The TTC Board met on February 22 with what appeared at first glance to be a light agenda. In fact the meeting ran on into the early evening. Various items were discussed including:
On July 24, 2023, at about 6:43 pm, a southbound SRT train derailed south of Ellesmere Station after snagging the reaction rail. This event lifted the rear truck of the car off of the track and also caused it to break away from the rest of the train.
The detailed investigation reports were quietly posted on the TTC’s website, and I wrote a summary of them at the end of January:
I filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request with the TTC at the beginning of 2024 for “track inspection reports and work orders” for the SRT between June 1 and August 31, 2023. The reason for the extended cutoff date was to pick up any inspections and repairs that took place after the derailment.
Introduction: Regular readers of this site will recognize threads and arguments from past articles here. Indeed some recent posts were intended as background to this overall article on our city’s transit direction. There is a new Mayor with Council support for change. However, we risk that momentum will be lost and content ourselves with “full service restoration” and a handful of RapidTO projects.
This is not exactly a manifesto, but we have been here before with hopes for new and improved transit seeking progress beyond “business as usual”. Will this round be any different?
Thanks to readers for tweaks in the text. This is a long article, and I have broken it into segments with hotlinks here so that you can jump to specific chapters.
An ongoing issue with TTC service levels is that TTC claims about crowding do not always appear to align with rider experiences.
The TTC Board’s February 22 agenda includes a report about proposed free transit for Middle and Secondary School students, particularly for group field trips.
Among the issues raised by the report is the ability of the transit system to handle the additional loads, and the need to co-ordinate planned outings with the TTC for provision of extra service. There is a map showing existing “hot spots” where mid-day routes are over capacity.
Many bus routes have this problem, but none of the streetcar routes.
A related issue is the degree to which crowding varies by day-of-week and the danger that Monday-Friday averages could mask problems with midweek demand levels.
Of particular note here is that the off-peak capacity shown is 35 per bus, not the higher value introduced with the 2023 budget that is close to a standing load. The heat map shows us where current operations exceed the 2023 standard, i.e. those over 100% occupancy vs a bus capacity of 35. Note that these are six-hour averages and individual bus loads will vary.
This also shows the scale of service changes required to reinstate the pre-2023 standard.
Here are the official Service Standard crowding levels and those implemented in the 2023 Operating Budget. The TTC Board has never formally change the Service Standards, and management plans to work back to the existing standards from the 2023 levels as part of future service and budget planning.
Service Standards Peak
2023 Peak
Service Standards Off-Peak
2023 Off-Peak
Bus
50
50
35
45
Streetcar
130
130
70
90
The TTC produces a lot of charts in their monthly CEO’s report, but crowding maps like this one showing actual conditions only appear to support analyses of specific issues. They should be a standard part of the CEO’s Report so that there is an up-to-date indication of service capacity versus demand for all time periods.
This article began as a Twitter/X thread responding to a post from Mayor Olivia Chow.
From the better way to the *best* way. This budget will restore 97% of pandemic-era TTC service cuts and get the city back on track.
There is a big problem with this claim, and I fear riders will be disappointed by what they actually see. Here is my consolidated thread.
It pains me to write this, but this post by Mayor Chow is simply not true. Either her spin doctors cannot read a budget, or she has been bamboozled by TTC’s misleading use of “restoring” service.
This chart is right out of the TTC budget and shows the planned service restoration by mode. Note that only the bus network gets back to 100%.
Because the values are based on vehicle and train hours, and buses (with relatively small capacity per vehicle) account for most of the hours, the total gets to 97% while leaving streetcars and the subway far behind.
But 97% is not really 97% as seen by riders. Many routes run more slowly than they did in 2019, and so it takes more hours to provide the same frequency and capacity of service.
For added clarity, “100%” of service hours will *not* reverse all pandemic era cuts because some hours go to routes running over 100% while others stay below that level. But spin doctors don’t do pesky details like that.
On top of that, crowding standards brought in by management without advance approval in 2023 mean that off peak service can be more crowded before triggering service improvements. These might be reversed in 2025 but only if there is budget headroom.
Talk about prepandemic service levels forgets that there were major problems with overcrowding and inadequate service back in 2019. Actual planned service in 2020 was higher than 2019, but was cut due to covid.
The shift in commute patterns means that total ridership is less than 2019 levels, but it is concentrated on a shorter work week. Off peak riding is already at or above former levels.
The TTC does not break out service frequency and capacity as metrics, but using vehicle hours hides deeper cuts in these areas.
The February 18 schedule changes include cuts on many routes which are described as “adjustments” on the TTC’s website. A few of these are erroneously called “improvements”.
One reason for the February cuts is that service in January was actually *over* budget and the cuts back that out.
The TTC has no public measurement of crowding conditions and service quality including gaps and bunching. That 97% number will be broadcast far and wide, but will hide many problems.
