Finance

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TTC Capital Budget 2014-23 Part I: Fleet Plans (Or, Where Will We Put The Riders?)

The past two years at TTC and Council have been all about the fight over LRT and subways, and the shifting loyalty to each mode especially when potential votes are to be gained.  While Toronto (and Queen’s Park) flailed about with expensive rapid transit plans, something more important, but more subtle, off the radar, was happening.

Discussion of the future of our transit fleet and service levels later this decade took a back seat in the triumph of ideology over planning.  We are now in a position where all three modes — subway, streetcar and bus — will strain to meet demands placed on them for the foreseeable future.  We will have very clean subway stations, but service and capacity are quite another matter.

The problems for each mode are different.

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Congestion Management and Transit Priority: Toronto’s Confused Approach

Two studies came through Toronto’s Public Works & Infrastructure Committee at its November meeting revealing a less-than-coherent approach to traffic management and transit priority.

The Congestion Management Plan (CMP) takes a city-wide view with two background reports:

The Downtown Traffic Operations Study (DTOS) has a much tighter focus on the core area from Bathurst to Jarvis with a northern boundary of Queen Street, except between University and Victoria where it extends to Dundas Street.  Background reports include:

Most striking about these reports is the fundamentally different way in which they approach their subject.

DTOS is very much about action, making specific changes “on the ground” to the way streets operate with the goal of improved capacity.  This includes a more sophisticated form of Transit Signal Priority (TSP) that would take into account not just the presence of transit vehicles, but whether they were ready to proceed through intersections.

By contrast, the CMP spends a great deal of time talking about the need for technology upgrades and for co-ordination among various agencies – City Transportation, TTC, Utilities, Emergency Services – to the point one might ask if any of them ever talk to each other today and, by extension, how much “congestion” there is simply in agency-to-agency co-ordination.  TSP gets pushed to the back burner here with a suggestion that it be granted only when vehicles actually need it, although how exactly that would be achieved given TTC’s chaotic approach to line management is anyone’s guess.  More to the point, the TSP facilities now in place were funded by the TTC, but City Transportation now proposes to hobble their usefulness.

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TTC Service Changes Effective January 5, 2014

The TTC will make  improvements in several routes in January 2014.  Many of the changes are small-scale “tweaks” and we have yet to see system-wide benefits from the fare increase that will take effect on January 1.

2014.01.05_Service_Changes

The Service Budget does show some increase over past years.

January Vehicle Hours of Service Per Week

2010   159,288
2011   160,187
2012   160,830
2013   163,148
2014   167,118 (Budget, unchanged from Nov. 2013)

The values above do not include construction services, that is, additional vehicle hours required to accommodate construction projects which vary from year to year.  Although some construction-related costs are charged to the capital budget, construction service takes buses and operators that are not available for regular service.  In a year with many construction projects, this can delay the onset of service improvements elsewhere.

Despite budgetary constraints, the TTC was able to increase service in 2013 because its actual costs for 2012 were below budget.  The 2013 subsidy was “flat lined” at the 2012 level, but the effect on an “as spent” basis was that the subsidy dollars rose in 2013, and the  burden of additional service did not fall entirely on the farebox.

In 2014, there is a real dollar increase in the subsidy coupled with higher fares.

Route Changes Due To Construction Projects

504 King, 503 Kingston Road and 303 Don Mills Night Bus

Construction on the King Street approach to the bridge at the Don River will take longer than originally expected, and diversions will now remain in place until April, according to the TTC’s diversion notice.

72 Pape and 172 Cherry

Construction downtown has made for unreliable operation of the integrated service on Pape and its longer branch via Commissioners Street to downtown.  Pending completion of the construction (mainly the work at Union Station), the route will be split.

72 Pape will operate from Pape Station to Cherry & Commissioners looping via Cherry, Villiers and Munition Streets.

172 Cherry will operate from St. Andrew Station to Cherry & Commissioners and will use the same loop as 72 Pape.

On Sunday evenings, matching existing schedules, there will be no service on 172 Cherry, and the 72 Pape route will terminate at Eastern & Carlaw.

97 Yonge

Water main repairs on Yonge Street between Finch and Sheppard will disrupt the 97 Yonge bus.  The route will be split with overlapping services:

  • Steeles to Lawrence Station (all hours)
  • Davisville Station to York Mills Station (all hours)
  • Queen’s Quay to York Mills Station (peak only)

Midday service between Davisville and St. Clair stations will be discontinued.

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Where Is The TTC’s Customer Liaison Panel? (Updated)

I have finally received a reply from the TTC to my query about the Customer Liaison Panel.  My original query went out on November 14, and I sent a follow-up on November 27.  Here, slightly edited, is a reply from Chris Upfold.

