Finance

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TTC Board Meeting: December 20, 2023 – Part I

The December 20 Board meeting at the TTC took rather longer than expected, and with a focus on some items that might otherwise have been unremarkable.

Items discussed here:

The 2024 Budget and Capital Plan will be discussed in Part II of this series.

Another report will be covered in a separate article.

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Broadview Station Reopens to Bus Service

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.

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When 95% Really Isn’t 95%

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.

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TTC 2024 Budget Preview: Part II – Capital

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”.

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TTC Service Changes Effective January 7, 2024

The TTC will adjust service on many routes with the January 2024 schedules.

A summary of all changes is in the spreadsheet linked here showing a before and after view of the affected routes. Note that the “before” data are from the November 2023 schedules which do not include the holiday period’s service cuts. All of those cuts are restored in the 2024 schedule, and they are not listed here.

TTC Service Changes 2024.01.07

Updated December 30, 2023:

  • Maps of route changes have been added from the corresponding TTC Service Changes pages.
  • The revised 501B Queen looping at Broadview & Gerrard has been added.
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TTC 2024 Budget Preview: Part I – Operating

The TTC Board’s meeting agenda for December 20, 2023 deals primarily with the 2024 Operating Budget, the Capital Plans looking forward 10-15 years, the growing backlog of State of Good Repair (SOGR) spending, and a preliminary look at the Five Year Corporate Plan. A few items are carried over from the December 7 agenda that the Board could not complete due to time limitations, of which the most significant is the quarterly financial review.

In this article I will preview the Operating Budget, but will turn to the Capital Budget in a second piece. I will also follow-up the Board meeting discussion and additional presentations from staff.

Major Issues

The overwhelming issue is, of course, funding: who will pay to continue TTC operations at their current level let alone to improve them?

No fare increase is proposed for 2024 “in recognition of the impact current economic conditions have on customers”. This has a cost in increased subsidy, or more subtly in works not undertaken for lack of revenue, if the gap is not filled. In 2024, this gap will use a reserve draw, but that approach is not sustainable due to declining reserves and the escalating cost from year to year of a continued freeze.

A political challenge in seeking profincial and federal subsidies for covid shortfalls is that a fare freeze appears to come on the back of covid payments that might not otherwise be claimed.

More generally, the idea of “covid costs” is going to run out of steam soon as support programs close down at the provincial and federal level. The TTC and City must figure out what TTC plans look like based on current revenue and ridership, plus whatever added subsidy might be available.

Future years include major challenges with a continuing reduction of core area work trips compared to pre-pandemic conditions. While total weekly trips might be lower than historical levels, daily volumes show considerable variation both on transit and traffic conditions. Service planned on the basis of average demand could be overloaded on the peak days.

Although the budget speaks of a return to 97% of the Service Budget level by Fall 2024, this is qualified by a note that this is to address traffic congestion. In terms of actual service level (i.e. buses per hour), riders may not see as much improvement as the 97% figure implies. There is almost no provision for additional streetcar and subway service. Peak subway service continues to operate at a much lower level than pre-pandemic schedules in spite of an overall return to 83% of the former service.

The budget contains little provision for additional service related to demand growth, nor is there any discussion of the implications of a growth rate higher than the assumed value. Ironically, added costs are included for maintenance of the growing streetcar fleet, but not for actual operation of these vehicles. Capital plans for buses see only a modest growth in fleet size and, by implication, in service levels.

There is no discussion of reversing changes to Service Standards implemented by management in 2023 that brought allowable off-peak crowding to almost peak levels. This keeps the cost of service down, but affects its attractiveness.

The net effect of demand changes in the core is that the TTC’s share of the travel market is falling even though ridership is strong for non-core trips with a higher recovery rate.

There is a major disconnect between capital plans for substantial growth in core area capacity on the rapid transit and GO networks, and the very modest plans for service growth to the same area.

This is very much the kind of budget presentation we have seen through many years of the Tory regime with small-scale changes. Given the funding limitations, this is no surprise, but there must also be a reconciliation between political aims for greater transit and what the money sitting on the table will actually pay for.

Other City initiatives, notably a greener fleet and proposals for massive service expansion, affect the Capital Budget and, eventually the Operating Budget, but these must be understood in the context of a basic question: what do we spend our money on? Basic operations and service quality will be compromised by bad choices or by simply hoping that a transit equivalent of the Tooth Fairy will appear.

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TTC Service Changes Effective December 24, 2023

The TTC will institute a number of service changes for the holiday period between Sunday, December 24, 2023 and Saturday, January 6, 2024.

All of these involve service cuts usually made over this two week period with the removal of school trips on many routes. These will be restored in the January schedules.

On all routes but one, the change is implemented either by switching back to the summer 2023 schedule or by amending the existing schedule to remove the extra trips.

38 Highland Creek has an extended route this year compared to 2022, and so it has a new “summer” schedule for the coming holiday. This will be used in 2024. Other routes extended as part of the SRT replacement do not have school trips, and so they are not affected by the holidays.

