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Richmond Hill or Bust? The Yonge Subway Extension (Part 3)

Posts in this thread have examined the general design proposed for the Richmond Hill subway and the many demand estimates for this line.  Now I will turn to the impact of this line on the larger network.

As many have pointed out in comments to the previous items, the Spadina/VCC extension was supposed to offload the Yonge subway.  We now know, according to the TTC’s estimates, that the effect will be a reduction of less than 10% of the existing demand southbound at the peak point, Wellesley Station.  Meanwhile, the availability of a competing subway line in the established Yonge Street corridor will attract many more riders.

The TTC manages a rabbit-in-the-hat trick by claiming that demand relative to capacity on the subway in 2017 will be the same as it is today thanks to Spadina diversion and more commodious trains.  That’s a very big, very fat rabbit, and I suspect it’s more of a canard.

Development will continue in York Region, and if anything the availability of frequent transit service, both on GO and on the TTC, will offset any effect that long-term increases in energy costs and commuting might have on travel demand and the decision to live far out of the core area.  Demand will grow on the subway both from the 905 and from within the 416. Continue reading →

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Richmond Hill or Bust? The Yonge Subway Extension (Part 2)

In the first part of this series, I reviewed the general layout of the Richmond Hill subway extension.  Now I will turn to the question of demand on the new and existing portions of the Yonge line.

Information on current and projected demands is very hard to nail down.  Transit agencies have a bad habit of fiddling the demand models to produce the results they want depending on available funding, political imperatives and the phases of the moon.  Small changes in the assumptions in any model can produce huge swings in the outcome.

Probably the single most flagrant problem with Metrolinx is that the demand model is proprietary to a consultant, IBI, and is not available for general “what if” use.  At the very time we are making decisions about network structures and spending priorities, we are told (by Metrolinx) that budget constraints limit the number of model runs.  Detailed parameters such as the capacity and speed of modelled lines are hard to come by.

In this vacuum, any plausible scheme for transit gains political traction even though it may rest on dubious planning foundations.  I say this not to knock the Richmond Hill proposal itself, but to urge caution in looking at the numbers particularly where the interaction between several alternative lines is concerned.

Projections for riding on both the Richmond Hill extension and the rest of the rapid transit network appear in various documents.  One of them even changed between the point where it was presented at a public TTC meeting and its publication on the TTC’s website. Continue reading →

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Richmond Hill or Bust? The Yonge Subway Extension (Part 1)

The proposed subway to Richmond Hill has an odd history as transit projects in the GTA go.  Normally, we are lucky to see anyone pay attention to any scheme for a decade or more, but this subway has gone from a gleam in local organizers’ eyes (and a website) to a top priority transit project with amazing speed.

Along the way, the whole idea of “alternatives analysis”, that pesky part of an “Environment Assessment” that is only a memory, is completely absent.  It’s a subway or nothing.  That’s unfortunate, to say the least, because the whole idea of Metrolinx was to plan on a regional basis, to see how everything fits together and where money would be best spent to improve a transportation network.

The Richmond Hill subway snuck through into the new, fast-track transit project assessment process before Metrolinx had even approved the final version of the Regional Plan.  Somebody wants a subway really, really badly.

As I have said in a comment thread elsewhere, I am not convinced that this line is a good idea especially when there are alternative ways to get people into central Toronto from the same catchment area as the subway extension.  York Region itself has (had?) plans for an LRT network as an end state for VIVA, although I have never taken them particularly seriously.  This may change once there is some real LRT running within Toronto, but as long as it’s an unknown quantity (or worse, something whose “best” example is on St. Clair West), nobody is going to take the mode seriously.

An argument can be made for an extension to Steeles as a way to relieve the bus congestion feeding into Finch Station, but there is some point where a subway has to end.  We cannot keep building a subway north on Yonge Street until we find ourselves in Lake Simcoe.  The demand simply isn’t there, and at some point the idea of a one-seat ride becomes laughable.  Indeed, even going to Richmond Hill, many travellers will depend on bus feeders or commuter parking to access the subway, and the quality of their trip will depend a lot on the amount of local transit or the scarcity of parking.  This problem is already familiar to GO Transit riders.

GO Transit, for their part, plans to upgrade service on their Richmond Hill line to 15 minutes peak, 30 minutes off peak.  This is not the same as frequent subway service, and it will only take people to Union Station, but this is an important part of the mix of services in the corridor.

