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The Mayor of Transit City

Yesterday, David Miller announced that he would not seek a third term as Mayor of Toronto so that he can devote his attention to his family rather than to political battles.  In his announcement speech, the Mayor spoke of his many accomplishments including those which improve public transit.  Indeed, in today’s Globe, when asked to name one of his greatest accomplishments, Miller replied:

One of the things I passionately believe, and one of the reasons I ran for elected office to begin with, was about public transit.

Indeed, improving public transit to make Toronto a “World Class City” was part of Miller’s first, unsuccessful, bid for a Council seat in 1991.  The next election, in 1994, brought Miller to the old Metro Council.

(There are many articles in all media about Miller’s decision, and I leave it to readers to track them down.  A news compendium is available the spacing.ca website as of September 28.)

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Streetcars Return to St. Clair

Streetcar service will return to route 512 St. Clair on December 20, 2009.

Streetcars will operate from St. Clair Station to Earlscourt Loop at Lansdowne, and buses will operate from Oakwood Loop to Keele (Gunn’s Loop).  Buses will run in the curb lanes except for the stop eastbound at Oakwood.

Service on the streetcar route will be improved relative to pre-bus operations (see detailed chart).  Headways at all times are more frequent than the April 2007 streetcar schedules, and the widest headway is 10 minutes.  That is operated only late evenings on weekends.

Round trip times between Yonge and Lansdowne were 60 minutes in the AM Peak 2007 schedules, but this has been reduced to 50 minutes in the new 2009/2010 schedules.  The longest running time in 2007, for Saturday afternoons, was 84 minutes (to Keele).  The time (to Lansdowne) has been reduced to 47 minutes in the new schedules.  (A round trip from Lansdowne to Keele likely took at most 16 minutes, not including layover time, in 2007.)

Work on the Bathurst Street underpass at Dupont will be completed before December 20, and streetcars will operate from Roncesvalles Carhouse rather than Hillcrest.

The service planned for St. Clair is clearly an improvement both in frequency and speed over that which operated on the route before it was rebuilt.  The new schedules go into effect during the winter months, an ideal time to show off improved service quality.  With luck, the traffic signals will actually speed streetcars across the route rather than contributing substantial delays.  This is a real test of the TTC’s and the City’s desire to show that transit priority and all of the disruption on St. Clair are worth the effort.

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TTC Capital Budget 2010-2019

The TTC’s Capital Budget Report is now available online.  I will not comment on this in detail until after the staff presentation at the Commission meeting on September 24.

Of particular note, although it is not mentioned explicitly in the Capital Budget Report, the TTC now has an “SRT Conversion and Expansion project” that is mentioned on Page 6 of the July Chief General Manager’s Report.  Presumably there will be more information about this at Thursday’s meeting.

Such a change has long been rumoured by staff at the various community EA meetings, but we have never actually seen an LRT, as opposed to ICTS, design for the RT and its Malvern extension.

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Those Too-Popular Metropasses (Update 2)

Update 2, 4:45 pm September 23:  The Chief General Manager’s Report for the period to the start of August 2009 is now online.  In this, we learn:

  • The change in average fare revenue is 2.32, not 3, cents per rider due both to higher pass sales and greater use of concession fares (children, students, seniors) (page 3).
  • Revenue loss due to ridership being below budget accounts for $3.4-million, while the lower average fare cointributes $7.6-million.  (Both of these are only for the seven months to the end of July.)
  • Yearend revenue shortfall from fares will lie between $15- and $19-million depending on ridership results through the fall.
  • Yearend revenue from advertising and other income (mainly interest) will be $3.6-million below budget.
  • Expenses are expected to be over budget due to the combined effect of:
    • Inglis building flood remediation ($1.4-million)
    • Higher service requirement from city construction ($2-million)
    • Higher overtime due to staff shortage (gapping), maintenance backlog and severe winter weather ($3.5-million)
    • Vehicle maintenance needs ($4-million)
    • Other changes ($0.3-million)
  • Savings on expenses include:
    • Lower energy rates and water consumption ($4.9-million)
    • Employee cost reductions ($2-million)
    • Planned service reductions ($1.9-million).  It is unclear whether these are reductions still to come, or if this is the saving versus budget of cuts imposed by availability problems with the bus fleet. 
  • The following actions will be taken to address the anticipated $17.4-million shortfall:
    • Some service improvements planned for fall 2009 will be deferred until mid-2010 (no list is given).
    • Overtime will be curtailed.  The effect on service availability is not addressed, but we do know that there were problems with fielding all service late in 2008 due to similar actions.
    • There will be a comprehensive review of hiring and training for operators.  This is intended to address a surge in retirements caused by demographics of the operator workforce.
    • All discretionary expenses in departments will be reviewed.
  • Page 6 mentions “the SRT Conversion and Expansion project”.  Although this is not explicitly mentioned in the Capital Budget report, we are about to see the TTC announce the conversion of the SRT to LRT technology.  This has long been rumoured, and finally has shown up in print.

