The TTC seeks feedback on its Innovation and Sustainability Strategy. As I write this, the announcement has been posted on X/Twitter, but not on the main TTC page. Instead, it is well hidden, like so much on the TTC site, among many items on the “Riding the TTC” page under “Green Initiatives”. There is a link from the survey’s introductory page, but this is only available when launching the survey, not afterward. Within the Green Initiatives page is a link to the TTC’s 2024-2028 Draft Innovation and Sustainability Strategy, a 50-page document that puts the survey in a wider context, but which most readers are unlikely to access, let alone read.

The survey contains three sections addressing various aspects of a TTC strategy:

• An “innovation pipeline”
• Prioritizing climate actions
• A culture of innovation and sustainability

Reading through the Draft Strategy, the overwhelming impression is of the creation of a bureaucracy within the TTC, not to mention a pervasive presence of an Innovation and Sustainability czar. Much of their work would focus on internal changes, only some of which actually address climate effects. This is not to say that innovation per se is a bad thing, but it is not defined. Moreover, it has been bundled with schemes to green the TTC that are really a separate project.

For the convenience of readers, here are the points in the survey which is open until August 16, 2024.

The “pipeline” deals largely with internal processes including a mechanism for employee suggestions, and the context is not exclusively “green”. There is also reference to unsolicited external proposals, a path exploited by an eBus proponent in early 2017. This was an eventually unsuccessful attempt to jump the queue on a bid process.

The following points are offered for ranking in the first part of the survey dealing with the “Innovation Pipeline”.

• Conduct external innovation challenges (competitions to find targeted solutions) to evaluate ideas from private organizations, non-profit organizations, customers, next-generation riders, and academic partners
• Conduct employee innovation challenges(competitions to find targeted solutions) to define, prioritize, and solve business problems and evaluate ideas through the TTC Innovation Pipeline
• Conduct a periodic evaluation to assess the effectiveness and to optimize the process used to run innovation challenged [sic] and the TTC’s Innovation Pipeline
• Conduct peer benchmarking related to new technologies, host demonstration days, and overall enhance collaboration with transit peers
• Explore and adopt new technologies in an active, responsible and transparent way
• Internal Intake: Create and implement an employee idea intake process with defined criteria for idea management and then evaluate ideas through the TTC Innovation Pipeline
• External Intake: Create and implement an intake process for unsolicited proposals from private and not-for-profit organizations and then evaluate ideas through the TTC Innovation Pipeline
• Exploring the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to solve problems
• Implementation and use of autonomous technologies to support business tasks at the TTC (e.g., inspections, remote monitoring, etc.)

The climate section of the survey includes the following. Note that this is the only place ridership growth is mentioned. For some of the points here, one cannot help wondering why they are presented as new (e.g. waste management) when one would expect that such policies and practices would have been in place for years.

Finally, the entire list is undercut by the fiscal sustainability bullet that implies these initiatives would be self-funding from savings, or otherwise be supported by external grants. The obvious question is whether these practices, especially growing ridership, are worth doing even if they cost money.

• Minimize GHG emissions through decarbonization of our fleets and installing charging infrastructure (20% zero emissions vehicles by 2025, 50% by 2030 and 100% by 2040)
• Maximize TTC ridership to reduce community-wide GHG emissions by ensuring the TTC meets existing customer needs and continues to attract new customers
• Encourage a reduction in GHG emissions from our employees, suppliers, and partners
• Minimize TTC’s GHG emissions through greening of our facilities by transitioning away from fossil fuels and other substance that are harmful to the environment
• Identify opportunities to reduce water consumption from our operations
• Improve waste management practices by conducting waste audits at highest consuming sites and developing a waste reduction plan for new construction, retrofit projects, and operational practices
• Specify the use of sustainable materials when purchasing products/services and in our projects, while ensuring transparency and accountability from our suppliers
• Improve TTC’s green spaces to enhance the urban forest, increase biodiversity and minimize urban heat islands
• Increase energy resiliency by implementing on-site renewable energy sources and advancing the use of energy storage
• Identify TTC assets or operations exposed to climate crisis risks and vulnerabilities and implement adaptive measures to local extreme weather events
• Maximize economic returns by seeking grant funding, capturing the savings and revenue that result from green initiatives, and self-funding the TTC’s Innovation and Sustainability Strategy

