Vehicles

by

The State of Disrepair (II)

The extended shutdown of Line 2 on May 13 brought the TTC’s work car fleet into the spotlight thanks to multiple equipment failures leading to hydraulic fluid leaks.

In the management presentation, the average age of that fleet was cited as 17 years, but these cars vary greatly in age. Here are the affected cars.

VehicleBuiltFunctionLeak Incident Dates
RT-411993Tie TamperApr. 2/24 & May 16/24
RT-171996Tunnel WasherJan. 17/24
RT-71998LocomotiveFeb. 10/24
RT-562006Vacuum & Drain CleaningJan. 14/24 & May 13/24
RT-842011Vacuum CarMay 15/24

Replacement of RT-41 with a new car was proposed in the 2018 Capital Budget along with several other new and replacement cars. The intent was to refresh the fleet and increase capacity to perform more work on the expanding subway network. Most of this program was deferred under CEO Rick Leary, although a second Tie Tamper, RT-21, does now appear in the illustrated list of work cars. RT-41 is well overdue for replacement.

Inspection of all work cars began a few days after the May 13 incident. Sources indicate that fewer than one third of the three dozen cars reviewed in the first two days passed inspection.

Planned work on Line 1 on the May 18-19 weekend was deferred, and it is unclear how the sidelining of RT-41 and other cars might affect planned track repairs.

Questions for the TTC

On May 22, I wrote a series of questions to TTC Media Relations attempting to get an official version of what I had heard from sources. Here are the questions.

  1. Can you confirm the failure rate for inspections (over 2/3)?
  2. Has all of the fleet been inspected now and what are the results?
  3. Will further adjustments be required in maintenance plans?
  4. A key vehicle that was not available last weekend was RT-41 the tamper car. According to the fleet diagram included in the board presentation there is another tamper car RT-21. What is its status?
  5. In 2018 the capital budget included a multi-year program to replace elderly work cars and expand the fleet including [replacement of] RT-41, but this program was repeatedly pushed into future years. What is its status?
  6. Since the pandemic the budget blue books have not been available, although there was talk of an e-version of them. What is the current status?

The TTC’s response on the afternoon of May 22 was not very revealing:

As you know from the Board meeting, we’ve already started the deep dive with external consultants AND our own staff have enhanced our proactive inspections on the workcar fleet.

The results, outcomes and findings will first be shared with our Board when they are known.

I can say that your source has misinformed you in as much as we have not yet inspected the entire fleet as this is a time-consuming process that sometimes requires workcars being shunted from one location to another.

As deficiencies are identified, they are corrected before being the work cars are put into service.

The TTC’s response was less than helpful for all questions:

  1. The TTC did not address the failure rate for cars that had been inspected.
  2. The TTC claimed my source was incorrect, but misrepresented the question. In fact I asked whether the inspections had been completed, and indirectly they confirmed that the answer is “no”.
  3. Not answered.
  4. Not answered. Tamper RT-21 is a comparatively new vehicle (it does not appear in 2018 fleet lists). It is not clear why it was unavailable when tamper RT-41 was sidelined.
  5. Not answered. The repeated deferral of this project is a matter of record within the budget papers from 2017-2024.
  6. Not answered. The significance of the “blue books” (so named because of the colour of the binders that held them) is that they included detailed descriptions of all capital projects and their status well beyond information in budgets or quarterly financial reports. Before the pandemic, these were routinely provided on request, but I have not been able to obtain them since 2019.

Most of the questions have nothing to do with the “deep dive” into fleet condition, but the TTC has used a simplistic response to dismiss all questions whether they relate to the deep dive or not. The one “answer” attempted to discredit a statement I did not make, and by extension the entire sequence.

Maybe, somewhere, there is a Board member who will demand answers.

Reduced Speed Zones

The tables below track the Reduced Speed Zones where track is awaiting repair. This is an updated version since the previous article. Depending on how your browser presents the tables, you may have to scroll to the right to see the most recent entries.

Although many of the entries from early 2024 have cleared off, others appear suggesting that inspections are uncovering new problem areas and adding them to the list. Little has changed through the month of May.

