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TTC Service Changes Effective February 16, 2014

The February 2014 schedules bring only minor changes on the system.

Exhibition Place

A new “walking transfer” will be added between services in the south end of Liberty Village and Exhibition Loop. This will link 63 Ossington at Atlantic and Liberty Streets to the 511 Bathurst, 509 Harbourfront and 29 Dufferin routes at Exhibition Loop.

Walking transfers are a quaint part of the TTC’s fare system where connections are permitted between routes that do not actually meet, but which operate nearby. This practice (and the rules governing where it is allowed) will not be needed as an exception within the overall system if the TTC moves to time-based fares.

A temporary Dufferin Street bridge will allow 29 Dufferin service to resume its operation into the park.  Service will be the same as in March 2013.

York Region Contracted Services

These changes are at York Region’s request.

The last afternoon peak trip of the 17A Birchmount route north of Steeles will be eliminated.  This trip now leaves Steeles northbound at 6:53, and returns from Royal Crest southbound at 7:06.

The last late Sunday evening trip of the 102 Markham Road route north of McNicoll will be eliminated.  This trip now leaves Nashdene & Markham at 11:14 pm and returns from Mount Joy GO Station at 11:42 pm.

An earlier trip will be added to 105B Dufferin North from Major Mackenzie on weekday mornings.  This trip will depart southbound at 6:29 am.

Pearson Airport Night Services

300 Bloor Danforth and 307 Eglinton West will change to use the same sequence of serving terminals as the daytime 192 Airport Rocket and 58 Malton routes. There will be no change in service levels, but scheduled times at stops will be altered by the new routing.

Other Service and Route Changes

142 Downtown Avenue Road Express was changed in late December by the elimination of a trial extension of its downtown loop west to Peter Street. This is now formally implemented in the scheduled route.

Service on 509 Harbourfront will be reduced in response to lower riding, and schedules will be changed to “improve reliability” with additional recovery time.

Service on some routes will be modified by adjustment of running and recovery times to improve reliability. Service levels are not affected, but some trip times will change.

  • 41 Keele will be modified in the evening on weekdays.
  • 30 Lambton will be modified during many periods, and recovery time will be shifted to Kipling Station to reduce bus idling at High Park Station.
  • 73 Royal York will be modified during peak periods.

Service to the Zoo on 86 Scarborough and 85 Sheppard East will be modified to reflect the change in closing time to 6:00 pm effective March 1, 2014.  Last trips will leave the Zoo at about 7:00 pm.

Service on 91 Woodbine will be changed on weekends to improve reliability with headways on both the 91C York Mills and 91A Parkview Hills branches changing from 20 to 24 minutes to provide extra running time.

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Creative Accounting With Subway Operating Costs

The Toronto Star’s Royson James writes today about automation of the TTC’s subway service and the elimination of train crews. His article includes a figure taken from a paper published by the Neptis Foundation which claims:

Converting the TTC subway to UTO [unmanned train operation] could save about $200 million per year, or $2 billion NPV [net present value].

Installation of PSDs [platform screen doors] might cost another $300 million to $500 million.

[Page 51.]

I wrote briefly about the Neptis paper last year, and keep meaning to return to it if only to debunk some of its more outrageous claims. However, the emergence of fantastical statements about the potential benefits of total automation force me to address this separately.

First off, the cost of PSDs is considerably higher than stated in the report. When this was still part of the TTC’s “above the line” budget, the cost stood at roughly $1-billion (about $15m per station).

The Neptis report says that automation could save “about $200 million per year”. This is wildly inaccurate as can be proven in various ways.

The total TTC operating budget for 2014 is $1.6-billion. Of this, at most 80% of the costs are for labour, and only half of that will be for operators who make up roughly 50% of the workforce. This means we are starting with a total cost of everyone who drives a bus, streetcar or subway train of $640-million. Saving almost one third of this by eliminating crews on the subway simply is not credible.

Continue reading →

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The Gardiner Expressway and Transit to Downtown

The City and Waterfront Toronto are holding a public meeting to present an update on the future of the eastern section of the Gardiner Expressway.

Bluma Appel Salon
Toronto Public Library, Yonge North of Bloor
Thursday, February 6, 2014 from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm

A media briefing on February 5 introduced the material, and there is widespread coverage in the mainstream press that I will not duplicate here. My interest lies more in the relationship of the expressway to travel demand generally, and to the importance of transit for the future development of central Toronto.

