Author: Steve

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Fun With Figures at the TTC

After a long hiatus, we finally have a Chief General Manager’s Report for the first quarter of 2008.  Over the past few years, the CGM’s report dwindled, and the online version of this one is a threadbare five pages long.  There are three appendices with the meat, no doubt, but you have to actually attend the meeting to read them.  Within those five pages, however, we still see the TTC’s inventive approach to reporting ridership.

Last summer, in the midst of the financial crisis, the TTC suddenly discovered that Metropass riders were taking too many rides.  Even though they were selling more passes, probably due to the tax incentive for pass use bringing a new demographic into the Metropass cohort, they were collecting less revenue.  This brought out the thundering forces of the TTC’s right wing who demanded that the price of Metropasses go up to compensate for the lost revenue.

However, after the City’s new taxes (and their revenue for 2008) were safely in place in the fall, we learned that the TTC had been counting those passholders as more “rides” than they actually represented, and retroactive to July, they dropped the calculated  total ridership by using the new, lower multiplier.  Nobody bothered to apologize about the erroneous claims of how Metropass users were ripping off the system.

This year, ridership for the first quarter is not doing as well as projected.  It’s 0.7% above budget, but ever so slightly below last year.  Never fear!  TTC New Math to the rescue!  If we use the lower Metropass multiple for all of last year, then the ridership for Q1 last year goes down by 3.3-million and — Presto! — we have a tidy jump in riding this year.  The TTC seems to have missed the point that adjusting their ridership for last year downward throws off all their claims about a banner year for transit and causes a slight increase in the overall average fare per ride, but we’re not supposed to notice that.

You can count the riding increase in 2007 or you can count it in 2008, but double-dipping ain’t allowed in my transit planning 101 class. 

The Metropass Multiple is supposedly calibrated every month by selected riders keeping trip diaries.  Even I did it years ago.  There will always be some month-to-month variation, but over time there should be a good trend (rather like the headway charts for the Queen car).  However, you can make the ridership numbers, and the imputed impact of passes on the revenue stream, jump all over the place simply by twiddling that multiple.  It’s a basic piece of data that should be published so that we can get some sense of how it shifts around over time and in response to external factors such as tax regimes, the price of gas, and seasonal changes in tripmaking.

It’s particularly odd to think that a value that is recalibrated as part of a monthly moving average can be changed retroactively over a year backward in time.  Have they only now gotten around to looking at those early 2007 trip diaries?  Of course not.  If the multiple was actually dropping in early 2007, the TTC would have known it by early Q2 at the outside, and certainly should have known it by the time of the fare and budget debates in the summer, Q3.  However, that was news best kept under wraps as long as goading the Commission into approving a jump in pass pricing was the real agenda.

This is a case where the TTC has that classic choice:  admit that you presented faulty data because you were asleep at the switch and didn’t know what was happening on your own system, or admit that you misled the public into thinking that a Metropass increase was essential.

Postscript:  Recently, we’ve seen media reports that the TTC faces a big jump in fuel costs later this year and is thinking of adding a fuel surcharge to the fares rather like the airlines.  Please don’t insult everyone’s intelligence.  If total costs go up, you raise fares or subsidies.  Period.  Don’t call it a surcharge when we are in an era of higher prices as part of the landscape.  Or does the TTC know something about the oil market they’re not telling anyone?  Do they have some magical access to cheap diesel fuel a year or two out?

That’s hardly the message for a transit system to send to motorists who, we hope, are in mortal fear of never affording to drive their SUV to the corner store again, much less to work.  Don’t worry, folks, it will all be over in a little while and you’ll be back to 70 cents a litre before you know it.

If the TTC wants more money, call it a fare increase and be done with it.  Or is someone not wanting to break a political promise to hold the line on fares?

The creative accounting at the TTC has got to stop.  It takes X dollars to run the place, and Y dollars are needed from the farebox.  Period.  Decide how you want to divvy up the revenue among available fare classes and get on with it.  If we ever do get back to 70 cent fuel, I will expect a reduction in the cost of my Metropass.

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Route 501 Queen in December/January 2007/08 (Part 7: East vs West Followup)

Back in Part 2, I wrote about the proportion of service that actually arrived at the terminals in the Beach, High Park and Lake Shore.  A comment from a reader (actually in the Part 3 thread on headways) suggested that I include trend lines in the charts for this topic, and I linked a version from my reply.

Now, having caught my breath from all those weekend postings, I offer a few comments on the new charts.

