Finance

by

Frozen Fares? Frozen Service? Frozen Riders?

Yesterday’s announcement that TTC fares will remain unchanged through 2009 warmed the hearts of many including a packed room at spacing magazine’s birthday party last night.  However popular a fare freeze may be, it’s only part of the story.

Through 2008, the TTC implemented many service improvements to catch up with a backlog of overcrowding and to restore hours of service and a half-hour maximum headway to the network.  There’s more to do including further catch-ups on crowding problems and proposals for even better service.  I will turn to that topic in a separate post.

Meanwhile, the cynics among us have been here before.  Freezing fares sounds great until you’re waiting for a bus that never shows up, or is packed to the roof when it arrives, because the TTC can’t afford to run more service.  Past years have shown what happens when the “you can just stretch the money you have” attitude prevails — service and maintenance deteriorate.

If City Council wants to freeze fares, they have every right to expect that the TTC will go through its books carefully to look for spending that can actually be deferred or eliminated, but this must not be a shield to hide a subsidy freeze.  More service costs more money, and we all know that the TTC does not make a profit on most of its riders.  Council cannot bask in the glory of a rejuvenated TTC and the Transit City mantra but refuse to pay the price of a better transit system.

I await details of the 2009 City operating budget and proposed subsidy arrangements with much interest.

by

TTC Adjusts 2009 Budget For Slightly Harder Times

At the recent TTC Board meeting, staff presented an update on 2008 ridership and on projections for 2009.

This review began with a look back to the recession of the early 1990s when the system lost 90-million rides from 1990 to 1996, a full 40-million of them in one year, 1991.  That year saw a combination of falling employment (6.3%), a fare increase (7.3%), service cuts (7.4%) and a 7-day strike.

Before I continue, one important point about service cuts.  The TTC always talks about vehicle mileage, but they mix subway together with surface operations, and the subway acts as a buffer in the statistics.  Most of the cuts actually come on the surface, but the real impact is masked in the totals.

For 2009, the TTC is taking a much different approach.  Although employment may fall, the TTC is not expecting this to be a major factor.  No fare increase is contemplated, and service is actually expanding, not contracting.  Labour unrest is unlikely.  A telling comment in the presentation says just about everything that needs saying about transit “budgeting” in the 1990s.

Lesson learned in terms of forecasting ridership:  Employment, fare increases/subsidy level and service are all interrelated in terms of ridership impacts.  Treatment of one element cannot be considered in isolation or results can be disastrous in terms of significant ridership declines.

Tell that to past Chief General Managers, Commissioners, Councillors and Premiers.  One might think that it did not take us until late 2008 to understand this basic fact of transit planning.

Meanwhile, the TTC has removed the “economic growth” factor in its ridership estimates for 2009.  Riding is now projected to grow from 467-million (probable actual for 2008) to 473-million, with revenue growing from $837-million to $851-million.

The increase for 2009 comprises various factors:

  • 3-million for riding growth due to expanded service
  • 2-million for the absence of a strike
  • 2-million for savings in fraud on adult tickets
  • 1-million from expansion of the U-Pass program

Less:

  • 1-million from riding lost through charges for parking lots
  • 1-million due to calendar adjustment

The real question will be what will happen if the economic impact on riding is greater than expected.  How will discretionary trips by locals and riding brought by tourists be affected?  There is some padding available in the service budget with provisions such as the next round of Ridership Growth Strategy rollout (the 20-minute maximum headway).  If push comes to shove, this could be deferred, just as RGS has been pushed back so many times in the past.

by

Express and Premium Fare Buses

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.

by

iPhone Schedule Data, But Not From The TTC (Update 2)

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”.

by

Transit’s Lost Decade Updated: 1990 vs 2008

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.

by

Ridership Growth Service Changes in Late November 2008 (Updated)

After many, many years, the service improvements promised by the Ridership Growth Strategy are here.  Starting November 23, we will see the rollout of more service on many, many routes to implement the following new service standards:

  • Peak bus loading standards are reduced by about 10% (a route will be considered to be “full” with a lower average load).  This triggers service improvements on many routes, but loading generally has been rising and there is already a backlog of changes waiting to begin.  This affects 62 routes with a total of 89 more am and 65 pm peak buses.
  • Off peak bus standards, as well as streetcar and rapid transit standards for all periods, are unchanged at, effectively, a seated load.  Note that this is an average over an hour and local variations will occur.
  • Routes with services less frequent than 30 minutes will be improved to the new 30-minute maximum headway.  This affects 26 routes.
  • All routes will operate seven days a week during all periods until at least 1:00 am.  This affects about 86 routes.

