The TTC Board met on April 16 with many items on its agenda. These include:
There are separate articles on this site covering other reports from this meeting:
The TTC is in the early days of a Request for Proposals for the supply of new subway cars. See:
The RFP was issued in December 2024 and was intended to go through several stages including:
We have just reached the point where early discussions with would-be vendors are to get underway, and actual submissions are three months off.
This means that no details of potential bids such as Canadian content, manufacturing plans or, of course, pricing are known to the TTC.
On April 23, 2025 (yesterday as I write this), Ontario’s Minister of Transportation, Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria, wrote to Mayor Chow asking:
I am writing to you about the importance of standing up for Ontario workers as a critical consideration during the procurement of the 55 new subway trains for TTC’s Line 2, which our government is supporting with a $758 million investment.
[…]
I am requesting that the City of Toronto recognize this historic opportunity and consider a sole-source procurement with Alstom, which would support Ontario workers in Thunder Bay and across our province.
Coverage of this appeared in The Star on April 24. In an unusual move for a government so enamoured of media exposure, this was not accompanied by a formal press release or media conference, but by a posting on the Minister’s LinkedIn feed.
Mayor Chow issued the following statement in reply:
Mayor Chow supports Buying Canadian whenever possible. With President Trump attacking Canada’s economy, we need to support local workers, jobs and businesses. We are working in collaboration with the provincial and federal government to deliver public transit for Torontonians and to support Canadian jobs. A Request for Proposal was issued in December. The Mayor speaks regularly with Minister Sarkaria and we will work collaboratively with the province and assess the feasibility of their request.
Past comments at both the Provincial and Federal level have suggested that this contract should automatically go to Alstom’s Thunder Bay plant, and yet the TTC issued an open RFP with all of the cost and complexity that entails. Of course, Trump’s machinations against Canada had not begun in December.
This RFP proposes not just the 55 replacement trains for the current Line 2 fleet, but trains for extensions to Scarborough and Richmond Hill, growth in demand, and eventually replacement of the current Line 1 fleet (all as options). Whoever gets this contract can well lock in decades of work supplying the Toronto subway system.
Sarkaria hints at the possibility that a sole-source contract to Alstom might require some adjustments:
The Ontario government will work with the city and the federal government to ensure the successful delivery of the trains should this decision lead to any changes in the project scope.
With a Federal election in progress, we will not know soon how much more funding might be on the table, but any extra cost would likely come out of Toronto’s allocation of the 10-year Federal funding plan already in place. It could be a stretch to get net new funding.
We have already seen the effect of cost projections on this project which was originally scoped at 62 trains, but was cut back to 55 to stay within the requested funding.
For the record, the Canadian content requirement in the RFP is 25%, and much of this contract could go offshore based on the RFP specs. If we are really going to “buy Canadian”, that number must be higher to the degree possible. (Some components, notably electronics, are not made in Canada.)
Vendors who are already involved in the RFP process will, no doubt, be upset that “the fix was in” for Alstom and resent the waste of their time. What added economic benefits might have come with an alternate vendor we will never know. Any such proposal would have to be weighed against the possible closure of Alstom’s facilities for lack of work.
I will update this article as the story develops.
In anticipation of transit demands for the FIFA games in June 2026 as well as general route reliability, Toronto proposes to install transit-only lanes on Bathurst (Eglinton to Lake Shore) and Dufferin (Eglinton to Lake Shore) Streets. Consultation sessions for these projects will be held through May 2025 both online and in person.
Updated Apr 28, 2025 at 1:40pm: Corrections to the Bathurst Street info have been added thanks to responses from the project team.
Updated May 7, 2025 at 10:10am: Links to the presentation decks and maps have been added for both projects.
Additional details and registration links for the online sessions are on the project web sites linked above.
The consultation sessions will be interesting, especially to see whether the FIFA games will be used to bulldoze transit proposals that might not otherwise be approved.
Implementation is planned for fall 2025 subject to Council approval.
Only overviews of the proposals have been posted at this time, but I will update this article when more details are available. The overviews are summarized beyond the “more” break below.
Continue readingThe TTC Board met on April 16 with many items on its agenda including a report on Extreme Precipitation Planning.
Anyone living in Toronto will remember the heavy rains of July 2024 and the snows of February 2025. July 15-16 brought 115mm of rain within 24 hours, higher than the 100-year design for storms. From February 8-17, Toronto saw over 60cm of snow accumulation with no melts between storms. This was the highest snow pack in 25 years.
