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Stintz Supports LRT, Maybe (Update 3)

Updated January 23 at 11:00pm:  Links to updated coverage including signs of movement toward a new transit plan have been added.

From the Star:

Tess Kalinowski writes about support building for a new plan.  In this version, a surface-subway LRT on Eglinton frees up money for, possibly, a short extension on Sheppard to Victoria Park and something on Finch West.

It’s too early to tell which combination will win out, and there’s no reference to eastern Scarborough.

Martin Cohn writes about the imminent collapse of the McGuinty-Ford transit deal.  We learn that Queen’s Park was prepared to pay the extra cost of expropriating property to widen Eglinton to compensate for space lost to surface LRT, but this option was rejected by Ford.

A Star Editorial congratulates Karen Stintz for telling us the obvious and urges her to begin a campaign for a subway-surface line on Eglinton.  At this rate, they’ll be casting a bronze of Stintz arm-in-arm with David Miller.

From the Globe:

Marcus Gee writes favourably about a move to bring Eglinton back to the surface.

From the National Post:

Natalie Alcoba writes about the proposed change including comments from supportive Councillors.

Updated January 23 at 5:50 pm:  I recently spoke with Bruce McCuaig, President and CEO of Metrolinx, about this issue.  Notes from our conversation are at the end of this article.

Adrian Morrow reports in today’s Globe that TTC Chair Karen Stintz feels an all-underground Eglinton line should just be what it is, a subway, but that it belongs on the surface as LRT for its outer suburban section.

Karen Stintz argues it makes more sense to put the LRT underground only along the most congested part of the route, in midtown, while building it on the surface in the spacious suburbs.

“If the decision is to go with an LRT, it should be at-grade,” she said. “If there’s a decision to put it underground, it should be a subway.”

That’s an interesting position for someone in the Ford camp because it continues the anti-streetcar rhetoric of the Mayor’s office.  If Eglinton is built as a subway line, the option of converting it to LRT and resurrecting Transit City falls because a major link (and the proposed main shops for the LRT network) would vanish.

As Morrow points out in his article, other systems use a combination of surface and underground alignments (including Boston where downtown streetcars went underground over a century ago) so that a network of surface routes can share a common tunnel in the congested central area while switching to a simpler surface alignment elsewhere.

If Eglinton were to become a subway, the problem of valley crossings won’t disappear and Metrolinx will still face the problem of either going under several valleys, or bridging them with parallel structures.

The real question a subway option begs is the future of the SRT.  If Eglinton becomes a subway, it will not easily through-route to Scarborough Town Centre along the existing alignment, and this will reopen the debate over a Bloor-Danforth extension.

Morrow’s article implies that Stintz may be shifting into the pro-LRT camp, but I am not convinced.  If she were really shifting positions, there would be more talk about revival of some parts of Transit City, notably the Finch West line which, unlike Sheppard East, is completely independent of the Ford subway proposals.

The pending release of Gordon Chong’s report on financing the Sheppard Subway will trigger, finally, a debate on the future of Toronto’s transit technologies at Council.  We will see whether Stintz is truly an LRT supporter, or simply pitching Ford’s “no streetcars” view of the world.

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Metrolinx Plans a Fare Increase

The Metrolinx board will meet on Monday, January 9 to formally approve new, higher fares across the system effective February 18, 2012.  Unlike the previous fare hike of March 20, 2010 which was a flat $0.25 bump in all fares, this round uses tiered increases so that short-distance fares are not as disproportionately penalized.

  • Fares which are now between $4.20 and $5.50 would rise by $0.30 (5.5 to 7.1%)
  • Fares which are now between $5.51 and $7.00 would rise by $0.35 (5.0 to 6.4%)
  • Fares which are now at $7.01 or more would rise by $0.40 (at most 5.7%)

Considering that many GO fares are well above $7 (a one way from Kitchener-Waterloo to Union costs $14.60), that maximum increase amounts to only 2.7%.  Oddly enough, the presentation on the agenda notes that:

A flat increase disproportionately impacts shorter trips and will make any potential future fare integration arrangement with the TTC more difficult to achieve.

The 2012 increase is still disproportionately high for those who might make short journeys.  The idea that this somehow supports future fare integration with the TTC is hard to swallow.

