Fares & Fare Collection

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TTC’s 2016 Customer Charter Reviewed

The TTC has released the 2016 version of its Customer Charter listing a number of areas in which they promise improvements through the year.

First Quarter:

  • Ensure that 510 Spadina is served by fully accessible streetcars: Mostly done already with a few of the high-floor ALRVs still in service but the majority of runs operated with low-floor Flexitys.
  • Apple Pay at collectors’ booths: In progress.
  • Reduce streetcar short-turns by a further 20% over Q1 2015: New schedules on 501 Queen effective January 3 make a big contribution to this coupled with the milder winter weather.
  • Start subway service at 8:00am on Sunday: Done effective January 3.
  • Add service to Line 1 (YUS) during off-peak: Not done yet, but the schedules going into effect at the end of March have not yet been announced. (Note 1)
  • Establish a Local Working Group for Donlands Station second exit project: Done.
  • Add five new express bus services: Planned for late March.

Second Quarter:

  • Wifi at 22 new stations (Note 2).
  • Roll-out of new fare gates with Main Station as a pilot: Work at Main in progress.
  • Improve bike parking at 5 stations.
  • Add 20 bike repair stops at subway stations: Subject to outcome of a pilot.
  • Install notice boards in 12 busy stations to inform passengers about planned/unplanned closures.

Third Quarter:

  • Ensure 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst are served by low-floor streetcars: With delivery of new cars, Harbourfront is already planned to ramp up beyond two assigned Flexitys in mid-February. Delivery rates for new cars are supposed to be up to 1/week by the end of March and this should make conversion of 511 Bathurst an easy task provided Bombardier manages to stay on track.
  • Pilot high capacity bike parking at one station.
  • Replace T1 trains on Line 4 (Sheppard) with 4-car TR sets: The order for these cars is in progress at Bombardier with delivery expected later this year.
  • Improve 28 Bayview South and 101 Downsview Park routes to be part of all-day, every day service. This will bring services to two park-based areas. The Bayview South bus serves the Brick Works from the west (Davisville Station), but service from the east (Broadview Station) will still be operated by a free shuttle bus.
  • Add 3 trains to Line 1 (YUS) to improve AM peak service. It is unclear whether these will be “gap” trains used to supplement service when things go wrong, or an attempt to slightly shorten the average headway over the entire line. Gap trains generally make a bigger difference for situations where holes in service at peak times and direction need to be filled because the extra train is used specifically where it is most needed.
  • Add peak service to 25 busy bus routes.
  • New streetcar service on Cherry Street: (Note 1) This service could most easily be implemented by converting the 504 buses now scheduled from Dufferin to Parliament back to streetcars as a Dufferin to Cherry operation. Peak vehicle requirements would probably go down, but the off peak service on Cherry would be a net addition. This change is related to whatever modifications the TTC will make to the 72 Pape and 172 Cherry bus routes.
  • Begin revamping the east parking lot at Finch Station.

Fourth Quarter:

  • Widen 25 bus stop pads to improve accessibility: Locations TBA
  • Install external route announcement system on all vehicles: Work in progress.
  • Add two new elevators at Ossington Station: Work in progress.
  • Install customer info screens at Union Station mezzanine and platform levels: An overdue follow-up. This work should have been an integral part of the station renovation.
  • Install customer info screens at Dufferin, York Mills and Lawrence stations.
  • Install transit signal priority at 15 intersections: Locations TBA
  • Complete PRESTO roll out to the entire system: Bus fleet conversion in progress; new fare gates will finish PRESTO subway access as they are installed.
  • 10 additional WiFi stations: Locations TBA (Note 2)
  • Lengthen 10 bus pads for compatibility with articulated buses: Locations TBA
  • Start construction on a bus queue jump lane: Location TBA
  • Introduce a new Wheel-Trans qualification process: Details TBA
  • Install new, “more informative” stop markers at over 3,000 surface stops.
  • Review schedules on 32 bus and streetcar routes to improve reliability and travel times.
  • Reduce subway delays by 10% (counted as both incidents and minutes of delay). See What Causes Subway Delays?
  • Consult with riders and other stakeholders to revise service in three neighbourhoods around routes 40 Junction, 54 Lawrence East and 116 Morningside.

