I received a comment from Karem Allen in Durham that belongs in its own thread: 

A friend asked me if I knew why there would be an empty bus following closely to a full bus and my anwer was — so the empty one would be able to jump ahead and pick up riders.

He told me at one time they could leapfrog and be able to help the other drive but are now strangled in policy.
He told me that if a Driver gets 2 early’s in a month he is suspended.  So instead of jumping ahead and taking the riders and let the full one continue the empty one will hang back so as to not be early and of course the stop is empty of people.

Is this still in force?

I did not think buses were on a schedule to be early anyways.

There are a few things going on here worth talking about.

First of all, there is nothing wrong with buses playing leap-frog to handle passengers when they are bunched.  This can even out the load and the buses actually make better time going down the street.  Sometimes, however, the following driver will let the poor sod in the first bus take all the load.  Not fair, but it happens.

Having said that, the TTC does have a fetish for on time performance that can have bizarre results from the customers’ point of view.  This is driven by a measure, reported monthly to the Commission, that was introduced by former CGM David Gunn:  what proportion of all trips operated within 3 minutes of their scheduled times.  This sounds laudable, but like many corporate targets, it skews the very process it is intended to measure. Continue reading →

I received the following comment from Karem Allen who runs the transit_nightmares page on Durham Transit at:

http://www.durhamregion.typepad.com/transit_nightmares

Here is something that never can be studied and is never accounted for:

GAS extreme situations.

My friend and fellow coalition member just called me with the following story.

• More people were on the GO train then normal- line ups to buy tickets were long as these were brand new riders with no passes or long term tickets. They chose to use transit because perhaps they had not gas or wanted to conserve it. 
• Upon arrival at Union station they were greeted with broken TTC token machines and out of service lights.

Question– were they down on purpose to force them to pay the cash fare?

Neither systems seem to be prepared to greet the number of people that actually are getting out of the cars.

We will be bringing this incident at the transit forum tonight. People were really mad that they could not buy tokens once they arrived at Union Station.

This is the time to woo the discretionary transit user not drive them away with broken stuff.

Solution could be – more ticket people on hand to cover the increased customer load at both GO and TTC.

Steve:  One thing I have learned in years of looking at large organizations like the TTC is that you should never look for a conspiracy when indifference, bad planning or bad luck can explain a problem.  The real question here is how long the token machines have been down and why.  Can any regular user of Union Station let us know?

I agree that GO and the TTC really need to make an extra effort at times like this, but both organizations have a mindset that they have no spare staff or budget to do anything.  This is dangerous because it can become a strongly entrenched excuse for never even trying.  If the TTC ever reached a point where it had enough funding, enough operators, enough vehicles and no traffic congestion, I am sure they would invent some new reason to explain why the service on Queen Street was still so undependable.

Please see the end of this post for additional text. 

Over the past few years, careful readers of the annual TTC Service Plans will notice that more and more requests for new service are denied because they don’t meet the financial criteria.  Today at the TTC we had yet another example, and it’s worth examining to see, in miniature, the problems brought on by blind, formulaic decision-making. Continue reading →

A notorious aspect of TTC budgeting is that ridership projections are stated relative to last year’s budget, not relative to last year’s actual riding.

With a system bursting at the seams, everyone is waiting for the new service coming in the fall when the Ridership Growth Strategy finally starts to kick in.  But, wait a minute, the TTC’s plans are not all they seem to be. Continue reading →

The new 29 Dufferin service described below was approved without debate at the TTC meeting on January 31.  Like some who have commented on this post, I look forward to the creative writing in the six-month review of the trial service.  It’s good to know that influential members of Council can get service to a location with zero demand while people are freezing in the cold from inadequate service.  Maybe the Councillor will champion significant additional funding for TTC operations in this year’s budget.  We shall see.

