Subways

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It Must Be Spring: The SRT Computers Are Working Again

Those of us who make daily expeditions on the SRT have known, every winter, that operations get rather flaky once it gets cold and especially once there is a lot of snow. This year, the SRT stopped running in automatic mode around the start of February more or less when the major snowfalls came.

The first few weeks were a bit rocky with very long holds at stations as SRT control managed the trains by radio. Believe me, when the wind is howling through those stations, you don’t want to be sitting in a train with the doors open. (Of course, the SRT cars manage to have snowdrifts inside them even when the doors are closed, but that’s another matter.)

Later, the TTC seems to have figured out that running a line with six trains where the operator can easily see trains in front of them isn’t all that hard, and the quality of service improved quite a lot.

Finally, about last Wednesday (March 27), a miracle! A train pulls into Kennedy station without its marker lights flashing (the tell-tale sign of manual operation), and it behaves as if it is being run automatically.

I checked with the TTC to find out whether they had finally activated the new, replacement ATO system for Scarborough, but, no that won’t be ready or a few weeks yet, and they have revived the old one. The saddest part is that they never really needed it in the first place, but it’s a showcase for our technology, don’t ya know.

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Yonge Subway Early Closings for Tunnel Maintenance (Updated)

Updated March 30: Diagrams, photos and the project description have been added.

A report in the March TTC agenda recommends closing the Yonge line late at night for an extended period to speed up work on tunnel liner maintenance north of Eglinton.

From June 2008 to February 2009, the line will be closed from Lawrence to Finch while work proceeds with the tunnel between York Mills and Sheppard.

From March 2009 to July 2010, the line will be closed from Davisville to Sheppard (according to the report) while work proceeds from Eglinton to York Mills. The report is silent on whether a shuttle train would run between Sheppard and Finch.

The hours of early closing would be from Sunday to Friday (Saturday late evening service would not be affected) starting at 12:30 am. Continue reading →

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How to Build a Subway — Let Me Count the Ways

As everyone knows, the public sector wastes huge amounts of money on overblown, out-of-control projects, or at least that’s the prevailing view in some quarters. One major side-effect of Ottawa’s participation in funding the York subway extension (or TYSSE: Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension), in an insistence on value-for-money and the maximum participation by the private sector.

Leaving aside that the TTC doesn’t actually build anything itself, and contracts out a vast amount of the design/engineering work, there is a perception that (a) subway construction projects could be better run and (b) there is (even more) opportunity for private sector participation.

A report on this week’s TTC agenda discusses the various options for delivering this project and includes some revealing information about the pros and cons of various approaches. I will leave it to those who are interested to read the full text, but a few things caught my eye.

First off, there are many ways and degrees in which a private sector company or consortium can be involved in large projects like this all the way from complete design, finance, construction and operation down to a basic contractor who bids on a job, builds a box and leaves.

In the review of options, the variants where operation rested with a private entity were rejected outright because the TYSSE is part of an existing, operating, public-sector subway line. Experience elsewhere suggests that private operation tends to occur only when a new, free-standing line is built such as the Canada line in Vancouver.

Financing options are not discussed at length, but this issue always turns on the question of whether a private partner can provide capital at a lower cost than a public agency. This also involves some creative accounting. A privately owned line (and its associated capital debt) does not appear on the public books. This scheme is commonly used to hide debts (think Enron), although generally accepted accounting practices for governments make this more difficult to pull off. Even if a government is not technically exposed to the debt, the last thing any (well almost any) provincial government will do is to let a subway line close because its owner is bankrupt.

We have heard a lot lately about borrowing from large investment pools such as pension funds. Whether this is done on a government basis or by an arm’s length agency, somehow the interest and debt must be paid. Either this is a direct charge against current operations, or it is transferred to a government through a subsidy arrangement (no doubt with an appropriate management fee).

As for construction, the difference between the two main options depends on whether the TTC designs it all and contractors just build it, or if the TTC says “build me a subway station” and the contractors design to a general set of specs and deliver a finished product. A working group from the construction industry reported that their preference is to leave the design to the TTC for contracts under $100-million, or where there will be multiple contractors (possibly including the TTC itself) onsite. This relieves the contractor of having to manage (and assume risk of) portions of the work not under his control.

