As previously rumoured in comments, the Kitchener rail service begins on December 19. GO will implement this with two trains a day.
In the morning, the existing 6:47 Georgetown trip will originate in Kitchener at 5:52. A new train will be added leaving Kitchener at 7:10 and arriving at Union at 9:08.
In the afternoon, two existing Georgetown trips leaving Union at 4:45 and 5:45 pm will be extended to Kitchener arriving there at 6:42 and 7:42.
The line will be renamed the “Kitchener” line.
The agenda for November 23rd’s meeting of the Metrolinx Board is now online and it includes several reports of interest. Here I will deal with GO transit performance and capacity issues. In a future article, I will turn to Presto (and the proposed TTC implementation which is also on the TTC’s agenda for November 23), the Air Rail Link, and planning issues at “Mobility Hubs”.
Updated November 9 at 11:20pm: The Toronto Star reports that Queen’s Park has told Mayor Ford that it will not advance any provincial funds from a possible “surplus” on the Eglinton project to jump start the Sheppard line. This leaves Ford’s camp having to find money on its own if work on a first phase to Victoria Park were attempted.
The original article from November 8 follows:
The Toronto Star reports that Rob Ford’s Sheppard Subway proposal might creep eastward from Don Mills Station rather than bounding in one leap to Scarborough Town Centre. An initial push east to Victoria Park might be a target for 2014, in time for the next municipal election, although the opening date would come later.
Considering that Ford was going to finance and build the entire Sheppard line in that time, this is a tad slower than promised during his election campaign.
The big problem, of course, is money. Ford doesn’t have much and, as the Star points out, the engineering difficulties for an all-underground Eglinton line won’t leave much unspent of the provincial fund earmarked for that route. For a route that was going to be financed by the private sector, Sheppard, or what we may see of it, is turning into a traditionally funded public sector project.
The specifics are no surprise. Don Mills was always an odd place to end the Sheppard line, and this choice was dictated by available funding, not by network planning. The proposed LRT connection into Don Mills is less than ideal, and a tunnel under the DVP would be required regardless of the technology. The extra cost lies in continuing east to Victoria Park.
What we don’t know yet is whether this extension would include a Consumer’s Road Station, or just go straight through to the new terminal.
During the debates over possible adjustments to the Transit City network, a subway extension was one option proposed by some. The typical reaction to this (and to any other schemes that would add to the cost of Transit City) was to reject the idea out of hand because the overall budget was already very tight. However, now that Queen’s Park has decided that no price is too high to keep Mayor Ford happy, it’s much harder to argue against rethinking some Transit City options.
Victoria Park could be a good terminal for a Sheppard LRT, but there’s a problem of timing. The “interim” subway terminal should be designed with provision for an LRT rather than subway continuation. I suspect that no one at the TTC will be allowed to even discuss, let alone design such an option. This will be a challenge for Councillors thinking ahead to a post-Ford era when LRT plans can be resurrected.
According to the Star, Gordon Chong should be reporting on a scheme to get the Sheppard line underway “before Christmas”. Will Santa have a nice shiny subway train for little Rob’s stocking, or just a lump of coal?
Meanwhile for comic relief, Matt Elliot’s Ford for Toronto site reports how that pesky Don River just won’t get out of Ford’s way.
Thirty-nine years ago, the TTC made its historic decision to retain streetcars in Toronto. At the time service on streetcar routes was considerably more frequent than today, and Torontonians generally thought kindly of that mode.
Over the years, it has been an uphill struggle to maintain this. Service cuts on the TTC led to fleet reductions, and improvements we should have seen go unfilled thanks to the too-small fleet of unreliable cars.
We have been through one generation of “new” streetcars, and it’s hard to believe that these are now due for retirement. The CLRVs (regular sized cars) are over 30 years old and although they may physically be capable of continued operation and body rebuilds, their ancient electronics are a challenge. The ALRVs (two-section cars) are a bit younger, but still elderly.