I don’t think you’ll be surprised that I don’t think they need to meet in public / have a web presence / etc. to be an effective consultative and steering body.

The model for ACAT is quite different. They are representing a particular part of society that, by their very nature, can have higher instances of social exclusion. For that very reason of social exclusion it is critical that a body like ACAT (for which I’m also responsible) have a public voice that can ensure they are heard above the general demands / wants of customers. The majority of our customers don’t need that same voice given they have the ability to feed back to us on a plethora of items in a multitude of ways – not least of which are our Town Halls and Meet the Managers.

The CLP meet on at least a monthly basis and have broad authority to ask the TTC to present to them on any initiatives or services. They’ve looked at route management for surface and subway, our complaints procedure, our communications plans, PRESTO plans, wayfinding, fare policies etc. etc. We also use them to give strategic and tactical feedback into options that we are looking at. They review some TTC Board papers at an early consultative stage so that the recommendations we are making are strong and supportable for customers.

Given that they do these things before they reach the public eye (or indeed are ready for the public eye) I think it’s absolutely necessary that they happen in private. As I say there is plenty of opportunity for customers to feed back in public. All of the members have signed NDA’s [Non-disclosure agreements] specifically for this reason.

I don’t think they need to “earn their keep in public” to have huge value for the TTC.

That’s all very nice, but the operative word in this group’s title is “Liaison”, and they can’t do much of that by meeting in private and reviewing management proposals, a privilege that may exceed even what is extended to some members of the TTC Board.  Without any public presence, they certainly cannot be spoken of as “representing” anyone.

When the Customer Service Advisory Panel proposed the formation of a liaison group, their recommendation was very heavily weighted to TTC management, unsurprising considering that the whole CSAP exercise was a big cheerleading session highjacked by management.  This is the same process that gave us more things riders had to do for the TTC, than the TTC had to do for its riders.

The site on which it was originally posted (ttcpanel.ca) no longer exists, but the report is available through an archive site.

Recommendation 1C: Customer Service Advisory Group

The TTC should institute a governance structure in order to ensure that the recommendations made by the CSAP, as well as future initiatives, are considered, implemented, and followed through to completion.

It is recommended that a Customer Service Advisory Group be created, consisting of:

  • 2-3 TTC Commissioners
  • 1-2 outside customer service specialists
  • The Chief General Manager of the TTC [now styled as the CEO]
  • The new Chief Customer Service Officer

Plus other appropriate members of the senior management staff.

In addition, this committee could include TTC employees and members of the public.

Quite clearly, the intent was for an internal panel to monitor and support the rollout of customer service improvements, and the public was very  much an afterthought.

By the time the CLP was actually constituted, the balance was completely changed with the majority of members coming from the public through an appointment process.  This might suggest a more public presence, but that’s not what we actually see.

The original article from November 29 follows the break below.

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The Transit Investment Panel: The Transit We Need

The provincial Transit Investment Panel has published the second of three discussion papers in advance of public meetings slated to start next week.  The paper is entitled “The Transit We Need” and it addresses filtering criteria by which possible transit projects should be judged.

This paper is odd on a few counts.  First off, it covers similar territory to the first “Hard Truths” paper by talking about meaningful criteria for inclusion of projects in competition for funding.  Second, it does not include specific proposals for alternatives to The Big Move, even though such a proposal was mooted by the panel’s Vice Chair Paul Bedford at a recent public presentation at UofT and obliquely mentioned in a Globe and Mail commentary (only available online).

The idea of a regional relief line that would connect several of the existing and proposed Metrolinx projects in a single line linking municipalities from Mississauga to Markham via downtown Toronto is worthy of exploration. Indeed, Metrolinx is in the midst of studying regional relief strategies right now. This would not constitute a re-mapping of the Big Move, but rather a strategic modification to better accommodate current and anticipated growth.

There is a fascination recently with advocacy for anything that might remove the need to build the Downtown Relief Line (or Don Mills Subway, or whatever we might call it), and the “Big U”, as Bedford calls it, is politically attractive because it goes out into the 905.  There is even a possibility at some distant future date that counter-peak flow to job centres in the 905 would add to the value of such a line provided that there is any local transit service to act as a distributor.

This does not eliminate the need for more local capacity into the core area especially if fare structures leave 905 residents clamouring for a subway to give them a cheap, frequent ride into downtown and riders from the 416 be damned.

