by

A Sudden Surge of Fare Evasion?

To everyone’s great surprise, the TTC recently discovered that fare evasion is a rising problem on the transit system, according to reports in the Globe and the Star.  Is Toronto becoming a city of transit cheaters, or is something more subtle at work here?

Over many years, when the subject of fare evasion came up at Commission meetings, the standard line from management was that Toronto has a very low evasion rate compared to other cities.  Indeed, a 2007 report on the “Business Case” for Smartcards talks about Toronto’s low fare evasion rate and the role new fare technologies might play.  Counterfeit media are considered to be more of a problem than evasion, and the TTC worries that Smartcards for concession fares may be abused at automatic entrances.

The low evasion rate was routinely cited as a reason that the TTC did not aggressively pursue fare inspections because the cost was greater than the potential revenue gain.

Times have changed.  Finding “waste” is the flavour of the day.  Moreover, as the stories linked here make clear, this debate is in the larger context of the TTC’s Special Constable force.  In 2010, the City Budget Committee and Council directed the TTC to reduce this force, and the Toronto Police Service has taken over their function for Criminal Code and other aspects of policing.  This issue came up again in the 2011 Budget, and a City report gives the background information.

It is quite clear that TTC fare inspectors do not require the full powers formerly accorded to Special Constables, but TTC management is exploiting the current financial situation and calls for crackdowns on freeloaders as a wedge to reopen the question of having their own, dedicated force.

Strangely, we find that fare evasion, long considered a non-issue in Toronto, is suddenly a problem.  Have the numbers really changed, or is the jump from past results simply the effect of better enforcement?

Recently, I was riding the Queen car and was asked to show my pass.  This is the first time in over a decade that this has happened.  All door loading is regularly used on Queen, and the occasional freeloader will hop on for a short trip — after all, with almost no inspection, the odds of getting caught riding for five minutes is quite small.

According to the Star’s article, transfer fraud has jumped.  TTC transfer enforcement was simplified some years back by the inclusion of a prominent day number on all transfers, and different colours for each day.  However, a parallel evolution was for operators to avoid confrontation with passengers over fares.  Indeed, even with polite riders, when 30 people all board in a crowd, checking all of their fares is not easy.

For those who do pay fares, we know that over half of all adult trips are done using a Metropass, and there tend to be more passes used on frequent downtown routes because the population of heavy transit users is greatest there.  This begs the question of what the evasion rate is among those passengers who don’t have a pass, those for whom there is an incentive to cheat.

The Queen car’s 50,000 daily riders represent annual revenue of about $30-million, but over half of this will be from passes and various forms of discount media.  If the TTC is really losing $1.2m annually from transfer fraud, this is a large proportion of the riders using transfers.  Catching them should be like the proverbial fish in a barrel, but two fare inspectors working the entire line won’t bring in a big haul.

The move to any new fare system with any kind of self-service validation (e.g. Presto) requires that the system be enforced, and even the TTC acknowledges that it should start more aggressive fare inspection on the streetcar routes, at least, as a prelude to the introduction of the new fleet where all-door loading will be standard.

Oddly enough, the TTC still wants to keep its Special Constables (or whatever they are to be called) deployed on the subway system, with a few left to handle the Queen car on weekdays.  That’s not a scheme designed to catch fare cheats, but simply a continuation of the way the Special Constables have been used since their inception.  If the TTC really wants to improve their haul of fares, then Special Constables should actually spend more time on this activity.

Otherwise, it’s hard to believe that “fare evasion” is anything more than the latest excuse to perpetuate the TTC’s own security service.

by

TTC’s “State of Good Repair” Funding Crunch

In past articles, I have reported the growth in TTC capital spending and the concurrent problem in funding for the system.  Over coming months, the City of Toronto and its agencies, including the TTC, will struggle to create a viable financial plan for 2012 and beyond.  This will include a five-year projection on both the operating and capital sides, an exercise that will (or should) frighten those concerned with the survival of public services.  However, it should also bring some discipline to year-over-year budgets and project approvals by demanding better accuracy in projections and clear justification for “surprise” projects in the out years.

