Finance

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The Mysterious GTA Pass [Updated]

[This piece has been updated to correct information about the tax deductibility of weekly passes.  Some comments in this thread will reflect the original version of the post that didn’t include take this into account in price comparisons.] 

Cynthia Cheng wrote to me recently:

I know plenty of people who don’t even realize that GTA passes exist and are paying two or more fares to get to and from work, school, etc. I am sure that if enough people know about it, then perhaps we’ll have monthly passes rather than weekly and perhaps more outlets would sell them. Do you know why this is?

A while ago, I had written about the demise of the GO/TTC Twin Pass thanks to GO-Transit’s refusal to pay its share of the $10-subsidy built into the pass.

There is, however, a GTA Pass that costs $43/week.  The only place it seems to be advertised in Toronto is on a pulldown on the TTC website for the various types of fares and passes.  It is not on the TTC fare card, nor is it on the VIVA farecard.

I had lots of time to contemplate this today while I languished in Don Mills Station waiting 22 minutes for the nominally 15-minute headway on the 190 Rocket to STC.  In vain did I search for any mention of the GTA pass on TTC or VIVA displays.

According to the web page, I can even buy one of these mystery passes at Don Mills Station.  The only problem is, I cannot do this in the bus loop, but at the collector’s booth which is somewhere else, I am sure, but not on the path I take from the Sheppard Subway train to the buses.  [In one of the comments below, directions to this booth were provided.]  I could also do this at STC station where the bus/RT interchange actually passes through the same space as the collector’s booth.

But would I want to buy this pass?  What does it offer me?  If I am a 10-trip-a-week person, my TTC fares at ticket rate would cost $21, compared with $30 for a TTC weekly pass.  That pass is tax deductible only if I buy 4 a month, and there is no bulk buy discount because, obviously, if I wanted that I would be in the Metropass Discount Program.

Meanwhile, over in Mississauga, I could pay $22 for 10 tickets or $23 for a weekly pass.  This means that a GTA pass equals the combined cost of 10 trips at ticket rate on the TTC and Mississauga Transit, and I can get a combined pass for the TTC and other GTA systems for only $13 more than a TTC-only weekly pass.

If we were pricing things the same way for monthly passes, the equivalent cost would be $143 assuming no discount for bulk purchase, but eligible for a tax refund of roughly $21 for a net cost of $122.

As things stand, I can pay $172 for four weeks’ worth of GTA passes, or buy a monthly pass for both systems.  The after-tax cost of the weekly passes is $146.20.  This is cheaper than buying monthly passes for the TTC and Mississauga Transit separately, about $166 net of the tax rebate, or $159 if I buy TTC passes on the discount program.

The situation is comparable for other GTA systems combined with the TTC.

This is a good example of how fare structures can be bastardized depending on what one is trying to achieve, not to mention the marketing issue that this is an almost unknown type of fare.  Given the discount, I’m not surprised they hide it!

Integrating fare systems where there are existing deep discounts for certain types of usage will be a real challenge.  Once we eliminate the artificial barrier between the 416 and 905, what should the fare be?  What should passes cost?

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Passes, Smart Cards, Fare Zones and the GTTA

I received the following note from Miroslav Glavic:

I am reading Metropass Triumphs! and I have a question or two, and a few more…

I personally think there should be ONE transit agency for the GTAH (up to Barrie, then east to Oshawa and west to Hamilton).

Smart cards are nice, I love my metropass, when I want to go to SQ1 (I live in Scarborough), I have to get out my metropass (which I love and have been getting for years now), then get out the change and pay.  One card would be nice, I go to Seneca College, Seneca@York campus, I can use my ONE CARD (ID card) in all of their campuses, take out book in all the campuses libraries and so forth.  Something like that for the GTAH would be nice.

Now to the non-universal fares…

Let’s say we go to the Toronto Zoo and after a day of visiting the animals (my favourite is the Gorillas, what’s yours?), I go to Fairview Mall, you go to the airport, we both put [in] $2.75.  Do you think it’s fair that it is the same fare?

In London, I went from Heathrow station to Charing Cross (via Picadilly Circus station), I went through most of their fare areas).

