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Where Ottawa’s Stimulus Spending Is Going

In my articles about the TTC budgets, I have been remiss in not reporting on the effect of the Federal Infrastructure Stimulus Program.  The TTC had a presentation on this topic at its meeting in September as part of the Capital Budget report, but I never wrote up the information.  (The presentation is not available online.)

I have summarized the financial information for easier access.

Stimulus Funding Summary 2009 to 2011

This summary contains two sections corresponding to two parts of the presentation.  One is for Operations and one for Construction.  There was more financial breakdown in the Operations section, and I am not going to try to explain why.

The TTC (and City) budget years correspond to the calendar years, while the Federal Government fiscal year starts on April 1.  That’s why all of the stimulus work to be billed to Ottawa must be completed by March 31, 2011 — nothing can spill over into the 2011-12 budget year.  (As an aside, I might note that both Queen’s Park and Ottawa happily include this non-recurring spending when they talk about the deficit as if it will go on forever.  This makes the deficits look bigger than they really are in the long term, and magically they will fall for the 2011 budget year when the stimulus ends.)

For the Operations projects, the budget is broken down into each TTC fiscal year showing the original and revised spending level for each project line (these correspond to lines in the full TTC Budget).  Of particular note is the fact that the change, if any, varies in each year and in some cases the change in 2011 is quite large.  This indicates work that was brought forward into 2011 from future years, but which won’t be completed by March 31 and is therefore only partly eligible for stimulus funds.

The three-year total for Operations is $68.1-million, up by $25.1m over the original plans.  Of this, Ottawa will contribute $10.8m or about 43% of the increase.

For the Construction projects, only the three-year numbers are given, and in each case Ottawa is assumed to pay 1/3.  Note that the Warden Station project, included in the list, was subsequently cut as part of the City’s budget review and, therefore, Ottawa’s $4m share has been foregone.

Looking at the Grand Total, Ottawa will contribute $61.1-million, about 28%, to projects with a total value of $219.0m.  The remainder will come from the City and Queen’s Park.

This is only part of the total stimulus package coming to Toronto as most projects are in the City’s own budget, not the TTC’s.

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When Things Go Wrong (1) (Updated)

CBC Radio 1 will be looking at the issue of TTC customer service starting on Monday, January 11, and I will be on Metro Morning dark and early sometime before 6 am.

Updated January 11:  The Metro Morning interview is now available online.

The chats with story producers got me thinking about the TTC’s eAlert system as well as other sources of information.  Knowing we won’t possibly cover all the details in a short interview, and that other aspects of the discussion will certainly come from readers here, I have started this thread.

A long-standing complaint about TTC service is that nobody knows what is going on.  At the best of times, one might peer into the mists on Queen Street and hope that somewhere there is a streetcar, or listen down the subway tunnels for the familiar rumble of a train.  Far too often, the TTC is not at its best, and the lack of information can drive people into a fury, one that may be visited on hapless TTC staff who are no better off than the rest of us.

The TTC’s website can be hit-or-miss depending on whether it is being updated regularly.  For example, the 501 Queen car’s route description was not changed back from the Shaw/Parliament split until quite recently (thanks to feedback from a reader on this site).  However, the 512 St. Clair route description gives no hint of the split streetcar/bus operation.

Diversions pose a special challenge because some are implemented thanks to emergencies such as fires or major collisions, but the most annoying are those implemented locally by the route management team, and not reflected on the website or on notices at bus and car stops.  The 41 Keele (local) service is diverting around construction at St. Clair southbound, but it took a few weeks for this to show up online, but only in the route description.  The schedule page and map still show the route running via St. Clair, and you can look up times for a stop that in fact has no service.  The info is on the “Diversions” page, but there is no alert on the route’s own page to indicate that readers should also consult the diversion information.

The subway, the main target of this article, has additional information sources for would-be riders, although all of these can be quite frustrating.

If you are at platform level, and your station has a working video screen (dead screens are becoming common), and you’re standing close enough to read it, and Transit Control considers a delay to be serious enough to put up a notice, then you have a fighting chance of discovering that something is amiss.  There may even be PA announcements, but they tend to occur only for very long-running delays.  (As I write this, there is no subway service east of Victoria Park, and info about this comes over the speaker systems regularly.  It also appears on the “Service Advisories” on the TTC website.)