The TTC capital budget is a formidable document with details in two binders of over 1,600 pages.  The summary form is tens of pages long.  Parts of the public presentation are so dense that one page brought a laughable comment from Vince Rodo, the TTC’s General Manager — Executive:  “You’re not supposed to be able to read that”.  A joke, yes, but a sad comment on the level of detail the Commission and the public see when confronted with a multi-billion dollar budget.

I have already written at length about the 2011 Capital Budget, and in this article I will focus on changes to the budget as it passed through the City’s approval process as well as the outlook for 2012 and beyond. Continue reading →

by

Understanding TTC Project Cost Creep

The recent TTC meeting saw Commissioner Minnan-Wong digging into questions about rising costs on two TTC projects, the design of Finch West Station and the resignalling of the south end of the Yonge subway.

Reports asking for increased spending authorization come through the Commission quite regularly, and Minnan-Wong has raised the question of “out of control spending” at Council on past occasions.  Just to declare my political leanings, I have never been a fan of the Councillor, even though there are certainly legitimate questions to be asked when project costs rise unexpectedly.

Unfortunately, Minnan-Wong tends to approach these issues as if someone is trying to pull the wool over his eyes and implies outright incompetence as the starting point for discussion.  This approach brings more confrontation than information.  Let’s have a look at the two projects in question and consider how information about them (and their many kin in the overall budget) might be better presented.

Continue reading →

by

Who Pays, and How Much? (Updated)

Updated March 1, 2011 at 7:00 pm:

To no great surprise, the TTC Board today endorsed the staff proposal to do away with Post-Secondary Student Passes for part time students.  This was done after a few hours of well presented, cogent deputations from a variety of speakers who, for their troubles, were greeted with a Blackberry wielding board who spent little of their time paying attention.  In one case, a presenter was finishes, but Chair Karen Stintz was so busy with her email that she didn’t notice for some time.

The common thread through the deps was that the concept of “part time student” is not consistently defined either between institutions or even programs within the same university or college.  About 20% of students today are “part timers” mainly for economic reasons (they cannot afford to pay the fees for a full time program in one go) or because the program they are in is defined as “part time” (regardless of its actual course load).  This cohort of students is growing, and they are also penalized by being ineligible for various loans and grants offered to “full time” students.

Yet another group not covered by the policy are those who are in “certificate” programs which may have just as heavy a course load, but don’t lead to a degree.

As one speaker put it, “students are students”, but the convoluted definitions and practices lead to artificial distinctions between them.

At the end of the deputations, Commissioner Palacio put forward a motion in the best tradition of appearing to be supportive while doing precisely nothing.  He wanted the Commission to reiterate that part time students have access to the “VIP Pass” discount program, and wanted the staff to write to university and college administrators urging that they extend their current VIP Pass program for staff to the part time students.

This proposal, which passed, of course, insulted the speakers who know perfectly well that a VIP Pass (which costs about $10 more than a student pass) was available, provided that their institution actually was part of the VIP program.  The problem is that this is not universal, and depends on an institution (or a group like a student union) setting itself up as a VIP Pass vendor.

Finally, Chair Stintz thanked everyone for “making their voices heard”.  “Heard” is not the word I would use, as “listen” was certainly not what much of the Commission was doing most of the time.  If she had really “heard”, she would have acknowledged that there is a problem with definitions, not to mention the larger issue of other groups who make claims for discounted fares, and sent the whole issue off for a detailed report.  This change won’t have much effect until fall 2011, and there was no need for a definitive decision today.

But no, that’s not what happened.  Mayor Ford’s minions were in and out of the meeting to ensure that the vote went the right way, and the students didn’t have a chance.

[The original article from February 28 follows the break below.]

Continue reading →

by

Queen’s Park to make TTC an “Essential Service”

A flurry of media activity heralded the news that Queen’s Park introduced a bill making the TTC an “Essential Service” and thereby blocking strikes by its unionized groups.

I get a lot of questions on this subject and, wearing two hats, my position as an advocate for better public transit has, at times, a rather robust discussion with my support for labour rights.  Which takes precedence, and are they mutually exclusive concepts?

The political context for the Province’s move is quite simple.  Labour unrest and poor customer relations, real and perceived, in transit and in other municipal services led to demands that unions be restricted from interfering with city life.  The media did their bit by playing up what they thought were the bad apples, although the most prominent of their stories backfired (the “sleeping” collector who actually did have a health condition and has since died).  The antagonism on transit that followed was compounded with resentment from the garbage strike and the overall economic malaise.