Service Budgets
For comparison, here are the 2019, 2020 (pre-covid) and 2024 service budgets. The important column is the third from the left, “Regular Service Total”.
For a comparison of January 2024 service levels to January 2020, see this article:
There is work to be done, and a vital first step is to understand just what is needed and what is possible. The TTC Board plans a strategy session in March, and their Budget Committee will probably start meeting in June-July.
Soon I will publish an article about a Ridership Growth Strategy for 2024 that will set the stage for the kind of debate that should be on the agenda.
Can we hope that these meetings will not be consumed by self-serving management dog-and-pony shows, but rather will be an open discussion of the state of and options for our transit system.
The TTC will modify service on many routes effective Sunday, February 18, 2024. Several of these changes involve “reallocation” of service between routes and time periods, and overall there will be a small decline in scheduled vehicle hours.
One concern about this process is that the TTC has stated that it would only impose the new, more crowded, off-peak loading standards when changing schedules, but would not retroactively cut service based on the 2023 management-imposed values. With many routes seeing service trimmed, we do not know what the new target crowding level will be because the TTC has not published this information for several years.
There will also be some adjustments for service reliability. These generally involve giving vehicles longer travel times with resulting wider headways on affected routes. In some cases, service does improve because extra time that had been allocated for construction effects is removed.
The table of construction projects affecting transit service is shown below. This does not include ongoing works on the subway system and slow orders for which there is no scheduled provision.
The major project beginning with this schedule period is the reconstruction of water mains and track on King Street West. This is the subject of a separate article:
The configuration of the streetcar network is shown below.
Scheduled vehicle hours will decline slightly with these changes in part to correct for an overage relative to budget in January. A small increase is planned for the schedule change in late March, and a large one in September. The drop shown for December is the usual effect of the holiday break and the removal/reduction of school services.
For those who have been wondering where my usual wrap-up of coming service changes is, it seems to be stuck in the managerial bowels of the TTC. A few weeks ago I was led to believe that its release was imminent, but as of the evening of February 11, crickets.
There is an online public event on the evening of Thursday, February 15 for which you can register via the City’s site. You can also subscribe to updates on the City’s page (the link is at the bottom).
Major changes to routes in the Parkdale and Liberty Village area are coming on February 18, and the details have been posted for a while elsewhere. Time for me to catch up. When the service memo comes out, I will flesh this out with service frequency details. Here is a map showing the wandering routes in the west end.
King Street will be closed between Shaw and Dufferin for water main and track work. This is a multi-stage project, although from a transit point of view it will have two configurations.
Effective February 18, 2024:
King Street will close between Shaw and Dufferin. Various routes will change to provide service, such as they can.
63 Ossington will no longer loop northbound via Atlantic and King to Shaw, but will be extended west via Liberty, Dufferin and King to Sunnyside Loop west of Roncesvalles.
29/929 Dufferin routes are not affected at this stage of the project.
501 Queen will vary by time of day. The eastern terminus remains at McCaul Loop, but the western terminus will change.
Until 10pm, all 501 Queen cars will run only as far west as Dufferin Street, and they will turn south to Dufferin Loop (CNE Western Gate).
After 10pm, all 501 Queen cars will run through to Long Branch as they do now replacing the 507 Long Branch car.
301 Queen night car bus service will continue to operate between Neville and Long Branch.
504 King cars will also vary by time of day:
Cars on both the 504A and 504B branches will divert via Shaw and Queen to Roncesvalles.
504A Dundas West cars will run north to Dundas West Station at all times.
504B cars that would normally run to Dufferin Loop will run west on Queen.
Before 10pm, 504B cars will run through to Humber Loop replacing the 501 Queen service which will divert to Dufferin Loop.
After 10pm, 504B cars will terminate at Roncesvalles.
Note that streetcar service to Broadview Station will be restored and so the 504B cars will no longer end at Distillery Loop, but will run to their normal east end destination.
304 King night service will operate between Broadview and Dundas West Stations diverting via Shaw and Queen. [Updated Feb. 12 at 11:40am] The TTC media release confirms that the night service will operate with streetcars.
507 Long Branch service is not affected.
508 Lake Shore cars will divert via Shaw and Queen, but will otherwise operate on their normal route.
Effective Late June 2024
Note: The work at King & Dufferin has been postponed to 2025.
The intersection of King & Dufferin will close for complete reconstruction of the track. This will require changes in the 501 Queen and 63 Ossington diversions, as well as a revised south end for the 29/929 Dufferin services, but details have not yet been announced.
Effective August 2024
With the completion of work at King & Dufferin, routes should revert to the February configuration, but nothing is definite about TTC plans as riders know well. Stay tuned.
The work is supposed to continue until “early December” according to the TTC site, but until “November” according to the City site. Normally, the schedule change would occur in late November, and so it is not clear just what date they are aiming at. The usual December change is for the two-week holiday schedules just before Christmas.