The media presentation contains information that will be included in the public meeting, and illustrations here are taken from that file.

StudyArea

The section of the Gardiner under study extends east from Jarvis Street to the Don Valley Parkway, plus the ramp down to Lake Shore Blvd. east of the Don River. It is important to remember what is not being changed.

  • From Jarvis Street west, the existing expressway will be rebuilt under a multi-year program stretching to about 2019.
  • The south end of the DVP will be modified only to the extent needed to connect in with whatever new or revised structure might be built.
  • The ramp down to Lake Shore will remain in its current form except if the Gardiner is removed, in which case the ramp will be demolished and a new Lake Shore will cross the Don on a bridge at grade.

The Gardiner’s design capacity was scaled for connection to a future Scarborough Expressway that was never built, and the structure east of Jarvis is wider than is needed for the demand. This section gives the greatest opportunity for reworking, and releases the most land around the expressway in any new configuration.

Continue reading →

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Sir John A. Station?

Yes, we must be into the mayoral campaign, even among undeclared candidates.

At today’s meeting of Toronto’s Executive Committee, Councillor and sometimes-mooted candidate for the Mayor’s office, Denzil Minnan-Wong (better known as DMW to the blogging community) walked a proposal into the meeting to rename Union Station as Sir John A. Macdonald Station.  It’s a slow news day, and this is the sort of thing we see at City Hall when the Ford Family hasn’t triggered any new scandals.

Never mind that this is a National Historic Site.  If someone wants publicity, why not pick a great big monument and propose a new name for it?

Don’t ya know that old Sir John A., our first Prime Minister, is coming up on his 200th birthday, and what better excuse to rename the station after that master of the Canadian Pacific (despite the fact the railway was built long, long before the current Union Station even existed).

It seems there is a group called the Toronto Friends of Sir John A. Macdonald who, along with “appropriate groups and individuals”, are to be consulted in the preparation of a report on the subject that will be back at Exec by July 2 at the latest.  This group even has a website with one rather trivial post that is over a year old.

According to The Star:

Supporters include Alan Broadbent of the Maytree Foundation, broadcaster Steve Paikin and journalist Richard Gwyn.

They should be ashamed.  Just because “Union Station” seems rather prosaic does not mean the name is without significance in Toronto.

No doubt, part of the impetus for naming anything in Toronto after Sir John A. might be his reputation for drinking gin (conveniently disguised as a glass of water) in the House.  A role model for our current Mayor, no doubt.

Poor DMW is doomed to be one of the also-rans in the mayoralty race, presuming he even puts himself on the ballot.  The things people do to get attention.  At least he has not changed his mind on transit funding and jumped on the subway bandwagon, yet.

This proposal is a waste of time for staff and Council who have far more important things to consider.

Leave Union Station alone!

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Toronto’s 2014 Budget & The TTC

On January 30, 2014, Toronto Council passed its 2014 operating and capital budgets.  In earlier articles, I discussed details of the TTC budgets and won’t repeat that info here.  However, a few details from the City budget debate are worth mentioning.

Scarborough Subway

Three Councillors attempted to sideline spending on the Scarborough Subway project by redirecting the planned $14-million in the 2014 budget either to a reserve or to other projects.

All of these motions were ruled out of order by the Speaker based on advice from City Legal staff who argued that since Council had already passes a special tax to fund the Scarborough Subway, they would be open to a lawsuit if the money were not spent for the intended purpose.  This ruling by the Chair was challenged, but the Chair was upheld by a vote of 23-22.  This is the same margin as in a previous vote on the issue, although a few Councillors switched sides.

I feel that attempts to derail this project are counterproductive at this time for several reasons:

  • Like it or not, Council has approved the Scarborough Subway project and its associated tax.
  • The issue is very contentious and in the current political environment quickly becomes a “Scarborough against the world” debate.
  • The cost estimate for the project is barely beyond the back-of-the-envelope stage, and this cannot be refined without further study that will occur in 2014 as part of the lead-up to the Environmental Assessment.  This will include comparative costs and effects for the City’s McCowan alignment and for Minister Murray’s “SRT” alignment.
  • If the cost of the subway proves substantially higher, this will certainly trigger a further debate at the 2015 budget sessions under the newly elected Council who must approve the next stage of the subway tax increase.  Any increase must be paid for with 100-cent City dollars because the commitments by Queen’s Park and Ottawa are capped.

