by

TTC Updates and Extends Spadina 510 Bus Replacement

Updated June 13, 2024 at 8:00 am: A table comparing scheduled service levels on Queens Quay has been added.

Updated June 13, 2024 at 2:00 pm: A table comparing scheduled service levels on the 510 streetcar with proposed bus service has been added.

In April, I reported TTC plans to replace 510 Spadina Streetcars with buses from June 23 through the summer and fall. The TTC has now updated the announcement and extended the program from October into December. Here are the April (left) and June (right) versions of the maps for comparison.

The TTC’s construction notices can be found here:

The scope of work includes:

  • Track reconstruction at Spadina Station
  • Enabling works for Spadina Station Loop expansion. Condo construction east of the station will expose part of its structure, and the TTC will make provision for extending the streetcar loading platform.
  • Overhead reconstruction from Spadina Station to College Street, and from King to Queens Quay.

There is no information about the segment from College to King which was omitted due to resource limitations according to the TTC. It is unclear whether there will be another shutdown in 2025 to finish the work. I await clarification on that issue from the TTC.

Buses will operate in mixed traffic, not on the streetcar right-of-way. According to the Transit Notice:

  • The City will be deploying traffic wardens to assist bus operations on Spadina Avenue.
  • Narrow lane width and centre overhead poles in certain sections preclude bus service on the streetcar right-of-way.
  • Overhead crews will be actively working in the right-of-way in different sections of Spadina Avenue.
  • Operating in both the streetcar right-of-way and in mixed traffic lanes would require new signals and
    limit any travel time benefits.

Some of this does not entirely make sense. There are centre overhead poles only south of Front Street. No work is planned between College and King. It is not clear that completely new signals would be needed for buses to shift between the streetcar right-of-way and curb lanes, especially at College and at King where there are already priority signals for streetcar turns northbound and southbound. Some reprogramming would be necessary.

As for traffic wardens, they will be little use on lower Spadina where traffic is regularly backed up from the Gardiner Expressway. I would not be surprised to see many buses short turn at Adelaide rather than attempting the trip south to Queens Quay.

Service on 509 Harbourfront will be improved, but the details have not yet been published.

I will update this article as more information is available.

Comparison of Service Levels on Queens Quay

The table below shows the existing scheduled service on Queens Quay until June 22 with the 509 Harbourfront and 510 Spadina cars, and from June 23 with the revised 509 service. It is quite clear that there will be less service on Queens Quay from June 23 onward.

The values shown below are headways in minutes and seconds, and vehicles/hour e.g. “10′ (6)”.

509 Harbourfront to June 22510 Spadina to June 22Combined 509/510 to June 22509 Harbourfront effective June 23Percent Change
Weekdays
AM Peak7’15” (8.4)10′ (6)4’10” (14.4)6′ (10)-31%
Midday9’30” (6.3)10′ (6)4’53” (12.3)7′ (8.6)-30%
PM Peak9’30” (6.3)10′ (6)4’53” (12.3)6′ (10)-19%
Early Evening9’15” (6.5)10′ (6)4’48” (12.5)7′ (8.6)-31%
Late Evening10′ (6)9’30” (6.3)4’53” (12.3)8′ (7.5)-31%
Saturdays
Early Morning8’30” (7.1)9’30” (6.3)4’49” (13.4)8’30” (7.1)-47%
Late Morning9’15″(6.5)8’30” (7.1)4.25 (13.6)7′ (8.6)-37%
Afternoon8’15” (7.3)7’45” (7.7)4′ (15)4′ (15)Nil
Early Evening9’15” (6.5)5’15” (11.4)3’21” (17.9)7′ (8.6)-52%
Late Evening10′ (6)9’30” (6.3)4’53” (12.3)8′ (7.5)-39%
Sundays
Early Morning15′ (4)15′ (4)7’30” (8)10′ (6)-25%
Late Morning8’45” (6.9)9’45” (6.2)4’35” (13.1)7’30” (8)-39%
Afternoon8’15” (7.3)9′ (6.7)4’17” (14)5′ (12)-14%
Early Evening9’15” (6.5)6’15” (9.6)3’44” (16.1)7′ (8.6)-46%
Late Evening10′ (6)9’30” (6.3)4’53” (12.3)8′ (7.5)-39%

Comparison of Service Levels on Spadina

The table below compares the existing streetcar service on 510 Spadina between Spadina Station and Queens Quay with the proposed level of bus service. Note that streetcars carry two to three times the load of a standard bus. Values are shown in minutes and seconds, with vehicles per hour in brackets.