The panel proposes a number of filters by which new lines would be evaluated, but gives no indication of the relative priority of these filters, or any relationship between the capital (and future operating) cost of a line versus the effect it might have (or not have) under these criteria.  This is rather like someone saying that we will cut taxes through “elimination of waste” without bothering to define the term or explaining how to find it.

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Measuring Service Quality

The quality of service provided on Toronto’s streets and in the subway has been a major, long-running topic on this site.  As reported last week, the TTC has just issued its third quarterly report on surface route reliability relative to a target of scheduled headway ±3 minutes.  They acknowledge that the methodology behind these numbers is flawed, and seek a better way to track reliability from the riders’ point of view.

To that end, the TTC is looking at the “journey time metric” used in London, UK, which tracks an entire trip’s experience including access, waiting and transfer times.  Leaving aside the need to define multiple trips both in location (downtown, suburban, in between) and in time (peak commutes, midday, evening, weekends), I believe that multiple metrics are required to flag problems at a level that is both meaningful and revealing of problem specifics.

What follows is a slightly reworked version of a proposal I made to the TTC recently on this subject.

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TTC Board Meeting October 23, 2013 (Update 3)

Updated October 26, 2013 at 5:20 pm to reflect discussions at the meeting.

The TTC Board met on October 23.

Update: The 2014 Operating and Capital Budgets are still not public, and they may now  appear in November (this has yet to be confirmed).  This is unusual because under Mayor Ford, the budget process for the City has been moved up so that the overall budget can be finalized early in the new year.  In 2012, the TTC budgets for 2013 were on the September agenda.

Will the TTC roll over again and accept a flat-lined subsidy placing the entire burden of extra costs on riders through fare hikes and compromises on service quality, or will they finally argue for better subsidies and force Council to debate just what transit should be doing – aside from building one subway line – for Toronto?

The CEO’s report (below) offers a hint in this statement:

“… discussions with the City continue regarding the TTC Operating and Capital Budget submissions for 2014-2023.  I am resolute in expecting an increase in subsidy to accommodate and service ever increasing customer numbers.”  [page 5]

Does this represent a strategic position on the TTC’s part, or division among the Commissioners about the direction the organization should take?

The City of Toronto will launch its 2014 budget process formally on December 2, 2013.

New Wayfinding Standards

Recent reports in other media have talked of a proposal to rename the subway lines with numbers to simplify wayfinding information for riders.  The details of this and other schemes to overhaul information will be presented at the meeting.

Updated October 23 at 10:55am:  The presentation is now online linked from the title above.

Updated October 26 at 5:00pm:  This topic will be split off into a separate thread given the volume of comments, and the accumulated comments will be moved to the new thread.

CEO’s Report

The CEO’s report has little new relative to the September edition.  Riding continues to be above 2012 but below budget.  For reporting period 8 (mainly the month of August), riding was up 3.5% over 2012.  On an annualized basis, riding is up 2.8%.  These results are 0.1% below budget for the period, and 0.5% below budget for the year to date.

Total ridership for 2013 is projected to be 527m, 1m below the budget projection.  This shortfall, coupled with higher-than-expected sales of passes versus token/cash fares, will mean revenue will fall $7.6m below budget.  This will be counterbalanced by various swings plus and minus on individual expense lines (details on page 24).

Update:  According to CEO Andy Byford, the lower ridership and revenue numbers for 2013 are mainly attributed to the severe weather and floods earlier in 2013.  Major shutdowns planned for 2014 will definitely affect ridership and this will be built into the budget estimates.

Subway punctuality on the Yonge-University line remains a problem particularly in off-peak hours.  It is unclear how much this is a side-effect of the yardstick of headways within ‡3 minutes of scheduled values.  During peak periods, it is much easier to meet this goal because there are more trains on the line, and entire trips can be missing without headways going beyond the 3-minute rule.

The BD line problems occasionally from the transfer of trains to the Yonge line to “cover shortages”, although this is not explained.  Are there simply not enough working trainsets to operate the Yonge service, or are BD trains poached to fill major service gaps?

Update:  I have asked the TTC to clarify what this section of the report actually means.

As if the wait hasn’t been long enough already, the CEO’s report states that the Harbourfront line will not return to streetcar operation until August 2, 2014.  No reason is given for the further slippage between the July date given by Waterfront Toronto and the TTC’s new August date.

One major issue that the CEO’s report does not address is the fleet availability in Toronto.  Only through the shutdown of substantial chunks of the streetcar system has the TTC managed to field enough cars to cover what remains in operation.  It is in their interest to prolong construction projects until they can get the first of the new fleet on the road.  What was originally touted as a “spring” startup of LFLRV service may now well slip to at least “summer”.

Production deliveries of cars are supposed to start later this fall.  What is the status of this order?