Note 1: Some items in the Charter are not yet funded in the City’s budget. Whether they will actually operate depends on the TTC’s ability and desire to squeeze money out of other parts of their operation.

Note 2: The WiFi rollout in the subway is limited to internet access only because the major telcos – Bell, Rogers, Telus – will not provide service over the incumbent provider’s network. Even the internet access has its problems due to login requirements recently introduced that require signon to a sponsoring site such as Twitter. This state of affairs can be traced to a bad system and contract design by the TTC who appear not to have contemplated the difficulties of the “big” players refusing to come onto, and thereby financially support, the network.

I cannot help feeling that a lot of this “Charter” is a shopping list of the low hanging fruit, things the TTC planned to do anyhow, but repackaged in a “look at us” format where green tick marks will gradually fill up the boxes. What is missing, and this is as much a political discussion as a managerial one, is a “what could we be” dimension and aspirational goals that might not be achieved, certainly not in a one-year timeframe.

Of course, when there are members of Council and the TTC Board who would rather count paperclips than address fundamental issues of just what  “good transit” really is, this situation is almost inevitable. Good news, but as cheaply as possible, and so we aim low.

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Relief Line, SmartTrack, GO/RER, Scarborough Subway Consultations

Toronto City Planning has released a draft list of upcoming public consultations on various transit plans including:

  • The Relief Line
  • The Scarborough Transit Plan (Subway, SmartTrack, Crosstown East LRT)
  • The Western SmartTrack Plan (SmartTrack, Crosstown West LRT)

2016_ConsultationCalendar

Additional meetings and information about Metrolinx plans (GO Regional Express Rail) will be organized by that agency.

Even more information will be available in March 2016 when the City releases a compendium report on all transit initiatives currently under study. These will include items listed above as well as the “Waterfront Reset” study, TTC Fare Integration proposals and a review of how (or if) Tax Increment Financing can contribute to the many transit projects under review. The intent is that this report will form the basis for public consultation and debate leading to recommendations at Council in June 2016. This is a very aggressive schedule, and there is no indication how consensus will actually be achieved in so short a time, especially with the usually-secretive Metrolinx as an essential player. At least the discussion will be at a network level, not ward-by-ward with a “relief” line for every member of Council, and there will be some filtering of various schemes based on engineering and operational realities.

What is sadly missing from all of this is a discussion of day-to-day transit operations and the backlog in the state-of-good-repair budget. We can blithely discuss billions worth of subway building to Scarborough and a Relief line, but Council won’t fund the basics of running a transit system.

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TTC Transfers: 1954/55

Transfers as a physical fare medium are set to disappear from the TTC in 2017 with the completion of the migration to Presto fare cards.

Here are the transfers as they existed in 1954 and 1955, the first year of the “Toronto Transit Commission” by that name. These include many suburban bus routes that were amalgamated into the TTC’s network with the formation of Metropolitan Toronto in 1954.

A few items worth noting:

  • Many of the suburban routes used red ink on white paper as a distinct colour scheme to identify cases where a check for a “zone 1” fare on a city route would be necessary. When coloured paper was abandoned for the older routes, Carlton was already using the “suburban” colour scheme and was missed in the conversion. For many years, it was the only “downtown” route with a red transfer.
  • There are two Yonge transfers. One is for the “Yonge T.C.”, the trolley coach operation from Eglinton to Glen Echo. The other, simply “Yonge” might suggest that the streetcars were still operating in 1955 over a year after the subway opened. This is for the night service.
  • Many route names are recognizable, but the outer ends of the suburban routes are a lot closer to the old city than they are today.
  • The text on the back of the transfer exhorting riders to only make their connections in the proper TTC way has not changed in years (it can be found on transfers from 1921). The use of the word “Conductor” is amusing considering that by 1955 two-man operation had ended. The term even appears on bus transfers.
  • “Up” and “Down” refer to directions of travel and correspond to the “U” and “D” cutoffs along the edge of the transfer. Generally, “Up” is westbound or northbound, but there are exceptions sometimes caused by route changes and amalgamations with segments in the “wrong” direction.

