This month’s TTC board meeting has a rather thin agenda. Whether that will lead to a short meeting is another matter.
Updated January 22, 2013 at 8:30 am: Results of the meeting have been added to this article.
Finance
Headway Reliability on 501 Queen for November 2011
This is the first in a series of posts about service on the Queen car following on from my article about evaluating the quality of transit service. Queen is a major TTC route that includes many problems including its length, traffic congestion in certain parts of the route, and a general dissatisfaction among riders.
Just how bad is the service? A common observation from riders is that they can walk to their destination without being passed by a streetcar. On the outer ends of the route, service can be unpredictable especially west of Humber Loop where only half of the service is even scheduled to travel and some of that is short-turned.
The TTC’s goal is to operate 70% of streetcar service within 3 minutes of the advertised headway. On Queen, scheduled headways at most times lie in the range from 5 to 7 minutes, and this translates to an acceptable band of service that treats gaps of up to 10 minutes as “punctual”. In practice, the route rarely attains that 70% score.
How Should We Measure Transit Service Quality?
Introduction
The question of service quality has been a central thread on this site more or less since its inception. It is not enough to have service on a street (or even in a subway or on a private right-of-way) if it shows up unpredictably, or can’t be used because it is overcrowded or short-turning before it gets to many riders’ destination.
For as long as I can remember, the TTC’s stock excuse for poor service was “traffic congestion” coupled with “it is impossible to provide good service with streetcars running in mixed traffic”. When detailed information about vehicle movements on the transit system became available, it was quickly evident that congestion was only one problem. Moreover, some bus routes on wide avenues exhibited service qualities almost indistinguishable from streetcars tethered to rails on narrow streets.
After a period when the Toronto supported more spending on transit to improve loading standards and hours of service, the city swung to the right treating transit service as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Despite cutbacks that could throttle demand, transit riding continues to rise, and with it the problems of service quality. Much of the service improvement we do see is funded not by subsidies but by fare revenue, not to mention by overcrowding.
The TTC has focused much effort the “soft” improvements — cleanliness, information systems and customer relations — but for the really important one — service they actually provide to riders — the jury is still out. The situation is compounded by budget constraints of the Ford/Stintz era, of just getting by with trims around the edges, but with no sense of a plan to make substantial improvements.
The time is overdue for a clear direction on improving transit service. The answer is not just to run more buses or build more subways, although service improvements are needed. We must also run the buses and streetcars we have more reliably.
The common thread through measurement schemes is that a transit system must be viewed from the passenger’s point of view. They are the people actually riding and telling their car-driving friends how good or bad transit is. In Toronto, at least, the riders are also substantially paying for the service.
How should we measure how the system is performing now and in the future?
For those who do not want to read to the end, no, I do not have a grab bag of solutions, a “right way” to do things. What we do need is a better understanding of how the system behaves at a detailed level — are there specific problems on individual routes that can be removed or at least lessened, and are there systematic problems with transit operations?
Some issues are external — there really is traffic congestion — but the question to answer is how we will deal with it. Will transit priority really take precedence at a possible cost to other road users? Some issues are internal — is there really enough service on the road, and could these vehicles be better managed? What improvements will riders accept with glee — service reliability — and which will they regard as “nice to haves” that don’t address the underlying problem that “my streetcar never shows up when I need one”.
Detailed reporting together with measurements that riders can understand are essential to maintain the transparency and credibility of a transit agency. One common element through this review of many systems and papers is that any measurements should be based on what the rider sees, not on management’s view and goals. The purpose should not be to trumpet how good Toronto’s transit is, but to find how to make it better.
TTC Meeting Wrapup for December 19, 2012
The Toronto Transit Commission meeting of December 19, 2012, brought a few items of interest, although the desire to get away for Christmas was definitely in the air. Nonetheless, the public meeting ran close to five hours.
In this article:
- Leslie Barn(s)
- A New Approach to Community Relations
- Subway Station 2nd Exits
- Presto Update
- CEO’s Report
- Gateway Lease
- City Auditor’s Report on Wheel-Trans
TTC Service and Budgets 2006 to 2013
Every year at budget time, there are many arguments about the coming year’s budget, fares and subsidy. Inevitably this concentrates on the current year just completing and the new year to come. Looking back over several years provides more context and is worthwhile in assessing where Toronto’s transit operations might go from here.
TTC Service Changes for January 2013
The TTC will make a small number of service changes in January 2013 that will reduce service on a few routes during underutilized periods. This change is required because the service improvements in fall 2012 overshot the budgetary mark, and the January 2013 service budget does not cover all of the additions.
Improvements to the budgeted weekly hours are planned later in 2013:
Budget Scheduled November 2012 161,990 163,772 January 2013 163,148 163,242 March 164,763 September 166,289 October 166,799 November 167,119
The numbers above do not include service provided to compensate for construction projects.
Metrolinx and the Auditor General (Updated)
Updated December 14, 2012 at 1:40pm:
Additional information regarding Presto and Metrolinx’ response to the Auditor General’s report has been added at the end of that section in this article.
