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A Response to “Save Our Subways”

For some time, I have stayed away from the “Save Our Subways” dialogue over on UrbanToronto in part because Transit City and related issues are presented as being “Steve Munro’s” plan (there’s even a poll that just went up on that subject), and because there are many comments in the SOS thread that are personal insults, not fair comment, well-informed or otherwise.

Such are the joys of an unmoderated forum.

Some have proposed a public debate, possibly televised, which I flatly reject.  First off, the issues are more complex than can be properly handled in that forum, and it certainly should not turn into a mayoral candidates’ debate on transit.  I do not know any candidate who could debate the details of either commentary.

Second, the lynch mob mentality of some writers on UrbanToronto is utterly inappropriate to “debate”, and this poisons many of the discussions on that site.

Recently I was asked by the authors of the Move Toronto proposal to respond, and this article is an attempt to start that dialogue in a forum where civility occasionally breaks through the diatribes.

To begin with, there are areas where SOS and I agree strongly, notably on the need for the Downtown Relief Line (at least the eastern side of it).  I’ve been advocating this for years at the very least as a high-end LRT line, more recently as a full subway as that technology fits its location in the network better and is well suited to the likely demand.

Where we part company is the premise that we have to give up big chunks of Transit City to pay for the DRL.  This sets up a false dialogue where TC lines are portrayed as overpriced and underperforming, denigrated at least in part to justify redirecting funding to the DRL.  That is an extremely short-sighted tactic and harms the cause of overall transit improvements.  It takes us back to the days of debating which kilometre of subway we will build this year.

I don’t intend to repeat my three long posts about Transit City here, but anyone who has read them knows that I do not slavishly support everything in that plan.  If anything, the lack of movement on some valid criticisms people have raised regarding TC sets up a confrontational dynamic.  Instead, the City/TTC could have been seen as responding to concerns.

Now, with the mayoralty campaign, attacking TC has become a surrogate for attacking the Miller program and the candidacy of Adam Giambrone.  These need to be disentangled if we are to have any sort of sensible debate.

My greatest concern is that whoever is the new mayor, the issues will be so clouded by electoral excess, by positions taken as debating points, as sound bites to attack an opponent, that we won’t be able to sort fact from fiction afterwards.  If, for example, George Smitherman winds up as Mayor, he will need a reasoned program, likely a mixture of some old, some new, not a “throw it all out and start over” policy.  People will have different ideas about what that new program might be, and that’s a valid debate.

Whether Steve Munro is an arch villain (SFX: maniacal laughter) plotting the end of civilized transportation is quite another matter.  To some, I have a vast reach through the political machinery of the GTA, while to others I am irrelevant.  I am not the issue.  Transit is.

These comments are organized roughly in the sequence of the Move Toronto paper (6mb download).  Although variations and alternatives have appeared in other locations, notably threads on the UrbanToronto website, I have not attempted to address these as they are (a) a moving target and (b) not necessarily the formal position of the Save Our Subways group.

I believe that Move Toronto contains many flaws arising from an underlying desire to justify a subway network just as critics of Transit City argue against its focus on LRT.  Among my major concerns are:

  • Subway lines are consistently underpriced.
  • LRT is dismissed as an inferior quality of service with statements more akin to streetcar lines than a true LRT implementation.
  • Having used every penny to build the subway network, Move Toronto proposes a network of BRT lines for the leftover routes. However, this “network” is in fact little more than the addition of traffic signal priority and queue jump lanes (“BRT Light”) on almost all of the BRT “network”.
  • Parts of the BRT network suggest that the authors lack familiarity with the affected neighbourhoods and travel patterns.
  • There is no financial analysis of the life-cycle cost of building and operating routes with subway technology even though demand is unlikely to reach subway levels within the lifetime of some of the infrastructure.

That’s the introductory section.  The full commentary is available as a pdf.

