Commuter Rail

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Queen’s Park, Metrolinx & the TTC (Updated)

Late last week must have been slow for real news when both the Star and Globe devoted considerable space to musings at the Pink Palace about a Metrolinx TTC takeover. Furious backpedalling all ’round with denials from Metrolinx’ Rob MacIsacc and cries of “hands off” from Mayor Miller.

Lurking under this sort of scheme are claims that just don’t hold up to scrutiny.

First up is the oft-heard desire for “seamless integration” of transit. Boiled down to its essentials, this means I should be able to ride from anywhere to anywhere for one fare with convenient integrated service wherever a change of route or mode is needed.

Riding on the back of this is a scheme for fare-by-distance charging and smart cards. While this may keep the technology companies and those who value appearance over substance as transit policy, this is totally the wrong end of the “solution”.

If the desire were to give everyone an integrated fare between the TTC and the 905 systems, we could do it tomorrow either with the GTA pass or some area-specific version. The big problems are how to divide up the revenue, what to charge and whether there will actually be any service in the 905 with which a 416 rider can seamlessly connect.

These are organizational and financial issues. As long as each transit system is expected to keep its own books, raise its own revenue, and account for every penny (perish the thought we might needlessly run one more bus than necessary), the rules of the game create agencies that defend their revenue turf.

As long as we maintain artificial distinctions between who gets to pick up riders on which street (again partly a turf war), we will have duplicate services.

As long as we starve transit agencies for funds, the clear goal is not to improve service but to minimize costs. This is totally contrary to any claims that our public goal is to get more people riding transit.

You don’t need a quarter-billion’s worth of high technology to fix these problems which, indeed, will still remain if we don’t fix the underlying way in which revenue is allocated to operators. If the fare barrier at Steeles Avenue is eliminated, somebody is going to have to pick up the difference — the TTC and its riders, York Region or Queen’s Park. Nobody wants that debate, but we can sidestep it so long as we focus on Presto! rather than on how it will be used.

It’s ironic that many cross-border services are now operated by TTC on contract to other agencies and the only “impediment” is the fare at Steeles Avenue. Maybe York Region would opt to pay the TTC more to carry its customers. Maybe a special subsidy could be arranged just as it is for Oakville passengers connecting with GO Transit. Why is it okay to have a special fare arrangement for GO Transit feeder services, but not for 905-to-TTC riders?

The “seamless barrier” is one of those transit myths that get dragged out regularly to avoid discussing the real issues. The line between the 416 and 905 could disappear tomorrow if only someone wanted to pay for it and co-ordinate the overlapping services where they exist.

This brings me to that shining example of Ontario’s contribution to transit, the GO system. Remember that GO is not paid for entirely by Queen’s Park, but levies a tithe against the municipalities. Only last week, a tripartite agreement with Ottawa was finally settled when Toronto agreed to pony up its share of a GO Transit funding request.

Metrolinx has been churning out discussion papers (green ones to solicit comment now, white ones to set policy soon) like sausages, and they hope this will lead to a Regional Transit Plan by “Spring 2008”. Whether they mean March 21 or June 22, I am not sure, but even the later date is very optimistic. Moreover, it is troubling because we recently learned that the RTP is also to stand in for the first two steps of the already shortened Environmental Assessment process.

We risk having a regional plan rammed through with little opportunity for comment or intelligent debate that could commit us to a complex and explicitly laid-out network long before we have a chance to consider how it will all fit together. Moreover, there is no mandatory ongoing review and process for change of the plan making “getting it right” at the outset all the more critical.

While Queen’s Park muses about a TTC takeover, they should look closer to home first. GO Transit has been in the commuter rail business for decades, with small forrays into buses, but with the focus on peak period, downtown oriented services. It does not matter what the agency name might be, there is a need for long-distance capacity around the GTA that does not stop at every lamppost. Riders in Oshawa don’t want a tour of Pickering, Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke on their way to Mississauga where they might arrive just in time to go back again.

GO’s service reliability raises questions about its ability to take on a larger role. Riders are cranky about crowding and unexpected changes in schedules, and there is even an online petition demanding a fare rebate when service runs late.

GO, however, has been at least as constrained for funding as the TTC and thinks only of its core services. Expansion comes in small jumps because they have no firm commitment from any level of government to do more.

