Finance

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Toronto Contemplates Transit Funding / Reviews Transit Plans (Updated)

Updated October 9, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Toronto’s Executive Committee considered a report on transit funding mechanisms today.  In the following report, I have included only the most interesting or important of comments to give the flavour of the debate.

The proceedings were rather odd in that a presentation, cued up for City Staff, was never heard, but a “private citizen” managed to give a half-hour long deputation thanks to many friendly questions from Committee members.  That “citizen” was Dr. Gordon Chong, former head of Toronto Transit Infrastructure Limited, an all-but-bankrupt subsidiary of the TTC used to conduct a study of the Sheppard East subway extension for Mayor Ford.

Chong liberally drew on his transit experience including years as head of the Greater Toronto Services Board, a provincial agency predating Metrolinx.  Throughout his deputation, the highly misleading map of four cities’ subway system was projected to emphasize how little Toronto has done.  (That map purports to show how little Toronto has in comparison with London, New York and Madrid while ignoring the fact that these were much larger cities, much sooner.)

A “glaring omission” from the collection of transit plans in the staff report, Chong said, was his own Sheppard report and the information produced by KPMG about tax increment financing (TIF).  Chong clearly implied that the report was biased, but missed the fact that the Council motion directed the inclusion of “approved” plans for review, something Chong’s most emphatically was not.  As for TIF, it is mentioned, but rejected as a funding mechanism as staff argue that such revenue is needed for general support of city services and should not be earmarked just for transit capital projects.

Councillor Michael Thompson pursued the scheme of a Scarborough subway with a BD extension that would loop back along Sheppard to close the loop at Don Mills Station.  Chong replied that if Toronto could deal with the “money issue”, then there is no reason we can’t have the best in transit.  Thompson observed that a casino might bring in $75-100m annually and could fund transit projects.  The oddity here is that both treat any new money as a bonanza to be used for the best possible transit (where they want it) when fiscal conservatives might be expected to argue for careful husbanding of whatever loot might come their way.  There is also the small problem that the municipal share of projected revenue for a Toronto casino is probably an order of magnitude lower than the Councillor’s claim.

Various Councillors mused about a regional agency to dispense transit dollars and decide which projects should be built.  An underlying assumption was that, of course, the network of suburban Toronto subways would rank high on the list, and nobody seemed to contemplate that a 905-dominated agency might have other more pressing needs or think that the investment in all those subways was of dubious value.

Chong had only veiled contempt for the “expert panel” who reviewed his report and recommended, instead, for the LRT option on Sheppard.  He strongly supports subway construction presuming the money is available, supported by the best possible feeder bus network.  Councillor Norm Kelly asked whether the LRT plan was “an aberration”, and Chong replied that all previous TTC Chief General Managers had supported subways.  Although he invoked the name of David Gunn, he neglected to mention that Gunn boycotted the opening ceremonies of the Sheppard line.

Next the Committee turned to questions of staff. Continue reading →

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Metrolinx Dumps TTC as LRT Partner (Maybe)

Updated October 4, 2012 at 9:20 am:

Mr reaction to the announcement yesterday that TTC would remain as “operator” of the LRT lines is on the Torontoist website.

Although the TTC sees this as a “good news” story, I am less impressed because Toronto is still very much the junior partner.  We get to drive the trains, and that’s about all.  With all maintenance remaining in the hands of Metrolinx private partner, whoever that will eventually be, this is a big step in outsourcing transit operations.

Updated October 1, 2012 at 10:00 pm:

The Toronto Star reports that discussions continue between Metrolinx, the City of Toronto and the TTC regarding the possible operation of the planned LRT lines by the TTC rather than a private contractor.

Exactly how much “operation” would entail is not mentioned, although the TTC is known to be concerned about responsibility for safety-sensitive systems such as vehicle, signal and track maintenance.