Both of these events revealed shortfalls in both TTC’s and City’s response to extreme weather. They also undermined the credibility of management claims of the transit system’s physical state, and the City’s false claims about snow clearing. The split jurisdiction between TTC and City forces did not help the situation either.
Among the issues raised in the report are:
Many of these are interrelated. For example, if snow were actually cleared to the curb on four-lane roads with streetcars or buses, then autos would park normally rather than obstructing the only other lane available for transit vehicles. If maintenance of drainage and pumping systems (both day-to-day and life-cycle) kept them in working order, then less water would accumulate and potentially block service or render stations unsafe. If passengers could board and alight from transit vehicles with their usual ease, buses and streetcars would not be delayed attempting to serve snowed-in stops.
Among the TTC’s observations is the challenge of operating streetcars and articulated buses in bad weather, particularly snow. How much of this an inherent shortcoming of the vehicles, and how much is the effect of inadequate infrastructure maintenance and snow clearing?
Both from the delay logs and from personal experience, transit vehicles continued to be blocked by parked cars, and stops were blocked by snow, well after the snowfall ended. Some of the snowbanks did not dissipate until they melted. One particularly ironic location was at the southbound stop on Bay at Albert Street, the City Hall stop.
These are not just issues for the once-in-a-blue-moon weather events, but for the general condition and robustness of transit and related city infrastructure.
The report actually contemplates the purchase of spare buses, and possibly a new garage to hold them, to deal with periods when streetcars and articulated buses have operating difficulties. This would present a substantial premium in fleet size, garaging and staffing for these vehicles. One cannot help asking if the same money invested in better service generally would be more productive, combined with more aggressive storm responses when needed.The TTC is silent on the subway (for which bus replacements are completely inadequate even in good weather), and on the extra staff who would have to be available on the off chance of a bad storm.
This ludicrous approach avoids responsibility for making the streets and the transit system as robust as possible in their own right. Elsewhere I have written about the TTC’s bad habit of maintaining a spare ratio for their fleets well above industry targets, and “just buying more buses” would make the problem even worse. It is the kind of response I would expect from a system whose CEO considers crowded buses a mark of success, and months-long slow orders on deteriorated subway track as perfectly normal.
The TTC routinely trots out its list of unfunded capital projects. Critical maintenance such as replacement of pumps for subway tunnels is on that list. This is not a “nice to have”, but essential for safety. However, the problem is not just in capital funding, but under-resourcing of routine maintenance, an operating budget issue. We know the effects this brought to subway and SRT track. What other aspects of the system are waiting to fail?
The capital budget lines related to extreme weather effects total $1.4 billion of which only $360 million is funded in 2025-2034, mainly in the early years. (See TTC Major Projects Update and Funding Shortfalls for details.)
Continue readingInformation on large transit projects and their status is scattered through several reports. Two of these appear on the TTC Board’s April 16, 2025 agenda, but for a broader picture we must look elsewhere. In part this is due to the split responsibility between TTC and the City’s Transit Expansion Office. Also, some details lie in the TTC Capital Budget, 10-year and 15-year plans.
On the April 16 agenda:
Previous City and TTC Reports:
The TTC Capital Budget contains a high level listing of many projects much longer than in the “Major Projects Update”.
There is no surprise that the TTC faces a very large gap between its capital needs and available funding. The City is the primary funder for projects still on the TTC’s books, with smaller contributions from the provincial and federal governments. Expansion projects such as the Ontario Line were taken over completely by the province.
This greatly increases Ontario’s share of transit spending overall, but with the caveat that they build what suits their political climate, and Toronto is left to raise money, such as it can, for anything else. Another recent issue is that originally, Ontario’s projects were to be 100% capital with operating costs borne by the City. This has proved impractical, and Ontario now guarantees an operating subsidy for new Lines 5 and 6, albeit not in perpetuity.
As for the Federal government, it will (assuming the current government remains in power) fund a national transit program over ten years, but the money allocated to Toronto (and every other city) falls well short of their needs. Moreover, the funding is still done on a project basis with cities applying for each project rather than simply getting a block grant. This is different from the provincial and federal gas tax rebates to cities which can spend them as they see fit.
The TTC and City both produce reports tracking major transit projects, but these do not cover the full extent of the funding problem. Many issues with infrastructure condition, for example, are not mentioned in these reports although they are critical to the viability of transit service. In this article, I will review both the formally acknowledged “major projects” as well as the large dollar line items within the Capital Budget that get much less attention.
