Finance

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New Trains for TTC’s Line 2 (Corrected)

Updated July 1 at 11:0 am:

  • The section on 2016 budgets has been corrected to show the then almost completed TR train delivery and the proposed T1 replacement project. These were conflated erroneously in the original text.
  • In the evolution of pricing for T1 replacement trains, I erroneously omitted a major change in cost estimates from a report in November 2023 which saw a roughly 50% jump in the cost of new trains. The text of the article has been modified accordingly with changes noted by text strikeouts and italics. My apologies for the error.

TTC’s need for a replacement Line 2 fleet has been known for many years. The “T1” cars were delivered between 1995 and 2001, and they will hit their 30-year design life through the latter 2020s. These cars are often talked of as if they will all be over the hill in 2026, but there actual range runs out to 2031. The important issue is to start deliveries of new cars so that the oldest and least reliable can be retired before they affect service.

Some of the T1s were originally used on Line 4 Sheppard, but they were displaced with the shift to Automatic Train Control on Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina. Sheppard trains run on ATC to reach Davisville Carhouse even though Line 4 itself is manually operated. This change added to the surplus T1 fleet.

When the Scarborough Subway Extension was expected to open in 2026, the extra cars would have provided initial service there, but this is no longer possible because they will age out of use before the line opens.

In the 2018 Capital Budget, presented in the last months of Andy Byford’s tenure as CEO, there are three related items:

  • Purchase of 372 new subway cars (2018 to post 2026)
  • New Subway Maintenance Facility (Property acquisition)
  • Line 2 resignalling (ATC)

The new subway MSF would be on property southwest of Kipling Station, the former CPR Obico Yard, and this has been purchased by the City. At the time, the Relief Line trains were expected to use Greenwood Yard and displace part of the Line 2 fleet, hence the need for a second yard. Moreover, if the new trains were in six-car units like the TRs on Line 1, Greenwood Shops would not be suitable as it was designed for two-car sets.

The clear intent was complete replacement of the T1 fleet starting with design and prototypes, then production deliveries roughly in line with the projected T1 retirement dates.

An “Ooops” In Funding Advocacy?

Updated July 1 at 11:00am: This section has been revised in light of the November 2023 report which used a much higher unit cost/train for the T1 replacements than all previous estimates. If there is an “ooops”, it lies in the use of a lower cost estimate for new trains for an extended period with a very recent jump that increased the unfunded portion of the project. The original estimate would now only cover the cost of replacement trains for Line 2 at its pre-pandemic level of service, but not any expansion/extension trains.

For many years, the plan for new trains required 62 trains (372 cars), a one-for-one replacement of the T1s, to re-equip Line 2 Bloor-Danforth and 18 trains to provide extra trains for service improvements on Line 1. Of the 62 trains on Line 2, 55 would provide the existing Kennedy-Kipling service, and 7 were headed for the Scarborough extension. In the most recent iteration, there are 55 trains for Line 2. The 7 SSE trains are combined with the 18 Line 1 trains to give 25 trains for unspecified future needs.

The full history is tracked later in the article.

Between the 2023 and 2024 budgets the project went from 80 trains for $2.487 billion in 2023 to 55 trains for $2.4-2.5 billion in 2024. Materials produced in support of the purchase and of lobbying efforts to gain federal funding are quite clear that only 55 trains are involved, not 80. This effectively raises the price per train by 50 per cent.

The following text is no longer appropriate, but has been left as a matter of record. Apologies for the error.

Conversely, if the real intent is to buy 80 trains, then pitching the needed subsidy as being only for the Line 2 trains misrepresents what is really happening. This would be an order both for the Bloor-Danforth line’s state of good repair and for accommodation of future extensions and growth.

The TTC has yet to produce updated demand projections for its subway system in a post-covid environment, and it is unclear how many trains will be required to address demand growth and expansion.

Meanwhile, a call for one third federal funding for a 55 train project at $758 million misrepresents the scope and purpose of the new trains. The scope of the planned TTC order is shown below, but with all of the cost allocated against Line 2.

However, elsewhere the plan describes the purpose of this investment as:

Purchase of new subway trains to replace the aging T1 trains, meet ATC requirements and align the fleet with ridership growth forecasts [p. 44 of the 2024 15-Year Capital Plan].

There is a fundamental discrepancy between the claimed need for and funding of new trains between 2023 and 2024 budgets. If the pricing for an 80-train order in years 2023 and before is correct, then the available City and Provincial funding would pay for the 55 Line 2 trains.

The Capital Plan and Shifting Priorities

The 15-Year Capital Plan landed with a thud when it was introduced as part of the 2019 budget. Unlike previous versions of capital plans, it included everything the TTC thought was necessary whether money was available to fund it or not. The price tag was a big shock, over three times the size of the conventional capital plan. This has since grown to four times as the appetite for capital projects goes up, but funding does not.

