Spadina 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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TTC November 2012 Meeting Wrapup

At its November meeting, the TTC considered various matters other than the 2013 budgets on which I have already reported.

New Commissioners

The new “citizen” members of the TTC were sworn into office: Maureen Adamson, Nick Di Donato, Alan Heisey and Anju Virmani.  Ms. Adamson was elected Vice-Chair of the Commission under a new Council-approved structure where the Vice-Chair is chosen from the citizen member ranks.  At this point we know little of where the newcomers will take the Commission beyond background articles such as one in The Star.

Although they may claim to be focused on customer priorities, whether this will survive the political onslaught of budget constraints and the organizational morass of “TTC culture” remains to be seen.  Commissioners tend to catch a “TTC disease” when it becomes easier to defend what the TTC has done and the official management outlook than to ask difficult questions, publicly, about how things could be better.  At least there is a CEO in place whose goals lie in improvement, not in justifying more of the same.

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Spadina Extension Opening Pushed Back to Late 2016

A report before the TTC meeting this week advises that the opening date for the Spadina Subway Extension is now fall 2016.

The report includes a long history of the Spadina project as well as a comparison of the bureaucratic environments of Toronto and Madrid, a city that manages to build subways much faster than most other cities in the world.

For some time, the TTC has been evasive about the actual opening date citing mid-2015 (for the Pan Am Games), then late 2015, and now 2016.  The fact that parts of the project were behind schedule has been reported in the monthly CEO’s report for some time.  Now, formally, the TTC is resigning itself that the lost time cannot be made up.

This will, no doubt, raise questions about why a staged opening to, say, York University then later to Vaughan, was not planned from the outset.  It is doubtful this would be possible because some of the systems contracts such as signalling have been set up on the basis of doing the whole line at one go.  All of the station construction contracts are scheduled to complete in 2015 with York U being the last.

If a staged opening had been desired, the decision to proceed that way would have been made some years ago, and design and construction would have focussed on the south end of the line.  This would have delayed photo ops north of Steeles and chances for various politicians to show what they were doing for York Region.  It might even have left the northern part of the line vulnerable to changing government priorities.

“The other shoe” that has not dropped yet is the question of the project’s budget.  So far, the claim as been “on time, on budget”, but half of that boast just went up in smoke.  Will the project come in on budget given the many delays and design changes it has seen?

One point of note is that when the TTC put together the project plan for this extension, they had not yet committed to ATC (Automatic Train Cperation) on the Yonge-University line, and didn’t include money for ATC signalling in the Spadina project.  That’s an add-on that is not funded as part of the four-partner package for the extension itself.

Another future add-on would be platform doors, although I doubt we will ever see this applied to stations so far away from downtown, if anywhere.  Indeed, one station’s design underwent major changes because the platform door wall had been designed as part of the support structure of the station.  No doors, no wall, no support.

The project budget does include provision for more subway trains, but only at the currently planned level of service.  Every other peak period train heading north on Spadina will go to Vaughan with a scheduled short turn at the station now called Downsview, but to be renamed Sheppard West.  Any trains for improved service are an extra unbudgeted order, and of course they would require storage space somewhere.

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OneCity Plan Reviewed

The OneCity plan has much to recommend it even though in the details it is far from perfect.

The funding scheme requires Queen’s Park to modify the handling of assessment value changes, and they are already cool to this scheme.  Why OneCity proponents could not simply and honestly say “we need a 1.9% tax hike every year for the next four years” (not unlike the ongoing 9% increases to pay for Toronto Water infrastructure upgrades) is baffling.  A discussion about transit is needlessly diverted into debates about arcane ways of implementing a tax increase without quite calling it what it is.

On the bright side, Toronto may leave behind the technology wars and the posturing of one neighbourhood against another to get their own projects built.  Talking about transit as a city-wide good is essential to break the logjam of decades where parochialism ruled.  Couple this with a revenue stream that could actually be depended on, and the plan has a fighting chance.  Ah, there’s the rub — actually finding funding at some level of government to pay for all of this.

Rob Ford’s subway plan depended on the supposed generosity of Metrolinx to redirect committed funding to the Ford Plan (complete with some faulty arithmetic).  Similarly, the OneCity plan depends for its first big project on money already earmarked by Metrolinx to the Scarborough RT to LRT conversion.  If this goes ahead, we would have a new subway funded roughly 80% by Queen’s Park and 20% by Toronto.  Not a bad deal, but not an arrangement we are likely to see for any other line.

On the eastern waterfront, there is already $90m on the table from Waterfront Toronto (itself funded by three levels of government), and OneCity proposes to spend another @200m or so to top up this project.  Whether all $200m would be City money, or would have to wait for other partners to buy in is unclear.