The average GO fare is $6.55 and the average increase, allowing for the effects of discounts, will be about $0.31 (4.7%) .  If this were applied to the KW-Union fare, the increase would be about $0.70.

A chart of page 3 of the presentation makes interesting reading.  It shows various GO cost factors and their rates of increase over the past decade.  By far the highest are diesel fuel and electric power.

Concurrent with the fare increase, GO will change the discount plan for adults and students to encourage their shift from paper passes to Presto.  The discounts of 17.5% and 35% now offered to adult and student passholders respectively will stay in place for Presto fares, but the discounts for a paper pass will drop to 15% and 30%.

Like the TTC, GO faces the dilemma that adding service, even if they carry more riders, drives up costs because on average all services recover only about 80% from the farebox.  Stronger ridership with little service improvement is financially beneficial, but service improvements add to the operating costs.

With constraints on funding from Queen’s Park, passengers will have to dig a little deeper.  This is a major issue for future GO planning as they move to services that will not have as robust a cost recovery rate (two way, all day rail service).  The farebox cannot pay for GO’s evolution from a system that cherry-picks the cheapest of riders to one that provides service as a basic policy for the GTAH.

Metrolinx Board Report

Metrolinx Board Presentation

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Rebuilding A Transit City

The waning fortunes of the Ford regime and its defeat on planning for the eastern waterfront have emboldened many to focus on the resurrection of the Transit City LRT plan.  Advocates despaired as the newly-minted Mayor Ford so unceremoniously and undemocratically cancelled the plan.  We watched as Queen’s Park, terrified of a “Ford Nation” juggernaut decimating Liberal ranks in the 2011 election, caved in with a “Memorandum of Understanding” completely undoing the principles of their own “Big Move” transit scheme.

Now we’re in 2012, rumour has the Liberals wanting a return to the original plan, but fearing a unilateral move without a request from Toronto Council.  Oddly enough, the absence of any Council approval for Ford’s actions, a requirement of the MOU, is never mentioned.  The economics of the all-underground Eglinton “LRT” and the private sector Sheppard subway don’t look encouraging, and Queen’s Park faces widespread constraint in public sector spending.  This is hardly the time to be blowing billions to gold plate projects, to cover them with “gravy” that would invite ridicule in other circumstances.

The left may engineer a vote at Council once the 2012 budget debates are out of the way seeking to resurrect Transit City as it was originally proposed and agreed to.  CodeRedTO has formed with the intent of seeking a way, preferably through compromise, to a revised transportation plan that will keep the best of competing views of our future.  They hope to copy the success of the waterfront’s CodeBlueTO.

Whether this will be possible given the bluster and intransigence shown by the Mayor whenever surface transit is mentioned remains to be seen.  Unlike the Portlands fiasco, a scheme hatched and promoted by the Mayor’s brother Doug, the transportation file is firmly part of Rob Ford’s agenda.  It was in his campaign platform, and the Mayor has often repeated his loathing for “streetcars” and his mantra that the war on the car is over.

Unlike Waterfront Toronto, transit agencies don’t have a string of projects to show off as a mark of their expertise.

The TTC still hasn’t lived down the St. Clair project even though many of its problems were not of the TTC’s making, and “St. Clair” is as much a conjuration of urban myth than today’s experience.  Local transit is more a collection of horror stories, of fights between the system and its customers, rather than of day-to-day triumphs.  Right at the top, the TTC is infected with the premise that transit is for somebody else, for the folks who can’t afford to drive, rather than an essential part of the region’s network for everyone.

Metrolinx does well as far as it goes, but has the comparatively easy job of serving a small, concentrated and select market.  It’s easy to do well when you deliberately ignore millions of potential customers and see high farebox returns as a mark of success without seeing all those trips not taken (because service isn’t provided) as a cost to travellers and to the region.

However the politics works out, a vital challenge for advocates is to avoid an endless debate on thirty years worth of future transit plans, pitched battles between various transit schemes, technologies and alignments.  Taxpayers who must fund whatever we build, and politicians who must get re-elected, need a focussed, clear objective.

The waterfront file was an easy fight in this regard:  a widely-praised, detailed plan already exists that was demonstrably better than what was proposed.  The rivalry between agencies (Waterfront Toronto vs Toronto Port Lands Corporation) and the desire to get quick sales to fund property tax breaks in Toronto exposed the shallow goals and cronyism of the Ford alternative.  The situation with Transit City is much different.