What if you went from Don Mills Station to Victoria Park Avenue/Sheppard?  Do you think it is fair to pay $2.75 to go 5 stops? (or 1 direct stop with the 190).  You can go from Don Mills Station to anywhere in the city for $2.75.

What if the TTC had fare zones? (yes it would get people a while to get adjusted), by the way London has a monthly pass as well.

Let’s go back to the example about the Zoo, what if to Fairview Mall it was $3.00 then to the airport was $6.00?.

The way it works in London is that you put the ticket/card (like a smaller metropass, made out of paper/cardboard material), and out it comes from the other side, imagine like the reader for metropasses, then when you get out from your end station you do the same, I guess it will deny you exit or something like that.  I am sure there is a way to implement this to use on buses and streetcars.

The TTC would have get a lot more money which it needs.

I am using cash fares for my examples, but there would still be one price for metropasses.

Steve:  I don’t go to the Zoo, but have dropped in on the Royal Winter Fair where my favourites are the swine.

The use of cash fares skews the argument badly.  One huge advantage of the Metropass is that people don’t pay individually for each trip they take.  Saying that it’s unfair that a ride two stops on the subway costs the same as a ride to the airport misses the point that with a pass, the fare is not charged for either trip, but for transit usage in general.  One big reason I posted Metropass Triumphs! is that we now have more than half of TTC rides taken by people who don’t have to think about reaching into their pocket for change or resenting the cost of individual trips.

Turning to Zone Fares, Toronto had them until 1972 when they were eliminated by the suburban members of Metro Council.  Their argument was that suburban taxes paid to support the TTC, and suburban riders should pay the same amount as their city counterparts.  Any attempt to re-introduce zones, at least within the 416, would meet with strong opposition and would, I feel, be counterproductive.  With a flat fare Metropass, we make the system appealing wherever one is travelling, and it is simple to administer.  Zones just complicate things and undo some of the benefits of the flat fare. 

The claim that the TTC would get much more revenue means that, one way or another, someone pays more for their trip.  On a zone basis, long trips are penalized, and yet it is these very trips that are the most difficult to attract to transit.  How would the good folks of Vaughan or the students at York U feel if we told them that their brand new subway was going to be in Zone 2 or 3, and that it would cost extra to come downtown?  “We spend billions to build this thing and now you want us to pay an extra fare?”

I am already on record as opposing zone fares even if we extend the fare structure to the entire GTA.  Yes, that will cost money, but it will save us a fortune on expensive fare collection technology and on endless squabbling about where the fare boundaries should be.  The option of a premium fare for GO Transit still remains because it is a fundamentally different class of service, but at least the same pass would be valid on local systems at both ends of the trip.

The current estimate of implementation costs for the TTC is in the range of $140-million, with an ongoing maintenance and support cost of $10-million or more for a the GTA Smart Card system.  Do we really need to spend this much money to replace a system that works today?

What, exactly, is the supposed benefit of a Smart Card?  If the purpose is to allow us to divvy up fare revenue among GTA agencies, isn’t that a bureaucratic exercise, a matter of turf protection, rather than of providing good transit service?  I am not advocating elimination of local transit operators, but must ask if there were already one big transit system, would concerns about revenue sharing and division even exist as a justification for Smart Cards?

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Metropass Triumphs!

An important statistic came out quietly at the TTC meeting this week:

This year, for the first time, more than half of all adult rides will be taken using the Metropass.  Tickets, tokens and cash share the remainder.

Metropass usage is up almost 25% over 2006 thanks to its new transferability and tax deductibility.  The pass now has broad appeal to regular transit users rather than only for the heavy users who make numerous personal trips in additional to regular work trips via TTC.

Advocates for a new unified “smart” farecard should take note:  the Metropass is hugely popular as an “all you can eat” way of purchasing transit services.  Any new fare structure that eliminates this option, or attempts to rebalance the pass pricing upward, will meet stiff opposition. 

Moreover, elaborate fare schemes requiring detailed tracking of passengers and some form of fare-by-distance calculation are doomed on at least two counts.  First, they will incur substantial additional cost to track rides and reconcile fares.  Second, if the resultant charges don’t lie in the realm of current pass pricing, they will destroy the very incentive to transit use the Metropass represents — no marginal cost for any trip and no need to plan trips to minimize transfer or stopover charges.

