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TTC Proposes New Fare Rules for Presto Roll Out

On December 16, 2015, the TTC Board will consider a report from management recommending several changes in the fare collection system. Some of these proposals are straightforward while others are likely to bring confusion and outright complaints from TTC riders.

On December 14, the TTC streetcar system goes to “Proof of Payment” (POP) on all routes and a few days later, Presto will be enabled across the streetcar system. In the short term, paying by Presto will be akin to dropping a token in the farebox on the “old” streetcar fleet. If you need a transfer, board at the front door and get one from the operator. Otherwise, rear door boarding is allowed. Transfers will be required if somewhere in your journey you will encounter a bus that is not Presto equipped. (The TTC is silent on how they will handle a route like 504 King that operates both types of vehicle if a Presto user discovers a non-Presto equipped vehicle is the first thing to show up.)

The roll out of Presto brings the opportunity to revise the fare system, for good or ill, as the TTC migrates away from its conventional model of tickets, tokens and transfers. (It is worth noting that a large number of riders have already made this migration by using Metropasses which are simple, if limited in the fare options they provide.)

The transitional period when both Presto and existing fare payment systems co-exist will be a difficult one. Indeed, there are strong incentives for riders not to shift to Presto until the system is fully functional unless their TTC usage is limited to that part of the network where Presto is active.

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TTC Surface Route Statistics 2011-2014

The TTC recently published statistics for its surface routes for 2014, adding to the online collection including 2011 and 2012.

For convenience in comparing figures from the three sets, I have consolidated them into a pair of tables.

Stats20112014

This table is ordered by route number and contains the following fields:

  • Route number
  • Route name
  • Weekday ridership
  • AM Peak vehicles
  • PM Peak vehicles
  • Vehicle Hours per day
  • Vehicle Kilometres per day

Notes:

  • In 2011 and 2012, some route statistics were consolidated whereas in 2014 they are shown separately.
  • Data were published for weekends, night and downtown express routes only in 2014.
  • Riding counts are not updated every year on every route. Where the same value appears in two years, most likely there has been no new count.

Stats20112014Summary

This table consolidates the information by type of route.

  • The “14x” routes are the downtown express buses for which data were only published in 2014.
  • The “19x” routes are the “rocket” express buses.
  • “Riders” are unlinked trips or “boardings”. One continuous trip can produce multiple boardings depending on the number of transfers.

The total number of riders by type of service can be subject to error if a considerable proportion of the routes do not have new riding counts (e.g. streetcars in 2012). Note that some of the 2011 counts are also from previous years.

The ratio of riders to service provided is expressed relative to AM Peak vehicles, to Vehicle Hours operated, and to Vehicle Kilometres operated.

The vehicle speeds are based on the reported hours and kilometres operated. To the extent that the hours include layovers (which on some routes can be a considerable proportion of the scheduled time), the speeds could be understated although this would be more likely to show up on a route-by-route calculation. This particularly affects night routes where running times are extended to be a multiple of the 30 minute headways.

Note that despite the importance placed on “express” buses (the 14x and 19x series), the vast majority (95%) of bus trips is carried on local services. Productivity of the downtown express routes is particularly poor.

Streetcar routes operate in more congested areas with higher passenger loads and more frequent stops. Their boarding ratios per peak vehicle and per vehicle hour are about 50% higher than for the bus routes reflecting the higher capacity of streetcars.

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TTC Service Changes Effective January 3, 2016 (Updated)

Updated December 8, 2015 at 12:30 pm: I checked with the TTC about the termination of both the 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst routes at Fleet Loop rather than simply running one route between Bathurst and Union Stations. Here is the reply from TTC Service Planning:

We considered running a 511 (Bathurst Stn-Union Stn) service but ruled it out for two main reasons. Firstly, stop usage on Fleet west of Bathurst has greatly increased in the last year, and serving these stops only with the shuttle bus would introduce a transfer or longer walk for too many people. Secondly, because of the road configuration and traffic patterns, it is not possible to have a northbound stop for through 511 cars on Bathurst at Lake Shore. The nearest stop would be the existing 509 stop on Bathurst farside of Queens Quay. This adds to the walking distance for customers heading to Fleet Street, and requires customers to cross an inhospitable intersection.