A related issue is the amount of detail that must be worked out before a master contract is let by Infrastructure Ontario.  If the private work ends when operation begins (with possible exceptions such as building and station maintenance), then this is a much simpler contract to draft than one that would require all of the details of future operations to be bundled with a design and construction contract.

Whether Queen’s Park and Metrolinx are aware of or care about the delay inherent in needing to specify so much detail so far in advance for a single contract remains to be seen.

September 21, 2012

My thoughts on recent announcements that Metrolinx would completely take over the LRT projects formerly part of Transit City are in an article on the Torontoist website.

 

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TTC Proposed Operating Budget 2013

The TTC has passed a proposed Operating Budget for 2013 including, in principle, a five-cent increase to the adult fare.  This budget now goes to the City of Toronto’s Budget Committee and Council for discussion and approval of the 2013 operating subsidy.

There are two components to the budget report: the budget for the “regular” TTC system and the one for Wheel-Trans.

Item                  Regular        Wheel-Trans
                      ($000)         ($000)

Fare Revenue          $1,061,000     $    5,546
Other Income              67,106
Total Income          $1,128,106     $    5,546
Expenses              $1,548,794     $  102,488
Subsidy Required         420,688         96,942
Subsidy Available *      410,951         96,823
Shortfall                  9,737            119

The “Subsidy Available” shown above is based on premise that the 2012 subsidy, adjusted for the cost of arbitrated labour settlements, will be provided as a “flat lined” City subsidy in 2013.  TTC management intend to continue looking for savings within the budget to whittle down the shortfall.  CEO Andy Byford is adamant that he does not want to cut service, and this is the first of many challenges for TTC supporters on Council.

The operating subsidy for the regular system in 2012 was $374.1m.  Adjusting for arbitrated pay increases going back to April 2011, the “flat line” value for 2013 is $411.0m, an increase of 9.9% to bring 2010 rates up to 2013.  It is entirely possible that budget hawks will want an absolute freeze in subsidies.  If so, then the TTC would have a big hole to fill in its budget.

Service on the regular system will be increased to meet a projected ridership of 528-million, but there is no provision for improved loading standards or minimum service levels.  This is a 2.7% increase over the projected 2012 ridership of 514m.  Projections for 2013 only months ago set ridership at 520m, an unreasonably low figure.  With the higher number, the budget does not have a built-in shortfall in planned service.

On Wheel-Trans, there is a one-time saving by the removal of ambulatory dialysis patients from the eligibility list.  This was originally intended to happen in 2012, but the decision’s effect was staved off by diverting $5m intended as subsidy for regular service to the Wheel-Trans budget.  TTC Chair Karen Stintz speaks of this as a “good news” story because it is claimed that alternative transport has been found for these riders.  Whether this is true, or to what degree costs are being transferred back onto riders, remains to be seen.  There were no deputations at the Commission Meeting on this subject.

The fare increase is half of the amount approved in principle during the 2012 budget debates when standard ten cent increases were proposed for years 2013-15.  At a five cent level, the increase is 1.9% for adult token fares.  On a weighted average basis across all fare types, the increase is 1.7%.  (Cash and child fares are unchanged; senior/student fares go up by 2.9% because a five cents is a larger proportion of the 2012 fare than for adults.)  The proposed new fare schedule is Appendix C of the budget report.

The shortfall could be eliminated by a ten cent fare increase which is projected to raise an additional $14m net of the effect of lost riding.  For many years, TTC riding tracked employment levels in Toronto, but this relationship ended at about 2009.  System usage continues to rise even though employment is stagnant through a combination of discretionary and off-peak riding.  Metropass sales continue to climb because the pricing, net of various incentives including discounts for various groups and the transit tax rebate, make passes an attractive way to purchase transit service.

Continue reading →

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Queen East Construction News (Updated September 21)

Updated Friday, September 21

The TTC has announced that the 501 Queen service will revert to its normal routing between Broadview and Coxwell effective Monday, September 24.  Service on Kingston Road will continue to be provided by buses for the remainder of the current schedule period.

