Finance

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Extreme Precipitation and the TTC

The TTC Board met on April 16 with many items on its agenda including a report on Extreme Precipitation Planning.

Anyone living in Toronto will remember the heavy rains of July 2024 and the snows of February 2025. July 15-16 brought 115mm of rain within 24 hours, higher than the 100-year design for storms. From February 8-17, Toronto saw over 60cm of snow accumulation with no melts between storms. This was the highest snow pack in 25 years.

Both of these events revealed shortfalls in both TTC’s and City’s response to extreme weather. They also undermined the credibility of management claims of the transit system’s physical state, and the City’s false claims about snow clearing. The split jurisdiction between TTC and City forces did not help the situation either.

Among the issues raised in the report are:

  • The (in)adequacy of drainage on City streets to prevent ponding and flooding of underground structures.
  • The (in)adequacy of TTC drains for streetcar tracks, subway tunnels and stations.
  • The condition of drainage and pumping systems from inadequate maintenance and deferred replacement of aged equipment.
  • The integrity of TTC buildings, tunnels and other infrastructure to prevent or limit water penetration.
  • The actual condition of roads that were supposedly plowed versus reported conditions.
  • The absence of snow clearing at transit stops.
  • The creation of windrows both along curbs and between streetcar and adjacent lanes where the curb lane is not used by autos.
  • The failure to remove accumulated snow on transit routes causing repeated cases of parked cars blocking streetcars, and in some cases, buses.
  • The TTC’s ability to keep subway open cut areas operational when there is a large accumulation of snow on the tracks and power rails.
  • The adequacy and timeliness of public information provided to riders about transit operations during emergency conditions.

Many of these are interrelated. For example, if snow were actually cleared to the curb on four-lane roads with streetcars or buses, then autos would park normally rather than obstructing the only other lane available for transit vehicles. If maintenance of drainage and pumping systems (both day-to-day and life-cycle) kept them in working order, then less water would accumulate and potentially block service or render stations unsafe. If passengers could board and alight from transit vehicles with their usual ease, buses and streetcars would not be delayed attempting to serve snowed-in stops.

Among the TTC’s observations is the challenge of operating streetcars and articulated buses in bad weather, particularly snow. How much of this an inherent shortcoming of the vehicles, and how much is the effect of inadequate infrastructure maintenance and snow clearing?

Both from the delay logs and from personal experience, transit vehicles continued to be blocked by parked cars, and stops were blocked by snow, well after the snowfall ended. Some of the snowbanks did not dissipate until they melted. One particularly ironic location was at the southbound stop on Bay at Albert Street, the City Hall stop.

These are not just issues for the once-in-a-blue-moon weather events, but for the general condition and robustness of transit and related city infrastructure.

The report actually contemplates the purchase of spare buses, and possibly a new garage to hold them, to deal with periods when streetcars and articulated buses have operating difficulties. This would present a substantial premium in fleet size, garaging and staffing for these vehicles. One cannot help asking if the same money invested in better service generally would be more productive, combined with more aggressive storm responses when needed.The TTC is silent on the subway (for which bus replacements are completely inadequate even in good weather), and on the extra staff who would have to be available on the off chance of a bad storm.

This ludicrous approach avoids responsibility for making the streets and the transit system as robust as possible in their own right. Elsewhere I have written about the TTC’s bad habit of maintaining a spare ratio for their fleets well above industry targets, and “just buying more buses” would make the problem even worse. It is the kind of response I would expect from a system whose CEO considers crowded buses a mark of success, and months-long slow orders on deteriorated subway track as perfectly normal.

The TTC routinely trots out its list of unfunded capital projects. Critical maintenance such as replacement of pumps for subway tunnels is on that list. This is not a “nice to have”, but essential for safety. However, the problem is not just in capital funding, but under-resourcing of routine maintenance, an operating budget issue. We know the effects this brought to subway and SRT track. What other aspects of the system are waiting to fail?

The capital budget lines related to extreme weather effects total $1.4 billion of which only $360 million is funded in 2025-2034, mainly in the early years. (See TTC Major Projects Update and Funding Shortfalls for details.)

