A Grand Plan

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Saying “Sorry” Is Only The Beginning

TTC CEO Andy Byford’s Youtube apology for subway service fiascos on March 18 stirred a lot of interest, along with an interview on CBC’s Metro Morning.  This will no doubt continue at a town hall meeting tonight (which I cannot attend due to scheduling conflicts).

Monday afternoon’s peak was not a good one for TTC subway service:

  • 5:16 Trains holding for smoke at track level at Eglinton Station (cleared 5:31)
  • 5:25 Trains holding for smoke at track level at Keele Station (cleared 5:33)
  • 5:58 Power cut at Dupont halting service from St. George to St. Clair West.  Train doors opened in the tunnel.  24 minute delay

The times shown for the smoke delays are from timestamps on TTC e-Alerts, and the actual duration of the delay was probably longer.  We know from Byford’s comments that there were a few passenger assistance alarms from people requiring medical assistance, but these never showed up as official alerts to riders.

The TTC’s daily measurement of service punctuality for the Yonge line fell to 93%, below the target of 96%.  This is an all-day average of performance at many places on the line, and it takes a big upheaval in service to make a dent in the considerable amount of more-or-less punctual service rating for the line as a whole.  The index has never been known to fall below 90%.

The delays were only part of the regular menu of service disruptions including mechanical failures of trains, track and signal problems, weather, security incidents, not to mention suicides.  Running a well-behaved service can be quite challenging.  One of those challenges is to simply keep people informed about what is going on when multiple delays interact to foul up service, and info about what is left running changes from moment to moment.

Seeing Andy Byford there on YouTube with his mea culpa is a nice touch, but there is a limit to how many of these the TTC can issue before riders simply say “oh no, not again”.  The TTC’s new Customer Charter commits the organization to improvement, but the message coming through loud and clear at public meetings is “show me”.

Monday’s events highlight some obvious issues for managing complex events, but they also raise questions about how much we can reasonably expect of the transit system.

The incident with the doors opening on a train between stations was a matter of human error by the Guard who inexplicably opened them when the train was stopped north of Dupont Station at a red signal.  Automatic Train Control could have prevented this, but that’s years away and, fortunately, this sort of incident is extremely rare.  The TRs will only open their doors when the train is stopped, and indeed the sensing associated with this feature is part of the extra delay time when trains arrive at stations.

Updated Mar 21:

There has been another incident of train staff accidentally opening doors in the tunnel as reported today by the CBC.

Any incident like this, and including fires or smoke, requires a power cut and affects service in both directions, whereas an ill passenger, most of the time, holds up service only one way for a brief time while they are assisted off of the train.

However, there are a lot of incidents, and each of them adds to discontent among the affected riders.  Even if someone only encounters a major delay once or twice a month, that’s the experience they remember and tell their friends about.  What’s more, if the system cannot get through the rush hour without, simply as a matter of probabilities, having a few non-trivial delays, this compromises the TTC’s ability to achieve its planned capacity.

A few years ago, the TTC had an independent review by UK-based transport consultants who found that, generally speaking, the TTC subway wasn’t all that bad for systems of comparable age and technology.  However, the consultants warned that hoped for increase in capacity required more reliability in trains and infrastructure, fewer incidents of passenger illness caused by crowding, and a general attention to running as tight an operation as possible.  Some delays are inevitable, and for them the issues are incident management, good communications with passengers, provision of alternate service if possible, and quick recovery of full subway capacity.

When we talk about how close the TTC might be to running out of capacity, optimists love to quote the highest possible figures — automated trains running on the closest headways, passengers flowing quickly to and from trains to minimize dwell times, equipment with superb reliability, and a magic world in which nothing ever goes wrong.  That’s not how the subway actually operates, and Byford’s task is to expunge every source of “controllable delay” from the system.

On Metro Morning, Byford made a passing remark about improving terminal operations and getting trains out promptly.  That’s an important change, one that is essential to maximizing the trains/hour actually operated and maintaining good service spacing.

Getting the subway to work as well as it possibly can is an important start, but it’s only part of the job.  We will probably never see YouTube apologies for the large gaps in service on surface routes, but instead will have small tutorials on why short-turns are required.  Sadly, “TTC Culture” still includes too strong a sense that most of the problems are external and this must change.

