The TTC will implement many changes to its services effective June 21 including the usual seasonal reductions, another phase in the rollout of the Ten Minute Network, and new Blue Night service on Steeles West.

20150621_ServiceChanges

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The TTC Board will consider two reports at its meeting on May 27, 2015 relating to service improvements announced jointly by TTC Chair Josh Colle and Mayor John Tory on May 24, 2015.

Most of the 2011 service cuts rammed through by former Mayor Rob Ford and former Chair Karen Stintz will be restored. The “greater good” of the system, a phrase beloved of Ms. Stintz, clearly no longer includes slashing transit service.

One rather contorted paragraph in the report gives an insight into the process by which routes got on the 2011 list:

The use of the productivity standard of boardings per service hour, commonly used throughout the transit industry, began in 2011 at the TTC. It was first used to identify the services that were recommended for removal as part of the budget cuts in that year. The standard used at that time was 15 boardings per service hour or, in some cases where there was a long walk to alternate service, the standard was reduced to ten boardings per service hour. For 2015, the boardings per service hour standard has been continued, but at the lower, currently-affordable level of nine boardings per service hour. The calculation of boardings has also been simplified, and now counts all customers on the entire route or branch section, as appropriate. Previously, a more-detailed and labour-intensive evaluation was used to try to separate and weight differently the boardings that would be made at unique stops, at stops with intersecting routes, and at stops along common sections of multiple routes. The new, simplified method of counting substantially all passengers is simpler to apply and understand, and allows the threshold level to be lowered.

In other words, the 2011 evaluations didn’t actually count passengers, but applied a formula and process to determine which routes made the cut. It is no wonder that some riders and Councillors were baffled to see routes with real live riders, but be told that there were not enough of them.

One oddity is that Kingston Road 12B and 12C (the branches that do not serve Variety Village) will not be operated at late evenings. However, the proposed all night service on Kingston Road will take the 12B/C path and bypass Variety Village leaving a gap in service between early evening and overnight service.

Details of the changes are in the report.

Several routes will be added (and a few restored) to the Blue Night Network. This will fill in many gaps and address service in areas where there is potential demand. In a few cases, existing routes will be modified to simplify their layout and bring them more into consistency with daytime routes.

• The King night car will be restored. Because this includes service on Broadview and on Roncesvalles where there are already night buses, the following changes will also occur:
  • The Jane night bus will operate straight south on Jane to Jane Station rather than southeast via Dundas and Roncesvalles to The Queensway.
  • The Don Mills night bus will operate straight south over the same route as the daytime Pape bus to Eastern Avenue rather than southwest via Danforth and Broadview to Queen.
  • The St. Clair night bus will take over service on Dundas between Jane and Dundas West Station.
• The Bloor-Danforth night bus will be extended to Kennedy Station via Danforth Road and Eglinton.
  • The Danforth-McCowan night bus will be rerouted at its south end to serve Kingston Road from Brimley to Bingham Loop.
• The Lawrence East night bus will operate to Starspray replacing the Eglinton East night bus.
  • The Eglinton East night bus will operate north to Malvern taking over the outer end of the existing Lawrence East and York Mills routes.
  • The York Mills night bus will operate east and north via Meadowvale to Sheppard.
• All night service to York University will be provided by the new Keele night bus, and by extensions of the Jane and Steeles night buses.
• The Steeles night bus will be extended east and south to a common terminus in Malvern with the Finch East and Eglinton East night buses.
• Service on Lawrence will be extended west to the airport and east to Sunnybrook Hospital.
• The Dufferin night bus will be extended north to Steeles.
• New all-night services will be added on Sheppard West, Spadina to Union Station, Parliament, Kennedy, and on a night version of the Evans bus that will connect to Long Branch Loop.

Details of the changes are in the report.

Note that the extension of 353 Steeles to York University has already been scheduled to occur on June 21, 2015 in anticipation of the Pan Am Games at York University..

One important aspect of the very old night service network, probably remembered by only a few old hands, is that there were published schedules for major stops and timed connections where possible between routes. This was lost when the Blue Night network was created decades ago, and the TTC would do well to restore accurate information and more rigourous operation of the night routes. The quarterly performance measures are particularly bad for the night routes, a serious problem for people attempting to travel when 30-minute headways can play havoc with trip planning.

This article updates my ongoing compendium of TTC route performance statistics to include the first quarter of 2015.

Route_Performance_Summary_15Q1

The numbers reported by the TTC represent performance relative to the planned headways (time between vehicles), not to scheduled arrival times on routes:

The percent means that proportion of vehicles that were within +/- 3 minutes of the scheduled headway. More specifically that when each vehicle passes a ‘timing point’ it is compared to the vehicle in front of it that last crossed that same point. [From TTC Route Performance report]

In my version of the table, the TTC data are arranged in route number order with values for each quarter. Where there are blanks in the table, there was no data in the corresponding TTC quarterly report.

Also shown are the maximum, minimum, average and standard deviation values for each route’s statistics. This gives a sense of how much these values have moved around. A high standard deviation flags data that have widely varying values.