The one downside to Metropass growth is that the average fare per trip is falling.  This is not surprising, but the rate of shift to passes means that total revenue is at best level if not slightly down despite continued growth in demand.  This will lead eventually to an important debate about how we “sell” transit service.

The historic model of one fare for each trip is meaningless, now, for a majority of rides.  Transit will be a bulk service purchased the same way people pay for many utilities, paying for its availability, not for the amount consumed.  Service and budget planning will also be affected, and we should return to the era when decisions about service quantity were based on demand, not on running as little as possible to get by.

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TTC Riding Growth Continues in Early 2007

The Chief General Manager’s Report for January and February, 2007, tells us that riding is up 2.8 percent over 2006, and 1.0 percent over budget.  Most of this growth came in February where riding was up 4.4 percent over last year.  Metropass sales in February were 24 percent above the 2006 level.

The TTC has not, at this point, revised its ridership projection for 2007 which remains at the 454-million mark.  However, the City clearly expects the TTC to do better than anticipated because the operating subsidy will be lower than the TTC’s initial request.  Part of this will come from a reduction in the planned increase in the number of Special Constables, and part will come from as-yet unspecified savings or growth in revenue.

The strong Metropass sales are a double-edged sword depending on whether they represent a net increase in revenue (passengers trading up to a pass) or a decrease (passes attracting riders who now will pay less than previously, especially when pass transferability is taken into account).

Service improvements are planned for the fall, and the TTC hopes that these will “alleviate” overcrowding problems.  I put that in quotation marks because, of course, we don’t yet know whether the new service will both absorb rising demand and permit implementation of the Ridership Growth Strategy improvements to loading standards.  Moreover, the TTC has no plans for further RGS-based improvements, and only limited provision for fleet growth going into 2008.

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Meanwhile in the Beach

In case everyone thought that this had turned into a blog about the Spadina Subway and intercity rail travel, let’s come back to the real world of the Queen Car with the following note.

Hi Steve
This is not really a comment, but rather a follow-up to my earlier comments re: service in the Beach.  It’s not getting any better.

Let’s start with a math quiz . What’s the next number in this sequence?

18,33,1,14,2,10,11 ______(??? )

Give up? Well the answer is “who knows, could be any number”.  It’s the 501 from Neville.

These were the 501 headways departing Neville westbound on a normal, dry road, no traffic, no accidents type middle of the weekday when all a person wanted to do was spend $10 on a streetcar going to Queen & Lee etc to do local errands. Can you believe it? Is anyone in charge of supervising this major streetcar route???

Walked down to the loop from Fallingbrook at 12:30 and saw 42xx departing westbound. 12:48 (run#7) finally came 18 minutes later. Thought I would hang around and see what followed:

  • The next car, 4244 departed at 1:21-33 minute gap!!!!
  • Then in a brilliant move, car 4250 left one whole minute later at 1:22 (came empty, left empty).
  • 4210 left 14 min later at 1:36.
  • Then run 14, 4230 left 2 minutes later at 1:38 (again empty)
  • 4225 left at 1:48, and finally
  • 4225 left at 1:57.

This is a very common situation, not unusual at all. What happens with this mess down the line? Where do the supervisors supervise from?  Do they know what is going on here????

This is sad and funny at the same time. Is anyone in control of this route??

Thought you may find this interesting Steve.
Pete

Yes, it is interesting and far, far too common.  The service at Neville Loop is supposed to run every 5’30”.

I am still mired in detailed analysis of the King route (which I hope to finish over Easter weekend) and have not had the heart to look at Queen Street yet.  The bottom line, however, is that service is quite irregular even on days, like Christmas, when it should run like a clock.

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Ridership Growth Strategy for the Island Ferries

The April 10th meeting of Toronto’s Parks and Environment Committee will consider a proposal to give two-for-one fares for adults travelling on the ferries between 5 and 9 pm (except for special event days on holidays and weekends) from the Victoria Day to the Labour Day weekend.

Most people leave the island in the late afternoon after a hard day at the beach.  The Parks Department reckons that there is a growing population who live downtown near the ferry docks for whom the island could be a welcome evening spot.  The ferries are running with available capacity, and the cheaper fares are not expected to cost the city anything.

Fortunately, the GTTA has yet to demand that total fare integration be provided so that a rider can board a GO Train in Barrie and travel seamlessly to Hanlan’s Point.

