of 27%). The existing services that rely on this line therefore are effectively being given priority.
3-I would note further to Steve’s point, even some of the Yonge line destined traffic will be contra commuting. Also some of these feeders feed the Spadina side, as well as the Bloor-Danforth line without trips down the Yonge side below Bloor. Also Metrolinx has committed to additional GO service to remove load from the Yonge line. I would hope that the extra service could therefore be accommodated as required.
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Funny that:
A few hundred of us TFC season ticket holders, and two members of the sports media were at a meeting yesterday to do with BMO Field expansion – it’s the same meeting the Star had a front page story about today. Transit came up.
MLSE, assuming the blessing of council voted on next month, is about to change availability of parking at the Ex grounds and likely Ontario Place. There will be a 9K increase in the capacity of BMO field for soccer games and 18K increase for special events. And, MLSE has been asked “to be involved” with Ontario Place, whatever that means. I suspect long term stable accessible daily storage in that area would be an issue by 2017.
On another transit note to do with transit and that area, Metrolinx and MLSE are negotiating an agreement for MLSE to pay a fee and offer sports celebs as poster boys for “Taking the Go” in return for free access to GO on game days for MLSE ticket holders. “Fully paid for” was the phrase. I have no clue how they are going to estimate all that.
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The 10% increase in obviously something that’s not possible with the TTC at its current state. Half the bus fleet is plagued with problems (age and hybrids) that probably should retire. If they retire all the hybrids too, then that’s a thousand buses to the scrap yard. How will the TTC find all that money and then buy another 120 buses for this 10%? Probably they will need another new garage besides McNicoll.
Steve, what are the chances that the TTC can convert more routes to articulated buses? Many routes on your list can make use of articulated buses after some modifications to the terminal platforms, curbs and garages. They could potentially reduce the number of operators needed for the 10% increase. I know that having a large fleet of artics that can’t operate on weekends due to lower demands can restrict this conversion (e.g. 7 Bathurst).
I guess a 5% increase is possible once the TYSSE opens. The TTC will free up at least 40-50 buses. The 196 won’t operate and the York Region routes will be transferred to YRT.
Steve: But the TYSSE won’t open officially until late 2016, and that date is going to be hard to hit given contractor problems at Pioneer Village (Steeles West) station. We need more service now, not in 4 years. Yes, the TTC has problems with equipment. But remember that we are prepared to pay $12m/year to keep the SRT operating basically so that a few politicians can get elected in Scarborough on the promise of a subway in 2023.
Some of the routes I listed are candidates for artics albeit with replacement on a 1:1 capacity basis, not with any improvement. Very soon we will probably find out that the TTC’s claim that wider headways can be better managed is so much hot air, but that’s a topic for another day.
There is something fundamentally wrong if we cannot improve service on the surface system right now.
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Is it feasible to park buses outside in the winter? While the upright windows may no accumulate much snow, wouldn’t the snow on the roof be a hazard?
Steve: ROTFLMAO. I am reminded of the claim of why the Toronto Mark I cars were so much more expensive than the cousins in Vancouver: snow load. Buses are stored outdoors all over the system today. You must lead a very sheltered life if you do not know this, or have your tongue buried very deep in your cheek.
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Perhaps a dumb question… or perhaps one that’s been covered before… but if the ALRVs need to be retired first, wouldn’t it make more sense to roll out the new streetcars on Queen first? I realize there’s a bunch of overhead and curb cut work to be done, but surely this could be done reasonably promptly if given priority.
After all, if we believe the TTC’s premise that increasing headways is the key to greater service reliability (!), switching the 501 to shorter vehicles requiring shorter headways is surely a service nightmare waiting to happen.
Steve: You are not supposed to notice that the emperor has no clothes. This has been a basic flaw in various versions of the new streetcar rollout plan for a few years. Nobody at the TTC seems to be able to count how many cars they will need if they retire the ALRVs before converting Queen and King to LFLRVs.
