Fares & Fare Collection

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Presto Permutations

This article arises from a comment in a related thread by Richard White in which he reported a misinformed remark by a Presto passenger rep on car 4403:

I asked about the transfer situation and she said and I quote. “He (Steve Munro) is wrong. You don’t always need a transfer. You only need it when getting on buses” Then I asked her about transfer on streetcars.

She said “Oh yea.. you need it on the old cars too.. but not on the subways. He is wrong because he did not ask about the subways. You do not need a transfer if you are going to the subway!”

Well, for the benefit of people who don’t know Toronto’s transit system well, here are all of the permutations of when one might, or might not, require a transfer or fare receipt. The situation will change substantially if the TTC implements either of the proposed fare structure changes for 2015: a two hour timed-based fare and/or PoP across the entire system with all-door loading even on routes that are not Presto-equipped.

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Presto Comes to Spadina

With the beginning of service today (November 30, 2014), Presto is available on any of the new streetcars running on Spadina.

That said, the implementation is ill-conceived, and how this can possibly be rolled out successfully system-wide is a mystery.

At each doorway (and on both sides of the double-width doors) there is a Presto reader. So far so good — make it easy to tap on as people enter.

However, if you need a transfer (and lots of riders do), you have to go to one of the two TTC fare machines which are (a) on the other side of the car and (b) nowhere near two of the four doors. There, you tap again and the machine issues a transfer.  All this assumes it’s not busy serving customers paying with cash or tokens.

Anyone who has been on one of the new cars when Spadina is busy will know that internal circulation just doesn’t happen. It’s hard enough to move around within the module where one boards, let alone get to another module where there’s a fare machine.

On the subway, the TTC doesn’t have this problem because transfer machines are available for all riders inside the paid area of a station, and a Presto rider is no different from someone who paid with another medium. Not so on the streetcars.

There is no sign of Presto support at the on street fare machines.

Why, oh why, wasn’t the Presto reader integrated with the TTC machines?

Meanwhile, we see another cocked up implementation of technology, one that TTC will get most of the blame for. Fortunately, there is little market penetration of Presto on TTC beyond downtown commuters because that’s the only place their card works. Until the TTC provides Metropass functionality via Presto, there is no incentive for the most frequent users to convert, and then it will have to work on all vehicles.

This has more the smell of publicity — “look what we did” — for the Presto project than it does of a useful addition to the system.

Half-baked would be a generous overstatement.

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TTC Management Proposes Widespread Service Improvements, Two Hour Fare and More (Updated)

Updated August 19, 2014 at 10:50 pm: The TTC board unanimously adopted the proposals in this report with amendments.  Some of these were intended to ensure clear understanding that approval was only in principle and subject to the review process in the 2015 budget.

In what proved quite a surprise to me, Chair Maria Augimeri moved a request for a set of reports related to service and fleet plans. The text of this came directly from a deputation on the CEO’s report which, at that point in the meeting, I had not actually presented because the Board took the agenda items out of sequence.

Here are my deputation texts, one on the “Opportunities” report itself, and one on the CEO’s report. The motion I proposed and which the Board adopted is in the second item below.

Although there were questions about details and about the manner in such a far-reaching set of proposals appeared on the Supplementary Agenda of the last Board Meeting before the election, there was broad support for the content.

Of the Mayoral candidates, even Mayor Ford has spoken favourably about many of the proposals with the exception of the widespread rollout of PoP (self service) fare collection and the move to time-based transfers/fare receipts.

Only John Tory has been strongly opposed choosing to take a hard-line tax-fighter stance that is hard to swallow in light of his own multi-billion dollar transit plans. Tory also does not understand that a staff report at the TTC only makes proposals for what should or might be done — it is up to Council to decide on priorities and funding mechanisms. Tory continues to disappoint as a candidate who has more bluster than substance, a trait he shares with the current Mayor.

Updated August 15, 2014 at 8:00 pm: Detailed comments about the proposal have been added.

