One of the pillars of the TTC's plan to trim its budget is to cut some twenty-one "poor performing" bus routes. But what, exactly, is a "poor performing" route? As it turns out, transit whiz Steve Munro claims, it sure isn't what the TTC says it is: "in a flat fare system," he writes, "it is impossible to allocate fare revenue in any way that makes sense and produces meaningful comparisons between routes."
There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is the sheer diversity of the routes and what they are used for by their travelers (compare, say, the Airport Rocket bus or the York University Bus, to the ones mostly used by people transferring on at stations, to the ones that are more used on a stop-by-stop basis), as well as other variables like fuel consumption (which varies depending on if the route tends to be in stop-and-go traffic or smooth sailing). There are all sorts of weird anomalies in the TTC's bus system—like the aforementioned Airport Rocket, which has both the highest cost per hour of service and the lowest cost per kilometer traveled.
So, last evening on his blog, Munro crunched the numbers and came up with some data of his own.
Aside from producing an improved chart of the performance [PDF] of each and every one of the city's bus routes (want to know how much it costs to run your favourite route per hour of operation? Or how many people, on average, board it each hour that it operates?) and giving us the majority of the list of routes that the TTC contends are poor performing (that's the 160 Bathurst North, 49 Bloor West, 8 Broadview, 120 Calvington, 127 Davenport, 26 Dupont, 33 Forest Hill, 14 Glencairn, 169 Huntingwood, 30 Lambton, 160 Lawrence-Donway, 132 Milner, 62 Mortimer, 74 Mt. Pleasant, 67 Pharmacy, 167 Pharmacy North, 115 Silver Hills, 10 Van Horne, and 97 Yonge), the real help is Munro's comparison between the "poor performing" routes and those that the TTC contends are doing just fine.
Munro's larger argument is not, though, that the TTC's definition of "poor performing" is misleading, but that in cutting any routes, the TTC risks doing damage to its entire system. "Before we start running around the transit network axing suspicious routes left and right," says Munro, "it’s important that we remember that this is a network and when you start taking parts away, you damage more than the individual pieces." What Munro's superb analyses demonstrate is what we all expected: that the TTC has its work cut out for them for September, even when it comes to defining or justifying two little words, like "poor performing." There are no easy ways to save $130 million without making the TTC worse.
Photo outside of Dupont Station, waiting for the 26 Dupont bus, by e.dward from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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One of the biggest problems in my view is that the TTC does not validate every single rider, so that for instance transfers and metropass riders are not counted as they pass from vehicle to vehicle.
Ridership is estimated by sending out "counters" which extrapolate those sample figures into yearly counts. Steve himself has muttered darkly about the times TTC chooses to send out counters and the misleading impression that might be gained - but he also opposes smartcards. One advantage of smartcard validators is that they would give near-realtime data for metropass riders and allow TTC to see "flows" of people between origins and destinations which might lead to new, direct routes being considered or promote tweaking of routes to coincide with special events.
Smartcards would, I think, be a brilliant solution, if only because the TTC ridership as a whole would probably enjoy it a lot more. What's more satisfying or convenient to your average rider: dropping change or a ticket or a token into some bin, or swiping a magic refillable card?
I'd never even considered the potential benefits for the TTC as far as determining ridership goes, but it makes complete sense (not to mention the benefits as far as lineups at stations go, reducing ticket fraud, and so on...).
Smartcards won't solve this problem, none of the smartcard proposals that I'm aware of have suggested putting card readers at existing direct transfer points or for riders leaving the system. You could do one or the other and it would further add to the unjustifiable expense. Unjustifiable that is unless you plan to bring in London style zoned fares based on distance of travel.
Let's get this straight
We want to increase transit usage for all kinds of good public policy reasons.
People who should be riding transit but don't are mostly put off by long trip times, crowding, unreliable service, infrequent service, insufficient hours or geographic coverage. Fare paying hassles are way down the list somewhere below bad smells and pathalogical fear of red velour.
Smart cards will do nothing about any of these actual problems but they will require fares to go up, which will not help the problem.
Nobody, and I mean, nobody is going to be coaxed into becoming a regular transit user simply beacuse they can now pay their fares with a stupid little card especially if the fares are higher and the stupid card is always running out of value at exactly the times when the refill machine isn't handy.
au contraire chester, i find nyc's smart card system makes transit there much easier to use, especially on a casual day-to-day basis. if implemented well across the GTA region, the benefits to riders would be tangible in the form of quick and easy transactions. our current system is archaic. i do agree that we need to keep the fares down, but maybe a better first step (than ranking public complaints and acting accordingly) would be to work out a rational funding system whereby higher ridership = more money, not the other way around.
Seoul uses a distance-based fare scheme and smart cards (and, I've mentioned in the past, a country-wide cell phone based Interac system that puts us to shame). The average subway fare is, I'll estimate, 1100 won (~$1.25) -- smart card users pay a flat 900 won (~$1) no matter where they're going on the network.
Seoul's system is also largely ad-free. Most platforms don't have ads at all, and I haven't seen a single car with as many ads every TTC subway car sports.
Why are we dicking around, finding ways to save pocket change while killing the TTC slowly, when the only real solution is government funding?
The TTC should run off of development fees. Give it the deed to 20-30 additional storeys for 300m surrounding subway stations and you know have a resource to fund expansion. Also it would help to have negotiators who DIDN'T want to give the union a huge pay increase.