The section on a culture of innovation and sustainability includes the following:

• Supporting employee innovation through a rewards and recognition program, training, and internal communications (e.g., newsletters)
• Make every TTC job a sustainable job through internal sustainability communications, workshops, and sustainability awareness and training
• Integrate Climate Action into the TTC by embedding a climate lens in corporate governance, capital projects (where applicable), and info knowledge sharing
• Seek advice and guidance from employees and customers at the early stages of the Strategy to ensure the work considers safety, accessibility, diversity, equity and inclusion
• Release annual innovation and sustainability progress reporting
• Publicly disclose annual environmental sustainability performance

Annual reporting and performance at the TTC depend both on the adoption of meaningful and measurable goals, and on honest reporting. The CEO’s report contains many metrics, as I have discussed before, that are simplistic and potentially misleading about actual TTC achievements. For example, it would be easy to achieve a high percentage of sustainability goals if many of these are small-scale, easily achieved changes (including those already committed and underway) while leaving the harder work of building ridership as a single bullet.

If you have read this far, your brain is likely over-full of management-speak and the sense of over-reach relative to a green agenda. It is a bizarre public survey considering how many points deal with internal matters that are only tangentially related to the environment.

A striking point about the survey is that the largest potential for greening the city as a whole, and not just the TTC, lies in diverting trips from autos to transit. This receives only passing mention in the survey, although the Draft Strategy document does cite the City’s NZ2050 goals which propose a massive increase in transit service. That goal has not been endorsed, let alone funded, by Council.

The Draft Strategy includes a chart showing the potential increase in the bus fleet to 2050.

This is part of a wider proposal:

As part of the technical work, one scenario was modelled for the transportation network to illustrate a pathway to achieving community-wide, net zero GHG emissions. This included service frequency of bus, streetcar and subway by 70%, 50% and a maximum three minutes headway off-peak, respectively, along with a number of other policy and behavioural changes. These service increases are beyond our current capital and operating plans. [Draft Strategy at p. 27]

TTC riders might well ask just how much effort the system makes today in attracting ridership when all three fleets – bus, streetcar, and subway – include far more vehicles than needed for current service plus maintenance spares. The surplus sits in garages and carhouses for want of operating funds to hire operators to drive and mechanics to maintain them.

At the end of the survey, respondents are asked to prioritize initiatives from the list below. Note that “encouraging more transit use” is only part of one item.

• Build climate resilience at the TTC (e.g., implementing adaptive measures to risks)
• Foster a culture of innovation at the TTC
• Be climate and fiscally responsible to maximize economic returns
• Scout for emerging technologies and solutions
• Protect our natural ecosystem (e.g., restoring ecological green space performance and reducing light pollution)
• Build an open intake process for innovative ideas (e.g., employees)
• Eliminate GHG emissions (e.g., fleet, facilities, encouraging more transit use)
• Identify and solve TTC problems with innovation challenges
• Commit to ongoing consultation to ensure the work of Innovation and Sustainability at the TTC is informed by customers and employees through safety, accessibility, diversity, equity and inclusion considerations
• Reduce the TTC’s consumption of water
• Drive transparency and accountability of innovation and sustainability initiatives
• Foster a culture of sustainability at the TTC

Searching the Draft Strategy for how the TTC might encourage more transit use, we find:

Encourage a modal shift by implementing the actions outlined in the 5-Year Service and Customer Experience Action Plan. [Draft Strategy at p. 47]

However, the 5-Year Service and Customer Experience Action Plan foresees only a modest growth in service with ridership remaining below pre-pandemic levels overall in the near future. That Plan is tethered by fiscal realities, a lack of advocacy for what the TTC might do, and the resources needed to achieve real improvement.

The “Customer Experience” part of that plan has included various schemes to add creature comforts to the system, but not an increase in service quality. This will require a combination of more transit vehicles on the street and much better service management to ensure reliability.

At the end of the day, the Draft Strategy and its packaging under the green banner could be little more than a make-work project to give the impression of progress. Meanwhile, riders waiting for their buses and streetcars will see few changes.