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How Many People Will Fit on a Bus?

Many discussions here lately have included comments about building networks of “bus rapid transit (BRT) as the truly low-cost solution to our transit woes.

Meanwhile, the TTC regularly trots out a chart showing the relative capacities of various modes.  This appears most recently in the Environmental Assessment materials for the eastern waterfront projects.  One of the many appearances can be found in the presentation materials for the West Donlands public meeting held last week.  (Warning:  this file is over 11 mb if you are on a slow link.)

The TTC claims that buses can handle demands of 6,000 per hour or more.  Let’s do the math. Continue reading →

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Improving Service on the King Car

This week’s TTC agenda includes a report called Improvements to the 504 King Streetcar Service.  You can read the details on the TTC’s site, but here are the high points and my comments on them.

Installation of a temporary reserved right-of-way on a four-to-five block section of King Street as a demonstration project in July and August 2008.

This proposal is modelled on the successful scheme down on Queen’s Quay, although I doubt we will be so lucky as to see bike lanes and geraniums up on King.  It is unclear which section of King would have the trial, although there is a suggestion in the report that it go west of John to pick up the restaurant district.  If so, a 4-to-5 block stretch won’t make it to Yonge Street.

While this will be interesting to see, it will benefit offpeak operations as much as the peak if most of the reserved lane is in the theatre/club district.  However, it’s much harder to justify a reserved lane for the offpeak headway on King  given other interests who will want all four traffic lanes.  The TTC is using peak period demands and headways to argue for reserved lanes, but there are problems in the offpeak as well.

A much more reasonable proposal would have been to ban parking (see below).

Rescind the existing “transit lane” on King from Dufferin to John, and from Jarvis to Parliament, because it isn’t enforced anyhow.  Expand the peak no-parking period from 7:00 to 10:00 am and from 3:00 to 7:00 pm.  Designate King from Dufferin to Parliament as a “transit priority zone” where fines for traffic and parking violations would be doubled.  Expand the use of red-light cameras to include King Street intersections.

I think that the hours of “no parking” need to be expanded.  If we count up the number of spaces on King in the theatre district versus the number of seats in various theatres, it is clear that parking on King itself does not contribute much to the overall capacity for people coming to these venues.  The same argument holds for the restaurant strip west of John.  If we are going to talk about taking space for transit, the easiest source of that space is the parking strip.

Staff to report back on the feasibility and cost of constructing taxi lay-bys on King from Bay to York.

Again, we can use streets to store traffic, or to move it.  If the taxis in the financial district are considered essential, then make room for them so that there are two working lanes each way.  Otherwise, start towing.

Elsewhere in the report, staff note that they have added cars to provide extra capacity above what the Service Standards would otherwise dictate.  Well yes, but that was at least four years ago and riding is still climbing.  This extra service, taking the line down to a 2-minute headway, only operates in the AM peak and is timed to hit the inbound peak through Parkdale and the Bathurst/Niagara neighbourhoods.  The PM peak service remains every 4 minutes.

Congestion on King is not a serious problem in the AM peak.  Indeed, although there is congestion through the core in the midday and afternoon, there is also congestion in Parkdale (any problem on the Gardiner or special event at the CNE), in the Theatre/Club district (evenings from roughly Wednesday through Saturday), and on Roncesvalles Avenue (some weekends).  None of the TTC’s proposals addresses this.

The report claims that a previous scheme for dedicated reserved lanes and closing of King to much traffic was opposed by business owners and some Councillors.  This is understandable considering that a permanent installation is an all-day affair and the level of off-peak service on King is not all that frequent.  As I said above, it also gets tied up in areas other than the core.

There is a fascinating table showing riding on the King car from Dufferin to Parliament, and the PM peak from 5:00 to 6:00 (3040 riders)  is nearly as high as the AM from 8:00 to 9:00 (3450) even though there is less service.  Note that on a 2-minute headway, there are only 30 cars per hour, and obviously we are getting good turnover of passengers and bidirectional traffic to get that many riders per car, especially in the PM.

The transit market share on King is at or above 60% from Strachan to Yonge hitting a peak around 70% at Spadina.  I wonder how much higher it would be if we could fit more people on the service?