by

So You Want To Be A Transit Commissioner (Update 2)

Updated June 21, 2012 at 7:15 pm

Two media reports indicate that the City Clerk has taken umbrage at comments in this article, and I feel compelled to reply.  As a general note, my quarrel was primarily with the TTC’s representative, not with the Clerk’s staff.

From Inside Toronto:

Recent information sessions held for aspiring civilian TTC commissioners were always intended as informal drop-in sessions rather than organized meetings, said a spokesperson for the city on Wednesday.

Martin Herzog characterized the four sessions, two of which took place Tuesday in Scarborough and North York, as an opportunity for individuals interested in applying to join the TTC board to get further information about the application process.

Herzog was responding to criticism that emerged this week on how the sessions were run.

“The sessions were never designed to be meetings with formal presentations,” said Herzog, the city’s acting manager for governance structures and corporate performance. “There was no formula for this.”

And later:

Online criticism of the information sessions is completely inaccurate, said Herzog.

“There’s some stuff trickling around full of factual errors,” he said.

There are no “factual errors” in my article, and methinks the Clerk doth protest too much.  Whether it was the original intent or not, Monday’s “drop in” turned into a 90-minute Q&A with the TTC’s Vince Rodo that had no prepared content, but lots of remarks that left a bad taste in my mouth particularly when coupled with earlier comments from a member of Council who sits on the Civic Appointments Committee.

As I reported, the Clerk’s Office had prepared a briefing package for those who attended and it contained a great deal of well-organized material culled from the City’s website.

From NOW:

Joe Borowiec of the city manager’s office dismisses the suggestion the external headhunting process has made outreach to the general public redundant. He says Munro misunderstood the intent of the public sessions, and that they were intended to be drop-in sessions rather than formal meetings.

Borowiec says that the city manager’s office is required to open the process to the public and insists that that all applications will be taken seriously.

“There’s no reason why someone who walks in off the street and picks up a form would not be a successful applicant,” Borowiec says. “We’re not looking to limit it to only corporate directors. We’re looking to reach out and communicate with anybody and everybody out there because we don’t know where those possible candidates are.”

That’s not what Rodo (the seeker of “Barons of industry”)  said, and it’s not what the specifications for the job state.  If Council actually intends director-level experience as a “nice to have”, not a “must have”, then they need to say that explicitly in the job ad.

Meanwhile, in answer to all who have asked, I will not be applying.  Becoming a Commissioner would severely compromise my ability to comment independently and to interact with various agencies and my now-peers in the journalistic/blogging community.  Much more can be achieved as an independent external voice.

Continue reading →

by

Congestion? Where’s the Congestion?

Recently we have heard a lot about congestion and its supposed causes.  The single largest ones, of course, are the lack of investment in transit and the continuation of building an auto-oriented GTA.  There are more people (and cars) hunting for space on a limited amount of roadway, and nowhere near enough capacity to handle all of the demand.

Transit will help, partly, eventually, but the sad fact is that development and travel patterns encouraged by auto-oriented planning cannot simply be reassigned onto a transit network.  There is no 905 equivalent of “King and Bay” to which we can conveniently funnel thousands of riders, let alone a network of routes focused on such a location from century-old travel patterns.

We can try, but there are limits, and the brave statements by Metrolinx about reducing congestion are at best optimistic.  Even Metrolinx acknowledges that their 25-year network, fully built out, will only keep congestion (or more accurately auto trips) at the current level, not reduce it.  Moreover, reductions in corridors where transit makes inroads will be offset by increases in travel where transit is not competitive.

In another thread, a discussion sprang up of problems related to congestion and to a list of the 10 worst intersections in Toronto.  Some have the temerity to point out that none of these has a streetcar line anywhere near it, and indeed a few are served by the Sheppard subway, that panacea for all our transportation ills.

To keep comments on this thread together, and to leave the original thread for its purpose  (Citizen Commissioners on the TTC), I will move the congestion-related comments here.

by

TTC v. Metrolinx (Again): Who’s In Charge Here? (Update 2)

Updated June 8, 2012 at 11:00am:  My comments about the Commission’s action appear in an article on the Torontoist website.

Updated June 1, 2012 at 9:15am:  The motions passed at the TTC meeting of May 30 have been added at the end of this article.  The Commission took a much more conciliatory view of their relationship with Metrolinx than the staff report.  I will be writing about this situation in a separate article.

The original May 29 article follows below.