Transit priority decisions were a very expensive shell game involving the timing and cost of transit projects. Until Premier Ford uploaded four major expansion schemes (Ontario Line, formerly the Relief Line, Eglinton Crosstown, Scarborough and Yonge North) in 2020, there simply was not enough money on the table to pay the City’s share for everything. Also competing for funding were SmartTrack stations, Eglinton East LRT and Waterfront East LRT, not to mention additional streetcars for service expansion, and bus replacements and migration to an all-electric fleet.

The 2019 plan shifted the purchase of new subway cars to post-2028. In its place was a 10-year life extension program for the T1 fleet stretching it out into the 2030s. The scope of the Line 2 ATC project was also adjusted because the T1 fleet cannot be modified to run with ATC signalling.

This achieved a reduction in capital requirements in the short term, but gambled on the viability of the T1s and the old block signal system on Line 2 surviving reliably into the late 2030s. This scheme was short-lived, but it served a purpose of reducing the TTC’s apparent capital requirements to make room for other projects, notably John Tory’s SmartTrack.

Both the provincial and federal government made commitments to some projects based on political considerations and the then-stated priorities of Toronto Council. One casualty of the proposal to defer new trains for ten years was funding for that project. For a time, it went from a “must have” to a future need.

By 2020, the plan included a proposal to buy replacement trains in the 2026-2030 time frame depending on funding, and deleted the life extension program for the T1s.

Ontario signed on for its share of a new fleet. Add-on orders will furnish trains for the Scarborough and Yonge North extensions that will cost less than they would as small, free-standing buys.

Replacement of the Line 2 fleet cannot proceed as a single project. The signal system dates from the 1960s and uses old technology. This presents both a maintenance and reliability challenge for the TTC and limits the frequency of service to what is possible with conventional block signals. That design holds trains further apart than an automatic train control system using “moving” blocks that can allow trains to pull closer together based on their speed and fine-grained location of their positions. Although new trains can be manually operated with old signals (as occurred on Line 1 during its transition to ATC), new signals require new trains.

By 2021, the new yard at Kipling had been pushed beyond the capital plan’s 10-year horizon. The Relief Line would have used TTC subway cars, but was replaced by the Ontario Line. Metrolinx claimed, falsely, that the OL would use newer up-to-date technology than the TTC would have provided. (This was a case of contrasting a brand new line with the oldest of TTC subway vehicles, signalling and operations.)

Originally the pressure for the Kipling yard came from using part of Greenwood Yard for the Downtown Relief Line, but the Ontario Line has its own Maintenance and Storage Facility at Thorncliffe Park. Trains for the Scarborough extension can be fitted within existing yards and spare tracks, but any service increase beyond pre-covid levels will trigger the need for a western yard. (A separate northern yard is under study as part of the Line 1 extension to Richmond Hill.)

Greenwood Shops, like the B-D line, is 60 years old and in need of overhaul and upgrades. Part of the original plan for a Kipling facility was to free up space for this work at Greenwood by reducing demand on the yard and shop space. However, with the deferral of Kipling, the Greenwood upgrades will occur while the yard is stuffed with the existing fleet and working through the transition to new trains. This saves money on a new yard at the expense of operational complexity and probably a longer period for upgrades than would otherwise be needed.

Federal Funding for T1 Replacements

The federal government has not yet committed funds to the T1 replacement project. Their current proposal involves a permanent transit fund available country-wide beginning in 2026. Whether the Trudeau government will still be in office to make any payments from such a fund is in some doubt.

Transit systems, not just Toronto’s, would like to pre-book payments from this fund so that they will be sure of the case flow in a few years and can launch major projects such as the T1 replacement now. The feds have been silent on that request although the TTC claims that discussions are underway.

The Federal Permanent Transit Fund (PTF) is set to provide new funding in 2026. Early commitments of funding under the Permanent Transit Fund (PTF) are needed this year, by opening up the intake process for critical in flight projects such as new subway trains. This is a request being made by all major transit agencies1 (STM, TransLink), and the Canadian Urban Transit Association2. Even if federal funding does not flow before 2026, having a firm approval of funding to be allocated from the PTF program will allow the TTC to launch the procurement. [Backgrounder, p. 2]

Even assuming that the fund will exist when it is needed, booking projects against it has a downside in that money earmarked for the subway cars will not be available for other projects. There is also a basic problem that the fund is thought to be too small, but that is a separate matter depending on government priorities well beyond the next election.

