This article began as a Twitter/X thread responding to a post from Mayor Olivia Chow.
From the better way to the *best* way. This budget will restore 97% of pandemic-era TTC service cuts and get the city back on track.
There is a big problem with this claim, and I fear riders will be disappointed by what they actually see. Here is my consolidated thread.
It pains me to write this, but this post by Mayor Chow is simply not true. Either her spin doctors cannot read a budget, or she has been bamboozled by TTC’s misleading use of “restoring” service.
This chart is right out of the TTC budget and shows the planned service restoration by mode. Note that only the bus network gets back to 100%.
Because the values are based on vehicle and train hours, and buses (with relatively small capacity per vehicle) account for most of the hours, the total gets to 97% while leaving streetcars and the subway far behind.
But 97% is not really 97% as seen by riders. Many routes run more slowly than they did in 2019, and so it takes more hours to provide the same frequency and capacity of service.
For added clarity, “100%” of service hours will *not* reverse all pandemic era cuts because some hours go to routes running over 100% while others stay below that level. But spin doctors don’t do pesky details like that.
On top of that, crowding standards brought in by management without advance approval in 2023 mean that off peak service can be more crowded before triggering service improvements. These might be reversed in 2025 but only if there is budget headroom.
Talk about prepandemic service levels forgets that there were major problems with overcrowding and inadequate service back in 2019. Actual planned service in 2020 was higher than 2019, but was cut due to covid.
The shift in commute patterns means that total ridership is less than 2019 levels, but it is concentrated on a shorter work week. Off peak riding is already at or above former levels.
The TTC does not break out service frequency and capacity as metrics, but using vehicle hours hides deeper cuts in these areas.
The February 18 schedule changes include cuts on many routes which are described as “adjustments” on the TTC’s website. A few of these are erroneously called “improvements”.
One reason for the February cuts is that service in January was actually *over* budget and the cuts back that out.
The TTC has no public measurement of crowding conditions and service quality including gaps and bunching. That 97% number will be broadcast far and wide, but will hide many problems.
Service Budgets
For comparison, here are the 2019, 2020 (pre-covid) and 2024 service budgets. The important column is the third from the left, “Regular Service Total”.
For a comparison of January 2024 service levels to January 2020, see this article:
There is work to be done, and a vital first step is to understand just what is needed and what is possible. The TTC Board plans a strategy session in March, and their Budget Committee will probably start meeting in June-July.
Soon I will publish an article about a Ridership Growth Strategy for 2024 that will set the stage for the kind of debate that should be on the agenda.
Can we hope that these meetings will not be consumed by self-serving management dog-and-pony shows, but rather will be an open discussion of the state of and options for our transit system.
The TTC will modify service on many routes effective Sunday, February 18, 2024. Several of these changes involve “reallocation” of service between routes and time periods, and overall there will be a small decline in scheduled vehicle hours.
One concern about this process is that the TTC has stated that it would only impose the new, more crowded, off-peak loading standards when changing schedules, but would not retroactively cut service based on the 2023 management-imposed values. With many routes seeing service trimmed, we do not know what the new target crowding level will be because the TTC has not published this information for several years.
There will also be some adjustments for service reliability. These generally involve giving vehicles longer travel times with resulting wider headways on affected routes. In some cases, service does improve because extra time that had been allocated for construction effects is removed.
The table of construction projects affecting transit service is shown below. This does not include ongoing works on the subway system and slow orders for which there is no scheduled provision.
The major project beginning with this schedule period is the reconstruction of water mains and track on King Street West. This is the subject of a separate article:
The configuration of the streetcar network is shown below.
Scheduled vehicle hours will decline slightly with these changes in part to correct for an overage relative to budget in January. A small increase is planned for the schedule change in late March, and a large one in September. The drop shown for December is the usual effect of the holiday break and the removal/reduction of school services.
Updated Feb. 5, 2023 at 6pm: Metrolinx has clarified aspects of the One Fare operation on Presto. See the end of this article for details.