The original article follows below:

The new year brings changes to some routes, mainly on the streetcar system, to deal with the shortage of new Flexitys and a construction project while improving service on 501 Queen, 502 Downtowner and 503 Kingston Road to better reflect actual conditions.

2016.01.03 Service Changes

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City of Toronto 2016 Budget Overview

On December 1, 2015, Toronto’s new City Manager, Peter Wallace, presented an overview of the state of the City’s finances to the Executive Committee. This was by way of an introduction to the 2016 budget which will launch on December 15. Wallace’s talk can be viewed on YouTube, and the slide deck from his presentation is on the City’s site.

Wallace’s approach to the budget is a breath of fresh air on two important accounts. First, he believes that the proper roles for Council and for the City Staff are policy and implementation, respectively. Second, he begins the budget cycle without the now-familiar annual exercise of wrestling the “budget gap” down to zero before Councillors even have a chance to review the numbers. These combine to place responsibility for choices and options where it belongs, at Council, rather than having a back-room hatchet job done by staff without the tradeoffs and options ever surfacing for public debate.

The City Manager is quite clear: decide what kind of City you want and then figure out how to pay for it.

Moreover, Wallace is very clear that the City has been living a charmed existence thanks to very strong revenues from the Land Transfer Tax, and because a large and growing backlog of unfunded capital projects has not been included in the City’s financial planning.

Politicians depended on staff telling only good news so that tax cuts and other giveaways could proceed without arousing questions of where the money will come from, or what might not be built without the lost revenue. That was certainly the case through the Ford era and the early part of John Tory’s mayoralty, but this extends even back into David Miller’s term. The concept of “below the line” budgeting was used to keep some capital requirements off of the books in hopes of major contributions from other governments, and to make the City’s long-term exposure look less dire to maintain a favourable bond rating.

From 2000 to 2015, the total City revenue per capita has grown by 19.7%, and the City’s share of the region’s economic activity has stayed at the same level (in other words, the City has not become relatively a larger or smaller part of the regional economy). What has changed is the proportion of income received from various sources.

TTC fares as a proportion of the total have risen from 9.6% to 10.5%, Utility Fees have gone up by about 50%, and Other User Fees have fallen. The property tax which formerly accounted for about 40% of City revenue now is only 33.5%. Most of this reduction comes from lower non-residential taxes (about which more below).

Land Transfer Tax may only account for 3.8% of total revenue, but that is out of a very large total and it represents several hundred million dollars annually.

CityRevenueTrend_20002015

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Metrolinx Board Meeting December 3, 2015 (Updated)

Updated December 3, 2015 at 4:30 pm:

This article has been updated to reflect actions at the meeting.

Farewells

The meeting began with farewells to two senior members of the Metrolinx team.

Jack Collins, the Chief Capital Officer, is retiring to return to live with his family in northern California. He is one of the “straight shooters” at Metrolinx from whom I never had any sense of “spin” in his presentation of information about his projects. His knowledge of actually building transit projects, and LRT in particular, has been a valuable part of Metrolinx work.

Stephen Smith, a Board Member and Vice-Chair, leaves after spending 10 years at GO Transit and then Metrolinx.

GO Transit Fare Increase

The Board spent only a short time in debate on this matter, and never really addressed the fact that the tariff does not line up with the claimed formula for calculation of fares (see Sean Marshall’s article on this linked below).

A rather tortured explanation (which we have heard before) told the Board that past inequities are being corrected through the application of a tiered fare increase with higher bumps for higher fares and, in 2016, no increase at all for the lowest tier. The actual breakdown is:

201602_GO_FareIncreases

For the second and third tier of fares, the increase ranges from about 6% to 7.5%. For the top tier, the increase is about 7.3% for the low end of the range. However, riders on the outer ends of lines fare considerably better. The Kitchener single fare is now $16.60, and it will rise to $17.20, a bump of only 3.6%.

The problem with GO’s formula is that fares go up the most for medium distance travellers, while those riding furthest have the smallest percentage increase.