The Supplementary Agenda for the May 30, 2012 TTC meeting includes a report “LRT Projects in Toronto — Project Delivery”.

This report deals with the proposed transfer of responsibility for the Transit City LRT projects on Eglinton, Sheppard, Finch and the SRT replacement from the TTC to Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario.

As TTC reports go, this one is rather oddly worded in that it:

  • asks the Commission to “note” a number of factors,
  • requests that provincial agencies respond to various issues,
  • sets an October 31, 2012 deadline for the transfer of project control, and
  • proposes that the TTC’s own staff now dedicated to the LRT projects be redeployed internally.

In effect, the TTC is taking their ball and going home rather than play with the guys from down the block.  This suggests a strained relationship between agencies notwithstanding the soothing words we hear so often, and a sense that a fed up TTC is telling Queen’s Park to get lost.

From a purely political and administrative point of view, Queen’s Park holds all the cards because they are paying almost the entire cost (with a small Ottawa contribution to Sheppard) for these projects.  It’s their money, and they get to say how it will be spent.  Whether it will be spent wisely, and how the projects might fare with the TTC on the sidelines, these are questions that won’t be answered for years until we see the results.

Continue reading →

by

Queen’s Quay West Construction Schedule Announced

Waterfront Toronto has announced the schedule for reconstruction of Queen’s Quay between Spadina and Bay based on the long-awaited design by West 8 + DTAH.

Stage I: Summer 2012 to Summer 2013

The first stage concentrates on utilities and on the streetcar right-of-way.  Works include:

  • Bell will install new duct banks and cabling during June and July 2012.
  • Toronto Hydro will install new splicing chambers and cabling to replace existing worn-out infrastructure.  This work begins in July 2012 and will run for a year.
  • A new sanitary sewer will be built in three stages (Rees to York, Bay to York, Lower Spadina to HTO West), and new storm sewers will be built in two areas (York to Bay, 350 Queen’s Quay to Rees).  This will replace existing aging sewers.
  • The TTC right-of-way will be completely rebuilt from the portal west of Bay to just east of Spadina.  The new alignment is slightly different from the existing one, and will include wider platforms (2.4m).  Streetcar service will end on July 29, 2012, but demolition of the right-of-way will not start until the fall with the new corridor to be completed by late spring 2013 when the line will be electrified and streetcar service will resume.  The TTC will also be replacing the track in the Bay Street tunnel (new rails are already in place in the tunnel).
  • During construction a replacement bus service will operate for route 509.  The service will run westbound on Queen’s Quay and eastbound on Lake Shore Blvd.  The connection to Union Station will be via north on York, east on Front, south on Yonge.  While Front is impassible due to construction, the route will be via York, Adelaide, Bay and Front to Yonge.
  • Also in 2012 (as previously reported), there will be interim improvements to the pedestrian and cycling infrastructure from Bay to Jarvis to better link the eastern waterfront to the central portion.

Stage II:   Summer 2013 to Early 2014

The second stage concentrates on the north side of Queen’s Quay to reconfigure the roadway, rebuild the sidewalks and install tree pits ready for planting (which will be timed to benefit the trees even if the civil works are ready earlier).

The TTC will rebuild the intersection and loop at Spadina & Queen’s Quay over three weekends (one each for the intersection, the loop exit on Spadina and the loop entry on Queen’s Quay).  Streetcar service will be suspended for these weekends.

During this work, all road traffic will use the south side (existing eastbound) lanes on Queen’s Quay.  When the new north side is ready, traffic will be switched to the new lanes.  A new traffic crossover with signals will be installed west of Spadina so that eastbound cars can get from the existing lanes south of the streetcar right-of-way to the new north-side alignment.  Eventually, when it is time to rebuild the section from Spadina to Bathurst, this crossover will be eliminated because all motor traffic will be north of the streetcar lanes.

Stage III:  Early 2014 to Late 2014

The south side lanes and the sidewalk will be demolished.  They will be replaced with a new expanded promenade and with the Martin Goodman Trail (bike path).  Planting of the new double row of trees planned for this part of the street may be deferred to spring 2015 to ensure that the trees will survive.

General

The cost of this project is about $110-million of which $90m comes from Waterfront Toronto, $10m from the TTC and the balance from various utilities.  Waterfront Toronto will lead the construction work so that all sub-projects are co-ordinated and the disruption to any one part of Queen’s Quay is kept at a minimum.  There has already been extensive consultation with business and residents, and this will continue through the project to head off problems as they arise.