I might believe that a Provincial agency could do a passable job with the TTC if the current one were actually looking beyond a narrow mandate as a commuter service. Imagine the example Queen’s Park could show of what their bounty could bring to transit. So far, what we have is unimpressive as a replacement for the TTC.

This is not to say that the TTC couldn’t use some housecleaning. However, any “new broom” had better know what it’s doing, not just come in to sell off the furniture and declare huge but ephemeral savings.

One particularly troubling aspect to some comments in this debate is the political slant. Adam Giambrone is out-and-out NDP, and David Miller certainly is not a Tory. Toronto Council is, if not in the grip of the left wing, at least not quite as right-wing as it was in the Lastman days.

What’s the solution? Take them over? Well we tried that with amalgamation, and after a few years of flailing around, look what we have: a moderately left Council with a moderately left Mayor. The voters have spoken.

If anyone has designs on the TTC or on GTAH transit in general, let the decisions be made for legitimate reasons of management, finance, operations and community involvement, not because some politician wants to score points for a coming election. We have seen decades of Provincial interference in transit both in funding and in technology choices that had much more to do with so-called economic development and pandering to voters than with production of useful transit infrastructure.

Message to Dalton McGuinty: Leave the TTC alone. Let Metrolinx continue with its planning, and don’t force the issue of a final plan so quickly and so permanently that we regret everything and start over in ten years.

Recognize that building and running more transit, getting a bigger share of the travel market, is going to cost a lot of money, and some of that will come from the public purse. Keep your chequebook handy.

Don’t substitute the illusion of action — organization and re-organization — for the real needs of transit systems throughout the GTAH.

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GO Transit’s 15-Cent Solution

Sean Marshall wrote in with the following comment in another thread. I’m putting it in its own post so that replies can be kept in the appropriate area.

… at GO Transit, they’re planning to increase fares again by the flat $0.15 rate. Of course, this is a disproportionate fare increase for those who make shorter trips (say within the 416 or from, for example, Georgetown to Brampton) yet almost insignificant for someone coming in from Barrie. And GO also has to fix the problems with its fare structure, where, for example, a bus trip from Square One to York U is the same price as from Bramalea to York U, about half the distance.

Anyway, my sense is that GO will always take the easiest route (requiring the least thought) to fix a “problem”. Service crowded? Tack on more cars. Issues with parking? Build more spaces. Crowding at platforms? Remove the escalators. Raise fare revenue? Make it a flat fare increase so we don’t have to work out what the new fares should really be.

This is not the first time GO has done this, and I can’t help worrying just a bit in anticipation of a smart card system that can do everything but make passengers’ breakfast, lunch and dinner, but might wind up supporting a fare structure more appropriate for conductors and ticket agents. Will GO continue to penalize short-haul riders with disproportionate fare increases?

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Union Station Revitalization

On Wednesday, November 14, the City of Toronto will host an open house at Union Station to display plans for the station from 12:30 to 6:30 pm.  Further information on the Union Station project is available on the City’s website.

Please note that although I am a member of the Union Station Revitalization Public Advisory Group for this project, the following comments reflect my personal opinion, not that of the USRPAG.

Today, the National Post reported GO Transit’s Gary McNeil as saying that GO should buy the station to take it out of the hands of “dithering politicians”.  McNeil, along with others who mused recently about taking over the TTC, should stick to running their own businesses before they weigh in on City matters.

Union Station’s future was mired for years in a failed scheme to have it managed on a long-term contract by a private company, and there was good reason to believe both that the selection process for a private partner and the financial situation for the City were less than ideal.  Much time was wasted in this exercise.

Although the detailed report is not yet public, some indication of the short-term spending requirements has already appeared in the Budget Analyst’s notes for the City’s Capital Budget.  Some Council members will groan about the high cost of owning this heritage station, and McNeil’s proposal that GO would happily take the building on will have an eager audience.  They should think twice. 

GO has been starved for funding for well over a decade, and the last thing it needs is the expense of bringing an aging and poorly-maintained station up to first class condition.  Moreover, GO’s operations will soon fall under the GTTA which may have its own spending priorities.

Meanwhile, some members of Council mused recently about shops and markets in Union Station.  This is a nice idea, but why couldn’t they wait for the staff report on the station to come out? 

A fish market at Union, if nothing else, will lend a distinct aroma to Gary McNeil’s trains.  For those long winter nights when trains languish miles from Union Station, McNeil might add a self-serve grill to the GO concourse so hungry passengers can eat their catch-of-the-day while it’s still fresh.

