Service Cost and Quality

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TTC Service Changes for June 22, 2014 (Update 2)

Service changes to be implemented on June 22 include a large number of seasonal cutbacks in service on a par with what was done in 2013. There is an unusually large amount of construction underway around the city and this is reflected both in adjusted schedules and in a much higher than budgeted number of hours for construction-related service. This activity is one of the constraints on service growth for 2014.

Updated June 18, 2014: With the reopening of Cherry Street south of Mill Street, the 172 Cherry bus will resume its normal routing through the Distillery District (via Parliament, Mill and Cherry) on Saturday, June 21.

29 Dufferin will be formally scheduled as an articulated bus route on weekdays. Although there will be fewer vehicles than at present, the reduction is smaller than the relative size of the vehicles giving an increase in route capacity. This may be offset by service reliability as happened already on 7 Bathurst.

The Queen and King streetcar routes will divert around track construction at Broadview & Queen from June 30 to July 25.

501 Queen cars which are now diverting both ways via Broadview, Gerrard and Coxwell will alter their route to divert via Parliament, Gerrard and Coxwell.

504 King cars now diverting both ways around the Don Bridge constuction via Parliament and Queen will alter their route to divert via Parliament and Dundas.

501/502 bus replacement service on Queen will divert both ways via Pape, Dundas and River. As with the diversion service already in operation for the Queen & Leslie track work, these buses will loop downtown via Church, Richmond and Victoria. There will be no 503 Kingston Road Tripper service to York & Wellington.

2014.06.22_Service_Changes (Updated June 13, 2014)

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Vanishing Streetcar Stops (Updated)

Updated May 26, 2014:

The TTC has released a report on the removal of streetcar stops that will be discussed at the Board meeting on May 28.

The report claims that there are two goals in the elimination and consolidation of streetcar stops:

  • Improving the consistency of stop placement to provide better safety so that stops are always at signalled intersections or those with pedestrian crosswalks, and
  • Reducing travel time through stop elimination where existing stops are very close to each other.

The question of safety in stop placement is laudable, although it is odd that so few locations are actually proposed for removal. Of the 550 existing streetcar stops:

  • 20 will be shifted from locations nearby traffic signals to be at the signalled intersection.
  • 39 regular stops that are within 200m of a nearby stop will be removed, although some of these are still under negotiation with the local Councillors.
  • Most Sunday stops (about 40) will be eliminated, and a few will be converted to regular stops.

The geographic distribution of stops to be eliminated is rather strange, and has an uneven feel to it at some locations. Oddly, there is discussion of removing the stops at Queen & Victoria, although this is still under review because of St. Michael’s Hospital, and King & Victoria westbound is on the hit list. However, the stops bothways at Dundas and Victoria (a location with problems compounded by traffic signals at Yonge and Victoria that prefer to thwart rather than aid transit) are not mentioned at all.  Ooops! They are.

Broadview Station could become the only place where one can board a streetcar in this neighbourhood as the stop on Erindale is to be removed, and the southbound stop at Danforth is under review. Strangely enough, the sidewalks at both stops were just rebuilt with accessibility ramps. Also, there is no mention of the northbound stop. Also, this stop is not in service during the peak period already, and how its removal would contribute to any peak time savings is a mystery.

There is no discussion of the comparable situation at Main Station, and 506 Carlton is not even included in the table of affected weekday routes.

The stops bothways at Connaught & Queen disappear, and I must assume that Russell operators are now doomed to making that “convenient” walk down the street to a consolidated stop.

It is particularly amusing to see a Sunday stop listed for Kingston Road at Malvern, a location where there is no streetcar service on Sundays.

Other anomalies can be found in the comment from “nfitz” that follows below.

This report has been three months in the making (at least), originally promised for February, finally delivered in May. It has the feeling of a report that argues the case for “faster transit” rather more forcefully than the actual number of stops involved would suggest. Sunday stops have nothing to do with weekday transit speeds, and the actual number of stops removed is trivial ib proportion to the streetcar system.

If the TTC wants to argue “safety”, fine, but don’t drum up another of these bogus claims that transit service will somehow be improved. That’s a task for the quantity and quality of service on the street, and the little matter of line management.

I cannot help remembering a report written years ago by a junior planner about the placement of all-night services that showed a hopeless lack of geographical knowledge of the city including basic obstacles like valleys, rivers and ponds to crow-fly walking distances.

If we were really talking about a major change in the philosophy of stop placement, and were looking at its effect not just on streetcars but also for buses, I might take this report seriously. Meanwhile, this is another of those “we know best” TTC reports that tries to justify a new policy with an oversold rationale.

The original article from May 9, 2014 follows the break.

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So You Want To Own A Subway …

November 25, 2017: As the Tories have trotted out the same uploading plan as in the last election, I’m reminding folks that their scheme simply does not hold water. The numbers here are from 2014, and in due course I might getting around to updating them with 2017 or 2018 data. But it won’t change the conclusions.

This article was originally published in May 2014.