Other related issues include:

  • The projected demand for the Scarborough Subway must be seen in the context of other regional plans that are under discussion.  These include substantially better service on the GO Stouffville Corridor.  An EA for double-tracking this line is already underway, and the corridor is part of the “Big U” that is under study as part of Yonge subway capacity relief.
  • The claimed shutdown period for the SRT for conversion to LRT has been inflated from the 2.5 years anticipated by Metrolinx to 4 years and beyond by subway advocates.  Any discussion of the LRT alternative must include a review of how long a shutdown really needs to take, but we are unlikely to see this given that the only authorized work for 2014 will be on the subway options.  Any work to make the LRT option more palatable would be viewed as backsliding by subway supporters.

The whole project will be back at Council again in 2015, and that is the time for a well-informed debate on alternatives.

Operating Subsidy

When the TTC Board approved its 2014 operating budget, there was a $6-million unspecified reduction in the expected subsidy based on a recommendation from the City Manager.  At the time, both TTC Chair Karen Stintz and CEO Andy Byford said that they would fight for the missing $6m, although we never found out exactly what the effect would be if the TTC didn’t get it.

The original 2014 subsidy proposed by management in the budget (November 2013) was $434m, up from a budget level of $411m for 2013. The Board passed a budget with a $428m subsidy.

The CEO’s report for November also predicted a $411m subsidy requirement for 2013, but probable actuals reported in January show that the system came in $7.3m below this number, at $403.7m.  Whether these savings are one time effects or sustainable into future years is a matter of debate (one unexpected source of revenue was the sale of retired subway cars).  The TTC does not distinguish between regular and extraordinary revenues, and some savings or costs (such as the actual vs budgeted cost of diesel fuel) vary with market forces.

In any event, for the second year running, the TTC’s actual subsidy requirements have come in below projections.  This makes the increase from previous year’s actual to current year’s budget bigger than simply a budget-to-budget comparison would show.

In case anyone is tempted to ask why the TTC cannot do “a better job” of budgeting “accurately”, that $7.3m is less than half of one percent of the total 2013 budget of $1.541-billion.  If your own personal finances operate at such a level of accuracy or better, then maybe you have a right to complain.  However, given that even a small percentage variation for the TTC turns into what, for Councillors, is a huge amount of money, debates about the TTC budget often turn on the minutia.  $6m represents 0.25% on the property tax rate.

Among several budget adjustments proposed by Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly and approved by Council, the TTC received an extra $3m for a new budgeted subsidy of $431m.

Council also passed a motion asking staff:

… to develop an intergovernmental campaign to advocate for a Provincial operating subsidy in line with pre-1995 levels.

$70m of Provincial subsidy now goes to the TTC operating budget as part of the City’s subsidy.  This is well below the formula instituted by Premier Davis in the 1970s of a 50% Provincial share.  A catch-22 here is that slavishly holding to a percentage allows Queen’s Park to dictate the size of the total budget by specifying an absolute limit to the dollar value of the subsidy.  This can artificially constrain the growth in TTC service.

Capital Budget

The Capital Budget was passed including over $2-billion in cuts (shifts of projects and funding to “below the line” over the coming 10 years.  Some of this lies in large projects that have yet to be approved, but a substantial amount comes from purchase of new vehicles (buses, streetcars and subway cars), garage/carhouse expansions and facilities maintenance.  $10m per year has been cut from streetcar track maintenance in 2014-18, and from subway track maintenance in 2019-2023.  In the out years, this is accounting hocus-pocus designed to make the capital spending fit within available target levels, but in the short term, this threatens some necessary TTC work.

The City and TTC will continue to beat their drums for added support at Queen’s Park and Ottawa even though, at least in the short term, this is likely to be more wishful thinking that productive lobbying.

Toronto has a self-imposed debt limit that arises from a desire to keep debt servicing costs at an affordable level relative to tax revenue.  Of course, if Council wants to raise taxes, they can also raise the amount of debt as they have done for the Scarborough Subway.

Affordability of Transit Fares

Council passed a motion asking several City departments and agencies, including the TTC:

… to report in advance of the rollout of the Presto Fare Card system and prior to the 2015 budget process, on options related to a fare media policy that addresses affordability issues of transit fares for low and moderate income Torontonians.

This topic comes up regularly at TTC Board discussions, and the common TTC response is that social benefits are not in the TTC’s purview.  With the move to smart card fare collection, there is an option to build fare subsidies into a rider’s account and to allow such subsidies to be tracked.