The Supplementary Agenda for the TTC Board Meeting of August 19, 2014, contains a report that is breathtaking in its scope:

Opportunities to Increase Transit Service in Toronto

The report recommends a program to include the following initiatives:

a) implement all door boarding and proof-of-payment on all streetcar routes;
b) reduce wait times and crowding on bus and streetcar routes;
c) establish a city-wide network of Ten-Minute-or-Better bus and streetcar services;
d) expand the Express Route Network with new and improved express bus routes;
e) implement more transit priority measures;
f) add resources to improve service reliability and route performance;
g) operate all routes all day, every day across the city;
h) change the one-trip-per-fare to a two-hour-travel-privilege-per-fare;
and
i) expand the overnight bus and streetcar network.

[The agenda will also include presentations on the new streetcar implementation, and on “Customer Journey Times”, a new way to measure the usefulness of transit service to riders. These presentations are not yet online.]

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TTC Board Meeting June 24, 2014

The TTC Board met a light agenda and little inclination to debate. As events at City Hall wind down toward the October election, there are no major decisions, and Commissioners in the Karen Stintz camp have succeeded in blocking any significant policy discussions until 2015. This leaves the Commission and Council going into the election and next year’s budget process without background information that could be useful in quick implementation of a policy shift in the post-Ford era at City Hall.

If it is any consolation, Stintz currently is polling at 3%, below the “don’t know” category.

Items of interest on the agenda include:

Details on the debate and actions taken, if any, follow the break.
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What Should We Do With $47-million?

In a breathtaking display of political opportunism, mayoral candidate (and former TTC Chair) Karen Stintz attempted to highjack an unexpected “surplus” from 2013 transit operations to pay for a fare freeze in 2015. This move was not derailed, but at least shunted into a siding by an alternative proposal from the current Chair Maria Augimeri. How did we get from a TTC that is desperate to make ends meet to one that can glibly talk about avoiding a fare increase, conveniently in the run-up to an election?

The May 28 TTC meeting agenda included the audited financial statements for 2013 and a report on the unexpected drop in the subsidy requirement for last year’s operations.

The subsidy requirement was much lower than the budget projection because of one-time changes that benefited the TTC:

  • liabilities for Workplace Safety & Insurance Benefits and the Long Term Disability plan were reduced by $6.3-million;
  • various expenses including depreciation, allocation of costs between the operating and capital budgets, accident claims payouts and retroactive pay were below budget by about $18m;
  • variations in non-labour costs netted out to a saving of $16m relative to budget.

Add in the previously reported $7.3m surplus, and collectively, the subsidy needed by the conventional TTC system was $46m below budget, and Wheel Trans was down $1.7m.

Council’s policy dictates that when the TTC has a “surplus” (i.e. the subsidy requirement comes in lower than expected), the money stays with the city and is allocated mainly to capital accounts, including the large backlog of funding needed for TTC’s 10-year capital program. For 2013, the city’s current plans are to allocate any surplus:

  • 75% to the shortfall in TTC capital funding, and
  • 25% to fund TTC post-retirement benefits and and accident claims long-term liabilities.

(Although the TTC budgets for long-term liabilities in the year they are incurred, the city does not pay out the money through subsidies until the money is actually needed by the TTC. This keeps the working capital in city hands, and the future payouts are funded, if possible, from “found money” like the TTC “surplus” rather than from current revenues. From the TTC’s point of view, they are an “account receivable”.)

Stintz proposed that the TTC ask Council to approve that the money would stay in TTC hands and be used to avoid a fare increase in 2015. Riders have put up with a lot with service problems, and they deserve a reward, indeed they should get some of “their” money back, she argued.

Not only is this an unvarnished election ploy, but it runs directly contrary to positions Stintz has taken at the TTC and at Council.