Sidewalks on both sides of Queen’s Quay will be laid with granite cobbles in a two-tone mosaic with a maple-leaf outlined in the pattern.  The total number of cobbles will be about 2.3-million with about 40% on the north side and 60% on the wider south side promenade.  Granite curbs will be used at the sidewalk edges.

Two public meetings will go into this project in more detail.

Wednesday, June 6 at Harbourfront Centre, Brigantine Room, 7-9 pm.  This meeting will include presentations on many projects underway in different parts of the waterfront.

Saturday, June 9 at Waterpark Place Lobby, 20 Bay Street, 10am-2pm.  This meeting will show detailed construction plans for the various phases and is intended for residents and businesses who want to see the final design and ask detailed questions.

Some information and images are available on Waterfront Toronto’s website.  The Fact Sheet contains details additional to the summary above.

by

Analysis of 36 Finch West for November 2011 & March 2012 (Part I) (Updated)

Updated May 28 at 17:35:  The graphs showing the “percent ontime” information have been updated to clarify some of the headings, and to add summary pages showing the percentages separate from the other displays.  Commentary about this has been added to the end of the article.

We hear a lot from the TTC about “customer service”.  A fundamental part of the TTC’s “product” is the actual movement of people to and fro in the city.  Clean vehicles, friendly staff, detailed and accurate web information — these are all part of the package.  But without reliable service at the bus and streetcar stops, the rest is window dressing, an elaborate stage set for a theatre without a show, a supermarket with stale food on half-empty shelves.

In many past articles, I have reviewed the operation of various streetcar lines, but it’s worth looking at some of the major bus routes too.  These are routes with extremely frequent service and heavy passenger demands.  Some are candidates for LRT.  How do they operate?  What is their service quality given that they are unconstrained by tracks and overhead?  Over the next few months, I hope to review a number of routes to see their similarities and differences.

This is a long and rather technical article, but I wanted to include a fair amount of detail as an alternative to simply saying “the service is screwed up”.  This affects how the service is operated, how it is perceived by riders, how it might be analyzed by the TTC, and most importantly that a catch-all explanation such as “traffic congestion” is too simplistic a response to complaints.

Continue reading →

by

TTC Meeting Preview: May 30, 2012

The Toronto Transit Commission will meet on May 30, 2012.

CEO’s Report

The scoreboard which begins the CEO’s Report includes the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) about which I have written elsewhere.  Subway performance continues to be monitored against schedule ±3 minutes 96% of the time.  It remains unclear how a systemic delay — where many trains are one or more headways out of place but service is otherwise well-spaced — affects this metric.  Surface routes aim to be within 3 minutes of the scheduled headway 65% of the time for buses and 70% of the time for streetcars.  Considering the headway on which all major routes operate, 3 minutes represents close to if not more than one headway, and much service will easily hit that target even though the rider sees disorganized bunching service with many short turns.  I will address this problem in separate articles looking in detail at specific routes’ behaviour.

Riding is up relative both to actual results in 2011 and to budget in 2012 (see following section on additional service to handle growth), and the offpeak increase is running ahead of peak as it has for some years.

The top source of complaints continues to be “Other” with “Surface Delays” and “Discourtesy” coming next in that order.  The TTC has initiated a rolling survey of customer satisfaction, but it has not yet accumulated enough data to produce a metric that shows a trend over time.  One big challenge of “customer service” is that some initiatives have an effect at limited points — clean and well-maintained washrooms may be appreciated by those who use them, but they don’t make any difference to overall service for most riders.  Pervasive changes — more frequent and regularly spaced buses, improved station cleaning and escalator/elevator maintenance — require changes in how the system thinks about its operation as a whole, not in discrete chunks that are easily targeted. Continue reading →

by

Streetcars in the Eastern Waterfront (Well, Track Anyhow) (Update 3)

Updated May 25, 2012:

Port Lands

Waterfront Toronto’s public meeting on May 24 drew an audience of about 300.  The presentation droned on for well over its allotted time, and consisted mainly of reading through a Powerpoint deck without benefit of a working laser pointer to highlight items of interest on the screen.  Oh well.  No marks for Management Presentation 101.

The content was more important than the style, and what came through loud and clear was that planning by bean counters has replaced planning with a vision for a great waterfront.

Council may have stopped the Fords in their tracks last fall, but Waterfront Toronto is clearly working to a penny-pinching agenda.  This shows up in two major ways.