Local priorities can have their own effect in misdirecting spending. The SmartTrack Stations program will build five additional GO stations (East Harbour, Liberty Village, Bloor-Lansdowne, St. Clair-Old Weston and Finch-Kennedy) at a total cost of $1.689 billion of which $585 million comes from the Federal government and $878 million from the City. This arrangement came into effect in April 2018, the period when the TTC downplayed the importance of new trains thereby making room for John Tory’s signature project. A few years later, priorities changed again, but the federal money was already committed to SmartTrack.

Toronto is using scarce transit funds, regardless of their source, paying over $300 million per station for what should be a GO Transit project.

Shifting priorities have delayed other projects and/or changed their scope, and federal money that might have been scooped if projects actually were underway sat on the table. Some of this is now rolled into the overall transit fund, and it will be up to Toronto to actually launch projects to use whatever has been allocated. Toronto will have to actually decide what it can afford within available funding rather than assuming other governments will always shell out, and that they will keep funding “commitments” alive while Council dithers about whose ward gets the next transit project.

Evolution of the Proposed Purchase

The replacement of the T1 fleet is a high priority for the City and TTC. Two documents in the Board’s June 2024 agenda covered this in some detail:

There is a major change between past year budget presentations on the subject of new trains and information in these reports.

Updated July 1 at 11:00am: This change was first reported in November 2023 when the estimated cost of new trains was substantially higher than in all previous reports:

The table below summarizes the information.

Updated July 1 at 11:00am: Estimated cost of 62 T1 replacement trains in 2016 added. Updated pricing from November 2023 added.

($ billion)T1 Replacement TrainsLine 1 Growth TrainsT1 Life ExtensionNew Trains (Total)
2016$1.737 (62)
2019$0.068 (*)$0.430$0.720
2020$2.270 (62) (**)$0.500 (18)$0.710
2021$1.742 (62)$0.501 (18)$2.243B (80)
2022$1.600 (62)$0.720 (18)$2.320 (80)
2023$1.718 (62)$0.769 (18)$2.487 (80)
2023 (Nov)$2.222 (55)$1.010 (25)$3.232 (80)
2024$2.4-2.5B (55)

Notes:

  • (*) T1 payment in shown in the 2019 budget is a downpayment that would be made at the start of the procurement contract.
  • (**) The value of the T1 replacement shown in 2020 is high because this assumes the contract would not start until much later in the decade, and includes inflation.

Two things have happened:

  • 7 of the 62 Line 2 T1 replacement trains have become Line 1 growth trains. These were originally trains for Scarborough, but responsibility for them has shifted to Metrolinx. However, the TTC has not reduced the total order size to compensate for this.
  • The background information on the replacement trains talks only of the 55 Line 2 trains, but uses the full $2.4-$2.5 billion cost reflecting the revised unit cost from the November 2023 report.

In fact about one third of the train order would be used for Line 1 growth, but the total dollar value is erroneously claimed to be only for the Line 2 trains. This is a deeply misleading presentation.

The remainder of this article looks at the history of the T1 fleet and the shifting plans for its replacement including the budget and fleet plans for Lines 1 and 2. For an extensive discussion of subway fleet history, see Transit Toronto’s site.

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TTC Service Changes Effective June 23, 2024

The detailed list of changes arrived from the TTC quite late compared to normal practice, only a few days before they went into effect. Hence the delay in my regular detailed post here.

Many summer service reductions occur with the June 23 schedules. These are common, and the only question will be which of them will be fully reversed in the fall.

Construction

Ongoing construction projects continue to require diversions and bus replacements for streetcars. The timing and duration of these leaves a lot to be desired, but that is a topic for a separate article.

In previous articles, I covered the resumption of streetcar service on St. Clair and the suspension of service on Spadina. See:

Streetcar Network Configuration

The streetcar route layout is shown in the maps below for daytime and overnight service.

Jane Station Construction

Reconstruction of Jane Station Loop will shift the terminus of all services to Old Mill and Runnymede Stations. The work was planned to start with the new schedule period, but has been delayed, and so there will be interim arrangements. The route plan during this work is shown below:

The 35/935 Jane services will dead head to Old Mill Station and will not pick up or drop off passengers there. The 26 Dupont and 55 Warren Park will remain in service to Runnymede Station to provide an accessible connection.

The 71 Runnymede and 77 Swansea routes will be interlined and they will be interlined to free up platform space at Runnymede Station for other routes. The arrangements for Jane, Runnymede and Old Mill Stations are shown below.

The TTC’s construction page for Jane Station is on their “Updates” page and the information is not linked to the affected routes as a service advisory. This is a standard problem with the TTC’s website.

Bus Service to High Park

Although the TTC had planned to cancel the 203 High Park bus in 2024, it has been reinstated through efforts by the City. The route will operate with a Wheel-Trans bus from High Park Station providing accessibility to the park even though it is closed to regular vehicular traffic. The bus will run every 20 minutes on weekends from 8am to 7pm until Labour Day, Monday, September 2.