  • The money is a “one time” windfall from better-than-expected conditions, and there is no guarantee that the TTC will perform similarly in 2014 and beyond. Indeed they are already short thanks to lower ridership and the brutal winter just past.
  • In both public and private sector finance the unfunded liabilities for future unavoidable costs such as pensions, benefits, and accident claims are a serious problem, and it is city policy to reduce its exposure to them.
  • Council debates over budgets repeatedly focus on the difference between “sustainable” and “unsustainable” funding practices. If City revenue is up, and this can reasonably be expected to continue in future years, then this is “sustainable”. The same is true for expense reductions that are permanent, not one-time blips. As part of “team Ford”, Stintz was quite insistent on the need for the City to avoid “unsustainable” funding strategies.
  • Stintz herself pushed and defended cuts to service quality both in hours of service and in crowding standards. These changes also led to the removal of a 150-bus order and the deferal of a new garage project in the Capital Budget. All of this was “for the greater good” of the transit system according to Stintz. Now, rather than improving service, she would rather hobble TTC’s revenue stream with a fare freeze.
  • Chair Augimeri attempted to get a motion through the TTC Board in April 2014 asking staff to report on service improvements to the June meeting with a view to including these proposals in the 2015 budget process. This motion was sidetracked by the Stintz faction on the Board who viewed it as an attempt to support her rival Olivia Chow. Staff will still do the work, but the due date is now conveniently beyond the election. Suddenly, with $47m in her pocket, Stintz wants a fare freeze.

During the debate, the question of creating a stabilization fund came up — “profits” from one year would go into a reserve to offset “losses” in another. This is a bit of accounting trickery because, of course, there is no “profit”, only a reduced subsidy requirement.

Nobody at the meeting, including the TTC’s own finance management, bothered to mention that such a fund already exists. It is listed in Note 17 to the financial statements on page 37 (page 41 of the PDF), and the account held $24.666m at yearend 2013. Oddly enough, during the 2014 budget debates, nobody talked about using this to lower fares or improve service for the obvious reason that the reserve is intended to deal with one-time events, and cannot provide “sustainable” funding for anything.

One member of the Board, Al Heisey, asked why there has been no debate on priorities for any spending of this type with a view either to service improvements or capital projects such as buying buses. This is part of a more general malaise at the TTC where broad policy objectives are not discussed by the Board. This is quite a change from the days of Chair Giambrone whose activist term routinely spawned many policy discussion through requests to staff for discussion papers that came to the public TTC agenda.

It is ironic that the city policy (keeping back any “surplus” from the TTC) arose in part due to Giambrone’s activism. If the money stayed in the TTC’s hands, it could be used to launch new programs without an explicit Council authorization. There was no guarantee against one-time “surplus” money funding a change that would require long-term subsidy funding in future years by Council. Stintz was trying to pull off precisely the type of funding trickery that Council spiked when it stopped putting TTC surpluses in the stabilization reserve.

In the end, the Board moved to ask the city to treat its budgets on a five-year basis so that a surplus from one year could be carried over and used to fund shortfalls the next. Whether the $47m will actually limit a fare increase, or even stay with the TTC, will be a decision for the new Council, one that, if polls are to be believed, will certainly not include Karen Stintz.

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Neptis Reviews Metrolinx: A Critique (I)

In December 2013, the Neptis Foundation published a review of the Metrolinx Big Move plan authored by Michael Schabas. This review received prominent attention in the Toronto Star and is regularly cited in their coverage of transportation issues. Some elements also appear in recent comments by Transportation Minister Glen Murray, and it is reasonable to assume that his view of Metrolinx priorities has been influenced by the Neptis paper.

Since its publication, I have resisted writing a detailed critique in part because of the sheer size of the document and my disappointment with many claims made in it, and a hope that it would quietly fade from view. Recent Ministerial musings suggest that this will not happen.

The stated goals of the report arose from four basic questions posed shortly after The Big Move was released in 2008:

  • What evidence suggests that the projects in the Big Move will double the number of transit riders and significantly reduce congestion in the region, as promised by Metrolinx?
  • Does each project offer good value for money?
  • Do all the projects add up to a substantial regional transit network or is the Big Move just an amalgam of projects put forward by diverse sponsors?
  • How do the projects in the Big Move relate to the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, its land use equivalent? [Page 2]

The report itself addresses a somewhat different set of questions and notably omits the land use component.

  • Will the Big Move projects achieve the Metrolinx objective of doubling transit ridership?
  • Are these projects consistent with Metrolinx’s own “guiding principles”?
  • Are they well-designed, consistent with international best practice, and integrated with other transport infrastructure?
  • Will they support a shift of inter-regional travel onto transit?
  • Are there alternative, more effective schemes that should be considered?
  • What changes would help Metrolinx produce better results? [Page 14]

Schabas’ work is frustrating because on some points he is cogent, right on the mark.