The madness that passes for political policy in Toronto continues in the provincial election with a proposal that a Tory administration under Tim Hudak would transfer control of the rapid transit system to GO Transit as a regional asset. The conventional wisdom is that the subway on its own would be “profitable”, and that Toronto would be stiffed for the money-losing surface network.

Quite bluntly, any claim that the subway makes a profit and could be uploaded at no net cost to Queen’s Park is pure bunk, and it says something about the quality of Hudak’s advisors that they don’t seem to know this (among many other fiscal facts of life). Just like the operation of a house or a car, two things many voters must deal with day-to-day, there are two budgets:

  • Operating: Here we have the bills that roll in regularly such as taxes, utilities, insurance. Unless we are renting out our homes or vehicles, there is no offsetting revenue, but in the case of the subway, there are fares and other much smaller sources of income.
  • Capital: Now and then, major expenses come along such as a new roof or foundation repairs, a new furnace or other appliances, fixing the plumbing and electrics, building that nice new patio you always wanted. These don’t happen often, and the expense covers an asset that should last decades, but some level of capital spending is unavoidable.

I have omitted mortgage costs here because they do not have a direct equivalent in transit budgets where the cost of borrowed money is not visible. If this were included, then capital-intensive modes like the subway would have a higher operating cost with the debt service charges included.

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TTC Service Changes Effective May 11, 2014 (Update 4)

The May 2014 schedules will bring major changes across the system mainly in response to construction projects.  Extra running time will be provided on many routes in response to construction delays.  At some times, the current headway will be maintained, while at others the headway will be stretched.  In two cases (46 Martin Grove and 94 Wellesley), no buses are available to improve PM peak service to compensate for extra running time.

The budget for construction-related service is considerably less than what will actually be required.  Although the total hours operated will be greater than the budget for May, “regular” service will be below budget while “construction” more than compensates.  Some changes in the fleet and in service levels have been deferred until later in 2014.

2014.05.11_Service_Changes

This table is broken into four sections listing miscellaneous minor changes, construction-related changes, one route restructuring and seasonal changes.

Updated May 17, 2014:

Effective Tuesday, May 20, the diversions for the Queen & Victoria track project will be changed.

  • All westbound 501 Queen cars will divert via Church-King-York.
  • 501/502/503 shuttle bus services will terminate at Church Street.

The details are on the TTC service advisory page (scroll down to see the portion effective May 20).

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How the “Small Stuff” Can Wreck the Best Intentions

A comment arrived from a regular reader, David Crawford, about how the TTC mishandles the details of its service and information. This really belongs in a new thread, and I’m sure it will spawn a trove of examples from other parts of the system.

The TTC is, probably necessarily, a very complex organisation but seems to lack the ability or ‘culture’ to look at projects or services as a whole. This is apparent in major ‘conflicts’ between priorities where the priority to reduce overtime results in short-turns and ‘maintaining the schedule’ rather than thinking of the priority to provide ‘good customer service’ and thus ‘running to headways’. This inability to ‘think things through’ is also apparent in much smaller ‘projects’.

More minor examples are the strange absence of links to NextBus on the TTC schedules pages (because the ‘schedule folk’ don’t talk to the “Nextbus folk” or resent Nextbus?) and in the recent temporary splitting of the 72 bus route.

Splitting the route may have been a good idea but giving it a new number (172) led to (unplanned) problems. Many bus stops had the Route Number painted on them, someone had to go out and add a “1″ before the “72″, the Nextbus displays at the King Station were not working for months (and may still not be), someone was sent out to fasten new 172 route schedules to poles, but was not told to remove the ones for the 72 – which no longer ran to those stops. In addition, because the 72/172 is on a ‘temporary’ routing downtown there were also large signs along the route noting that the 72 ran there – these too had to be changed to read 172. Furthermore, there are (old) buses that do not seem to be able to display a route 172 sign so they still actually run as 72s – though are, in fact 172s. There were also references on the TTC website to the 72 bus – getting to the Distillery for example – when the new (temporary) route was the 172.

It would have been far easier and less confusing if they had simply created another branch of the 72 that would only run between King and Commissioners. When the route numbering was changed it would also have made sense to have bitten the bullet and officially changed the routing so that the bus will go permanently to the King and St Andrew subway stations. This temporary change has clearly resulted in far more ridership as the 72/172 is now a very viable alternative to the (too often short-turned) 504 streetcar.

The lack of direct links between the TTC schedule pages and Nextbus is very annoying, and you have to know your way around to use the information.  That said, there are a few challenges in presenting the information.

Both the desktop and mobile versions of the site provide the “stop number” which can be used with a text message to retrieve predicted arrival times for vehicles.  The desktop version includes a clickable “?” that is supposed to call out a help panel, but on the 504 display I tested, this has no effect. I believe the idea is that the pop-up should tell you how to use the stop id in a Nextbus call.

There is no reference to Nextbus on the general Schedules and Maps page, but it is included with much other info on a Connect With the TTC page.  If one is using either a desktop or a smart phone, it is not necessary to know the stop number as there are other paths into Nextbus, but their availability is not explained by the TTC.