First, although the most recent plan (see page 12 of the presentation, right side is the newest) attempts to create more greenspace on the water’s edge, it has lost the magic of the revitalized mouth of the Don.  The drawing still shows a river meander, but you have to read the text to learn that the outermost part of this, west of Cherry Street, would not actually be built until and only if the Lafarge Concrete plant decides to close up shop.  Until then, the mouth of the Don will be the Lafarge slip.  In the original plan, the river mouth was north of the slip and could be built independently of the plant.

Second, transit seems to have fallen off of the map.  Something will be built, maybe, eventually, although for the near term we must make do with buses, possibly on a right-of-way.  Waterfront Toronto is obsessed with the problems of connecting to Union Station (and associated costs as discussed elsewhere on this site), but seems to forget that an alternate option from the east end of the harbour, certainly from the Port Lands, is to go north via Cherry to King.  Some of the staging of upcoming projects could support this, but bits are missing, and there is little sense that anyone really is looking beyond a bus route here and there.

Neither of these situations went down particularly well with the attendees.  Examples of “transformational initiatives” (for which you absolutely positively must not ever dream they might mean “casino”) from other cities are included (Page 18), but as one speaker remarked, it is the river that is the “transformation”, the jewel of the project.  Indeed, Waterfront Toronto can hardly stop themselves from talking about the international recognition the design received, a design which depends on the river mouth, now relegated to a “phase 5, maybe” status.

Many spoke about the need for good transit to the site.  The staging (Page 25) could support a through LRT service, but only partly in the early years.  Stage 1 includes realignment of Cherry and Queen’s Quay, but it does not include a new Cherry Street bridge over the Don (essential for an LRT line running south to the Keating Channel), nor does it include widening of the Cherry underpass at the rail corridor (essential for connecting north to the Cherry Street streetcar tracks to be installed later this year).

Adrian Morrow in the Globe wrote about the Tiny Perfect Streetcar Line in today’s Globe including the general problem that transit to real development in the waterfront is not on most politicians’ agendas while transit to phantom developments in the suburbs gets no end of attention.  One big problem is that Metrolinx wants nothing to do with waterfront transit and regards this as a local initiative to be paid for on the City’s dime.  I cannot help wondering just how Queen’s Park justifies its investment in many proposals for the 905 that will serve far less development than the waterfront LRT network, but leaves Toronto high and dry.

I may seem unduly harsh on Waterfront Toronto given the pressures they are under from the Monorail Mania at City Hall, but there is too much of a sense of making do, of a loss of emphasis on what will make the eastern waterfront a great place, not just an OK suburb of downtown.  Particularly notable in the presentation was the absence of any explanation of how these lands would relate to nearby existing and future developments, a sense of place in the larger city.  A big problem was that the presenter, a senior Waterfront Toronto exec, didn’t seem really thrilled about what he was showing us, but instead focussed on how the plan saved money, how it addressed the Ford’s desire for more and faster development.  He was playing to the wrong crowd.

The new overall plan for the Port Lands is broken into three stages based on gradual expansion of flood protection that would allow a wider set of land uses in various areas.

Phase 1 (Page 20) creates a spillway parallel to the Don Roadway so that a flood from the river would not inundate lands west of Cherry Street.  This frees up the first set of lands for redevelopment.

Phase 2 (Page 21) raises the Don Roadway itself to create a berm that protects the Film Studio district.

Phase 3 (Page 22) builds the new river mouth and associated parkland/spillway so that land between Cherry and the Don Roadway can be developed.

The presentation notes that the amount of land available for development is larger in the revised plan, but a number of speakers pointed out that by Waterfront Toronto’s own admission, the real estate industry cannot absorb all of the available lands for decades.  Whether there is any value from the “new” land is unclear, although if this falls within, say, Phase 1, it would accelerate revenue from the overall project.

The whole issue was to go to Council imminently, but this has been put off until the fall so that details of how the financing might work can be figured out, and the plan can undergo an external review.  The next public session will likely be in August with the, in effect, final version of the proposal that will go to Council.  If Council approves the new scheme, this will trigger a roughly 18-month process to amend the approved Environmental Assessment.

Central Waterfront

The Waterfront Toronto Board has approved a project to rebuild the sidewalk and bike path (Martin Goodman trail) from Bay to Jarvis Street this summer.  The work will also  include reconstruction of the aging Jarvis Slip’s dock wall and revision of its anchoring system to provide clearance for new telecomm and hydro ductwork that will serve the eastern waterfront.  Some road refinishing will be done to tidy up Queen’s Quay if the budget permits.