Here’s the original post: 

Last September, at the urging of Deputy Mayor Pantalone, the TTC approved the extension of the 29 Dufferin bus through the CNE to serve the new BMO Field soccer stadium.  This will not just be a special event service, but an all-day operation.  Every second bus will run south from Dufferin Loop, across the top of the CNE grounds via Saskatchewan Road and Manitoba Drive (past the existing streetcar loop) to a loop just north of Princes’ Gate. 

It should be noted that the Dufferin bus will not pass much closer to the new stadium than the existing streetcar service, and Ontario Place will still be a healthy hike from any transit service.

This wouldn’t be news to anyone except for one thing:  the estimated annual cost will be $350K, but this will be offset by reallocating service from the existing Dufferin route or from other parts of the system.  One or two additional buses will be required at all times of the day, and as we well know, there’s nothing to spare elsewhere in the system.

Try telling this to the residents of northeastern Scarborough who, after a deputation at the TTC last year, were told that the earliest they could get more service, or in some cases any service, would be September 2007 when Mayor Miller’s 100 new buses will start rolling into town.

I suppose that if we built the soccer stadium in Scarborough, we would already be extending the RT to serve it day and night whether anyone was actually there or not.

I have no problem with serving special events at the CNE grounds, regardless of where they are located or what market they serve.  When we start taking service away from the existing system during peak periods for a new full-time service, a line has been crossed.

The list of routes where service is inadequate but where improvement is thwarted by a combination of fleet size, available operators, and the pig-headedness of the City Budget process, is very, very long.  When one Councillor gets service reallocated to serve his pet project, that’s an abuse of the transit system.

This proposal should be scrapped.

Over the past year, oft we heard the TTC argue that adding service is of no use because vehicles just get stuck in traffic.  More service does not lead to more ridership.  This is hogwash, but they’ve been getting away with it.

Let’s look at just what sort of additional service the King car has enjoyed.

Back in the dark ages of 1990 before a recession and service cuts took their tolll, the King car provided the following service:

• AM Peak: 2’20” combined service west of Church, 3’30” to Broadview Station
• Midday: 6’00”
• PM Peak: 2’43” over the entire route
• Early Evening: 7’17”
• Late Evening: 9’20”

The route operated 4,600 vehicle miles or about 7,360 km of service and carried 58,800 passengers per day, and the Lake Shore route did not yet exist.

By 2000, the service looked like this:

• AM Peak:  A 4’00” headway from Dundas West to Broadview overlaid by a 4’00” headway east from Roncesvalles for 12 trips corresponding to the peak eastbound demand to provide a 2’00” headway for 48 minutes.
• Midday:  6’20”
• PM Peak:  4’00”
• Early Evening:  7’30”
• Late Evening: 10’00”

The route operated 4,300 vehicle miles or about 6,880 km of service and carried just under 52,000 passengers per day, and the Lake Shore route did not yet exist.

By 2003, the service looked like this:

• AM Peak:  A 4’00” headway from Dundas West to Broadview overlaid by a 4’00” headway east from Roncesvalles for 16 trips corresponding to the peak eastbound demand to provide a 2’00” headway for 64 minutes.  Three trips on Lake Shore fit into this but they are widely enough spaced that they do not make a big impact on the headway seen by riders waiting in Parkdale or King/Bathurst.
• Midday:  5’40”
• PM Peak:  4’12”
• Early Evening:  7’15”
• Late Evening: 10’30”

The route operated 4,200 vehicle miles or about 6,720 km of service and carried just under 48,000 passengers per day.

Today, the service is:

• AM Peak:  Same as 2003
• Midday 4’45”
• PM peak 3’45”
• Early evening 7’00”
• Late evening 9’00”

The King and Lake Shore routes operate a total of 7,100 km per day and, according to the TTC stats for 2005, carried 47,900 passengers.

[Updated Feb 5] When the TTC says that it added nine cars to the route, this is simply not true in the context of recent service changes.  Relative to 2000, extra eastbound trips have been added to the AM peak, and midday service has been increased.  However, there has not been the magnitude of change one would imply from “nine more cars” because overall the amount of extra service is small.

