Author: Steve

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Revisionist SRT History at the TTC

On April 3, 2024, the advocacy group TTCriders submitted a request to the City of Toronto Auditor General for a review of TTC maintenance practices. This arose both from the July 2023 SRT derailment and other recent events on the subway including a broken switch and a flurry of slow orders.

Full disclosure: I was asked to review a draft of the TTCriders letter and suggested minor edits, but am not a party to their request.

Both in the staff presentation at the TTC’s September 26, 2023 Board Meeting and in comments responding to TTCriders, the TTC has been quite clear that it regards the root cause of the SRT derailment to be loose mounting bolts for the reaction rail. This does not tell the full story, especially in light of consultant reports that were published well after the September 26 meeting.

The published version of the Network Rail report is dated August 23. The Hatch report is Sept 28. Gannett-Fleming’s is Oct 12. Systra’s is Nov 30. For an extensive review of these, see my previous article:

A common thread in the consultant reports was that inspection and maintenance practices were inadequate, staff were not trained in the potential danger of defects that they discovered, and many staff were juniors who had not fully qualified as track inspectors. At the time, this was treated as a problem limited to the SRT. Recent events suggest that poor practices extend beyond to the rail network generally, and this is a more pervasive problem than originally reported.

The staff presentation in September was part of a larger review of the SRT replacement service, and the report title gives no hint that the derailment is part of this. Elsewhere in the same agenda, the CEO’s report celebrates the “Farewell to the SRT” event but makes no mention of the derailment reviews.

In the TTC’s review of these reports, presented in the April 11 Board meeting agenda, these suppositions are countered, although not entirely convincingly. It is fair to assume that most people will not be familiar with the detailed reports and will take the TTC’s rebuttal at face value. [The April 11 report is discussed later in this article.]

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said CEO Rick Leary ordered the external reports the night of the derailment to get answers on what happened while including links to the reports posted on the TTC website. He also said the matter was discussed at the Sept. 26 TTC board meeting.

“TTCriders was represented at this same meeting so presumably they heard the same information and are fully aware what the root cause was,” he wrote.

CityNews April 3, 2024

Certainly TTCriders and anyone else attending the September 26 meeting or playing the video later “heard the same information”. The problem lies in being “fully aware” of the root cause which was not the loose bolts, but the failure to detect and correct the problem, and more generally the state of inspection work and staff training. A related problem identified by the consultants was that previous repairs at the derailment site had created a weakness in the reaction rail which, combined with loose bolts, made the failure causing the derailment more likely.

The September presentation noted the difficulty of inspecting the reaction rail supports which required hands-and-knees posture to peer under the track in all manner of weather and lighting conditions. In practice, this level of inspection was rare because it was so difficult. Oddly enough, the Vancouver SkyTrain system uses a separate test, striking the support bolts with a tool, and listening for a dull “thud” instead of a clear “ping”. The “thud” indicates a loose bolt requiring closer inspection.

A common indication that there were problems is scuffing of the reaction rail. This was noted at several locations on the line. One does not have to peer under the track to see this early indicator of a developing problem. However, scuffing could also result from minor clearance problems with specific cars and this would not necessarily be interpreted as a location warranting detailed reaction rail review, especially if the marks had been seen repeatedly.

The most damning item is in the TTC’s own Maximo defect tracking system as reported by an inspection team two weeks before the derailment (July 9, 2023). The item highlighted below shows the reaction rail was “raised 1/2 inch on the approach end”. This was a defect serious enough to be visible without the usual difficulty of inspecting under the reaction rail. A related oddity is a two-week gap in reporting of any further problems leading up to the derailment.

In summarizing the investigation at the September meeting, TTC staff stated that the “immediate cause” of the derailment was the failed anchor bolts. Further, the consultants had recommended that if the SRT were to resume operation through November, then all of the newer bolts installed from 2016 onward should be tested and retrofitted as necessary. This work would have required “time well beyond the planned closure date”, and so the line remained closed. (See meeting recording.)

The estimated scope of this work implies a pervasive problem that was either undetected or whose potential severity was not understood, or worse ignored.

An important distinction here is that the term “immediate cause” has morphed into “root cause”. No matter the frequency of track inspections, the loose bolt problems would not be detected because they were not visible.

