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Trams vs Skytrain: A view from Vancouver

Today’s Globe & Mail includes an op ed article Rethinking the Need for Speed reporting on a recent study comparing the cost of transportation modes.  The study and the article conclude that trams (streetcars) are the best choice, and that Skytrain (also known as the “RT” in Toronto) is a distant choice.

Those who know me well know that any chance to give the RT/ICTS/Skytrain advocates a black eye is more than welcome, but in this case I have to put a bit of context on the discussion.

The Skytrain vs LRT debate has consumed Vancouver transit advocates, planners and policitians for decades.  The original Skytrain was a combined product of a premier who didn’t like streetcars and of lobbying by the Ontario government to get its then-new ICTS showcased for Expo in Vancouver.  Certain characteristics of the original Skytrain route including the availability of a tunnel under downtown that could handle stacked Skytrains, but not LRT, an available right-of-way that kept down elevated construction costs, and the operational advantage of close headways of short trains tipped the balance in Skytrain’s favour.

Having said that, I must also observe that the technology was used to its maximum during Expo with a far more sophisticated operating model than anything the TTC has ever implemented on any line.  This was automated transit really shining, but only for a brief moment.  Probably the most important thing about the Vancouver system is that the people running it really wanted to make it work.  From the day it opened, they analysed operations (including automatically produced charts such as those you see in my TTC route studies) looking for ways to handle demands and unusual events better.  The idea of throwing up your hands in resignation, the TTC’s approach to line management, was totally foreign.

Skytrain works not just because of the technology, but because the people running the system care to make it run well.

All the same, the love affair with Skytrain wedded Vancouver to high-cost system expansion, and a route design skewed to handling commuters more than local trips.  Indeed, most of the original Skytrain line does not follow city streets, and it depends on local redevelopment, walk-in trade and bus feeders for passengers.

The LRT vs Skytrain debate heated up recently with a proposed east-west line along Broadway, a major bus and trolleybus corridor.  This is a street with much local development and Skytrain foes look to LRT as a way of achieving better local access and support for the community throiugh which the line will pass.  Elevated construction is out of the question, and a Broadway Skytrain will almost certainly be underground adding considerably to its cost.

This is the political background to the Skytrain vs Trams study, and it’s important to read the study in context.  The study itself does not address specific corridors, but simply looks at the operating and capital costs of each mode, as well as the environmental effects.  When the numbers are combined, trams come out on top (or more accurately on the bottom with the lowest cost and carbon impact).  Skytrain is much higher, primarily due to capital cost.

The basic debate in all of this is one of philosophy:  should new transit lines be built to serve long trips where speed between stations is paramount, or should lines serve shorter trips and local demands with easily accessible stations?  In the ongoing debate here, Transit City comes under fire because the lines won’t be fast enough for long trips.  Should that be their purpose?  What role does GO have as a regional carrier within the 416? 

Some Transit City proposals call out for redesign, especially regarding the Sheppard/Finch transfer and the dubious nature of surface proposals for the south ends of the Don Mills and Jane routes.  Work on new proposals is already underway as a spinoff of the Metrolinx studies, but the old plans still get lots of play including the TTC’s own Transit City campaign all over the system.  The TTC needs to update the proposals to remove the less credible options and to indicate that they are not just drawing lines on maps.

Finally, I hope to see the Metrolinx study of options for the Scarborough RT published soon.  This is an ideal chance to convert the line to LRT, and even the TTC’s own recommendation to upgrade with Mark II cars only, barely, made sense if the line would never be extended.

We now know that the “SRT” will run north into Malvern and possibly north of Steeles Avenue.  The cost comparison between LRT and Skytrain should spell the end of the RT as we know it.

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GO2020: GO Transit’s Answer to Metrolinx

GO Transit announced its plan for the next decade’s worth of expansion of (mainly) commuter rail service in the Greater Toronto Area on December 12.  The full text is an immense PDF (66MB) on GO’s site that you can download should you desire.  The Service Plan, however, fit in a lot less space, and I have reformatted this as a 115K PDF.

Although the text talks about how GO2020 fits in with the Metrolinx Regional Plan, there are a few noteworthy differences especially regarding very frequent service in some corridors.  Metrolinx has the electrification of some lines in its short term plans, but it remains to be seen whether this is tehnically viable at a cost that will fit within Metrolinx’ budget.  Moreover, there are serious questions about the ability of Union Station to accommodate all of the traffic (trains and people) that Metrolinx forecasts for this hub.