A target of 65% for “punctual service”, itself based on a generous 6-minute-wide margin for service relative to scheduled headway, accepts that the odds are better than half that a rider will encounter a significant gap at least once a day, probably more if they take multiple trips.  What we don’t see is a measure of how well or poorly passenger loads are distributed among buses and streetcars, and what the riders see rather than what the hourly or daily averages report.

If transit really is going to attract more riders, especially those facing longer trips, reliability is key.  To some, the solution is a network of subways, but that simply won’t happen thanks to cost and the time needed to build them.  Some new rapid transit capacity is overdue, but it must be placed where it will do the most good, not as pet projects of particularly noisy and influential members of Council.

Meanwhile, the TTC must address service quality on that vast part of the network not served by subways, and Andy Byford must be just as prepared to take responsibility for the Finch and Dufferin buses and the Queen streetcar as he is for the Yonge subway.

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Board of Trade Advocates New Revenue For Transit

The Toronto Region Board of Trade has announced its support for new revenue streams that could fund the Metrolinx “Big Move” Investment Strategy and more.

Matt Elliott (aka @GraphicMatt) has produced a chart showing the contribution of each of four recommended sources and the range of possible incomes.

The Board of Trade has launched a new website under the name letsbreakthegridlock, and this includes a background paper on the evolution of their recommendations.

Most striking about the proposed revenues is that even the “low end” total is close to $3-billion per year with the high end over $4b.  The Board of Trade is not recommending specific levels for the new revenue stream, but the Toronto Region and Queen’s Park need to aim high.  The Metrolinx Big Move plan was priced at $2b/year, but that estimate is several years out of date and does not include inflation.  It also does not include any money for local transportation improvements that was recently announced as part of the “Next Wave”, and which would increase the total needs by one third.

This is not some wild-eyed, pinko-commie, downtown bunch of granola-eating, pot-smoking, tree hugging, tax-and-spend radicals — it’s the Board of Trade, and they claim wide support from their members.  Congestion and the lack of good transportation options within the GTHA are strangling business and making the region uncompetitive.  That’s the kind of effect businesses notice, and they recognize the effect of decades of disinvestment in the transportation network.

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Ed Levy Writes About Rapid Transit in Toronto

Being around long enough to see the way things really work is a huge advantage both for a blogger like me, and for professionals who have a long, if somewhat jaundiced, view of the evolution of transit plans in Toronto.

Ed Levy has just released “Rapid Transit in Toronto”, a webbook tracing the history of a century of transit schemes for our city.  This was produced with the support of the Neptis Foundation.

The online version of the book covers a wide range of topics and is filled with maps, history and observations about the evolution of transit plans (much more so than actual construction) in Toronto.  The book is downloadable in chapters sized either for email circulation or full resolution (see the PDF page).

I have only quickly browsed the chapter outlines so far, but there is a lot of material here, and it is so good, finally to see all of this in one place.  If nothing else, it will save those of us with shelves full of studies having to actually pull out the hard copies whenever we need to check something!

Congratulations to Ed, a fellow advocate for better public transit, on publishing such a major overview of our history.

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A Chat With Minister Murray

Glen Murray has only been sitting in his new office as Minister of Transportation and Minister of Infrastructure for Ontario for about 2½ weeks, but already his comments in the mainstream media (Globe Star) and on Twitter (@Glen4ONT) show that business as usual will not be the style of his office.  We chatted for about 45 minutes earlier today.

I began by asking about the change of his Twitter handle from the suffix “TC” (for his riding’s name, Toronto Centre) to “ONT” and his recent comments about transportation in northern Ontario.  Murray’s focus there is on economic development, and the need for transportation facilities to support investment, especially in mining.  On the question of passenger services, it was a bit harder to nail down the Minister’s position.

Murray is a big fan of High Speed Rail, and feels that the Windsor-Quebec corridor needs that sort of investment as an important first step, followed by improved rail and bus feeder services.  Yes, but what does this do for the north?  Murray sees the need for a spine rail service linking Toronto to the north with bus routes feeding into that spine, but neither details nor any sense of timing emerged.

Two important dollar figures, however, came out.  First, in southern Ontario, current spending on the 400-series highways is about $2.4-billion annually, and there is an argument to be made for upping spending on transit.  Second, mining now brings in about $1-billion annually, and the industry’s primary complaint is the lack of infrastructure, not their tax burden, according to Murray.