Plans called for the 502 Downtowner to operate from Bingham Loop to Wolseley Loop at Bathurst Street, and the 503 Kingston Road will operate from Bingham to York & Wellington effective Tuesday, October 9 (the first weekday of the new schedule period).

For the next two weeks, we should see amazingly good service on the outer ends of the 501 Queen route because cars will have the extra running time for a diversion they are not taking.  This will be an interesting point of comparison once the normal running times return with the October 7 schedules.

Continue reading →

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How Network Structure Matters — The Birth of the Grid in Toronto

Robert Wightman left an interesting comment that begins by linking to Jarrett Walker’s piece on Portland’s 30th anniversary of their grid-based transit network.

Toronto’s grid is almost a half-century old.  With it we avoided having the 60’s growth turn into the rambling sort of suburban transit system found so often in the 905.  Here is Robert’s comment:

Jarrett Walker has an interesting article on his web site about the 30th anniversary of the grid in Portland. Next September is the 50th anniversary of the TTC’s implementation of the suburban grid system in the then OUTER REACHES OF Toronto. Before that date if you wanted to go from Lawrence and Warden TO DON MILLS  AND LAWRENCE you took a bus (Pharmacy IIRC) to Luttrell Loop, the Bloor car to Pape and the Don Mills Bus to Lawrence. After that date is was a straight 10 to 12 minute ride instead of a 90 minutes sightseeing tour of Scarborough, Toronto, Leaside and North York.

I will bet that are not many at the TTC who realize what a monumental effect that decision had on the growth of transit usage in Toronto, especially the suburbs. This anniversary should not be forgotten and the people who were responsible should be honoured, probably posthumously unfortunately. The foresight and courage of these people to take a major risk and change all the suburban bus routes to form a cross city grid is a major factor in the TTC’s current success.

I have PDF files of the early 1963 and late ’63 ride guides and the difference in coverage is amazing. What is also noticeable IIRC is that the Sheppard bus ran from Dufferin to Warden or Kennedy, the Finch bus from Dufferin to Leslie or Don Mills. Most of the outer 416 was still farmland.

Maybe Steve could start a new thread on this topic and anyone who has any relevant information could add to it. The TTC should also play up this anniversary as it was a major game changer in Toronto and the planning should be remembered.

The grid is, of course, absolute poison to those who believe a transit system’s job is to take them from their front door radially to the subway system.  Even with our grid, the network is still very subway-centric looking at service quality for anyone who wants to travel around the suburbs.

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Service Changes Effective October 7, 2012

On Sunday, October 7, the TTC will improve service on many routes.  This is a continuation of the upgrades across the system made possible by Council’s allowing the TTC to spend unexpectedly high fare revenue on more service.

2012.10.07 Service Changes

This round of improvements begs an intriguing question.  These are improvements not driven by some Miller era ideology about improving transit service in the hope that more people will ride, but by the fact that ridership growth has pushed demand on many routes beyond the reduced service standards enacted by the Ford/Stintz administration.

A fundamental issue about cities with robust transit demand is that eventually you have to run more service.  We may make nips and tucks around the edges, but those pesky passengers just keep showing up at stops.

Will Council recognize this fact in the 2013 budget and allow the transit subsidy to grow, or will they cave in to the Ford ideology that no increase is the only acceptable policy?

Looking at the projected changes in average loads for many routes, it won’t take much more riding to bring them above the threshold for another service improvement.  This is not a one-time effect, and the TTC needs to produce a plan showing how it will deal with the growing demand on all of its network.

With the October schedules, the services on Queen will be back on their normal route except for the 502 Downtowner which will be extended from McCaul to Bathurst until mid-November pending completion of water main and track construction on McCaul.  The Spadina streetcar returns between Bloor and King in November, and to Queen’s Quay just before Christmas.