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Proposed Service Changes for February 12, 2012 (Updated)

The TTC has released plans for service cuts in February quite similar to those originally planned for January.

The battle now turns to City Council to restore funding to the TTC’s operating budget so that services can be preserved.

Compared with the original proposals for January 2012, there is one change of note.  The new proposed peak period loading standard for buses is to be increased by only 5% rather than 10%.  This has the effect of removing a number of proposed peak cuts from the list on routes where the reported average load was already close to the old standard.  Where peak loads were not close to the old standard, the proposed service cut remains in place.

With one exception, all of the proposed off-peak service cuts remain because there has been no change in the loading standard against which they are measured.

2012.02.12 Proposed Loading Standards Chart

This chart shows three peak period standards:  the existing Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS) standard, the originally proposed 10% increase for bus routes, and the revised proposal of a 5% increase.  Note that there is no change in the standards for rail modes because these were not modified under RGS.

For services operating every 10 minutes or better, the new off-peak standard moves from a seated load to seated plus 25%.  This has the effect of making the off-peak and peak standards close to each other, and busy routes will feel crowded all day.  There is no provision in the standards for service reliability, and where buses operate on irregular headways, most riders are on the crowded vehicles and experience much worse service than the standards would imply.

The following routes where peak service cuts were originally planned will now retain their existing service levels:

  • 192 Airport Rocket (PM)
  • 7 Bathurst
  • 6 Bay (AM)
  • 11 Bayview / 28 Davisville (AM)
  • 9 Bellamy
  • 17 Birchmount (AM)
  • 42 Cummer (AM)
  • 23 Dawes (AM)
  • 25 Don Mills (AM)
  • 29 Dufferin
  • 32 Eglinton West (AM)
  • 39 Finch East
  • 41 Keele (AM)
  • 54 Lawrence East
  • 57 Midland (AM)
  • 116 Morningside
  • 79 Scarlett Road (AM)
  • 85 Sheppard East (AM)
  • 24 Victoria Park
  • 112 West Mall (AM)
  • 95 York Mills (AM)

For the cynical, this means that at least the service won’t get any worse, but offers little hope for improvements where over crowding is already a daily fact-of-life for riders.

As before, the notable changes fall on off-peak services on busy routes including major streetcar and bus routes.  The intent of RGS was to give better off-peak service through a tighter loading standard to reflect the system’s latent capacity to operate better off-peak service at lower marginal cost than peak service.  Ridership growth came through the additional comfort, such as it was, of the improved service, but the TTC now risks choking off one of its cheaper ways of attracting new riders to the system.

There are some service increases to deal with stronger riding, but these are few beside the long list of service cuts.

There has been no public discussion of the proposed new standards, nor of standards in general including the degree to which the TTC has budget headroom to handle new demand beyond a very modest planned growth over the actual level in 2011.

2012.02.12 Service Changes

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A War on Parking?

Toronto’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee plans to wrestle with the problem of congestion and illegal parking/stopping on downtown streets over the coming months.  Although there is a separate study of the core area, a more general problem is the occupancy of curb lanes by vehicles that should not be there:  parked cars and delivery vehicles.

That blocked curb lane is capacity free for the taking, but the “right to park” seems has been sacrosanct for decades.  A ticket here, a ticket there, but through infrequent enforcement and low fines, motorists, especially commercial ones, shrug off the cost.

In a report to be considered on January 4, 2012, city staff recommend a variety of actions that could fundamentally change the way Toronto uses its road space.

  1. Create new offences for parking, standing or stopping in prohibited areas during rush hour periods defined as 6:00 to 10:00 am and 3:00 to 7:00 pm.  The fine for these offences would be $150, and the amount would not be negotiable in court.  (This is in keeping with a new proposed city practice that establishes set fines a judge must impose for various municipal offences.)
  2. Increase the fine for stopping in a bike lane at any time to $150.
  3. Work with the Toronto Police Service to develop a co-ordinated enforcement strategy.

Current parking fines are $40, and for standing/stopping they are $60.