All the same, any review of the proposal needs to assume that it will be built and that whatever impact this has on the network will have to be addressed.  If we are going down this path, we need to understand the consequences.

In the sections to follow, I will review the TTC report and presentation from December 17.  Parts of York Region’s original EA for this area make interesting reading, especially the ridership forecasts. Continue reading →

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Privatization If Necessary?

David Cavlovic passed on to me an article by Ben Dachis in the Ottawa Citizen dated December 18.  The thrust of the article is that we can improve transit by avoiding strikes, and we can do that by encouraging competition among service providers.

One of the major stumbling blocks in the current negotiations has been the issue of outsourcing. However, outsourcing of transit operations and maintenance can be done in a way to improve public transit, preserve the jobs of workers and ensure that the city isn’t crippled by a strike.

Ottawa should consider modest relaxations over the transit monopoly that OC Transpo has in the region. Private companies could be permitted to operate a transit route on contract to the city.

If one transit operator went on strike, another could fill the service void. Ottawa can look to a suburb of Toronto, York Region, to see that in the case of a strike by one transit provider — Viva, operated by Veolia Transportation — the rest of the operations continued normally and most riders were not left waiting at the curb.

Competition between transit companies can ensure service delivery, reduce costs and improve service. The key to all of this is transit competition — not a transit monopoly.

This is utter nonsense.  The ability of one provider to take over for another assumes that there is sufficient capacity — buses and drivers — available to operate the fill-in service.  As was well-reported in York Region, the YRT buses could not cope with the riding displaced from VIVA.  Moreover, neither system carries riders on the scale of major urban systems like Toronto’s where the sheer size of operations would make any shift between providers a daunting one.

The classic example is the U.K. In London, controlled competition has led to cost savings and an increase in passenger trips.

In Ontario, privately operated transit systems had operating costs per hour of vehicle operation 20 per cent below publicly operated transit systems. The realized gains in efficiency come a number of ways, such as lower management costs.

London (and anywhere else in the U.K.) is probably the worst possible example regarding labour costs and service provision.  England is notorious for overly generous work arrangements for unionized staff, and the savings (such as they may be) achieved there do not transport across the pond to North America.

A related issue is that many schemes to privatize segments of systems eventually led to monopolies as the larger, better-financed operators systematically bought up the smaller ones.  The problem of a single operator’s shutdown taking the whole system becomes just as real in this situation with the added problem that the negotiating team is removed from public review.

Ontario cost comparisons need to be taken with several grains of salt.  First off, the most likely services to be privatized are those that are small enough for a private firm to take them on.  They are also likely to have much less demanding operating conditions (hours, riding levels, vehicle costs) and be candidates for part-time staff with lower total wages and benefits.  Major urban systems are different, and will automatically have “higher” costs due to their complexity, level of service and the need for a much larger organization to manage and operate their systems.

The unions can bid alongside private maintenance companies for the right to maintain OC Transpo vehicles, in what is known as managed competition. When this was done with U.S. government contracts, public unions won around 90 per cent of all work that was bid out, suggesting that they will not lose much work. In fact, in the U.K., local government employees have been successful at winning contracts for private-sector work in certain services.

If public workers are going to win about 90 percent of all work offered on tender, this implies that they are already competitive or close to it.  A more important question, however, is what proportion of work was actually offered on tender?  How many private companies now exist who repair large bus fleets or subway cars? It’s not as if there is an underutilized transit maintenance industry just sitting there waiting to do work on large transit systems.  The real agenda is likely the selloff of existing public assets to a private “operator” at fire-sale prices.  Think Highway 407.

Large systems already contract out some speciality work where it makes sense to do so, and large-scale capital projects are substantially built by private companies.  The last year has been a bonanza for private transit consulting firms, and there is a queue of construction firms ready to build new lines the moment the designs are finished and the funding is available.

The labour situation in Ottawa will not be helped by sabre-rattling on privatization.  This only fuels distrust at the bargaining table and suggests that the politicians are more interested in scoring debating points than in addressing contract issues.

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Santa Rides the 502

Today’s Star contains an article about yours truly.  While I’m really not one to bang my big bass drum (I will leave that to the politicians), I felt that some of you who either don’t read the Star or are further flung than its circulation territory might like to know about it.

Many thanks to Tess Kalinowski for such a flattering piece and to others for their kind, if occasionally frustrated, words.