For a look at pre-TTC transfers, please refer to this article.

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TTC Proposes New Fare Rules for Presto Roll Out

On December 16, 2015, the TTC Board will consider a report from management recommending several changes in the fare collection system. Some of these proposals are straightforward while others are likely to bring confusion and outright complaints from TTC riders.

On December 14, the TTC streetcar system goes to “Proof of Payment” (POP) on all routes and a few days later, Presto will be enabled across the streetcar system. In the short term, paying by Presto will be akin to dropping a token in the farebox on the “old” streetcar fleet. If you need a transfer, board at the front door and get one from the operator. Otherwise, rear door boarding is allowed. Transfers will be required if somewhere in your journey you will encounter a bus that is not Presto equipped. (The TTC is silent on how they will handle a route like 504 King that operates both types of vehicle if a Presto user discovers a non-Presto equipped vehicle is the first thing to show up.)

The roll out of Presto brings the opportunity to revise the fare system, for good or ill, as the TTC migrates away from its conventional model of tickets, tokens and transfers. (It is worth noting that a large number of riders have already made this migration by using Metropasses which are simple, if limited in the fare options they provide.)

The transitional period when both Presto and existing fare payment systems co-exist will be a difficult one. Indeed, there are strong incentives for riders not to shift to Presto until the system is fully functional unless their TTC usage is limited to that part of the network where Presto is active.

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TTC Fare Increase For 2016

After a long, rambling, and less-then-well-informed debate, the TTC Board has approved increases in selected fares for 2016 at its meeting of November 23, 2015.

  • Adult cash fares will rise from $3.00 to $3.25.
  • Adult tokens will rise from $2.80 to $2.90.
  • Metropass prices (all classes) will not change.
  • Student and senior fares will not change pending the outcome of a study on Fare Equity that will report early in 2016.

The cash fare last changed in 2010, while the adult token fare, then $2.50, will have gone up $0.40 by 2016.

Freezing the Metropass prices will have the effect of lowering the “trip multiple”, the ratio of the pass price to the token fare from 50.5 in 2015 to 48.8. For monthly discount plan (MDP) subscribers, the ratio will fall to 44.7. The multiple is even lower for those who can claim the transit tax credit pulling it down to 38 for MDP users. This is only available to people with taxable income against which the transit credit can be applied.

This will make the pass more attractive to riders who now feel that it is priced beyond their normal transit usage level, and of course will provide a fare freeze for all existing pass users.

The gap between the adult and senior multiple will now be wider because seniors’ fares have not changed leaving the ratio between passes, tickets and cash fares as they were in 2015.

The unfocused debate can be blamed directly on the TTC’s own Budget Committee and its failure to actually discuss fare policy beyond producing a range of options for consideration by the full Board. Absent a clear idea from Mayor Tory or the City’s own budget process of subsidy that the TTC might receive in 2016, debates about “fares” turn into efforts to minimize the subsidy call against the City where “fighting taxes” takes priority.

When the issue reached the full Board, any idea that the TTC could magically survive without more subsidy had evaporated, but we still don’t know what will actually happen to fares or service if Council fails to deal with the TTC’s shortfall.

By the end of the meeting, there were several overlapping motions on the table, the product of many Board members each cooking up their own version of an appropriate new structure and policy framework.

  • By Vince Crisanti: That student and senior fares be frozen pending the outcome of the Fare Equity report in 2016. Carried.
  • By John Campbell: That a revised fare structure (see below) be implemented including a $0.20 jump in the adult token fare. Defeated 10:1 against.
  • By Shelley Carroll as amended by Glenn De Baeremaeker: That staff report back on a common fare multiple for adult, senior and student passes. Carried.
  • By Alan Heisey: That TTC and City Transportation Services work together on improvements to enhance transit service especially for special events such as subway shutdowns, and report to the Board in six months. Carried.
  • By Joe Mihevc: That all seven options for service enhancements be approved. Defeated 8:3 against.
  • By Joe Mihevc: That the three options not approved by the TTC Budget Committee (Subway service reliability, three minute service on Line 1 YUS, Cherry Streetcar) be referred to the City Budget Committee for consideration. Carried.
  • By Josh Colle: That the TTC and Toronto Parking Authority study means by which parking revenue can be maximized with a report to the Board in 3Q16. Carried.
  • By Josh Colle: That the TTC examine ways to increase non-fare revenue and reduce office space costs through consolidation, and that staff report by 2Q16 on annual and long term revenue targets. Carried.
  • By Ron Lalonde as amended above: That the TTC adopt fare scenario 7 with no Metropass, student or senior fare increase ($0.25 more on adult cash fares, $0.10 more on adult token fares). Carried.