510 Spadina to June 22510B Spadina Bus effective June 23
Weekdays
AM Peak5′ (12)3’45” (16)
Midday5′ (12)3’30” (17.1)
PM Peak5′ (12)2’30” (24)
Early Evening5′ (12)3’30” (17.1)
Late Evening9’30” (6.3)6′ (10)
Saturdays
Early Morning9’30” (6.3)9′ (6.7)
Late Morning4’15” (14.1)2’45” (21.8)
Afternoon3’52” (15.5)2’45” (21.8)
Early Evening5’15” (11.4)4′ (15)
Late Evening9’30” (6.3)5′ (12)
Sundays
Early Morning15′ (4)9′ (6.7)
Late Morning4’53” (12.3)3′ (20)
Afternoon4’30” (13.3)3′ (20)
Early Evening6’15” (9.6)4′ (15)
Late Evening9’30” (6.3)6′ (10)
by

Josh Colle Returning to TTC

TTC CEO Rick Leary has announced that former Councillor and TTC Chair Josh Colle will return to the TTC in the position of Chief Strategy and Customer Officer effective July 15. He has several years of consulting work for various transit agencies in Canada and the US in a variety of roles.

Colle will come into a difficult position where the TTC faces much more serious problems than his term as chair ending in late 2018. There are severe challenges with ridership, service attractiveness, budget, operations, maintenance and capital funding. The City’s hopes for a strong TTC role in attracting travel from cars onto greener modes, notably transit, are not supported with funding and service beyond a stand-pat level.

Within the TTC there are issues in the management ranks, although “Strategy and Customer Service” is not first among them. Better and more reliable service sound like they should be customer service priorities. Without staff to drive and maintain vehicles, a reliable fleet and infrastructure, and an ethos that looks first within the TTC to solve problems, all the strategy and smiling faces will not get people on transit.

The TTC faces a severe backlog of maintenance and quality control problems that have been downplayed or hidden for some time. A near-miss subway incident, deteriorating track, the Scarborough RT derailment are only part of what is seen publicly. There are unseen issues such as subway work car reliability that contribute to infrastructure issues and recently an all-day shutdown of Line 2. Work is deferred for want of appropriate equipment. On the streetcar system, problems with track are “solved” with slow orders as streetcars tiptoe through problem areas, and we know from the Auditor General’s report that overhead maintenance planning and record-keeping leaves much to be desired.

We do not know if the passenger fleet condition — subway trains, streetcars and buses — constrains the amount of service that might operate. All three modes have considerably more spare vehicles than needed for routine maintenance, and this allows the less reliable ones to be set aside, a particular problem with the bus fleet. In theory, the TTC could run better service, but they do not have the budget to operate it, and we do not know if all of those spare vehicles could actually run if they were needed.

Hundreds of new hybrid and battery buses, plus 60 more streetcars are on their way. The TTC trumpets its green fleet initiatives, but is silent about vehicle reliability and durability. The recently published Five Year Plan foresees only modest growth with the system still running below pre-pandemic levels in 2028.

All of this leaves Josh Colle sitting in an organization he does not control. If he is truly going to handle “strategy” at more than a superficial level, the TTC must take the need for renewal and transparency to heart. Whether the current crop of managers can or will do this is quite another matter.

by

TTC Draft Financial Results for 2023

The TTC’s Audit & Risk Management Committee met on June 5, 2024 with a lengthy agenda. This article includes comments on:

For the financial statements, I have attempted to explain the difference in presentation under the Public Sector Accounting Standards the TTC uses and the more familiar annual budget. The standards require the capital and operating streams to be consolidated including showing assets such as vehicles and infrastructure on the balance sheet. This arrangement swamps the operating results with the much larger capital values even though TTC’s assets are almost entirely funded by subsidies, and they do not represent a value which can be used offset operating costs.

