Finance

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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.

Continue reading →

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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).

Continue reading →

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TTC November 2012 Meeting Wrapup

At its November meeting, the TTC considered various matters other than the 2013 budgets on which I have already reported.

New Commissioners

The new “citizen” members of the TTC were sworn into office: Maureen Adamson, Nick Di Donato, Alan Heisey and Anju Virmani.  Ms. Adamson was elected Vice-Chair of the Commission under a new Council-approved structure where the Vice-Chair is chosen from the citizen member ranks.  At this point we know little of where the newcomers will take the Commission beyond background articles such as one in The Star.

Although they may claim to be focused on customer priorities, whether this will survive the political onslaught of budget constraints and the organizational morass of “TTC culture” remains to be seen.  Commissioners tend to catch a “TTC disease” when it becomes easier to defend what the TTC has done and the official management outlook than to ask difficult questions, publicly, about how things could be better.  At least there is a CEO in place whose goals lie in improvement, not in justifying more of the same.

Continue reading →

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Services Changes Effective November 18, 2012 (Updated)

A few changes will be made to TTC service in November 2012.

Corrected Nov. 7, 2012 at 11:35 am: Route 504 King trippers which appeared to be a service increase are actually only a TTC correction to a previous error in their Service Summary.

502 Downtowner

Service will return to McCaul Loop operating on the same headways but with one fewer car during peak and weekday midday periods.

29 Dufferin

Service will return to Dufferin south of Queen when work by Toronto Water and TTC track replacement have finished.

504 King (Corrected)

Although this is not mentioned in the service change memo, the Service Summary shows three more CLRV trippers in the AM peak than on the October schedules.  This extends the period of 2′ headway eastbound to downtown by 12 minutes (a total of 19 trippers rather than 16 on a 4′ headway).

Correction Nov 7:  Scott Haskill at the TTC advises that these trippers existed in previous schedules, but were not included on the Service Summary.  Therefore, there is no net addition to service.

45 Kipling

The late evening 11 minute headway will be extended to midnight to relieve crowding, and a new northbound trip from Kipling Station will be provided at about 2:20 am.  These changes are on the weekday schedules only.

103 Mt. Pleasant North

All service now operating on a 15′ headway with 2 buses will be changed to run on a 20′ headway to “improve reliability”.  The change includes adding six minutes of driving time and four minutes of layover to each trip.

Affected periods are weekdays all day to mid-evening, Saturday and Sunday daytime.  Service at other times remains at 30′.

510 Spadina

Streetcar service returns between Spadina Station and King Street with a bus shuttle from King to Queen’s Quay.

Streetcar headways will be:

Period             Weekday  Saturday  Sunday
AM Peak              2'30"
Midday               1'53"
PM Peak              2'00"
Early Morning                  6'00"  15'00"
Morning                        2'30"   2'50"
Afternoon                      2'00"   2'10"
Early Evening        2'15"     2'30"   6'00"
Late Evening         6'00"     6'00"   6'00"

Bus shuttle headways will be 6’00” at all times except early Sunday morning when they will be 10’00”.

Streetcar service will return to Queen’s Quay & Spadina on December 23, 2012 using the same schedules as in May 2012.  Service to Union Station will not resume until late spring 2013.

165 Weston Road North

Weekend service to Canada’s Wonderland ends.

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TTC 2013 Capital Budget Part III: Streetcar Fleet and Infrastructure (Updated)

The 2013-2022 Capital Budget includes plans for the conversion of streetcar services from the existing CLRV/ALRV fleets to the new low-floor light rail vehicles (LFLRVs), related projects to bring the infrastructure up to the required standard for the new fleet, and continuing system maintenance.

Updated Nov. 4, 2012 at 8:30 pm:

The headway shown for LFLRV operation on Queen was incorrectly calculated in the spreadsheet.  This has been fixed.

Continue reading →

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TTC 2013 Capital Budget Part II: Bus Fleet Plans

This article looks at the fleet plans for the conventional bus fleet and for Wheel Trans over the 10-year period 2013-2022.