We’ve come a few steps back from the brink thanks to some improvements in attitude on both sides, but there is still much to do.  The TTC as an organization hasn’t changed much, and the coming years’ transit cutbacks will only accentuate the problems in service reliability, vehicle crowding, failing equipment and contentious rider-operator relations.

The bad apples, be they union or management, get the publicity because it’s the fights people remember, that they post on Facebook, that they vent to call-in shows.  (Please don’t use this thread for your latest horror stories — the real issue is the larger context of how often, or not, such things may happen and what, if anything the TTC does about it.)

The Globe and Mail’s Kelly Grant has a profile of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113’s President, Bob Kinnear, in the February 26 issue.  Grant talks of the changes in Kinnear’s style from his early combative days, the period every new union leader goes through trying to prove himself, to a more balanced, less confrontational style trying to do the best for his members within a union-unfriendly political context.

So where do I stand?

Job actions on the TTC inevitably bring legislation and arbitration, and one can’t help wondering why we don’t just cut to the chase and prevent strikes in the first place.  That’s a simple answer, but it begs the question of how “essential” a service must be to warrant this intervention.  Will we have a general debate about who should have the right to withdraw services?  Why only the TTC?  What of the broader public sector?  In this coming age of privatization, should the private sector face the same sort of constraints and penalties?  Where is the line between actual danger to society at large and inconvenience?

An important factor with the TTC is that a simple “no overtime” decision by union staff would seriously affect service.  The TTC plans a great deal of rush hour service, and some off-peak operations, on the assumption that there will be operators willing to work overtime.  The premise is that the effective cost is lower, even at overtime rates, because the fixed cost of an operator (mainly training and benefits) are already paid.  For their troubles, union members are pilloried when they show up on the provincial “sunshine list”.

In a fiscal environment where “head count avoidance” takes precedence over common sense, overtime is way to minimize the total staff count and benefits while getting more work per employee.  In some circles, this is called “productivity”.  Of course, this bumps headlong into demands that overtime be reduced because it is seen as a waste by those who don’t understand the implications of what they ask.

If service on the road is erratic and overcrowded, if an operator spends their time arguing with riders, that’s not good transit service.  Poor morale can become ingrained, and transit continues its spiral into a last rather than a first choice for riders who have an option.  A no-overtime action guarantees that working conditions will worsen, and that’s really not in the front line staff’s interest.  The riders are hurt, but the politicians for whom transit is for “other people” may exploit the situation to press for a no-union and/or privatized arrangement.  The worse public sector services look, the better any alternative may appear.

Behind this debate is the question of labour-management relationships including the political context.  If prominent politicians rail against fat unions and lazy workers, this does not encourage productive bargaining.  Oddly enough, when unions complain about simplistic, blowhard politicians, such comments are portrayed as self-serving.

That term, “self-serving”, is at the heart of the relationship.  The public will either support the unions, or at least recognize problems of poor management and inadequate funding, or they will seize any opportunity to “put the unions in their place”.  Much of this depends on the day-to-day interactions between front line staff and riders, and it doesn’t take many horror stories to give the impression that TTC staff and “customer service” don’t belong in the same sentence.

From my own experience (and I know others who comment here will differ), the overwhelming majority of TTC staff are not grouchy, lazy curmudgeons.  Do they greet every passenger with a smile and a cheery “thanks for riding the TTC”?  No, and that would be rather difficult when you’re driving an already full King car that has left at least a carload of would-be riders at stops.  That’s a management, political and funding problem.  Management underplays the inadequacy of service, and many politicians don’t want to hear about the need for more money and better transit priority on streets.  They are too busy looking for that elusive gravy, or cooking up schemes to get those pesky transit vehicles off out of their way.

Will the Essential Service legislation work?  Well, it will save us the bother of having to recall the House if there’s a threat to transit service, but it won’t guarantee friendly relationships at the bargaining table or in day-to-day dealings between management, the unions and riders.

Should management exercise their rights to manage?  Definitely.  The fastest way to encourage bad actors is to do nothing, and failure to manage, to call employees on the carpet when it’s deserved, is a fast way to losing control of an organization.  This is one of the first thing any manager learns (or should learn).  But that management must be fair and consistent, and should not to seek to blame staff for the shortcomings of the organization.