GO’s plans have the advantage of looking out little more than a decade, a timeframe in which the plan is actually credible.  Metrolinx has much at the 15-25 year horizon, and while this will keep planners gainfully employed, it does little to address current problems. Continue reading →

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The Twenty Minute Network

Among the side comments with the proposed fare freeze announcement came a note that we might not see the implementation of a 20-minute maximum headway in 2009.  Indeed, just paying for the changes recently introduced could be a stretch.

Just to see what this entails, I have compiled a list of the services that now run less frequently than 20 minute headways.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list as I built it rather quickly to get a sense of the size of the issue, not to nail down every last detail.  A few important points here:

  • Routes outside of the 416 are not included as they are contract services not subject to TTC headway policies.
  • Sunday early morning services are not included because this period is not part of “subway hours”.
  • Where routes overlap, I have tried to omit infrequent services on the overlap.  For example, individual services on Broadview may run on wide headways, but the combined frequency is within the 20 minute cutoff.
  • Not every route with two or more branches has been included.  I mentioned a few in the list because there is an important policy question here.  Should the TTC run very frequent service on a route so that its branches can each stay within the 20 minute maximum?  (A very good example is Eglinton West which has both the Emmett and Trethewey branches that are not always scheduled into the pattern of the main route.)
  • Routes that have no service less frequent than 20 minutes are not included in the table.
  • Empty cells in the table indicate a period when the service is every 20 minutes or better, or in a few cases where there is no service.

One overwhelming observation is that the late evening periods (generally after 9-10 pm) most commonly have wide headways on most listed routes.  A relatively few routes have 30 minute headways for most of the day.

The debate on use of any funding for service increases needs to determine whether the 20 minute maximum is an appropriate goal across the system, or whether it is time to start subdividing by class of route and time of day.  For example:

  • Is a 30 minute headway after 10 pm an acceptable compromise or first step in a full 20-minute rollout?
  • Should routes serving primarily industrial areas be subject to the 20 minute maximum?
  • Do rush hour express buses (the 140 series) qualify as full routes once they no longer charge premium fares, and if so, what should be the minimum headway?
  • Should there be a special class of peak-only routes that do not automatically get full service at the policy headway?

In my next post, I will turn to what may seem to be a more radical idea, the Ten Minute Network.  Such a network would have a guaranteed maximum 10 minute headway on a core network of routes.  Please save comments on that idea until I get the post about it online.  Meanwhile, the policy question is this:  would a Ten Minute Network contribute more to the system overall at this time than the move to a twenty minute maximum affecting only the infrequent services?

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Frozen Fares? Frozen Service? Frozen Riders?

Yesterday’s announcement that TTC fares will remain unchanged through 2009 warmed the hearts of many including a packed room at spacing magazine’s birthday party last night.  However popular a fare freeze may be, it’s only part of the story.

Through 2008, the TTC implemented many service improvements to catch up with a backlog of overcrowding and to restore hours of service and a half-hour maximum headway to the network.  There’s more to do including further catch-ups on crowding problems and proposals for even better service.  I will turn to that topic in a separate post.

Meanwhile, the cynics among us have been here before.  Freezing fares sounds great until you’re waiting for a bus that never shows up, or is packed to the roof when it arrives, because the TTC can’t afford to run more service.  Past years have shown what happens when the “you can just stretch the money you have” attitude prevails — service and maintenance deteriorate.

If City Council wants to freeze fares, they have every right to expect that the TTC will go through its books carefully to look for spending that can actually be deferred or eliminated, but this must not be a shield to hide a subsidy freeze.  More service costs more money, and we all know that the TTC does not make a profit on most of its riders.  Council cannot bask in the glory of a rejuvenated TTC and the Transit City mantra but refuse to pay the price of a better transit system.

I await details of the 2009 City operating budget and proposed subsidy arrangements with much interest.

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Do We Really Need Metrolinx and Other Vital Questions

The fifth anniversary of spacing magazine hits the stands this week, and with it my new role as a transit columnist.  If you want to see how I answer the Metrolinx question, you will have to buy the issue!

The focus of the magazine is the thinkToronto exhibit, a set of ten designs, plus runners up, by under-35’s (that leaves me out by a long way) who care about our city.  We see wayfinding, transit design, streetscapes and a host of other ideas for how to improve Toronto.  I won’t call them “innovative” because that’s a 20th-century word freely translated as “I am a consultant and have a product you really should buy, preferably for far more than it is worth”.

New major sections will appear regularly on issues of transit, cycling, walking, city politics among others.

If you’ve never visited spacing, do it now!

And have I mentioned it yet, buy the issue!  Subscribe!

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Subway Fleet Planning(?)

The TTC’s ongoing inability to correctly provide for its fleet requirements gets embarrassing at times.  A big one comes during consideration of capital budgets when there always seem to be brand new projects that appear out of thin air even though they should have been foreseen.