Updated Feb. 5, 2023 at 6:30pm: The TTC has an extensive FAQ page about One Fare.
On February 5, 2024, Ontario announced that it will extend the co-fare arrangements between GO Transit and local municipal transit systems outside of Toronto to the TTC. The branding for this scheme is “One Fare”.
As of February 26, any trip including GO Transit will be discounted by the removal of local transit fares at either end of the journey. Trips beginning or ending on a local system will only pay the GO Transit fare.
Trips using only local systems (such as TTC+Miway) will pay the local fare on the system where they begin, but will transfer free onto any connecting system.
This arrangement corresponds to “Option A” in the Metrolinx Initial Business Case Final Report detailed in a previous article here.
Timed transfers will be valid for 2 hours for trips starting on a local system, and for 3 hours for trips starting on GO Transit. The Metrolinx announcement is not clear about whether a trip beginning on local systems but shifting to GO gets the expanded 3 hour window from paying a GO fare. In effect, does the tap on to GO “top up” the remaining transfer time with an extra hour, or does starting on a local bus fix the transfer window at two hours. I have asked Metrolinx for a clarification.
Update: See the end of the article for further information on the transfer window.
The new fare scheme will be funded by Ontario and local systems will be reimbursed for the foregone fare revenue. The anticipated ridership growth is about 8 million per year.
The anticipated saving for riders, on average, is $1,600 per year. That corresponds roughly to two local transit fares per weekday.
There will be no change in fare payment procedures. Riders will only tap on to the local systems, but must tap on and off for the GO Transit portion of the ride where the fare is distance based.
The provincial press release states “The government will continue to work with municipal partners to identify opportunities to make transit more seamless for riders by harmonizing discounted fares and other measures.” What this will actually entail remains to be seen.
Update: Metrolinx Clarifies One Fare Issues
The following responses were provided by Metrolinx in response to my queries.
On transfer windows:
The initial two-hour window begins when the customer first taps onto the local transit service. When a transit rider transfers and taps onto GO Transit, a new three-hour window begins. For example, a customer who takes an HSR bus (local transit) and then transfers to GO Transit starts with a two-hour window upon their first tap on the HSR bus. When they tap onto GO Transit, a new three-hour window begins.
On the monthly pass:
PRESTO transit passes for TTC, Brampton Transit, Durham Region Transit, MiWay and York Region Transit are eligible under Ontario’s One Fare Program. Please note, customers transferring to GO Transit using a transit pass will not receive any additional discount using a transit pass.
On concession fares:
Customers also benefit from concession fares through Ontario’s One Fare program because the second fare is always free on local transit, or reduced on GO Transit. For example, in the case of a senior, if the customer begins their journey on the TTC and they transfer to YRT, they pay only $2.25 (the TTC fare) because the second fare is free on local transit. This saves them $2.40 on the trip. On a TTC to GO Transit trip, in the case of a senior, the GO fare would be reduced.
Metrolinx Media Relations Email of Feb. 5/24
It is possible that the GO Transit fare is less than a TTC fare, for example for a short GO trip by a senior where the TTC fare is $2.25 and the GO fare (using Union to Long Branch as an example) is only $2.13.
The TTC FAQ clarifies that the UP Express is not part of One Fare due to technical constraints. It is not clear when or if this will be fixed.
Thanks to reader Adam Chojecki for providing the link to the TTC page.
Anyone who deals with Metrolinx from the outside knows that getting information can be a real struggle, but every so often the veil of secrecy lifts, although not always intentionally.
The implementation of “regional fares” is supposed to happen in March 2024, but this will be on a fairly limited scale, at least according to anything published so far. The TTC will come into the same arrangement as the 905 systems with recognition of each other’s fares across the 416/905 boundary, and the reinstatement of a GO Transit cofare.
Like the elusive Toronto sun of recent weeks, a report appeared, and then disappeared on the Metrolinx website called Regional Fare Structure Initial Business Case Final April 2023. This is not a draft, but gives a sense of Metrolinx thinking on the subject and how little some of their fare objectives have changed over the years.