Proportion of Service Reaching Terminals on 501 Queen

Page 1 shows the proportion of cars reaching Neville on weekdays from December 3 to January 31 broken down by three-hour time period.  Trend lines are included to show the overall patterns.

Generally speaking, the worst period is the afternoon peak (1500 to 1800) with midday (1200 to 1500) and early evening (1800 to 2100) roughly tied for second last place.  The best service, stated as a percentage of total trips leaving Yonge eastbound, occurs after 2100.

Seasonal fluctuations and the impact of the mid-December snowstorm are evident here.

Page 2 shows the proportion of service reaching Humber.  This chart starts off better than the Neville plots for December, but there is a clear change in late January when the proportion of service getting to Humber goes down.  This suggests a change in line management strategy.

Page 3 shows the proportion of service reaching Kipling.  I chose this point to put the best possible face on service to southern Etobicoke, and Kipling short turns are included here.  Note that the scale is different here than on previous charts because only half of the service is supposed to get past Humber under ideal conditions.  Values above 50% occur because the numbers are relative to the total cars leaving Yonge Street westbound.

Note that the pm peak is consistently at about the 40% mark.  Relative to the expected 50%, this means that about 20% of the service destined for the Lake Shore never gets there between 1500 and 1800.

Page 4 shows the situation at Long Branch, and you can see the effect of Kipling short turns.  On this chart, the pm peak trend line rides between 30% and 40% meaning that there are days when over one-third of the scheduled service never reaches Long Branch Loop.  On an 11-minute headway, this produces unacceptably irregular service.

The late January decline noted above in the Humber chart is echoed at the points further west.

Page 5 shows the ratio between the values for Humber and Neville.  If short turns are affecting both ends of the line equally, the trend line should sit at about 1.  A mid-December rise in the values from 0900 to 1800 shows that more cars were short turned in the east end.  This was probably a combination of traffic congestion eastbound to downtown (as discussed in other articles) and snow delays in the Beach.  In late January, the situation changes, and it is the west end that has more short turns in the period from 1500 to 2100.

Page 6 shows the ratios at Long Branch.  If the level of short turns were equal, proportionately, the trend lines should sit at 50%.  Although they are clustered around this value, there are clear differences by time of day.  The large rise in the midday ratio (yellow) corresponds to the aftereffects of the December storm in the Beach.

Looking at these charts, it is important to see not just the trend lines, but the considerable day-to-day fluctations in values.  The trend lines show that there are consistent patterns over the two-month period, but there are some very wide swings in some of the individual data points.  For example, on one day, only 40% of the pm peak service actually reached Long Branch.

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Route 501 Queen in December/January 2007/08 (Part 6: Headway Reliability)

In this article, I turn to a view of the data for 501 Queen that shows the reliability of service as seen from headways (the passengers’ point of view), and from schedules (TTC Operations’ point of view).

As in previous analyses, there are charts for both December and January, but I recommend that readers look at the January charts first.  The service in January is generally better behaved, and you will get a better sense of what these would look like, ideally, from those charts.  December was a complete disaster both for headway and schedule reliability.

Each set of charts presents the time a specific run was seen at a point on each weekday in a month.  If the service were running perfectly on time, the data points should be identical for each day, and we would get a series of straight lines across the page.  That type of chart is the exception, and in the worst cases the chart is a hodgepodge of points.

The five pages of each set show first an overview of the entire am or pm peak, and the next four pages show each hour in greater detail.  Where the same run appears on two or more successive days, the points are connected by lines.  Breaks in these lines indicate runs that did not pass the location on some days.

The horizontal lines on the chart are spaced at the scheduled headway for the am and pm peak periods as a reference.  In an ideal world, there should be a car in each horizontal slice of each chart.

This view of the data would likely change substantially if the line were managed to headway without regard for schedules.  The runs would appear all over the place depending on how service was managed, but there would be something present on a regular basis in each column.  Indeed, this chart would become meaningless, and the headway charts in Part 3 would be the major reference for service reliability.

One caveat about these charts.  A special schedule was operated over the Christmas and New Year’s period which is similar but not identical to the regular one.  You will see a slightly different pattern of run numbers in late December and early January corresponding to the weeks when this schedule was used.

Continue reading →

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Route 501 Queen in December/January 2007/08 (Part 5: Terminal Operations)

In previous articles about the Queen car, I have mentioned the difficulty of getting reliable information about the length of layovers at the terminals.  However, there is an indirect way to do this, subject to certain caveats:  use the round trip time from somewhere near the terminal where data is “well behaved”.  As long as the travel times to and from the terminals are fairly constant, this will give us a view into how long runs actually sit at the end of the line.