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Service Changes Effective September 2, 2012 (Updated)

September 2012 will bring the restoration of “winter” service levels on routes across the system as well as many service improvements.  Most of these occur in the off-peak period thanks to constraints on the size of the fleet and of the operator workforce.

The bus fleet is constrained in the peak period by the many construction projects now underway.  These require either bus/streetcar substitutions, or additional vehicles on bus routes to deal with congestion.  Some of these will end as the fall progresses.

Updated August 26, 2012:

A fare policy experiment will begin on the 38 Highland Creek bus on September 1 and will run through until April 27, 2013.  Riders with GO fare media will be allowed to ride free between Rouge Hill GO Station and University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

Summer Services

Seasonal services will end after Labour Day on the following routes:

  • 101 Downsview Park weekday service
  • 29 Dufferin to Princes Gates (the limited service that would remain will not operate to the CNE due to a construction diversion)
  • 30 Lambton service to High Park
  • 72B Pape service to Cherry Beach weekday daytimes and weekend evenings
  • 86 Scarborough to the Zoo (extended hours weekday evenings, weekend route extension)
  • 85 Sheppard East to the Zoo (extended hours weekends)

Rapid Transit Changes

The Yonge-University-Spadina subway will see improved midday service, and the transition between the AM peak and midday will be smoothed.

Running times on the Scarborough RT will be extended and headways will be widened.  This change is intended “to better reflect actual operation”.  How it will affect the SRT’s ability to actually operate all of its scheduled service (the target now is to operate at least 80% of planned trips) is a matter for conjecture.

Waterfront Changes

Service on 511 Bathurst will be cut from the summer levels, but will remain above the normal winter schedules to compensate for the construction on Queen’s Quay and on Spadina.

Service on the 509 Harbourfront bus will be cut slightly from summer levels.  However, all 509 buses will now operate to Exhibition and this will recover the time now wasted by many of them laying over in Spadina Loop.  Service west of Spadina will be greatly improved.

The 6 Bay bus will be restructured to provide somewhat improved service to the eastern waterfront and the new George Brown College campus.  In August, the Dundas branch of the route was extended south to Queen’s Quay.  Beginning in September, a new 6C Union to Queen’s Quay service will be added.

The combined service south of Front will see considerable improvement:

  • AM peak from 6’30” to 2’27”
  • Weekday midday from 12’00” to 6’40”
  • PM peak from 10’20” to 3’20”
  • Weekend afternoons from 15’00” to 7’30”

The 75 Sherbourne bus will also see improved service for the George Brown campus:

  • AM peak from 9’00” to 7’30”
  • Weekday midday from 12’00” to 9’00”
  • PM Peak from 10’00” to 8’30”
  • Saturday afternoon from 20’00” to 11’00”

Construction Route Changes

Dufferin street trackage will be rebuilt north from Dufferin Loop to Queen (skipping over the intersection at King) beginning in September.  The 29D Princes Gates service will divert to operate southbound via the “old” Dufferin routing of Peel and Gladstone to Queen, then east to Shaw, south to King, west to Mowat, south to Liberty, east to Fraser and north to King.  The northbound buses will follow the route via Shaw and Gladstone back to the regular route.

The temporary service arrangements for the routes operating on Queen Street will remain in effect with streetcars diverting between Broadview and Coxwell via Gerrard.

2012.09.02 Service Changes

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Zero Percent Is Not Acceptable

Recent press coverage of the opening salvos in Toronto’s 2013 budget process tell us that the Budget Chief, Mike Del Grande, is trying for another year in which he, the Mayor and the City Manager dictate a zero percent increase in city funding to all agencies.  This is not playing well with some members of Council according to The Star, and with some luck this will extend to boards of agencies like the TTC.

The dynamics of Council have changed since the 2012 budget launch a year ago when the Mayor and City Manager issued a zero-percent edict and drove through cuts to many city services while claiming a massive, if fictional, deficit threatened the city’s integrity.  Trying for a repeat performance may play well as part of the already-in-progress 2014 election campaign, but such an attempt runs counter to the will of many on Council.  This is a delicate time for management at the City and its agencies like the TTC, and the leadership for a different world view must come from Council and the agency Boards.