A further concern is the manner in which consultant reports were quietly posted on the TTC’s website with no announcement in November and December 2023. My coverage of them was the first that some TTC Board members I have spoken with knew about them.

The documents are posted under the Projects page for the future of Line 3 SRT replacement service, hardly a location one would look for technical info on the derailment. Three of the reports were posted in mid November and one in December. It is easy to verify that they were not there earlier by looking at Internet archives for the page on October 2 and December 7, 2023. The first three reports went up almost two months after the Board meeting, not “a few weeks” as expected. However, there was no media release about them nor were they brought to the Board’s attention.

At the September meeting, Councillor Matlow asked whether there could have been a reduction in maintenance or negligence due to the anticipated shutdown of the line. The Gannett-Fleming consultant replied that there were multiple possible causes for the bolts coming loose, but did not address the frequency of inspections.

Staff and consultants reiterated that inspections for problems of loose bolts were very difficult and they would generally not be spotted. It would not matter how often a walking inspection passed potentially defective reaction rail mounts because these were not visible. Indeed, there was an inspection on the morning of the derailment that found no issues.

The Network Rail consultant mentioned marks on the reaction rail surface in passing, but then talked about the impossibility of seeing bolt problems because they are under the reaction rail, and movement was seen only with a train passing. He also said that issues were being reported and fixed, but this is contradicted by the Maximo logs which show a reaction rail lifted 1/2 inch at the site two weeks before the derailment (see above).

One major problem with the Maximo records is that there is no explicit log of repairs made in response to problem reports. Moreover, the consultants noted that almost all issues were logged with a relatively low priority for repairs. I attempted to FOI the repair work orders. However, the TTC advised that the only record was that a defect report was closed, and that there was no information on the actual repair work. If true, this makes post-incident review of the nature of repairs, if any, impossible.

In September, Matlow asks whether there was an increase in maintenance on the aging system. Staff replied about the 2016 plan to replace the anchors which was well-intentioned, but as we know from the reports there were design and installation issues that eventually caused the failure.

Councillor Holyday pursued the anchor design issue. The replies mentioned that there were other locations with scuff marks but mostly from different causes. There was no mention of a problem, flagged by consultants, of repairs that created a weak spot due to cuts in both layers of the reaction rail at various points including the derailment site.

Matlow asked CEO Leary about how the TTC will prevent another accident, and Leary talked briefly about changes already underway and lessons learned. He then mentioned a planned November report, but this was the unfunded capital projects report, not a more detailed SRT report.

Leary pivoted to the Line 2 trains and signal system, and funding problems that could lead to shutdowns. He explicitly mentioned avoiding having old vehicles in service in the future. This ignored his original support for rebuilding Line 2 trains for a 40-year lifespan, and of keeping conventional signals because ATC would have been incompatible with these trains. Now he has changed his position.

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TTC Priorities: Asking the Wrong Question

A recent Council debate considered a report on Prioritization of Planned Higher-Order Transit Projects. Its first recommendation:

City Council reaffirm the policy that maintaining the existing system in a state of good repair is the first priority for investment in transportation.

Despite the State of Good Repair (SOGR) ranking first, some Councillors pursued their subway dreams. Amending motions included the Finch West LRT extension to Pearson Airport, the Bloor subway extension to Sherway, and the Sheppard subway western and eastern extensions. All of these are long-term projects that will have no effect on the transit system for a decade at least.

(Two lines, the Eglinton East and Waterfront East LRTs, were not under discussion as they are already City “priority” projects, although what benefit this status confers remains to be seen.)

The TTC’s Capital Plan includes a very long list of projects for which there is only partial committed funding, or none at all. Meanwhile, the backlog in SOGR work will climb to about $8 billion over the coming decade in spite of $13 billion in spending. In other words, the 10-year budget should be $21 billion, but is actually only 60% of that figure.

Even this pales by comparison with the 15-year total which now stands at almost $48 billion of which only 25% is funded. This number does not include many proposals including the rapid transit projects favoured by Council.

My review of the TTC’s 2024 Capital Budget and Plan includes more details on the December 2023 Unfunded Projects report and I will not repeat that here.

