Posts Tagged: Toronto

08
Aug

2011

CABLEGRAPH: Gas Prices vs Public Transit

How does the trend of increased ridership match up against the local gas prices in Toronto?

Stuck between budget cuts and politics no one can ignore the increase in both fuel costs and public transit ridership. So the question is, how many riders will it take to shift attention over to public transit funding, infrastructure and policy?



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01
Jul

2011

Toronto Transit Commission to Charge Riders For Next Vehicle Information

An article in yesterday’s Toronto Star caught my eye. Apparently the Toronto Transit Commission is preparing to charge its riders 15¢ for every sms they receive from the system’s next-vehicle text system. Says The Star:

TTC staff want to charge customers 15 cents to use the next-streetcar text message system when the service expands to include buses later this year . . . The first two texts would be on the house, according to a staff report going to city hall Wednesday. Customers would only be charged for the third and subsequent text messages sent within a 24-hour period.

I’m torn about this one.

The TTC is an almost perpetually underfunded agency and looks for revenue wherever they can find it, but this seems like penny-pinching at its worst. According to the article, the total savings/revenue this scheme would generate is roughly $400,000 CAD, a mere drop in the bucket for an agency that has an annual operating budget that approaches nearly $1.5 billion.

At the same time, this is exactly the kind of model I advocate for when I talk about things like the Freemium Model of Public Transit. The difference, of course, being that with a Freemium model a basic service is incredibly discounted or offered free of charge and revenue is recouped through alternative means (such as 15¢ next-vehicle texts). The TTC, meanwhile, is rather expensive by North American standards with nearly constant fare hikes over the last decade.

I’m also not entirely sure about the whole idea that the first two texts (per day) are free and only the subsequent ones are subject to a charge. On the surface this looks like a fair and logical policy. After all, most people are only going to make two trips on transit per day – once to work and once back home. Two free texts should theoretically be enough for the average user.

The problem with this line of thinking, however, is that it presumes that a single text is going to be accurate and reliable which is questionable given the TTC’s significant reliability and schedule adherence problems – especially on its streetcar lines. One can receive a text saying that the next vehicle will arrive in 5 minutes only to find out two minutes later that it will be there in 7.

I know of several people who therefore opt to receive a half dozen texts prior to actually heading out the door to ensure they have the most up-to-date information and aren’t stuck lingering at a transit stop. For those people, two texts will simply not be enough, but not through any fault of their own.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this policy and would love to hear what you all think about it.



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09
Dec

2010

The Trouble With Ford’s Plan

As any Torontonian knows, Toronto’s transit plans are seriously in flux. After what seems like an eternity of planning a network of Light Rail lines, new mayor Rob Ford has decided to unilaterally nix that idea and build a new subway under the auspice that the “war on the car is over.”

Yet amidst all the hand-wringing, protesting and name-calling, no one seems to have actually scrutinized Ford’s plan. Which is good for Ford because his plan doesn’t look good.

Arguably, the single most important purpose of transit is to get people from where they live to where they work in the most efficient way possible. Connect lots of people to lots of jobs, and there’s a pretty good chance you’re doing your job right.

By that measure, Ford’s plan makes little sense:

The Toronto Subway network - simplified.

The above is a very simplified portrait of Toronto’s subway network. A few features for those not from Toronto:

  • The eastern half (right side) of the yellow line is the Yonge line. It’s either at capacity or over it – depending upon whom you asked.
  • The station that allows transfers between the Yonge line and the green Bloor-Danforth line is overcapacity.
  • The purple (Sheppard) subway line has only 5 stations and is underutilized since it opened in the early part of 2000’s. The system is so poorly used, there has been talk of shuttering it to save cost.

Rob Ford’s plan is this:

Rob Ford's plan to extend the purple Sheppard subway line.

So Ford’s plan amounts to extending a subway line that no one uses into an area where there aren’t many jobs and not that many people (relative to the rest of the city):

Population Density of Toronto - Source: Statistics Canada.

Worker Density in Toronto - Source: Statistics Canada

Overlay the two maps together and you get an even clearer picture of the problem:

Overlay: Population Density and Worker Density in Toronto

Essentially the Ford plan moves suburbanites from one mall (Scarborough Town Centre) to another mall (Fairview / Don Mills). Given that it’s Christmas season, I can see the appeal of that, but after the gifts have been unwrapped and the credit card bills have (hopefully) been paid, whose going to use this line? Doesn’t every mall offer basically the same thing anyways?

Oh, and it will only cost three-and-a-half billion to do it.



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03
Dec

2010

When Is A Road Not A Road?

Toronto’s grand LRT scheme, Transit City, appears headed for a premature grave. Almost immediately after assuming his new role as Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford declared to the province his intention to kill Transit City and replace it with subway lines.

Toronto media has been ablaze with the story since it hit yesterday, but no one seems to know what to make of it. Does Mr. Ford have the power to unilaterally declare dead a plan that was 8 years in the making? What will the province’s response be? What of Metrolinx, the regional transit planning authority? What of all the money spent on contracts, plans and new Light Rail vehicles?

No one seems to know.

Even staunchly pro-LRT advocate and Toronto transit buff Steve Munro seems lost for words. Says Steve: “Readers who know me well will appreciate that today is not the brightest day in my history of transit advocacy.  It would be easy just to write a bitter rant against the incoming regime.  That would be a waste of time — they won’t read it anyhow.”

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve never been a fan of Transit City, but let’s put that aside. Let’s put the mode choice/technology debate aside for a second.

Ford’s actions concern me. Maybe it’s just for political showmanship, but Ford unilaterally declaring the “war on cars” to be over is ridiculous and dangerous theatre. Whether such a war actually exists or not is besides the point. In Mr. Ford’s world, roads are for cars not people. (This assertion of Ford’s is so universally known in Toronto, it’s almost pointless to link to it, but just in case, check here and here).