GO claims that its formula is a base amount plus a distance charge, as in:

Fare = Base + (Distance * Rate)

It should be trivial to adjust the two factors (Base and Rate) and recalculate the entire fare table. However as Sean Marshall has demonstrated, the existing fares don’t actually work that way. The tiered increases GO actually uses are a rough attempt at this, but they are biased in favour of long-haul riders.

If the Metrolinx Board were doing its job, it would spot this problem and demand a program to move to a justifiable, formula based tariff possibly over a multi-year implementation to smooth out the effects.

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Union Pearson Express Continues Unimpressive Ridership

At its Board Meeting on December 3, 2015, Metrolinx will receive an update on the ridership for the Union Pearson Express. Previous statistics released by Metrolinx to mid-September were not encouraging with a fairly flat ridership in the mid-2000 range once the initial burst of “try outs” and free rides passed.

The new report only extends the published information by about six weeks to the end of October, and the numbers are presented in a way that masks what is really going on.

UPX_Ridership_To_201510

This looks like wonderful upward growth, but there are two problems:

  • The base of the chart is 60,000, not zero, and so the slope of the chart is more impressive than might otherwise be the case.
  • The ridership is reported on a monthly basis with no correction for the length of each month.
    • June was a short month with only 25 days of operation, and this included two promotional days with unusually high ridership.
    • October has one more day than September.

Plotted as daily averages with a zero base line, things don’t look quite the same. There was a drop off in the summer with July and August relatively flat, and a slight increase for September and October, roughly 7% but over a two-month period. The real question is where do things go from here?

UPX_Daily_Ridership_To_201510

To reach the target of 5,000 riders/day at the end of the first year’s operation will require almost a doubling of daily ridership over the period from November 1, 2015 to May 31, 2016, or a sustained growth of about 14% each month.

After many rosy accounts of the initial reception of UPX, we now read of the problems of getting people to adopt a new mode of travel:

Metrolinx just completed an airport ground transportation survey this fall which found that 70% of all travellers make decisions about ground transportation modes based on past habits or they have the decision made for them. This is regardless of whether they are flying to or from a home airport. Only 20–30% of travellers did research or saw/heard information prior to departure and this was mostly related to the destination airport. The findings underscore how deeply engrained travel habits are and the significant work required to successfully change these behaviours. This is consistent with what we have been told by other international air rail links – changing entrenched travel behaviours of both local and visiting air travellers takes time.

Before UPX launched, Metrolinx did extensive reviews of the air-rail link industry, and yet somehow this basic principle, the difficulty of getting people to change habits, escaped their notice.

Marketing efforts include a UPX presence at the terminal stations, trade shows and special events.

Additional marketing initiatives over the past few months have included:

  • Refreshed wayfinding & signage at Union and Pearson
  • Installed additional ticket sales & servicing kiosks inside the Terminal 1 baggage claim area and the T3 counter
  • Increased presence of UP Express Ambassadors at Pearson
  • Revised on-site advertising to complement wayfinding

Metrolinx has tinkered with the fare structure on UPX, although the trips are still quite expensive. An appendix setting out the recently modified structure is missing from the online report, but the fares can be viewed by wandering through the website for standard, employee, and group/corporate tariffs (although the latter contains no information about the discounts actually available).

By listening to, and understanding our customer needs we are continually evaluating our suite of fares and investigating new structures to respond to demands including:

  • Family Long Layover to complement the individual long layover
  • Family Meeter & Greeter to complement the individual fare product
  • Increasing the age for free child fares from 6 to 12 years of age, to align with other global air rail links
  • Changing the return fare costs to attract repeat usage

In an article by Oliver Moore in The Globe & Mail, we learn:

The service was forecast to hit 5,000 passengers a day by next summer, about twice the current ridership. [UPX President Kathy] Haley suggested on Monday that the forecast might be flawed, because it predated Uber, and hinted that the ridership goal could be in flux.

The possible effect of Uber, let alone the idea that the goal of 5k/day in ridership, does not appear in the report to the Metrolinx Board. It is hard to believe that a service, routinely promoted as a premium quality line with fares to match, should be at the mercy of lowly Uber. Is the market is not quite so upscale and immune to price as we have been led to believe? Are there not enough of that class of traveller to make UPX pay?

