Grzegorz Radziwonowski passed along the following notes from last night’s annual public meeting re service improvements.

* The people who came to the meeting are much more unhappy with the 504 King Streetcar than with any bus, streetcar, or subway route.

* There continues to be a dislike. at times hatred, of Transit City, LRT ROWs, and Streetcars in general. Many people were proposing the TTC put in Electric Buses (Trackless Trolleys) in the Transit City ROWs, rather than Streetcars.

* At least 3 people were talking about the 30 Lambton leaving High Park Station 4 minutes early during the evenings.

* Apparently buses are to be a part of a second phase of Transit City; however, no further details were given on this.

* When I spoke to some of the TTC planners, they currently want to renovate Bloor-Yonge Station by adding the second (Eastbound) platform at Yonge Station.

* While speaking with planning staff, I also found out that minibuses were unfeasible because the biggest expense would be to pay the drivers (which would be from ATU 113), and that that cost would outweigh any benefits the TTC might gain from reduced fuel costs. They also told me that while they really want Articulated vehicles, they have yet to find one that meets their criteria (I have yet to find out what exactly that criteria is).

* A lot of people wanted either the SRT or 21 Brimley to be extended until the last B-D train arrives at Kennedy. Many of these same people want 133 Neilson to have an express branch, running to Scarborough Town Centre, preferably via Highway 401.

Other smaller issues were raised, but I really can’t list all of them. I only listed either reoccurring ones, or one that would affect Transit for all.

I can’t help feeling sadness and despair that the TTC has done such a thorough job of making streetcars unpopular.  We don’t have enough of them.  The TTC is better at finding excuses for poor service than actually making cars run reliably.

Nobody believes that the Transit City lines can be built quickly and cheaply because the counterexample of St. Clair stares everyone in the face. 

On other notes, the “Transit City Bus Plan” is intended to flag major routes that will be guaranteed good service all the time, with express operations where they are warranted by travel patterns.  This is related to the posts I did a while ago about the 10 and 20 minute networks.  (By the way, those posts were for discussion purposes, not as definitive lists of routes.)

The really big problem with minibuses is that they don’t last anywhere near as long as a full size bus, and the cost over a comparable lifespan can actually be higher.  This depends, of course, on assumptions you make about what is “equivalent”.  The labour issue is a red herring, but is a convenient excuse the TTC can trot out to avoid discussing the issue.  They already operate several “community bus” routes, and labour costs on these are lower than on major routes because the crews are off-peak work which tends to cost less to operate.  Artics, needless to say, are intended for a completely different type of route.

Over the past week, two people have commented to me about trying to use the 94 Wellesley bus and just giving up.  Among the complaints I have heard are:

• The printed timetables are completely meaningless.
• Gaps of over half an hour in the peak period occur.

This is quite different from the rosy view the TTC system had in the wake of November’s service improvements.  Looking at the Scheduled Service Summary I see that the headways are supposed to be:

• AM Peak:  12′ between Ossington  and Wellesley Stations, 6′ east to Castle Frank
• Midday:  10′
• PM Peak:  16′ between Ossington and Wellesley Stations, 8′ east to Castle Frank
• Early evening:  13′
• Late evening every day:  15′
• Saturday early morning:  17′
• Saturday afternoon:  12′
• Weekend early evening:  16’40”
• Sunday daytime:  18′

What is ironic here is that the PM peak service west of Yonge is worse than it is during most other operating periods.  On top of this, if a bus is missing or short turned, a gap of over half an hour results.

I know it’s a lot to expect that there are hundreds (tens?) of Wellesley bus riders reading this blog, but if you have some service horror stories of this or other routes, please let me know.  We need to ensure that the TTC is actually operating its services properly, and not just the ones that had recent improvements.

Recently, the TTC implemented a maximum 30 minute headway across the network and full service from roughly 6:00 am to 1:00 am everywhere.  Plans for 2009 include a reduction of this maximum to 20 minutes, a topic I reviewed in a previous post.  Whether we will actually see this next year is still a topic for budget debates, and the recently announced fare freeze could put that scheme on hold.