SOGR is seen by some as getting in the way of their preferred system expansion projects, and that a way forward might be paved (so to speak) with a focus on a short list of the most important SOGR items. This is absolute folly, but typical of the priorities that created the problem in the first place.

This misses the key question about our transit system: what do we want it to be? This includes choices not just for capital repairs and/or expansion, but for the overall scope and quality of service transit will provide.

Will the TTC always be a second class service except in a handful of rapid transit corridors, will transit play a much larger role in moving people around the entire city, or will it decline for want of resources to an unattractive last choice for travel? Only after we decide on the goal can we address the question of where to spend, and how much we need.

The 15-year Capital Plan grew substantially from 2023 to 2024 with the principal additions in the bus fleet and a provision for added capacity under the TransformTO Net Zero program. The big jump in bus costs reflects the higher unit cost of battery buses now assumed to be the standard. (Facility Maintenance and Network Wide Assets are new categories in 2024, but they simply replace the “Other” group from previous years with a comparatively small increase.)

Portfolio2022-2036 ($m)2023-2037 ($m)2024-2038 ($m)
Subways$25,400.0$25,343.0$27,613.0
Buses$6,300.0$6,948.0$8,705.2
TransformTO$5,339.8
Streetcars$2,230.0$2,277.0$2,307.4
Facility Maintenance$2,415.1
Network Wide Assets$1,474.8
Other Infrastructure$3,300.0$3,478.0
Grand Total$37,230.0$38,046.0$47,855.3

Even the $5.3 billion TransformTO line is an understatement because it accounts only for bus fleet expansion, not for the other modes, and there is no discussion of the related operating cost and competing funding needs.

A quick-and-dirty way to approach the budget is to pick a “top five” project list as if, by implication, all of the rest can wait their turn behind Councillors’ aims for their “deserving” wards. A top five list is a simplistic approach that does not recognize the complexity of TTC’s maintenance needs. Even worse, it implies that if the worst of the backlog is addressed, we can sleep soundly.

I challenge anyone to pick only five lines from the tables below as the subset we could pay for while downplaying the rest.

Another challenge lies in project linkages (you cannot buy more buses without some place to store and maintain them), and in deciding which items should be stripped of priority, in effect relegated to a “bottom five” group. That will be a hard fight.

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“Educating and Training” The TTC Board

The TTC Board will hold a special meeting on Tuesday, April 2. The announced agenda includes only one report TTC Board Orientation, Education and Training Session which includes several topics:

a. Overview of the TTC, its Governance, Safety and Communications
b. Code of Conduct and Municipal Conflict of Interest Act
c. Being an Effective Director
d. Key TTC Strategies and Plans
e. Strategy Training Exercise

Although the agenda page advertises this as a public meeting and invites public deputations, the report states that it will be held in camera as permitted by the City of Toronto Act (S. 190.3.1). The report recommends that the “training materials” be publicly released after the session, although this could be amended. More importantly there will be no public record of the Board’s discussion.

The first three topics should be familiar to most of the Board as they have been in office for some time. Only three Councillor members changed with the arrival of Mayor Chow, and the existing Tory-era Citizen members are still in place except for one who resigned late in 2023. His replacement has not yet been appointed by Council. Training on how the TTC works should be an orientation session for new members, not a topic consuming a full Board meeting that could be spent on overall policy discussion.

Some years ago, the TTC Board attempted to arrange an agenda-free meeting to discuss general policy, but this was hijacked by management with a dog-and-pony show on their own accomplishments and the duties of the Board. This could be a repeat performance.

The time is long overdue for the Board to ask hard questions of management, of each other and of the City about the TTC’s future. We got a sense of what is possible at the recent Audit and Risk Management Committee meeting. Board members Saxe and Osborne grilled management who, frankly, were not fully prepared to answer questions about the Fare Inspection audit report. We have also seen an accumulation of issues regarding infrastructure maintenance and priorities that require informed debate and direction.

Probably the largest overall issue is budget, service and maintenance planning for 2025. In December 2023, the TTC Board wanted to establish a Budget Committee, but this has not yet happened. The motion was couched as a request to staff to report on the idea in Q2 2024 rather than as direction to “do it now”. By the time Q2 ends, it will be too late.