There is a new provision in the capital accounts this year for the disposal cost of assets. This recognizes the future cost of removal and remediation including environmental exposures.

Covid relief has been shown in the statements to distinguish revenues and costs specific to the pandemic, but future budgets and financial reports will no longer do this because the special provincial and federal subsidies ended in 2022.

There was a $38 million operating surplus in 2023 due to unused provision for opening of Lines 5 and 6, offset by extra costs to operate the SRT replacement service sooner than planned.

I have included tables from the financial statement notes showing the breakdown of various subsidies as this area is poorly understood. Provincial gas tax comes to the City and portion of this is allocated to TTC operations with the remainder going to capital. Federal gas tax, now renamed the Canada Community-Based Fund, goes entirely to the capital program.

The TTC accounts do not include provincial projects such as the Ontario Line, nor the City’s SmartTrack program which is implemented by Metrolinx with funding from various sources notably Toronto’s City Building Fund.

The Draft Annual Report does not contain much at this point, but will eventually include the approved financial statements. It is the usual collection of pretty pictures and good news stories sure to warm the hearts of TTC Board members who don’t look beyond the surface.

The report contains a 10-year summary of key system statistics which I have included in the article as well as percentage changes in various factors over time. One item of note is the growth in staffing over ten years to operate roughly the same amount of service. Part of this due to changes in system scope (a larger subway system) and the pandemic-era problem that the staff needed to support fleet and infrastructure does not decline even though there are fewer riders.

The bus fleet today is also larger than in 2014. This does not reflect increased service, but rather a higher proportion of buses idle as maintenance spares. The Annual report includes different claims about the fleet size and overstates the number of green buses the TTC actually owns. I have asked the TTC for clarification of these numbers, but they have not replied.

The TTC is taking delivery of hundreds of new buses through 2024-25 that will replace older inactive vehicles, but there is no budget plan to fund operation of more service. The report crows about the greening of the fleet while neglecting to address how it will be operated.

Continue reading →
by

Moving Forward With Transit

Just before midnight on June 6, the Toronto Transit Commission and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 announced that they had a tentative agreement for a new three-year contract. Further work continued beyond the midnight deadline to reach a proposal the union executive could support.

No information has been released, and the deal is described as a “framework” with details to be finalized before the package goes to union members and the TTC Board for ratification. However, both union leadership and TTC management sound hopeful for a settlement.

This was not the situation only days earlier when Local 113 stated that there was little progress on major issues, notably job security, and transit riders braced for a possible strike.

By comparison with previous TTC labour negotiations, this round did not spill over into public rounds of finger-pointing. At the political level, pressure was not overt, although behind the scenes guidance must have affected bargaining. This bodes well for a less contentious relationship than would exist with polarizing, blowhard media statements that can undermine whatever trust might exist between negotiators.

On CBC’s Metro Morning, Local 113 President Marvin Alfred noted a shift in TTC negotiating posture to remove management conditions attached to some union proposals that would have limited their benefit. This led to a tentative agreement. What triggered this change is not public, but that was key to unlocking the negotiations.

Assuming that the framework evolves quickly into an approved contract, the focus now must turn to the future of transit in Toronto. The TTC faces major financial problems, but lurking behind these are issues with service quality, maintenance and TTC management culture.

On the financial side, common discussions focus on the Capital budget including the backlog of “state of good repair” funding, notably for a new Line 2 fleet of trains. However, the more pressing challenge lies with the Operating budget that is funded primarily by the City of Toronto and fares. Through the pandemic, special federal and provincial funding allowed service to remain frequent, but this revenue has ended. Any policy to maintain, let alone improve service falls to the City and to riders.

The options are not fully understood, but with 2025 budget planning now underway, it is vital that any debate be well-informed. For many years, the TTC budget landed with a thud on the Board’s public agenda in December or January with all significant decisions about funding, service and maintenance solidly baked in. After the annual charade of public consultation, Board and Council tweaks, the budget sailed through. At best, one might see requests for options going into the the next year’s process.

