Finance

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Who Will Pay for New Streetcars?

A great deal of bilge was pumped out by Ottawa and Queen’s Park over the past few days about the TTC’s proposed order of new streetcars from Bombardier.

In today’s Globe & Mail, John Barber did a particularly nice job of eviscerating George Smitherman, the Minister of Infrastructure, for his apparent total ignorance of the TTC’s funding needs and requests.

It’s no secret that the TTC is looking for new streetcars.  The original bid process had to be halted when no vendor came up with a technically and commercially compliant proposal, and more recently the whole process of getting a second set of bids has been well covered in the media.

Many of us will remember walking through Bombardier’s mockup display at Dundas Square which happens to be in Smitherman’s riding.  Maybe he was out of town at the time and missed it.

Smitherman claims that the City can’t make up its mind what its priorities are.  Strange that in a letter to Dalton McGuinty, copied to Smitherman, dated December 16, 2008, Mayor Miller wrote of upcoming meetings of Finance and First Ministers:

Toronto’s first priority for infrastructure is to build Transit City, the 21st century modern public transit network that our city needs.  The Government of Ontario has demonstrated foresight and leadership in its support for Transit City.  Toronto City Council has unanimously agreed to request the Government of Canada to provide:

  • $368 million toward the streetcar fleet’s replacement and expansion; and
  • the federal $6 billion share of Ontario’s $17.5 billion Move Ontario 2020 commitment for the Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan.

The streetcar fleet replacement also shows up in the list of funding requests under the stimulus program by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Other related letters to both Queen’s Park and Ottawa can be found on the City’s website.

Meanwhile, Smitherman’s comment that the TTC shouldn’t be awarding a contract without knowing funding is in place shows that he is badly out of touch.  First off, the TTC has not signed the contract, and its execution is dependent on funding being in place.

Second, there is a long history of agencies such as Metrolinx (a provincial body) announcing plans for which they have no funding, and for which even discussion of proper funding won’t happen for years into the future.  There are two subway extensions (Spadina/Vaughan and Richmond Hill) of which the first was not fully funded until long after the project was announced, and the second still does not have full commitments.

That’s how projects like this work.

The streetcar purchase will run over a 10-year period, and funding it can hardly be called a short-term stimulus.  Funding would likely come from some other program, but the funding should come.  Toronto is asking, in effect, for $40-million a year from Ottawa and from Queen’s Park to re-equip the core of central Toronto’s transit system and to anchor the expansion of LRT in our city.

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Service Changes for May, 2009

Effective May 10, 2009, several service changes, mostly seasonal, will occur.

In addition to these:

Subject to vehicle and operator availability, a PCC will operate as an extra on 509 Harbourfront on Sundays from May 10 to September 6 between 11:30 am and 7:30 pm.

Fare collection eastbound on Queen’s Quay for the 509 and 510 Spadina routes will be handled at Union Station, not onboard vehicles, as in previous years to reduce loading times on weekends after 3 pm.

Continue reading →

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Metrolinx New Speak

Roger Brook passed on to me a formal reply from the Ministry of Transportation to various questions about the Metrolinx/GO merger.  In the quoted sections below, the questions are Roger’s, the answers are from Emna Dhahak, MTO Bilingual Senior Media Liaison Officer, Media and Issues Office.

Both Minister Bradley and Premier McGuinty have dug themselves into a rather deep hole with their convoluted explanations for the changes at GO and Metrolinx.  Rather than simply saying “Metrolinx and GO were always intended to merge and be governed by a board more like GO’s with few politicians”, we get bafflegab.  Not only that, it’s cut-and-paste bafflegab with the same paragraphs repeated in the answers. Continue reading →

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Michael Ignatieff on Transit (Updated)

Updated:  Michael Ignatieff was on CBC’s Metro Morning yesterday (March 23) but, alas, the interview was not deemed worthy of a podcast.  Please see the comment from “Ed” dated today for a precis.  It appears that Ignatieff is still out of touch with the details of what Toronto actually needs.

Over the weekend, I received news from Michael Ignatieff’s “Town Hall” meeting in Halifax.  (For the benefit of foreign readers, Ignatieff is now the Leader of the Opposition in Ottawa, the Liberal Party.) 

Marcus Garnet sent an email to a Transport 2000 list, and this found its way to me.  Below are extracts. Continue reading →

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Fare By Distance? Not When It Suits GO (Updated)

Today, GO Transit implements a 25-cent across the board increase in all fares.  Writing in the Star, Tess Kalinowski reports displeasure among commuters who have been slapped with higher relative increases for short trips than for long ones.