The question, as always, will be whether TTC funding should go to improvements in service and/or fare structure for all riders, or be targeted to those who receive some other form of social assistance.

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Eight Years On

Today, January 31, 2014, this blog is eight years old.  Many thanks to you, the readers, for making it what it is – a forum for discussion about and advocacy of public transit and how it can improve our city.

As a way of looking back to the early days and as a commentary on the successes and failures we have faced, I chose to republish my Jane Jacobs Prize acceptance speech from April 2005.  Jane was still alive for that ceremony, and I remember her delicious skewering of then Mayor Miller for the shortcomings of his Planning Department whose world view owed more to a suburban than a “downtown”, neighbourhood-oriented outlook.

A possible bid for a World’s Fair was in the air complete with all the talk of the wonders of new investment it would bring to Toronto.  Sound familiar?

April 5, 2005

Thanks to Mayor Miller, John Sewell, Ideas That Matter and especially to Jane Jacobs.

Jane and I lunched near the Park Plaza Hotel in 1973 when she was fresh from the Stop Spadina campaign.  Her long battles in New York City with Robert Moses and his expressway plans appear in Ken Burns’ documentary New York.  Seeing that reminded me of what a lifetime of activism really means.  My 33 years since Streetcars for Toronto saved our streetcars are small change beside Jane’s work, and I am honoured to receive a prize in her name.

John Sewell has told you how I came to be here, of the successes and failures in transit activism over those decades.  Now I’ll say a few words about the role of Toronto’s activists in 2005 and beyond.  Should we cozy up to “the establishment” which is now in friendlier hands?  Is transit planning finally headed in the right direction?  Are we on the verge of a transit nirvana?  Answer:  No – maybe – not a chance.

The details are a bit longer.

Activists always have an uneasy time with politicians and professional staff – there’s the lure of being “on the inside” and feeling that you’re really getting something done.  But it’s an illusion, and you can lose valuable time and influence by becoming too much a part of the process you hope to change.  Activists need to hold politicians’ feet to the fire, to always ask for more than we can get, and to never, ever be satisfied.

Our job is to get issues discussed, to present views and options that would not otherwise be heard, to inform the community, the media and the politicians, to show that “business as usual” is not the only solution to our city’s problems.  To do this, we need independence from official channels where compromise takes precedence over excellence, where confidential access to the inner circle muzzles open debate.  We must not be afraid of being unpopular – opposing a bad proposal does not mean we are against transit.

In a few years, I will retire from the Toronto District School Board, but I will not retire from transit activism.  Mayor Miller will see a lot more of me around City Hall.  After all, friendly faces can change, and we could find ourselves with Tories everywhere in another Dark Age.  We must do what we can, while we can.

Where is transit planning going?

We have a Ridership Growth Strategy that aims to build service and lure riders back to the TTC surface routes.  Those routes are the backbone of the system, but they were cut back by 25 to 40 percent during the 1990s.  We’re going to rebuild!  We are getting new buses!  Alas, at the current rate, we will make it back to that 1990 level of service well into in Mayor Miller’s third term of office.  That is no commitment to transit.

We have an Official Plan that recognizes our need to intensify population along streets to provide a vibrant “city” lifestyle and a transit demand that will support fast, frequent service.  The OP has no subway lines in it.  Bravo!  About time!  Alas, it has no transit lines in it at all, and only hints at what could be done with LRT (modern streetcar lines) on the major routes.

Originally, the RGS had no subway lines in it either – any system expansion was way down the priority list long after service improvements and changes to the fare structure.  Alas, the subway fraternity prevailed, and two lines with price tags of about $1.5-billion each crept into the TTC plans.

Subways are dangerous things.  Their cost makes debates on where to build the next one almost endless, and they crowd out much cheaper schemes that would improve the system as a whole.  They make “the ask” from City politicians to senior governments enormous, and those governments do their duty to transit with one big cheque.  You want more for buses, for better service?  Get lost, kid, we already paid for your subway.  That’s exactly what Ontario has said to Toronto for the past decade.  We may open a subway to York University or to Scarborough Town Centre, but your local bus and streetcar routes will be just as unreliable as they are today.

Now we have Building a Transit City.  There’s some hope here.  It’s the missing chapter from the OP and later this year we may see a proposal for a low-cost network of busways and LRT lines.  This is great stuff, but it needs lots of money in a very short time, a decade at most, if we are going to seriously address the deficit in transit service throughout Toronto.