TTC has been without a Budget Committee of any significance for years. Now is the time to create one and to ensure that it actually meets for substantive debate. There must be open discussion of options. The TTC’s Five Year Service Plan includes some costed proposals, but other issues such as fare structure, service quality and reliability need review at the same time. The Board has a bad habit of cherry-picking items for debate in isolation from the larger context.

Major issues for the union are wages, understandably, and job security. On the wage side, the recently published TTC 2023 draft annual report includes a table showing the hourly cost of wages and benefits from 2014 to 2023. Over that period, this value rose from $49.01 to $61.67, a ten-year increase of almost 26%. Individual annual changes varied considerably with some years seeing values well under 2%.

From a system cost point of view, the wage and benefit rate does not tell the whole story because the combined effect of traffic congestion and more generous terminal recovery times in schedules push down the amount of service delivered per vehicle hour. Putting it simply, if the average speed of buses goes down by 1%, then 1% more vehicle hours are needed just to maintain the same service. Unless there are offsetting service cuts, this adds to service costs beyond the basic hourly rates and benefits. Management can claim an improvement in service operated, measured in hours, while scheduled frequency and capacity can actually decline.

Job security is also important because of creeping outsourcing of work from formerly union jobs to outside contractors. This began with some of the simpler tasks such as bus cleaning, but more recently regional service integration schemes raise the question of which transit operators (and their respective staff) will provide service in Toronto. Current proposals involve minor parts of the system, but the clear intent is to shift TTC costs to other providers.

Service quality is a big issue for riders, and this is an area where both management and the union must co-operate for improvement. There is a need for honesty in reporting about crowding levels and reliability about which I have written many times before. Management cites all-day averages and uses a measure of reliability that does not reflect real-world rider experience. Crowding is directly related because bunching produces uneven vehicle loads with most riders on crowded buses. Management must accept the need to manage service and report on its actual quality. “On time” performance metrics disguise actual quality problems including vehicles running in groups for extended periods.

Options for increasing service must recognize the large pool of spare trains, buses and streetcars available to provide more frequent service today. “We don’t have enough resources” is a common response to calls for better service, and years ago this applied to vehicles and garage space. Today it applies mainly to budget constraints, not physical fleet and infrastructure. Toronto might not be able to afford to run all of the vehicles it owns, but that decision should be made openly recognizing implications for the attractiveness and future growth of the transit option.

Maintenance is a big issue both for the fleet and infrastructure. This affects both reliability and safety. Many factors are at work including budget limits and an extended period when the TTC did not have to field full service during the pandemic. Some maintenance can be put off for a short term, in a pinch, but when the new, lower quality becomes normal, climbing back to a once-demanded level can be hard. An organization can forget its standards, or adjust them to fit available funding and hope for the best.

There is no question that system inspection and maintenance are not keeping up with current conditions as we have seen in reviews of the Scarborough RT, subway track and streetcar overhead areas. What we do not know is how pervasive these issues are in other parts of the transit system, nor what other problems will threaten rider confidence in the TTC’s ability to provide safe, dependable service.

Finally, there is the long-standing matter of TTC culture. It is no secret that the top-down management style has hurt the organization, cost the system in lost expertise and corporate memory, and fostered a climate where appearance of success takes priority. TTC messaging overstates the progress in post-pandemic service recovery without acknowledging the decline in service riders actually experience. Maintenance problems are hidden until events force them into the open.

The Board, after years of ceding power to management, must now shift to a more hands-on role if only to ensure that the City and transit riders are not blind-sided, that key issues are not downplayed. This could work against a political incentive to get “back on track” and report good news as soon and as often as possible. The Board needs management it can trust, but also the political support to be open and honest about what the transit system needs.

With labour issues more-or-less settled, Toronto must turn to rebuilding and expanding its transit system. Speeches and plans about improvements are worthless without honesty, transparency, funding and sustained commitment. Plans for subway lines in the 2030s make for good press, at least among those who only look for the photos ops, but they don’t carry riders today, let alone address issues with changing travel demands where suburban travel is as important as trips downtown.