Toronto must make some hard decisions about a “Plan B” if the Ottawa refuses to play while the Tories remain in power.  Even if we saw an NDP (or an NDP/Liberal) government, I wouldn’t hold my breath for money flowing to Toronto (and other Canadian cities) overnight.  A federal presence is a long term strategy, and spending plans in Toronto must be framed with that in mind.

Sitting on our hands waiting for Premier McGuinty or would-be PM Mulcair to engineer two rainbows complete with pots of gold landing in Nathan Phillips Square would be a dead wrong strategy.  Bang the drum all we might for a “one cent solution” or a “National Transit Strategy”, Toronto needs to get on with debating our transit needs whether funding is already in place or not.  Knowing what we need and want makes for a much stronger argument to pull in funding partners.

In some cases, Toronto may be best to go it alone on some of the smaller projects, or be prepared to fund at a higher level than 1/3.  If transit is important, it should not be held hostage by waiting for a funding partner who will never show up.

The briefing package for OneCity is available online.

My comments on the political aspects of OneCity are over at the Torontoist site.

To start the ball rolling on the technical review of the OneCity network, here are my thoughts on each of the proposals in the network. Throughout the discussions that will inevitably follow, it is vital that politicians, advocates, gurus of all flavours not become wedded to the fine details. Many of these lines won’t be built for decades, if ever, and we can discuss the pros and cons without becoming mired in conversations about the colour of station tiles.

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TTC Meeting Review February 29, 2012

The February 29th meeting of the Toronto Transit Commission was one of the shortest in my long memory of these events.  The agenda was trivial with an utter absence of meaty issues for debate, and the real action would follow in press scrums.

Accessible Transit Services Plan: 2011 Status Report

This generally upbeat report was approved without debate.

Notable by its absence is any mention of the operating budget challenges faced thanks to cutbacks in funding by the City of Toronto.  Recently, the Commission diverted $5-million intended to support regular bus service quality into the Wheel Trans budget.  For the long term, Council must address the fact that cutbacks to the Wheel Trans subsidy have much more severe effects, proportionately, than cuts to the regular system.

The TTC may be improving its accessibility, slowly, but basic questions about whether the service is adequate to meet demand receive little public debate.  This is not just a question of Wheel Trans for those who cannot use the conventional system, but of recognition that mobility affects many who are ambulatory, but whose neighbourhoods and destinations may not be well served by surface routes.

What’s In A Name?  Stations on the Spadina Extension in Vaughan

The Commission adopted “Highway 407” and “Vaughan Metropolitan Centre” as the names for the two stations north of Steeles on the Spadina subway extension on a 5-2 vote.

For some time, staff and some Commissioners have pressed for the simpler “Vaughan Centre”, but the City of Vaughan Council prefers the longer (and somewhat more pretentious) name.  Sadly, the opposition to the long version came from Commissioners whose credibility leaves much to be desired, although their comments might in other circumstances be cogent.

Norm Kelly mentioned the “conceit” of former cities within Metropolitan Toronto which created “town centres” such as in Scarborough, Kelly’s home turf.  This is deeply ironic considering that it is the failure of Scarborough Town Centre to attract employment that is part of the argument against the Sheppard Subway extension which Kelly supports.  Frank Di Giorgio worried that everyone will make a case for special consideration on station names.  Di Giorgio, it should be remembered, is the advocate for total obedience to Mayoral fiats by city staff, and if Rob Ford had a position on station names, it would take precedence over everything.

Meanwhile Maria Augimeri had hopes her “Black Creek” would get equal consideration when it comes to formally naming “Steeles West” station.

After the meeting, a group of my colleages agreed that one of my local stations, Chester, should be renamed as “Riverdale Metropolitan Centre”, although I might add the word “Organic” in deference to the neighbourhood.

It is unclear how the TTC will handle placing the long version of “VMC Station” on its maps and other signage.

St. Clair at Keele/Weston

Commissioner Palacio asked for a report on improving traffic conditions at the St. Clair and Keele intersection where, because of the rail underpass just to the east, traffic is constrained to a single lane by the streetcar right-of-way.

Restructuring the Commission

In a scrum after the meeting, Chair Karen Stintz announced that she had reached a compromise for the proposed change in the makeup of the TTC.  A report coming to Council on March 5 (whose origin lies in the machinations of the Ford camp to enhance control of all agencies by the Mayor) recommends a nine-member Commission (as at present) with five citizen members and four Councillors.  The Chair and Vice-Chair would be a Councillor and Citizen member respectively.

The new proposal would see an 11-member Commission with six Councillors.

After the firing of Gary Webster by Ford’s Gang of Five, many Councillors have talked about restructuring the Commission to be more representative of Council as soon as possible, including at the March 5 meeting.  Stintz feels that she has the votes for the compromise arrangement, and that a major shuffle of the Commission would not occur until June when the citizen appointments are confirmed by Council.