I have not even mentioned those lands beyond the edge of the map, where dragons lie, and yet they are vital to any discussion of Toronto’s future.  Long, long overdue improvements to GO Transit’s rail network are underway, and we are beginning to see schemes for improved bus services in the 905.  Sadly, York Region’s VIVA system is spending far more on marketing, relative to the TTC’s size, than Toronto will spend on “Ridership Growth”.  Don’t tell people how wonderful the service is, just get out there and run it!  Ads are cheap.  Performance is not.

What would a transit nirvana look like?

Toronto would have frequent, uncrowded service on all routes at least 18 hours a day.

If the subway is the backbone, then a network of LRT lines, some on rights-of-way, but most in the middle of streets, would form the skeleton of our system.  They would bring faster service without the cost of subways throughout the city.

GO Transit rail services would be substantially improved with all-day service on all corridors.

Regional travel fares would be integrated with the TTC so that riders see one network, no matter how many operational agencies provide the service.

We would stop proposing road-building projects that are disguised as transit improvements.

This brings me back to Jane Jacobs.  The Spadina Expressway was a highway sanitized by a subway line.  We need to be wary of such proposals.  People do not live on expressways, and commercial spaces nearby are surrounded by parking lots, not by pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods.

We need to tell the road engineers “No!” when they slip intersection widenings into LRT proposals.

We need to build our new neighbourhoods with good transit service from day one, not as an afterthought once we discover that a suburban, car-oriented development has taken over our waterfront.

Building a Transit City takes more than vague and inadequate funding announcements.  We do not need a World’s Fair to justify transit improvements.  We need a Council that will advocate for better transit, for a better city, and if this means tax increases, so be it.

There is a lot of work for transit activists in the years ahead, and I for one hope to earn the Jane Jacobs prize by continuing to fight for what Toronto needs – an excellent transit system.

Thank you.

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Allocating Transit Costs and Revenues

This post arises from a discussion at Toronto Council’s budget debates in which the question of the profitability of various parts of the system came up.  This triggered a Twitter thread in which I eventually said “2 big 4 tweets”, and offered to write about this issue here.

Please note that this discussion will be theoretical, not a specific examination of TTC or any other system’s costs because (a) I don’t have the raw data, and (b) the level of analysis needed to ferret out the level of info needed is something requiring inside knowledge of each agency’s accounting practices.

In effect, this article is a caveat:  anyone who tells you they can produce a profit and loss statement on a line-by-line basis in a system where fares and costs cannot be accurately subdivided between system components is, to be gentle, full of hot air.  Politicians and bureaucrats love metrics, numbers that purport to allow comparison between portions of a system, between cities, etc, in the elusive search for a “more efficient” operation.  They have wet dreams about metrics that can reduce a complex universe to a single dimensional value with a “traffic light” to indicate current status.

This misses the point that “value” can be a subjective measurement depending on your goals.  For example, an 80% farebox cost recovery number is boy-scout-badge-worthy if your goal is to provide the most service at the lowest net cost, but it could mask the rejection of any new services that would not contribute to the target level of recovery.  Services that might be desirable for other benefits such as time of day or geographic coverage could be rejected because they will spoil the overall system numbers.  Moreover, a metric might have a different target depending on the type of service it measures — we expect far more from a subway line because of its high capital cost than we do from a local bus route.

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Complaining About Crappy Service

From time to time, people leave comments here about bad experiences with TTC service.  One recent observation dealt with irregular headways and unexpected short turns on night services.

When this sort of thing happens to you, be sure to note the time, date, location and especially the vehicle number(s).  Whether the TTC will actually do anything about your problems is hard to say, but it’s essential that when you do complain, you have specifics.

The TTC talks a good line about customer service, and they need to be held to account when they screw up.

To readers who are operators:  I am not looking to bash anyone, and our friends at CIS Control probably have a lot to do with problems.  However, where things happen, especially repeatedly, that show a disregard for the quality of transit service and the riders, those responsible need to know that wonderful service is not the product actually on offer.

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TTC Board Meeting: January 28, 2014

The TTC Board will meet on January 28, 2014.  Here is a review of the major items on the agenda.

Time-Based Transfers

This report was important enough that it has an article of its own.

CEO’s Report

The CEO’s Report includes more-or-less final numbers for the system for 2013.

The TTC was hoping to see 528-million rides in 2013, but only achieved 525m mainly thanks to severe weather events.