The caveat is important for Neville Loop because the section from Woodbine (the next timepoint used in my analysis) and Neville can be affected by snow and congestion delays.  However, we do have fairly good data for the westbound trip (see Part 4), and can use this to temper ourview of the round trip times.

At Long Branch, congestion is not an issue, and we can use the variations in round trip times from Kipling as a surrogate for terminal layovers.

Round Trip From Woodbine to Neville — December — January

December saw a lot of congestion at various times in the Beach both due to shopping traffic and to snow on December 16.   Although the charts don’t reveal as much as I would like about layovers, one thing does stand out — the general increase in round trip times during midday and in the evening.

The midday increase, especially on Saturday, is likely shopping-related, while the evening increase is almost certainly due to longer layovers.

In January, the data values are more tightly clustered, and the midday peak has almost completely disappeared.

Round Trip From Kipling to Long Branch — December — January

In the west end, things are somewhat different, and the data values show quite a spread from the trend line.  This is almost certainly due to long layovers at Long Branch Loop.  The effect is quite strong in week 4 (after Christmas) when the line as a whole is less congested.

December Saturdays are all over the map.  On December 1, the line operated with buses until about 1800 and they tended to handle the Kipling to Long Branch trip faster than the typical streetcar times, probably because they didn’t sit long at the loop.  (Their trip times to Humber, which can be seen in Part 4, were longer, however.)  The very wide spread in times shows that there was considerable room for layovers at Long Branch on Saturdays for many runs, and under this situation the problem of on time departures from the terminal can become an issue.  I will turn to that subject in a later installment.

Sundays in December show a similar pattern to Saturdays, but with less spread.  Christmas Day is particularly notable for generous layovers.

The pattern for January is similar to December.

As an operational issue, I don’t object to giving staff a chance for a breather, particularly when the trip from Neville can take as much as two hours on a very bad day.  However, the combination of generous layover times, long routes, and route segments (e.g. Yonge to Roncesvalles) where congestion can double the running times makes is a recipe for poor service.

Long “recovery times” encourage operators to take them as layovers whether the time is available or not, and the variations in the scheduled times shows that this is more a requirement of blending service at Humber than of providing a standard length layover.

If Queen is broken into shorter routes, operators will have more frequent chances for a break because they will be at terminals more often, and they may be more willing to shave time from a terminal layover when they are slightly late.

In the next article, I will turn to the question of headway reliability during the am peak.

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Route 501 Queen in December/January 2007/08 (Part 4: Link Times)

In previous posts in this series, we have seen where cars on 501 Queen actually go, as well as the gaps and unpredictability of service both downtown and at the outer ends of the line.  Now I will turn to the length of time cars take getting from one place on the route to another, and how this varies both over the course of the day, and from day to day through December and January 2007/08.

We hear a lot about traffic congestion and the need for better transit priority.  If such a scheme is to benefit riders as a whole, it must address the locations and times when streetcar service is slow.  Often this is not the “obvious” time or place– the peak period, downtown — and priority schemes focussed on this narrow time and location will do little to improve service.

This article contains a series of charts that are similar to the headway charts in Part 3.  Data are organized into groups by week (for weekdays), Saturdays and Sundays/Holidays.  Instead of headways, the times shown are the intervals between a car’s appearance at two locations. 

When these times are unvaried and show little scatter, then there is no congestion or variable delay due for stop service, and almost no opportunity to change running times.

When these times vary a lot, but in a predictable way (moving up and down over regular times each day), this shows regular variations in traffic levels and stop service time.  Delays caused by traffic signals can be addressed through priority schemes.  Delays caused by stop service can be address by increased use of all-door loading.  Delays caused by congestion, especially those outside the peak, can be address by traffic restrictions on parking and turns at intersections.  These will not be popular in neighbourhoods outside of the core where the main streets are important local commercial strips and the streets are the grid through which drivers access the residential side-streets.

Where these times show unpredictable spikes or move away from a regular pattern, this is the result of some event like a storm, a traffic accident (possibly on a nearby street such as the Gardiner Expressway with a spillover effect), or an unusual rise in traffic (for example around the club district or on New Year’s Eve). Continue reading →

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Route 501 Queen in December/January 2007/08 (Part 3: Headways)

The 501 Queen car is a mess — that’s no surprise to anyone.  In the past two posts, I have looked at where the cars go.  More, to the point, I have looked at where they don’t go thanks mainly to short- turns.