Source: TTC Reduced Speed Zones Page

Line 1Jan 18Feb 2Feb 12Mar 7Mar 12Mar 14Mar 21Apr 29May 8May 17May 22
Hwy 407 to VaughanNB
Sheppard W to WilsonNBNBNB
Wilson to YorkdaleSBSBSBSB
Yorkdale to Lawrence WSBSBSBSB
Eglinton W to St. Clair WNBNBNB
St. Clair W to DupontNBSBSBSBSB
Spadina to St. GeorgeBWBWBW
St. George to MuseumNBNBNB
St. Andrew to UnionBWBWSBSBSBSBSB
Union to KingNBBWNBNBNBNBSBSBSBSB
College to WellesleyBWBWBW
Bloor to RosedaleNBNBNBNBNBNBNBNB
Summerhill to St. ClairBWBWNB
St. Clair to DavisvilleBWBWBWBWBWSB
Davisville to EglintonBWSB
Lawrence to York MillsNBNBNBNBNB
York Mills to SheppardNBNBNBNBNBNBNB
North York Centre to FinchNBNB
NB = Northbound SB = Southbound BW = Both Ways
Line 2Jan 18Feb 2Feb 12Mar 7Mar 12Mar 14Mar 21Apr 29May 8May 17May 22
Royal York to JaneBWBW
Runnymede to High ParkWB
Keele to Dundas WestBWBWEBEBEB
Sherbourne to Castle FrankEBEB
Castle Frank to ChesterEBEBEBEBEBEBEB
Chester to BroadviewWB
Greenwood to CoxwellEB
Coxwell to WoodbineEBEBEB
Woodbine to Main StreetEB
Victoria Park to WardenEBBW
Warden to KennedyWB
EB = Eastbound WB = Westbound BW = Both Ways

by

How Many Buses Does The TTC Use? (2024 Update)

A year ago, I reviewed the usage of the bus fleet to compare the total size with actual usage. See:

In this round, the data are from January 1 to February 15, 2024. As before, the raw information has been provide by Darwin O’Connor from his TransSee website, for which much thanks.

The amount of service the TTC operates is limited mostly by budget, which in turn dictates how many operators the system can afford, but there is also the question of bus availability and reliability.

Updated May 20, 2024 at 3:10pm: Link to UITP report on in-motion trolleybus charging added at the end of the article.

Reliability

Buses that break down interrupt service and incur greater maintenance. Buses that never leave the garage might show up on the roster, but they are not really available.

For many years, the ratio of spare buses to scheduled service on the TTC has been quite high by industry standards, and this grew during the pandemic thanks to service cuts. Restoring full pre-pandemic service, let alone expanding beyond that level, does not depend on fleet size in the short term. Moreover, many of the elderly vehicles on the system will be replaced with new diesel-hybrids now on delivery, and this should increase the number of buses actually available for service. Opening of Lines 5 and 6 Crosstown and Finch West should also release buses for use elsewhere.

The May 2024 CEO’s Report shows the current official fleet size.

The reliability of buses is reported in an odd way by the CEO. The charts below have capped the reported mean distance to failure at a target value rather than reporting actual values for several years. We know that hybrid buses achieve at least 30K kilometres between failures, and diesel buses achieve 20K, but the actual numbers could be both higher and more variable than the charts show. Meanwhile, some values for battery eBuses are capped and others wander quite a bit. Note that both the target level and y-axis maxima vary from one chart to another.

An important factor here is that buses that never, or rarely, operate in service do not contribute to failure statistics, and this can hide the true reliability of a fleet, or subgroup within the fleet. Unused buses represent capital sitting idle and service that cannot be provided. If budget cuts prevent full usage of the fleet, this is hidden, but there could be an unseen cap on what is possible if budget priorities change.

Continue reading →
by

TTC Board Meeting: December 20, 2023 – Part I

The December 20 Board meeting at the TTC took rather longer than expected, and with a focus on some items that might otherwise have been unremarkable.

Items discussed here:

The 2024 Budget and Capital Plan will be discussed in Part II of this series.

Another report will be covered in a separate article.

Continue reading →
by

Moving to Electric Buses: TTC Plan Update

At its meeting of December 7, 2023, the TTC Board received a staff presentation on its bus electrification plan.

The City of Toronto has a goal to move to a zero-emission fleet across all departments by 2040 with interim goals of 20% in 2025 and 50% in 2030. TTC’s electrification plans fit within that timeframe.

Of the TTC’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in 2019 80% of these came from the diesel bus fleet.

The history of a move to an all-electric fleet is shown in the TTC drawing below. Three decades ago, the TTC was seduced into “greening” its fleet by the replacement of electric Trolley Buses by CNG-powered buses. This was the result of an alliance between TTC management who wanted rid of the TBs, the gas industry which has a surplus of product, Ontario Bus Industries who wanted an untendered contract, and the new technology arm of the Ministry of Transportation who were desperate to show some sort of progress. (This was not the first, nor the last time provincial boffins would meddle in transit technology choices.)