Although fare revenue is lower than expected (by about $11m, partly offset by income of other revenue), expenses show an even greater saving.  This results in a $7.3m “surplus” for the year.  This is subsidy that was planned for but not required.  The details are on pages 25-26 of the report.

As in the 2012-2013 comparison, this “surplus” means that the actual increase in subsidy for 2014 will be larger than it appears at the budget level.  (2013 was a “freeze” only on a budget-to-budget basis because of underspending in 2012.)

The Capital Budget is underspent by about $500m mainly due to slippage on major contracts and deferral of some work from 2013 to 2014.  This is mostly not a saving, only a difference in the timing of expenses versus original projections.

The date for resumption of streetcar service south of King is once again reported as June 22, 2014, not the earlier March 30 date that had been projected.  I will check on this with both TTC and Waterfront Toronto.  Very cold weather has slowed construction, but it is unclear why and end of March date is impossible for service to Queen’s Quay.

Despite suggestions by Chair Stintz at a previous Board meeting that there was a “commitment” for substantial completion of the Presto project in time for the Pan Am Games in 2015, it is clear that this will not occur.  Presto will roll out in stages beginning with the new streetcars later in 2014.

The TTC had planned to publish new measures of service quality late in 2013, but these are not yet ready and will be rolled out sometime in 2014.  This process is intended not only to better reflect the conditions seen by riders, but to identify routes and locations where existing operations, including the schedules, do not fit with typical conditions.

Improving Safety and Travel Times by Elimination and Relocation of Transit Stops

The TTC proposes to rationalize the placement of stops with the goal of making streetcar stops safer, and reducing the need for vehicles to stop frequently at closely-spaced stops.

This proposal affects various classes of stops:

  • Sunday stops.  These are a holdover from the days of “Toronto The Good” where even operating streetcars on Sundays was considered a dubious undertaking.  These stops provided close access to churches, but they are primarily found in the older part of the system.  (There are a few special cases for use early on Sundays when the subway is closed.)  Sunday stops were eliminated when the St. Clair and Roncesvalles streetcar lines were rebuilt, and they will now be dropped throughout the system.
  • Some stops are not located at traffic signals or crosswalks, and these can take motorists unawares because they are not prepared to stop for other purposes.  The TTC would like to rationalize such stops to better locations.
  • Some stops are very close together for no evident reason, and the TTC proposes to consolidate stops.

The report includes an illustration of a “before and after” on Queen from Church to John.

20140128_QueenStopLocations

This scheme eliminates stops both ways at Victoria on the grounds that these are in a short distance of Church and Yonge Streets.  The TTC seems unconcerned or unaware that these stops also serve St. Michael’s Hospital.

At York Street, the stops are eliminated both ways because they are close to University Avenue.  One major problem at York, as at other locations where stops are at traffic signals, is that this location does not have transit priority, and a streetcar stopping for passengers will almost certainly be held by the traffic signal, usually for more time than the actual stop service itself.

At Simcoe westbound, the stop will be shifted to the traffic signal at St. Patrick.  The stops both ways at McCaul will be dropped.  Why the TTC could not include an eastbound stop at St. Patrick is a mystery.

This entire exercise has a feel of blindly following a supposed philosophy without looking closely at the details.  With luck, pushback from Councillors in affected areas will bring some sense to the process.

If the TTC were really serious about speeding transit trips, they would far more aggressively pursue transit priority at the many locations where it has never been installed or activated, where it has been shut off, or where it operates only at limited times of the day.

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Time-Based Fares for the TTC? Maybe in 2015

The agenda for the TTC Board’s meeting on January 28, 2014, includes a report on time-based fares.  The report cites many advantages for a shift to this form of fare including:

  • ease of understanding by riders and clarity for enforcement by operators and fare inspectors;
  • simplicity of implementation on PRESTO;
  • simplicity for routes using all-door loading where transfers would not be inspected on entry;
  • compatibility with fare policy on most other transit systems.

The downside, such as it may be, would be a loss of revenue relative to the current fare structure of up to $20-million annually (a bit under 2%).  There are additional concerns related to a transitional period before PRESTO takes over the overwhelming majority of all fare transactions, such as the increased value of transfers issued freely in the subway which would become limited time passes.