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TTC Draft Financial Results for 2023

The TTC’s Audit & Risk Management Committee met on June 5, 2024 with a lengthy agenda. This article includes comments on:

For the financial statements, I have attempted to explain the difference in presentation under the Public Sector Accounting Standards the TTC uses and the more familiar annual budget. The standards require the capital and operating streams to be consolidated including showing assets such as vehicles and infrastructure on the balance sheet. This arrangement swamps the operating results with the much larger capital values even though TTC’s assets are almost entirely funded by subsidies, and they do not represent a value which can be used offset operating costs.

There is a new provision in the capital accounts this year for the disposal cost of assets. This recognizes the future cost of removal and remediation including environmental exposures.

Covid relief has been shown in the statements to distinguish revenues and costs specific to the pandemic, but future budgets and financial reports will no longer do this because the special provincial and federal subsidies ended in 2022.

There was a $38 million operating surplus in 2023 due to unused provision for opening of Lines 5 and 6, offset by extra costs to operate the SRT replacement service sooner than planned.

I have included tables from the financial statement notes showing the breakdown of various subsidies as this area is poorly understood. Provincial gas tax comes to the City and portion of this is allocated to TTC operations with the remainder going to capital. Federal gas tax, now renamed the Canada Community-Based Fund, goes entirely to the capital program.

The TTC accounts do not include provincial projects such as the Ontario Line, nor the City’s SmartTrack program which is implemented by Metrolinx with funding from various sources notably Toronto’s City Building Fund.

The Draft Annual Report does not contain much at this point, but will eventually include the approved financial statements. It is the usual collection of pretty pictures and good news stories sure to warm the hearts of TTC Board members who don’t look beyond the surface.

The report contains a 10-year summary of key system statistics which I have included in the article as well as percentage changes in various factors over time. One item of note is the growth in staffing over ten years to operate roughly the same amount of service. Part of this due to changes in system scope (a larger subway system) and the pandemic-era problem that the staff needed to support fleet and infrastructure does not decline even though there are fewer riders.

The bus fleet today is also larger than in 2014. This does not reflect increased service, but rather a higher proportion of buses idle as maintenance spares. The Annual report includes different claims about the fleet size and overstates the number of green buses the TTC actually owns. I have asked the TTC for clarification of these numbers, but they have not replied.

The TTC is taking delivery of hundreds of new buses through 2024-25 that will replace older inactive vehicles, but there is no budget plan to fund operation of more service. The report crows about the greening of the fleet while neglecting to address how it will be operated.

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Moving Forward With Transit

Just before midnight on June 6, the Toronto Transit Commission and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 announced that they had a tentative agreement for a new three-year contract. Further work continued beyond the midnight deadline to reach a proposal the union executive could support.

No information has been released, and the deal is described as a “framework” with details to be finalized before the package goes to union members and the TTC Board for ratification. However, both union leadership and TTC management sound hopeful for a settlement.

This was not the situation only days earlier when Local 113 stated that there was little progress on major issues, notably job security, and transit riders braced for a possible strike.

By comparison with previous TTC labour negotiations, this round did not spill over into public rounds of finger-pointing. At the political level, pressure was not overt, although behind the scenes guidance must have affected bargaining. This bodes well for a less contentious relationship than would exist with polarizing, blowhard media statements that can undermine whatever trust might exist between negotiators.

On CBC’s Metro Morning, Local 113 President Marvin Alfred noted a shift in TTC negotiating posture to remove management conditions attached to some union proposals that would have limited their benefit. This led to a tentative agreement. What triggered this change is not public, but that was key to unlocking the negotiations.

Assuming that the framework evolves quickly into an approved contract, the focus now must turn to the future of transit in Toronto. The TTC faces major financial problems, but lurking behind these are issues with service quality, maintenance and TTC management culture.

On the financial side, common discussions focus on the Capital budget including the backlog of “state of good repair” funding, notably for a new Line 2 fleet of trains. However, the more pressing challenge lies with the Operating budget that is funded primarily by the City of Toronto and fares. Through the pandemic, special federal and provincial funding allowed service to remain frequent, but this revenue has ended. Any policy to maintain, let alone improve service falls to the City and to riders.

The options are not fully understood, but with 2025 budget planning now underway, it is vital that any debate be well-informed. For many years, the TTC budget landed with a thud on the Board’s public agenda in December or January with all significant decisions about funding, service and maintenance solidly baked in. After the annual charade of public consultation, Board and Council tweaks, the budget sailed through. At best, one might see requests for options going into the the next year’s process.

