In March 2003, the TTC published its Ridership Growth Strategy. Although it’s hard to believe, this report is official TTC policy, but like many good ideas has always been subject to the constraints of budget and subsidy pressures.
Now we’re coming up on the third anniversary, and I thought this would be a good time to review what was in the RGS and to see just where we are in implementing parts of it.
Recently, the TTC received a proposal to retrofit three of its stations on the University subway line (Museum, St. Patrick and Osgoode) with major redesigns linked to the nearby palaces of culture:
Word of this seeped into the press as one of those grand public-spirited gestures. A foundation would raise money (tax deductible of course) and with this pool of loot would go forth and do good works. You can read about it at http://spacing.ca/wire/?p=355.
There is a catch. There is always a catch. Continue reading
[This item has been expanded on February 5, 2006 with additional information about loading standards in the more section.]
This item contains a copy, modified into a suitable format for easy downloading, of the TTC staff presentation on January 25, 2006. This has been adapted from a Power Point file by stripping out all of the photos and converting the remainder to a PDF. This will allow easy access to the material by readers and very substantially reduces the size of the file.
Explanatory notes and comments about this presentation are at the end of this item.
Here is the presentation I made at the TTC meeting. My recommendations have been sent to staff for comment. The nub of the argument is that TTC needs to provide ongoing projections of the resources needed to handle various scenarios for growth in demand, rather than treating each year’s changes as a big surprise for which there is no room in the budget.
The City of Toronto has spent a lot of time thinking about possible ways to improve capacity in the Don Valley corridor. One night, after a particularly good concert at Tafelmusik, a conversation ensued in front of Greg’s Ice Cream. This evolved into a late evening flight of whimsy together with the realization that transit could be much better in Toronto, that we could fly ahead of the world in transit innovation.
If only we could get enough feathers.
Over the years, I’ve attended many, many of the Toronto festivals, and quite some time back started to review what I had seen. This was a combination of two factors:
Enjoy!
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Note: There is more than one Steve Munro living in Toronto and I am not the one who is a very good sound editor and designer. If you don’t like my reviews, please don’t give him a hard time.
Steve Munro 