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Feeling Congested: Does Toronto Suffer From “The Moscow Syndrome”? (Updated)

The City of Toronto’s consultations about transportation plans and financing continued on the evening of March 4, 2013, with a panel discussion at the St. Lawrence Centre.  The 500-seat Jane Mallett Theatre was packed for the event, and had been sold out for several days in advance.

The participants were:

  • Matt Galloway, host of CBC’s “Metro Morning”, as moderator
  • Jennifer Keesmaat, Chief Planner of Toronto
  • Larry Beasley, retired Chief Planner for Vancouver, keynote speaker
  • Carol Wilding, president and CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade
  • Councillor Peter Milczyn, chair of Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee and member of the Toronto Transit Commission
  • Councillor Michael Thompson, chair of Toronto’s Economic Development Committee
  • John Howe, Vice-President, Investment Strategy and Project Evaluation at Metrolinx

The most newsworthy comments of the evening were a clear break by the two Councillors, both members of Mayor Ford’s Executive Committee, with the Mayor’s position on financing transit.  Michael Thompson stated that getting rid of the Vehicle Registration Tax was “a mistake”, and Peter Milczyn stated that Council (by implication with or without the Mayor) would approve “a suite” of tools to generate the needed revenue.

The message that “the people are ahead of the politicians” on transit financing, first raised by Carol Wilding, was a consistent theme.

Updated Mar. 5, 2013 at 11:10 am:

Although Larry Beasley’s thesis was that Moscow was trapped in an inescapable hole caused by decades of inaction on transit investment, this information appears to be out of date.  As one commenter here has noted, since the arrival of a new mayor and the availability of petrodollars, a lot has been happening.  This can also be seen by a cursory trip around the internet looking at the Moscow system.

Yes, the hole they have to dig out of was very deep, but they’re trying.  Toronto has not yet really acknowledged the effort needed not just to arrest the decline, but to make up for decades when transit wasn’t “important enough” beyond fighting over a vanity subway line or two.

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TTC Meeting Preview: February 25, 2013 (Update 2)

Update 2 on Tuesday, February 26, 2013 at 10:00 am:

Additional information from presentations and debates at the Commission meeting has be added to this article.

The Toronto Transit Commission will meet on Monday February 25, 2013.  This month’s agenda is a tad on the thin side, but there are some reports of interest.

  • CEO’s Report (updated)
  • Status Report on TTC Accessible Services
  • Second exit planning & consultation / Response to Ombusman’s report
  • Leslie Barns connection to Queen Street
  • Accommodating strollers
  • Purchase of 126 articulated buses (updated)
  • Amending the Automatic Train Control System contract to include Spadina/Vaughan extension (updated)
  • Update on Bus Servicing and Cleaning Contract (new)
  • Deputation by Merit OpenShop Contractors Association of Ontario (new)

There was also a presentation on new shelter maps and stop poles.  This item is likely to generate a strong response in the comment thread, and I will create a separate article for it.

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Metrolinx Meeting Preview: February 14, 2013 (Update 2)

The Metrolinx Board meets on February 14 with an agenda that, as usual, features a rather long private session followed by a shorter public one.  There will be brief updates on GO Transit and the PRESTO farecard project, a Customer Service Committee update, and one substantive item – updates to the regional plan, The Big Move, and feedback from the public consultation sessions now in progress.

Updated February 15, 2013 at 9:10 am:  Notes from discussions at and after the Board meeting have been added to this article.

Update 2 at 12:45 pm:  The date for Board approval of the Investment Strategy has been clarified.

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Metrolinx Math

In a recent comment, a reader questioned the disparity between the $34-billion cost of the Metrolinx “Next Wave” projects and the sum of the individual projects listed on the website.  These projects are:

Brampton-Queen BRT     $  600 million
Dundas BRT                600
Durham BRT                500
GO Expansion            4,900
GO Lakeshore Express    1,700
GO KW Electrification     900
Hamilton RT             1,000
Hurontario LRT          1,600
Downtown Relief Line    7,400
Yonge North Subway      3,400
Total                 $22,600 million

A big chunk of the difference between these two numbers can be explained by a factor which is new in the “Next Wave”, a provision of 25% of whatever funding is available for local transit, regional highways and other smaller projects.  This would eat up $8.5b out of the total leaving $25.5b for the next wave of “Big Move” projects.

I wrote to Metrolinx asking for an explanation of the remaining $2.9b, and this is their response.