Does Toronto really want better transit?

by

505 Dundas Headways: April 2024

In the previous article, I reviewed travel times on 505 Dundas for the month of April 2024. Now, here are charts of the headway data.

Service on this route comes nowhere near meeting the TTC’s own rather lax standards for service quality. The TTC measures On Time Performance (“OTP”) with the assumption that if cars are on time, then regular service will take care of itself. However, there is considerable leeway in the words “on time”.

OTP is measured only at terminals and compares the scheduled trip time to the actual one. If a car leaves no more than 1 minute early or 5 minutes late, it is “on time” for the stats. There is no measurement of OTP along the route, and the spacing from terminals is rarely maintained.

The six minute window this provides allows service to be quite erratic, but still counted as “on time”. For example, on a route like Dundas with a 10 minute headway, cars could alternately be 5 minutes late and 1 minute early. This would produce the following departure pattern:

Scheduled12:0012:1012:2012:3012:4012:501:00
Actual12:0512:0912:2512:2912:4512:491:05
Headway4′16′4′16′4′16′

The cars on short headways would inevitably catch up with the cars on wide headways, and pairs 20′ apart would travel across the route. There is nothing in TTC standards to measure this. and reports will blissfully say that service is “on time”. In fact, the TTC does not even achieve its own lax standard.

There is also no metric for missed trips caused by absent cars. Conversely, a trip at a terminal can legitimately be missing if a car was short-turned to restore regular service. The TTC’s focus on OTP stats to the exclusion of any other metric is one reason for the no short-turn policy. This can do much damage by blocking legitimate service management techniques. In the article on travel times, there are many examples of short turns to preserve service on the central part of the route rather than letting vehicles pile up at terminals.

This article shows how service leaving the terminals of 505 Dundas is disorganized from the outset, and how this evolves along the route. For an organization that hopes to win back riders, this is not an ideal example of what service should look like.

Continue reading →
by

505 Dundas Travel Times: April 2024

On the Toronto Council agenda for May 22, 2024, there was a motion asking for Transportation Services to investigate changes in traffic regulations on Dundas Street in anticipation of coming work on Spadina Avenue and at Spadina Station. This will replace streetcars with buses for a period from late June to mid-December, 2024, and the buses will not operate on the streetcar right-of-way.

Community Council Decision Advice and Other Information

The Toronto and East York Community Council requested the General Manager, Transportation Services to report directly to the May 22, 2024 meeting of City Council on recommended temporary parking, loading and traffic amendments on Dundas Street West that would support timely and reliable streetcar service on Dundas Street West between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street during construction at Spadina Station.

Summary

During the June to December 2024 closure of the 510 Spadina streetcar for construction at Spadina Station, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) wishes to enhance alternate routes for customer movement to and through the Chinatown neighbourhood. One key alternate route is the 505 Dundas streetcar. Unfortunately, this streetcar is frequently delayed by acute traffic congestion between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street. To improve timeliness and reliability of 505 Dundas streetcar service through Chinatown during the Spadina closure, TTC is requesting that Council temporarily modify left-turn prohibitions, reduce on-street general-use parking, and add no stopping restrictions in strategic locations and timeframes along Dundas Street West between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street. Designated loading zones may also help to reduce conflicts with streetcar service while supporting local businesses.

Transportation Services has replied to this request with a recommendation for changes in parking, stopping and turning restrictions on Dundas between McCaul and Spadina. Current curb lane restrictions are for no parking or stopping only in peak periods, with a mixture of paid and unpaid parking allowed at other times. There are also various turning restrictions (see the reply for details). The proposed changes are:

  • Between McCaul and Spadina, Dundas would be a No Stopping zone in both directions at all times.
  • Between University and McCaul, the peak direction (eastbound AM, westbound PM) would be a No Stopping zone.
  • Left turns eastbound and westbound at Dundas and Spadina would be banned between 7 am and 10 pm on all days.

