Subways

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Analysis of 903 STC Express: September-November 2023

This article is a preliminary look at the service offered by the 903 express bus which replaced Line 3 SRT.

Until Saturday, November 18, the 903 buses provided very frequent service between Scarborough Town Centre and Kennedy Station. On Sunday, November 19, eight other routes were extended from STC to Kennedy Station, the 903 was extended to Centennial College replacing the 134/913 Progress bus, and much existing service on route 903 was reallocated to the extended routes.

I will review the other routes serving this corridor in early 2024 when they have accumulated a few months’ experience.

Travel Times

The charts here show how travel times between STC and Kennedy Station have changed over the past three months. The screenlines for these measurements are located:

  • Leaving STC Loop
  • Just north of Eglinton on Midland and on Kennedy

Note that this excludes time spent navigating roads and construction near Kennedy Station, and any time spent in STC Loop. I will review terminal operations when more data for all of the routes in this corridor have accumulated.

The charts below show monthly data, by week and hour, with North/Eastbound service on the left and South/Westbound service on the right. Note that there are no data for September, Week 1 because the service was provided with untracked extras until the schedule change on Labour Day weekend.

The solid lines show the average headways, and the dotted lines show the standard deviation, a measure of the scatter in the values. The closer the SD values are to zero, the more reliable the service is.

In the early weeks of operation, the transit priority measures were not in place, and service was more affected by traffic sharing the road. This settles down by November, although some peak period effects are still visible.

The TTC had anticipated that a trip between Kennedy Station and STC would take 15 to 18 minutes depending on conditions. Considering that the times shown below do not include access time to and from terminals, the service is close to the TTC’s target.

Service from November 19 Onward

After November 19, the 903 STC Express became more typical of other routes with less frequent service. Variations show up that are similar to other parts of the system. The charts below show headways westbound at Progress and Markham Road, and northbound from Eglinton and Kennedy for the last two weeks of November. The scatter of data points shows the type of service that someone waiting for a 903 bus would experience.

  • Some data are missing on the morning of Friday, November 24.
  • Some of the wider headways (dots higher on the charts) have no correponding short headway (dot near the horizonal axis). This indicates that a bus was missing, as opposed to two buses running close together after a long gap.
  • The weekend charts at the south end of the line include data for the early part of the month when 903 service was much more frequent.
  • Although much of the weekend service stays close to the target headway, there are data points showing wide gaps where a bus was missing from the service. This is a concern for service east of STC to Centennial College.
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Ontario and Toronto Make A Deal

After several weeks of behind-the-scenes discussions between the Ontario and Toronto governments, amid various side-shows such as the Greenbelt scandal, the bribes for planning overrides, the potential destruction of both Ontario Place and the Science Centre, there is a deal, sort of.

In the immediate publicity after the announcement on November 27, the level of information varied depending on which document one read all the way from simple, enthusiastic political statements up to terms sheets and draft legislation.

Toronto comes out of this with a better fiscal situation, including some benefits for transit, but some battles are now over, conceded as part of the deal.

The Rebuilding Ontario Place Act has considerable detail on the redevelopment of Ontario Place, and it is clear that this was not pulled together at the last moment. Although the announcement speaks of design changes and makes passing reference to the Science Centre, neither of these is mentioned in the Act which confers substantial power on the Province to do anything it wants, and compels Toronto to stay out of the way.

The Recovery Through Growth Act, by contrast, is threadbare with only the most cursory provisions recognizing the discussions between Toronto and Ontario, and leaving the bulk of any details to Regulations that might be enacted by the Lieutenant Governor in Council (the Provincial Cabinet).

The new financial arrangements for Toronto extend only three years, roughly until after the next provincial and municipal elections, when the context of any renewal might be different. Meanwhile, the Province and City will “undertake a longer-term targeted review of the City’s finances to be completed by 2026”. [Detailed Term Sheet Cover Letter, p. 2]

Both parties expect added support from the federal government, although the dollar amounts and target projects vary between the City and Province.

The “core commitments” in the Detailed Terms begin with a recognition that housing and transportation are intertwined issues:

Toronto needs to expeditiously streamline and optimize planning approvals and accelerate the delivery of affordable, attainable, and rental housing across the continuum. As density is added, Toronto’s transit and city-enabling infrastructure needs to keep up. The upload of the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway will create significant additional capacity for the City to support building more homes faster in Toronto and across the GTHA.

The City commits to using immediate financial benefits as well as all future financial benefits of the upload (pending Provincial due diligence) to support historic investments in housing and the infrastructure that supports and enables growth such as transit, water and wastewater infrastructure, and local road improvements.