To be blunt, fare planning at Metrolinx has always eyed the Toronto subway as a “regional” facility and its riders as potential cash cows who will help fund other parts of the system. I wrote about this back in 2017-18.
A major problem with earlier proposals was that the Toronto subway was treated as a premium service, like GO, where riders should pay more for the speed and comfort compared to the surface system. This utterly ignored the fact that the TTC system is designed as a single network with subway lines as the backbone and feeder/distributor surface lines. The underlying reason for pushing up subway fares was to make the model revenue-neutral, in effect, to subsidize the elimination of extra fares for cross-border trips with more expensive subway rides.
That scheme would have seen any trip longer than 10km charged an extra fare, and that would have affected the vast majority of suburban commuters who already complained of long bus+subway trips to get to work and school. This idea appeared to die off, and with the ascension of the Ford government in 2018, nothing more was heard. Ford concentrated on large-scale capital projects, not on tinkering with fares.
In the Final version of the business case, the subway fare proposal has changed so that it would only apply to cross-border trips of 10km or more. This would have the effect of undoing part of the supposed benefit of the pending 905/416 fare boundary elimination where riders will not face an extra fare for the subway portion of their journey.
Future Richmond Hill riders look forward to a single fare to central Toronto, but this scheme might not be attractive as a 10km ride will only get them to roughly Yonge and Sheppard (8km for the Yonge extension, plus 2km on the existing subway). In the tariff modelled in the Final Report, the fare to Union Station would be $7.50. Similar issues face trips in other parts of the future rapid transit network.
Removing of the 416/905 fare boundary so that the TTC’s relationship with systems in the 905 and with GO becomes the same as every other system remains an option, but it is presented as the least attractive choice. The clear intent is to pave the way for higher subway fares for “regional” travellers while preserving the flat fare, for now, within Toronto. The political considerations are obvious, but so is Metrolinx’ intent to move forward in their implacable way. Both the Draft and Final versions of the report speak of a path from the current fare arrangements to a totally “integrated” future, albeit one that is not clearly defined.
Options with further levels of “integration” perform well as riding stimulants because they involve significant reduction in GO fares at a time when service will be increased through the GO Expansion program.
A major barrier to fare-by-distance on the subway is the need to “tap out” from the subway fare zone. This is not simply a question of putting Presto readers on the “inside” face of every fare gate, but of establishing fare lines between the surface and subway portions of stations. This has a substantial cost and creates a barrier to free flow for the vast majority of trips that would still pay a flat TTC fare, Moreover it would be a Trojan horse making future conversion of the subway within Toronto to a separate fare zone much simpler.
This is not a “fare integration” scheme, but rather a plan to increase GO rider subsidies while also setting the stage for subway fare increases. The idea of a revenue neutral change in the tariff has been abandoned, at least for now. The historic pattern emphasizing GO capacity for longer trips has been turned on its head to give GO rail a larger part in local travel within Toronto.
In order to sell this concept, Metrolinx now includes rebalancing the GO fare structure under the “integration” rubric. This is a completely separate issue and it should have been addressed years ago on GO independently from the cross border fare problems.
An intriguing caveat in all of this is that the Ministry of Transportation is listed as a “partner” in the study, and its conclusions will be referred to MTO for review. One has the sense of Metrolinx being on a short leash.
It is not surprising that this report was pulled from public view, but it is worth discussing because it reveals Metrolinx’ thinking. A document does not become a “Final” report, even if it is only a “Final Initial” version, without a lot of policy signoffs along the way.
Note: In this article, I use Draft and Final (capitalized) to refer to the two versions of the Initial Business Case.
A common, but troubling practice in talking about transit is the attempt to build a “business case” as if city’s transit network can be examined through a rather simplistic management school lens. Everything is reduced to a monetary value, be that direct spending, spinoffs, or the notional value of benefits.