A coach loading zone will be preserved in front of the Art Gallery (south side of Dundas, west of McCaul), and “consultation will be undertaken with the Chinatown BIA to identify areas where loading zone could be designated”.

Council amended the staff recommendation to asked for a “report back to the Toronto and East York Community Council by the fourth quarter of 2024 on the effectiveness of these changes for streetcar operations and a recommended long-term plan for parking, loading and traffic regulations on Dundas Street West between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street.”

How much these changes will contribute to the Dundas car’s operation remains to be seen. There are already peak period restrictions on Dundas, and so there would be no change at those times. As always, the question of enforcement in practice vs regulation in theory is a problem. Moreover, 505 Dundas service is much less frequent than the combined services on King, and transit’s presence on Dundas is nowhere near as dominant. At most times, the scheduled service is every 10 minutes, and the most frequent service, 7 minutes, is on Saturday afternoons.

There is much more to the 505 Dundas route than the short section east of Spadina, and any review of the route should look at it over all. The travel time between University and Spadina, even on “bad” days, is under 10 minutes and the likely saving of any restrictions will be at best 4 minutes, likely less. Focus on a single segment will not address wider problems along the route.

The remainder of this article looks at travel times for 505 Dundas cars in April 2024 as a “before” point of reference, and to high light other areas where cars are (and are not) delayed.

Continue reading →
by

506/306 Carlton East End Track Work & Bus Replacement

Route 506/306 Carlton will operate as a bus route east of Parliament Street for two weeks beginning late on May 25. Worn curves at Gerrard & Bowmore (between Coxwell and Woodbine) and at Coxwell & Upper Gerrard will be replaced.

Updated June 6, 2024: The diversion that was expected to last until June 6 finished a day early, and normal service was restored to Main Station on June 6, not June 7 as originally planned.

Updated May 31, 2024 at 4:30pm: On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 28, the TTC announced that the 506 Carlton route would be extended east to Woodbine Loop via Queen Street. This would soak up the very substantial unused scheduled time for trips through to Main Station. Although some cars did operate over this routing on May 28, many turned back at Broadview. From May 29 onward, all service ran east to Woodbine Loop via Broadview and Queen, returning westbound via Queen and Parliament. None of the cars operating off route, nor any of the replacement shuttle buses appear on the tracking apps.

There service diversion varies as work progresses:

From 11pm Saturday May 25 to 4am Monday May 27:

The first stage of the work will be at Gerrard & Bowmore.

From 4am Monday May 27 to 4am Friday June 7:

The second stage of the work will be at Upper Gerrard & Coxwell.

TTC Construction Notice

by

The State of Disrepair (II)

The extended shutdown of Line 2 on May 13 brought the TTC’s work car fleet into the spotlight thanks to multiple equipment failures leading to hydraulic fluid leaks.

In the management presentation, the average age of that fleet was cited as 17 years, but these cars vary greatly in age. Here are the affected cars.

VehicleBuiltFunctionLeak Incident Dates
RT-411993Tie TamperApr. 2/24 & May 16/24
RT-171996Tunnel WasherJan. 17/24
RT-71998LocomotiveFeb. 10/24
RT-562006Vacuum & Drain CleaningJan. 14/24 & May 13/24
RT-842011Vacuum CarMay 15/24

Replacement of RT-41 with a new car was proposed in the 2018 Capital Budget along with several other new and replacement cars. The intent was to refresh the fleet and increase capacity to perform more work on the expanding subway network. Most of this program was deferred under CEO Rick Leary, although a second Tie Tamper, RT-21, does now appear in the illustrated list of work cars. RT-41 is well overdue for replacement.

Inspection of all work cars began a few days after the May 13 incident. Sources indicate that fewer than one third of the three dozen cars reviewed in the first two days passed inspection.

Planned work on Line 1 on the May 18-19 weekend was deferred, and it is unclear how the sidelining of RT-41 and other cars might affect planned track repairs.

Questions for the TTC

On May 22, I wrote a series of questions to TTC Media Relations attempting to get an official version of what I had heard from sources. Here are the questions.