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Walking the Talk

Today, the TTC issued a Media Advisory containing a letter for all TTC staff from Chief General Manager Gary Webster.

Our Customers Deserve Better

February 6, 2010

I don’t know about you, but I am becoming increasingly tired of defending the reputation of the TTC; tired of explaining what is acceptable and what is not; and tired of stating the obvious: that much of the behaviour being reported is, indeed, unacceptable.

You have heard me say that I am proud of the TTC. I still am, but I am not proud of what we have been dealing with over the last several weeks.

Two weeks ago I said that the vast majority of TTC employees care about the organization and do a good job, but we can all do better. I asked everyone to respond well. Some of you did. Clearly, some of you did not.

We all have to accept responsibility for allowing the TTC to drift into a culture of unacceptable operating discipline. In other words, we have deemed it acceptable for some employees to not do all aspects of their jobs.

We have two choices. We can continue to react to issues, deal with individual employee problems, and hope that the rest of our employees get the message, behave themselves and not get caught doing something they should not be doing.

The other choice, and the one we are going to take, is a much broader approach. Expectations need to be clear, especially for frontline employees. And employees need to be held accountable for their poor performance.

We are in the customer service business, but some of the behaviour our customers have encountered recently would suggest otherwise. Our customers pay a fare and the City provides hundreds of millions of dollars every year to the TTC. This public transit agency belongs to the very people we serve.

As Chief General Manager, I am ultimately accountable to our customers. As employees, you – and you alone – are accountable for your actions. The culture of complacency and malaise that has seeped into our organization will end. I hold all of management responsible to make this happen. Reviews and plans are under way to address systemic issues regarding customer service, but real change starts with you.

Gary Webster

Chief General Manager

On the same day, Joe Clark, who writes about many issues including transit, but from a design, signage and accessability perspective, was on a Queen car where the operator clearly was wearing earphones.  When Joe challenged him, the situation escalated including calls for assistance to Transit Control, and officious behaviour from a TTC Supervisor.  Both TTC staffers persisted in claiming that photography on the TTC is illegal (it isn’t, and there is a specific section both in the bylaw and on the TTC website on this subject).

TTC staff may feel under siege from the hordes of camera-bearing riders, but I have absolutely no sympathy.  If they are doing their jobs properly, there will be nothing to photograph.

Joe Clark can be a pain in the butt, but his valid messages are too often ignored by the TTC.  (Even I have been the target of his less than decorous comments.  Some folks consider a mention on his site as almost a badge of honour.)  His frequent letters and deputations to the monthly meetings are almost always “received” (thanks, now bugger off), and hardly anyone at the meeting table pays any attention while he speaks.  That is precisely the sort of treatment that sends guerilla photographers out into the streets looking for the most embarrassing shot they can find.

Good manners start at the very top, even when the customers or deputants at TTC meetings have messages you don’t want to hear.

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TTC Trip Planner Available For Beta Testing (Updated)

Updated February 3 at 10:55:  The TTC added another server to the trip planner last night, and this may explain some of the outages during the evening.

The TTC has announced a trial version of its online trip planner.  Those of us who have played with earlier versions know it has some warts, and the TTC wants your input.  There is a feedback form linked to the planner pages.

The TTC wants feedback from users about the beta version of its trip planner as it continues to develop this tool. When complete, the TTC trip planner will include alternate route suggestions, an expanded points of interest list, a mobile application, the ability to create profiles, and complete integration with e-alerts and service changes. Later this year, the TTC will make its trip planner data openly available to the public and outside organizations, such as Google, so applications can be developed that will be useful to TTC customers.  [From the TTC’s press release]

Please direct technical notes about what it does or doesn’t do to the TTC, and keep track of your submissions (I’m sure the dedicated among us will have many).  The real test will be how quickly changes and fixes are implemented.

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Help Avoid Short Turns (Updated)

Today I received a note in another thread from Drew who said:

I was riding the 512 home last night, and noticed a sign that read:

HELP AVOID SHORT TURNS – EXIT FROM THE REAR DOORS.