What is needed now from the City is an updated pro forma 2024 budget showing the effects of this agreement. This would inform consultation and debate now in progress leading into the budget cycle at Council.

On the transit front, the entire debate about service restoration and quality must be updated with a sense of the monies that will be available in coming years, and the possible targets Toronto can aim at depending on how much additional support is provided to the TTC.

The following sections are arranged by major topic area and are reordered from the Detailed Terms.

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The Challenge of Funding Subway Renewal

At its November 22, 2023 meeting, the TTC Board will consider a report New Subway Train Procurement and Implications for Line 2 Modernization and Future Growth which goes into considerable detail on several related capital projects related to renewal of both Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina and Line 2 Bloor-Danforth.

The TTC is in a very difficult position for capital planning because for many years it understated the size of the capital backlog and also tended to treat related projects, or even components of the same project, as separate items. This led to low-balled estimates of total costs and, in some cases, piecemeal execution of projects. Now that we see “all in” costs, the problems facing the system are perceived more seriously, but just at a point when new money to invest in existing subways is hard to find.

Although the TTC called for proposals for a replacement of the Line 2 fleet of T1 trains, with add-on provisions for system expansion, this was cancelled in June 2023 due to lack of funding commitments from either the Provincial or Federal governments.

The report proposes three scenarios depending on when new trains and facilities would be delivered and built at total costs ranging from $8.5 to $10 billion including inflation. Very little of this has committed funding.

This is not just a question of buying new trains, but of building, or renewing, many facilities:

  • Greenwood Carhouse dates back to the opening of the BD subway and needs to be modernized and rebuilt to handle a new fleet.
  • The signal system on Line 2 dates to the 1960s and must be replaced both to maintain reliability, improve operations and provide for service growth.
  • Additional trains for both Lines 1 and 2 will require more storage including a major new maintenance facility for Line 1.

The funding sought by this report does not include companion upgrades that have been flagged in the overall capital plan:

  • Running more frequent service requires more traction power on top of state of good repair work needed for both subway lines’ power systems.
  • More service means more passengers, and some key stations cannot handle additional demand between the platform and street without additional circulation capacity.

Moreover, there are major projects beyond subway fleet renewal that are either partly or totally unfunded even at the City level, never mind its partners:

  • Ongoing replacement of the bus fleet including electrification
  • Any provision for service growth to improve transit coverage and encourage a shift to transit riding especially in areas where it is not competitive with auto
  • LRT lines in the waterfront or Eglinton East
  • Platform screen doors to prevent access to track level

Even if the fleet and signal renewal for Line 2 finds much-needed financial support, this is only the beginning of the TTC’s search for capital, and I have not even mentioned the need for ongoing state of good repair.

In the short term, the TTC has been “saved” from a capacity crisis by the covid pandemic and the loss of subway riding. Only a few years ago, the concern was not empty trains, but platforms full of riders who could not move. Although the subway is not back at full demand, recovery is well underway. Here are historical figures and projections for the future from the report.

2041 might sound a long way off, but in the scheme of subway fleet planning, it is fairly near given both the lead time to buy new trains and their 30-year design life. What we plan for today will affect the system for decades to come.

This forecast will be updated with results from the current Transportation Tomorrow Survey and other planning work to provide an outlook to 2051.

These projections translate to service requirements on the two lines. Note that this is likely based on the historical ratio of peak to all day demand. Although work-from-home may shift some riding away from peaks especially on Mondays and Fridays, this would still leave the midweek days facing crowding. It would be dangerous to make plans for lesser demand as a short-term cost saving measure.

Line 1 has already been converted to Automatic Train Control (ATC) with moving block signalling that can handle more trains/hour. Note that the projected Line 1 service is at 36 trains/hour, or every 100 seconds. This will be challenging to sustain especially at busy stations and terminals.

The current signal system on Line 2 cannot support headways below about 140 seconds, the pre-pandemic peak service level on that route. This is equivalent to 25.7 trains/hour which gets us only to the 2032 projected requirement.

This translates into the following requirements for a larger fleet.

The 55-train replacement for Line 2 where there are now 61 trains is based on the capacity with new trains (similar to those now on Line 1) with about 10% more room than the old ones. This finally addresses the excess of T1 trains in the fleet ever since the TTC decided to run Lines 1 and 4 entirely with new “TR” trains and ATC, and relegated the T1 fleet to Line 2.

The Metrolinx options are for the Richmond Hill and Scarborough extensions. Growth trains are to permit the operation of more frequent service than the existing fleet can support.

