Finance

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TTC Service Changes Effective May 10, 2015

The schedule changes for May 10 will bring the first wave of improvements from the recently adopted City of Toronto budget and increased transit subsidy.

  • Many routes will gain service to begin implementation of the “Ten Minute Network” on core routes across the system. This stage mainly affects weekend service. Weekday changes to some of these routes will follow with the June schedules.
    • 192 Airport Rocket
    • 506 Carlton
    • 25 Don Mills
    • 36 Finch West (to Humberwood)
    • 191 Highway 27 Rocket
    • 504 King
    • 44 Kipling South
    • 47 Lansdowne (Queen to St. Clair)
    • 129 McCowan North (to Steeles)
    • 116 Morningside (to Finch)
    • 63 Ossington (to St. Clair)
    • 86 Scarborough (to Sheppard)
    • 24 Victoria Park (to Steeles)
  • The implementation of “All day, every day” service will begin.
    • 108A Downsview to Jane via Grandravine on Sundays late evening.
  • Expansion of express bus services will begin.
    • 196 York U Rocket to Sheppard-Yonge Station on weekends daytime.

The Scarborough RT will now be officially known as “3 Scarborough”.

Branch name changes will continue the move to use of the “A” designation for the primary branch of routes:

  • 6A Bay Dupont to Queens Quay & Sherbourne (formerly 6)
  • 38A Highland Creek to Rouge Hill GO (formerly 38)
  • 24A Victoria Park to Steeles (formerly 24)
  • 165A Weston Road N to Steeles (formerly 165)
  • 165C Weston Road N to Canada’s Wonderland (formerly 165A)

The 102D Markham Road contract service in York Region will be extended to Major Mackenzie Drive.

At the request of York Region Transit, the 102D (Warden Stn-Mount Joy GO Stn) service will be extended to Major Mackenzie Drive via Bur Oak Avenue and Mingay Avenue. Service will be removed on Castlemore Avenue, Anderson Avenue and Bur Oak Avenue, and from Mount Joy GO Station.

Retirement of the 7200-series Nova RTS buses at Arrow Road will continue through the spring. These vehicles have been used on 96 Wilson and 165 Weston Road North, but they will be confined to peak-hour runs if any remain in service for the May schedule period.

Reconstruction of the south ladder track at Russell Carhouse on Eastern Avenue will require significant operational changes. Some runs will be reassigned to Roncesvalles Carhouse, and the use of Exhibition Loop to store cars overnight will increase. Cars remaining at Russell Carhouse will be backed into the yard from the north entrance.

Various seasonal changes reflecting the decline in school-related travel and the increase in demand for recreational trips will be implemented. However, due to the timing of the Pan Am Games and the Indy car race, the seasonal expansion of 29 Dufferin service to the Princes’ Gates will not occur (weekday midday and evening, Saturday late evening, Sunday/Holiday evening).

The split operation of 72 Pape and 172 Cherry was planned to end with the May schedules. However, construction on Front Street at Union Station continues and a date for resumption of the unified route has not been settled. The TTC advises that, except for Pan Am Games, no other changes are planned until at least September.

With the completion of construction at College & Spadina and at Spadina Station, streetcars will return to 510 Spadina. Other changes this triggers include a reduction of service on 509 Harbourfront and resumption of buses for peak extras on 504 King. Two runs on 509 Harbourfront will be scheduled and crewed for LFLRV operation in anticipation of vehicle availability.

Details of individual route changes are in the spreadsheet linked below.

2015.05.10 Service Changes

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TTC 2015-2024 Capital Budget: Streetcar Infrastructure

Updated March 15, 2015 at 8:40 pm: An example of a vintage tram adapted for pantograph operation in Munich has been added to the end of this article. Thanks to John F. Bromley for the photo.

The TTC’s Capital Budget includes ongoing programs to replace worn streetcar rail as well as to upgrade the overhead power distribution system for compatibility with the new Flexity LRVs.