Updated February 11, 2023 at 1:45 pm: In response to a reader comment, I have added illustrations from the City’s presentation deck showing the technologies used for traffic monitoring and analysis at the end of this article.
On February 9, 2024, Mayor Chow held a press conference to announce various changes coming to King Street and the success of the Traffic Agent program in taming congestion downtown, particularly on King.
Regular readers will know the graphs below showing day by day travel times eastbound from Bathurst to Jarvis by hour from 3pm to 9pm. These charts have been updated with January 2024 data. (Note: Gaps in the charts in mid October and early December correspond to diversions via Church and Queen for water main repairs east of Jarvis. No streetcars covered the full Bathurst-Jarvis segment during these periods.)
The graphs illustrate the change in congestion levels peaking in the 5-6pm hour, but still quite evident in 6-7pm and to a small extent in 7-8pm. The build-up through the fall was caused by construction on Adelaide coupled with a complete lack of enforcement of the transit corridor and of “box blocking” at major intersections where cars enter but cannot cross in the allotted green time. With the introduction of Traffic Agents to enforce the rules on November 27, 2023, the street ran much more smoothly and the peak in congestion vanished.
These charts are intended to show how travel times in many cases have been growing since the early days of the pandemic in March 2020. Where I have them, there is a small amount of pre-pandemic data for comparison.
In most cases, there is a notable drop in travel times in Spring 2020, with gradual growth thereafter. Drops for the year end holidays are common, but this was small in 2020 because isolation was still in effect. In 2021, there was a recovery followed by a combination of the drop for the holidays and the omicron wave. 2022 and 2023 saw bigger declines at the holidays. In some cases, the travel times in January 2024 are higher than the pre-pandemic values.
The Spring 2020 values are likely as good as one can expect from any transit priority scheme as they show the travel times of buses unencumbered by either traffic or heavy passenger loads.
Where the 85th percentiles (orange) spike well above the medians (blue), this shows the day to day variability in travel times that are particularly strong on Steeles West.
An important distinction lies in the location of time savings. Transit priority might not be present over an entire route, and a more detailed review of these data will show the locations of the critical segments. I have not included them here to avoid making an over-long article, but I will bring out more of that analysis as the City gets more deeply in route-specific studies.
A challenge for planners and traffic engineers is that the problem locations are likely to be the hardest to “solve” in the sense that they have the lease spare capacity, if any, to reallocate to transit. Conversely, there are areas where transit priority will make little difference because the road is uncongested most of the time, and signals are not a source of delay. Fine-grained study is essential to any new RapidTO plan.
In the first article of this pair, the charts ended at December 2023, but by the time I was working on this piece, the January 2024 data were also available and have been included.
In the case of routes already operating on red lanes in Scarborough (86/986 Scarborough, 116 Morningside and 905 Eglinton East Express), travel times have grown since 2020, but it is impossible to know how much they might have grown in the absence of transit priority measures other than by analogy to other corridors where conditions might not match.
Updated February 7, 2024: The charts for 116 Morningside have been updated to include data from late October to December 2020 that was omitted from the original version.
At its January 24 meeting, the TTC Board received a report and presentation on maintenance work and closures planned for the subway and streetcar system in 2024, plus a preview of 2025.
The report has long tables of events organized by date, but to make things a tad easier to find, I have grouped items by affected area in this article.
Subway closures come in various flavours with the most disruptive being full weekend for major work such as replacement of turnouts (switches and frogs) at junctions such as centre track entrances/exits and leads to yards, or renovation works that cannot be completed in an overnight shift. Other works only require early closing of a line to allow for a longer work shift.
All dates shown below are subject to change, but the schedule gives a sense of the timing and amount of work. (SSE) and (OL) refer to works for the Scarborough extension and Ontario Line respectively.
There are no projects planned on Line 4 Sheppard.
Riders may have thought that the end of the Line 1 Automatic Train Control (ATC) project and the near completion of Line 5 Crosstown might have brought a reduction in subway closures. However, a large amount of track and structural repair in 2024 consumes much of the calendar. This is particularly true for the Spadina branch of Line 1, and the east end of Line 2 which is also affected by both the Ontario Line and the Scarborough Subway Extension.
On the streetcar system, riders in Parkdale will face changes to 504 King, 501 Queen and 63 Ossington for most of the year while water main and track repairs occur on King from Shaw to west of Dufferin. In the east, there will be work for the Ontario Line that will close Queen Street for brief periods. There are many projects for overhead reconstruction as the pantograph conversion progresses from an interim to a final state, but the TTC has not revealed which of these will trigger diversions, and which can be handled under service with off-hours work. Construction of the 501 Queen Ontario Line diversion downtown is planned at a glacial pace extending to Labour Day.
No diversions/substitutions have been announced for any of the streetcar projects.
Steve Munro 