A Grand Plan

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Stintz Leads Call for Special Council Meeting (Update 3)

Updated February 10, 2012 at 1:00 am:

The description of the reporting mechanism and due date for Sheppard “expert panel” has been corrected to match what Council actually passed.  The information previously quoted here came from the original version of the motion.

Updated February 9, 2012 at 2:00 pm:

The minutes from the Special Meeting of Council are now available online.

Updated February 9, 2012 at noon:

On February 8, Toronto Council voted to seize control of the transit agenda from Mayor Ford and to support much of the original Transit City / Metrolinx 5-in-10 Plan that was approved in 2009.  I will publish a separate article on the debate and the motions later today.

Additional coverage is available from Torontoist, and a compendium of links to other media is available at Spacing Toronto.

The two most important motions were from TTC Chair Karen Stintz.

The first confirms Council’s support for the originally planned subway-surface alignment of the Eglinton LRT line, for the conversion of the Scarborough RT to LRT technology with an extension north to Sheppard (and eventually to Malvern), and for the Finch LRT west from Keele (the future Finch West station on the Spadina subway) to Humber College. Council also authorizes the TTC to discuss with Metrolinx the feasibility of several future projects:  a Sheppard West extension to Downsview, a Sheppard LRT to the Zoo, a Danforth subway extension to the Scarborough Town Centre, an Eglinton extension from Jane to Pearson Airport, and the Downtown Relief Line.

The second creates a special panel with broad enough representation to command political and technical respect.  This panel will advise Council on “the most effective means of delivering the greatest number of riders with the funds currently allocated for a public transportation project on Sheppard”.  The panel is to report back to a special meeting of Council no later than March 21, 2012.

Reaction from Mayor Ford and his faction was predictably hostile, but now extends to openly defying the will of Council.  Meanwhile, Ontario’s Minister of Transportation, Bob Chiarelli, issued a press release affirming the importance of support from “council, as a whole”.  Chiarelli has asked Metrolinx to report as quickly as possible on the effects of Council’s position.

Original post from February 6, 2012 follows the break.

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Metrolinx Contemplates LRT vs Subway (Updated)

Updated February 8, 2012 at 7:40am:  I have often described a suspicion that there is a fifth column within Metrolinx working against the TTC and LRT plans.  Royson James in the Star gives us a view into that organization in which we clearly see how it suits some at Metrolinx to misrepresent what the Toronto of David Miller and the TTC were doing.  This problem goes back years, and was evident during preparation of “The Big Move”, but the Metrolinx love for secrecy, for holding all of the substantive discussions behind closed doors, kept this out of sight.  Now Metrolinx may be faced with a vote at City Council that could run directly opposite to the scheme some at Metrolinx secretly have supported for years.  Will Metrolinx and Queen’s Park listen?

Original post from February 7 below:

On Monday February 6, Metrolinx held a press conference to outline its position on the current subway vs LRT controversy.  This article is a summary of the presentation (which is now available online) and a commentary on it.

I have taken a breather from the Chong report because of its size, the fact that it is now available online, and my desire to review Metrolinx position first.  That agency has somewhat more credibility than and “Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited”.

Purpose

The presentation is intended to “provide information” on the Eglinton line as outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Mayor Ford, and to restate the principles embraced by Queen’s Park and Metrolinx.

Principles

  1. Sound Regional Transit Planning.  Any projects must “achieve sound transportation objectives for the City and the region” and be in tune with the regional plan, The Big Move.
  2. Budget and Cost.  The maximum budget available from Queen’s Park remains $8.4-billion (2010$).  Any plan must remain within the overall total as well as projected yearly cash flows.  Additional costs must be paid by the City or some other partner.
  3. Penalties.  Queen’s Park will not pay any penalties resulting from changes sought by the City, and the penalty costs and losses from the MOU (the Ford document) remain the City’s responsibility.
  4. Cost of Delay.  Further delay is unacceptable to Metrolinx, and any costs this triggers must be paid by the City.
  5. Traffic.  “Any plan should minimize adverse impacts on traffic to the extent reasonably possible.”

Point 3 begs an obvious question of how the Province can hold Toronto responsible for costs incurred because they were foolish enough to proceed on Mayor Ford’s say-so without ensuring Council’s approval.  As we know from the recent legal opinion, the Mayor cannot bind the City to a contract without Council’s consent.

Point 5 is unclear about whether this refers to traffic problems during construction or after a line has opened.  During construction is of interest because this affects both cost and elapsed times for big projects like Eglinton.  The TTC’s construction schedule for an all-underground version is extended out to 2022 because they don’t want to dig up every station location at the same time.  If this were allowed, say as part of a sweetened deal with a private partner, the cost would come down.

