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Smart Card Wars

With the election upon us, some candidates have decided that transit Smart Cards are an issue they can use to say “I’m the best candidate” by hitching their star to Ontario’s Presto card program.

The Star reports that the TTC will proceed with a tender for an Open Payment system later this year with the intent of a 2011 rollout.  Mayoral hopeful Rocco Rossi has his own scheme called “Presto Plus”.  Can the TTC actually commit to a new system with the current regime still in office?  Rossi’s campaign confirms that he would cancel the TTC’s scheme if he were to become mayor.

Metrolinx would love to see the TTC sign on to Presto, but many questions remain about just what Presto can do for a truly integrated transit system.

Smart Cards are yet another example of the way that transit technology wars in the GTA get in the way of solving fundamental transit problems.  The technology choice becomes more important than the service it provides.  Here are a few questions anyone with “the answer” should consider.

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Paying the Piper (2)

On July 12, the Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA) held a round table at Wychwood Barns to discuss their recently published paper on transit funding.  Please refer to my first article on this topic for details.

The round table added nothing to what we already know on this subject, but did provide insight into public policy debate here in the GTA.  Although this was officially a TCSA event, it was clearly at the service of Metrolinx who had a strong presence.  Rob Prichard, Metrolinx CEO, gave opening remarks.  As I have already noted, John Brodhead, Metrolinx VP of Strategy & Communications, co-chaired the working group behind the TCSA paper.  Other Metrolinx staff were scattered through the crowd, some as facilitators at tables.

Invited participants included activists of varied backgrounds, a few politicians, professionals from government and industry, representatives from various business groups, a few from the media, and others from the collection of “usual suspects” one sees at this type of gathering.  The idea, the hope, was that the collected wisdom of this group might inform future debate and recommendations about how to proceed.

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Front Street Redesign Open House (Updated)

The display panels from the Front Street Redesign Project Open House are now available online at the project website.  Here is an overview together with my comments.

The introduction at page 4 shows the overall process and also reveals a major flaw.  We have reached the point of selecting a “preferred alternative” on which all future detailed design and discussion will be based, but I am not convinced that only a single option should be carried forward.  I am quite certain that feedback from many regular users of this area — pedestrians, businesses, transportation service operators, cyclists, even a few motorists — will suggest that more than one option has its advantages.  At this point, we don’t have enough information to pick one, and doing so risks compromising the project’s credibility when it comes before the new, 2011 Council for further approvals.

The objectives listed on page 6 include:

  • Accommodate increased development and passenger growth associated with Union Station, and …
  • Prioritize the role of pedestrian activity.

However, as we will see later, much analysis reflects the need to accommodate auto traffic even though pedestrian volumes will more than double in coming decades.  The premise should be turned on its head — what design is needed to handle the pedestrians, and what, if anything, is left over for other uses.  Some quite attractive pedestrian areas from other cities are shown on page 7, but these are notably devoid of traffic on anywhere near the level now on Front Street.

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New Second Exits at Donlands and Greenwood Rouse Community Ire (Update 5)

Updated July 15, 2010 at 11:00 am:

With luck, this will be the last update in this thread.

At the TTC meeting on July 14, there was a long presentation and discussion of the issues at Donlands and Greenwood Stations.  The presentation materials are not yet online as the project pages are being updated by the TTC to reflect recent changes.

Greenwood Station

TTC staff recommended and the Commission approved that the community’s alternative proposed second exit route be used.  This route passes through the back yards of numbers 11 and 15 Linsmore rather than through a site now occupied by any house.

The first version of this scheme included the expropriation of the house now under renovation at 9 Linsmore.  A newspaper report of the affected landowner gives some idea of the background and suggests that his 7-year renovation project is a long-standing annoyance to at least some in the neighbourhood.

In any event, it appears that other owners on Linsmore may be willing to sell, and one way or another, that’s where the exit will go.  The only remaining issue for the TTC is to determine the location of a sewer that may interfere with the proposed route to the exit, and the feasibility of diverting this sewer to suit the new construction.

Donlands Station

The situation at Donlands is more complex than at Greenwood.  TTC staff did a much more thorough job at the Commission meeting, compared with the public meeting a few days earlier, of explaining the standards and calculations used in evaluating the alternatives.  Their target for the path length from the point where an exit stair meets the platform to the surface is two minutes.  This keeps the total exit time, including getting to the exit on the platform, within the overall code targets.

The original group of exit proposals by the community fails to meet the exit time criterion.  However, a new alternative came to light at the Commission meeting.  This would link into the east, rather than the west, end of Donlands Station.  The exit passages would all lie under roads rather than houses, and the exit building would be on the north-east corner of Donlands & Strathmore where there is now a school parking lot and a vent shaft to the subway.  TTC staff will report back on this option once they have a chance to review it.

