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Why Are Subway Cars on Bloor-Danforth So Dirty?

As a regular traveller on the Bloor-Danforth subway (Line 2), I cannot help noticing how often a car will appear with a very grimy exterior. Although inside the cars look just fine, the exterior can leave much to be desired. The comparison is quite striking with the gleaming trains on Yonge-University-Spadina (Line 1).

It turns out that this problem is caused by a combination of factors including the fact that the BD trains (the T1 sets) are riveted aluminum, while the YUS trains (the newer TR sets) are welded stainless steel.

I asked the TTC about this issue, especially considering how important system cleanliness is in their attempt to present a good face to customers, and they replied:

You’re correct that some of the T1 cars are not as clean as we like.

There are a number of factors in play here.

Trains are not washed regularly through the winter when the ground temperature drops below a certain point. Every winter, it follows that the trains become less clean. We do wash trains mechanically but it is less effective.

Each summer we employ summer students to hand wash the trains using detergent and pressure washers. They can do a train or so a day. They look pretty good, but with the condition of the body and its design –  it takes time.

Chemicals used also make the aluminium more porous and so we have to be careful how much we use, or we potentially make the issue worse over time as the body will attract even more dirt.

The work is made more difficult due to the number of rivets used on the sides of the train. You can see more staining around the doors in general where the normal train wash (think of a car wash for trains) just doesn’t get into these nooks and crannies. On the TR we designed this dirt trap out by the smooth car body.

The students have started work and you’ll see a gradual improvement in the fleet. That said, progress will be slower this year as we are using them to clean also air filters on the trains’ heating system which whilst invisible to customers needs doing across the fleet and is a higher priority.

We will be targeting the worst units first, and working through the fleet on a priority basis.

[Email from Mike Palmer, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, TTC, April 19, 2016]

The T1s will be with us for many years as they are only about 15 years old. TTC has had aluminum bodied cars for decades, and I hope that they can maintain some semblance of cleanliness with this fleet.

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TTC Service Changes Effective May 8, 2016

May 2016 brings the first wave of seasonal changes as attendance at universities and community colleges drops, and demand for travel to parks ramps up for the summer.

The 101 Downsview Park bus will now operate on weekdays. This was formerly a seasonal service, but the change is now permanent and it will not be reversed in the fall.

Several bus routes get new early morning trips.  Individually these are small changes, but they illustrate how the city’s work day starts well before the subway opens at 6:00 am.

After several years’ absence for construction on Queens Quay, the Sunday afternoon PCC operation will resume between Victoria Day and Labour Day weekends. One car will run as an unscheduled extra from noon until 5:00 pm on 509 Harbourfront.

Route 501 Queen will divert around water main construction on Queen Street West from May until early October via Spadina, King and Shaw both ways with a replacement shuttle bus covering the gap. Route 510 Spadina will have extra running time to allow for the expected delays caused by the 501 diversion, and the short turn service will remain scheduled to Queens Quay rather than to Charlotte to limit turning moves at King and Spadina.

There is no information yet about special provisions to assist streetcars turning, particularly to and from Spadina, such as changes to traffic signals or use of police to manage traffic. Also unknown is how the congestion this diversion will cause will interact with the King Street closure for the film festival in September.

The 97 Yonge bus will be split with overlapping services running south from York Mills and north from Lawrence, and midday service between St. Clair and Davisville will not be operated. This is intended to isolate the effects of construction at Sheppard to the north end of the route, an arrangement used previously in 2014.

2016.05.08 Service Changes

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Asking Santa For Transit Dollars (Updated)

Updated April 15, 2016: Further information received from the Infrastructure Canada has been incorporated, as noted, in this article.

The new, transit-friendly Trudeau government has announced a major shift in Ottawa’s funding for municipal transit including policy changes to improve the flow of money:

  • Decisions about which projects should be funded with federal dollars will rest with local agencies rather than being dictated by Ottawa.
  • Federal funding will pay for up to 50% of projects compared to previous schemes in which each level of government contributed 1/3 (e.g. the Vaughan subway extension).
  • The pool of funds will be distributed based on ridership, not on population, so that provinces with well-used transit systems will receive most of the money.