Metrolinx has bumbled through its existence protected from significant criticism, swaddled in a cocoon of “good news” and the presumed excellence of its work. To be fair, the agency operates in a political environment where independent thought, especially in public, is rare, and years of planning can be overturned by governmental whim and the need to win votes.

That said, Metrolinx is a frustrating, secretive organization conducting much of its business in private, and tightly scripting public events. Schabas rightly exposes inconsistencies in Metrolinx work, although his own analysis and alternatives are, in places, flawed and blinkered.

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A Subway Anniversary & A Few Old Transfers

The Yonge Subway celebrates its 60th birthday this weekend on March 30, 2014.  In honour of the occasion, I have scanned in a few transfers from the era predating the opening.  With the exception of the souvenirs from 1953, these were rescued from oblivion when the TTC was cleaning house of old files at Hillcrest Transportation many years ago.

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Toronto Deserves Better Transit Service Now! Part 2: What Can Be Done

The first part of this article reviewed the evolution of transit service and riding since 2006. In brief:

  • System riding grew by about 22% from 2006 to the projected demand in 2014.
  • The bus fleet, after increasing by about 22% early in that period in part for the Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS), has not grown since 2009.
  • The capacity of the bus fleet has dropped by about 6% as the remaining high-floor fleet was replaced with low-floor buses.
  • Although RGS improved crowding standards to encourage more riding, these changes were reversed in 2012 to fit more passengers on existing vehicles.
  • The streetcar fleet size has not changed at all, and peak service improvements, such as there were any, came from redeploying vehicles from routes shut down for construction projects.

Changing the level of TTC service on a broad scale is not something anyone can do overnight.  More service means more buses and streetcars, more operators and more garage capacity.  All of this takes more operating and capital subsidy, and a sustained commitment that lasts longer than a campaign sound-bite.

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Toronto’s 2014 Budget & The TTC

On January 30, 2014, Toronto Council passed its 2014 operating and capital budgets.  In earlier articles, I discussed details of the TTC budgets and won’t repeat that info here.  However, a few details from the City budget debate are worth mentioning.

Scarborough Subway

Three Councillors attempted to sideline spending on the Scarborough Subway project by redirecting the planned $14-million in the 2014 budget either to a reserve or to other projects.

All of these motions were ruled out of order by the Speaker based on advice from City Legal staff who argued that since Council had already passes a special tax to fund the Scarborough Subway, they would be open to a lawsuit if the money were not spent for the intended purpose.  This ruling by the Chair was challenged, but the Chair was upheld by a vote of 23-22.  This is the same margin as in a previous vote on the issue, although a few Councillors switched sides.

I feel that attempts to derail this project are counterproductive at this time for several reasons:

  • Like it or not, Council has approved the Scarborough Subway project and its associated tax.
  • The issue is very contentious and in the current political environment quickly becomes a “Scarborough against the world” debate.
  • The cost estimate for the project is barely beyond the back-of-the-envelope stage, and this cannot be refined without further study that will occur in 2014 as part of the lead-up to the Environmental Assessment.  This will include comparative costs and effects for the City’s McCowan alignment and for Minister Murray’s “SRT” alignment.
  • If the cost of the subway proves substantially higher, this will certainly trigger a further debate at the 2015 budget sessions under the newly elected Council who must approve the next stage of the subway tax increase.  Any increase must be paid for with 100-cent City dollars because the commitments by Queen’s Park and Ottawa are capped.

Other related issues include:

  • The projected demand for the Scarborough Subway must be seen in the context of other regional plans that are under discussion.  These include substantially better service on the GO Stouffville Corridor.  An EA for double-tracking this line is already underway, and the corridor is part of the “Big U” that is under study as part of Yonge subway capacity relief.
  • The claimed shutdown period for the SRT for conversion to LRT has been inflated from the 2.5 years anticipated by Metrolinx to 4 years and beyond by subway advocates.  Any discussion of the LRT alternative must include a review of how long a shutdown really needs to take, but we are unlikely to see this given that the only authorized work for 2014 will be on the subway options.  Any work to make the LRT option more palatable would be viewed as backsliding by subway supporters.