The next move is up to Council itself on March 5.

Subways and only Subways

While the TTC was meeting, across on the other side of City Hall Mayor Ford was hosting a bevy of developers for a luncheon discussion of subway funding.  After the TTC meeting completed, there was a scrum outside of the Mayor’s office (with Chair Stintz nowhere in sight) in which the Mayor and his circle claimed that there was broad support in the development industry for subways.  When pressed about funding, Mayor Ford didn’t want to get into the details beyond pointing to the Chong report, but claimed that the development community was totally onside.  Onside maybe, but the developers all slipped out the side door and avoided the media lest they have to go on record supporting or, worse, opposing the Mayor.

Of course developers love subways because they offer an opportunity to squeeze higher densities out of the city than they would get otherwise.  We have been down this path before with the Sheppard Subway.  However, don’t ask the developers to pay for subways, certainly not through development levies that would make their brand new condos uncompetitive with buildings downtown, the really hot part of the condo market.

See Robyn Doolittle and Royson James in the Star (the photo suggests Ford is less than engaged in the event), and Elizabeth Church and Kelly Grant in the Globe.

The strangest part of the whole scheme is that funding the subway depends on new revenue sources many of which Ford is on record as hating, and one (the vehicle registration tax) which he killed early in his term as a swipe at Toronto’s alleged appetite for higher revenues rather than reduced expenses.  Even the normally supportive Toronto Sun cannot believe what their hero is up to.

All of this leads up to a March 15 21 special Council meeting where the “expert panel” convened to look at Sheppard options will report that LRT is the preferred option.  Will Mayor Ford have a credible financing scheme in place, or will this be more smoke and mirrors, more claims that the money is there without any commitment to actually raising the levies needed to build the project?

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Spadina Subway Extension Update

The presentation from the Spadina update given at the TTC meeting on July 6 is now available online.

There’s nothing very surprising, but a few points are worth noting:

Station Names (p 3): There are still discussions in progress about station names.  The ones in the presentation are the working names that have been used for the project, but the final selection will occur probably in October.  Among the proposals in various stages of consideration are:

  • Sheppard West:  There are some who would rename this Downsview, or Downsview Park, although this would create a conflict with the existing Downsview Station which, just to spice things up, is actually at Sheppard.
  • Finch West:  There was a proposal to call this University Heights, although that is a neighbourhood name that doesn’t appear to have much currency among the local residents.
  • Steeles West:  This might become “Black Creek — Pioneer Village” to mark the nearby historical site.
  • Vaughan Corporate Centre:  Aside from being a name that would only inspire an accountant, it’s a rather long name that will be hard to fit on signage, literature, etc.  However, Vaughan wants it “Vaughan Metropolitan Centre” which is still rather long.  York Region is paying the municipal share for this part of the line, and I suspect that a long name will prevail, even if it’s rather pretentious.

Whatever names stations do eventually get, I hope that the major street names survive with a local neighbourhood name as a subtitle rather like “Bay Yorkville”.  Of course if we sell the station names to the highest bidder, neighbourhood and street names might vanish completely.

Budget (pp 4-5): The project is “fully funded”, but this has to be taken with a grain or two of salt.  First off, all of the project contingency has already been consumed in the design phase, and we still have four years of construction to get through.  The TTC hopes to make up any deficiencies through a combination of cost controls and the interest earned on the trust fund holding the provincial contribution to the project.

The project has repeatedly been described as “on time and on budget”, but whether this condition will hold through the remaining 4.5 years to opening remains to be seen.

Construction Schedule (pp 10-13): The schedule shows that the line will open at the end of 2015 taking us beyond one municipal election and two provincial elections.  Who knows which politicians will actually get to cut the ribbon.  Although the physical construction will finish in early 2015, commissioning of the line will take several months.  There has been no discussion of an early opening to York U or to Steeles West to serve the Pan Am Games.

Just as with the budget contingency, all of the “float” time in the project has already been consumed.

Automatic Train Control (p 14): When this project started, the TTC had not yet launched into an ATC conversion project, and the extra cost of ATC over a conventional signal system was not included in the approved, shared budget.  Strictly speaking, this is not required to open the line provided that a headway shorter than a conventional system can handle is not operated into non-ATC territory.

Earlier in the design stage, the TTC dropped Platform Edge Doors from the extension to save money.  At one station, this triggered a redesign because the wall containing the doors was planned as a structural element holding up the roof.

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TTC Meeting Wrapup May 2011

The TTC Agenda for May 11 contained a number of items of interest.  In a previous article, I reviewed the preliminary report for the Finch bus service improvements.

