Service Cost and Quality

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Customer Service Excellence Our Goal: TTC

On January 27, the TTC announced a number of new programs and policies designed to substantially improve all aspects of customer service.  I won’t go into all of the details, but for those who have not seen them, you can follow the links below.

TTC Site

Spacing Toronto

The Toronto Star

This will probably be the last transit announcement by Adam Giambrone who is widely expected to announce his candidacy for Mayor of Toronto next Monday.   Once that happens, he cannot maintain a high-profile position and use the TTC for electoral good news.

In his introduction of the new program, Giambrone talked about four essential parts of TTC customer service:  courtesy, information, responsiveness and reliability.  Some of these are “people skills”, some are technical, but many require changes to organizational culture.  Just making the trains run on time isn’t enough (although I suspect many riders would be happy just for that small miracle).

The TTC will create an external panel of customers, employees, and others outside the TTC with a customer service background.  The work plan sounds depressingly like so much public consultation.  First there will be a terms of reference, then the panel will review current plans, consult the public and draft a “bill of rights” for transit customers.  This process is hoped to wrap up by June 30 — an unusually fast schedule for consultation and reporting. 

For the record, I have neither applied for nor been invited to be a member of the panel.

The TTC plans a number of technology-related changes to improve information flow including screens showing information about service status at subway entrances, real-time vehicle information via SMS (text) messages, new microphones at collectors’ booths to improve conversational quality between staff and passengers, an internet trip planner, and completion of next vehicle information throughout the subway.

We know that the GPS-based line displays have been available internally for some time.  The TTC included a view of one as part of a recent presentation, and real time trip information cannot work without the underlying data.  Why are these not available to the public?

A significant omission in the vehicle tracking system is knowledge of the advertised destination of a vehicle.  Like so much else in TTC operations, the only available information is the scehduled destination.  However, this is meaningless on routes with frequent short-turns and ad-hoc service restructuring.  Someone waiting for a car wants to know where it is really going, not where it is scheduled to be.

(One amusing note about the TTC presentation:  If you scroll down to the “Backgrounder” section, there is a picture of a “next car” info sign saying that a car is now “due” and coming in 1 minute.  The streetcar in the background is a 504 signed for Dufferin, a short turn.  The information system has no way of knowing it is advertising the arrival of a car that may not go where the rider wants.)

The trip planner is still at a beta-testing stage (comment threads on other sites have talked about various peculiarities in early versions), but it will be released with the clear intent of getting customer feedback.  This will be an early test of the TTC’s intentions because bug fixes and enhancements will be essential to having a really good product.

I will not discuss the relative merits of the TTC’s system and other available software, although one wonders why the TTC went down the “roll your own” path on this project. Once the TTC version has actually been up for a while and had some fine tuning, then we can get into comparative discussions about other products.

The TTC plans to add 50 new pass vending machines at locations in the system and to expand the use of debit/credit car transactions.  I hope that, while they are rewiring stations, they take into account future needs for Presto so that they don’t have to tear everything apart in a few years’ time.  Indeed, the idea of provisioning new equipment when we are close to a system-wide conversion to automated fare collection begs the question of how serious the TTC really is about the latter.

One big complaint about TTC information services is their availability during business hours only.  The TTC hopes to incorporate a complaints line into the City’s 311 service so that customers can call in immediately when an incident occurs.  The TTC should simply ditch its own info line and make transit information part of 311, transferring staff if necessary to the City operation.

Passengers expect cleaner stations.  Report after report showing how Toronto’s mythical “station cleanliness index” is inching up year by year simply are not enough.  There are now plans in the TTC budget to beef up the cleaning staff, but even this is a multi-year scheme.  Don’t expect spotless stations soon.

Good customer service is to be an organizational goal.  After several years’ focus on safety and absenteeism, the TTC will now look to its customers.   They should never have looked away.

Particularly striking in the list of goals is “reliability”.  This is the heart of good transit service, and it removes many of the annoyances that plague both riders and operators.  The TTC must stop finding excuses for poorly managed and operated services.