Ongoing debates about the type of car that would replace Toronto’s fleet and, indeed, whether 100 of the CLRVs would receive a major overhaul including new control systems, delayed the replacement process. This delay would be merely annoying had control of the Mayor’s office and Council stayed with a streetcar and transit friendly administration, but we’re now in an era where the streetcars are tolerated, not celebrated.
A mockup of the next generation of Toronto cars, Bombardier’s Flexity, goes on display next weekend at Hillcrest Shops. Design delays, not to mention political foot-dragging, have this project running at least a year late. Meanwhile, construction of the new carhouse and maintenance facility at Ashbridges Bay has not progressed beyond site preparation.
When the Streetcars for Toronto Committee (of which I was a member) advocated for streetcars, this was not just for the nostalgia of seeing rails in Toronto’s streets. “Light Rapid Transit” (LRT), a then-modern-sounding pseudonym for streetcars on reserved rights-of-way, could have brought an inexpensive network of suburban routes long before the suburbs as we now know them were built. Not until the Transit City plan, decades later, did we have an administration that took this concept seriously. Transit City had its flaws, but these pale beside the madness of an all-underground alternative foisted on Toronto by Mayor Ford and Premier McGuinty.
Engineering challenges may force a rethink for Eglinton’s valley crossings at the Don River and other locations, but these will come grudgingly and the original surface alignment is at best “on the back burner” until less hostile forces occupy City Hall.
The rest of Transit City is so far in the background that even the name has been expunged from official use except as a slur against the Miller years.
Day-to-day transit service is under attack from City budget cuts and Provincial underfunding. Toronto’s recent history of strong ridership may continue only by an accident of high energy prices and traffic congestion, not from an active plan to serve growing demand and population.
This is really not where I had hoped to see our transit system by now.
The 40th anniversary will come in 2012 when transit will still be fighting for its life politically and financially in Toronto. We should have been celebrating a renaissance.
Readers of Douglas Adams will know that “42” is the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything”. What will 2014 bring?
Almost a month after Ontario’s provincial election, the political landscape in Toronto is shifting away from the Ford Brothers and “Ford Nation”. The Brothers Ford’s hoped-for Conservative ally, a Premier who would support any of their mad schemes, remains in opposition. The Tories didn’t even manage to girdle Toronto with a sea of blue ridings, and the Liberals remain in power in much of the GTA with the NDP taking several urban seats. Between them, the Liberals and NDP count for a large block of “not Tory” votes, and Ford’s effect on the election was at best neutral.
The Liberals, content to re-announce past commitments, proposed little on transit during the election. Queen’s Park remains silent on any transit initiatives. This might be a sign of consistency if only we did not hear daily about “congestion” and the need for much better transit in the GTA.
Bob Chiarelli, formerly Mayor of Ottawa, replaces Kathleen Wynne as Minister of Transportation (also as Minister of Infrastructure). The Ministry’s website describes Chiarelli as “a champion of public transit, including clean light-rail expansion”, and for once we have a transition between Ministers that might not wreck a pattern of support for transit within the government.
There is much to do. Simple recitations of committed projects must give way to discussions of a future, much improved world for transit in the GTA and other major Ontario centres.
Herewith, a few suggestions about what the “major minority” (Premier McGuinty’s term for a not-quite majority) of our new government might do on this file.
November 3, 2011 (Thursday) from 3:00 to 7:00 pm
Room 309, Metro Hall
This is the second public information centre as part of the Environmental Assessment process for the proposed redesign of Front Street between York and Bay Streets in front of Union Station. The intent is to make the street much more pedestrian to support the very large volume of foot traffic to and from the station.
One through lane of auto traffic would be maintained in each direction (effectively what is now the case given parked cars, buses and taxis), but the lanes would be wider and would also provide space for cyclists.
This is a drop-in event, not a formal meeting.
For background information, visit the project page.
Updated November 4: The display panels are now available online.