Status

The west/central portion of the Eglinton project is common to both versions of the plan, and it is “making good progress”.  Metrolinx and the TTC are working to allow an alternative procurement strategy (putting more responsibility in the hands of a private partner), but certainty is needed on what exactly will be built in the eastern portion.

Current Plan

This is shown as a map with the following components and costs:

  • Metrolinx Crosstown Project:  $8.18-billion
  • Sheppard East Subway Project:  $2.75b
  • Sheppard West Subway Project:  $1.48b
  • Sheppard Subway Yard:  $0.5b

It is worth noting that the total here for Sheppard is $4.73-billion.  This is the “TTC” estimate for Sheppard, not the lower so-called “Metrolinx” estimate cited in the Chong report.  Is there something about the cost of Sheppard Metrolinx knows that they did not share with Gordon Chong and KPMG (who wrote the section of Chong’s paper where this appears)?

Benefits of the Current Crosstown Plan

Just the title of this section is intriguing because, of course, Council has never approved this plan and strictly speaking, it’s not “current”.

Metrolinx claims that there will be a reduction of travel times from Kennedy to Black Creek by 25% as the line will operate at 30-32km/h overall.  Of course, the subway-surfrace variant would operate at this speed too, and the only question is the speed over the section from Leaside to Kennedy.  Part of this section will be grade separated (around Don Mills Station) although the extent is not yet confirmed.  The total distance from Brentcliffe to Kennedy is about 8km.  From Black Creek to Brentcliffe is a bit over 10km.  In other words, the section where any improvement in time can possibly occur is 8/18 or about 45% of the line.

To achieve a 25% increase overall, the speed improvement east of Brentcliffe would have to be 55%.  We know that the speed used for underground operation is 30-32, and this means that the presumed speed for surface operation would be only about 20km/h.  This is lower than the figure actually used by the TTC in the Eglinton line’s published description (22-25km/h) and it also ignores the change in access time to the more widely-spaced stations on an underground alignment.  The difference is between a 15 minute trip (at 32km/h) and a 24 minute trip (at 20km/h).  If the higher TTC speed (25km/h)  is used, the surface trip falls to 19 minutes.  Much will depend on the degree of surface transit priority afforded to the LRT.

Metrolinx cites reliability because an underground line would be completely separated from traffic.  Conversely, a surface line would have to interact with traffic and pedestrians at intersections, and there would be some effect on left turns and signal cycle times.

They also cite “convenience” because the Eglinton and SRT routes are linked.  Note that this arrangement is not peculiar to the underground proposal, and nothing prevents the TTC from doing this for a subway-surface version of the line.  The TTC’s concern is that demand north of Kennedy is higher than on Eglinton, and they don’t want to operate a very frequent “SRT” service with short turns at Kennedy to accommodate a smaller demand west on Eglinton.  This is an issue of operational convenience rather than necessity.

Metrolinx cites higher ridership, especially in the peak, on an underground Crosstown line as compared to the subway-surface route.  This is a direct effect of their demand model which is very sensitive to running times, and which redirects a considerable amount of traffic from the Danforth subway to the Eglinton line.  Whether this is desirable is quite another matter given concerns about the capacity at Eglinton/Yonge station.  A related question is the potential benefit of a Downtown Relief Line intercepting demand on Eglinton at Don Mills.

Overall, Metrolinx states that a fully grade-separated line doubles the capacity of the project.  This is true in the sense that more and longer trains can be operated if the line is all grade-separated, but it also begs the question of the effect on overall cost of providing a fleet and yard sufficient for that capacity and whether LRVs are appropriate for a route that never runs on the surface.  The presentation returns to this issue later.

Light Rail Vehicles

About $76m of $770m of the contract for 182 Bombardier LRVs has been spent to date.  The “current plan” reduced this number to 135 by the elimination of the Finch and Sheppard routes, but these vehicles are suitable for “other LRT applications around the region and province”.  The strongest endorsement of LRT comes here:

“Metrolinx remains confident that LRVs are a good choice given their flexibility to operate at surface, in tunnels and on elevated guideways, with a low floor and high capacity”

Metrolinx notes that the LRVs were intended to operate partly in tunnels in the original plan.  They cite other examples of Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco.  Closer to home, one can look at Edmonton, Philadelphia and Boston (where streetcars have run underground for over a century).  The important point about all of these is that the LRVs do not stay underground when there is no reason for them to do so.