Transforming the transportation network in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area is similar to any renovation project, and $50 billion was a planning number that was developed in 2008 for the Regional Transportation Plan, also known as The Big Move. As we move through assessments and delivery, we will have harder numbers, so that figure will change.

However, prior to the assessments and delivery, we’ve built a contingency into the $34 billion cost of the Next Wave projects, which accounts for a difference in numbers.

It should be noted that more than $16 billion from all three levels of government has been allocated to the “first wave” of projects drawn from The Big Moves list of top priorities. This is the largest financial commitment to transit expansion in Canadian history. [Email from Metrolinx February 5, 2013]

I will take at face value the statement that the $2.9b is “contingency”, but note that this was not mentioned in any of the presentation materials nor on the website.  To me it looks more like an “oops”.

This is not simply a question of catching Metrolinx out on an incomplete or inaccurate presentation.  We are now engaged in a debate about regional transportation and funding, and it is vital that this take place in a fully informed context.  An amount of $2b/year is commonly used as a reference point for the amount of funding that must be delivered by any new revenue tools.  This was in the original “Big Move” budget of $50b delivered over 25 years, and shows up most recently in the City of Toronto’s “Feeling Congested” outreach program.

That original number was in 2008$ and it included some provision for future operating costs.  However, it did not include inflation, nor did it include the recently added provision for local transit and road projects which would take 25% off the top of any new revenue stream.

The $50b was supposed to finance 52 separate projects listed in The Big Move, but between the “first wave” and “next wave” list, many still remain outside of funding plans.

If the Investment Strategy report expected from Metrolinx late this spring is to have any relevance to the discussion, it must include current estimates of capital and operating costs to be funded from new revenues, and must provide for inflation.  Either the capital provisions must be escalated to future dollars, or the future revenue from new tools must be discounted to present day.  We cannot discuss our long-term funding needs with a mixture of dollar values spanning decades.

Public transit projects have a long history of coming in over budget for various reasons.  Some of this is bad planning and some is scope creep, although it could be argued that these are often related.  There is always the issue of unexpected circumstances, not to mention the treatment of large public transit projects as an opportunity for every nearby utility to have their plant upgraded at the project’s expense.  Past funding for Metrolinx projects has always been announced as $x-billion plus inflation so that a $16b or $34b “commitment” may actually be much larger in as-spent dollars.

A further wrinkle is the use of private sector financing, construction and operation through “AFP” (Alternate Finance and Procurement), a methodology now in favour both in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park.  In this scheme, part of the capital cost of a project is assumed by a private partner, and this can reduce the capital outlay required during construction by the public sector.  However, that money has to be paid someday, and the payments show up on the operating budgets through mechanisms such as leases and revenue guarantees.  That will be a future call on the new revenue streams, and it must be built into the long range Investment Strategy.

Finally, some transit costs have been borne through non-Metrolinx budgets including various transfers to municipalities (now mainly the gas tax, although the infrastructure fund may be revived in a future budget) and a clawback to GO transit via a tithe to help pay for its capital program ($20m from Toronto this year).  All of these funding streams need to be sorted out and presented in one place so that a rational view of what is needed going forward is available for everyone to see.

Metrolinx should take greater care with its announcements and fiscal plans so that its credibility is not undermined by simple questions about arithmetic, and so that the funding they seek will actually match the funding they will need.

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Step Right Up for the Miracle Cure! (Updated)

For those readers here who do not follow the Torontoist website, I have an article there commenting on the City of Toronto’s outreach program for the new Official Plan.

Toronto seeks the opinion of its residents on the purpose and priorities of a transportation network, and on how we might pay for this in coming years.  The City’s heart is in the right place, but the planned consultation has its problems.

Updated February 3, 2013 at 8:00 am:

Toronto City Planning’s website seeking feedback on priorities and revenue tools has been live for a few days now.  It operates in a somewhat different fashion than I had assumed from the presentation by Jennifer Keesmaat at a recent Planning & Growth Management Committee meeting.

The site allows participants to select among a set of priorities, choose their favourite revenue tools and build a budget showing how each tool would contribute to a $2b/year target.

The priorities are a bit wooly and don’t necessarily reflect the linkage between the options and the type of spending that might occur.  For example, the “affordable” priority is described as relating to the cost of using transit, not to the cost of building it.