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TTC Major Projects Update and Funding Shortfalls

Information on large transit projects and their status is scattered through several reports. Two of these appear on the TTC Board’s April 16, 2025 agenda, but for a broader picture we must look elsewhere. In part this is due to the split responsibility between TTC and the City’s Transit Expansion Office. Also, some details lie in the TTC Capital Budget, 10-year and 15-year plans.

On the April 16 agenda:

Previous City and TTC Reports:

The TTC Capital Budget contains a high level listing of many projects much longer than in the “Major Projects Update”.

There is no surprise that the TTC faces a very large gap between its capital needs and available funding. The City is the primary funder for projects still on the TTC’s books, with smaller contributions from the provincial and federal governments. Expansion projects such as the Ontario Line were taken over completely by the province.

This greatly increases Ontario’s share of transit spending overall, but with the caveat that they build what suits their political climate, and Toronto is left to raise money, such as it can, for anything else. Another recent issue is that originally, Ontario’s projects were to be 100% capital with operating costs borne by the City. This has proved impractical, and Ontario now guarantees an operating subsidy for new Lines 5 and 6, albeit not in perpetuity.

As for the Federal government, it will (assuming the current government remains in power) fund a national transit program over ten years, but the money allocated to Toronto (and every other city) falls well short of their needs. Moreover, the funding is still done on a project basis with cities applying for each project rather than simply getting a block grant. This is different from the provincial and federal gas tax rebates to cities which can spend them as they see fit.

The TTC and City both produce reports tracking major transit projects, but these do not cover the full extent of the funding problem. Many issues with infrastructure condition, for example, are not mentioned in these reports although they are critical to the viability of transit service. In this article, I will review both the formally acknowledged “major projects” as well as the large dollar line items within the Capital Budget that get much less attention.

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Fare Enforcement, Fare Freezes, Service and Budget Cuts

Fare evasion and enforcement are a common topic at TTC Board meetings, and for some time the sense has been that “there’s gold in them thar hills” among Commissioners. Debates can run for hours on what efforts should be launched, what policies for limited toleration there should be, and how much more can be spent on enforcement.

A fundamental flaw in these debates is that the presumed gross losses to fare evasion, based on field studies and estimates, is $140-million annually as reported by the City of Toronto’s Auditor General in March 2024. However, the TTC’s ability to recoup this missing revenue varies from place to place on the system because there are multiple ways to avoid paying.

  • The most obvious case is simply to avoid tapping on to surface vehicles when boarding.
  • Subway stations had “crash gates”, so-called because they were originally intended for cases where large volumes of riders needed to enter or exit quickly, notably for transfers to/from subway shuttles. To serve riders who did not have machine readable fares, these were left open for riders to enter on an honour system.
  • Where riders do pay by dropping money in a farebox (either on a bus or in a station), there is no guarantee they will pay the full amount owed.
  • Riders can walk into most subway stations unchallenged through bus and streetcar loops.

Much of the TTC’s focus has been on the first case, a rider who does not “tap on” to a vehicle, and until quite recently enforcement was directed at streetcars because of their multiple, unmonitored entrances.

TTC recently closed the crash gates so that riders wishing to pay cash must do so either at a fare vending machine. Ticket and token users (while these modes are still accepted) must use the station collector’s farebox, although whether anyone is present to monitor them varies by location and time of day. The estimated loss from open crash gates was $14.2-million per year, and from underpaid cash fares was $9.1-million. This leaves $116.7-million in other types of fare evasion.

In the 2025 Operating Budget, the TTC allocated $2.6-million for 69 additional fare enforcement staff. This is a part-year figure, obviously, as this only pays $37.7-thousand per employee. The anticipated new revenue is $12-million in 2025, and so the recovery ratio is about 4.6:1. That is a good return especially if it can be sustained.

There is no guarantee that hiring more inspectors will necessarily produce the same rate of return. A further problem is that with fares frozen, or increasing slower than wages, the cost of inspectors will go up faster than the recovered fare revenue.

New inspectors will be deployed to check riders getting off of buses in the paid areas of subway stations where inspection is easier than attempting on-board checks, especially on crowded vehicles. Absent fare inspection across the system, there are some types of evasion that will persist. The full estimated losses to evasion will never be recovered, and the implication that this amount would be available as new revenue is, to be kind, misguided.