Metrolinx has yet to release any financial data on the line’s performance, and we are unlikely to see this until their next annual financial reports (which subdivide results by operation division within the agency) due in mid-2016.

The explanations, the excuses, for poor performance of UPX have all the earmarks of a service that was over-hyped from the outset to justify its design and cost. One question Metrolinx must answer is why they need so many staff, so much marketing, to attract riders to a line that was supposed to have demand come to it so easily. This route is on a par with a minor TTC bus route. 126 Christie has roughly the same daily demand, but it does not command an army of greeters, let alone its own President.

Remember when the airport link was to be a private sector project with no public money?

Pearson Airport is a major regional hub, second only to Union Station for daily passenger volume. Transportation to the airport and surrounding districts should address travel from a wide variety of origins, not just downtown. Service and fares should reflect that the majority of this travel is a combination of ordinary commuting and air travellers, each with their own needs that the network must support.

Metrolinx should concentrate less on its showcase, premium fare service to Union, and more on making the airport a major transit destination for the GTHA.

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Development Charges and Politicized Transit Planning (Updated)

Updated November 26, 2015 at 11:00 pm: A follow up article by Jennifer Pagliaro includes reactions from Mayor Tory. My comments appear at the end of this article.

The Toronto Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro reports that the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) will challenge Toronto’s planned increase in Development Charges for the Scarborough Subway Extension (SSE) at the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB).

[BILD is] challenging the planning foundation for the three-stop subway — which council controversially approved last term over a seven-stop LRT that was fully funded by the province. BILD is raising red flags about the city’s ridership projections.

Bryan Tuckey, BILD’s president and CEO, says homeowners across the city should not be on the hook for a “political decision.”

“The ridership numbers that we have demonstrate that what’s needed in that area is light rapid transit,” Tuckey, whose background is in city and provincial planning, told the Star.

“We want to have fair and accountable use of development charges.”

This action has implications well beyond the Development Charges (DCs) for the Scarborough Subway and touches on the whole question of transit financing and planning that for years has been more about political gamesmanship than about the actual needs of the City of Toronto.

We know that the development industry does not like paying one cent more than they have to, and preferably less, in taxes. In that sense they are no different than other taxpayers.

However, while homeowners can only express their opposition by voting for politicians with vague promises to fight waste at City Hall, and hope that their “champions” like Ford and Tory will “do right” by them, their only real recourse is at election time. Elections are fought on signature platforms like SmartTrack and “Subways Subways Subways”, and voters don’t get to cherry pick the platform lines they really want. Elected politicians claim they have “a mandate” when their victory may simply depend on “not being the other guy”.

Development Charges, on the other hand, have specific rules about how they are calculated and an appeal mechanism neither of which is available for general property taxes (or many other taxes Council can or could levy of which the Land Transfer Tax is one obvious example). As the Star notes, most of the City’s share of the SSE ($910m) will come from the subway property tax yielding $745m. This tax will rise to 1.6% in 2016 and then stay on tax bills for decades. The amount coming from DCs ($165m) is much smaller, but developers have an appeal option through the OMB.

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TTC Capital Spending Priorities

Lost in all the debate about the TTC’s Operating Budget and fare increases for 2016 was the approval of the 2016 Capital Budget and 10-year plan out to 2025. There wasn’t much debate because the Board was worn out from the fare issue, but a few comments were worth noting before a very perfunctory approval of a $9-billion budget.

This is a very big, complex budget (see my previous article for some details). The Board only knows about it at the broadest possible scope – the really big projects and the major “state of good repair (SOGR)” budget lines – but there’s a lot more under the covers.

For the gory details of each project’s actual content and purpose, one needs to read the two-volume “Blue Books” which have not yet been published for the 2016 cycle. In past years I have included extracts from them in articles to give background info. The Board members will each get a set, eventually, but one requires a strong constitution to read through the equivalent of two Toronto phone books. Having done this for many years, I have the advantage of needing to look only for what has changed, but someone coming to this as a novice wouldn’t make it even part way through the first volume before the amount of detail bored them to sleep.

