Subways

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The Scarborough Subway Vs LRT Debate, Again (Updated)

Updated July 3, 2013 at 11:20pm: 

TTC Chair Karen Stintz, as reported by the CBC’s Jamie Strashin on Twitter, claims that Minister of Transportation Glen Murray has put $1.4b of the planned $1.8b SRT conversion cost on the table as a contribution to a subway project.

Jamie Strashin ‏@StrashinCBC

TTC Chair Karen Stintz tells me she just met with Provincial Transportation Minister Glen Murray. 1/2

2/2 Stintz: Murray indicated that if city shows clarity around subway option, province would be “open” to freeing up $1.4 slated for LRT.

There has been no confirmation from Murray whether this is true, or if Stintz/Strashin have misreported a conversation.  Such a proposal would violate claims about provincial support for a subway extension that were made in the Metrolinx letter to the City of Toronto.  Given Murray’s past history of freelancing on government policy, we will have to wait for clarification of what is really on the table from the provincial point of view.  An informed debate at Council requires that this be stated publicly and unambiguously from the Premier’s Office.

Meanwhile, Stintz offers her own version of the situation on her blog, but with no reference to her conversation with Minister Murray.  She repeats the canard that a four-year shutdown will be required to replace the SRT with LRT in the same corridor.  Moreover, she adds a sweetener about using the existing SRT right-of-way to expand trackage for the GO Stouffville corridor, something which is not actually necessary.

Mayor Ford has announced that he has asked the City Manager to report to the July16 Council meeting on the Scarborough subway option.  How definitive this report will be remains to be seen, especially if the TTC and Metrolinx cannot come to an agreement on cost estimates and the penalties involved in ending the LRT project.

The original article follows below.

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Development Charges and Transit Expansion

The City of Toronto Executive Committee will discuss the matter of a new Development Charges Bylaw at its meeting on July 3, 2013.  This is a statutory requirement as the current bylaw expires in April 2014, and it must be replaced in order for the city to continue collecting these charges.

Already press reports show a real estate industry apoplectic at the possibility that these charges will double.  With all the concern over a possible softening of the market for new units, the last thing they want is yet more cost added to the purchase price.  However, what we are seeing is a combined effect of the rising population and the exhaustion of surplus capacity in existing infrastructure, notably transit and water.  Much of the new development is concentrated in the central city in former industrial areas that do not possess the infrastructure needed to support their coming new populations.

(Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat observed at the “Feeling Congested” session earlier this week, about 70,000 people will call places like Liberty Village and the waterfront neighbourhoods their new home over the coming decade.)

There is bound to be lively debate, especially from the “no new taxes” brigade on Council, but the simple fact is that the city cannot have new development without some way to pay for the supporting infrastructure and services.  In this article, I will talk only about the transit component which is the single largest piece of the new DCs rising about 150% from the previous level for residential development.  (DCs overall will go up 86% because other categories have lower increases.)

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Feeling Congested Part 2: Setting Priorities

The City of Toronto’s Planning Department is consulting with the public for the development of an updated Official Plan.  The plan’s transportation component falls under the rubric of “Feeling Congested” with a website devoted mainly to transit issues.  In the first round of meetings, the focus was on “what is important”, what goals should the new plan try to achieve.  In the second round, the topic is the prioritization of goals and how these might drive out different choices in a future network.

This parallels work that Metrolinx is doing on their Big Move plan, but it includes additional options for study that are city initiatives such as transit to serve the waterfront.

A survey now in progress (until June 30) seeks feedback on the evaluation criteria for transit projects, and also for the goals of the cycling plans.  Some of this makes more sense if one first reads the toolkit, but even then the presentation will leave skeptics unhappy because there is no link to the detailed study explaining how the proposed criteria have been measured for each of proposals.  (A summary chart on page 14 does not include the subcategories within each of the eight criteria that generated the total scores .)

Even with this background, an exercise asking whether the methodology is sound seems to be an odd way to survey public attitudes without a stronger discussion of the implications for a preferred network.  This is rather like discussing the colour of a magician’s hat rather than the effect this might have on the rabbit he pulls out of it (or if there’s even a rabbit at all).

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TTC Meeting Wrapup for June 24, 2013

Aside from the King Street transit lanes and the new streetcar rollout plans (covered elsewhere), there wasn’t much else on the agenda for the TTC Board (as it now styles itself).

One procedural change was that there are no longer any printed agendas for the meeting — reports are available only online.  If you’re not carrying a device that can display them easily, you’re flying blind making sense of the meeting.

CEO’s Report

Ridership for reporting period 4 (mainly the month of April) was 1.1% below budget, but 2.2% above the corresponding period in 2012.  Poor April weather (an unusually cold early spring) was blamed for the shortfall.  For the last twelve months (May 2012 to April 2013), ridership is up 2.4%.

For the year 2013, ridership is expected to be at the budgeted level of 528-million.  However, the average fare is lower than projected because of higher pass usage, and the revenue projections are down by $2.0m.  This is offset net savings in expense lines.  On the entire budget, this is a variation of less than 1.5%.