Continue reading →
by

The Challenge of Funding Subway Renewal

At its November 22, 2023 meeting, the TTC Board will consider a report New Subway Train Procurement and Implications for Line 2 Modernization and Future Growth which goes into considerable detail on several related capital projects related to renewal of both Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina and Line 2 Bloor-Danforth.

The TTC is in a very difficult position for capital planning because for many years it understated the size of the capital backlog and also tended to treat related projects, or even components of the same project, as separate items. This led to low-balled estimates of total costs and, in some cases, piecemeal execution of projects. Now that we see “all in” costs, the problems facing the system are perceived more seriously, but just at a point when new money to invest in existing subways is hard to find.

Although the TTC called for proposals for a replacement of the Line 2 fleet of T1 trains, with add-on provisions for system expansion, this was cancelled in June 2023 due to lack of funding commitments from either the Provincial or Federal governments.

The report proposes three scenarios depending on when new trains and facilities would be delivered and built at total costs ranging from $8.5 to $10 billion including inflation. Very little of this has committed funding.

This is not just a question of buying new trains, but of building, or renewing, many facilities:

  • Greenwood Carhouse dates back to the opening of the BD subway and needs to be modernized and rebuilt to handle a new fleet.
  • The signal system on Line 2 dates to the 1960s and must be replaced both to maintain reliability, improve operations and provide for service growth.
  • Additional trains for both Lines 1 and 2 will require more storage including a major new maintenance facility for Line 1.

The funding sought by this report does not include companion upgrades that have been flagged in the overall capital plan:

  • Running more frequent service requires more traction power on top of state of good repair work needed for both subway lines’ power systems.
  • More service means more passengers, and some key stations cannot handle additional demand between the platform and street without additional circulation capacity.

Moreover, there are major projects beyond subway fleet renewal that are either partly or totally unfunded even at the City level, never mind its partners:

  • Ongoing replacement of the bus fleet including electrification
  • Any provision for service growth to improve transit coverage and encourage a shift to transit riding especially in areas where it is not competitive with auto
  • LRT lines in the waterfront or Eglinton East
  • Platform screen doors to prevent access to track level

Even if the fleet and signal renewal for Line 2 finds much-needed financial support, this is only the beginning of the TTC’s search for capital, and I have not even mentioned the need for ongoing state of good repair.

In the short term, the TTC has been “saved” from a capacity crisis by the covid pandemic and the loss of subway riding. Only a few years ago, the concern was not empty trains, but platforms full of riders who could not move. Although the subway is not back at full demand, recovery is well underway. Here are historical figures and projections for the future from the report.

2041 might sound a long way off, but in the scheme of subway fleet planning, it is fairly near given both the lead time to buy new trains and their 30-year design life. What we plan for today will affect the system for decades to come.

This forecast will be updated with results from the current Transportation Tomorrow Survey and other planning work to provide an outlook to 2051.

These projections translate to service requirements on the two lines. Note that this is likely based on the historical ratio of peak to all day demand. Although work-from-home may shift some riding away from peaks especially on Mondays and Fridays, this would still leave the midweek days facing crowding. It would be dangerous to make plans for lesser demand as a short-term cost saving measure.

Line 1 has already been converted to Automatic Train Control (ATC) with moving block signalling that can handle more trains/hour. Note that the projected Line 1 service is at 36 trains/hour, or every 100 seconds. This will be challenging to sustain especially at busy stations and terminals.

The current signal system on Line 2 cannot support headways below about 140 seconds, the pre-pandemic peak service level on that route. This is equivalent to 25.7 trains/hour which gets us only to the 2032 projected requirement.

This translates into the following requirements for a larger fleet.

The 55-train replacement for Line 2 where there are now 61 trains is based on the capacity with new trains (similar to those now on Line 1) with about 10% more room than the old ones. This finally addresses the excess of T1 trains in the fleet ever since the TTC decided to run Lines 1 and 4 entirely with new “TR” trains and ATC, and relegated the T1 fleet to Line 2.

The Metrolinx options are for the Richmond Hill and Scarborough extensions. Growth trains are to permit the operation of more frequent service than the existing fleet can support.