I do not expect my readers to look at every line of the budget, nor do I expect this of the Board members. Even I do not read every line.

One of the big challenges to a reader is knowing which parts to look at first: big ticket projects, projects that have a high profile, projects which, from past experience, are worth keeping an eye on. This takes experience, and TTC Board members don’t have the time to acquire it, let alone a guide saying “start here”. There is no trail of cookie crumbs through the budget forest.

To their credit, the Board agreed with a proposal by Commissioner Joe Mihevc that they should do a “deep dive” into capital plans in 2016 before the 2017 budget cycle starts. How far down they will get depends to a great deal on how well TTC management can package the budget in a way it can be clearly understood without undue simplification. This really is an iterative process needing a broad view, and then deeper passes through the details highlighting critical parts of the budget. It is not a session for a Councillor who only cares about his pet project and queries every penny in every other budget line as if it were a waste of previous taxpayer dollars (i.e. not being spent in his ward).

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TTC Fare Increase For 2016

After a long, rambling, and less-then-well-informed debate, the TTC Board has approved increases in selected fares for 2016 at its meeting of November 23, 2015.

  • Adult cash fares will rise from $3.00 to $3.25.
  • Adult tokens will rise from $2.80 to $2.90.
  • Metropass prices (all classes) will not change.
  • Student and senior fares will not change pending the outcome of a study on Fare Equity that will report early in 2016.

The cash fare last changed in 2010, while the adult token fare, then $2.50, will have gone up $0.40 by 2016.

Freezing the Metropass prices will have the effect of lowering the “trip multiple”, the ratio of the pass price to the token fare from 50.5 in 2015 to 48.8. For monthly discount plan (MDP) subscribers, the ratio will fall to 44.7. The multiple is even lower for those who can claim the transit tax credit pulling it down to 38 for MDP users. This is only available to people with taxable income against which the transit credit can be applied.

This will make the pass more attractive to riders who now feel that it is priced beyond their normal transit usage level, and of course will provide a fare freeze for all existing pass users.

The gap between the adult and senior multiple will now be wider because seniors’ fares have not changed leaving the ratio between passes, tickets and cash fares as they were in 2015.

The unfocused debate can be blamed directly on the TTC’s own Budget Committee and its failure to actually discuss fare policy beyond producing a range of options for consideration by the full Board. Absent a clear idea from Mayor Tory or the City’s own budget process of subsidy that the TTC might receive in 2016, debates about “fares” turn into efforts to minimize the subsidy call against the City where “fighting taxes” takes priority.

When the issue reached the full Board, any idea that the TTC could magically survive without more subsidy had evaporated, but we still don’t know what will actually happen to fares or service if Council fails to deal with the TTC’s shortfall.

By the end of the meeting, there were several overlapping motions on the table, the product of many Board members each cooking up their own version of an appropriate new structure and policy framework.

  • By Vince Crisanti: That student and senior fares be frozen pending the outcome of the Fare Equity report in 2016. Carried.
  • By John Campbell: That a revised fare structure (see below) be implemented including a $0.20 jump in the adult token fare. Defeated 10:1 against.
  • By Shelley Carroll as amended by Glenn De Baeremaeker: That staff report back on a common fare multiple for adult, senior and student passes. Carried.
  • By Alan Heisey: That TTC and City Transportation Services work together on improvements to enhance transit service especially for special events such as subway shutdowns, and report to the Board in six months. Carried.
  • By Joe Mihevc: That all seven options for service enhancements be approved. Defeated 8:3 against.
  • By Joe Mihevc: That the three options not approved by the TTC Budget Committee (Subway service reliability, three minute service on Line 1 YUS, Cherry Streetcar) be referred to the City Budget Committee for consideration. Carried.
  • By Josh Colle: That the TTC and Toronto Parking Authority study means by which parking revenue can be maximized with a report to the Board in 3Q16. Carried.
  • By Josh Colle: That the TTC examine ways to increase non-fare revenue and reduce office space costs through consolidation, and that staff report by 2Q16 on annual and long term revenue targets. Carried.
  • By Ron Lalonde as amended above: That the TTC adopt fare scenario 7 with no Metropass, student or senior fare increase ($0.25 more on adult cash fares, $0.10 more on adult token fares). Carried.