Cutting salaries at the TTC by 15% and cutting 10% of workers through mandatory retirements of the most senior employees would cut the total budget by more than 17%. Labour is roughly 75% of TTC expenses, but we're giving huge raises for an operation that loses money. Time to roll back wages, if it weren't for our trotskyite mayor.
Also, the ENTIRE problem of TTC funding is that it is government funded. ALL government monopolies will provide a poor service because funding is separated from use. This not only adds bureaucracy to the spending, creates opportunities for political wage setting to large worker groups, and politicises service decisions (can you say Sorbara? or Lastman?), but it also means that it is harder to make the case for increased funding and almost impossible to plan capital improvements.
Look at public universities, public schools, public transit, and public hospitals. Even the schools and the hospitals, the two services that crowd out all other spending, have squalid physical plants, too many administrators (with unconscionable salaries), and not enough janitors (who also make far too much money - no one should be mopping floors for 40 years, so $10/hr is more than enough, not $25).
This has been a topic of hot discussion on the late-night 26 (very much its own little microcosm – it’s one vehicle at a time running a mere once an hour, which I suppose could spur some discussion right there). My home bus, 31 Greenwood, will run until the day they close the TTC because the Greenwood subway yard is on its route (so is the post office that handles every letter mailed in Toronto). But really, you could cancel every other route and “justify” it. Remember, they’ve already floated the idea of shutting down 4/69 of the subway, the Sheppard line.
Now, the thing I pointed out today is: Why are we talking about cancelling the 26 but not cancelling the Museum Renaissance misadventure? People want the 26; nobody wants Museum station in drag.
Guest 7/8: You are the first person I've ever heard say the TTC gets too much government funding.
Tyrannosaurus - I don't think 7/8 is saying the TTC gets too much government funding. What he's saying is that, much like every other government agency - and particularly one run under an NDP administration - the money is spent poorly, and it's run very inefficiently.
When an agency like the TTC can get away with harassing upper levels of government for more money instead of taking the necessary steps to reduce staffing costs, it can afford to pay janitors $25/hr.
Sigh. The TTC is mostly funded by the fare box.
There's no reason we can't have the best of both: Correct the payroll problems *and* get mad cash from the feds.
Do we need a Facebook group, or something, to get some action on this front? Is anyone talking to the feds about their role in this mess?
This is at risk of becoming a duplicate of the comments on this past Friday's TTC article: i.e. the same old "worker salaries are too high, let's fire some TTC workers," etc. The TTC has roundly refused to take either of those two steps, in large part because, well, it won't have much effect (as so aptly demonstrated by one of our guest commenters here). I don't think pay cuts in any organization are any good for anyone, but if you want to just throw stats out there (like here), it'd be helpful to me -- and to everyone -- if you could provide some sources to back it all up.
And while I do like the suggestion that the TTC could own or rent propery as a means to make more money (that's how Victoria College at U of T, among many many other well-to-do organizations, makes so much of its money -- it owns the ground that several condos and Yorkville stores sit on), it strikes me as too much of a long-term investment to be on their radar right now when they basically have a year and a half to try to either raise $130 million or cut, cut, cut.
Rek, I know that you were just joking, but it's time that someone does something in this city that goes above and beyond creating a Facebook group. A "Save The ______" Facebook group is at risk of becoming the new PetitionOnline.com: a ubiquitous document that gains some attention but, in the end, acts as a mere gauge of public opinion and is otherwise meaningless and not taken seriously by the people who it's trying to reach (The Sam's Sign petition was a very impressive exception, but it's spawned a whole slew of copy-cats). What people need to do is actually get out there if they object to what is happening and care about it. But then the real question becomes who do you blame? That, I think, is what is so frustrating about this so far.
Getting back to the whole "bus" thing, I ride the 26 Dupont. I think that it is, by far, the worst, least-reliable, inconsistent route I have ever seen, and I won't miss it if it goes. But if the 40 Junction was about to get shut down, and the Bloor-Danforth line cut along with it, then I'd be finding out what I could do next to try to stop it. I wouldn't want my defense of something that is important to me to consist of clicking a "Join This Group" button on the internet. That's why I have some respect for the TTC protest happening this weekend, woefully uninformed (and, ironically, Facebook-organized) as it is. At least it's something, ya know? If this city is outraged at this, maybe people like us sitting around and talking about it on a blog is only a good first step. Maybe the next step needs to be something bigger, something communal.
I have no idea how effective it might be, or if it's another zero-impact petition in disguise:
Write a short and to-the-point letter that pulls no punches: the TTC is essential to Toronto and Toronto is essential to Canada; either push through a TTC funding package now, before the next federal election, or lose the election.
Print a thousand copies and ready a thousand envelopes, then stand at Queen and Yonge (or some other high-traffic intersection with a subway station) and get people to read and sign it. At the end of the day cram those letters in mail boxes. Repeat the next day. Repeat at other locations.
The letters would be addressed to a variety of trolls in Harper's government, as well as the leaders of the opposition parties and their transportation critics. Letters to MPs still have more weight than emails, and it's free.
What do you think, Toronto(ist)?
The simplistic proposal to cut the number of staff work hours either by layoffs or by "Miller Days" misses one basic point: buses and streetcars do not drive themselves.
If you want to walk to work one day a week, or take a day off yourself, you can contribute to reducing demand on the TTC so that they need less service.
Steve Munro