Much information about evasion and enforcement is available in published reports, but this is not the only way the TTC spends money or foregoes revenue. Other areas do not get a comparable level of attention by the Board:

  • The foregone revenue due to fare freezes and below-inflation increases.
  • The cost of achieving standards to attract more riders to transit.
  • The effect on service quantity and reliability through constraints on maintenance budgets.

Even when these are discussed, the topics are considered in isolation.

In January 2025 as part of the budget approval, the TTC Board voted to establish a Strategic Planning Committee with details to come back for consideration in February. It is now April, and there is no sign of the committee. Previous attempts by members of the Board to increase their participation in planning and budgets have been sandbagged by inaction. Is this a repetition? Is the Board actually willing to perform its oversight role?

The City of Toronto claims to be pro-transit with a strong desire to attract more riders out of their cars. This is not echoed by the planned funding even at the “nice to have” level to see what budgetary effects might result.

The 2026 Budget work will begin in mid-year, and if the Board expects to have any input beyond the most superficial level, now is the time for those discussions and the review of alternatives to occur. So far, there is little sign that this will happen, and the budget will land with little opportunity for substantive change.

We will continue to hear about fare evasion, that shiny, spinning disco ball that diverts attention from most other issues. Some added revenue may be found over time, but a dedicated program to improve the transit system requires more than fare enforcement can provide.

The TTC and Toronto have many policy areas where decisions affect revenues and costs. Fare evasion and enforcement is only one of these. Some decisions, notably about the amount of budgeted service and maintenance levels, never come to the TTC Board for debate, let alone as a set of options ranging from “nice to have” to “absolutely must have”.

It is quite clear that funding for transit capital and operations will not come easily with the many economic pressures Toronto faces, and that was so even before the launch of a trade war and its potential effect on government revenues and priorities.

The TTC needs to discuss strategy for its future and understand what might be possible so that alternatives aspiring for better transit are on the table, not swept out of sight. That’s what a Strategic Planning Committee is for, and why the TTC’s failure to create one is so disheartening.

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TTC Service Changes Effective March 30, 2025

The TTC will make several service changes on March 30, 2025. Most of the changes will increase the frequency of service, but in some cases there are reductions. There are also a few cases where the new schedules adjust travel times, but the frequency is unchanged.

Updated March 27, 2025 at 10:15am: The detailed spreadsheet showing changes in headways, travel times and vehicle assignments is now available.

Updated March 28, 2025 at 11:15pm: Erroneous entries in the first/last trip table that were copied from the TTC’s service change memo have been updated with information from the electronic version of the schedules (GTFS) on the City’s Open Data site.

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TTC Expands Fare Inspection to Bus Routes

The TTC has announced that effective Monday, March 17, fare inspection will occur on bus routes. However, unlike the streetcar system, this will be done at locations where bus passengers enter subway stations at fare-paid interchanges.

To maximize efficiency, inspections will be carried out on bus platforms at integrated stations where customers could be required to show proof-of-payment between exiting buses and entering the subway system.

Fare inspection on board buses is more challenging than on streetcars due to tighter circulation space, and on both modes is particularly difficult on crowded vehicles. A further wrinkle will be added when the new Lines 5 and 6 open because their cars have no on board fare equipment, and riders are expected to “tap on” using machines on platforms at surface stops unlike existing streetcar lines where riders can tap as they enter vehicles.

This type of inspection already occurs at streetcar/subway interchanges. While the tactic is “efficient”, it will not address fare evasion for trips that do not end at a station. The TTC regularly cites a $140-million annual loss to evasion. They give no estimate of the proportion of losses bus-to-subway transfer trips represent, nor the net revenue they expect to obtain after allowing for the cost of inspectors.

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TTC Board Meeting: February 24, 2025

The TTC Board met on February 24, 2025 with an agenda that seemed light going in, but the meeting itself ran well into the afternoon partly due to a long in camera discussion and partly to debates that expanded the scope of the items on the agenda.

Reports of interest:

    No Strategy for the TTC?

    Notable by its absence was a report on establishment of a Strategic Planning Committee, an item approved by the Board on January 10 with an implementation plan due at the February 24 meeting. (See minutes at p. 3) Such a committee is vital so that consultation and planning can occur before and while the 2026 budget is in preparation, a process that gets underway in roughly June-July each year. If there is to be some brave new vision of what transit can become, there is no point in asking that it be included in an already final budget in December.