Aside from basic errors in methodology, this approach assumes that the supposed value of transit spending can be gleaned from a one-dimensional view of its so-called worth in dollars and cents. Bad enough that this practice is entrenched in Metrolinx, an agency that sets priorities based on political, not financial, evaluations thereby undermining the credibility of financial analyses. The scheme has trickled down to the municipal level with a TTC/UofT study intended to show that money for transit has financial benefits and should be encouraged for the good of city and country.
You might ask why a transit advocate has misgivings about this exercise, but the answer lies in my long-standing conservatism (with a very small “c”) about public spending generally. Megaprojects bring press coverage, especially with the opportunity to announce over and over the latest step, no matter how trivial, as work inches along. This tactic works as long as there is success to report, and we just don’t talk about abject failures like Line 5 Crosstown any more often than needed.
A huge problem with the TTC’s gaping hole in Capital funding, and to a lesser extent on its Operating side, is that the cry “please, Sir, I want some more” for transit support wears thin with would-be partners. Moreover, everything on Toronto’s wish list does not necessarily align with political priorities elsewhere, and it must compete with demands from other cities and provinces. Thus the desire to show that transit spending has a great “payback”, but that number hides fundamental questions.
The problem with spending for its own sake is that one rarely hears the question “what else might we do with these billions” or “is this project really worth its cost compared to other demands on public funds”. How much is not built or operated because some other project took priority, or the growing cost of works already underway crowded other new schemes off of the table?
Into our political environment, one rife with patronage, cronyism and outright corruption, comes an attempt to justify spending on transit as an inherently good thing.
In 2022, the TTC launched a joint study with the University of Toronto Mobility Network which surfaced as part of the 2023 and 2024 Budgets. The goals of the study were “to identify and quantify the economic and other key benefits resulting from investment in transit and the TTC”:
Economic benefits realized from investments in transit services and capital works that enhance TTC’s existing transit network
Economic impact of the TTC on the local, regional, provincial and national economy
Qualitative and quantitative social, equity, health and environmental benefits and the economic spin off benefits derived from these other benefits
Impacts should the necessary service and capital investments not be made in the TTC
A major problem with TTC budget “debates” is that they are quite perfunctory compared with the size and importance of the reports, and the spending involved. There has been no TTC Budget Subcommittee for years, and even when it existed, it rarely met. The idea of at least part of the Board doing a deep dive into budgets seems to be utterly beyond their idea of “good governance”, at least until the recent change in the Mayor’s and Chair’s offices.
Commissioner Ainslie asked that the Chair work on creation of Budget Committee with a report in 2Q24. He observed that agencies with much smaller budgets than the TTC have budget committees, and the TTC should too. The Board asked staff to report in Q2 2024 on the establishment of a Budget Committee.
It should not be for staff to report on creation of such a committee, but for the Board to say “we need this” and immediately canvass members for their interest. An informed committee will be essential for review of the 2025 budget priorities before the budget is struck. The budget should not come to the Board as a fait accompli based on discussions at the staff level. Moreover, the Mayor’s Office should have visible input to the process. If the level of so-called review by the Board amounts to a once-a-year dog-and-pony show by staff, there is no opportunity for Board input and queries about the underlying policies, assumptions and options available.
Some TTC Board members are strong in their belief that the role of the Board is to provide policy and oversight, and of management to manage. That is a great model provided that the Board actually engages in its role, but for many years there was no sense that the TTC Board actively developed policy, let alone held management accountable.
By the end of the budget debate, Board members were very concerned about the financial status of the TTC, even though quite complimentary about the detail of work presented by staff. Some of these members sat through the years when Mayor Tory ran the show, and the primary message was “everything’s just fine”. They bear some responsibility for problems that have festered for years.
After the staff presentation on the two budgets, there were many questions from the Board. The items below have been consolidated by topic. Illustrations are taken from the presentation deck.
The TTC has announced that bus operations will return to Broadview Station in coming days now that reconstruction of the track and paving is complete.
Thursday, January 4:
The 504/505 King/Dundas replacement bus service has operated from Castle Frank Station stopping on street at Broadview & Danforth. It will resume use of Broadview Station. The 304 King Night bus will also return to the station.