The lead time to procure new buses is considerably shorter than for rail vehicles (18-24 months vs several years), and this provides more flexibility in responding to changes in circumstances and/or policy regarding bus services.  What is striking in both of these plans is the slow rate of growth for the conventional bus fleet and the total absence of planned growth for Wheel Trans. Continue reading →

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TTC 2013 Capital Budget Part I: Subway Fleet Plan

This is the first article in a series examining various aspects of the TTC’s Capital Budget for 2013 and the 10-year plan running through 2022.  The report linked here gives an overview, but I have now reviewed the roughly 1,300 pages of supporting information in the “Blue Books” which detail each capital project.

Those books are not available on line, but contain much valuable information.  When the Commission considered its Capital Budget, this material had not yet been assembled.

To avoid creating a post as long as the Blue Books, I will break this into separate articles for major topics.

The Subway Fleet Plan

Subway Fleet Plan 2012.10

This plan provides for additional trains on the Yonge-University-Spadina and Bloor-Danforth subways, but only on a limited basis.  The fleet of Toronto Rocket (TR) trains will be used exclusively on YUS and the T1 trains (now split between both major lines) will operate on BD and, in four-car sets, on Sheppard.

The TR fleet is just large enough to accommodate the extension to Vaughan with a short-turn operation to Wilson Station, but only at the current level of service.  The T1 fleet is larger than required for current schedules on the BD and Sheppard lines, and so the surplus is used up at the rate of about 2 trains every 3 years on BD with no additional service on Sheppard.

The projection presumes that the spare factor for TR trains can be held at 13%, and it is unclear today whether this can be achieved and maintained over the life of this fleet.

Those extra T1 trains have been counted as “free” on more than one occasion for subway expansions proposed for the near future, but obviously they can only be used once be it for extra BD service, or on extended Sheppard or Danforth subways, or on the first phase of a Downtown Relief Line (DRL). Continue reading →

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Raining on Civic Action’s 32 Minute Parade

This morning, the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, or CivicAction for short, launched its “What Would You Do With 32?” campaign.  They have a video with all sorts of folks musing on how they would spend all the extra time they would have if the full Big Move plan were implemented.  Very nice, very charming, very misleading, very wrong.

Getting. Around. Town. Can. Take. An. Eternity.

But it doesn’t have to. It can be so much better.

There’s a plan in place to dramatically improve transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area – one that could actually save you an average of 32 minutes on your daily commute. [From your32 website]

At the press conference, that number troubled me because I didn’t remember seeing such a calculation anywhere in the background papers to Metrolinx’ The Big Move.  It turns out that this number is not a saving relative to today’s trips, but a comparison of our future, 25 years out, in Big Move or “do nothing” scenarios.

What’s so important about the number 32?

32 represents the number of minutes per day, on average, that you’ll save on your commute if The Big Move is funded and realized – that’s eight days a year or about two years over the course of your life. It is the difference between the average commute time if The Big Move is built (77 minutes; Source: Metrolinx), and the commute time if no comprehensive system is in place (109 minutes; Source: Metrolinx). [From your32 website]

Anyone who thinks there commute will be 32 minutes shorter than it is today is dreaming.  For comparatively short commutes, a 32 minute saving is physically impossible unless Metrolinx has an unannounced program to teleport us around the city.  (Given Queen’s Park’s track record on transit technology, I wouldn’t be too keen on trying it out, although I can think of some guinea pigs who surely won’t be missed.  The concept of a short-turn does not bear consideration.)  Even for long commutes (over 90 minutes), a 32 minute saving is a substantial chunk of a trip, and it won’t be made over every segment.

The biggest problem for transit riders is not the “rapid” part of their trip today (subway or GO train) but it getting to and from the rapid line at both ends.  These parts of the trip don’t lend themselves to big reductions in travel time.  We might extend a subway to Vaughan, but unless you live in a condo on top of the station, you still have to get to it.  Many transit trips are all surface because even with The Big Move, they will not lie along rapid transit corridors and going out of the way (as an expressway driver would) to use them would be counterproductive.  The Big Move (and associated funding schemes) don’t address this problem and leave local municipalities to find the funds, if they are willing, to boost what are seen as feeder services to the subway, not as vital lines in their own right.

Yesterday’s discussion at Toronto’s Executive Committee included the important observation that people need to feel they are getting something concrete in return for a new tax they might pay.  Civic Action’s campaign has two phases — one to talk about what might be, and one to talk about how we might pay for it.  The fundamental problem, however, is that they are selling those “32 minutes” that don’t really exist.  Most commute times will not get 32 minutes shorter.