Yonge subway reliability has fallen due to ongoing issues with TR train reliability, “workforce availability”, passenger-related delays and fires at track level.

There has been no update on problems with the TRs beyond “we’re working on it”, and the time is overdue to ask whether the goals for reliability have been set too high.  Without a detailed report on the situation, there is no way to know whether the trains have chronic, difficult-to-solve problems, or if we can expect some resolution.  (According to minutes of an Advisory Committee on Accessible Transit meeting (ACAT), TTC staff have no prognosis for correction of the TR platform leveling problem that makes trains inaccessible.)

36 of the 70 TR trainsets on order have been accepted for service.  This leaves 34 trains still in the pipeline to hit early 2014, although the last 10 of the trains are intended for the Spadina extension that will not open until 2016.

“Workforce availability” is an odd term to use considering that overall attendance rates at the TTC are supposed to be improving.  Punctuality is affected by a number of factors including the effect of many small delays, but also by extended times required for some crew changeovers.  The TTC needs to sort out which effects are strictly due to staff and which to other factors.

The reliability index for Bloor-Danforth is also dropping, but still runs at a higher level than the Yonge-University-Spadina line.  The TTC does not break out the various sources of delay by line to report which problems exist system wide and which are more prevalent in certain locations.

SRT performance has been quite good since October 2012 when schedules were changed to reflect the actual capabilities of the aging technology.

Surface route performance for both modes is above the rather generous target levels, but we know from the Quarterly Report published earlier in 2013 that overall headway adherence is quite bad on some routes.  This is no surprise to anyone who looks at vehicle monitoring data.

Elevator and escalator availability continues to get a high rating, although, as I understand things, this is based on a once-a-day report of status.  There is no report of the prevalence of outages or their duration.  This is rather like looking out the window, seeing one bus, and deciding that all is well with the transit system.

A few new Sunday shutdowns of the subway have been announced in this report:

  • June 29 from Wilson to Downsview for track installation.
  • July 7, 14 and 28 for beam installation on the Prince Edward Viaduct.  This work is normally done during the night-time shutdown, but a provision for opening the subway later than normal gives more time to complete planned work.

Details will be announced for each planned shutdown.

Change Orders for Design Costs on the Spadina Extension

Four reports requested substantial changes in the contracts for design work at Steeles West, Vaughan Corporate Centre, Highway 407 and York University stations.  The magnitude of the changes attracted questions from the Board.

According to staff, TTC practice is to award design contracts based on interim amounts with change orders issued along the way as required.  A contingency budget line provides funding for these changes.  Some of the costs will be recovered from third parties such as York Region and GO Transit/Metrolinx who asked for design changes in the originally completed plans.  Other costs were incurred to reduce construction expenses and keep stations within the project’s budget.  The degree to which this may have compromised the original designs is unknown.

Oddly, some of the extra costs cited by staff were for activities at Finch West and the new Downsview/Sheppard West stations (changes to suit GO and the Finch West LRT project).  Neither of these was the subject of the four reports on the agenda.

CEO Andy Byford wants to improve the reporting of large project budgets and costs, but does not expect to have a proposed scheme for doing so until fall 2013.

Steeles East Night Bus

The Board approved the proposed extension of the 353 Steeles East route from Middlefield Road to Markham Road effective August 4, 2013.  This extension uses up excess running time in the current schedule and requires no extra buses.

Ossington Bus / Hellenic Home for the Aged

The TTC has been requested to divert the 63 Ossington bus to a home for the aged which is north of Davenport up a steep hill on which seniors have difficulty walking to service on the main street (see map in report).  A decision on the matter has been put off to July 24 to allow for meetings between staff and those requesting the change.

The staff report recommends against this diversion which was requested through Councillors Mihevc and Fragedakis.  Mihevc should know better as a former member of the TTC Board.  Off-route diversions are the bane of transit operations and compromise the benefit of straight routes for passengers.

It is worth mention that this home was built off of the Ossington route some decades ago, but long after the route was established.  The policy decision is whether transit routes should be tweaked to serve such sites, and whether the Board has the political backbone to say “no” when the greater good of the route and the precedent for future requests are at stake.

Bicknell Loop

The property at which the Rogers Road car, originally part of York Township Railways, ended has been declared surplus to TTC requirements.  Buses on this route use the nearby Avon Loop on Weston Road.

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What Does Subway Construction Cost?

An interesting article on the site Pedestrian Observations was recently linked on Twitter by Taras Grescoe (@grescoe), the author of Straphanger.  In Comparative Subway Construction Costs, Alon Levy attempts to bring together projects worldwide, adjust for currencies, inflation and other factors to derive comparable US$ values for subway construction.  The numbers are interesting in light of complaints about overpriced construction in Toronto.