[Updated Feb 5]  The number of cars in service in the AM peak on King and Lake Shore was 44 in 1990, 38 in 2000, 50 in 2003, and 48 today.  Note that in 2003, the route was under major reconstruction.

The combined 2’00” AM peak service has been in place since 2000, with a few trips added by 2003.  Meanwhile, the wider headway of the afternoon peak remains.  One might reasonably ask whether the prospect of a tedious wait for a trip home is a disincentive to people who might ride the marvellously improved AM peak service.

The improved midday service, implemented in September 2005 as a first step in the Ridership Growth Strategy was worthwhile, but this probably happened after the 2005 riding count was taken, or was in place for only a short time before.

The TTC must stop misrepresenting the issues of service, demand and traffic congestion.  We are deadlocked with a bogus claim that more service doesn’t generate more riding and a demand that exclusive lanes are the only solution to our problems.  The logical conclusion is that we shouldn’t spend more on TTC service because it won’t make any difference.  What, then, is the purpose of the Ridership Growth Strategy?

The TTC Operating Budget presentation on January 31 included TTC Budgets and City Building, an overview of how the need for better service and a rejuvenated fleet are integral to our hopes for achieving the city building goals near and dear to some political hearts.

At this point, the TTC is in the hole by about $33-million for its 2007 subsidy requirement (the difference between what the City budget folks set as the target for the TTC and what they actually need).  Given that the TTC is one of the Mayor’s central platform issues, I think we can assume that this problem will vanish sometime over the next three months.  A fare increase doesn’t seem to be in the offing, but what is really troubling is that real progress on “Ridership Growth” will not appear until late in 2007 and early 2008.

Remember that the Ridership Growth Strategy is four years old this March and people might justly wonder when some of its promises will appear.  Yes, we have the transferrable Metropass and tax deductability that makes passes attractive to a wider base of users, but we are waiting for more service.  An important part of RGS is a change in the vehicle loading standards so that a service is deemed to be “at capacity” at a lower load factor than today.  This means, in theory, that service will be added before people resort to riding on the roof rather than afterwards.

The one flaw in this premise is that you need vehicles, operators and budget headroom to run more service.  Outside of the rush hour, we have vehicles today, but we don’t have operators and more importantly we don’t have budget.

Two charts in the presentation show just how far behind the system has fallen in dealing with pent-up demand.

The Map of Overcrowded Routes shows those that were already overcrowded in late 2006 plus those that are predicted to be overcrowded in early 2007.  In this context, “overcrowded” means that the loads exceed the pre-RGS loading standards.

The Chart of Service Vs Demand shows the total service provided in terms of vehicle hours.  Obviously, this is a rough surrogate for capacity given that vehicles come in different sizes.  Moreover, an hour in which a vehicle has surplus capacity cannot be easily moved to one where there is excess demand without destroying service at lightly loaded times of day and locations.  All the same, the chart does show the gap between the amount of service operated and the amount required to catch up with demand.

Note that this chart shows only service additions over the years, not total service.  In round numbers, the TTC runs about 120,000 hours of service on surface routes per week beside which the increase of less than 5,000 hours is rather small.

These should put Council on notice.  We can play games for months trying to appear “fiscally responsible” in the hope that Queen’s Park and Ottawa will take pity and give us more money.  There are two problems with that approach:

• We usually get only a one-year bailout rather than major, meaningful, ongoing support for transit.
• Because we lowball our budget needs for service expansion, we already understate the amount we need.

No doubt, somewhere buried in the TTC budget, there is money to be found.  That’s a worthwhile exercise, but it diverts attention from the real need to think on a larger scale, to embrace the idea that we are going to make transit much more attractive to potential customers. 

Not ten years from now with a new subway.  Not five years from now with new streetcars.  Not next year when there may be a handful of spare vehicles left to implement RGS.  Right now, today, with this budget.

I received the following email (which also went to all of the TTC members, the Star and the Sun).  The text is uncut. Continue reading →