Service Changes Effective 2023.12.24

The file linked here contains lists of the routes that will lose school trips and/or will have summer service for the two week period. The last page of this file details the TTC’s plans for service on a day-by-day basis including New Year’s Eve. The arrangements are identical to those for 2022 except that there are no “last train times” for the now-discontinued Line 3.

No new diversions have been announced for the holiday period although it would not surprise me if a whole pack of Grinches is working on a last minute “gift” for transit riders.

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The Politics of Outsourced TTC Vehicle Cleaning and Servicing

Updated December 20, 2023: As of today, Board member Ron Lalonde, whose term was to run until February 2025, resigned creating a vacancy that could be filled with a non-Tory aligned citizen member.

At its December 7, 2023 meeting the TTC Board considered a management report recommending the continued outsourcing of surface vehicle cleaning and servicing. This proved to be a very contentious issue triggering a long in camera session after which the recommendation was adopted in part, but with one amendment, and on a split vote.

Background

Outsourcing of bus cleaning began under CEO Andy Byford as an outgrowth of Toronto’s core services review. It began as a pilot at Mount Dennis and Malvern garages, and from November 2013 was expanded to the (then) full seven garages. When that contract expired at the end of 2017, a new contract was signed covering the period to the end of 2023.

In 2020, as part of the Covid response, the work of disinfecting all vehicles, including streetcars and subway trains, was added to the contract.

Cleaning and servicing of streetcars was added to the contract in September 2021 with a December 2023 end date, and an option for two additional one-year terms. Starting in January 2023, midday in-service streetcar cleaning was added as part of “TTC’s action plan with respect to community safety, security and well-being”.

The contractor, TBM Service Group Inc., uses employees under Local 2 of the Service Employees International Union, and pays wages higher than the statutory minimum, but not as high as comparable work that would be done by Amalgamated Transit Union 113. ATU claims that this work is rightfully theirs, and that the TTC is in breach of contract by outsourcing it. This is a long-standing dispute.

TTC argues that TBM’s employees are 40% female and 85% visible minority, but this does not speak to what the breakdown might have been had the work stayed with ATU. For their part, ATU argues that the cleaning and servicing positions were entry level jobs to the TTC which are no longer available.

TTC also argues that having ATU staff perform these functions created problems at garages because of staff shortages. When other maintenance workers filled in, this left repair work unfinished. The TTC argues on the basis of efficient staff usage without addressing why they were short cleaners in the first place.

TTC also claims that vehicle reliability has gone up over the outsourcing period, but does not address other possible factors such as:

  • the average fleet age which has been falling as the shift to a 12-year replacement cycle builds into the system,
  • the under-utilization of the fleet thanks to pandemic-era service cuts allowing the worst performing buses to be sidelined,
  • the opening of McNicoll Garage relieved bus crowding at other locations that interfered with efficient maintenance.

The TTC acknowledges that the work model implemented by TBM is an improvement over past TTC practices, and they would adopt it although costs would rise because of higher ATU wage rates.

TBM has since refined the business model to adopt a production line approach utilizing dedicated workforce to perform each activity. If the TTC were to perform servicing and cleaning in-house, the TTC would be inclined to adopt a similar business model as TBM to ensure continued success of KPIs. Using TBM’s business model, the TTC would need to increase its workforce compared to the 2012 business model. The expected cost avoidance of second sourcing with the updated workforce model is approximately $101.83 million over the contract term (2024-2028) or an average annual cost avoidance of $20.37 million.

Appendix A – Bus and Streetcar Servicing & Cleaning – Benefits & Performance p. 5

Leaving aside the question of cost, this begs the question of whether the TTC was attempting to make do with fewer staff than needed when the work was in house.

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Analysis of 903 STC Express: September-November 2023

This article is a preliminary look at the service offered by the 903 express bus which replaced Line 3 SRT.

Until Saturday, November 18, the 903 buses provided very frequent service between Scarborough Town Centre and Kennedy Station. On Sunday, November 19, eight other routes were extended from STC to Kennedy Station, the 903 was extended to Centennial College replacing the 134/913 Progress bus, and much existing service on route 903 was reallocated to the extended routes.

I will review the other routes serving this corridor in early 2024 when they have accumulated a few months’ experience.

Travel Times

The charts here show how travel times between STC and Kennedy Station have changed over the past three months. The screenlines for these measurements are located:

  • Leaving STC Loop
  • Just north of Eglinton on Midland and on Kennedy

Note that this excludes time spent navigating roads and construction near Kennedy Station, and any time spent in STC Loop. I will review terminal operations when more data for all of the routes in this corridor have accumulated.

The charts below show monthly data, by week and hour, with North/Eastbound service on the left and South/Westbound service on the right. Note that there are no data for September, Week 1 because the service was provided with untracked extras until the schedule change on Labour Day weekend.

The solid lines show the average headways, and the dotted lines show the standard deviation, a measure of the scatter in the values. The closer the SD values are to zero, the more reliable the service is.

In the early weeks of operation, the transit priority measures were not in place, and service was more affected by traffic sharing the road. This settles down by November, although some peak period effects are still visible.