The underlying problem, of course, is that no two projects are the same.  Varying proportions of underground construction, different soil/rock/water conditions, variations in station numbers/size/depth, not to mention rolling stock procurement and yard/maintenance facilities all affect the total cost and hence the cost/km.  Stir in political differences and the ease or difficulty with which projects are approved, and the number of variables is quite high.

All that said, Toronto’s costs are not wildly out of line.  This is not to say that they may not be excessive, but the cause could be our extended design and approval process and a preference for deep bore tunneling that drives up construction costs compared to shallower cut-and-cover.

The argument for LRT has always turned on the availability of a surface option where it is practical.  Whether we choose to exercise this in every possible case is another matter.

There are cases where underground construction is the only practical way to build a line, but that should not condemn Toronto to building only subways without looking at alternatives.

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TTC’s Five Year Plan Reviewed

TTC CEO Andy Byford was hired by former chief Gary Webster to modernize management practices and provide focus to an organization that had lost its way.  Thanks to Webster’s ousting at the hands of the subway-loving, LRT-hating Mayor Ford, Byford unexpectedly found himself top dog.  After a year in Toronto, Byford released his five year corporate plan on May 29, 2013.

Those of use who follow the TTC closely have heard a lot about this plan as a centrepiece for the future of our transit system.  Byford’s talks at meetings around the city, most recently a Town Hall presented by Councillor Josh Matlow on the eve of the plan’s release, raised expectations for a major document, a fundamental shift in how the TTC would operate.  If this were a summer movie release, Byford’s appearances would be the equivalent of ever more tantalizing trailers and “sneak peeks” at what would come.

The plan’s release was something of an anti-climax — a press release via web and email, no additional information, no political feedback to indicate support.  The TTC board discussed the plan in its private session at their May 24 meeting, but made no public comment.  Internally, the plan was launched at staff meetings that will continue over coming weeks to reach throughout the 12,000-strong company.

Media attention is, to be generous, muted with the story completely submerged under the Ford follies at City Hall and the Metrolinx Investment Strategy.

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A Few Delicate Questions About The Scarborough Subway (Updated)

Updated May 7, 2013 at 9:30 am:  The TTC has confirmed that the January 2013 cost estimate for the Scarborough LRT includes a $500m provision for a carhouse and yard.  As previously discussed in this article, the yard is not required for the LRT option because the Scarborough and Sheppard East lines will share space at Conlins Road Carhouse.

The City Manager’s Report on “Revenue Tools” to fund transit expansion may, or may not, find its way onto Toronto Council’s agenda on May 7/8 depending on the success of political manoeuvres to bring the item onto the agenda.  Executive Committee chose to defer the item to its May 28, 2013, meeting at which point the issue will be moot as Metrolinx will already have issued its recommendations to Queen’s Park.

In the run-up to a forced Council debate, it is not enough for some, including TTC Chair Karen Stintz, to simply appeal to a sense of democracy – six members of Executive should not be able to block debate by 45 members of Council on an important matter.  This became a chance to dust off the “One City” plan and pull together a Scarborough coalition by advancing the cause of a Scarborough Subway – an extension of the Danforth line east and north from Kennedy Station to Sheppard and McCowan.

No sooner was this scheme back on the table, but other would-be players began to mutter about their own pet projects.  That “extra half billion” the subway option in Scarborough may cost on paper could attract billions of add-ons, almost like the worst of pork-filled appropriations in the US Congress.  What might fall off of the table to pay for the Scarborough subway plus any other extras needed to bring reluctant Councillors onside is unknown.  Queen’s Park has been quite clear that there is no additional funding from that quarter, and so and extra must come from Toronto.

Queen’s Park can, of course, ignore whatever Council may try to add as conditions on approval of revenue tools, but if these undo the agreement to build LRT lines signed barely a year ago, this is no trivial discussion.  Regional planning will take a back seat to political aspirations just as it has for the past four decades, and momentum for actual construction rather than endless debate and delay will be lost.

The whole concept that the subway option is “affordable” turns on the premise that it is only slightly more expensive than the LRT, and brings benefits the LRT option cannot.  Some claims made for the subway option are, at best, misinformed, and at worst outright deceptions.  Unfortunately, the public agencies charged with providing accurate information are staying silent lest they be drawn into yet another political debate that could wreck professional careers.

Here are a few questions that should be asked and answered.

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TTC Meeting Wrapup: April 24, 2013 (Updated)

The TTC met on April 24 to discuss a rather thin agenda, and the meeting was over in a not-quite-record 90 minutes.  Discussed here:

  • May meeting preview
  • CEO’s Report
  • Customer Satisfaction Survey
  • Property Acquisition Management Plan
  • Pape Station reconstruction
  • A deputation about the 507/501 streetcar service

Updated May 6, 2013 at 5:20pm:  In the original version of these notes, Commissioner Heisey’s concern about unreliable service on Dundas Street was reported.  The Commissioner has written to me to note that the service was actually worse than how I quoted his remarks.  His correction is included near the end of the “Customer Satisfaction Survey” section below.

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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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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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