Riders are frustrated not just by the unpredictable destinations of Queen cars, but by the lack of reliable headways.  The schedule may say there’s a car every 6 minutes, but this is at best a general average.  TTC “on time” goals say that an error or plus-or-minus 3 minutes is an allowable margin, and this means that gaps of up to 9 minutes, followed by only 3 minutes , is “on time” performance. 

This ignores the fact that the gap car will carry 3 times the headway, be much more heavily loaded, and the average rider’s perception of the service will be much worse than the average implied by the schedule and the loading standards.

If the service actually stayed within 3 minutes of the advertised schedule, life would be annoying, but tolerable.  There might even be a car in sight much of the time, if not the “always” of the TTC’s slogan for good service from the 1920s.  We should be so lucky. Continue reading →

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Route 501 Queen in December/January 2007/08 (Part 2: East vs West)

In the previous post, I presented the information about the destinations of cars on 501 Queen with details over the month.  One issue right at the end of that post was the eternal east-vs-west debate:

Does the Beach get more service than High Park?  Are more cars short-turned in the west end than the east end to keep the Beachers happy?

Although there appears to be some indication this might have developed in late January, overall the level of short-turning is quite bad at both ends of the line, usually in equal measure. Continue reading →

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Route 501 Queen in December/January 2007/08 (Part 1: Short Turns)

In anticipation of a TTC report on measures to improve service on the Queen car, there will be a series of posts here over the Victoria Day weekend.  These will review data for December 2007 and January 2008 on 501 Queen and related routes.

I am going to take a different approach in the sequence of articles from earlier rounds.  In those analyses, I began with the graphic timetables of route operations showing first Christmas Day 2006 and then moving on to other days of interest.  Later came Headway and Link Time analyses for individual days, and later for the month as a whole.  Finally came charts showing the short-turning and service reliability as seen outbound from Yonge Street.

In practice, now that this entire process is fairly well understood (at least by me), I am going to turn things around and work “backwards” from the monthly charts to specific days.  The monthly summaries reveal days and locations where interesting events or practices might be found, and of course they also show the overall pattern of transit service.

I have made some changes in the charts both to make the headings “friendlier”, and I plan to standardize on the filenames I used for the linked PDFs.  (Really!  I promise!)  Some of the changes that readers have asked for will not be found in this version such as expanding the daily graphs to have more per day (and hence fewer hours per page).  This is a tradeoff between having charts that are too busy and spreading peaks over multiple pages.  Also, I have deliberately kept the pages in letter size format so that people can print them without having legal sized paper.

For this first set of comments, here are the charts of vehicle destinations outbound from Yonge Street.

December 2007 Westbound to Humber and Long Branch

December 2007 Eastbound to Neville

January 2008 Westbound to Humber and Long Branch

January 2008 Eastbound to Neville

These take some explaining, but they provide a lot of information. Continue reading →

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Station Redesign for Pape and Islington

The TTC agenda for May 21 includes full PDF versions of the reports on the planned redesign of Pape and Islington stations.

The file for Pape Station is about 5.5MB, while the one for Islington Station is about 2.8MB.  A notable change at Islington is the disappearance of the proposed SNC-Lavalin building on the former bus loop site, although this remains available for development.

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Subway Entrance Identification (Update 2)

In an unusual move, the full version of a report (almost a 70MB PDF) of a design charrette on entrance identification is available on the TTC’s report website.  If you want it, grab it while it’s still there as this situation may not be permanent.

I will add comments here after I have a chance to digest it.

Update 1:  I got all the way down to the last page after the file downloaded, and there was a pair of photos of the existing sign at Osgoode Station and a proposed replacement.  The “new” one looked terribly familiar.

A quick visit to the City Archives confirmed my worst fears:

You can see a sign that looks remarkably similar at the opening of the Yonge Subway in 1954, or at the opening of the University line in 1963.

Here is the original entrance on the south side of Bloor east of Yonge.

The old signs used the shape of the TTC flying keystone (the wings were added for the “Rapid Transit” image to the original 1921 design), and this was simplified to make the signs cheaper to build and maintain by the time the Bloor line opened in 1966. The main differences between the 1954 and the 2008 versions are the use of the “modern” TTC colours in 2008, and the absence of the word “SUBWAY” across the wings of the sign.

Update 2: As a public service, I have put a condensed version (1.3MB) of the TTC’s file on my site.