The TTC Board met on October 6, 2025. Many items on the agenda were confidential in whole or in part, and the meeting immediately recessed into private session. Four hours later, the public session resumed.
Extended private sessions have been a “feature” of recent Board meetings, and this is a major inconvenience for people who have taken the trouble to travel to City Hall for deputations, or remained available online. In years long past, the Board scheduled an in camera session before the public session so that, usually, the public part started on time. They should reconsider this practice, or at a minimum advertise a long, planned private session in the agenda so that public attendees can plan accordingly.
Items of interested included:
The CEO’s monthly report including an updated format for bus fleet and route performance metrics
The Peer Review of asset management by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP)
In the Major Projects Update on the TTC Board’s September 2025 agenda, there is a troubling reference under three subway maintenance projects in progress.
Rogers 5G Implementation
“The schedule may be impacted because of workcar and resource availability, which prioritizes state-of-good-repair activities. The TTC will co-ordinate with internal departments to prioritize Rogers work (where possible) so that workcars are available and assigned.” [p. 19]
Line 2 Capacity Expansion Program
“The unavailability of the TTC Operations workforce and workcars is a concern and is impacting the successful delivery of Line 2 Traction Power portfolio projects.” [p. 22]
Line 1 Capacity Expansion Program
“Negative reinforcing cables VMC to Sheppard West: Construction has slowed down due to the unavailability of the TTC Operations workforce and workcars … [p. 25]
“The unavailability of the TTC Operations workforce and workcars is a concern and is impacting the successful delivery of Line 1 Traction Power portfolio projects.” [p. 26]
Reading this, I could not help thinking back to the proposal for renewal and expansion of the TTC’s fleet in the latter years of Andy Byford’s term as CEO. Until 2019, the TTC published its Capital Plan in detail in two large binders commonly referred to as “the blue books”. This practice stopped in 2020, and it was not replaced by an electronic equivalent.
From the 2018 budget, I compiled a list of planned work car purchases. Also, I requested from the TTC a list of new vehicles since 2017. The table below merges this information.
Note 1: At the beginning of the work car plan, TTC owned two tie tampers, RT-21 and RT-41. Descriptions in the detailed plan speak of acquiring two additional units similar to RT-41. However, all that appears to have happened is that one unit, RT-21, was replaced. These units are essential to dealing with track problems that lead to slow orders.
Readers will recall the major interruption to subway service in 2024 thanks to an hydraulic oil spill from a work car. This incident triggered a review of maintenance practices revealing problems with the quality and frequency of inspection, and of the general state of the fleet. One issue is the age and condition of some cars which are not always fit for service.
From the table above, it is clear that many planned work car purchases in the 2018 plan have gone forward, but some have not. I asked the TTC about pending acquisitions, but received a generic answer.
The TTC Subway Workcar fleet undergoes a continuous program of growth, replacement, and overhauls, with another 10 vehicles targeted for overhaul/upgrade, or replacement between 2026 and 2032. The usual caveats around timing being dependent on the ability to procure would apply once they are put to tender. [TTC Media Relations email Septmber 8, 2025]
As the subway system grows and ages, the maintenance workload will go up, and with it the need for both specialized staff and work cars. The Major Projects report shows that the TTC is falling behind on both counts.
This is an aspect of “State of Good Repair” that is generally hidden from public view, but is key to maintaining reliability of the infrastructure and the revenue service it supports.
In previous articles, I have tracked the evolution of subway segments where Reduced Speed Zones (RSZs) are in place since February 2024. Recent comments in other articles suggest that readers have not been following this.
Here are updated charts showing areas where speeds are or have been restricted on Lines 1 and 2.
The charts on the left are for 2024, while those on the right show 2025 with a gap at the top where I did not check for about a month. The longevity of the RSZs can be clearly seen in the length of more or less continuous coloured vertical bars notably on Line 1 between Eglinton and Bloor, and north from Eglinton West to Sheppard West.
The coloured areas show where RSZs were located, and the arrows show the direction with “<>” meaning “both ways”.
Tables with location details and expected times to repair taken from the TTC’s site are below. Note that in previous versions, many of these sites were expected to be repaired in August, but the target dates have been adjusted.
At the request of a reader, here are the Line 1 and 2 charts condensed onto a single page for each line so that the year-to-year continuity of problem areas is more obvious.
As a long-time transit activist, issues accumulate over the years and decades. Attempts to discuss “what needs to be done” quickly become a tangle of interlocking subjects. There is no simple solution to many problems.
Advocates for better transit run into comments like “you’re so smart, what would you do?” The intent is usually to shut down debate and prove that armchair criticism is a lot easier than the hard professional work of running a city and its transit system.
Recently, after a wide-ranging conversation about Toronto’s transit and the political history of the city, I was asked to boil down my feelings into three key issues about the TTC. This is the sort of question one might encounter in an interview to see how well a candidate knows their material and can focus on core items without rambling. I wasn’t interviewing for anything, but did not hesitate in my reply. This article grew from that discussion.