A Budget Committee must exist before the budget is locked down to allow a proper debate about options. For too many years, the budget has landed on the Board’s desk at the last minute with no scope for review of any but the most trivial parts.

As a matter of history, the TTC Budget Committee has not existed since January 10, 2019. Even then it had been moribund since November 2017 thanks to lack of interest by its members, a less than sterling example of good corporate governance.

The fundamental questions are what should the TTC be doing, and what can it do. Starting with the attitude that “we can’t afford it” is an abdication of the Board’s responsibility.

Toronto should know what might be possible and how much this will cost, and only then make decisions about what we choose to afford. The past decade plus of Ford/Tory tax policies precluded this approach, but with a new administration, it is time to seize control of the transit debate.

Here are questions I would ask were I on the TTC Board. This is not an exhaustive list, but then the “education and training” meeting is only scheduled for one day.

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TTC Service Changes: Sunday March 31, 2024

On March 31, the TTC will make service changes on several routes. Many of these include small service increases and/or adjusted travel times to reflect conditions on the routes.

Major changes include:

  • Reconfiguration of routes for construction at:
    • Lawrence West and Lawrence Stations
    • Sheppard-Yonge Station
    • Pape Station
  • Return of streetcars on 301 Queen Night
  • Service on 905 Eglinton East Express will change from using articulated to standard buses
  • Adjustments to travel times on bus routes in the STC corridor
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Fare Evasion on the TTC

Updated Mar. 20/24 at 11:15 pm: The URL in the link below to the Fare Compliance Strategy has been corrected.

Updated Mar. 21/24 at 2:45 pm: A section about children’s Presto cards has been added at the end of this article.

On March 19, 2024, the TTC’s Audit & Risk Management Committee considered a presentation from their Internal Audit group and management’s response regarding an updated Fare Evasion study conducted from April to October 2023. See:

The fieldwork was conducted on weekdays and weekends between 6:30am and 1:00am with a total of 25,730 observations. The intent was to update findings from the 2018 and 2019 studies to post-pandemic conditions. One addition to the scope was a review of underpayment of cash fares. Two items remained outside of the scope: illegal entry to stations via bus loops, and fare evasion on Wheel-Trans and night services.

The Committee is small with only three members, of whom only its chair, Councillor Dianne Saxe and citizen board member Julie Osborne were present. They both had time to ask many questions, and it was clear that the report’s findings took them very much by surprise.

The headline number is an estimate that fare evasion costs the TTC $123.8 million annually, and that 11.9% of riders (on a weighted basis across the three modes) do not pay. This is about double the rate found in 2019. A further $17.1 million is lost to underpaid cash fares.

Lurking behind this entire discussion is the question of Special Constables and Fare Inspectors. The higher the purported loss, the greater the political pressure to regain the missing revenue through enforcement. I will not impute a motive behind the audit study, but observe that finding $140.9 million “under the cushions” every year will get Council’s attention. Whether enhanced enforcement will lead to productive staffing decisions and a real increase in revenue is quite another matter.

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Service Changes Coming to East York & Thorncliffe Park

The TTC has announced route changes coming soon to routes serving Broadview and Pape Stations due to impending Ontario Line construction. This will occur in two stages. Note that the dates are approximate and depend on construction progress.

Effective Sunday, March 31, 2024

With the next schedule change on March 31, 2024, loading arrangements at Pape Station will change as shown in the map below.

  • All routes will drop off at Bay 1 just inside the station entrance from Pape.
  • 72 Pape will shift east to Bay 2.
  • Wheel-Trans will share Bay 2 with the Pape bus.
  • 25 Don Mills and 925 Don Mills Express will load on the street on Lipton Avenue. New bus bays will be built there starting on March 25 by Metrolinx.
  • 81 Thorncliffe Park will load at a stop in front of the main entrance of Pape Station.
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Service Reliability on the Scarborough RT Corridor (Part 2)

This is the second part of a review of headway reliability on the routes serving the former SRT corridor.

Routes included here are:

  • 903 Kennedy-STC Express
  • 939 Finch Express
  • 954 Lawrence East Express
  • 985 Sheppard East Express

For other routes, and an introduction, see Part 1 of this article.