Management recommends that time-based transfers be considered as part of the 2015 budget.  This would leave a final decision on such a change to the next Council and TTC Board.  Other proposed changes include discontinuing time-based transfers on St. Clair if a system-wide policy is rejected, and formulation of a policy for locations where time-based transfers would be allowed in future as an offset to major local construction activity (e.g. on Eglinton).

This is quite a refreshing report about TTC fare policy because it proceeds from the basis that this is something that can be done, that many other cities already have implemented, and which has benefits and costs that should be weighed as part of any decision.  We do not hear about all the money the TTC would be wasting on people who would obtain more transit for lower fare.  The contrast with the typical portrayal of Metropass users is quite astounding.

The report notes that only about 10% of existing trips on the TTC involve the use of a paper transfer because more than half the riders use passes, and many trips involve connections where there is no fare barrier and therefore no need for a transfer as proof of payment.  Trips that now involve multiple fares (e.g. a short there-and-back trip, or a multi-legged trip with stopovers) would be cheaper for those riders who do not now use passes, and who do not already organize their journeys to optimise transfer use.  (As someone who has used a Metropass since they were introduced in May 1980, I still miss the challenge of getting the most out of one fare.)

An obvious point the report completely misses is that a time-based fare would give the single fare more value in that it would buy a few hours of unlimited riding rather than a single connected trip.  This is particularly important for people who tend to pay their fares one at a time.

Another effect would be that Metropass users, now portrayed as taking an almost embarrassingly high number of “rides”, would be seen as using far fewer “fares” because some trips now counted as separate would now be part of one connected journey.  The concept of “lost revenue” to passholders would become even more difficult to justify in an environment where the right to use transit was sold by time, not by trip segment.

Indeed, the TTC will have to recalibrate how it counts “riders” and “fares”.

Transfer abuse is estimated to be the single largest source of “lost revenue” today.  I put that in quotation marks because transfers, and the inventive ways riders use them, have been around for over a century, and the “loss” was never money the TTC might have collected in the first place.  It is part of the cost of doing business, and indeed is a “cost” brought on by the obvious incentive riders have to maximize the return for their fares.

The TTC claims it loses almost $15m to transfer abuse each year, but that is not real money they could recoup without a large investment in enforcement.  The lost fares represent under 1.5% of the annual total (7.6-million fares out of 540-million).

The cost for a two-hour, unlimited use fare is estimated at $20-million annually.  This would have to be made up by additional subsidy (less than 5% over the current operating subsidy level), by an extraordinary fare increase (about 2% based on $1-billion in annual fare revenue) or by some combination of these.

Modified schemes with more restrictive policies would cost less, but they have drawbacks:

  • a shorter time period such as 90 minutes would catch more riders and trigger second fares;
  • restrictions on where a transfer could be reused would be confusing and would not completely eliminate arguments between staff and riders about transfer validity.

One aspect the report does not mention is the problem of delays and short-turns.  What happens if someone’s trip is pushed beyond the time limitation because of erratic TTC service?  In the case of manual fare inspection, there is at least a chance for a conversation to explain the circumstances, but where the fare check is automated, this is much more difficult.  Should riders be penalized with extra fares because of poor TTC service?

Time-based fares will be essential for regional fare integration.  A rider should be able to “buy” the ability to ride transit and change between routes regardless of which company operates the bus.  There could be a premium for including GO trains in a journey, but it should not be a full additional GO fare.  (This would make system-wide the existing co-fare practice between various 905 transit systems and GO.)  All of this is comparatively simple (from the technology, if not the political perspective) with a smart card fare system, and all but impossible with the TTC’s current transfer rules and fare collection.

Discussions of time-based transfers go back almost a decade.  The report includes excerpts from studies in 2005 and 2009.  The 2003 Ridership Growth Strategy looked at fare-by-distance and at time-of-day-based fare discounts, but not at transfers as short-term passes.

This is not a new idea, but one that until now has always been sandbagged by the combined effects of “we can’t afford it” arguments and an attitude that any fare reduction is “lost money” for the TTC, not an improvement in the system’s quality and attractiveness for riders.

A thorough discussion of this is long overdue and, but for the Ford interregnum, we might have seen this a few years back as part of the TTC’s concept for smart fare cards even without PRESTO.

The shift to time-based transfers, in effect to short-term passes, would complete the TTC’s move away from a one trip, one fare model.  This would increase transit’s attractiveness for casual or irregular users whose travel is penalized, compared to pass holders, by that outdated model.

Mayoral and Council candidates would do well to consider the benefits of this system, and look to implementation in 2015 at the latest.