I am reminded of their inability to count subway cars which led to the surplus of T1 cars that we will be stuck with for the next decade. When they planned for the TYSSE, they assumed that the entire fleet would be interchangeable. Then someone got the bright idea of unit trains with ATO capability, and suddenly the T1s were no longer able to be used on the YUS as it will exist in about 4 years. We are about to buy 10 more TR trains specifically because of this cocked up planning.
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Some questions with regards to capacity on Yonge Street Line
1-Has there been further discussion on adding a 50′ car, and the various constraints on it. I gather given the Red Rocket design you could not squeeze the doors of a standard car onto the platform even with either end hanging out anyway. (11 feet to centre of door from train end, so say 8-9 feet to door edge)
Steve: The 50′ car idea seems to have dropped out of TTC’s current plans as it is no longer listed among the various potential improvements to the line. This may be a question of timing. The overall fleet plan was to shift the TR trains from Yonge to Bloor in about 2023 when the T1’s used on BD are up for replacement. At that point, new 7-car trains would be ordered for Yonge. One small problem with this is that the Yonge line needs many more trains than BD when the effects of the Vaughan extension and headway reductions planned for the line are factored in.
Once that is sorted out, the question then becomes one of physical accommodation of longer trains in various pocket and tail tracks, as well as in yards and buildings.
2- I understand even with ATC we are practically limited to about a 110″ (1 min 50sec) headway on the Yonge line, and my understanding has been this is largely due to turn time required to turn a train, is this the limitation, if so, {so in effect assuming this is solved, ie there is a viable solution and we choose to adopt it}, what is the required dwell time for unload/load at the most crowded stations, and is that the next limit (feels like it takes a long time for a train to be ready at Bloor on Yonge). Would not this still be something on the order of 100 seconds as the required dwell at Bloor feels to be well over 30 seconds (more like 40+).
Steve: The limitation might be lowered if both ends of the YUS used a split terminal. On the west side, only half of the service will go to Vaughan and so that leg is dealt with. On the east side, only an extension further north (Steeles has been suggested as a first step) is practical. With this proviso, they might get the line down to 105 or even 100 second headways. In any event, this is at least a decade off.
So I guess the question is in practice, ATC will buy us about another 5k in capacity, a 50 car additions buys us an additional 3500 (assuming that all switches, and turnarounds, and other trackage and gear can handle or be modified to take a 500 foot train) taking us to something like 35.5K from current 27K, is this an effective hard limit?
Steve: At some point, there is no more room for either longer trains or more trains/hour. (GO Transit faces the same problem on a different scale on some of its lines too.)
If so would that not mean that only service improvements on existing lines can afford to use Yonge? I guess you could consider the Crosstown and Sheppard LRT as service improvements (replaces bus lines) but would it not be reasonable that they would by themselves trigger enough latent demand (people driving who would prefer not to) to consume all available Yonge space shortly after start of service (assuming no Yonge street extension), leaving no room for additional growth regardless of extensions, and even removing room for organic growth?
Has Metrolinx made a serious proposal yet on how they can actually induce enough traffic off this route (Yonge)? In your opinion how headway sensitive is this load likely to be? Is anything short of Subway/LRT frequency likely to divert much load? How much of the Richmond Hill load is actually bound for the core that is not already GO?
Steve: Metrolinx is just starting a study on this specific issue. The first round of public meetings to introduce the study were planned for March, but they have been deferred to April. The presentation shown at a stakeholders’ meeting I attended was “not ready for prime time”. Also, some of the municipal partners needed more time for their part. I think that if Metrolinx can operate a reliable 10′ headway, this can divert traffic via the Richmond Hill, Stouffville and Barrie lines (varying degrees for each route). Don’t forget that the point of comparison is not just the YUS as it exists today, but also with a future Richmond Hill extension plus population growth in the 905. Then there is the small issue of what the fare structure will be and how that will influence trip patterns. There will always be trips that use the subway because their destination is far enough from Union to make a GO trip less convenient, but there is no road capacity for extra travel into the core area, and every ounce of transit capacity will be needed. Politically, there seems to be a hope that it can be an “or” decision and we can avoid building some parts of the proposed network such as the DRL, but I feel that this is a foolhardy outlook based more on fear of future taxation to pay for everything than on recognition of the overall travel demand as it will evolve.
