Subways

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Welcome to Walmart Station

It really was silly season at the TTC yesterday.  Commissioner Peter Milczyn asked for a report on naming rights for stations in return for corporate sponsorship.  A short debate ensued during which the Commissioners seemed to forget that barely an hour earlier they had approved a report entitled TTC Corporate Policy Review – Policy 2.8.2 Identification of Routes, Stations and Stops.  This report states quite clearly:

Normally, the station name will incorporate the name of the major cross-street at which it is located, so that the location of the station is clearly identified to customers as they travel through the system. If this is not possible (because, for example, confusion would result with existing station names, or because there is no major nearby cross-street), then the station name may be related to the area in which the station is located, or a major destination nearby.

A good example of the last class of station name is “Museum”.

I have a fundamental objection to corporate sponsorships on the basis of equity.  If you want to build a subway station, it will cost anywhere from $70-100 million, and even more for a large terminal or interchange, not to mention ongoing operating costs.  If Pepsi or Walmart wants to sponsor a station, let them shell out at least 2/3 of the cost so that, on an after tax basis, they’re paying at least half the price of the station. 

Meanwhile, you and I, who actually pay for the station through our taxes should expect that naming rights will stay in the public sector.

No sponsor wants to shell out $35-50 million, and they hope to buy a station for a few million.  For that they get a couple of escalators.   Maybe they could actually pay to maintain the escalators so that their logo isn’t associated with a machine sitting in parts all over the floor more often than it actually carries passengers.

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Arithmetic Lessons for Fleet Planners

Today’s Commission meeting included one of the more embarrassing presentations I have seen at the TTC in some time.  It wasn’t meant that way, but that’s how it came off.  The topic was the Subway Service Improvement Plan.

The first problem was that this is really two reports in one.  The first major topic is delays, their causes and what the TTC is doing or can do to reduce them.  This material was presented in a less than thrilling manner, and most Commissioners were visibly not paying attention.

The second topic was the subway car fleet plan.  This has always been something of a black art influenced as much by whatever size order Bombardier needs to have for Thunder Bay this week rather than solid planning.  However, when the TTC’s own numbers don’t add up and there are blatant mistakes in the analysis, that’s when it gets embarrassing.

The report is not available online, and you will have to take my word for the material as I don’t feel like scanning the whole thing in.  A warning for the faint of heart.  This post contains a lot of numbers and a discussion of service levels and fleet requirements.  If this isn’t your cup of tea, skip the rest of this item. Continue reading →

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Scarborough RT Extension Study

The Scarborough RT extension study co-hosted the meetings with the Sheppard East LRT which I discussed in the previous post.  The presentation materials for the SRT study are available online.

A major piece of work for this study will be to update previous schemes based on changes in land use, travel patterns and availability of rights-of-way since the Malvern extension of the Scarborough LRT was proposed decades ago.  (Yes, it was going to be an LRT line originally although the history in the current presentation doesn’t go back that far.)

The presentation claims that ICTS/RT technology was recommended in the Scarborough RT Strategic Plan as being the most effective and lowest cost option.  This is not true.  That plan dealt only with replacement of the existing line between Kennedy and McCowan stations and did not examine the cost or operational tradeoffs involved in extending the RT north to Sheppard or beyond.  Given the high premium for grade-separated operation, the RT quickly become uncompetitive with LRT the further the line goes.

The TTC holds that LRT is unable to handle the demands to be placed on the SRT corridor.  However, the projected demand shown in the presentation is about 2,500/hour north of Sheppard, about 4,000 west of McCowan (ie inbound to STC), and 10,000 at Kennedy Station.  With the completely separate right-of-way on the existing RT, a 10,000/hour operation with LRT is quite feasible.  Two-car LRT trains would provide this on a headway of just under two minutes. Continue reading →

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Sheppard LRT Environmental Assessment Meetings (Updated)

The City and TTC will be holding two EA meetings for the Sheppard LRT line on Tuesday and Thursday, April 15 and 17, 2008.

These will also include discussions of the proposed extension of the Scarborough RT.

The FAQ linked from the EA notice page includes a variety of intriguing items giving an idea of how the project team views what they will implement.  Apropos of discussions in other threads here about stop spacing and vehicle speed, we learn that

there is normally a much greater distance between stops, relative to a typical bus route.

It should be interesting to see how the TTC and City reconcile this statement with the actual layout of streets and stops on the existing bus route, not to mention the Official Plan goals for Avenues with medium density development along transit lines rather than concentrated at major intersections.

Update: The presentation materials from the meeting are now available online.

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The Downtown Relief Line Gets On The Map

In what has to be record time for a transit proposal to get from a blog discussion to publicly debated policy, the Downtown Relief Line (DRL) is now barely a decade away.