If you are anywhere else, and you have cell/internet signal, you may get information from various sources:

I get both the eAlerts and the Facebook updates, and compiled a log of information from both sources.  My apologies to those who don’t like “busy” displays as there is a lot of info consolidated in one place. Continue reading →

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Streetcars for Toronto: 1952 (Updated)

Updated January 8 at 7:30 pm:  Links have been added at the end of this article to Transit Toronto’s site.

Back in 1952, the TTC was about to open its first subway line and was contemplating the future of the streetcar system.  Options included rehabilitation of its Peter Witt car fleet as well as the acquisition of more PCC cars.

By that time, new PCCs would be expensive as the market for them had more or less disappeared thanks to the onslaught of bus conversions in North America.  However, many used fleets, some quite new, were on the market and Toronto was quick to snap them up.

A fascinating report to the transit commission dated June 3, 1952, was written by W.E.P. Duncan, Operations Manager, and it recommends among other things the acquisition of used streetcars from Cleveland and Birmingham.

This report is also interesting for what it tells us of demands on various major routes and the number of streetcars assigned to each line.  The Bloor route, carrying 9,000 per peak hour/direction, would require 174 cars.  Today’s network requires 192 cars in total, of which 38 are ALRVs.  Demands have changed quite a lot.

The report includes strong language about the retention of streetcars, not a common approach in the 50’s.

There is obvious justification for the abandonment of streetcars in smaller communities but the policy of the abandonment of the use of this form of transportation in the larger communities is decidedly open to question.  In fact it is hardly too much to say that the results which have occurred in a good many of these larger cities leaves open to serious question the wisdom of the decisions made.

It may be not wholly accurate to attribute the transit situation in most large American cities to the abandonment of the streetcars.  Nevertheless the position in which these utilities have now found themselves is a far from happy one.  Fares have steadily and substantially increased, the quality of the service given, on the whole, has not been maintained, and the fare increases have not brought a satisfactory financial result.  Short-haul riding, which is the lifeblood of practically all transit properties, has dropped to a minimum and the Companies are left with the unprofitable long hauls.  Deterioration of service has also lessened the public demand for public passenger transportation.  The result is that the gross revenues of the properties considered, if they have increased to any substantial degree, have not increased anything like the ratio of the fare increases, and in most cases have barely served to keep pace with the rising cost of labour and material.  It is difficult to see any future for most large American properties unless public financial aid comes to their support.

These facts being as they are, Toronto should consider carefully whether policies which have brought these unfortunate results are policies which should be copied in this city.  Unquestionably a large part of the responsibility for the plight in which these companies find themselves is due to the fact that the labour cost on small vehicles is too high to make service self-sustaining at practically any conceivable fare.

Why then did these properties adopt this policy?  It is not unfair to suggest that this policy was adopted in large part by public pressure upon management exerted by the very articulate group of citizens who own and use motor cars and who claim street cars interfere with the movement of free-wheel vehicles and who assert that the modern generation has no use for vehicles operating on fixed tracks but insists on “riding on rubber”.  If there is any truth in the above suggestion it is an extraordinary abdication of responsibility by those in charge of transit interests.  They have tailored their service in accordance with the demands of their bitter competitors rather than in accordance with the needs of their patrons.

Two important points made here still apply today.

First, the importance of the short-haul rider.  These are the cheapest to serve.  In the flat-fare environment of the 50’s, they would also yield the greatest revenue per passenger and were most sensitive to quality of service.  We know this today — people love the ability to jump on a vehicle for a short trip provided that they don’t have to wait very long for it.  If they can walk faster, they do, but deeply resent the poor service.

Second, is the attitude that motorists should not be catered to as fellow users of the road.  Transit should not adjust to accommodate them, but should address them as rivals.  In today’s context, this churns up the “war on the car” rhetoric, and the days when transit could demand precedence are long gone.  All the same, transit gives up too easily too often because politicians talk a good line about priority measures but go to great  lengths to avoid hurting motorists.

The plan set out in the report set the stage for the eventual elimination of streetcars by 1980 on the assumption that the major routes would be replaced by at least one of the Bloor or Queen subways, even though the latter would be initially operated with streetcars.  This leads directly to the suburban rapid transit plan of 1969, described in the previous article.

Updated January 8:

For an excellent article on the many sets of second-hand streetcars acquired by the TTC, please see Transit Toronto’s site.  The two photos linked below are also on that site.

Photo of a train of two ex-Cleveland cars westbound on Bloor entering the transferway at Bloor Station (where, until recently, Bloor street widened out for the streetcar station removed after the BD subway opened in 1966).  A train of ex-Lousiville cars passes eastbound.  The westbound train is a Danforth Tripper headed for Bedford Loop (now St. George Station and the OISE building).