Continue readingWith Toronto’s Congestion Management Plan in the news, we hear about various ways to improve the movement of cars and, oh, by the way, maybe speed transit vehicles too. Toronto talks a lot about “transit priority” but this more often means giving transit vehicles the leftovers, the spare time that can be shaved at some locations from competing traffic, not absolute priority for transit vehicles.
This shows up particularly where transit vehicles have a dedicated lane, but they must wait patiently while other traffic, typically left turns, gets out of the way. This has the perverse effect of making transit slower particularly when combined with the “double stop” effect of farside stops. At these locations, the nearside space a stop would normally use is occupied by a left turn lane, and traffic in that lane has first claim on a green cycle.
Two routes with this as a near-standard stop configuration are 510 Spadina and 512 St. Clair. The Spadina car only recently returned, and I will leave comparative analysis of bus and streetcar operation there until more data have accumulated. A preliminary look is not complimentary to the streetcars because, unlike them, the buses are able to combine waiting for green signals with loading passengers.
On St. Clair, streetcars returned in Fall 2024. This article reviews tracking data for March 2025. In brief, a common situation along the route is that streetcars spend more time waiting at intersections than they do serving stops once they cross to a farside platform. The traffic signals are not organized to favour streetcar movements, and the configuration with farside stops is counterproductive.
To be fair, one cannot simply throw a red signal in front of cross traffic every time a streetcar appears as this will affect both auto and pedestrian crossings that require a minimum time. When both the St. Clair and Spadina lines were designed, a concern was the frequency of streetcar service and the high probability that there would always be a streetcar demanding priority. However, the larger Flexity cars combined with TTC service cuts makes this claim less valid.
Pre-emptive streetcar signals could be challenging at some locations, but there is the separate issue of timing of the phase for left turning autos. Should it come before or after streetcars are allowed to cross the intersection? Streetcar-only phases are only provided at some locations on Spadina where cars are turning across traffic lanes, but not for through movements. There is a streetcar-only phase at Lansdowne and St. Clair westbound, but otherwise left turning auto traffic always has priority.
A related problem lies in TTC’s glacial streetcar speeds through special work which would require a lengthy transit phase to allow streetcars to clear intersections on Spadina with streetcar junctions. With streetcars crossing on the shared north-south green, this does force motorists to wait for streetcars to get out of their way.
The data on St. Clair show a common pattern: streetcars spend more time waiting to cross intersections than they do serving the farside stops. They may operate in their own lane, but the combination of farside stops and signal design works against transit operations. This has implications for the soon-to-open “LRT” lines on Eglinton and Finch.
If we are not prepared to give transit vehicles true priority over cars, how do we expect to attract more riders to the system and, in theory, reduce overall road demand?
The remainder of this article describes the methodology behind my analysis and shows the behaviour at individual intersections along St. Clair.
Continue readingUpdated April 24, 2025 at 11:30 pm: TTC responses to my questions have been added at the end of the article. One questions remains outstanding.
Back in 2018, the City of Toronto bought the lands southwest of Kipling Station formerly known as the CP’s Obico Yard. This land was to be used for a new Maintenance and Storage Facility for Line 2 trains in anticipation of:
The existing Line 2 fleet comprised 372 T-1 subway cars dating from 1995-2001, and they will reach the end of their 30-year design life starting this year. The cars are in married pairs that can be easily uncoupled from their trains. Greenwood’s layout is based on short maintenance bays, not on six-car trains. (When Greenwood was designed, operation of four-car trains was common.) Back in 2018, the expected new trains for Line 2 would be similar to the TRs on Line 1 running in permanent six-car sets.
The original plan was to buy 62 New Subway Trains (NSTs) to replace the T-1 fleet. This would give enough trains to operate Line 2 through to Scarborough, albeit likely with a short turn during peak periods at Kennedy Station. The NST order has been scaled back to 55 trains (the number required for the existing Kennedy-Kipling line) with extras to be purchased as part of the Scarborough and Yonge North subway projects.
The NST design has changed to retain the style of the 6-car TRs with open gangways, but the cars will come in married pairs. Each end of the train will have a pair with one cab plus hostler controls on the “blind” end of the pair. The middle pair will have hostler controls at both ends. This will allow the 6-car sets to be broken up for movement of individual pairs in yards and shops. (See: TTC Requests Proposals for New Line 2 Trains and Signalling)
The Ontario Line replaced the Relief Line, and will have its own fleet and MSF at Thorncliffe Park eliminating Greenwood as its home base.