TTC has been without a Budget Committee of any significance for years. Now is the time to create one and to ensure that it actually meets for substantive debate. There must be open discussion of options. The TTC’s Five Year Service Plan includes some costed proposals, but other issues such as fare structure, service quality and reliability need review at the same time. The Board has a bad habit of cherry-picking items for debate in isolation from the larger context.

Major issues for the union are wages, understandably, and job security. On the wage side, the recently published TTC 2023 draft annual report includes a table showing the hourly cost of wages and benefits from 2014 to 2023. Over that period, this value rose from $49.01 to $61.67, a ten-year increase of almost 26%. Individual annual changes varied considerably with some years seeing values well under 2%.

From a system cost point of view, the wage and benefit rate does not tell the whole story because the combined effect of traffic congestion and more generous terminal recovery times in schedules push down the amount of service delivered per vehicle hour. Putting it simply, if the average speed of buses goes down by 1%, then 1% more vehicle hours are needed just to maintain the same service. Unless there are offsetting service cuts, this adds to service costs beyond the basic hourly rates and benefits. Management can claim an improvement in service operated, measured in hours, while scheduled frequency and capacity can actually decline.

Job security is also important because of creeping outsourcing of work from formerly union jobs to outside contractors. This began with some of the simpler tasks such as bus cleaning, but more recently regional service integration schemes raise the question of which transit operators (and their respective staff) will provide service in Toronto. Current proposals involve minor parts of the system, but the clear intent is to shift TTC costs to other providers.

Service quality is a big issue for riders, and this is an area where both management and the union must co-operate for improvement. There is a need for honesty in reporting about crowding levels and reliability about which I have written many times before. Management cites all-day averages and uses a measure of reliability that does not reflect real-world rider experience. Crowding is directly related because bunching produces uneven vehicle loads with most riders on crowded buses. Management must accept the need to manage service and report on its actual quality. “On time” performance metrics disguise actual quality problems including vehicles running in groups for extended periods.

Options for increasing service must recognize the large pool of spare trains, buses and streetcars available to provide more frequent service today. “We don’t have enough resources” is a common response to calls for better service, and years ago this applied to vehicles and garage space. Today it applies mainly to budget constraints, not physical fleet and infrastructure. Toronto might not be able to afford to run all of the vehicles it owns, but that decision should be made openly recognizing implications for the attractiveness and future growth of the transit option.

Maintenance is a big issue both for the fleet and infrastructure. This affects both reliability and safety. Many factors are at work including budget limits and an extended period when the TTC did not have to field full service during the pandemic. Some maintenance can be put off for a short term, in a pinch, but when the new, lower quality becomes normal, climbing back to a once-demanded level can be hard. An organization can forget its standards, or adjust them to fit available funding and hope for the best.

There is no question that system inspection and maintenance are not keeping up with current conditions as we have seen in reviews of the Scarborough RT, subway track and streetcar overhead areas. What we do not know is how pervasive these issues are in other parts of the transit system, nor what other problems will threaten rider confidence in the TTC’s ability to provide safe, dependable service.

Finally, there is the long-standing matter of TTC culture. It is no secret that the top-down management style has hurt the organization, cost the system in lost expertise and corporate memory, and fostered a climate where appearance of success takes priority. TTC messaging overstates the progress in post-pandemic service recovery without acknowledging the decline in service riders actually experience. Maintenance problems are hidden until events force them into the open.

The Board, after years of ceding power to management, must now shift to a more hands-on role if only to ensure that the City and transit riders are not blind-sided, that key issues are not downplayed. This could work against a political incentive to get “back on track” and report good news as soon and as often as possible. The Board needs management it can trust, but also the political support to be open and honest about what the transit system needs.

With labour issues more-or-less settled, Toronto must turn to rebuilding and expanding its transit system. Speeches and plans about improvements are worthless without honesty, transparency, funding and sustained commitment. Plans for subway lines in the 2030s make for good press, at least among those who only look for the photos ops, but they don’t carry riders today, let alone address issues with changing travel demands where suburban travel is as important as trips downtown.

Does Toronto really want better transit?

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The State of Disrepair (II)

The extended shutdown of Line 2 on May 13 brought the TTC’s work car fleet into the spotlight thanks to multiple equipment failures leading to hydraulic fluid leaks.

In the management presentation, the average age of that fleet was cited as 17 years, but these cars vary greatly in age. Here are the affected cars.

VehicleBuiltFunctionLeak Incident Dates
RT-411993Tie TamperApr. 2/24 & May 16/24
RT-171996Tunnel WasherJan. 17/24
RT-71998LocomotiveFeb. 10/24
RT-562006Vacuum & Drain CleaningJan. 14/24 & May 13/24
RT-842011Vacuum CarMay 15/24

Replacement of RT-41 with a new car was proposed in the 2018 Capital Budget along with several other new and replacement cars. The intent was to refresh the fleet and increase capacity to perform more work on the expanding subway network. Most of this program was deferred under CEO Rick Leary, although a second Tie Tamper, RT-21, does now appear in the illustrated list of work cars. RT-41 is well overdue for replacement.