LRVs are low floor vehicles which, in the Metrolinx implementation, will load level with the platform (unlike the surface streetcars which must use a ramp because they operate in mixed traffic).  The low floor aspect of the cars is a “small component” of the overall vehicle cost and project.

Metrolinx notes that:

“Having a low floor provides flexibility for the vehicle to be used in a surface application, when the line is extended west towards Pearson airport or north and east further into Scarborough”

Vehicle Capacity

Metrolinx cites capacities for three-car trainsets ranging from just under 10k/hour at a 3 minute headway (20 trains/hour) to just under 20k/hour at a 1.5 minute headway.  This can accommodate projected ridership beyond 2051.  Surface operations in a median are limited to 8-9k/hour because frequent trains and high pedestrian volumes would interfere too much with road traffic.

Results

What was once a $6.5b project is now an $8.2b project and limited funds are available for other routes.  There will be fewer stations because of their higher cost underground.  Metrolinx states that although this version costs more, it “delivers greater benefits”.  Whether this calculation is offset by the benefits lost through not building other routes is unclear.

Going Forward

Metrolinx and Queen’s Park seek a single position from the City.  They “remain committed” to partnering with Toronto, but “clarity is required”.  Any City position will be evaluated against the principles stated earlier.

I cannot help pointing out that there already is an accepted Memorandum of Agreement dating from 2009 between all of the parties and especially City Council.  It would be difficult for Metrolinx to claim now that the network the MOA contemplates (the 5-in-10 Metrolinx plan for Eglinton, SRT, Sheppard and Finch) would now fail this test.  Tinkering with the plan by Council could re-open the question of what is an “acceptable” request.

The next installment in this drama lies with Council, and political concerns will dominate although this will be disguised by concerns for technical matters.  We may learn again why Canadian winters are too cold for surface operation and other tidbits from Ford’s fountain of transit knowledge.

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The Chong Report (I) (Updated)

Updated February 6, 2012 at 11:45pm:  The Chong report is now available online (linked below) together with a report from KPMG on financing the Sheppard subway.  Large chunks of the KPMG report are reproduced in the Chong report.

Original post from Feb 5 follows:

Gordon Chong’s report

Toronto Transit Back on Track
Sheppard Subway Development and Financing Study

will be released sometime this week, but a copy has already found its way to me.  This report was commissioned by Mayor Ford to explore the viability of his proposal, as stated in the purported Memorandum of Understanding with Queen’s Park, for the City to go it alone on the Sheppard Subway project.  The report is close to 200 pages long including its appendices, and I am not going to review it in a single article.

There is no question Chong’s mandate was to substantiate the need for and viability of the subway line, and to that end his report is coloured with sections intended to denigrate LRT alternatives and the political process that led to the Transit City proposal.  I will turn to this material in due course, but any decision on the subway project must stand on its own.  History is worth reviewing insofar as it provides technical background and shows the evolution of transit planning in Toronto.  Fighting old battles may score political points, but the subway must be justified on its own merits.

The cost and financing model are central to the thesis that the Sheppard line, and by extension a network of subways, is an appropriate goal, indeed the only goal, for Toronto.  The common wisdom is that “everybody wants subways”, but as with many aspects of public spending, what people want is not always what they will get.  Recent events in Toronto’s budget process are littered with lectures by Ford’s followers about fiscal responsibility and the need to make do with less.  We are told that the city and its taxpayers cannot afford to pay more.  We must, therefore, examine claims that major new public works are affordable with suspicion.

What is the estimated cost of any new project?  Are the numbers we are using credible?  Are subways actually cheaper than we have been told, and could a lower cost bring them within financial constraints of potential revenue?  Are public agencies the appropriate developers of such projects?  Are their costs (historical and projected) greater than might be achieved through another delivery mechanism?

While it may be a common Toronto sport to poke holes in TTC budgets, management practices and operations (a not uncommon thread on this blog), such criticism must be backed with a standard of accuracy and care.

How Much Will the Sheppard Subway Cost?

A central premise in this debate is that the TTC, and by implication the public sector generally, is unable to deliver this project at a reasonable cost.  An oft-quoted figure puts the TTC’s estimate of the project at $4.7-billion while an estimate from Metrolinx sits at $3.7-billion.  These numbers first appear in Table 2 in the Executive Summary, and they are routinely repeated as gospel.  One must read all the way down to page 147 and Table 38 to see the details. Here we see component costs that are generally higher for the TTC estimate than the Metrolinx one, but the details reveal that the billion dollar difference is not all that it seems.