Note that Line 4 Sheppard is not included here as it has a dedicated set of six 4-car trains that can handle projected growth on that line. Depending on the extension of Line 4, a future procurement of trains and storage facilities could be required.

In the remainder of this article, I will describe the scenarios and implications of choices the TTC, Council and its funding partners will make in the near future.

Recommendations

The report recommends that:

  • The TTC prioritize funding in the capital budget for:
    • New subway cars and related projects with a cost of $3.2 billion as the City’s share.
    • A 30-year state of good repair overhaul of the T1 fleet.
    • Risk mitigation activities for Line 2 related to fleet and signal system life extension.
  • Subject to confirmation of funding, the CEO issue an RFP for new trains needed on the existing Line 2 with options for extensions and demand growth on the system.

This will have effects not just for subway planning but for other TTC capital project funding and timing.

Continue reading →
by

First New TTC Streetcar Enters Service

This morning, after a ceremony at Leslie Barns, car 4604 entered service on 504 King. It is running as an extra and is not visible to tracking apps, but can be located with a vehicle-specific search such as this on Transsee.ca. As I write this just after 3pm on November 17, the car is headed back to Leslie Barns.

The second car of the new set, 4605, is in Russell Carhouse. The remaining vehicles in the 60-car order will be delivered from now through 2025.

The real question remains what the TTC will do with these cars. Of the 204 they already own, the peak service has rested at about 140 cars for a few years. In February 2020, pre-pandemic, it was about 160. This is not just a question of construction projects and bus replacements, but of the TTC’s operating budget and staffing levels which prevent full fleet utilization of any mode on the system.

Lacking in TTC budget information, especially notable at a time when Mayor Chow calls for open dialog and transparency, is a clear statement of how much service the TTC can actually operate at various funding levels.

It is convenient for management to point to system ridership at about 80% of pre-covid numbers, but this does not account for the unequal level of recovery through the week. Weekends are already a time of strong demand, and Sundays are running above pre-covid levels.

Weekdays might, on average, be lower than historical numbers, but a well-known issue is that Tuesday through Thursday are the busiest days when more people come to work. On average, weekdays might be below early 2020 levels, but the TTC does not report how this demand is spread by day, and complaints of crowding are common.

Openness in budget and service planning might aid the debate, but so far proposals have been more “business as usual” with an asterisk beside possible improvements due to budget constraint. The freshly minted TTC Board has yet to demand a wider range of options, the costs they would entail, and an analysis of the TTC’s ability to actually field more service.

The 2024 Service Plan is part of the TTC Board’s November 22 agenda, and I will report on it in a few days (it’s a thick agenda this month).

Two new cars with more to follow are welcome, but they will simply add to the 30% of the streetcar fleet that sit idle every day, far more than should be needed for maintenance spares. It is the classic budget problem: money for new capital purchases, but no money to operate them.

Links:

by

TTC Board Meeting Preview: September 26, 2023

The TTC Board will meet at Scarborough Council Chambers at 10:00 am on September 26, 2023. This will be the first meeting of the reconstituted Board under Mayor Chow’s administration. Among the reports on the agenda are:

The agenda also includes a report Update on TTC’s Partnership Approach to Community Safety, Security and Well-Being on Public Transit. I will address this in a separate article.

Continue reading →
by

New Metrics for a New TTC

With the changing of the guard in the Mayor’s Office and a shift in the political balance of the TTC Board, it is time to blow the dust off of the metrics in the TTC CEO’s Report and elsewhere. I have written about aspects of this before, and will not belabour earlier arguments. However, in an era of recovery, we need to show what this is actually happening, and that we are getting good use out of the transit infrastructure, notably a large vehicle fleet, that we already own.

The areas of particular interest are:

  • Ridership, demand and crowding on routes
  • Service quantity and reliability
  • Fleet availability, usage and reliability

The CEO’s Report is replete with “Key Performance Indicators” (KPIs), a favourite tool of lazy managers to give the impression a complex organization and process can be reduced to a handful of simple numbers. Either “up” or “down” is considered “good”, and as long as the lines move in the correct direction, gold stars are handed out like confetti. Rarely, if ever, is the underlying process, the product, or the real meaning of the KPIs discussed.

A subtle, pervasive issue for TTC KPIs is the focus on top line numbers for ridership and revenue. This is akin to a restaurateur who counts the receipts and the number of meals sold without asking what brings diners to the door, or even worse, whether they will come back. The goal is to sell more meals, preferably at a low cost. Advertising, not word of mouth, generates new, if not lasting, trade.