The intent is not to be exhaustive, but to sharpen debate to key issues. For every question there would be dozens of subsidiary issues, and always a chance that something would be missed. However, senior managers and politicians have limited attention spans, and they cannot deal with every issue at once. Neither can the organizations they lead. There is a “trees and forest” problem where many small details deserving of attention can obscure the larger picture.
Here are my three issues as a launching pad for debate about where the TTC should focus. There is a common theme: if you don’t know what’s broken, you cannot possibly fix it.
Honesty and transparency about service
The state of infrastructure
Headroom for short-term growth
I have not discussed transit funding, a perennial topic at the TTC and City Hall, and one we will hear much about as the 2026 budget season unfolds. This is a deliberate choice.
Funding debates consume vast amounts of time, usually to address a handful of key problems. The most recent example was the new Line 2 subway fleet, but there are many, many more budget lines both for state of good repair and system expansion, and many of these are interlinked. We rarely hear about any of them.
Even modest growth, a “business as usual” approach, has challenges, but aggressive transit growth as foreseen in Toronto’s TransformTO strategy adds very substantially to an already difficult situation. Council has not yet endorsed this plan fully, and the TTC has only produced an incomplete estimate of its implications.
If we hope to build a more robust transit system, we need to understand both the shortcomings of the existing one as a base and the challenges of accelerated growth. Toronto came through the Covid era with its transit system more-or-less intact, but we face a decision. Will we just muddle through, content with small improvements and a handful of future rapid transit lines, or will we launch into an era of real growth in transit across the entire system? Will we really make the TTC “The Better Way”?
Recently, the TTC added tables to its page mapping all reduced speed zones indicating the nature of each problem and the anticipated time to repair. Many of the dates were in August, and we’re well into that month already. Given past history, this seemed optimistic.
The table has now been revised with a number of dates pushed into September. A few items have vanished, but there are new entries too.
August 1 VersionAugust 19 VersionAugust 1 VersionAugust 19 Version
Despite the premise of an open, competitive bid among potential carbuilders for new subway trains, various politicians have openly argued that the work should go to the historical provider, the Alstom (formerly Bombardier) plant in Thunder Bay.
On August 15, all three funding governments, Canada, Ontario and Toronto announced that a sole-source contract will be awarded to Alstom Transport Canada. This is intended to support Canadian jobs and an existing manufacturing facility. All bidders have been notified that the former bid process has been cancelled.
To ensure that Alstom delivers state-of-the-art trains at a fair market price, maximizes the creation of Canadian jobs, and benefits Toronto, Alstom must:
• deliver a product that is compliant with the TTC’s original requirements; • maximize Canadian content and create Canadian jobs; • have its pricing subject to an independent third-party market price assessment.
It is expected that negotiations will occur over the next few months with a report back to the TTC Board on the status of negotiations by the end of the year.
The proposed contract would provide 70 new trains
55 trains to replace the existing Line 2 fleet
15 trains for the North Yonge and Scarborough extensions
There is also provision for future train orders that would support expansion of service on both Lines 1 and 2. The 55 trains are sufficient to operate Line 2 at the capacity supported by its existing signal system, but more trains would be needed to exploit the capabilities of CBTC (Computer Based Train Control) which will be installed in coming years. Similarly, the existing Line 1 fleet will support the pre-CBTC service level of 140 seconds (25.7 trains/hour), but more trains are needed to go beyond that level. There is no funding for the additional trains in current budgets, nor for the added maintenance facilities a larger fleet will require.
The award of additional trains to Alstom is dependent on their performance on the 70-train order.
The new release states:
The TTC is working diligently to ensure the aging Line 2 fleet operates safely and reliably until new trains arrive.
Originally, the TTC had planned to replace the Line 2 trains by 2026, but that scheme was shelved by former CEO Rick Leary who claimed the trains could be life-extended to 2040. That solved a budget pressure for funding, including the proposed new maintenance yard at Kipling, but created a potential crisis in subway reliability and fleet availability.
The TTC has more than 55 of the current T-1 stock used on Line 2 due to changes over the years in the scope of automatic train control implementation on Line 1. These would, if all trains were working, have allowed the Scarborough extension to open using the existing fleet, but only barely. The delay in the Scarborough project bought the TTC time to procure new trains.
The challenge now is to keep the T-1 fleet operating reliably until new cars arrive. TTC management reported at a Board meeting earlier this year that some cars are being used as a source of spare parts. There are obvious limits to how far this practice can go, and if carried too far will limit the TTC’s ability to restore full pre-pandemic service on Line 2.
The TTC maintains a list of reduced speed zones on its website, and this constantly changing list is tracked in a previous article here showing how long some restrictions have been in place.
The format of the TTC page has been changed to include not just a map showing where the zones are, but why they were created and, in most cases, a target date for remediation.
The current map and table of repair targets, as of July 31, 2025, are shown below. Note that some of the items on the map are not included in the detail (e.g. Warden to Kennedy eastbound), and the table includes entries that are not reflected on the map (e.g. Sheppard West to Wilson). This does not speak well of the TTC’s ability to communicate consistent, accurate information.
Updated August 1, 2025 at 9:10am: The TTC has updated their page so that the map and tables are now in sync with each other.
