Today, May 12, the TTC implemented many changes to its services as detailed in my previous article.
Earlier in the week, on May 7, the Mayor Chow and TTC Chair Myers, among others, held a press conference to announce widespread service improvements, and the illustration below has appear in the Mayor’s social media feeds.
There is only one problem: several of the routes on this map will see service cuts, not increases. In some cases, there is a service increase, but on only part of a route or at a limited time through the week. The chart below illustrates where and when the changes actually happen.
In parliamentary language, one might say that “the Mayor was badly advised”. However, it is her name and face on an announcement that simply is not true.
TTC management has a long history of spinning service changes to emphasize the gains, such as they might be, while downplaying the cuts. The May 2024 changes were particularly challenging to anyone who wanted the details because the memo containing this information was not released until the afternoon of May 10. Normally it is available one to two weeks in advance. It may have suited the stage management of the press conference to keep it under wraps.
995 York Mills Express was singled out in the press announcement because of the doubling of weekday midday service from 20′ to 10′, but that is a rare example of a significant improvement. It is not typical of the actual changes to the bus network as a whole.
I have already written about the so-called service recovery based on vehicle hours, not on actual service frequency. The TTC itself has noted a decline in traffic and transit speeds in recent years. That, combined with more generous provisions for delay recovery time has pushed up the number of hours even while some routes see less frequent service.
This chart and the following text have been corrected to show changes to 939 Finch East Express which were missed in the first version.
A detailed route-by-route review follows the “more” break.
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Steve Munro 