The common thread through these reviews is that although there is transit priority in place between Kennedy Station and Ellesmere on Midland and on Kennedy, these routes have reliability problems. The red lanes benefit riders once they are on a bus, but their wait for a vehicle could delay their trip.

I do not expect that most readers will take a brief look at routes they use. However, some with an absolute passion for Scarborough bus service and lots of time might dive into details for every route.

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Service Reliability on the Scarborough RT Corridor (Part 1)

When the Scarborough RT closed, it was replaced by a bus shuttle, 903 Kennedy-Scarborough Express, running frequent service over streets paralleling the former SRT route. In previous articles, I reviewed actual travel times to determine how much traffic interference and transit priority contributed to speedy travel. See:

Since mid-November 2023, service between Scarborough Town Centre and Kennedy Station has been provided by many routes with the intention of eliminating transfer delays at STC. The following routes were extended south to Kennedy Station following the same route as the 903 Express. At the same time, service on the 903 was reduced as buses were redeployed to the other routes.

  • 38 Highland Creek
  • 129 McCowan North
  • 131 Nugget
  • 133 Neilson
  • 938 Highland Creek Express
  • 939A/B Finch Express
  • 954 Lawrence East Express
  • 985A Sheppard East Express

Debate over the planned busway in the former SRT corridor focuses on travel time savings using a private road from Eglinton to Ellesmere, but an important aspect for any rider is the wait time for their bus. The benefit of a faster ride can be undone by an unpredictable wait. This series of articles reviews service reliability on the extended routes as well as the remaining 903 Express operation between mid-November 2023 and the end of February 2024.

With all the focus on the shared route between Scarborough Town Centre and Kennedy Station, there remains the much longer portion of routes that have been extended. While the red lanes, and later the BRT roadway, should minimize further sources of irregularity, this does not change the fact that some of these routes have service issues east and north of STC.

This is part of a more general issue across the bus network that improvements are needed that will not come quickly or easily simply with a few transit priority projects. Moreover, riders need to see improvements now, not in the indefinite future after studies, priority lists and endless debates about who “deserves” better transit.

Included in Part 1 are routes 38, 938, 129, 131 and 133. The remaining express routes are in Part 2.

Updated Mar. 16, 2024: Route map added.

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The State of Disrepair

Updated March 14, 2024: The table listing subway restricted speed zones has been updated by addition of the TTC’s March 12 and 14 lists.

Updated March 22, 2024: The table of restricted speed zones has been updated with the TTC’s March 21 list.

In July 2023, the Scarborough RT met its unexpected end with a derailment south of Ellesmere Station. The underlying cause was a loose segment of reaction rail struck by the train. The last car separated from the train and the rear truck lifted completely off of the tracks. A major issue raised by the investigation was poor track inspection and maintenance procedures, possibly influenced by a combination of badly trained junior staff and the assumption that the line would close soon and did not require much ongoing work.

Fortunately, the location was an at-grade segment where there was little danger of the car falling far. Had the accident happened on the elevated stretch from Midland to McCowan, this could have been a very different story.

For a detailed look at this accident and the investigation, see:

The SRT would never re-open. Subsequent inspections found other problem locations including some with similar faults to the one causing the derailment.

This might be regarded as poor management choices and bad luck for a line that would soon close, but only half a year later, the subway was beset with widespread slow orders that hampered service. These arose from an annual track geometry inspection performed by a contracted service using a test rig that is run through the entire subway system. The equipment looks for problems a visual inspection will not spot including rails out of gauge and potential failures due to metal defects and fatigue.

At the January 2024 TTC Board meeting, management claimed that this was a normal outcome of the annual inspection. However, a month later in February, management admitted that the number of defects was higher than usual. Unfortunately, for unknown technical reasons, the video record of the February meeting is not available on YouTube to provide an exact quote.

An obvious, but unasked question is why there was such a jump in defects. Have past inspections missed problems or been too infrequent? Have their findings been ignored? Have repairs been less than adequate?

Quite recently, on March 1, 2024, a broken switch blade was discovered north of Museum Station. This defect was so serious it required service to be suspended from early morning until mid-afternoon when repairs were complete.