Inspection of all work cars began a few days after the May 13 incident. Sources indicate that fewer than one third of the three dozen cars reviewed in the first two days passed inspection.

Planned work on Line 1 on the May 18-19 weekend was deferred, and it is unclear how the sidelining of RT-41 and other cars might affect planned track repairs.

Questions for the TTC

On May 22, I wrote a series of questions to TTC Media Relations attempting to get an official version of what I had heard from sources. Here are the questions.

  1. Can you confirm the failure rate for inspections (over 2/3)?
  2. Has all of the fleet been inspected now and what are the results?
  3. Will further adjustments be required in maintenance plans?
  4. A key vehicle that was not available last weekend was RT-41 the tamper car. According to the fleet diagram included in the board presentation there is another tamper car RT-21. What is its status?
  5. In 2018 the capital budget included a multi-year program to replace elderly work cars and expand the fleet including [replacement of] RT-41, but this program was repeatedly pushed into future years. What is its status?
  6. Since the pandemic the budget blue books have not been available, although there was talk of an e-version of them. What is the current status?

The TTC’s response on the afternoon of May 22 was not very revealing:

As you know from the Board meeting, we’ve already started the deep dive with external consultants AND our own staff have enhanced our proactive inspections on the workcar fleet.

The results, outcomes and findings will first be shared with our Board when they are known.

I can say that your source has misinformed you in as much as we have not yet inspected the entire fleet as this is a time-consuming process that sometimes requires workcars being shunted from one location to another.

As deficiencies are identified, they are corrected before being the work cars are put into service.

The TTC’s response was less than helpful for all questions:

  1. The TTC did not address the failure rate for cars that had been inspected.
  2. The TTC claimed my source was incorrect, but misrepresented the question. In fact I asked whether the inspections had been completed, and indirectly they confirmed that the answer is “no”.
  3. Not answered.
  4. Not answered. Tamper RT-21 is a comparatively new vehicle (it does not appear in 2018 fleet lists). It is not clear why it was unavailable when tamper RT-41 was sidelined.
  5. Not answered. The repeated deferral of this project is a matter of record within the budget papers from 2017-2024.
  6. Not answered. The significance of the “blue books” (so named because of the colour of the binders that held them) is that they included detailed descriptions of all capital projects and their status well beyond information in budgets or quarterly financial reports. Before the pandemic, these were routinely provided on request, but I have not been able to obtain them since 2019.

Most of the questions have nothing to do with the “deep dive” into fleet condition, but the TTC has used a simplistic response to dismiss all questions whether they relate to the deep dive or not. The one “answer” attempted to discredit a statement I did not make, and by extension the entire sequence.

Maybe, somewhere, there is a Board member who will demand answers.

Reduced Speed Zones

The tables below track the Reduced Speed Zones where track is awaiting repair. This is an updated version since the previous article. Depending on how your browser presents the tables, you may have to scroll to the right to see the most recent entries.

Although many of the entries from early 2024 have cleared off, others appear suggesting that inspections are uncovering new problem areas and adding them to the list. Little has changed through the month of May.

Source: TTC Reduced Speed Zones Page

Line 1Jan 18Feb 2Feb 12Mar 7Mar 12Mar 14Mar 21Apr 29May 8May 17May 22
Hwy 407 to VaughanNB
Sheppard W to WilsonNBNBNB
Wilson to YorkdaleSBSBSBSB
Yorkdale to Lawrence WSBSBSBSB
Eglinton W to St. Clair WNBNBNB
St. Clair W to DupontNBSBSBSBSB
Spadina to St. GeorgeBWBWBW
St. George to MuseumNBNBNB
St. Andrew to UnionBWBWSBSBSBSBSB
Union to KingNBBWNBNBNBNBSBSBSBSB
College to WellesleyBWBWBW
Bloor to RosedaleNBNBNBNBNBNBNBNB
Summerhill to St. ClairBWBWNB
St. Clair to DavisvilleBWBWBWBWBWSB
Davisville to EglintonBWSB
Lawrence to York MillsNBNBNBNBNB
York Mills to SheppardNBNBNBNBNBNBNB
North York Centre to FinchNBNB
NB = Northbound SB = Southbound BW = Both Ways
Line 2Jan 18Feb 2Feb 12Mar 7Mar 12Mar 14Mar 21Apr 29May 8May 17May 22
Royal York to JaneBWBW
Runnymede to High ParkWB
Keele to Dundas WestBWBWEBEBEB
Sherbourne to Castle FrankEBEB
Castle Frank to ChesterEBEBEBEBEBEBEB
Chester to BroadviewWB
Greenwood to CoxwellEB
Coxwell to WoodbineEBEBEB
Woodbine to Main StreetEB
Victoria Park to WardenEBBW
Warden to KennedyWB
EB = Eastbound WB = Westbound BW = Both Ways

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TTC Doubles Down on Service Change Misinformation

In a recent “Stakeholder Update” email, the TTC reiterates misleading claims about the service changes implemented on May 12.