Also, Mount Dennis Garage will open roughly a year after it was actually finished.

One caveat, of course, is the already known problems with hybrid bus availability.  The degree to which the TTC can get and keep its fleet of these vehicles on the road will affect the full rollout of the new peak period services.

Meanwhile, I cannot help noticing the breadth of the changes across the system with 20% better service found fairly commonly on some routes and periods just to get average loading within the standards.  This shows a combination of deferred improvements and of the unusual rate of riding growth on some routes.

Updates October 25: 

A summary of the changes, boiled down from the 80-odd page original, is now available.

A table of the revised loading standards is now available.

Updates November 6:

A list of division assignments is now available.

by

The Economics of Hybrid Buses

The City of Toronto’s Executive Committee agenda for October X contains a report on the City’s Green Fleet Plan for various agencies.  By far the biggest of these is the TTC, and in an accompanying report, we learn just what the economics of the hybrid bus fleet are.

On page 15, the TTC presents a chart showing the fuel efficiency of its fleets, and it is worth noting that fuel consumption per vehicle km is rising at the same time as the average capacity of the vehicles is falling.  This is partly due to the additional systems, notably air conditioning, that are present on newer vehicles.

Of the total fleet, just over a quarter (450 out of 1653) are hybrids, and these consume about 10 percent less fuel than their pure-diesel cousins (based on experience to date).  This implies that the increased fuel consumption on the diesel fleet is even higher, proportionately, than the consolidated figures imply because of the offsetting benefit of the hybrids.

In the longer term, the relative fuel savings of hybrids may rise as they operate on routes with dense, stop-start traffic where the benefit of electric propulsion and battery energy storage will shine.  Nonetheless, there will be a considerable net cost of owning hybrid buses relative to diesels over their lifespan.

The TTC expects to spend $110-million on diesel fuel in 2009.  This includes a saving of $3.6-million for the existing hybrid fleet, and that saving will rise to somewhere around $6-million annually by the time that the fleet is about 50% hybrid (854 out of 1864) in 2011.  That’s a per vehicle saving of  about $7,000 per year.  We do not know yet what savings, if any, on maintenance will accrue to the hybrid fleet.

The capital cost premium for a hybrid bus is about $200,000, and the hybrid saving is only about 3.5% per year on this additional investment.  In time, if the capital cost premium comes down, the cost of fuel goes up, or the average percentage saving across the fleet rises, the numbers will converge and the rate of return will improve.

Meanwhile, it’s a shame we don’t have comparative figures for the cost of trolleybus infrastructure for our major routes.  Two decades ago, the TTC sacrificed its trolleybus system on the twin altars of environmental responsibility and natural gas buses.

Postscript:  The supposed economic advantage of natural gas as a fuel was almost entirely due to the fact that it was not taxed.  A large chunk of the TTC’s annual fuel bill is in tax paid to the Province of Ontario.  Without this tax, the economics of buses in general would be rather different.  Oddly, because the dollar saving from reduced fuel consumption would actually be lower without the tax, the economics of hybrid buses would look even worse if this tax were rescinded.

by

Metrolinx: The Big Move (3) Investment Strategy

The Metrolinx Investment Strategy (Draft) is a really odd collection of documents, and as I look at the presentations, I can’t help feeling there is a mountain of background somewhere that Metrolinx would prefer to keep out of sight.

On the agenda of September’s Board Meeting, we find a glossy brochure that is clearly intended for the coming public review.  For a “draft”, it has the look of something rather final to me.  With a section titled “Your voice matters”, this is not intended for the Board’s consumption, but for the process that Metrolinx calls public consultation.

Worth noting are Rob MacIsaac’s own remarks at last Tuesday’s briefings.  On at least two occasions, he said that there won’t be much pressure for change in the plans based on the extensive consultations to date.  He is prejudging the outcome, and that’s no way to ask for public input.

The separate presentation to the Board is not available online, but I have reformatted it on my own site.  (Note to the purists:  most of this was scanned as text and then cleaned up to avoid problems with blurry copy-of-copy scanning.)

Draft Investment Strategy Presentation September 26, 2008

The heart of this “strategy” is to do next to nothing about proper transit funding for many years (at least one if not two election cycles), and to live off of the previously announced $11.6-billion MoveOntario money.  A subset of the projects in the 15-year draft Regional Transportation Plan was selected to soak up this money, and if the Tooth Fairy is feeling generous, we might even get another $6-billion from Ottawa to stave off actually making a decision about transit funding for almost a decade.

Continue reading →