The 8 Broadview and 62 Mortimer buses have terminated at Broadview & Danforth using on street stops, and then deadheading to Gerrard to loop near Bridgepoint Hospital. They will return to their normal looping at Broadview Station.
Sunday, January 7:
The 87 Cosburn, 100 Flemingdon Park and 322 Coxwell Night buses have operated to Pape Station. They will resume their normal routes to Broadview Station.
Streetcar Service
Streetcar service is expected to return to Broadview Station on 504B King and 505 Dundas in the mid-February schedule changes.
Many shouts of “hurrah” have been heard around transit circles with the news that the TTC will be operating service at 95% of pre-pandemic levels on the bus network in early 2024 building up to 97% by the Fall.
The key question here is “95% of what?”
To make this a tad simpler, consider a rider who is told that service is back to 100%. To someone waiting on a street corner, this means that the bus will arrive (or at least be scheduled) at the same frequency as it was four years ago before the covid cuts tore through many routes’ service levels.
At the risk of disappointing readers, they should not rush out on January 7, 2024 when the next schedules come into effect waiting for the miracle of restored transit service to roll down their street.
Politicians and management who trumpet the return to “full service” should qualify their excitement with the fact that service on many routes is less frequent than it was in 2020.
“Service” also includes crowding standards. It is hardly valid to claim full service restoration if crowding standards pack more riders per vehicle before service is improved, and even that depends on available vehicle hours in the budget. It has been many years since the TTC published current loading stats and a list of routes that are operating beyond standards.
Truly restoring full service will require more resources than the TTC has been given or will see in the 2024 budget, and a political will to talk about “service” in a way that reflects rider experience.
In the first article in this set, I reviewed the TTC’s Operating Budget for 2024. Now, I turn to the Capital Budget and Plan for the year 2024, the 10-year period out to 2033, and the 15-year period to 2038. Reports cited here include:
Capital budgets and plans exist in three formats, each with its own purpose:
The annual Capital Budget sets out spending for the coming year. For multi-year projects, only current year spending is included, plus any carry-overs from incomplete work in the previous year.
The ten year Capital Plan shows spending planned for the coming decade, and this feeds into a comparable plan at the City of Toronto. Only items for which funding can be reasonably expected are included, and this tends to make the plan lighter on the back end. In past years, some items have been carried “below the line” as unfunded, but desirable, usually major rapid transit projects.
The fifteen year Capital Investment Plan shows everything (or almost) that the TTC foresees as capital requirements in coming years. Over the years, it was quite evident that many, many items were not being reported even in the “below the line” portion of the Capital Plan.
The Capital Investment Plan (CIP) gave City politicians and managers a severe case of indigestion when it was first published in 2019 because the total involved, well over $30 billion, was more than three times the size of ten year Capital Plans normally presented by the TTC. This addressed a long-standing problem where capital requests would appear out of thin air because they had never been approved as part of the Capital Plan, and TTC long-range requirements were very different from the numbers usually cited.
Transparency is a double-edged sword because any new scheme will usually show up in the CIP complete with a cost. In the 2024 version, the effect is particularly substantial with a jump to a total of almost $48 billion. Later in the article, I will review the CIP’s evolution over recent years to show the origin of this increase.
A major problem with the various budgets is that they are huge, and the TTC Board has an aversion to long, complex reports. Moreover, there is no Budget Subcommittee of the Board to develop some expertise on the matter, and even when one existed, it met rarely, if ever.
The current Capital Budget was always of most concern because it was usually presented just before it had to be rolled up into the City’s budget, and there was no scope for tinkering. As long as enough money was found somewhere, the immediate financial crisis would pass, and long-range planning would be left for another day. That day rarely came, but it suited the former regime at City Hall not to have the TTC’s or City’s financial peril exposed to much scrutiny. Now that Toronto’s gaping budget hole is out in full view, we can see just how badly the city and transit system have been served by years of pretending our needs were “affordable”.
Steve Munro 