Day: November 11, 2017

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TTC Board Meeting Preview November 13, 2017

The TTC Board will meet on November 13 with a full agenda. Among the items of interest are:

The Board will also receive a presentation on the Metrolinx Draft Regional Transportation Plan. If there are any new developments on this front at the meeting, I will report on them in an update to this article.

Notable by their absence are two long-awaited reports:

  • The Ridership Growth Strategy. This has been repeatedly promised, but not delivered. I spoke with Andy Byford at an event launching the King Street Pilot on November 9 and asked about this project. He advised that there would be an interim report at the December Board meeting setting out a work plan to verify that the strategies staff are looking at line up with what the Board actually wants to study. Then there would be a separate report or reports in 2018 with specifics of implementation. He reiterated past comments that the plan would be very “aggressive”. Note that a few RGS-related changes are listed in the 2015 Service Improvements Review, although they lack funding.
  • The Bloor-Danforth line renewal plan. This plan will address the need for a new fleet in the 2020s, a new carhouse, resignalling and conversion to automated operation, station upgrades, and any other work that reasonably fits in a package where a unified, co-ordinated approach will reduce overall project costs. The only problem is that Toronto has no funding for most of this. A related issue is that some work, notably a fleet capable of automated operation, will likely be needed for the Scarborough Subway Extension planned to open in the mid-2020s. Byford believes that this report will be coming to the Board in early 2018.

(The Board will consider its 2018 Operating Budget at a special meeting on November 28, 2017. The City of Toronto 2018 budget launch will occur on November 30, 2017.)

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