City staff argue that the problem is not a lack of regulation, but a lack of respect for traffic rules already in place.  Some locations could benefit from extending the “rush hour” beyond its current two-hour window, but scofflaws will still park where they should not and stronger incentives are required to deter them.

In the context of Toronto’s budget constraints, improved enforcement of existing laws is viewed as a potential financial drain.  Rigourous ticketing or, even better, towing, might reduce fine revenue to the point where city loses more money than it gains.  I am not making this up — that is actually the argument put forward by staff.  In effect, if we can’t make money by enforcing the laws, we shouldn’t try.  The benefit of freeing up road capacity is not considered at all.

Higher fines are attractive because they would be both a stronger deterrent and a better revenue source.  However, poor enforcement has always been a problem with Toronto’s traffic policing.  It is easier to send the parking squad out to ticket cars in the Entertainment District or in residential neighbourhoods than to enforce parking and stopping rules when and where traffic effects are severe.  If this attitude does not change, the higher fines will be of little benefit.

The report claims that:

Patrol of rush hour routes on all major arterial roads is standard practice through a highly visible uniform presence, and no statistical evidence suggests that the current level of enforcement is not appropriate.  However, an integrated approach in which current enforcement protocols are augmented with directed patrols including towing and public awareness campaigns to complement the new set fine establishment is a viable option to increase compliance.

Anyone who has seen major streets fouled by vehicles illegally occupying curb lanes knows well that the “current level of enforcement” is far from appropriate.  Indeed, if the current level were working, we would not be reading this report.  On one hand, the report appears to claim that everything is just fine today, but maybe we should try harder tomorrow.  This is hardly a call to action.

The report goes on to say that towing is “common practice”, but again routine observations suggest that the amount falls well below the level needed to strike fear into the hearts of motorists.

The biggest problem, of course, is with commercial vehicles.  A companion report proposes the creation of a new licence for commercial vehicles that would allow them to use some locations not otherwise available.  In effect, this would create a new class of loading space on streets for use only by commercial vehicles.  This class of space would not exist on any streets with bike lanes, and it would be available only outside of the rush hour periods.

That’s the gigantic loophole in the whole scheme.  Unless Toronto is prepared to go after the commercial users during rush hours with frequent ticketing and towing, the burden of this new scheme will fall on only a minority of drivers.  What will the average motorist think of being towed away and heavily fined when a Fedex truck blocks a major intersection with impunity?

The ban on loading areas where bike lanes exist creates two problems.  First, it will become a powerful new argument against the creation of such lanes in any areas with commercial uses that don’t have off-street parking.  Second, in locations explicitly designed to accommodate both loading and bike lanes (such as Roncesvalles Avenue), the ban would be nonsensical.

One option that was rejected was the use of a “Denver Boot” to lock a car in place.  Toronto Police take the position that “booting” would simply lock the traffic obstruction in place without achieving the goal of opening up the curb lane.  This is an odd stance considering the marginal effect that placing a ticket under the windshield wiper will have.  In either case, the goal is to deter people from parking illegally in the first place, and the stronger the penalty, the better the deterrent.  Either by booting or by towing, those who now regard tickets as part of their business expenses must face a much more severe penalty — the loss of their vehicle and its contents for a period of time.

Later in 2012, the Downtown Traffic Operational Study will begin to report on possible ways to improve traffic in the core including schemes such as one/two way options, longer periods for rush hour bans, turn restrictions and traffic signal changes.  This study does not have a webpage yet, and there is no information on its plans nor its public consultation efforts.

Enforcement of any new legal framework is essential, but the tone of the city’s report gives little hope that we would actually see a major change.  The debate at a very car-friendly Public Works Committee will be fascinating because the real issue here is between two sets of motorists.  Transit may benefit, but the larger question is to decide how roads will be used.

There is only so much road space.  We can use it to store vehicles or to move them.  If storage takes priority politically and economically, then congestion is an inevitable result.

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A Look Back: July 1967

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Danforth and Woodbine looking west.

No, it’s not an experimental train of air-electric multiple unit cars, and these are certainly not Bloor streetcars given that the subway had been open for over a year when this was taken.