Don’t forget that’s an average, and so even greater savings are obviously forecast for some travellers while others will get little.  I am not sure of the arithmetic validity of these claims.   It’s noteworthy that the Metrolinx models were not capacity constrained and they forecast ridership on some routes like the main TTC subway lines well in excess of their actual capacity.  That translates into full trains and pass-ups, something riders know today, never mind 25 years in the future.  A missed train is extra wait time, but I suspect the Metrolinx model does not allow for this problem.  As for the TTC, there are limits on how many trains and riders can be stuffed into the existing system, and few of the updates needed to handle more riders (even if we assume they are practical) are part of The Big Move.

The basic problem with the “Your 32” campaign is that it tries to find something to sell — those 32 minutes — because it cannot talk about specifics of what network and services we might actually see.  Metrolinx’ plans are years old now, and there are already components that must be added to make the whole package work.  Among these are the proposed Union Station West (for additional capacity and operational flexibility), GO electrification (a prerequisite for very frequent service) and the Downtown Relief Line (with expanded reach and an earlier implementation date to make both Union West and the Richmond Hill subway practical).

Metrolinx has been hinting at an updated Big Move for some time.  One was expected this fall, but they now expect to release a “technical update” in Spring 2013, and there is no sense of how much this update will address.  We must hope that, at least, the 2013 plan contains all of the projects that the new Investment Strategy will fund, and that we won’t have an “oops” where a major component such as electrification is missing from the list.

Also still missing is a worked example of putting the many components of The Big Move through a prioritization scheme.  That process will inevitably set off a noisy political debate as people discover that their pet projects are now at the back of the queue (if they are still in the mix at all), and that major spending on new transportation capacity is decades away in some areas.  How badly will the transit map be gerrymandered to convince taxpayers and politicians throughout the GTA that they should buy into a region-wide funding scheme?

If we could raise $3-billion in new annual revenue, some of this would have to go to operations and to municipal transit systems, and it will be a quarter-century or more before the whole plan is completed.  One might ask the boffins at Queen’s Park whether the construction industry can even burn through capital at that rate given their concerns about the constructability of Transit City on a compressed timeframe.

John Tory, the chair of CivicAction’s board, spoke not just of traffic congestion but of leadership congestion.  This begs the obvious question of Mayor Rob Ford and his supporters.  At some point, “transit leadership” must include some blunt words about Ford’s views on transit and on funding.  Partnerships with the private sector might work, although there are no guarantees and transit riders (not to mention taxpayers) will be left holding the bag if these deals fall apart.  To his credit, Tory did not treat these partnerships as a source of free money, and talked of the need to pay back investments made by the private sector one way or another.

CivicAction recruited a council of over 40 “regional champions” for their cause.  What, exactly, they will do is still a bit vague, although one might hope they would organize outreach at the local level.  You too can become a “local champion” and take the message to your community.  This all has a rather amateurish feel to it, but I may be pleasantly surprised.  Much will depend on the resources available to these champions including clear answers from government agencies about the transportation schemes and revenue tools they are promoting.

A recent poll showed that 90% of GTA residents don’t even know about The Big Move, and if they don’t know about the plan in general, they certainly don’t know what it might (or might not) do for them.  Getting new revenue such as a regional sales tax will be an uphill battle if people see this as just another tax grab.  When and if CivicAction gets down to the task of explaining The Big Move, they will discover just how hard finding those phantom 32 minutes will be, and this could further undermine its credibility.

The potential revenue from new taxes and fees are well-documented, most recently in the City’s report, and the City consultations will focus on the money side of things.

“Your 32” might have been a nice idea in a different context, but I fear CivicAction fails on two counts.  First, the underlying premise is wrong, and there is no way to sugar-coat that statement.  It’s not a question of interpretation, but of misrepresentation.  Second, the real debate will focus on raising money for major expansion of transit, and this demands concrete answers about what we would actually build and what the benefits of various network components will be.  CivicAction depends on Metrolinx for this sort of information, and that agency remains silent on the details.

Advocacy by local municipalities and by CivicAction is hamstrung because there is no way to know what the provincial priorities might be.  Will The Big Move will be treated as little more than a bag of election goodies to dribble out as Queen’s Park sees fit?