Metrolinx estimates the cost of maintenance facilities at $138-million based on a per-car value of $2.66m.  A footnote on the table clearly states that the TTC estimate of $500-million is based on a new facility larger than is needed to hold just the fleet for Sheppard.  Why such a big difference?  Metrolinx assumes an expansion of the yard at Wilson and therefore a marginal increase in system capacity whereas the TTC makes provision for future fleet growth for demand and for system extension.

Wilson Yard has a looming problem with its size because there are limits on how fast trains can be pushed out for service buildup in the AM peak.  Already there is discussion of shortening the hours of subway service to retain an overnight maintenance window between the end of one day’s operations and the start-up of the next.  TTC plans include proposal for an underground storage yard north of Finch Station and, eventually, to a new carhouse somewhere in York Region.  We cannot simply keep stuffing more and more trains into Wilson.

This aspect of the cost difference cannot be counted as a penalty against the TTC because it addresses a completely different model of what would be built (and why), not some inherent flaw or inflation in TTC costing.

“Operating Systems” covers a range of items listed in the comparison.  For this, the TTC’s value is 4.5 times the Metrolinx value ($329m vs $73m).  This amount cannot be explained simply by claiming inefficiency at the TTC, and it is wildly out of scale with the differences in other items.  At the very least, anyone purporting to compare estimates would flag such a difference and explain it in their report rather than simply using the numbers without question.

“Contingency” is a catch-all allowance in any project budget to allow for unexpected events and costs during construction.  Both the TTC and Metrolinx estimates allow about 26% over and above the component costs, and with the TTC’s costs being higher, so is the contingency in their estimate.

Sales tax is included in the TTC estimates, but it is not in the Metrolinx version.  This shows up by virtue of an HST Rebate in the TTC section of the table which has no equivalent on the Metrolinx side.  The HST is included in the component costs including the contingency factor, and the TTC unit costs are not presented on an equal, untaxed footing with the Metrolinx costs.  Again, this sort of adjustment is a basic requirement of financial analysis, but it is absent from Table 38.

There are likely other areas where differences between Metrolinx and TTC figures would bear scrutiny, but as the TTC numbers are not detailed here, nor are the assumptions on which they are based, it is impossible to dig further.

Taking what we can see into account covers about three quarters of the difference between the Metrolinx and TTC estimates.  Before we can believe the Metrolinx $3.7b estimate, the inconsistencies with the TTC numbers must be explained.  Both values may be legitimate given the underlying assumptions used in each case, but these are demonstrably different.  Saying that there is a $1-billion spread between the two is an apples-to-oranges argument.

Here, it suits Gordon Chong’s thesis that the TTC is an inherently poor steward of public funds and that the project could be delivered at lower cost through another agency or mechanism.

A January 2008 Metrolinx report on a study tour to the United Kingdom and Spain is included as an appendix to the Chong report.  Even a cursory reading of this document shows that there are significant differences in the environment in which large-scale projects were undertaken in these jurisdictions compared with Toronto.  A major source of savings lies in the scale and continuity of construction projects, a general agreement that the projects should go forward (possibly with less up-front review such as our Environmental Assessments), and a regulatory environment that reduces contention between proponent agencies and the companies actually building their projects.  (Buried in the report, by the way, are references to “Tram” (LRT) components of the Madrid system which are considerably cheaper per kilometre than their subways.)

The degree to which each difference between the European cities and Toronto contributes to differences in costs is not explored, and yet this is essential to any comparison.  The scale of their projects and longevity of their construction plans are not directly transferable to a single Toronto subway extension.  It is not enough to say “look at how cheaply Madrid builds subways” without also understanding why they can do it.

In my next article I will turn to the question of how we will pay for this project.

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Council Votes a Small Increase in TTC Funding (Update 3)

Updated January 28, 2012 at 10:15am:  One intriguing point about the proposed service restorations is the formula on which they are based.  Originally, the off-peak standard for frequent services was to change from “seated load” (on average) to “seated load plus 25%”.  On this basis, several routes and periods of operation would have service cut so that the allegedly existing seated loads were given 20% less service. 

(If you have five buses each with a seated load, and you cut the service to four buses (a 20% cut), then one quarter, or 25%, of the seated load from that fifth bus much be added to each of the remaining vehicles.)

Now the TTC proposes a standard of “seated plus 15%” saying that this will rescue many of the services that would have been cut.  Hello TTC.  If an existing service is already at seated plus 15%, then it is most certainly over the current standard of a seated load.  The same sort of calculation applies to the peak period bus routes that were already saved by an adjustment of the new standard.