The questions of subway capacity and fleet size are not small change, something to be fixed up with the underspending in a few minor accounts.  If you get it wrong in one direction, nobody can fit on the trains, and the lead time to fix this condemns riders to horrendous service.  If you get it wrong in the other direction, you have a bloated fleet, an investment in trains and yard space that might have gone to more deserving projects, and a padding factor that works against efficiency in maintenance because there’s always another spare train in the yard. 

The TTC’s surrent subway fleet plans do not include cars for the subway extensions beyond Steeles Avenue, nor for the allegedly closer headways we require to accommodate all of the riding growth the Richmond Hill line will bring.  Cynics might be tempted to say that the whole question of subway capacity has been manipulated to the TTC’s budgetary advantage, but I have always taken the view that much that appears to be Machiavellian can be explained by bad planning.

This post and the much longer paper attached to it will examine TTC fleet planning and the degree to which we are not seeing the full story of options for future subway services. Continue reading →

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Many Meetings on the Waterfront (Updated)

The week of December 8 brings a series of meetings on various aspects of the waterfront redesign and transit services.

Monday December 8:  Queen’s Quay Revitalization EA Public Meeting #2  Harbourfront Community Centre, 627 Queen’s Quay West at Bathurst.  Open house at 6:00 pm, presentation and discussion at 7:00 pm.

Also of interest is the presentation from the Stakeholders’ Meeting held on November 27 (erroneously dated December on its cover page).  The Study Area now extends from Parliament Street to Bathurst Street, and there are signs that the many overlapping projects are being treated as a unified set rather than a few blocks at a time.

A great deal of time was spent in 2008 sorting out the competing requirements of various agancies and their plans, but the dust is settling now.  Queen’s Quay itself will generally stay at its existing width with selective widenings.  The streetcar tracks will remain in the “middle” of the street where they are now, but their relationship to auto, pedestrian and cycling traffic will likely change.

There are many design demands for the street summarized in text and photos from page 13 to 26.  Various options for street layout are discussed starting on page 35.  Three of five alternatives survive the screening process.  The two that are rejected are “do nothing” (the existing layout) as well as a scheme with the Martin Goodman trail taking over what is now the curb lane of Queen’s Quay eastbound.

Of the remaining three, the one that stands out (Alternative 5) is the conversion of Queen’s Quay for auto traffic to one-way westbound using the existing lanes, more or less, with the entire south side taken over for pedestrians and cycling.  This scheme simplifies intersection layouts and provides a generous landscaped area adjacent to the transit right-of-way.  At the east end of Queen’s Quay, it will also blend directly into the proposed design for Cherry Street north of the railway.

Wednesday December 10:  Lower Don Lands Infrastructure EA Public Meeting #2, St. Lawrence Hall (Great Hall), King & Jarvis.  Open house at 6:00 pm, presentation and discussion at 7:00 pm.

This meeting will address many issues such as water supply and sewage, street layout, and transit routes.  The presentation at the first public meeting held in July 2008 gives a good overview of the scope.  In particular, page 17 shows the proposed alternative road configurations, and this affects the design of the new LRT lines in this area.

Two alternatives are shown for Cherry Street.  The easternmost one is the existing street, and the alternative is slightly to the west as far south as Commissioners Street.  The alternative helps to sort out the Cherry, Lake Shore, Queen’s Quay intersection by shifting it to the west.  This would also require a new portal under the railway, but would eliminate problems with available right-of-way for roads, cyclists and transit within the existing portal, and would avoid any conflict with the Cherry Street Tower, and historic building within the railway lands. 

Tuesday December 9:  Western Waterfront Master Plan

St. Joseph’s Health Centre, 30 The Queensway, 7:00 to 9:00 pm.

Tuesday and Thursday December 9 and 11:  Waterfront West LRT Parklawn to Long Branch

Tuesday, December 9, 2008
James S. Bell School
90 Thirty-First Street (Gym, southeast entrance)
6:30pm – 9:00pm Open House

December 11, 2008
John English School (Cafeteria)
95 Mimico Avenue (east of Royal York Rd)
Parking and entrance from George Street lot
6:30pm – 9:00pm Open House

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I can’t help wondering whether we might see vastly improved service on the 501/507/508 well in advance of any LRT to “build ridership”, rather like the 190 Rocket from Don Mills Station to STC.  The good folk of Etobicoke might be forgiven some skepticism that a beautiful new right-of-way will be conspicuously empty most of the time.

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Streetcar Track Replacement Plans 2009-2013

Last week, I said that I would publish the current version of the five-year track reconstruction program, and although this is a bit later than I claimed I would get to it, here it is.