Russell Carhouse had a pool of old PCCs it used, but there were more in the pool than would fit at Russell and the extras were stored at Danforth Carhouse.  From time to time, cars would be swapped from one location to another, and in this view the front car, 4270, is pulling a stored car along the Danforth enroute to Russell.  (The shorter connection via Coxwell was no longer available.  Cars took the long way around via Danforth, Main, Gerrard and Coxwell to get down to Queen.)

Note the old yellow and blue “Night” stop.

This corner and the vista to the west make an interesting comparison to the present day view on Google Street View.  Even today, the buildings are low rise all the way west, an excellent example of how a subway does not necessarily trigger or require high rise development.

The Royal Bank is still on the northwest corner, but Scotiabank has moved across the street to a new building where National Trust and Kresge’s used to be.  Everything else has changed hands, although the buildings are mostly the same.  Bowling alleys were common in the 60s, but they gradually disappeared.  Billiard halls were not the sort of place respectable teens could hang out.

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A Look Back: February 1966

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Bloor and Bathurst looking east.

The brand new subway will open in about one week, and the Bloor streetcar is about to vanish into history.  Much else in this photo would disappear as well.  The buildings are still there, but their use has completely changed.  The TD bank is now a coffee shop, Danforth Radio is no more, and the Midtown cinema is now the Bloor.

Street signs have changed a lot since the 60s.  Toronto outlawed the overhanging signs decades ago, and the few that remain are grandfathered.  Traffic regulations are spelled out rather than shown as graphics.  A demure “TTC Subway” sign with a small arrow directs passengers who might be looking for the Bloor car to the subway station just up Bathurst Street.

The hydro wiring is still in overhead box structures, and the classic Toronto acorn luminaires had yet to be replaced by sodium vapour lighting on higher poles.  There’s a phone booth on the sidewalk and a pre-Astral garbage bin.

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How Many Buses Does Toronto Need?

Toronto’s budget debate for 2012 brought many issues of transit financing into the open thanks to an ill-considered proposal by Mayor Ford to cut transit operating subsidies by 10%.  Recently the TTC put off implementing service cuts originally planned for January 8, 2012, pending a decision by Council on the final version of the budget and the level of TTC subsidy.

However, the TTC’s Operating Budget is not the only one that is constrained by City spending policies.  On the Capital Budget, the total projected City borrowing required to pay for all of the projects the TTC would like to undertake exceeds a self-imposed target on total City debt.  To bring the 10-year debt projection within that target, the TTC restructured its capital plans.

Some projects were postponed beyond the 10-year window so that some or all of the spending (and associated debt) did not count, or might be offset by future improvements in subsidy programs from other levels of government.  Other projects were modified in scope or cancelled.

I discussed the amended Capital Budget in a previous article, but the current debate about Service Standards also has a capital component.  Among the cutbacks on the capital side were a purchase of new buses and the provision of storage space to hold these vehicles.

An order for 134 new buses (of which 26 were for “contingency” to handle unexpected growth in demand) has been cancelled along with the provision of temporary yard space.  Before Transit City was proposed, the TTC had planned to build another bus garage to accommodate its growing fleet.  However, Transit City (plus the opening of the Spadina subway extension) would replace some existing bus service with rail, and reduce the total bus fleet requirement.

Even with a short-term pre-Transit City bulge, only temporary storage would have been needed.  However, now that much of Transit City has been either cancelled or pushed off into the next decade, there will be continued pressure on the bus fleet and on the need for storage space.

  • The Spadina extension will not open until late 2015.
  • The Sheppard subway, if it is actually built, will cover only the portion of the Sheppard East bus services west of Kennedy.  Service east to Meadowvale will still be provided by buses.  The original opening date for the Sheppard LRT was 2013.
  • Finch West will continue to be served by buses, not an LRT line that originally would have opened in 2013.
  • The proposed extension of the SRT to Malvern was originally planned to open in 2015.  In the revised plan, this extension has been dropped.

In a briefing note, TTC’s Chief General Manager Gary Webster states that the capital cost of restoring the bus order and storage for the vehicles could be up to $93-million.  However, in the TTC’s budget presentation, this number is stated as $73m (see Shortfall Reduction Plan on page 52).  If the order is reinstated, the quantity of buses will be smaller by at least the contingency of 26 according to staff comments at the TTC’s last meeting.