This isn’t the first time GO increased fares disproportionately, but the cumulative effect sets a pattern.

One commuter who travels from Old Cummer to Union complained that:

… the flat-fare hike means riders who live in Toronto are subsidizing passengers travelling from places such as Hamilton and Barrie.

“Over the last five years, I’ve seen my fares go up 27 per cent. Somebody from Barrie has seen their rates go up 9 per cent, Oshawa 14 per cent, Hamilton 10 per cent,” he said.

In response, GO replies that many costs have nothing to do with how far someone travels:

Transit officials defended the increase, saying many of the system’s costs, such as snow removal, station improvements and communications, are fixed and have nothing to do with distance. They also worry about discouraging riders from farther afield by pricing them out of the system.

Strange, that argument.  It’s precisely the one for which I, among others, have been villified when suggesting a flat (or at least flatter) GTA-wide fare policy.  Long distance riders are subsidised with free parking, new make-work garage building, and proportionately lower fares relative to the resources they consume.  Why?  Because we don’t want them driving to and from work.  The costs — both physical to provide and maintain infrastructure, and social to consume so much land with unproductive roadways and a low-density lifestyle — are greater than what it takes to subsidise their commute by GO.

As regulars here know, I have a big problem with parking construction as an alternative to improved local feeder bus services.  This issue will only grow as GO becomes less of a peak period carrier and more of an all day regional rapid transit system.  That’s one of the many areas Metrolinx, in its less than infinite wisdom, chose to ignore.  We won’t have “Mobility Hubs” complete with soaring interiors and palm trees as Metrolinx envisions if stations are surrounded by parking garages, and those who cannot afford to dedicate a car to all-day storage at a GO lot will still be isolated from regional transit services.

Finally, those who advocate for fare-by-distance as a “benefit” of the “Presto!” card (or whatever technology is eventually adopted) should compare notes with the folks at GO for whom high costs for long trips are a very bad idea indeed.  Queen’s Park and its agencies don’t seem to have a consistent view of how we should price transit.  There is no perfect system, and all of them will distribute benefits and rewards inequitably.

Metrolinx could do everyone a big favour by looking at the impact of various options for fare structures, including the wider issues of local service funding and the broad social value of mobility for everyone.  Will they will have the fortitude to take on this issue (and revenue tools in general) rather than studying only infrastructure we may never be able to afford to build and operate?

Update 1, March 14 at 3:50 pm:  Andrew Salmons of Milton has created an online petition requesting not only a reversal of today’s increase, but a lowering of GO’s cost recovery ratio so that fares could be reduced.

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Toronto’s Operating Budget and the TTC

This morning, the City of Toronto unveiled its operating budget for 2009.  Included in this material are budget briefing papers for all city departments including the TTC.

This gives a view of planned TTC operations with more information than we have seen at the TTC meetings, and includes the following items (these are selected quotations from a much longer paper):

  • Ridership is expected to grow by 6 million in 2009 to 473 million, and then remain flat for 2010 and 2011 due to the recession.
  • Specifically with respect to the Queen car:
    • Implement additional bus service and service reliability measures on the 501 Queen Street route to compensate for the shortage of streetcars required to meet ridership growth.
      The TTC will hire a total of 20 new Route Supervisors. Of these, six Route Supervisors will manage the 501 Queen route to ensure the optimum flow of streetcars. In 2009, the TTC will split the Queen Street route. In 2009, the TTC will also add buses to the 501 Queen Street route in order to deal with growth in the number of riders in anticipation of the new LRVs with increased capacity which will be delivered in 2011.
    • The 2009 Recommended Operating Budget includes funding of $0.880 million for reliability improvements to the 501 Queen Street route and $0.280 million to address the streetcar shortage on Queen St. As well, there is $1.735 million to fund 20 additional Route Supervisors to deal with congestion and improve the flow of buses and streetcars on heavily traveled routes.
  • Continuation of the Ridership Growth Strategy service improvements is funded for 2009.
  • The 2010 Outlook reflects a net increase of $188 million. For 2010, it is expected that ridership will stay flat at the 2009 level of 473 million riders due to the economic downturn. Collective bargaining agreements, other employee costs, service requirements, energy needs, inflationary increases and the operating impact of capital projects will continue to exert pressure in 2010. In 2010, there will also be an on-going impact of over $11 million from increased growth in service. Given the volatility of fuel prices in 2008, it is difficult to predict future diesel rates. No funding for new service initiatives is included in the 2010 Outlook at this time. No fare increase is included in the 2010 Outlook.
  • The 2011 Outlook represents a net increase of $75 million. As in 2010, other employee costs, service requirements, energy needs, inflationary increases and the operating impact of capital projects will continue to exert pressure in 2011. The impact of cost of living increases is not included in the 2011 Outlook after the end of the first quarter as the latest collective agreement expires on March 31, 2011. No funding for new service initiatives is included in the 2011 Outlook at this time. No fare increase is included in the 2011 Outlook.
  • It is recommended that the Chief General Manager of the Toronto Transit Commission report back to the Budget Committee in Spring 2009, with a five-year plan, driven by ridership and TTC service delivery plans that would include various options for a multi-year fare strategy.