I have written here before about “TTC culture” and its deep roots in the premise that the TTC is always right.  That showed up in the “customer service” panel’s report last year, and it’s a day-to-day feature where the concept of “harassment” is a catch-all response to the public, a response condoned and at times encouraged by management.  That sort of attitude must change at the corporate and political levels.

No legislation will transform the TTC top-to-bottom.  Essential Service status will, for a time, satisfy the blood lust in some political circles, but it is the active co-operation and good will of labour, management and politicians that will keep good service on the streets.

by

Liberty Village Planning Studies

The City of Toronto has three planning studies underway that will affect Liberty Village, and they will hold a combined open house on March 1 for the next stage of the public consultation.

Dufferin Street Bridges

The south end of Dufferin Street has two bridges — one over the rail corridor, and one over the Gardiner Expressway.  Both are in need of replacement, and future plans require a new design.  This project had its first meeting last year, and now the City is back to discuss alternative schemes.

Projects related to this include expansion of the GO Lake Shore corridor, provision of clearance for electrification and connection of the streetcar system from Exhibition (East) Loop west to Dufferin.  The streetcar extension is part of the proposed Waterfront West LRT line, although it is far from clear whether any of the alignments shown on the drawings for the bridge project would actually be built.  The WWLRT is not exactly at the top of anyone’s list of transit projects, but whatever is decided for the new Dufferin bridges may preclude some of the WWLRT options.

New King-Liberty Pedestrian/Cyclist Link

The Georgetown rail corridor creates a long barrier between Strachan Avenue and the west end of the King Street underpass at Atlantic Avenue.  With the redevelopment of lands to the north, current and future plans for lands to the south, this barrier isolates the two neighbourhoods from each other.  Some crossings are now made illegally, but plans to increase the number of active tracks and the frequency of GO service will make this much more dangerous.

At the first open house last year, various alternatives were presented, and two of these were carried forward for detailed study.  The results will presented at the March 1 open house.

Liberty Village New Street

A new street is proposed along the south edge of Liberty Village from just west of Strachan Avenue to Dufferin Street.  This road would occupy what was originally planned to be the Front Street Extension, but as a purely local street.

The March 1 meeting will launch this project for comment.

by

TTC Service Changes Effective March 27, 2011

The list of changes for the “March” (actually almost April) schedule period is rather short because the TTC deferred implementation of service cuts on lightly used routes to May 8.

One intriguing side-effect of that decision is that the amount of service operated will be “over budget” because the cuts were incorporated in budget plans in November 2010, long before there was any public discussion, and at a time when rumours of cuts were met with denials from the TTC.

In our wonderfully new “transparent” Toronto, how many other changes are lurking, unpublished, in the budget?

Changes in Hours of Service

53F Steeles East Staines Express: Two new morning trips will be added weekdays from Morningside at about 5:21 and 5:48 am.

Diversions

505 Dundas: With the resumption of watermain work on Dundas, streetcars will divert via Spadina and College until late June.  Headways at all times will not be changed, but one car will be added to the route to handle the longer round trip times.  There will not be any replacement bus service on Dundas.

504 King: Reconstruction of Roncesvalles Avenue will resume to allow work by Enbridge Gas as well as completion of the sidewalk reconstruction.  During this period, the same bus shuttle that operated in 2010 will run from Dundas West Station to Sunnyside Loop, and King cars will loop through Roncesvalles Carhouse.  The Jane night bus, which runs on Roncesvalles, will not be affected.

In May, work is expected to begin on track replacement and paving between Roncesvalles and Close on King Street.  This will complete the rebuilding of the King route to the new resilient track standards.  While this is in progress, King and Lake Shore cars will divert via Queen and Shaw.  The work is expected to be completed before the CNE (with associated traffic problems in Parkdale) opens in mid-August.