The combined effect of these decisions leaves the TTC with a $41-million gap between its proposed budget and the 2015 subsidy level. Considering that they are not even sure of getting that much when the first cut of the City’s 2016 budget is launched on December 15, 2015, this leaves Council facing an 8.7% increase in the main TTC operating subsidy request and a similar increase (although a smaller dollar amount) for Wheel-Trans.

When the final text of these motions is published by the TTC, I will update this article.

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TTC Proposes Cherry Street Service Revision / Surveys Riders (Updated)

Updated November 26, 2015 at 2:30 pm: The TTC will be conducting a “Meet the Planners” session at George Brown College on Dockside Drive on Tuesday, December 1 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. There has already been a similar session at Pape Station.

Route 172 Cherry was split off from 72 Pape a few years ago due to congestion from construction at Union Station. The question now is how to put the routes back together again, or indeed, if they should be in their original form.

The TTC has a survey active on its website until mid-December 2015 to poll riders on proposed changes to service mainly in the eastern waterfront.

The current arrangement of routes is shown in the map below (taken from the survey):

MapExisting

This arrangement provides a fairly large loop through downtown and acts as a parallel service to the 504 King car for riders along The Esplanade and in the Distillery District. It was particularly useful during the recent Pan Am Games when service here was substantially improved because the route served the Athletes’ Village.

However, the connection between the 72C Pape and 172 Cherry services is not good. It is not a scheduled connection and the two routes operate on different headways. Moreover, the Port Lands is not exactly the best place to connect between routes at night or in bad weather. Splitting the routes also effectively eliminates a direct link from the Danforth subway to Queens Quay East and the Distillery District.

The new proposed route structure is shown below:

MapProposed

Route 72 Pape would be confined to the shuttle between Queen and Danforth, with route number 172 belonging to a revised Cherry bus that would operate via Queens Quay rather than using The Esplanade. The 172 would loop via Bay, Front and Yonge. It is unclear what the service level on 172 would be or whether this would be blended with the 72 Pape bus on the common section.

A new route 121 would operate on Front and The Esplanade between Parliament and Bathurst.

Service to the Distillery District along Mill Street would cease to exist, and the Distillery District would only be served at a distance by the 172 Cherry bus on Lake Shore and by the new 514 streetcar on Cherry itself.

The 514 car would operate from Dufferin Loop via King to Cherry Street, although given TTC scheduling, many of these cars could well short-turn without serving the outer ends of their route.

The 514 is less a new service for Cherry than a supplementary service for King, although this is not how it was presented in the 2016 Operating Budget. Indeed, provision of this map could have informed the discussion about streetcar service on Cherry considerably more than the way it was presented as a small spur off of King that would attract no new riders.

The survey itself is interesting because it asks, among other questions, whether this route structure would encourage people to use the TTC more. What is missing is a direct question about whether this arrangement is more convenient, not to mention any indication of service frequencies on which any discussion of “convenience” inevitably turns. There is a big difference between a line on a map and whether service is worth planning on and waiting for. One obvious question is whether the new routes – 172, 121 and 514 – would become part of the 10 Minute Network.

The survey claims that the new 172 Cherry route on Queens Quay would improve service to George Brown College (GBC), but it misses two important points:

  • The primary service to GBC, the 6 Bay bus, loads diagonally opposite from the likely stop for the 172 at Bay and Front. The option of taking whichever bus shows up first is not available to riders.
  • Similarly, westbound from GBC to downtown service would not use the 6 Bay stop within the loop at the college, but would speed past likely using the stop on Queens Quay well west of Sherbourne.

Looping through Dockside Drive in both directions, and a revised loop at Union Station should be considered if this is to be advertised as an “improvement” to GBC service.

The 121 bus as an alternative to the streetcar service on 509 Harbourfront only makes sense if it is quite frequent and reliable, not if this is a one or two bus shuttle showing up now and then for whoever happens to be passing by.

This is a good first attempt, but more thorough community feedback is needed than just this survey, and the TTC has to be more forthcoming about how each neighbourhood along the proposed routes would be affected.