The TTC had anticipated that a trip between Kennedy Station and STC would take 15 to 18 minutes depending on conditions. Considering that the times shown below do not include access time to and from terminals, the service is close to the TTC’s target.

Service from November 19 Onward

After November 19, the 903 STC Express became more typical of other routes with less frequent service. Variations show up that are similar to other parts of the system. The charts below show headways westbound at Progress and Markham Road, and northbound from Eglinton and Kennedy for the last two weeks of November. The scatter of data points shows the type of service that someone waiting for a 903 bus would experience.

  • Some data are missing on the morning of Friday, November 24.
  • Some of the wider headways (dots higher on the charts) have no correponding short headway (dot near the horizonal axis). This indicates that a bus was missing, as opposed to two buses running close together after a long gap.
  • The weekend charts at the south end of the line include data for the early part of the month when 903 service was much more frequent.
  • Although much of the weekend service stays close to the target headway, there are data points showing wide gaps where a bus was missing from the service. This is a concern for service east of STC to Centennial College.
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East End Route Diversion Update

This post consolidates information about the diversions affecting east end bus and streetcar services as a convenience for readers.

Construction projects affecting these routes include:

  • Water main repairs on King between George and Sherbourne. This is a permanent repair for the problem that diverted all service in late October due to a sinkhole.
  • Reconstruction of Broadview Station Loop.
  • Adelaide Street reconstruction for the Ontario Line streetcar diversion.
  • Ontario Line construction at Queen and Yonge.

Routes as of Tuesday, December 5

501D Queen East streetcars run between Neville Loop and Distillery Loop via King west of the Don River. The easiest way to connect with these cars is to take any route headed east out of downtown that goes far enough to make a transfer connection with the 501D. Note that this is tricky at King and Sumach because stops are not well-located for a transfer connection eastbound there.

503 Kingston Road streetcars run between Bingham Loop and (officially) King and Spadina diverting via Queen between the Don River and Church Street. In practice, much of this service turns back via the traditional 503 downtown loop via Church, Wellington and York to King. If you want a 503 eastbound from anywhere west of York, it is best to get on any eastbound service and transfer to the 503 at Bay or Yonge. If you transfer at York, the 503 stops on the SE corner. Note that at Church and King Streets, eastbound 503 streetcars stop on Church just north of King. [Corrected 6:05 pm, Dec 5]

501B Queen buses that run between Bathurst (Wolseley Loop) and Broadview and Gerrard have swapped their route east of Church with the 503 cars. The 501Bs run on King Street, and the 503s run on Queen.

504 King streetcars are all turning back at Church Street looping via Church, Richmond, Victoria and Adelaide because they cannot run east on King.

504/505 King/Dundas shuttles operate from King and Parliament to Broadview and Danforth making on street stops on the NW and SW corners of that intersection. Subway connections are via a walking transfer. These buses continue west across the Viaduct to Castle Frank Station.

Both the 501B and 504/505 buses do not stop eastbound on Queen at Broadview, but instead stop northbound on Broadview beside the parking lot. Westbound buses stop at the usual southbound stop on Broadview at Queen.

504 King shuttles to the Distillery run from a downtown loop of Church, Wellington and York Streets, and they serve the eastbound stops on King at Bay and Yonge Streets, among others. At the Distillery, they are supposed to loop west from Cherry via Mill, Parliament and Front to Cherry. They do not serve Distillery Loop.

508 Lake Shore streetcars normally operate east on King looping via Parliament, Dundas and Broadview. They are diverting via Queen and Church. This is a peak only service.

There is no change to the 505 Dundas streetcars which continue to operate to Woodbine Loop via Gerrard and Coxwell east of Broadview.

Beware of TTC notices posted at stops as they are almost certainly out of date, incomplete or inaccurate thanks to the frequent route changes. There is a particular problem with outdated notices remaining at stops sometimes without a current replacement, or the “new” sign might be found in a different location (pole, transit shelter) than the “old” ones.

King Street water main work is supposed to be completed by the coming weekend, Sunday, December 10, and routes should go back to a somewhat less chaotic arrangement.

Effective Wednesday, December 6

Although Broadview Station Loop is still closed for construction, Broadview Avenue itself is open. Effective December 6, the 62 Mortimer and 8 Broadview bus routes will resume operation on Broadview stopping at Danforth at the NW (southbound) and SE (northbound) corners for subway connections.

These buses will continue south on Broadview to Gerrard, but will run out of service and loop via Gerrard, St. Matthews and Jack Layton Way. Riders making a transfer between these routes and the 504/505 King/Dundas shuttle should note that this does not stop at the same stops as the 8 and 62 buses. Southbound 8/62 riders would get off on the NW corner at Danforth and cross to the SW corner to catch a 504/505. Northbound 504/505 riders would get off on the NW corner (farside) at Danforth and walk back to the SE corner to catch a northbound 8 or 62 bus.

Effective Monday, December 11

For one week, the intersection of Bay and Adelaide will be completely closed to traffic. The TTC has not yet announced diversions for 19 Bay and 501B Queen (eastbound) buses.

Traffic congestion on King will no doubt be even worse during this period.