There. Short-turns are our fault.

Of course, exiting through the rear doors is written all over every surface vehicle —  it does make boarding/alighting much faster … it could be done without the inference that we cause short-turns.

Now we KNOW on St. Clair, it can’t be traffic causing short-turns (or where, aside from St. Clair West Stn these turns take place), so it must be us.

I too saw this notice on a 504 King car.

Update:   Joe Clark has supplied a photo of the sign.

I was sorely tempted to start a guerilla campaign of my own with signs saying “Manage headways, not schedules”, but I would probably be arrested for defacing TTC property.  I won’t say anything about loading delays caused by three cars leaving the end of the line in a pack with the first one having to wait forever to board passengers at each stop.

Yes, passengers do need to move back, but that’s not the whole story.

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Looking Back at “A Grand Plan”

At the end of my series on Transit City, I refrained from offering my own recipe for a new transit system.  That sort of issue is hard to address, and without first knowing just how much any government, future mayor or council might want to commit to transit, it’s very hard to pick a “solution”.

Indeed, we have seen exactly this conundrum with Metrolinx, a body formed to sort out the details and priorities of MoveOntario2020.  With much effort, they whittled a $90bn plan down to $50bn and change, only to find themselves in a recession and a desire by Queen’s Park to limit spending.

All the same, having a network view of things is absolutely essential.  We need to know what we will do as and when money is available either from a booming economy or a change in relative budgetary priorities.  That is the philosophy behind Transit City and The Big Move.

Some readers are relatively new to this site and probably have not delved into the archives.  There are a lot of archives, and I don’t blame people for not reading every word.  Back in March 2006, I wrote an article called A Grand Plan that attempted to give a unified view of transit from my perspective.  Note that this was a year before Transit City was announced, 15 months before MoveOntario, and well before Metrolinx came into being.

Sadly, that agency regarded me as an arch-rival, an enemy to be neutralized, not as a potential friend and supporter of transit.  They are under new management now.

Reading my words from 2006, I am struck by how much survives either because it has already been implemented or is an integral part of current plans.  There are a few points where I took a hard line on the subway-vs-LRT argument, notably what we now know as the DRL East, but the paper stands up.  For the record (in case you haven’t read anything else here), I now agree that the DRL requires heftier service than an LRT line integrated with surface operations on Don Mills could provide.  This change comes in the context of the DRL’s “relief” function for the Yonge line and the Richmond Hill subway extension.

I recommend it to any would-be mayors, and to those planners whose gaze rarely extends beyond their own drawing boards.

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Transit City Revisited (Part III, Updated)

(Updated at 3:00 pm, February 1.  I omitted a section on the proposed Sheppard subway extensions to Downsview and to Scarborough Town Centre.  This has been added.)

In this, the final installment of my review of Transit City, I will look at the unfunded (or underfunded) TTC transit projects.  Some of these spur passionate debates and the occasional pitched battle between advocates of various alternatives.  There are two vital points to remember through all of this:

  • Having alternatives on the table for discussion is better than having nothing at all.  It’s very easy to spend nothing and pass the day on comparatively cheap debates.  The current environment sees many competing visions, but most of them are transit visions.  The greatest barrier lies in funding.  Governments love endless debate because they don’t have to spend anything on actual construction or operations.  Meanwhile, auto users point to the lack of transit progress and demand more and wider roads.
  • Transit networks contain a range of options.  They are not all subways or all buses or all LRT.  Some are regional express routes while others address local trips.  Most riders will have to transfer somewhere, even if it is from their car in a parking lot to a GO train.  The challenge is not to eliminate transfers, but to make them as simple and speedy as possible.