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I would argue, that with the right approach to LRT and bus, implemented completely enough could solve most of Toronto’s transit issue. I am just not convinced that any politician is prepared for the implications of this. Other than the DRL (east side only) I do not believe that Toronto really needs any additional Subway. I think, that as someone commented sometime ago, imagine if 4-6 LRTs had been run north south instead of Yonge.
I think that if you actually built a Waterfront LRT from Brown’s Line, to Kingston Road, or Woodbine (I stop there, because I have no vision how to go further east). Build the Don Mills LRT to a DRL (yes you need this one, or Don Mills needs to go through underground to the core) the Finch LRT to Yonge, build the Sheppard LRT to Morningside, build the Scarborough LRT, complete the Crosstown to the Airport (and the Finch LRT) and have linkage to the MiWay BRT, build a Jane (or thereabouts) LRT from Bloor to Steeles, build a McCowan or Markham Road LRT/BRT a Kennedy LRT/BRT and a Kipling/Islington LRT/BRT and maybe a King street transit mall I suspect you would find ample capacity and great flow, providing we build them appropriately following best established practice. This would be especially true if Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, and Markham follow suit in building appropriate BRT and LRT networks.
I would say this likely $24-30 billion would have a much bigger impact than building the equivalent value of subway, especially as the the first $8-10b will go between the DRL and Scarborough, the Crosstown money is gone and most of the the balance would be required just to complete the Sheppard east subway.
Most North American cities have expanded as low density sprawl, and subway is too expensive to expand out to serve it well. The original approach, that drove the Yonge Line construction was more appropriate than the current. They built a subway when they could not support load with existing streetcar. They did not follow a build it and ridership will appear approach.
I believe the province and the GTHA need to focus on a data driven not speculation driven approach. We need to look first at building to relieve existing long bus trips on high frequency crowded routes. Avoid, as someone said in a previous comment “leaps of madness” from high frequency bus to subway, and restrict ourselves to minor leaps of faith from high frequency bus to low-midrange LRT, making sure we leave an allowance for future growth (if you need 1 or 2 car 3 minute service, make sure you can support 3 or 4 car 2 minute service in the future by buying additional LRVs).
We need to remind ourselves that a single car LRT running on a 2 minute frequency (30 runs) replaces 90 standard bus runs per hour based on peak service loading, and would likely reduce crowding. Build the LRT with provision for expansion, and start talking about subway when the 4 car LRT on 90 seconds is overloaded (480 bus run equivalent). Where we have load for fewer than 60 buses per hour, in my mind we have no business building LRT, unless we are going to use it to divert load from elsewhere with very high level of certainty.
Assuming that you have a very pro transit province and federal government, finding the 2-3 billion per year in capital will be hard enough. Guessing at load 50 years into the future is a mugs game. Showing off near empty subway cars, or 2 or 4 car subways on a 5 minute headway where everyone is sitting at rush also makes getting money hard. If you need a bus every 10-15 seconds maybe just maybe you need a look at subway, although there had better be some good growth prospects as well.
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Moaz: I fully agree with this being an issue but as the TTC is (once again) in a desperate state without enough buses to provide the service it needs to provide, there is no other short-term option available. A spare ratio well over 20% is scary.
And I’m not even talking about junking the hybrid fleet … or the inevitable problems that happen when you buy a large batch of buses (or streetcars) then don’t let the fleet grow incrementally over time so you can retire the older vehicles. Imagine the horror had TTC waited until the H-cars were 30 years old (and at the end of their lifetime) before buying new subway train cars all in one batch. Yet we did that with the PCC-CLRV transition and the CLRV/ALRV-LFLRV transition.