The common point here and in the round of service cuts on lightly used routes last year is that the TTC’s riding counts are out of sync with the service they actually operate.  One one day, a revised standard may cause a service cut, but on another, amazingly, it turns out that there were more riders on those buses and streetcars than we had been led to believe.  Certainly many routes are operating beyond the “Ridership Growth Strategy” standard, and the amount of headroom to cut service is less than alleged by KPMG’s Core Services Review.  That document is a tangle of half-truths and bad research, but it was the underpinning of planned cuts to many City departments.

Why didn’t the TTC explain this during the budget reviews?

Updated January 27, 2012 at 11:25pm:  A “final budget” report on the TTC’s agenda for the January 31 meeting recommends spending the $5-million voted by Council either on restored service on the conventional system, or on avoiding a cutback in Wheel-Trans service.  The report includes a list of services that would be restored on March 25, 2012 reversing completely or partially the cuts pending for February 12, 2012.  There is no discussion of service restoration (which would require redoing the work sign-up for February on very short notice) for the period from February 12 to March 24.

While funding of Wheel-Trans will be advanced by some as a more humane way to use the $5m, the very clear intent of Council and of everyone who spoke in favour of this funding was to restore service on the regular bus system.  Wheel-Trans funding is a separate issue that even the TTC had agreed to leave until mid-year pending possible funding from another source.

At the meeting, we will see whether the Commission chooses to thwart the will of Council, and whether Councillors who voted the additional money will show up to read the riot act to those Commissioners who do not understand that Mayor Ford lost that vote, and the TTC should get on with restoring regular service.

Those who argue that the $5m is “not sustainable” because it is drawn from one-time funding conveniently ignore that it will have this status whether it is spent on regular routes or on Wheel-Trans.  Moreover, it is entirely likely that a good chunk of this money will appear in fare revenue from riding that is running ahead of budget predictions.

Updated January 23, 2012 at 10:55pm:  The option of using the extra subsidy voted by Council as part of the capital budget to pay for new streetcars has been ruled inappropriate by the City’s legal staff because this conflicts with the wording of Council’s motion.  However, because “restore service” could also be construed to refer to Wheel-Trans cuts (although that was not the intent), it is possible that the Commission might sneak through redirection of the funding anyhow.  How this will sit with Councillors who thought they were saving regular service remains to be seen.

The original article from January 18, 2012 follows:

In a surprise victory at City Council, progressive forces — an alliance of the left, the “mushy middle” and a few from the right wing — combined to restore funding in the 2012 budget in several areas including the TTC’s subsidy.  The vote on January 17 was as close as it could be with a 23-21 margin (one Councillor was off sick, and the vote would have been 23-22 if he were present).

The TTC will receive an additional $5-million for its operating subsidy in order to reverse some of the planned service cuts.  This is less than the full amount needed ($9m), and will likely result in a concentration on off-peak services.  Why only $5m?  The political compromise needed to pull together this vote involved a lot of horse trading, and many of the amounts involved for other budget areas were considerably lower — in the hundreds of thousands rather than millions — and the overall package had to stay within a scope the coalition could support.

The TTC must now consider how it will use the money, and the mechanics of unwinding cuts that have already been scheduled for mid-February.

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First Steps for a Transit Compromise (Update 3)

[Updates with links to media coverage are at the end of this article.]

Elizabeth Church reports in the Globe about a proposed compromise that would redistribute the funding for the proposed all-underground Eglinton LRT line.

Tess Kalinowski and David Rider in the Star cover the same story and include a map.

  • Eglinton would stay on the surface east of Leaside with a dip underground at Don Mills to surface east of the DVP.  This is similar but not identical to the original Transit City scheme.
  • Part of the money released from the Eglinton project would be used to extend the Sheppard Subway east to Victoria Park and include a stop at Consumers Road.
  • A bus transit corridor would be provided on Finch West and East.

The article implies that there may be good support from various parts of Council for this scheme, and a clear endorsement by a motion would send Metrolinx the signal it claims to be waiting for of just what Toronto wants to build.

Updated January 25, 2012 at 10:45am:

Natalie Alcoba reports in the National Post that although there may be support growing on Council for this plan, the Mayor’s office appears unmoved.

But an official from the Mayor’s office suggested he is not interested in relinquishing ground on his LRT stance. “We’re happy with the Metrolinx plan that they’re working on now,” said Mark Towhey, the Mayor’s policy director. “Residents don’t want trains running down the middle of the street.”

…

On the radio on Tuesday, Mr. Ford seemed to distance himself from the Eglinton line, saying he doesn’t want to stick his nose in a provincial project.

“I’m concentrating on the Sheppard line, and building a subway up there. If Metrolinx or the province wants to do this… I’m not a fan of streetcars, I’m not a fan of LRTs. If they’re underground I am, that’s been my position all along.”