We now learn, through the budget papers, exactly what is planned for Queen Street including a route split and partial use of buses to deal with the shortage of streetcars.  This appears to contradict statements about the Queen car made at TTC meetings and in reports suggesting that the single-route operation would be maintained while various route supervision options were pursued.

Where the TTC will find the extra buses to supplement service on Queen is unknown considering that they don’t have enough to serve their bus network today.

It also appears that any further expansion of RGS beyond its current extent is shelved for the near future at least partly due to budgetary constraints.

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Bus and Operator Shortage Hits Service

On Sunday, February 15, new schedules will be implemented on many routes.  Across the system, many of the peak period improvements from last November are rolled back to reduce the demand for buses and operators.

The bus shortage is easy to understand thanks to the battery problems with the hybrid fleet, but the shortage of operators is more troubling.  Does this represent a problem with recruiting, a higher turnover of staff, a jump in retirements, or some combination of these?  The TTC owes us an explanation if only to temper expectations of service improvements that are practical later in 2009 and beyond.

The cuts will be in place from February through, probably, June 2009 when we would normally see summer service reductions.  The real challenge will come in September when “full” service should return to the system.

February 2009 Service Changes

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Where’s My Streetcar?

Tess Kalinowski, writing in today’s Star, tells us of the job that TTC Route Supervisors have in managing service.  We learn of great hopes for vehicle location technology so that supervisors will actually know where cars might be up and down their lines, but the telling comment comes here:

Frequent mechanical problems mean supervisors have to scramble to find another car. These days, the 30-year-old Rockets are failing so fast the TTC expects to be running buses on some routes by the end of the year to keep service levels up.

“There are days when you’re constantly scrambling to find a piece of equipment,” says [route supervisor Doug] Smith.

This is the reality of TTC operations at a time when the St. Clair line is partly shut down for reconstruction.  A report on fleet plans is due later in 2009 for all modes including streetcars.

Toronto needs to know how its service will be provided, and the streetcar system needs an infusion of confidence.  The last thing we need is the feeling that “streetcars mean bad service” just as we are trying to expand LRT into the Transit City network.

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TTC Service Review Meeting

Grzegorz Radziwonowski passed along the following notes from last night’s annual public meeting re service improvements.

* The people who came to the meeting are much more unhappy with the 504 King Streetcar than with any bus, streetcar, or subway route.

* There continues to be a dislike. at times hatred, of Transit City, LRT ROWs, and Streetcars in general. Many people were proposing the TTC put in Electric Buses (Trackless Trolleys) in the Transit City ROWs, rather than Streetcars.

* At least 3 people were talking about the 30 Lambton leaving High Park Station 4 minutes early during the evenings.

* Apparently buses are to be a part of a second phase of Transit City; however, no further details were given on this.

* When I spoke to some of the TTC planners, they currently want to renovate Bloor-Yonge Station by adding the second (Eastbound) platform at Yonge Station.

* While speaking with planning staff, I also found out that minibuses were unfeasible because the biggest expense would be to pay the drivers (which would be from ATU 113), and that that cost would outweigh any benefits the TTC might gain from reduced fuel costs. They also told me that while they really want Articulated vehicles, they have yet to find one that meets their criteria (I have yet to find out what exactly that criteria is).

* A lot of people wanted either the SRT or 21 Brimley to be extended until the last B-D train arrives at Kennedy. Many of these same people want 133 Neilson to have an express branch, running to Scarborough Town Centre, preferably via Highway 401.

Other smaller issues were raised, but I really can’t list all of them. I only listed either reoccurring ones, or one that would affect Transit for all.

I can’t help feeling sadness and despair that the TTC has done such a thorough job of making streetcars unpopular.  We don’t have enough of them.  The TTC is better at finding excuses for poor service than actually making cars run reliably.

Nobody believes that the Transit City lines can be built quickly and cheaply because the counterexample of St. Clair stares everyone in the face. 