So let’s put Transit City, LRT and subway lines to the side and agree on one thing: Roads are most certainly, 100% not just for cars. Maybe it’s just a matter of definition, but roads are also for people, too. People and roads existed for thousands of years before cars did.

History makes clear that roads aren’t just for cars. Roads are also for…

. . . eating . . .

A Chip Wagon Outside Toronto City Hall. Image by flickr user Danielle Scott.

. . . walking . . .

Barcelona's famed pedestrianized Las Ramblas. Image by flickr user Carlos Lorenzo.

. . . playing hockey . . .

Street hockey in Montreal. Image by caribb.

. . . boating . . .

Venice's Grand Canal. Image by flickr user gnuckx.

. . . relaxing . . .

Car Free Day in Vancouver. Image by flickr user thirteencentpinball.

. . . Christmas shopping . . .

Zürich's Bahnhofstrasse. Image by flickr user meckert75.

. . . and anything else you can think of.

Rob Ford had best be careful. Announcing the end of a war that never existed might just start the war he claimed was already over.



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14
Oct

2010

Let The Drivers Sing

A couple years back the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) decided to do away with the practice of transit vehicle drivers announcing upcoming stations and stops. It was decided that a GPS-enabled system would instead announce upcoming stations (in the case of subways) and stops (in the case of streetcars and buses) via generic, female, computerized voices.

No harm done, right? Maybe not.

One evening while riding the Parliament 65 bus, I overheard the driver talking with another driver. To paraphrase, the driver was quite upset at having the responsibility of stop announcements taken away from him. Driving a bus is about as boring a job as there is, he complained, and the act of getting on the loudspeaker was one of the few things that broke up the monotony.

Sometimes, he said, he would turn off the computerized voice and do the announcements himself – surely in contravention of some misconstrued (but no doubt well-meaning) TTC policy.

As any regular rider of transit in Toronto remembers, the act of personal station-stop announcements gave the system a personality. There was the Singing Subway Driver who would concoct all sorts of bizarre puns set to television theme songs to announce the upcoming station. There was the College Streetcar Tour Guide, who would make the effort to describe a little bit of history and context about the sights and roads you passed along your way. There were dozens of others, all with their own unique style, take and effort. Sure they probably irritated a few riders who just wanted to read their book and be left alone, but a great many transit riders would smile when they heard those drivers’ voices.

They’re all gone now. Their bodies may remain, but their voices don’t.



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18
Aug

2010

Speed Is Not Dependent Upon Technology

The Toronto Star reports today that the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and a waterfront development agency are at loggerheads over a planned new streetcar corridor.

The essence of the conflict is this:

The Toronto Transit Commission wants to experiment with track design on a new streetcar route to speed up Toronto’s failingly low streetcar speeds (between 10 and 12 km/hr, on average). Their solution is to place both track directions on the North side of Queens Quay (a major waterfront boulevard), and place both directions of vehicular traffic on the south side.

(Note: Traditionally, streetcars are placed in the center of a roadway with – say – eastbound streetcars moving on the same side of the street as eastbound traffic and westbound streetcars moving on the same side of the street as westbound traffic).

Neither the TTC nor the article offered an explanation as to how, why, or if this plan would increase average streetcar speeds. Nevertheless, TTC officials quoted in the article claim that according to their plan streetcars would experience average speeds of 13 – 15 km/hr, a significant speed premium.

Waterfront Toronto (the development agency), however, envisions a 3 km long stretch of Queen’s Quay  with up to 20 separate traffic lights to contend with the myriad of developments they have in the area. Of course this 3 km long stretch of roadway is the same as that which is to be used for the TTC’s new streetcar line.

For those who are counting, Waterfront Toronto’s plan would result in 1 traffic light every 150 meters.

TTC officials state that so many traffic lights would result in a streetcar line “even slower” than other Toronto streetcars (those within the 10 – 12 km/hr range).

Waterfront Toronto officials, however, contend that their plan for having extended greens and transit signal priority (TSP) schemes along the stretch would result in average speeds of 16.6 – 19.5 km/hr.

As I’ve argued before, transit signal priority schemes have a very dubious track record and there is little consensus about whether the technologies actually work (at least in a North American sense). At best, TSP seems to reduce travel times (and increase travel speeds) by around 6 – 10%. At worst, it actually increases travel times and reduces speed.

Waterfront Toronto, however, is convinced that their TSP plan would result in an increase in travel times of roughly 65%. This speed increase, meanwhile, would be realized in a corridor with 43% more traffic lights than some of the most congested sections in all of downtown Toronto.

The TTC accurately described the plan as “death by a thousand cuts.”

Something doesn’t make sense here. Both Waterfront Toronto and the TTC cannot be right. Both could however be wrong. That they differ in their opinions so widely suggests someone’s (or both’s) forecasting models are severely flawed.

At the end of the day, what this quibble shows is this: Road based transit speed has almost nothing to do with technology choice. Speed and travel times is dependent almost entirely on how the technology is implemented in relation to its surrounding environs.

Transit enthusiasts, advocates, planners and researchers need to get out of the habit of saying their technology preference is the fastest. After all, as the above demonstrates, your technology preference could be the fastest but it could also be the slowest.



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31
May

2010

A Toronto Gondola System

A while back I wrote a post soliciting people to contribute their own Cable Propelled Transit conceptual ideas. Aside from some uptake from the good people over at neoHouston, there was little interest. No wonder: I never offered my own conceptual. Kinda’ hypocritical, huh?

So, without further ado . . . Here’s how I’d use cable in my fine hometown of Toronto, Canada. To readers not from Toronto, please just play along:

Read more



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