November 9, 2011 (Wednesday) 6:30 to 8:30 pm
Toronto EMS, 895 Eastern Avenue (at Knox)
This meeting will present the landscape design for the new Maintenance and Storage Facility at Leslie and Lake Shore. Site preparation work for the new building is already underway, but the contract for construction has not been let by the TTC. There have been rumours that this will come before the November Commission meeting, but until we see the agenda as well as details of the 2012 Capital Budget this is still uncertain given funding constraints.
Note: The public display of a mockup of the new TTC low-floor Light Rail Vehicles will likely occur over the weekend of November 11-14. Further details will be posted here when they are available.
For background information, visit the project page.
The Cities Centre at the University of Toronto will host a two day forum on mobility in the GTA. There will be two free events, but both of these require pre-registration.
November 9, 2011 (Wednesday) 7:00 to 9:00 pm
City Hall Council Chambers
November 10, 2011 (Thursday) 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Wychwood Barns
According to the event description:
… this event is not about re-hashing the “Transit City” vs. subway discussion debate. Rather, “Toronto Talks Mobility” will examine what we do next as a region to build on progress made to date (including the Big Move) and how we can ensure long-term success. Ultimately, the event aims to kick-start a campaign to bring a broader civic voice to our transportation future.
I can understand the organizers’ reluctance to get bogged down in debating Transit City or various alternative. However, any discussion of mobility must address the basic questions of whether we plan for networks we can afford to build, how we will pay for them (and by extension, just what “afford” means) and the tradeoffs between transit modes, speed, road space and network capacity. This will inevitably touch on Transit City, if only as a starting point.
A “broader civic voice” is definitely required, but this requires ears willing to hear the message. If Queen’s Park and the City of Toronto reject funding strategies that inevitably require new sources of revenue, this will be an exercise in debating the obvious to no effect.
Calling on Ottawa for new funding is a predictable, but pointless, exercise if we are not prepared to begin the work of funding transit ourselves. We will be talking about massive network expansion at a time when day-to-day service and quality are under attack not just in Toronto but in many parts of the GTA.
Metrolinx Board Meeting
The regular meeting of the Metrolinx board will be held on Wednesday, November 23 at 8:30 am. I will post a summary of major issues when the agenda is released.
TTC Commission Meeting
The regular meeting of the TTC will be held on Wednesday, November 23 at 1:00 pm. I will post a summary of major issues when the agenda is released.
TTC Customer Information Town Hall
November 24, 2011 (Thursday)
City Hall Council Chambers (final details TBA)
This is planned as the first of an ongoing series of Town Hall meetings around the city for the TTC to get public input on a range of issues. Whether we will actually get to complain about budgets and their effect on service quality remains to be seen.
Waterfront Toronto Queen’s Quay Project
Waterfront Toronto recently hired a Project Manager to oversee this project, and they plan to hold a public meeting covering the construction plans for work on the redesigned Queen’s Quay. Details will be posted here when they are available, but the meeting is likely to be in late November.
There is also a Community Update meeting planned for the East Bayfront (Yonge Street east to about Parliament). This is a general update regarding land developments and related projects, but there is not likely to be much info on transit as the whole question of the “Harbourfront East” LRT is hung up in funding problems at the City and TTC.
November 22, 2011 (Tuesday) 6:00 to 8:00 pm
Corus Quay (Atrium), 25 Dockside Drive
The Toronto Transit Commission met on October 19, 2011. With the exception of one item, it was an uneventful agenda. This article deals only with matters where significant new information came to light beyond that reported in my initial review of the agenda.
28 Billionth Rider
In case you were wondering, the “official” 28-billionth rider chosen to mark the TTC’s 90th anniversary on September 1, 2011, was not chosen with a countdown clock, but from the pool of the TTC’s Metropass Discount Plan subscribers. The lucky rider gets a free Metropass subscription for one year.
I did not win, although I have been using the Metropass since its inception in 1980, and became a subscriber as soon as this was possible. By the 100th anniversary (if the TTC still exists by then), we will all be using Presto. Sigh.