Items detailed below the break are:

  • PRESTO Update
  • Adam Giambrone’s Office Expenses
  • Station Ambassadors
  • Chief General Manager’s Report for January-February 2011
  • 510 Spadina Additional Service South of King Street
  • Additional Commissioners

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TTC Meeting for April 2011 (Update 2)

Updated April 6, 2011 at 7:20 pm:

I forgot to mention in my earlier update that there was talk going around the meeting that only half of the Sheppard Subway scheme (the eastern half) might be pursued in the short term (the next decade) to keep the cost down to $2 billion and change.  This echoes a comment by Vice Chair Peter Milczyn in yesterday’s Toronto Sun.

Updated April 6, 2011 at 5:00 pm:

At the Commission meeting, very little happened.

The new, but not yet official, Chief Customer Service Officer was introduced and he made a few remarks about his hopes for the new position.  He has a real challenge in front of him.  Customer Service may be the kind of thing Commissioners love to smile brightly and gush about, but wait until we start talking money, or the negative effects of cutbacks on the perceived quality of the system.

As expected, the proposed split of the 12 Kingston Road bus so that half of its service would run via past Variety Village (via Birchmount and Danforth) was approved.  This will begin operation on May 8, but the community shuttle bus (run by Wheel Trans) from Main Station will continue to run until Victoria Park Station (route 12’s terminus) becomes accessible later this year.

Unlike the previous meeting, Commissioner Minnan-Wong did not belabour the public session with inquiries about contract cost changes.  Some of these questions should be asked, but without implying that every change is a sign of waste and incompetence.  Whether he was equally silent in the private session before the main meeting, I don’t know.

However, in what must be the greatest example of how petty the new Commission (and the Ford regime) can be, there was continued discussion of the fact that former Chair Giambrone overspent his 2010 expense allowance by approximately $3,400.  The issue will come back to the May Commission meeting, and there were dark hints that more serious measures would be taken.  Considering that for many years, none of the Commissioners or Chairs has used all of their expense budget, this is really small potatoes.  However, it’s more important than worrying about how to pay for a $4.2-billion subway with magic beans.

The big issue, relatively speaking, was the new Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited report.  This company, renamed and resurrected from an older, inactive TTC subsidiary, will be used as a home for work on the “Toronto Subway Project” (the official name for the Sheppard Subway extensions in the Memorandum of Understanding with Queen’s Park).  It has $160,000 sitting in the bank from the original setup capital out of TTC when it was created, and retained earnings from work performed years ago.  This nest egg will allow it to operate without any funding approvals for the short term.

We learned that Gordon Chong, a former Councillor and Commissioner, has been retained at $100k/year as President, CEO, Secretary, Treasurer and Co-Chair.  The other directors and officers who are members of Council will not be paid for their work on TTIL.

A rather convoluted motion was passed by the Commission stating that it would approve paying invoices on TTIL’s behalf provided that a mechanism was set up for Council to fund them.  Presumably this would be required once they burn through their $160k nest egg.

Former Vice-Chair Mihevc spoke as a deputant, and raised a number of issues about the Sheppard Subway notably the lack of detailed information on the way it will actually be funded, what the effects will be for ongoing system subsidy requirements (as compared with the Transit City LRT lines originally proposed), and what type of service would be offered to those areas where the LRT plans have been cancelled.

A report on what to do with Finch West is expected back later this year, and the 2012 budget review will include provision for whatever is recommended.  Obviously, this won’t involve any significant construction such as a BRT lane and stations.

The Commission swatted these requests aside, and Vice Chair Milczyn said that “we don’t need to know what future subsidies might be” because in every past case the TTC has always just opened new lines and absorbed the cost.  The desire to not debate the wisdom of the Sheppard proposal, which hasn’t been approved by anyone yet other than the Mayor, was quite clear.  After the meeting, a press scrum with Chair Karen Stintz was notable for its evasiveness.  In the end, it all comes back to “the Mayor wants it”.

As long as Council has enough cheerleaders who let Mayor Ford get away with this sort of thing, it’s hard to understand why we even bother holding public meetings.

The original post from April 2 outlining major agenda issues (most of which were not discussed at all), follows the break.

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Understanding TTC Project Cost Creep

The recent TTC meeting saw Commissioner Minnan-Wong digging into questions about rising costs on two TTC projects, the design of Finch West Station and the resignalling of the south end of the Yonge subway.

Reports asking for increased spending authorization come through the Commission quite regularly, and Minnan-Wong has raised the question of “out of control spending” at Council on past occasions.  Just to declare my political leanings, I have never been a fan of the Councillor, even though there are certainly legitimate questions to be asked when project costs rise unexpectedly.

Unfortunately, Minnan-Wong tends to approach these issues as if someone is trying to pull the wool over his eyes and implies outright incompetence as the starting point for discussion.  This approach brings more confrontation than information.  Let’s have a look at the two projects in question and consider how information about them (and their many kin in the overall budget) might be better presented.

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