The combined effect of these decisions leaves the TTC with a $41-million gap between its proposed budget and the 2015 subsidy level. Considering that they are not even sure of getting that much when the first cut of the City’s 2016 budget is launched on December 15, 2015, this leaves Council facing an 8.7% increase in the main TTC operating subsidy request and a similar increase (although a smaller dollar amount) for Wheel-Trans.

When the final text of these motions is published by the TTC, I will update this article.

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TTC 2016 Operating Budget

On November 23, 2015, the TTC Board will consider its operating budget for 2016 including issues of fares and possible service improvements. The version of the budget before the Board was approved at the TTC’s Budget Committee meeting of November 9, 2015 with some amendments from the original staff proposal. The only recommendation related to fares was that the price of a Metropasses be frozen in 2016, but no other specifics. (I have already commented on the motions passed by the Committee in a previous article.)

The matter is complicated by the fact that the actual subsidy that will be made available to the TTC by City Council will not be set until early in 2016, and the TTC will compete with other agencies for available money.

(The 2016-2025 Capital Budget is also on the November 23 agenda, but it has not changed from the version discussed at Budget Committee.)

Although the Operating Budget report is long, it is better organized than the previous version with more detail, rather than depending on whatever questions might arise from a long PowerPoint slide deck and the skill (or lack thereof) of the presenter.

This budget is always a balancing act between competing forces and interests:

  • A political imperative to “keep taxes down” and limit the growth of the TTC’s call on City subsidies from the property tax base. This often manifests itself in calls for “efficiency” year after year in the hopes that the TTC can do more with less funding in constant dollar terms.
  • A political will to keep riders happy with benefits such as controlling growth in, or even freezing fares while providing more and better service. This includes targeted fare changes to benefit groups who are perceived to be more deserving of support through lower fares.
  • Annual increases in the cost of labour, materials and utilities.
  • The cost of additional service to handle demand from a larger population and a shift to transit from other modes.

In 2015, Council approved an extra $95-million for a number of improvements to service, elimination of the fare for children, and a capital-from-current purchase of 50 new buses to be used for new express routes in 2016. This increase only covered the part-year cost of the changes, many of which came into effect only in recent months, and additional subsidy will be needed in 2016 for the full 12-month cost. Additional improvements are on the table as part of the 2016 budget, and some of these were approved in the Budget Committee. The bottom line here is that improving transit has an ongoing cost and is not something to be done on a one year “feel good” program followed by a return to penny-pinching. Indeed, even that $95m might not have come to the TTC had Council been aware of unexpected costs from changes in Provincial funding arrangements for other programs that came to light after the extra transit money was announced by Mayor Tory and TTC Chair Josh Colle.

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Metrolinx Fare Integration Survey

Metrolinx is running a survey of “fare integration”, whatever that might mean to you, until November 30, 2015.

This survey is striking in the way that it reinforces options and viewpoints commonly seen in Metrolinx analysis of fare systems. It is quite 905-centric both in the types of questions and options, and the view of how people might use a transit network.

The survey begins by asking about someone’s “typical trip” to establish an origin-destination pair. Of course, many riders within the city have many regular destinations, especially when their travel (like my own) is not dominated by commute trips to work or to school. After one gets through that section, another comes up asking about non-commute trips but with no attempt to quantify them or ascertain where they might occur.

Cross-border and multi-carrier travel figure prominently in the survey, something by which, self-evidently, a regular TTC rider using only that system is not affected. The following list of fare options reappears in different guises elsewhere in the survey. As a piece of design, it fails because some questions are in the “I can …” format while others are “would” or “should” questions. It is unclear how an “I can” question can have anything beyond a “yes” or “no” answer. Does Metrolinx want our opinion on paying one fare for all of a local transit system, or asking if I can already do this?