I will start with the unfunded Transit City lines, and then turn to a range of other schemes and related capital projects. Continue reading →

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Transit City Revisited (Part I)

Transit City and transit in general are much in the political news thanks to one mayoral candidate’s declaration that there would be a moratorium on additional routes among other changes at the TTC.  Christopher Hume’s column in the Star gives an overview of the landscape.

In the midst of TTC problems from lousy customer relations to service reliability, from Enbridge cutting into the subway tunnel to a maladroit handling of the recent fare increase, everyone needs to step back a moment and divorce the TTC from the politicians.

Transit City has many good points, and they need to be reinforced, not simply tossed aside as part of the anti-Miller rhetoric brewing in some campaign offices and newspapers.  Transit City isn’t perfect, but the map may as well be cut into stone tablets rather than being a living document to hear some of its supporters. Such inflexibility undermines the plan itself.

There’s an odd parallel to Metrolinx’ Big Move plan.  Metrolinx claims that their plan is a work in progress, but just try to criticize it, try to suggest changes, and their professed love of public input evaporates.  Transit City isn’t quite as bad, and we are at least having some public feedback through the Transit Project Assessments.  However, some fundamental changes are needed.

Before I talk about the plan, it’s useful to see where it came from. Continue reading →

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Four Years

Four years ago today, stevemunro.ca came to life as what I thought might be a handy, small blog where I could make available comments and analysis on a variety of (mainly) transit issues.  It didn’t quite work out that way, and I’ve been quite pleased at the way this site has grown as a forum.

Daily page views are now sitting in the 2-3,000 range, although the all-time high (4,723) arrived on the day I published the old GM “New Look” product literature.  I think the gods of blog activity are having a laugh at my expense with the most popular post being one about buses.

Some people don’t like the fact that this is a pro-LRT site.  That’s their privilege.  I am not against subways or buses, but each mode has its place, and for far too long Toronto (and Queen’s Park) ignored what hundreds of other cities are doing.  The subway and LRT camps need to view transit improvement as the goal, rather than arguing a zero-sum game in which any “gain” for one mode is a “loss” for the other.

The heart of this site is the readers and the comments they leave.  Back in April 2009 came the landmark of 10,000 active comments.  We will hit 15,000 early in February.

All those comments make for a lively conversation whether we agree with each other or not.  I think this improves the general quality of transit advocacy in Toronto because people get to read about and discuss issues in depth.

This blog is well read in professional and political circles, and I have often been complimented on the quality and range of the discussions here.  It’s not just the pearls of wisdom, such as they may be, from my electronic pen that attracts such an audience.

Thank you to all the readers.  Without your contributions, this would be a rather quiet place.

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Customer Service Excellence Our Goal: TTC

On January 27, the TTC announced a number of new programs and policies designed to substantially improve all aspects of customer service.  I won’t go into all of the details, but for those who have not seen them, you can follow the links below.

TTC Site

Spacing Toronto

The Toronto Star

This will probably be the last transit announcement by Adam Giambrone who is widely expected to announce his candidacy for Mayor of Toronto next Monday.   Once that happens, he cannot maintain a high-profile position and use the TTC for electoral good news.

In his introduction of the new program, Giambrone talked about four essential parts of TTC customer service:  courtesy, information, responsiveness and reliability.  Some of these are “people skills”, some are technical, but many require changes to organizational culture.  Just making the trains run on time isn’t enough (although I suspect many riders would be happy just for that small miracle).

The TTC will create an external panel of customers, employees, and others outside the TTC with a customer service background.  The work plan sounds depressingly like so much public consultation.  First there will be a terms of reference, then the panel will review current plans, consult the public and draft a “bill of rights” for transit customers.  This process is hoped to wrap up by June 30 — an unusually fast schedule for consultation and reporting. 

For the record, I have neither applied for nor been invited to be a member of the panel.

The TTC plans a number of technology-related changes to improve information flow including screens showing information about service status at subway entrances, real-time vehicle information via SMS (text) messages, new microphones at collectors’ booths to improve conversational quality between staff and passengers, an internet trip planner, and completion of next vehicle information throughout the subway.