In the first three years, $3.4-billion will be allocated with about 44% coming to Ontario. Of this, the TTC expects to see about $880-million according to TTC Chair Josh Colle as quoted by the CBC with money going to “what can be done quickly” with “the greatest customer impact.”

That will be a challenge on a few counts.

The TTC’s Capital Budget for 2016-2025 includes about $2.7-billion in unfunded projects, but some of these are not planned to start, indeed are not even required, in the immediate future.

PrelimANotes_CapBelowTheLine

The table above (from the City Budget Analyst Notes) shuffles around a bit every time we see it, but the outline remains the same. The serious problem with capital funding begins in 2018 when the City’s headroom for additional borrowing (in the absence of some other scheme to finance its capital programs) will be exhausted.

The $55.4m shown for 60 additional streetcars may or may not actually be triggered as a 2016 expense depending (a) on how many cars Bombardier delivers this year, and (b) on how much Toronto trusts Bombardier with an add-on order when the base contract is running so late.

Most of the list above deals simply with replacing or repairing vehicles and infrastructure that are at the end of their natural lives, and only a small part of the total (99 buses, 60 LRVs) would actually bring more service and capacity to the system. Toronto has not shown much enthusiasm for funding additional operating costs that a larger fleet represents and persists in the belief that ridership growth can somehow be handled by “efficiencies” within the base budget.

Another problem, of course, is that if $2.7b is “below the line” in unfunded status, and Ottawa is prepared to contribute only 50%, then the remaining 50% still has to come from somewhere, likely from the City of Toronto which claims to have no ability to finance this spending.

Many other projects are not even included in the ten year budget notably Waterfront transit and the Relief Line, not to mention some costs associated with capacity expansion on the existing subway. Queen’s Park is funding the first wave of LRT construction in Toronto, but other proposals sit on the wish list:

  • The main section of the Crosstown from Mount Dennis to Kennedy is fully funded by Queen’s Park, as is the Finch West LRT from Finch West Station to Humber College.
  • The Crosstown East LRT is to be funded through a shuffle of available money among Scarborough transit projects. It is not yet clear whether changes to SmartTrack and the Scarborough Subway Extension will actually balance out the LRT’s full cost.
  • The Crosstown West LRT would, in theory, be funded from “savings” through the cutback of SmartTrack to Mount Dennis, but ST itself is not fully funded or costed. How much will actually be available remains to be seen, especially when Queen’s Park’s share will only be an “in kind” contribution through GO-RER upgrades.
  • The Finch West LRT extension to the airport, the Crosstown extension north beyond UTSC to Malvern, and a Sheppard East rapid transit line have no funding.

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Toronto Council Endorses Transit Plan, Seeks Background Details

At its meeting of March 31, 2016, Toronto Council passed several motions relating to the proposed rapid transit plan for the city.These evolved first as a set of staff recommendations, then amendments at the Executive Committee and finally amendments at Council. The changes along the way give a sense of how the attempt at a general approach taken in the new transit plan by staff can be warped into an emphasis on individual projects while losing sight of the overall purpose. This is not new in Toronto’s political theatre, but the city and region are at a crucial time when the “big picture” of the transportation network is essential. The challenge for those who would lead this process is to find a responsible balance between wider priorities and local concerns without making every decision only on political merits.

Many of these motions involve requests for additional reports, and at one point there was some concern about whether city staff could actually handle the workload. One might ask whether the city should be making such important decisions if staff are unable to produce sufficient background material and simply want approval trusting their recommendations. While studying issues to death is a well-known delay tactic, rushing decisions without all the details is a classic method of railroading through decisions the city might regret later. There is certainly nothing wrong with asking for a more thorough study of items that have been omitted, provided that the same requests do not surface over and over again.