There is a big problem in that some options interact, but there is no provision for this. Metrolinx is obsessed with the idea of paying more for “better” service which could mean anything from a GO Train or a Highway coach, to a local express bus, the subway or even a new LRT line. One might agree with a premium for the GO train (although that would also relate to distance travelled), but not for other types of service. There is no option to distinguish between these.

20151118_Survey_FareOptions

The ideas reappear as a list of challenges to transit travel. For a monthly pass holder, many of these options don’t really apply although one could certainly complain about the cost (high fare multiples) and the fact that on some parts of even the TTC, transfers can be a big headache thanks to unreliable service.

20151118_Survey_Challenges

Another set of options requires the choice of a top three issues and ranking them rather than using the 1-to-9 scale for all of them.

20151118_Survey_Wants

Later the survey asks about co-fares between systems including local-to-GO and local-to-local transfers, but is silent on the question of how new co-fares might be funded, indeed on the whole question of regional fare revenue and subsidy sharing. Similarly, questions about distance or zone-based fares give no hint of what the effect might be for different journeys. Time based transfer and return trip privileges are nowhere to be found, typical for Metrolinx that only grudgingly acknowledges them as an option within local systems, not for the network as a whole.

No doubt the results from this survey will be trotted out to support whatever fare scheme Metrolinx comes up with, but it could be strongly biased to “typical” Metrolinx riders who have a very different view of the transit world and fares than their (much more numerous) “local” network cousins. It would be amusing to see what a similar survey carried out for the population within Toronto would yield. The survey includes a request for one’s postal code, and so at least there should be some idea of the distribution of responses across the GTHA.

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Metrolinx Fare Integration Backgrounders

About a month ago, I reported on the Metrolinx Fare Integration Study. At the time of that article, the backgrounders to the Board Meeting presentation had not gone online. They went up a short while later, and now I’m getting around to discussing them.

There are three papers:

These make interesting reading if only to give a sense of what this study has been up to, and the direction it seems to be headed. As I wrote before, Metrolinx has shown a preference for distance-based fares because that is what they know. They are a long-distance carrier compared with any of the “local” transit systems in the GTHA, and developed in an environment where paying more for longer trips was a logical way to do things. (The question of how fairly those “distance based” fares are calculated is a separate matter.)

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TTC Contemplates Fare Option Principles

Updated on September 24, 2015 at 1:45 pm: The TTC has clarified a few points about its table of fare policies. The text of this article was updated to reflect this.

At its meeting on September 28, 2015, the TTC Board will receive a staff presentation on the principles to be used for evaluation of possible fare systems. At this point, specific changes to fares are not up for debate, but staff seek direction from the Board on where to focus their analytical efforts.

An important table comparing fare options across the GTHA is included in the report. Pass-based fares including the monthly discount program fall into a separate category of “loyalty programs”.

GTHAPolicies1 GTHAPolicies2

This chart drives home the fact that 2 hour time-based transfers are common in the GTHA while distance-based or zone-based fares are comparatively rare. Such a chart should have been part of the recent Metrolinx Fare Integration report, but it was not, potentially misleading the Metrolinx Board about the relative prevalence of GO’s world-view on fare structures.

Within Toronto, the TTC flags three challenges for any fare system:

  • Demand exceeds peak period capacity on some routes. By implication any fare structure that drives up demand will only worsen this situation.
  • Revenue control. The TTC does not entirely trust that any new fare system will yield the same revenue.
  • Complex fare and transfer rules. Within Toronto, the transfer rules make integration with other fare systems difficult if not impossible.

However, these may be offset somewhat through other improvements such as system-wide proof-of-payment and Presto rollout.

A timeline shows how various features of a new fare system would be implemented.

Timeline

Note that a move to support a wider range of cards beyond Presto is timed for 2017. This date is part of the Presto plans, as reported at the recent Metrolinx Board meeting. An essential change in the Presto model is that all of the fare handling logic moves to the “back end” of the system and the card (or some equivalent such as a SmartPhone app) merely provides a rider’s “credential” saying “this is me” to the system. Such a change makes possible a much richer set of fare integration and loyalty programs because a rider’s travel can be accumulated over time (much as a phone bill is) and the appropriate rates and discounts applied after the fact based on usage.