Another option that has surfaced is the concept of a core grid of routes where service would never be worse than every 10 minutes.  To get a sense of what this might look like, I culled through the current schedules to produce a list of routes that have headways wider than 10 minutes.  This is not a definitive list, and I know there can be both additions and deletions.  Indeed, proposals like this are guaranteed to produce all sorts of political fights as each Councillor tries to get “their” routes on the “A list” for service quality.  The criteria for picking the routes were:

• Routes on the major concession roads, or a reasonable approximation, were chosen.  This is the roughly 2km square grid of main streets in Toronto.
• For areas with more complex geometry such as southern Scarborough, I have selected routes to provide geographic coverage.
• Only services within the 416 are included.
• All streetcar lines are included, although an argument can be made that one or two of them could be trimmed from the list.

Where the cells in the table are empty, the service is already at a 10 minute headway or better, and some routes have completely blank rows.  What is quite noticeable here compared with the chart of 20 minute routes is that there are more time periods where service improvements would be needed on more routes.  Moreover, many of these are major routes where the number of additional vehicles would be substantial.

In a period of tighter finances, this raises the question of which approach to service improvement should get priority:

• Improve service even more on lesser used routes and periods from 30 to 20 minute maximum headways.
• Improve service on core routes to 10 minute headways.
• Improve service on routes that could benefit from reduced crowding.

All of these must be balanced against the debate over fare levels.  Regular readers will know that my preference has always been to concentrate on service because that’s what people really need.  The greatest prices in the world won’t do any good if the shop window is empty.

Among the side comments with the proposed fare freeze announcement came a note that we might not see the implementation of a 20-minute maximum headway in 2009.  Indeed, just paying for the changes recently introduced could be a stretch.

Just to see what this entails, I have compiled a list of the services that now run less frequently than 20 minute headways.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list as I built it rather quickly to get a sense of the size of the issue, not to nail down every last detail.  A few important points here:

• Routes outside of the 416 are not included as they are contract services not subject to TTC headway policies.
• Sunday early morning services are not included because this period is not part of “subway hours”.
• Where routes overlap, I have tried to omit infrequent services on the overlap.  For example, individual services on Broadview may run on wide headways, but the combined frequency is within the 20 minute cutoff.
• Not every route with two or more branches has been included.  I mentioned a few in the list because there is an important policy question here.  Should the TTC run very frequent service on a route so that its branches can each stay within the 20 minute maximum?  (A very good example is Eglinton West which has both the Emmett and Trethewey branches that are not always scheduled into the pattern of the main route.)
• Routes that have no service less frequent than 20 minutes are not included in the table.
• Empty cells in the table indicate a period when the service is every 20 minutes or better, or in a few cases where there is no service.

One overwhelming observation is that the late evening periods (generally after 9-10 pm) most commonly have wide headways on most listed routes.  A relatively few routes have 30 minute headways for most of the day.

The debate on use of any funding for service increases needs to determine whether the 20 minute maximum is an appropriate goal across the system, or whether it is time to start subdividing by class of route and time of day.  For example:

• Is a 30 minute headway after 10 pm an acceptable compromise or first step in a full 20-minute rollout?
• Should routes serving primarily industrial areas be subject to the 20 minute maximum?
• Do rush hour express buses (the 140 series) qualify as full routes once they no longer charge premium fares, and if so, what should be the minimum headway?
• Should there be a special class of peak-only routes that do not automatically get full service at the policy headway?

In my next post, I will turn to what may seem to be a more radical idea, the Ten Minute Network.  Such a network would have a guaranteed maximum 10 minute headway on a core network of routes.  Please save comments on that idea until I get the post about it online.  Meanwhile, the policy question is this:  would a Ten Minute Network contribute more to the system overall at this time than the move to a twenty minute maximum affecting only the infrequent services?