Significant Service Increases as of May 12

As of May 12, TTC has TTC increased scheduled service on major routes, delivering more frequent and reliable trips, shorter wait times, and more room for customers on board. The latest round of service increases will bring service to 96% of pre-pandemic levels, the highest since 2019. 24 bus routes now have improved service, mostly in off-peak periods, providing more room on board and improving more than 140,000 daily customer trips.

I reviewed the changes in a previous article showing that in many cases service is actually less frequent than it was before. See:

TTC quotes service as being at 96% of pre-pandemic levels. This is measured in vehicle or train hours, not by the actual frequency of service. Some of the changes use additional vehicle hours to address traffic congestion stretching existing service further apart to give longer scheduled trip times. With less frequent buses, these changes do not provide “more room on board”.

The TTC claims that by improving schedule reliability, they simply reflect actual operating conditions and that the former service did not match schedules. This might be true, but still does not reflect the provision of more service measured as buses/hour past your stop.

The tiresome point about this is that one expects spin from what is a “communications” piece telling the official story and putting the TTC in the best possible light. For years the TTC Board under former Mayors has been content to lap up this and other management tales, but an organization hoping to win back riders cannot start by overselling its wares.

The TTC has severe budget problems, but these are not helped by overly rosy claims about improvements that, if anything, undercut calls for better funding. It’s easy and popular to slag the Feds when they don’t belly up to the bar on capital funding, but this applies equally to the City and Province on the operating side.

Riders may see the ads touting better service, but like shoppers lured into a store with a glitzy window display, they soon find what is really on offer.

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Hydraulic Oil Spills on the Subway

Subway service on the central portion of Line 2 Bloor-Danforth was suspended for over 12 hours on Monday, May 13 due to a spill of hydraulic fluid on the tracks. The replacement bus service was swamped by the combination of subway demand and congestion on Danforth Avenue and Bloor Street. The situation was compounded by changing and incomplete information about the extent and potential duration of the problem.

This was initially described as a spill somewhere between Sherbourne and Castle Frank Stations with the impression that the directly affected area was small. In fact, the volume was large, 200L of hydraulic fluid, and the area ran from Spadina to Greenwood Yard (east of Donlands Station). Trains could not operate safely until the rails were cleaned and operators could brake with confidence that trains would actually stop correctly.

This was not the first such incident. At a TTC Board Meeting earlier in 2024, ATU Local 113 had raised the issue of operational safety after a similar, albeit smaller problem in January at Eglinton West Station. Following the May 13 spill, the ATU wrote to the TTC Board raising basic questions about the incident, and by implication how well-informed the Board actually was about ongoing issues with subway safety.

At the May 16 Board meeting, management gave an extensive presentation about hydraulic fluid leaks and the recent increase in the frequency of these events. It is not clear whether such a detailed presentation would have occurred without the ATU going directly to Board members. Management’s credibility and transparency have been open to question following a near-miss incident at Osgoode Station that went unreported to the Board for almost a year, as well as track and infrastructure problems including the SRT derailment, and the need for ongoing slow orders due to problems with subway track.

CEO Rick Leary has retained external consultants, Hatch LTK, to review these incidents, and there will be a peer review by APTA (American Public Transit Association).

A much broader concern is subway delays of various types and how they are handled. Some have external causes (passengers wandering at track level, for example), but some are “own goals” in the sense that they arise from operational or infrastructure issues that could have been prevented. Whatever the reason, all of them strain the subway’s ability to provide reliable service. This works directly against the drive to restore transit’s credibility and attract new and returning riders.

Far more is needed than free Wi-Fi here and a new kiosk there. Creature comforts are nice, but the service must be trustworthy. The TTC’s fundamental job is to move people. The lion’s share of delays might be due to external factors beyond the TTC’s control, but how they react to delays is key.

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Three Views of TTC Growth

Growth of transit ridership is a subject often discussed in the abstract, but rarely with specifics and particularly with no thought to the financial implications for Toronto and supporting “partners” in other governments. Transit is one of those “good things” we will support at least with fantasy maps of future networks and even billions here and there for construction. Actual transit service is quite another matter.

This issue surfaces again with two 5-year plans at the TTC Board meeting of May 16, 2024:

Both plans talk about many things other than ridership, and I will leave a wider review for another day. The Corporate Plan includes one of those great time-wasters of management navel-gazing, new vision and mission statements.