Underlying the analysis will be the assumption that new fare policies would not be implemented until 2018 when the technology underpinning would be in place. There is an expectation that the price gap between cash fares and Presto would widen relative to current practice as this is already the case in other parts of the GTHA.

There are seven principles proposed for the analysis:

  1. Improve the customer experience
  2. Meet the needs of our different customer groups
  3. Increase ridership
  4. Optimize TTC fare revenue
  5. Optimize TTC operations
  6. Embrace new technology to modernize our fare offering
  7. Support fare integration initiatives across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area

The analysis will review:

  1. Cash fares and single ride options
  2. Loyalty programs
  3. Peak and off-peak fares
  4. 2hr time-based transfers
  5. Fare by distance/zone
  6. All-door boarding on buses
  7. Proof-of-Payment (POP) system wide including buses and subway
  8. “Tap on” to all buses and streetcars
  9. “Tap on and off” at all subway stations

Notable by their absence in this list is a discussion of service classes such as premium express fares and any scheme in which the “rapid transit” network would be a separate fare tier.

Also included on a regional basis will be considerations of low income discounts and fare equity as well as co-fares.

The analysis will come back for debate and endorsement by the TTC Board at its December meeting.

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Metrolinx Fare Integration Study: Heading to a Foregone Conclusion?

Updated September 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm:

A few issues raised in this article were addressed during the presentation and debate on the Metrolinx report.

  • The dismissal of “time based fares” refers only to fares that are calculated by the length of a journey measured in hours rather than kilometres or zones. Times based transfer privileges (in effect, limited time passes) are still part of the mix of fares under discussion.
  • Although the initial goal of the study is to produce a revenue-neutral model, Metrolinx will also expand the scope to look at adjustments to reduce the effect of bringing about that “neutrality”, in effect to offset unwanted side-effects of balancing who pays for what. This is an important consideration so that all interested parties can debate whether we want more subsidy, or higher fares, or some combination of these in aid of the greater good of an integrated and “fair” regional system. Just telling everyone “this is how it will be” is a recipe for political disaster, especially considering any reorganization of regional fares is likely to occur just in time for the next round of elections.
  • Integration is a big issue for Metrolinx because the distinction between “local” and “regional” travel is vanishing. This is actually more important than the off-cited cross-border double fare, and the RER service concept cannot operate without close integration of local fares and service to whatever Metrolinx runs.
  • Still unanswered is the question of just what service classes Metrolinx will propose, and the effect of making rail services like subway and LRT lines a separate fare class when they were designed, for the most part, to be integrated with local systems as replacements for existing bus routes.
  • Metrolinx plans to publish the background papers for this study including a review of the fare structures now in use by the GTHA’s transit systems.

The original article follows below:

The Metrolinx Board will receive an update on the status of its regional fare integration study at its meeting of September 22, 2015. To no great surprise, the study is pointing strongly toward fare by distance as the preferred scheme, no matter how much the entire exercise wants to give the impression of an unbiased approach and of “consultation” with municipal transit operators and the public. For some time, the Metrolinx review has the air of “any colour you like as long as it’s black”, and this update does little to change the impression.

The fundamental problem is that Metrolinx is a regional commuter system where any kind of flat fare simply won’t work, although their pretensions to being truly fare-by-distance fall apart the longer a trip gets. As the role of Metrolinx changes, both with the construction by Ontario of urban lines, and with the evolution of its market beyond the hinterland-to-downtown model, a one-size-fits-all fare system simply won’t work. Things get even more complicated where there is a mix of GO and local services serving the same territory whether these be rail or bus operations.

An “integrated fare system” has long been the goal for regional planners, although just what this means has varied over the years. For a long time, “integration” meant little more than having one farecard (Presto, of course) that would work everywhere while the actual fare structures were unchanged. The farecard would simply eliminate the pesky business of having different fare media – tickets, tokens, passes, cash, transfers – for different systems. Now that completion of Presto’s rollout is within sight, the question turns to the matter of fare boundaries and “fairness” in fare structures.

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