The challenge in this whole process is to understand just how big the bus fleet should be given the robust state of TTC ridership.  For this we must first go back to the bus fleet plan as it existed in 2006.

There were two competing views of the future for ridership.  In one version, growth would continue at just over 1% per year following a long trend of the past decade.  In another version, growth would be more robust at 3% per year.  The bus fleet plan had been based on the lower rate, but if the stronger trend prevailed, the TTC would need more buses sooner.  A new garage would be needed by 2012/13 even at the low growth rate, possibly by 2010 if the fleet grew faster than expected.

Indeed, stronger growth is exactly what arrived.  On the original projection, ridership was expected to grow from 436m to 469m between 2006 and 2011.  At the higher rate, it would reach 505m.  The actual number we now know will be about 499m.  The accelerated growth began just after the Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS) rolled out, a policy the current crop at the TTC would undo in the name of “efficiency”.

By 2010, the fleet planning had to take into account new factors including the proposed Transit City LRT lines and the Spadina extension.  Transit City was expected to displace 168 buses between 2014 and 2019, and a further 30 would be replaced by the Spadina extension in 2016.  This led to a plan in which there would be no bus purchases for several years, and the total fleet would actually shrink through attrition back to 2008 levels, well within the capacity of existing garages.

By early December 2011, the active bus fleet stands at 1,820 vehicles for a scheduled peak service of 1,520.  Requirements for 2012 and beyond will be very different depending on the service quality and ridership we assume in making fleet plans.

  • Service actually operated in 2011 was based on a budgeted ridership of only 487m, not the 499m Toronto actually achieved.  This is one reason why there are some routes already over the supposed loading “standards” — there is no budget to operate all of the service the standards would dictate.  Conversely, the planned cuts on some routes are impractical and this situation is tacitly admitted by the proposal to retain service on “busy” routes.
  • If the RGS service standards are retained, then the planned peak cutbacks on major bus routes cannot go forward.  In the short term, this can be handled with the existing fleet, but more buses will be needed (by the TTC’s projection) in fall 2013.
  • Multi-year projections in the TTC budget (see TTC Final Budget report for 2012 at Page 7) start from a base of 503m in 2012 and rise to 523m by 2015.  The base itself is less than 1% above 2011’s projected 499m, and the cumulative growth rate is about 1%.  By contrast, ridership is running over 4% above last year, and an ongoing rate of 3% should be easily attained provided that there is sufficient capacity and no economic catastrophe to drive down demand overall.

If we take 499m for 2011 and increase at 3% per annum, this would give a cumulative increase of about 12.5% to 2015.  In turn, the bus fleet would have to grow from 1820 to 2045.

The TTC has not published a detailed fleet plan including such an analysis, but this is as important to the future of Toronto’s transit as the fantasy subway plans.  The capital budget does not include any projection of funding needed to sustain strong transit growth, and the operating budget assumes a much lower rate of growth than we actually see.  The situation is very much like the one back in 2006.

Delaying or cancelling the implementation of Transit City created a crisis in the bus system’s ability to serve growing demand.  The Commission’s response is merely to cut service and ignore future problems with meaningless, low-balled projections of ridership, fleet requirements and operating costs.

Most of the transit Commissioners don’t want to entertain these debates because to do so counters the received wisdom that transit funding must be cut no matter what.  They might even have to admit that the course they advocate — of limiting the growth of service and capacity — is truly a “service cut”, certainly a reduction in the attractiveness and quality, such as it is, of the system, not merely an “efficiency”.

This type of “planning” badly serves Council and the citizens of Toronto because we don’t know what the alternatives are and the implications of various future paths.  Indeed, we risk hobbling the TTC with reduced service, fleet and staff, and creating a hole out of which a more-enlightened administration must first dig just to undo past errors.

Postscript:

In a Briefing Note to the City’s Budget Committee, the TTC advises that it is contemplating the purchase of 150 articulated buses in 2014-16.  If Council decides to retain higher service quality in 2012, the need for these buses could be accelerated.

Seven routes (not named) would convert to artic operation.  The fleet replacement ratio the TTC would use is 1.35:1.

The anticipated annual saving would be $60k/bus mainly in the labour cost of drivers.  The annualized saving with the 150-bus fleet fully in operation would be $9m.  Savings from this scheme have already been built into the multi-year budget projections.