Replacement of streetcar track with infrastructure built to new, robust standards is almost complete on the main lines used by all routes. What remains are sections used for diversions and short turns.

Tangent track on Spadina south from College that was installed for the resumption of streetcar service in 1997 is scheduled for replacement in 2018. The table and the map differ on whether this work will end at Queen or at King. In any event, this will be the first major track replacement over a section constructed to new standards, and only the surface layer (track down to the tie attachments) should have to be removed.

Replacement of overhead contact wire with thicker 4/0 gauge is also well underway, as is the replacement of feeder cables, some of which are very old and are shedding their insulating covering. Intersection and yard upgrades will, together with the new tangent wire, make the system 100% pantograph compatible. When the last of the cars using trolley poles has been retired, the overhead can be further adjusted to remove pole-specific hardware and simplify future maintenance.

This article contains lists and maps of the work planned for 2015-2019.

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How Much Will The Spadina Subway Extension Cost?

The Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension (TYSSE) to Vaughan has been much in the news lately thanks to its delayed opening and cost overruns. The line was originally expected to open in 2015, even in early rosy estimates before the Pan Am Games, but now will not be in service until 2017. The project was repeatedly cited (as recently as December 2014’s CEO Report) to be on its budget of approximately $2.6-billion. The exact final cost is not known but has been reported to be up to $400-million more.

To date, the TYSSE project is on budget with a total budget of $2,634 Million. The in-service date is targeted for the fall of 2016 however the project is facing a serious schedule challenge. [CEO’s Report for November-December 2014, p. 29]

The “on budget” statement, which had appeared in all previous CEO reports, vanished with the January 2015 report.

A peer review was conducted by an APTA panel in late 2014 largely to assess schedule and budget challenges. A report is expected at the end of January related to schedule and budget challenges and will make recommendations to mitigate these challenges.

Bechtel Ltd., a consulting firm, was also retained at the CEO’s specific direction to conduct a thorough in depth analysis of the project and likewise is expected to present its findings at the end of January. [CEO’s Report for January 2015, p. 30]

The results of these reviews are to be tabled at the March 26, 2015 TTC Board meeting.

There are two issues in play here. First and most obvious is the question of how a major project can suddenly be found to have budget problems, and why these were not discovered and reported sooner. How much oversight did the TTC Board actually have beyond the one-line monthly assurance that the project was “on budget”? Second is the more general question of the tracking of major projects, and why this is not regularly reported to the Board and through them to City Council and other funding governments.

To learn as much as I could from publicly available sources, I culled through TTC meeting reports going back to the early days of design work on the TYSSE. Tracking a project’s history this way can be challenging for various reasons:

  • Some agendas exist only as a PDF file without links to the underlying reports.
  • TTC procurement policy allows contracts of up to $5-million to be approved by management without a report to the TTC Board. (This is in line with the City of Toronto’s policy.)
  • A monthly report listing all expenditures authorized by management in the $1-5m range was discontinued in March 2012.
  • Changes in the total authorized spending on a line item only appear in public when there is an update involving a large contract change.
  • The CEO’s report tracks variations in capital spending, but this is only against the expected amount for the current year, not for a project overall. Because of various delays, the TYSSE tended to underspend versus plans even though the estimated total cost to completion might actually be rising.

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City of Toronto Budget Amendments 2015 (Updated)

At its meeting of March 11 and 12, 2015, City Council passed a few budget amendments affecting the Toronto Transit Commission. Some of these reflect a sense that the TTC has not been “minding the store” quite as well as it claims, and a little belt tightening is good for any organization. Others address specific concerns that, quite frankly, should have been on the TTC’s agenda before now, but were buried under the rapid transit debates.

The motions address the following topics:

  • Additional Streetcars
  • Automatic Train Control
  • Waterfront West Transit
  • TTC Staffing and Project Management

Updated March 13, 2015 at 1:50 pm with further information about proposed staffing reductions.