For large contracts, it may be worth a contractor’s while to bring the design work in house provided that the job is fairly generic and does not require skills in special systems peculiar to transit. For example, building an empty box that will become a subway station or tunnel structure is a fairly straightforward task while design and co-ordination of the many subsystems fitted within the structure are complex and outside of their regular scope of work.

One point not mentioned here is that the industry’s skill base depends strongly on what they do most of the time. An important observation about Madrid in recent studies is that their continuous program of system expansion allows the industry to develop expertise and continuity of staff that would not otherwise be possible. In Toronto, there are only so many subways to go around among the major players, and we don’t build them very often.

Finally, there is a breakdown of the TYSSE’s estimated cost — $2.09-billion in 2006 dollars, or $2.633-billion assuming completion by 2015. This date could slip if various governments spend time squabbling about whether the project passes a private sector sniff test, adding to the cost.

For all you readers who have wanted a subway station of your very own, we see station costs of $73-to-$100-million depending on the complexity. Of particular note is a 26% contingency. This rather generous $400-million slush fund (a cool half-billion with inflation) will allow considerable overruns while keeping the project “on budget”. At this point, I will be generous and hope that this is for “things we haven’t thought of in the preliminary design”, but at some point this needs to be nailed down. I doubt we will ever know how much contingency everyone builds into their estimates (public or private partner) and yet there is probably more money on the table in this one line than in any savings, real or imaginary, from increased private sector participation.

I should mention the rolling stock. The estimate shows 56 cars, although it is physically impossible to buy them in this quantity as they now come in married sets of 6. Even with these cars, the TTC will not have enough “Toronto Rockets” to completely replace the existing fleet on the Yonge-University-Spadina line, and another car order will be needed. Thunder Bay will be churning out cars for years.

The TYSSE will be interesting if, for nothing else, showing us whether there is money to be saved on subway projects with greater private sector know-how at work. Alas, we won’t have an answer to the question for about 7 years, and we will have spent $2.5-billion finding out.

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Victoria Park Station Re-Design

There is a report up on the TTC’s site showing the plans for renovation of Victoria Park Station. Note that this is a roughly 3.5MB document.

For those of you looking at the URL linked here, yes there is a spelling mistake in the TTC’s filename with “Vcitoria” Park station and terminal “Finsihes”. If they fix this, the link may break, and you will have to go to the general report site to get the document.

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Transit City Update

At the TTC meeting last week, there was a long presentation about the status of the various Transit City projects. The TTC’s website contains only the two page covering report with absolutely no details, but lucky for you, my readers, here is an electronic copy. As and when the TTC actually posts this report on their own site, I will change the link here to point to the “official” copy.

Warning: 7MB download: Transit City February 2008

While there may be individual issues to prompt kvetching in this report, overall I am impressed by what is happening. For the first time in over 30 years, we have not only a unified plan, but a unified set of studies. I may be naïve to expect all of this will actually be built, but we are in far better shape knowing what might be than if only one or two lines were on the table.

Here is an overview of the report along with my comments.

Overall Priorities

Of the various Transit City proposals, three have been selected as the top priority for design, funding and construction: Sheppard East, Etobicoke Finch-West and Eglinton-Crosstown. All lines were scored against various criteria, and those coming out on top overall got the nod. This doesn’t mean work stops on the others, but at least we know the staging.

Projected total ridership is highest for Eglinton, Finch and Jane, with Sheppard East in 5th place. Partly, this is due to the length of the routes and their catchment areas. Note that Waterfront West brings up the rear, unsurprising given the area it draws from.

The lines rank roughly the same way for the number of car trips diverted to transit and the reduction in greenhouse gases. There’s something of a compound effect here as several measures all vary more or less as a function of ridership.

Transit City, again with the exception of Waterfront West, touches the City’s priority neighbourhoods where better transit is needed to increase mobility and economic opportunities for the residents.