Original post from December 13:
The Auditor General of Ontario released his Annual Report on December 12, 2012, and it includes a section on Metrolinx. For those of us who have wrestled with the secrecy of Metrolinx, some of the information and recommendations in this report are a breath of fresh air.
Metrolinx’ overall reaction to the report is much of the same boilerplate about the wonderful job they are doing and how important they are to the region. In some cases, Metrolinx dodges the questions raised by the Auditor in a way familiar to anyone who has ever attended one of their press conferences.
The report should be read in the context of March 31, 2012, the end of the period to which the audit applies.
Metrolinx Meeting Wrapup — December 2012
The Metrolinx Board met on December 5, 2012. Most of its business was conducted in private, an unfortunate habit of this provincial agency, but some items emerged on the public agenda.
I have already reported on the “Next Wave” of transit projects and the amendments proposed for The Big Move regional plan. In other news …
Metrolinx Updates The Big Move, Announces Priorities for Phase 2 Projects (Updated)
Updated December 6, 2012 at 11:20 am:
A warmed over version of the Board of Trade presentation was given to the Metrolinx Board by President & CEO Bruce McCuaig at the Board meeting on December 5. There were a few clarifications of note:
- The list of “Next Wave” projects will not be nailed down until the February 2013 Board meeting following a round of public consultation.
- That consultation will also include a review of the proposed amendments to The Big Move and yet another round of talks about potential revenue tools. The meetings will probably take place in January at 12 public round tables, as well as a 36-member “Residents’ Reference Panel” doing “deep dives” into the issues at weekend sessions. This process will report back to the Board in spring 2013. (There is no info about how the 36 “residents” will be selected for the panel.)
- It is likely that construction of the Downtown Relief and Yonge Extension subway projects would take place concurrently with Yonge to Steeles opening at roughly the same time as the DRL from Downtown to Danforth. “Phase 2” of each project would follow. At this time there is no commitment to going north of Danforth or to any specific route either through downtown or through the east end of Toronto. This will be the subject of an Environmental Assessment for the project.
- The goal of TBM was described by McCuaig as having 75% of GTAH residents within 2km of rapid transit at their origin or destination. That “or” is an important distinction I don’t remember hearing before. It’s child’s play to have lots of people close to rapid transit at one end of their trip — anyone who works in major centres within Toronto or lives along a subway, LRT, BRT or GO line will qualify. The more difficult target is to have such access at both ends of the trip because “convenience” is meaningless if only one end is well-served.
- In an apparent contradiction to the implied 1/3 local funding described in the Star’s article about Mississauga having second thoughts on the LRT project, McCuaig said that we cannot look at traditional federal/provincial/municipal financing models. Presumably the Investment Strategy will address this problem.
The actual timing of the Next Wave projects varies depending on which document one reads or how one parses the announcements.
- In the Next Wave handout (linked later in this article), this is described as a 15-year, $34-billion project.
- The spend rate implied by another part of the same handout is only $1.2b/year, and this translates to a 28+ year timeframe.
- Metrolinx, in an email responding to this article and my concerns about the status of projects such as the Eglinton LRT to the Airport, said that there would be a “Third Wave” in 2025.
- At the press briefing following the Board meeting, McCuaig confirmed that for the “15 year plan”, year zero has been reset to 2012. This implies that TBM’s original 15 year timeframe is now stretched to roughly 20. Moreover, McCuaig hinted that projects started within the next 15 years may not finish by then.
- Despite all of the delays, the year 2031 is still the target for completing all of The Big Move.
In previous discussions of the Investment Strategy, Metrolinx has included an allowance for operating the new facilities as they come into service. This is missing from the $34b of the Next Wave, but will have to be incorporated into the IS discussions. Moreover operating costs are ongoing while capital are one-time.
In all of this discussion it was amusing to listen to Metrolinx talk about revenue tools, code for the very things some politicians in Toronto find utterly unacceptable preferring to imagine that pools of private capital are available at little or no cost.
The presentation materials from the Board meeting are not yet online, but the hard copy version comes under the unhappy title of “The Big Move In Action”. Deleting only one space would give a good description of the treatment of project schedules for Transit City by Queen’s Park. The presentation ends with a page titled “Keep the wheels moving” and a picture of a stone wheel and hammer. Ontario makes a lot of claims for its triumphs in transportation technology, and I can’t help wondering if this is an early product of the Ontario Transportation Development Corporation.
I mention this because Metrolinx appears to have embraced a new, quaint graphic style for their Big Move and Union Pearson Express websites.
TTC 2013 Budget Update (Update 2)
Updated November 30, 2012 at 5:00 pm:
The City of Toronto budget papers released yesterday include Budget Analyst Notes for the Operating and Capital Budgets.
These are different in format from the TTC versions in that they are cast in a standard reporting layout for City budgets and concentrate on the financing of the TTC from the City’s point of view. All expenditures have a “gross” and “net” version with the difference made up by various revenues such as fares and subsidies from other governments. That difference represents what the City must raise from its own resources (although some of this actually originates externally).
Steve Munro 