The supplementary agenda for this week’s TTC meeting includes a report on Express Buses.  Unfortunately, this report has been badly misreported in today’s Star to the extent that the article and the report are diametrically opposed to each other.

The Star, drawing on information from Adam Giambrone, claims that a new network of express buses with premium fares has been proposed.  In fact, here are the changes recommended by the report:

• In the interest of encouraging riding on the routes parallel to the Yonge Subway (141 Mt. Pleasant, 142 Avenue Road, 144 Don Valley), these routes will become regular fare routes effective September 8, 2009.  The report is silent on whether this change in status would also trigger an RGS-based implementation of full service to match “subway operating hours”.  I don’t think that the TTC has digested the full impact of the RGS changes or how they would specify exemptions.
• A downtown express from Bayview/Lawrence will be evaluated following the trial period of regular fare operation on the three routes listed above.
• New local-express service will be implemented on 41 Keele and 60 Steeles West, but not until November 2009.
• The express services on 35E Jane and 96E Wilson will be improved to see whether this boosts riding, but again not until November 2009.  The effects will be reviewed in 2010 with a view to keeping, improving or eliminating this service.
• No other express services are warranted at this time on existing routes because the travel time savings and travel patterns are such that new express services would cause at least as much harm by degradation of local service as they would benefit riders who might use them.
• A network of express routes paralleling the eventual Transit City network is not warranted because they would operate in mixed traffic, and their additional operating cost could not be justified.

I will not repeat all of the detailed information from the report here.  The common thread you will see in the recommendations is that everything happens late next year so that the impact on the 2009 budget is minimal.  By that time, we should also know about:

• The RGS proposal to move to 20-minute minimum headways
• Additional express services, if any
• Fine tuning, if any, of the RGS hours of service to deal with exceptional situations

A parallel issue, mentioned in the TTC report, is crowding on the subway and plans for future capacity increases.  I will be posting a separate article about fleet planning and options to divert ridership onto other corridors later this week.

Update 2: The Register has a story about Berlin and the Dutch State Railways where the issue of copyright and use of public schedule data by outside application creators has arisen.

The TTC is not alone in fighting against externally built apps.

Original post follows:

There’s a great post and comment thread by Shawn Micallef on the spacing website about yet another non-TTC application to help users get TTC data.  This time, it’s an iPhone app.

Update:  The Torontoist site also has a post on this (sorry David for not picking up on that earlier).

After the initial burst of launching the still-not-bug-free and incomplete TTC website, work on that site seems to have ground to a halt.  At the very least, the TTC should put up a “coming soon” page with a list of committed improvements and dates.  This would allow people to spot the things that are still missing, and give us all a sense that the project isn’t stillborn.

One excuse is the need to make documents fully accessible.  This places the community who needs such services in the position that they appear to be the problem, rather than the TTC’s own inactivity and lack of preparation for this requirement.

An important issue raised by Shawn (and by others in the past) is the way that the TTC jealously guards its internal data on the grounds that it has some commercial value.

Get off your butts, guys.  This is public information and all your sitting on it does is to prevent people from making good use of the data.  Other cities make this type of scheduling info freely available, but Toronto is too busy protecting its “intellectual property”.

Back in 2002, I collaborated with Rocket Riders and the Toronto Environmental Alliance to produce Transit’s Lost Decade, a report on the savage cutbacks in transit during the 1990s thanks to budget cuts.

This morning, I received a comment in the thread about the November service changes from James who asked:

How does total service, as of November 23, 2008 compare with peak service prior to the big cuts of the early 90’s?

This sent me digging into my archives to see how we have been doing.  For the details, please refer to this linked spreadsheet.