The whole project will be back at Council again in 2015, and that is the time for a well-informed debate on alternatives.

Operating Subsidy

When the TTC Board approved its 2014 operating budget, there was a $6-million unspecified reduction in the expected subsidy based on a recommendation from the City Manager.  At the time, both TTC Chair Karen Stintz and CEO Andy Byford said that they would fight for the missing $6m, although we never found out exactly what the effect would be if the TTC didn’t get it.

The original 2014 subsidy proposed by management in the budget (November 2013) was $434m, up from a budget level of $411m for 2013. The Board passed a budget with a $428m subsidy.

The CEO’s report for November also predicted a $411m subsidy requirement for 2013, but probable actuals reported in January show that the system came in $7.3m below this number, at $403.7m.  Whether these savings are one time effects or sustainable into future years is a matter of debate (one unexpected source of revenue was the sale of retired subway cars).  The TTC does not distinguish between regular and extraordinary revenues, and some savings or costs (such as the actual vs budgeted cost of diesel fuel) vary with market forces.

In any event, for the second year running, the TTC’s actual subsidy requirements have come in below projections.  This makes the increase from previous year’s actual to current year’s budget bigger than simply a budget-to-budget comparison would show.

In case anyone is tempted to ask why the TTC cannot do “a better job” of budgeting “accurately”, that $7.3m is less than half of one percent of the total 2013 budget of $1.541-billion.  If your own personal finances operate at such a level of accuracy or better, then maybe you have a right to complain.  However, given that even a small percentage variation for the TTC turns into what, for Councillors, is a huge amount of money, debates about the TTC budget often turn on the minutia.  $6m represents 0.25% on the property tax rate.

Among several budget adjustments proposed by Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly and approved by Council, the TTC received an extra $3m for a new budgeted subsidy of $431m.

Council also passed a motion asking staff:

… to develop an intergovernmental campaign to advocate for a Provincial operating subsidy in line with pre-1995 levels.

$70m of Provincial subsidy now goes to the TTC operating budget as part of the City’s subsidy.  This is well below the formula instituted by Premier Davis in the 1970s of a 50% Provincial share.  A catch-22 here is that slavishly holding to a percentage allows Queen’s Park to dictate the size of the total budget by specifying an absolute limit to the dollar value of the subsidy.  This can artificially constrain the growth in TTC service.

Capital Budget

The Capital Budget was passed including over $2-billion in cuts (shifts of projects and funding to “below the line” over the coming 10 years.  Some of this lies in large projects that have yet to be approved, but a substantial amount comes from purchase of new vehicles (buses, streetcars and subway cars), garage/carhouse expansions and facilities maintenance.  $10m per year has been cut from streetcar track maintenance in 2014-18, and from subway track maintenance in 2019-2023.  In the out years, this is accounting hocus-pocus designed to make the capital spending fit within available target levels, but in the short term, this threatens some necessary TTC work.

The City and TTC will continue to beat their drums for added support at Queen’s Park and Ottawa even though, at least in the short term, this is likely to be more wishful thinking that productive lobbying.

Toronto has a self-imposed debt limit that arises from a desire to keep debt servicing costs at an affordable level relative to tax revenue.  Of course, if Council wants to raise taxes, they can also raise the amount of debt as they have done for the Scarborough Subway.

Affordability of Transit Fares

Council passed a motion asking several City departments and agencies, including the TTC:

… to report in advance of the rollout of the Presto Fare Card system and prior to the 2015 budget process, on options related to a fare media policy that addresses affordability issues of transit fares for low and moderate income Torontonians.

This topic comes up regularly at TTC Board discussions, and the common TTC response is that social benefits are not in the TTC’s purview.  With the move to smart card fare collection, there is an option to build fare subsidies into a rider’s account and to allow such subsidies to be tracked.

The question, as always, will be whether TTC funding should go to improvements in service and/or fare structure for all riders, or be targeted to those who receive some other form of social assistance.