Photo of a train of two ex-Louisville, ex-Cleveland cars on Bloor Street at Bedford from Transit Toronto.  These cars were ordered by Louisville, but the city abandoned its streetcar system before they were delivered.  Cleveland bought them, but later in the throes of abandonment itself, resold them to the TTC who acquired almost-new cars at a very attractive price.

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Once Upon A Time in Scarborough

Over the years, I’ve taken a lot of flak about LRT proposals for Toronto.  Some folks imply that I am personally responsible for leading one or more generations of politicians astray, and that LRT is an invention of my very own with which, like the Pied Piper, I have lured the city away from its true destiny, a network of subways and expressways.

That is an exaggeration, but there are times I wonder at the powers claimed for me, and wish I had taken up a career as a paid lobbyist.

In fact, there was a time when the TTC was considering a suburban LRT network of its own, one that bears some resemblance to plans we are still discussing today, four decades later.

To set the stage, here is an article from the Globe and Mail of September 18, 1969 about the new life Toronto’s streetcars would find in Scarborough.  Included with the article was a photo of a train of PCCs on Bloor Street at High Park, and a map of the proposed network.

The TTC’s hopes for streetcars on their own right-of-way are a bit optimistic, and it’s intriguing how the ranges seen as appropriate for various modes have all drifted down over the years.  All the same, it was clear that the TTC had an LRT network in mind and was looking eventually for new cars for that suburban network.  It didn’t happen, of course, because Queen’s Park intervened with its ill-fated high-tech transit scheme.

A few things on the map are worth noting.  North York and Scarborough Town Centres are still “proposed” as is the Zoo.  There is a proposed Eglinton subway from roughly Black Creek to Don Mills, and the proposed Queen Street subway turns north to link with the Eglinton line and serve Thorncliffe Park.  The network includes links to the airport from both the Eglinton and Finch routes.

I didn’t invent this plan, and Streetcars for Toronto was still three years in the future.  Somehow, the TTC and Toronto lost their way, and what might have been the start of a suburban transit network, years before the development we now live with, simply never happened.

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Still Waiting for Airport Rapid Transit

Wandering through my files, I ran across a clipping from the Toronto Sun dated November 28, 1990.  (Note to the Sun folks — if you want to holler about copyright, I will cut this down to quotations.)

Pearson LRT link still up in the air

By Ian Harvey

A rapid transit link to Pearson International Airport may take until the next century to get off the ground.

The province and federal government have jointly commissioned a $400,000 study into transit links but Ontario Minister of Transport Ed Philip says no timetable or priorities have been established.

One of the options being considered is to relocate the CN Rail track which currently runs past the airport.  That is being proposed as more efficient than running spurs off the line, which also carries the Georgetown GO Train and some VIA trains.

But moving the line would be expensive and could involve problems getting rights-of-way.

A more ambitious plan calls for a TTC Light Rail line to the airport from Eglinton Ave. and Hwy. 427.

However, that plan depends on construction of a $1.2-billion line from Spadina to Hwy. 427 along Eglinton Ave. W. from the Spadina subway line.

TTC general manager Al Leach said the Eglinton LRT line might not be completed by the end of the decade because it is competing with eight other projects for funding.

“There is no time frame” for the airport link, said Philip.  “We expect draft proposals by the spring.  I’m not going to set any timetable until I see the report.”

[“LRT” in this article refers to the RT technology in Scarborough.]

Those with good memories will know that late 1990 saw the beginning of the Bob Rae NDP government at Queen’s Park, and their approach to transit was to build as much as possible, whether we needed it or not, as a job stimulation scheme.  The fact that subways have a very long lead time — when mainly planners and engineers make all the money — shows up in the fact that so little was actually built.  Mike Harris could easily cancel projects that barely had a shovel in the ground.

Now it’s 2010, and current plans will get the airport link to an Eglinton line by 2020.

Don’t pack your bags yet.

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The Long Sad Tale of the Queen Car

One of the joys of year-end housecleaning is that I run across old files — letters and reports from bygone days that show how much, or how little has changed over the years.

Back in 1984, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee conducted a detailed survey of streetcar route operations with particular attention to short turns. We presented our manually collected findings in a manner that will be familiar to readers of this post from the detailed reviews of lines’ operation as graphic timetables.

That study prompted the TTC to commission the Joint Program in Transportation at the UofT to make a detailed, formal study of the Queen car. In due course, that study reported and the findings came to the Commission.