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Yonge Subway to Richmond Hill (Update 2)

Update 2:  The presentation from the Commission meeting is now online.  (4MB PDF)

I will write up comments on this project on the weekend.

Update 1:  Here is the text of the motion made by the Commission including the various caveats and requests for additional information.

Original Post:

The TTC staff report on the Richmond Hill subway is available online.  (Warning 15M PDF)

Today, the Commission voted to endorse this report in principle with futher discussion and deputations to follow at the January meeting.  The Commission also reaffirmed that Transit City was its first priority for system expansion, and sought a number of additional reports to clarify the impact of the subway extension on the existing network.

I do not have time now (Wednesday evening) to write this up in full, but will do so over the next few days.  Some material was presented at the meeting which is not in the linked file.

Of particular concern to the Commission is the haste with which this project is rolling forward based on an assessment launched by York Region that had very little consideration for how the line would fit in the overall scheme of the network.  I might be forgiven for thinking, only a month ago, that we had turned away from “my line first” planning to a network view thanks to the Metrolinx Regional Transportation Plan.

An argument can be made for extending the subway, but the true cost and impact are lowballed.  Yes, the staff report raises many caveats about service and capacity impacts, but there is no real alternatives analysis, no sense that anyone has looked seriously at larger issues.  I will turn to this when I discuss the report in detail.

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November 2008 Service Improvements (Update 2)

Update 2:  The TTC now expects to have all posted schedules updated by Christmas Eve, subject to delays caused by the weather.  Please hold your cards and letters, folks, about places they have missed at least into mid-January.

Original Post:

This Sunday (November 23) will see a large number of service improvements both during peak and off peak periods to implement the next major step in the Ridership Growth Strategy. Continue reading →

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This Law’s An Ass

From time to time, the enthusiast community, be they locals or visitors, runs afoul of TTC officialdom by actually taking photographs of TTC operations.  This leads us into the quagmire of policies and bylaws regarding photography on TTC property.

Yesterday at the Commission Meeting, the makers of a student video “I Get On the TTC” were celebrated by all present including Chair Giambrone and Mayor Miller who observed that they had managed to make this entire production without official authorization.

Not long ago, a new policy regarding photography on TTC property was before the Commission, and a letter was simply “received” (ignored) raising problems with how this applies to amateurs including tourists and transit enthusiasts.

The problem begins with the text in the policy itself:

“Filming/photographing on TTC property means commercial or non-commercial requests as follows:

“3.1 Commercial Film production agencies to film television commercials, feature films, etc., and photographic agencies for magazines, billboard advertising, etc.

“3.2 Non-Commercial Requests from the news media, students and other non-professional individuals and groups for productions requiring TTC assistance and authorization.”

The policy directs people to various other documents about property permits and the need for supervision. Moreover, it can be read to imply that if I want to take a photo anywhere on the TTC, I have to have a property permit, I have to tell you where I am going to do this and Transit Control must know about it. This is an onerous, unreasonable and unenforceable restriction.

However, TTC Bylaw Number 1, quoted directly from the website, mentions ONLY “Commercial” photography in:

“16.b No person shall operate for commercial purposes any camera, video recording device, movie camera, or any similar device upon any vehicle or premises of the Commission without authorization.”

The bylaw is silent on non-commercial photography.  Just to complicate things, many types of “commercial” photography such as a newspaper event shoot are not covered by 3.1 in the policy. 

The two documents — policy and bylaw — are not in harmony with each other.  Although I wrote a lengthy critique of the new Bylaw No. 1, this appears to have been completely ignored by the TTC (it has many, many more problems than the definition of photography).  The problem is that badly drafted policies and bylaws give leeway for TTC staff to harass people who are in no way interfering with their operations and may even be providing free publicity and goodwill.

If “security” is the issue, then say so explicitly.  Publish the policies and procedures for complying with them online, not hidden away in documents nobody can access or even know about.

The makers of “I Ride On the TTC” are an interesting case. They were not making their video for “commercial” purposes as defined in 3.1 above. What they were doing clearly did not require TTC “assistance”. All that they lacked was “authorization”.

The key words in 3.2 are “assistance and authorization”. I hate to split hairs, but legal beagles will tell you that “and” means that both conditions must be present for the clause to be operative.  If they didn’t need assistance, then the question of authorization is moot because it has no bearing.  I should also note that “supervision” is not the same as “assistance”.  If I want to take a photo on a streetcar, I don’t need anyone from the TTC to help me do it even though they might want to be sure I don’t catch anything as unseemly as a grafitti covered seat, a scratched up window or an overcrowded car.