These factors led to a rethink of Greenwood Shops and the need for a new yard west of Kipling Station.
In 2022, the City bought property east of the Western Yard lands at 780 Kipling as a site for their next bus garage, although current plans will not require it immediately. The two properties are adjacent, but are separated by the link between the Metrolinx Lakeshore West corridor to the CPKC Milton line at Kipling Station.
TTC proposes to use this site not just for a garage, but to consolidate other operations that are now in leased space around the city.
The map below shows the two sites. The Milton corridor is at the upper left, and Kipling Station is out of frame at the upper right.
There are two RFPs (Requests for Proposals) on the street for consulting services:
The Master Plan work entails looking at the various possible uses for the site and how they would be accommodated.
The Western Yard RFP includes two documents from the Line 2 Capacity Enhancement Program as reference information. Both were prepared by HDR and Gannett Fleming.
Although it may seem like the distant past, only six years ago the subway system was bulging with passengers, and planning focused on how to accommodate more riders. This led to proposals including new trains, automatic train control and a general increase in capacity of both Lines 1 and 2. The services now operating on Lines 1 and 2 are not yet back to pre-covid levels.
| Line 1 Time Period | Trains (Headway) January 2020 | Trains (Headway) April 2025 | Capacity Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| AM Peak | 65 (2’21”) | 56 (2’52”) | -22% |
| M-F Midday | 42 (3’49”) | 35 (4’34”) | -20% |
| PM Peak | 65 (2’36”) | 54 (2’59”) | -15% |
| M-F Early Eve | 46 (3’30”) | 38 (4’11”) | -20% |
| M-F Late Eve | 32 (5′) | 26 (6′) | -20% |
| Sat Afternoon | 42 (3’41”) | 34 (4’34”) | -24% |
| Sat Early Eve | 30 (5′) | 30 (5′) | Nil |
| Sun Afternoon | 35 (4’20”) | 34 (4’34”) | -5% |
| Sun Early Eve | 30 (5′) | 25 (6′) | -20% |
| Line 2 Time Period | Trains (Headway) January 2020 | Trains (Headway) April 2025 | Capacity Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| AM Peak | 46 (2’21”) | 42 (2’38”) | -12% |
| M-F Midday | 33 (3’20”) | 30 (4’04”) | -22% |
| PM Peak | 43 (2’31”) | 34 (3’23”) | -34% |
| M-F Early Eve | 29 (3’42”) | 25 (4’52”) | -32% |
| M-F Late Eve | 20 (4’52”) | 19 (5’23”) | -11% |
| Sat Afternoon | 26 (4’15”) | 26 (4’15”) | Nil |
| Sat Early Eve | 19 (5’30”) | 19 (5’30”) | Nil |
| Sun Afternoon | 22 (4’52”) | 22 (4’52”) | Nil |
| Sun Early Eve | 20 (4’52”) | 19 (5’30”) | -13% |
TTC expects to be back to the pre-covid peak service in 2030. Line 2 will require 46 trains plus 7 spares (at TTC’s minimum of 15%) for a total of 53, or 9 spares (at 20%) for a total of 55. Spares include both trains ready for deployment as replacements or extra service (ideally 4), as well as those in maintenance programs.
Service more frequent than 140 seconds will not be possible on Line 2 until it fully converts to automatic train control in the early 2030s. The Scarborough extension’s opening date is currently claimed to be 2030, although whether like so many other projects it will come in late is unknown. Extra trains for that extension, and for ATC conversion will be needed starting in 2030.
Thus far, this article has covered basics and readers might ask about the title’s question – will a western yard ever be built?
The Western Yard design RFP incorporates the Greenwood Yard study which speaks of construction of a new yard originally planned for 2034, but now pushed to 2038 or beyond by the TTC. No reason for this is given. No estimate of construction time, and hence availability of the new facility, is given either.
Can Greenwood handle the transitional state between its current role and various steps on the way to complete delivery of the new trains, not to mention a new yard?
Back in 2018, the transition looked relatively straightforward with a planned new yard to provide capacity. Now this is constrained by several factors even allowing for the DRL/OL fleet shift out of Greenwood. There is no provision in the TTC’s 10 Year Capital Plan for construction of a western yard, only for preliminary work such as design.
The issues go beyond space for train storage. They include capacity for ongoing servicing and maintenance, major overhauls, spare parts storage and workforce scheduling. For many years, the TTC had a surplus of space and maintenance capacity, but as the number of active trains grows concurrently with delivery of new trainsets, much more will be expected from staff and facilities.