What’s Missing

Notable by their absence are the Waterfront East lines (Queen’s Quay, Cherry Street and Port Lands) as well as the Kingston Road line in Scarborough. EAs are aready in progress for these, but they don’t make it onto the overall status report.

This is a shame because we must stop making distinctions between “Transit City” itself, and other related transit projects that will compete for attention and funding. Continue reading →

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Service Improvements, Someday

Peter Kuitenbrouwer in the National Post has a series of articles talking about crowding on the TTC.

One more person, and this subway’s gonna explode

If you ignore the smell, the bus is still the better way

A seat on the Queen streetcar? Don’t make me laugh

The February 17 service improvements are a start, but it’s no secret that there’s a long way to go. A few changes are in the wind as described in a TTC report from their February 27 meeting.

We learn that more service will come with the March 30 and May 11 schedule periods to address the backlog of overcrowding, at least on the bus routes.

In the fall, further improvements will change the peak hour loading standard for bus routes. Across the board, the standard will be improved by 10% so that the acceptable average loads, now in the mid-50s depending on vehicle type, will be reduced by 5 or 6. This won’t mean 10% more service on every route because some lines are running below the new standard already and won’t be eligible for more service. (These tend to be short routes where cuts today would have a severe impact raising the average load above the line or making the headway unacceptably wide.)

Also planned for the fall is a return to full hours of service on most routes so that if the subway is open, the routes are operating at least a 30-minute service. 2009 may bring a 20-minute maximum, but that’s a budget issue for next year.

Meanwhile, we see little discussion of streetcar or rapid transit service because both suffer from constraints in fleet size. That may be the situation, though I am skeptical, but what is missing is a projection of what we would need if we made the same changes in loading standards for the rail modes. Continue reading →

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Interminable Waits at Kennedy (Update 3)

Updated Feb 27, 6:15 pm:

At today’s TTC meeting, we learned that they expect to have repairs at Kennedy completed by Friday. I will post more information about the derailment and the nature of the damage when I receive an electronic copy of the report on this incident.

Correction Feb 26, 11:00 pm:

This evening, I received the following email from Adam Giambrone, Chair of the TTC. It was addressed jointly to me and to Ed Drass whose column I cite later in this post.

Steve,

I told Ed Drass yesterday that I understood the slow order was to be off by now BUT that I was going to check with Warren Bartram of TTC during a tour of the tunnels with CTV earlier this morning (2am-5am) to confirm. I actually watched the crews doing the repairs and I called him earlier today to confirm that the slow order was still in place and will be for another week or so.

The problem is that many of the bolts (I don’t know their technical name) that bolt the rail to ground were ripped up (some 150) and there is only so much that can be repaired in the 150 minutes they have most days to do the work.

Anyway, I usually qualify a statement of fact if I am not sure and I did so in this situation.

Adam Giambrone

I expect to get more details at the TTC meeting tomorrow and will post that info here.

This post has been revised in light of Adam Giambrone’s email.

Updated Feb 26:

This morning at 8:40 am, the backlog of trains from Kennedy stretched to Victoria Park Station, and the trip from there to the terminal took 21 minutes.

According to Ed Drass’ column in today’s Metro, Adam Giambrone was advised that the slow order on Kennedy crossover was lifted last week. This proved to be incorrect based on his email quoted above.

Original post:

Ever since the Kennedy Station derailment two weeks ago, service at the eastern terminal of the Danforth Subway has been glacial, especially at the end of the peak periods. As an example, I spent more than 15 minutes this morning getting from Victoria Park to Kennedy Station, and this has happened almost every day for the past two weeks. Looking on the bright side, the TTC has figured out how to operate a reasonable headway on the SRT even when it was in “manual” mode and we no longer creep from Kennedy to STC. The combination of these two delays made the term “rapid transit” quite a joke.

The problem at Kennedy arises from the slow order which has been on the crossover. Trains move over it at low speed while TTC staff watch carefully as the trains pick their way through the special work. Riding on trains, I can’t tell whether the roughness of the crossing is due to the very slow speed or the condition of the track. With luck, we will learn more at Wednesday’s Commission meeting when there will be a presentation on the derailment.