Note that Line 4 Sheppard is not included here as it has a dedicated set of six 4-car trains that can handle projected growth on that line. Depending on the extension of Line 4, a future procurement of trains and storage facilities could be required.

In the remainder of this article, I will describe the scenarios and implications of choices the TTC, Council and its funding partners will make in the near future.

Recommendations

The report recommends that:

  • The TTC prioritize funding in the capital budget for:
    • New subway cars and related projects with a cost of $3.2 billion as the City’s share.
    • A 30-year state of good repair overhaul of the T1 fleet.
    • Risk mitigation activities for Line 2 related to fleet and signal system life extension.
  • Subject to confirmation of funding, the CEO issue an RFP for new trains needed on the existing Line 2 with options for extensions and demand growth on the system.

This will have effects not just for subway planning but for other TTC capital project funding and timing.

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Line 3 SRT Replacement Service and Derailment Investigation

The TTC Board received a presentation at its September 26, 2023, meeting updating the information in the report published with the agenda. The first part deals with plans for the Line 3 bus replacement service and gives additional details beyond those previously announced.

The shift to using all of the Red Lanes on Ellesmere, Midland and Kennedy is planned for November 19.

The travel time today is considerably higher than when the RT was operating (second bar in the chart on the right below). This will be reduced with the elimination of transfers at STC between feeder routes and the 903 shuttle service together with the full transit priority implementation in mid-November. Further saving is expected when buses shift to a busway in the SRT corridor.

On November 19, eight routes will be extended to Kennedy Station to eliminate the need to transfer to the 903 shuttle.

The most disappointing part of the presentation is the timeline overview which shows the opening date for the busway in the SRT corridor as 2026. Design work is underway to be completed in 2024 with construction in 2025 aiming at a mid-2026 opening date.

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TTC Service Changes Effective Sunday, September 3, 2023 (Preliminary)

This is a preliminary version based on GTFS data (the standard format for transit schedules used by online services) and some Service Advisories on the TTC site. I expect to receive the full list of September service changes early in the week of August 28 and will update this article accordingly including the usual detailed comparison of service levels.

Updated August 26 at 9:15 pm: 512 St. Clair updated to reflect complete bus replacement for work at various locations on the line.

Updated August 27 at 4:30 pm: At 10:30 am on August 28, the Mayor, TTC Chair and CEO will hold a press conference at STC Station to “outline how the TTC will increase service beginning September and into the fall.”

Updated August 29 at 5:30 pm: Due to changes in the Metrolinx schedule for work on the Lake Shore East Queen Street bridge, there has been a further revision of planned service. Please see this post for details.

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TTC Confirms SRT Will Not Reopen, Plans Bus Improvements

The TTC has announced that the SRT will not reopen and that the focus will now be on the replacement bus service.

The review of the July 24 derailment is still underway and is unlikely to complete with much time left for remediating the condition of the SRT and restarting service for a short period before the planned November 18 shutdown.

The initial operation with reserved bus lanes is under construction with painted lane markings southbound on Midland and northbound on Kennedy between Eglinton and Ellesmere. Other work including red painted lanes, queue jump lanes and signal priority will be implemented in the next three months.

One problem caused by the unexpected early SRT shutdown is that the temporary bus terminal facilities at Kennedy Station are not yet completed. A interim terminal north of Kennedy Station will be used. Once the station reconfiguration is done, eight routes that now terminate at STC will be extended through to Kennedy Station to eliminate transfers.

This was part of the original plan for the SRT replacement service. The list of candidate routes for transfer elimination is 38 Highland Creek, 129 McCowan North, 131 Nugget, 133 Neilson, 134C Progress, 939 A/B Finch East Express, 954 Lawrence East Express, 985A Sheppard East Express [source: FAQ within Future of TTC’s Line 3 Scarborough].

According to the press release, the TTC is working to remove the existing SRT infrastructure and build the replacement bus roadway sooner than the original plan that stretched out two years. An updated target date has not been announced, buy the TTC’s recognition that this roadway is urgently required is a welcome change.

A larger issue critical to review of TTC’s maintenance plans is whether the derailment is a “one of” event, or if there has been a general decline in TTC maintenance across the system. This is directly tied to capital and operating budget planning for 2024 and beyond.

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A Revived, Activist TTC Board?

Following Olivia Chow’s election as Mayor of Toronto, the process is now underway to repopulate committee and board appointments that will reflect the Mayor’s and Council’s priorities .

The Striking Committee – Councillors Malik (Chair), Bravo (Vice-Chair), Carroll, McKelvie and Perks – is very different from the crew who managed this process under Mayor Tory. Only Deputy Mayor McKelvie was carried over from previous era.