Note that this info may appear to be for the serious railfans among us, but this also affects things like the overall condition of the streetcar infrastructure and future service disruptions.  Nerdy yes.  Trivial, no.

I will spare the more delicate among my readers the gory details by placing them after the break.

Continue reading →

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TTC Adjusts 2009 Budget For Slightly Harder Times

At the recent TTC Board meeting, staff presented an update on 2008 ridership and on projections for 2009.

This review began with a look back to the recession of the early 1990s when the system lost 90-million rides from 1990 to 1996, a full 40-million of them in one year, 1991.  That year saw a combination of falling employment (6.3%), a fare increase (7.3%), service cuts (7.4%) and a 7-day strike.

Before I continue, one important point about service cuts.  The TTC always talks about vehicle mileage, but they mix subway together with surface operations, and the subway acts as a buffer in the statistics.  Most of the cuts actually come on the surface, but the real impact is masked in the totals.

For 2009, the TTC is taking a much different approach.  Although employment may fall, the TTC is not expecting this to be a major factor.  No fare increase is contemplated, and service is actually expanding, not contracting.  Labour unrest is unlikely.  A telling comment in the presentation says just about everything that needs saying about transit “budgeting” in the 1990s.

Lesson learned in terms of forecasting ridership:  Employment, fare increases/subsidy level and service are all interrelated in terms of ridership impacts.  Treatment of one element cannot be considered in isolation or results can be disastrous in terms of significant ridership declines.

Tell that to past Chief General Managers, Commissioners, Councillors and Premiers.  One might think that it did not take us until late 2008 to understand this basic fact of transit planning.

Meanwhile, the TTC has removed the “economic growth” factor in its ridership estimates for 2009.  Riding is now projected to grow from 467-million (probable actual for 2008) to 473-million, with revenue growing from $837-million to $851-million.

The increase for 2009 comprises various factors:

  • 3-million for riding growth due to expanded service
  • 2-million for the absence of a strike
  • 2-million for savings in fraud on adult tickets
  • 1-million from expansion of the U-Pass program

Less:

  • 1-million from riding lost through charges for parking lots
  • 1-million due to calendar adjustment

The real question will be what will happen if the economic impact on riding is greater than expected.  How will discretionary trips by locals and riding brought by tourists be affected?  There is some padding available in the service budget with provisions such as the next round of Ridership Growth Strategy rollout (the 20-minute maximum headway).  If push comes to shove, this could be deferred, just as RGS has been pushed back so many times in the past.

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Metrolinx Benefits Cases: VIVA First Out

Metrolinx has started the publication of its Benefits Case Analyses with the York VIVA system.  The SRT replacement study is also completed, and I expect to see it online soon.

These papers will appear in a section of the Projects Page on the Metrolinx site.

There is nothing too surprising in the VIVA study.  The map, excerpted from the full report, shows the staging options for the construction of exclusive bus lanes, here called “Rapidways”.

The core of the system radiating out from Richmond Hill Centre north to 19th, east to Unionville and west to Vaughan Corporate Centre would be finished by 2013.  In Option 1, the remainder of the network would be completed by 2018, or if Option 2 is chosen, by 2026.

A quite fascinating part of the BCA comes in the ridership estimates.  In the “Base Case” (just leave VIVA as it is with provision for modest fleet expansion), the projected 2021 ridership is 28.0-million per year.  This rises to only 30.3-million for either of the options studied.  Similarly, 2031 ridership is projected at 31.3-million for the Base Case, or 34.0-million for either of the optional networks.

Various factors are at work here.

The core of the demand falls on the first stage network that is common to both options, and the impact of the extensions is so small that it doesn’t make a difference (Before anyone accuses me of VIVA-bashing, that is a direct paraphrase from the report.)  Although the implementation of the Rapidways will give existing users a better riding experience, the comparatively small jump in riding suggests that most of the potential market is already using the system.

Updated:  In a comment posted following this post, “Dave R in the Beach” notes that the big jump in ridership is from current ridership of 6.8-million to the Base Case value of 28.0-million, and this is largely due to the subway extension.  In my response, I observed that the marginal gain from either BRT network is small and may reflect the comparatively small contribution the reserved bus lanes make to overall trip times when the much longer subway segment of the journey is included. [End of update]

An unknown acknowledged in the BCA is the question of land use planning.  Will York Region redevelop along the Rapidways, and how much will this contribute to future demand?

In the end, the BCA does not specifically recommend one option over the other, but the message about getting most of the benefit for 60% of the capital cost is quite clear.  We will see how this fares when Metrolinx puts together its detailed plan for project staging.