This will not be as easy as holding a press conference to announce a $30-billion plan for a fairytale network of rapid transit lines that would be paid for through as-yet unknown future taxes and contributions from other governments.  This is the real world where the City and its agencies must raise real money from existing revenue streams today, must make decisions that will affect real service levels today, must be prepared to fight for policies that will deliver results today, not decades in the future.

The Operating Budget in Brief

The Operating Budget covers the day-to-day cost of running and maintaining the transit system.  Major repairs, new vehicles and infrastructure come out of the Capital Budget (about which more later).  Generally speaking, expenses and funding cannot be moved between the two budgets.

2012 Budget (Revised)        Operating     Wheel-Trans
                               ($m)          ($m)
Farebox & Other Revenues      1,069.9           5.3
Expenses                      1,444.0         100.2
Subsidy                         374.1          94.9

2012 Projected

Farebox & Other Revenues      1,076.6           5.3
Expenses                      1,447.4         101.4
Subsidy Required                370.8          96.1
Subsidy Available               374.1          94.9
"Surplus"                         3.3        (  1.2)

Source: CEO's Report for April 2012 (Published June 2012)

The projected figures are always different from the budget for various reasons.  The most common is that expenses never work out exactly as expected due to actual conditions including unexpected changes in major cost centres such as fuel and vehicle repairs.  Some details are in the CEO’s report (see compendium of links at the end of the article).  Revenue is affected by ridership, but can also be hurt or helped by fluctuations in advertising and rent revenues.  While these are small numbers in the larger budget scheme, all of the political debates about transit funding revolve around such small amounts and discuss service cuts or adds in millions of dollars.  A bad year for ad revenue coupled with a Council unwilling to backstop the loss with subsidies translates to worse service for riders.

The 2012 budgets were amended twice.  In June 2012, Council approved increasing the regular expense budget by $2.1m to provide additional service beginning this fall with funding to come from increased revenues.  Earlier, when the Commission was still dominated by Ford-friendly appointees, an attempt by Council to fund $5m in added service was thwarted by the Commission who diverted the funding to Wheel-Trans.

Continue reading →

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TTC To Order Artic Buses from Nova Bus

NOW magazine’s Ben Spurr reports that the TTC will award a contract to Nova Bus for 153 articulated buses.  The award is already shown on the TTC’s website with a date of August 2, and this will be confirmed by the Commission at its meeting on September 27.

Plans to buy artics have been in the works for a while at TTC, but this is a particularly large order, roughly the equivalent of two years’ of past bus purchases.  NOW lists many routes where these might run (the topic has been discussed in past reports to the Commission), and there are no surprises.

The critical point in any rollout will be the degree to which service capacity is actually increased.  For decades, riders on Bathurst and Queen streetcars have put up with wider headways (which are compounded by delays and short-turns) from the use of articulated streetcars.  The TTC bases service levels on the alleged demand and capacity of the route.  Demand that gives up and walks, cycles or drives isn’t counted.  Vehicles that never show up because of short turns, or which appear in a parade and run little-used, are of no benefit to riders but count toward the scheduled capacity.  TTC service standards were changed thanks to the Ford administration’s penny-pinching to stuff more people on routes that provide frequent service, and there is no sign this decision will be reversed.

With luck, by the time the new buses arrive, a more enlightened transit funding policy will be in place at Council, but until then, riders on major routes shouldn’t count on any improvement.

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The Fate of OneCity (Updated)

Several postmortems have appeared on blogs about the supposed death of OneCity and what might follow:

Updated July 19, 2012 at 7:00 am:

Updated July 16, 2012 at 11:15am:

My own take on OneCity’s fate together with the original article detailing proposals for dealing with transit planning follow the break.

Continue reading →