If changes in scheduling rules are needed to substantially reduce short turns, then find out how to make this work.

Don’t tell us about all the added route supervision, show us the service evenly spaced out rather than running in packs.  The operation of the St. Clair car since it reopened to Lansdowne is a disgrace.  This was not even mentioned during the press conference.

The TTC did talk about the subway shutdown brought on by Enbridge Gas construction work.  This incident revealed not only a problem with clear communications, but with emergency preparations in general.  Certainly, buses can never replace the subway particularly at the peak time.  However, the first thing that should happen in this type of situation is the closure of an affected street like Yonge to all non-essential traffic so that buses can move as quickly as possible.  The TTC, City and Police do not appear to have a standard protocol for this type of situation, and it’s badly needed.

Without question, there are employees whose public manner leaves much to desire, but they are, in my experience, a minority.  Both passengers and employees are made all the more sensitive and aggressive when they must deal with irregular service and an almost total lack of information.  Fix those problems, and some of the contention between riders and staff will disappear.  It won’t be perfect, but those employees who want to do a good job need to see that management is actively trying to improve their lot.

Many of these initiatives will take time to be implemented on the street, and a review committee must exist long enough to compare promises to reality.  The TTC is not a credible evaluator of its own success, if only because it has ignored its problems far too long.

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Customer Service On The Rocket (Update 3)

Updated January 24 at 5:30 pm:  The TTC has decided that it will accept the temporary adult tickets for refund until the end of March rather than having them turn into worthless confetti on February 1.  The original concern was with redemptions of counterfeit tickets, but few people would have any reason to have a large number of tickets on their own.  Only organizations that hand out TTC fares to their clients would buy large stocks in advance.

Updated January 24 at 8:00 am:  The TTC has added route-based advisories to its schedule pages.  47 Lansdowne now tells me about the diversion at the north end of the route.  504 King tells of the bus replacement on Roncesvalles.  41 Keele has three advisories — two for construction at Keele Station and one for the diversion at St. Clair.

This change addresses the problem of having to search in multiple locations for notices affecting the same route.

Updated January 23 at 11:00 am:  Revised and expanded to include comments on the Commission meeting of January 20 and CP24’s “On The Rocket” of January 21.

At the January 20th TTC meeting, on proposals by Chair Adam Giambrone and Commissioner Peter Milczyn, the Commission decided to seek out a “blue ribbon panel” to review customer service and improve the TTC.

What’s missing here is the very first step in any such review — a recognition that “customer service” is not just a smiling face on the front line, but an organization that really, truly, top to bottom believes that this is important.  Too much of what the TTC talks about is focussed on the employees’ interaction with customers.  Of course that’s part of the overall picture, but that relationship is coloured by the tools and support employees are given.

The TTC takes every chance to pat itself on the back, to tell Torontonians how great the system is.  Inevitably this shows up with praise for TTC management.  Indeed, Commissioners are loathe to publicly criticize management’s efforts.

That’s a huge shame because it sends the message that management is just fine, thank you, and doesn’t have to change the way they do business. Continue reading →

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Queen 501 Operational Review

The supplementary agenda for January’s TTC meeting includes a report on the various experiments with Queen car operations.  Unsurprisingly, it concludes that the split route operation was an abject failure, and recommends that the “step forward” crewing technique be formally implemented on the route during periods when the line is subject to disruption.  This scheme keeps operators on time but allows vehicles to continue without short turning.

I will not comment in detail on this report until after the Commission meeting and any discussions there.  At this point, I am still waiting for vehicle monitoring data for October and November 2009 so that I can perform a detailed analysis of the split and “normal” operations.

Because this report deals only with the various operational models actually tried to date, there is no discussion of alternative route structures such as splitting off the 507 in some form as a dedicated Long Branch service.  I suspect that any mention of this would trigger a “we tried to split the route and it didn’t work” response even though the Dufferin/Broadview split was a completely different design than, say, a 507 service to Dundas West Station.

This post will be updated with further comments or information when available.