[End of update]

There are longer range issues here, but retention of a subway-surface alignment on Eglinton will permit future extensions to the west and northeast that would likely be unaffordable if an all-underground structure had been repurposed as a full subway line.  The difficult problems of an alignment from Black Creek to Jane have yet to be addressed.

Finch will see BRT at least initially, and it will be important that no design elements preclude future conversion to LRT when demand justifies this.  This would also avoid the cost of a carhouse on Finch West in the short term that was part of the Transit City scheme.

The unknown would be Sheppard and the terminal at Victoria Park.  Will this be a “temporary” end of the line, or will the design allow further extension by either subway or by LRT with a convenient transfer connection?  An argument now about the technology east of Victoria Park will only muddle the debate, but the option of either form of extension should be left open for a future decision.  Will a BRT on Finch stand in for the Sheppard East LRT?

Portions of the Ford subway scheme appear to have fallen off of the table.  We still need those debates about the role of subways, LRT and BRT (not to mention such lowly creatures as simple buses running in mixed traffic) in a suburban network.  Part of this will fall to Metrolinx’ “Big Move 2.0” about which we know very little today and to the degree that solid transit funding actually shows up through new revenue sources such as tolls, sales taxes or maybe even a casino.

Meanwhile, we debate the disposition of billions in capital spending while proposing a few millions in savings by widespread service cuts.  Such is the madness of Toronto’s transit politics.

I can quibble about some aspects of this proposed compromise, but it is a good start.  Here is a sign that finally Council takes seriously the need to plan and make responsible decisions about our transit future.  For a year, by its inaction, Council gave de facto endorsement to a half-baked campaign promise that Metrolinx adopted as its working plan.  Now we can have a real debate.

Updated January 26, 2012 at 12:40am:

Robyn Doolittle in the Star reports that momentum is building for the compromise plan.

Elizabeth Church and Patrick White report in the Globe with more details about response from Queen’s Park and Metrolinx.

Natalie Alcoba in the Post suggests that Mayor Ford is still wedded to a subway plan, but that support for surface LRT is building.

One troubling point in all of this is a comment by Metrolinx chair Rob Prichard who wants to see Council, the Mayor and the TTC all onside.  Whether Rob Ford will actually endorse a new plan, or wind up as one of a few voting against it remains to be seen, but at some point Queen’s Park has to listen to the majority of the citizens’ representatives.

Updated January 26, 2012 at 12:50:

Royson James in the Star gives Metrolinx a well-deserved thrashing.  By its own admission, this agency proceeded with the all-underground Eglinton plan even without Council approval, a clear requirement of the Memorandum of Understanding between Queen’s Park and Mayor Ford.

Christopher Hume weighs in with a video commentary including a call for an all-surface Eglinton LRT.

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Stintz Supports LRT, Maybe (Update 3)

Updated January 23 at 11:00pm:  Links to updated coverage including signs of movement toward a new transit plan have been added.

From the Star:

Tess Kalinowski writes about support building for a new plan.  In this version, a surface-subway LRT on Eglinton frees up money for, possibly, a short extension on Sheppard to Victoria Park and something on Finch West.

It’s too early to tell which combination will win out, and there’s no reference to eastern Scarborough.

Martin Cohn writes about the imminent collapse of the McGuinty-Ford transit deal.  We learn that Queen’s Park was prepared to pay the extra cost of expropriating property to widen Eglinton to compensate for space lost to surface LRT, but this option was rejected by Ford.

A Star Editorial congratulates Karen Stintz for telling us the obvious and urges her to begin a campaign for a subway-surface line on Eglinton.  At this rate, they’ll be casting a bronze of Stintz arm-in-arm with David Miller.

From the Globe:

Marcus Gee writes favourably about a move to bring Eglinton back to the surface.

From the National Post:

Natalie Alcoba writes about the proposed change including comments from supportive Councillors.

Updated January 23 at 5:50 pm:  I recently spoke with Bruce McCuaig, President and CEO of Metrolinx, about this issue.  Notes from our conversation are at the end of this article.

Adrian Morrow reports in today’s Globe that TTC Chair Karen Stintz feels an all-underground Eglinton line should just be what it is, a subway, but that it belongs on the surface as LRT for its outer suburban section.

Karen Stintz argues it makes more sense to put the LRT underground only along the most congested part of the route, in midtown, while building it on the surface in the spacious suburbs.

“If the decision is to go with an LRT, it should be at-grade,” she said. “If there’s a decision to put it underground, it should be a subway.”

