Over the past week, two people have commented to me about trying to use the 94 Wellesley bus and just giving up.  Among the complaints I have heard are:

• The printed timetables are completely meaningless.
• Gaps of over half an hour in the peak period occur.

This is quite different from the rosy view the TTC system had in the wake of November’s service improvements.  Looking at the Scheduled Service Summary I see that the headways are supposed to be:

• AM Peak:  12′ between Ossington  and Wellesley Stations, 6′ east to Castle Frank
• Midday:  10′
• PM Peak:  16′ between Ossington and Wellesley Stations, 8′ east to Castle Frank
• Early evening:  13′
• Late evening every day:  15′
• Saturday early morning:  17′
• Saturday afternoon:  12′
• Weekend early evening:  16’40”
• Sunday daytime:  18′

What is ironic here is that the PM peak service west of Yonge is worse than it is during most other operating periods.  On top of this, if a bus is missing or short turned, a gap of over half an hour results.

I know it’s a lot to expect that there are hundreds (tens?) of Wellesley bus riders reading this blog, but if you have some service horror stories of this or other routes, please let me know.  We need to ensure that the TTC is actually operating its services properly, and not just the ones that had recent improvements.

Recently, the TTC implemented a maximum 30 minute headway across the network and full service from roughly 6:00 am to 1:00 am everywhere.  Plans for 2009 include a reduction of this maximum to 20 minutes, a topic I reviewed in a previous post.  Whether we will actually see this next year is still a topic for budget debates, and the recently announced fare freeze could put that scheme on hold.

Another option that has surfaced is the concept of a core grid of routes where service would never be worse than every 10 minutes.  To get a sense of what this might look like, I culled through the current schedules to produce a list of routes that have headways wider than 10 minutes.  This is not a definitive list, and I know there can be both additions and deletions.  Indeed, proposals like this are guaranteed to produce all sorts of political fights as each Councillor tries to get “their” routes on the “A list” for service quality.  The criteria for picking the routes were:

• Routes on the major concession roads, or a reasonable approximation, were chosen.  This is the roughly 2km square grid of main streets in Toronto.
• For areas with more complex geometry such as southern Scarborough, I have selected routes to provide geographic coverage.
• Only services within the 416 are included.
• All streetcar lines are included, although an argument can be made that one or two of them could be trimmed from the list.

Where the cells in the table are empty, the service is already at a 10 minute headway or better, and some routes have completely blank rows.  What is quite noticeable here compared with the chart of 20 minute routes is that there are more time periods where service improvements would be needed on more routes.  Moreover, many of these are major routes where the number of additional vehicles would be substantial.

In a period of tighter finances, this raises the question of which approach to service improvement should get priority:

• Improve service even more on lesser used routes and periods from 30 to 20 minute maximum headways.
• Improve service on core routes to 10 minute headways.
• Improve service on routes that could benefit from reduced crowding.

All of these must be balanced against the debate over fare levels.  Regular readers will know that my preference has always been to concentrate on service because that’s what people really need.  The greatest prices in the world won’t do any good if the shop window is empty.

Among the side comments with the proposed fare freeze announcement came a note that we might not see the implementation of a 20-minute maximum headway in 2009.  Indeed, just paying for the changes recently introduced could be a stretch.

Just to see what this entails, I have compiled a list of the services that now run less frequently than 20 minute headways.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list as I built it rather quickly to get a sense of the size of the issue, not to nail down every last detail.  A few important points here:

• Routes outside of the 416 are not included as they are contract services not subject to TTC headway policies.
• Sunday early morning services are not included because this period is not part of “subway hours”.
• Where routes overlap, I have tried to omit infrequent services on the overlap.  For example, individual services on Broadview may run on wide headways, but the combined frequency is within the 20 minute cutoff.
• Not every route with two or more branches has been included.  I mentioned a few in the list because there is an important policy question here.  Should the TTC run very frequent service on a route so that its branches can each stay within the 20 minute maximum?  (A very good example is Eglinton West which has both the Emmett and Trethewey branches that are not always scheduled into the pattern of the main route.)
• Routes that have no service less frequent than 20 minutes are not included in the table.
• Empty cells in the table indicate a period when the service is every 20 minutes or better, or in a few cases where there is no service.

One overwhelming observation is that the late evening periods (generally after 9-10 pm) most commonly have wide headways on most listed routes.  A relatively few routes have 30 minute headways for most of the day.

The debate on use of any funding for service increases needs to determine whether the 20 minute maximum is an appropriate goal across the system, or whether it is time to start subdividing by class of route and time of day.  For example:

• Is a 30 minute headway after 10 pm an acceptable compromise or first step in a full 20-minute rollout?
• Should routes serving primarily industrial areas be subject to the 20 minute maximum?
• Do rush hour express buses (the 140 series) qualify as full routes once they no longer charge premium fares, and if so, what should be the minimum headway?
• Should there be a special class of peak-only routes that do not automatically get full service at the policy headway?

In my next post, I will turn to what may seem to be a more radical idea, the Ten Minute Network.  Such a network would have a guaranteed maximum 10 minute headway on a core network of routes.  Please save comments on that idea until I get the post about it online.  Meanwhile, the policy question is this:  would a Ten Minute Network contribute more to the system overall at this time than the move to a twenty minute maximum affecting only the infrequent services?