The most contentious part of the discussion turned on whether the TTC would give approval to any plans on July 14, or would wait until their August 23 meeting to finalize their choice.  The community, understandably, does not trust the TTC, and a deferral would have been a sign of good faith from the Commission.  Such an action would not have slowed work because the Council meeting at which expropriation will be considered is not until August 25.  A TTC recommendation could be taken to Council as supplementary information, a routine process.

On a split vote of 6-3, the Commission decided not to delay approval, and decided to give staff the authority to proceed with the three proposals now on the table:  (a) Donlands & Strathmore, (b) the new TTC alternative with a building in the Dewhurst road allowance and (c) the original scheme using property now occupied by 1 & 3 Strathmore.

Staff assured the Commission that they will report back in August with the outcome of their review.  More generally, there is a recognition at TTC that a public consultation process is needed for “small” projects that don’t trigger formal Environmental or Transit Project Assessments.

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WordPress 3.0 Implementation

This site is undergoing maintenance to the “look-and-feel” of a new WordPress theme, but is available for general use. During this period, you may see the site with a different appearance from normal as new software is tested.

Style mavens who wish to complain about the current layout should find some other useful way to occupy their time. This is a work in progress.

Things I have already fixed/changed:

  • The original default typesize was a tad too small.  I have bumped it slightly, and also changed the option of how available sizes are displayed for selection.
  • The ability to get an RSS feed for an individual article still exists in WordPress 3.0, but was not included in the new default template.  I have updated the comment section so that this feed now appears just above the comment box.
  • Block quotes now have a shaded background so that the italicized text is not confused for comments of my own.
  • Modify CSS so that underscored text does not intercept character descenders (accessibility).
  • Various links did not need to be underscored (next/previous post, for example).  They no longer have it to save on cluttering up the layout.
  • Bullets in lists have been changed from square to disc.
  • Modify CSS so that some fields now displayed in black are shown in dark green, the standard colour of this site.
  • Make the swan avatar appear without the tedious repetition of an ad-hoc bio line on every post.
  • Implement green/brown colour scheme for links.
  • Fix menu area so separators are all green regardless of “visited/unvisited” status.

Works in progress/planned:

  • Mobile support using standard plugins (see separate post on this topic).
  • Block mobile displays from starting with the complete text of the menu bar and all of its options.
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Where’s My Car?

Today, the TTC unveiled the next step in its customer information services with the ability to obtain next vehicle information via an SMS text message from any cell phone.

The cell phone “short code” for this service is 898882 (txtttc), and all stops for which this service is available now have stickers showing their individual codes prominently.  The reponse that will come back looks like this:

505 E 3min / 505 E 3min / 504 E 4min / 505 E 4min / 504 E 6min / 504 E 7min. Predictions generated as of 14:54.

This happens to be for the northbound stop on Broadview at Withrow for my return home after today’s press announcement across the street in Riverdale Park.  The message does not include location info because you would already know this from making the request in the first place.

The list shows the next predicted vehicles at the stop.  For stops served by multiple routes where you are only interested in a specific route, you can append the route number to the stop number as in:

12345 504

where “12345” is the stop number and “504” is the route number.  This can be further qualified with a direction (N, S, E or W) although few stops have cars for the same route travelling in more than one direction.

An as-yet unadvertised service is the ability to retrieve information for any stop using a route, direction and stop name lookup from NextBus.  Once you reach a display you want, you can bookmark it for direct access.  Even if you want to look up a different location, it is faster to pick any bookmarked lookup you already have, and then select an alternate location.  These displays auto-update.  (The link given here takes you directly to the TTC route selection page.)

At some point, the TTC will create a page on their own site where you can look up stop-based info using the stop number, or navigate to NextBus for the more general selection menu.

Finally, I hope that the TTC will agree to expose the NextBus maps to public view again soon.  There have been internal debates about the way these maps show how, at times, the service is not well-organized, but this information is very useful in cases where someone wants to get a general idea of the state of a route for use in the near future without having to look up service “now” at a specific stop.

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Paying the Piper

The Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA) recently published a discussion paper on transit and transportation infrastructure funding in the GTA.  This document will be discussed at an invitational working group meeting on July 14.

There is little new information in this report which follows on the heels of a similar paper by the Board of Trade (see my post from May 2010) and a Metrolinx review of revenue options in 2008.  Much more fascinating is the process:  a major discussion of provincial infrastructure planning and revenue generation policy is taking place outside of the agency charged with that task.  Indeed, Metrolinx VP John Brodhead is listed as a co-chair of the working group along with TCSA’s Julia Deans.

Metrolinx itself may be unwilling to discuss the so-called “Investment Strategy”, but this does not stop well-connected external groups from pursuing a more activist agenda.  After years of decrying excessive public sector spending, Toronto’s business community has discovered that failure to spend on infrastructure costs the city dearly in lost productivity and attractiveness for investment.  This is not a problem that turns around overnight even assuming we all agreed on what to do.

Queen’s Park may be horrified of proposing new taxes, tolls, “revenue tools”, but with the understanding that spending on transportation in urban regions is essential, even the more conservative elements at the Pink Palace will have to take notice.

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