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Metrolinx Board Meeting Wrapup: March 3, 2015

The Metrolinx Board met on March 3 for its quarterly gathering. Although there were important issues on the agenda, the debate was as superficial as usual, and the message that “everything is just great” permeated the proceedings.

Things got off to a slow start. The meeting room is relentlessly beige, overlit and unadorned. Windows there are, but when we entered, they were already partly screened and the view, such as it is, simply looks across to rooms and the roof opposite. Not long into proceedings, a further set of screens blocking this view descended lest we be distracted from the worthies sitting at the board table. We might as well have been in the set of an existential play wondering if there actually was a world outside, not a fine, downtown historic building.

The first order of business was a goodbye to retiring director Nicholas Mutton, a genteel fellow who has headed up the Customer Service Committee. Sadly his reports are always pushed to the back of the agenda and are rushed for time, and his presentations rarely get beyond reading a few pages of a short PowerPoint.

Then we had a brief report from Bruce McCuaig, the Metrolinx President & CEO, reiterating events of note since the last board meeting in December. One might forgive the poor directors for being out of touch with recent news given that they meet so rarely and have so little to say. Surely they stay informed on Metrolinx activities and don’t need a recap beyond the most unusual events.

In the remainder of this article, I will discuss:

  • Back-Charging Toronto for Metrolinx Work
  • The Regional Express Rail (RER) Update
  • The Regional Fare Integration Study
  • The Study of the Pearson Airport Area

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TTC Confirms Streetcar Service Levels With New Fleet

Toronto’s Budget Committee has asked staff for many briefing notes on details behind various programs. Among these requests was for TTC to detail the level of service that would be operated on all streetcar routes after the 204 new Flexitys have been delivered, and how this would be improved with the addition of a proposed 60 car order.

The TTC has responded with a report that details how the cars would be used.

Long–Term Peak Headway Projections for Streetcar Routes

With the initial 204 car order:

  • Peak headways would widen by varying degrees on all routes except 501 Queen where existing AM peak frequency would be maintained using the larger cars. The biggest change would be on the 502/503 services changing from 12′ to 14’30” on each of the routes which, in theory, provide a blended service.
  • Capacity increases in the AM peak would be greater than in the PM peak.

With the additional 60 cars:

  • Peak headways would return roughly to current levels. Capacity, relative to today’s service, would be considerably higher than today, except anomalously, on 501 Queen.

The report notes that additional cars will be needed for routes to serve the waterfront, but gives no indication of the service levels or fleet requirements for these routes. Because the report shows only headways for existing routes, not vehicle allocations, it is unclear how many of the 60 cars go for service improvement and how many for new routes. The percentage improvements on existing routes are high enough that it is possible that cars have been double-counted for this purpose. I will follow up on that issue with the TTC.

Updated at 12:22 pm: At Budget Committee, Andy Byford confirmed that the only “expansion” covered by the 60 cars is the Cherry Street spur south from King Street.

Updated at 3:00 pm: The TTC has confirmed that all of the 60 additional cars would be allocated to “legacy” routes with none reserved for expansion. As to the spare ratio they would design for:

“Spare ratio of 18%. We expect that that we will be able to reduce that when the fleet is settled in and we have confidence in the performance and reliability but, until then, this is our going-in assumption.” [Email from Mitch Stambler, TTC]

The ratio for the streetcar fleet today is about 25% (not including cars out of service due to cold weather) with roughly 200 of the 247 in the fleet scheduled for the AM peak.

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A Few Questions About Scarborough

Toronto Council’s agenda for today, February 10, 2015, contains a series of “Administrative Inquiries” by Councillor Josh Matlow regarding various aspects of transit plans for Scarborough. The City Manager’s response appeared late yesterday, but it was not exactly packed with revelations.

In theory, the inquiry process provides a way for questions to flow directly from a Councillor to City staff bypassing the usual mechanism of committee reports where administration majorities might strangle debate. In practice, the information released might or might not fully address the question.