By November 2008, the AM Peak bus service will stand at 1505, still 43 less than the 1990 level of 1548.  The difference in capacity is slightly greater on two accounts:

• 1990 includes articulated buses (fleet of 90, number in service unknown)
• 2008 includes 21 buses replacing streetcars on St. Clair for construction

If we assume that at least 70 artics were in service, this is the capacity equivalent of 35 more 40-foot buses.  Adjusting the totals gives an effective service of 1583 buses in 1990 versus 1484 in November 2008.  During this period, the Spadina subway was extended from Wilson to Downsview, and the Sheppard subway largely replaced bus service from Yonge to Don Mills.  However, these do not completely offset the difference in peak bus operations.

On the streetcar network, the AM peak service is down by 37 cars even though the Spadina route did not exist in 1990 (15 vehicles).  The level of streetcar service is much, much lower now than it was in 1990 and shows no sign of improving.  The long delay in decision-making on rebuilding and/or replacing the streetcar fleet means that “Ridership Growth Strategy” is a hollow term to patrons of those routes.

Please refer to this list of streetcar vehicles and headways for November 1990 and 2008.

Finally, you will note the presence of the Trolley Coach fleet in 1990.  With the recent difficulties involving Hybrid Buses, Toronto continues to see how a fascination with new technology first with CNG buses, then with hybrids, has turned out.  Hybrids may come into their own as battery technology improves, but today we can only look to our sister-city, Vancouver, to see a real commitment to electric buses.  That’s another thread, and I will turn to it soon.

After many, many years, the service improvements promised by the Ridership Growth Strategy are here.  Starting November 23, we will see the rollout of more service on many, many routes to implement the following new service standards:

• Peak bus loading standards are reduced by about 10% (a route will be considered to be “full” with a lower average load).  This triggers service improvements on many routes, but loading generally has been rising and there is already a backlog of changes waiting to begin.  This affects 62 routes with a total of 89 more am and 65 pm peak buses.
• Off peak bus standards, as well as streetcar and rapid transit standards for all periods, are unchanged at, effectively, a seated load.  Note that this is an average over an hour and local variations will occur.
• Routes with services less frequent than 30 minutes will be improved to the new 30-minute maximum headway.  This affects 26 routes.
• All routes will operate seven days a week during all periods until at least 1:00 am.  This affects about 86 routes.

Also, Mount Dennis Garage will open roughly a year after it was actually finished.

One caveat, of course, is the already known problems with hybrid bus availability.  The degree to which the TTC can get and keep its fleet of these vehicles on the road will affect the full rollout of the new peak period services.

Meanwhile, I cannot help noticing the breadth of the changes across the system with 20% better service found fairly commonly on some routes and periods just to get average loading within the standards.  This shows a combination of deferred improvements and of the unusual rate of riding growth on some routes.

Updates October 25: 

A summary of the changes, boiled down from the 80-odd page original, is now available.

A table of the revised loading standards is now available.

Updates November 6:

A list of division assignments is now available.

Fall 2008 brings service back to its standard levels on the TTC network after some summer cutbacks.  I have consolidated the service changes, most due to increased riding, in a two-page summary.

I have omitted a lot of information on school trips and other seasonal changes, but if you want the gory details, you can either visit the TTC’s website or read the summary on Transit Toronto.

A few notable points in this round:

• Off-peak service on the Yonge and Bloor subway lines is increasing to meet rising demand.  Even with the added service, the lines will be only slightly below the service standards threshold at which more trains have to be added.  The off-peak standard is 500 passengers per train, or 83 per car (a small number of standees at the peak point).
• For everyone who dreads off-peak visits to the Distillery District, the Cherry Street Union Station service will now run every 15 minutes on Saturdays, and every 30 minutes in the evening.  This is far from spectacular, but it’s an improvement for those who prefer not to walk to the King car.
• Better service comes to the Harbourfront car recognizing that people on the waterfront actually exist, and they stay up late.  The Spadina car will now run to Union Station until the subway closes.
• Service improvements on Eglinton West, Jane and Morningside address growing demand in these corridors (all of which happen to be part of Transit City).

Further improvements are expected later this fall including the next round of the Ridership Growth Strategy with full service on all routes during subway operating hours.  Coming in 2009, budget permitting, is a move to 20 minute maximum headways.