  1. Can you confirm the failure rate for inspections (over 2/3)?
  2. Has all of the fleet been inspected now and what are the results?
  3. Will further adjustments be required in maintenance plans?
  4. A key vehicle that was not available last weekend was RT-41 the tamper car. According to the fleet diagram included in the board presentation there is another tamper car RT-21. What is its status?
  5. In 2018 the capital budget included a multi-year program to replace elderly work cars and expand the fleet including [replacement of] RT-41, but this program was repeatedly pushed into future years. What is its status?
  6. Since the pandemic the budget blue books have not been available, although there was talk of an e-version of them. What is the current status?

The TTC’s response on the afternoon of May 22 was not very revealing:

As you know from the Board meeting, we’ve already started the deep dive with external consultants AND our own staff have enhanced our proactive inspections on the workcar fleet.

The results, outcomes and findings will first be shared with our Board when they are known.

I can say that your source has misinformed you in as much as we have not yet inspected the entire fleet as this is a time-consuming process that sometimes requires workcars being shunted from one location to another.

As deficiencies are identified, they are corrected before being the work cars are put into service.

The TTC’s response was less than helpful for all questions:

  1. The TTC did not address the failure rate for cars that had been inspected.
  2. The TTC claimed my source was incorrect, but misrepresented the question. In fact I asked whether the inspections had been completed, and indirectly they confirmed that the answer is “no”.
  3. Not answered.
  4. Not answered. Tamper RT-21 is a comparatively new vehicle (it does not appear in 2018 fleet lists). It is not clear why it was unavailable when tamper RT-41 was sidelined.
  5. Not answered. The repeated deferral of this project is a matter of record within the budget papers from 2017-2024.
  6. Not answered. The significance of the “blue books” (so named because of the colour of the binders that held them) is that they included detailed descriptions of all capital projects and their status well beyond information in budgets or quarterly financial reports. Before the pandemic, these were routinely provided on request, but I have not been able to obtain them since 2019.

Most of the questions have nothing to do with the “deep dive” into fleet condition, but the TTC has used a simplistic response to dismiss all questions whether they relate to the deep dive or not. The one “answer” attempted to discredit a statement I did not make, and by extension the entire sequence.

Maybe, somewhere, there is a Board member who will demand answers.

Reduced Speed Zones

The tables below track the Reduced Speed Zones where track is awaiting repair. This is an updated version since the previous article. Depending on how your browser presents the tables, you may have to scroll to the right to see the most recent entries.

Although many of the entries from early 2024 have cleared off, others appear suggesting that inspections are uncovering new problem areas and adding them to the list. Little has changed through the month of May.

Source: TTC Reduced Speed Zones Page

Line 1Jan 18Feb 2Feb 12Mar 7Mar 12Mar 14Mar 21Apr 29May 8May 17May 22
Hwy 407 to VaughanNB
Sheppard W to WilsonNBNBNB
Wilson to YorkdaleSBSBSBSB
Yorkdale to Lawrence WSBSBSBSB
Eglinton W to St. Clair WNBNBNB
St. Clair W to DupontNBSBSBSBSB
Spadina to St. GeorgeBWBWBW
St. George to MuseumNBNBNB
St. Andrew to UnionBWBWSBSBSBSBSB
Union to KingNBBWNBNBNBNBSBSBSBSB
College to WellesleyBWBWBW
Bloor to RosedaleNBNBNBNBNBNBNBNB
Summerhill to St. ClairBWBWNB
St. Clair to DavisvilleBWBWBWBWBWSB
Davisville to EglintonBWSB
Lawrence to York MillsNBNBNBNBNB
York Mills to SheppardNBNBNBNBNBNBNB
North York Centre to FinchNBNB
NB = Northbound SB = Southbound BW = Both Ways
Line 2Jan 18Feb 2Feb 12Mar 7Mar 12Mar 14Mar 21Apr 29May 8May 17May 22
Royal York to JaneBWBW
Runnymede to High ParkWB
Keele to Dundas WestBWBWEBEBEB
Sherbourne to Castle FrankEBEB
Castle Frank to ChesterEBEBEBEBEBEBEB
Chester to BroadviewWB
Greenwood to CoxwellEB
Coxwell to WoodbineEBEBEB
Woodbine to Main StreetEB
Victoria Park to WardenEBBW
Warden to KennedyWB
EB = Eastbound WB = Westbound BW = Both Ways

by

TTC Doubles Down on Service Change Misinformation

In a recent “Stakeholder Update” email, the TTC reiterates misleading claims about the service changes implemented on May 12.

