by

TTC Board Meeting: December 20, 2023 – Part I

The December 20 Board meeting at the TTC took rather longer than expected, and with a focus on some items that might otherwise have been unremarkable.

Items discussed here:

The 2024 Budget and Capital Plan will be discussed in Part II of this series.

Another report will be covered in a separate article.

Future Use of 21 Pleasant Boulevard

A variety of forces is slowly reducing the amount of parking particularly downtown where land is valuable. A recent addition to this is the City of Toronto’s search for lands for housing.

The cut-and-cover construction of parts of the subway created a swath of City-owned land that went for a variety of uses, notably parking. The land at 21 Pleasant Boulevard is south of St. Clair Station, and it houses a Toronto Parking Authority garage which has reached end-of-life. The TPA intends to give up its lease sometime in the future, and the City is interested in developing the property.

TTC would retain a stratified title because the subway passes under the property, and any new building must accommodate that structure. Moreover, TTC is considering use of the land for a downtown eBus charging station. This gives a hint of the charging strategy the TTC might use to avoid garage deadhead trips through the day in areas where layover space in stations might be at a premium.

The report gives no details beyond their desire to retain this option. According to TTC staff, the study of charging options is still in progress.

A debate, triggered by a presentation from veteran TTC deputant Alan Yule, ensued about the loss of revenue the garage closing represents to the TTC and more generally the question of whether the City or TTC should benefit from any redevelopment or sale. This got into the thorny issue of how TTC lands are treated.

At one time, they were entirely under the TTC’s control, but that ended after some, shall we say, dubious transactions that were not entirely above board. The City assumed responsibility for all TTC lands, and with the TTC being wholly owned by the City, on a consolidated basis they are City lands anyhow. However, the debate centred on whether the TTC should be compensated by the City for the loss of parking revenue and future development profits.

The lease revenue is small change, $196,000 annually, but the land represents a one-time option for development. There would be no profit if the land were repurposed for public housing.

In the end, the recommendations were amended as below:

  • Original:
    • 2.d TTC and CreateTO will explore the opportunity together, acting reasonably, of including the future installation of a facility to support TTC’s bus electrification initiative at this location,
    • 2.e TTC will request additional funds for TTC’s Operating Budget from the City to compensate for the lost rental income from 21 Pleasant Boulevard
  • Amended:
    • 2.d TTC will have an option for any future development of the property to include a facility to support TTC’s bus electrification or other TTC initiatives;
    • 2.e TTC to receive compensation (indexed to inflation) from the City to compensate for any lost rental income and for property value from 21 Pleasant Boulevard;

My guess is that the TTC will be told to forget about compensation for the property considering that the City regularly acquires land on the TTC’s behalf such as a future bus garage and subway yard near Kipling Station. Ongoing funding of the TTC is a much larger issue that should be dealt with as a policy issue in its own right, not as a side-effect of parking strategy and revenue.

One irony in all of this is that whenever the TTC wishes to make use of more curb space for transit stops, or when the City elects to repurpose curb lanes for cycling or CafeTO space, there is always a statement of lost parking revenue as a cost. Nobody expects TTC funding to be reduced to compensate the city for this change.

There is much land available for development above subway corridors that the City already owns that has sat for decades as open space. Building above a shallow subway has its challenges, but is not impossible, and the TTC lists several properties (some of which are already developed) as potential CreateTO sites in their Real Estate Investment Plan.

That said, the land is City property regardless of which agency might have originally acquired title. Housing programs should not be turned into a cash cow for transit funding.

Renaming Subway Stations

Commissioner Josh Matlow raised a point of privilege on the subject of station renaming. He noted that the original proposal regarding Dundas and Dundas West Station was that Council “direct” the TTC to change the names, but this was softened to “request”.

In the case of Dundas Station, renaming to “TMU” will be funded by Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson. Dundas West would be funded by the TTC, but a new name has not been chosen.

The matter of privilege turned on a City press release which included endorsement of the scheme by TTC’s CEO Rick Leary before the idea had even come to the TTC Board.

Leary stated that a report on naming rights will come to the Board in the second quarter of 2024.

This is a thorny issue because it begs the question of getting relatively small amounts of money in return for changing station names, something that violates good transit wayfinding design. The idea is also one of the leftovers of the Tory era when anything and everything was up for sale in a desperate attempt to find new revenue.

Commissioner Saxe asked that Leary withdraw his comments in the press release, but it is not clear just how he would do this. The more general issue is the degree to which the CEO feels he is free to engage on issues without prior Board approval.

The original quote was:

“Both TMU and the TTC are important pieces of what makes this city great. I want to thank TMU for collaborating with the TTC on the renaming of Dundas Station as soon as possible so we can give our customers total clarity during the transition. We also look forward to working with the City and the Recognition Review Community Advisory Committee on the future Dundas West station renaming.”

– Rick Leary, CEO, TTC

City of Toronto News Release, December 14, 2023, by email

This text is no longer part of the online version.

What we are seeing here is a mixture of the tension about Leary’s future at the TTC, and resentment by some Commissioners that the Board is pre-empted on decisions by Council. That is hardly a new situation.

Sale of Used Buses

An existing five-year contract for the sale of buses at their end of life has expired, and the TTC issued a Request for Proposals in mid-2023 for a new contract. The current provider was the successful bidder at $5.67 million for 915 buses. The revenue will actually flow as buses are retired. The vehicles involved are listed below.

The first group are buses that have already reached their 12-year lifespan, and some are rarely in service. The second group will reach end-of-life during the new contract. All of these buses will be replaced with new vehicles now on order or planned for future delivery. This will both refresh a substantial part of the TTC’s fleet and reduce the average age of vehicles.

Although the RFP was on an “all or nothing” basis with bids for the entire 915 buses, during discussion of the item various carve-outs were suggested including small lot sales to any transit operators interested in retired buses, the use of some buses for temporary housing in place of encampments, and the preservation of an Orion bus, the last group of transit buses made in Ontario.

The management recommendations were amended to incorporate these provisions including the offer of one Orion bus to the streetcar museum in Halton.