On the budgetary side, the potential revenue from various sources is given (this was missing from the PGM presentation), but there is no discussion of the ease with which any of the tools could be implemented nor of issues such as fairness in who would pay the new revenue.  A few examples:

  • Congestion charges are aimed at downtown where, ironically, the level of road traffic relative to total travel is very small.
  • A payroll tax charges businesses based on the size and cost of their labour force, not on the level of economic activity they represent.
  • Charges assigned per unit (e.g. utility levies) fall disproportionately on those with the smallest units and low usage (typically poorer family units).
  • Charges related to property value are keyed to notional value (CVA) rather than ability to pay.  Value capture schemes, like CVA, would tax an asset that the owner could not monetize unless the property were sold.  The effect is completely different for residential and commercial uses.

I will examine the various revenue tools in a separate article consolidating the discussion with the recent proposals from the RCCAO (Residential & Commercial Construction Association of Ontario).

Finally, there is no discussion of how the money would be used.  From the Metrolinx “Next Wave” proposal, we know that 25% ($500m/yr) would come to the municipal sector, roads and active transportation options.  This is actually small change beside the ongoing needs for local transportation funding and the backlog of infrastructure repairs.

The consultation does not include any discussion of what, at a local level, the new revenue might fund although this could affect the selection of tools.  Responses do include the selection of where broadly speaking money should go (transit, roads, etc) but with no examples of the implications or needs for each sector.

As I write this, the ranking of responses so far places highway tolls, congestion levies and development charges at the top of the list although even the first ranked gets a score of only 2.46 suggesting that many respondents ranked it in 3rd place or lower.  Some scores are tightly clustered indicating that responses are picking a variety of options.  It is unclear whether the ranking system assigns a value to “not selected” and is assigning scores only to the five items which each participant selected.  No value of “n”, the number of people selecting an item, is given.

How useful this survey will prove in the next stage of the consultation remains to be seen.

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New Premier, New Policies? (Updated)

Updated February 2, 2013 at 12:30 am:  The costing for Next Wave projects has been corrected to reflect that spending for local projects and roads is included in the total of $34-billion rather than as an additional cost on top of that number.

The Ontario Liberal Party has a new leader, and soon the province will have a new Premier.  Although I am not a Liberal supporter, I am extremely pleased by Kathleen Wynne’s rise to head our provincial government.  She represents the progressive wing of the party, and a fresh outlook after the increasingly frustrating reign of Dalton McGuinty.  A change of focus is already evident with social services, education labour relations, job creation and transportation infrastructure getting prominent mention.

Transportation is not first on the list, but it is vital to the GTHA.  Mobility has many benefits for business and for individuals.  Transportation infrastructure, especially transit, has far too often been treated as a cost to be avoided, to be offloaded, to be deferred while we strangle in congestion.  That congestion isn’t just on roads, plugged highways and arterials, but on the very transit systems we keep telling drivers can be our way out of the mess of 21st century gridlock.

The scope of what we need is enormous.  Within Toronto, we are accustomed to annual ridership figures now over half a billion, although this is well below half of all the journeys in the city.  Elsewhere in the greater Toronto area, transit does well to carry 10% of all travel.  The GTHA requires much, much more investment in transit infrastructure and in service to attract a larger share of the market.  Making transit a credible alternative to the automobile will not be easy, and reaching a target of 1/3 of work trips by transit in 2031 requires far more than a few trains and buses.

“More of the same” is not an option for a new government, especially one with a tenuous minority in the legislature.  Transportation problems are too big and have been set aside for another day for far too long.

Later this year, we will see the long-awaited Metrolinx “Investment Strategy”, a document that should have been published at least two years ago.  The necessary background information has been available for some time, but nobody at Queen’s Park wanted to talk about new “revenue tools”.  This lack of political fortitude and leadership, coupled with project funding delays and scope changes, cost the GTHA more lost time and compounded the deficit in transit building.

Fortunately Ontario now has a Premier-designate who is willing to talk about raising the money necessary to improve transit.  The challenge will be to actually go from talk to implementation and the creation of a funded transit plan.

We are at an important time in the political and economic cycle for the debate and real progress to begin.  Too many big announcements came just at high points when the economy boomed, only to lose the momentum to a downturn, retrenchment, and a shift of focus away from transit expansion, let alone changes in government. This pattern stretches back to the early 1970s and the Davis government’s aim to build cities for people with transit rather than with cars.

We are having the difficult, “mature” conversation about new taxes (whatever we might call them) when times are tougher.  Building transit funds into the base of government spending rather than as good-time baubles will be a major change, if it happens.

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