Significant Service Increases as of May 12

As of May 12, TTC has TTC increased scheduled service on major routes, delivering more frequent and reliable trips, shorter wait times, and more room for customers on board. The latest round of service increases will bring service to 96% of pre-pandemic levels, the highest since 2019. 24 bus routes now have improved service, mostly in off-peak periods, providing more room on board and improving more than 140,000 daily customer trips.

I reviewed the changes in a previous article showing that in many cases service is actually less frequent than it was before. See:

TTC quotes service as being at 96% of pre-pandemic levels. This is measured in vehicle or train hours, not by the actual frequency of service. Some of the changes use additional vehicle hours to address traffic congestion stretching existing service further apart to give longer scheduled trip times. With less frequent buses, these changes do not provide “more room on board”.

The TTC claims that by improving schedule reliability, they simply reflect actual operating conditions and that the former service did not match schedules. This might be true, but still does not reflect the provision of more service measured as buses/hour past your stop.

The tiresome point about this is that one expects spin from what is a “communications” piece telling the official story and putting the TTC in the best possible light. For years the TTC Board under former Mayors has been content to lap up this and other management tales, but an organization hoping to win back riders cannot start by overselling its wares.

The TTC has severe budget problems, but these are not helped by overly rosy claims about improvements that, if anything, undercut calls for better funding. It’s easy and popular to slag the Feds when they don’t belly up to the bar on capital funding, but this applies equally to the City and Province on the operating side.

Riders may see the ads touting better service, but like shoppers lured into a store with a glitzy window display, they soon find what is really on offer.

by

How Many Buses Does The TTC Use? (2024 Update)

A year ago, I reviewed the usage of the bus fleet to compare the total size with actual usage. See:

In this round, the data are from January 1 to February 15, 2024. As before, the raw information has been provide by Darwin O’Connor from his TransSee website, for which much thanks.

The amount of service the TTC operates is limited mostly by budget, which in turn dictates how many operators the system can afford, but there is also the question of bus availability and reliability.

Updated May 20, 2024 at 3:10pm: Link to UITP report on in-motion trolleybus charging added at the end of the article.

Reliability

Buses that break down interrupt service and incur greater maintenance. Buses that never leave the garage might show up on the roster, but they are not really available.

For many years, the ratio of spare buses to scheduled service on the TTC has been quite high by industry standards, and this grew during the pandemic thanks to service cuts. Restoring full pre-pandemic service, let alone expanding beyond that level, does not depend on fleet size in the short term. Moreover, many of the elderly vehicles on the system will be replaced with new diesel-hybrids now on delivery, and this should increase the number of buses actually available for service. Opening of Lines 5 and 6 Crosstown and Finch West should also release buses for use elsewhere.

The May 2024 CEO’s Report shows the current official fleet size.

The reliability of buses is reported in an odd way by the CEO. The charts below have capped the reported mean distance to failure at a target value rather than reporting actual values for several years. We know that hybrid buses achieve at least 30K kilometres between failures, and diesel buses achieve 20K, but the actual numbers could be both higher and more variable than the charts show. Meanwhile, some values for battery eBuses are capped and others wander quite a bit. Note that both the target level and y-axis maxima vary from one chart to another.

An important factor here is that buses that never, or rarely, operate in service do not contribute to failure statistics, and this can hide the true reliability of a fleet, or subgroup within the fleet. Unused buses represent capital sitting idle and service that cannot be provided. If budget cuts prevent full usage of the fleet, this is hidden, but there could be an unseen cap on what is possible if budget priorities change.

Continue reading →