In time, I may dig out and publish all of that material, but one letter says far more than the studies. In April 1985, Alderman Dorothy Thomas (the title had not yet become “Councillor”) who represented the Beach wrote to Julian Porter, then Chair of the TTC, about the study. Her letter shows much of the same frustration with the TTC’s attitude to service quality and management as we have seen over the past quarter-century.  (Note that I have scanned in only the text from the letter and have dropped the graphics such the Council letterhead.)

At the time, the Queen route still operated with four-axle cars (PCCs and CLRVs), and had not yet experienced the wonders of wider headways with six-axle ALRVs nor the service cuts of the mid-90s.

Recently, the TTC attempted a trial operation with a split route using turnbacks at Shaw and at Parliament. I have requested but still have not yet received the vehicle monitoring data for the months of October and November 2009 that would allow a detailed review of that operation nor of the “standard” arrangements in place for part of each month and on weekends.

What we do know is this:

  • Staff hated the scheme, and some actively sabotaged it.
  • Although notices were sent at least twice advising that operators should carry riders west to Dufferin and east to Parliament, this was almost completely disregarded by staff, some of whom were quite aggressive in telling people they could not ride beyond the turnback point.
  • There was no attempt visible any time I checked to manage the merging of the two services, and it was common to see pairs of cars crossing downtown together.

A report on the split operation is expected early in 2010, but based on what I saw and heard, it will confirm what some TTC management probably wanted to demonstrate all along, that the community and the advocates should keep their fingers out of operational planning.

Among the comments in Alderman Thomas’ letter we see both how the TTC’s characterization of problems does not fit with empirical data, and that some problems arose simply from the way the line is managed.

Back in 1984/5, it was sad to see how much the TTC attempted to deny the problems they had with service reliability, and the degree to which they simply did not collect real data in the field.  Twenty-five years later, the TTC is doing some internal analysis of data from the vehicle monitoring system (CIS), but I have still not seen anything as sophisticated as the articles published here.

I’m an “amateur”, albeit one with a very strong IT background and a talent for making sense out of the large amounts of CIS data.  The TTC has never invited me to discuss my work, nor to make suggestions either for improvements or corrections to the methodology.

We’re all still waiting for “Next Bus” to be rolled out with online route displays of anything more than the Spadina and Harbourfront lines even though the contract for this system was awarded over three years ago.

When many routes appeared, briefly, in a beta version of the system, but with less than stellar accuracy in displays, we were told that the problem lay with the completion of the GPS rollout.  Either that rollout is going much more slowly than planned, or there are still problems handling additional routes.  We’ve seen publicity shots of central dispatchers looking at the Queen car on a real map, not a bare-bones text display from the dawn of CIS.  Why are these displays not available to the public?

Promises of new, accurate information channels for TTC riders come frequently, but I can’t help feeling a lot of them short-turn well before they reach their destinations.

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History of the Dundas West GO Connection

From time to time in the Georgetown South Corridor debate, the issue of a direct connection between Dundas West subway station and the GO platforms at Bloor station surfaces.  Oddly enough, although a connection at this point for the Airport link would be quite useful, the usual “design” mooted is for a walking transfer via Bloor Street.  This is bad enough for TTC-to-GO connections, but for Airport passengers with luggage, it’s a joke.

Since the late 1980’s, the TTC and GO have contemplated a direct link at this location, and provision for this was included in the property deal between the City of Toronto, the TTC and what became in time the Crossways Development.  Nothing ever came of this in part because service on the Weston corridor was peak-only, and the cost was considered excessive for the potential use it would see.  This situation is no longer true because there will be all-day service at least to Georgetown plus the Airport link, however it is implemented.

A preliminary design for the connection was done by TTC in April 1987.  This design would require some revision today both to provide full accessibility (elevators) and to fit with the planned new platform arrangements at Bloor station on the rail corridor.  In the interests of informed discussion, I have scanned the 1990 report on the history of this connection as well as the 1987 plan.

The report has been reformatted slightly, but the text is unchanged.  The drawing has been split apart from four separate images on one large page for ease of viewing online.

TTC GO Connection Report
Key Plan of Stations
Subway Platform East End
Control Area of Connection
Section View of New Connection

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Service Changes for January 2010

A few changes will occur on Sunday, January 3, 2010.

Notable among these is the 192 Airport Rocket which has been formally rescheduled and rerouted in response to concerns about the safety of its operation.  The changes were implemented on November 2, 2009. 

