With the arrival of an Interim CEO, Greg Percy, at the TTC, the CEO’s Report has been somewhat reformatted, although the overall content has not changed much. All of the performance metrics and associated commentary have moved to a separate file on the TTC’s CEO Report page.

The covering report is signed by Josh Colle, recently appointed as Chief – Strategy and Customer Experience Officer and by Percy. Further changes to format and content are in the works “to align with the new 2024-2028 Corporate Plan”.

In his introductory remarks, Greg Percy announces that there will be an open house and guided tour of the Hillcrest complex on Saturday, September 28. Details are available here.

Ridership Update

In the ridership update, the report notes that weekday boardings reached 2.6 million per day during the week ending September 7, a post-pandemic high since March. Note that this count is not the same as “rides” which are linked trips, in planning terms, from one point to another. “Boardings” are unlinked trips which count each transfer separately. Most ridership numbers cited by TTC, certainly from pre-pandemic times refer to daily trips, not boardings. Here is a sample trip:

• Bus–Subway–Streetcar

That trip counts as one ride but as three boardings. When the fare structure was simpler, rides and fares tended to be the same thing because one fare bought one ride. However, with the arrival of passes and now with the two-hour fare, the distinction is much more vague. It is not clear how the TTC reconciles historical “riding” counts with the new fare structure.

This distinction has been misreported in the press where the terms are used interchangeably:

During the first week of September, the Toronto Transit Commission told CTV News Toronto that 2.66 million riders boarded local transit each day—a post-pandemic high since the last week of March 2024.

[…]

Out of all modes of public transportation, the TTC said weekday boardings were highest across its bus routes, with 1.30 million commuters per day. Comparatively, the streetcar saw 230,000 and the subway had 1.13 million riders.

Source: CP24

This misinformation has been repeated elsewhere.

Pre-pandemic, the TTC typically carried 1.6 million rides per day, with two record days being 2 million (Papal visit) and 2.7 million (Raptors win). The TTC is doing better in 2024 than past covid-era years, but it is most definitely not close to 100% ridership recovery across the board.

Bus, streetcar and subway demand are up 3%, 10% and 9% respectively compared to a year ago. The higher increase for the rail modes implies that the downtown area is starting to see a return of peak riding that had already bounced back in the areas served mainly by buses.

Boardings vary greatly depending on the mode and day of the week. Numbers in the metrics are from July which has typically lower demand due to vacations and the absence of student traffic. However, numbers in the main report are cited from early September. This can lead to confusion when monthly numbers are compared from the two sections.

Ridership and boardings are reported in detail in the metrics. Revenue rides to July 27 are reported as 237.6 million, 0.8 million above budget, 8% above 2023, and 79% of the pre-covid level.

Demand continued to vary across weekdays, with Tuesday to Thursday being the busiest, and Thursdays being 11% busier than Mondays. Compared to pre-pandemic levels, average weekday boardings in July were 84% for bus, 65% for streetcar, and 73% for subway. The busiest weekday, however, was 87% for bus, 68% for streetcar, and 77% for subway.

Weekday peak- and off-peak demand recovered to 67% and 79% of pre-pandemic levels in July, respectively; demand in AM and PM peak periods continue to make up about 52% of all-day weekday demand.

That 52% figure is extremely important. Although there is much focus on commuting travel, this is only slightly more than half of weekday demand. There are more off-peak and weekend hours, and so their demand is less concentrated, but these periods carry a lot of TTC’s riders.

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