Other apps, of course, use the same data feed and have their own benefits and drawbacks, but they all depend on having something beyond a basic cell phone.

As for the 172 and the Pape diversion in general, the truly annoying feature was that it was so prominently advertised in King and St. Andrew Stations while information about the 509 Harbourfront bus (a much more frequent and well-used service, especially by people unfamiliar with the area) went for a long period with only minimal signage. Visitors from other planets might be forgiven for thinking that 72 Pape / 172 Cherry are vital routes without which the city would collapse.

The problem for the TTC is inconsistency.  One day a change or diversion will get saturation coverage, another day it’s a small paper notice if you look in just the right place.

As for the 504, yes, it’s a mess. I am working on a large collection of vehicle tracking data for a series of articles on the evolution of service on this route over past years. What is abundantly clear to anyone riding the system is that managing for headway is a myth, and short turns to keep operators on time are more common than ever. Meanwhile the King route supervisors cluster outside the John Street Tim Horton’s in an obvious display of wasted manpower.

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Toronto Deserves Better Transit Service Now! Part 4: Streetcar Riders Count Too

Much discussion of improved service has talked about bus riders in the suburbs who have long trips and whose bus routes lost peak service when the crowding standards were rolled back in 2012.

Peak period crowding standards had never been improved for streetcars because there were no spare vehicles, and so there was nothing to roll back. However, over past decades, that shortage of streetcars limited peak service in a way that the bus system didn’t have to deal with.  This was compounded by two factors:

  • The TTC opened a new Spadina-Harbourfront line without increasing the fleet.  This was possible because service cuts on the early 1990s left Toronto with “spare” streetcars.
  • The project to buy new streetcars dragged on for years thanks both to the embrace of 100% low floor technology, and the obstructions posed by Mayor Ford to streetcar and LRT plans in general.

Between 1998 and 2014, the total number of streetcars scheduled for the peak periods has risen only 10%, and there is no headroom for further growth with the existing fleet. Indeed, service quality is compromised by vehicle failures, and the scheduled service may not all get out of the carhouse.

This year, the TTC will finally take delivery of the first “production” vehicles in its new fleet, and claims that service will operate as of August 31, 2014 on 510 Spadina with the new cars.  Whether the line will convert 100% to the new fleet in one go remains to be seen.

The TTC Fleet Plan contains no provision for improving service on any streetcar route beyond the higher capacity that new cars will provide. This will come only as the new fleet rolls out line-by-line and some routes will wait until late this decade to see more capacity (and even then with less frequent service).  Existing cars would be retired at a rate that matches or exceeds the new fleet’s ability to replace service, and would also eliminate any spare capacity for growth on lines running older cars.

This is what passes for responsible planning in an organization that claims a dedication to “customer service”.

This article looks at each streetcar route in turn and at a possible revised fleet plan that would make provision for short term improvements as the new fleet arrives.

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Toronto Deserves Better Transit Service Now! Part 3

In previous articles, I wrote about the decline in transit service thanks to the budget cutbacks of the Ford/Stintz regime, and about the potential for short term improvements.

This article looks at improvements in more detail in light of a recent policy announcement by Mayoral candidate Olivia Chow that she would increase service by 10% to reduce crowding.

What would a service increase look like “on the ground”, and what resources would it require?

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Toronto Deserves Better Transit Service Now! Part 2: What Can Be Done

The first part of this article reviewed the evolution of transit service and riding since 2006. In brief:

  • System riding grew by about 22% from 2006 to the projected demand in 2014.
  • The bus fleet, after increasing by about 22% early in that period in part for the Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS), has not grown since 2009.
  • The capacity of the bus fleet has dropped by about 6% as the remaining high-floor fleet was replaced with low-floor buses.
  • Although RGS improved crowding standards to encourage more riding, these changes were reversed in 2012 to fit more passengers on existing vehicles.
  • The streetcar fleet size has not changed at all, and peak service improvements, such as there were any, came from redeploying vehicles from routes shut down for construction projects.

Changing the level of TTC service on a broad scale is not something anyone can do overnight.  More service means more buses and streetcars, more operators and more garage capacity.  All of this takes more operating and capital subsidy, and a sustained commitment that lasts longer than a campaign sound-bite.

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Toronto Deserves Better Transit Service Now! Part 1: Evolution of Service from 2006 to 2014 (Updated)

Updated March 10, 2014 at 2:55 pm:  A section has been added with a chart tracking the evolution of budgeted hours of service from 2006 to 2014 showing the effect of revisions, especially those occasioned by the Ford-Stintz cutbacks, and the recent growth of service thanks to carry-overs of “surpluses” in subsidy levels.

Originally published on March 9, 2014 at 8:00 am.

In the coming municipal election campaign, there will be claims and counterclaims about transit service – how much do we have, did it get better or worse, who should be praised or blamed for the changes.

This article reviews the quantity of service offered on surface routes measured by the number of vehicles on the road during various periods. The data shown are, with one exception, for January in each year to give comparable operating and demand conditions for scheduling purposes.  (The exception is for 2008 where I only have the February information in my archives.  Typically there are few changes between the January and February levels of service.)

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