Of the 179 routes reported, 87 have higher ratings in 15Q1 than their averages for the nine quarters reported to date. To put it another way, about half of the routes did better than average for the first part of 2015, while about half did worse. If the extremely bad winter were a factor overall, one would expect a less balanced situation. On the streetcar lines, only three of eleven routes bettered their averages in 15Q1 (King, Lake Shore and St. Clair), but many of the differences are small with five of eleven falling within one standard deviation.

Headway reliability numbers are consistently bad on the 14x Downtown Express routes, and this implies that these infrequent services have a problem with running on time. What is not known is the measurements times and locations used to produce the stats for these routes and whether the service is at least on time where it collects passengers.

Similarly, headway measures for the 3xx Blue Night services are unimpressive, and what matters much more for these routes is on time performance and reliability of connections between routes, such as they exist.

The TTC claims that it will be introducing new “Journey Time Metrics” later in 2015, but there are as yet no details of what exactly these will measure. In parallel, there are moves to change the service reliability standards so that they look at routes end-to-end, not simply at their central points. (This was described in a presentation at the TTC board meeting in March 2015 (see p7 of TTC Modernization).

The TTC has yet to settle on a reporting mechanism that takes into account the difference in rider needs depending on the nature of a service. When a route is supposed to provide “frequent service”, the important point is that it be reliable. A 5 minute headway is not “frequent” if this actually means three buses every 15 minutes. When service is less frequent, then waiting times for off-schedule vehicles are a huge annoyance and on time performance is key. Short turns, of course, play havoc with both of these measures for riders who need a route beyond its common turnback points. Plans to measure the proportion of service that actually arrives at termini will highlight these problems.

Underlying all of this is the absence of a clear goal, a definition of what constitutes “good” transit service. Too often the goal has been to constrain cost increases and make the best of whatever resources the TTC has at hand.

The schedule changes for May 10 will bring the first wave of improvements from the recently adopted City of Toronto budget and increased transit subsidy.

• Many routes will gain service to begin implementation of the “Ten Minute Network” on core routes across the system. This stage mainly affects weekend service. Weekday changes to some of these routes will follow with the June schedules.
  • 192 Airport Rocket
  • 506 Carlton
  • 25 Don Mills
  • 36 Finch West (to Humberwood)
  • 191 Highway 27 Rocket
  • 504 King
  • 44 Kipling South
  • 47 Lansdowne (Queen to St. Clair)
  • 129 McCowan North (to Steeles)
  • 116 Morningside (to Finch)
  • 63 Ossington (to St. Clair)
  • 86 Scarborough (to Sheppard)
  • 24 Victoria Park (to Steeles)
• The implementation of “All day, every day” service will begin.
  • 108A Downsview to Jane via Grandravine on Sundays late evening.
• Expansion of express bus services will begin.
  • 196 York U Rocket to Sheppard-Yonge Station on weekends daytime.

The Scarborough RT will now be officially known as “3 Scarborough”.

Branch name changes will continue the move to use of the “A” designation for the primary branch of routes:

• 6A Bay Dupont to Queens Quay & Sherbourne (formerly 6)
• 38A Highland Creek to Rouge Hill GO (formerly 38)
• 24A Victoria Park to Steeles (formerly 24)
• 165A Weston Road N to Steeles (formerly 165)
• 165C Weston Road N to Canada’s Wonderland (formerly 165A)

The 102D Markham Road contract service in York Region will be extended to Major Mackenzie Drive.

At the request of York Region Transit, the 102D (Warden Stn-Mount Joy GO Stn) service will be extended to Major Mackenzie Drive via Bur Oak Avenue and Mingay Avenue. Service will be removed on Castlemore Avenue, Anderson Avenue and Bur Oak Avenue, and from Mount Joy GO Station.

Retirement of the 7200-series Nova RTS buses at Arrow Road will continue through the spring. These vehicles have been used on 96 Wilson and 165 Weston Road North, but they will be confined to peak-hour runs if any remain in service for the May schedule period.

Reconstruction of the south ladder track at Russell Carhouse on Eastern Avenue will require significant operational changes. Some runs will be reassigned to Roncesvalles Carhouse, and the use of Exhibition Loop to store cars overnight will increase. Cars remaining at Russell Carhouse will be backed into the yard from the north entrance.

Various seasonal changes reflecting the decline in school-related travel and the increase in demand for recreational trips will be implemented. However, due to the timing of the Pan Am Games and the Indy car race, the seasonal expansion of 29 Dufferin service to the Princes’ Gates will not occur (weekday midday and evening, Saturday late evening, Sunday/Holiday evening).

The split operation of 72 Pape and 172 Cherry was planned to end with the May schedules. However, construction on Front Street at Union Station continues and a date for resumption of the unified route has not been settled. The TTC advises that, except for Pan Am Games, no other changes are planned until at least September.

With the completion of construction at College & Spadina and at Spadina Station, streetcars will return to 510 Spadina. Other changes this triggers include a reduction of service on 509 Harbourfront and resumption of buses for peak extras on 504 King. Two runs on 509 Harbourfront will be scheduled and crewed for LFLRV operation in anticipation of vehicle availability.

Details of individual route changes are in the spreadsheet linked below.

2015.05.10 Service Changes