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Does the Transit Commission Believe in Transit?

Much air time and print space have been devoted to Wednesday’s TTC meeting (September 12).  Which routes will be on the chopping block?  What will happen to fares?  Does anyone except the riding public actually care, or are the politicians and press too busy scoring political points off of each other?

The Transit Commission has a difficult decision, but hardest one will be this:  resist calls for cuts now.

Shirking responsibility?  Nonsense.  The Transit Commissioners should be advocates for transit, not hatchet men for those who prefer to starve a vital service.  The Commission’s job is to avert the destruction of the system. Continue reading →

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Scarborough Consults on Transit Funding

Tonight, Councillor Michael Thompson, who is also a TTC Commissioner, will host a public meeting in the Rotunda of the Scarborough Civic Centre (south of the SRT station, across the plaza).

TTC CGM Gary Webster and the Chair Adam Giambrone will join Councillor Thompson to talk about how the City’s cost containment measures will affect the TTC and transit services in Scarborough.

I will not be attending tonight, but will be at the full TTC meeting on Wednesday. Later today, I will publish my position on the TTC cuts overall and the action that the Commission should take pending resolution of budget problems.

The surveys conducted by the TTC and the Torontoist website both show that retention and improvement of service is paramount for TTC riders. Recently, the Toronto Board of Trade released their own five-point election platform, and they strongly support transit improvement.

Let your Councillors, especially those who prefer to blame every cut on Queen’s Park or the unions, know that we need better service, we need more service, and we will not tolerate more excuses for Toronto’s failure to properly fund its transit system.

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TIFF 2007 Day 1

The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off last night.  For the next 10 days, I will be in festival mode spending most of my time in theatres.  Transit won’t disappear completely from this site, but my focus will shift as it does each year.

I will be posting reviews of the films I see, although keeping up on a day to day basis may be a challenge.

Reviewed here:

Fados by Carlos Saura 

Continue reading →

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Seasonal Service Reductions?

Several people at the TTC must be asleep at the switch these days.  Imagine my surprise to see at Broadview Station a brand new poster advertising “seasonal service reductions” for the summer starting September 4.  Obviously, someone has changed the banner date on an earlier poster but not bothered to fix the text.

These posters were printed.  These posters were installed.

Does anyone at the TTC read them?  This may explain, indeed, why so much out of date bilge is left on the walls of our stations.

It is bad enough that the TTC does not take the simple step of printing “remove after xxx” on their posters, but when they put up signs that are just plain wrong, one senses that a remedial reading course is in order.

At times when we have people calling for quick fixes by simply cutting wages and firing staff, gaffes like this give the TTC’s critics the sort of ammunition they need.

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How Do We Wait?

I have received a request for assistance with research on how transit systems make passengers wait.

Hello,

I’m a researcher at the Institute of Railway Studies at the University of York in England, and I’m looking at the way transport systems force people to wait.  A lot of your comments about Toronto are interesting, but not specific enough for me to use.  If anyone wants to find their views about waiting in line, fat fares, smart cards etc incorporated in research please contact me.  My research e mail address is Davidsd@skynet.be. 

If you want information about England (or Belgium) in return I’m happy to trade.

David Stewart-David

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Transit Priority on King at Community Council

The King Car will be up for discussion at Toronto & East York Community Council next Monday (September 10), just two days before the TTC itself meets to decide what may happen with fares and service in 2008.  Item TE8.41 on the agenda includes both the TTC’s original request which was met with some considerable opposition by area merchants and some counterproposals that were tabled for discussion (item TE8.41a).

These proposals, viewed jointly with the work I have done analyzing operations in the route, raise a number of questions. Continue reading →

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Analysis of 504 King: Part IX – Headway Reliability and the Two Minute Wave

So far, we have been looking mainly at data one day at a time over the route as a whole.  In this discussion, we will look at service at specific points for every weekday in December 2006.  This allows us to compare the behaviour of service, the experience of a rider who tries to use the system for a regular work trip.

On King, the TTC claims to run a two-minute headway and this is true, but only for part of the line and only in the morning rush.  For roughly an hour, from 7:30 to 8:30 am, there is a “wave” of two-minute service scheduled to come east through Parkdale and the Bathurst/Niagara district.  Riders in these neighbourhoods complain of erratic service and overcrowded cars.  What is actually going on? Continue reading →

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Analysis of 504 King: Part VIII – Those Pesky Short Turns

By now, you are probably getting tired of looking at charts of individual days, and they’re starting to look the same.  On the other hand, you probably have a fairly good idea for the sort of thing that is “typical” as opposed to an unpredictable event.

Now, I will turn to views of the King Car that show the entire month in a summary format, and will begin with the long-standing problem of Short Turns.

Back in 1984, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee conducted a review of streetcar operations using volunteers on street corners to track the movement of cars, and we came up with plots similar to the graphic timetables shown in other posts here.  Today, however, we have CIS technology and much more data.  It’s a lot better than standing out in the rain for hours on end. Continue reading →

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Analysis of 504 King: Coming Soon

As you will see below, I have posted detailed information on several days’ operation.  These are extracts from a much longer paper that covers many aspects of the route in detail.  Please don’t ask me to send you one because this is (a) still a work in progress and (b) the full collection of data and charts is quite large.

Still to come are:

  • Charts comparing link times for various parts of the line over the month showing the similarities and variations by segment, time of day, and day of the month.
  • A review of vehicle allocations (CLRV and ALRV) and change-offs.

In case you have lost the thread of where this is all leading, my aim is that the TTC make substantial improvements in understanding how it actually operates and manages its services.  As a management tool, the information available from CIS for all routes has been more or less ignored for the decades since the system went into operation.  Daily reviews of operations on major lines should be a matter-of-fact way to run the business, and strategies should be developed to deal with chronic and emerging problems.

Far too often, the catch-all excuse of “traffic congestion” and “mixed traffic operation” is used to justify inaction.  Yes, there are traffic problems, but some of them can be addressed if only the TTC and politicians who claim to support transit would actually expend some of their “support” on changing the operation of traffic signals, parking regulations and enforcement.