Ridership is a rough measure of system use and a point of comparison for post-pandemic recovery, but it does not tell the whole story. Already we know that the bus network which is mainly based in the suburbs has recovered much of its pre-pandemic demand, although this is not distributed the same way with shifts in peak periods and in travel patterns. Off peak recovery is stronger than peak, in part because “work from home” affects less than half of the total demand, and non-work trips still occur.

Even “growth” can be misleading. In pre-pandemic times, the TTC routinely celebrated year-over-year riding growth even while the rate of growth slowed and eventually stalled. A problem flagged at the time was that growth occurred disproportionately in the off-peak where there was surplus capacity. That capacity filled up, but thanks to budget constraints service did not expand to match.

This shows the danger of looking at a single, simple number without understanding the detailed system behaviour, or even worse, of using the simple metric to hide a growing problem. Trimming capacity to demand can be a vicious cycle that prevents growth.

The phrase “subject to budget availability” is a standard caveat on any goals, and it has haunted TTC planning for years, well before the pandemic. That might be a basic part of corporate management, but over many years it has become the foundation of TTC reality. Aim low because aiming higher will cost too much.

This speaks to the split nature of TTC goals. It is supposed to provide transportation, and the motto “Service, Courtesy, Safety” is emblazoned on the TTC’s coat of arms. However, the TTC Board sees its primary role as serving its political masters at Council and especially the Mayor.

I wrote about TTC culture and that motto back in 2010. For context, this was before Andy Byford became CEO, let alone Rick Leary.

The common problem with many KPIs the TTC publishes is that they are one dimensional and report only average values of major variables. They do not necessarily reflect what riders see nor give a sense of the shortfall between what the system achieves and what could be possible.

I have said this before: riders do not experience “average” trips any more than diners in a restaurant experience an “average” meal. A four-star restaurant might outdo itself with a plateful of magic from the kitchen, but an off day could bring overcooked, lukewarm food and indifferent treatment by the wait staff. Getting it right most of the time doesn’t warrant four stars. Getting it right only some of the time doesn’t warrant any. The diners are paying for all four.

On occasion, I am asked how I would change the TTC’s KPIs to better show what is happening. My first response is that many aspects of a transit system cannot be reduced to one-dimensional metrics that compress all of the vital details into simplistic averages.

TTC needs to focus its performance metrics on service-related factors, direct measures of what riders experience. Average values will not do, and the Board needs to understand what these numbers mean. Providing tolerable service on most routes a good deal of the time is not an advertisement for “the better way”. Provide attractive, reliable service and riders will follow.

Continue reading →
by

TTC Hillcrest Changes for New Streetcars

The first of the 60 additional streetcars for Toronto’s fleet arrived at the Hillcrest Shops on August 9, 2023. Based on the budgeted cash flow over coming years, delivery of these cars is expected to complete in 2025.

  • 2023: $58.434 million
  • 2024: $193.248
  • 2025: $82.644
  • 2026: $5.759
  • Total: $340.265 million
Car 4604 at Harvey Shops on August 9, 2023 [Photo from a reader]

The currently active streetcar yards at Leslie, Russell and Roncesvalles can absorb 35 of these cars, but the remaining 25 will need additional storage and servicing facilities elsewhere. The TTC plans to adapt part of their Hillcrest site as a small carhouse that will serve the 512 St. Clair and possibly 511 Bathurst lines. Aside from providing space, this will also reduce dead-head costs for cars that now come to St. Clair from Leslie Barns.

The presentation erroneously states that “New streetcars will begin arriving at TTC facilities by 2025” [p. 2] when quite obviously this will be late in the overall delivery scheme. However, as the first 35 can be accommodated elsewhere, it would make sense that Hillcrest changes do not have to be ready until the latter half of the order arrives.

Some of the project schedule, however, extends into 2027 and this begs the question of why the work will take so long.

Aerial view of Hillcrest from the northeast. [TTC photo]

The TTC plans consultation sessions in the neighbourhood in August, although they have not yet announced dates or locations. Links:

Continue reading →
by

TTC Board Meeting July 12, 2023

The TTC Board met on July 12 with a variety of items on their agenda. I have already addressed the presentation of pending service changes as well as a discussion of short turns in previous articles.

Topics discussed here include:

  • The CEO’s Report for July 2023
  • Elevator and Escalator Overhauls
  • Wheel-Trans Transformation 2023 Program Update
Continue reading →