The intent is to provide a link to the new developments on Queen’s Quay east that have been isolated from the stylistic changes further west and especially the major redesign of the road to begin this summer.

Governance

The CEO’s Report includes updates on all major projects at Waterfront Toronto (I tend to focus on transit and related issues).  One of the most important notes in this month’s report is:

The province has indicated that it is tracking for a spring/summer approvals process for Waterfront Toronto’s long-standing request for increased operational governance. A scoped consent package has been negotiated with the three orders of government which would provide Waterfront Toronto the ability to borrow, create subsidiaries, receive revenues and encumber its assets. Once provincial approval has been obtained, the federal government will seek its respective approvals likely in the late summer/fall.  (Page 6)

Several projects, including the transit infrastructure for the eastern waterfront, will require new funding sources among which may be new mechanisms within Waterfront Toronto itself.  At the Board meeting, CEO John Campbell was optimistic that senior governments would agree to proposed changes, although he noted that Queen’s Park was particularly sensitive on the matter of creating subsidiaries in the wake of the ORNGE scandal.

Continue reading →

by

Looking Back: Moving House on a Grand Scale

March 31, 1972, brought an unusual sight to downtown Toronto.  An 1822 house, originally the home of Sir William Campbell, sixth Chief Justice of Upper Canada, moved from Adelaide and Frederick Streets in the old Town of York to its current site at Queen and University.  It was the Town’s oldest remaining building.  (Although The Grange behind the Art Gallery on Dundas Street dates from 1817, it was built out in the countryside, far from the few blocks of the original town.)  Campbell House sat in an area now booming with condo development and rejuvenated warehouses, but then a run-down district where an old house just got in the way of a parking lot expansion.

As I write this, we are celebrating Victoria Day weekend.  Victoria herself was only 3 when Campbell House was built.

Moving the house was quite a challenge as the following photographs show.

Looking back at these pictures, I was amazed at how close the crowd following the move was to the building. In these days of Health & Safety Officers (with liability lawyers in close pursuit), the crowd would be kept back for blocks.

Continue reading →

by

The High Cost of Going Underground(?) (Updated)

Updated May 17 at 11:00 pm:  Richard Gilbert has responded to this article.  Rather than leave his remarks and my replies in the comment stream, I have placed them at the end of this article.

Urban consultant and former city Councillor Richard Gilbert has an article on the Globe & Mail’s blog titled “How Toronto’s transit plan takes taxpayers for a ride”.  The article decries the high cost of the Eglinton LRT and in particular the high effective subsidy per rider of the capital cost of burying much of the line.

The basic premise, the questions behind the article are sound, but the methodology is not.  This leads to a substantial overstatement of the per passenger subsidy for the capital construction.

At the outset, I must emphasize that my intent is not to attack Richard Gilbert himself, but rather to comment on the pitfalls involved in making comparisons between different systems, and in the use of generic formulas in planning.  In many of the critiques I have written over the years, the hardest  part has been to delve into the underlying assumptions and methodologies (themselves often hidden away in background papers).  These may “prove” something, if only that an author found the number he wanted to find and looked no further.

Gilbert writes:

According to Metrolinx, the provincial agency charged with implementing the transit improvements, the Eglinton line is to cost $4.9-billion (an amount under review). It is forecast to carry 5,400 passengers per hour in the peak direction in 2031, eleven years after it is scheduled to begin operation.

This peak rate is usually associated with an annual total of some 17 million rides. The annualized capital cost of the line is about $300-million per year ($4.9-billion amortized over 35 years at 5 per cent).

Thus the capital cost per ride will be an extraordinary $17.50 ($300-million divided by 17 million). This will be the effective subsidy per ride if the fares to be paid roughly cover the operating costs.

Central to this calculation is the translation of a peak point/hour demand of 5,400 to an annual ridership of 17-million.  The Eglinton route, like many transit lines in Toronto, is not a commuter line feeding unidirectional demand into one point like a GO train.  It is a route (actually several bus routes) serving an overlapping set of demands.  Many riders on the line do not contribute to the peak point count — a peak measured westbound to Yonge in the AM peak will not include any riders using the west end of the line, nor will it include any counter-peak traffic.  Many riders will not contribute to the peak hour counts — the ratio of off-peak riding on the TTC is much higher than on GO Transit even where all-day service is provided.