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Still Waiting for Transit Priority Report (Updated)

Updated January 15:  The TTC agenda for this month reveals that the report requested in June 2005 may now be presented in March 2010.  I am not holding my breath.

In case you’re wondering, positions 2 through 4 in the queue are occupied by three requests from Vice-Chair Mihevc dating from 2007.

Original post from December 14, 2009:

Continue reading →

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When Things Go Wrong (1) (Updated)

CBC Radio 1 will be looking at the issue of TTC customer service starting on Monday, January 11, and I will be on Metro Morning dark and early sometime before 6 am.

Updated January 11:  The Metro Morning interview is now available online.

The chats with story producers got me thinking about the TTC’s eAlert system as well as other sources of information.  Knowing we won’t possibly cover all the details in a short interview, and that other aspects of the discussion will certainly come from readers here, I have started this thread.

A long-standing complaint about TTC service is that nobody knows what is going on.  At the best of times, one might peer into the mists on Queen Street and hope that somewhere there is a streetcar, or listen down the subway tunnels for the familiar rumble of a train.  Far too often, the TTC is not at its best, and the lack of information can drive people into a fury, one that may be visited on hapless TTC staff who are no better off than the rest of us.

The TTC’s website can be hit-or-miss depending on whether it is being updated regularly.  For example, the 501 Queen car’s route description was not changed back from the Shaw/Parliament split until quite recently (thanks to feedback from a reader on this site).  However, the 512 St. Clair route description gives no hint of the split streetcar/bus operation.

Diversions pose a special challenge because some are implemented thanks to emergencies such as fires or major collisions, but the most annoying are those implemented locally by the route management team, and not reflected on the website or on notices at bus and car stops.  The 41 Keele (local) service is diverting around construction at St. Clair southbound, but it took a few weeks for this to show up online, but only in the route description.  The schedule page and map still show the route running via St. Clair, and you can look up times for a stop that in fact has no service.  The info is on the “Diversions” page, but there is no alert on the route’s own page to indicate that readers should also consult the diversion information.

The subway, the main target of this article, has additional information sources for would-be riders, although all of these can be quite frustrating.

If you are at platform level, and your station has a working video screen (dead screens are becoming common), and you’re standing close enough to read it, and Transit Control considers a delay to be serious enough to put up a notice, then you have a fighting chance of discovering that something is amiss.  There may even be PA announcements, but they tend to occur only for very long-running delays.  (As I write this, there is no subway service east of Victoria Park, and info about this comes over the speaker systems regularly.  It also appears on the “Service Advisories” on the TTC website.)

If you are anywhere else, and you have cell/internet signal, you may get information from various sources:

I get both the eAlerts and the Facebook updates, and compiled a log of information from both sources.  My apologies to those who don’t like “busy” displays as there is a lot of info consolidated in one place. Continue reading →

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Service Changes for January 2010

A few changes will occur on Sunday, January 3, 2010.

Notable among these is the 192 Airport Rocket which has been formally rescheduled and rerouted in response to concerns about the safety of its operation.  The changes were implemented on November 2, 2009. 

The northbound route is via Dundas, Hwy 427, Hwy 27 and Dixon Road to the airport.  Southbound trips remain via Hwy 427 and Dundas to Kipling Station.

The loading standard at all times is 38, a seated load.

2010.01.03 Service Changes

At Scarborough Town Centre, the 169 Huntingwood bus will move to the diagonally opposite corner of the platform from its current location to make more room for the 190 Scarborough Centre Rocket.  This takes effect on Tuesday, January 19.

2010.01.19 STC Bus Bays

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TTC Capital Budget 2010-2019 (3): Bus Fleet Plan (Update 3)

Updated October 28 at 12:45 pm:  A revised fleet plan appears on the Supplementary Agenda for the TTC meeting on October 29 as an appendix to a report regarding the purchase of new buses for 2011 and 2012 delivery.  This version differs from its predecessors mainly in the removal of vehicles for the Transit City Bus Plan, offset by the additional vehicles required due to deferral of the Transit Signal Priority project for the bus network.  Accounting for maintenance spares and contingency buses has also changed.