The new vision statement: Moving Toronto towards a more equitable, sustainable and prosperous future.

The new mission statement: To serve the needs of transit riders by providing a safe, reliable, efficient, and accessible mass public transit service through a seamless integrated network to create access to opportunity for everyone.

    The concept of actual growth is buried in five “strategic directions” rather than being the one overarching goal.

    1. Build a Future-Ready Workforce.
    2. Attract New Riders, Retain Customer Loyalty.
    3. Place Transit at the Centre of Toronto’s Future Mobility.
    4. Transform and Modernize for a Changing Environment.
    5. Address the Structural Fiscal Imbalance.

    In simpler days, this was expressed by the motto still found on the TTC coat of arms:

    “Service Courtesy Safety”

    The Service and Customer Experience Plan, true to its name, actually focuses on service although one might hope it would aim higher if only to inform debate on possible futures for Toronto. It does include a number of options including costs projected out five years. This is a welcome reminder of the 2003 Ridership Growth Strategy that started from the premise “here is what we could achieve” rather than “we cannot afford to even talk about improvements”.

    Not mentioned in either of these is the TransformTO scheme for massive increase in transit service and ridership. TTC staff included this in a December 2023 update on their Electric Bus Plan. There has been some confusion about whether this is actually an approved Council policy, and I understand that it is not. In any event, it is another vision of the future, and it would incur very high costs for additional fleet, infrastructure and service.

    A vital point about service plans is that rapid transit construction alone will not achieve high growth both because trains must run in those tunnels to carry riders, but also because those riders do not all live and work at stations. The service to and between the rapid transit lines is as important as the shiny new stations and tunnels.

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    Service Improvements That Aren’t

    Today, May 12, the TTC implemented many changes to its services as detailed in my previous article.

    Earlier in the week, on May 7, the Mayor Chow and TTC Chair Myers, among others, held a press conference to announce widespread service improvements, and the illustration below has appear in the Mayor’s social media feeds.

    There is only one problem: several of the routes on this map will see service cuts, not increases. In some cases, there is a service increase, but on only part of a route or at a limited time through the week. The chart below illustrates where and when the changes actually happen.

    In parliamentary language, one might say that “the Mayor was badly advised”. However, it is her name and face on an announcement that simply is not true.

    TTC management has a long history of spinning service changes to emphasize the gains, such as they might be, while downplaying the cuts. The May 2024 changes were particularly challenging to anyone who wanted the details because the memo containing this information was not released until the afternoon of May 10. Normally it is available one to two weeks in advance. It may have suited the stage management of the press conference to keep it under wraps.

    995 York Mills Express was singled out in the press announcement because of the doubling of weekday midday service from 20′ to 10′, but that is a rare example of a significant improvement. It is not typical of the actual changes to the bus network as a whole.

    I have already written about the so-called service recovery based on vehicle hours, not on actual service frequency. The TTC itself has noted a decline in traffic and transit speeds in recent years. That, combined with more generous provisions for delay recovery time has pushed up the number of hours even while some routes see less frequent service.

    This chart and the following text have been corrected to show changes to 939 Finch East Express which were missed in the first version.

    A detailed route-by-route review follows the “more” break.

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    TTC Service Changes Effective May 12, 2024

    The TTC has announced many service changes on Sunday, May 12. As I write this, they have issued a press release and have a page listing the changes on their website that, I must say, conveys more detailed information than usually appears in their notices.

    There are more improvements than cuts in this round, but they lie mainly outside of the peak period.

    They have not yet issued the detailed list of changes from which I normally build a spreadsheet comparing old and new headways, travel times and vehicle allocations. When this is available, I will update this article with the usual spreadsheet. I hope to get the details tomorrow (May 8).

    Updated May 10, 2024 at 10:00 am: The TTC has still not released the detailed memo describing the changes. This is not merely an inconvenience to that pesky blogger SwanBoatSteve, but it affects internal processes for customer information online and at stops. Customer info is always cited as an important part of plans to improve service, but actual delivery can be hamstrung by delays in key parts of the process.

    Updated May 10, 2024 at 5:00 pm: The detailed memo of changes was issued mid-afternoon today. This article will be updated first with the addition of maps, and a correction to the 104/184 service information. Over the weekend, I will build the usual spreadsheet showing the details of all changes. Stay tuned.

    Updated May 10, 2024 at 5:15 pm: Construction project list added. Tables of service hours and fleet allocations added.

    Updated May 11, 2024 at 7:40 am: 39 Finch East change revised from “Weekday” to “Saturday”.

    Updated May 11, 2024 at 11:55 pm: Spreadsheet with details of all service changes added.

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