On other notes, the “Transit City Bus Plan” is intended to flag major routes that will be guaranteed good service all the time, with express operations where they are warranted by travel patterns.  This is related to the posts I did a while ago about the 10 and 20 minute networks.  (By the way, those posts were for discussion purposes, not as definitive lists of routes.)

The really big problem with minibuses is that they don’t last anywhere near as long as a full size bus, and the cost over a comparable lifespan can actually be higher.  This depends, of course, on assumptions you make about what is “equivalent”.  The labour issue is a red herring, but is a convenient excuse the TTC can trot out to avoid discussing the issue.  They already operate several “community bus” routes, and labour costs on these are lower than on major routes because the crews are off-peak work which tends to cost less to operate.  Artics, needless to say, are intended for a completely different type of route.

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Mr. Flaherty Discovers Union Station

Tuesday’s budget announcement from Ottawa didn’t surprise me one bit in virtually ignoring transit as a focus for economic stimulus.  Many cities may have a backlog of transit projects they would love to see funded, but most of these projects are well beyond the horizon of what we hope will be a modestly short recession.

Transit needs explicit, ongoing funding, not more one-off handouts because of an economic crisis or an MP/MPP with constituents to please.  Ottawa may come to the table with that some day, but Finance Minister Flaherty seems happy to crow about the gas tax and the GST rebate as if they were new money for cities.  They’re not, and the GST isn’t even vaguely linked to transit spending as one might hope for the gas tax.

Wednesday morning, we heard Flaherty on Metro Morning proclaiming that we would “finally” renovate Union Station to expand capacity.  The tone was of a long-suffering parent finally making good on their offspring’s profligate ways.

Someday, when the Finance Minister has more to do than announce trains for his riding (a proposal that seems to have dropped from view), he might learn that the City of Toronto and GO Transit are already partners in the Union Station renovation.  The details of this have been available on the City’s website for months.  “Now we’re going to take the lead Federally” says Flaherty to expand capacity at Union.

Some lead.  The feds will kick in $75-million, of which $25-million has been on the table snce 2000 as a pledge from Parks Canada for heritage restoration.  The total project is in the half-billion range (details will come out in a few months), and Ottawa’s contribution isn’t even close to the 1/3 level of funding everyone talks about for these partnerships.  For that contribution, Ottawa claims that this is now their project.

As usual, Flaherty dragged out that old chestnut about how if only cities (for which read “Toronto”) would manage their money better, all would be well.  Partnerships with the private sector would bring efficiencies and savings.  That record was broken months ago, and playing it again shows just how bankrupt the Tories are for real ideas.

We thank Mr. Flaherty for his $75-million, but hope that we actually see the money rather than endless bureaucracy to bless funding requests.  As for Flaherty himself, his attitude shows that the finger-in-your-eye style of November’s laughable financial update is alive and well in Ottawa.  Maybe he should be parked in a refurbished RDC in Peterborough waiting for the start of service to Toronto.

Earlier in the same program, I spoke about the budget’s implications for transit in Toronto.  My theme was the need for Toronto and Queen’s Park to stop linking transit plans to federal funding that never arrives.  If an enlightened government someday appears in Ottawa, the real need will be to increase dedicated, ongoing funding such as the gas tax, not project-based schemes that generates fees for engineers, consultants and bureaucrats in grant applications, but little real work.

Queen’s Park and Metrolinx dodged the whole issue of funding their regional plan.  No money will actually appear on the Ontario’s books until lines actually open, and the cost will then be treated as a mortgage, an ongoing debt to be paid down in decades to come.  Metrolinx, likely under Queen’s Park’s orders, played along and left the issue of revenue to pay for all this for the future (beyond the next election).

To its credit, the Metrolinx Board takes a more active stance, and the debates about road tolls, regional sales taxes, or any other alternatives will come sooner rather than later.  If we’re going to commit billions in debt to build all of this infrastructure, we need to commit revenue sources to pay the bills.  Assuming that natural economic growth will magically make the problem go away is a bankrupt policy as we see in every newspaper and every economic forecast.

Life is suddenly much harder for transportation Pooh-Bahs, and they will have to make hard decisions about where to spend money.  It’s easy to put big maps up on the wall while an appreciative crowd oos and ahs about their new transit network.  All those big announcements are a lot smaller than before, and the shortcomings in many plans will be glaringly obvious when we can’t pay for all of them.  Trade-offs and careful study are needed, and that takes more than a superficial road show.

Much energy will be wasted in coming months figuring out how to change Ottawa’s mind.  That may bear fruit in the long run, but we must start thinking about the alternatives.  We cannot put off forever building lines we have needed for a decade or more, and we must decide how, if Ottawa won’t help, we will build a network we can afford.