This situation arose in part because TTC management opted to defer the new yard with no acknowledgement of its critical role as the system grows. Simultaneously, contracts for new trains and ATC conversion also were pushed out into the future. This delayed capital expense, helped to keep taxes down, and left headroom for other projects.
All of this bumps into assumed go-live dates for the Scarborough extension, automatic train control and headways below 140 seconds. The pandemic pushed many dates for transit’s growth into the future thanks to lost riding. However, if events drive demand up faster than the TTC’s projections, they will not be able to handle the pressure. Considering that the City of Toronto often cites transit growth as an essential part of fighting traffic congestion, the City and TTC plans could be out of whack.
Continue readingFare evasion and enforcement are a common topic at TTC Board meetings, and for some time the sense has been that “there’s gold in them thar hills” among Commissioners. Debates can run for hours on what efforts should be launched, what policies for limited toleration there should be, and how much more can be spent on enforcement.
A fundamental flaw in these debates is that the presumed gross losses to fare evasion, based on field studies and estimates, is $140-million annually as reported by the City of Toronto’s Auditor General in March 2024. However, the TTC’s ability to recoup this missing revenue varies from place to place on the system because there are multiple ways to avoid paying.
Much of the TTC’s focus has been on the first case, a rider who does not “tap on” to a vehicle, and until quite recently enforcement was directed at streetcars because of their multiple, unmonitored entrances.
TTC recently closed the crash gates so that riders wishing to pay cash must do so either at a fare vending machine. Ticket and token users (while these modes are still accepted) must use the station collector’s farebox, although whether anyone is present to monitor them varies by location and time of day. The estimated loss from open crash gates was $14.2-million per year, and from underpaid cash fares was $9.1-million. This leaves $116.7-million in other types of fare evasion.
In the 2025 Operating Budget, the TTC allocated $2.6-million for 69 additional fare enforcement staff. This is a part-year figure, obviously, as this only pays $37.7-thousand per employee. The anticipated new revenue is $12-million in 2025, and so the recovery ratio is about 4.6:1. That is a good return especially if it can be sustained.
There is no guarantee that hiring more inspectors will necessarily produce the same rate of return. A further problem is that with fares frozen, or increasing slower than wages, the cost of inspectors will go up faster than the recovered fare revenue.
New inspectors will be deployed to check riders getting off of buses in the paid areas of subway stations where inspection is easier than attempting on-board checks, especially on crowded vehicles. Absent fare inspection across the system, there are some types of evasion that will persist. The full estimated losses to evasion will never be recovered, and the implication that this amount would be available as new revenue is, to be kind, misguided.
Much information about evasion and enforcement is available in published reports, but this is not the only way the TTC spends money or foregoes revenue. Other areas do not get a comparable level of attention by the Board:
Even when these are discussed, the topics are considered in isolation.
In January 2025 as part of the budget approval, the TTC Board voted to establish a Strategic Planning Committee with details to come back for consideration in February. It is now April, and there is no sign of the committee. Previous attempts by members of the Board to increase their participation in planning and budgets have been sandbagged by inaction. Is this a repetition? Is the Board actually willing to perform its oversight role?
The City of Toronto claims to be pro-transit with a strong desire to attract more riders out of their cars. This is not echoed by the planned funding even at the “nice to have” level to see what budgetary effects might result.
The 2026 Budget work will begin in mid-year, and if the Board expects to have any input beyond the most superficial level, now is the time for those discussions and the review of alternatives to occur. So far, there is little sign that this will happen, and the budget will land with little opportunity for substantive change.
We will continue to hear about fare evasion, that shiny, spinning disco ball that diverts attention from most other issues. Some added revenue may be found over time, but a dedicated program to improve the transit system requires more than fare enforcement can provide.
The TTC and Toronto have many policy areas where decisions affect revenues and costs. Fare evasion and enforcement is only one of these. Some decisions, notably about the amount of budgeted service and maintenance levels, never come to the TTC Board for debate, let alone as a set of options ranging from “nice to have” to “absolutely must have”.
It is quite clear that funding for transit capital and operations will not come easily with the many economic pressures Toronto faces, and that was so even before the launch of a trade war and its potential effect on government revenues and priorities.
The TTC needs to discuss strategy for its future and understand what might be possible so that alternatives aspiring for better transit are on the table, not swept out of sight. That’s what a Strategic Planning Committee is for, and why the TTC’s failure to create one is so disheartening.
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Steve Munro 