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The Changing of the Guard

With the new Toronto City Council comes change at the TTC.

Long-serving and controversial Chair Howard Moscoe did not stand for reappointment, but has taken over as Chair of the Licensing and Standards Committee.  Former TTC Vice-chair Adam Giambrone is now Chair, and Joe Mihevc is the new Vice-chair. 

Other new commissioners Peter Milczyn, Michael Thompson and Anthony Peruzza.  This rebalances the regional representation on the TTC based on the “old” regions to Toronto (3), Etobicoke (2), York (1), North York (1), Scarborough (2).  Whether it will change the rampant desire for subways everywhere remains to be seen. Continue reading →

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Howard Levine Writes About St. Clair

Howard Levine, a former member of City Council and one of the founding members of Streetcars for Toronto back in 1972, writes in today’s National Post about the St. Clair project.  Howard and I sit on opposite sides of the St. Clair fence these days — I still believe in the scheme and wish it were done better, while he sees it as irredeemably flawed.  I share his despair that what we fought for in 1972 took so long to achieve and was such a botched piece of design and community relations. Continue reading →

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St. Clair Update

Christopher Hume has a column in today’s Star about the St. Clair line (Click here) where he discusses the gap between theory and practice in major urban design/construction projects.

This morning, CBC’s Metro Morning had a discussion about the impact on businesses with the owner of the Retro Cafe (at Vaughan and St. Clair) and David Crichton, the city’s manager for design and construction.  With luck this may show up later today as a podcast on the CBC site here.  It may have been early in the day, but Crichton continued the city’s unhappy stance of saying “it’s too bad, but we have to rebuild the street” while ignoring that the design and the construction phasing have considerable impacts. Continue reading →

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Eighteen Lost Years

My friend Bob Brent put together a spreadsheet listing many TTC operating and financial statistics for 1988, and 1996 through 2005.  Our ridership high came in 1988 just before the early 90s recession.  Service was mercilessly slashed in the nadir of 1996 thanks to funding cuts.

By 2006, we may just barely get back to the 1988 ridership level, but funding is another matter.

Those of you who love mulling over numbers will have fun here, but I will talk a bit about the highlights. Continue reading →

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Automatic Train Operation, Capacity, Night Service and Clean Stations

In a truly breathtaking display mixing unrelated subjects in one press conference, Howard Moscoe has embraced Automatic Train Operation (ATO) as the salvation of much that is wrong with the TTC.  A chicken in every pot (provided that you have a Metropass) will follow soon after.

You can read about Moscoe’s scheme on the Star website: TTC Eyes Driverless Subway. Continue reading →

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Fare Boundary Woes

I received the following comment from a student at Ryerson, and thought it would be a good jumping off point for a new thread.

Hello,
This is more of a question rather than a comment.

I am an Engineering student at Ryerson University working on a report for my Technical Communications class.  I chose to write my report on: the inconvenience it is for students commuting from Brampton/Mississauga area, cost wise.

It is financially hard for students to pay for:

  • The local transit to get to the GO station.
  • The monthly GO pass and
  • The TTC fare from Union Station to Dundas.

And not to mention the time that is consumed commuting.  I was wondering if these issues have been discussed before with TTC and GO authorities.  Would anyone of you know the status of the situation?  Are there any documents or online resources that discuss this in detail?

If they have not been discussed before, what are your views on this topic?  Any help on your behalf is much appreciated.

Sincerely,
Mon.

There are a number of intertwined issues here. Continue reading →

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Winners and Losers

The election results are almost complete as I write this, and it’s worth celebrating.

First, a huge round of applause to Joe Mihevc who not only won in Ward 21 against all of the anti-St. Clair rhetoric, but won with over 50 percent of the vote.  My post a few days ago may have seemed anti-Joe, but it’s a call to try harder, to question the assumptions, to make our transit system as good as it can be.  Maybe with this election out of the way, Councillor Mihevc and his allies can push for better street designs, better neighbourhoods and better transit service with renewed vigour.

Next is Gord Perks in Ward 14 who won despite two other major left-of-centre candidates.  Gord and I go a long way back, and for him this is a huge change — from being an amateur polician to a professional one, from the perennial critic and gadfly to a Councillor.  I may even have to make deputations that don’t agree with him just to prove I haven’t gone soft!  And to think that only recently Gord dreamed of finding time to be at the Film Festival rather than juggling three or four environmental issues at once. Continue reading →

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How Do We Calculate the Cost of Transit Operations? Part 1: The Raw Data [Updated]

Yes, friends, I am finally starting to dig through the backlog of issues, and I’m starting with an analysis of the TTC’s route cost and revenue figures.  These are normally reported in the annual Service Plan, but since there was no plan published this year, the stats for 2005 appear in a stand-alone document at this link.

This data, reformatted as a spreadsheet and with additional columns can be obtained here: 2005 Route Statistics.

I have written before about how untrustworthy these numbers are as a guide to operating costs and service productivity.  Various comments came in, and I have held them awaiting a chance to work on this in more detail. Continue reading →