Meanwhile, capacity on the BD subway is badly constrained. In two previous posts, I talked about the physical limitations that subway line and terminal layouts place on the frequency of service.

How Often Can Subway Trains Run?

How Frequently Can We Run Subway Trains?

The minimum headway at a terminal controls the level of service on the rest of the line unless additional trains are inserted at short-turn points. Indeed, that is how the TTC plans to fit more trains onto the Yonge line in eight years or so with turnbacks at Finch (following a northerly extension beyond Steeles) and somewhere in Downsview (following the York U extension).

Just to review, here is the sequence of events at a terminal:

  • Signal turns green
  • Train guard initiates door closing and this completes
  • Train moves off from platform and eventually clears the crossover
  • Signal system determines that the crossover is clear and realigns the switches
  • Signal system displays clear for the incoming train
  • Incoming train starts up and crosses into the station
  • Signal system determines that the crossover is clear and realigns the switches

The two longest steps in this sequence are the train movements. Today, I timed trains at Kennedy, and it takes 80 seconds for a train to move from a stationary position either on a platform (departing) or from the last approach signal (arriving) through the crossover to a point where the junction is clear for another movement.

This means that 160 seconds (2 minutes, 40 seconds) are consumed simply for train movements. Add to this about 10 seconds for signal and switch system activity, and we are up to 170 seconds before any delays introduced by the readiness of crews to depart.

However, the scheduled headway on the BD line is 144 seconds (2 minutes, 24 seconds) in the morning peak. Quite clearly, it is impossible to operate this headway given the constraints at Kennedy, and a queue of trains builds up. This affects service on the entire line unless trains are inserted along the way to bring the headway back down to the scheduled level.

The TTC should seriously consider short-turning some trains. This could be done at Warden, provided that these trains crossed over to the westbound platform so that they did not block the eastbound flow. Yes, this would require careful management at Warden, but it would reduce the backlog at Kennedy and allow a reliably frequent service to operate on the rest of the line.

I say this with some trepidation because this scheme could also foul up the line just as badly as the current arrangement if it were not managed to ensure fast in, fast out turnarounds of the short-turning trains.

A further option, applicable only to the am peak, would be to send trains that would run out of service to Greenwood into the yard eastbound.

I write this not just as someone who is personally inconvenienced, but out of concern that a long-standing operational problem affecting service capacity has not been addressed.

After Wednesday’s update at the TTC, I will add to this item as appropriate.

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Low Technology Has Its Place

This morning I had the dubious pleasure of riding the SRT from Kennedy to STC in what was clearly a manual dispatch mode. Trains were not always at full speed, and each station-to-station move was made after clearance from SRT control.

Much grumbling was heard from passengers around me as this sort of thing is not uncommon in bad weather.

I couldn’t help thinking how the SRT was supposed to be an LRT line originally, and how the capabilities of its ATO system have never been exploited or needed on a line with such infrequent service. As an LRT line, it would have had limited signals at the terminals and for the underpass at Ellesmere, and operation would be “on sight” for most of the route.

I have seen the train control system do wonders with interlined services on the Vancouver SkyTrain where, also, the operation is completely automatic. In Toronto, the signal system just gets in the way, an example of technological overkill.

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What Does Building a Subway Cost?

In the previous item here, I wrote about the Metrolinx study tour including a visit to Madrid. A report reviewing that tour was on yesterday’s Metrolinx Board agenda.

The “Madrid Miracle” is always an issue for discussion. How could a city build so much rapid transit so quickly? Part of the answer lies in the political climate where just getting the work done takes priority over endless political posturing, announcements, jurisdictional wrangling and little action. Part of the answer lies in the money lavished on Madrid by other governments. But part is the much lower cost of building subway tunnels in Madrid compared to other cities thereby making subway expansion much more affordable regardless of who pays for it.

The TTC produced a complementary report examining the differences between Madrid and Toronto to determine just where the cost differences lie. The material that follows is a paraphrase from the TTC’s material with a few of my own observations. Continue reading →