Yesterday, Sean Marshall’s post at spacing generated a blizzard of comments, and today, the National Post reports comments by Adam Giambrone and Rob MacIsaac.  Giambrone will start looking at the line in 2018.  That is far too late, and the TTC needs to start looking at it today if it’s going to be open, as he suggests, by 2020.

A few comments raised my eyebrows, however:

As the city core becomes more dense, passengers are choking the Bloor-Yonge and St. George transfer points, as well as the King and Queen streetcars. The Bloor-Danforth line will soon be congested, too, Mr. Giambrone said.

Rob MacIsaac said:

“There’s so much demand that you’re exceeding what a streetcar line can carry. I had a discussion with [former TTC general manager] David Gunn once and he said, ‘Don’t build a subway until you can jump from the top of one streetcar to the next,’ which is probably a circumstance that you’re getting close to on Queen Street.”

I don’t know who has the idea that streetcar service on King and Queen are anywhere near capacity, and the only streetcars someone can jump roofs on are in Russell and Roncesvalles Carhouses.  Service on both streets has operated at twice the current capacity, and there’s lots of room for more streetcars if only the TTC had a large enough fleet.

What’s fascinating to me is that, finally, it is acceptable to talk about adding transit capacity into the core of the city.  For years the focus has been on the suburbs going  back to the deal-with-the-devil struck by then Councillor Jack Layton and Mayor Lastman.  Layton supported suburban subway expansion as a means of diverting intensification from downtown.  The DRL fell off the map because it did not fit with the goal of strangling core area development to benefit the suburbs. 

We all know how successful this was.  A good chunk of the office and commercial space in North York Centre is empty, while downtown fills up with condos and resurgent office development.

As for the DRL, the original proposal was simply for a line from Flemingdon/Thorncliffe to downtown.  Subway fitted with existing technology in the area, and nobody was taking LRT seriously as a “light subway”.  We have more options today including a through connection to a line in the Weston Subdivision (as described in the Post article) up to at least Dundas West Station.  It doesn’t take a genius to see how this fits into Transit City and a service to the airport.

Very frequent service can operate on the southerly parts of the Don Mills and Weston lines where they are completely on their own right-of-way, with less frequent trains continuing up Don Mills in the street median, up Jane and out Eglinton West.

When we look at the possibilities of both an Eglinton and a “DRL” built with LRT, but spanning almost the complete range of LRT implementations from street median up to near-subway, we see the real possibilities of this mode for our growing transit network.

(And yes, Hamish, the Waterfront West service can hop onto the same corridor at Queen and Dufferin.)

While we’re at it, as I mentioned in a previous comment, we must keep sight of the role for regional services on existing and future GO lines.  One source of subway overloading is long-haul riders for whom GO service (if any) is too infrequent.  Better GO service with a fare structure integrated with the TTC will give riders a fast, alternative way into downtown, at a much lower cost than expanding subways everywhere.

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What We Got For Five Million

One of my jobs here seems to be the curmudgeon whose view of the latest great thing isn’t quite as gentle and forgiving as other commentators.  This brings me to Museum Station.  You can see lots of photos over at The Torontoist where many (including me) have commented on various aspects of the station.

For me, one big issue is not just that it’s unfinished, but that in doing so, something is lost of the original design.  Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here is what we were supposed to get.

MuseumOriginalDesign

Note the curving ceiling that hides the plumbing and pulls the rows of columns together in a long gallery.  You won’t see that at Museum Station.  I suspect that the TTC didn’t want yet another specialized ceiling finish that would spend half its time disassembled while work went on above, but we’ve lost something important there.

Another issue is the large patches of painted concrete wall at intervals along the station.  Nothing is shown in the image of what might be there, and one wonders whether this was intended for advertising.

Speaking of advertising, there were ads present at the station until last weekend when their negative impact on the overall design was raised by some of us at Transit Camp to people who are in a position to get things changed.  They were.

The other change is that the old Metron, carefully preserved even though it didn’t work, was in the station right up to the weekend.  Odd how we’ve been told the problem is always with getting electrical work done for Onestop installations.  Funny how in a $5-million project they didn’t put in the conduits and wires for the new video screens.  They’re even shown in the drawing above, but that’s something else you won’t find at Museum.

I was kind of hoping the Metrons would stay as the beginning of a TTC museum of horology.  They could have relocated a few of the old analog clocks from Lower Bay to round out things.

Finally, there is an odd, unintended historic reference in the plaque describing each of the columns.  We learn that the red columns modelled on the Forbidden City would have held up yellow ceilings, a colour only the Emperor was allowed to use.  Yellow, of course, was the old colour of Museum Station, and it’s absent now at platform level.  No Emperors here I guess.

For me, Museum has too much the feel of a half-baked project.  Nice columns, but lots left to be done and nobody stepping up to pay for it.  If all this decor cost us five million, we were ripped off.

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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.