The supplementary agenda for this week’s TTC meeting includes a report on Express Buses.  Unfortunately, this report has been badly misreported in today’s Star to the extent that the article and the report are diametrically opposed to each other.

The Star, drawing on information from Adam Giambrone, claims that a new network of express buses with premium fares has been proposed.  In fact, here are the changes recommended by the report:

• In the interest of encouraging riding on the routes parallel to the Yonge Subway (141 Mt. Pleasant, 142 Avenue Road, 144 Don Valley), these routes will become regular fare routes effective September 8, 2009.  The report is silent on whether this change in status would also trigger an RGS-based implementation of full service to match “subway operating hours”.  I don’t think that the TTC has digested the full impact of the RGS changes or how they would specify exemptions.
• A downtown express from Bayview/Lawrence will be evaluated following the trial period of regular fare operation on the three routes listed above.
• New local-express service will be implemented on 41 Keele and 60 Steeles West, but not until November 2009.
• The express services on 35E Jane and 96E Wilson will be improved to see whether this boosts riding, but again not until November 2009.  The effects will be reviewed in 2010 with a view to keeping, improving or eliminating this service.
• No other express services are warranted at this time on existing routes because the travel time savings and travel patterns are such that new express services would cause at least as much harm by degradation of local service as they would benefit riders who might use them.
• A network of express routes paralleling the eventual Transit City network is not warranted because they would operate in mixed traffic, and their additional operating cost could not be justified.

I will not repeat all of the detailed information from the report here.  The common thread you will see in the recommendations is that everything happens late next year so that the impact on the 2009 budget is minimal.  By that time, we should also know about:

• The RGS proposal to move to 20-minute minimum headways
• Additional express services, if any
• Fine tuning, if any, of the RGS hours of service to deal with exceptional situations

A parallel issue, mentioned in the TTC report, is crowding on the subway and plans for future capacity increases.  I will be posting a separate article about fleet planning and options to divert ridership onto other corridors later this week.

Update 2: The Register has a story about Berlin and the Dutch State Railways where the issue of copyright and use of public schedule data by outside application creators has arisen.

The TTC is not alone in fighting against externally built apps.

Original post follows:

There’s a great post and comment thread by Shawn Micallef on the spacing website about yet another non-TTC application to help users get TTC data.  This time, it’s an iPhone app.

Update:  The Torontoist site also has a post on this (sorry David for not picking up on that earlier).

After the initial burst of launching the still-not-bug-free and incomplete TTC website, work on that site seems to have ground to a halt.  At the very least, the TTC should put up a “coming soon” page with a list of committed improvements and dates.  This would allow people to spot the things that are still missing, and give us all a sense that the project isn’t stillborn.

One excuse is the need to make documents fully accessible.  This places the community who needs such services in the position that they appear to be the problem, rather than the TTC’s own inactivity and lack of preparation for this requirement.

An important issue raised by Shawn (and by others in the past) is the way that the TTC jealously guards its internal data on the grounds that it has some commercial value.

Get off your butts, guys.  This is public information and all your sitting on it does is to prevent people from making good use of the data.  Other cities make this type of scheduling info freely available, but Toronto is too busy protecting its “intellectual property”.

Back in 2002, I collaborated with Rocket Riders and the Toronto Environmental Alliance to produce Transit’s Lost Decade, a report on the savage cutbacks in transit during the 1990s thanks to budget cuts.

This morning, I received a comment in the thread about the November service changes from James who asked:

How does total service, as of November 23, 2008 compare with peak service prior to the big cuts of the early 90’s?

This sent me digging into my archives to see how we have been doing.  For the details, please refer to this linked spreadsheet.

By November 2008, the AM Peak bus service will stand at 1505, still 43 less than the 1990 level of 1548.  The difference in capacity is slightly greater on two accounts:

• 1990 includes articulated buses (fleet of 90, number in service unknown)
• 2008 includes 21 buses replacing streetcars on St. Clair for construction

If we assume that at least 70 artics were in service, this is the capacity equivalent of 35 more 40-foot buses.  Adjusting the totals gives an effective service of 1583 buses in 1990 versus 1484 in November 2008.  During this period, the Spadina subway was extended from Wilson to Downsview, and the Sheppard subway largely replaced bus service from Yonge to Don Mills.  However, these do not completely offset the difference in peak bus operations.

On the streetcar network, the AM peak service is down by 37 cars even though the Spadina route did not exist in 1990 (15 vehicles).  The level of streetcar service is much, much lower now than it was in 1990 and shows no sign of improving.  The long delay in decision-making on rebuilding and/or replacing the streetcar fleet means that “Ridership Growth Strategy” is a hollow term to patrons of those routes.

Please refer to this list of streetcar vehicles and headways for November 1990 and 2008.

Finally, you will note the presence of the Trolley Coach fleet in 1990.  With the recent difficulties involving Hybrid Buses, Toronto continues to see how a fascination with new technology first with CNG buses, then with hybrids, has turned out.  Hybrids may come into their own as battery technology improves, but today we can only look to our sister-city, Vancouver, to see a real commitment to electric buses.  That’s another thread, and I will turn to it soon.