The City Clerk polled Councillors to determine each member’s interest in a wide variety of positions, and their requests will be considered by the Committee at its meeting on August 10, 2023. Their recommendations will be forwarded to Council for approval at a special meeting on the afternoon the same day.

Up for grabs are six positions on the TTC Board including the Chair and five other seats. The Councillor members’ terms will run to the end of 2024 when the process of juggling appointments will be repeated (standard practice at Council’s mid-term), although the sitting TTC Board members are likely to be reappointed for a further two years.

The remaining four members of the board, non-Council “public” members, will not be up for reappointment until early 2025 or 2027 unless Council rescinds them sooner. Any selections will be affected by the revised membership in the Civic Appointments Committee.

Today there are only five Councillors on the Board and there is one vacancy.

Councillors who have asked to be considered for the TTC Board are: Ainslie, Burnside, Holyday, Mantas, Matlow, Moise and Myers. Of these, all but Matlow and Myers are already on the Board, and Burnside is Chair. (The Vice-Chair is chosen from among the citizen members.)

The Striking Committee and Council should aim to create a TTC Board that actively pursues policies to improve transit. This includes public debates about just what we, as a city, expect of the system. Wringing their hands and saying “we can’t afford anything, so we won’t bother trying” should not be an option.

There are huge challenges financial (the City’s budget deficit), political (the Ford government at Queen’s Park) and organizational (the less-than-steller performance of and reputed poisonous environment under CEO Rick Leary). Any would-be Commissioner who views their job as simply showing up for meetings now and then to hear good news stories should seek work elsewhere.

The TTC has just embarked on consultation for its 5-Year Service Plan and a Customer Experience Action Plan. This might have been a business-as-usual plan under Mayor Tory entrenching a “Board approved” set of targets driven by a conservative agenda.

Toronto needs much more, an aspiration not just for “better” transit, but for a greater relevance of transit to riders across the city. Even if our goal is out of reach in the short term, we should aim high.

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The Scarborough RT Derailment

On Monday, July 24 at 6:45, a southbound SRT train was leaving Ellesmere Station when its rear car derailed. This was not simply a case of slipping off of the tracks, but a more complex incident in which:

  • The rear car of the train broke away from the other three cars.
  • The truck (or bogie, the undercarriage holding the wheels and motor) at the rear of this car was detached from the car.
  • A section of the reaction rail which is part of the propulsion system broke away from the guideway.

The car came to rest with one end leaning against the guideway’s fence and a low sidewall. Fortunately, this is a location where a derailed car could not fall any distance.

Five passengers were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

The line remains closed with shuttle buses ferrying riders, and the TTC has announced that the line will remain closed for at least three weeks pending an investigation of the cause of this accident. That will take us until at least mid-August.

It is not certain if the line, which was planned to shut down permanently in mid-November, will ever re-open depending on the cause of the derailment, the amount and cost of work to remediate it, and the limited time during which this expense would have any benefit.

Updated July 27 at 10:20pm: The proposed schedule for the SRT right-of-way conversion to a busway has been added to the article to clarify that “Winter 2025” really means the end, not the beginning, of 2025.

For the convenience of readers, especially those out of town who might not have followed this event in detail, here are links to many articles which include a wealth of photos.

City TV

CP24

Global News

Toronto Star

Spacing

  • Technical Difficulties: The Scarborough RT accident was absolutely predictable as policy-makers and riders have been aware of it’s deterioration for almost 20 years

CBC

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TTC 2024 Service Plan Consultation Round Two

The TTC is part way through production of its 2024 Service Plan as well as a 5-Year Service Plan and Customer Experience Action Plan. In Round Two, consultation will focus on plans for service changes triggered by major construction projects. Five pop-up sessions are planned at Flemingdon Park, Union Station, Liberty Village, Finch Terminal, and Pape Station between June 29 and July 12, 2023. Details are available here.

Also available on that page is a link to a survey seeking feedback on various proposals. Please note that my site is not an official TTC conduit for feedback, although it is no secret that many at the TTC do read articles and comments here. Any specific feedback for the TTC should be submitted through their own survey.

Round Three in August-September will present draft concepts for the 5-Year Plan and Customer Experience Action Plan, and these will be refined into final drafts for Round Four in October-November.

The remainder of this article presents an overview of the survey and proposals for construction-related service changes.

There are no proposals for new routes nor of overall service levels in this round. The election of Olivia Chow as Mayor will no doubt bring a review of existing services, but that is not in the scope of this round.