The net effect is that bus purchases originally planned have been scaled back by 50 and the remainder are rescheduled:

  • from 40 to 35 in 2011,
  • from 105 to 60 in 2012,
  • from 35 to 60 in 2013,
  • from 85 to 40 in 2014,
  • from 55 to 75 in 2015

An order already placed for 120 buses for 2010 is not affected.

I will comment on this in detail after the Capital Budget Update report also on the October 29 agenda is available.

Updated October 24 at 10:00 pm:  A postscript has been added with notes about other known or possible events affecting the bus fleet.

Updated October 24 at 3:45 pm:  Provision for bus route changes triggered by the Spadina Subway Extension have been added to the projection.

The TTC’s proposed 2010-19 Capital Budget includes an ongoing plan to rejuvenate and expand the bus fleet.  While these may seem to be laudable goals, the actual plans leave much to be desired.

The Bus Fleet Plan is a marvellous document that changes in every iteration.  Barely is the ink dry on one version when it is revised again.  There are three different versions of this plan within the Capital Budget documents alone, and these are a substantial revision from the version shown in the 2009 Capital Budget.

Bus Fleet Plan [From Appendix E of TTC Capital Budget Report, September 24, 2009]

However, two different sets of numbers appear in the version of the plan in the Capital Budget “Blue Books” (the detailed report of all capital projects).  One is in the project covering purchase of new buses, and another in a project for temporary accommodation of an enlarged bus fleet (about which more later).

A major change in the TTC’s fleet planning came earlier in 2009 when, with little fanfare, the TTC decided to get out of the Hybrid Bus business for new purchases starting in 2010.  The special subsidies available to “encourage” hybrid purchases are no longer available, and at the time of the decision, the hybrids were problem children in the fleet.  A project to replace the original lead-acid batteries with lithium-ion batteries will complete within the next half year, but TTC staff have not yet reported on the improved reliability and performance, if any, of vehicles with the new batteries.

Rather than paring the capital cost of future purchases down, the Capital Budget now uses this money to purchase more buses than originally planned.  This can be seen in comparing the projected fleet size in 2018 for different versions of the fleet plan.

  • 2009 plan:  1549
  • 2010 plan (as seen in the Commission Report, Appendix E):  1796
  • 2010 plan (as seen in the project description for bus purchases, Blue Books Page 954):  1793
  • 2010 plan (as seen in the project description for temporary bus storage, Page 927):  1748

In short, the TTC now aims for its 2018 fleet to be roughly 250 buses larger than what it projected only a year ago.  What generates this additional requirement? Continue reading →

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The TTC Responds: TTC Times 2 / Riding Around Loops

Recent comments in the thread regarding the split operations on 501 Queen, as well as a reported incident where an operator was unaware that GO Transit could be used as a “bridge” between two TTC routes, led me to send questions for clarification to the TTC’s Director of Corporate Communications, Brad Ross. 

Here, with my comments, are the replies.  The questions have been slightly reformatted so that they can stand outside of the context in which they were written. Continue reading →

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Trial Split of 501 Queen Car (Updated)

Updated October 22 at 10:25 am:

Brad Ross, TTC’s Director of Corporate Communications, advises that effective 9:30 am today all Queen operators will carry passengers around the Shaw/Dufferin and Parliament/Broadview loops, and tell passengers of the layover that may occur.

Also, for those who like to know the internal trivia, the east and west ends of the route are known as “500” and “507” respectively so that they can be scheduled and managed independently.

Original post:

Today, the TTC begins a five-week test of operating the Queen car in two overlapping sections, weekdays only.

  • East end cars will operate between Neville and Shaw, looping via Shaw, King and Dufferin.
  • West end cars will operate between Long Branch or Humber (alternate cars) and Parliament, looping via Parliament, Dundas and Broadview.

