The July 17 Board meeting was extraordinarily long thanks to three in camera items, plus extended discussions of the CEO’s Report and of use of buses as homeless shelters during the winter.

The confidential session dealt with:

• A collective bargaining update for two small groups of customer service and operations supervisor employees.
• An update on advice from External Counsel. On a recorded vote, this was adopted with all Board members except Councillor Saxe in favour. As of the publication of this article (July 28), there have been no leaks about the subject of this report.
• An update on the fare modernization program including the status of the Presto contract. The report was also discussed briefly in the public session later in the meeting.

The public meeting included:

• The July 16 storm, flooding and hardening of infrastructure against climate change.
• New subway trains and federal funding announced earlier the same day (July 17).
• Prioritization of State of Good Repair projects. This item received scant attention although the report contains much interesting background on capital plans.
• Safety on the TTC.
• Use of shelter buses.
• Transit network expansion update.
• Fare Compliance Action Plan: See the updated version of my previous article on this report which includes the debate at the Board meeting.

Not discussed was the issue of hydraulic fluid leaks from subway work cars of which one quarter are still out of service. A report is supposed to be coming to the Board soon. It is not clear how much this situation is affecting the TTC’s ability to stay on top of track maintenance issues and the growing list of slow orders for track that cannot be safely operated at full speed.