That’s an interesting position for someone in the Ford camp because it continues the anti-streetcar rhetoric of the Mayor’s office.  If Eglinton is built as a subway line, the option of converting it to LRT and resurrecting Transit City falls because a major link (and the proposed main shops for the LRT network) would vanish.

As Morrow points out in his article, other systems use a combination of surface and underground alignments (including Boston where downtown streetcars went underground over a century ago) so that a network of surface routes can share a common tunnel in the congested central area while switching to a simpler surface alignment elsewhere.

If Eglinton were to become a subway, the problem of valley crossings won’t disappear and Metrolinx will still face the problem of either going under several valleys, or bridging them with parallel structures.

The real question a subway option begs is the future of the SRT.  If Eglinton becomes a subway, it will not easily through-route to Scarborough Town Centre along the existing alignment, and this will reopen the debate over a Bloor-Danforth extension.

Morrow’s article implies that Stintz may be shifting into the pro-LRT camp, but I am not convinced.  If she were really shifting positions, there would be more talk about revival of some parts of Transit City, notably the Finch West line which, unlike Sheppard East, is completely independent of the Ford subway proposals.

The pending release of Gordon Chong’s report on financing the Sheppard Subway will trigger, finally, a debate on the future of Toronto’s transit technologies at Council.  We will see whether Stintz is truly an LRT supporter, or simply pitching Ford’s “no streetcars” view of the world.

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Metrolinx Plans a Fare Increase

The Metrolinx board will meet on Monday, January 9 to formally approve new, higher fares across the system effective February 18, 2012.  Unlike the previous fare hike of March 20, 2010 which was a flat $0.25 bump in all fares, this round uses tiered increases so that short-distance fares are not as disproportionately penalized.

  • Fares which are now between $4.20 and $5.50 would rise by $0.30 (5.5 to 7.1%)
  • Fares which are now between $5.51 and $7.00 would rise by $0.35 (5.0 to 6.4%)
  • Fares which are now at $7.01 or more would rise by $0.40 (at most 5.7%)

Considering that many GO fares are well above $7 (a one way from Kitchener-Waterloo to Union costs $14.60), that maximum increase amounts to only 2.7%.  Oddly enough, the presentation on the agenda notes that:

A flat increase disproportionately impacts shorter trips and will make any potential future fare integration arrangement with the TTC more difficult to achieve.

The 2012 increase is still disproportionately high for those who might make short journeys.  The idea that this somehow supports future fare integration with the TTC is hard to swallow.

The average GO fare is $6.55 and the average increase, allowing for the effects of discounts, will be about $0.31 (4.7%) .  If this were applied to the KW-Union fare, the increase would be about $0.70.

A chart of page 3 of the presentation makes interesting reading.  It shows various GO cost factors and their rates of increase over the past decade.  By far the highest are diesel fuel and electric power.

Concurrent with the fare increase, GO will change the discount plan for adults and students to encourage their shift from paper passes to Presto.  The discounts of 17.5% and 35% now offered to adult and student passholders respectively will stay in place for Presto fares, but the discounts for a paper pass will drop to 15% and 30%.

Like the TTC, GO faces the dilemma that adding service, even if they carry more riders, drives up costs because on average all services recover only about 80% from the farebox.  Stronger ridership with little service improvement is financially beneficial, but service improvements add to the operating costs.

With constraints on funding from Queen’s Park, passengers will have to dig a little deeper.  This is a major issue for future GO planning as they move to services that will not have as robust a cost recovery rate (two way, all day rail service).  The farebox cannot pay for GO’s evolution from a system that cherry-picks the cheapest of riders to one that provides service as a basic policy for the GTAH.

Metrolinx Board Report

Metrolinx Board Presentation

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Rebuilding A Transit City

The waning fortunes of the Ford regime and its defeat on planning for the eastern waterfront have emboldened many to focus on the resurrection of the Transit City LRT plan.  Advocates despaired as the newly-minted Mayor Ford so unceremoniously and undemocratically cancelled the plan.  We watched as Queen’s Park, terrified of a “Ford Nation” juggernaut decimating Liberal ranks in the 2011 election, caved in with a “Memorandum of Understanding” completely undoing the principles of their own “Big Move” transit scheme.

Now we’re in 2012, rumour has the Liberals wanting a return to the original plan, but fearing a unilateral move without a request from Toronto Council.  Oddly enough, the absence of any Council approval for Ford’s actions, a requirement of the MOU, is never mentioned.  The economics of the all-underground Eglinton “LRT” and the private sector Sheppard subway don’t look encouraging, and Queen’s Park faces widespread constraint in public sector spending.  This is hardly the time to be blowing billions to gold plate projects, to cover them with “gravy” that would invite ridicule in other circumstances.