The Operating Budget was mentioned only in passing in the context of planned public consultation on “Customer Service”, and the service cuts for January were treated as a done deal that is not subject to discussion. This is rather odd considering that Council has yet to finalize its budget, and “what if” questions about various funding scenarios will be an obvious part of the debate.
For example, the current TTC budget requires a 10-cent fare increase to balance the books. What further cuts will be needed if this is not implemented? We don’t know. Indeed, we didn’t even know what cuts the present budget would bring until the detailed list found its way to me earlier this week. Officially, the TTC was still working on the cuts (probably true in the strictest interpretation), but a detailed proposal had already been posted for staff information.
If a higher fare increase were implemented, what could be done with the added revenue? This type of question, of planning, was at the heart of the Ridership Growth Strategy which, thanks to Mayor Ford, was jettisoned as an unwanted leftover of the Miller era. With the fundamental assumption that any improvements cannot be afforded, or worse, might be “gravy” undeserved by the beneficiaries, Toronto finds itself cut off from the basic debate of the worth and quality of its services. The present crew of TTC Commissioners colludes in this by avoiding discussion on alternative budget strategies. “What if” is a question nobody wants to hear answered.
Meanwhile, Chair Karen Stintz focuses on “good news” stories about things the TTC did, or appeared to do, well. She is dancing on the deck of the Titanic.
Several issues raised in the KPMG “Efficiency Reviews” are now under study by TTC management. While many of the areas addressed here are worth studying, they represent comparatively small efficiencies and, moreover, they are one-time savings. Improvements in the affected cost areas may be found, although some may not bear fruit until 2013. However, an “efficiency” cannot be repeatedly applied to yield new savings year after year, and the TTC will have do deal with ridership and inflationary pressures in 2013 and beyond without the one-time reductions applied in 2012.
One large “saving” comes from the designation of the TTC’s Pension Fund Society as a “jointly sponsored” plan which does not require full solvency of future liabilities. If the TTC had been required to fully fund the plan, this would have added $40 to $45-million annually to the Operating Budget through about 2022. This is really only an avoided cost, not a saving against current spending.
In a separate study, the City is reviewing the consolidation of various pension plans, including the TTC’s. The possibility of such a move and its financial implications have not yet been reported out to Council.
Wheel-Trans Operating Budget
Commissioner Cesar Palacio tabled a request that staff consider moving from the current 60/40 ratio of contracted versus TTC-provided service to a new target of 80/20. The question of using private operators to carry more of the WT customers has come before the Commission many times before, although in this case it crept into the agenda unexpectedly with Palacio’s motion.
The fundamental problems with previous attempts at private operation of WT vans/buses has been with the quality of staff, vehicle maintenance and passenger treatment. How this will be address in the 2013 budget cycle remains to be seen.
One point TTC management has not yet addressed is the degree to which high in-house costs are a function of poor dispatching that affects vehicle utilization and trip lengths. A new booking system is supposed to reduce these problems, but we have yet to hear any reports on actual operational or financial benefits.
By far the biggest issue for debate was the question of mandatory testing for drug and alcohol use by TTC staff. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 strongly opposes this scheme, and the matter is already in grievance proceedings and likely to wind up in the courts. The ATU’s position is that random testing is an invasion of privacy, and that it does not fully address the problem of a driver’s ability to perform their job.
The ATU supports the implementation of non-invasive technologies to assess driver alertness that check for response times using video displays, a system already deployed in parts of the USA. The ATU’s position is that this would monitor for all forms of fatigue including those due to tiredness or illness, not just test for the presence of drugs or alcohol.
This is not as straightforward a situation as it may appear. For one thing, privacy and especially health privacy laws in Ontario are much more strict than south of the border. The TTC also claims that it is interested in whether someone is impaired at the time a test is taken, not whether there is evidence of past use.
TTC Management and the Commission appear to be exploiting a recent collision between a bus and truck which caused a passenger’s death to push through the new policy. The driver was charged with “criminal negligence causing death” and it is unclear whether a separate charge for marijuana possession has any bearing on this case. I will not comment further on this matter, and will edit out any comments that speculate on this subject because it is before the courts.