The northbound route is via Dundas, Hwy 427, Hwy 27 and Dixon Road to the airport.  Southbound trips remain via Hwy 427 and Dundas to Kipling Station.

The loading standard at all times is 38, a seated load.

2010.01.03 Service Changes

At Scarborough Town Centre, the 169 Huntingwood bus will move to the diagonally opposite corner of the platform from its current location to make more room for the 190 Scarborough Centre Rocket.  This takes effect on Tuesday, January 19.

2010.01.19 STC Bus Bays

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Transit City December 2009 Update (Part 3) (Revised)

Revised December 29 at 12:15 am:  The section on the Finch LRT has been moved to the end and expanded to clarify an alternate proposal for the underground connection between the Yonge subway and the LRT station.

In the two previous articles in this series on the Eglinton and other LRT lines, I mentioned that the TTC would receive an update at its December 16 meeting on the status of the projects.  Seasonal festivities and other matters have diverted my attention, and I’ve been remiss in not reporting on the news, such as it is.

The discussion was intriguing as much for its political as its technical content.  Two factors, related to some extent, will force decisions that, to date, have been avoided about priorities and about the mechanism of project delivery.

  • With the award of the 2015 Pan Am Games to the GTA, there is a desire to have everything up and ready to go with time to spare before the event itself.  This affects both the SRT and the proposed Scarborough-Malvern LRT.
  • Although Queen’s Park, through Infrastructure Ontario, is enamoured of “alternative procurement” (code for private sector development of public infrastructure), actually launching a project on such a basis is now acknowledged to add about one year to the delivery time.  This affects both the SRT and the Finch West LRT which were to be delivered in this manner.

Under the original project schedule, the SRT would still be under reconstruction as an LRT line when the Games took place in 2015.  If this is to be avoided, the start date for the project must be advanced to 2011 or delayed until after the games.  The latter option is dubious considering that the SRT is, technically speaking, on its last legs and keeping it running reliably into the Games period may be challenging.  TTC staff will report on these issue in January, and another round of public meetings is expected in the same timeframe.

Of course, staff will also finally have to produce a design that shows an LRT conversion, rather than an ICTS-centric scheme.  They will have to modify the connection at Sheppard both as an interim terminal (the northern section to Malvern is not yet funded), and to provide a track connection to the Sheppard LRT so that Scarborough LRT trains can use Sheppard carhouse.

The Kennedy Station redesign is also affected by the LRT conversion as the SRT will no longer be a separate entity from the Eglinton LRT lines.

When the Games were announced, there was much talk of accelerating construction of the Scarborough Malvern LRT running east from Kennedy via Eglinton, then north via Kingston Road and Morningside to UofT’s Scarborough Campus (UTSC).  What has not been examined in detail, probably because people still think of the “SRT” as an “ICTS” line, is the early construction of the northern 2km of the Malvern line from UTSC north to Sheppard.

I suspect that the running time from Kennedy to UTSC via Eglinton, or via a temporarily extended SRT via Sheppard could be comparable, and for a short-term operation would make much more sense.  The UTSC site could be served by trains on the S(L)RT from Kennedy and by trains on the Sheppard LRT from Don Mills giving good access not just for people using the BD subway to reach Kennedy.  Longer term, this option would provide service to UTSC long before the planned date for the Scarborough-Malvern line.

Metrolinx is considering this option, but the TTC and City are plumping for funding of the full Malvern LRT line.

The “alternative financing procurement” (AFP) issue arises because the contract with the private developer imposes an extra layer of complexity, preparation and management that does not for a project delivered in the “traditional” manner by the inhouse TTC project.  Any private arrangement must have a defined product along with a mechanism to ensure compliance, and design must reach a detailed enough stage that a bidder can make a concrete proposal.  This pushes back the start date for any project using alternative procurement by about a year.

In the case of the SRT, it would likely not be possible to make the target date for completion, according to preliminary comments at the TTC meeting, if the new line was to be up and running by the winter of 2014/15, well in advance of the Games.

In the case of the Finch West line, the delayed start triggers a political problem because there is so much focus on Scarborough.  Why should Downsview and Rexdale have to wait behind reordered priorities that could complete the Scarborough LRT network all in the name of serving the Games?

For all of Transit City, the TTC will deliver the projects on Metrolinx’ behalf, but we don’t yet know how the next layer down will work for the AFP projects.  However, regardless of how the new lines are built, the TTC will operate and mainten them.

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