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Portlands Carhouse Proposal

[My thanks to the Transit Toronto site from which I picked up this information.  With the Film Festival in progress, I’ve been a bit distracted.]

The TTC recently presented details of its preferred location and proposed layout for a new carhouse in the Port Lands.  Of several sites considered, the now-vacant land at the south-east corner of Leslie and Lake Shore wins out.  The land is close to Queen Street (only a few blocks to the north), and as vacant land can be easily redeveloped.

The presentation linked from the project’s website gives an overview of the site selection process as well as drawings of the new carhouse.

The big issue now will be funding.  Over the past year, the debate centred on getting and paying for 204 new streetcars, but nobody talked about the carhouse they would need.  That’s one of the outstanding issues going into the capital budget planning for coming years.

One item of great interest is that the drawing on page 15 clearly states that the yard capacity is 100 cars, plus 36 cars inside the carhouse.

The long-term status of Roncesvalles and Russell is undecided at this point.  In the short term, they will be needed to house the existing CLRV/ALRV fleet.  However, the proposed new carhouse is clearly too small, and the TTC must intend to use another site, possibly the nearby Russell Yard, as a spillover location.

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Landmarks Vanish! Tourists Mystified!! (Update 2)

Updated September 22 at 9:50 pm:  According to this evening’s Global news, the TTC will pull the offending maps tonight from all stations.  Now may be your last chance to photograph your favourite blunder.  Mind you, considering how fast the TTC is at taking down out-of-date notices, I suspect the “bad” maps will be around for awhile.

It will also be intriguing to see if, when the new maps are installed, they actually do update all of them in every station.  I found four of elderly vintage without looking very hard yesterday.

Meanwhile, the Star managed to publish an annotated version of the St. Andrew map which shows City Hall where Osgoode Hall actually is, and the CN Tower at the corner of John and Front, north of the rail corridor.  I suppose a paper with its offices in the 905 can’t be expected to know much about downtown Toronto any more.

Finally, I strongly urge that the TTC circulate the new maps for comment to ward Councillors’ offices who might actually know where things are in their respective neighbourhoods.  Even better, as some have suggested in the comments here, put them online so that the vastly better-informed transit amateurs can help out with the project.

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TIFF 2009: Part I

The Toronto International Film Festival (aka TIFF) is over for 2009, but as usual I am left with the task of writing the long form of my reviews.  Those of you who want transit stuff can just ignore this sequence of posts, and of course there have already been capsule reviews in another article here.

In theory, now that I am retired, I should actually be able to finish these in short order, but it’s amazing how the schedule of transit events and other cultural activities can fill up my time.

This post contains a few general observations plus two guest reviews from my cousin whose TIFF schedule partly overlapped my own.

Included here:

  • Introductions
  • A Conversation with Michael Caine
  • Mao’s Last Dancer

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TIFF 2009

This year I will maintain a list of films I have seen with ratings and brief descriptions, and will add to this on a daily basis including pointers to items of special note.  Full reviews will appear as I have time to write them out from my notes, mainly after the festival ends.  The titles below are hotlinked to the TIFF website.

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The Discovery of a Transit Agenda

The Toronto Board of Trade recently issued a press release calling for a permanent national transit funding strategy.  Included in the release is a list of Ottawa’s spending promises in the GTA, although notable by its absence is comparable information for Provincial or Municipal shares in these projects.

As regular readers here will know, I have my doubts about the viability of a national funding scheme specifically because of this unpredictability and the inevitable three-way fights that arise over funding and eligibility.  If Ottawa is to be part of transit funding, I agree that this needs to be on a permanent basis and with a formula that transit agencies can rely upon to plan their long-range budgets.  Project-based funding is at the whim of day-to-day policy and politics.

Later this month, the Board of Trade has a session about Vancouver’s Transit Revolution and the wonders that innovative financing can bring.  For a more jaundiced view of the Vancouver situation, visit Stephen Rees’ blog.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Urban Institute will present Designing Transit Cities on November 19-20, 2009.  This will include a free public session in City Council Chamber on the evening of November 19, and a number of paid-entry sessions on November 20.

This program is co-sponsored by the City of Toronto, the Toronto Society of Architects, the Cities Centre at UofT, the TTC and Metrolinx.

Oddly, these “Canadian” organizations have assembled guest speakers all from the United States.  What does this say about their perception of Canadian planning?

There is supposed to be a separate website at www.transitcities.org, but it leads right back to the main CUI page with no additional info.

With two major organizations publicising the importance of transit to urban areas, I can’t help wondering how their programs, not to mention those of would-be mayoral candidates, would differ from and improve on transit plans already in place.