We know that the GPS-based line displays have been available internally for some time.  The TTC included a view of one as part of a recent presentation, and real time trip information cannot work without the underlying data.  Why are these not available to the public?

A significant omission in the vehicle tracking system is knowledge of the advertised destination of a vehicle.  Like so much else in TTC operations, the only available information is the scehduled destination.  However, this is meaningless on routes with frequent short-turns and ad-hoc service restructuring.  Someone waiting for a car wants to know where it is really going, not where it is scheduled to be.

(One amusing note about the TTC presentation:  If you scroll down to the “Backgrounder” section, there is a picture of a “next car” info sign saying that a car is now “due” and coming in 1 minute.  The streetcar in the background is a 504 signed for Dufferin, a short turn.  The information system has no way of knowing it is advertising the arrival of a car that may not go where the rider wants.)

The trip planner is still at a beta-testing stage (comment threads on other sites have talked about various peculiarities in early versions), but it will be released with the clear intent of getting customer feedback.  This will be an early test of the TTC’s intentions because bug fixes and enhancements will be essential to having a really good product.

I will not discuss the relative merits of the TTC’s system and other available software, although one wonders why the TTC went down the “roll your own” path on this project. Once the TTC version has actually been up for a while and had some fine tuning, then we can get into comparative discussions about other products.

The TTC plans to add 50 new pass vending machines at locations in the system and to expand the use of debit/credit car transactions.  I hope that, while they are rewiring stations, they take into account future needs for Presto so that they don’t have to tear everything apart in a few years’ time.  Indeed, the idea of provisioning new equipment when we are close to a system-wide conversion to automated fare collection begs the question of how serious the TTC really is about the latter.

One big complaint about TTC information services is their availability during business hours only.  The TTC hopes to incorporate a complaints line into the City’s 311 service so that customers can call in immediately when an incident occurs.  The TTC should simply ditch its own info line and make transit information part of 311, transferring staff if necessary to the City operation.

Passengers expect cleaner stations.  Report after report showing how Toronto’s mythical “station cleanliness index” is inching up year by year simply are not enough.  There are now plans in the TTC budget to beef up the cleaning staff, but even this is a multi-year scheme.  Don’t expect spotless stations soon.

Good customer service is to be an organizational goal.  After several years’ focus on safety and absenteeism, the TTC will now look to its customers.   They should never have looked away.

Particularly striking in the list of goals is “reliability”.  This is the heart of good transit service, and it removes many of the annoyances that plague both riders and operators.  The TTC must stop finding excuses for poorly managed and operated services.

If changes in scheduling rules are needed to substantially reduce short turns, then find out how to make this work.

Don’t tell us about all the added route supervision, show us the service evenly spaced out rather than running in packs.  The operation of the St. Clair car since it reopened to Lansdowne is a disgrace.  This was not even mentioned during the press conference.

The TTC did talk about the subway shutdown brought on by Enbridge Gas construction work.  This incident revealed not only a problem with clear communications, but with emergency preparations in general.  Certainly, buses can never replace the subway particularly at the peak time.  However, the first thing that should happen in this type of situation is the closure of an affected street like Yonge to all non-essential traffic so that buses can move as quickly as possible.  The TTC, City and Police do not appear to have a standard protocol for this type of situation, and it’s badly needed.

Without question, there are employees whose public manner leaves much to desire, but they are, in my experience, a minority.  Both passengers and employees are made all the more sensitive and aggressive when they must deal with irregular service and an almost total lack of information.  Fix those problems, and some of the contention between riders and staff will disappear.  It won’t be perfect, but those employees who want to do a good job need to see that management is actively trying to improve their lot.

Many of these initiatives will take time to be implemented on the street, and a review committee must exist long enough to compare promises to reality.  The TTC is not a credible evaluator of its own success, if only because it has ignored its problems far too long.