Mayor Tory’s position is quite clear: the subway debate is over, and Matlow’s questions are simply attempts to reopen the question on matters that are already known and decided. Would that it were so simple. Subway champions should pause in their dismissal of Matlow’s position because the report shows how much we don’t know, or at least are not being told, about the subway project.

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TTC Service Changes Effective March 29, 2015 (Update 2)

Updated February 6, 2015 at 6:10 pm:

A change to service on 1 Yonge-University on weekday evenings was missed in the original version of my condensed version of the changes. This has been corrected.

Updated February 3, 2015 at 11:30 am:

In response to questions raised by the planned changes, I asked the TTC for more details on specific work.

  • At College & Spadina, the platforms used by 506 Carlton will be lengthened, but not widened. They are already wide enough for boarding via the ramps on the Flexities.
  • The 509 Harbourfront route will convert to PoP operation when the Flexities move there at the end of March.
  • Transit signal priority has been or will be restored at various locations on St. Clair:
    • On December 23, 2014, it was restored at Yonge and at Avenue Road.
    • Before March 29, 2015, it will be restored at Deer Park, west of Dunvegan, Russell Hill, Bathurst, Wychwood, Arlington and Caledonia
    • To be completed, but not necessarily by March 29: Ferndale (St. Clair Stn. Loop exit), Christie, Old Weston, Keele/Weston)

The original article from January 31 follows below.

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Those Pesky Metropasses

The TTC Board has approved fare hikes in most categories effective March 1, 2015. [Scroll down in the press release for the details.]

This round included certain changes that attracted debate:

  • Children (age 12 and under) will ride free.
  • Adult Metropasses will change from the equivalent of 49.5 tokens to 50.5 tokens.
  • Cash fares remain at their 2014 level.

Although the “average” increase is advertised as 3.7%, the Metropass holders (who are 40% of the TTC’s customers and account for 53% of all riding) will see an increase of 5.8%.

TTC management has never liked the Metropass and fought hard against its introduction in 1980. Over the years, to encourage use, the TTC reduced the fare multiple (the token equivalent of the pass price) from the original 52 and it eventually dropped to about 48.

Management pushes back, and treats pass holders as people who get too good a deal, also as a captive market who will put up with a larger-than-average fare increase leaving money to offset other fare policies such as free rides for kiddies. They argue that passholders don’t pay their way:

  • Since 2010, the price of a pass has gone up by 17%.
  • During the same period, based on surveys of pass users, the trips taken per pass have gone up from 70 to 75 per month, on average, or 6%.
  • Therefore the price per ride (on average) has stayed at roughly the same level as inflation in Toronto.
  • The effective after tax price of the pass is only 43 fares.

From 2010 to 2015, the cost of a token has gone up from $2.50 to $2.80, or 12%, roughly equal to the imputed increase for pass holders, but this assumes that every pass holder actually is making five more rides a month to offset the higher price. As for the tax rebate, this assumes that a buyer has taxable income against which to offset the transit credit, and passes actually cost the poor more than they do those with taxable income.

Management claims that it is “not economically sustainable to carry an ever-increasing number of trips without the associated revenue to cover the cost of providing those trips” [Budget Presentation, Feb. 2, 2015, page 25] What this statement completely misses is the fact that pass holders make many “trips” that they would not take on a pay-as-you-play basis, or they would creatively cheat on their transfers. Those 75 trips/month do not all represent “lost” revenue, nor do they necessarily push up operating costs through a need for increased capacity. Indeed, pass holders get no credit in this calculation for the much lower cost/trip of fare collection — one monthly transaction, an electronic one for the Monthly Discount Program, no handling of cash (other than one monthly payment for in-person transactions), no tokens to distribute and collect, and no transfers.

There has never been an accounting of the so-called cost of Metropass users to the TTC, and especially not one weighed against the benefits in simplified operations and the social benefit of a fixed, monthly fare.

Oddly enough, management has no worries about “sustainability” when it comes to the inevitable demand that free rides for children will bring, but instead spins this as a way to get future customers into a transit habit early in life.