Service reliability is supposed to be reported quarterly for all surface operations, but the third quarter report has not yet appeared (it is expected to show up sometime on October 21).  When it does, I will be reporting separately on comparisons of the numbers over the past three quarters of 2013.

Update:  The quarterly report was published on October 23 and has been discussed elsewhere on this site.

I will follow up on questions raised here with TTC staff at the meeting and will update the article when further info is available.

TTC Fare Policy – Requests For Fare Discounts

This is a compendium report on various proposals/requests the TTC has received for reduced fares for various groups.  The staff position is that any additional subsidies for various classes of riders must be funded through a policy decision at City Council with adequate funding through the subsidy stream to offset the projected revenue losses.

This has been the TTC’s stock position for such requests for years, but at least we now have a consolidated report listing the projected cost for each option.  If Council wants to fund new discounts, the expected cost is known presuming that we accept the TTC’s estimates (some of which are dubious).

  • Extending “Family Pass” (6 people, maximum 2 adults) pricing to the entire week.  This is projected to cost only $2.2-8.6m per year, although I am suspicious of the figure because it is based on existing pass sales.  If the pass is more attractive, then more of them will be sold, but the estimate does not take this into account.
  • Free off-peak trips for seniors.  The cost is estimated to be at least $22m per year based on the number of non-pass trips by students/seniors today (45.2m), subdivided by the proportion of seniors (40%) and then the proportion of off-peak trips (65%).
  • Off-peak only pass for seniors.  The technology to handle time-of-day passes does not exist on turnstiles today, and so this option would best be left until Presto is rolled out across the system.  The estimated annual cost is $1.0-2.1m, but this depends on various assumptions regarding pass pricing, trip counts and conversion rates from the existing all-day passes.
  • Lower age for “senior” passes to 60 from 65.  The estimated cost is $3.3-4.9m, but this includes only the lost revenue from existing Metropass holders switching to the lower-priced pass.  No provision is included for token users for whom the senior’s Metropass would be more attractive than continuing to pay single adult fares.
  • Extend senior/student fare pricing to ODSP and OWP recipients (these are the Ontario Disability Support and the Ontario Works programs).  This is projected to cost $6.3-12.6m, but the mechanism for administering these fares is not discussed.  Of particular note, the calculation is based only on the actual recipient numbers within Toronto, not on their dependents and spouses.

Any special fare regime will be easier to administer once automatic fare collection is in place.  Time-of-day discounts and special fares associated with a rider’s status can be build into the fare structure, and the actual amount of discount provided for each target group can be tracked.  This will be important if special subsidies are involved so that they remain separate budget lines rather than simply merging into the overall TTC revenue stream.

Advisory Committee Activity

An interesting read in recent TTC agendas has been the meeting minutes for the Advisory Committee on Accessible Transit (ACAT).  This is a very active group whose discussion cover a wide range of issues with TTC staff, and the minutes report their activities in detail.

One might wish for the Customer Liaison Panel to be as forthcoming with information on its activities.  It is unclear whether the CLP has done anything since its formation, or what its areas of focus might be.  If the panel is intended to represent “customers” as part of TTC activities, why doesn’t it show the rest of the world what it is doing?

Supplementary Agenda

Yorkdale Fatality of September 14, 2012 – Final Investigation Report

This report contains the detailed findings regarding an accident last year in which a work car struck two employees during overnight maintenance near Yorkdale Station.

[New] York University Station Construction Status

Councillor Perruzza addressed the Board on the issue of York University Station where, as reported in the National Post, the station excavation is a lake, and no work appears to be in progress.

According to TTC staff, the tunnel construction contractor, Obrascón Huarte Lain and FCC Construcción, has handed off the site to the station contractor, Ellis-Don, but this process has taken longer than expected.  Meanwhile, Ellis-Don did not take over pumping of water even though they were now responsible it.  This is to be corrected, and Ellis-Don will begin active work on the site in 2-3 weeks.

Construction at this location was substantially delayed due to a worksite fatality in 2012.

[New] Time-Based Transfers for Eglinton West

Commissioner Colle requested a report from staff on the implementation of a time-based transfer arrangement on Eglinton West during the Crosstown tunnel construction similar to the setup still in use on St. Clair Avenue.  The TTC will ask Metrolinx to contribute to the cost of this if it is implemented.

[New] GO/TTC Fare Integration at Dundas West and Exhibition Stations

Chair Stintz requested that staff report on the provision of a joint TTC/GO fare between Union Station, Dundas West and Exhibition Stations as a way of relieving demand on the system, notably on the 504 King car.  The report should be on the November agenda.