An important issue left over from the 2023 Budget process and the recent service cuts is the question of Service Standards. These are described as “Board Approved”, but in fact the 2023 changes were implemented by management as part of the budget with only retroactive consent from the Board. Moreover, the actual effect of the changes was withheld from the Board and Council until well after the budget was approved.

Transparency in budgets and service planning will be an important change looking ahead to 2024. With a new Mayor I hope to see a much improved process.

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TTC Cancels RFP For New Subway Trains (Updated)

A Request for Proposals for new subway trains has been cancelled due to lack of funding. The following notice was sent to all vendors on Friday, June 23:

The Toronto Transit Commission issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) on October 13, 2022 for the procurement of New Subway Trains.

The RFP indicated that the TTC was in the process of actively pursuing additional funding from other orders of government (Provincial and Federal), and that contract award was subject to receiving full funding commitments by early 2023. As detailed in item 1.2.2 – Funding Status of Part 1 – Invitation and Submission Instructions of the RFP document: “Timelines associated with this RFP have been communicated to potential funding partners, and a request for confirmation of funding by early 2023 has been requested. In order to receive the NST deliveries in time for the legacy fleet replacement and to meet growth needs, the TTC has elected to commence the procurement at this time, however, contract award is subject to receiving full funding commitments.”

Unfortunately, the additional funding required has not been secured and as such, TTC is cancelling the RFP effective immediately, and the Bonfire Portal will be closed.

The TTC will continue to have discussions with the Provincial and Federal governments on funding requirements for New Subway Trains and evaluate the requirements for issuance of a future Request for Pre-Qualification and Request for Proposals in the future.

Where this leaves future projects for enhancement of Line 2 Bloor-Danforth, conversion to Automatic Train Control and provision of full service on the Scarborough Subway Extension is anyone’s guess.

This is a project which was initially delayed by CEO Rick Leary in favour of a fleet rebuild, then reactivated as his attitude to the worth of ATC warmed with the success of the Line 1 conversion, a project very much the work of his predecessor Andy Byford and his team. The focus on spending for new lines has left major state of good repair such as fleet renewal high and dry, and this RFP cancellation show where that shortsighted policy has brought us.

I have reached out to TTC Media Relations for comment. This post will be updated as more information becomes available.

Updated June 26, 2023 at 3:45 pm

The TTC replied to my query for comment with the following:

As the posting says (or should), the purchase of the cars is contingent on funding being secured.

That has not yet happened, although discussions are ongoing.

This was about being transparent with bidders and letting them know that once funding is secure, we would re-post.

It is worth noting that as recently as the TTC Board meeting of June 12, 2023, there was no mention in the public session that this action was imminent. Here are the relevant pages from the Major Projects Update.

Updated June 26, 2023 at 5:00 pm

How many trains will the Scarborough Subway Extension require?

The TTC owns 370 cars in the T1 fleet which operates Line 2. That is equivalent to 61 6-car trains plus four spare cars.

The scheduled AM peak round trip time on the existing Line 2 is 105 minutes. For the maximum service possible with the existing signal and train control system, one train every 140 seconds, requires 45 trains. That was the AM Peak scheduled service in January 2020 before the pandemic-related service cuts. One additional train was on standby as a “gap” train for a total of 46. Allowing for spares at 20%, this requires a fleet of about 55 trains leaving only 6 spare for expansion.

The Scarborough extension is only marginally longer than the Line 1 extension from Eglinton to Finch with similar station spacing. A one-way trip on that part of Line 1 takes about 12 minutes, or 24 for the round trip. By analogy, that would make the round trip on the extended Line 2 about 129 minutes, and would required 55 trains with nothing left over for extras. Including spares at 20% would require a fleet larger than the TTC now owns.

Alternately, if every second train short turns at Kennedy Station leaving a 280 second service (4’40”) to Sheppard East, the line could probably operate with 50 trains which just fits within what is available.

One might argue that with a new fleet and the benefits of Automatic Train Control, overall speed could be improved and with that the fleet needed for full service to Sheppard could be reduced. But that is moot if TTC maintains the existing fleet.

When the SSE was planned, it had a pocket track east of Kennedy Station, but this was cut to save money, then it was restored. I wonder if someone is counting trains, or just hedging their bets on service levels beyond the existing terminus?

In any event, a failure to buy new trains has the double effect that it will condemn Line 2 to manual operation with an aging signal system for the foreseeable future, and will prevent the operation of full service beyond Kennedy in peak periods unless the Bloor-Danforth line never returns to the pre-pandemic peak service level.