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    Travel Times on 504 King: Update to January 2025

    Updated February 7, 2025 at 8:00pm: It occurred to me that although charts here are produced with maximum Y-values of an hour, or even 90 minutes, that this shows the peak times while compressing the visual range of the area where averages change over time. I have added a second set of charts for 2016-2025 with the maximum Y of 30 minutes to give the area where averages move between 15 and 25 minutes more “elbow room” and to make the evolution of values easier for readers to see. These have been added at the end of the “Implementing the Transit Mall” section.

    In previous articles, I have posted charts showing the changes in travel times on the central portion of the 504 King route between Jarvis to Bathurst. This is the area covered by the supposed transit mall, although the degree to which streetcars actually have priority has varied over time for various reasons.

    This article will review how travel times have evolved in recent years, as well as looking back to pre-pandemic and pre-transit mall eras. Full chart sets are available via links to PDFs for those who are interested.

    Beyond that central section lies the conventional “streetcar” portion of the route west through Bathurst/Niagara, Liberty Village and Parkdale. To the east is the northern reaches of the St. Lawrence and Distillery districts. Do these deserve the same level of priority treatment? What would be the benefit if any? I will turn to those areas later in the article.

    For those familiar with similar analyses on this site, I have retained the format of charting the 50th percentile (median) and 85th percentile values. These show both the general trend over time as well as the degree by which trips can vary from the median affecting reliability both in the priority area and on the broader route.

    Significant events include the implementation of transit priority in November 2016, the covid lockdown in March 2020, and the effect of enforcement (or lack of it) on the ability of streetcars to move briskly through the priority area. Also important to note is that the effects differ by time and direction, and that congestion interferes with transit not just during the classic peak periods.

    The important history lesson on King Street is that transit priority can improve travel times, but more importantly can improve reliability leading to more predictable trips and vehicle spacing over a route even beyond the bounds of the priority scheme’s area. Moreover, the benefits are easily lost through lack of enforcement and external events that significantly change demand on the road network.

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    TTC Service Changes Effective February 16, 2025

    There are relatively few service changes for the mid-February schedules, and most are on the bus network. There is no change in subway service.

    The major change for construction is the start of work at the Bathurst, Fleet, Lake Shore intersection for water main replacement and track renewal. This will be ongoing in stages until June 2025. 511 Bathurst and 509 Harbourfront cars will be replaced by buses at the south and west ends of each line respectively.

    With the completion of construction at Jane Station, the temporary route shifts to Old Mill and Runnymede Stations are reversed and service returns to Jane Station. This change is actually already in place 26 Dupont, 35/935/335 Jane, and 55 Warren Park. The schedules are now catching up. The 71/77 Runnymede/Swansea interline will be broken and the individual routes will loop in Runnymede Station.

    Bus bay allocations at Warden and Victoria Park Stations will change to better suit the routes operating there.

    Destination signs on many routes will be modified to standardize references to stations such as Scarborough Town Centre, Coxwell, Greenwood and Wilson Stations.

    Service on the 300 Bloor-Danforth and 320 Yonge night buses will be improved to deal with scheduling and crowding problems. I have an article in preparation on this situation using December 2024 and January 2025 tracking data as a “before” view of service quality which is extremely poor.

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    TTC Board Meeting Wrap-Up – January 27, 2025

    This article covers:

    • The January 2025 CEO’s Report
    • A follow-up on the report re Subway Streetcar Fleet and Infrastructure
    • The proposed interim wayfinding strategy
    • An update on fare collection technology
    • A new procedure for handling complaints about CEO misconduct

    I will cover the 2025 Annual Service Plan and the Corporate Plan Update in a separate article.

    Location of Reports Changed

    Effective with this meeting, the agendas and reports for Board meetings have shifted to the City’s meeting management site which hosts Council and Committee meetings. This will also host documents for Board committees such as Audit & Risk Management. Information for past meetings continues to be available on the TTC’s own site.

    In Fall 2024, the CEO’s Report was reorganized with the Key Performance Indicators split off from the main report. There are now separate pages on the TTC site for accessing monthly CEO’s Reports and KPI reports.

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