Any claim that a single peak point’s ridership can be translated to an annual figure will be inaccurate because it ignores the characteristics of the line as a whole. Continue reading →

by

Good News Far Too Much of the Time

The TTC has now launched a public-facing version of an internal campaign pitching its new organization and attitude to serving riders under the rubric Modernizing the TTC.  The same information appeared in a poster recently issued throughout the organization.

From a service delivery point of view, the key pages are the 25 Key Performance Indicators and the Daily Customer Service Report.

The “KPIs” are intended to give ongoing information about ridership, service quality and station conditions including availability of escalators and elevators.

Strangely enough, the daily report is not available to the public, only a snapshot from March 19 on which — surprise! — everything is just fine, thank you very much.  This is precisely what has been wrong with the TTC for so many years — they are addicted to hearing good news.

Three changes are badly needed.

1.  Put real time data online

It’s all very well to know service ran so well two months ago, but I want to know how these indices are tracking today and over recent weeks.  Riders who waited while full buses zoomed past their stops, or were thrown off of short-turning streetcars, need to see what’s happening now and whether the TTC’s stats reflect their actual experience.

2.  Put more detail online

While the system as a whole may meet its targets, that does not reflect actual rider experience at a route-by-route level or at various times of the day.  The public information should be subdivided by route so that riders (and members of Council) can check against their local services rather than system averages, and the stats should be subdivided by time of day to distinguish busy peak periods from quiet evenings or weekends.

3.  Collect meaningful statistics

The statistics and targets now reported by the TTC have been with us in one form or another in places like the Chief General Manager’s Report (now the CEO’s Report) for some time.  Everything looks rosy until one thinks about what data drives the KPIs and whether it is really meaningful.

Subway and surface operations are measured by the proportion of trips that operate within three minutes of the scheduled headway.  It’s good to see the TTC moving away from “on time” as a measure of service quality because in most cases customers only care that vehicles/trains are regularly and reliably spaced.  They couldn’t care less if they are “on time” except in cases of wide headways.

However, if a service is scheduled to run every 4 minutes, this means that any headway from 1 minute to 7 minutes is acceptable for the statistics.  Even worse, a parade of vehicles each 1 minute apart meets the target except for the first in the queue where, presumably, there is a large gap.  A parade of 10 cars would be 90% “on time” because 9 of the 10 would be within 3 minutes of their scheduled headway.

With uneven headways more passengers accumulate in the wider gaps.  What most riders see is the train, bus or streetcar that arrives with a heavy load after a long wait, and they may not even be able to board.

The KPI needs to be revised so that vehicle bunching cannot produce statistics showing an acceptable quality of service.  As things stand, it would be easy to achieve a target of 2/3 of trips within an acceptable headway and still have quite ragged service especially on “frequent” routes.

Where headways are wider (some off-peak services and especially those with branches), on time performance is much more important.  Riders would like to plan their travel based on when a bus is supposed to appear rather than having to face waits of 20 minutes or more.

At a route level, an index is required to track service quality not  just at the route’s peak point, but at termini and common short-turn points.  Some routes have multiple peak points, and reporting only on one of them can misrepresent what many riders actually experience.

A sad commentary on the reliability of the SRT is that its service target is to operate 80% of scheduled trips.  Whether this will happen in a snowy winter remains to be seen.

Elevators and escalators are supposed to be 97% available.  However, I understand that this status is of about 9am and does not reflect whatever outages may occur through the day.  Moreover, devices that are out of service for maintenance don’t count against the target.  Unfortunately, a rider who cannot use stairs only cares that they cannot use their station.

As of May 16, 2012, there are seven escalators listed as out of service by the TTC not including devices at Union Station affected by the second platform project.  From a rider’s point of view, these are just as unavailable as a bus or streetcar that shows up after a long gap or hopelessly late.  They are a service that is expected but not available.

Outages for planned maintenance should be included in the stats, even if as a separate category.  Availability stats should be based on all-day operations, not once-a-day surveys.  (Note that it is not necessary to physically visit every station, but simply to log trouble calls that come in.)

When I spoke with the TTC about the fundamental problems in their statistics and goals, they freely admit that these just are not good enough.  However, management and Commissioners are now trumpeting a scorecard of success just at a time when they really need to set the standards higher.  All those green checkmarks will change at least to yellow if not red when the bar is raised.  TTC management and staff must be ready to accept the need for improvement against goals and measurements that reflect what passengers actually see day-to-day.