What is clear is that until various legal and labour proceedings work themselves out, the new policy will be in limbo.
Subway Station and Vehicle Cleanliness
The TTC received a presentation on the cleanliness of its stations and vehicles. In case you have been wondering why TTC vehicles might be a tad grubby, we now know that the only daily cleaning they get is a “dust and sweep” except for the bus fleet which gets an exterior wash as part of the daily fuelling cycle. Streetcars don’t need to be fuelled, and they go straight to the yard.
Now that the wash tracks at Wilson and Greenwood are back in operation, subway trains do look a lot better, although some cars remain grungy, notably on the BD line, possibly because the long period without cleaning has left dirt and grease more or less permanently part of the cars.
Audit results for the condition of stations and vehicles show that there has been some improvement, but the TTC is still not at its hoped-for targets. The streetcar fleet, in particular, is well below the hoped-for level of litter although this is probably due to the relatively large number of vehicles staying in service all day and evening without a mid-day break where basic housekeeping might be possible.
The TTC plans to transfer some subway cleaners from carhouse duties to subway terminals where they can clean out trains at the end of each trip. It is unclear whether there are enough cleaners for this during all service hours.
Some tile and grout work now underway at a half-dozen locations should be finished by year-end. However, there was no comment on the many locations where portions of station walls were removed for inspection, and the due date for replacement recedes into the future. Similarly, there was no comment on locations like St. George where the trackside walls remain filthy even while work continues on the platforms and stairwells.
Updated September 30, 2011 at 5:40pm: Urban Toronto’s interview with Conservative transportation critic Frank Klees has now been posted.
Updated September 29, 2011 at 2:35pm: Urban Toronto’s interview with NDP transportation critic Cheri DiNovo has now been posted.
Updated September 28, 2011 at 12:00nn: Urban Toronto will be posting interviews with the three parties about their transportation platforms. The interview with Liberal Kathleen Wynne is now online. I will link to the others as they appear.
The NDP has announced that they would commit to electrifying the Air Rail Link from opening day rather than implementing it as a diesel operation and converting later. This is an ambitious plan, but it has the advantage of forcing GO Transit’s hand. We hear a lot from Metrolinx about “if” they will electrify, but “when” is a target somewhere in the mists of the future.
Updated September 20, 2011 at 10:45pm: The calculation of the effect of the NDP proposal has been revised to take into account additional revenue from new transit riding, presuming that this actually materializes in the face of constraints on service.
The original post from September 11 follows below.
Election time in Ontario brings out a fresh batch of promises from political parties, promises they hope will lure our support on voting day, promises that will inevitably be broken no matter who is elected.
Transportation is not at the top of anyone’s priority list in an era of bad economies. The big ticket items (both for votes and for dollars) are health care, education and jobs. Transit gets the leftovers if it is mentioned at all. For many ridings, transit isn’t even an issue, if transit has any presence.
What would the three major parties bring us after October 6?
The TTC is increasingly fond of shutting down parts of its subway system for maintenance late at night. The practice began with the project to repair the tunnel liners on the North Yonge subway (Eglinton to Sheppard) that, through a design flaw, were causing the tunnel to gradually go out of round. Rather than work for only a few hours each night, the repair window was opened by ending subway service on the affected part of the line at 12:30 am. This will continue until sometime late in 2012.
The Bloor-Danforth line is now shutting down at midnight for rail grinding with a rolling schedule working across the entire route:
Replacement bus service will operate overlapping the section of the route that is shut down.
This project begs the question of why there is a need to do rail grinding on a scale and with a level of service disruption we have not seen since the subway opened. Once upon a time, there was a two-car train of PCCs used for grinding, but these are long-retired. A problem arose many years ago on the high-speed section of the subway north of Eglinton where lateral sway of trains (a particular problem with the H1 series of cars) generated long-period horizontal equivalents of “corrugations” that reinforced the unwanted car movements.
I have asked the TTC for an explanation for this project, and also about any plans they might have for similar work on the Yonge-University-Spadina line.