Most of the zones listed here are scheduled for removal by early September with only a few continuing into the Fall or beyond (“TBD”). This list will bear watching for additions, and for removals of cleared sections within the expected time frame.
Since February 2024, I have tracked the TTC’s posted list of Reduced Speed Zones (RSZs) on subway lines 1 (YUS) and 2 (BD). A pattern has emerged that some RSZs are very long-lasting, others are brief, and some come-and-go.
Former Interim CEO Greg Percy claimed that we should expect about a dozen of these at any time, but the current total as of July 13, 2025, sits at 27.
If these zones came and went in short order as problems were discovered, one might tolerate a period of travel delay. My own recent experiences with glacial trips from Vaughan to St. George makes me thankful that I don’t take this route every day, but regular riders there have my sympathy.
Current reporting makes actual tracking of track defects difficult, and there is no sense of the underlying problems or limitations on performing repairs. Transparency demands that more information is provided for the status of RSZs, specifically:
Location
Date first reported
Defect issue(s)
Planned repairs
Projected date to completion
Actual date slow order is lifted
Whether this will speed repairs depends on available resources (capital, work equipment, crews) and conflict with other works along the subway lines, but at a minimum riders deserve to know when they can expect relief from slow orders. The TTC Board and Council deserve to know how deep-seated the outstanding problems might be, where they originated, and what will be required to fix them.
On January 10, 2025 as part of the budget process, the TTC Board approved:
Establish a Strategic Planning Committee to assist the TTC Board in managing strategic planning and priorities, including through a Ridership Growth Strategy and other existing strategic documents, and direct the Director, Commission Services to report back to the February 24, 2025 TTC Board meeting on a proposed structure and meeting schedule after canvassing Commissioners’ interest in committee membership;
Amend the 2025 Schedule of Meetings to add a Special Meeting of the Board in September 2025 to consider recommendations from the Strategic Planning Committee, receive an update on the 2026 Budget, and discuss budget priorities informing the development of the 2026 TTC Operating Budget; 2026-2035 Capital Budget and Plan and 15-Year Capital Investment Plan and Real Estate Investment Plan Update;
Direct the Director, Commission Services to include a Special Meeting to consider recommendations from the Strategic Planning Committee, receive an update on the next year’s budget, and discuss budget priorities informing the development of the next year’s budgets in future year’s recommended annual schedule of Board and Committee meetings for the Board’s approval, in accordance with Section 20 of the By-law to Govern Board Proceedings;
TTC Staff conduct public consultations and develop a Ridership Growth Strategy 2.0, building upon the Ridership Growth Strategy 2018-2022 and report back to the Board in July 2025;
TTC staff develop a hiring strategy on the basis of the approved Ridership Growth Strategy 2.0 and report back to the Board by October 2025; and TTC staff use the approved Ridership Growth Strategy 2.0 and associated hiring strategy to inform the 2026 TTC Budget process.
I began writing this article before the meeting took place as background based on the then-posted materials. After attending the meeting, I found that it was more productive than I had expected thanks in part to two presentations that were not in the original published agenda.
TTC Chair Jamaal Myers praised Councillor/Commissioner Alejandra Bravo who chairs the Strategic Planning Committee for the work she did in producing a focused agenda that made for a useful meeting. Past attempts by the Board to engage in general policy debates have been rare.
There was much more meat on the presentations than we have seen in a long while at the TTC. Heavy going in places, and some hard truths about the options available. This type of briefing is long overdue, and will provide the foundation for informed discussions at the TTC Board and eventually at Council.
The actual establishment of a committee contemplated in point 11 did not actually occur until the Board meeting of April 16, 2025, and the first meeting only now happened, six months after the original motion. It is not clear how much influence the committee will have on the 2026 budget process considering the length of delay.
Although the next meeting date is currently shown as October 25, 2025, Chair Bravo indicated that she does plan to schedule one in time to feed into the budget.
As for consultations on a Ridership Growth Strategy, these have not yet begun, and the TTC is now only in the first round of its Annual Plan consultations. By extension, any service improvements flowing from a new RGS including hiring required to staff buses and streetcars do not yet exist. How much would be done in the 2026 budget remains to be seen.
The delay in the committee’s initiation places the Board in a familiar position. Actual discussion of policy options is pushed off, if it occurs at all, so late in the year that the next budget is “more of the same” because there was no time to consider alternatives. Options for significant growth are never presented to Council because the TTC Board never discusses what might be done.
“Value for Money”
Almost at the end of the meeting, Chair Bravo made a comment about advising the budget process. She posed two questions about funding:
Is it the best value for money?
Does it create the most value for transit users?
This slipped by quickly, but a vital issue here is that these are not the same question, but two separate issues depending on what one assumes as the role of transit. Best value for money for whom? For taxpayers asked to subsidize transit? For riders awaiting a bus that never comes?
That distinction lies at the heart of every transit funding debate I have heard, but the actual question is never asked, and “value for whom” rarely starts with riders. This can be an important change in budget planning and in advocacy for financial support from the City and Province.
Steve Munro 