By the way … everyone hoping that the opening of the TYSSE will help relieve the bus shortage, don’t forget that the LFLRVs are delayed and the ALRVs are going to go down quickly. I won’t be surprised if we see buses supplementing at least 1 or 2 streetcar route over the next year or two.
Beyond that, the Scarborough RT trains are 30 years old and will be a) at the end of life or b) in need of maintenance and overhaul which means fewer trains available. And that is with or without the possibility of the line being shut down to convert it to LRT.
Cheers, Moaz
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Sorry Steve reading this over I think it needs to be corrected it says:
“Yonge” should read “YUS”.
Steve: Are you sure you don’t want to call it “Line 1”?
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I agree. The problem is still largely in the minds of people and transit planners in Toronto. Call something a subway and everyone is on the same page. It should be fast and move lots of people. It’s probably too costly to do anything else. People can and so TRUST what a subway means. And trust is perhaps the most important thing a government has with its people.
Call it LRT and you end up in this mixed zone.
Some people still think of it as a bus and want local stops everywhere along the way reducing the speed of the line and making it more like a street car. This would reduce the appeal of it being a low-cost subway replacement.
Others want it more like a subway and want it completely separated from traffic/weather to the point where it basically costs as much as a subway and you might as well have built a subway.
Others want to use transit to build density and if that is the goal and you invite condos and condos to be built then the long term thinking is indeed … why build LRT now, when you’re going to have build a subway soon anyways (soon being a decade or two).
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That would get the people down to King, Queen, Waterfront but it would not get them to the CBD. The lines would need to make a 90 degree turn and go along King, Queen or some other east route, probably overloading them. Just out of curiosity upon what streets would you run them? Aside from Avenue Road, Queen’s Park , University which only takes you to St. Clair I cannot think of one that is wide enough for LRT let alone 4 – 6.
The Yonge and Bloor Danforth Subways were necessary to provide high capacity spines across the city. If anything is to be extended into Markham let it be the DRL on a surface right of way so that it can be built for a reasonable cost. Yonge cannot absorb any extra increase that would result from extending it north of Steeles. After all it is the Toronto Subway, not a rebuild of the Richmond Hill Radial car or the York Region subway.
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Steve, do those new LFLRV make you feel young again?
Steve: Only a PCC will do that.
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The original commentor I believe had his LRTs much more spread out (I believe Jane was the western most and Vic Park the Eastern), and it was more of a point he was making in service. To have done this, it would have had to be done when Yonge was in fact built, so the ship sailed some 50 years ago. However, it would have required an east-west subway to link them, or yes a number of LRTs. If you had a solid one on Lakeshore, another on Queen, and say one on Bloor, I think the city would look somewhat different. However, it would be impossible to begin to route these now, or even 20 years ago. How hard would it have been in 1950 to build something on Bathurst, and University, Jarvis/Mt Pleasant before the subway was constructed.
Steve: And do remember that Steeles Avenue was well out into farmland in the 1950s, and building LRTs to it would have been ludicrous.
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Steve:
In an answer to Malcolm N, you seem to say that ATO in itself would not increase capacity on Line 1 unless one adds a staggered terminal on the north end of the Yonge line. In previous articles, you mentioned a problem with end station geometry which would limit capacity even with ATO.
Steve: ATO will provide some, but not all, of the claimed increase. The problem with terminal geometry was identified decades ago when the Yonge and Spadina subways were proposed to form a loop so that there would be no terminal station, and hence no terminal constraint.
However, a recent TTC video states that ATO would increase capacity and did not mention any constraint problems with end terminal geometry.
So the question is: Does the TTC disagree with your opinion? Or is the video making some kind of political simplification of the problem?
Steve: Some at the TTC disagree, but not to the degree which they once did. There was a time when people cavalierly talked about 90 second headways and immense capacity of the subway. Now we are hearing more reasonable values like 110 seconds, as compared with actual operations today of 140 seconds. That’s roughly a 27% increase in line capacity, but getting to that level will be a challenge even with ATC.