If anything, Council has been woefully underinformed on transit options, priorities and tradeoffs, and such an environment “debate” often has little to do with the real world. Will every Councillor read every page of every study? No, but at least the material will be there to answer questions, support the good ideas and counter the dubious schemes. We hear a lot about “evidence based planning”, but this can be a double-edged sword where “evidence” might not support fondly-held proposals.

This article groups Council’s motions by topic so that readers do not have to sort through the relationship of recommendations and amendments.

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GO/RER Details Emerge in Business Case Analysis

Metrolinx has published a set of documents containing the “Initial Business Case” for the GO Transit Regional Express Rail (GO/RER) network.

Updated Dec. 13, 2022: Due to a reorganization of Metrolinx’ site, the reports are no longer available there. However, I have archived copies of them. The Summary and Full Report links below are to my site. The Appendices are not yet available as I must break them into chunks small enough that WordPress will allow them to be uploaded.

  • Summary
  • Full Report
  • Appendices A-J
    • A: Corridor Specifications
    • B: Corridor and System Schematics
    • C: Model Assumptions and Results
    • D: Record of Assumptions – Direct Demand Model
    • E: Financial Performance of RER Systems
    • F: Sensitivity Analysis
    • G: Wider Economic Benefits
    • H: Line Speed Analysis
    • I: Environmental Assessment Program
    • J: Fare Structure Issues and Solutions
  • Appendix K:  Station Access Analysis

[Note that except for the Summary, the documents are large PDFs.]

This article begins a review of these documents and of the various RER proposals examined in the Metrolinx studies.

Overview

Work on this review of GO/RER began in April 2014 following the announcement by Queen’s Park of its commitment to the RER concept. Unlike previous reports, this study looks in depth at all of the GO corridors, and reviews the technical issues associated with both increased service and electrification. This is not a final review, and much engineering work remains to be done, but there is a great deal more information now publicly available as the basis for discussions.

These documents were completed sometime in 2015 as is clear from references to future events that will occur later in the year, notably reports from the City of Toronto on SmartTrack. That scheme gets only passing mention, some of it the usual political cover story, because the specifics had yet to be decided. Exactly what the incremental effect of ST will be beyond the proposed GO/RER configuration is not yet known. Preliminary information in City reports implies that ST will amount to considerably less than was foreseen by the Tory election campaign, possibly as little as a few more stations and some sort of TTC/GO fare integration.

Five scenarios were reviewed to compare the effects, benefits, costs and technical issues associated with various possible future networks.

  1. The “Do Minimum” scenario provides only marginal peak period improvements to the existing system in response to projected demand growth, but with no electrification. This is effectively a “business as usual” model for the base case.
  2. The “Two-Way All-Day” scenario expands off peak service, but with diesel operation and no electrification. This is a minimal level of service expansion.
  3. The “10-Year Plan” would provide frequent service on the inner parts of some corridors, but with limited electrification.
  4. The “Full Build” extends beyond the 10-Year Plan to provide frequent service on the inner parts of all corridors, and with full electrification.
  5. The “10-Year Plan Optimized” extends the scope of electrification beyond that contemplated in scenario 3.

This progression implies a certain sequence of events during the study where a full build is impractical and the original 10-year plan was not aggressive enough with electrification, a key component of the announced government direction.

The estimated capital costs rise from $5 billion for scenario 1, through $10b, $12b and $19b for scenarios 2 to 4. The price tag for the latter is well above what Queen’s Park has available, and scenario 5 was developed with a projected cost of $13.5b. All but scenario 4 are said to be achievable by 2024. Given that it is now 2016, and this is a 10 year plan, that date probably requires some adjustment.