I hate to say this again, but this is the sort of petty-minded and ineptly executed “policy” that makes me cringe when I consider matters of substance like the Richmond Hill subway or a contract for hundreds of streetcars.

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The Ten Minute Network

Recently, the TTC implemented a maximum 30 minute headway across the network and full service from roughly 6:00 am to 1:00 am everywhere.  Plans for 2009 include a reduction of this maximum to 20 minutes, a topic I reviewed in a previous post.  Whether we will actually see this next year is still a topic for budget debates, and the recently announced fare freeze could put that scheme on hold.

Another option that has surfaced is the concept of a core grid of routes where service would never be worse than every 10 minutes.  To get a sense of what this might look like, I culled through the current schedules to produce a list of routes that have headways wider than 10 minutes.  This is not a definitive list, and I know there can be both additions and deletions.  Indeed, proposals like this are guaranteed to produce all sorts of political fights as each Councillor tries to get “their” routes on the “A list” for service quality.  The criteria for picking the routes were:

  • Routes on the major concession roads, or a reasonable approximation, were chosen.  This is the roughly 2km square grid of main streets in Toronto.
  • For areas with more complex geometry such as southern Scarborough, I have selected routes to provide geographic coverage.
  • Only services within the 416 are included.
  • All streetcar lines are included, although an argument can be made that one or two of them could be trimmed from the list.

Where the cells in the table are empty, the service is already at a 10 minute headway or better, and some routes have completely blank rows.  What is quite noticeable here compared with the chart of 20 minute routes is that there are more time periods where service improvements would be needed on more routes.  Moreover, many of these are major routes where the number of additional vehicles would be substantial.

In a period of tighter finances, this raises the question of which approach to service improvement should get priority:

  • Improve service even more on lesser used routes and periods from 30 to 20 minute maximum headways.
  • Improve service on core routes to 10 minute headways.
  • Improve service on routes that could benefit from reduced crowding.

All of these must be balanced against the debate over fare levels.  Regular readers will know that my preference has always been to concentrate on service because that’s what people really need.  The greatest prices in the world won’t do any good if the shop window is empty.

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Be It Ever So Humble

Today, the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) issued a press release saluting Metrolinx’ inclusion of the Air Rail Link in the Regional Transportation Plan.  This really isn’t a surprise to anyone.  Metrolinx had little choice given the political situation with a nonsensical premium fare, privately operated route left over from an ancien regime in Ottawa.

The GTAA is thrilled to tell us that

significant environmental benefits will be realized with the implementation of the air rail link. In the first year of operation, it is projected that this will eliminate about 6.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions and see approximately 1.35 million cars from the roads.

Do tell!  That’s 6.6 tonnes, not six thousand tonnes, SIX!  Only when we compare this with the savings that will accrue to other RTP lines do we see the miniscule effect of this route.  Each of the planned GO rail express services will reduce CO2 by over 100K tonnes, and many other RTP projects are well above 10K.

And all those cars!  1.35 million cars must really be trips, not vehicles.  This means we are looking at about 4,500 cars/trips per day (assuming the equivalent of 300 weekdays per year with weekends counting for half).  That’s about 250 per hour for an 18-hour day.  This has to be some new record for low patronage on a line that many would have us believe will change life as we know it in the GTA.  Ridership would be better if we assumed a higher than 1:1 ratio of passengers to auto trips, but the market for the Air Rail Link isn’t the car pooling crowd.

To put this in context, daily ridership on selected bus routes:  Warden South (4,200), Sherbourne (4,600), Prince Edward (4,200).  Yes, people don’t travel as far on them as Union to the Airport, but these will almost certainly be part of longer trips with transfers to other routes.

Can we please put this line out of its misery?  Metrolinx may be doing an EA for it in the spring of 2009, but what I really want to see is the Benefits Case Analysis.  If this were all to be done with private money, I would say let the project sponsor go broke paying for it, but that’s not the way we do “partnerships”.  How much public money will be wasted on a premium fare design when we could be building facilities and capacity to attract a broader demand at a regular fare?

This study will be a real test for Metrolinx.  Can they face up to the deep flaws in the Air Rail Link proposal, expose them to view, and propose an alternative that actually fits into their Regional Plan?