The physical constraint comes from a combination of the train length and the crossover geometry. In a worst case situation, a train making the crossover move (either inbound to or outbound from a terminal) must start from a stationary position, accelerate through the switches, but not so fast as to create G forces that will throw riders off balance, and the back end of the train must completely clear the crossover before a new route for the next train can be cleared. Actual observation of long crossovers such as Kennedy or Finch shows that getting this down even to a 120 second cycle will be a challenge even with perfectly timed operation.
I note that the video offers no numerical values for the improvement, and even getting from 140 to 120 seconds represents is about 17% better.
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Olivia Chow subscribes to the David Gunn philosophy to run more buses. When that’s inadequate, run an lrt. When ridership exceeds the lrt, build a subway. At best, you never pay more money than is needed (e.g., you don’t end up with a subway with 1/3 the projected ridership – Sheppard). At worst, you must endure overcrowding until the capacity matches the demand.
Steve: A perfectly reasonable way to do things. Where we seem to differ right now is only in how much more service she is aiming to run, and her focus on bus service to the exclusion of the streetcar lines.
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Moaz: It makes me think of the Osaka subway, which has a beautiful grid network comprised of multiple east-west and north-south lines.
But would you want to make the transfer if you only had to go 1-2 stops on the perpendicular line? Certainly not during peak hours with overloaded trains. From my own experience there it was much more pleasant to get out and walk.
Moaz: There have been some interesting proposals for subways/underground Light Rail in Toronto … and most of them radiate out of the CBD or connect to a radiating line. I can only think of two that don’t … a cross-city Eglinton line and the Bathurst subway that Ed Levy mentioned.
Moaz: And by that we should also consider that in the days before Metro Toronto the subway was built to serve the City of Toronto … along Yonge it went up to Eglinton because the City of Toronto went up to Eglinton. I don’t think other lines would have gotten much past Bloor St (especially considering the terrain differences of “uptown,” “midtown” and “downtown”) … would it make sense to have 4-5 north south lines that ended at Dupont or St Clair Ave.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: And as I said in a previous reply, the lands to the north were occupied mainly by farms, not by houses and apartment towers. There was no “there” for these supposed LRT lines to serve in the 1950s.
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Moaz: So will you be riding the PCC to celebrate the return of streetcar service on Kingston Road? I suppose there is no chance of the LFLRV stopping by to try out the new track.
Cheers, Moaz
Steve: I very much doubt it. I don’t think that the prototypes have been accepted for passenger service yet by the TTC.
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It is impossible to implement such an approach because there aren’t enough roads in Toronto that are wide enough to take out 2 lanes and still have 4 car lanes left. One of the reasons that I think that not making Eglinton fully grade separated is such a bad idea is that there is a lack of east west roads in that part of the city, and little can be done to relieve it if it inevitably becomes overcrowded because everyone wants to use it as an alternative to Highway 401. Lawrence and St Clair have gaps in them, so the only thing that can possibly be done to relieve Eglinton is to convince CP to allow passenger trains on its line.
In general I think that partially underground light rail is a terrible idea because of its high cost and low capacity. There is a reason that so many large cities in Europe and Asia are spending huge amounts to build large subway expansion projects, commuter rail, etc. No city in Europe or Asia that is as large as Toronto subscribes to the belief that light rail and buses by themselves are remotely adequate. Toronto has some of the worst traffic of any developed country in the world, especially when there is bad weather, and doing the opposite of every other city with a population over 5 million which has adequate transit funding makes no sense.
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TTC commuter parking lots are only available until 2am for customer use. This would make them free from 2am to 6am, assuming they are open as of start of subway service. Using them for peak parking need could be done without much inconvenience for customers, except those who like to park after 2am since they will need to be quickly towed.
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How is the gap in Lawrence a major obstacle to LRT construction?
Obviously, it’s not nothing, but it’s a rather short gap that I believe could either be bridged or bypassed.