Scenario 5 is the 10-Year Plan Optimized, it represents significant progress towards implementing the service levels of Scenario 4. It goes beyond the investments and service included in Scenario 3 (10-Year Plan), with electrification also to Bramalea, Barrie, Stouffville and to Pearson Airport. This scenario and the resulting recommended RER program has been defined to maximize return on investment while mitigating risks. Depending on resolving various challenges, it can be delivered over 10 years for approximately $13.5 billion. It does not preclude, but rather prepares for, services to Milton and Kitchener to be eventually electrified and frequent all-day services introduced when agreement is reached on co-existence of GO and freight on these privately-owned corridors. [p. iv, Full Report]

Annual ridership is expected to go up by a factor of 2.5 over the coming 15 years, but operation costs will not rise at the same rate. The study postulates that an operating profit would be possible, eventually, but that will depend a lot on future fare policies, and on the evolution of trip patterns (length, direction, average fare). The ridership model foresees that “hundreds of thousands” of auto trips would be replaced by GO ridership each weekday comparing scenario 5 to scenario 1. The proportion of trips and its relationship to expected growth is not specified in the Executive Summary. (Possibly in the demand modelling later.)

The rate of demand increase on GO overall is projected at 2.3% which is lower than recent levels, but allows for some leveling off in a more mature service.

One big issue is the problem of getting riders physically to and from the GO trains. Either this will be done with substantially improved local transit services (an option that brings many issues associated with fare integration and cross-system subsidies), or with parking. The cost estimates include $750m for 15,000 new parking spaces, or $50k per space. At that scale, simply paving empty lots is not an option. The study notes the possibility that some of this cost “may not be necessary if service integration and fare integration with local transit services can be improved”. [p. v]

Those 15,000 spaces represent nowhere near the ratio of new parking spaces to existing facilities that the projected ridership growth would entail if everyone arrived by car. Parking charges are listed as a way of raising additional capital for the RER project, and of encouraging a shift to ride sharing and public transit feeder services.

It is amusing to read about the benefits of proven technology, something for which Ontario has not been noted in past endeavours.

Virtually all of the works are within existing rail corridors, so environmental and community impacts are limited mostly to noise and vibration. RER will use proven technology that is working around the world. [p. v]

Descriptions of RER cite similar operations in more than 50 city regions worldwide [page 6], and list a number of factors that simplify implementation [p. 4]. I cannot help thinking of how badly past studies have downplayed the benefits of LRT which bears a family resemblance, but at a local rather than a regional level.

The first electric railway opened in 1883 (the Volks Tourist Railway on the Brighton seafront in the U.K.). Ever since that time, electric traction has increasingly become the default source of power for the world’s more intensively used rail systems. [p. 14]

Finding this statement in a Metrolinx report is quite amusing considering some of the remarks made during community meetings on electrification before Metrolinx and GO “got religion” on the subject. The report skirts that debate by observing that GO is now at the threshold where electrification makes sense:

Until recently, diesel traction has been the appropriate mode of traction for the GO rail operation. However, the service enhancements envisaged in the near future will take GO rail beyond the threshold of service intensity appropriate for electrification. Continued use of diesel traction will become a source of financial and economic inefficiency. [p. 14]

Metrolinx intends to pursue discussions with the railways regarding the upgrades needed on their trackage, and also intends to review “modern, proven technology” with Transport Canada and the railways.

This is an “initial” analysis, and changes are likely depending on the evolution of expectations, changes in provincial funding, and who knows what political meddling that could arise.

A decade is a long time in politics, and the likelihood that the current governing parties or councillors will still be in place at that distant time is minuscule. Moreover, changes could come at any level part way through the project, and only a very strong, unshakeable commitment (i.e. very popular and difficult to derail) is likely to survive. This is not simply a case of showing up for a photo op or two with a gigantic prop cheque, but of supporting the plan for the long haul, including building a constituency that can survive beyond current governments. The arrival of a Ford-equivalent who simply wanted to start over with his own plan would be disastrous.

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Analysis of Service on Route 94 Wellesley Bus for January 2016

This is the second of two articles reviewing the operation of a comparatively short downtown bus route to see how it behaves in comparison to longer and busier routes. The first article covered 6 Bay for the same period.

The schedule for 94 Wellesley was adjusted in September 2015 to provide added running time, and to improve service so that the eastern part of the route was in the “10 Minute Network”.

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Easter Parade 2016

Once again, the TTC participated in the Easter Parade through The Beach from Neville Loop westward. This year, I only photographed the departure from Russell Carhouse rather than walking the entire parade route.