The left may engineer a vote at Council once the 2012 budget debates are out of the way seeking to resurrect Transit City as it was originally proposed and agreed to.  CodeRedTO has formed with the intent of seeking a way, preferably through compromise, to a revised transportation plan that will keep the best of competing views of our future.  They hope to copy the success of the waterfront’s CodeBlueTO.

Whether this will be possible given the bluster and intransigence shown by the Mayor whenever surface transit is mentioned remains to be seen.  Unlike the Portlands fiasco, a scheme hatched and promoted by the Mayor’s brother Doug, the transportation file is firmly part of Rob Ford’s agenda.  It was in his campaign platform, and the Mayor has often repeated his loathing for “streetcars” and his mantra that the war on the car is over.

Unlike Waterfront Toronto, transit agencies don’t have a string of projects to show off as a mark of their expertise.

The TTC still hasn’t lived down the St. Clair project even though many of its problems were not of the TTC’s making, and “St. Clair” is as much a conjuration of urban myth than today’s experience.  Local transit is more a collection of horror stories, of fights between the system and its customers, rather than of day-to-day triumphs.  Right at the top, the TTC is infected with the premise that transit is for somebody else, for the folks who can’t afford to drive, rather than an essential part of the region’s network for everyone.

Metrolinx does well as far as it goes, but has the comparatively easy job of serving a small, concentrated and select market.  It’s easy to do well when you deliberately ignore millions of potential customers and see high farebox returns as a mark of success without seeing all those trips not taken (because service isn’t provided) as a cost to travellers and to the region.

However the politics works out, a vital challenge for advocates is to avoid an endless debate on thirty years worth of future transit plans, pitched battles between various transit schemes, technologies and alignments.  Taxpayers who must fund whatever we build, and politicians who must get re-elected, need a focussed, clear objective.

The waterfront file was an easy fight in this regard:  a widely-praised, detailed plan already exists that was demonstrably better than what was proposed.  The rivalry between agencies (Waterfront Toronto vs Toronto Port Lands Corporation) and the desire to get quick sales to fund property tax breaks in Toronto exposed the shallow goals and cronyism of the Ford alternative.  The situation with Transit City is much different.

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Union Station & Rail Corridor Capacity

At the recent Metrolinx Board meeting, staff presented an overview of planning now underway for the future of Union Station.  One background report addressed the future levels of GO, VIA and other services at Union and the surrounding rail corridors.  This report makes interesting, if unsurprising, reading because it confirms what anyone with even a modest understanding of railway operations already knows:  there are severe capacity constraints at Union as it is now configured and operated.  Too much discussion focuses on a bright future of frequent service without considering how we will fit all the trains and passengers through the hub of the network.

The full report is not online at Metrolinx, but I have obtained a copy.  Due to its size, I will not link the entire document here.  If you just want the highlights, read the Executive Summary.  For more details including a description of the evolving simulations of various levels of service, read the main report.

USRC Track Study Executive Summary

USRC Track Study Main Report

The study considered various scenarios corresponding to stages in the growth of GO and other services over coming decades:

  • Base Case:  The existing service at Union, including a reservation of two tracks out of service for the reconstruction project.  This was used to calibrate the model.
  • 2015:  Construction at the train shed is completed giving two more tracks for service.  The only new peak hour service beyond the base case would be a few VIA trains and the Air Rail Link.
  • Electrification study base case:  This configuration was used as a starting point for the recent electrification study, and it assumes two-way service on all corridors.  Three variants of this were tested to refine operations and remove constraints triggered by service at a much higher level than today.
  • Maximum capacity:  This configuration attempted to maximise service on all corridors.

The study concludes that significant changes will be required both in the physical plant (track, signals) and in train operations which will have to be managed considerably more tightly than today.

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Metrolinx Toys With 3Ps

The Toronto Star reports that Metrolinx is considering the private sector option for delivery of some or all of the Eglinton LRT project.  This is not much of a surprise given that Queen’s Park has an entire Ministry, Infrastructure Ontario, dedicated to building stuff, and their standard delivery model is a partnership with the private sector.

Advocates and opponents of public-private-partnerships often take extreme views that these schemes are either the saviour of government services, or evil works meant to transfer control (and money) of vital projects from public to private hands.  The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Every project the TTC or Metrolinx undertakes has a large private sector component:  engineering, construction, provision of materials.  Delays and cost overruns can arise from poor planning and design, some of it carried out by those same private sector engineers, or from contractors who view changes and delays as a potential source of profit.  They can also come from a client who can’t make up its mind and changes requirements as the project unfolds.

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