Without rehashing many previous posts on this topic, here is a preliminary look at the issues:

  • The design of the overlapped routes may not be ideal, and I hope that it will work well enough that TTC staff don’t reject any alternative arrangements.  Part of the problem is a tradeoff between the number of cars and operators available and the amount of additional service on the route.  A long term arrangement may require a different route configuration and/or even more service.
  • Scheduled service to the outer ends of the line has been cut to provide for the overlap.  The premise is that with more reliable headways and fewer short turns, the actual service provided to Neville and Long Branch will be better than on the unified route.  However, the AM peak is not, for the most part, affected by congestion and short turns were comparatively rare.  Will the reduced service be able to handle demand outside of the overlapped section downtown?
  • Overlapped TTC services have a long history of badly managed integration.  This can be seen with the  behaviour of 502 Downtowner cars that often pull out from McCaul or Kingston Road right behind a 501 Queen and carry as few passengers as possible.  How many times will we see pairs of east and west end cars travel across the central part of Queen together?
  • Both turnbacks involve on-street loops.  Cars waiting for their scheduled departure times may be pushed out by other services, or may simply create congestion of their own while laying over in the middle of the street.
  • On the brighter side, both scheduled turnbacks are  far enough away from Yonge Street that even a short turn (say westbound at Bathurst or eastbound at Church) will maintain service in the heart of downtown.

With shorter routes, the need for recovery time should be reduced as operators won’t face a 90-minute more trip between termini.  For the east end service, recovery times are no more than 4 minutes (peak periods). 

In the west end, recovery times are longer, but these are mainly intended to make the schedule merge at Humber work properly — the difference between Humber and Long Branch trip times must always be a multiple of the headway.  For example, in the early evening, the Long Branch cars get 13 minutes “recovery” so that their round trips differ by one hour (four times the 15-minute headway) from the Humber cars.  Later in the evening, the difference in round trips is only 38 minutes (two times the 19-minute headway), and the Long Branch runs get only 4 minutes recovery.

This thread is intended as a repository for observations and comments about the split route operation, and I am particularly interested in hearing from regular users of the Queen car on their day-to-day experiences.

I have asked the TTC for their vehicle monitoring data for the months of October and November for the 501 and will publish an analyses of route behaviour comparing the unified and split operations.

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Service Changes for September 2009 (Updated)

Many service changes are coming this fall to the TTC network and they fall into a number of broad categories.

Seasonal Changes

The summer service changes are, for the most part, reversed in September as tourist/amusement traffic falls off and school traffic returns.  Subway and RT services return to normal “winter” levels.

Construction Changes (streetcar lines only)

The Dundas Street watermain work between Bathurst and Dovercourt is supposed to complete by the end of August, and both the 505 Dundas and 506 Carlton routes will revert to their May 2009 routings and service levels. 

Updated September 4:  The 505 Dundas car will operate via Spadina and College west to Lansdowne and thence to Dundas West Station.  A bus service will operate from Dundas West Station to Beverley Street (the west side of the Art Gallery of Ontario).

Work at Bingham Loop will continue, and the 502/503 services on Kingston Road will continue to operate with buses until the October schedule change.

Work at Queen & Church on watermains and track will continue, and the diversion of Queen and Downtowner routes around this area remains until the roads are open for traffic, possibly in late September.

Updated September 4:  The Queen and Downtowner routes will revert to their standard routing.

Work on Roncesvalles will continue until late 2010.

Fleet Availability

In February 2009, there were many service cuts in response to the poor availability of hybrid buses.  This situation continues to some extent, but some of the February cuts have been restored with a few service improvements added.

I have formatted the information in my usual manner for this site, boiling down a much longer TTC document to show service and riding levels, headways, and the rationale for changes (or lack of them).  In this case, I have colour coded the chart to make it easier to see the types of change applicable to each route.

  • Blue:  A service restoration and/or improvement
  • Orange Italics:  A service cut that was made in February 2009 and remains in place.  Note that the headway changes shown for these cases took place in February and are simply continuing into September.  In some cases, the before and after ridership has been updated by the TTC with recent counts.
  • Red Italics Underscored:  A service cut that was made in February has been confirmed as permanent in response to lower ridership.

In theory, when bus availability improves later in 2009, the “orange” list here will see service restored at least to pre-February levels.