Unlike the period of watermain work on King West in 2010, there will not be any replacement bus service on King west of Shaw.  I can’t help wondering why the TTC doesn’t simply route the 504 to Dufferin Loop so that service would be maintained for riders from Shaw to Dufferin whose access to Queen is limited by the rail corridor.

by

Metrolinx Contemplates Ford’s Subway Plan

The Metrolinx Board, not the most talkative bunch at their infrequent public meetings, took the unusual step yesterday of discussing possible major changes in their regional transportation plan.  Rob Ford’s subway plan can hardly be ignored, and Metrolinx directors need to engage in this debate lest they become irrelevant through inaction.

Both Chair Rob Prichard and President/CEO Bruce McCuaig went out of their way to speak positively about Ford’s scheme, while other directors were less inclined to accept the proposal.  In this article, I will recap the discussion and then conclude with thoughts of my own.

Continue reading →

by

Ford Proposes Privately Built Sheppard Subway (Updated)

Updated February 17, 2011 at 10:00 am:

Councillor Doug Ford talked to Matt Galloway today on Metro Morning.  Listen to how he slides all over the place without giving specifics of how the money would be raised and simply says that such schemes have worked elsewhere.  No details, but the usual put-downs of “nay sayers” as if anyone with the nerve to criticize is a foe of progress.  Sounds very 50’s to me.

In a separate interview, MPP Greg Sorbara, former Minister of Finance and heavyweight proponent of the Spadina Subway, explains that, while the proposal may look interesting, the devil is in the details, and at the end the public pays.

Original article from February 16 at 16:44:

Mayor Ford’s office has proposed to Metrolinx that the Sheppard subway be extended west to Downsview and east to Scarborough Town Centre as a private sector deal with the City according to articles in the Globe and the Star.

The expansion would be privately financed, but owned by the City with the cost to be repaid out of development charges and tax increment financing.

What is unclear at this point is the amount of development that would be needed along the extended line to actually pay for its construction without adding to the City’s debt, nor is it clear how much of the proposed Provincial and Federal contributions to the Sheppard LRT would be available for a Sheppard Subway project.

This scheme leaves a number of other projects up in the air including:

  • the remainder of the Sheppard LRT’s scope from Kennedy (where the subway would veer south to STC) to eastern Scarborough and, possibly, to the UofT Scarborough Campus
  • the replacement of the SRT as either an LRT line (part of any remaining LRT-based Transit City network) or as a BD subway extension
  • the status of the proposed Eglinton and Finch LRT lines, although the former as an LRT subway hybrid seems fairly certain to be built

A long term plan to finance a subway using future revenues presumes that the money to pay for its construction, debt financing and developer’s profit will actually materialize.  This begs the question of station location and spacing because there would be little development on land far from stations spaced widely as on the most recent extensions to the subway.  Enough land and development potential must exist to pay for the subway over time, and the locations must be sufficiently attractive to would-be builders that they will pay a premium to locate their buildings on subway sites.

Whether the subway would generate net new development or merely attract buildings away from other sites is hard to say given that major redevelopment of the older commercial/industrial strips in Scarborough and North York is not already underway.

Would existing neighbourhoods in which new stations (and their associated development) would be placed welcome a complete change in their density and character?  This may be viable on Sheppard, but not in other neighbourhoods with well-establish, stable residential land use.  Indeed, some routes, like a Downtown Relief Line, would be built as part of a wider network to spread demand and give access to new parts of the city.  Should the locations a DRL would pass through enroute to downtown pay the cost in redevelopment effects because that’s where a line is drawn on a map?

The extensions would cost $3.4-$4.4-billion according to the Star, and this would translate to an annual debt service cost of $200m at 5%.  That’s a lot of new tax revenue, although the amount would be lower depending on the amount of principal that can be paid off through development charges.

As with other private development schemes around the world, the real challenge lies in the details of any contract.  Who, for example, will be responsible for upkeep of the infrastructure and repair of any premature faults that appear over the period of the lease-purchase?

My reaction to this is mixed.  The Sheppard Subway may be the apple of some advocates’ eyes, but it is not the most important transit expansion project in the GTA.  Regardless of how it is financed or who builds it, this will divert considerable investment and attention from other projects and may well pre-empt any expansion of LRT service to the northeast.

On the other hand, we have been hearing about the wonders of privately developed transit for so long, part of me wants to say “put up or shut up” to those who would pursue this course.  Is the project really viable?  Will the city see the revenues needed to pay for the long term lease-purchase of the new line, or will future taxpayers be on the hook to bail out the project?