The 2024 Annual Service Plan will be presented by TTC management at the November 22, 2023 meeting of the TTC Board. It is a 219 page long document, and I have boiled down the highlights here.

This report really should have been subdivided into digestible parts because it simply will not be absorbed by even the most dedicated transit nerd, let alone by the Board and Council responsible for setting policy. In particular, there is no discussion of the budgetary implications and option of proposals in this plan, and therefore no basis for discussion in the pre-budget consultations now underway.

This plan’s origins go back a few years, and its size is partly due to being a compendium of past years’ proposals. Two large groups are associated with the opening of Lines 5 Eglinton and 6 Finch which were expected to occur earlier than 2024. Another large group arises from area studies in various parts of the city. Still others come from the analysis of poorly-performing routes, a process that has been on hold during the covid years.

Despite implementation delays, consultation continued with a variety of online and in person sessions going back to 2022, some in support of the upcoming Five Year Plan for 2024-28 (which I will review in a separate article).

Through many sessions, TTC heard a message loud and clear about what riders and their own staff want to see:

The key priorities include:

• Service reliability – on-time service when expected and predictable travel times.
• Frequency – vehicles come more often and reduced crowding and wait times on routes.
• Safety – physical safety when travelling at night or during quiet periods.
• Communication – accurate and clear communications, especially during service disruptions.

2024 Annual Service Plan at p 5

Poor communications are repeatedly flagged in surveys and Service Plan consultations, but reorganization and improvement of TTC’s various information channels lies outside of the plan’s scope even though it is badly needed.

Both riders and operators flagged crowding as a problem. There is an issue with the reporting of ridership that masks crowding by looking only at rolled up weekly or annual statistics, and routes as a whole rather than trips.

TTC reports its ridership recovery relative to pre-pandemic times on a weekly basis, and for budgetary purposes, on an annualized basis. This brings two problems:

• Weekly numbers do not account for day-to-day variations. Midweek days are known to be busier than Mondays and Fridays due to work-from-home patterns, and weekends are already reported with stronger recovery. With two lighter days in the mix, the recovery will not be uniformly distributed, and crowding will be a greater problem on the busy midweek days.
• In a recovery scenario, ridership growth over a year will mean that the revenue versus historic data will be an average from the start to the end of the year. This will understate the situation “now” in the fourth quarter, let alone the needs going into a new budget year.

The Service Plan report includes more detail:

For September 2023, ridership averages approximately 78% and revenue averages approximately 77% of pre-pandemic levels. In comparison to budget, ridership was expected at 75% and revenue at 74% of pre-pandemic levels.

Similar to pre-COVID experience and in line with seasonality, weekly ridership increased in September. However, September ridership increased more than expected, averaging ~5% above budgeted levels for the Period, with ridership likely to remain at these levels for the balance of year. During Period 9, 2023, up to 97% of unique PRESTO riders used the system each week. While riders have returned to the system, the travel frequency of the riders has dropped. For example, the number of unique riders classified as “commuters” (i.e. ride four of five weekdays per week) are at 65% of March 2020 levels, whereas riders who use transit less frequently (ride less than four weekdays per week) are at 121% of March 2020 levels.

Day-of-week use is highest and consistent across Tuesday to Thursday, averaging approximately 76% of pre-COVID levels for Tuesday through Thursday during Period 9. Weekend recovery is at approximately 90% of pre-COVID levels, consistently stronger than weekday recovery.

2024 Service Plan at p 22

Emerging travel patterns from changes to work patterns – downtown office occupancy has averaged at approximately over 50% through the first half of 2023, representing between 2 and 3 days of in-office work per week. Peak day office occupancy has averaged at almost approximately 70%. This creates variability in travel demand by day-of-week and resulting challenges in scheduling the right capacity.

2024 Service Plan at p 23

Too many politicians, budget hawks especially, look at the average numbers without recognizing the difference between these and the current day-to-day requirements.

The preliminary projections for budget show a range of ridership and revenue figures through 2024. Note that this shows a modest ridership increase, year-over-year, of only 2%. That affects both the available fare revenue (from a budgetary point of view) and the mindset behind service improvements, if any.

The Service Plan echoes a familiar refrain from the Ford and Tory eras: service improvements will only come if they can be offset by savings elsewhere. Overall, planning is a zero-sum game and key changes such as rapid transit expansion can elbow aside other deserving services. Ridership growth brings more revenue, but not enough to offset the cost of more service. Unless Council allocates more money for subsidies, transit service remains mired in small-scale tweaks with little hope for network wide change.

Even worse, a decision to withhold funding at budget time echoes throughout the year. All the fine words about a return to service and the importance of transit ring hollow when the phrase “subject to budget availability” clouds every proposal. In 2023, the TTC had an unexpected budgetary nest egg with the unused headroom for Line 5 opening. That will not be repeated in 2024 and beyond

The report has an intriguing note about the Service Standards changes that came in with the 2023 Budget. This was a controversial action not just taken unilaterally by management before Board approval, but followed by stonewalling about what effects the new standards would have on service. It should not have required an FOI request to pry this information loose from management’s grip. Quite clearly, someone in this town did not want the effects of budgetary limitations to be known. “Transparency” was not a priority.

The 2024 Plan states:

In spring 2023, as the pandemic impacts on customer demand were expected to have stabilized, we realigned our transit services to pre-pandemic peak service standards with confidence that service levels will be appropriate for the customer demand. A temporary adjustment to the TTC Board-approved Service Standards was approved through the 2023 Budget. The realigned service plan protected periods of service and network coverage on all routes. As part of the ongoing service reliability program, schedules were adjusted to reflect actual operating conditions throughout the year.

This resulted in changes to 47 routes to match capacity to customer demand and to modify schedules to reflect current operating conditions and congestion. These changes represented a better calibration of scheduled service to today’s context. Demand-responsive service was also operated to protect for unforeseen changes to customer demand, travel patterns, and construction.

2024 Service Plan at p 14

What is not clear is when, or if, there is any plan to reverse this “temporary” change which saw off-peak standards revert to a level predating the ridership growth initiatives of Mayor Miller’s era. The 2024 plan talks about a review and update of the Service Standards as part of the Five Year Plan, but there has been no mention of this in the consultation sessions for that plan.

Meanwhile, the TTC acknowledges that it fails to achieve its current standards. Note that there are five daily periods from the AM peak through late evening, and a few hundred routes making a total of roughly 1,000 “periods” for comparison. A 92% figure may not sound bad, but much depends on the times and locations of that 8% (roughly 80 periods) that don’t make the grade. Beyond that 8% on average, a portion of trips on “acceptable” routes will be crowded thanks to uneven loads, gaps and bunching. This illustrates the danger of reporting averages rather than specifics.

It should also be noted that the “temporary” 2023 standards set off-peak crowding levels only slightly below peak levels as against earlier standards of a seated load, or seated plus 10%, that used to apply. This is a particular problem due to the extra space needed for baby carriages, shopping carts and mobility devices all of which tend to be seen more at off peak in anticipation of less crowding. The Service Standards make no provision for this type of demand and space usage.

The 2024 plan explicitly states that the standards adopted in early 2023 will continue to be applied.

Service adjustments will continue to be consistent with TTC Service Standards, which were applied to the system-wide realignment exercise to match service to ridership demand in the spring of 2023.

2024 Service Plan at p 27

This puts Mayor Chow’s desire to restore full service in question, and shows how TTC management continues to resist proposing a more aggressive service policy.

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