Peter Witt 2766 led the fleet followed by PCC 4500, CLRV 4125, ALRV 4217 and Flexity 4412.

The Witt was driven by operator Frank Hood who after 31 years is retiring today.

The Easter Parade fleet at Russell Carhouse: 2766, 4500, 4126, 4217 and 4412

The Easter Parade fleet at Russell Carhouse: 2766, 4500, 4126, 4217 and 4412

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TTC Board Meeting Follow-Up: March 23, 2016

The TTC Board met on March 23. In earlier articles, I have already reviewed the agenda, and discussed ridership statistics.

Arising from the debate on ridership, the Board passed a motion to revisit the whole issue of actively pursuing ridership growth. The motion by Commissioner Shelley Carroll reads:

That TTC staff report back to the Commission by the third quarter of 2016 with a development plan for a comprehensive multi-year strategy to address current ridership stagnation and to achieve a steady rate of ridership growth annually thereafter.

This is particularly important going into the 2017 budget year when there will be pressure to accommodate both the start of new expenses for the Spadina subway extension (TYSSE) and strong growth in the Wheel-Trans budget. Debates and decisions about which options might be pursued to improve transit and attract riders need to have more background than the annual need for politicians to have something to announce. At the very least, changes should be thought out with specific benefits beyond the photo ops.

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Where Is TTC Ridership Going? (Updated)

Updated March 25, 2016 at 1:45 pm: Charts and commentary have been added at the end of this article regarding monthly ridership statistics published by the TTC through the CEO’s Report.

In a previous article, I wrote about a TTC management report giving a “Ridership Update” for early 2016. This was triggered by concerns that overall ridership had stagnated, and the obvious question management might hear: “what are you doing about this”.

During the debate at the March 23, 2016 Board meeting, it became clear that to some extent, management was making up the story as they went along. The report includes data for the first two months of 2016, and February was particularly bad with a drop against both the budget target and against results in 2015.

20160323_JanFeb16Ridership

However, once the debate was well underway, management reported that March to date was almost on budget, and was up 2.5% over 2015. Why was this information not in the report, or at least in a supplementary paper published before the meeting got underway? The entire tone of the debate would have changed with the sense that, maybe, things were turning around and ridership was growing again.

The situation was further complicated by repeated claims from management and from TTC Chair Josh Colle that ridership was not on a decline, but that it simply did not achieve its budget target. This quite flatly is not true as anyone capable of reading TTC reports can see.

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No Time For Panic on TTC Ridership Numbers

The TTC’s Ridership Update report will be discussed at the March 23, 2016 Board meeting. Its publication triggered an unwelcome round of hand-wringing about transit service and financing that could well undo momentum seemingly regained by the Tory regime at City Hall. How did we get so quickly from a pro-transit stance to one where just avoiding cuts will seem a victory?

Fun With Budgets at City Hall

During the Ford years, TTC ridership continued to climb despite the best efforts of Council to throttle the TTC budget, but a good deal of that growth came at the margins, filling up less crowded routes and time periods, and stuffing the busier ones to the extent any new riding was possible. John Tory ran on a platform that SmartTrack would fix absolutely everything, but once in office acknowledged that day-to-day service had taken a hit and needed fixing. Improvements to date have not addressed peak capacity for the simple reason that there were no spare vehicles, and that is only now being addressed.

Some of the new buses bought by the TTC will not directly address capacity shortfalls, but instead will be used to bolster the pool of spare buses so that maintenance standards can improve and fewer vehicles will fail in service. The streetcar system remains hobbled by a car shortage thanks to Bombardier’s missed deliveries, and this cascades down into the bus fleet. On the subway it is physically impossible to run more trains, a problem that will not be eliminated until 2019-20, and then only on Line 1 YUS. Riders might be forgiven for wondering if things will ever improve, especially for peak period travel.

Schedule adjustments have reduced the amount of short-turning on some routes, but gaps and bunching of vehicles remain a problem.

The TTC is far from out of the woods on service quantity and quality, and this situation cannot be fixed overnight.

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