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I guess the question becomes how much latent demand do you think there is. If we are building LRTs in roadways like Sheppard, or in the Gatineau power corridor, you need to remember that a 4 car LRT is feasible. Even in Eglinton beyond the tunnelled section now being built you can widen the road for the most part, and if you are running a 4 car lrt on 2 minutes, that is a lot more people than the 401 you keep talking about. Look at lane capacity to hold speed. If you want 1800 vehicles per hour per lane, you are not holding 80 kmh, so call it 2400 people. Well 6 lanes is still under 15000 people, or less than multi car 1 LRT. Even a single car lrt is a couple of expressway lane equivalent. Cars are great at moving small numbers from low intensity origin to low intensity destination, but are not where there are large numbers involved.
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I was just listening on CBC Radio 1 to a replaying of an interview I heard yesterday on the afternoon show “Here & Now” where the host was speaking with Faye Lyons from CAA South Central Ontario about their “Ontario’s Worst Roads” campaign. Ms. Lyons was encouraging listeners to send in their votes for the worst roads in the province as part of their annual contest. The goal is to rally the citizenry – drivers, transit riders and bicyclists too, it appears – to send in their votes and thereby shame city politicians in order to get them repair the worst patches of asphalt in their communities.
In particular, Toronto’s Dufferin Street was noted as being one of the worst pothole-and-bump-bad thoroughfares, pretty much from top to bottom: the same as last year. (Ms. Lyons *did* mention the city *was* repairing a stretch of it this year, but …)
The mention of Dufferin Street made me think about some of the discussion on this site, especially given your ongoing work, Steve, in highlighting the far too common shoddy timing and management of far too many bus and streetcar routes. It almost seems that there needs to be a *public* mechanism whereby transit riders could send in votes to be *publicly presented* to the TTC and City Councillors regarding bad routes.
The irony, of course, is that because it’s the CAA reporting on the bad roads, there is an automatic “validity” to any results; meanwhile, one would have to be very careful about how any TTC-based public voting process went or people (including a certain mayor and some councillors) would dismiss any “complaints” as coming from crazy streetcar lovers or latte-sipping nobodies …
Oh and never mind the work a certain blog-minding transit expert does regarding actual facts and stuff: if it’s not a public contest, well it doesn’t seem to matter much.
One can only hope … (and keep up the good fight, Steve!)
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The TTC Riders group have recently introduced something called the TTC Sardine Awards. They have been holding a photo contest, have chosen winners, and are planning to deliver the Awards on March 28th to The TTC (and if I recall correctly, TTC commissioners) … and they even called for escorts/supporters who would be willing to wear sardine suits and carry placards.
Cheers, Moaz
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Moaz re sardine contest, those are some great pics and really illustrate the issue. I suspect you could get one like the Finch bus there daily, and likely close on the King car.
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From your view Steve, based on required changes in mode splits etc (how many more cars can be added?), is this likely to be a sustained rate of growth. That is can we expect to see ridership up by 25% in 8 more years, and 32% in 10, or more reasonably stated 10%+ in 5, 15-25% in 8 and 25-35% in 10?.
Has the TTC, considered hiring pushers (Tokyo style) for the Yonge line?
Steve: The growth in demand on the subway will be constrained by the available capacity, but it is clear that elsewhere the system has good sustained increases in ridership. In other words, the subway will probably fill up as quickly as we can add capacity to it. Part will be better accommodation of the backlog, and part will be the induced demand from the perception that it is worthwhile trying to get on.
And, no, Andy Byford has not talked about pushers.
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So in essense from the perspective of economics – there is a very large pent up demand, and in effect the Yonge line is being rationed. I really think the TTC, and Toronto city staff, need to look long and hard, and make a point of talking to the candidates, and make sure that they are aware of the forecasts, current ridership levels, and capacities.
Senior TTC staff needs to look at the people putting this information together, and be clear, this has to be deliverable capacity. Ideally the public and candidates should be able to see a list or map of areas that will be critical in the next decade, and what real ridership projections are, and where those riders are coming from and going to. Bad or purely politically motivated ideas will then be easily highlighted, and a real debate can be had on a single set of facts.
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