Union Station needs a lot of work to handle the expected growth in demand over the coming decades.  Many agencies need to work together with each other, with the politicians and with the public to make Union Station the great hub it can be for downtown’s transportation systems.

Those who take off in their own directions wanting only to read their name in the National Post as often as possible do nothing to aid this vital project.

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Getting On GO Transit

At the GTTA Board meeting yesterday (see previous post for additional information on this), GO Transit presented an overview of its plans for additional parking on the network.  I won’t go into the fine details here, but broadly this contained two important directions:

  • GO is moving toward parking structures, possibly in conjuction with development of its parking lot properties, as an alternative to continued outward expansion of the lots.
  • The target growth rate is from 1,500 to 2,000 spaces per year.

GO currenly operates 48,500 parking spaces, and the park-and-ride sector now account for 67% of ridership.  Other modal shares are kiss-and-ride (15%), walking (9%), local transit (8%) and cycling (.5% to 1%).

In the long run, parking is not sustainable at its current modal share.  Assuming a 20-year growth rate in the middle of GO’s cited range (1,750), this would give 35,000 more spaces.  However, GO expects its riding to double over the next 20 years, and external factors such as a stepp rise in oil prices could accelerate this.  Clearly, parking will handle a lower, even if still important, proportion of total ridership.  A further problem is that a route such as Lakeshore with plans for large increases in capacity through electrification and extension is not necessarily where the additional parking capacity can be easily located.  Rapid growth in ridership may outstrip parking growth on this line.

This puts a considerable additional demand on local transit service to the GO stations both in quantity and in hours of service.  This will be a challenge for local transit operators and, by extension for the GTTA.

As the GTTA contemplates the future role of transit, it must adapt from provision of downtown-oriented, peak Monday to Friday communting service (including the local transit component) to service that makes travel by transit within and among the regions easy.  After all, much of the GTA gridlock comes not from commuters to downtown, but from travel between the regions including phenomena such as the lunch-hour traffic jams.

This is one of several cases the GTTA must not adopt a “more of the same” approach to transit.

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When Will Dalton Discover Hot Air?

One of the more bizarre election stories appeared in the Globe and Mail today — Dalton McGuinty is advancing the idea of hydrogen-fuelled GO Trains.

Regular readers here will know that my opinion of hydrogen as a transit fuel is thinly-veiled contempt on the best of days, and I am astounded to see McGuinty wandering down this technological dead end.

Fuel cells and hydrogen power have their uses, but they run into difficulties even at the scale of a city bus, let alone a railway car.  If this were used for GO equipment, it would be at best for self-propelled cars running on minor lines that did not warrant full, locomotive-hauled trains.  This is a niche market, not a mainstream replacement for existing equipment. Continue reading →

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Who’s In Charge at Kipling Station?

[Since the Star has hotlinked my site from their article, it might be nice if there was actually some content here for any visitors to read.  Hence this piece.]

Today, Queen’s Park announced that GO Transit would fund the construction of a regional terminal at Kipling Station for joint use by GO and Mississauga Transit.  Amusingly, this project was not part of MoveOntario, but, like many other bits and pieces, was overlooked in the rush to put together Dalton McGuinty’s transit plan.

Oddly, nobody from the City or TTC was at the announcement even though the new terminal will sit on their land.  The TTC design for a new Kipling Station came out late last year, and it’s hardly news.  All we were waiting for was funding, and that arrived today.  However, Queen’s Park seems only concerned with the regional part of the project and it remains to be seen how the City/TTC portion, which includes redevelopment of some lands at Islington, will fit into everything. Continue reading →

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Everybody’s Got a Plan

The agenda for the July 27 GTTA Board meeting includes overviews of the transit plans from all of the GTA regions plus an GO Transit’s schemes.  This material has been updated to reflect the MoveOntario2020 announcement, but not the current budget crisis at the TTC.  In the timescale that these plans operate, that crisis will only be a memory long before any of this is actually built.

Queen’s Park is looking for “quick success” stories, projects that can show some concrete return in very short order.  They actually hoped, at one time, to be able to have photo ops before the election, but that’s not very likely.