Riders on the streetcar system know that there are slow orders everywhere. Any junction slows streetcars to a crawl, and any facing point switch has a mandatory stop-and-proceed so that the operator can verify the switch is correctly set. There is even a rule, not much observed except by junior operators, that streetcars should not pass at junctions lest one of them derail and strike the other. (This rule originated from just such a sideswipe collision several years ago.)

The attitude that poor track condition can be dealt with simply by going slow spread from the streetcar system outward, and now affects the key routes of the TTC’s network.

Somebody made decisions over the years that led to declining maintenance on the rail systems. This was never presented to the TTC Board or Council explicitly, but was the inevitable effect of making do year-by-year with cuts to the Operating and Capital budgets. Three decades ago during a recession and funding cuts, TTC management claimed that they could get by without compromising the system. The parallels are far too clear, and that era’s result was the Russell Hill subway crash.

The term “State of Good Repair” (aka “SOGR”) comes up a lot in TTC budgets as a key component – maintain what we already have, ensure that the system continues to provide safe, reliable service and only then worry about spending on shiny new projects.

A report making its way to Council’s March 20 meeting includes a rough prioritization list of many rapid transit proposals, but the first priority above all is to invest in SOGR. However, the backlog on that account is so big that were this priority taken seriously, Toronto would never have another penny to spend on anything else.

One problem in discussing SOGR is that there is much emphasis on the Capital Budget with big ticket projects like new subway cars and buses, automatic train control, electrification, and replacement of major items such as track, escalators and elevator. We rarely hear about the SOGR buried in the Operating Budget and the day-to-day work of keeping the system in good condition.

An important difference is that the Operating Budget is funded by fares and City subsidies, while the Capital Budget comes from taxes and borrowing at all levels of government. As an example, the cries for Line 2 subway car funding are familiar in recent years. This diverts attention from much-needed ongoing repairs, a very unglamourous part of transit operations.

Spending on operations means money goes out the door today, not in future years for a project that might only now be a line on a map. That money comes from current revenue, not from borrowing, and directly affects taxes and fares depending on which pocket we reach into. There is a lot of competition for whatever spare change we might find.

Any decision to limit tax increases for transit or to freeze fares has a direct effect on how much service the TTC can operate and how well it can maintain the system. Under the Ford and Tory administrations and their low tax policies, there was very strong political pressure to say “we can make do” with no detailed examination of the effects.

This might change under Mayor Chow, but there is no indication that the current TTC budget philosophy has shifted. Indeed, the big push is to restore service and freeze fares. Raising uncomfortable questions about maintenance shortfalls will not serve that agenda.

In this article, I will review the issues with subway and streetcar infrastructure, and then turn to the wider problem of whether “State of Good Repair” can stay as the City’s “priority 1” in the face of typical Council politics. The focus here is on track because that links many current events on the three rail networks, but the concern should be general for the adequacy of TTC maintenance and budgetary limits that are now baked in to overall system quality.

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The Bay Trolleybus in 1988

Back in 1987-88, I photographed the Bay trolleybus a lot. The route was threatened for a time by a proposed one-way pairing with Yonge Street, and the south end of the route went out of service for construction of the Harbourfront line.

Looking at these photos 36 years later, two things are quite striking: the changes all along the route where the canyon of newer buildings had not yet materialized, but also the frequency of service. Getting shots with two or three buses at a time was easy, far different from today when the service is infrequent with the “best” being a 14-minute PM peak headway, and 20-30 minutes at other times. This route saw a vicious downward cycle of riding loss and service cuts, and now is simply not worth waiting for.

For a history of the route, see the Transit Toronto site.

The route’s conversion to trolleybus was an offshoot of the 1972 decision to retain streetcars. The surplus TBs from 97 Yonge, released when the subway extension to York Mills opened, were originally intended for the St. Clair streetcar route, although the proposed service level would have been worse than the streetcars to be replaced. The Streetcars for Toronto advocacy group (which I chaired for a time) pushed for deployment of the surplus TBs on Bay given its frequent service and downtown location well placed to use the existing power distribution infrastructure. (A less obvious motive was to eliminate a potential threat to any other streetcar lines with the TBs looking for a home.)

The galleries below run from south to north along the route with photos from Fall 1987 and Spring-Summer 1988. Photos of 9200, the first production bus of the “new” TBs, are from a fan excursion.

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