It will be intriguing to see how the replacement bus service fares especially in the heavily-travelled central section of the line, and whether the crowd control and passenger information provided by the TTC at closed stations will amount to more than a few hand-written signs.
With late night services under attack in some quarters, I can’t help wondering when some bright spark on City Council will conclude that we really don’t need the subway open so late, and with it the many bus services operating to 2:00am and beyond.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, the Nuit Blanche celebrations will see limited overnight subway service on October 1-2 finishing at 7:00am Sunday. There will be a brief interval where the subway is closed before the start of regular Sunday service at 9:00am (trains are actually out on the line building up service somewhat earlier).
The 300 BD Night Bus will only operate on the outer parts of the route not covered by the subway. The 320 Yonge Night bus will have frequent service north of Eglinton, and a Spadina shuttle bus will operate north of St. Clair West.
Whether the TTC will put signs on the night bus stops advising that travellers should use the subway remains to be seen. Even more challenging will be whether people will read them.
A 15-minute headway will operate on the following surface routes overnight transitioning to the start of Sunday daytime service:
The question of an earlier closing time for the subway is related to service expansion plans. As the YUS gets longer and longer, and as the headways are shortened with automatic train control, the number of trains on the line rises considerably. Most of these trains will originate at Wilson Yard, and there is a physical limit to the number of trains/hour that can enter service for the morning peak. This will require the loading of service, if not revenue operations, to start earlier than it does now and will limit the time when the line is available for maintenance work.
Available alternatives include earlier shutdowns, extended weekend outages on affected sections of a route or the construction of additional storage capacity elsewhere on the line, preferably on the Yonge side to balance out service loading requirements.
Many recent reports and proposals talk about the problems of long commuting trips, of the futility of attempting to move quickly around our increasingly congested city.
Back on August 24, Statistics Canada published their commuting study based on 2010 data. The study reviews not only comparative commuting times by mode, but also the attitudes of motorists to the transit alternative.
The average commuting time for all of Canada was 26 minutes, but this rises to 30 minutes for CMAs (“Census Metropolitan Areas” which are generally larger than actual municipalities) of 1-million or more population. Toronto and Montreal average 33 and 31 minutes, but this doesn’t tell the entire story as any Toronto commuter will tell. 27% of Toronto commutes take over 45 minutes, and 29% are caught in traffic jams.
When the data are subdivided by car and transit, the transit trips take longer, and this difference is heightened in lower density areas. That’s no surprise because low density areas tend to have poor transit service as a direct result of lower demand. Waiting times are an important part of transit trips when service is poor, and this is compounded by any need to change between routes that may not directly serve all travel patterns. The average transit commute in large CMAs is 44 minutes while the average car trip is 27 minutes. The figures are even worse for Toronto. Missing from this is any discussion of the length of the trip or the differences caused by trip location and density of demand.
Neither transit nor car users like traffic congestion, but the presence of rapid transit networks means that some trips are congestion-free (even though they may be subject to transit delays that were not part of this study). The proportion of commuters who were satisfied with their commute times is understandably high where these times are short and congestion is comparatively rare. Transit riders put up with longer commute times better than car drivers, but those with short trips tended to be less happy with transit than motorists were with their cars. This is easy to understand when one considers that a short transit trip is more likely to have a relatively large proportion of wait time, while at least some of the longer trips (notably commuter rail) allow the commuter to relax enroute.
The vast majority of motorists view public transit unfavourably, but this statistic is not broken down by region, let alone by sub-region where variations might be seen due to the availability and quality of the public transit option.
Media reaction to this report was quite predictable with stories about how bad Toronto’s commuting times are. Less clear is the question of what, if anything, can be done about the situation. Indeed, the most simplistic analysis might suggest that car trips are inherently faster and “better” than transit trips based on their average length. This would completely mask the effect of averaging together trips over a wide variety of roads and transit lines and the cost, broadly speaking, of increasing capacity for either mode.
Steve Munro 