Having all of these plans in one place is useful both for people who are not familiar with what each region has been thinking, and to show just how far the entire GTA has to move to make any serious dent in the rising car traffic.  Some regions don’t plan to be above 10% transit share by 2031 and, given their development and travel patterns, how that can be improved is a mystery.  We can extend the reach of GO Transit, but travel within and between regions travel is quite another matter. Continue reading →

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GO Ottawa? (Updated)

On July 27, David Cavlovic passed on another Ottawa Sun article in this thread.  He comments:

Well, NOW it’s getting really ridiculous.

That’s all we need. It’s not enough that resources are stretched in the GTA, let’s stretch it in other cities as well.

Toronto Transit CORPORATION. Oh dear. Harbinger of the future?

[The article’s author is not in touch with Toronto’s transit system as we saw yesterday.]

 Fortunately, there is a bit of good sense on Council:

River Coun. Maria McRae, who is also the chair of the city’s transportation committee, said there is no reason why GO Transit and OC Transpo can’t work together.

“We can do both,” said McRae. “We should pursue that GO model for outside the city, but not lose focus on Ottawa’s transit issues.”

[Original post follows] 

David Cavlovic passed on the following item of interest from the Ottawa Sun.

Ottawa could be moving from the O-Train to the GO Train.

With Mayor Larry O’Brien mapping out an ambitious inter-regional commuter transit plan for Eastern Ontario, the province’s biggest regional commuter carrier, GO Transit, is expressing interest in helping the city with its plan.

“It’s definitely something we would look at,” said Jamie Rilett, communications director for Ontario Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield, whose department operates the Government of Ontario (GO) network in the Greater Toronto Area.

“When it was first brought up to us and we discussed it with various mayors and members from the Ottawa area, it was made clear to them we would look at any proposal they had and if they were interested in having GO participate in whatever way then it’s definitely something we would consider,” said Rilett.

[The full article goes on to talk about how wonderful GO is, and manages to get some of the facts wrong.]

Amusingly, this is yet another situation where a comment comes not from the GTTA but from the Minister’s office.  At tomorrow’s GTTA meeting, maybe they can discuss a small eastward expansion of their territory.

More to the point, Ottawa has to decide whether it wants a commuter rail network providing relatively infrequent service oriented to peak demand, or a transit network.  These are two completely different things.

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GO Transit’s Addiction to Parking Lots

The GO Rail system has for years depended on parking lots small and large to bring riders to its trains.  Local bus services do some of the work, but the parking lots are the mainstay of GO ridership.

With the recent announcement of substantial increase in GO capacity and reach, especially on the Lake Shore corridor, the linkage between parking lot construction and GO rail service must be drastically reduced.  There is an upper limit to the amount of land available for parking, and huge lots poison the land around stations — natural focal points for communities — by limiting development.  I have even heard a politician complain about the opening of a GO station because of the traffic it will generate through her community enroute to the parking lot down the road.

GO has started to think about developing the land around its stations, but this is still in the context of even more parking.  Garages are expensive, and GO hopes to defray this cost by including them in condo developments or office buildings.  This is a very short-sighted view.

A major gap in MoveOntario is the absence of funding for local transit operations, especially lines that will feed new and expanded regional services.  Many families cannot afford to have enough cars that each person can drive to the GO station as and when they need to use the service.  GO’s ridership is already at a level where they cannot provide parking for everyone, and even before MoveOntario was announced demand was expected to double over the next 20 years.

Today, I learned that about one third of the riders boarding at Oakville Station come by transit.  The rest drive in either to park or be dropped off.  As the Lake Shore line becomes a frequent, all-day service, accessing GO by car will not be a realistic way to travel because the lot will be full early in the morning.

MoveOntario forces all of the GTTA to change the way it thinks about transit both regionally and locally, although I’m not sure Dalton McGuinty’s advisors thought that far down the road when they cooked up this scheme.

GO must break its dependence on parking if it is to grow out of its role as a peak-period commuter network, and the local systems must expand to complement the regional improvements.  I am not saying we should close GO parking lots, but we have to think hard about stopping expansion plans, especially on heavy routes with present or soon-to-come all-day service.

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MoveOntario 2020 : GO Transit Section

With the growth in the comment string on the original post, it’s getting rather unwieldy.  Therefore, I am setting up new subsections to continue the threads on separate major topics.

This one is for GO Transit.  Any comments related to GO that are left on the other thread will be copied into this item.  In a few days, I will close off comments in the old thread on the assumption that everyone will have relocated to this one.

I have not yet decided whether to have a thread just for Swan Boats since Dalton didn’t announce any funding for them.