This is a simple grab for $7-million in extra revenue in the guise of better equity.

In fact, Toronto should encourage more people to use passes as an incentive to ride transit. Being able to take “another trip free” is an important change in how a user views transit, and is similar to a motorist’s view of car use — it’s paid for, I might as well drive.

Unfortunately, the 2015 budget was assembled entirely out of view of the Commissioners who nominally should debate and approve these things. Mayor Tory and TTC Chair Colle simply assembled the media in a schoolyard one brisk morning and announced the new fares with no input from the board nominally in charge. The new fares were not even a campaign promise, quite the opposite.

One ray of sunshine in this procedural murk is that the Commission voted that management should bring back a report in May 2015 on a “vigourous” (later amended to “rigourous”) process for future budgets so that the policy issues affecting them can actually be debated. This is a welcome change, but it should not have been necessary in the first place if the Commission had been doing its job and actively developing policies in public view.

Next year, the TTC and Council will have to address key issues such as:

  • Whether to implement a “two-hour fare”, in effect a limited time pass in place of the current transfers.
  • Whether to implement discounted fares for recipients of social welfare programs.
  • What, exactly, “fare integration” with GO and the 905 transit systems would look like, and who will pay for it.
  • What will a “monthly pass” be in a regional context, and how should it be priced.
  • How will the additional, net, cost of opening the Spadina Extension to Vaughan be absorbed in the budget (an estimated $10m that will have its full effect in 2017).
  • The next round of “customer service improvements” beyond those planned for 2015 are off in remote 2019. Is this acceptable, or should Toronto continue to budget for even better service by, for example, fully restoring the crowding standards to the Miller era?
  • What does “reliable” service look like, and what steps are required from management and staff to make this a reality.

This is much more complex than the smiling, simplistic, good news, bright-yellow-flower world of the previous administration. Is the TTC, is Toronto up to this challenge, or will the major debates be on the choice of tiles for new subway stations?

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Below The Line

TTC capital spending plans suffer from a basic problem: political support for funding of routine maintenance that doesn’t have ribbon-cutting, photo-ops and election prospects has been falling for years. During the same period, demand for transit service, not just for shiny new lines, but for seats on buses, streetcars and subways, has been climbing fast. Two to three percent a year might not seem like much, but when many services see no improvement, or even deliberate cutbacks, things get tight.

This is not news. The shortfall in funding the TTC’s ten-year capital plan was foreseen some years ago, and it appears regularly as part of the City of Toronto’s budgetary handwringing about the growing backlog of work. There is always hope that a new formula, a more enlightened attitude at Queen’s Park or Ottawa, will bring new money to transit and solve this problem once and for all. Meanwhile, the shortfall is, to the degree possible, pushed off into later years of the plan so that the TTC can do the maintenance and rebuilding it needs.

That, at least, was the idea a few years ago, but those “tomorrows” are now “todays” and things have not changed much.

The first problem is that the only consistent revenue stream Toronto now receives from other governments is a share of gas tax, and this is a fixed amount, one that could decline due to population shifts and reduced use of fuel. Over the ten years 2015-2024, no increase in this tax stream is included in the TTC’s budget with the obvious result that gas tax as a portion of transit spending will continue to fall in purchasing power.

The second problem is an ideological standoff over revenue tools. “Give us more money” says Toronto, while Queen’s Park replies “We gave you revenue tools, use them”. This is the same Queen’s Park that is scared to death of using its own taxing powers to fund better regional transportation systems. All governments tell fairy tales about the magic of Public-Private-Partnerships and Tax Increment Financing, schemes designed to hide the fact that costs we should pay today would be financed by borrowing against the future, but in a way that doesn’t use that dirty word “debt”.

This is not a happy situation, but the debate becomes more complex when we actually look at those unmet financing needs of the next decade and beyond. Are all of the projects now on the books reasonable? What is missing? Would additional funding, if it were available, be spent wisely?

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